The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26409.
A typical offering from Paul (except for the lack of risqué humour), inventive and not too difficult, provided you keep your wits about you to avoid all the misdirections.
| Across | ||
| 9 | HO CHI MINH |
Hellish extremists welcoming old Communist leader, that man in Asian revolutionary (2,3,4)
An envelope (‘welcoming’) of O (‘old’) plus C (‘Communist leader’) plus HIM (‘that man’) plus ‘in’ in HH (‘HellisH extremists’)
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| 10 | RIFLE |
Upset about head of family one’s butted? (5)
An envelope (‘about’) of F (‘head of Family’) in RILE (‘upset’), with a cryptic definition.
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| 11 | ONE-STEP |
Dance round home with record (3-4)
A charade of O (’round’) plus NEST (‘home’) plus EP (‘record’).
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| 12 | DIAMOND |
Matt finish in mind around one card (7)
An envelope (‘around’) of I (‘one’) in DAMON (‘Matt’) plus D (‘finish in minD‘).
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| 13 |
See 23
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| 14 | PROSECUTED |
Tried describing some 12s in exercise with 12s (10)
An envelope (‘in’) of ROSE-CUT (‘describing some 12s’ i.e. diamonds) in PE (‘exercise’) plus D (’12s’, diamonds again).
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| 16,6 | OUTSIDE BROADCAST |
Recording away from the studio — tedious? (7,9)
A wordplay-in-the-answer clue: an anagram (BROADCAST) of OUTSIDE is ‘tedious’.
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| 17 | WASTREL |
Profligate is no longer taking risks, enjoying life for starters (7)
A charade of WAS (‘is no longer’) plus TREL, first letters (‘starters’) of ‘Taking Risks Enjoying Life’.
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| 19 | TROUSER-ZIP |
One waking up with buzz, going after first of tsetse flies (7-3)
A charade of T (‘first of Tsets’) plus ROUSER (‘one waking up’) plus ZIP (‘buzz’ in the sense of hurry). Apart from being needed for the surface, I cannot juustify the plural ‘flies’.
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| 22 | ACID |
Drug treatment to get over cold (4)
An envelope (‘to get over’) of C (‘cold’) in AID (‘treatment’?)
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| 24 | ENGLAND |
Country putting organ on menu (heart only) (7)
A charade of EN (‘mENu heart only’) plud GLAND (‘organ’)
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| 25 | ELAPSED |
Having failed, pleased to see passed (7)
An anagram (‘having failed’) of ‘pleased’.
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| 26 | IRENE |
Girl — Frenchman going after one (5)
A charade of I (‘one’) plus RÉNÉ (‘Frenchman’).
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| 27 | CROSSRAIL |
Boring project with petulant rant? (9)
A charade of CROSS (‘petulant’) plus RAIL (‘rant’), for the east-west rail line under construction through London, involving extensive tunnelling (‘boring’).
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| Down | ||
| 1 | SHOOT FROM THE HIP |
Talk directly, given Spooner’s sound of the fog horn? (5,4,3,3)
A Spoonerism of HOOT FROM THE SHIP (assuming the foghorn is on board).
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| 2 | ACTED OUT |
Mimed to a T, cued badly (5,3)
An anagram (‘badly’) of ‘to a T cued’.
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| 3,5,20 | FIFTY SHADES OF GREY |
Iffy novel about debasement ultimately, fiend from hell shackling female in vacuous story? (5,6,2,4)
An envelope (‘about’) of T (‘debasemenT ultimately’) in FIFY, an anagram (‘novel’) of ‘iffy’ plus another double envelope (‘in’ and ‘shackling’) ofF (‘female’) in HADES OGRE (‘fiend from hell’) in SY (‘vacuous StorY‘), with an extended definition-cum-review.
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| 4 | DISPERSE |
Scatter spiders spinning on middle of web (8)
A charade of DISPERS, an anagram (‘spinning’) of ‘spiders’ plus E (‘middle of wEb’).
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| 5 |
See 3
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| 6 |
See 16
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| 7 | AFLOAT |
A feature of a carnival on the sea (6)
A charade of ‘a’ plus FLOAT (‘feature of a carnival’).
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| 8 | HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE |
Grass reported a couple of cons in rhyme (3,6,6)
… the cat and the fiddle… A charade of HEY, a homophone (‘reported’) of HAY (‘grass’) plus DIDDLE DIDDLE (‘a couple of cons’).
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| 15 | MISSHAPEN |
Female writer capturing hearts with article, distorted (9)
An envelope (‘capturing’) of H (‘hearts’ in bridge, say) plus A (‘article’) in MISS (‘female’) plus PEN (‘writer’).
