Cryptic crossword No 29,738 by Imogen

by

Thank you to Imogen. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1. Hotel has not much custom (5)
HABIT : H(letter represented by “hotel” in the phonetic alphabet) plus(has) [A BIT](not much/just a little).

4. Pelt teacher, as violent youth (8)
SKINHEAD : SKIN(hide of an animal/pelt) + HEAD(short for “head teacher”).

8. Peer at loo on beach – sometimes weed (5-3-6)
LORDS AND LADIES : LORD(a nobleman/peer) plus(at) [ LADIES(loo/toilet for females) placed after (on) SAND(the beach) ].
… you can guess where its name comes from.

10. One often flat out on road, he would pass hospital, say, coming back (8)
HEDGEHOG : HE’D(contraction of “he would”) + reversal of(…, coming back) [GO(of time, pass/elapse) + H(abbrev. for “hospital”) + EG(abbrev. for “exempli gratia”/for example/say) ].
Defn: …, having been run over by traffic.
… driving them to extinction.

11. Hearty eater, not entirely an idiot, shortly to cut down (6)
FOODIE : Last letter deleted from(not entirely) “fool”(an idiot) + last letter deleted from(shortly) “diet”(to cut down on intake of, say, food).

12. Metal, last of long series in reissued manual (9)
LANTHANUM : NTH(denoting the last item of a long series, as in “He was caught doing it for the nth time”) contained in(in) anagram of(reissued) MANUAL.
Answer: A metallic chemical element.

15. It’s plain McDonald’s return is brief (5)
OVERT : Reversal of(…’s return) [“Trevor”(McDonald, news presenter on ITV) minus its last letter(is brief)].

17. Linger a day by source of water (5)
DWELL : D(abbrev. for “day”) plus(by) WELL(a source of water from the ground).

18. From sex recoil shuddering: onward and upward! (9)
EXCELSIOR : Anagram of(… shuddering) SEX RECOIL.
Answer: Expression for “always upward”, used as a motto, from the Latin for “beyond lofty”.

19. Opened wide given dentistry at last, showing bristles (6)
YAWNED : Last letter of(… at last) “dentistry” + AWNED(having/showing awns/stiff bristles growing from the ears of certain grasses).

21. No longer a success, did that chap belong to a political party? (6-2)
WASHEDUP : [WAS HE DUP?](question whether that chap/he belonged to the DUP ie. the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland).

24. Initial data run is wrong? I’m not dogmatic (14)
LATITUDINARIAN : Anagram of(… is wrong) INITIAL DATA RUN.
Answer: One with an attitude that allows for latitude in religion by showing no preference for any one of such.

25. Pins equipment let loose in seconds (8)
SKITTLES : [ KIT(equipment/gear) + anagram of(… loose) LET ] contained in(in) SS(plural of abbrev. for “second”, the time period).

26. Much greater desire to conceal name (5)
HUGER : “hunger”(desire/craving for) minus(to conceal) “n”(abbrev. for “name”).

Down
1. Short school breaks may suggest Indian festival? (4-8)
HALF-HOLIDAYS : 1st 4 out of 8 letters of(HALF) “HOLIDAYS” = HOLI/an Indian festival celebrated usually in March.

2. They say you can’t miss the entrance to this social (4,5)
BARN DANCE : Cryptic defn: Reference to a “barn door”(figuratively, a target so large that you can’t miss it, and literally the door to a social gathering held in a barn).
Answer: An informal social gathering for country/traditional folk dancing, sometimes held in a barn.

3. A tiny bit of sense (5)
TASTE : Double defn: 1st: … of food or drink taken as a sample; and 2nd: One of the body’s five senses/faculties.

4. Son to stop wasting time in tannery? (3,6)
SUN LOUNGE : S(abbrev. for “son”) + UN-(prefix meaning “to cancel /stop an action”) LOUNGE(to waste time/to idle).
Answer: Extension of “tannery” (a place where animal skins are tanned) to a building/room where human skin can get a suntan.

