A fun solve, and a bit tricky for a Monday. A lot of likes including 8ac, 9ac, 10ac, 18ac, 1dn, 2dn, 6dn, and 16dn. Thanks to Vulcan
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | INITIAL |
Opening letter, I nail it up the wall (7)
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anagram/"up the wall" of (I nail it)* |
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| 8 | JANITOR |
Caretaker to retire initially after New Year (7)
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TO + R-[etire], after JAN I (Jan 1 / January 1st / "New Year") |
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| 9 | OXEN |
A little fox engages much bigger animals (4)
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hidden in/"A little" of: f-OX EN-gages |
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| 10 | SOUNDBITE |
A part of speech? (9)
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cryptic definition: a part/extract of a recorded speech or interview the surface suggests grammatical parts of speech |
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| 12 | QUAFF |
Squad heartily taking two females for drink (5)
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the central letters ('heart') from s-QUA-d, plus F F (short for 'female', two times) |
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| 13 | DRAUGHTY |
Currently a bit uncomfortable? (8)
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cryptic definition: uncomfortable because of the existence of a current surface suggests "Currently" in the sense of 'at this time' |
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| 15 | LEAD |
Boy holding end of the leash (4)
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LAD="Boy" holding the "end"/final letter of th-E |
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| 16 | FURZE |
Thorny plant becomes coated, they say (5)
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homophone/"they say" of 'furs' 'fur' can be an intransitive verb meaning 'to become coated' |
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| 17 | CREW |
Team triumphed (4)
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double definition: second definition is CREW as past tense of 'crow', to express triumph |
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| 18 | ONE-HORSE |
Moving here soon, such a tiny town (3-5)
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definition references the phrase 'a one-horse town', a very small or insignificant town anagram/"Moving" of (here soon)* |
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| 20 | MAUVE |
Colourful sort of light in West (5)
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UV (ultraviolet, "sort of light"), in MAE (actress Mae "West") |
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| 21 | SPONSORED |
Do press on, struggling in such a walk? (9)
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definition refers to SPONSORED walks for charity anagram/"struggling" of (Do press on)* |
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| 22 | LOST |
An office may have this property (4)
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cryptic definition: reference to lost property offices |
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| 24 | NEW AGER |
Hippie: bet on one losing head (3,4)
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WAGER="bet", after/"on" o-NE losing its head/first letter |
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| 25 | LEG SPIN |
Pirouette on the cricket field? (3,4)
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a type of bowling in cricket a pirouette is a spin around one foot/leg |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ONYX |
Stone working with axes (4)
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ON="working", plus Y and X ("axes" as a plural of axis, Y the vertical axis and X the horizontal axis for a chart or set of coordinates) |
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| 2 | STANDARD |
Bear away flag (8)
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STAND=endure="Bear", plus "away" becomes A + RD="way" |
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| 3 | MASSIF |
Service provided in mountain region (6)
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MASS=church "Service" + IF="provided" |
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| 4 | MANDRAKE |
Poisonous plant made nark convulsive (8)
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anagram/"convulsive" of (made nark)* |
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| 5 | PIPING |
Making music, really hot (6)
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double definition |
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| 6 | JOKE |
In Paris I receive fine for facetious remark (4)
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JE="I" in French/"In Paris", around OK="fine" |
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| 11 | UNDERWEAR |
Not use these clothes enough? (9)
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UNDERWEAR could be read as 'under-wear' as in under-use the clothes, not use the clothes enough |
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| 12 | QUEEN |
Powerful piece from rock band (5)
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double definition: first definition referring to the chess piece |
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| 14 | THEME |
London police, endless subject (5)
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THE ME-[t] (short for the Metropolitan Police and with the final letter removed, "London police, endless") |
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| 16 | FORESTED |
Description of desert? Wrong (8)
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anagram/"Wrong" of (of desert)* |
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| 17 | CLUELESS |
Stupid? Not this crossword (8)
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this crossword has clues, and is therefore not CLUELESS |
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| 19 | HOORAY |
Well done, Henry! (6)
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Hooray Henry is a term for a brash young upper-class man |
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| 20 | MADDER |
Dye plant marks snake (6)
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definition: madder is a plant whose root is used to make a red dye M (marks, as in former German currency) + ADDER="snake" |
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| 21 | SPEW |
Bring up small seat (4)
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S (small) + PEW="seat" |
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| 23 | SKIP |
Ignore the captain (4)
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double definition |
A nice pangram this morning from Vulcan. I love the word “Quaff” and seem to remember it being used in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. The word “massif” ( mountain region ) always takes me back to Ali G ( Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat ) and his sketches about the East Staines massif versus the West Staines massif ( Street gangs )
https://youtu.be/oesOC7JvcwQ
The town of Staines got so fed up of this it officially changed its name to Staines-upon-Thames to avoid SBC’s bad publicity ! Some move but Ali G slighted some other aspects of Staines so I guess a justified move !
