Anto provides the Guardian puzzle today.
This had a bit of a Monday feel about it. On my first pass, I had all but eight solutions in place and a lot of crossers, which meant that I was able to fill in the missing ones relatively quickly. A good crossword to blog as it didn’t take too long and there was nothing difficult or contentious to explain.
Thanks Anto
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | BEGINNER |
Redesigned green bin for starter (8)
|
| *(green bin) [anag:redesigned} | ||
| 9 | ETHANE |
Scottish chieftain going after English — that’s a gas! (6)
|
| THANE (“Scottish chieftain”) going after E (English) | ||
| 10 | KICK |
Quit strike force (4)
|
| Triple definition | ||
| 11 | GET OUT MORE |
Leave additional guidance for those obsessed (3,3,4)
|
| GET OUT (“leave”) + MORE (“additional”) | ||
| 12 | VIAGRA |
By means of gravity, artist creates something arousing (6)
|
| VIA (“by means of”) + G (gravity) + RA (member of the Royal Academy, so “artist”) | ||
| 14 | INFLATED |
Find out about dead becoming bloated (8)
|
| *(find) [anag:out] about LATE (“dead”) | ||
| 15 | TANDEM |
Transport used by some in metropolitan demography (6)
|
| Hidden [in] “metropoliTAN DEMography” | ||
| 17 | ADDICT |
One showing a desire for essentially deadly sadism acts (6)
|
| [essentially] (de)AD(ly) (sa)DI(sm) (a)CT(s) | ||
| 20 | DAYLIGHT |
Illumination needed for blatant hold-up? (8)
|
| Cryptic definition, referring to DAYLIGHT robbery. | ||
| 22 | KITSCH |
Little Christopher at school that’s in poor taste (6)
|
| KIT (“little Christopher”) at Sch. (school) | ||
| 23 | BRAND NAMES |
Amazon and Google, perhaps, stir up bad manners (5,5)
|
| *(bad manners) [anag:stir up] | ||
| 24 | BLOC |
Extremely banal operatic group (4)
|
| [extremely] B(ana)L O(perati)C | ||
| 25 | UPPERS |
You must be broke being on such drugs (6)
|
| On your UPPERS = “broke” | ||
| 26 | EXECUTES |
Realises old wives are appealing inside (8)
|
| EXES (“old wives”) with CUTE (“appealing”) inside | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FEMINIST |
Artist beset by duke, one demanding women’s rights (8)
|
| (Tracey) EMIN (“artist”) beset by FIST (“duke”) | ||
| 2 | SINK |
Drop wrong end of stick (4)
|
| SIN (“wrong”) + [end of] (stic)K | ||
| 3 | ENIGMA |
Imagines content being rewritten to create a mystery (6)
|
| *(magine) [anag:being rewritten] where MAGINE is the content of (i)MAGINE(s) | ||
| 4 | REBUFFED |
Denied having applied more polish (8)
|
| Double defiinition | ||
| 5 | THUMB A LIFT |
Artificial ham built fat without a hitch (5,1,4)
|
| *(ham built ft) [anag:artificial] where FT is F(a)T without A | ||
| 6 | UNTRUE |
Crooked furniture used regularly (6)
|
| (f)U(r)N(i)T(u)R(e) U(s)E(d) [regularly] | ||
| 8 | RETAIL |
Sort of therapy necessitating major outlay? (6)
|
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 13 | GUNSLINGER |
Cosy up and hang round with hired killer (10)
|
| <=SNUG (“cosy”, up) + LINGER (“hang around”) | ||
| 16 | EUGENIST |
Brussels first acquires information identifying someone espousing discredited science (8)
|
| EU (European Union, so “Brussels”) + IST (1st) acquires GEN (“information”) | ||
| 18 | TICK OVER |
Make slow progress when credit is no longer available (4,4)
|
| TICK (“credit”, colloquially) + OVER (“no longer available”) | ||
| 19 | STYMIE |
Stump set by umpire, occasionally (6)
|
| S(e)T (b)Y (u)M(p)I(r)E [occasionally] | ||
| 21 | ABRUPT |
Fit to host just half of brunch — it’s short (6)
|
| APT (“fit”) to host [just half of] BRU(nch) | ||
| 22 | KISMET |
Gear placed over kind of business lot (6)
|
| KIT (“gear”) placed over SME (small and medium-sized enterprise, so “kind of business”) | ||
| 24 | BOUT |
Boy has way to avoid fight (4)
|
| B (boy) has OUT (“way to avoid”) |
Thanks, Anto and loonapick!
