Eccles has provided our mid-week cruciverbal teaser this Wednesday, using a grid that contains no really long entries and so plenty of short- and medium-length entries for us all to tease out.
I rated this puzzle very highly in terms of entertainment value, and I enjoyed lots of sniggers along the way. Overall, I am relatively satisfied with my parsing, although I am not sure that I have nailed things at either 6 (“filleted”) or 7 as a whole. The intended meaning of “couch” at 25 and “totty” at 26 were both new to me.
It is hard for me to single out clues that I particularly enjoyed, but let me mention a few: 10, for originality; 17 and 22A, both for surface reading; and, above all, 12, for topicality and the ingenious splitting of “boom and bust” between wordplay and definition.
*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in multiple-definition clues
| Across | ||
| 01 | RACE | Care about people
*(CARE); “about” is anagram indicator |
| 03 | UPPER CLASS | Stimulant very good for posh people
UPPER (=stimulant) + CLASS (=very good, as in a class act) |
| 10 | VOW | Promise that’s amazing: first wife gets half-cut
WOW (=that’s amazing!); “first wife (=W)” gets half-cut” means first letter “w” gets cut in half to resemble a “v”! |
| 11 | AMUSE | Please employ escorts in the morning
AM (=in the morning) + USE (=employ) |
| 12 | BOSOM | Starmer primarily must stop boom and bust
S<tarmer> (“primarily” means first letter only) in BOOM; a bust is a woman’s chest, bosom |
| 13 | VIDAL | Film by Al Gore?
VID (=film, colloquially, i.e. video) + AL; the reference is to US writer and intellectual Gore Vidal (1925-2012) |
| 14 | KNAPSACK | Smack sent back with a cake, occasionally, in backpack
KNAPS (SPANK=smack; “sent back” indicates reversal) + A + C<a>K<e> (“occasionally” means alternate letters only are used) |
| 16 | LONG HOP | Delivery that was mastered by Jonathan Edwards?
Cryptically, as a champion triple-jumper, Jonathan Edwards clearly mastered a long hop!; the long hop is a delivery, i.e. a type of ball bowled, in cricket |
| 18 | DEGRADE | Duke agreed to change and lower rank
D (=duke) + *(AGREED); “to change” is anagram indicator |
| 20 | SASSOON | Maybe 13 elite servicemen very forward
SAS (=elite servicemen, i.e. Special Air Service) + SO (=very) + ON (=forward, as in moving on/forward); the reference is to UK hairstylist and entrepreneur Vidal (=entry at 13) Sassoon (1928-2012) |
| 22 | BRUBECK | Stream entertaining massage for jazz pioneer
RUB (=massage) in BECK (=stream, rivulet); the reference is to US jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) |
| 23 | REST AREA | Pointedly look into Arsenal ignoring odd characters providing services?
STARE (=pointedly look) in<a>R<s>E<n>A<l> (“ignoring odd characters” means only even letters are used); e.g. motorway services are a kind of rest area |
| 25 | SET-TO | Carniverous couch-dwellers run away, returning for fight
OTTE<r>S (=carnivorous couch-dwellers, where “couches” are above-ground resting places; “run (=R, on cricket scorecard) away” means letter “r” is dropped); “returning” indicates reversal |
| 28 | ETHOS | Get hostelry to stock spirit
Hidden (“to stock”) in “gET HOStelry” |
| 29 | ALARM | Warning from American lecturer with gun, perhaps
A (=American) + L (=lecturer) + ARM (=gun, perhaps) |
| 30 | PAT | Tap, tap on the counter
TAP; “on the counter” indicates reversal; to tap someone on the arm, say, is to pat them |
| 31 | WATERMELON | Musk following Washington call is bearing fruit
WA (=Washington, i.e. US state) + TERM (=call, name) + IS + ELON (=Musk, i.e. US entrepreneur and POTUS adviser) |
| 32 | DYAD | Couple in Germany converse from sunrise to sunset
D (=Germany, in IVR) + YAD (DAY=from sunrise to sunset; “converse” indicates reversal); a dyad is something composed of two parts, cf. triad |
| Down | ||
| 01 | REVIVALIST | Everyone else restrains Italian composer after knocking out Dutch preacher
VIVAL<d>I (=Italian composer; “after knocking out Dutch (=D)” means letter “d” is dropped) in REST (=everyone else); a revivalist is an itinerant preacher |
| 02 | COWED | Intimidated women in educational establishment
W (=women) in COED (=educational establishment, i.e. a school where boys and girls are educated together) |
| 04 | PLUCK UP | Summon youngster taking a break
LUCK (=a break; cf. a lucky break) in PUP (=youngster); e.g. to pluck up courage is to summon, muster it |
| 05 | EMERALD | Dear me! Lake unusually green
*(DEAR ME + L (=lake)); “unusually” is anagram indicator |
| 06 | CUBES | Young animal eats filleted solids
CUB (=young animal) + E<at>S (“filleted” here seems to mean gutted); cubes, cylinders, etc are solids in geometry |
| 07 | ASSOCIATE | Couple // with nearly equal status
Double definition: to associate is to couple, link, make a mental connection with AND e.g. a business associate or an associate professor has subordinate but nearly equal status as … |
| 08 | SUMO | Tot getting love for wrestling
SUM (=tot, add up) + O (=love, i.e. zero score in tennis) |
| 09 | BALLYHOO | Uproar as British couple house terrorist at centre
B (=British) + ALLY (=couple, join, as verb) + HO (=house) + <terr>O<rist> (“at centre” means middle letter only |
| 15 | GET KNOTTED | Become gnarly and leave!
