The last crossword before Christmas Day so perhaps not too surprisingly, three of the clues refer to ‘seasonal songs’!
The three thematic entries are however a rather intriguing selection. There are also (possibly unintended?) connections with the festive season in two other answers, but we only found them by chance when we googled the individuals concerned!
Happy 14d to everyone from the two of us!
| Across | ||
| 1 | Foreign network in Western state controlling set of firms | |
| CARTEL | RTE (foreign network – Irish Radio and TV) in CAL (Western state – California) | |
| 5 | Perfect rental property featured in commercial exercise | |
| COMPLETE | LET (rental property) in COM (commercial) PE (exercise) | |
| 9 | Bring together a second musical group without leading pair | |
| ASSEMBLE | A S (second) + |
|
| 10/16d/14d | Party tango? Dance currently amid vulgar bit of revelry miscast awfully with no end of music as seasonal song | |
| DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS? | DO (party) + T (tango) + HEY (dance) + NOW (currently) in or ‘amid’ KITSCH (vulgar) + R (first letter or ‘bit’ of Revelry) + an anagram of MIS |
|
| 11 | Good cartoonist showing warmth of feeling | |
| GLOW | G (good) + LOW (cartoonist – David Low, famed for his Colonel Blimp and WWII cartoons ) | |
| 12/14d | Seasonal song from soprano in hit stirs melancholy possibly | |
| LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS | S (soprano) in an anagram of HIT STIRS MELANCHOLY – anagrind is ‘possibly’. A Christmas no.1 for Mud in 1974. | |
| 13 | Hospital in magazine lies oddly in scary place | |
| HELLHOLE | H (hospital) in HELLO (magazine) + odd letters of LiEs | |
| 14 | Immature actor? | |
| CALLOW | Double definition – a reference to Simon Callow, who is currently appearing in a one-man version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ | |
| 15 | Winter sportsmen’s aerial shots | |
| SKIERS | Double definition, if a shot into the air can be called a ‘sky-er’ | |
| 17 | Emperor greeting head of tourism in Republican state | |
| HIROHITO | HI (greeting) + T (first letter or ‘head’ of Tourism) in R (Republican) OHIO (state). A reference to the 124th Emperor of Japan, who reigned from Christmas Day 1926 through WWII until his death in January 1989 | |
| 19 | See celebrated golfer around Eastern US city | |
| LOS ANGELES | LO (see) + SANG (celebrated) + ELS (Ernie Els – golfer) around E (eastern) | |
| 21 | Standard piece of deception or magic | |
| NORM | Hidden in, or a ‘piece of’ deceptioN OR Magic | |
| 22 | Timeless foreign car Celt clipped – a disaster | |
| FIASCO | FIA |
|
| 23 | Singer getting award by judge in shades | |
| TOM JONES | OM (award – Order of Merit) + J (judge) in TONES (shades) | |
| 24 | Trees, we hear, quite in an advantageous way | |
| USEFULLY | Homonym (‘we hear’) of YEWS (trees) + FULLY (quite) | |
| 25 | Mum and son also wearing doubtful expression | |
| SHTOOM | S (son) + TOO (also) in or ‘wearing’ HM (doubtful expression) | |
| Down | ||
| 2 | Pardon tar on part of shoe around village’s entrance | |
| ABSOLVE | AB (tar – able-bodied seaman) + SOLE (part of shoe) around V (first letter or ‘entrance’ of Village) | |
| 3/14d | A festive CD set with a slow rhythm churned out seasonal song | |
| THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS | An anagram of A FESTIVE CD SET with A SLOW RHYTHM (anagrind is ‘churned out’) | |
| 4 | K Pietersen’s teammate cutting tortured soul? That’s defamatory | |
| LIBELLOUS | I BELL (Ian Bell – England cricket teammate of Kevin Pietersen) in an anagram of SOUL – anagrind is ‘tortured’ | |
| 5 | Purify Catholic article on Sunday in general | |
| CLEANSE | C (Catholic) + AN (article) S (Sunday) in LEE (General) | |
| 6 | Moss, say, arising in humble domain | |
| MODEL | Hidden and reversed (‘arising’) in humbLE DOMain | |
| 7 | Be completely uninhibited in a little fancy Latin resort | |
| LET IT ALL HANG OUT | An anagram of A LITTLE (anagrind is ‘fancy’) + L (Latin) + HANGOUT (resort) | |
| 8 | Old golfer deploying drive not without touch of deftness | |
| TREVINO | An anagram of |
|
| 14 | See 10ac, 12ac & 3d | |
| See 10ac, 12ac & 3d | ||
| 16 | See 10ac | |
| See 10ac | ||
| 17 | One’s enthralled to be in this class? | |
| HELOTRY | Cryptic definition – A play on the less common use of ‘enthralled’ meaning ‘held in bondage or slavery’ | |
| 18 | Wreck poem with bit of poetic nonsense? Quite the reverse | |
| TORPEDO | ODE (poem) + P (first letter or ‘bit’ of Poetic) + ROT (nonsense), all reversed | |
| 20 | Spirit in Yorkshire town by the sound of it | |
| GHOUL | Homonym (‘by the sound of it’) of GOOLE (Yorkshire town) | |
Morning, both, and thank you for the blog. More used to seeing Hypnos in the Independent on Sunday, but this was a bit of seasonal fun. CHRISTMAS was pretty obvious, but in a piece of muppetry unsurpassed for 2013 I decided that 12/14dn was NOELLY THIS CHRISTMAS, which didn’t help matters.