Liked DAYLIGHT, UPPERS, GUNSLINGER and TICK OVER.
RETAIL therapy: the act of buying special things for yourself in order to feel better when you are unhappy.
Learnt today.
Defeated by KICK and EXECUTES, but for no good reason. Not entirely convinced by OUT as a way to avoid but I suspect somebody will give a good justification for it.
Thanks Anto and Loonapick.
11a defeated me.
Probably because I kept processing “obsessed” as “possessed”.
Maybe I should GET OUT MORE!
Crispy @3
If you offer someone an “out”, you offer them a free pass or authority not to do something, so I think it’s valid.
Thanks Anto and loonapick
I struggled on my last two, the crossing 2d/10a, but got there in the end – not convinced by “force” as a definition for KICK. I didn’t know SME but it had to be KISMET.
Smiled at VIAGRA.
Crispy @3 – He should do it, but he has an out.
I liked GUNSLINGER and DAYLIGHT and hesitated about EXECUTES for realises and UNTRUE for crooked. For once ANTO produces a good Quiptic and they don’t put it in the Quiptic slot.
I agree with loonapick about this being Mondayish. I would have finished even quicker if I hadn’t written Eugenics and Tick Away for 16 and 18dn. Thanks Anto for a gentle start to the day.
muffin@6
KICK
In the sentence ‘He should be kicked out’, ‘kicked’ means ‘forced’. Right?
In many dictionaries, KICK=force/power (as a noun). I don’t know if the
sentence ‘The rifle has a strong kick’ will work as an example here.
Someone else will come up with more appropriate examples, I am sure.
Ah. The light dawns on SINK. I saw the triple definition in KICK, but needed quite a few checks to narrow the possible letters down. I can’t regard that as a solve, so I guess I revealed those two. Thanks to loonapick and Anto.
For a change I did the downs first and entered PROD for 2 which then held me up a bit. I didn’t know the broke meaning for UPPERS. Otherwise ok. Loved THUMB A LIFT when it dropped out. Thanks Anto & loonapick.
I enjoyed this although not quite as much as last week’s prize or Everyman, both of which had LOL moments.
I too had to use the check button for KICK as I’ve never heard of it used as force.
Thanks Anto and loonapick
Ticks for GET OUT MORE, DAYLIGHT, ENIGMA, and KITSCH for my second meatspace namecheck in as many days 🙂
Cheers A&L
Not too taxing but nice clues in there already mentioned above. There’s a slight typo in your ‘cryptic’ for DAYLIGHT, although the word sounds intriguing loonapick.
Ta both.
I enjoyed this, thanks Anto. It was just the right level for my day today. A few I had to chew over like KICK and SINK (but I don’t know why now, they’re quite straightforward) and some I had to build, like GET OUT MORE but most comfortably getable. Enjoyed them all. Thanks, loonapick, for the blog and explaining SME in KISMET.
A very pleasant puzzle with some great clues, my favourite being GET OUT MORE.
DAYLIGHT also earned a tick. (Some people will try to tell you that the phrase “daylight robbery” originated with the Window Tax of the 1690s, but I think this is a modern myth. The phrase is not recorded until much later and its meaning of course has nothing to do with the deprivation of daylight.)
Many thanks Anto and loonapick.
Technically a dnf here, as I shoved in GASLIGHT instead of DAYLIGHT.
UPPERS interested me enough to look up the meaning. Never realised the reference was to having worn out one’s soles.
Gotta love crosswords, doncha.
Lord Jim @16: Oh dear. I’ve always thought that about the window tax!
Good blog, loonapick, a trivial typo at KISMET if you felt like fussing enough.
Took me a while to parse FEMINIST, not having heard of Emin, and struggling to comprehend why duke is fist. (My dictionary says the latter is about a four-stage process involving rhyming slang.) SME was unknown, and I wasn’t aware that little Christopher is somehow Kit. So much to learn …
Very enjoyable.
Favourite: FEMINIST – it is interesting how Tracey Emin is becoming the go-to artist for crosswords (in the Guardian, at least).
I could not parse 14ac.
Thanks, both.
Pedant corner. Viagra isn’t really “something arousing”. It enables you to respond to “something arousing”.
