Cyclops still on puerile form with an Eye puzzle I found on the hard side this time.
First in was 18D, a gettable anagram, which shows I could not cold solve 6D. I find Double Defs like that trickier than most clue types. That top left corner resisted till just before the end.
About half the answers were in at the end of the first pass but I had taken a long time over it. Maybe 40 minutes to get that far.
Then what helped a lot was getting the long light, 7/15. This clue was great linking Trump with Clinton via his name. No doubt Monica was smitten with Clinton. I remember Sandi Toksvig on a QI last year relating that once she had five minutes backstage alone with Bill Clinton. She had never met him before, and after five minutes she thought to herself: “No, I probably would.” She said he was mesmerising. The American comic Tom Ward was on the panel and impersonated Clinton, relentlessly and weirdly accurately for a few minutes.
( Series U, Episode 7 – Ufology )
The clue that made me laugh most was 17D, conjuring images of the S+M version of a children’s game.
I expect Max Hastings, the erstwhile Standard and Telegraph editor, will be happy to be seen in print for the first time in years, in the clue for 20d.
The last to fall were in the bottom right. 28 17 26 22. No particular reason. In retrospect those clues are not that tricky.
Oh dear. Maybe it’s me?
Help with the wordplay for 3D please, there’s something going on there I cannot fathom (though I may not want to know given the connotations!)
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 6 | DIATRIBE | Abuse from Peter out to crush a Brit production (8) DIE (peter out) around (to crush)(A BRIT)* AInd: production. |
| 8 | DUGOUT | A place for the football manager: “tit should get fired!” (6) DUG (tit) OUT (fired) |
| 10 | TOAST | Brown: “Like to be surrounded by drink” (5) AS (like) inside TOT (drink) |
| 11 | GUNRUNNER | American Rod, athlete smuggler (9) GUN (American Rod) RUNNER (athlete) |
| 12 | DEPENDANT | Hanger-on Pence, collared by DA, needn’t change (9) P[ence] inside (collared by) (DA NEEDN’T)* AInd: change. |
| 14 | JUROR | Judgemental type Jack, our floundering party’s centre (5) (J[ack] OUR)* AInd: floundering, [pa]R[ty] |
| 19 | RABID | Fanatical right gets one to submit (5) R[ight] A (one) BID (submit) |
| 21 | MATERIALS | Stuff China added to currency units (9) MATE (China, from CRS: “Chine Plate” = Mate), RIALS (currency units) |
| 24 | SATIRICAL | Just like the Eye to rubbish A-list celeb’s superior air (9) (A-LIST C[eleb] (Celeb’s superior) AIR)* AInd: rubbish. |
| 26 | AWFUL | Just heading off for base (5) [l]AWFUL (just, heading off) |
| 27 | DILDOS | Cover withdrawn by party’s stand-in members (6) LID< (cover, withdrawn) DO’S (party’s) |
| 28 | GOALPOST | Horrendous tool – gasp! Aim to put balls on the right side of it (8) (TOOL GASP)* AInd: Horrendus. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BAD APPLE | Inferior multinational company corrupting influencer (3,5) BAD (inferior) APPLE (multinational company) |
| 2 | BRITON | Inhabitant: “Good for Macron to import right computer networks etc” (6) BON (Good, for Macron) around R[ight] IT (computer networks etc.) |
| 3 | PUT-UP JOB | Racket stuck in rectum of long-suffering type? (3-2,3) Def: racket. Is the rest a CD? |
| 4 | DOWNER | Drink English rum initially as a depressant (6) DOWN (drink) E[nglish] R[um] |
| 5 | STIR FRY | Jail gets Stephen to cook quickish? (4-3) STIR (Jail) FRY Ref. Stephen Fry, who did accept an invitation to spend some time at her majesty’s pleasure early on in his life |
| 6 | DATED | Went out with old hat (5) Double Def. |
| 7/15 | BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL | How a young impressionable Lewinsky saw Clinton‘s Trumpian piece of legislation? (3,9,4) Double Def. conflating the now historical indiscretions of Bill C, with the present day absurdity we find ourselves witnessing. |
| 9 | INSTRUCT | Tutor in street goes around vehicle to get end away (8) IN ST[reet] around TRUC[k] |
| 13 | A BIT MUCH | Am I butch, screwed up and unreasonable? (1,3,4) (AM I BUTCH)* AInd: screwed up. |
| 16 | UNDERDOG | Persecuted type working for a bastard? (8) UNDER (working for) DOG (a bastard) |
| 17 | LEAPFROG | Play in which a golfer is abused with putter head (8) (A GOLFER + P[utter])* AInd: abused. |
| 18 | CRUSADE | Dodgy used car campaign (7) (USED CAR)* AInd: Dodgy. First one in |
| 20 | BATTLE | Finally let belt out to go round middle of Max Hastings? (6) ([le]T BELT)* AInd: out, around [m]A[x] |
| 22 | REALLY | I say – gather round Conservative right wing! (6) RALLY (gather) around [conservativ]E ! Last one in |
| 23 | SPLIT | Division when Labour leader opens gob (5) L[abour] in SPIT (gob) |
| 25 | LOO | John Bull’s ultimate pair of balls (3) [Bul]L OO |
One of my son’s friends told me he’d got a new job managing a bowling alley.
“Ten pin?” I asked.
“No it’s a permanent position” he replied
PUT-UP JOB
JOB is (a) long-suffering type (bible)
stuck in rectum is PUT UP, I guess.
