Some tricky clues in this puzzle, including one that I was unable to parse fully. Thanks to Paul.
(This blog was written rather in haste, sp apologies in advance for any errors – I should be able to correct them later today.)
| Across | ||||||||
| 1 | DAWDLER | Snail shell found in wood in valley alongside river (7) The “shell”of WooD in DALE + R |
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| 5 | SUNLESS | First in steeplechase, barring grey (7) S[teeplechase] + UNLESS (barring) |
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| 9 | PANDA | Five bedded in group, and assassin shoots lover? (5) Hidden in grouP AND Assassin. Pandas are lovers of bamboo shoots |
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| 10 | SOAP OPERA | Hence, a time for commercial music programme (4,5) SO A POP ERA |
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| 12 | EPIC | Pachyderm’s head found buried in ice: that’s woolly mammoth! (4) P[achyderm] in ICE* |
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| 14 | SIGNIFICANT OTHER | After initial, should I be able to add her partner? (11,5) SIGN (to initial) + IF I CAN + TO + HER |
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| 18 | ONLY CONNECT | Where link sought for chain on new cycle, not broken by friction ultimately (4,7) [frictio]N in (NEW CYCLE)*. Only Connect is a game show where contestants have to find links in a chain of clues |
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| 21 | MESH | Network where I must learn to keep my mouth shut! (4) For me to keep my mouth shut if for ME to SH! |
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| 22 | TIMBERLINE | Limit of growth capital invested in magazine (6,4) BERLIN in TIME (US magazine) |
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| 25 | TRONDHEIM | City in Europe’s mid-Northwest, mid-Northeast proving inaccurate? (9) It’s an anagram of MID NORTH E, and I suppose it’s in mid-NW Eirope |
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| 27 | LOTTERY WINNER | Fortune, for lucky fellow always at the end, one in the money? (7,6) I can see LOT = fortune, and the last letters of foR luckY felloW, but otherwise I’m stumped on this one |
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| 28 | EVENTER | Victory on back of horse, record for jockey (7) [hors]E + V + ENTER (to record) |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 28 | EVENTER | Victory on back of horse, record for jockey (7) [hors]E + V + ENTER (to record) |
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| 1 | DEPUTY | Second assignment with upcoming exercise penned (6) Reverse of PE (exercise) in DUTY |
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| 3 | LEAF INSECT | Camouflaged creature, appendage on branch covered by something green (4,6) LEA (something green) + FIN (appendage) + SECT (branch) |
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| 4 | ROSIE THE RIVETER | One number I have in work schedule for hard-working poster girl (5,3,7) I + ETHER (the familiar numb-er) + I’VE in ROSTER. Rosie the Riveter featured on American propaganda posters in World War 2 |
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| 5 | SNAKEBITE | Poison to drink? Drunk’s a bit keen! (9) Anagram of (S A BIT KEEN), with the S lifted-and-separated |
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| 6 | NEON | Gas one’s lit under bottom of saucepan (4) [saucepa]N + ONE* – “lit”in the sense of drunk |
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| 7 | EXEMPLAR | Cross on temple discovered in possession of listener, ideal (8) X (cross) + [t]EMPL[e] in EAR (listener) |
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| 8 | SCARCITY | Famine in southern Detroit? (8) S[outh] + CAR CITY. Detroit is famous for car manufacture, giving its nickname Motown (Motor Town) |
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| 13 | WINTER ROSE | With minimum of warmth, plant grew – did it? (6,4) W[armth] + INTER (plant) + ROSE (grew) |
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| 15 | GENUINELY | Dope attending university in Cambridgeshire city, as a matter of fact (9) GEN (information, dope) + U + IN ELY (Cambs city) |
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| 16 | HOT METAL | Type left disheartened at home, sadly (3,5) Anagram of L[ef]T AT HOME |
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| 17 | FLESH OUT | Elaborate nude seemingly? (5,3) If you’re nude then your FLESH is OUT |
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| 19 | WITH-IT | In-jokes, murder (4,2) Another L&S – WIT (jokes) + HIT (murder) |
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| 20 | TERROR | Ending on foot, dropped brick brings frightful feeling? (6) [foo]T + ERROR (a dropped brick) |
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| 23 | BOMBE | Sweet, shell with new filling (5) BOMBE + the filling pf nEw |
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| 24 | IDLE | Resting, veteran comedy actor (4) Double definition, the actor being Eric Idle of Monty Python fame |
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27/2 is LOT (fortune) plus last letters of foR luckY felloW (“always at the end”) plus I (“one”) inside TENNER (“in the money”). The whole thing is an @lit.
