This was a spring zephyr—really a breeze—still quite entertaining for all of the ease.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Soldiers also used in strategy (7) |
| PLATOON PLA(TOO)N |
|
| 5 | Harmful file corrupted in computer (7) |
| MALEFIC MAC “computer” stores (file)* |
|
| 9 | Comedian senses upset viewers (9) |
| WITNESSES WIT, “Comedian” + (senses)* |
|
| 10 | Bear, male, a sacred thing (5) |
| TOTEM TOTE, “Bear” + M(ale) |
|
| 11 | Port behind old Tokyo, to the west (6) |
| ODESSA ASS, “behind” + EDO, “old Tokyo” <=“to the west” |
|
| 12 | Utter brute, for a fighter (8) |
| GUERILLA “gorilla” |
|
| 14 | Doing spectator sports, as forecast (14) |
| PROGNOSTICATED (Doing spectator)* Creative Anagrind Prize! |
|
| 17 | As, for example, Parisian culture? (7,7) |
| CAPITAL LETTERS CAPITAL, “Parisian” + LETTERS, “culture” |
|
| 19 | Lines on child’s foot (8) |
| INFANTRY INFANT, “child” + RY, (railway) “lines” “Foot” as short for “foot soldiers” |
|
| 21 | Football’s big hitter on the radio (6) |
| SOCCER “socker” |
|
| 23 | News agency didn’t disclose bug (5) |
| APHID A(ssociated) P(ress) + HID |
|
| 24 | Showing off, gunman’s about to go downhill (9) |
| UNMASKING (gunman’s)* around SKI, “go downhill” |
|
| 25 | Appeared to act (7) |
| ENTERED CD |
|
| 26 | Holding the evacuated French city (7) |
| TENANCY T |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Meeting captive, I say (6) |
| POWWOW POW, prisoner of war, “captive” + WOW(!), “I say(!)” FWIW, Merriam-Webster appends this usage note: “Use of the word powwow to refer generally to a social get-together or to a meeting for discussion is considered to be an offensive appropriation of a term of great cultural importance to Indigenous Americans.” Collins has no such caveat, but Dictionary.com has a much wordier “Senstive note.” As long as the word is used in reference to a Native nation where it is part of the language, no problem. |
|
| 2 | When Panama falls for no good reason (2,3,4,2,1,3) |
| AT THE DROP OF A HAT Did you know that all authentic Panama hats are made in… Ecuador? Go figure. The definition here seems to ever-so-slightly stretch the sense of the idiom, which I’ve usually understood as simply synonymous with “immediately,” ”without delay,” or “as soon as the slightest provocation is given.” Of course, whether a “reason” is “good” or not is often a judgment call. |
|
| 3 | Failure of management (9) |
| OVERSIGHT DD |
|
| 4 | Boy raised on hot food (4) |
| NOSH SON<=“raised” + H(ot) |
|
| 5 | Flies lawgiver across capital (10) |
| MOSQUITOES MOS(QUITO)ES |
|
| 6 | Not now? Dead right (5) |
| LATER LATE, “Dead” + R(ight) |
|
| 7 | A drawing that’s disastrous as a picture (5,10) |
| FATAL ATTRACTION The first reference a bit cryptic, the second vague enough! |
|
| 8 | Soldier, nod off (8) |
| COMMANDO COMMA + (nod)* |
|
| 13 | Trifle that’s sweet, more or less (4,6) |
| FOOL AROUND FOOL, “sweet” + AROUND, “more or less” |
|
| 15 | Plant fibre thus gets new twigs (7,2) |
| COTTONS ON COTTON, “Plant fibre” + SO, “thus” + N(ew) |
|
| 16 | Last part of Aida polished off, get going (8) |
| ACTIVATE ACT IV, “last part of Aida” + ATE, “polished off” |
|
| 18 | Not even fish will swallow goods (6) |
| CRAGGY CRA(GG)Y That’s “fish” in the sense of definition 3 in Collins—with the proviso “not in technical use”—“any of various aquatic invertebrates, such as the cuttlefish, jellyfish, and crayfish” (emphasis added). |
|
| 20 | In kindergarte{n, a dir}ty bottom (5) …It happens… |
| NADIR Hidden |
|
| 22 | Miss being sick? Not very (4) |
| OMIT |
|
2D: I was surprised too, but “without delay or good reason” is the definition in the Concise Oxford and ODE.
