I rattled through most of this pretty quickly, helped by a lot of anagrams and some other rather obvious clues. I have a nagging worry that I’m missing a theme here, but I can’t see anything obvious, apart from a vague link between 11a and 5d, so over to you… Thanks to Brummie.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | DUCHESS | Aristocrat getting half of tax on game (7) DU[TY] + CHESS |
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| 5. | CORN DOG | US fast food is old-fashioned stuff — make good (4,3) CORN (old-fashioned stuff) + DO (make) + G – and American fast food consisting of a sausage in batter |
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| 9. | AGREE | Greylag reed houses share a view (5) Hidden in greylAG REEd |
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| 10. | DARK HORSE | Hardly a revealing character, Black Beauty? (4,5) Double definition |
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| 11. | ALMOND-EYED | Deadly omen affected Tutankhamun, visually (6-4) (DEADLY OMEN)* – a look associated with ancient Egypt: see here for example |
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| 12. | COOK | I’m astonished by Köchel’s fiddle (4) COO (I’m astonished!) + K (as used to refer to Mozart’s music in Köchel’s catalogue). “Fiddle” as in “cook the books” |
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| 14. | MOISTURISER | Increase in tourism misrepresented, which is rather a dampener (11) RISE in TOURISM* |
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| 18. | WHITE SPIRIT | Thinner, washed out, in need of courage (5,6) WHITE (washed out) + SPIRIT (courage) |
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| 21. | BABY | Dear little book found in stall (4) B in BAY |
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| 22. | COLORATURA | Decorative singer, actual or fraudulent, bags gold (10) OR in (ACTUAL OR)* |
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| 25. | ITEMISING | I almost do casual work and I perform, making a list (9) I TEM[P] + I SING |
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| 26. | TUTOR | Turning out in transitive school (5) OUT* in TR |
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| 27. | GRYPHON | Horny GP after surgery is a monster (7) (HORNY GP)* |
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| 28. | THREE RS | Education basically ruined her rest (5,2) (HER REST)* |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1,24. | DO AWAY WITH | Abolish one method to get humour into Homerian acknowledgement of stupidity (2,4,4) A WAY + WIT in D’OH (Homer Simpson’s exclamation) |
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| 2. | CHROME | Church of Rome: six of its members shunned superficially shiny stuff (6) CH[URCH OF] ROME – seems rather an odd clue, but I suppose it works |
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| 3. | EVEN NUMBER | It indicates the previous clue, say, is less sensitive than before (4,6) As in “even more numb” – the previous clue is 2, which is an even number |
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| 4. | SIDLE | School’s head, useless creep (5) S + IDLE |
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| 5. | CARPENTER | Artisan‘s stylus possessed by renowned Egyptologist (9) PEN in CARTER (Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb) |
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| 6. | RUHR | Upper class Henry entering bishop’s address here in Germany (4) U H in RR |
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| 7. | DORMOUSE | Animal used moor for recreation (8) (USED MOOR)* |
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| 8. | GREEK URN | Ancient vessel — pull a nasty face, inhaling smoke (5,3) REEK in GURN |
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| 13. | PROTRACTOR | One who makes longer drawing instrument (10) Double definition |
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| 15. | IMPLOSION | One medium Pils drunk without oxygen at the time of collapse (9) I + M + O in PILS* + ON (at the time of) |
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| 16. | SWABBING | Cleaning up pop group not quite into rock (8) ABB[A] in SWING |
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| 17. | DIMBLEBY | Bible’s out with day, month, year for David or Jonathan? (8) (BIBLE D M Y)* – the Dimblebys are a famous dynasty of British broadcasters |
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| 19. | TURTLE | Career time for hot shell-suited swimmer (6) HURTLE with the H replaced by T – it’s perhaps possible to read the clue the other way round and get HURTLE as the answer, but I think it works better this way (and the online verson agrees) |
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| 20. | WALRUS | Toothy creature happened to be holding back web address (6) URL reversed in WAS |
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| 23. | OUGHT | Anything at all should! (5) Double definition |
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Er …BABY DUCHESS CARPENTER GRYPHON COOK TURTLE WALRUS DORMOUSE- thats a good start shurely!
