A fun solve with some tricky parsings. My favourites were 8ac, 9ac, and 5dn. Thanks to Brockwell for the puzzle.
…there is a theme around 8ac BREAD (and several references to the US and TV shows)
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | JEHOVISTS |
Plane’s carrying company of 8 biblical authors (9)
|
| JET’S=”Plane’s” around/carrying HOVIS=a British bread company=”company of [8 across]” | ||
| 8 | BREAD |
Walter White finishes Breaking Bad making money (5)
|
| definition: ‘bread’ is slang for money
the end letters (“finishes”) of [Walte]-R [Whit]-E, breaking into BAD for the surface, Walter White is a character from the TV series Breaking Bad |
||
| 9 | MINT SAUCE |
Terrible miscue at the end from Allan Lamb’s partner? (4,5)
|
| definition: mint sauce is a common accompaniment/partner for lamb dishes
anagram/”Terrible” of (miscue at n)*, with the n as “the end from Alla-n” for the surface, Allan Lamb was a cricketer, so the surface could describe a miscue from his batting partner |
||
| 10 | FLOUR |
Student tucked into square meal (5)
|
| definition: meal as in ground grains such as flour
L (Learner, “Student”) inside FOUR=a “square” number (two squared is four) |
||
| 12 | BAKERY |
Shop window broken by king and queen (6)
|
| BAY=type of “window”, around (broken by): K (king, chess abbreviation) + ER (Elizabeth Regina, “queen”) | ||
| 13 | TWINSETS |
Suspect ending in Silent Witness reveals matching threads (8)
|
| for definition, “threads” as in pieces of clothing
anagram/”Suspect” of (t Witness)*, with the t from “ending in Silen-t) |
||
| 14 | GRANARY |
Old lady wasting money in Virgin store (7)
|
| GRAN=”Old lady”, plus ARY [the Virgin M-ary, minus ‘m’ for money] | ||
| 17 | PALAVER |
Every year, Wimbledon champion makes a fuss (7)
|
| PA (per annum)=”Every year” + Rod LAVER the “Wimbledon champion” | ||
| 20 | CORNETTO |
Wind octet entertaining men with new instrument (8)
|
| definition: a wind instrument [wiki]
anagram (“Wind” as a verb) of (octet)*; around/entertaining OR (other ranks of soldiers, “men”) + N (new) |
||
| 22 | DOLLAR |
American 8 lying about in Balmoral Lodge (6)
|
| definition: American money (8ac is bread, slang for money)
hidden and reversed in (lying about in): [Balmo]-RAL LOD-[ge] |
||
| 24 | AGAMA |
A Trump supporter going round The Lizard (5)
|
| definition: a type of lizard
A (from surface) + MAGA (Make America Great Again, “Trump supporter”); all reversed (going round) |
||
| 25 | BAR MAGNET |
Rolling Stone possibly cutting hair to become object of attraction (3,6)
|
| definition refers to magnetic attraction
MAG (magazine, for example Rolling Stone music magazine), cutting into BARNET=”hair” |
||
| 26 | DAILY |
Spooner’s mistress delivers paper (5)
|
| Spoonerism of the two syllables from ‘lady’=”mistress” | ||
| 27 | SOURDOUGH |
Son with money belonging to us is 8 (9)
|
| definition: a type of bread, 8ac
S (Son) + OUR DOUGH=”money belonging to us” (dough is slang for money) |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | REGINA |
Queen of Hearts in unreal PGA final (6)
|
| some central letters (“Hearts”) from [un]-RE-[al] [P]-G-[A] [f]-INA-[L] | ||
| 2 | SOUTHERN |
Ten hours lost below the equator (8)
|
| anagram/”lost” of (Ten hours)* | ||
| 3 | BINARY |
Kind of star to reject amateur lines (6)
|
| definition refers to binary star systems [wiki]
to BIN=to “reject” + A (amateur) + RY (railway, “lines”) |
||
| 4 | STICK TO |
Comply with Klingon on the telephone (5,2)
|
| the word “Klingon” sounds like (on the telephone) ‘cling on’, which can mean STICK TO | ||
| 5 | TROLLS |
Offensive posters from Tesla introducing luxury car (6)
|
| definition: internet trolls post online to create offense
