Wiglaf provides the Saturday challenge this week….
….and quite a challenge it was!
As we have come to expect from Wiglaf, there is some ingenious clueing, some neat surfaces and quite a few rather obscure (to us!) definitions and synonyms.
We felt that there had to be a theme because of the number of proper nouns in the grid, but we couldn’t figure it out until we had filled the grid and used some electronic assistance – even now, we’re not totally convinced that we have tumbled to it.
Initially HERBERT WELLS leapt out at us – Herbert George (HG) Wells – and we wondered about a connection to Louis PASTEUR, with his research into bacteria – which cause the downfall of the aliens in ‘War of the Worlds’. However, we couldn’t find any other connections to Pasteur, except a rather loose one to Mary SHELLEY, author of ‘Frankenstein’, about ‘scientifically’ creating a new life form. This vague connection made us wonder whether Science Fiction might be the key, so with more online checking, we found that there are at least six Science Fiction writers in the grid: William GIBSON, Iain BANKS, Mary SHELLEY, Frank HERBERT, HG WELLS and Philip DICK. Are there any others?
Bert was quite a fan of Science Fiction in his youth, but had never come across Gibson (contemporary author of ‘cyberpunk’ novels), Herbert (‘Dune’) or Dick (‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’). Once again we learn something new from a crosswords! Many thanks Wiglaf.
ROUE (‘Don Juan’) in PIT (hell) + T E R (first letters or ‘starts’ to torment each Russian)
A reversal (‘goes west’) of MEL (Mel Gibson – 1 down) – ‘Lunar Excursion Module’
PAST (former) EUR (European)
PUFFIN (‘flier’) G (good)
An anagram (‘could spark’) of A N (new) ROMANCE
BANS (outlaws) round or ‘stealing’ K (£1000)
SHY (reluctant) round, not ‘appearing in’ (‘on the contrary’) ELLE (woman’s magazine’)
HER (woman’s) BET (laid) round (‘without’) R (resistance) – strange definition!
SWELL (dandy) with the first letter (‘beginning’) moving to the ‘far right’
STERn (back) missing the last letter (‘briefly’) round (‘cuddling’) RETCH (cat) – we had to check the definition
RAN (managed) round (‘keeping’) CO (company) in CO (business)
DELAwaRE (US state) round (‘drinking’) C (clubs), missing ‘WA’ (Washington – US state)
HUIt (French for ‘eight’ – ‘crew’) missing the last letter or ‘snubbed’ – a new word for us
An anagram (‘in medley’) of SERENADED round C (contralto)
GI (‘Joe’ – American serviceman) S (last or ‘final’ letter of starts) ON (playing) round (‘grabbing’) B (bass)
B (bishop) ONE (‘cardinal’ number) MEAL (spread)
BE (live) A R (river)
STEP (rung) HER (the girl) round FAT (‘money’ – a new slang word for us)
REF (referee – ‘official’) in (‘punches’) a reversal (‘up’) of BAP (Baptist)
dALLIANCE (casual affair) missing (‘abandoning’) ‘d’ (daughter)
I (one) M (million) AGES (times) – rather long definition?
A reversal (‘over’) of SHE (that woman) round or ‘staying’ COP (‘busy’ – slang term for a detective)
An anagram (’employed’) of BY S (south) ASIAN round (‘nursing’) IN (home)
ELECTrIC (‘charged’) round (‘possessing’) C (cocaine) and missing (‘away’) ‘r’ (run)
RECENT (‘novel’) round a reversal (‘rampant’) of IT (sex)
A reversal (‘picked up’) of RAT (traitor) + GET (land)
An anagram (‘away’) of WHY ROT
Hidden (‘suppressing’) in thiS COURSe – we had to check the definition
HEAThER (erica) missing the second ‘h’ (husband)
Spotted DICK is something one might have at lunch
You can add (Stanislaw) LEM to your list.
Found this very difficult and needed to check a few words. Failed to get HERBERT & TARGET although I wondered about the latter and failed to see it. Put an unparsed DICTATE in 26, so a few head slaps are in order. Pleased to get the rest though.
Nice puzzle. Certainly tricky in places but I was only beaten by PIROUETTER right at the end, failing to think of the def – or the Don Juan synonym – and unable to get hell = DIS out of my mind. Like our bloggers, I had to check a few unknown definitions – SCOURS, HUI, LEM, STRETCHER and FAT. Lots to like.
I wonder if there might be an alternative parse for IMAGES – though it’s not my favourite. It would end up with a shorter def, though, and do away with the tautologous element of pictures needing to be seen. Def: pictures. One = I, needs to see (juxtaposition) one million = M times = AGES = I M AGES. The second ‘one’ is just about defensible – there is just the one M – but it’s slightly awkward.
Oh, and Gregory BEAR was another SF author.
Thanks both
PS. From Google: Chi HUI (born 1984) is a prominent Chinese science fiction author and former editor of Science Fiction World,
Is Herbert a silly like Charlie is?
Not on this setter’s wavelength at all. Rarely had so many answers correctly filled but completely unparsed. Thanks to B&J for the enlightenment. As for the theme….
I parsed IMAGES as PostMark but wasn’t sure.
Certainly tough but I think that’s expected from this setter. My reading is mostly sci-fi so the theme helped for a change.
Plenty of synonyms that were new to me and cat=vomit only recently added to the vocabulary from crosswords.
Liked RACCOON
Thanks B&J and Wiglaf
Thanks both. I’ll stick to what I have said before, that I detect the setter has very little sympathy towards solvers. demonstrated by the many difficult, obscure, often stretching definitions and wordplay. Unenjoyable as a result, I’m afraid.
Despite having read at least some of HERBERT, LEM, DICK, GIBSON, WELLS, and SHELLEY, I missed the theme. (By way of recommendation, Lem’s Cyberiad is an absolute delight, which would really appeal to the sort of people who like cryptic crosswords, whether or not they also normally like science fiction.)
I still don’t understand HERBERT–it looks like there’s some British expression I don’t know? Can someone elucidate? I had to reveal that one, of course.
Staticman @7: cat=vomit because most cats vomit a lot! (But you have to keep track how much “a lot” is for your cat, because if it increases in quantity or frequency, it’s time for a vet visit.)
Thanks B&J for the blog. Only 8 sci-fi writers were meant to be included – BEAR, LEM and those shaded. CHI Hui is unintentional and in any case her first name CHI is the surname, not Hui, as is the practice for Chinese names.
Strangely it wouldn’t be a lie to say this was a STRETCHER.
Struggled mightily with this and dnf by a long shot, but thanks to Wiglaf for the challenge and to Bertandjoyce for sorting it all out. I wonder if Spencer Jones is the HERBERT in question.
Re STRETCHER for “lie”: I know I’ve seen that usage by Mark Twain. (Not sure where in Twain’s massive oeuvre, so I can’t give you a quote.) So it feels sort of 19th century rural to me. But by the time Twain wrote most of what we know him for, he wasn’t rural anymore, so never take him at face value.
Did not do well on this, which is annoying as I’ve been an SF fan for over sixty years. I suppose GIBSON is contemporary but he’s been writing for over forty years. (There’s a TV version of Neuromancer in the works, but book is a bit dated nowadays.) And looking at the grid, I wonder about RACCOON as Raccoona Sheldon was a pseudonym of Alice Sheldon, better known as James Tiptree, jr.
Got most. Some definitions a bit far out. But fair enough. Them’s the breaks. Entire Cambridge staff room would have cracked it.