Today’s grid, which I am given to believe is the work of the New Boss himself – know him by the initials RR, the same as Rolls Royce, a mere coincidence, or IS IT? – was a satisfying puzzle for me chock full of cleverly misleading surfaces with fun words hidden behind them. (Is it just me who has an unseemly predilection for any word containing any of Scrabble’s “Big Four” letters? I could roll the phrase “1D 17D” from this puzzle around my mouth all day.)
Talking of Scrabble, 19A was surely the obscurest piece of vocab in this puzzle, not a word you’ll hear at many bus-stops alas, but probably part of many a tile-scrabbler’s arsenal. I liked the shout out to Wodehouse at 13A and the pair of clues located in the 18th century, though sadly Louis Quatorze and George I died before the birth of the master’s mate of HMS Bounty so the three of them were probably never at a party together.
I’m rarely the kind of person who can polish off one of these babies in single digits of minutes, but it passed my usual test of being pleasantly solvable between points A and B of my London perambulations, A and B being on this occasion Wandsworth and King’s Cross. Last one in was I think 22A, not a term I’ve come across before, but easily gettable from the crossing letters. Maybe it was just that I was on the trains at the time but I wanted so badly for the “steel band” to be the Tube map’s very own éminence grise, the JUBILEE LINE.
COTD probably has to be 12A, due to it encapsulating the essence of English participation in the World Cup. I drew Chile in our office sweepstake by the way, which initially filled me with a powerful existential despair, but things have definitely started looking up since then. ¡Viva Chile!
Across | |
1 | CLASSY – stylish: CLAY [earthenware] “drinking” SS [vessel] |
4 | UPSTREAM – “away from estuary”: (PASTURE)* [ploughed] + M [miles] |
10 | COME OFF IT – “I refuse to believe”: COMET [space traveller] “is clothing” OF FI [belonging to girl] |
11 |
UTTER – unqualified: |
12 | OOH – to sound excited: 0-0 [blank scoreline] + H [hard] |
13 | HOORAY HENRY – typical member of Bertie Wooster’s Drones Club: (HONORARY)* [new] “receiving” Y HE [unknown male] |
14 | MUMBAI – city: MU [letter from Greek] + MBA [business graduate] + I [one] |
16 | ROYAL WE – sounds like Louis’s “royal oui”, and is also an English king’s “I” |
19 | AGELAST – mirthless person (i.e. “one impervious to cracks”): AGE [get old] + LAST [shoemaker’s mould] |
20 | ICE AGE – time long ago: sounds like [“to listen to”] EYE SAGE [watch + one who is learned] |
22 | JUBILEE CLIP – a type of steel band: a short sequence from the Thames Pageant would be a different kind of Jubilee clip |
25 | TUT – expression of disapproval: TUTOR [teacher] – OR [men, i.e. “other ranks”] |
26 |
IONIA – old territory: |
27 | OWNERSHIP – having: (NO WISH + REP)* [getting involved] |
28 | TROUSERS – bags: T [time] + ROUSER [alarm] + S [seconds] |
29 |
THE WHO – rock band: |
Down | |
1 | CUCKOO – double def: “hourly you might hear this” [from a cuckoo clock], and “sound? hardly!” [since “cuckoo” is “of unsound mind”] |
2 | ALMSHOUSE – place for poor: AL [little boy] + MOUSE [timid creature] keeping SH [quiet] |
3 | SLOTH – aversion to industry: SLOT [opening] + H [hours] |
5 | PITCAIRN ISLAND – probable [Fletcher] Christian burial site: PIT [hollow] + CAIRN [stone mound] + IS [one’s] + L [left] + AND [with] |
6 | TOUCH-TYPE – cryptic definition |
7 |
EAT IN – have fare [at] home: |
8 | MARTYRED – done in [i.e. killed] Apostle style: M [mass] + ARTY [pretentious] + RED [cardinal] |
9 | A FOOT IN THE DOOR – early opportunity: AFOOT [abroad] + (I’D NO OTHER)* [alternative] |
15 | BE ALL EARS – attend exclusively: B [British] + (REAL ALES)* [original exhibition of] |
17 | LIGHT SHOW – “series of moving beams”: LIGHTS [comes down] + HOW [the way] |
18 | BANJOIST – musician: NAB [collar] reversed [“raising”] + JOIST [beam] |
21 |
STOP-GO – “continually checking progress”: STOO |
23 | BINGO – cry on discovering something: BIN [axe] + GO [split] |
24 | PERCH – double def: a fishy perch is a catch, a wooden perch a pole |
Oh dear, another bad time for me (over the hour), but at least I got them all right this time…
Didn’t get the (s)EAT IN(g) bit of 7dn or the ‘catch’ bit of PERCH, dnk PITCAIRN ISLAND or AGELAST (spellcheck doesn’t know it either). Lots of clever misdirection.