Aargh! How did I miss that? Thanks copmus.
Ha! I missed the theme as well. Also couldn’t get COOK for some reason. Yes, fairly easy all round. I thought the clue for BABY was possibly a bit iffy. Favourites were DIMBLEBY, MOISTURISER and GREEK URN. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
THREE RS, too
Dimbleby/Tweedledee?. It’s 150 years since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published. For some reason, I found the across clues much easier than the downers. Good fun!.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Well, two perhaps: Reeling and Writhing.
Thanks, Andrew.
Most straightforward solve for well over a week – but no complaints.
I’m glad I forgot to look for a theme until I’d finished – I might have been stuck at an unparsable WHITE RABBIT at 18ac!
Favourite clue by far is DIMBLEBY – thanks Brummie.
Had 16 Down as “Sweeping”, for a while, with the most unlikely “eep” inside the clue as a homage to Uriah Heep, so couldn’t get 21 Ac for a while…
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
I nearly fell into the WHITE rabbit trap, and could not parse GREEK URN.
I think there is a second ‘theme’ here, the final Alice books differ from the original tale Dodgson (Carroll) told the girls on their rowing trip from Folly Bridge near Oxford to Godstow. The added matter is related to the ‘new mathematics’ of the time, algebra in particular. Dodgson was a very conservative mathematician, a lover of Euclidian geometry (PROTRACTOR), and Alice moves from a rational world to a land where EVEN NUMBERs behave erratically. http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_10.html
Again a bridge too far?
A very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
(Learning about Dimbleby and Three RS in Chennai formerly Madras)
Cookie @ 9 – Very good! I’ve been looking for other words to shoehorn in: best I can come up with is TUTOR, which sounds as though it has something to do with the TORTOISE who taught us; and DO AWAY WITH – Off with their heads!
drofle @11, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was a mathematics TUTOR at Oxford.
Ronald @8- I had “sweeping” in mind for a while(16)- there was a horrible pop group called Sweet but the remaining” ping” didnt make any sense so I rethought. And the rabbit was spirited away.
Shouldn’t that have been a “do’h!” instead of an “aargh!”, Andrew?
Drofle @11, rote learning of Euclid’s elements in English schools in the 1860’s came increasingly under fire and there were proposals to DO AWAY WITH the Euclidian approach to geometry, the two people on different sides of the Euclid divide being Thomas Archer Hirst and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
[Lillibet @14, Andrew seems not to appreciate ‘themes’, neither does John (Wil Ransomme), both are mathematicians, see comments, Independent 9068 / Phi.]
Cookie @ 12 & 15 – Thanks for the education!
[Drofle @17, I am interested in the subject because my great-aunt was taken in by Alice Liddell’s uncle, the Earl of Ravensworth, when her mother died, my great-grandfather was the surgeon for his coal miners.]
All pretty straightforward and enjoyable – I missed the theme but I never read the books. Liked THREE RS, SIDLE (last in), DIMBLEBY and WALRUS
Thanks to Brummie and Andrew
Could somebody explain 6d to me please. Why is Bishop’s address “RR” ?
Right Reverend is the standard form of address for a bish
Well it is MUCH better than yesterday’s. Quite a lot of anags, nine. There is a theme, but some people are being too generous as to its possibilities, Cookie! Okay:
1a the ‘on’ as discussed here a lot is not usual used like this for across clues unless you are ‘Barnard’ ha ha ha; 11a not sure re def; 14a silly def; 1 24d surely this should have ‘Homeric’?; 2d yes very odd, why bother; 3d weak def, I don’t think the cryptic really works either; 6d def?; 8d REEK is a dialect word which makes things harder; 15d can I really have a medium ‘Pils’?; 19d would prefer to see ‘has’ in there.
Not too bad, at least the theme is in the grid.
HH
Hoggy @22, not so sure about being too generous here, Carroll wrote several articles ‘lampooning’ his mathematical colleagues at Oxford, and it is said that the Alice books would not have caught on so without their satirical content.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
Steady progress (missing the theme, of course). Enjoyable but not special; the adventure of Philistine yesterday was more interesting, if less rigorous.
