Great fun from Chalmie this morning.
In typical Chalmie style, a fair chunk of the puzzle is hinged on the slogan clue. There were a few write-ins to get me started, but it took a while to really penetrate the grid. Once I had the slogan about halfway through, it was plain sailing. Great fun, so many thanks to Chalmie.
PILE (heap) protects F[reedom] F[ighters’] (leaders)
(RESISTED)* (*changes)
(REVOLT)* (*failed) spanning MON (24 hours, i.e. Monday)
O[rthodox] (leader of) + FOLD (congregation)
MOO (low) + R[umbling] begins
STUD (boss) + E BAKER (who makes bread online?)
(NITS ON A)* (*roundabout)
Definition: In NY they’re UNITED (from 19) i.e. United Nations, whose headquarters are in NY
16. Sticky end due for 19 team (6)
(END DUE)* (*sticky)
Definition: UNITED team (from 19a) i.e. Dundee United FC
UNITED (airline) + WEST (bearing) + (VID WELL IF DEAD)* (*weird)
The slogan has its own Wikipedia page
CAST (actors) + A[nnoye]D (extremely) by RIFT (split, from 24D)
I DIM< (one stupid, <turns)
IS LET (has licence)
(BANK SEAL I)* (*break)
Definition: to leave DIVIDED (from 5d)
(IM UNITED (from 19a))* (*confused)
[Coa]T (finally) impresses SAGES (wise men)
(MAIL)* (*junk) swallowed by PONY (horse)
OTT (too much, over the top) in FORGE (counterfeit) + N (note)
LOO K (toilet + K being the 11th letter of the alphabet)
If LOO A is the first toilet, LOO B the second, and so on
(MONITORS TB)* (*outbreak)
[audienc]E BOO K[illing] (section of)
SEERS (prophets) eat D (500)
It’s a country after UNITED (from 19), i.e. United States
NORTHA[mp]TON (town, ditches MP for C[ouncil] leader)
AXE< (chopper, <going up) above MINING (excavation)
L (liberal) + ([office]R (finally) stops DIVERS[e] (various))
Something missing to tell us to drop the ‘e’ on ‘diverse’ I think
(BAD RULE)* (*broken)
ISM (doctrine) supporting S (small) + CH (children)
Definition: Church DIVIDED (from 5d) after this
P (power) + ART (pictures?)
Definition: Make DIVIDED (from 5d)
Thanks, Chalmie and Oriel!
Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog.
UNITED WE…
A minor omission:
After WEST, ‘with=AND’ and then the anagram.
L-DRIVERS
Divers (adjective) means various.
Very much enjoyed this. The enumeration and a few crossers were helpful for the long answer which in turn helped with the other referenced clues. What wasn’t so helpful though was being left with only the _O_T_ crossers for the first part of 14d. The ‘Town’ could have been North or South and not remembering my Tube map well enough, I plumped for the wrong station.
No complaints though. I particularly liked BALKANISE (first time on Fifteensquared for over four years) and STUDEBAKER (surprised to see this appeared only a bit more than six months ago).
Thanks to Chalmie and Oriel
This was a tight set of clues with some clever variations on the central ‘slogan’.
Aside from the fun of piecing those together, I enjoyed the ‘sticky end’ of DUNDEE (being a cake as well as the football team), LERMONTOV, and the neat confluence of 23/29 and 28/24d. There even seemed to be a mini theatre theme in MOOR, CAST (ADRIFT), PART, STAGES.
Nicely done, Chalmie, and thank you Oriel .
Didn’t know LERMONTOV and don’t recall seeing PALIMONY or BALKANISE before, but all easy to guess and check. Agree with KVa’s comments (as usual). Also had the same issue with 14d as WordPlodder, so didn’t bother entering the two letters (?O?TH ACTON).
Very enjoyable puzzle, thanks, Chalmie. I was in slow brain mode today so it took me a while to get going, but once I got SCHISM (purely from the wordplay) that gave me DIVIDED and the rest fell into place pretty quickly after that.
Thanks for the splendid blog, Oriel.
WP @2 – I initially wrote in SOUTH ACTON too but quickly remembered there was no such station!