5. Boon companion not the first to have troubles (4)
ILLS : “Mills”(companion to Boon of “Mills & Boon”, publishers of escapist romantic novels) minus its 1st letter(not the first).

6. Lacking stomach, happy to cross water up on smooth – this? (9)
HYDROFOIL : Inner letters deleted from(Lacking stomach/without guts) “happy” + reversal of(… up, in a down clue) FORD(to cross a body of water, say, a river) placed above(on, in a down clue) OIL(to smooth/to facilitate by figuratively or literally rubbing with oil/lubricant, as in “to oil the wheels of …”).
Putting the answer at the end of “Lacking … smooth” gives the clue a smooth surface reading.

7. I see notice about closure of theatre is up (5)
AHEAD : AH!(expression signifying “I see!”/”I get it!”) + AD(short for “advertisement”/a promotional notice/poster) containing(about) last letter of(closure of) “theatre”.

9. Dear, this knife often is (6-6)
LETTER OPENER : Double defn: 1st: “…” as the opening word in the body of a letter; and 2nd: A tool, often shaped like a knife, for cutting open envelopes containing mail/letters, or “knife often is this”.

13. Greek lover’s little girl caught up in violent crime (9)
HELLENIST : Reversal of(… up, in a down clue) NELL(Little …, a young girl in Charles Dickens’ novel, The Old Curiosity Shop) contained in(caught … in) HEIST(a violent crime, in this case an armed robbery).
Answer: One who appreciates/loves Greek civilisation, its culture and achievements.

14. Skilled workers’ strange mischance (9)
MECHANICS : Anagram of(strange) MISCHANCE.
Defn: … (apostrophe excluded).

16. Go in fancy with devil, acting so? (9)
EVILDOING : Anagram of(… fancy …) [ GO IN plus(with) DEVIL ].

20. Share with journalist (5)
WHACK : W(abbrev. for “with”) + HACK(a journalist who produces dull work).
Answer: A specified share of something.

22. Summer weather, hot, for butterfly (5)
HEATH : HEAT(hot weather conditions prevailing in summer) + H(abbrev. for “hot”).

23. One powerfully built that’s fought in Spain (4)
BULL : Double defn: 1st: The powerfully built male of some animal species such as elephants and whales; and 2nd: Animal ….
Or it’s just a cryptic defn.

64 comments on “Cryptic crossword No 29,738 by Imogen”

  3. Anyone else tempted by TOUCH as a solution to 3d? HEDGEHOG was a sad definition.

    Not an easy puzzle and I did not see NTH in the nho LANTHANUM.

    Thanks both

  5. Yes, I had TOUCH too. Until I didn’t.
    I think I went on a HYDROFOIL from Guadeloupe to Marie-Galante.
    But that was years ago.

  6. Laughed and groaned at the definition for HEDGEHOG. Thought this was going to be more Vulcan than Imogen when the first three across clues were almost write-ins, but then crashed to a halt. In common with most other solvers, I suspect, I wasn’t familiar with LANTHAMUM, though an anagram of ‘manual’ was an obvious constituent. Took me a while to think of the ‘nth’ in a series. Got YAWNED without knowing ‘awned’ which is a new word for the lexicon. Thought BULL was just a CD. So, all in all, a good challenge from Imogen. Thanks to him and to Scchua for the illustrated and detailed blog.

  7. Snap Andrew and PostMark!

    Lanthanum is interesting because chemically it is the first in the chemical series, the lanthanides, not the last, so the clue is deliberately misleading. However, mentioning “series” in the clue makes people familiar with the periodic table think of lanthanum and actinium (first of the actinides) which helps narrow down the very large number of metals.

    Many thanks Imogen and Scchua…a good example of “fun does not always equal impossibly chewy”.

  8. This was a confidence-boosting end to the week – nothing to trouble me here and some fun clues. LETTER OPENER is probably the standout. I got EXCELSIOR instantly because it’s the name of my cycling club. WHACK and HEATH were neat.

    I hadn’t heard of AWNING in that sense, or HOLI, but there were no resultant hold-ups. LANTHANUM today sits well with a (pitiful) former chemist, whereas yesterday’s suggested retort stand put me off.

