In a slice of serendipitous symmetry, this week’s prize puzzle from Kite is the one accidentally (and momentarily) published four weeks ago, instead of the Easter Special, in my last blog slot…to some consternation amongst the late/early birds and Anitipodeans, although I slept through that event and didn’t download or solve it at the time…
Some more serendipity is that it was (re-)published in the week the ‘Newbie Corner’ appeared on this site…and Kite has produced a handy guide to the building blocks of a cryptic crossword…in a cryptic crossword!
We have a DOUBLE- or CRYPTIC-DEFINITION, ANAGRAMS, REVERSAL, HIDDEN words, INSERTION, CHARADE and an ACROSTIC…any others?…
And many of the clues are an example of their solution – I haven’t been through and ticked them all off the list, but ACROSTIC is an acrostic; ANAGRAMS is an anagram; REVERSAL is a reversed hidden word; HIDDEN is hidden in ‘orcHID DENnis’…you get the picture!
If you are an INGÉNU(E) at these things you need to get SMART and follow the CHOICEST BIG IDEAs and TACTICs described here, to learn what all this cruciverbal stuff COMES TO. Hopefully you won’t think it all INANE and a bit of a DRAG…
My personal favourites were the ‘rock star Jeremy’ at 15D IRONSTONE, and Choc Ices as the ‘best dessert’ for 17D CHOICEST. Least favourite (because I still can’t parse it!) was CHARADE…is it as simple as adding ‘-ADE’ to ‘CHAR’, as in LEMON-ADE?…
I’m sure I may have missed another layer of the onion, or something suitably subtle, but I will stop here and salute Kite for this gentle homage to things cruciverbal, and I hope all is clear below.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 9A | SAN ANGELO | Western city has no lasagne unfortunately (3,6)
anag, i.e. unfortunately, of NO LASAGNE |
| 10A | ICIER | Nastier king leaving more frozen (5)
IC( |
| 11A | INGENUE | Genuine, busy young woman lacking experience (7)
anag, i.e. busy, of GENUINE |
| 12A | BIG IDEA | Female saint (queen) rejected each clever scheme (3,4)
B( |
| 13A | TEAM | Company mate’s one of 2 (4)
MATE is an ANAGRAM (2D) of TEAM (company) |
| 14A | ASCENDANTS | Ancestors’ DNA sets can get misconstrued (10)
anag, i.e. get misconstrued, of DNA SETS CAN |
| 16A | NOSTRIL | End of breathing tube is torn and left at sea (7)
anag, i.e. at sea, of IS TORN + L (left) |
| 17A | CHARADE | A riddle, sweetened tea perhaps is one (7)
CHA(R) (tea) + (R)ADE? [Beats me – see comments below…I’m sure someone cleverer than me will explain!] |
| 19A | DEFINITION | This might be 5 or 24 interpretation (10)
In cruciverbal terms, a DEFINITION might be double (5D) or cryptic (24A) |
| 22A | DRAG | Out of uniform, retired conductor is a bore (4)
G( |
| 24A | CRYPTIC | Strange vault I see (7)
CRYPT (vault) + I + C (see) |
| 25A | COMES TO | Recovers from company sad musical (5,2)
CO (company) + MES_TO (mesto, music, sad) |
| 26A | OCEAN | Lots of water buffalo ultimately stir, eating the middle of reeds (5)
O (ultimate letter of buffalO) + C_AN (prison, stir) around (eating) E (middle letter of reEds) |
| 27A | INSERTION | Entry by passage right for college (9)
IN (by) + SE( |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | ASSISTANT DOCTOR | Physician’s helper trains cats to do something initially unnatural (9,6)
anag, i.e. unnatural, of TRAINS CATS TO DO S (initial letter of Something) |
| 2D | ANAGRAMS | Marg as an alternative is one of these (8)
anag, i.e. alternative, of MARG AS AN! |
| 3D | INANE | Foolish grandma that is welcoming (5)
I_E (id est, that is) around (welcoming) NAN (grandma) |
| 4D | REVERSAL | Mishap’s found in Dallas, Rev Erikson upset (8)
reversed hidden word, i.e. ‘found in’ and ‘upset’, in ‘dalLAS REV ERikson’ |
| 5D | DOUBLE | ‘Solvable’, you said for a match (6)
DO-( |
| 6D | KING EDGAR | Old monarch’s family good, agreed to be employed when lacking English (4,5)
KIN (family) + G (good) + EDGAR (subtractive anagram, i.e. employed, of AGRE( |
| 7D | HIDDEN | Discovered orchid Dennis covered (6)
dis-covering, or removing the outer layers (thrice) of ‘orcHID DENnis’ gives HIDDEN |
| 8D | BREAKS NEW GROUND | Does something innovative, suggesting bankers? (6,3,6)
BANKERS’ could be BREAKS and N (NEW) GROUND, or anagrammed! |
| 15D | IRONSTONE | Rock star Jeremy’s air (9)
IRONS (actor/star, Jeremy Irons) + TONE (air, mien) |
| 17D | CHOICEST | Best desserts not cold for once, tasty at the beginning (8)
CHO( |
| 18D | ACROSTIC | This starts from any crossword, reading of sign that is clear (8)
initial letters, or starts, of ‘Any Crossword Reading Of Sign That Is Clear’ |
| 20D | FLYMEN | Theatre workers are 23 guys (6)
FLY (smart, 23D) + MEN (guys) |
| 21D | TACTIC | Method of army signals after cycling (6)
TICTAC is a method of signalling used by bookies with their arms, hence arm-y(!), and cycling the two halves round gives TACTIC [thanks to various commenters below for the improved parsing on this] |
| 23D | SMART | Wilful cruelty depicted by pictures is trendy (5)
SM (sado-masochism, wilful cruelty, depicted by the initials) + ART (pictures) |
Since lemonade is sweetened lemon juice, I assumed CHARADE would be sweetened char (tea), the solution being an example, in the cryptic crossword sense.