We get into trouble these days if we call a female actor an actress, so I was surprised to see “editress” — a word I’ve never encountered. Silly me thought that the long clue was a slogan for an airline — I guess you’d call that hook, line and sinker, to use another well-worn expression? Hadn’t heard of seders, Lermonton, Dundee United or South Acton, but all gettable from wordplay. Not keen on “impressing” as an anagrind, but no doubt it’s in Chambers so beyond reproach. 😉
Good fun, thanks, Chalmie & Oriel.
Lermontov! Told you I’d never heard of …
Thanks Chalmie and Oriel
14dn: There is a South Acton station on the North London Line, which is now part of the London Overground. It could well have been part of the same station which was on the end of a branch of the District Line that closed in 1959. This is all stuff I looked up after reading the blog. I do not think it is fair to solvers to have “tube” necessary to resolve an ambiguity which is not even resolved by checked letters from other clues.
This was indeed enjoyable. I despaired initially at all the interlinking clues but, as for Widdersbel, it was SCHISM that let me in.
When PIFFLE came up at 1a I did wonder if we might have PYRAMID or INVERTED in honour of a certain gentleman who will no doubt be providing more of the same later today, but it was not to be.
Had superficially parsed ‘bearing with’ as WE STAND but grateful to the blog for the tighter parsing of WEST AND. Better crossword etiquette for sure.
Didn’t know PALIMONY so something learnt.
Tx Chalmie and Oriel.
Thanks Oriel and all. I don’t know why GdU complains about “impressing” as an anagrind, given that it’s only used as an insertion indicator in this puzzle. And thanks to Diane for, as usual, finding things in the puzzle I didn’t know I’d put there.
Further to 8: Oh, and please do not say that Southampton is a city, so “Town” must mean Northampton. The first definition of city in Chambers 2014 is “a large town”.
Chalmie, yes, sorry, I meant insertion indicator. Not used to it.
PB @8 – I may be missing something but I don’t understand your objection – “tube” is a necessary part of the definition, and what makes the solution unambiguous. “Tube station” could only have defined SOUTH ACTION if the puzzle had been made prior to 1959.
Widdersbel@13: Thank you for pointing out the lack of clarity in my comment. Let me have another go. I do not think it is reasonable to expect solvers to know, or be willing to look up, which of North Acton or South Acton is on the tube.
Ah! I see. Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
Widdersbel@15: Glad to make myself clearer. I could also have said that my remarks were following earlier comments. In a more constructive mood, I might add that, if Chalmie had thought of the potential problem, he could have started the clue with something like “Inland town”. Anyway, at worst a small blemish on an enjoyable puzzle.
@PB/W passim. I will admit that when I wrote the clue, I thought of “Northampton Town” being the football club. Never having heard of South Acton, the potential confusion with the other place simply escaped me.
London Underground stations, especially ones on the outer reaches of lines, are a rather parochial bit of general knowledge, no argument there. Fairness in this sort of thing is largely a matter of perception and personal tastes. Speaking purely for myself, I quite enjoy crosswords with a strong GK element – Russian novelists, American car brands, Eastern European cities, Scottish football teams, London Underground stations… all grist to my mill!
I appreciate not everyone feels the same.
Today’s earworm is the sole reason I know of STUDEBAKER as a car brand – Virginia Plain by Roxy Music
I seem to remember from way back in my youth that a city was defined as a town that has a cathedral. Maybe that has changed over the years.
14D is obviously aimed at people who live in greater London.
8D was obvious from the clue and cross letters but the answer was unknown to we atheists.
Re 2D: “left out” is a deliberate omission. “forgotten” is an unconscious act.
I’ve only just realised after reading others’ contributions that South Acton, as I’d entered, was wrong. So there you go …
Peter@19 “we atheists…” needs the qualification “… who have no idea why our Jewish friends won’t come for a drink on Friday night”, as it was certainly familiar to the atheist who composed the puzzle.
Thanks for the blog, really enjoyed this. NORTH ACTON is a bit unusual, if SOUTH ACTON tube station still existed it would fit the definition and the word play and the crossing letters.
