Once again I thought this was a fine specimen of Friday puzzlehood, not impossible to get started with (my FOI was the aptly self-descriptive 27A) but building towards some robust challenges. 16A and 13D were two words I thought might give people trouble, though for some reason I’m well up on my unusual Latinate terms for eye disorders, to the point where I briefly wondered if it might be NYSTAGMUS; grape varieties I’m less confident on, but was able to dredge up a memory of seeing such a word as 13D from somewhere.
The military man at 10A was a funny one: the MARSHAL part was the first part of the puzzle I cracked, but I BIFD in the other half once I had the crossing letters, and fully resolved the wordplay only in the aftermath. I also never really saw how 2D is “special treatment”, though the solution was all clear enough from the letters and wordplay. On the surfaces front, all was very neat and tidy: I’d hold up the aforementioned 15A as a very efficient clue, one of many such. On the smile-raising front I liked the police harassment of the poor old newspaperman who should have worn a suit, so I’ll make that my COTD I think…
| Across | |
| 1 | POMFRET – sort of cake: (FROM*) [“nuts”] inside PET [dear] |
| 5 | REGULAR – soldier: RA LUGER [Royal Artillery (with) gun] “retreating” |
| 9 | LOG – record: L{ots} O{f} G{reat} “No. 1s”, i.e. first letters |
| 10 | EARL MARSHAL – army officer: EARL{y} [“brief” in time] + MARSHAL, homophone of “martial” [of war, “it’s said”] |
| 11 | MACHETES – pointed weapons: M [male] + SET [group “recoiling”] “pierced by” ACHE [long] |
| 12 | PAST IT – now undrinkable?: ASTI [wine] in P{in}T [pint “container”] |
| 15 | CHUM – friend: CHUMP [fool] minus P [“to lose” money] |
| 17 | STRABISMUS – (an eye) problem: “recurring” SUMS I BARTS [problems (with) eye “reported” (by) hospital] |
| 18 | PULLED OVER – stopped by police: “casually-dressed newspaperman”, i.e. ED in PULLOVER |
| 19 | TRAM – public transport: R [runs] “on” T [time] + A.M. [in the morning] |
| 22 | ACTION – case: (COAT IN*) [“stuffed”] |
| 23 | REJOINED – double def |
| 25 | GO BY THE BOOK – follow the rules: homophone of “go buy the book” |
| 27 | LYE – solution: {real}LY E{asy} “partly spelled out” |
| 28 | DODDERY – rather senile: ODDER [stranger] “taken in by” {la}DY [lady, “not half”] |
| 29 | EXPLOIT – feat: EX PILOT [old aviator] with the I [one] “positioned closer to the rear” |
| Down | |
| 1 | POLEMIC – attack: MIC{e} [vermin “mostly”] “with” POLE [big stick] |
| 2 | MAGIC BULLET – special treatment: MA LET [mother | allowed] “to go around” GI [private] + (CLUB*) [“arranged”] |
| 3 | REEFER – drug-filled cigarette: REF E’ER [whistle-blower | always] “rolling” |
| 4 | TURKEY TROT – dance: TUR{n} [go, “briefly”] + TORT [wrong “doing the twist”] “after” KEY [main] |
| 5 | RIME – double def, frost / old-fashioned verse [as in “of the Ancient Mariner”] |
| 6 | GERMANIC – European: R + EG [king, say] “turned” + MANIC [mad] |
| 7 | LAH – note: LA{s}H [cat] “has abandoned” S [“last of” kittens] |
| 8 | RELATES – tells: RE [about] + SLATE [part of roof] “top falling away”, i.e. the S dropping down |
| 13 | TEMPRANILLO – wine fruit: RAN ILL [quickly went | bad] “in” TEMPO [time] |
| 14 | PATE DE FOIE – French course: PATE [head] “gets” DEFOE [author] “to introduce” I [current] |
| 17 | DEPORTEE – banished person: ROPED [tied “up”] against T{r}EE [tree, “not right”] |
| 18 | PRANGED – crashed: P [parking] + RANGE [Sierra] + {roa}D [“close to” road] |
| 20 | MIDWEST – somewhere in America: SEW D [join | daughter] “over” in M.I.T. [college] |
| 21 | COOK UP – devise: OK [sanction] “during” COUP [revolutionary activity] |
| 24 | SEXY – attractive: {cop}SE [copse “lawman cut”] + X Y [axes] |
| 26 | BAD – not healthy: B{r}A{n}D{y} [brandy “taken regularly”] |
Before all that I was very pleased to come up with TEMPRANILLO which I never heard of (if somebody finds that I wrote about it before in a puzzle I blogged myself, please don’t tell me) and also LYE. I got STRABISMUS but was unable to parse it.
Edited at 2015-01-23 07:43 am (UTC)
I came unstuck, however, with the French course, which I doubt I’d have got if I’d thought about it all day.
One or two clues here slightly above my pay grade.
Would never have known PATE DE FOIE (do you get fries with that?). Maybe a consonant in the checkers would have helped, but by then it was all too late anyway.
Nice to see some variety in the levels of difficulty. Thanks setter and blogger.
Non. Frites.