first letter from (introducing) T-[esla]; plus ROLLS (Rolls Royce, “luxury car”) |
||
| 6 | BAGUETTE |
8 stone (8)
|
| double definition: 8ac bread; or a baguette cut of a precious stone such as a diamond | ||
| 11 | PITA |
Food served up in Emirati Palace (4)
|
| reversed (served up) and hidden “in”: [Emir]-ATI P-[alace] | ||
| 15 | RIOT GEAR |
City great arranged police protection (4,4)
|
| RIO=”City” in Brazil + anagram/”arranged” of (great)* | ||
| 16 | ROTI |
Filling of hot Caribbean sandwich (4)
|
| definition: ROTI can refer to a Caribbean style of wrap or sandwich [wiki]
inner letters (“Filling”) of [e]-ROTI-[c]=”hot” |
||
| 18 | ALLEGROS |
Austin Powers finally in pieces (8)
|
| definition refers to “pieces” of music
ALLEGRO (the “Austin” Allegro was a model of car [wiki]); plus final letter of [Power]-S |
||
| 19 | SODA POP |
Drink of Manhattan stirs up American Dad (4,3)
|
| definition has “Manhattan” to indicate a US phrase
ADOS=”stirs” (an ado = a fuss, a stir) reversed/”up”; plus POP=”American [word for] Dad” |
||
| 21 | NIMBLE |
Writer is almost drained by conclusion of Jonathan Swift (6)
|
| I’M=I am=”[this] Writer is”; plus BLE-[d]=”almost drained”; all after/”by” conclusion of [Jonatha]-N | ||
| 22 | DEMARK |
Country scrapping nuclear limit (6)
|
| DE-[n]-MARK minus n for “nuclear” | ||
| 23 | AWEIGH |
No longer hooked on holidays we hear (6)
|
| definition: aweigh describes an anchor no longer hooked to the bottom
sounds like (we hear) ‘away’=”on holidays” |
Brockwell is now one of my favourite setters and I really enjoyed his BREAD theme last night. I included (JE)HOVIS(TS), FLOUR, BAKERY, DOLLAR, GRANARY, DAILY, SOURDOUGH, STICK, (T)ROLLS, BAGUETTE, PITA, ROTI, SODA and NIMBLE, which is made by HOVIS. I completed the east side first, finding the west more chewy. I also liked MINT SAUCE, PALAVER, CORNETTO and BAR MAGNET.
Ta Brockwell & manehi.
Don’t forget (PA)LAVER bread, CORN(ETTO) bread, BARM(AGNET) bread! Also a reference to bread riots at 15.
Great puzzle!
Tricky but fun. I failed to parse GRANARY (I had GRANDMA for ages, which didn’t help), BAR MAGNET, ROTI (I am routinely useless at identifying synonyms for subtraction clues: see also mARY in GRANARY…)
The JEHOVISTS were new, though I liked the “company of bread”. Lots of other bread-y answers beside the 8 references: GRANARY, PITA, SODA, FLOUR, BAKERY, SOURDOUGH, tROLLS, BAGUETTE, ROTI and even LAVER bread (which isn’t bread at all but a Welsh seaweed dish). Thanks Brockwell and manehi.
Favourite: BAR MAGNET.
I could not parse 1d, 16d.
New for me: BINARY star; JEHOVISTS/yahwist/yahvist (but I have heard of Jehovah’s Witnesses); Austin ALLEGRO – the dozens/hundreds of car brand names elude me and I wish that the setters could clue these words differently 😉
BREAD BIN(ary), BREAD SAUCE, and give us this day our DAILY BREAD…
The wife jokes bread is my specialist subject, the food version rather than the money unfortunately.
Thought JEHOVISTS was a really great clue.
Thanks Manehi and Brockwell
Weighing anchor is common; aweigh as adjective is quaint. But then language is quirky — nothing less like a cut gemstone than the baguette you eat. Meanwhile, Hovis bread we did have downunder, though haven’t seen it for years. And Allegro, another tempo-named piece to go with Larghetto, yesterday was it?
Very digestible, thx Brockwell and manehi.
Like Alan C @1, I found the LHS more chewy. Got lucky with ALLEGROs. Guessed it was a make of Austin cars, which were very popular in Oz. Had a couple Austins, but not that one. Also old enough to remember TWINSETS and Rod LAVER. 8 stone was a kind of benchmark for young women back in the day, but not if you ate baguettes, or wore them round your neck.