CRAGGY was a cross-your-fingers (and then wait a week) answer for me. Of course I know of crayfish, but “cray” on its own I’ve never seen. After submitting, I looked it up and Chambers doesn’t support it so I figured maybe I’d missed something. I, too, was a bit bemused with AT THE DROP OF A HAT meaning “for no good reason”. Anyway, when I see the setter is Dean I never know if it is going to be something requiring multiple sessions to finish it or something, like this one, that is still full of clever clues but doesn’t require a lot of perseverance. I liked it.
20:50
My fastest time for a Dean puzzle. I had the same feeling about ‘cray’ as Paul. And I don’t see how Collins helps: ‘fish’ doesn’t mean e.g. ‘crayfish’, ‘crayfish’ does. (Collins does list ‘cray’ as Oz/NZ meaning ‘crayfish’, but a cray is not a fish.) I liked ENTERED, OMIT, & COD COMMANDO.
Since, as you point out, “cray” is short for “crayfish” in some Anglophone parts, and “crayfish” is covered by the looser (virtually biblical) definition of “fish” in Collins, it works out fine.
It works out fine because of Definition 3, and we always (so far as I know) yield to the dictionary. My problem is that Definition 3 is wrong: ‘fish’, to repeat myself, doesn’t mean e.g. ‘crayfish’: it’s part of the word ‘crayfish’. (ODE, I see, is rather more cautious.)
‘Fish’ is used to mean ‘whale’ three times in the book of Jonah, at least in the KJV. I see no problem in us using ‘fish’ in an archaic or loose sense.I didn’t know ‘cray’ meant ‘crayfish’ but it was a good clue in any case.
With Dean, I’m always ready for a struggle, but with this puzzle I must have been on the wavelength. Most of the clues were solved at sight – I didn’t even hesitate at craggy. Powwow was used as jocular UK slang in the 1890-1940 period, so no problem there.
Time: 16:46
I don’t know where “1890-1940” comes from. The Collins entry implies far older use and has a usage graph starting around 1700. At the other end, there are more than 200 uses in the searchable online past editions of the Times and ST, aside from familiarity for someone born in 1960.
I quibble slightly with “As for example” being CAPITAL LETTERS i.e. the plural.
I didn’t know the trivia about Panama hats. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks for the blog Guy.
51 minutes as far as I went, but a technical DNF as I had a brainstorm and missed the obvious COTTONS at 15d. I’d considered LATCHES ON originally and then CATCHES ON when the C-checker arrived but never managed to think past that although it obviously wouldn’t work.
Perhaps my brain hasn’t yet recovered as I still don’t understand the ODE wordplay at 11ac despite reading the blog explanation several times. Incidentally there’s a typo in ‘Tokyo’ here.
EDO is the old name for Tokyo, reversed for ODE followed by ASS, also reversed.
Thanks. That comes as news to me.
I really enjoyed this and found the answers just going in one after the other. Liked As for CAPITAL LETTERS, initially thinking it was something to do with arsenic. COMMANDO very clever but with the ‘o’ at the end saw what was going on quickly.
Thanks Guy.
54m 34s
I did like 8d COMMANDO as I am often bamboozled by such punctuation mark clues.
I liked COMMANDO, as well.
22.24
Breezeblocked at the end for well over 5 minutes on FOOL AROUND VOMIT and UNMASKING the latter of which I really struggled to pin down the w/p. Clever stuff. Also bamboozled by the, but it’s not the first time and I doubt it’s the last.
Lovely puzzle and particularly liked FATAL ATTRACTION.