    Thanks Imogen and scchua (I’m sure I’ve seen that skinhead before, though not in person).

  9. My faves: FOODIE, WASHED UP, HALF-HOLIDAYS, SUN LOUNGE and EVILDOING (CAD?).

    LETTER OPENER
    Read it as
    this knife (i.e., LETTER OPENER) often is Dear.
    ‘Often is’ goes with ‘Dear’ rather than ‘this knife’, I think.

    Thanks Imogen and scchua

  10. Liked HYDROFOIL and HEDGEHOG. Another who started with TOUCH. Generally very good.

    I wasn’t keen on ‘butterfly’ as definition for HEATH – like defining corn as ‘snake’ just because there is a species of snake called a corn snake.

    Thanks scchua and Imogen.

  13. @3 PostMark, I confidently put TOUCH in and then was momentarily confused when the initial T was right but the rest wasn’t!

  14. Thanks Imogen and scchua
    Most enjoyable for some time. Favourites included LORDS AND LADIES (the plant with the most folk names, I think), EXCELSIOR (“The shades of night were falling fast”?), and SUN LOUNGE.
    I didn’t parse 1d, not knowing the Indian connection.
    I misread “Boon” in 5d as “boom”, first, so thought the companion was (s)AILS!
    I didn’t think the surface for HYDROFOIL was very good, though.

  15. Always happy to see Imogen’s name at the top of the puzzle and she has, as expected, provided aN enjoyable end to the week. The SE corner provided the most chewy moments; I was too hung up on fast food to think about newsreaders for OVERT. But once the delightful LETTER OPENER popped into my noggin, the rest came fairly swiftly. HEDGEHOG gave me a chuckle, Thanks Imogen and thanks scchua for the parsing of YAWNED, which passed me by having nho ‘awned’; one to remember.

  16. My first thought for 1ac was house. H for hotel, 0 = not much, use = custom. It kind of works, though hotel has to do double duty and hotel=house is rather loose.

  17. @3 – for 3d I started with SIGHT (as in a sight of something), then opted for TOUCH – and ended up with TASTE …

  18. Thanks, quite the workout but not as tough as Imogen can be. As with others slight hiccup with a confident TOUCH incorrectly inserted which significantly slowed me down. However eventually managed to eek the clues out.

    Really liked LETTER OPENER and BARN DANCE. And the illustrated blog.

    Thanks Imogen and Scchua

  19. A refreshing end to the week, especially after yesterday’s vanity project… NHO: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LANTHANUM (my LOI). Very much liked: SKINHEAD, HEDGEHOG, SKITTLES. COTD: LETTER-OPENER. Thanks Imogen and schuua – see you next week.

  21. First Channel crossing was by hydrofoil, Dover to Ostend from memory. Love some of the plant folk-names– Old Man’s Beard, Lords and Ladies etc. And letter-opener was a nice nudge clue. Fun, ta Im and scchua.

  22. I thought I had TOUCH. I solve on my phone and just hit reveal if I’m confident. Didn’t notice it revealed something else!! 🙂

  23. muffin@14, I hardly dare to ask on this site who else has read Mills and Boon? Fantasy books of girls’ boarding schools got me there, (and a scholarship), then Mills and Boon were the only illegal property that could be hidden down the pleats of a tunic. Well, apart from transistor radios when they first came in.

    paul@15 Imogen aka Vulcan is a ”he”.

  24. PostMark @3 et al. Another TOUCH until I was disabused. Now commence the discussion on whether a cryptic clue should lead to a unique solution. I vote yes. 🙂
    Favourite for me was YAWNED.

  25. It might have been nice not to be confronted by a picture of a squashed hedgehog today. Bit unnecessarily grim.

    That aside, thanks to Imogen and Scchua. My easiest one since Monday, solved it in a working morning with no checks while a couple still elude me from yesterday. NHO LATIDUNIARIAN but worked it out, suspect I had heard of HELLENIST but I had to piece it together. LORDS-AND-LADIES a lucky one from an upbringing of walking on country roads and trying to eat brightly coloured things as a young child. LOI DWELL, embarrassingly.

