Some weeks ago it was proposed I think in the Daily Cryptic blogs that we should have a competition to find the best short story composed by using all the words in a particular solution. When I saw this I gave myself a ritual smack on the head, as I had had this idea years ago and had never suggested it (although I had toyed with doing it occasionally, but never with enough resolve to complete the task). But then again, I don’t imagine the idea is really particularly novel, and I guess people have been idly thinking about such a thing since the dawn of the age of crosswords. Certainly, when I used to work in Advertising, people used to get very het up about being ‘original’ and ‘creative’. But the best creative types were the ones who realised that it had all been done before and that there was nothing new under the sun. In fact, the motto that I took away from those days and which I still find applicable to practically everything I do in life is: “All of life is cut & paste.” It works particularly well with parties. Was there a particular bottle of wine or something that you took as a gift to the last one you went to that everybody just loved and thought was great? Well don’t sweat about what to take to the next one, just cut & paste!
But having got through this puzzle fairly quickly I found myself playing around with the words, cutting and pasting them, and this was the result.
Mr 8A and his 13A 10A were enjoying a holiday in County 9A. They heard there was a showing of some old 6D at the local picture house, but when they got there they found this had been replaced by a really 1D comedy act called 2D. The highlight of this act was a 16A:
“I’ve decided to give up asking rhetorical questions. I mean, what’s the point?”
So you can tell how bad it was.
In the interval they went to the bar, and as they were the only people there the barman easily had the 5D job in the house. They ordered a 4D 21A, a 7D of some wicked-looking 19D and a tuna 17A, but the show was so tedious that they felt they were just going to 22A by staying and so they left.
Arriving back at their B & B and emboldened by their drinks they thought it would be a 3D to surprise one of the other guests, a 15D and his 13D, so they entered their bedroom 12D and…
Waking up suddenly, the other guest grabbed a shoe and, flinging it towards the door called out: “Get out of here, you 14As-in-the-grass!
Very 11A, they left. In a 18D they arrived back at their own room, 1A and 20A soundly.
As mentioned above, the puzzle was really a return to the nursery slopes for me. I remember practically all the Across clues going in without any trouble, and I only had a minor attack of ‘breeze-block’ (see recent blogs) towards the end of the Down clues. So not quite a PB for me, but fairly close at around 6m 30s.
But straightforward does not mean uninteresting, and many thanks to Hurley for an entertaining set of clues (and another setter to add to my portfolio). FOI was, in the natural order of things, 1A, and LOI was 5D (and I can’t help thinking that, given the answer, that was just the way the setter had designed it!) I think that’s probably my COD as well.
Definitions are underlined in italics. Cryptic parsing is explained just in the way it occurred to me as it wriggled through my consciousness in the clearest English I can muster.
Please forgive any typos, as just as I was doing my final proof-read my wife warned my that I have to vacate this room pretty much immediately for the cleaning lady. See you later!
| Across | |
| 1 | Retire with some wine? (3,3,4) |
| HIT THE SACK – sack is a type of wine that is often drunk in Crossword Land, along with hock, port, Asti, tent (but vide infra at 11D for use of another sense of the word), retsina et al.. | |
| 8 | Fixing car, I’m no expert on radio! (7) |
| MARCONI – anagram of CAR I’M NO (‘fixing’). | |
| 9 | Lose weight? Finish off attempt in Irish county (5) |
| SLIGO – when you lose weight you SLIM. Take the ‘finish’ off of this and you have SLI, and an attempt can be a GO (as in ‘ave a go, ‘Arry!) | |
| 10 | Frenchman in safety vest (4) |
| YVES – people you meet in Crossword Land are often Ian or Mac if they come from Scotland, and Dai, Evans or Rees if they come from Wales. The usual two inhabitants of France are René and, as here, YVES, hidden in the rest of the clue: safetY VESt. | |
| 11 | Contrite writer I provided with shelter (8) |
| PENITENT – PEN (writer) + I + TENT (shelter). Not a wine in this case therefore. But the clue would also have worked quite nicely if it were “Contrite writer I provided with wine”. The only problem would be that we would all probably be falling over from the surfeit of alcohol-based clues we had consumed. In fact, I have counted 4 others, so it would have comfortably given us our ‘5 a day’! | |
| 13 | Descendant touring Channel Islands finding another one (5) |
| SCION – a descendant is a SON, and if he ‘tours’ the CI (Channel Islands) you end up with a SCION. | |
| 14 | Meander in South with no clothes on cut short (5) |
| SNAKE – S (south) + NAKEd (with no clothes on, cut short). | |
| 16 | Old northeastern ship is a joke (3-5) |
| ONE-LINER – O (old) + NE (northeastern) + LINER (ship). | |
| 17 | Soften, ultimately calm, English Lieutenant (4) |
| MELT – M (ultimately calM) + E (English) LT (Lieutenant). | |
| 20 | Dropped off pelts needing treatment (5) |
| SLEPT – anagram of PELTS (‘needing treatment’). | |
| 21 | Trading centre in island provides drink (7) |
| MARTINI – a MART is a trading centre, and adding on IN and I (island) brings us almost to the half-way point with one of our 4 much-needed refreshments. | |
| 22 | Fail this time here after finally missing the cut (3,7) |
| GET NOWHERE – NOW (‘this’ time is the present, as opposed to ‘another time’ in the past or the future) + HERE gives NOWHERE. Place this after the last letters (‘finally’) of missinG thE cuT and what do you GET? You get GET NOWHERE! | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Overacting, his antics maybe miff you initially (5) |
