Cryptic crossword No 29,717 by Carpathian

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Carpathian is today's setter.

This puzzle had a Monday feeling about it. No obscure words or definitions, very little general knowledge, simple anagrams and a friendly grid. It was nevertheless an enjoyable solve and one that allows me to have another half an hour in bed before I have to get up.

Thanks, Carpathian.

ACROSS
5 SHRIEK
Cry as one is eaten by ogre (6)

I (one) is eaten by SHREK (movie "ogre")
6 DANCES
Balls ascend randomly (6)

*(ascend) [anag:randomly]
9 PRIMES
Equips 2, 3 and 5 perhaps (6)

Double definition
10 ORNAMENT
Adorn gold books containing star (8)

OR ("gold") + NT (New Testament, so "books") containing NAME ("star")
11 FEAT
Accomplishment of bases broadcast (4)

Homophone/pun/aural wordplay [broadcast] of FEET ("bases")
12 REBELLIOUS
Defiant about promises involving ring (10)

RE ("about") + IOUs ("promises" to pay) involving BELL ("ring", as in "I'll give you a bell")
13 ACCELERANDO
With increasing speed oleander spread by a cricket club (11)

*(oleander) [anag:spread] by A + CC (cricket club)
18 WING MIRROR
Fly paper that’s attached to car (4,6)

WING ("fly") + MIRROR (news"paper")
21 GRAB
Seize end of big flipping obstacle (4)

[end of] (bi)G + [flipping] <=BAR ("obstacle")
22 WAITRESS
Server with first class hair (8)

W (with) + A1 ("first class") + TRESS ("hair")
23 PASTEL
Staple moulded artist’s material (6)

*(staple) [anag:moulded]
24 STENCH
Small fish producing unpleasant smell (6)

S (small) + TENCH ("fish")
25 HOMILY
Note in religious sermon (6)

MI ("note") in HOLY ("religious")
DOWN
1 DRAMATIC
Small drink a jerk finds exciting (8)

DRAM ("small drink") + A + TIC ("jerk")
2 TEASER
Drinks beer regularly in advert (6)

TEAS ("drinks") + (b)E(e)R [regularly]
3 MAGNOLIA
Old lady with returning desire to have one adult plant (8)

MA ("old lady") with [returning] <=LONG ("desire") to have I (one) + A (adult)
4 SCAMPI
Dish affected when coated with silicon (6)

CAMP ("affected") when coated with Si (chemical symbol for "silicon")
5 SORBET
Ice screen around edges of balustrade (6)

SORT ("screen") around [edges of] B(alustrad)E
7 SEND UP
Make fun of result during drink (4,2)

END ("result") during SUP ("drink")
8 DOUBLE-CROSS
Hoodwink doppelganger on X (6-5)

DOUBLE ("doppelganger") on X (cross)
14 EVIDENCE
I have returned to study church support (8)

<=I'VE ("I have", returned) + DEN ("study") + CE ("Church" of England)
15 DIGESTIF
Enjoy drug and endless strong drink (8)

DIG ("enjoy") + E (ecstasy, so "drug") and [endless] STIF(f) ("strong")
16 VITALS
Innards initially tossed into bottles (6)

[initially] T(ossed) into VIALS ("bottles")
17 RARELY
Seldom lean around a Republican (6)

RELY ("lean") around A + R (Republican)
19 GUTTED
Very upset as boat returns with 50’s youth (6)

<=TUG ("boat" returns) with TED ("50s youth")
20 RAPTOR
Parrot mauled another bird (6)

*(parrot) [anag:mauled]

57 comments on “Cryptic crossword No 29,717 by Carpathian”

  1. Thanks Carpathian and loonapick
    I don’t like this grid – shortage of first letters. It mostly went in quickly though, with the NW holding out longest, except for 15d, where I was a bit careless with the last two letters of 13a, so had several goes!
    Favourite WAITRESS for the conciseness of the clue.

  2. Thanks Carpathian; just right for a Tuesday. NW corner held me up a bit, embarrassingly 9 was LOI with a smite of the forehead…
    Thanks loonapick for the early blog.

  3. Like GiS I iniitially fell for the misdirection in 9 and was trying to find some connection between teasers and magnolias… it should have been obvious that the clue didn’t specify 5ac or 5d, but hey, it’s early in the morning, and I got there in the end! Otherwise this was very straightforward, but no less enjoyable for that. Many thanks to Carpathian and loonapick.

  4. Quick solve, but 26 lights is at the low end for Guardian grids (34 is the highest).
    I would have avoided using “5” in 9A as it is immediately apparent that it can’t be a cross-reference. Any other prime in the grid would have added to the intended deception.
    All good fun.
    Thanks to Carpathian and loonapick.

  5. MOH @3
    Not specifying 5a or 5d isn’t as definitive as all that. There is a convention that if the direction of a cross-reference is unspecified, it refers to the one in the same direction.