Stand out for me was 1,24 for the “Homerian acknowledgement of stupidity”. I finished in the NW with this one near last, after having tried to remember names of characters from Homer!
Well 1d/24d indeed provided an acknowledgement of Homerian stupidity when I finally got it
missed the theme, very clever.
I spent ages trying to get an ARK in for vessel in 8d, and I was well-mislead by the Dimbleby’s
Thanks Brummie and thanks Andrew for the review
I’m surprised everyone thought this was easy.
I started doing this last night, and got only about four things in. Then this morning, it did all start to fall into place, but I’d hardly have called it easy. Total solving time for me about 45-50 minutes, which is on the long side for me. I get today off work, as the college I teach at takes Veterans Day (Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, whatever you call it where you are) as a holiday, which is probably a good thing–it gave me the time I needed to do this.
Did NOT see the theme.
I have predictably never heard of DIMBLEBY; we also have a different name for WHITE SPIRIT. (Mineral spirits). I was unable to parse 8dn (Gurn? New one for me.)
Corn dogs are disgusting, by the way. Do not try.
Thanks to Brummie and Andrew. I needed help parsing GREEK URN (I did not know “gurn” and I wanted to squeeze in “Grecian” a la Keats) and DO AWAY WITH, and both DIMBLEBY and WHITE SPIRIT (“paint thinner” in my vocabulary) were new to me. Last in was COOK (I took a while seeing “coo”). Overall, Great fun.
COOK was my LOI as well. I wasn’t looking for a theme and consequently didn’t find one. I didn’t know the anniversary either but it wasn’t necessary to solving the puzzle- although I might have got DUCHESS more easily
DIMBELBY was so good!
Thanks Brummie
Thanks for the blog, Andrew. One tiny point – in 2, I think ‘superficially’ is part of the definition, as chrome is superficially shiny stuff.
And thanks to Brummie for an enjoyable crossword.
Also wrote in “sweeping” without parsing the “eep” giving E_B_ for “dear” which I assumed was Elbe to match Ruhr elsewhere.
I then realised “Dear” is a concatenation of “DE, a r” meaning a river in Germany (couldn’t see how ELE was a stall but assumed it was). Was feeling a bit clever and was expecting all sorts of complaints here.
Imagine my disappointment to find out that I am not clever at all.
Thank you Brummie and Andrew. Really enjoyed this.
I thought that this crossword was interesting because in every case (I think) the cryptic part of the clue led me to the definition. This is a change from the increasingly common practice of setting clues for which the definition goes in followed by a frantic(and judging by comments, frequently fruitless) effort to decode the cryptic possibilities. Whether you think this is a refreshing change is obviously a matter of opinion but although it was a relatively solve, I found it most enjoyable.
THREE RS had me on the back foot for ages as I couldn’t work out what the two-letter word was! I really enjoyed this one – perfectly pitched for my brain (slow start leading to triumphant finish two hours later). Thank you Brummie.
Thanks all
What can have happened in Birmingham?
This is the easiest Brummie ever!
I loved the misdirection in 18 across….there had to be an anagram of thinner- no?
A very pleasant diversion on a trip to Warwickshire for a funeral early this morning, thanks very much Brummie.
Having the theme pointed out to me only added to my pleasure, so many thanks to all, especially Cookie, for that. Thank you too for the blog, Andrew.
Despite the fact that I read “The Walrus and the Carpenter” two weeks ago (entirely different context) I somehow managed to miss the theme. Doh!
Easy or tricky? Well, I tried to do it this morning while waiting for the telephone repair men and struggled to get even a few answers, then had to put it aside. I had an unintentionally long nap after lunch, came back to this puzzle and the answers flowed quite quickly (except COOK, my LOI, which took quite a while). I missed the theme, of course, even though I love the books. If a frumious Bandersnatch had appeared, I’d have got it at once. 😉
Favourites are THREE RS, DO AWAY WITH and DIMBLEBY.
Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
Same here for 16d. The “eep’ could have been (D)eep (Purple), or ELP (eep being nearly elp). Mrs Dave in Spain suggested ABBA so we managed to correct before we checked your blog. Thanks to all.
