A fine, well balanced puzzle from Joker again, IMO easier than Wednesday’s blog although that might be down to a lack of hangover today. Nothing obscure and a few to make you smile when the penny drops. It took me 8 minutes to solve before starting the write-up. Excuse some brevity, we have visitors.
Across |
1 |
WON TON – Later = NOT NOW, reversed, tasty Chinese dumpling. |
5 |
SUPPLY – Drink = SUP, alternate letters of pally = PLY, def. ‘provide’. |
8 |
TAKE A BACK SEAT – Surprise = TAKE ABACK, chair = SEAT, def. ‘to act in a subordinate role’. |
9 |
EYES – E (top of Everest) YES (certainly), def. ‘views’, as a verb. |
10 |
CONFRONT – CON (servative) FRONT (boldness), def. ‘face up to’. |
11 |
SHINTO – Very much = SO, divided by HINT (suspicion), S(HINT)O, def. Religion in Japan’. |
13 |
ASPIRE – (PRAISE)*, indicated by ‘excitedly’, def. ‘strive for higher things’. |
15 |
CROCKERY – C (cold) ROCKERY (stony part of garden), def. ‘all kinds of earthenware.’ |
17 |
SACK – SLACK (careless) with the L left out, def. ‘bag of material’. |
19 |
ROUGH AND READY – (OUR HYDRANGEA’D)*, not very elegant, indeed a slightly clumsy anagram. |
21 |
UNTRUE – UN(I)T, RUE (regret), def. ‘false’. |
22 |
MORSEL – The Oxford detective plus L for learner. Apologies for omitting this earlier, my printscreen – paste method of getting the quickie on paper dropped this last clue off the page. |
Down |
2 |
OVARY – Madame Bovary loses her head (B), def. ‘part of flower’. I read this recently because it’s free on Kindle, it was less bad than I expected. |
3 |
TREASON – T (turncoat’s first) REASON (justification), def. ‘disloyalty’. |
4 |
NUB – Hidden word reversed in DE(BUN)KERS, def. ‘the central point’. |
5 |
SECONDARY – (A DRY SCONE)*, def. ‘inferior’. |
6 |
POSER – Double definition. |
7 |
LEARNER – Def. ‘student’, removing the central R would give you LEANER = more unproductive. |
10 |
COOPERATE – COOPER (cask maker) ATE (took in), def. ‘work with other (joiners)’. |
12 |
HARPOON – HARP (instrument) + O + ON, def. ‘whaling ship will have this’. |
14 |
PASTEUR – PAST (former) EUR (European), Louis Pasteur, 1822-95, French chemist and bacteriologist chap, immortalised in ‘pasteurisation’. |
16 |
CIGAR – GI (american soldier) reversed, IG, in CAR (motor), def. ‘smoke’. |
18 |
CADRE – CARE (feel concern) about D (firebrand’s end), CA(D)RE, def. ‘revolutionary group’. |
20 |
DAM – MAD (very angry) reversed, def. ‘flood prevention barrier’. |
Favourite today was the elegant but not too difficult EYES.
Like stevieshot, I also struggled a bit with the logic of LEARNER – I’d always equated leaner with more efficient (= productive). Anyway, minor quibble.
I seem to have less trouble with these type of clues than some others, which may of course mean I’m missing hidden depths that others are plumbing!
But I think in general terms Occam’s (Grammatical) Razor may be invoked. In today’s clue it it natural to interpret it the way the setter means it to be interpreted, that us, as a reversal of ‘very angry’ (‘very angry about’). It would simply be stretching normal grammar principles too far to take it to be intended as a reversal of ‘flood-prevention barrier’ (‘about flood-prevention barrier’). Only Yoda of Star Wars fame (whose style DOES crop up in whimsical clues occasionally – but not in reversal clues) would like this talk!
Edited at 2014-06-27 10:45 am (UTC)
My average solving time for the week equalled my best so far (week 12) at 11:40 but two bad weeks at the start of the month screwed up my four-week average.
Edited at 2014-06-29 06:03 am (UTC)
As far as Bryan Lawson’s question about ambiguous reversal clues is concerned, there don’t seem to be any rules about this as far as I can tell, and the same can be said for some letter substition clues. Sometimes the grammar of the clue is so clear that the correct answer is obvious, but where it isn’t I generally keep both options in mind and wait until a checker removes the ambiguity. On the very rare occasions that such an ambiguity can’t be resolved by checkers (i.e. the ambiguity is an unchecked letter or letters) I go with the most logical reading of the clue, and if I’m wrong I whinge at the setter and call it a bad clue. Others may have a different view.
Curious
If there was an alternative parsing, I reckon the combined experience / intellects of the esteemed Ulaca, jackkt, Andy and others would have found it – so on that pragmatic basis I don’t believe there is!
As for the fact that ‘lean’ can mean more productive or less productive, that ambivalence is something that can very reasonably be exploited by the setter, so I can see no problem with that either.
Edited at 2014-06-28 12:05 pm (UTC)
Most elegant explanation, if I may say. Interesting how traditional hymn lyrics – not sung in anger since leaving school – continue to float around the brain and resonate so readily. “Without a city wall…” instantly transported me back to the old school assemblies. Whenever I duck into a service station for petrol, I find myself thinking of “fuel” as a three syllable word a la Good King Wenceslas.
Notwithstanding my positioning as a curmudgeonly 58 year old atheist, there’s definite magic in those old hymns.
The only alternative I know is a cut-and-paste job and you’ll need to find your preferred method of working to do this, possibly via screen prints or Snipping Tool if you’re on Windows. There are two principal irritations in this, firstly the wide-open blank space between grid and clues, and secondly the inability to display all the clues without scrolling down which means they have to be copied in two sections.
My method is 1) copy the grid only, using Snipping Tool, and paste into Word, 2) copy the clues from the top as far as visible and paste alongside the grid, 3) scroll down to expose the remaining clues and repeat the process for them, 4) print from Word.
If anyone knows a simpler way of doing any of this, please let me know.
Edited at 2014-06-29 06:02 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-06-29 10:13 am (UTC)
I find I can do it in just two snips – one for the grid, and one for all the clues: maybe this is just a screen size thing, or maybe jackkt is not adjusting the zoom thingo in the browser.
Once you’ve got both snips in, just treat them as pictures and reduce size so you get everything on one page.
Well worth a minute out of your life, I’d suggest…