The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29580.
An ingenious construction from Picaroon, announced in 13A PLAYWRIGHT: the other 12 Across answers contain the names of playwrights, some with one of their prominent works, as follows:
5 Thornton WILDER (the only one appearing as a full answer)
6 Thomas KYD (16th. century, The Spanish Tragedy)
9 George Bernard SHAW
10 Lindsay PRICE (the only one I did not know)
11 John GAY (17/18 century, The Beggar’s Opera)
12 William INGE (Bus Stop)
18 Edward BOND (Saved)
21 Dario Luigo Angelo FO (Italian)
22 Jean RACINE (17th century French)
23 John FORD (16/17 century, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore)
24 David HARE (Plenty)
25 Christopher FRY (The Lady’s Not for Burning)
Even without the theme, a puzzle in my Goldilocks zone.
Greetings all round for the New Year.
| ACROSS | ||
| 5 | WILDER |
Hollywood director left bigger screens (6)
|
| An envlope (‘screens’) of L (‘left’) in WIDER (‘bigger’), for Billy Wilder, the diretor of Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot and many other films. | ||
| 6 | ALKYDS |
Lush exterior of diaphanous resins (6)
|
| A charade of ALKY (an alcholic, ‘lush’) plus DS (‘exterior of DiaphanouS‘). | ||
| 9 | SHAWLS |
Accessories – boring items put on that woman shortened (6)
|
| A charade of SH[e] (‘that woman’) minus the last letter (‘shortened’) plus AWLS (‘boring items’). | ||
| 10 | AT A PRICE |
Assistant returning in a flash if you’re prepared to fork out (2,1,5)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of AP, a reversal (‘returning’) of PA (personal ‘assistant’) in A TRICE (‘a flash’). | ||
| 11 | GAYE |
Motown star is good? Indeed! (4)
|
| A charade of G (‘good’) plus AYE (‘indeed’), for Marvin Gaye. | ||
| 12 | HUMDINGERS |
Has a craving to eat 1501 peaches (10)
|
| An envelope (‘to eat’) of MDI (Roman numeral ‘1501’) in HUNGERS (‘has a craving’). | ||
| 13 | PLAYWRIGHTS |
Wary jockeys in difficulties – a dozen of them are in this grid (11)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of AYWR, an anagram (‘jockeys’) of ‘wary in PLIGHTS (‘difficulties | ||
| 18 | IONIC BONDS |
I wasted coins engaging agent to show some attractions of chemistry (5,5)
|
| An envelope (‘engaging’) of BOND (‘agent’ 007) in ‘I’ plus ONICS, an anagram (‘wasted’) of ‘coins’. | ||
| 21 | UFOS |
Buff host with no clothing is what could alarm Sky viewer (4)
|
| ‘[b]UF[f] [h]OS[t]’ minus the outer letters of each word (‘with no clothing’) | ||
| 22 | RACINESS |
Erotic quality in caress that’s out of control (8)
|
| An anagram (‘that’s out of control’) of ‘in caress’. | ||
| 23 | OXFORD |
Steer car? One may go on foot (6)
|
| A charade of OX (‘steer’) plus FORD (‘car’). | ||
| 24 | SHARED |
Back from hols – bit of a laugh and wine in Split (6)
|
| A charade of S (‘back from holS‘) plus HA (‘bit of a laugh’) plus RED (‘wine’). | ||
| 25 | FRYERS |
Cooks a kind of bread in fires, now and again (6)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of RYE (‘kind of bread’) in FRS (‘FiReS now and again’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FLYWHEEL |
Pilot, with excited cry, getting large bit of machinery (8)
|
| A charade of FLY (verb, ‘pilot’ a plane) plus WHEE (‘excited cry’) plus L (‘large’). | ||
| 2 | MENSCH |
Son, breaking pieces, taps good egg (6)
|
| An envelope (‘breaking’) of S (‘son’) in MEN (‘pieces’ eg in chess) plus CH (cold and hot ‘taps’). | ||
| 3 | PLEADING |
Appealing face of police chief (8)
|
| A charade of P (‘face of Police’) plus LEADING (‘chief’). | ||
| 4 | RYA RUG |
Knocked over Scottish port and syrup – it’s on a Swede’s floor (3,3)
|
| A reversal (‘knocked over’) of AYR (‘Scottish port’) plus GUR (‘syrup’? gur is a name for jaggery, a sugar product, but it is solidified, and I have not been able to find a rference which might identify it with the syrup from which it derives). | ||
| 5 | WAH-WAH |