I agree with others – a very straightforward sub ten-minuter, but none the worse for that though most surprising for a Brummie. Favourite by far, for me, the wonderfully misdirectional DIMBLEBY.
cookie, dutch – are either of you grocers perchance? Surely it’s 1860s and Dimblebys? Do we not owe correct apostrophisation to those who follow us?! Or do I weep alone? x
[William F P @38, apologies, my English will only get worse from now on. By the way, is “a 60s war zone” correct, or should it have an apostrophe? (Phi, 9062.)]
“… are either of you grocers?” ??? What sort of standards are these? 😕
[William, yes, “a 60s war zone” seems to be correct (a false possessive, so not “a 60s’ war zone”?), but there appears to be controversy over years, 1860’s versus 1860s (the spell check is questioning 1860s), however, the Oxford Dictionaries say apostrophes should only be used with single numbers, e.g. “find all the number 7’s”, but not with dates.
Searching further I find that those who were at school before the 1970s, as I was, were taught to write 1950’s and 1960’s etc..]
Cookie @41 et al
Well, I was at school well before the 1970s and, as you can see, I don’t use the apostrophe. I think of apostrophes as indicating possession or omission, so I don’t see the point of an apostrophe after a number, even a single digit one. We wouldn’t write “Count all the seven’s on this page”, so why add an apostrophe just because the number is not written out?
jennyk @42, I wonder if when I was taught in the 1940s it was assumed that 1940 on its own meant nothing, but that 1940’s implied the “1940’s years”, i.e. the years of the 1940s ?
jennyk, thinking further, are you certain you were not taught to include the apostrophe? I live in a kind of time warp, from the age of 22 I have not lived in an English speaking country, apart from 6 years in Jamaica; I am now over 70 years old.
Wait a minute, my spell check is American and will not accept 1960s (it will accept 7’s), NATO sometimes uses 1960’s etc. and I went to school in New Zealand. Unfortunately, I don’t suppose mrpenney will see this.
[Cookie, no, I’m not certain. I’m only slightly younger than you, and my memory of exactly how I was taught is very vague. I’d been reading since I was three so I’d absorbed a lot just from that, and I was often sat in the corner with a book intended for older children rather than going over the basics again with the class. Also, I went to 3 different primary schools, so I may not even have received consistent messages about punctuation at that stage. Of course, we covered punctuation in English language lessons at senior school, but I don’t remember this particular issue being covered, though I do remember one Australian teacher who insisted on putting in commas at every conceivable opportunity and docked marks for every one which was absent
[BTW, I believe from comments on previous blogs that William may be older than either of us and yet still apparently favours “1970s”.]
Is there actually any rule in this area? Perhaps the use of decades as descriptive terms postdates the formation of the rules of grammar. As I see it, the apostrophe in (eg) 1960’s indicates that something strange is happening in tying numbers and letters together. One wouldn’t write nineteen sixtys, which is what 1960s spells.
Van Winkle, I was joking when I said to come back here, you have made an error in line 1 of your comment @18 in today’s Qaos.
The 1940’s years (sic) would be illogical because there is only one year 1940. The 1940s’ years would be very strange, but imply you were looking at 1940-49. Of course, in the real world, ‘the 1940s’ is the correct form to refer to 1940-49.
As an editor I would always use (e.g.) 1940s – no apostrophe whatsoever. The thing that really bugged me was US punctuation, but that’s another subject . . .
Van Winkle @46
You wouldn’t write nineteen sixty’s either.
jennyk – agreed, you wouldn’t write that either. So I feel one has licence to do something a little strange to portray nineteen sixties.
From what I can see the American English usage of “1960’s” etc. started to die out in the 1980s, and is now only considered correct if referring to things that belong to the year 1960, e.g. “the 1960’s movies”, films made in the year 1960.
I found this discussion on apostrophes interesting in that I personally had never been taught to use apostrophes for the plural of numerals. In fact I had never knowingly encountered this use.(And I was definitely educated before 1970 as I started primary school in 1958!)
So I referred to my Fowler’s “Modern English Usage” Revised Third Edition 1998.
It says.
