A slow solve and an enjoyable challenge. My favourites today were 1ac, 9ac, 21ac, 22ac, 6dn, and 8dn. Thanks to Picaroon for the puzzle
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BASHFUL |
Retiring from transport company surprisingly flush (7)
|
| BA (British Airways, “transport company”) + anagram/”surprisingly” of (flush)* | ||
| 5 | DEFICIT |
Skilful concealing old British firm’s shortfall (7)
|
| DEFT=”Skilful” around ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries, “old British firm”) | ||
| 9 | COFFEE-TABLE BOOK |
Conspicuous volume of doubly fine drugs swallowed by company board with caution (6-5,4)
|
| FF + EE; both inside CO (company) + TABLE=”board” + BOOK=”caution”
FF is double F, for “doubly fine” EE is more than one E for ecstasy, “drugs” a football referee might book/caution a player by giving them a yellow card |
||
| 10 | LATHI |
Not entirely cool at hip club in India (5)
|
| definition: a type of blunt weapon in India
hidden in coo-L AT HI-p |
||
| 11 | PRIMROSES |
Puritan and saint drinking wine — they may be in bed (9)
|
| definition referring to a flower bed
PRIM=”Puritan” + S (saint), around ROSE=rosé “wine” |
||
| 12 | RAINPROOF |
Setter dons apron for cooking, keeping dry (9)
|
| I=”Setter” of this puzzle; inside anagram/”cooking” of (apron for)* | ||
| 14 | IOWAN |
Statesperson, one given bagel and pasty (5)
|
| definition: someone from the state of Iowa
I=”one” + O (a “bagel” is a score of 0 games in a tennis set) + WAN=”pasty” |
||
| 15 | RANGE |
4×4 car, not Rover or Sierra (5)
|
| definition: a sierra is a mountain range
RANGE Rover=”4×4 car”, minus the “Rover” |
||
| 16 | INDECORUM |
Being crude, oil’s kept here without saving the planet? (9)
|
| IN DRUM=”oil’s kept here”, going outside/”without” ECO=”saving the planet?” | ||
| 18 | TEMPORISE |
Stall worker given zero extra cash (9)
|
| TEMP (a temp worker) + O=”zero” + RISE=increase in salary=”extra cash” | ||
| 21 | RUSES |
Game’s involving two bridge players getting tricks (5)
|
| RU ‘S (rugby union + ‘s, “Game’s”); around SE (South and East, “two bridge players”) | ||
| 22 | THELMA AND LOUISE |
Film version of Hamlet with antic Dane trapping foreign king (6,3,6)
|
| anagram/”version” of (Hamlet)*, plus anagram/”antic” of (Dane)* around LOUIS=name of many kings of France=”foreign king” | ||
| 23 | RESERVE |
What tennis player does after a let shows modesty (7)
|
| a tennis player would RE-SERVE, serve again, after a let call | ||
| 24 | PASCHAL |
Philosopher astride horse or kind of lamb (7)
|
| definition: a paschal lamb is a lamb sacrificed at Passover
Blaise PASCAL the philosopher, around H (horse) |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BUCKLER |
Bend sinister at the bottom in shield (7)
|
| BUCKLE=”Bend” with the last/”bottom” letter of siniste-R | ||
| 2 | SAFETY IN NUMBERS |
Peter amended tiny part of Bible giving reason to stick together (6,2,7)
|
| “Peter” is slang for a money box or SAFE + anagram/”amended” of (tiny)* + NUMBERS=a book of the Bible | ||
| 3 | FEE SIMPLE |
Charges current politician over void lease for land ownership (3,6)
|
| definition: a term for unconditional ownership of land
FEES=”Charges” + I (symbol for electric current) + MP (Member of Parliament, “politician”) + L-eas-E void of its inner letters |
||
| 4 | LIT UP |
Smashed bulb may be so (3,2)
|
| definition: ‘lit up’ and ‘smashed’ are both terms to describe being drunk
a light bulb might also be LIT UP (…and a smashed/anagrammed TULIP bulb might also give LIT UP?) |
||
| 5 | DEBRIEFED |
Grilled cheese scoffed after case of Drambuie (9)
|
| BRIE=”cheese” + FED=”scoffed”, all after the outer letters/”case” of D-rambui-E | ||
| 6 | FREER |
Official admitting hesitation over having more autonomy (5)
|
| REF (referee, “Official”) around ER=”hesitation”, all reversed/”over” | ||
| 7 | CROSS SWORDS WITH |
Succeeded cracking puzzles needing brains and hard fight (5,6,4)
|
| S (Succeeded) cracking into CROSSWORDS=”puzzles” plus WIT=”brains” + H (hard) | ||
| 8 | TAKES IN |