Musical sound effect radio collaborator brought up (3-3)
|
| A reversal (‘brought up’ in a down light) of [Lord] HAW-HAW, the nickname of broadcasters of Nazi propaganda, principally William Joyce, in the Second World War (‘radio collaborator’). | ||
| 7 | SECURE |
Safe spot to catch dog (6)
|
| An envelope (‘to catch’) of CUR (‘dog’) in SEE (‘spot’). | ||
| 8 | SAN MARINESE |
Reasonable to protect soldiers from small country (3,8)
|
| An envelope (‘to protect’) of MARINES (‘soldiers’) in SANE (‘reasonable’). | ||
| 14 | YABBERED |
What chatterbox did ruined Baby Reindeer’s second half (8)
|
| An anagram (‘ruined’) of ‘baby’ plus ‘[rein]deer’ (‘second half’). | ||
| 15 | TRUFFLES |
Chocolates or last portion of fruit ripples (8)
|
| A charade of T (‘last bit of fruiT‘) plus RUFFLES (‘ripples’). | ||
| 16 | MORASS |
Model catching painter in confused situation (6)
|
| An envelope (‘catching’) of RA (‘painter’) in MOSS (Kate, ‘model’). | ||
| 17 | HOARDS |
Tough lioness ultimately keeping old squirrels away (6)
|
| An envelope (‘keeping’) of O (‘old’) in HARD (‘tough’) plus S (‘lionesS ultimately’). | ||
| 19 | IF I MAY |
During 11/05, fellow makes polite request (2,1,3)
|
| An envelope (‘during’) of F (‘fellow’) in I I (’11’) MAY (‘5’). | ||
| 20 | SPOORS |
Awful, boring cover of Smiths tracks (6)
|
| An envelope (‘boring’) of POOR (‘awful’) in SS (‘cover of SmithS‘). |
Happy New Year PeterO, and thanks for all your wonderful blogs over the previous one. Well done on finding all the playwrights and setting them out here for us.
Syrup for RUG is rhyming slang. It’s come up before. Can’t remember the reference, but by the time I’ve posted, someone else will have come up with it.
TBH I didn’t pursue the theme. A bit themed out. I was having fun with the solve.
I was lucky with WAH-WAH, which was familiar from the WAH-WAH pedal for a guitar, and I knew Lord HAW HAW.
MOSS the model was also familiar, as was Marvin GAYE from Motown.. I wonder if Picaroon and I are of similar age.
The clue for UFOS was novel, and funny.
Well, no one else has yet. Looked it up. It’s syrup of figs for wig, ie rug.
Thanks Peter, well done on identifying all those playwrights, many of which seem a bit obscure to me. I had Oscar Wilde for 1a, which fits more with the pattern of the other themers in that it is a part of the answer. Thanks to Picaroon too!
Paddymelon @1: Syrup: Cockney rhyming slang for “syrup of Fig” = Wig (rug)
Also HNY, PeterO. Like cryptor, I took the playwright at 5a to be Oscar WILDE and that at 10a to be the Welsh writer, Tim PRICE. On rescanning the completed grid for the 12, Dario FO was the last to be spotted – author of The Accidental Death of an Anarchist among others.
I understood the playwright at 5a to be Oscar WILDE and the one for 10a as being Elmer RICE. All playwrights in the end, though the theme might be meant to be found in portions of answers. A pretty tough puzzle for the New Year. LOI was 4d, which almost took me as long as the rest of the clues.
I hope Picaroon hasn’t made a new year’s resolution to make his crosswords twice as hard from now on. I only solved about half of this, and my head is still spinning after looking up the answers. I always experience a small frisson of excitement when I see his moniker on a puzzle, as he’s probably my favourite setter, and I’m hoping today’s disappointment is a one-off.
Geez you guys are up early, assuming you’re all from the UK. Or perhaps you haven’t slept at all given it was new year’s eve. Anyways a happy new year to all.
Enjoyed this crossword. Was a slow start and even though I figured the theme, it was little help as I didn’t know many playwrights. Needed some help finishing ALKYDS and RYA RUG, both I had not heard of. Favourites were HUMDINGER, TRUFFLES and IF I MAY. Thanks Picaroon and Peter
HUMDINGERS, IONIC BONDS, RYA RUG (like paddymelon@1, I have also come across this CRS before) and IF I MAY.