  6. Good fun, thanks. Another seeking in vain for a MAGNOLIA SORBET TEASER!?!

    My fave was also WAITRESS.

  8. Enjoyed this, a rare easy one for me. Thanks L and C.

    I spent the remainder of my time pondering 9/PRIMES, something of a write-in as it stands, and how it could’ve worked in other forms. Including just “2 and 3” would have added to the misdirection (Wednesday standard maybe?), whereas just say “2” feels needlessly obtuse but I can imagine certain setters, no names mentioned, opting for that to spike the difficulty. Any other sequence that wasn’t just the first three might have been marginally trickier as well.

    Anyway. Fun one!

  9. Thanks to loonapick – and hoping he enjoyed the extra half hour sleep-in. I enjoyed this puzzle. Thanks to Carpathian. Ticks for 5a SHRIEK and 6a DANCES.

  10. Nothing to scare the horses. Ticks for REBELLIOUS, DRAMATIC & DIGESTIF

    Couldn’t find much support in Chambers for PRIMES=equips

    Cheers L&C

  11. Yes, the NW corner for me too was tough, four clues taking as long as the rest of the crossword.
    SHRIEK, FEAT, TEASER (didn’t know the ad meaning) and SORBET. I tried the BE early on but the check button misbehaved once again, taking away the B; it does seem to have some quirks.

    Thanks C and l.

  12. I hope no-one’s going to try and convince us that FEAT doesn’t sound like Feet the way they pronounce it. 😉

  14. Began somewhat Andante in the NW, worked up an ACCELERANDO to trot Allegro clockwise round the grid, ending with a pleasing ritardando over SHRIEK and VITALS, thank you C&L

  15. Quick solve but I also fell for the PRIMES trick. Glad I wasn’t the only one.

    Not the toughest but the clues are so well constructed it’s always a treat to do a Carpathian puzzle.

    Liked DOUBLE-CROSS today.

    Thanks Loonapick and Carpathian.

  17. Bodycheetah @10 I’d never heard that equine phrase until it was in a grid the other day. I agree with the sentiment.

    I checked PRIMES against equip in Chambers Thesaurus where it was confirmed.

    Thanks Carpathian and loonapick

  18. Bodycheetah@10 My edition of Chambers gives the second definition of PRIME as: to fill, to supply with powder or other means of igniting the charge (of a firearm, bomb, etc). I think that could be described as equipping.

  19. Last to yield for me was the NW corner too, for pretty much the same reasons as some of the comments above, wondering whether the already painted in MAGNOLIA might somehow be connected to clues 2 and 5 across or down. Other trees or shades of emulsion.
    Without trying to be a spoiler 5ac appears in a very similar kind of clue in another national daily cryptic I’ve had a go at this morning.

  20. PRIMES
    equip vs prime

    Found this equivalence in another sense:

    equip somebody (for something) | equip somebody (to do something) to prepare somebody for an activity or task, especially by teaching them what they need to know

    The course is designed to equip students for a career in nursing.

    If you prime someone to do something, you prepare them to do it, for example by giving them information about it beforehand.

    Claire wished she’d primed Sarah beforehand.

  21. Like some others, the NW corner was the last to fall for me. And, yes, I did look for the MAGNOLIA connections at first (plants?). I liked the fly paper attached to the WING MIRROR and the church support for EVIDENCE.

    Thanks Carpathian and loonapick.

  22. I missed 9A on the first pass through, but got it the second time of asking when I had all the crossers, and felt quite pleased with myself.

  23. An easy stroll today — or for me, last night.

    How does sort = screen?

    Thanks, Carpathian and loonapick.

  25. Enjoyed this even if it was all over a bit too quickly. ORNAMENT as a verb took a while (i.e. the crossers) to get. My favourite penny drops were WING MIRROR, WAITRESS, and DOUBLE CROSS. Here’s a small spoiler for STENCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apf2RcUEZQE
    Thanks Carpathian and loonapick
    Valentine@23 used as a verb e.g. to sort the candidates for interview/ to screen the candidates for interview

  26. Before coming here, I was thinking equip and PRIME were close enough, and KVa@20’s examples reinforced that. Except rereading them, it seemed it would feel a little off to use prime in the first example and equip in the second. That’s why we have different words, I suppose! Still, close enough.

  27. Thanks for the blog , I agree with the assessment except for the grid , it is a stricklebrick giving very few first letters . We do need puzzles like this twice a week to encourage newer solvers .
    An interesting Gozo ( Maskarade ) puzzle in the FT today .

  28. Valentine@23 – to sort can mean to screen, like screening job applicants, meaning to sort into those you will interview and those you wont. Or when ore and aggregate are passed through literal wire screens to sort /grade them.

  29. The best way to screen applicants is to randomly throw half the applications in the bin . You do not want to employ unlucky people – David Brent .

  30. [Roz @29
    Larry Niven’s Ringworld has a character who was the result of many generations of winning the birthright lottery – i.e. she was deliberately bred for luck!]