I did like the multiple use of the main entry .
14D What meaning of the word “at” is being used in the cryptic reading here: {Wordplay} at {Definition}? I’m not convinced that it can validly perform the function of a link word.
Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. I found the number of clues that depended on other clues being solved first to be supremely annoying. After solving a handful I abandoned ship. Thanks Oriel for the blog.
Widdersbel@18 It’s largely a function of what rubbish is stored in a setter’s mental attic. I have no idea how I intend to clue words: I just look at them and see what the librarian has in stock which gives me idea of what story in I can tell in seven words. Some setters are great at dreaming up ways of making just the letters do acrobatics: I try and find random pieces to stick together ands see what happens.
Wordplodder@5 – that’s rather what I expected. A six-word 26-letter answer was unlikely to be solved directly. I reckoned enough of the 5/19 references were clear enough as wordplay only to give a decent hint at one of them, and from there the ghastly contrived nonsense which forms the 26 wouldm fall intoplace fairly rapidly.
But NORTHAMPTON is a “Town” whereas SOUTHAMPTON is a city. 🙂
All cities are towns including old London town , the world’s most important city is six towns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northampton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton
Cities and Towns are different. Just watch Pointless.
People guess cities from Football teams’ names.
The low scoring cities are ELY, St Davids, Armagh, Belfast?, Derry, Lisburn?, Newry.
Chalmie got everything right by accident with “tube” and “Town”.
All cities are towns but not all towns are cities , that is the difference on Pointless , A town is give city status in various ways , usually royal charter. Elgin City does not work from the football .
[Widdersbel @18: Thanks for the link to Virginia Plain. I’ve been a fan of Roxy Music since the 70’s but I never picked up the Studebaker reference in the song. I remember Studebaker mainly as a sponsor of the Mr. Ed TV show in the 60’s.]
[ Virginia Plain is one of the few singles I own. My parents passed all their vinyl on to me , 99% albums . They got the single because it was not on any early Roxy Music albums. It is occasionally shown in repeats of Sounds of the 70s ]
Chalmie @ 25 “A six-word 26-letter answer was unlikely to be solved directly.“
Er, I did, from S _ A _ D and two other crossers, then went back to the linked clues.
Thanks for the puzzle, and to Oriel for the blog.
Thanks blogger and Chalmie but what a shame there is no smut. I expect at least one next time, setter.
Guildford is a town, even though it has a cathedral.
All good except for 1 down. Having decided that “horse” was the answer, I entered “palomino” which fitted but didn’t parse well. I don’t see that fit matters whether one entered North or South Acton since both fit the clue and the grid. Great puzzle thanks Chalmie and Oriel.
john@35: South Acton is not (any longer) a tube station, as many of us have pointed out in earlier comments.
Now that I know that North Acton is an underground station and South Acton used to be an underground station but is now an overground station, and is therefore no longer a part of the same system, I accept that I got this one wrong. But I’m not sure that this is a nuance that any non-Londoner should be expected to know, and the crossers didn’t help resolve the matter.
Chalmie@25, I love your description of your clueing method, which in some ways matches my solving method.
Peter@19, I second Chalmie’s point @21. As a wishy-washy pseudo-atheist who hedges his bets (otherwise known as an agnostic), but who is also a member of a pluralistic society, I have an ordinary lay-person’s knowledge of some of the the holidays and ceremonies of the mainstream religions of my neighbours. (I even remember some of the Presbyterian ones from my upbringing.)
Thanks Chalmie and Oriel for the excellent diversion.
Cellomaniac@37 re 14dn (North/South Acton): I think Chalmie@17 has made it clear that he was not expecting us to know this nuance. For what it is worth, I was born and lived for most of my childhood within 12km (within 8 miles) of Acton, and I put South Acton in when solving. I always solve without reference material, although I often look things up for the purposes of discussion on this site.
Chalmie@17: Belated thanks for that comment. I would have been much less happy if you had claimed that the distinction was deliberate.
For anyone still reading, Chelmsford City has been the football club for many years. There is a cathedral here, but city status only came a few years ago. The footballers assumed it was a city from the cathedral. All very confusing.