Thank you Vulcan and manehi.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi
I needed your parsing for the first part of STANDARD.
I’ve seen a very similar clue clue for THEME quite recently, though the “Search” facility didn’t seem to find it.
Ticks for STANDARD, JOKE & CLUELESS. The less said about FORESTED & MAUVE the better
Cheers V&M
This provided a very enjoyable start to Easter Monday. The first third proved to be a write-in then everything slowed down. LOI was MAUVE; I realised it would be a type of light inside ‘Mae’ but I’m ashamed to say that it took this ex-Cambridge physicist ages to think of UV.
Thank you, V&M.
In W. S. Baring-Gould’s “The Lure of the Limerick” he uses the following limerick to explain the verse form’s “seductive anatomy”
While Titian was mixing rose MADDER
His model reclined on a ladder.
Her position to Titian
Suggested coition,
So he leapt up the ladder and had ‘er.
(Without that memory I don’t think I’d have got 20D)
…couldn’t work out whether to put HOORAY or HOORAH. So of course I chose the wrong ‘un.
SE corner was tough for me. Gave up on 17ac, 20ac, 17d.
Liked STANDARD, UNDERWEAR.
New for me: SPONSORED walk for charity.
Thanks, both.
A typical Monday.
Must be the briefest clues for a crossword I have ever seen.
SKIP and LOST my LOIs, and took me ages compared to the rest of the clues.
Thanks manehi and Vulcan
Dave Ellison @9….. you can’t have seen this one then https://www.mycrossword.co.uk/cryptic/958
Thanks for the blog, very good puzzle in the Monday tradition. STANDARD was neat and LOST very clever. JANITOR made me think of Scooby Doo, 14D for AlanC ( 17Ac less so ) .
Thank you manehi. Needed your explanation of “becomes coated” for FURZE. I was hung up on the grammar. NHO of the plant. Missed the anagram in FORESTED.
Agree muffin@2. THEME has been clued similarly recently, and not so recently.
Liked ONE-HORSE, MANDRAKE, QUEEN, MASSIF for the surfaces. SOUNDBITE brought a smile.
Pleasant Bank Holiday puzzle, thanks Vulcan. Thanks for the clear blog, manehi, I particularly appreciated your elucidations on the ‘cryptic definitions’, all too often bloggers just write ‘cryptic definition’ and leave it at that i.e. not explaining the clue at all.
Liked DRAUGHTY, MAUVE, LEG SPIN and HOORAY.
LEG SPIN
Though ‘pirouette’ is involved in the wordplay, it is needed for the def too.
The whole clue may have to be underlined as a cryptic def, I think.
Thanks, Vulcan and manehi!
… couldn’t work out whether to put New Aged or New Ager. So of course I chose the wrong ‘un!
(Apologies to Blaise @ 6!)
Thanks to Vulcan and manehi
Enjoyable, no particularly sticky moments, and quite a few smiles. Never heard of Hooray Henry — must be a Britishism? (Consequently I was tossing up between HOORAY & HOORAH.) I thought the clues for MAUVE & SPONSORED were a bit on the loose side.
I’m with manehi that this was “a bit tricky” and some clues were more Imogen than Vulcan. I had trouble with the barely heard of FURZE and took a while to work out LOST. I didn’t perform the required lift and separate for 2d so STANDARD remained unparsed. I tried to make LEG=’on’ in 25a (which I agree is probably a cryptic def) but couldn’t really make it work.