Cod: TROUSERS
Not sure that (9dn) “abroad” and “afoot” are quite the same. Imagine Holmes: “the game is abroad”. Poor old Watson would be thinking “Where, Brazil?”.
I’m constantly amazed at the day-to-day quality of these puzzles.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Just over an hour for this one. I’d already posted in the Forum that I thought this was the work of a new setter or an “old” one trying a bit too hard to be different, so I’m interested that you say this is by the hand of the new Ed himself. I’m not over-keen, to be honest, though some of it was admittedly very good indeed.
Edited at 2014-06-20 07:09 am (UTC)
In the light of the Ed’s efforts I note two breaks with convention and wonder if they are of any significance. 29ac refers to people still living, and AGELAST is not in either of the two usual sources for Times dailies, namely COED and Collins, nor even in ODE. It’s in Chambers and the two-volume SOED, however.
Nice mix of the colloquial and the weird (AGELAST, JUBILEE CLIP) with BE ALL EARS getting my COD nod. My refusal to read Wodehouse cost me only a minute, which would satisfy most cost-benefit analysts, I suspect.
By the way, if you are unable to blog for any reason, you can always run it by your confrere Jack in the first instance, or, indeed, if the need is urgent or the hour inhospitable, send an LJ message to a regular on the board, such as myself, who is out east and therefore “active” in the early hours UK-time.
Thanks for the parsing of BINGO, which eluded me.
AGELAST: I confess to checking before pressing submit: I couldn’t think of any other solution to the wordplay. Fortunately I check in Chambers. The pronunciation guide confirms that I’ve never come across it before.
My fave of the day from an excellent bunch PITCAIRN ISLAND, though I think they probably threw him off the cliff if he sounded anything like as insufferable as Marlon Brando. Much prefer Mel Gibson (and more especially Anthony Hopkins as Bligh).
My COD to 27A as I always like the clues where the definition is well hidden, as was ‘Having’ here.
Glad to see someone else measuring out their crossword puzzles in commutes!
I was puzzled by 7dn but I suppose the clue is saying that there’s no room for the ‘case’ of SEATING because there is only room for five letters.
A couple of quibbles:
> Does the wordplay work in 25ac? ‘Men ignoring teacher’ seems the wrong way round.
> PG stands for ‘parental guidance’, not ‘parent guidance’.
An excellent puzzle with lots of deceptive elements. Difficult to pick a best clue, but I particularly liked 1a, 1d and 3d.
One’s to equal IS though?
Verlaine, if you’ve never encountered a jubilee clip before then you’ve obviously never had to attach hose A to tube B. Having the requisite knowledge didn’t stop me writing in jubilee line initially mindst.
Hard to choose a favourite with so many top-notch clues in one place, but for the chuckle I’ll go for the royal we.
Count me as another who had never heard of AGELAST, and when I checked it post-solve I found out I didn’t know how to pronounce it either. BINGO was my LOI after TROUSERS. Until I couldn’t parse it and admitted to myself that it wasn’t really a proper expression I wanted 22ac to be “Jubilee flop”.
>than stick a comma between them(even if it makes a legitimate word?)
Interesting question. I’m pretty sure it’s not the first time of seen this – in fact I think it may have been used in the early decades of the Times crossword – and if this puzzle really is the current crossword editor’s handiwork, it probably won’t be the last. I can’t say it’s my favourite type of clue, but I regard it as quite legitimate.
At least you’ll be ready for it next time.
I forgot to say earlier that I enjoyed your interesting blog entry.
For 9dn “a bird in the hand” had insinuated itself into my brain so effectively – even though obviously wrong – that it took time for the inevitable penny to drop.
OOH, CLASSY!
I seem to be one of the few (perhaps the only non-Scrabbler!?) who knew AGELAST, which went straight in from the definition – though I did have the E in place when I reached it.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one, difficult though it was. I do think that the bar has been raised over the last few weeks – or perhaps I’ve just lost another tranche of grey cells. Excellent clues, with many gems. Lots of cunning but fair misdirection, and the chewiest clues always ended with an “aha!” rather than an “oh, alright then”, which is as it should be.
I’d quibble, though, over “AGELAST” (never heard of it, despite being surrounded by them), which failed to meet my definition of the ideal clue: a perfectly ordinary word hiding in plain view.
I’d quibble too (as others have) over “TUT”. I suppose “men ignoring tutor” could, at a pinch, be read as “men staying away from tutor”, but it seemed rather clunky to me, especially as “teacher ignoring men” would have worked just as well.
It’s too early to award Accident of the Day with certainty – it’s Friday and the night is young. It’s May Ball season, so at least we’re getting a better class of poisoning. However, the award may well go to a guitarist who fell off the stage and landed very unfortunately on his instrument. That’s one guitar I wouldn’t want to have to tune.