Sheer genius, with a wide variety of succinct, initially baffling clues, from reverse hidden thru cryptic definition to (semi-)&lit—of which we have… one or two!
Happy Bastille Day à tout le monde !
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Email edited to make speech better (10) |
| AMELIORATE (Email)* + ORATE, “make speech” |
|
| 6 | Trick WC Fields initially rejected (4) |
| FOOL LOO, “WC” + F |
|
| 9 | Rent a place on the Adriatic (5) |
| SPLIT DD, the latter being a city in Croatia |
|
| 10 | Can openers belt cricket shots? (4-5) |
| RING-PULLS RING, “belt” + PULLS, “cricket shots” …I had to look up that last bit, of course. |
|
| 12 | Shots of tennis players crushed by medical crises (6,7) |
| GROUND STROKES GROUND, “crushed” + STROKES, “medical crises” …Another sports term new to me but guessable |
|
| 14 | Breaking lock, step inside? (8) |
| TRESPASS semi-&li! TRES(PAS)S |
|
| 15 | Elasticity of university head’s clothing (6) |
| BOUNCE BO(U)NCE |
|
| 17 | Clerical office bunch regularly turning rude (6) |
| CURACY |
|
| 19 | Puzzle’s case to become more brutish (8) |
| BEWILDER B |
|
| 21 | Keen to dine on one’s own? (13) |
| CANNIBALISTIC CD, playing on “on one’s own” |
|
| 24 | Flap on underwear: popular idea (9) |
| BRAINWAVE BRA, “underwear” + IN, “popular” + WAVE, “Flap” |
|
| 25 | Romeo has left Harry for Mark (5) |
| BADGE BADGE |
|
| 26 | Religious adherent’s request to be heard (4) |
| SIKH “seek” |
|
| 27 | Pagans had The Omen distributed (10) |
| HEATHENDOM (had The Omen)* |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | In tim{es pa}st, back end of the chancel (4) |
| APSE Reverse hidden |
|
| 2 | Eastern block united by Blake’s last poem (7) “Jerusalem”? |
| ECLOGUE E(astern) + CLOG, “block” + U(nited) + |
|
| 3 | Brooding overture, perhaps including piano (13) |
| INTROSPECTION INTRO S(P)ECTION |
|
| 4 | Scarcity of high earners close to Leeds (8) |
| RARENESS (earners)* + |
|
| 5 | Tool for gripping underwear husband discarded (5) |
| TONGS T |
|
| 7 | Something repellent in paintings — blood (7) |
| OILSKIN OILS, “paintings” + KIN, “blood” |
|
| 8 | What Gavin does for gain gets discouraged (5,5) |
| LOSES HEART Gavin sans V is “gain” |
|
| 11 | He’s number two in this organisation (8,5) |
| PERIODIC TABLE CD |
|
| 13 | Cook’s ingredients inventory grows exponentially (5,5) |
| STOCK CUBES STOCK, “inventory” + CUBES, “grows exponentially” |
|
| 16 | Dwelling trendies refurbished (8) |
| RESIDENT (trendies)* As an adjective |
|
| 18 | Loot bag, bolted on top (7) |
| RANSACK RAN, “bolted” + SACK, “bag” |
|
| 20 | Act to keep police resolute (7) |
| DECIDED DE(CID)ED Yer C(riminal) I(nvestigation) D(epartment) |
|
| 22 | One comes round every year without delay (5) |
| APACE A(PA)CE, PA being “per annum” |
|
| 23 | Craft device for turning hard wood (4) |
| HELM H(ard) + ELM, “wood” |
|
I just looked back to discover I finished this in 26 minutes, very coincidentally exactly the same time as I took on the Satueday puzzle.
LOI was SIKH / SEEK which I remember struggling with and obsessing about SUFI for a while
COD for me was CANNIBALISTIC
Thanks blogger and setter
28:16
BEWILDER took me some time, as I took “puzzle’s case” to be PE. DNK BONCE; or maybe just forgot. DNK PULLS, of course, but didn’t have to. Really irritated to find that once more I’d missed He; had to biff PERIODIC from checkers first. COD to FOI FOOL.
This must be the easiest Robert Price ever, and only cannibalistic gave me trouble. I even pulled bonce out of the recesses of my brain, and I’ve seen He as helium a few times already.
Time: 21 minutes
Once again, not so easy for me as for others so far. 47 minutes for all but CANNIBALISTIC which I abandoned unsolved for the night but saw it immediately when I returned the following morning.
I had no problems solving INTROSPECTION but I wasn’t too happy with the wordplay. ‘Overture perhaps’ accounts for INTRO, but extending it to INTRO SECTION doesn’t fit naturally in my view and I felt SECTION should have been clued separately.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly by “fitting naturally”, but in cryptic clues, we are happy to use things like “the French”, “flower” meaning a river, which are definitely not natural in non-crossword English. The only difference I can see with overture indicated by “intro section”, which is absolutely accurate when an overture begins a musical or opera, is that you probably haven’t seen it before.
Easy? I am in awe of those who found this so, because it was way, way, way beyond me. Utter failure this week, and I can only study the blog and yet again try to learn from it. Well done, all, and thanks.
I didn’t find this easy either, though I did finish. Some wonderful clues. I loved TRESPASS, LOSES HEART, FOOL and BADGE – all brilliant wordplay. I haven’t heard bonce since childhood – my father, who was from Derbyshire, used it regularly and seeing it evoked nostalgia. STOCK CUBES held me up a lot on the second word, as I had entered ASKE for 26a, which also fitted with 18d, but became the obvious SIKH when I realised I’d gone astray. LOI was CANNIBALISTIC, which took a lot of work even with all the crossers. CDs are often my downfall, so it was pleasing to get the answer eventually and realise its brilliance!