Thanks Picaroon and PeterO.
A bit harder than I would have liked, given the imbibing that went on earlier this evening. Spent too long trying to make an anagram of “wary jockeys” in 13a. Eventually I mentally reset and got PLAYWRIGHTS, but it didn’t help getting any of the acrosses, although I recognized most of the playwrights when I had the answers.
Happy New Year setters, bloggers and everyone else.
Got out 13a, then forgot about it because the names of playwrights aren’t exactly at the top of my consciousness. Had difficulty getting into this one, but it started to fall out thereafter. Thanks and Happy New Year to all!
Defeated by 4d, never having heard of a RYA RUG and had forgotten the rhyming slang. I’m another one who had WILDE rather than WILDER as a playwright, as I think of Thornton Wilder as a novelist rather than a playwright, and also found (Carly) MENSCH and (Tom) PRICE as (TV) playwrights, but missed INGE. Thanks to PeterO and Picaroon and hoping for the best for all this year despite Trump, Musk, Putin, Netanyahu, Farage and all their crew.
This was fun and in my Goldilocks Zone too.
I also had Oscar WILDE and wasn’t sure if RICE (Elmer) or PRICE was meant. Dario FO’s Death of an Anarchist was everywhere when I was a student. RYA RUG was a jorum because I couldn’t think of any other three letter Scottish port.
Thank you to PeterO and Picaroon. Wishing you and everyone else a Happy New Year.
What an ignorant twit I am! I found only 2 13a’s, the obvious 5a and 9a…I really should be doing the Sun crossword instead!
Lovely solve today, I love Picaroon’s crosswords, in inverse proportion to Paul’s crosswords (yesterday) that I loathe.
Thanks to both and Happy New Year to all.
Paddymelon @ 1 and cryptor @3 – and also a wig is “an Irish (Jig)”.
RUG, I think is just a reference to its property!
Thanks Peter and Picaroon
Ok that was a tour de force from Picaroon to start the year. Quite incredible – all across clues themed with no discernable drop in quality of clues/solutions or overall puzzle. The setters for the rest of the year have a tall order to maintain that stupendous opener.
I am so pleased that PeterO knew all the playwrights but one. I didn’t know any of them, except for Racine.
I only knew RYA RUG because it’s ryijy(matto) in Finnish. I’m not sure if the Swedes took it from us, or the other way round. Probably the other way round, actually. They are usually on the wall here.
The rugs that is, not the Swedes.
Have been suffering from a nasty respiratory bug since Boxing Day, so my mind is not 100%, and I didn’t find anything like 12 PLAYWRIGHTS (Oh, it’s not an anagram…). Never heard of a RYA RUG and ALKYDS were unfamiliar, but with so many themers to get in Picaroon did pretty weĺl. Favourite HUMDINGERS.
Billy Wilder also directed Stalag 17, one of my favourite films, for which William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar.
Superb puzzle – thank you Picaroon for a delightful test, and well done Peter O for winkling out all the playwrights
Thanks Picaroon and PeterO
I didn’t enjoy this as much as usual with Picaroon. It was a DNF – I revealed MENSCH (is that a word in English?) I only saw 7 of the playwrights, but I had Tim RICE for 10a.
RYA RUG was another NHO. I worked it out, but didn’t think syrup>wig>rug was entirely fair – a stage too far.
I liked the construction for YABBERED.
The last two in RYA RUG and SAN MARINESE I had to look up after they both went in speculatively from the clueing. FRYERS also took a while, even with all the crossers in place. As with Paddymelon@1 I wasn’t too fussed with the theme, spotting one of them early on in RACINEss, but there were several I didn’t know, anyway – Price, Inge, Bond, Fo and Ford. This in no way detracted from another superlative Picaroon Puzzle to start the New Year.
I saw (Oscar)Wilde when I solved it, but then entirely forgot about the other11. Pretty difficult, I thought, but worth the struggle. My solve of RYA RUG matched Shanne’s, syrup of figs only occurred tome sometime later.
Thanks both.