There could be a better explanation from
someone else.
How is ‘dug’ a tit?
Cyclops reliably produces out-and-away the most entertaining crossword around. Every single fortnight, gawd bless ‘im.
Too many ticks to list them all, but my fave was 7/15, closely followed by BRITON, DEPENDANT, LOO & DILDOS.
Took me way longer than it should have done to figure out the parsing of DIATRIBE and DUGOUT (Tony @2: I think “dug” only relates to animals’ nipples – but I could easily be wrong).
I agree with KVa about 3D.
Many thanks to beermagnet for the blog, and to Cyclops for the entertainment.
dug
Tony and Wellbeck
Chambers says ‘a woman’s breast’ as well.
Some dictionaries say that it’s a rude/vulgar usage.
Wellbeck@#3 I agree, Cyclops is the most fun. Ta blogger and setter
Thanks KVa @#1 I didn’t think of Job from the bible. Someone whose name is pronounced with a silent ‘E’ that is also invisible.
I take ‘dug’ to be a gross word for a human breast/nipple presumably because as Wellbeck @#3 says, it is primarily for animals’ teats. I can visualise James Herriot using the term about a sheep without embarrassment or secondary meaning.
Thanks for the blog beermagnet, and Cyclops for another fun puzzle. I found this one took a bit longer than usual, but as always, once all the answers are in it doesn’t same as bad as at first thought. I had to look up dug as well, I’d never heard it used that way before. I’ve seen the long-suffering Job a few times in puzzles elsewhere so it was filed in my memory bank.
I think maybe you’re looking for more complex wordplay for 3D than it actually needs. It seems to be very straightforward – “put up Job” simply means “sticking something up poor old Job’s rectum”!
Wiktionary has this for dug, noun
“dug (plural dugs)
(chiefly in the plural) A mammary gland on a domestic mammal with more than two breasts.
Synonym: udder
(now vulgar, chiefly in the plural) A woman’s breast or nipple.
Synonyms: pap, breast; teat, tit, nipple”
My fave was 3d Put Up Job. Poor old Job, bad luck continues.
My thanks to beermagnet and Cyclops.
A suggestion has been made @59 on General Discussion. I’m not familiar enough with this setter to be sure, so while I’m inclined to think that TFC@7 and George@8 are right with regard to 3d, Baldparent@59 on the other thread may also be onto something.
In TS Eliot’s The Waste Land he uses dugs for breasts
I, Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
sheffield hatter @#10 : In 3d It was the connotation of “job” as poo when I hadn’t considered biblical fella Job as the long-suffering type, that had me thinking there was a really disgraceful reading too this clue. I see Baldparent mentions he’s from Glasgow – I thought the soubriquet of choice for poo there was “jobbie” (according to Billy Connolly).
So I prefer the Old Testament solution
Dugs meaning breasts is also in Gulliver’s Travels, Part 4 Chapter1, where Swift is describing the Yahoos (degenerate humanlike creatures): “(The females’) dugs hung between their fore-feet and often reached almost to the ground as they walked.” We came across this when we did Gulliver’s Travels at school when I was about 13. There was a lot of sniggering at the back of the class, and as a result I’ve known this meaning since then, and got 8a as my 1st one in.
I always enjoy Cyclops’s puzzles, but I thought that this was really great.
We seem to have many reincarnations of Job’s Comforters these days, including in the pages of the Guardian, whose reporting – whether of the rise of populism and dictatorship, climate change denial, or any other malaise – apparently insists that these are indefeasible.
They aren’t.
SE corner had me flummoxed on this one till today, another one I haven’t been able to submit in time 🙁
Didn’t matter anyway cause I had DOLLOP instead of DILDOS as I couldn’t parse the clue. Solved and parsed all the downs, but:
* couldn’t figure out why tit was DUG (that’ll teach me as I only looked up definitions for “tit”…and to think I have an Eliot book on the table next to where I do the crossword!)
* couldn’t figure out why China was MATE (any rhyming slang will usually have me lost, it’s rare in the north and I’m not even sure how much of it you hear in London)
* even after coming here I still can’t figure out American Rod/GUN — can anybody explain further? When I googled it a week ago all I got was shopping results for shoes! XD
Rod is one of many American synonyms for gun. After all, they’ve got a lot of them – in both senses.
It always reminds me of the lyric in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song “Big Shot”:
“Normally I pack a rod. In pyjamas I carry nothing but scars from Normandy Beach”
I’ve no doubt at all that Job is the fall guy.
Si@15 — define:whatever (or similar syntax) in your browser address bar will usually point you to a whole set of dictionary entries, usually including a US one as well.
I don’t see any real call for treating ‘dugs’ as gross. It’s pre-Shakespearean — he used it himself in Venus and Adonis:
” Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache,
Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake.”.
OED’s first entry for it was in 1897, and the most recent revision only as recent as 1925: “The pap or udder of female mammalia; also the teat or nipple; usually in reference to suckling. As applied to a woman’s breast, now contemptuous.” I surmise that the last sentence was added then, other dictionaries picked it up, and then inertia set in.
Persecuted type working for a bastard? (8)
UNDER (working for) DOG (a bastard)
I’ve never heard of the word DOG as a euphemism for bastard
Thanks beermagnet@16, lemming@17; I usually use Wiktionary but in this case I figured if I just googled the terms together I’d get an explanation somewhere close to the top ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SmellYe@18 my sole point of reference for it as a straight substitutable is when a stereotyped Russian refers to somebody as a “filthy American dog”…