LIBELLOUS was clever, but please don’t mention the cricket; I would normally write SHTUM but since it’s not a real word that doesn’t really matter; and I thought HELOTRY was a bit unfair since it’s an unusual word and the definition is pretty vague.
But all in all an enjoyable distraction from Hypnos. Thanks to him and best wishes for the season to all.
Thanks Hypnos for an enjoyable puzzle and B&J for the blog. Presumably the “(with 14 Down)” was written that way to allow the software to cope.
25ac: I must disagree with K’s Dad @1 here. This is a real German word which has a variety of Anglicised spellings. I remember someone criticising Araucaria for using STUMM, the correct German spelling.
17dn: I must agree with K’s Dad @1 here. I knew the word, but feel that it should count as an obscure word and therefore be given precise wordplay, not just a cryptic definition.
20dn: As with Monk yesterday, note the placing of the definition of the “wrong” answer in the middle of the clue to avoid ambiguity – particularly necessary for homophones of equal length.
A very enjoyable themed offering. Thanks and Season’s Greetings to Hypnos – I do like a crossword where you can have a sing as you solve.
Thanks to B&J too – It was great to meet you both on Saturday even if I did learn slightly more about your private life than was entirely necessary!! Hope you have a great Christmas – if anyone is looking for a present idea for B&J, matching jim-jams could be just the thing ;)xx
I needed aids at the end to get SHTOOM because I had never seen that variant spelling and it just didn’t occur to me. I couldn’t get past thinking of either “um” or “er” for the “doubtful expression” in the wordplay, and “hm” didn’t occur to me because I’m sure I’ve seen it written as “hmm” whenever I have come across it before.
I knew HELOTRY so it wasn’t a problem, although I can see why some people would find the clue unsatisfactory.
As far as Sue@3s’ comment about matching jim-jams for B&J for Xmas is concerned, thanks for that mental image Sue. From now on, rightly or wrongly, I’ll be imagining B&J as a latter-day version of Howard and Hilda from Ever Decreasing Circles ………
Merry Christmas to you all.
Well …… What can we say? Comments about matching jim-jams have spoilt Christmas for us as we have now found out what each of us have bought for each other!
Crypticsue – can we now keep things on topic about the crossword so we don’t spoil our present opening tomorrow any further?! It was good meeting you on Saturday but were mortified when we were upstaged later in the day!
Andy @4 – it’s better than the image I came home with last Saturday 😀
B&J sorry to spoil the present opening. I’m sure there’ll be lots of exciting surprises!
I did not manage to 5 across this crossword because I thought I had a better answer to 6 down.
Moss, say, arising in humble domain (5)
My answer to this was:- “sedge” based on,
Sed is des arising (des res)
ge is say arising (eg)
This puzzle was probably ok for the experts 5 years ago in the Sunday Independent, but for the general readership of the “i” on the day after Boxing Day 2018, I found it very difficult, most of us amateur puzzlers only get a couple of hours in a day “if we are lucky “ to have a go at a cryptic crossword, this one would take all day, come “i” if you must keep churning out the old Independent puzzles, can you please give us ordinary human mortals an additional puzzle we can have reasonable go at apart from your choice of crosswords, can I say the paper is excellent.