Add me to the lists of a) those for whom RYA RUG is nho and b) those who took WILDE to be the playwright. Searching for short Scottish ports, I could only think of AYR and Oban but could not imagine RYA being part of a solution. Oh, and syrup of fig = WIG is one bit of rhyming slang I never recall. We have had the debate about whether syrup > fig > wig is fair not that long ago (Paul’s cake puzzle). AT A PRICE, UFOS, OXFORD, FRYERS, FLYWHEEL, YABBERED and HOARDS were my faves today.
PeterO, there is a minor typo in the solution for 5d which has a ‘2’ appearing in it.
Thanks Picaroon and PeterO
RUG for wig is really common in the local argot, with an occasional syrup, so I don’t find RUG = syrup a problem. I hear rug for toupee. Wigs in my head are what women, Dolly Parton and drag queens wear, rugs for men, syrup when some bloke is trying to explain why he just said that guy needs to update his rug as it’s obvious now.
I’m sure he isn’t an intended playwright, but there is also the Earl of OXFORD, one of the prominent candidates suspected (not by me) of being the person who “really” wrote Shakespeare.
I wasn’t sure that RICE qualifies as a playwright so I went for Stanley PRICE (1931-2019) who had some successful West End plays in the 1980s starring the likes of Ricard Briers and Penny Keith. He also wrote screenplays for TV and was a novelist.
Remember first meeting the wah-wah in Cream’s White Room, where shadows run from themselves. Fun puzzle, noticed Shaw and Racine but like pdm@1 didn’t bother much. Thanks both, HNY all.
Very tough puzzle. Gave up on 6ac and 4d as I know nothing of Scottish ports or Swedish rugs!
Managed to find 13 playwrights with some help from google – Racine, Ford, Fry, Bond, Wilder, Wilde, Kyd, Hare, Shaw, Gay, Hare, Hoar, and Tim Price – but the theme did not help me as I looked for the playwrights after solving the clues. My list is a bit different from PeterO’s and others above but maybe that is because there are so many possibilities / so many playwrights and I think I also looked at the down answers.
Favourites: MENSCH, IF I MAY, HUMDINGERS, GAYE.
New for me: FLYWHEEL, IONIC BONDS.
Thanks, both and Happy New Year to all!
Wikipedia lists several playwrights called Wright.
Memo to self: TAPS = CH. Seen it before but forgot (they’re marked red and blue here in France). Bonne année à tous et à toutes.
Good one from the Pirate. I solved the keyword about half way through, having started at the bottom as the top few solutions didn’t spring out at me, but I completed the puzzle without its help, and looked for the dramatists when I had finished. That, for me, is the sign of a good theme – one that isn’t necessary to solve the crossword.
RYA RUG was new to me, but the wordplay was unambiguous (they don’t sell them under that name in IKEA, at least outside Sverige). As a chemist, I enjoyed ALKYDS (much used in paints) and IONIC BONDS. SAN MARINESE is not an expression you come across very often, but slotted in easily (in Italian it is ‘sammarinese’). Too many other good clues to list.
muffin @20: MENSCH is certainly a word used in English – although like many expressions from Yiddish, it is more common in American usage.
Thanks to the ever reliable Picaroon and PeterO
PostMark @23, Uig (on Skye) is another three letter port, the ferry terminal for Tarbert (Harris) and Lochmaddy (North Uist), but fortunately I only thought of it after plumping for Ayr.
A good but tough puzzle. I enjoyed working out PLAYWRIGHTS from the crossers – first I guessed RIGHTS, then thought “perhaps WRIGHTS?”, then PLAYWRIGHTS, and then saw the correct parsing and that the definition was plausible, then saw one in RACINESS and didn’t bother much with the other 11.
[I hope everyone is feeling fine after the New Year celebrations. After sandwiches and parties I am expecting Paul’s next puzzle to be themed on words meaning drunk and/or hangover 🙂 ]
I had Emma Rice (Wise Children) It was Racine (not really known for his RACINESS) that led me to the PLAYWRIGHTS.
Monkey @32: good call re Uig. I’ve even taken a ferry from there! One to attempt to retain in the memory banks.
[PostMark @35
When I went to Harris from Uig it was actually the first time I had been on Skye (I’ve been again since). I was really surprised by how big it was. From the bridge to Uig was over 50 miles!]
I also spent far too long looking for an anagram of “WARYJOCKEYS” until I got 1d. I was pleased to get RAG RUG for 4d, until it didn’t work – I think these are common in Sweden, too, but perhaps @Anna can correct me on this.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda, pawb!