In front of uncovered king, captures rooks (5,2)
|
| definition: to rook means to swindle, fleece, ‘take in’
k-IN-g without its outer letters/”uncovered”, with TAKES=”captures” going in front |
||
| 13 | ORIGINATE |
Start travelling to Nigeria (9)
|
| anagram/”travelling” of (to Nigeria)* | ||
| 14 | INCURIOUS |
Trendy blackguard has debts with no interest (9)
|
| IN=”Trendy” + CUR=”blackguard” + IOUS=I owe you s=”debts” | ||
| 15 | ROTATOR |
Spinner, which is unaffected by spinning? (7)
|
| ROTATOR is a palindrome, the same when reversed/”unaffected by spinning” | ||
| 17 | MISDEAL |
Inappropriately, give hands to married ladies when dancing (7)
|
| definition refers to “hands” dealt out in a card game
M (married) + anagram/”dancing” of (ladies)* |
||
| 19 | ORMER |
Female leaving old seafood (5)
|
| definition: an edible ear-shaped mollusc
f (female) leaving f-ORMER=”old” |
||
| 20 | END UP |
Finish eg trifle, extremely nice after turnover (3,2)
|
| PUD=pudding (“eg trifle”) plus the extreme/outer letters of N-ic-E; all reversed/”after turnover” |
Doh! Yet agin I forgot that s = succeeded. A good workout today. Thanks Picaroon and Manehi
Enjoyable puzzle.
Liked INDECORUM, coffee-tablebook, PRIMROSES, RANGE (loi).
New for me: BUCKLER = shield; FEE SIMPLE; LATHI.
Thanks, both.
Really enjoyed this but slowed myself down by carelessly entering MISLEAD instead of MISDEAL, which made my hunt for a philosopher much longer than it should have been.
A bit of a breeze for me for a Picaroon. My only struggles were LATHI, IOWAN (until the PDM) and the 4 long ones for some reason.
PASCHAL was a favourite while I was wearing my Preston North End shirt with the Paschal lamb in the logo.
Some excellent clues. A very enjoyable puzzle. I especially liked IOWAN. The answer was reasonably obvious, though I hadn’t known the alternative meaning of bagel. With thanks to both.
Another nice challenge that was very satisfying, thanks Picaróon. My lexicon has been expanded with ORMER, LATHI & BUCKLER. I’m surprised that I remembered that for some extraordinary reason “peter” is “safe”. I don’t like S for saint and for succeeded, but I’m aware that they’re legit.
A rapid solve but most enjoyable with a few new words that needed the dictionary.
Failed to fully parse TAKES IN so thanks manehi.
I wonder if there’s the wrong part of speech in INDECORUM which is a noun? Not sure I could substitute this for “crude” or “being crude” in a sentence. Perhaps someone has an example.
… felt rather the same about RESERVE which I thought needed to be reserves.
I’m sure William could never be accused of being crude. 😉
Got BASHFUL, searched fruitlessly for Sleepy and Doc, got BUCKLER, couldn’t find a swash, but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks P & m.
If you have “being” as a gerund, or whatever it’s called (ie a noun), so “my being crude amounted to nothing less than a scandal” is much the same as “my indecorum…”
I learnt the same new words as Michelle@2 andGDU@6. Initially this looked very difficult but after 9 and 22ac came together, I had some purchase to go and work out the rest. 14ac was my favourite when I finally got the correct pronunciation of pasty.
Thanks to P and M today.
William @8 – yes, What tennis players do after a let… would work. And I can’t think of a sentence substituting “being crude” for “indecorum”.
Lots of finding building blocks for clues and slowly adding them together to create the answers – it’s the only way I solved PRIMROSES.
Thank you to manehi and Picaroon.
Having read all the across clues without solving one, I thought I was in for a struggle, but the downs were much more accommodating and the rest yielded quite quickly thereafter.
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
I thought CROSS SWORDS WITH was a cracking clue, as was IOWAN when the penny dropped. Same new words as Michelle plus ORMER. Quite straightforward but very enjoyable.
Ta both.
Re RESERVE (when the crowd say Bo)
A tennis player doesn’t RE-SERVE, does she? Oh yes she does.