My Phrmacology lecturer referred to it as Mydyxaflopin
Typos corrected
Michelle @21 are you suggesting she’s becoming preeminent? 🙂
A bit of a mixed bag for me this morning. Initial guess for all three was FEMINIST, GUNSLINGER and INFLATED, but couldn’t see how these worked before I had some crossers in place and then realised why. Similar device used for STYMIE and UNTRUE. And two completely different ways to discover the Kit element of both 22 down and across. UPPERS penultimate one in as I incorrectly had Eugenics in place. Stared at 10 across for ages before it became loi with an oh, yes! KICK into the net. Thanks Anto and Loonapick.
And when exactly did THUMBing A LIFT go out of fashion on our roads and motorways…?
GeoffDownUnder@20: Marlowe is sometimes referred to as Kit rather than Christopher. There is also the actor Kit Harington. No doubt there are other examples, but I have a bit of a brain fog this morning.
Geoff @16 – Put up your dukes is a fairly well known expression in the UK, although the etymology is a little hazy. I just put in feminist, saw EMIN (as in Tracy) and confirmed.
Etymologists think this is probably how we got the word dukes used to refer to fists, as in “put up your dukes.” Fork was slang for “hand” or “fist,” and the phrase “dukes of York” was created as rhyming slang for “fork.” So, instead of telling someone to “put up your forks,” you might say “put up your dukes of York!” Eventually, this was shortened to “put up your dukes.”
Mostly a steady solve with a couple correct ones I had trouble parsing.
[We hitched a lot as kids … into town… to the beach … It died out. Sad, that it started to feel unsafe…]
As others have said on the easier side but I enjoyed it – a lovely leisurely solve.
Favourites: ETHANE, KITSCH, GUNSLINGER, STYMIE, UPPERS
Thanks Anto and loonapick
Agree with NDJWL at 22.
‘Mycoxsafloppin’ was the alternative I heard when working in pharmacy stores.
grantinfreo@28: It was only last week during a motorway journey that I remarked to my brother that you rarely see hitch hikers today. Certainly compared with our childhoods in the 60s and 70s. All the evidence points to it being safer today than in the past, but we are much more sensitised to the risks. Also, I think relatively cheaper travel, or more to the point higher rates of disposable income (even in these challenging times!), must have had an effect.
I’ve had a break of three or four weeks from crosswords, for no particular reason, returning to The Times yesterday and The Guardian today. Glad to say I still remember how to do them! Nothing contentious today and a fairly gentle top-to-bottom solve to get me bedded back in: as our blogger says, Mondayish. Thanks, as ever, to blogger and setter.
Pleasant solve on a reasonably sunny morning.
I liked INFLATED because of the clever use of ‘find out about’, DAYLIGHT for the hold up, and FEMINIST for the unusual use of duke (and thanks to Jimbo @27 for the derivation).
Thanks Anto and loonapick.
Groundhog Day moment – is this Monday again? Straightforward puzzle.
Not much to say. Like Robi, I enjoyed ‘find out about’, and I agree with NDJWL @22 and Ornette @39 about sildenafil citrate. It isn’t the first time that I’ve seen the drug mistakenly defined in a similar way.
Thanks to S&B
Yes a good, steady and fun solve for me. All the solutions I really liked have already got a guernsey here so I’m just writing to thank Anto and loonapick.
Thanks Anto & loonapick
Was there a pugilistic motif with KICK, BOUT, F…IST, BLOCk, the living DAYLIGHTs, and a half-hidden
UPPER …CUT.. ?
Anto being damned with faint praise again, I see. Well, I enjoyed this, and found the devices entertaining in 3d (imagines content for the anagrist) and in 6d and 19d – yes, it’s the same device in both, Ronald@25, but I enjoyed spotting it each time.
I almost wrote in GANGBANGER at 13d, and GASLIGHT at 20a, so it was a joyous moment when the correct answers became apparent. Would the 17th century Window Tax count as DAYLIGHT robbery, or should it be burglary because the light was stolen from a house? (See comments on Brendan yesterday passim.) Check out the penultimate scene of the movie Shane for the demise of the great actor Jack Palance as the GUNSLINGER Wilson.
I can appreciate that for the more fluent solver this puzzle would have been less than challenging, but for those of us who find they have woken up with a head full of mush, this was just the thing.