One of my degrees is in English Literature so, by rights, I should have been on a roll – but due to an inevitable looseness in the solutions, I actually came up with 15 playwrights.
I won’t bore you by listing them: they’ve all been mentioned.
I suspect the choice of WILDE or WILDER depends upon which side of the Atlantic is your chief source of cultural input: I’m English, so Wilde was a no-brainer. (Wilder occurred later, when I was totting up – and would technically mean 16.
17, if we allow both Price and Rice – and why not?)
A lot of them, and I speak as one who knows them all, are far from General Knowledge – so I’d class this puzzle as a tad frustrating.
Then again, since gentler crosswords are clearly less-welcome under the Guardian’s current editor, I know I shall just have to grit my teeth and up-my-game….
Thank you to Picaroon for the challenge & PeterO for all the explanations!
Great setting to fit all 12 PLAYWRIGHTS into the remaining Across solutions without too many obscurities (when I thought of RYA I didn’t quite expect it to be a word). Like some others the keystone clue did not help much during the solve but I spotted some of them once I had finished.
I liked the boring items in SHAWLS, the back from hols for SHARED, and the lioness and squirrels in HOARDS.
Thanks Picaroon and PeterO for finding the PLAYWRIGHTS.
Re 23a
Don’t some claim that the Earl of Oxford was Shakespeare?
Nho of RYA RUG, nor of the supposed rhyming slang, nor of the syrup, so 4d was impossible. Tried to parse WAH-WAH as a reversal of HAM-HAM (radio amateur) which nearly works. And I missed the theme entirely, having to reveal the key clue last of all. However this was still a good puzzle.
Another one who thought WILDE for the 5a playwright. But from the comments so far I’m possibly the only one who took the full answer WILDER to refer to Gene Wilder, since he did do some directing.
Revealed ALKYDS and the first half of RYA RUG. That felt like pretty good going, though, given how daunting this was on my first attempts at tackling it.
Smashing puzzle, and blog.
Happy New year to you all!
Enjoyable fare except for 4D. I am in the camp that the chain of reasoning there is a stretch too far. Even if one knows syrup of fig is ‘wig’ (I didn’t), one then has to replace ‘wig’ with the slang ‘rug’, and then shift to an alternate meaning of ‘rug’, and then bingo! a floor covering many of us have never heard of. A blot on an otherwise excellent puzzle.
Anyway, congrats to PeterO for winkling out all of the playwrights, about half of whom eluded me.
Glad to be finished with all the parties and the sandwiches. Tough enough puzzle to start the year and I didn’t spot the theme yet again. Faves: WAHWAH, HUMDINGER, SHAWLS, UFOS… NHO: RYA RUG, assumed it was an IKEA product and went through the ABC.
[ Thanks setters, bloggers and contributors for a very entertaining and instructive year.
How good are cryptic crosswords, eh? My wife is Spanish and I introduced her to the concept a while ago. Now she’s hooked but has run out of puzzles. The 15 x 15 UK-style grid is practically unknown in Spanish, we’ve only found one (excellent) setter on Crosshare – David Marchand. Any more recommendations gratefully received. HNY 2025 ]
I think this Crossword is flawed.
15D. Truffles are not chocolates. They are fungi. The answer I arrived at is Truffino, a Brand name of Turkish chocolate. It is an anagram (ripples)of N ( last letter of portion) and OF FRUIT. That of course would make 25A incorrect
Ed @46 – truffles are most definitely chocolates as well. The word has more than one meaning 🙂
Ed @46: supplementing Rob T’s point, Chambers gives:
Any fungus of the genus Tuber or the family Tuberaceae
Its underground edible fructification
A rich confection made with chocolate, butter, etc, usu shaped into balls
8d is wrong. An inhabitant of San Marino is called a “Sammarinese”, one word.
Wellbeck @38: Since neither the wordplay nor the solutions require any knowledge of the hidden playwrights, but are constructed and solvable in the usual way, why should it matter whether or not the dramatists are household names? The theme is irrelevant to solving the crossword.
David Mansell @49: See me @31. Sammarinese is certainly the Italian demonym, but in English SAN MARINESE is properly formed, just as Turinese rather than torinese is the accepted English word.
I don’t know why, but I found this to be much gentler than Picaroon’s usual standard, which suited me today. The 13a s certainly helped me.
