Pretty sure I’ve never done a Dean puzzle any easier than this (there are seven anagrams!), but it is also among those I’ve enjoyed the most. The vocabulary features nothing the least bit esoteric or exotic, yet the deft trickery of the clues makes nothing too obvious.
I detected subtle sympathetic resonances between some of the vividly evocative answers. Here we are in our ISOLATED GROTTO with a THUNDERING outside like the BERING SEA… I’ll have some more CHIANTI…
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Bouncer possibly for party (4) |
| BALL DD |
|
| 3 | Huge object to keep down (10) |
| THUNDERING TH(UNDER)ING |
|
| 9 | Protest over cuts for one down the road (7) |
| SOMEDAY S(DEMOS<=“over”)AY …Such a wistful word… |
|
| 11 | So, softly’s right for one singer (7) |
| SOPRANO SO + P[-I,+R]ANO |
|
| 12 | Bargees in rough water (6,3) |
| BERING SEA (Bargees in)* |
|
| 13 | Broke cover — time to chase (5) |
| SKINT SKIN, “cover”—with T(ime) on its heels |
|
| 14 | Bishop moved to Lyme Regis to find romance (3-5-4) |
| BOY-MEETS-GIRL B(ishop) + (to Lyme Regis)* …And they’re only a couple steps away from AMOUR. |
|
| 18 | Publicity vehicle joins promotions (12) |
| ADVANCEMENTS AD, “Publicity” + VAN, “vehicle” + CEMENTS, “joins” |
|
| 21 | A possibly keen endless love (5) |
| AMOUR A + MOUR |
|
| 22 | Want a little rain? (9) |
| SHORTFALL SHORT FALL |
|
| 24 | X — not for a drink (7) |
| CHIANTI CHI, “X” + ANTI, “not for” |
|
| 25 | Fine swimmer in suit (7) |
| FORFEIT F(ORFE)IT …My LOI |
|
| 26 | Meeting in Frenchman’s flat (4-1-5) |
| PIED-A-TERRE PIE(DATE)RRE |
|
| 27 | Pad including new spelling aid (4) |
| WAND WA(N)D |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Cute animal but, mostly, shabby mongrel (8) |
| BUSHBABY bu |
|
| 2 | Chopped parsley smothering minute fish (8) |
| LAMPREYS (parsley)* with M(inute) in there too |
|
| 4 | Part of London that’s funny, sure (5) |
| HAYES HA YES |
|
| 5 | Clings to a troubled past? (9) |
| NOSTALGIC (Clings to a)* &lit (sorta…)—with a marvelously apt anagram The question mark may refer to the surface sense of “troubled,” since this feeling may seem most often prompted by happy memories. But one who has lived thru hard times may look back fondly on those years too… even aside from the fact that things often look different in hindsight. |
|
| 6 | Light shower 16 (8,5) |
| EXPOSURE METER &lit, playing on “show-er” and a mundanely literal reading of the answer to 16 …I got the answer thinking this was just a CD and only when writing the blog today finally noticed the “16,” which of course lifts the clue to another level. I had already noticed, though, how the answer slides down the grid to stand next to IN CAMERA. |
|
| 7 | One under arrest will stop it presently (2,1,3) |
| IN A BIT I(NAB)(I)T |
|
| 8 | Crossing river, reached cave (6) |
| GROTTO G(R)OT TO |
|
| 10 | Novel and/or deadline for novel (6,7) |
| DANIEL DERONDA (and/or deadline)* George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 1876 |
|
| 15 | Resignation announcement from working late shift (5,4) |
| THATS LIFE (late shift)* There is something exquisitely poetic about the linkage of “late shift” with THAT’S LIFE. |
|
| 16 | Gunners arrived secretly (2,6) |
| IN CAMERA IN CAME R(oyal) A(rtillery) |
|
| 17 | I will get rebuked about old single? (8) |
| ISOLATED I + O(ld) + SLATED, “rebuked” |
|
| 19 | Rash almost turned out better (6) |
| MADCAP MAD |
|
| 20 | Never agree to decorate cake (2,4) |
| NO DICE NOD, “agree” + ICE, “decorate cake” |
|
| 23 | Volunteer murderer? (5) |
| OFFER OFF is (primarily US) slang for “kill,” so an OFFER can be a “murderer,” but as that lacks dictionary status, I’m going to draw the line and call that a cryptic hint rather than dub this a double definition clue. |
|
I liked this. BALL was a write-in at 1a and usually that means the setter is going to give you a hard time in the lower half, but it wasn’t too bad. THUNDERING took a bit of thought but once I saw ‘thing’ for ‘object’ and with the ‘N’ from NOSTALGIC it came to me. I liked IN A BIT and SOPRANO which took me a while to get the -I + R as I initially just thought softly = ‘P’, clever. ‘Down the road’ for SOMEDAY was also good. NHO ‘orfe’ the fish. Also didn’t know or forgotten DANIEL DERONDA and in the past week it has come up in both Jeopardy! and Pointless. Saw CHIANTI where I assumed ‘chi’ is ten, but wasn’t sure. My COD has to be the brilliant EXPOSURE METER with the cross reference to 16d.