Oh and 18a should be N[ew] (CYCLE NOT)* broken by [frictio]N. Another great Paul, and thanks Andrew for the blog!
Correction to my post @ #2: it is ON + new (CYCLE NOT)* broken by [frictio]N.
Thought TRONDHEIM might be something to do with mid NORTH (ORT) west (TRO) but then gave up
Rosie may be a lovely lady but we’ve never met, so DNF for me. Also, found the LOTTERY WINNER impossible to parse, but overall another fun challenge from my favourite setter. Thanks Paul and Andrew.
I thought TRONDHEIM might be an anagram (inaccurate) of the MIDdle letters of “northwestMIDNORTHEastproving” but it’s off by one.
Tough but very rewarding. Not heard of ROSIE THE RIVETER but recognised the poster straightaway on my post solve Google.
Parsed LOTTERY WINNER as per earlier comments but it was retrospective having solved it from just the LOT of fortune. I liked that clue but well done to anyone who solved it from the word play.
TRONDHEIM also retrospectively parsed.
SNAKEBITE brings back mixed memories of a rock club I used to go to in my younger years. They were always on offer so were the drink of choice but certainly went into the poison territory after a few pints.
Tough but very rewarding as usual with Paul.
Thanks Paul and Andrew
Proud to have finished this offering from Paul in spite of obscure British TV programmes and US poster ladies.
Also stumped by the parsing of LOTTERY WINNER but enjoyed TIMBER LINE and GENUINELY. Paul isn’t a favourite with me, more of an exercise in getting on a very different wavelength.
There appears to be a T missing from the parsing of SIGNIFICANT OTHER. Is it that ‘should I be able to’ is IF I CAN’T, so that TO can be added inside before HER? But then perhaps the clue should say ‘should I not be able to’. Tough puzzle though. I can vaguely picture Rosie, but the Lottery Winner has eluded me in more ways than one.
In 14a where does the second T come from? I can’t work it out! Hard puzzle, but great, and thanks for the excellent blog
Thanks Torus @10. I think you’ve got it!
Torus@10 and James G – In 14A the ‘add’ in the clue leads you to TOT.
Larry@13 So it does, well spotted Larry. That’s much better.
Thank you for the blog, Andrew – it helped clear up some matters.
10A was an unparsed guess: now that I know the parsing I can’t say I’m wild about it.
Since Trondheim is on the coast of Norway, I hardly think it’s in “mid” northwest. I’m still unsure what “five” is doing in 9A.
I really enjoyed SCARCITY and SNAKEBITE.
I actively disliked three other clues, but am aware of what happened to Roz when she made her disapproval clear, so I shall keep my powder dry.
Wellbeck @15 – Five consecutive letters (PANDA) and makes the surface more readable
Thank you, Andrew. An additional couple of things for when you return to tidy up. You have entered EVENTER as both the final Across answer and the first Down. Then, at 23d, in the parsing you have kept the E on BOMB (= shell), whereas, as your yourself point out, the E comes from ‘nEw’.
Thank you Crispy @16.
I’ve not come across that device before in a “hidden word” clue.
(I have to confess, I think it actually detracted from smoothness of the latter part of the clue.)
Thanks Paul and Andrew
Including the ‘s in the fodder for 5d is a bit sneaky; I must remember to look out for this trick.
Why is “veteran” needed in 24d?
Favourite PANDA – great surface.
14 was one of the first for me, just kept repeating partner, then an episode of OFAH came from nowhere, Del kept introducing his partner thus throughout… bingo!
muffin @19 veteran isn’t strictly necessary, but if included as part of the definition the clue is OK.
14 was one of the first for me, just kept repeating partner, then an episode of ‘OFAH’ came from nowhere, Del kept introducing his partner thus throughout… bingo!