I did like the smooth surfaces esp ALKYDS and PLEADING. My fave clue however was for YABBERED.
Thanks Picaroon and PeterO
And Happy New Year to all
Tricky but fun, and fair IMO. Well, I did unashamedly look up a list of Scottish ports once I had the R G and then think “can it possibly be RYA?” Got the theme by using KYD to work out PLAYWRIGHTS, though I missed a couple of them in the grid, including FO, which was nicely done–I assumed there must be one or two down (there are playwrights named Hoar and Mora if one searches enough, I guess). Excellent clue for PLAYWRIGHTS too.
I did think of Thornton Wilder as a playwright first because of The Skin of Our Teeth. Oh, and Our Town too, which probably puts his plays ahead of his novels in the general consciousness.
19d was clear from the enumeration but I did spend a little time trying to figure out how November 5th fit in.
Happy New Year to all and thanks Picaroon and PeterO!
Personally I found this very tough by Picaroon’s usual standards, with an obscure theme that didn’t help the solving at all. I ended up having to reveal the last three – I had heard of MENSCH but didn’t know the meaning, and had never heard of ALKYDS or RYA RUG… and of those three could only parse ALKYDS even after revealing them. Thanks to PeterO and others on here for the explanations – hadn’t come across CH for taps before, or syrup = wig. None of those clues seem particularly satisfactory? File this one under “not much fun”!
It’s always interesting as to what different people think is tricky/obscure vs fair. Lots of people caught out by ‘syrup’ -> RUG but that was one of my first in (admittedly the RYA part took longer) – but on the other hand I took ages to get MORASS as I just couldn’t get ‘painter’=RA until I had crossers, and once I solved it I thought it was a tad too indirect, but no-one else has mentioned it 🙂
Thanks both and happy new year to all!
Rob T @55
RA (Royal Academician) is very common in crosswords for “painter” – file it away.
It’s the two-step process needed to get from “syrup” to RUG that I thought was unfair, particularly as the answer was pretty obscure (and tautological? Apparently RYA means RUG!)
muffin @56: RYA RUG isn’t strictly tautological, as ‘rya’ is the Swedish word for the deep-pile woven material from which the rug is made.
muffin @55 – thanks, I’ve been aware of RA clued as ‘artist’ for a while but ‘painter’ struck me as a step away from the source abbreviation as it’s a subset/example of an artist, not a synonym.
On the other hand, both ‘syrup’ and ‘rug’ are slang terms for a wig, so that passed the substitution test for me.
Gervase @57
Wiki was my authority – I know it can be wrong!
In particular it says this:
“Though rya means “rug” in English, the original meaning in Sweden of rya was a bed cover with a knotted pile.”
I think we can take the meaning in English?
MENSCH is interesting: in German it just means “person”; only in Yiddish does it have the connotation of being a “good egg”, as the clue puts it. And since it was loaned to English from Yiddish rather than German, that’s what it means in English too. “He’s a real mensch.”
I spotted about half the playwrights, thinking of both WILDE and WILDER; I assume the former is the one Picaroon had in mind, since Wilder is pretty darned American. The theme only actually helped me with SHAWLS, though. I wound up revealing RYA RUG and ALKYDS (immediately saying “Spanish Tragedy–duh.”)
Re 23. It’s a baker’s dozen if you include the Earl of.
MrP @60
Thanks for that. I was baffled by MENSCH. The only time I have encountered the word is in Mahler’s third symphony, where the song starts “O Mensch! Gib acht!” (setting words by Nietzsche).
muffin @59: By that logic, OXFORD shoe would be tautological because they can simply be referred to as ‘Oxfords’ 🙂
Gervase @63
Ah, but no they couldn’t! Oxford shoes are shoes, but Oxfords aren’t necessarily – they could be blues, for example.
There was a more blatant example a couple of days ago that I couldn’t be bothered to complain about – Vulcan’s 13a.
muffin @64: False analogy 🙂 It’s common to refer to items simply by the name of the material from which they are made. Take this entry from Chambers:
sheepˈskin noun
The skin of a sheep, with or without the fleece attached
An item made from it, eg a rug, horse’s noseband, coat, etc
Gervase @65
I don’t follow. Are you saying that shoes are made from Oxford?
Did you look back at Vulcan’s? ??? isn’t whiskey – ??? whiskey is whiskey.