A lovely puzzle, over too quickly. Smooth surfaces and clever misdirection. If I have to pick a favourite it’s the excellent THELMA AND LOUISE.
William @8: I think “What tennis player does” can lead to either RESERVE or reserves. He/she does RESERVE, or he/she reserves.
Many thanks Picaroon and manehi.
essexboy @9: Ha-ha! Very neat, thank you.
That works, James G @10, but I think the ‘being’ is being a present participle, ie a verb.
I see that on the Grauniad site one regular commenter has simply said ‘ridiculously easy’: it certainly wasn’t at the toughest end of Picaroon’s range, but what a pity that he didn’t add ‘for a genius like me, but a superb crossword for ordinary mortals’.
Another excellent puzzle from Picaroon.
A usual, I had umpteen ticks – with a double one for THELMA AND LOUISE, for the brilliant ‘antic’ as an indicator:
“As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on” (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene V).
I’ll just also mention PRIMROSES, PASCHAL and DEBRIEFED, for the pictures they conjured up and ORIGINATE, for the well-spotted anagram – but I could go on.
I knew BUCKLER from singing German’s ‘O peaceful England’ at school – the phrase stuck somehow and immediately sprang to mind:
“Sword and buckler by thy side,
Rest on the shore of battle-tide,
Which, like the ever-hungry sea
Howls round this Isle”
Many thanks to Picaroon and to manehi.
Thanks Picaroon and manehi
In contrast to some earlier posters, I found this harder than usual, so satisfying to finish it (though INDECORUM unparsed).
I wasn’t keen on BUCKLER. “Buckle” for bend, though justifiable, wasn’t obvious, and the “in” seems inappropriate.
[btw two of our common fern families are called “shield ferns” and “buckler ferns”, referring to the shapes of their spore-bearing structures.]
Had to reveal 11ac. Could not rid myself of saint=ST.
‘Ridiculously easy’ eh? Graciousness isn’t shared out equally is it ?. (Disclaimer: I found it rather tough today)
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
Enjoyable but marred by ‘INDULGENT ESCAPES by jet2 holidays’ popping up and obscuring half the clues. Anyone else?
I thought almost all of them were cracking clues! But it wasn’t easy by a long shot. Loved my second to last one in, THELMA AND LOUISE (do’h) but missed TEMPORISE till the very end. Magic. Thank you Picaroon and manehi for a lovely Thursday workout. CROSS SWORDS WITH and SAFETY IN NUMBERS were also wonderful.
“S” analysis figures greatly in this excellent Picaroon puzzle. Just two squares apart, in 7 dn it’s clued as “succeeded” while as “saint” in 11 ac. Both are in my Chambers 2003. In 21 ac, it’s there again as “apostrophe s” in RU’s ( Rugby Union’s ). In 23 ac, I have a grammatical quibble over “s”. Shouldn’t clueing be “What tennis playerS do ….” in order to pick up the plural verb form and pun it with a synonym of “modesty” ? I.e. What tennis player does is reserveS. Unless it’s the stressed verb form : he/she does RESERVE. I guess I could live along with that.
Loved IOWAN and THELMA AND LOUISE.
Here’s an earworm of a song ( Shel Silverstein composed ) from the soundtrack, and Marrianne Faithfull sung. I know this song well as it’s inevitably sung by Dennis Locorriere ( non eye patched singer in Dr Hook ) and I’ve seen him so very many times. I once, as a teenager. stood next to Marrianne Faithfull, at the shops and was too shy to chat or ask for an autograph !
https://youtu.be/d0NxhFn0szc
Thank you Picaroon and manehi.
Shanne@12: “at the risk of indecorum” – “at the risk of being crude” (makes me think of 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover 🙂
I enjoyed this a lot and fairly rattled through it for once.
My only dislike was several abbreviations which personally I only ever see in crosswords, though I know dictionaries justify them: s=saint, s=succeeded, h=horse.
Other than that plenty of nice clues such as 7d (despite that abbreviation) and about the right level for me. I was left with half a dozen I just couldn’t see but which became obvious an hour later – do others sometimes find that too?
This was at just the right level for a Thursday – no clue too hard, but each a satisfying solve. Particularly enjoyed COFFEE TABLE BOOK, PASCHAL and CROSS SWORDS WITH. Thanks Picaroon – just what we were looking for!
