Daedalus and I keep running into each other on Fifteensquared. This is his ninth Indy puzzle and I’ve blogged five of them. I’m still not warming to his style – I find it a bit clunky – and Come Up and See Me, Make Me Smile by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel might have been the theme tune I’d have requested for this. But that’s just my take on it. Others may think differently.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Lackeys without power or wealth
OODLES
[P]OODLES. POODLES for ‘lackeys’? Sure. Blair and Bush as depicted by Steve Bell in The Guardian. OODLES for ‘wealth’? I don’t think so. If I were wealthy, I might say I had OODLES of money, but I could also have oodles of talent, or I could send you all oodles of love.
5 Horse we start to brush shows signs of neglect
COBWEB
A charade of COB for ‘horse’, WE and B.
9 Tourist mentioned these locations in East End
SIGHTSEER
A homophone of SIGHTS ‘ERE.
10 Sacrifice bishop for pawn in trap, gaining turn
UPEND
A replacement of P for B in U-BEND.
12 Cat in scrap
OUNCE
A dd. As in ‘he hasn’t got a scrap/an ounce of courage in him’, I suppose.
13 Merry monk perhaps shakes off relative with a fondness for suits
LITIGIOUS
A charade of LIT for ‘merry’ or drunk and [REL]IGIOUS. Er, ‘monk, perhaps’ for RELIGIOUS?
14 Fitting furnishings etc round us
DECOROUS
A charade of DECOR, O and US.
16 Supply fencing that hurts budget
LOW-END
An insertion of OW! in LEND. The insertion indicator is ‘fencing’.
18 Ignoramus stood in rear? No, no, no, no!
SAVANT
Dear lord. It’s only my opinion, of course, but this is wilfully obscure, and it’s not even a creative surface reading. SAT is the opposite of ‘stood’. VAN is the opposite of ‘rear’. But we’re not putting ‘not stood’ or SAT in VAN or ‘not rear’, but the other way round. So that accounts for the first three ‘nos’. The last one is to indicate that a SAVANT is ‘not’ an ‘ignoramus’. Did you get it? No, I didn’t either, which is why I’d like to publicly thank a fellow blogger for solving and parsing this one for me.
20 Second American vessel, sometimes called a dish
MOUSSAKA
A charade of MO for ‘second’, USS for ‘American vessel’ and AKA for also known as or ‘sometimes called’.
23 22’s stories about clubs and bars
OBSTACLES
A charade of OB’S for ‘old boy’s’ and C inserted in TALES.
24 Feature in newspaper is great!
FACET
In FT is ACE.
25 Doctor, I have an urge
DRIVE
A charade of DR and I’VE.
26 Pick up drug called ‘rebound‘ …
BOOMERANG
I think that this is BOOM in its BOOM or BUST sense, E and RANG.
27 … pick up drug inside, in fact
REALLY
An insertion of E for the same drug in RALLY.
28 Couple entertaining European with lots of gadgets
HI-TECH
An insertion of E in HITCH.
Down
2 Raised some celeriac in a grow-bag without fertiliser
ORGANIC
Hidden reversed in celriaC IN A GROw-bag.
3 Much flatter white
LATTE
In my opinion only, of course, this is a bit loose. ‘White’ for LATTE? If you must. And ‘much’ telling me to remove the outside letters of [F]LATTE[R]. If you must.
4 Hi you in street, gimme money!
SHELL OUT
An insertion of HELLO and U in ST. Why ‘gimme’ and not ‘give me’ I don’t know.
5 Clergyman took after dog
CURATE
A charade of CUR and ATE.
6 Humph! Is poaching egg middle-class?
BOURGEOIS
An insertion of URGE for ‘egg’ in BOO for ‘humph’ followed by IS.
7 Eeyore’s poor sight
EYESORE
(EEYORES)*
8 A hint of green inside, like e.g. phlegm father hawked with perfect manners
AS GOOD AS GOLD
As awkward surfaces go, this is up there. And I’m afraid that I have no idea how to parse it, so help welcomed.
11 Catch Italian of 18 years stealing diamonds
DISADVANTAGE
A charade of DI for the Italian word for ‘of’, D for ‘diamonds’ inserted in SAVANT, which is 18ac, and AGE.
15 Almost enable girl dancing to be recognised
RANG RING A BELL
[E]NABLE, or ENABL[E], and GIRL made into an anagram (‘dancing’).
17 On about 27 + 0 = 27
FORSOOTH
A bit too clever for its own good, this clue. FORSOOTH is an archaic word for ‘in truth’, ‘indeed’, or REALLY, which is 27ac. It’s an insertion of SO for for ‘really’ and O in FORTH for ‘on’.
