Although this was a Harry Sunday, I didn’t struggle much, assisted no doubt by the generous helping of anagrams (seven!). I was introduced to only one previously unknown word, but it soon seemed an old friend. Although I am not a big fan of cryptic definitions when they stand alone, the ones that appear here in company with other wordplay struck me as damn clever! Both the &lits stuck the landing in a way that is too rare.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | What are you doing here? (9,6) What’s it to ya? |
| CROSSWORD PUZZLE This clue seems rather sui generis, but if pressed I’d call it a CD. …The answer was so obvious that I almost didn’t believe it. |
|
| 9 | Successful chess players holding ultimate of titles? (7) |
| MASTERS MA(S)TERS &lit! |
|
| 10 | Host finally cut off very vacuous swimmer (7) |
| ANCHOVY ANCHO |
|
| 11 | Worry about wine running short (4) |
| CARE CA, “about” + RE |
|
| 12 | Be careful today, I see struggles over Sunday (4,4,2) |
| EASY DOES IT (today, I see)* with S(unday) inserted …“Be careful!” was what my mom regularly said to my dad as he left in the morning for work as a lineman for the Monongahela Power Company. |
|
| 13 | Cup of tea and wafer son polished off (7) |
| CHALICE CHA, “tea” + |
|
| 15 | Chained up animal that preys on colonists (7) |
| ECHIDNA (Chained)* With a cryptic definition, playing on “colonists” for ants |
|
| 17 | Prior to party, catch game (7) |
| NETBALL NET, “catch” + BALL, “party” |
|
| 19 | Sober and beginning to shun drugs (7) |
| SEDATES SEDATE + S |
|
| 20 | Plainly too silly by choice (10) |
| OPTIONALLY (Plainly too)* |
|
| 22 | Out of favour rebels ousted military leaders (4) |
| FROM First letters |
|
| 25 | Going to seed (and church) is not inspiring (2,5) |
| AT PEACE AT, “Going to” + PEA, “seed” + CE, “Church” (of England) And it’s not exhaling either! The definition is rather cryptic. AT is “going to” in the sense of (Collins) “towards; in the direction of | looking at television | throwing stones at windows” EDIT: Or “going to” as “attending” meaning “at,” as Peter W. has it below. …Admittedly, substituting “Going to” for “at” in those examples would sound odd. This part was a momentary poser. |
|
| 26 | Race to save two groups of soldiers in distress (7) |
| TORMENT T(OR)(MEN)T That’s the Isle of Man’s annual T(ourist) T(rophy) motorcycle race. |
|
| 27 | What better hopes to change in city hall? (3,6,4,2) |
| THE POWERS THAT BE (what better hopes)* |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | A funny turn? (5) |
| COMIC DD, a cartoon strip or a person doing, say, a stand-up routine (a “turn” can be either a performance or—in some dictionaries—the person doing it). |
|
| 2 | Orthodox bishop picked up by old man (9) |
| OBSERVANT O(ld) + B(ishop) + SERVANT, “man” |
|
| 3 | On radio, religious type gets request (4) |
| SEEK “Sikh” |
|
| 4 | Drink stops male party-goer performing (7) |
| ONSTAGE ON(STAG)E ONE for “Drink” as in “one for the road” …The idiom is, in fact, the only dictionary backup I found for this—unlike ONE for “joke” (as in “Did you hear the one about…?”), to which Collins gives a listing under the main header. |
|
| 5 | I’m shocked a remedy worked (5,2) |
| DEARY ME (a remedy)* |
|
| 6 | Shift? He couldn’t being out of gear! (9) |
| UNCLOTHED (He couldn’t)* |
|
| 7 | Menageries containing medium-sized flies (5) |
| ZOOMS ZOO(M)S |
|
| 8 | Set paying off some people in pyramid schemes? (9) |
| EGYPTIANS (set paying)* With a jocularly cryptic definition |
|
| 13 | An example is B harmonic (9) |
| CONSONANT DD |
|
| 14 | Lover shortly to embrace old singer (9) |
| INAMORATO IN A M(O)(RAT)O |
|
| 16 | Cleaner put off dope by cost in the end (9) |
| DETERGENT DETER, “put off” + GEN, “dope” (information, intelligence) + |
|
| 18 | Holiday with abrupt worker … don’t bother (5,2) |
| LEAVE BE LEAVE, “Holiday” + BE |
|
| 19 | Honours a music producer gets in spades with soprano (7) |
| SALUTES S(A)(LUTE)S |
|
| 21 | Bit of data on PC some boo{t up le}gitimately (5) |
| TUPLE Hidden Collins: “computing | a row of values in a relational database”—from the combining form -tuple, indicating a set of the number it’s attached to, as in “quintuple.” …I didn’t know this, but it was the only thing that looked like a word hidden after “some”—and it was perfectly logical. |
|
| 23 | Hat and glove removed at last by engineers (5) |
| MITRE MIT |
|
| 24 | Something that may have straight edges and a curve above (4) |
| ARCH The definition—let’s take it as a synonym of “ARCHway”—doubles as instructions for building the word: H, with the “straight edges” that may be the sides of the passage, being topped by ARC, “a curve.” &lit! …This was the hardest for me to parse, after entering it as my LOI. |
|
Fell for TORRENT instead of TORMENT. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks DMcL and GdS.