Great puzzle! It was fun finding the breads and learning some new ones – as listed by previous commenters. There could also be SOUTHERN Bread, breads typically cooked in the US South. Maybe a US solver could confirm.
New for me similar to Michelle#4: HOVIS bread company (and their NIMBLE bread); JEHOVISTS (LOI, guessed); Austin ALLEGRO; BINARY star. But I could work them out.
I did not parse ROTI or the Virgin bit of GRANARY.
Favourites: REGINA, MINT SAUCE. I also liked the Aus reference in PALAVER, the surface for BREAD and the brevity of BAGUETTE.
Thanks to Brockwell and manehi.
GIF@7: “Anchors aweigh!” is a familiar expression and was enough to give me confidence in the answer.
Much fun and brilliant use of the theme. Many thanks Brockwell and manehi.
Yep, now you mention it JOFT, of course!
An excellent puzzle. Strange how the memory works. Hovis and Laver both took some time to emerge, even though I see the name Hovis almost every day on this site.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and unusually finished a Friday puzzle (although 16d was unparsed before reading this blog).
I’m a bit uncertain about the definition for 7a though. I thought JEHOVISTS were those who read the original Hebrew in a certain manner, not the authors?
Thanks to Bracewell & Manheim.
Me@13 *Brockwell *manehi. Sorry, autocorrect got me… 🥺
By sheer happenstance I revisited an old episode of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue last night, wherein GRANARY is defined as “an old people’s home”.
Is 26a really a Spoonerism? The strict definition would seem to require at least two words (cf. both Chambers and Wikipedia).
Well, each to his/her own. There was indeed a lot to enjoy in the cluing; but for my taste there was too much obscurity for its own sake (I think ROTI and NIMBLY were the worst offenders) coupled with an utterly vile grid (twelve lights with a majority of unchecked letters).
Thanks, both, for the bits that I enjoyed and for the explanations of the bits I didn’t get.
poc #15. It doesn’t answer your question about the ”strict definition”, but we had this kind of 1 word/2 syllable Spoonerism not so long ago. I can’t remember it exactly, but it also involved a diphthong like /eɪ/ as in “day”.
PS . AI told me this.
While spoonerisms usually occur between two separate words, they can also happen within a single two-syllable word. In linguistics, this internal swapping of sounds or syllables is technically known as metathesis.
Here are examples of single words where swapping the initial sounds of the two syllables creates a different common word:
Kitchen / Chicken (the most famous example) ………
paddymelon @18: thanks, that would be Chitken surely.
I really enjoyed that, company of bread made me smile.
Gosh, NEILH @16, you can’t have much interest in Indian cuisine – even my curry house round the corner in a provincial town in eastern England offers Tawa ROTI. It was borrowed into Caribbean cuisine from South Asia. And I think most of the older British-based commentariat here will remember a young woman ascending skyward under a hot air balloon while Honeybus sang ‘I can’t let Maggie go’, advertising NIMBLE. Are you too young, or were / are you domiciled overseas? Neither, certainly, gave me a moment’s pause.
GiS @ 13
Chambers:
”Jehōˈvist noun
1. A person who held that the vowel points attached by the Masoretes to the Hebrew word YHWH are the proper vowels of the word (obsolete)
2. A writer of passages in the Pentateuch in which the name applied to God is Yahweh, a Yahwist”
The OED has similar.
Alan C. @19. It needs to be read/sounded as tchi ken / ki tchen.
The Jehovist, now usually called the Yahwist, was one of the four postulated primary sources of the pentateuch. So I’m not sure that JEHOVISTS in the plural is appropriate for “biblical authors”.
Balfour @21: It’s ages since anyone accused me of being young!! I can even remember Rod Laver.
It was the wordplay of the clues in question that I found obscure; “find a word that might be vaguely synonymous with something and then chop bits off it” is too close to an indirect anagram for my taste.
But I suspect I was just in a foul mood because of the grid.
Sorry if I’m repeating what somebody else has said. If types of bread/money and where it is made is the theme. I included AGA, SOU (French coin) , (German) MARK and (Royal) MINT.