19 Drop or dump man in letter
VESTIGE
An insertion of STIG for STIG OF THE DUMP in VEE for a not universally accepted phonetic rendering of the letter V.
21 Old investigators return and follow crook?
ARCHAIC
A charade of ARCH and CIA reversed.
22 Mate being bloody stupid
OLD BOY
(BLOODY)* I liked this one because of its concise and meaningful surface. It’s not OLD BOY in its alumnus sense, but an upper-class term for ‘mate’. ‘I say, old boy, shall we order another bottle of Bolly?’
24 Fast boats
FLEET
A dd.
Many thanks to Daedalus for the Bank Holiday puzzle.
Thanks Pierre
My parsing of 8dn was:
G[reen] (a hint of green) in (inside) AS (like) GOO (e.g. phlegm) DA (father) SOLD (hawked)
Chambers tells me that DA is a dialect version of dad so I suppose the setter can get away with it.
9A is I think a homophone of SITES (locations) and ‘ERE.
13A Religious can be used as a noun, thus a monk can be called a religious (“one bound by religious vows”).
Agree some pretty well, weird, clueing, with SAVANT bordering on the insane. Still thought it reasonably enjoyable on the whole.
Thanks to Daedalus and Pierre.
Heavy going. SAVANT was my last in as well and not particularly satisfying even when solved: I was expecting something a bit more amusing.
Glad I wasn’t blogging AS GOOD AS GOLD: it went straight in without parsing, waiting for crossers which duly rolled in and by then I couldn’t be bothered, tbh.
But I think the ‘gimme’ thing is fair enough, suggesting an informal demand as in ‘shell out’. And I did like VESTIGE, in the end; the ‘dump man’ was nice and I bet that ‘letter’ had us all trying to parse MISSIVE.
Confusingly – because I still do this in the Daily who are not great sharers – I presumed the puzzle was by Monk, because, extra confusingly, that made sense of a sort in the parsing of RELIGIOUS [‘I’ for Monk (perhaps)]
So, grudging thanks to Daedalus, and mention in despatches to Pierre. Tough blog!
Thanks, gwep. I meant to write SITES ‘ERE, but my fingers and brain didn’t let me. You are quite right, of course.
No, I can’t say I enjoyed this one. The SAVANT and VESTIGE crossers were my last ones in after resorting to trial and error for SAVANT (I only got DISADVANTAGE from a word finder and then couldn’t see any connection to 18ac). Like Grant@3 I was trying to fit MISSIVE into 19dn and wondering if the quadruple ‘no’ sequence in 18ac indicated letters that represent numbers such as I,O and various Roman numerals.
Pierre, some of us of a certain age could possibly add to your comment on 1ac an advert from the fifties (sic) for a brand of minestrone soup containing ‘oodles of noodles’.
And I second Grant’s vote of thanks.
I wonder if 15d would be better served with the solution “ring a bell” as the anagram fodder includes an “i”. Otherwise I totally agree with Pierre’s verdict. Thanks to him and Daedalus.
Thanks all, and particularly to Pierre for his heroic efforts of course. Although he tries to conceal it I think Pierre secretly loves my crosswords so much he grabs the blogging slots whenever he can.
I suspected 18ac would raise one or two eyebrows, but I’m happy the editor let me indulge my peculiar sense of humour. I hope a few twisted souls liked it; apologies to solvers who were less amused. Pierre, in 1ac, I think you forgot the wider meaning of ‘wealth’: You might also have a wealth of talent or love. Chambers defines both words as ‘abundance’.
While I’m here, might I also mention that in 8d, the word ‘father’ appears to have gone missing from the quoted clue, which might account for your difficulty there, and that in 15d where Maysie is quite right about the intended answer, the definition was ‘to be recognised’.
Blog now amended.
Some great clues (2 down and 25 across), but 18 across surely has to top the list of most unsolveable clues ever!
I didn’t think this was so unsatisfactory as some here and liked it. The reason for what seems like unpopularity is in my opinion the lack of surface meaning in several of the clues. I did manage to solve and understand 18ac and 8dn but not perhaps with a lot of pleasure.
Dedalus, I am that one twisted soul! I loved 18 across. I glowed with satisfaction when I got it and spent about 20 seconds murmuring ‘Ogmail.comh that is SO clever’. There you go, we’re a minority of two. Thank you.
Sorry. Part of my email address slipped in. Pretend it’s a clue.