  26. Tim C@24: TASTE did lead to a unique solution. You just had to get one of the crossers to see it. Personally LORDS AND LADIES was a write-in for me on a first reading, before even looking at the down clues, so I knew the answer for 3d had to have an S as it’s 3rd letter. ‘Touch’ therefore never even occurred to me.

  27. I went for TASTE not TOUCH. Is it a girls/boys thing?
    Tim C @24, Are you stirring the pot? Of course, the only solution is the one that the crossers allow. However I had taste, before I had touch, or anything affecting my sensory perception (like crossers).

  28. TimC@24 agree with orders, not if the crossers don’t allow for ambiguity. Enjoyed this puzzle a lot, especially because TOUCH didn’t even cross my mind 😉. LETTER-OPENER a beauty, it made me wonder what the question was (‘Break it to me gently darling, does any of our silver ever get found in the dishwasher?’)

  29. I did 1a first, then tentatively 1d, so I looked at its crossers for confirmation, and so had LORDS… and HEDGEHOG before looking at 3d; hence “touch” never occurred to me. I think I would have been a bit irritated if I had seen it first, though.

  30. Hadrian @28. I hope the ”silver” isn’t found in the dishwasher. It would be ruined. Your bracketed last line sounds awfully like a song by Petula Clark. Agree. LETTER-OPENER was brilliant. Have got a couple floating in my desk drawer ready to remind me. Hands up those who remember polishing the silver with ”Silvo”?

  31. It suited the Friday brief for me as I found it quite tricky.

    Another TOUCH, although I thought the five-letter word in 8 ending in U (with 5-3-6) looked a bit unlikely. The Check button disabused me. I liked the wordplay and definition for HEDGEHOG, the wordplay for WASHED-UP, the definition for SUN LOUNGE, and the dd for LETTER OPENER. I didn’t get the HOLI part of HALF-HOLIDAY.

    Thanks Imogen and scchua.

  33. I hardly ever finish an Imogen, so apart from my usual moan that the Spanish don’t fight bulls, they slaughter them, quite pleased with myself.

    [Was it Spitting Image? Charles and Diana at breakfast. “Where’s that thing for opening letters?” “It’s his day orf.”]

    Thanks both.

  34. paddymelon@23 I’ve read a few Mills and Boon novels for teaching on a literature course though I failed to see the reference in 5d. This is the first cryptic I’ve completed and enjoyed for a while. Must be a wavelength thing.

  35. …and yet another Touch here at first, seemed somehow slightly more precise than TASTE. I don’t think I have ever used the word HUGER in a spoken sentence, either. Our nearby HEDGEHOG rescue service would have been saddened by the illustration accompanying 10ac. I’m another who hadn’t heard of Awned before…

  36. Smooth sailing for the most part (I even had to check this was actually the Cryptic rather than the Quiptic), but why ‘sometimes’ in 8a (I’m no botanist) and why ‘this’ in 9d. Seems redundant.

  37. poc @36
    Perhaps because some people wouldn’t regard it as a weed? After all, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place….

  38. Balladeer@25. Empathize about the vision of the unfortunate HEDGEHOG. I had to think twice to get that, being from the Antipodes. We have so many other similarly-affected creatures. I’ve been following from afar Brian May’s efforts to save the hedgehog.

  39. Amma@34. Mills and Boon in the same sentence as ‘teaching’ and ‘literature’. Where were you when we needed a get out of gaol card?

  40. Paddymelon@39 There are scholarly articles on Mills and Boon so they’re obviously all right to admit to now. We had fun reading and discussing them. ‘Love is a Risk’ was my particular favourite – may still have it somewhere though the academic essays are long gone.

  42. Not heard of Trevor McDonald (LOI), awn, latitudinarian, neither half-holidays nor holi, whack for share, nor heath butterfly. Yet somehow filled the grid!

    I did not parse ILLS, but in hindsight it is clever.