Thanks to Vulcan and manehi
WordPlodder@17
I tried that ‘LEG=on’ stuff too. 🙂
Thanks Vulcan and manehi and belated Easter greetings to all.
Because it’s Easter I felt less bad making liberal use of the reveal button.
I had LEG SLIP until I Checked it.
I had CHURLISH for CLUELESS, which fits all the crossers and sort of works with stupidity and cross words… and then I felt stupid and said some cross words.
Liked SPONSORED and THEME. Didn’t much care for SOUNDBITE, DRAUGHTY and LOST. Took a whILe to fathom out loi NEW AGER…
Another ‘bit tricky for a Vulcan’ here. Fun though, thanks V & m.
Re THEME – it was in Picaroon’s prize 29021
3dn Idea which reappears with a lot of force in London (5)
I remember Vulcan clueing M = marks before. I know it’s in Chambers, but it was never the abbreviation in West Germany or post-reunification Germany. The last Mark to use the letter M by itself was the East German Mark (1948 – 1990).
Roz @11, JANITORs and fairground owners got a bad rap from Scooby Doo. I know you don’t do links, but some here may be amused by this from How I Met Your Mother – JANITOR is a very useful word for a rapper trying to find a rhyme for Canada 🙂
muffin@2, EB@23 : MET was also built into the clueing of another Picaroon. March 23 -> fight with police and a large old copper perhaps (5,5) Blogged by Eileen.
The fluent running rhythm of the word JANITOR is also used ( rap not so developed in 1977 ) by Strouse in his “You’re never fully dressed without a smile” song from Annie
So senator, so JANITOR
So long for a while
Remember you’re
Never fully dressed
Without a smile
Nice bounce to it and clever use of “so” three times over.
Mustn’t be an excluder of my praise for DRAUGHTy in 13a and in some dictionaries the M in MMW shortform is MARK within “Mark My Words”. I tend to think of the old German currency as DM Deutsche Mark but agree that M is valid clueing for Mark in the foreign currency sense.
Thanks to Vulcan for the pangram and manehi for the blog.
[Thanks also to Blaize@5 for giving us a new perspective of Titian. Big smiles in our house.]
Yes a bit tricky for a Monday, but it is a bank holiday. I thought FORESTED was a really good clue-as-definition. I had an idea that I first came across “ONE HORSE dorp” in The Thirty-Nine Steps but I can’t seem to find it now.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
A bit trickier than the usual Vulcan and a very enjoyable pangram. I liked STANDARD, ONE-HORSE, SPONSORED and LOST but I don’t understand the objection to FORESTED, which I thought was neat. [Roz @11: I liked your 6dn and and would add 22ac and 17dn. 15ac would be a nice feeling for once].
Ta Vulcan & manehi.
Also reminded of John Donne’s
‘Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root’.
Flea@1 There is a Raven beer, so you could Quaff the Raven nevermore. I am waiting for a more political setter talking about the London police falling short.
Brief fun. An extreme example of Mondayism.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi
I enjoyed this: thanks V and m. I had draughts for 13a. Did I miss something in the clue?
Thanks Vulcan and manehi
Petert @ 29: while you’re waiting for your political setter, you might be interested to know that the latest Private Eye has a cartoon which reveals that ‘Metropolitan Police’ is an anagram of ‘potential crime pool’.
Enjoyed this one, Vulcan added to our list of favourites setters.
Thanks V and M.
Simon S@…now you’ve ruined it for a future setter taking all the plaudits for that one, or at least Private Eye has!
Great start to the week,
CREW is past tense of crow? I never knowed that. And is a NEW AGER a hippie?
Lovely stuff – nice balance between the more straightforward and the head scratching. Thanks to Vulcan for the workout and to manehi for helping me parse STANDARD, now so obvious.
[Thanks also to Blaise@5 for the Limmerick. Huge laughter round the table. It prompted the following response …
Is Titian ascending a ladder,
An idea that’s really so bad, uh?
But whilst there to bare
His own derriere!