For a total of 23 linked answers. Not bad going for what one Guardian poster called a mini-theme.
Many thanks to manehi for another excellent blog and to everybody else for the overwhelmingly positive comments. It is always much appreciated. All the best, B
I have to quibble about SODA POP, which is very much not the name of a drink in Manhattan. In the US, names for pop are highly regional. In New York and surrounding areas, the word is simply soda, and has been for many years. Pop is a central/western northern name.
gtrimprov@24: my thought too. Although “Jehovists” might exist in other senses, in the definition of the clue it is very much singular.
NeilH@25: I agree. I congratulate those including our blogger who found “erotic”, but not in a thousand years would I have gotten there.
I had forgotten about Hovis, Nimble (if I ever knew it?), and above all the Austin Allegro, which I hope never to be reminded of again.
Thanks Brockwell nad manehi
Mostly great. I did know ROTI, but I thought it a bit unfair to have to think of a synonym for “hot” – not an obvious one – then top and tail it.
Is a binary a star?
Favourite MINT SAUCE>
I found this hard and failed to parse quite a few in particular ROTI and NIMBLE. Nho JEHOVISTS. Perhaps I would have done better with a more helpful grid as mentioned by NeilH @16.
Mention of the Allegro brought back memories of the widely unloved car. The early models had a quartic (square) steering wheel which caused some merriment, though in retrospect it wasn’t such a bad idea. It acquired the nickname of Allergo for the terrible build quality of early models.
Good fun with plenty to chew. I imagined Lamb’s partner was going to be sheep at first, but I liked MINT SAUCE. I also liked the Rolling Stone with his BAR MAGNET, the City great in his RIOT GEAR, and the (not Jonathan Swift) NIMBLE writer.
Thanks Brockwell and manehi.
Jehovists, although nicely constructed in utterly unfair. My mind is flexible, has been twisting through and round clues for years but Biblical authors is not a valid definition.
Apologies for bellyaching. Auracaria often set obscure words with solvable clues and easy words with difficult ones. Bunthorne, would go for both, obscure and difficult but the definition was always fair. Setters now sometimes seem to be wilful.
For completeness: in BAR MAGNET, “barnet” for hair is rhyming slang – “Barnet Fair”.
Excellent stuff. Favourites JEHOVISTS (possibly aided by being nho but gettable) and BREAD for the surface.
muffin @29: interesting question. I think a binary star consists of two, um, stars.
Thanks to Brockwell and manehi.
When I first came to live in France back in the mid-seventies I was casting around for which bank to entrust with my hard-earned money. Just the name almost tempted me to go with the Banque Régionale d’Escompte et de Dépôts, aka BRED…
I really enjoyed the theme. Made it a bit easier than usual actually. Although is FLOUR as a meal fair? I was stuck on it for ages. I had got FLAIR in my mind for ages but that obviously didn’t work.
JT @37: meal and FLOUR are both grain ground into powder.
paddymelon @23: oh I see.
Very good. I didn’t remember to look for all the bread references after seeing the theme in the clues. I’m glad other posters have delineated the full list.
I had a very slightly different parse for SODA POP: DOS (stirs) up + A (American) + POP (Dad).
Faves: MINT SAUCE, BAKERY and BREAD, especially the latter. I tried a Breaking Bad surface in a Guardian clue competition entry a while back that went down like a lead balloon! Nice to see this one work out.
Thanks, Brockwell and manehi.
Phew… I found this one a bit of a toughie, despite the theme; so my thanks to Brockwell for a hard but ultimately doable challenge; steady filling in of a few clues at a time when I had a bit of space in the day, rather than an “all done and dusted over coffee” job like some of the earlier puzzles this week. I cracked and resorted to a “what fills these crossers” site for a few towards the end: including, shamefully, my LOI DAILY. Doh!
Thanks manehi for several parsings: especially the the tricky eROTIc. I wasn’t aware of the BAGUETTE cut, nor did I think of FLOUR as being meal = ground grain rather than, say , egg and chips.
I liked JEHOVISTS – when I finally got it – , TWINSET, PALAVER, ALLEGROS and many more – neat, somewhat devious, surfaces throughout.
In the rankings of “Britain’s dullest car”, the Austin Allegro must be somewhere near the top of the list.