    Quibble for 4D: UN- “to cancel /stop an action” feels like a stretch. UN- is widely used as a negation, not only for verbs, e.g. “unclear”. Also, “wasting time” and “lounge” are different parts of speech, no?

  43. Touch was my first thought too, but immediately discarded it in favor of taste because the U in the crosser seemed so unlikely. 8A came much later for me, plant names (along with birds and insects) being one of my blind spots, so I was very pleased with myself when I dragged it up from somewhere!

    Thanks Imogen and scchua

  44. My first one in was HABIT, then TOUCH was so obvious for 3d that it went in next. After a couple more, the rather strange-looking L_R_U as the first word in 8a started to prompt a re-think.

    I worked out “LANGERNUM” for 12a — G = “last of long”, ER = (TV) series, in what I thought was an anagram of MANUAL, except that now I see it isn’t. When I searched for “langernum metal”, Google kindly asked if I meant LANTHANUM, so I suppose I finished by cheating. Oh well.

    Ace @ 42: I think in 4d “unlounge” is intended as a whimsical term for “stop wasting time”.

    My favourite was ILLS for the very clever “Boon companion”. Many thanks Imogen and scchua.

  45. Great puzzle, quite tricky. Lovely blog and illustrations.
    I hadn’t heard of LANTHANUM before today, but by coincidence it featured in today’s Connections puzzle, which I did first. NTH was clever.
    I missed Mills and Boon and didn’t know Trevor McDonald, so both ILLS and OVERT were bifd.
    And I was a TASTER not a TOUCHER.
    LETTER OPENER was my COTD. Ticks also for HALF-HOLIDAYS, SUN LOUNGE, WASHED-UP, HELLENIST.
    Thanks to Imogen and scchua.

  46. Paddymelon@30: I’m afraid I was brought up in a household where I polished the brass with Brasso!

    Another TOUCH here, though I soon got LORDS AND LADIES to put me right: I had the Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers where it is the Cuckoo Pint or Wake Robin (both names with a sexual meaning).

    I eventually worked out LANTHANUM (new to me) but not HYDROFOIL. AHEAD took longer than it should have until I stopped trying to use AHA rather than AH, and I forgot Trevor McDonald. I didn’t parse HUGER because I took “conceals” to be an inclusion rather than an omission indicator. Didn’t much like HEATH for butterfly: there’s a Large Heath and a Small Heath, but no actual Heath as such.

    Finally, here is the Longfellow EXCELSIOR, and Marriot Edgar’s splendid retake on the subject.

  47. Another big fan of LETTER OPENER here.

    None of the people I know who call themselves FOODIEs are particularly hearty eaters, but they do have a strong interest in food. Recalls the difference, taught in school ages ago, between gourmets and gourmands.

    I never realized before that LATITUDINARIAN and altitudinarian, which just differ by switching the first two letters, are antonyms.

  48. paddymelon@23 thanks for the tip off. I hadn’t realised that Imogen and Vulcan were the same setter. I almost checked on Imogen before typing ‘she’, but got lazy.

  49. [gladys@46: Thank you for the link to Marriot Edgar’s wonderful version of “Excelsior”. Better even than Housman’s pastiche. Both, however, are markedly less funny than the AI summary at the end which is so utterly unaware of the humour and origin as to be hilarious. Talk about an idiot-savant. I found exactly the same thing when searching for Christopher Isherwood’s “The common cormorant or shag, lays its eggs in a paper bag”. The first hit on a well-known search engine was a similar AI summary which took the whole thing at face value.

    I don’t think literary critics will be put out of a job by LLMs for a while…]

  50. A rare finish to an Imogen Friday puzzle.
    10a was not fully parsed, AWNED was a new word. Not sure I fully understand 1d, certainly NHO HOLI…
    Many thanks, both

  51. JoFT@46 [You beat me to it. I was just about to post about the AI analysis. I didn’t know Isherwood was responsible for the Cormorant. Verse and Worse has Anon. I’ll look it up.]