This is the easiest one in quite a while, even though I had a hard time believing crossword puzzle -really? Tuple was the only obscurity – we just called a rows a row, and a columns a column – the Macedonians of IT. Solving from the cryptics, I didn’t notice how strange at peace was.
Time: 29:02
I often find that when the first clue is a gimme, it usually means the setter is leading you into a false sense of security. So, when I biffed 1a CROSSWORD PUZZLE, I thought I’d have a tough workout, but, overall it wasn’t too bad.
Loved the pyramid schemers for EGYPTIANS, and thought ARCH was very clever. ECHIDNA was very good but I had to wonder if the setter thought it was a man-eater before the ant/colony penny dropped. NHO of TUPLE but luckily it was hidden. ‘Going to’ does indeed seem strange for ‘AT’ in AT PEACE. Never sure whether to put INAMORATO or INAMORATA as I know that one is male and one is female, but the wordplay helped.
Thanks Guy. Just for fun, I googled the pronunciation of ‘Monongahela’, very tricky!
33.30
Must be me but I just don’t get 1ac at all or at least I’m probably in the camp of a cryptic that doesn’t quite work. Anyway lots to like elsewhere – the anagram for THE POWERS was really clever and had me assuming I was looking for something to do with gamblers
Thanks Guy
So what WERE you doing there? Sudoku?!
23:38
Maybe my best time for a Harry puzzle. Like Guy and Vinyl, I had difficulty believing 1ac; thought there must be more to it. I have a bunch of ?s on my hard copy: 13ac slice?, 25ac def?, 4d drink?, 24d cryptic?
I took 25a ‘not inspiring’ to be not breathing, dead, at peace.
Yes, and I thought that would be obvious from my merely saying the definition was cryptic, but I shall add “And not exhaling either!”
I figured that had to be it, after writing the query; didn’t care much for it.
4Dn – I thought normally “stops” means the preceding word is in the middle of the following word(s) ?
That wouldn’t stop the word that’s on the outside but merely interrupt it. I’ve wondered about this usage before, but here “stops” means closing off, so to speak, on both ends. I also always want “lining” to mean on the outside rather than on the inside, as it actually does.
25ac. Collins has under “go”:
—–> to attend: – “go to school”, “go to church”.
So, could “going to” = “at”, work in a sentence like:
“I haven’t seen you for years! Last time we met my son Johnnie was just a toddler, he’s now GOING TO secondary school” (same as “…he’s now AT secondary school”).
4d. Collins has:
You can use “one” to refer to an alcoholic drink.
[informal]
Other members of the committee drifted in for a quick one before closing time.
Hmm. I looked only at definitions for “at,” not “go,” and it didn’t occur to me that “at” is sometimes used that way. Thanks.
Regarding “one,” I always skip the CoBuild entries at the top of Collins, which start with “You…,” to go directly to the definitions from the dictionary.
Beg your pardon re. the CoBuild. I think there used to be some drop-down menu or something, that you could go directly to the dictionary entries. Now, I have to manually scroll past them, and I get mixed up which bit I am looking at!
I believe COBUILD entries always come first. You can tell if you’re reading a COBUILD definition: it’s a dictionary for non-native learners of English, so the definitions are written in a simplified English. COBUILD will also omit all but the most common definitions for a given word.
The Collins site is a mess. They seem determined to make as difficult as possible to get to the actual dictionary!
Indeed. A week or two ago, when you went to Collins they landed you on the “Summary” page. I must have been one of a multitude of people who wrote to say that what users usually want when they look into a dictionary is a DEFINITION, not other brilliant content that Collins has come up with. I received a very nice reply:
‘Many thanks for taking the time to contact us with your comments on the recent changes to the lookup experience on Collins’ online dictionary. We greatly appreciate feedback on aspects of the user experience and appreciate that this recent change caused some frustration for our regular users. With this in mind, we have now reverted to the previous functionality for those accessing the site on desktop.’
39 minutes. Like others I had never heard of TUPLE but once the checkers were in place it presented no problem.
I can’t see the clue at 24dn as other than a rather a wordy but literal description of the answer containing no wordplay, so not &lit, nor cryptic really.
