A puzzle of “average plus” difficulty I think – though I can see a couple of answers that I might possibly have got sooner. Last few solved were 28, 24 (writing in the answer I’d wondered about for quite a while), 19, 18. The grid has seven answers beginning with B, mostly in the BOBBIN/BABY BOND NE corner.
Solving time 11:40
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | BOB,BIN(g) – know your mid-20th century stars – hopefully familiar to even the youngest of solvers from old movies on TV. |
| 4 | SKIP,ANTS – ‘PANTS’ was written in above the grid squares as a pretty safe bet, but the only 3-letter kind I could immediately remember were HOT, which tells you something about my age |
| 10 | B,ON(A PART)E – nicely done construction, and ‘British leader’ is a good fake definition. |
| 13 | LA(SAG(e))NE |
| 14 | NAIRN – (N. Iran)* – town near Inverness – “best known as a seaside resort” says Wikipedia – apparently its climate was warmer than you might expect from a northerly town on a north-facing coast, even in 1860. |
| 15 | S,AND,BANK – beginners: watch out for {with = and} and vice versa |
| 18 | EDGE,HILL – ‘down’ = a hill, mostly in the South of England, and Edgehill was the first pitched battle of the English Civil War. So even those who found this a dull subject in school history might remember it (sorry, “Jesse” James if you or your descendants ever read this). |
| 23 | NAM=man rev.,IBI(z)A – in case any US solvers haven’t met it yet, Ibiza is the third-largest of the Balearic Islands, and well-known for its summer club parties which attract large numbers of tourists, but the island and the Spanish Tourist Office have been working to shed the prevailing “sex-and-alcohol” image in order to promote more family-oriented tourism (Wikipedia). If this year had been normal, Mrs B and I would have been on a long tour of Namibia right now – probably trying to get pictures of animals in Etosha National Park. |
| 25 | GA(SOHO)L. |
| 26 | ADAM,S – surname of the second and sixth US presidents |
| 27 | IN,S(P)ECTOR – policeman such as Morse |
| 28 | R,ALLYING – R=resistance |
| 29 | RED HOT – 2 defs, including ‘enthusiastic’. |
| Down | |
| 1 | BABY BOND – I got the James Bond reference this time – could hardly miss it. Diasppointingly, ‘baby bond’ is not some arcane bit of stock market terminology, but just a savings scheme for children. |
| 2 | B(ENG.)ALI – a language as well as a person from that part of India and Bangladesh. |
| 3 | IMP,UDENC=dunce*,E – full marks for not doing the IMP(r)UDENCE subtraction for the umpteenth time |
| 5 | KREMLINOLOGIST – (strike looming, L) – nice easy anag. |
| 6 | PUFFS – 2 defs, one related to smoking |
| 7 | NO(NAG)ON – shape with two more sides than a 50p piece. The clue is written to make it look as if “middle of the day” is the def, and “horse gets in shape” the wordplay. Old hands say: if there’s any possibility of ambiguity, consider both ‘(A containing B) = C’ and ‘A = (B in C)’ |
| 8 | SILVER – 2 defs., one Long John S of Treasure Island |
| 9 | P(RED)EST,I,NATION |
| 16 | BRASSI((h)ER)E – nicely done wordplay from the lads of the fifth form |
| 17 | CELLARET = “selleret” – a cellaret is a piece of wine-holding furniture for those who can’t just buy whatever the local supermarket has on offer and drink it young. (A tad unfair – in the days of cellarets, there were no supermarkets) |
| 19 | DAMN ALL – Am. in (L,land), all rev. |
| 21 | UNHITCH, from ‘in hutch’ – a Spoonerism by the loose def. favoured by Azed in his ‘Spoonerisms’ puzzles. Judging by recent rec.puzzles.crosswords chat, some will tell you that a Spoonerism requires a swap of initial sounds. To be fair, that’s what all the usual dictionaries say (the OED’s def. isn’t quite as strict) |
| 22 | UNFAIR = (ruf(f)ian)* |
| 24 | BUS(H)Y – {busy = policeman} was new to me but is in COD |
Held up by trying to force ‘Kissinger’ into the foreign policy specialist somehow – kriminal I’d say…
I liked 1A both for its clever use of “Crosby in short” and for memories stirred of the old “Road to” films. Is there such a thing as a “selleret”? I’m not with AZED in his view of Spoonerisms and do not personally consider 21D a true one. Like Peter BUSY=detective was new to me but I couldn’t see any alternative. We will no doubt see this used again!
Jimbo: I suspect Azed is quite aware that his puzzles stretch the meaning of ‘Spoonerism’. For that kind of puzzle, I suspect there aren’t enough ‘proper’ ones to go round.
I can’t really add much to Pete’s excellent notes!
I had never come across “baby bond” but found it described as a bond of low face value (eg $1,000) as issued by small companies which cannot attract institutional investors but target individual investors. As a finance lawyer, one lives and learns!
I looked forward to something very witty in 21A, and was disappointed.
In these days of Gordon Ramsey, 19D sounded strangely precious!
CoD BONAPARTE.
Things I didn’t know but was able to deduce: PUFFS = good reviews? BUSY = policeman? CELLARET.