I found this extremely tough going at first but once I’d got a few crossers in things got easier. A tough (imho) but entirely fair challenge, with the standouts for me being INDECORUM (I don’t have a problem with indecorum as the state of being crude), SAFETY IN NUMBERS (knowledge of the OT coming in handy) and MISDEAL (for the wonderful surface). Enjoyed it so much that I’m not even mildly irritated by the people who proclaim that they found it a cinch.
Thanks, both.
Ravenrider @27 – the situation of returning to a puzzle and finding things obvious that were a complete mystery previously is indeed a familiar one. I have always assumed that in some way your subconscious has been working on the puzzle in the meantime. I don’t know if anyone has ever done any research on the matter.
After getting a foothold with a few down clues this was smooth sailing for the most part. In my opinion it was not “ridiculously easy” but it was not as difficult as the chef-themed offering recently. I loved many of the clues including CROSS SWORDS WITH, COFFEE-TABLE BOOK, IOWAN, and SAFETY IN NUMBERS. Thanks to both.
NeilH @30. Snap. Back in the days of my Assembler coding I could worry away for hours at a bug I had written, go home, come back in the morning and spot it immediately. I was tempted to use this an excuse to leave at midday when I was stymied ?.
Another cracker, thanks, Picaroon. “Conspicuous volume” is a particularly fine bit of misdirection. And thanks for the blog, manehi.
Re 16a – James G @10 has it spot on: it’s a gerund, ie a verb form that functions as a noun. Nothing wrong with it at all. If anyone wants to see what a gerund looks like in the wild, there’s a rather good artist’s impression here.
RESERVE:
It’s common to see something like ‘what tennis player does’ to clue ‘reserves’ but that is a grammatical mess. It is the ‘what’ in the clue that refers to the solution, and the structure requires that the ‘what’ is replaced by the thing that goes with ‘does’. Do when used as an auxiliary is followed by the root form, i.e. ‘reserve’, not ‘reserves’.
Changing the word order makes it clearer: ‘tennis player does what?’ Tennis player does reserves is clearly nonsense.
The answer should be ‘reserve’ whether the clue says ‘what tennis player (or tennis players) does, did, or will do’.
I must comment to share my delight at the quality of clueing in Picaroon’s work today. I thought the Hamlet clue was a real stonker — excellent — but there were many well crafted surfaces that concealed clever and witty but always fair wordplay. I didn’t have a problem with the tennis player who reserves, because the setter creates a question-answer frame for the clue (rather than requiring a direct substitution).
Another cracker from Picaroon.
I was another who fell into the MISLEADing trap at the beginning. I thought LATHI was well-hidden, THELMA .. and COFFEE … had good wordplay, and DEBRIEFED and TAKES IN had interesting surfaces.
Thanks Picaroon and manehi.
Nice puzzle (puzzlingly athematic?) which for me slipped down more easily than most offerings from the Pirate.
I liked the conspicuous volume, being crude, the grilled cheese, and of course T AND L. LATHI was new to me but obvious from the crossers.
I agree with Flea @25 that ‘what tennis players do’ would be grammatically tighter. I also had a quibblet about ‘scoffed’ = FED. ‘Scoffed’, if referring to eating, is an obligate transitive verb – the object being the food consumed by the subject. On the other hand in the transitive usage of ‘fed’ the object is the food given by the subject to another. ‘Fed’ can be used intransitively (ergatively?) but not ‘scoffed’. Minor point, though, in an enjoyable crossword.
Thanks to S&B
Re. re-serve:
Here is a sentence: “What a second-hand car dealer does is resell.”
Here is another sentence with the same underlying grammatical structure:
“What a tennis player does is re-serve.”
Both sentences use the copula verb “to be” to establish an identity, as in “(a cat) is (a mammal)”. There is no requirement for verb agreement between the left-hand and right-hand sides.
It’s almost all been said, except that I also liked the bend sinister, which would indeed be seen on a shield (though only on the bottom if the person in question were a few generations removed from his bastard forebear).
About the other debates here, I’ll say that the only thing worse than grammar pedants is grammar pedants who are wrong. Both of the clues people are complaining about are grammatically correct, y’all, for reasons already enumerated. What a tennis player does is re-serve (as an infinitive). Indecorum is being crude (as a gerund). Done and dusted.