Very good, not that easy, but all done in 48 minutes, with fingers crossed in just one place.
For anyone who’s never heard the word ECLOGUE, “plug” fits the wordplay just as well as “clog” giving a possible EPLUGUE, and a difficult choice. ECLOGUE just seemed slightly less unlikely.
I liked CANNIBALISTIC; cannibal clues always seem to be good-uns
11:54. Not very easy, but not too hard and very enjoyable.
A minor point but I don’t think either of these are &Lits. In 14ac the word ‘breaking’ is not part of the wordplay, which makes the clue semi-&Lit. And 11dn is, I think, just a cryptic definition.
Re real or illusory &lits: It’s true that “Breaking” and “inside” would, in the wordplay, both be positioning PAS in TRESPASS. I first had “Breaking” alone as the definition, but found that the whole clue gives more the sense of “breaking and entering.” “Infraction” (a “breaking”) is indeed the first “strong match” at Thesaurus.com, but did you know that there is no British entry for “infraction” in Collins? So no entry in Collins proper—online, anyway.
There seems to be more complicated wordplay in PERIODIC TABLE than normally goes into a mere CD, but whatever…
The setter thinks the PERIODIC TABLE clue is a cryptic definition – his notes just checked. It can only be an &lit if it can be read in two ways, one giving a definition, and one giving wordplay in the cryptic crossword sense.
Thanks! I’m having trouble prising the two elements apart, evidently, but I can’t think about this any more today.
The only things you could usefully “prise apart” in an &lit clue are an indicator and the things it refers to. In the fairly well-known &lit clue for ECONOMIST, “I’m one involved with cost”, you could separate “involved” as the anagram indicator from (“I’m one” with “cost”) as the fodder. But what makes it an &lit is the “I’m a person often interested in the notion of ‘cost'” interpretation which could show someone that “economist” is the answer without them knowing that the anagram is there. If there is a wordplay reading of this clue like the anagram reading in that example, the setter, his editor and the entire readership of this report have failed to identify it, because it quite simply isn’t there, and “cryptic definition” is the only possible classification.
No, “He’s, etc.,” taken uncryptically, does not given a definition for PERIODIC TABLE. Got it.
Just to clarify: What I was trying to prise apart (and have now so prised—thanks!) were the two ways this &lit clue can be read—in your words, “one giving a definition, and one giving wordplay in the cryptic crossword sense.”
When you said:
No, “He’s, etc.,” taken uncryptically, does not given
a definition for PERIODIC TABLE. Got it.
I thought you had at last understood that the clue is simply a cryptic definition.
There is only one way to read this clue that leads to the answer. If you think there are two when everyone else can only see one, please explain cogently what both of them are.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.
Anybody can follow this convo and see that, I hope.
Am I being BADGEred?
I’m going back to sleep, Peter.
If your way of saying that there’s only one way of reading something includes “What I was trying to prise apart (and have now so prised—thanks!) were the two ways this &lit clue can be read”, it is far from easy to conclude that you agree that there is only one way and the clue is NOT an &lit. You now seem to be saying that you thanked me for something that did not happen. I’ll be far more convinced that you understand me if “or &lit?” is removed from the clue explanation.
I couldn’t edit the blog when away from my desk. Don’t like to edit on the phone. Now things are crossed out.
Should have just written “this clue” in that hasty reply. I didn’t mean to contradict what I had just written!
You were right to talk about two meanings – the one setter wanted you to see, and what the clue really meant, but two meanings like that exist in any genuinely cryptic clue except an &lit. As an example, the real meaning of the whole clue in 1A is nothing to do with editing emails or improving speech. But the surface meaning disguises a def+wordplay structure. In CDs and &lits, the whole clue says two things at once. In a CD you have to see through the surface reading and understand what some of the words really mean to find the overall meaning that provides a def, whereas in an &lit, you have to realise that the surface reading that you normally have to see through is the definition, and that the clue also indicates the wordplay when read as wordplay instructions. Confusion between the two is not unusual – quite a few clue writing entrants think they have written an &lit clue when they’ve produced CD instead.
The usual elegant construction from Robert. In 13dn I was initially irritated by the cluing of ‘cubes’ as ‘grows exponentially’, but when I checked in Chambers I see I was wrong. If one puts ‘grows’ and ‘exponentially’ together, as one mentally does normally, to grow exponentially is not to cube. But he’s used ‘exponentially’ not in the usual mathematical sense but is referring to the exponent you get when you cube something.
So it’s fine.
My only unknown word was ECLOGUE, where the wordplay helped. And as is usually the case, I took a very long time to get the CDs CANNIBALISTIC and PERIODIC TABLE (I agree with keriothe on that being a CD). No real problems otherwise.
Thanks Guy and Robert.
FOI Ameliorate
LOI Apace
COD Trespass
No one else fancied EPLUGUE? Both were unknowns though I can now see that my choice had the not-very-rare distinction of being a NHO and a laughable momble.
Lots to like as always. FOOL and BADGE my faves
Thanks Robert and guy
A nice start to my Saturday down here, taking an even 40 minutes to work through it – only APACE gave me parsing problems and had to wait to my final run-through to finally see the tricky word play. It’s a funny game, CANNIBALISTIC was my third one in – seeing it immediately – whereas others struggled – bet that they all saw APACE straight away !
Started with HEATHENDOM, got PERIODIC TABLE early on too and finished in the NE corner with FOOL (nice clue), OILSKIN and BOUNCE the last few in.
Thought your comments about the PERIODIC TABLE clue were a bit tetchy, Peter. Interesting discussion about &lits being read entirely as definitions, and entirely as wordplay, but mixed in with too much seeming hot air. Love Robert Price puzzles, and thanks for the excellent blog post, Guy.