Was it lust, or a tired old bladder?]
Blaise@6, Geoff Down Under@16, Chambers gives both spellings of “Hoorah” for Henry, so the answer is indeterminate, at least until revealed.
Bhoyo@36, Mark 14:72 in the King James version “And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.” – appropriate for Easter
Thanks to Vulcan and manehi for a good BH Monday puzzle and blog.
Where is the pangram,please?
TimSee @38
HOORAH and HOORAY are equally valid spellings, but I’ve only ever heard the latter paired with “Henry”.
MartinD @39
“Pangram” is a name given to a puzzle in which the solutions between them contain all the letters of the alphabet.
Great crossword and help here.
I managed to complete ~60% of the clues on my own, before revealing the rest.
16a, 17a, 24a and 25a were well above my paygrade.
16d, 20d and 21d were also beyond me.
The feeling you get when you solve several clues unaided is fantastic!
Thanks, Muffin@41. I wasn’t aware of that variation.
Candymandad54 @37. Thanks…you made my day! (Apart from reminding me of prostate problems)
muffin @40. Just did a google search:
Hoorah Henry: 236 000 results
Hooray Henry: 3 070 000 results
I should, for once, have gone with the majority!
Very enjoyable, and slightly chewy for us newbies. Favourites were LOST, UNDERWEAR and CLUELESS. Made us chuckle. Thanks Vulcan, and Manehi for the blog.
Steffen @42. Well done! Yes, that feeling you get when you solve clues without aids. 🙂
Of the half dozen you mention, I thought 16d was particularly tricky, and my brain wasn’t flexible enough to see that the “definition” (if you can call it that) was the whole clue! (Usually the “surface” of the clue is intended to be misleading, so I try to ignore it and look for bits of wordplay and a possible definition, but in this one that was a trap.)
I didn’t know LEG SPIN or HOORAY HENRY, natch, but my big mistake was confidently entering “indigo” instead of MADDER. I just learned that indigo snakes are confined to the southeast US where I grew up.
Muffin @20: a leg slip would be a “botched pirouette”, wouldn’t it?
Muffin@40, to clarify, C2016 gives both spellings for the phrase. Phrases.co.uk attributes the term to Damon Runyan, who spelled it “Hoorah Henry”, while using “Hooray” in the article. Quantum crossword with a solution that can be expressed as a superposition of classical solutions?
Roz @11 – or Hong-Kong Fuey??? He was a JANITOR when he wasn’t a superhero.
I know that CREW is a past tense of ‘crow’, but I struggle to put together a sentence in which ‘crew’ can be substituted directly for ‘triumphed’ (or ‘crow’ for ‘triumph’, for that matter). Isn’t it something you might do when you triumph? I found the SE particularly to be tricky: e.g. MAUVE = ‘colourful’ (rather than colour?). Thanks, Vulcan and manehi.
Looks like I’m the only one who wrote in rear at 21d. Bring up small / seat.
Tim C @10 – thanks for the mention 🙂
HYD@51 well remembered, Hong Kong Phooey was a mild-mannered janitor although quicker than the human eye. The real superhero was Spot the cat who never got any credit.
TimC@10 No,I hadn’t – thanks for this
FORESTED was my LOI but very ingenious.
On the whole a fairly accessible ‘Monday’ puzzle, but I was one of those torn between HOORAY, HURRAH, etc, etc, I was, thank God, of a different Oxford generation than the odious BoJo, Cammers, and all that ilk, and the Bullingdon was beyond my ken (surprisingly, as I’d read Waugh’s Decline and Fall) – but I can certainly remember the “Hooray Henrys” who infested the place during my student days. It was mostly about ‘pavement pizzas’ encountered in unexpected places – ugh! The Progcors and Bulldogs were certainly kept busy!
[Dave Ellison@9, TimC@10 – re very brief clues: I think I read somewhere of a clue in the Times that read like this:
(7)
The answer, apparently, was MISSING. Is this story true or apocryphal? I suppose there have been Times setters, hiding behind their anonymity, free to get up to all sorts of un-Ximmy mischief…]
“Proctors”. Sort of University magistrates.