Cryptically, since a gnarl is a knot, “get knotted” could mean “become gnarly”; as an exclamation, “Get knotted!” is Leave! Clear off! |
| 17 | NISSEN HUT | Uses ninth amendment in military building
*(USES NINTH); “amendment” is anagram indicator |
| 19 | GRUESOME | Shot up in audition – a little shocking
Homophone (“in audition”) of “grew (=shot up) + some (=a little)” |
| 21 | NARRATE | Sped up tempo in Relate events
NAR (RAN=sped, raced; “up” indicates vertical reversal) + RATE (=tempo, speed); to relate events is to recount, narrate them |
| 22 | BRAVADO | Show underwear, and five fuss
BRA (=underwear) + V (=five, in Roman numerals) + ADO (=fuss, commotion); bravado is show, swagger |
| 24 | TASER | Revolutionary again took weapon
RESAT (=took again, of exam); “revolutionary” indicates vertical reversal |
| 26 | TIPSY | Leans close to sexy totty
TIPS (=leans, tilts) + <sex>Y (“close to” means last letter only); totty is tipsy, slightly drunk |
| 27 | MEOW | Drunk women briefly making cat cry
*(WOME<n>); “briefly” means last letter is dropped from anagram, indicated by “making” |
Well, it’s just the usual Eccles, isn’t it? Great setting, great fun.
Is TOTTY=TIPSY? I presume it’s so, somewhere, but not in my grey cells.
DYAD goes into the “whylist”, but another I didn’t mind learning.
Agree with our blogger on “filleted”, 6(d), my thought was “take the bones out of” ( ‘though first, I tried “solids” instead of “eats”.) 7(d) looks fine, too.
Particularly enjoyed the AL/ GORE/ VIDAL/ SASSOON artifice.
Super stuff, Eccles & Ratkoja
Forgot….an otter’s den = couch or holt. ( I didn’t know either of them, though holt sounds familiar).
Liked VOW, LONG HOP, SET-TO, CUBES (E…S: that was my parsing as well) and GRUESOME.
ASSOCIATE: Parsed as the blogger.
Thanks Eccles and RR.
The blog has a stray IS in the parsing of WATERMELON. DYAD is a word that often cropped up in my Control Theory research days, so no problem there.
Always thought get knotted meant like the other ‘gets’, effed and stuffed, but hey ho, happy to learn. Gore V would’ve been amused by the culture cross from lit style to hairstyle between 20 and 13. Easy but fun, ta Eccles and RR.
The ninth amendment trick was very clever, as was halving the W to get VOW. Strange how we call it a double-u, rather than a double -v like in French.
Petert@6, I pathetically assumed it was because, at primary school, we wrote “uu” together, when learning to write “w”, nicely rounded, in lower case.
Apparently, it goes back to early printing presses, and the availability of the letter-sets that they had, in England.
I’m thinking….”our” w is pronounced “v” in many languages, and our “v” sound is their “w”.
There’s a thesis in there, for somebody.
10(ac) remains, a wery good clue, quite vunderbar.
Ja virklich!
Thanks Eccles for the mid-week fun. I particularly liked BOSOM, WATERMELON, DYAD, and BALLYHOO. I had no chance with LONG HOP knowing neither the cricket term nor Jonathan Edwards. Thanks RR for explaining.
Just to spell out what was implicit in Ratkoja’s explanation for 16A, triple jump is also known as hop, skip and jump.
I didn’t know the adjectival use of totty and thought it was a wry description of someone who’d had too many tots of drink.
Thanks for the excellent crossword and blog.
Eoink @10 – no it isn’t! It’s known as “hop, step and jump”.
If you want to see true athletic beauty, you can’t do much better than Jonathan Edwards’s slightly illegal 18.43
I wasn’t bad in my day, but would have needed a hop, step, hop and jump to get anywhere near that!