  52. JOFT @49
    I was intrigued and Googled. Most sites attribute it to Isherwood, but with some reservations about misattribution. Disappointingly, though, I didn’t get the AI analysis!
    I did on Uppards, though, and it was hilarious.

  54. [Muffin@52: I wish I’d kept a copy as even searching again shortly afterwards I could not get the same summary. So not only do the Big Search Engine People waste oodles of energy producing a summary I did not want, they create a new one each time, wasting more energy. As Pete Seeger put it “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”]

  55. Dr. WhatsOn@47. Your gourmet/gourmand distinction was how I interpreted FOODIES. Hearty eaters; a play on hearty meaning here that foodies love</em food.

  56. paddyelon @38
    It’s a little ironic that Brian May is keen on saving both hedgehogs and badgers. Doesn’t he realise that they’re mutually exclusive?
    An elderly local told me recently that before the 1980s there were no badgers near our village. Now, thanks to their protected status, we have a badger plague. Local gardeners are tearing their hair out as lawns are excavated and bulbs extracted and eaten. Badgers and hedgehogs are both omnivores. Unfortunately that means that badgers eat hedgehogs. Yes, really. So we haven’t seen a hedgehog for years. I know which I prefer…

  57. I didn’t notice that the “analysis” was AI until the commenters told me. I wondered whether this was a tongue-in-cheek mock scholarly discussion or what? Now that I know, I’m not surprised that AI didn’t get the joke, but I am rather astounded that it did so well if you grant its mistaken premise. I suppose the one thing that AI will never possess is sense of humor.

    I’ve seen the Thurber illustrations, and I’d say they do the same thing for the poem in pictures that “Up’ards” does in words.

  58. I thought that this was a fine puzzle, and a steady solve. I was another with TOUCH for a start. I agree that FOODIE seems to be a term for people who are highly punctilious about what they will or won’t eat, and therefore not hearty eaters.

    Thanks all.

  59. Looks like I was the only one who was underwhelmed by this. I seem to be alone in disliking LETTER OPENER; as KVa@9 says, the “often is” presumably goes with the “Dear” so that seems like a clumsy cryptic reading to me.

    I guess Trevor Mcdonald is still a household name for some but I found it a bit obscure. There doesn’t seem to be any word play for the [BARN] DANCE. And TASTE could have been TOUCH, which disrupted half the audience it seems (I got lucky).

    ..UNLOUNGE.. doesn’t work for me even whimsically although I can’t quite put my finger on why; “unstick” feel fine, by contrast. (For sure the tannery was a goodie though.) For EVILDOING, it’s a bit of a stretch to treat the whole fodder with the same anagrind, positioned as it is. And as per gladys@46, a HEATH is not itself a butterfly.

    I confess I was also going to gripe about the hearty eaters but I swallow what paddymelon@55 says.

    That’s not to say there weren’t things to enjoy, of course, with LORDS-AND-LADIES being my favourite. Thanks to Imogen for the challenge, and to our blogger of course.

  60. Strictly a DNF as I had to use the word search for a couple. HEDGEHOG: I just did not consider that form of ‘flat out’. HYDROFOIL: meh?

  61. 60 comments above, and I don’t think there is one which considers the definition of skinhead as violent youth to be a bit of a broad brush. Interesting.

  62. Arjay@61. It’s been a while since your post. Just to say I also thought that SKINHEAD was a “broad brush”.

  63. TripleJumper@56. (BTW are you/were you a hop, step and jumper?) I have to thank you for leading me to badgers and hedgehogs, separately and together. Had no idea.

  64. A rare win. Imogen usually contains a lot of nho that prevent completion, but this time I got them all (along with everything else), thanks to clear clueing: LORDS-AND-LADIES, LANTHANUM, LATITUDINARIAN, HALF-HOLIDAYS, WHACK, SUN LOUNGE, and HEATH

    3d TASTE I also started with TOUCH. Amazing how many of us did

    23d BULL is barely cryptic. I didn’t write it in at first because I thought it couldn’t possibly be so obvious

    Loved UNLOUNGE — very funny!

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