  32. When gendered job titles like actress, stewardess etc are increasingly frowned on, I’ve wondered why WAITRESS seems still to be OK.

  33. A very enjoyable solve; managed to do it but was waiting for the blog to understand some of the parsing. Thanks Carpathian and loonapick!

    Had ORNAMENT in but couldn’t understand why it was correct – just didn’t think of it as a verb. Like some others, had 9 the LOI – a good one! I still don’t get why TED = “50s youth”…

  36. WAITRESS is an interesting case, Zoot @32. ‘Actor’, like ‘doctor’ and ‘solicitor’ before it, has reasonably comfortably been adopted to cover both male and female practitioners (although I still from time to time see online fogeyish objections to ‘actor’, which are encouraged, of course, by the practice of the Oscars and other award ceremonies), but there seems to be some instinctive cultural resistance to ‘waiter’ doing the same. The non-gendered noun to cover the profession therefore appears to be ‘server’.

  37. Thanks Carpathian for an enjoyable crossword with my top picks being WAITRESS, STENCH, DRAMATIC, DOUBLE-CROSS, and RAPTOR. I hadn’t heard of WING MIRROR (side view mirror is more familiar to me) but it was easy enough to get from the wordplay. TED as 50’s youth was also new. Thanks loonapick for the blog.
    [muffin @13: Don’t residents of the Hebrides speak Scottish, not English? 😊]

  38. Balfour #36 But WAITRESS is still frequently used without comment in a way other titles wouldn’t be.
    [I’m sitting my garden typing this. I can hear a young neighbour trying to play Bird’s KC Blues on his alto. He’s been practising it for weeks.]

  39. [Balfour @36: Awards organisations can easily jettison the dated actress category by simply saying ‘best actor in a male role’ and ‘best actor in a female role’. There will be, however, the odd year when both are won by members of the same sex.]

  41. Muffin@30 anyone born has won the lottery , we all come from a long line of very fortunate tadpoles .
    Paul@31 surely it is lucky to work for a boss who is just a chilled-out entertainer .

  42. I object to:

    “Equips 2, 3 and 5 perhaps”

    2, 3 and 5 being primes, surely this should be:

    “Equips 2, 3 and 5 for example”

    I don’t like that sort of bad misdirection.

  43. Layman @40 – you are welcome

    Tony @37 – that’s probably why their pronunciation is so weird!

    (They would probably call it Gaelic rather than Scottish. There’s a nice book called Crowdie and Cream about a lad growing up on Harris. He had no English until he went to school, where he was forced to learn it.)

    Roz
    you would need to read the book. As I remember, population pressure meant you had to win a lottery even to be allowed to try to have a child.

  44. @several for waitress , we need a neutral word to replace both , Balfour mentions server but does not seem quite right . Do other languages have a single word we could borrow ?
    My only “proper” job was being a wine-waitress in a posh Oxford hotel .

  46. Roz @44 I have certainly heard ‘server’ used by those who practise the art. The last time my son and I went to the expensive carnivores’ restaurant just up the road (it does not happen often), we were greeted at table by a young woman who gave her first name and added, ‘I am your server tonight’.

  47. Maybe you are right but I think of school dinners . There were dinner ladies , cooks and servers and they dished the food out as you walked past with your tray .

  48. [Some gendered nouns, especially those borrowed from the French, are just too beautiful to give up: chatelaine, chanteuse, salonnière … ]

  49. [Roz, muffin, et al: There’s been a gender neutral term for a restaurant ‘server’ for quite awhile: WAITRON is in several dictionaries including Collins. However, it never caught on, maybe because it sounds robotic. In any event, robots may soon be replacing waiters and waitresses so ‘waitron’ could very well have its day.]

  51. muffin @45 French also has “serveur” … But with the feminine “serveuse”. In France you would not call a woman “garçon” which actually means young boy, besides being used for a “serveur” in a café, the feminine being “garçonne”, which is never used. A young girl is called “fille”, which, incidentally, also means “daughter”.

  52. Woody@50. Or indeed for a Wednesday morning. Lasted exactly one bowl of muesli.

    Thanks Carpathian and Loonapick.

  56. A rare Carpathian DNF for me, because, like TonyS@37, I thought of the North American SIDE MIRROR for 18a. Unlike Tony, I thought side was close enough to fly (he’s got side), so I wrote it in. Thus I couldn’t get 19d GUTTED.

    Carpathian’s puzzles are always entertaining, and this was no exception. Thanks C and L for the fun.

    (Tony and muffin, I always thought the language of the Hebrides was Whisky.)

  57. Always good to see Carpathian’s name appear at the top of a puzzle. Like Cellomaniac @56 I was defeated by 19d GUTTED because I had SIDE MIRROR instead of nho WING MIRROR, which gave me the wrong crosser. Everything else went into place nicely, and was a great pleasure

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