Good crossword as usual from Paul. Some pretty clunky surfaces but that doesn’t bother me.
Which part of Europe TRONDHEIM is in depends on how you think about it – if you simply divide Europe into quadrants NE, SE, SW, NW then Trondheim is somewhere in the NW sector, and not very near its boundaries, so ‘mid-northwest’ seems OK to me.
My favourites include FLESH OUT, WITH IT, TIMBER LINE, PANDA.
Thanks Paul and Andrew.
Some very inventive and enjoyable cluing, so I think it’s a shame that so many of the surfaces are bonkers.
Favourite was PANDA.
DNF on PANDA, but now that I see it I’m kicking myself. The “Five” threw me. I had PENTA for a while but couldn’t make it work. I found this very tricky but it helped pass some insomniac hours. I thought SIGNIFICANT OTHER very clever. Thanks Paul and Andrew.
I don’t say this very often, but this was a Paul puzzle I did manage to complete, with last one in, EVENTER, making me think that I wouldn’t quite call a person on a horse in a three-day equestrian event a jockey, simply a rider.
However, I suppose I did perform a sneaky one by googling Rosie The Poster Girl, and up popped the, for me, nho before RIVETER flexing her muscles on that poster.
Some clever stuff as ever with this setter, with TERROR and FLESH OUT both making me smile…
Unlike Wellbeck@15, I am completely unaware of what happened to Roz, so I am opining that the clue for 14a is just messy, and an exemplar of the rather slapdash setting that is Paul’s trademark. beaulieu@23 points out Paul’s tendency to disregard the surfaces of clues. The debate here about TRONDHEIM arises because the clue is poorly constructed. Of course, solving poorly constructed clues is more difficult (because we can’t properly parse them, the wordplay might be wonky, the semantics equivalences awry) and so Paul gains a reputation as a setter of hard puzzles. And clearly, some people enjoy the heightened challenge. It doesn’t work for me.
Got Rosie from the enumeration and definition, so didn’t bother parsing it. I liked HOT METAL (I used to work at CUP many decades ago) but didn’t like ‘shell found in wood’ in 1a.
Ground this one out eventually with quite a few BIFD and parsed later, except LOTTERY WINNER and LEAF INSECT.
Overall, I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable but I did like ROSIE THE RIVETER, SCARCITY, HOT METAL and WITH IT.
Thanks Paul and Andrew.
Enjoyable but tricky puzzle, great blog, very helpful.
SIGNIFICANT OTHER. Small correction, TOT (add) not ‘TO’.
ie SIGN + IF + I + CAN + TOT + HER.
ROSIE THE RIVETER. I couldn’t parse the ‘number’ bit. Thanks for ETHER. Doh!
PANDA – I thought five meant five hidden letters.
I hadn’t parsed LOTTERY WINNER.
Thanks Paul and Andrew.
I found this tough and needed this blog to clear up some parsings. Lottery winner was particularly obscure. Like Andrew, I aw fortune=lot and thought the definition was “one in the money” but could not parse the rest. Also thanks to the bloggers for clarifying the extra t in significant other, and what the five was doing in panda. I needed the “check word” button a lot, and had to google Rosie once I had guess “Rosie the …” (I am familiar with the poster, but not the name), but managed to solve without revealing. Thansk, Paul and Andrew
And I liked PANDA.
Apologies to earlier bloggers Larry@13 and Crispy@16.
I hadn’t noticed your comments about add=TOT and the five (letters) in PANDA before I posted mine. Poor skimming on my part.
LOT TE(_r _y _w 1)NNER
Not sure why people are bellyaching about SIGN IF I CAN TOT HER; seems fine to me.
Phil@36: Oh, yes! “add” = TOT. I see now, so the stray ‘T’ is accounted for. Thanks for pointing that out.
I still don’t like the clue.
Ah! and I see that Larry@13 noted TOT, too. Okay, okay, I missed that.