I put GALLONS instead of GASOHOL which slowed me down a bit 🙁
Last to go in: SANDBANK. Just didn’t think of {with=and} for so long! I guess I’m just a greenhorn.
Several words seem to have come up quite recently and I wondered for a moment if they had published an old puzzle: KREMLINOLOGIST, GASOHOL and SKI PANTS. I struggled with all of these on their previous outings but not this time.
QED: 1-8-7, the quibble being 21 as explained above.
P.S. I never heard of busy = policeman either.
once that the commonest examples include ‘par cark’ and ‘mazagine’.
Tom B.
Actually, today’s puzzle took me 9 hours. I did it in bed last night, but cheated out “Edgehill” this morning. The history teacher who tried to teach me about the Tudor/Stuart period was known as Jesse James to us. It can’t have been the one who Peter’s talking about, but it’s a strange coincidence. My teacher was Geraint James who now lives in Dolgellau, I believe.
Dafydd.
It appears lots of us were “guessing” BUSHY and CELLARET. I don’t recall seeing 9 used before and that’s a nifty clueing of a long word. Didn’t quite see the wordplay for 13, but the checking letters gave it away. I also arched an eyebrow at UNHITCH as a Spoonerism for INHUTCH, but will defer to the shining wits at the OED.
Douglas Hofstadter uses the nonce terms kniferism and forkerism to refer to interchanging the nuclei and codas, respectively, of syllables. (Example: a British TV newsreader who, in a story about a crime scene, referred to the police removing a ‘hypodeemic nerdle’.) Spoonerisms exchange the onsets.
Another example is an incident that happened to veteran newscaster (and Timex watch pitchman) John Cameron Swayze. During an interview on The Mike Douglas Show, he stated that on a radio show, he was making reference to a fellow journalist as a “noted woman columnist” but accidentally said “noted woolen communist”.
Nico.
24d brought back memories of two years living in an interesting part of Liverpool where most evenings one could hear the sound of children playing in the street… “Oh no! Leggit – it’s the busies!!” Definitely a Scouse standard.
UNHITCH isn’t a great success. As well as the question about initial position for the switch, I think a good Spoonerism needs to involve a plausible utterance. Hard to think of a sentence where “in hutch” would occur without an intervening article.
Hot pants (which I also pencilled in at first) have been making a bit of a comeback, Peter, which is bad news for most women and good news for most men.
Q-1, E-7, D-5 COD – 1a BOBBIN
Notable clues were 1A as mentioned above and I also enjoyed 25A. Despite not quite being &lit 26 gets my COD-nod (Wiki reveals that while Adams was the second US President he was actually the first Vice President, so I assume he was there at the first opening of the senate?).
Time: 14 minutes
Q-0 E-8 D-6 COD 26
I’ve come across busy as a scouse term for cozzer but had never seen it written down so was briefly stumped. I’d imagined a quite different spelling, as in “Quick, leg it – here come the bizzies”.
The only other thing that stumped me was predestination, which I put in but then fretted over for a while as I couldn’t see the red in pest part.
Q-0, E-8, D-4, COD 16.
If anyone wants to be turned off spoonerisms for life, take a look at the Roy Hudd character in Dennis Potter’s Karoake (cloying to say the least).
I like the use of hypotheticals (‘selleret’); are there occasions when these are permissable as actual clue entries (rather than simply used instrumentally)?
I’m with Jimbo and others in disliking the false Spoonerism at 21 dn. I cannot think of any famous Spoonerism that does not involve the transposition of the initial letters or sounds of two (or more) words – e.g. “you have hissed all my mystery lectures and will leave Oxford by the town drain”. But if, as Peter B says, the looser definition of a Spoonerism deployed here is indeed an accepted cryptic convention, I will at least now be forewarned.
About 35 mins for me. Curious mix of the quite difficult with the almost absurdly easy – e.g 12 ac. I was not helped by entering “baby boom” at 1 dn initially, which I knew couldn’t possibly explain “spies”. Had never heard of a baby bond. But overall a fair and enjoyable puzzle.
Michael H
The answer to 20ac is ACUTE, being alternate letters of rAnCoUr ThEy, i.e. rancour they “regularly”. Watch out for this device as it crops up with alarming regularity (much to the dismay of many).
Any of you who intend to join in this evening’s chat are invited, between now and 8pm-ish, to come up with alternative ways of indicating alternate letters. Penfold is absolutely right – the current crop of indicators is painfully sparse and, inevitebly, overused.
Believe me, we on the setting end of things are more than happy to steal the ideas of… sorry, accept the suggestions of those who can suggest new indicators they’d be happy with.
11a Like one’s journey to cemetery in coffin alas (5)
FINAL. Hidden in cof FIN AL as.
12a Helped by brother, put hair into plaits (7)
BR AIDED. Another instance of BRA in the puzzle.
20a Intense rancour they regularly displayed (5)
A C U T E. Alternate letters in r A n C o U r T h E y. I wonder if any alternatives to the likes of “regularly” came out of Anax’s meeting?
It may be a famous clue – and I admire it greatly – but I don’t think I would have got an anagram of alternate letters in an &lit in quite a long time.
I scrolled down a bit and found a Tim Moorey anagram that I might have unravelled.