Thanks to Picaroon for yet another great crossword
Thanks also to Manehi
Thank you poc @26
ravenrider @27 S for saint appears in missals and lectionaries, plus RC notices – you often see SS Peter and Paul, for example.
shanne @41 the problem is those are rather specialised – I’ve no idea what missals and lectionaries are (except they sound religious) and what comes to mind for RC is either Roman Catholic or (rather less likely) radio control. You may often see SS Peter and Paul, I don’t think I ever have.
George Clements@19 and SteveThePirate@22: that particular poster on the Guardian has form for starting the thread with short dismissive comments of that kind. To be fair, s/he sometimes says things like “not bad”, too.
I took a while to get anything apart from LATHI – then after THELMA AND LOUISE (uptick) the floodgates opened until I got to the NE corner where all the wheels came off. An 80/20 crossword – 80% of the clues took 20% of the time and vice versa. Didn’t know that meaning of bagel, but guessed O from the shape.
I liked all the long ones, plus INDECORUM and PRIMROSES.
Really enjoyed this, as per usual with a Picaroon puzzle. Very glad and relieved that the first two inserted were the grid fillers SAFETY IN NUMBERS and THELMA AND LOUISE. For 14ac I thought there can’t be many (US) “Statesmen” with only 5 letters, so that was a good eliminator. Played my final hand with MISDEAL, the loi today…
Loved 22 ac especially for the misdirection: I also assume that the use of “antic” referred to Hamlet, who put on an “antic disposition” – a phrase that sums up cryptic crosswords, perhaps?
mrpenney @39: What you’re saying is that if you’re going to be pedantic you should do it properly 🙂
An excellent crossword. I had concerns about INDECORUM and ‘fed’ (but reserve which came immediately to mind, not reserves) and see that these have been addressed above. Favourite was IOWAN and LOI was RAINPROOF. Many thanks Picaroon and manehi
An enjoyable crossword, made all the more satisfying by dint of a rare completion.
Like all Guardian crosswords, seemed impenetrable to start with, but slowly fell into place.
The four long ones helped, and they were all clues of the highest quality.
Now to see if I have parsed everything…
Thanks both.
As Shanne @12 says, this one involved “finding building blocks for clues and slowly adding them together to create the answers”, which is probably my preferred way of solving crosswords. Prime examples were the two long acrosses. Compare yesterday’s Fed, where the “building blocks” were so small and seemingly placed randomly in the surface of the clue, that the only way of solving (for me, at least) was to spot a definition that would fit the crossers.
I did all but one in a fairly short (for me) sitting, then gave up on 10a only for the answer to come unbidden within six paces from my chair. Nice!
Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.
ravenrider @27: “My only dislike was several abbreviations which personally I only ever see in crosswords”. Rather than disliking these usages, how about seeing their appearance in crosswords as opportunities to broaden your horizons?
H for horse is used not only in horse racing – on the racecard and in relevant publications (H is a male horse over four-years-old, C for colt, F for filly, M for mare) but also to refer to heroin. (For example, Len Deighton’s book Horse Under Water.) Perhaps, like S for saint, this is something you can claim never to have seen outside of a crossword, but it’s really not the fault of the setter. 🙂 (It was also used by Picaroon last November, when you queried it in a comment @25, so clearly something to watch out for.)
Just 4d, LIT UP = drunk, new to me…
HIYD @51
“Lit up” for drunk might derive from this famous commentary?
Muffin @52 – that’s great!
As already said, a delightful puzzle over far too quickly.
Favourite was SAFETY IN NUMBERS for the smooth surface, but there were many others.
Thanks Picaroon and manehi
Thanks for the blog, I found the Across clues quite tricky but the Downs a bit easier, once I put them in it collapsed. The grid is very friendly, it must have close to the maximum of first letters and they are the most helpful.
Cold solving each clue the puzzle has average difficulty for me but each entry in the grid gives several more making it much easier.
I liked the hands in MISDEAL and the meaning of stall in TEMPORISE .
I can see that lamb works better foe PASCHAL but it would have been nice to have moon .
Flea@25:
I Liked your earworm. Here’s one back at you. One of my favourite songs, sung live and unaccompanied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJCMKrK8X-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJCMKrK8X-c
HYD @51: “Lit” was used as an anagrind in a crossword recently so keep it in mind.
FrankieG @57: one of my party pieces when I’m LIT UP back in Ireland. Would never have imagined MF singing this but she does a ‘fair’ job of it.
[ AlanC perhaps you should learn to sing that Freddie King song ]
AlanC@59
🙂
FrankieG@57 Thank you. As tears go by, I am sitting and replaying and re-re-playing your earworm. Beautiful. Last time, I misspelled M’s Christian name. Marianne is, of course, a single “r”. Silly me.