Slow going for me, but some very clever witty clues. I really liked the “shoots lover” for PANDA, and SCARCITY also earned a tick for the CAR CITY, Motown.
pserve_p2 @27: I don’t understand why you think the clue for TRONDHEIM is poorly constructed. It works perfectly for me — definition = “City in Europe’s mid-Northwest”; wordplay = anagram (“proving inaccurate”) of MID NORTH E. Is it because you have to substitute E for “east” for the anagram? That seems like reasonable misdirection to me.
Many thanks Paul and Andrew.
The panda reminds me of the “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” book by by Lynne Truss. A great book on punctuation
The “five” in the clue for PANDA threw me: I think that’s the first time a setter has told me how many letters to look for when the enumeration already gives it. I wasted ages trying to insert a V somewhere. Nice def though.
I struggled with this and eventually gave up with four or five in the SW uncompleted. Of those I did, I liked SCARCITY and SOAP OPERA. But what’s a WINTER ROSE when it’s at home?
Another brilliant puzzle from Paul! So much to admire and, of course, smile at.
Favourites were SOAP OPERA, EPIC, ONLY CONNECT, TIMBER LINE, SCARCITY and WITH IT.
Looked daunting to start with but gradually yielded like all the best puzzles.
Thanks Paul and Andrew
[Gladys@41 – Helloborus Niger – I’ve got one flowering at the front of the house at the moment]
Since I’m an American, I of course have heard of ROSIE THE RIVETER. I entered her fairly early, thinking, “no, it can’t be–that’s too American for these puzzles. But wait–it parses! So that must be it.”
[She was emblematic of the phenomenon that when you’re sending most of your manpower abroad to fight a war but you still need to manufacture armaments, the only solution is woman-power; so for the first time, women were hired to do what was previously thought of as men’s work. It was hard to put that genie back in the bottle once the war was over, laying the seeds for the social transformations of the next 30 years or so. Also, Rosie is pretty butch, you’ll notice–it doesn’t take much imagination to see why she remains a lesbian icon.]
Lord Jim@39: Well, as Andrew notes in the blog, the definition element of the clue is fudgy — it’s a capital city definitely but what’s all that stuff about Europe’s mid-Northwest? Is that definition, too? Turns out it has to be because otherwise that phrase is just some lame padding slop stuff which maybe is only there to make the “mid-Northeast” anagrist seem less bizarre in the surface. I think it’s just Paul’s way of airily waving the hand at the clue construction. And then there’s “proving inaccurate” as an anagrind: it exemplifies my point about Paul’s cavalier approach to semantic equivalences. Apart from the vague sense of “inaccurate” as something that is different I think “proving inaccurate” is not a very good clue that an anagram is involved in the wordplay. The combination of a) vague definition b) vague anagram indicator and c) anagram fodder requires splitting “Northeast” into NORTH and E(ast) adds up to a very vague clue which almost certainly will simply require the solver to guess the solution from the enumeration and crossers and then retrospectively try to work out the parse. I think a good crossword clue balances the wordplay and the definition elements so that the solver can use the combination to arrive at the solution. This clue, like so many of Paul’s, is just a biff.
pserve_p2 @45: well we’ll have to agree to differ, and I suppose these things are somewhat subjective. I thought it was rather a good clue with a clever surface. And “City in Europe’s mid-Northwest” is definitely the definition!
Re TRONDHEIM, it seems to me that there should be some significance in the fact that TRONDIM is hidden in reverse in both midnorthwest and mindnortheast, and H is the middle letter of both northwest and northeast, and E is sometimes used for Europe.
That’s how I “solved” the clue, but I couldn’t and can’t quite make it work.
I parsed Trondheim as
Def: City
“Europe is (in the) mid North (going) West” –> HTRONDIeM
“Mid nortHeast” (= H)
So HTRONDIEM, with the H “proving inaccurate”?
I found this maybe my favourite Paul ever, PANDA probably best of the bunch. Certainly some parsings were done in hindsight and breaking a sweat!
Thanks Paul & Andrew
Carefully re-reading, the first “mid” would be doing a bit of double duty in my explanation, wouldn’t it? “Europe’s mid mid-North, West”. Hmm…
Finished it, but cheated a bit. Paul is too clever for my taste, although I like some of his clues, like the one for SCARCITY. Today’s blogger and many posters had difficulties parsing some of the clues even when knowing the solutions. IMHO, even if the clues are logically constructed this shows that the crossword was a bit too difficult for the average Guardian cryptic solver.
