A tricky puzzle from IO this morning.
Not that we should expect anything less, of course! There are a couple of solutions where I’m definitely missing a nuance or other meaning – do enlighten us all in the comments if you have further input. Many thanks to IO for a clever and challenging puzzle. Plenty to enjoy.
Cryptic definition
‘Tripe’ and ‘cobblers’ can be be edible items, but also are both slang terms for ‘nonsense’. ‘Prep’ is a synonym for ‘homework’. ‘King Charles’ being a type of spaniel of course.
O (duck) + INKED (as tattoos)
PARTS< (roles, <reversing) + YOURS (not mine) + ELFIN (not indelicate)
AMP (some current) + COLLECT (prayer) parts STING (defraud)
BRIGAND (robber) + “BY SAIL” (ships, “we hear”) securing N (new)
Any ideas about the ‘not after’ bit?
(UNDERPLAYS)* (*cryptic) + IMPLY (hint)
DO (arrange) to take V-ONE< (Doodlebug, <back)
Cryptic definition
‘Pap’ meaning a woman’s nipple in this context
HA (what would be funny doubling up, i.e. HAHA) about YEN (long)
[Jerse]Y ZOO D[urrell’s]< (in, <set up)
G (group) of OK (fine) + W (women) taking on AN
“TRUE SO” (to be faithful + SO, “we hear”)
NO LIT (not books, etc) probing MOHS (physical scale)
MOHS is a hardness scale to measure resistance to scratching from 1 to 10
Cryptic definition
‘MC’ stands for Master of Ceremonies
(NO. 1 (premium), LAGER (beer) keeps)< (<rocketing)
UNL[it] (pretty dim, IT leaving) + ADEN (Red Sea port)
R[a]T (person bringing misery, heartless) aboard TOURER (conveyance equipped with rack? a roof-rack in this context) – &lit
The RACK is an old torture device
15. Incarcerating drunk men in a terrible state (9)
Incarcerating SOT (drunk), (MEN IN A)* (*terrible)
Cryptic definition
In the NATO alphabet you might get ‘crazy GOLF’ and then ‘barking HOTEL’
(TAR (salt) + PS (I almost forgot to write))< (<about)
‘Tar’ and ‘salt’ are both colloquial terms for sailors
(IRO[n] MA[n])* (repeatedly cut off, *supply)
Mario is a plumber character in Super Mario Bros
LO (witness) + BE (live)
BRING AND BUY SALE
Not after=BY, ships=SAIL (a vessel/a group of vessels: Collins)
CRAZY GOLF
Should we read ‘Barking Hotel’ as ‘crazy H’? ‘crazy G/CRAZY GOLF’ is ahead of ‘crazy H’.
Is that what Oriel is saying?
Liked plenty of clues. Thoroughly enjoyed this Io puzzle. There is always a possibility of missing out an
additional layer or two in an Io. Excellent blog Oriel! Thanks to both.
TROUSSEAU def = “It’s in keeping with the bride-to-be”
“TRUE SO” (faithful + SO, “we hear”)
The usual very hard work for an Io puzzle. I’d never heard of GOK WAN, but thought I’d parsed the rest until seeing now that the parsing of BRING AND BUY SALE (new to me as a thing) and TORTURER had escaped me. I suppose ‘Did swine’ means mimicked a pig but this was another that went in with a shrug. Favourite was WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, having remembered the unusual sense of ‘pap’.
Peter, a ‘cobbler’ is a sort of fruit pie; I think (I may be wrong) it’s mainly an American term.
Satisfying to at least have filled the grid correctly, but I’ll need a few weeks to recover until Io next appears!
Thanks to Oriel and Io
Peter@3
Gok Wan is a British fashion consultant from Leicester who was best known for hosting a makeover TV show called How To Look Good Naked.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pap#Etymology_2
‘1 (archaic) A female breast or nipple. [from 13th c.] – 2 (now rare, archaic) A man’s breast. [from 15th c.] – 3 A rounded, nipple-like hill or peak.
… Etymology 3 – Ellipsis of Pap smear. … (Etymology 5 – Clipping of paparazzo.)’
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pap_smear#English – ‘Etymology – From Papanikolaou. Named after Greek-American physician Georgios Papanikolaou’
OINKED
I think …
Did duck as tattoos=did O as tattoos
O INKED.
Not fully convinced.
(Oriel! ‘as tattoos=INKED’…is this ok? I tried to parse it differently as I couldn’t understand this bit).
Tricky and enjoyable
Thanks to Io and Oriel
There are several hills in Scotland (and maybe elsewhere) with “pap” in their names, because of their supposed resemblance to breasts, e.g. the Pap of Glencoe and the Paps of Jura.
Thanks Io and Oriel
1/9ac: Everyone’s friend rhyming slang makes an appearance here “cobblers’ awls” = balls, used either literally for male anatomy or metaphorically as rubbish.
Not too hard this time, but plenty to chew on.
I think HOST must have a double meaning – perhaps MC for military cross being something that represents an army? Not sure, but the particular wording suggests there’s more.
HOST
I think it applies to the one who is represented as well as the one who represent. Both are HOSTS.
Thanks for the blog, very good set of clues, perhaps some of the long answers made life easier for us.
HOST I think the clue is just saying that MC is one example of a host, the cryptic deception being MC as Roman numerals which do not represent one.
Roz@17
I have a different take. We can read the clue in two ways:
One (aHOST/owner of the show)may be represented by an (emcee (one designated by the HOST).
One (a HOST/emcee) may be represented by the abbreviation/letters M C.
….by an emcee (one…..)*
BRING ….SALE
Just adding a bit:
By 7 pm: Not after 7 pm.
I took one meaning of MC to be 1100, which would be a large number or host of people.
Mostly guesswork.. not sure if I’d read the blog first it would have helped me..
Thanks Oriel n IO
Andrew@20
That’s a better explanation, I feel.
Great blog-only finished this morning-never heard of GOK
And forgot about super mario.
But I did do a word search with only W and B and got wardrobe !!
I think PAP may have been a very old slang for breast-dunno why
Thanks
Congratulations to everyone who completed this. Way above my pay grade. Weirdly, I managed the last Io but this one completely defeated me.
Wow. Got through this but it took a few checks along the way.
I entered STAMP COLLECTION at first: ‘collection’ seemed (still does seem, to me) to be a better match with ‘compilation’ than ‘collecting’ which doesn’t agree grammaticallly unless you view it as a gerund.
Quite familiar with ‘paps’ in the Scottish sense so no problem there. Likewise, ‘lobe’ can apply to many types of projecting thing not just ears.
The ‘nonsense’ sense of ‘Tripe and cobblers’ did not seem to have anything really to do with the answer for 1/9 so this seemed like a big stretch.
Favourite clue PURELY AND SIMPLY, a fabulous bit of work.
13ac: stamp collecting is given as a noun phrase in all the usual dictionaries, as the name of a hobby. Having STING as the container in the wordplay should remove all ambiguity.
Late thanks Oriel for making sense of the heartless rat and for STAMP COLLECTING – not knowing the religious part, I was struggling there and indeed had the same error as jvector@25 until the REGIONAL light dawned. On the other hand I had no problem with “pap”, probably as it has occurred often enough in dubious fiction to have stuck. Have missed the last couple of Io’s and maybe that’s why my eyebrows reached new heights at times solving this one. But I always enjoy the test and the breadth of references, thanks Io.
PS I thought of a bike with rack (for panniers) being a tourer but am happy to believe it could apply to cars with roof-racks too.