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| 17 | WHITE-HOT |
Very exciting bit I can’t hear, nothing trivial, initially (5-3)
A charade of WHIT (‘bit’) plus EH? (‘I can’t hear’) plus O (‘nothing’) plus T (‘Trivial initially’).
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| 18 | ROCK STAR |
Famous singer causes agitation to sailor (4,4)
A charade of ROCKS (’causes agitation’) plus TAR (‘sailor’).
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| 20 |
See 3
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| 21 | REDUCE |
Cut cherry, juicier with odd bits removed (6)
A charade of RED (‘cherry’) plus UCE (‘jUiCiEr, odd bits removed’).
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| 23,13 | MARSH FROG |
Jumper knitted from rags worn by hippy leader (5,4)
An envelope (‘worn by’) of H (‘Hippy leader’) in MARSFROG, an anagram (‘knitted’) of ‘from rags’ .
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Thanks, PeterO; in my own “English”, “flies” is the word I would use rather than “fly” but I have no idea which is more current nowadays.
An easy one from Paul today but there is still much to admire and plenty of smiles, if no smirks!
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY: great &lit but too good really as the surface reading immediately gives the game away.
19a is ok, I think. ‘Your flies are undone’ is a common expression.
Thanks, PeterO and Paul
Feeling virtuous because I had no idea how many shades there were in the dreadful book at 3d (30, 40, 50, 60?), so it wasn’t a write-in. TROUSER-ZIP last in, but my penultimate MISSHAPEN a much better clue.
@2, Rog:
There’s also the W.E. Johns book: Biggles Flies Undone.
Thanks for Fifty Shades… I’d got it all except the vacuous story, which I’d got marked down as the def given that “iffy novel” was wordplay – didn’t realise the whole shebang was one vast &lit.
I didn’t know the right Matt either – Paul is always more up-to-date in his references than I am.
Thanks Peterr. Had a hiccup on 8D: it looked like Lee (sounds like grass) Harvey Oswald. Ditto for 27A, guessing first ‘crossball’ then ‘crosswail’ for is project that was new to me. Otherwise pretty straightforward.
Thanks, PeterO.
Relatively mild but entertaining puzzle from Paul.
Some nicely varied wordplay, though there are rather a lot of initial and final letters incorporated into charades. I particularly enjoyed the &lit at 3,5,20, the reverse clue at 16,6 – and 19a, which raised a smile. I even liked the Spooner clue.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
Could not parse WHITE-HOT and CROSSRAIL was a mystery.
Laughed at FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, I thought it was a book about old ladies; however, on googling, see that it is mainly older women who buy it. Just hope no one sends it to me for Christmas.
Flies also made me smile. In the House of Commons someone sent Chuchill a note saying “Mr Prime Minister, your flies are undone” (buttons in those days), to which Churchill replied “An old bird rarely falls out of his nest”.
CROSSRAIL and EUROTUNNEL in successive days. I’m on the look-out for HS TWO.
Paul always ‘works’ for me; there’s a fairness in his clues which, eg, Otterden yesterday lacked once or twice. Plus he’s very good at linking clues in different parts of the grid, which helps get over the ‘awkward quadrant’ – three examples today.
But didn’t know that diamonds could be rose-cut and missed the actorly reference in 12a.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
I struggled for ages to parse 25a because I got it fixated on ‘Having failed’ = LAPSED but of course I couldn’t figure out where the initial E came from. I felt such an idiot when the penny finally dropped! 🙂
I wonder if calling a trouser fly ‘flies’ came about due to people incorrectly expanding the contraction in “Your fly’s undone!” My Chambers doesn’t even mention the plural version, yet my Encarta dictionary states it is usually in plural, so perhaps that’s the norm in the US and we in the UK have just picked it up from them.
gladys @5: Matt Damon has been one of the most prominent Hollywood actors/screenwriters/producers for over a quarter of a century. Even if you’ve never seen one of his films it’s hard to believe you are unfamiliar with his name.
Angstony @10, the OCED, 1995 edition, gives fly (Brit. usu. in pl.) a flap on a garment, esp. trousers, to contain or cover a fastening; 1964 edition, fly, lap on garment to contain or cover buttonholes. Seems usage of the plural is recent.
I’ve always, correctly or otherwise, referred to a trouser zip as “flies”. Though I think back when they were buttons rather than zips, “button fly” was common. Chambers has “fly” as a trouser fastener, but it’s easy to see that someone might think each half of the arrangement to be a single fly.
Last in CROSSRAIL, pure guesswork, knowing nothing of the boring project.
