Thanks to IO for the challenge!
I started off very well and managed to get about 50% completed confidently, but then got rather stuck with some of the unknown (to me) solutions, and tricky parsing. But I do appreciate the change of pace that IO brings, and the extra effort involved adds to the sense of satisfaction when it all falls into place. Eventually. Many thanks to IO.
What BOAR (swine) exhibits, trampling on I (one) in CUP[i]D (model of adoration) + LOVE (nothing) – &lit
(O[n] P[a]RA[d]E (from the solution to 7D; AND missing))* (*in bits)
PA (Panama) adopts (A + TAG (label) + ON (attached to) + I (independent))
Cryptic definition
A play on the concept of ‘roaring’
H + H (hours) during which I have EAT (to dine)
Sir Edward Heath was Prime Minister of the UK between 1970 and 1974
Cryptic definition
A Managing Director might oversee the rest of the Board; ‘main’ referring to the sea
(TO (heading for) + RHEA (bird)) under protection of MOD (rival?)
Methods of Destruction or M.O.D. could be considered a rival to Motorhead, both being metal(ish) bands from the same(ish) era
EY UP (ow’re thee) stalling [W]E[nsl]E[ydal]E (most common, i.e. the letter E)
EY UP is Yorkshire’s informal ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ and they stereotypically drop the ‘h’ sound
(VOLUNTEER + [r]SP[b] [h]E[s] [l]EF[t] [o]F[f] (packing))* (*for some excitement)
GRATINS* (*supply) crusts PE (exercise, Physical Education)
[mea]T AT OU[r] (homes)
A tatou is a giant armadillo
(TASK RA[r]E (R (recipe) light) TREAT)* (*cooking) – &lit
Cryptic definition
For the straight definition: ‘cloud chambers’ are particle detectors
IO might use Chambers (the dictionary) for reference, and this could be online, indicated by ‘e’ or in the ‘cloud’
Cryptic definition
For El Greco (i.e. someone Greek), in the alphabet sequence, we find PI as letter 16 and ETA as letter 7
‘Pieta’ is Michelangelo’s famous Madonna and Jesus sculpture from the Renaissance era
Double definition
(E (English) + SUPER (police chief))< (<retired) nursing RPO (Beecham’s baby)
Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1946, remaining its conductor and director until his death in 1961.
Before ETON (school); L (lecturer)
BUTT (bottom) + GETABLE (within reach)) in VEER (swing)
ONE (a) boxing (AD (poster) that appears to be sub PAR (standard))
(TAPE UNDERWEAR)* (*to bustle)
[restaur]ANT EVER T[aking] (employed in)
‘Antevert’ means to slope forwards, anatomically, e.g. as the uterus does
S[ense] T[roub]e (starts to) after (DICE SAY)* (*rolling)
An ‘ecdysiast’ is a stripper or erotic dancer
(APP[r]OP[riately] (LITERARY leaves))* (*kicked about)
‘Uncle Sam’ indicating an Americanism
[of]F AT WA[terloo] (you need this to get)
Without the letters FATWA you can’t complete the phrase ‘off at Waterloo’
A wonderful puzzle from Io. Thanks.
A matching superb blob from Oriel. Thanks.
A couple of observations:
MOTORHEAD
I find that MODs and rockers were two conflicting subcultures that began in the late 1950s London. Maybe what the
blogger says is the same.
VEGETABLE BUTTER
Took the pharse ‘bottom within reach’ as ‘GETABLE BUTT’.
Thanks Oriel. In 16, though, I think rival is a reference to Mods and Rockers, not another band. (I should have typed faster…)
Thanks oriel.
Again I completed with a lot of cheats and seeing the blog I never would have finished otherwise. I don’t even bother to try these unassisted any more and enjoy them far less as a result. This setter is a complete outlier compared to the others in the FT roster who are generally far more fun.
16a is simpler than the blog I think. Mods and rockers used to amuse themselves with mass brawls in the sixties, on the basis that their opponents were wearing the wrong clothes.
Think in 16 the rival is a Mod (modernist) as in mods and rockers
Far too subtle for my talents, I managed to get Heath and On Another Planet and that was it.
Re Overboard: an MD oversees a business, the Board is overseen by the Chairman.
Re Eye Up – in my experience the normal Yorkshire greeting is Now Then: Aye up or Ey Up being more a Lancashire and Cheshire thing.
Ecdysiast? Really?
Make that three for rivals being Mods and Rockers. Also, I think 14A is a double definition with “in the main” also being OVERBOARD. Don’t usually finish an IO so I take this to be more IO lite. Thanks IO and Oriel!
Yep, familiar Brit cultural history to oldies, mods and rockers. 15d took all the crossers and wrestling the rest, only then recalling that strange word for stripper. Enigio with his customary gnarl. Ta both.
Thanks Io and Oriel. I actually managed to solve this in one session, taking just over double my notional “par” time for a normal FT crossword.
14ac: Others may have hinted at this, but (as I read it) “MD’s position” is OVER BOARD – strictly speaking, this is wordplay as it enumerates as (4,5) not (9) – and then “in the main?” is a somewhat cryptic definition for having fallen off a ship or boat.
16ac: I agree with everyone else about Mods and Rockers.
A couple more points from me:
17ac: I think “most common” is the indication that E is the only letter occurring three times in “Wensleydale”. I do not think there is anything about dropping aitches in this clue.
