Bluth provides today’s challenge.
Another great puzzle from Bluth, with plenty to test the old grey matter. We haven’t come across the phrase at 4d/18d before, and initially thought it was something our setter had made up – but, no…. there it is in Chambers! 5d/19d brought back memories for us – we can’t remember the last time we used 19d to pay for anything, let alone 5d/19d!
Thanks, Bluth, for the challenge and the the memories!
Alternate or ‘occasional’ letters of sEeMs ClEvEr
JACk (small white ball – in bowls) without the last letter or ‘dropping behind’ + A + R AND A (Royal and Ancient – ‘golf club’)
An anagram (‘new’) of AGE CRANK DWELLs (without the last letter or ‘largely’) and ON
L (pound) + DON (put on) B (black) in or ‘splitting’ ONUS
GeordiE without the middle letters or ‘content to go’ + LID (top)
PEoPLE (electorate) with the ‘o’ (nothing) replaced by R (right) + X (vote)
TEAT (milk supplier) round or ‘entertaining’ S + AD (commercial) all reversed (‘sent over’)
ROOM (space) after a reversal (‘returned’) of NUS (National Union of Students)
DAVE (TV channel) in CAR (vehicle) – something a Coroner (2d) might study
BOW tIE (‘dicky’) missing the ‘t’ (last or ‘final’ letter of heart)
An anagram (‘treatment’) of CAnCELS PET with the ‘n’ (last letter or ‘tail’ of alsatian) missing or ‘docked’
CRUNCH (critical point) IN (during) G (middle or ‘essential’ letter of surgery) after or ‘resting on’ NUMBER (‘anaesthetist’ – one causing numbness)
LANDS (gets) round or ‘over’ FILL (charge)
IE (that is) in or ‘breaking’ TIN (metal)
LO (look) in ESCAPES (flights)
Hidden (with ‘fragments falling off’) and reversed (‘climbing) in swoRE NO ROCk
ERA (time) TO (against)
An anagram (‘cracked’) of the odd letters of BlUe and JOKE + X (by) and MUS (Greek characters) I (island) + first or ‘original’ letters of Cast As Locals – we have never come across this term before. Thanks to Ian SW3 for pointing out the error in the parsing – as he says it could be X (chi) another Greek character
A homophone (‘sounded’) of CZECHS (Bohemians) with CROSS (angry) in front or ‘at first’ before ED (journalist)
RELATED (told) round EG (say)
An anagram (‘somehow’) of LED US ON
NAME (handle) with the ‘n’ moved to the back or ‘rotated’ + D (first letter or ‘starter’ of double-decker)
LOO (gents?) SmokE (without the middle letters or ‘on vacation’) LEAF (marijuana) – we had to check this slang term
An anagram (‘supply’ – in a supple manner) of URGENT after or ‘propping up’ TURkey (country) missing or ‘wanting’ ‘key’ (vital)
NEW MAN (reformed character) round or ‘inspiring’ S (son)
VA (Virginia) vINE (creeper) missing the ‘v’ (against) round or ‘supporting’ CliniC (first and last letters or ‘walls’)
B (book) AN A (American) L (learner – ‘student’)
A reversal (‘up’) of I CAT (whip) + T (last letter or ‘end’ of dessert)
Great crossword. I could solve the puzzle but I needed the bog for some of the parsing. I was thereabouts with the longish anagrams but completely foxed by 14a (I was hung up on the possibilty of date milk) and have never heard of a dickie bow but I have now. Liked PERPLEX, LOOSE LEAF and LONDON BUS from a smorgasborg of tasty clues. Thanks all.
Very enjoyable though I can’t remember a crossword where I filled in so many from checkers and a stab at the definition. I don’t have time to go over the parsings at the moment but of the ones I have fully nailed I particularly liked PERPLEX, LONDON BUS, NUMBER CRUNCHING and TACIT but favourite has to be the brilliant LOOSE LEAF.
Many thanks indeed Bluth and B&J.
I detest the answer to 1a with a passion. It is a very ugly word which has been unnecessarily manufactured. What’s wrong with MC if you don’t want to write the full three words? (OK, I know MC wouldn’t fit in the grid!). Nevertheless, it has somehow found its way into our dictionaries and, as such, is fair game to setters. Fortunately everything else in this excellent and challenging puzzle restored my good humour.
I’ve never heard of JACARANDA nor JUKEBOX MUSICAL but both were readily derivable by being fairly clued.
LONDON BUS was my favourite.
Many thanks to Bluth and to B&J.
You’ve left out the X in the parsing of 4d/18d. It is most likely ‘by,’ but possibly another Greek character (chi).
No other comments or complaints. A cracker. Thanks, Bluth and B&J.
I agree with Rabbit Dave @3 over 1A, but fair game if it’s in dictionaries. There were several I solved but couldn’t fully parse so thanks to the bloggers for the explanations. Never having been into recreational drugs, I’m always a little dopy when solving such clues as 13D. Thanks Bluth and B&J.
Thanks Ian SW3 – blog (or ‘bog’ as Sofamore calls it!) is now amended.