Thank you PeterO for explaining 12a and 17d. And thank you gladys @5 for joining me in being ignorant of Matt Damon!
Thanks Paul & PeterO.
My ODE, which is quite good on current usage, gives Brit. often flies for ‘an opening at the crotch…..’
MISSHAPEN was my LOI with entertaining misdirection. I liked OUTSIDE BROADCAST and the flies.
I thought at first the MARSH FROG was knitted from ‘rags worn,’ no doubt being deliberately misleading, although then ‘worn’ would have had to do double-duty.
P.S. fyi: ‘The Fifty Shades of Grey movie will allegedly feature no male nudity and potentially less-then-expected amounts of explicit sex. That might not be a recipe for box office success.’ Must be Hollywood dumbing down, especially now that the Republicans are in charge…..
P.P.S Thanks Cookie @8 for the amusing Churchillian reference.
“Flies” is the British usage, “fly” is universal in the US. “Flies” mystified me when I first ran across it.
So rare for me to be able to finish a crossword, so managing is always a bonus. Paul seems to me on my wavelength. Needed the blog (thanks!) to explain the vacuous story though.
The zip would always be plural flies to me – just like trousers almost always are (except when used adjectively as here??). I guess crosswords would be much less entertaining if the language was less riddled with such oddities.
Cookie @11: Thanks. That makes sense as I seem to recall the singular ‘fly’ being more common when I was a… I was about to say ‘nipper’ there but in light of what we’re talking about I think I’ll just say ‘youngster’ instead. 😮
Valentine @16: Thanks. Then I guess the origin of our “flies” usage will remain a mystery. It’s also interesting that we usually refer to the most common fastener used in that area as a ‘zip’ whereas you would usually refer to it as a ‘zipper’, right?
Very enjoyable as always – I particularly liked TROUSER-ZIP, SHOOT FROM THE HIP and HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE. I usually find that I’m on Paul’s wavelength, and think that his clueing is very fair. I struggled with Otterden yesterday.
Enjoyed this without finding any real difficulties. Last in was ACID – needed ROCK STAR for that, which I only saw after spending far too long looking for anagrams of “To sailor”. HO CHI MINH and FIFTY SHADES OF GREY were almost write-ins from the enumeration alone. Liked SHOOT FROM THE HIP and CROSSRAIL. As for flies, the erroneous plural version was already in common usage at my primary school in the mid 70s.
Thanks to Paul and PeterO
Yes, all jolly fine. Except for 12 that is. If you are seriously not into a particular field of activity then giving a first name without indicating the field of activity makes the clue pure crap for you. It no doubt makes it seriously easy if you are into that field of activity. I solved the clue from crossers and “card”. I then had absolutely no idea what the rest of the clue meant. Having come here I looked Mr Damon up on Wikipedia. Nope, still never heard of him and his face was totally unrecogniseable.
So, just how many famous Matts are there if the field of activity is not indicated? Far too many to justify saying just Matt.
A great Private Eye cartoon from a few years back: one fly saying to another “your humans are undone”. There are various ways of telling someone discreetly – “you’re flying low” “you’ve got egg on your chin” are two.
Paul seems to have turned the tables on us today, it is we who are supplying the risqué humour.
Marienkaefer @22, “you’ve got Windows in your laptop”.
DL @21
Like you I got DIAMOND from definition and crossers and scratched my head about the parse for a bit. But when you look at the wordplay the “I” and the second “D” are well indicated, and that leaves “DAMON”. This actor, whose career goes back to 1988, has starred in films that have to date made over $5.5bn at the box office, straddling many different genres, including war (Saving Private Ryan) action thrillers (the Bourne series), western (True Grit), crime thrillers (Ocean series, The Departed), sci-fi (Elysium) and many others. I think it’s fair to say that makes him pretty famous
I would gently suggest that it’s not the setter’s fault if some solvers haven’t come across absolutely all the cultural references, pop or otherwise, contained in their clues.
Thanks Paul and PeterO
Fairly straightforward, though, although I had guessed FROG from crossers early on, MARSH was my LOI.
I’ve always referred to “flies”, and thought (not necessarily correctly) that the plural was because of the multiple buttons that preceded zips.
Back in the day
Back in my schooldays, we called that area “the flies”. I always assumed it was short for “fly buttons” since zips were still at least a decade away.
Thanks all
Last in 23,13 since I was sure the anagram was rags worn!
Favourite was 16,6.
No problems with flies!
Mitz, well done, you totally missed the point. I never said he wasn’t famous. Listing what he has appeared in is utterly irreleveant to what I was saying (never heard of those either). But he is not universally famous. If he was universally famous I would have heard of him, QED.