Thanks Dean/Guy
– Had no idea how ODESSA worked (I considered ODENSE for a while) as I didn’t know Edo as an old word for Tokyo
– Hesitated over GUERILLA as I thought it had to have two Rs
– Initially put MASH for 4d, with Sam as the boy, before PLATOON forced a rethink to get NOSH
– Was mystified by COMMANDO, continuing my perfect track record of failing to parse clues involving use of punctuation
Thanks Guy and Dean.
FOI Nadir
LOI Craggy
COD Tenancy
11a Odessa. Did know but had forgotten old Tokyo=Edo. Knew it from James Clavell Shogun book. RIP Richard Chamberlaine; he starred in the TV miniseries as Blackthorne.
17a Caps. I too thought As was arsenic for a while.
1d Powwow. I suppose for us in UK we don’t see the same sensitivity about words imported from Indigenous American languages. But I remain confused; my understanding was that the various languages are very different from each other so a word imported into English would typically affect few Amerindians, (if that is an OK term!) so would it be a sensitive matter to those not affected?
2d At the drop…. I did know the hats come from Ecuador; a friend of mine lived there for a few years, long enough to acquire a(nother) wife anyway. Also much enjoyed the Flanders & Swann records.
5d MosQuito-es; another Ecuadorean reference. Has our setter lived there as well?
7d Fatal Attraction added to Cheating Machine.
16d Activate, DNK Aida is in 4 acts.
22d (V)Omit, ha ha! COD.
Thanks Guy & Dean Mayer.
I enjoyed this, as usual for Dean, and finished in 40 minutes. I misread the wordplay for COMMANDO by not noticing the punctuation mark in the clue and talking myself into believing that COMMA could be some kind of ant or similarly martial insect, but of course my answer was right. The only clue I had any real difficulty with was ODESSA and I wouldn’t have known the old name for Tokyo if I hadn’t tried to learn Japanese a long time ago, but it did eventually come to mind. I rather liked INFANTRY or rather the clue for it.
A raised eyebrow at “cray”, standalone, which I’d never heard as a name for the (not really a fish) crustacean. It took me a minute to decide that my usage of At The Drop Of A Hat to mean instantaneous would have to imply action without time for forethought; though I had thought the term came from starting horseraced by dropping a hat. Either way, I filed it under “Cray” for fishy. The usual educational blog, Guy; the usual enjoyable 20 minutes, Mr Mayer
Much enjoyed as usual except the ODESSA clue where I couldn’t tell if it or Odense was correct. Was unaware of ODE and Tokyo, and the unsignposted Americanism irritates me , as it always does when ‘ass’ is used as a synonym of ‘behind’ etc. In a UK-based paper I should have thought the word was ‘arse’.
13:09. Late to comment after a busy weekend. I didn’t know EDO and was very unsure about 18dn, doubting both ‘fish’ for CRAY and ‘not even’ for CRAGGY.
Problem getting PLATOON, because I wrote in DHAL instantly for 4d ( lad, coming up, with H= food), pretty sure that it was right…ah well. Didn’t correct until I had to reveal WITNESSES ( as I’d probably never associate COMEDIAN with WIT!). But a good call, an example of how flexible we have to be in our solving. Really liked PLATOON, along with quite a few other very clever ones, notably CAPITAL LETTERS and the inventive COMMANDO. Did not get CRAGGY ( even though here in Oz anything that comes out of the sea is fish), nor did I spot the anagram indicator at 14a. But a thoroughly enjoyable ride.
Thanks Dean and Guy
Continuing through the backlog, didn’t find this as breezy as some, taking a bit under the hour across two sessions to get it done. Like Jacaroo, I went down the DHAL path at 4d, except forgetting where to put the H – anyway was kiboshed with WITNESSES later on.
Liked the CAPITAL LETTERS and the COMMANDO tricks and thought that MOSQUITOES was concisely and cleverly clued. ODESSA was another neat clue – recalling EDO as the former capital of Japan from a few historical novels, including ‘Shogun’.
Finished down the bottom with FOOL AROUND, UNMASKING (which took longer than it should have to parse) and OMIT the last one in.