Edited at 2015-01-23 11:21 am (UTC)
I’ve been married to a Frenchwoman and lived in France for the last ten years. I’ve never seen just “pate de foie” without the “gras”. It actually sounds rather strane.
> STRABISMUS. No idea how I knew this, but I did. I never figured out the wordplay.
> PATE DE FOIE. Speaking French helped here, and in fact it strikes me as a requirement, which is a bit off. Mind you we’re often expected to have some knowledge of Latin, and at least French has been regularly taught in schools in the last half century.
> TEMPRANILLO. I always find it a bit odd when grape varieties are clued as ‘wine’, which is what I thought was going on with 13dn as I bunged it in from what turned out not to be the definition. It’s the main ingredient in Rioja, and the same grape as Tinto Fino in the Ribera del Duero.
I’m amazed folk haven’t heard of this grape because, as you say, it is the main constituent of Rioja and they must surely have drunk that at some time
You can become an expert on wine just by making a resolution to take the trouble to notice it, as it goes down
STRABISMUS for me is always preceded by Dr and followed by (whom God preserve) of Utrecht: my family didn’t always take The Times. Only later in life did I discover that it was also an eye disorder.
Couldn’t work out:
Why (p)RELATES was anything to do with roofs
Where the hospital was in STRABISMUS – though in truth I didn’t really try
Where the EARL came from and why
Whether TEMPRA-thingy was wine-related: I just followed the paint by numbers instructions.
Whether MACHETES necessarily have a point: surely the point of a machete is that it has an edge? I genuinely didn’t enter that until it couldn’t be anything else.
(For quite some time) where the BUL came from in MAGIC BULLET. Club is always just C. But BUL doesn’t mean arranged…
Good Friday challenge, blessings on Verlaine (and compliments on a fine time) for unscrewing the inscrutable.
Commiserations Jack. You’re not alone. I know I’m going slowly down hill including a very strange episode with last sunday’s Mephisto
I enjoyed today’s crossword, though I found it hard and didn’t do too very well (I give myself twenty minutes each day and stop wherever I’m at. Today I had about ten clues outstanding). But I have an issue with 3d and 4d. Both contain anagrams of words not contained in the clues. 4d has an anagram of TORT; 3d has, unless I’ve missed something, two such anagrams: REF and EER. This doesn’t seem cricket to me.
Thoughts?
In 3d you need to find REF and E’ER, put them together and reverse them. In 4d, “doing the twist” in this case is another reversal indicator, so even though you’d expect it normally to indicate an anagram, the same applies i.e. it’s reversing a deduced word (which I suppose you could say is producing a very specific type of anagram).
I’d agree there is a fine line between indirect anagrams and reversing indirectly defined words, even if it’s only that the same rules clearly don’t apply to the latter. What the “rules” are is a whole different story, of course – there are no Crossword Police – but I think you’re right to suggest that indirect anagrams are a no-no in most cryptic circles.
P.S. Welcome aboard.
“At Utrecht the unit detained a Dr Strabismus, scientist who had earned his place on the [Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee] list due to his research on perpetual motion. The doctor was an interesting find since he was last reported as working in Spain in 1944.”
Yours is not the only occasion when a reference to the good doctor has escaped proper notice.
The one I had trouble with was the pate de quelque chose, and this despite the fact that I’ve made the stuff myself using foie de volaille (aka chicken livers -50cents at the local supermarket because most people throw them away). Delicious just so long as you don’t see it made.
Also must have been thinking of “red carpet treatment” in 2d because I left the rug in there far too long. Something around 29 minutes.
Edited at 2015-01-23 11:06 pm (UTC)
I did like the rest of the puzzle though. Was going to object to ‘Earl Marshal’, but now I see the literal is a bit of a pun on the College of Arms, of which the Earl Marshall is the chief officer. I put in ‘strabismus’ from the literal, and then puzzled out the cryptic – very clever.
My one real objection is that a machete is not necessarily pointed. The one I had, the end was square, with the blades on both sides.
Couldn’t parse strabismus, which I got from the checkers, or sexy – thanks for the explanation. Must remember x&y for axes!
Edited at 2015-01-23 05:51 pm (UTC)
Fortunately PATE DE FOIE went straight in before I had any of those horrid checked vowels to put me off; and luckily the wordplay for the unfamiliar TEMPRANILLO made it seem pretty certain. (It’s not that I don’t enjoy food and wine; it’s just that my tastes are very ordinary. In fact as far as wine is concerned, a nice bottle of claret or Sancerre is all I ever want. Oh, and a glass or two of champagne at weddings.)
It’s possible (even probable) that I first encountered STRABISMUS through Beachcomber’s good doctor (Whom God Preserve).
PATE DE FOIS went in fairly easily but, as some others have commented, it’s a bit too French for my taste. As for the ethical dubiety of foie gras, I believe its production is quite painless, unless the geese try to nip your fingers as you’re force-feeding them. I object to it on principle, but in practice it is far too delicious to eschew.
Edited at 2015-01-24 12:50 am (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fitzalan-Howard,_18th_Duke_of_Norfolk
My FOI (27a) was ‘really easy’ i.e. easy as ABC and ‘partly spelled out’. Pretty obvious to me. Must be on the way down.