Thanks to Anto and loonapick.
I’m the same as muffin on SME/KISMET.
Since when does Boy = B?
Couldn’t parse GUNSLINGER, so thanks, loonapick.
I thought that the middle of 26a was supposed to mean “are appealing,” so I was looking for some verb like “lure,” which would have worked except that “exelure” isn’t a word The U from BOUT put me wise.
Pleasant stroll last night. Thanks Anto and loonapick.
Fun puzzle which just about (in the Aussie sense, not the British) filled a lunch break. I wrote uppers in without parsing, that was new for me. Crossers gave me E-G-N— for 16d, and being an engineer I was initially indignant followed by begrudgingly accepting of the defo “someone espousing discredited science”, until I worked through it properly.
I agree with Sheffield Hatter at 37: I enjoyed this too – in fact, I’m growing increasingly fond of Anto’s works.
Lots of ticks for this one, especially ENIGMA, ETHANE and GUNSINGER, with TICK OVER, REBUFFED and DAYLIGHT making me grin.
Thanks to loonapick for the blog and to Anto for the fun.
About three or four clues in, I thought “hey, this seems easier than your average Tuesday”. Good fun, though. I got stuck on the SINK/KICK pair for no particular reason (though kick=force is a bit of a stretch) and missed the SME in KISMET. Liked GET OUT MORE, ENIGMA, THUMB A LIFT (no, you don’t see many hitchhikers these days.)
Valentine @38: The only instance of B = boy I can think of is in the abbreviation OB for ‘old boy’ (ie alumnus). It might stand for ‘boys’ in abbreviations of the names of schools, but I’m unaware of its being used on its own, unlike S = son [Who’s Who certainly used to list offspring in the form: 1s 3d, which I always thought seriously undervalued female progeny 🙂 ]
[I think the main problem for thumbing a lift is motorways – there’s nowhere to safely and legally stop. I was fined as a pedestrian on a motorway slip road in the late 70s, and it certainly hasn’t got any easier since then. I reckon my last use of my thumb in getting a ride was about 10 years ago, between Ravenglass station and Wasdale Head in the Lake District – no motorways there! (Yet )]
[We gave a charming young American chap a lift from Kerrera to Oban only last week. First time I’ve seen a hitcher since the Mighty Boosh ]
Tracey Emin seems to be every setter’s new favorite artist. I needed the parsing for KISMET.
Everything else I was going to say seems to have been thoroughly covered!
Regarding the steep decline in hitchhiking, was it because people decided it was too dangerous to be a hitchhiker or to pick up a hitchhiker? Or some mixture of both.
Also, fun to have a word with a double H in the middle. Win bar bets with that one.
Thanks for the blog, another good puzzle from Anto, neat and clear wordplay throughout.
Fist=duke seems to have been in a few times recently . (re)INFLATED three times in three days.
B=boy is certainly used in maternity units along with the superior G=girl.
[ The Guardian had a puzzle supplement on Saturday , it included a Jumbo themed puzzle from Brendan. Also a beginners puzzle from Carpathian using just the four most basic clue types with an explanation of these types alongside. Steffan if you read this , I think you would like it, I imagine it is available online somewhere. ]
As a member of the unofficial Anto fan club I enjoyed this crossword. I liked clues such as VIAGRA, INFLATED, BRAND NAMES, EXECUTES, and ENIGMA (nice surface). I needed a word finder for RETAIL; I couldn’t parse UPPERS (I was not familiar with broke=on your uppers) and the SME of KISMET. Thanks loonapick for the blog.
FEMINIST and KISMET were brilliant, I thought. I missed KICK and had ‘gaslight’ for DAYLIGHT.
[Jacob@46. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Chambers uses a hyphen between the two aitches in hitch-hike and its derivatives. Same applies for rough-house.
The one that gets me is threshold, which is usually spoken with two distinct aitches, one modifying the S at the end of thresh, the other appearing at the beginning of hold. Though Chambers also allows ‘old for the second part, the spoilsports.
No doubt this post will provoke numerous responses from people who have never spoken and never heard the second aitch in threshold. 🙂 ]
Very neat and tidy puzzle. Thanks Anto.
I enjoyed that, and not too tricky.
But a minor quibble/query: the clue for 17a ADDICT, unless I’m missing a way of reading it, seems to use the construction for , which in crosswording terms is ungrammatical as the direction is wrong. Someone either agree with me or enlighten me please 🙂
Thanks both.