Thanks Guy and setter.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘orfe’ here; its other name is ‘ide’.
Thanks. Never seen it before either.
Garden centres sell “Golden Orfe” and “Blue Orfe” for ponds.
(A heron ate all my goldfish in the 1990s, and I’ve never replaced them. I’ve just been looking at pond discussion forums, where people seem to have complicated set-ups involving “laser beams, waterguns, dogs barking speakers, eyes in the water, plastic models” to try to deter the birds. So I’m glad I’ve stuck with water lilies and dragonflies).
There have been at least 3 instances of ORFE as an answer here, most recently in a Jumbo in 2023, however there were many more occasions when IDE appeared and the blogger or a commenter saw fit to mention that IDE is an alternative name for the orfe. I learnt both words from crosswords decades ago, long before I took up The Times.
22:14
Probably my fastest time on a Dean puzzle. I did fail to parse SOPRANO, though, not getting the ‘right for one’. Biffed BUSHBABY & PIED-A-TERRE, parsed post-submission. I liked BUSHBABY.
32m 35s
Oh well, Guy, your first sentence said almost all of I was going to say about this puzzle!
7 anagrams, indeed!
The clues i liked particularly were FORFEIT, EXPOSURE METER and IN CAMERA.
30 minutes exactly, so I agree it was easy for a Sunday. MADCAP was my LOI and I missed the full parsing of SOPRANO.
I know you are a perfectionist over presentation, Guy, so you may like to attend to the stray bracket in the clue number at 12ac.
Yikes! Thanks!
23D: You mean “second definition”, as “double definition” describes a whole clue.
Yes, my mind clearly slipped at the end to talking about the entire two-part clue, rather than just that element of it.
…
Amended to reflect that.
So your “slip” was to use “double definition”, and therefore “definition” in the same way as 99.9something% of people working on or writing about cryptic crosswords, and for “definition” in particular, all four of the English dictionaries on my iPad, in which “definition” does not only mean “dictionary definition”.
You’ve used the sensible meaning of “definition” alone in at least two places in this report. I’m not going to identify them so that you can correct the “mistake” of doing the right thing. Why not just talk sense, instead of potentially confusing readers new to cryptic crosswords by failing to identify what kind of clue, or part of a clue, you’re talking about in the same way as practically everybody else? (When you get one like “offer” here, or “flower” meaning “river”, you can just call it an imagined or whimsical definition.)
My slip (as indeed it was one; I’m not the drooling moron you seem to think I am) has been corrected in that note. There is nothing remotely confusing about it now. Someone would have to be brain-damaged to not know what part of the clue I was talking about. (My day job, by the way, is making sentences, paragraphs, articles make sense. I’ve never picked on your little mistakes.)
I find this comment flabbergasting. I really don’t know what you’re on about, but I’ve gotten the distinct impression that you simply don’t like me, Mr. Biddlecombe, for some unfathomable reason. There is no difference in my mind between a “cryptic hint” and a “whimsical definition,” when in the context this hint is obviously a sort of definition. People use these terms interchangeably all week long. Maybe that’s not kosher in your chapel on Sunday, I dunno. And I don’t care.
I would not call someone who can finish cryptic crosswords any kind of moron.