21d definition is just “method” – the “army signals” are signals using the arms.
A lovely crosswordy crossword that I did inadvertently at Easter but appreciated a lot more on second viewing.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67
I parsed 12a rather differently. Female saint= BRIGID; queen =ER, giving you BRIGIDER. Then perform fission on ‘r/ejected’ and eject both R’s, leaving you with BIGIDE. Finally add ‘A’ for each, as in ‘Feed the birds, tuppence a bag’ to give you the solution.
The theme was apparent early on, from ANAGRAMS and the cross-references. I found the theme reduced the challenge substantially – for my taste it would have worked better with the definitions in theme clues dropped, Maskarade-style. (Maybe having done the puzzle a few weeks ago contributed.)
I’m by no means an expert or even a practitioner, but isn’t wilful cruelty sadism, not sado-masochism?
I had TACTIC as Judge@2, the “army” being a bit of whimsical fun
Thanks mc_rapper67. I got some way through this thinking some of the clues were vaguely familiar before I realised I had completed it last month. Enjoyed it again though and spent some more time trying to come to terms with17d, I had the ices inside hot but couldn’t account for the initial C.
Like Judge@2, I enjoyed this a lot more second time around, probably because I saw the theme (how did I miss it a month ago??). Both times, I confidently started to enter LOS ANGELES at 9a, before counting/checking the letters. IRONSTONE was my favourite too. Thanks, Kite and the rapper.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67.
Good puzzle. Neat blog.
SMART
I read ‘Wilful cruelty depicted by pictures’ together to mean ‘SM ART’.
DEFINITION
Def: Interpretation, I think. The rest is WP.
Liked BREAK NEW GROUND, TACTIC and ASCENDANTS.
Thanks Kite. I enjoyed this over Easter & I saved my copy of the puzzle. When I saw it was Kite again I compared the puzzle numbers but they were different so I began solving what I thought was a new Kite. About a quarter way through I realised it was the same crossword. I thought it was clever then & now. Thanks mc_rapper67 for the blog.
I hadn’t seen this when it was first published, but when I started thought it was going to be a write-in which was odd for a prize. However, the bottom half turned out to be a lot trickier than the top. Pleased to have completed it.
Didn’t get the parsing of 27, I was trying to use SION as the college…
For 8 I took ‘bankers’ as an allusion to rivers carving through the landscape, but the explanation here fits the theme much better.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67.
Agree about “army signals”. That sense of “army” (of the arms) appeared in the Spectator puzzle the previous week.
Chambers has…
tick-tack (noun)
2. (also ticˈ-tac) bookmakers’ telegraphy by arm signals
Thanks to Kite and mc_rapper67
Jay @10 ‘Army’ in that sense also featured in Vlad’s cryptic on 9th May, where STICK EM UP was clued as ‘army command’.
Balfour@11, thanks for that, I recall the Vlad clue now you mention it.
I keep a list of these ‘nouns that work as adjectives’ (army, irony, tory …)
Thanks for the blog and the grid , a nice idea carried out very well . I found the bottom half required quite a bit of thought . CHOICEST a clever clue and very precise , KING EDGAR not so exact . BREAKS NEW GROUND is really stretching things , perhaps there would be complaints if it was not so easy from the enumeration .
A lovely puzzle. Yes, BREAKS NEW GROUND was a bit of a stretch … but that exactly fits the crossword’s theme! Many thanks, Kite. Thanks mc_rapper67 for parsing INSERTION for me.