Haha so my attempted use of punctuation marks for emphasis rendered my above comment nonsensical as words were omitted. I’ll try again:
The clue for 17a ADDICT, unless I’m missing a way of reading it, seems to use the construction definition for wordplay, which in crosswording terms is ungrammatical as the direction is wrong…
Great fun! Especially liked GET OUT MORE, THUMB A LIFT, and GUNSLINGER. I couldn’t quite figure out what that “are” is doing in 26a. Is there a way to parse it that makes sense of it?
Rob T @54: Says who? This is unusual, certainly, but I’ve always considered clue constructions to be commutative.
Gervase @56 — I know there isn’t one definitive source for crosswording conventions (I hesitate to use the word ‘rule’ of course) but I’ve been setting amateur cryptic puzzles for a year (exactly! today! I just checked!) and these get critiqued by solvers and other setters, and among that particular community there are definitely acceptable conventions on directionality of link words – it’s one of the most common quibbles that rookie setters get pulled up on. There is an inherent grammatical logic underpinning the idea that ‘definition from wordplay’ and ‘wordplay for definition’ are considered correct and their converses are not. It just surprises me when professional setters use such inverse constructions. And I’m actually generally quite easy-going, but there are a handful of conventions that I do cling to pedantically as they are based on how sentence syntax actually works.
I agree with Gervase@56 re ADDICT. We can read ‘for’ as either “produces” or “replaces”, it seems to me.
Not so sure about ‘are’ in 26a. It caused me a moment’s doubt, and I’m not sure I see how it is meant to work. If it’s ‘are appealing’ in the clue then it’d be ARE CUTE in the answer, wouldn’t it? “Those ex-wives who are appealing are the ones that are cute.” (That sounds terrible.)
Rob T @54
You can include the for in the definition, so there’s no need for the linker at all.
phitonelly @59 – I considered that reading but ‘one showing a desire for’ doesn’t = ADDICT, it’s missing an object…
Loved this puzzle – just the right degree of difficulty and so clever! Thanks, Anto and loonapick.
sh @58 — now this is interesting. I don’t think every link word can be bi-directional but the idea of ‘for’ as a ‘replacement’ is actually quite logical. Hmmmm… that’s making my brain fizz… (in a good way) 🙂
Rob @54, I agree. A better way might have been “Essentially, deadly sadism acts for one showing a desire.”
Jay @63 — yes that’s the thing, this particular clue is so easy to tweak to avoid the potential eyebrow-raise 🙂
Jay@63. Yes, but that would lose the fluidity and potential ambiguity of the surface. And if ‘for’ is truly commutative (as Gervase opines @56) and if my explanation @58 causes brains to fizz, then everyone’s a winner, n’est ce pas?
sh @65 – I think I’ll still avoid it as a setter (personal preference) but understand the alternative interpretations so will resolve to be less uptight about it as a solver!
[Sheffield Hatter @43: you are not alone. I was called before the Luton Magistrates, also in the seventies, for a wayward thumb at the Toddington Services on the M1]
Roz many thanks…I am struggling to locate that particular crossword by Carpathian but I’d love to try it.
Today’s cryptic beat me hands-down. I solved 9 clues and had to reveal the rest.
Bit demoralising when many people appear to have found it straightforward, but the explanations in the blog mostly make sense.
William@17 – I think gaslight is an acceptable answer for 20a. If you gaslight someone, you blatantly hold up any communication with them. daylight is a clearer fit though.
I also thought that 14a allowed for an alternate answer: inflamed. If you have a lame leg you might say you have a dead leg. inflamed is as good a synonym for bloated as inflated.
Enjoyed the puzzle nonetheless.
Thanks for the fun, Anto. Like others, I was unaware of the meaning of SME.
Since Anto gets a lot of criticism, I’ll stand up and be counted as one who greatly enjoyed this puzzle. I agree with those who found it toward the easier end, but none the worse for that. The only flaw I see is the extraneous “are” in 26ac, which as others have pointed out doesn’t make sense in the cryptic reading. But if that’s a setter’s greatest sin in a puzzle, then they’re doing very well!
I say “eugenicist”, rather than “eugenist”, but both appear to be perfectly cromulent words.
Really liked this one – loads of great clues. My only confusion is the word “are” in the clue for executes