The “all week long” idea contrasts with my assessment that “cryptic hint” with this meaning is practically entirely limited to crossword blogs, and proud as I may be to have started the first enduring one, I understand that many people interested in cryptic crosswords know nothing about the blogs. As some evidence, I have three current email accounts, one with emails about crosswords sent to me as an editor over the last 14 years. That no emails with “cryptic hint” in the text (and I only intentionally delete emails that are obviously spam or nothing to do with my work). The only account with any was my personal one, where all the emails with “cryptic hint” were notifications about posts on this blog, except for one where “cryptic hint” was used to describe something in the title for a crossword.
And as I’ve said before, if it is obvious that part of a clue is obviously a definition, then that part of the clue should obviously be underlined to help people understand the role of each part of the clue.
It’s a two-word clue. The dictionary-quality definition is underlined. The function of the other part is sufficiently explained. I don’t think people are as dumb as you seem to assume.
Without wishing to involve my self in the debate, I was under the impression that I was the person who introduced “cryptic hint” to explanations of clues in TfTT blogs so I have just done a little research into the archive.
Seemingly I was wrong about that because Andy (linxit) used the expression in two of his blogs back in 2008, but the next occurrence was in one of my blogs in 2014. After that I used it very regularly and almost exclusively for the next 4 years, but other bloggers who gradually picked it up and started using it regularly were Penfold in his Jumbo blogs, and Rolytoly. I haven’t researched later than 2019.
I’ve always found it a helpful way to describe a variety of supplementary non-dictionary definitions.
Thanks, Jack! I knew I’d seen it somewhere! Ha.
FWIW, I didn’t wish to involve myself in any “debate” either. And I don’t think that’s what this was.
I have no objection to anybody saying “this definition is a cryptic hint”. What I do object to is people here refusing to underline all such definitions, or to use the term “definition” in the same way as writers and commentators on cryptic crosswords, including the writer(s) of the TfTT glossary, Ximenes, Alec Robins, Don Manley, Brian Greer and Tim Moorey, frequently in an early statement that any cryptic clue must include a definition, and that many also include what we now usually call “wordplay” (formerly the “subsidiary indication”).
18:31. A tricky one, and I got particularly stuck on a couple at the end. One of them was FORFEIT, which became obvious as soon as I considered ‘fine’ as the definition but it took me far too long to do so. I can’t remember what the other one was.
15.45
This was a superb puzzle imho. Neat, fun, clever. I must admit that I thought it was a Robert Price whilst solving, but I hope that is taken as a compliment to both setters.
Lots of great clues but I did particularly like BOY MEETS GIRL.
Thanks Guy and Dean
Thanks Guy du Sable and DeanMayer.
Not too difficult.
COD 14a Boy Meets Girl.
4d Hayes, wasn’t 100% certain this was right at the time, but it is fine so not sure what worried me.
10d Daniel Deronda. Had forgotten about this never-read-it book. Needed all the crossers, then found it was already in Cheating Machine, DOH!
– Didn’t understand how chi means X for CHIANTI but have since looked it up
– Only now do I fully appreciate how the clue for EXPOSURE METER works
– Hadn’t heard of DANIEL DERONDA so had to hope I’d filled the blanks in correctly
Thanks Guy and Dean
FOI Offer
LOI Exposure meter
COD Boy-meets-girl
Started off with a bang – ended with a wimper. Couldn’t get the tail of THUNDER???, and had forgotten that X = chi. So, top half done in record time, but ground to a halt in the lower half, where I couldn’t see FORFEIT, CHIANTI, THATS LIFE nor INCAMERA. RASH=MADCAP? Ah well. But enjoyed the ride, as always with one of Robert’s puzzles.
Or, for that matter, with one of Dean’s.
Thanks Dean and Guy
Might be because of cutting back the number of puzzles that I have been doing lately – ailing mother and a kick up in the work at the moment – but anyhow, didn’t find this one easy at all, taking about double time at the 90 minute mark and spilling over to the second day. Having said that, once it was finished, all of the parsing had also been done.
Like others, I thought that the EXPOSURE METER clue was a gem and liked PIED-A-TERRE too – firstly for remembering the term and after belatedly seeing the word play behind it as well. Finally finished with MADCAP and AMOUR in the SW corner and then back up to eventually see SKINT in the NE.