6dn: I took this the same way as KVa@1. I think GETABLE BUTT needs to be taken together, as there is no other indication of the order of those two words in the solution.
PB@9
EYE UP
I was also looking for an aitch dropped or the first letter of an expression dropped, because the clue says ‘ow (not how).
Though I had the same parsing as the blogger and you (E in EY UP), I still have this question: Why is it clued as ‘ow, but
not how?
Unsurprisingly this was tricky and I am grateful to Oriel for the blog which explained a few I had not parsed. I am not a great fan of clues like that for “heath” where there is a lot of superfluity. “I have to dine” = “eat” (or, I suppose “I have” refers to the setter having “to dine” placed there). I don’t think the grammar quite matches up either. Ditto in 1ac, why is “what swine exhibits” = “boar” rather than it just being a swine? Often it’s the case there is some elucidation here which changes my mind about a clue once I see its subtleties, so fingers crossed!
Incidentally the grid is exceptionally “white dense” and every single solution is crossed at every other letter, with lots of helpful first letters. Perhaps one of the friendliest grids I’ve seen in that respect.
Thanks for the blog , a surprising number of answers to write in straight away and lots of letters to help with the harder ones . Only two first letters not checked which always helps .
CLOUD CHAMBERS not seriously used for about 70 years but I still get them out because they are so visual and exciting . Famously captured the positron in1932 after prediction by Dirac .
Too slow , JOFT beat me to it on the grid .
KVa @10 – ow’re thee , or more usually , ow at , are equivalent greetings to ey up .
KVa@10 re 17ac: I really meant to say that I do not think “most common” in the clue has anything to do with dropping aitches.
1ac: I think “What swine exhibits” forms an essential part of the clue as definition. How much of the rest of the clue really belongs to the definition I would rather not say.
Thanks for the parsing of CUPBOARD LOVE , I think ‘replace some of x with y’ are my hardest to see even after finding the solution, tried for ages to put the swine into ‘platonic’
I enjoyed this puzzle, even the handful of NHOs that I had needed to check seemed fair game.
I thought heading/HEAD could have been avoided in 16ac.
I no longer attempt IO puzzles, but I read through the clues before breakfast then come here later in the day to remind myself why I no longer attempt IO puzzles.
As usual for me and Io/Enigmatist at his “easier” end, about a third of this could be confidently entered, another third entered with maybe some head-scratching, two or three more entries plunked in based on the definition, and then a surrender on what’s left. (I know that last sentence has a parallelism error, which I can’t be arsed to fix.) This time I also accidentally revealed CLOUD CHAMBERS, which I probably would have eventually gotten otherwise.
I had no idea that POPPA was an Americanism, and it sounds quaint to me–the sort of thing that people from another time and possibly also another part of the country might have called their fathers. As far as I know, everyone I know calls/called their father Dad or maybe Daddy.
[Expounding on my comment: At Io’s harder end, I get about five entries total before declaring that life is too short. And, y’all, let me tell you that I’m neither a moron nor a novice solver. My American-ness is a handicap, but it’s not an insurmountable one for any of the other regular setters of the UK dailies, and I don’t think that’s the main problem here either. One American puzzle constructor (as we call them over here, and I forget which one, maybe Will Shortz?) once wrote that the goal of the constructor is to temporarily deceive the solver. I think Io needs to re-examine the adverb in that sentence.]
Agree with mrpenny @19.
Well, I quite liked OVERBOARD.
Late to this party. I did not understand the definition “split” for LET ON, and I wondered whether that was a typo for “spilt,” which makes way more sense.
Everything else was more or less the usual for an Io.
I tried and tried and tried. But at some point my own lack of vocabulary failed me. Never heard of even some the normal sounding phrases like CUPBOARD LOVE. Don’t know who MOTORHEAD is didn’t know who Beecham was. Never heard of a VEGETABLE BUTTER. I probably feel fine never learning what that last one is at the table.
Let alone the really obscure words like the stripper one or the uterus one. Lots to learn for me i guess. But hard to have hard parsing for obscure words crossing one another for someone like me
Thank you all!
Cineraria @22 SPLIT is UK usage , it means spill the beans , grass up , LET ON etc .
I tend to side with Torquemada , he did invent cryptic crosswords , sometimes the setter should aim to give the solver a severe beating .
My experience with Io’s puzzles matches mrpenny’s exactly (@18&19). When I read the blog – excellently done by Oriel – and there are half a dozen clues that I can say I would never get (NIAMY’s in my parlance), it tells me that these puzzles aren’t for me, and never will be.
In this case I got 75% of the clues (more than I usually manage with Io), albeit with several unparsed, before giving up.
However, I just shrug my shoulders and accept that “There are days for Roz and not for me, and that is how it ought to be.”
Thanks Oriel for the informative blog, and Io for satisfying the needs of better solvers than me.
mrpenney@19: Thank you for quoting “temporarily deceive the solver”. That is a view with which I fully agree, and I do not think I have ever seen a better formulation of it. Yes, there is a place within crosswordland for Torquemada-style puzzles, but I really do not think that daily newspapers are the best place for them.
The FT has a wide range of difficulty but most are in the middle or easier end of the range . Surely once a month we can have a hard crossword . Not every day needs to be “Everyone must have prizes” .
Agree with roz@27
Enjoyed the fight enormously