13:58 on the Club timer. Nicely put-together puzzle, where a couple of gaps in my knowledge were filled by wordplay.
Across |
1 |
HALT – double def. (I shudder when guards – sorry, train managers – inform me of our next “station stop”. Though this is as nothing to my irritation when they tell me that we’ll be “arriving into” our destination. |
3 |
DAMASK ROSE – DAM + ASK + ROSE. A particularly fragrant example of the species. |
9 |
GO TO POT – double / cryptic def. |
11 |
ALAMEDA – A LAMED Adult; I didn’t know the Spanish for “promenade”, but the word seemed familiar, possibly because of the Californian city of the same name. |
12 |
CAT OF NINE TAILS =CAT OF NINE “TALES”. |
14 |
MESON – SO in MEN. |
15 |
INSOLVENT – Very in INSOLENT (=fresh). |
17 |
DO A RUNNER – (ORDERANUN)*. The surface suggested by this tickled me. |
19 |
CAPRI – CAPRICE without the C.E. |
21 |
GRAND NATIONAL – GRAND(splendid) + NATIONAL(subject, as in “a British national”). I presume even non-British residents are familiar with the steeplechase? |
24 |
UNBOWED – double def.; “pizzicato” is the musical instruction to play a string instrument by plucking, rather than with the bow. |
25 |
PENDING – Piano + ENDING. |
26 |
STARRY EYED – Right in (YESTERDAY)*. |
27 |
WRIT – WRIST without the Small. |
|
Down |
1 |
HIGH COMEDY – HIGH + COME + DumpY. As opposed to the base sort. |
2 |
LITOTES – TOT in LIES; understatement as a figure of speech e.g. “not half bad”. |
4 |
ATTENTION=”A TENSION” . |
5 |
APART – APARTMENT. More than half, five-ninths to be precise. |
6 |
KHAKI ELECTION – cryptic def. Any election where war is an issue, or the votes of returning soldiers are key to the result, first used to describe the 1900 election (fought around the Boer War), but also applied to those of 1918 or 1945. |
7 |
OVERSEE – LOVE ERSE English. |
8 |
ELAN – IrELANd. |
10 |
PENINSULAR WAR – (ALIPWARNNURSE)*. I saw an interesting documentary recently which suggested that victory in Spain was achieved by the British having better wagons, while the French supply chain was fragile, so despite his fighting prowess, Wellington’s real gift was for logistics. |
13 |
STRIP LIGHT – TRIP in SLIGHT. |
16 |
SORB APPLE – (POPLARBEST)*. Having never heard of it, I tried to justify STAR APPLE at first, before sorting out the wordplay, which was pretty clear when combined with the checkers; somebody with green fingers might know more about one of the three sorts. |
18 |
ALGEBRA – (ALEG)* BRA. |
20 |
PANNIER – ANN in PIER. I started by thinking the girl was Annie, and was wondering what Wigan had to do with PR… |
22 |
DODGE – Defendant in DOGE. |
23 |
LUGS – double def. |
Edited at 2012-12-04 06:11 am (UTC)
Edited at 2012-12-04 02:35 am (UTC)
[Well, you suvverners can write “oop” for “up” when you know damn well that “oop” is a cockney “hoop”. Eh?]
I share Tim’s shudders over ‘station stop’ on trains, even though there is a dreary logic to it. But given that a station without buildings can be called a HALT, do branch line guards ever announce that “Our next halt stop is…”?
Edited at 2012-12-04 03:07 am (UTC)
I did wonder if the DAM in 11 is meant as one of the Australian variety, that is, something you fall into rather than fall off.
Derek
I detest the phrase “station stop”. I see it as a cynical ploy by train companies to improve the perception of their services. Rather than actually trying to make them efficient they try and get people used to the idea that lengthy stops in places other than stations are perfectly normal.
I share McText’s dislike of 6D which I solved from K?A?I and the word “vote” in the weak clue. Thankfully no longer have to subject myself to train managers and their strangled announcements.
The point aboiut Wellington is interesting. A school friend of mine went into the army and told me that as officers they had to study and contrast Wellington and Napoleon. Wellington comes out streets ahead on both logistics and power of delegation. Apparently had Napoleon’s subordinates had more delegated power and been better organised, Waterloo would have been a different story. The same lessons can I’m told be drawn from Nelson at Trafalgar
I was in Paris for a few days’ holiday last week and did last week’s puzzles over the weekend. Enjoyed reading everybody’s comments about them – thank you. “Oink” was a particularly memorable clue.
Whatever way you look at it – Cat-O-Nine-Tails is NOT Cat of Nine TALES. Is there an expression Cat of Nine Tales? I’ve never come across it, but am happy to be corrected.
Seems to me that yet again a crossword compiler has applied his own “rules” to the English language.
Another example would be Flower for river – Um? Yes, a river flows, but is it really a flower? It doesn’t appear in any dictionary as such.
As to flower = river, my understanding is that a cryptic crossword involves using the wonderful complexity of the English language in order to create a challenge for the solver. There are conventions, if not actual rules, and as long as the setter plays fair, he or she is under no obligation to be literal in how the clue is constructed. By their very nature, you won’t find cryptic definitions, or charade type definitions, appearing in the dictionary.
Describing a river as a flower, or an anaesthetic as a number, is no longer innovative and witty, though it certainly would have been thought so when someone came up with the idea, I expect. However, it’s certainly part of the standard grammar of cryptic crosswords. If you don’t like it as a device, that is purely a matter of taste (others dislike definition by example, or cryptic definitions, or homophones, or Herbert Beerbohm Tree), but I don’t think it disqualifies the device from being a valid part of the setter’s armoury.
Anon – ‘flower’ for river is a morphological pun. Not a great one, but a pun nonetheless. And puns are part of the territory, as in CAT O NINE TAILS / ‘cat of nine tales’.
Thanks for your blog Tim, much appreciated.
Chris G.
Thanks.
I rather liked KHAKI ELECTION. (If you hadn’t come across it before, then you have now!)
Edited at 2012-12-04 11:40 pm (UTC)