And to choose ‘city hall’ as the embodiment of authority defining those who wield it seems rather odd and at best an unsignalled DBE.
A question mark is usually deemed sufficient to flag a DBE. The expression “(You can’t) fight City Hall” is sometimes used without strict reference to a municipal government.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/fight-city-hall
Seems to me that you’re missing the way the definition of ARCH also breaks down the way the word is built. This construction falls apart, of course, for definitions of ARCH other than as a synonym for “archway” (i.e., just the top part). But there’s no other discernible reason for such wordiness.
You’re right I missed that about ARCH despite having read it in your blog. It still seems bizarre to me and perhaps too clever for its own good. At least the ‘rugby post / H’ device revived in a puzzle recently is a little more accessible than ‘something that may have straight edges’.
Yes, I have to acknowledge that the DBE at 27 is covered by the question mark. Although some places in the UK have city halls, any expression referencing the machinations of local authorities is more likely refer to the Town Hall. That’s why it struck me as a bit odd. Perhaps it’s different in the US? But in any case I didn’t have a problem solving the clue, and that’s the main thing.
Collins lists “city hall” as a British term too, “the building housing the administrative offices of a city or municipal government,” and gives it, when capped, a quite specific sense, “the building, located in Southwark and designed by Norman Foster, housing the headquarters of the Greater London Authority and London Mayor; opened in 2002,” but specifies that the metonymic sense, meaning municipal government or its officials and generally any bureaucracy or bureaucratic strictures, is native to the USA or Canada.
Exactly. As in my previous, city hall is used here but the catch-all term for local bureaucrats and officials is town hall. Of course TPTB can also apply to central government and Civil Service, QUANGOs etc, which is another reason why city hall struck me as an odd example to choose.
I find the clue for ARCH a bit strange too. The only reason I can think of for saying ‘something that may have straight edges’ is that the letter H doesn’t, necessarily, because it can be in lower case.
For the definition, an archway may not have straight edges either. I already mentioned that to you! But I neglected to mention here your point about the lower-case “h,” which is helpful.
I’m talking purely about the wordplay here, where ‘something that may have straight edges’ indicates H. That was what jackkt was querying.
Yes, I know. But it doesn’t hurt to have it repeated, since it was missing from my note.
TUPLE was a gift for anyone in software development. The one that held me up was FROM, which was my LOI.
POI 26a Torment. There are several TTs. Oddly the RAC TT (for cars) is 2 years older than the IoM TT which is for motorcycles, and was last run at Silverstone in 2019.
21d Tuple. Knew this from a training course by Mssrs Oracle I think. Should have gone on a course inspired by Codd & Date. The word tuple always irritated me and I didn’t know until Guy informed us whence it came. I would have been less irritated had I known.
24d Arch, BIFD. Didn’t have a clue how clever it was. Still somewhat foxed.
14:21. I found this quite tricky, in spite of TUPLE being the only unknown. I find that clue for ARCH a bit strange.
1ac was easy but it raised a smile.
Don’t often solve the Sunday cryptic, but I managed this one.
– NHO TUPLE
– Didn’t parse AT PEACE
– Didn’t understand the ‘one’ part of ON STAGE
– Nearly put ‘leave it’ for 18d and was glad I held off on the last word until THE POWERS THAT BE pointed me towards LEAVE BE
Thanks Guy and David.
FOI Seek
LOI Arch
COD Care
I found this very tricky (83 minutes of tricky), but perhaps it’s just not my day. My first pass through the grid produced just two across answers and two down answers, but very very slowly everything else fell into place. My LOI was ONSTAGE, because I just couldn’t see the drink in it until I reluctantly decided it was indeed OK. Many other clues very clearly suggested entirely wrong paths of understanding and had to be very carefully unravelled. I always enjoy Sundays and this was certainly a very good puzzle, but somehow today it did put me off a bit.
Another route to CARE in 11a – CLARET running short of L and T
That doesn’t work, as “running short” can only mean something removed from the end. And it doesn’t take account of “about.”
It wasn’t a serious cryptic alternative for the crossword – just noted the word was short of two letters making up care. A fun fact that’s all.
Thanks David and Guy
Did this over a couple of sessions today in a combined time of just over the hour. Got all bar the SW corner over breakfast and was able to quickly wrap it up after lunch. Held up by some own-goals by writing in EASY GOES IT initially (and only fixed in the final parsing run – which picked up that there was no G) and had LEAVE IT at first at 18d until 27a showed that I had used one too many T’s from the anagram material.
Enjoyed the solve a lot, finishing with that ARCH (that took ages post-solve to really understand and then liked it), INAMORATO (with the neat IN A MO around it) and CHALICE (another that took a while to fully understand the workings, until finding that definition of ‘wafer’ in semiconductors!)