I was much delayed by thinking 26a was OFFAL. Last five characters of buFFALO stirred. Reed is my surname and I was impressed to discover reeds a type of offal. Had I spotted the theme much earlier, I would have known that my thinking was far too woolly for such a clever puzzle.
My one criticism is to wonder if a choc ice is really a dessert. Anybody seen it on a restaurant menu? But not sure I could define it any better.
I totally missed the theme.
I could not parse 21d (never heard of bookies’ tictac signals), 23d, and 17ac I guessed it was Char-ade like lemon-ade.
New for me: IRONSTONE, SAN ANGELO, FLYMEN, MESTO= sad.
My favourite was DOUBLE, which I thought was a clever trick.
I started off a bit dissatisfied with ASSISTANT DOCTOR as my first one in. Is “Assistant Doctor” really a thing? I suppose it is to the extent that you could be an Assistant Taxi-Driver or an Assistant Farmer, but it seemed a bit contrived. It’s a sweeter solve when an anagram definition is a readily recognisable phrase.
However, once I got onto my stride this crossword turned out to be a challenging and admirable puzzle.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67
From merriam-webster (below see 2) apparently you can use -ade suffix for any sweetened drink
-ade
noun suffix
1
: act : action
blockade
2
: product
especially : sweet drink
limeade
Agree top half was quick and bottom half needed more time. No ticks this week
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper67
Love the theme pointed out by mc_rapper 67! So clever. Re 27A, in what sense does ‘in’ mean ‘by’?
I thought the Guardian had finally seen sense and published a conventional cryptic to complement the Maskarade “special”. I got about half way through this before I realised that I had done it before. Not sure what that says about my memory!
Anyway double fun for me
Cheers MC&K
A crossword so good I solved it twice. And took just about as long the second time round.
Jess Anderson@19 – how about “in/by doing so I displayed a worrying lack of memory”.
Thanks to Kite and mc_rapper67
Good question Jess Anderson@19 – I’m struggling to find examples where ‘by’ and ‘in’ can be interchanged. Perhaps ‘in/by my reckoning’ or ‘I’ll complete it by/in five days’ The problem with prepositions in English is that they have such a variety of uses and they aren’t always particularly precise; you can probably always find some overlap with all prepositions.
KING EDGAR, as Roz@13 hints, is not ‘lacking E’ 😕. Wouldn’t ‘losing’ have worked instead?
On the other hand, 8d really does break new ground, as we have an anagrind in the answer, but the fodder is made up of BREAKS + N, with the N in bankers stretched somewhat. An ‘innovative’ clue indeed.
My favourite was CHOCICES for the subtle manipulation: ‘not cold for once’. Very good.
Not so impressed with CHAR ADE.
Thanks to Kite and our golfer.
Thanks to mc_rapper67 for a super blog. Yes the CHAR-ADE (like lemonade) was a CHARADE. I think I understand the point about lacking English, although as English is E (single) only one is not there; or perhaps I have misunderstood the comment. This was quite fun to set, trying to make the target word part of the wordplay, hence CHAR-ADE.
PS, this crossword was originally slated for 19th April before it was realised that that was Easter Saturday. It was moved to 17th May but unfortunately the IT gremlins failed to remove it on Easter Saturday at first.
Kite@24. Thanks for joining in – it’s always good to hear from the setters.
I think the point is that ‘lacking’ usually means “not having any”. I take your point about singular E, but how would you make it plural? “Lacking all English” would be clunky.
Why not just use ‘losing’ or ‘missing’ instead?
I thought CHAR was the cleaning lady and CHA the drink but Chambers says that CHAR can also be Cockney for “tea”. How do they know? I don’t think that Cockney is a written language and Cockneys don’t pronounce the “r” in CHAR.
Thanks to Kite and mc_rapper67
We completed the crossword ‘in’ the specified time, that is ‘by’ the given deadline in the SE corner! The theme was clear but a few of our parsings were incomplete or unsatisfactory until reading the blog (ta to mcr).
Favourites among many clever clues were IRONSTONE and CHOICEST with FLYMEN and MESTO new to us. We felt that CHARADE and DOUBLE were a tad dubious and could not believe that we were so slow to ACROSTIC!
As always, thanks be to K and mc.
sh @26; thanks for the explanation. Perhaps lacking was not the right word. I did make sure with the CHOC-ICES that the clue made it clear that only one C was removed.
Pino@27 Cha derives from the Chinese. (Wiki) Cockney slang for tea is Rosie Lee, or just Rosie. I’m not really surprised if Chambers got this wrong.
