It’s Wednesday and we are more than pleased to have another Eccles to blog.
As expected, some smiles along the way, a couple of definitions that needed checking and one unknown word at 6ac. Lovely smooth surfaces throughout.
It’s Joyce blogging and my only grouse is being referred to as an ‘old woman’ in 21ac. I know I am old but I don’t like being reminded about it. My mother is 102 today however and I do think of her as ‘old’!
Thanks Eccles.
Double definition
Hidden (‘screened’) in cocA-COLa – a new word for us. We had never played bridge so were unaware of the word to describe a system of betting in the game.
TEAR (run quickly) DROP (fall)
A reversal (‘put back’) of UP (excited) + TOFF (posh boy)
JE (first person in French or ‘in Paris’) ROME (equivalent place in Italy – they are both capital cities)
R (rector) in POTENT (powerful) and S (first letter or ‘introduction’ of sermon)
FOOD (sustenance) reversed or ‘rejected’ + US (American)
A fanciful way of saying that if you have been moved to a different ward in a hospital you have been RE-WARDED
A homophone (‘caught’) of ADDER (venomous snake) LAID (established)
RACE (compete) ME
GRAN (old woman) inside or ‘blocking’ FRAT (men only group in US or ‘over the pond’ universities)
A homophone (‘reportedly’) of PLACE (spot)
WRATH (violent anger) around or ‘covering’ I (Italy)
ALL (everybody) IN CE (church) around or ‘welcoming’ A
A homophone (‘on the phone’) of ASH (remains)
An anagram (‘confused’) of IS OFTEN followed by RE (with regard to)
Alternate letters (‘oddly’) in MaY vErY wEll (missing last letter or ‘cut short)
An anagram (‘around’) of LARK + OFF (rancid)
N (north) OR S (south) E (Spain)
ON (working) + APE (copy) in PR (Press Release)
Hidden (‘kept by’) in cANT BE ARsed
An anagram (‘broken’) of SOFT FRAME
An anagram of MADe (missing last letter or ‘briefly’) and ERRORS
SPIN (trip in motor car) ACHES (is painful)
LEGS (appendages for walking) IDE (fish)
EXTRA (additional) CT (court)
CHAP (man) AT (visiting) I (india)
‘Hidden’ in grumPY LONdoner
A homophone (‘announced’) of CASH (change)
It’s such a treat to find an Eccles puzzle every week. As ever, this one provided superb entertainment. Today’s learnings were ANTBEAR and PYLON.
Eccles’ three word definition for 19a was delightfully succinct, especially when compared with Chambers’ remarkable 18 words.
Why is the posh individual in 9a described as a boy? Surely it is normally applied to an adult man.
My top picks were TEARDROP, ADELAIDE, TOP DRAWER and LEGSIDE.
Many thanks to Eccles (with a special thank you for the US indicators for DOOFUS and FRAT!) Thanks too to B&J.
A typically smooth puzzle, with TOP-DRAWER, PORTENTS and the elegant ALLIANCE being my favourites. I didn’t fully parse REWARDED, nor LEGSIDE (which I waved past as a synonym for “for walking on”, using “airside” as a vague analogy), but it was a satisfying solve anyway. Thanks both!
I read the clue for LEGSIDE as needing the opposite order, but I suppose with can work for both before and after. I liked ADELAIDE and ALLIANCE. Rabbit Dave@1 Does US still count as an American indicator when it is part of the wordplay? Thanks, all
Thanks both. Almost a first visit solve, with SPINACHES raising the only query as I regard spinach already as the plural, though I guess we are looking at variants, until I laboured inexplicably over LEGSIDE; my feeble excuse that most cricket sources represent it as two words, sometimes hyphenated – if it were onside, we are talking football, on-side cricket….howzat?
Thanks to Joyce for the parsing of PORTENTS. It had to be that from def and crossers but at first I was trying to fit an anagram of RECTOR into P and S. New word for me LEGSIDE (know little about cricket despite doing these crosswords for more years than I care to remember). Thought it might be a word for a walking path I just hadn’t heard of. ‘Lets go legside’ might even catch on. Agree with TFO@4 that SPINACHES is a bit of a stretch but there are several varieties of spinach. Liked ADELAIDE once the penny dropped and TOP DRAWER.
Thanks to Eccles of course for the usual good puzzle.
Petert @3. It’s a yes from me!
Thanks Eccles for the midweek treat. I sailed through this but I still couldn’t dredge up CHAPATI from the depths of my brain. Lots of favourites as usual including PORTENTS, DOOFUS (I think it’s fine to have US as an American indicator and be part of the wordplay as well; regardless, there’s often an overlap between British & American slang & one can say the definition is simply ‘idiot’ as the blog states), FRAGRANT, WRAITH, ON PAPER, TOP-DRAWER, & SPINACHES (great surface). Thanks B&J for the blog.
Gentle fun apart from the nho but couldn’t be anything else acol. Doofus definitely needed the American indicator as it’s never used in UK is it? Not near me anyway.
Goodness, an Eccles puzzle that only faced me with one unknown, wonders will never cease! Must admit to assuming it was a computer language until I looked it up….
Think my top clues today were those for MAKING OUT, KARLOFF, ANTBEAR & PYLON. Not just Londoners who feel grumpy about the latter!
Thanks to Eccles for another great puzzle and to B&J for the review – worry not Joyce, at least our setter thinks you smell FRAGRANT!
LEGSIDE fooled me. I hadn’t realised that “on” was the definition.
I don’t play bridge but I had heard af Acol. As I understand it, there’s no betting (officially) in bridge. Acol is a bidding system, a way of giving indications to your partner of what’s in your hand without actually telling them.
Being an American, I bid my bridge using American Yellow Card, so ACOL was new to me. But I figured it would be the British equivalent (it is). [For those who don’t play, before the hand starts there’s an auction. Each player in turn can bid the number of tricks they expect their side to take, along with the suit they want to be trump. You must outbid the previous player (the suits are ranked, from low to high, clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, no-trump, so a bid of 1S is allowed over a bid of 1C). People long ago started giving these bids artificial meanings to describe their hands in more detail; it was almost as long ago that people decided this wasn’t cheating as long as everyone knew what set of additional meanings was being used. Thus, the birth of bidding conventions.]
FRAT is short for fraternity, by the way. They have a well-earned reputation for laddish, beer-fueled excesses, but it’s usual to state that that’s not the whole story; I wouldn’t know, since they were banned at my university.