I’m quite happy to guess the answer and then workout the parsing especially with Paul’s crosswords. I’d never heard of Rosie the Riviter. Thanks for the parsing.
Thanks for the blog , for PANDA I agree with Dutchgirl@40 , the clue references the book . On the cover was a picture of a panda holding a smoking gun .
Pretty good overall , my only issue is “shell found in wood” – so clumsy .
Obviously not my day for crosswords today. I usually like Paul’s puzzles, but today was not so much a DNF as a DNS – i.e. Did Not Start. No idea why, but despite several passes the only clue I could solve was NEON, so I eventually gave up. Oh well, tomorrow is another day !
On the subject of clue construction, I’m fairly relaxed about that although I do find excessively wordy clues more difficult and sometimes have problems with puzzles which are almost all very short clues of 3 or 4 words – which is something else Paul occasionally essays. Clunky surfaces I can handle so long as the clue isn’t complete gibberish. Even those can sometimes be quite straightforward, for example “Eveeveryry (3,2,3)” and “R3 (9)”. The second of those is from The TImes many years ago and I think the first may just have been a dingbat rather than a crossword clue !
Late to the party today; it’s been a full day. But I did manage to finish Paul’s challenge-piece in small slices when intervals offered.
To my surprise, for quite a lot of it I seemed to be fully on Paul’s wavelength -ROSIE THE RIVETER was FOI just on inspection of the letter-counts, parsed afterwards. Similarly for maybe half the board. Then the tuning went off, and the last half dozen or so caused quite a bit of headscratching and hard stares. A real pleasure to get to a satisfying end with SNAKEBITE.
I didn’t know that ONLY CONNECT was a game; I know it only as a late hippy-era (?) saying. (Looks it up, finds it’s E.M. Forster rather than Marshall McLuhan or whoever; that’s me dished.)
Lots of ticks, but PANDA was great, with its sideways definition making a great surface; my CotD.
Thanks Paul and Andrew.
When did consummate word-play-fulness so fall out of favour ?
Play playfully for goodness sake …..
I think LOTTERY WINNER is no more than ‘lottery’=’fortune’ (either monetarily or perhaps as in “life’s a lottery”) with WINNER being a ‘lucky fellow always’ appended ‘at the end’ of the answer. The ‘for’ makes it a bit clunky.
Didn’t get very far with this one — eleven solved, mostly in the NE. Tomorrow’s Enigmatist not looking any better so far! I liked 8d SCARCITY (for “southern Detroit”, maybe a classic?), 12a EPIC (for a great surface), and 24d good old Eric IDLE
Our second Guardian cryptic today! We were amazed that we actually got it out after almost despairing around half way. Some brilliant clues—we are fans of TRONDHEIM—but parsing of LOTTERY WINNER was beyond us despite our getting LOT and the RYW. Probably too brain-worn by then. Only NW corner came out easily. TIMBER LINE took too long, but SE generally was worst. BOMBE and WITH IT were LOI. Thanks Paul for a great challenge.
I would echo Hugh@55. We should enjoy the playfulness, and not take the exercise too seriously.
Paul’s puzzles have plenty of playfulness. The wit is a large part of the pleasure for me. Occasionally, however, his clues have meaningless surfaces, and those ones therefore are lacking in wit. By way of contrast, see Arachne, Brendan, and Philistine for three examples (among others) of what I’m saying. They never tolerate a clunky surface.
In any event this was the kind of puzzle I like. Hard to get started with only a few going in on first pass, then gradually coming together, and with plenty of wit. Thanks, P&A for the pleasure and parsing assistance.
Late to comment as took us a long time to finish. But we did! Couldn’t parse lottery winner and originally was certain that 21a was mums (as in mums net).
Isn’t timberline one word though?
Our second Guardian cryptic today! We were amazed that we actually got it out after almost despairing around half way. Some brilliant clues—we are fans of TRONDHEIM—but parsing of LOTTERY WINNER was beyond us despite our getting LOT and the RYW. Probably too brain-worn by then. Only NW corner came out easily.