I have not seen 10a in a crossword for a while. I expect to see two more soon. JACARANDA was my favourite. I was expecting WOOD or IRON to appear in the answer. Thanks for a great puzzle and blog.
Thanks both. Thought the cluing for BOWIE was a little poignant given his relatively recent passing. This was tough but excellent throughout
What a box of tricks. Always great fun to tackle a Bluth. This was one I found more approachable than many in the past; must be on the right wavelength today. I’ll be honest; I didn’t go through all the elements of the long anagrams – I tend to do most anagrams in my head and it was clear I was there or thereabouts with the fodder. By = X in JUKEBOX MUSICAL worked for me and I didn’t consider an alternative, I confess.
Favourites today include JACARANDA, CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, PERPLEX, BOWIE, LANDFILLS, CORONER, LOOSE LEAF, NEWSMAN and BANAL.
Thanks Bluth and B&J
Crossed cheques brought back memories, although exactly why we crossed them is a bit obscure.
Sorry to be pedantic @Ian but the character for chi is not quite the same as an X (different symbol set) just as the symbol for mu is not u and alpha is not a. But “by” works fine.
Thanks B&J and thanks all.
My intended parsing for 4d did supply the required X with the word ‘by’ as Ian SW3 suggests.
I’m surprised that some people aren’t familiar with the phrase – they’re such a phenomenon in the (understandably) risk averse industry (why take a chance on a 100% new show if there are songs the audience already love to work with?) and the phrase pretty much always appears in any review of such things.
For what it’s worth, I always have more misgivings about including lights such as 3d which feels far more obscure to me.
Petert@7 arf!
Are the Muses goddesses or nymphs?
FalkirkDouglas
Chambers:
Muse /m?z/ (Gr myth)
noun
Any of the nine goddesses of the liberal arts, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Calliope of epic poetry; Clio of history; Erato of love poetry; Euterpe of music and lyric poetry; Melpomene of tragedy; Polyhymnia of sacred lyrics; Terpsichore of dancing; Thalia of comedy; Urania of astronomy)
A bit tricky in places but we got it all, albeit with some answers unparsed, and we only got CORONER by working backwards from CADAVER. Favourites were JACARANDA and LONDON BUS.
Thanks, Bluth and B&J.
BertandJoyce,
Can’t argue with that.
Ericw:
To help:
A crossed cheque could only be banked into the payee’s bank account. Uncrossed, it could be cashed over the counter. Even at the local pub. Which often was.
I don’t know if it still works that way ….
All really good stuff, bar 14, for me. I’d argue a vast amount of computer files are not data sets, and one can have a data set which is not a computer file; so it is either a definition by example or a rather loose equivalence. I would have clued the definition as “Excel computer file?”
No-one else seems bothered though, so maybe in a crossword the technical looseness is OK?
DaveJ @17 – I was relying on the definition given in Chambers.
Data Set noun (computing) A file
@https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jukebox_musical’
The origin of the phrase “JUKEBOX MUSICAL” in its current meaning is unclear. The word “JUKEBOX” dates to around 1939.
The first documented use of “JUKEBOX MUSICAL” in print may have been in a 1962 description of the MUSICAL Do Re Mi, but that was a MUSICAL (with original music) about a man who sells JUKEBOXes. 🙂
In a 1964 review of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, critic Andrew Sarris described that film as “the Citizen Kane of JUKEBOX MUSICALs”‘
Hi Bluth@18
9a – Any reference to CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, the 1971 Mike Nichols film or were you just thinking about sex? I suppose you were too young then, but or me your clue evoked a time when I was managing to pass for 18 and getting in to see X-certiificate films. I can better remember films & books from that era – The Graduate, Catch-22, A Clockwork Orange – than I can the latest releases. And yes, I was just thinking about sex.
Fair enough, Bluth @18 and thanks for the clarification.
I could probably bore for England on how that is a terrible definition, but if Chambers is happy with the equivalence then it’s obviously good enough for a crossword.
Thanks again for the puzzle
DaveJ @21 ta. It’s not just Chambers, mind. Collins has:
~ computing another name for file
FrankieG @20 – no thought of any movies, just fun words to construct clues for.
Bluth @22. A-ha! I have found the reference: IBM called their files on the S/360 mainframe *datasets*, and that seems to have made its way in to the dictionaries. The 360 was discontinued in 1978! Big Blue set the rules back in those days.
If you are interested, read Wikipedia on data sets/datasets and you will see why they are not always a synonym for a computer file, and there is a link there to the IBM context, where they once were.
Cheers
Ian SW3@4 & Ericw@10
I remember in the early ’80s on holiday in Greece seeing the sports page of a newspaper with a picture of Celtic manager David Hay.
His first name was problematic.
Delta is more of a “dh” than a “d”: nu+tau was closer = nt
Alpha is a short A, so no use for the long A in DAVID : that neeeded epsilon+iota = ei
There is no V in Greek : theta was closest = th
Iota was ok for i
So they spelt his name: nu tau epsilon iota theta iota nu tau = nteithint!