Re BUCKLER and continuing on music, I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the song “A froggie goes a-courting”. He has a sword and a BUCKLER by his side.
I’m having a silly day ! I’m tense. A froggie WENT a-courting.
[ Roz @60: once again, very droll, but will not pursue any double entendre 🙂 love the craic ]
[ I was not thinking of KPR , just you skiing on your undercover mission. I would put a link but my IT skills are too advanced for the current version of the internet ]
Just for you https://youtu.be/V_ONyukSLqA
Flea@62:
I could have sworn it was “pistol” but you’re right, it’s BUCKLER. We used to have it by Burl Ives on a single and that’s what he sings.
Tex Ritter & Bob Dylan (yes, Bob Dylan – who knew?) sing “pistol”. Apparently it’s from 1549.
My kind of cluing. Very enjoyable.
Thanks, Swashbuckler and manehi
Gervase @37, why can’t scoff be used intransitively? What about something like “the wolves ate/fed/scoffed at dusk”?
ravenrider @42, one common place to see SS for saints in action is on church signs, e.g the one in the photo for SS Peter and Paul, Chingford here.
Nuntius @5: among tennis fans in the United States, the winner of a set is said to have “bageled” the opponent by winning it 6-0, on account of the hole-shaped of the number for love. [Coincidentally, in baseball a pitcher who wins with a shutout (no runs scored against) is said to have pitched “goose-eggs”. Geese in baseball; ducks in cricket. Is anyone aware of a sporting idiom that uses doughnuts?]
Eileen@20 As a ten @30-year-old in Maryland I used to sing the state song, “Maryland, my Maryland,” which includes the line “gird thy beauteous limbs with steel.” I found it quite stirring at the time. I didn’t register then that the Civil-War-era song’s lyrics were out-and-out pro-Confederate. (The opening line, “The despot’s heel is on thy shore,” refers to Lincoln.) It didn’t become the state song until 1939, though, in the Jim Crow era. Marylanders tried for decades to get rid of it, and finally succeeded in 2021.
ravenrider@27 and NeilH@30 I think the experience of the impenetrable becoming the obvious after an absence (usually a night’s sleep in my case) is some combination of addition (your subconscious working on it in the meantime) and subtraction (you forget the misinterpretation you’d been hung up on).
widdersbel@33 Thanks for the zoology lesson. I had to look up gerundive to see if there really was such a thing and that really led me into a thicket!
Flea@62 I learned the American version of this as a child as “sword and pistol by his side.
Thanks, Picaroon and manehi.
Valentine@70
Maryland, my Maryland was a trad jazz staple in my youth, though I never knew the words. The same tune is used for the German carol,die Tanelbaum, The Red Flag and my old school song. The school tried to change it but too many Old Boys protested and it was re-adopted with the justification that we had it before the Communists.
I was held up for a while by having entered FREED for 6D – the official being FED and the ‘over’ wrongly applied to ER – after all, freed means having more autonomy than prior to being being freed?
Widdersbel @33, thanks for the memory of swots, snekes, cads, prigs, bulies and various other chizzes.
I’m amazed that nobody’s mentioned that the word ‘swashbuckler’ is formed from ‘swash’ and ‘buckler’ but it is. Once you’ve realised that, you’ll never forget that a buckler is a shield.
A rare quick solve from James but enjoyable nonetheless. The only minor qualm I have is a LATHI is more of a stick or a staff than a club. It’s typically used by policemen in India for dispersing crowds and the likes.
This was ridiculously easy. It took me less than two hours to finish it, and there were only three words that I had never heard of. I mean really, where’s the challenge in that? 🙂
Thanks muffin@52 for the hilarious lit up commentary.
Widdersbel@33, who is that gerundive cartoonist, and what is the source of those delightful drawings?
Thanks Picaroon for the fun and manehi for explaining some of those ridiculously easy clues for me.
cellomaniac – it’s from Ronald Searle in one of the Molesworth books, that one is How to be Topp – a series of books based on the experiences of being a school boy from the point of view of Molesworth (who finds skool full of swots, bullies and chizzes, some of them the teachers).
Not quite under two hours to solve, but one of my longer solves this week, including this morning’s Paul.
Thanks, Shane. I’m about to start today’s Paul – he usually takes me a couple of days to solve.
Sorry, Shanne – autocorrect strikes again.