I managed to notice the crossword theme from 19ac and a few others, but as usual I didn’t think to list the whole set at the end, so thanks mc_rapper. Shame on me as it was a well-crafted puzzle. I liked IRONSTONE, both for the wordplay and the solution (living a few hundred yards from one of the many derelict mines of East Cleveland). CHOICEST and CRYPTIC also stood out. I got stuck for a while for my last two in, TACTIC and INSERTION. I couldn’t parse them, so I was relieved to find confirmation from mc_r’s blog. I enjoyed Judge@2’s amusing additional explanation about arm-ey signals in TICTAC. Ho!Ho! Like Jess@19 and Larry@22, I was not too happy with IN SECTION for BY PASSAGE, but acceptable, I suppose. All in all, an excellent puzzle.
Thanks Kite and mc_rapper
8d seems just a little bit off to me. “breaks new” “ground” (anagrammed) doesn’t give “bankers”. Going from “new” to N, as needed to get “bankers”, seems a bit like a “reverse indirect”!
me @32
By that, I mean that if the fodder included N and you had in fact to use NEW, that would be regarded as an indirect anagram. This is essentially the same, but in reverse.
Thanks to Kite for this clever and enjoyable ‘crosswordly crossword’. and @24, @25 and @29 for joining in the discussion about CHAR-ADE and CHOC-ICES.
[I have kept the completed grid as a reminder for use in the future, and a reminder of my best attempt at a Prize Cryptic crossword]
Lots of favourites:
7D HIDDEN;
6D KING EDGAR;
15D IRONSTONE;
17D CHOICEST;
11A INGENUE;
and a big smile for 24A CRYPTIC.
Thx also to mc_rapper67 for the blog.
Although I failed to parse BREAKS NEW GROUND, I think it is fair (indeed very good), Muffin @32-33. ‘Breaks new ground’ is a perfectly good cryptic definition of BANKERS, so ‘breaks new ground’ suggests bankers. A cryptic clue needs a straight definition and a cryptic defition. Here we have both, ‘suggesting bankers’ and ‘does something innovative’. I say ‘chapeaux, M/Mme Kite
Roberto @35
I don’t think you have understood the point I was making about the (non) anagram.
Two clues for CHARADE from the archives:
Fizzy tea? It’s absurd (7) I-11749-Bluth
Deception, fishy fizzy drink? (7) G-28433 Paul
Almost certainly not, no. I was thinking that it wasn’t a standard reverse indirect, but this probably further reveals my ignorance.
Lovely crossword – I agree with others it had a low centre of gravity/difficulty gridwise which made for a quick start and a slow finish – and a lovely blog. I think it took me longer the second time round, how is this possible? Thank you both!
Me @38, I don’t mean ‘reverse indirect’, of course
I found this an interesting memory experience.
Even though I knew that I’d done it before the first couple were a bit like the first time.
Then it started coming back to me and the whole thing quickly collapsed.
Thanks all.
A tour-de-force of cryptic crossword methods. Very clever. Bottom half very hard & only completed this evening. IRONSTONE the last one in as I was struggling to get CORBYN, BEADLE or THORPE into the answer – not realising that the star related to Jeremy.
Surely BREAKS NEW (being N) ground has the same cryptic grammar as IS TORN and LEFT (being L) at sea?
Both seem fair to me.
Rich@43 in 16A (NOSTRIL) there is an anagram followed by L (for left). The L is not part of the anagram – so no indirect anagram.
Larry@44. Sorry, but the anagrind ‘at sea’ comes after all the fodder including ‘left’, so it’s just a coincidence that L is the last letter of the solution.
There is nothing unfair about left=L or new=N being included in anagrams. The Ximenean objection to indirect anagrams was that it was unfair to the solver if the clue required thinking of a synonym and then rearranging its letters to make the answer. This is not the same as using a standard abbreviation in the fodder.
The innovative bit of 8d is that the N is in ‘bankers’ in the clue and turns up as NEW in the answer. I – and Rich@43 – think this is good. Others may feel differently.
I may not be a Cockney, but I am a Londoner. I have always spelt tea as “char”, and when I first started doing crosswords, where “cha” is the favoured spelling, this gave me trouble.
Thanks for all the comments so far – much appreciated as usual, and apologies for the late response, I have been a bit off-grid this weekend…
Thanks particularly to Kite, for popping in, and to those who cleared up CHAR-ADE, and corrected me on the ARM-Y(!) signals – will update the parsing, if I can get round to it.
I think most of the questions raised have been cleared up by fellow commenters (thanks, again), and, apart from a few quibbles/personal preferences on (reverse?) indirect anagram fodder, this seems to have been particularly well received by most – there were even some who thought it so good they solved it twice (;+>)
I thought AGREED was just lacking one E (English) for EDGAR, and ‘lacking’ made more sense in the surface read. Anyway, I’m off for a nice cup of CHA-R!
Just wanted to say that, even for a lifelong resident of the US, SAN ANGELO is not a city that pops readily to mind. I’d vaguely heard of it and was pretty sure it was in Texas somewhere, but I don’t know anything else about it.