Love the puzzle! I didn’t have ‘INGE’, but I did have [Elaine] MAY in 19D. So there are 13 playwrights, or 14 if you count both Wilde and Wilder.
muffin @66 – I took Gervase’s example to mean that single words often stand in for compound phrases. That can be material, place of origin, or something else.
In the example you give from Vulcan, that one three-letter word ___ can, per Chambers, mean ___ grass, ___ whiskey or ___ bread.
Polysemy is a fundamental principle of the cryptic crossword. When a setter says (or wants to clue) “Oxford” they could mean (or use as wordplay) a shoe, a university, a cotton fabric or a city. It’s all part of the game, no?
I enjoyed a quick lunchtime solve here in Connecticut. It helps that I had the knowledge – I saw Swedish floor covering, biffed rya rug, and then parsed it. Mensch is common in the Yiddish-saturated NY metropolitan area, and the cryptic isn’t hard. Lord Haw-Haw? Yep. I could only find 5 playwrights, but they weren’t really needed.
WAH-WAH as a musical sound effect was originally (and continues to be) produced by a trumpet or trombone player using a plunger mute, long before the invention of the electric guitar. It was particularly effectively used by players in Duke Ellington’s orchestra.
Rob T @68: Precisely. I used the sheepskin example because ‘sheepskin’ can mean a coat made of sheepskin, just as ‘rya’ can indicate a rug made of rya.
From an old Guardian article:
If football managers’ dugout outerwear has changed over the years – from overcoats in the 90s to hoodies and gilets more recently – Motson’s sheepskin was part of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school of football style.
… but nobody would suggest that the expression ‘sheepskin coat’ was pleonastic.
Indeed, “sheepskin” by itself would suggest a diploma to me. (US, informal, says Collins.)
Generally I don’t worry about a pleonasm like “rya rug”–avoiding redundancy isn’t the only desideratum in conversation, adding “rug” to “rya” can help communicate part of what you’re talking about to someone who’s never heard the term or needs to be reminded.
Found this enjoyable though ultimately defeated by RYA RUG.
Also to be found in the grid (though almost certainly not intended as one of the twelve) were the following playwrights: Nicholas WRIGHT, Madhu RYE, Thomas MAY and Sarah RUFF
How many are we up to now? 😉
I found this incredibly difficult, and had to give up after putting the Skye port of Uig in 4d. Apparently there is such a thing as a GIU RUG. Or at least, Google was afraid I’d be disappointed if it didn’t pretend there was.
Google also found me a playwright called MENSCH. Perhaps, like rock bands, any word or part of word can also be the name of a dramatist. What an interesting world we live in.
Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO.
Found this very tough, but I don’t resent Pirate stealing hours of my New Year’s Day. Enjoyed WAH-WAH. Love themed crosswords but this one didn’t really help solve. Excellent blog, thank you both.
Welcome to crossword land. I found Paul obdurate and hard work when many loved him and Picaroon fun and pleasantly challenging where many found him obdurate and hard work.
Uig or Ayr ? Not heard of either giu or rya rugs, but I have heard Uig pronounced as “wig” so giu was my first choice.
Many thanks to Picaroon for a brilliantly entertaining puzzle, and to PeterO for enriching it like a Christmas cake!
I’ve only just got round to finishing this, but if anyone’s still reading I wish them all a happy and healthy year in 2025. As always, I thought that Picaroon provided a superb puzzle. I had to construct ‘Mensch’ and ‘Rya Rug’ from the wordplay as they were unknown to me.
The only playwright I knew was Oscar Wilde, so no help from the theme for me, despite solving PLAYWRIGHTS early on. Many enjoyable clues though. DNF.
Took me a long time, but eventually got there. Unfortunately didn’t get the 12 as I had Marine (Russian) and Hoar (NZ) on my list, but no Fo or Kyd. Admittedly, I had resorted to putting “playwright xxxx” into a popular search engine. Which may be considered dangerous and/or cheating by some. Part of me thinks you can have whichever playwrights you like
Wrestled with this one for two days and got all but four. Very satisfying and enjoyable to gradually put it together. A good mental workout
– Got close to solving HUMDINGER, but not quite. Got the HUNGER or HANKER part, but expected ILI in the middle
– Apparently RAG RUGs are a thing in Sweden, so that went in unparsed
– Nho ALKYDS and SAN MARINESE, so didn’t get close to those