C General
1 Abbreviations. Though once commonly used in the plural of abbreviations and numerals (QC’s, the 1960’s), the apostrophe is now best omitted in such circumstances: MAs, MPs, the 1960s, the three Rs, in twos and threes. Except that it is normally used in contexts where its omission might possibly lead to confusion e.g. dot your i’s and cross your t’s, there are three i’s in inimical, the class of’ 61 (= 1961).
All very interesting!
This morning I referred to Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage, OUP, first published 1980, second edition 1995.
It says
punctuation (1): apostrophe
3 special plurals
It was in the early 1960’s. (OR … 1960s.)
Funny how everyone uses the 1960s as an example, here is another
The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, OUP, first published 1983, second edition 1993.
apostrophe
In modern English the use of the apostrophe to mark ordinary plurals (e.g. potato’s, ice-cream’s) is generally regarded as illiterate and is disparagingly referred to as the ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’. It is usually acceptable with the less usual plurals of letters and dates, e.g.
Mind your p’s and q’s
That is what people did in the 1960’s/1960s
I think the overall message is that both forms are used these days, but perhaps the trend is towards the form without the apostrophe. Both Cookie’s latest sources give them as alternatives. The ODEG only says the apostrophe is “usually acceptable” (in contrast to “illiterate” in other circumstances) which is a rather lukewarm approval.
I’m puzzled by B(NTO)’s Fowler reference including “class of ’61”, as surely that is indicating omission, and nothing to do with plurality?
jennyk @55, both the sources I cite are out of date, they do not appear to be revised editions. The usage now is “… in the 1960s”, but I can find no grammar book of a later date in the house. B(NTO)’s Fowler is a later revised edition.
Having eavesdropped on the ongoing apostrophe conversation with some interest, I’ll add that the Guardian style guide has this to say about dates:
“Use figures for decades: the 1960s, the swinging 60s, etc.”
Unfortunately, I can’t find a definitive style guide to apply to the Independent crosswords. I’ll just have to chance it over there. Fearless, that’s me.
Just for the record, the French write “les années soixante”, “the years 60”, which gives “the 60’s years”, and perhaps this was shortened to “the 60’s” – something like this could account for the old usage.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
I’ve never whizzed through a Brummie like this one. Wavelength or just very straightforward?
I enjoyed it though – I liked CARPENTER and DARK HORSE- but failed to spot the theme per usual.
First, in North America, gurn is spelled girn. Neither word is recognized by my spellcheck, nor, unfortunately, by me when trying to do this crossword.
Second, I am mystified by those who take 45 minutes to do these puzzles and then label it as a longer-than-normal time. Good for them. Really?? I take about three days, intermittently admittedly.
Third: ‘Coo’ means ;’I’m astonished’ ?? It’s a quiet comment in my experience.
Fourth: I am of an age that Dimbleby means Richard. Anypone out there like me?
michael Rooksby @ 61
I’m in the same boat as you, though I never finish the puzzles. I took “I’m astonished” to be cor as in “cor lumme stone the crows” but couldn’t parse the resulting cork.
The top half was relatively straightforward (I will not say easy) but the bottom half was difficult for me, an American. Notably white spirit (Hail, to thee, white spirit, turps thou never wert.)and Dimbleby (not to be found in the O.T.).
I remember reading Coo Lumme from the mouth of an urchin in one of my sister’s kiddie books: Mary Poppins or Frances Hodgson Burnett, or some such.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew
Did this one close to the published date, but had put it to one side and only checked it off tonight. Found quite a bit of ‘depth’ to the parsing of clues in as much as they had terms that were new to me (e.g. DIMBLEBY, GURN, COLORATURA and WHITE SPIRIT). There were a number of clues where I could only see the parsing on this last run through – seeing the missing 6 letters in CH(urch of) ROME and COO K (had originally written in an unparsed CORK).
Thought that the ‘Homerian acknowledgement of stupidity’ (D’OH) part of DO AWAY WITH was priceless.
Would never have spotted the theme as I haven’t read the books and only recognise a few of the themed characters.
Didn’t find this as easy as others, finishing up in the NW corner with ALMOND EYED and DO AWAY WITH as the last couple in.