| HAMMY – ‘overacting’ looks initially like a present participle but here it is doing the job of an adjective (if someone is overacting, they are ‘hammy’). ‘Initially’ indicates that we should take the initials of the rest of the clue: His Antics Maybe Miff You. | |
| 2 | They brought gifts, new items, here, for exchange (5,4,3) |
| THREE WISE MEN – may I introduce the Magi, arriving a little late (our Christmas decorations haven’t quite made it to the loft yet, but they have definitely reached the landing and are sitting there gathering my wife’s impatience like a layer of toxic dust. Or even as well as a layer of toxic dust). Anagram of NEW ITEMS HERE (‘for exchange’). | |
| 3 | Furious about onlooker’s first jeer of derision (4) |
| HOOT – HOT (furious) about O (Onlooker’s first). | |
| 4 | Giving extra flavour, special, with sugary coating (6) |
| SPICED – SP (special) + ICED (with sugary coating). | |
| 5 | Extremely easy insult about attempts to hit coconut? (8) |
| CUSHIEST – there are only a few things that one usually ‘has a shy’ at rather than just ‘throws something’ at. The only two I can immediately think of are cricket stumps and coconuts. So here we are taking some SHIES at the hard, brown, hairy fruit that I am told are stuffed with MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides), one of the latest food fads (see ‘bulletproof coffee’). An insult is a CUT (as in the unkindest cut) and if this is put ‘about’ SHIES (attempts to hit coconuts) you get CUSHIEST (extremely easy, although for me the most difficult of the day (vide supra)). | |
| 6 | Crushed teen crime via series of films? (6,6) |
| CINEMA VERITE – anagram of TEEN CRIME VIA (‘crushed’). I suppose this is the ancestor of what we find wall-to-wall on our TV screens nowadays, so called ‘reality entertainment’, which I always think of as a double misnomer as it is neither reality (how can it be with high-tech camera crews following every move?) nor entertainment (it is as dull as the proverbial). A bit like that other double misnomer, ‘common-law wife’. As a live in lover a CLW was never a wife and neither did she have her rights enshrined in common law. This week’s competition: answers on a postage stamp please! How many other ‘double misnomers’ can we think of? | |
| 7 | Source of stout courage? (6) |
| BOTTLE – double definition, the first one just a little bit cryptic. | |
| 12 | Silently forward: hint to European (2,6) |
| ON TIPTOE – if you go forward, you go ‘ON’. As in onwards and upwards. Add a TIP (hint) + TO + E (European) and there you have it. | |
| 13 | Partner in second Post Office application (6) |
| SPOUSE – S (second) + PO (Post Office) + USE (application). | |
| 15 | Not entirely relevant language (6) |
| GERMAN – if something is relevant it is GERMANE, and if it loses its last letter it perhaps becomes ‘not entirely’ relevant, and also GERMAN. | |
| 18 | Star circle oddly ignored for moment (5) |
| TRICE – just do what it says – ignore the odd letters of sTaR cIrClE. | |
| 19 | Hombre who stashes drink (4) |
| BREW – hidden in homBRE Who. | |
I thought should I go back in and edit it, but then thought no, it would be subtler to leave it there.
In fact, what I should have done of course was to sign off with “See you laterfgjvhj.GCUIVC”! Or something like that.
Slightly more humorous, self-referential, metacryptographical, outside the cage, over the hills and far away and all those things that we love about crossword clues.
But I didn’t.
But I live and hopefully learn.
Some of the parsing was tricky:
Dnk germane
Dnk sp for special.
Spent ages on sligo, cushiest (had shies but couldn’t see cut = insult), had cinema _e_i_e and got verite after trying all the combinations of r, t, v.
LOI bottle (source of stout is a bit weak). My alternative is:
Crazy bet, lots shorn of small balls!
COD sligo.
Thanks for the blog.
Personally I thought all the clues were OK. If something is spiced, then it does give extra flavour. And I had no problem with the source of stout (probably because it is my favoured type of beer – anything thick and dark rather than thin and watery for me).
But I did have a good laugh at your alternative which I think is brilliant. But then it’s probably a good job I’m not the editor!
Update – Throughly enjoyed the tale of the B&B adventurers in Ireland. Are you looking to be published?
Edited at 2018-02-12 09:19 am (UTC)
As I said in another comment I thought SPICED was OK (and really I think it sounds as though you did too on reflection).
And thanks for your comment on the little story. Yes, I would love to be published, but I somehow don’t think I will manage it with that effort. I have always loved reading, and most keen readers are frustrated writers, but writing is a hard job and frankly I’m just too lazy!
Edited at 2018-02-12 09:28 am (UTC)
PlayUpPompey
The puzzle had some tricky clues in it, in particular 9a, 12d and 5d and it also took me a while to spot the parsing of the first part of 22a. But fortunately there was some easier stuff thrown in to provide plenty of checkers. There were lots of contenders for COD but my vote goes to 15d. Completed in 17 minutes with LOI 12d
I got through the 15 x 15 quicker this morning, so worth a punt for beginners looking to step up.
Thanks setter and blogger
So full of confidence I came to this but ground to a halt after about 20 minutes. Could not get 12d; was not sure about 22a -I had End Nowhere; and after a long look I shoved in Shave for 14a (i.e.Cut Short).
So a comprehensive defeat on the QC today. Liked 8a and 16a.
No problem with Cinema Verite as the anagram was very clear. David
I thought I was being a bit useless, so was relieved to come here and find that I wasn’t the only one struggling. LOI 12D COD 11A
I thought the story was very cleverly compiled! Thanks for that. MM
LOI: cushiest
COD: get nowhere
thanks Hurley & Astartedon.
Carl
But I worked this one too swiftly to think about it.