Why is it, that of all the arts, followers of cinema are uniquely unable to grasp the simple point that it is not a universal interest, it is not, therefore, universal knowledge?
I follow a sport which has many followers, and the stars of that sport are famous within that sport. Some people outside that sport have also heard of them, probably by accident. But why, other than accident, should you have heard of them if you have no interest yourself? Just reverse the situation and you might then understand.
As hedgehoggy is late on parade, could I be today’s pedant and say…with DIAMOND, I have no problem with Matt Damon being brought in, but isn’t there a tradition that a question mark is supplied to indicate that the setter is using the ‘definition by example’ technique?
I quite liked the puzzle though – some nice things in there (I like reverse-cluing like OUTSIDE BROADCAST…even though the cryptic device is no use at all in solving the clue – merely providing post solve smirk-value!).
Derek, you have missed my point, but we’ve been here before and I simply can’t be bothered.
Marienkaefer @22, as a schoolboy, a person who was “flying without a licence” would be told, “XYZ” (eXamine Your Zip). On correcting the wardrobe malfunction, the transgressor would simply reply “ABC” (Already Been Checked).
Of course, Matt Damon’s name shouldn’t be considered universal knowledge. But then neither should 50 SoG, Ho Chi Minh or Crossrail (which I’d never heard of, and again got from checkers). General knowledge, yes, but not universal. A setter can only reasonably fill his or her crossword with things many or most are likely to know, and I think Paul has done exactly that.
With crosswords, there are always times when, however learned you are, you will hit a stumbling block, and I think the beauty of a cryptic crossword is that you get both a definition and a wordplay to help you, along with the checking letters. So the clue, to me, is accessible even if the Matt eludes you.
As for indicating what field of endeavor Matt Damon is in, the clue kind of can’t, thanks to the need for a plausible surface reading. “Matt finish” is a thing. “Actor Matt finish” is not.
And anyway, “Actor Matt” gets you Damon or maybe Dillon, and then…who? Too easy.
I’m not sure what was wrong with me today. This was a well crafted, witty puzzle which was well up to Paul’s high standard but I got in something of a twist with it. Perhaps it was the lack of rivalry- TROUSER ZIP and FORTY SHADES being as close as we got. I loved the Spoonerism,ROCK STAR and WHITE HOT. Last in was CROSSRAIL
THANKS Paul
I enjoyed this puzzle, although I admit that FSOG and DIAMOND went in from definition and I didn’t bother to parse them. I finished in the SE with CROSSRAIL after the ROCK STAR/ACID crossers.
An enjoyable crossword but easy enough if one avoided the many misdirections.
The SOED seems pretty conclusive on the “flies” issue.
7A strip on a garment which contains or covers the fastening; sing. & (freq.) in pl., the flap that hides the fastening at the front of a pair of trousers; the fastening itself. m19.
G. Greene The flies of his grey flannel trousers gaped from a lost button.
Thanks to PeterO and Paul
I enjoyed this crossword from my favourite setter. The one that caused me problems was RIFLE. Eventually I parsed it from the crossings as RILE plus F but it still took me a while to get the connection with “butt” – perhaps not the best word to mention when discussing Paul’s crosswords.
I am still trying to get the hang of “crosswordese” and it needed Eileen a few months ago to explain to me that “butter” could refer to a male sheep. It is but a short step from the dairy product to a piece of ordnance. Aren’t crosswords marvellous?!
Eileen, I hope you enjoyed your Wednesday walk.
Paul passed the ball into our court today, and it was really a ball trap (clay pigeon shooting in France).
Just a thought: If the clue for 16a had read ‘Recording away from Studio E — tedious?’, then it would have provided a double definition 🙂
Thanks to Peter & Paul
Thanks Paul and PeterO
Entertaining, as always, from Paul with great variety and humour in his clues! I have grown to enjoy unravelling the mysteries in the parsing of some of his longer clues such as ‘Fifty Shades’ and PROSECUTED today. His misdirection in a couple had me barking up the ‘to sailor’ anagram tree and at ICED instead of ACID for a while there.
Interesting with the Matt clue …whilst I know him and had the ‘aha’ moment with 12a, one could argue similarly where Mo was recently clued for Mo Farah (in the FT, I think) – I didn’t know him previously but he wasn’t too difficult to track down.
To Angstony @18
Yes, flies have a zip and a fly has a zipper.
Here I am again commenting four years after the fact. I enjoyed this puzzle. All the controversy was about ‘Matt’ – which I certainly didn’t parse, even though I got it right. I found Crossrail much more annoying, as it was my only fail and I’d never heard of it.