[muffin@ 29: “a binary star” or “a binary star system” is the usual nomenclature (wiki) – I guess arising from naked-eye or low-power telescope objects seen originally as single stars being later being found by higher-resolution instruments to be a pair. Maybe Roz will drop by and chip in – I think it’s her patch of academia?
(on reading on the in Wikipedia article, my memory was jogged about the star Algol (“the demon”), so called historically because of its variable brightness – it’s now known to be an eclipsing binary.) ]
Too many unparsed, unfortunately, for this to be enjoyable.
The surfaces on the Allan Lamb and Breaking Bad clues are superb.
Thanks for the hints, filled in several parsings.
Thanks to Brockwell also.
Enjoyable but I foundered top left. 1d contains the hidden GAFINA who was a character in the novel Queen of Hearts. Seeing Hovis bread never made it out here I was completely “anchored aweigh”.
Great fun though. Thanks, as always, for blog and setting efforts.
Tough puzzle, but I got there. Like Gladys, I had a misplaced grandma for a while. ROTI was a lot easier after that! I ate them in Trinidad.
If you were in a binary solar system, it would be obvious that there were two stars. From light years away, even through a home telescope, not so much. It’s understandable that “binary star” and “binary star system” have some interchangeability. Anyone who cares knows the difference, but I think Muffin’s mini-quibble is fair; I had a similar reaction.
Thanks Brockwell and Manehi.
[Mystogre@43; Hovis bread is still in the minds of many Brits of a certain age because of a 1973 advert; claimed to be “Britain’s favourite” (the advert, not the bread); me, I’ll go for the Cadbury’s drumming gorilla, though.
[DTS @45
Rather surprisingly, that wasn’t a constructed film set; it’s a genuine location – Gold Hill in Shaftesbury.]
[muffin@46: Indeed it is. The tone of the advert leads one to believe it’s somewhere in maybe Lancashire, but it’s actually in the soft south. Even now, it looks pretty much just as in that 50 year old (blimey!) advert. It is a very steep hill indeed, as I can testify, having walked down and up it. ]
I think CORNETTO, being Italian for croissant, also fits the bread theme. Very impressive, with some wonderful clues.
SueM@9 – I think it’s Southern Bread Riots for the theme rather than Southern breads?
Balfour@21
I failed on 16d because I’m not keen on curry, my wife can’t stand the smell on her or my clothes and, as others have said, no-one ws going to work this out from the wordplay.
grantinfreo@7
Yes, it was only yesterday that we had Larghetto. I knew of an orchestral piece called “Handel’s Largo” for years before I learned that it was an arrangement of an aria, “Ombra mai fu” from his opera Xerxes.
I did see the theme fairly early on (which is rare for me), but it didn’t necessarily help with the solving. Struggled with loi 7a JEHOVISTS. I was trying to fit CO in, in vain, then figured “company of (bread)” probably referred to a UK bread company I’d never heard of. Sure enough, DuckDuck gave me HOVIS, which led to the solution. Also lucky with 18d ALLEGROS — nho the make of car, but we had a tempo indication for a musical title just yesterday
Best of the bunch was 8a BREAD itself, with a most outstanding Breaking Bad reference. Other picks were 2d SOUTHERN (Ten hours lost), 4d STICK TO (Klingon), 22d DEMARK (apt political surface)
Many great misdirections: 9a MINT SAUCE (Allan Lamb), 10a FLOUR (square meal), 12a BAKERY (Shop window), 20a CORNETTO (Wind octet), 1d REGINA (Queen of Hearts), 15d RIOT GEAR (police protection), 18d ALLEGROS (Austin Powers), 21d NIMBLE (Jonathan Swift), 23d AWEIGH (no longer hooked)
Couldn’t parse 25a BAR MAGNET, but we’ve had lot of magnets lately, so it came to mind readily
This was great, I thought, and took me until just now to parse ROTI.
Which wag was it, who coined the term J. Hoover’s Witlesses for the FBI?
Cheers all.
I have just, for the first time, completed a full week of Guardian cryptic crosswords having taken them uk with the first Quick Cryptic almost two years ago. The quick cryptic, quiptic and Everyman were really key to me learning how they work. And then of course, the excellent fifteensquared and all who support it were essential in getting me here. Thanks all!
TopDeck@54 Congratulations!