Solving time: 34 minutes
I have to admit, this puzzle was a bit on the strange side. While most of the clues were routine, and a few were even chestnuts, there were a couple that really forced you to think, and one that will probably cause a lot of complaining from its lack of a clear literal.
Music: Gene Ammons, Boss Tenor
Across | |
---|---|
1 | ACTION, double definition, the first one referring to shooting a film: “lights, camera, action!”. |
5 | COMEDIAN, CO + MEDIAN, where the instructions are unusually literal. |
9 | PLAYGROUND, PLAY (G) ROUND, i.e. at your local golf course. I had seen that ‘playground’ would fit, but was looking at the wrong clue so didn’t put it in. |
10 | MEAN, double definition. |
11 | FORECAST, cryptic definition, as the Met Office provides the weather prediction in the UK. In NYC, however, the Met is much higher class, offering opera and fine art instead of a chance of rain. |
12 | SUBSET, the one everyone will be talking about. This is apparently an kind of &lit double definition, where the officers are ‘subset’ of the crew, and the whole lot of them is a ‘sub set’ on a particular type of warship. You’ll either love it or hate it. Kevin Gregg has managed a more correct parsing of this clue. “Officers in crew, say” is the literal, and “put on warship” = sub + set is the cryptic. Phew! |
13 | BLOG, B[ana]L O[fferin]g. |
15 | RELEVANT, RE + LEVANT. The verb ‘levant’ means ‘to leave secretly or hurriedly to avoid paying debts’. |
18 | INFERIOR, INFE(RIO)R. |
19 | VINO, V(I)NO. More popular in the eighteenth century than it is today. |
21 | CANNES, cryptic definition, and a good one, as ‘by the audience’ evokes a ‘sounds like’ clue. |
23 | PRINCESS, PR(INC)ESS. |
25 | ITCH, [w]ITCH. |
26 | EISENHOWER, anagram of WHERE ON IS. Excellent misdirection from this unlikely anagram fodder. |
27 | CRIMINAL, hidden in [pacifi]C RIM, IN AL[aska]. |
29 | YESMEN, YE(S[tate]MEN, a chestnut. |
 | |
Down | |
2 | CELLO, CELL + O, another chestnut. |
3 | IVY LEAGUE, cryptic definition, referring to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not the university in the UK. |
4 | NORWAY, NO(R)WAY. |
5 | COUNTERPROPOSAL, anagram of O + PLAN PROSECUTOR. |
6 | MODESTLY, MO(D[ebat]E)STLY. |
7 | DEMOB, DEMO + B. |
8 | AGAMEMNON, A(GAME M)NON. The temptation to parse ‘Greek Leader’ as ‘G’ is strong. |
14 | LANCASTER, anagram of ANCESTRAL. |
16 | VIVACIOUS, VI([sa]VA[ge])CIOUS. A very novel clue construction, that had me guessing for a while until I finally saw it. |
17 | EINSTEIN, EIN(ST)EIN. |
20 | KIDNEY, K(I’D [pai]N)EY. |
22 | NAHUM, anagram of HUMAN. |
24 | SCENE, sounds like ‘seen’, my FOI. |
3dn is in reality Harvard. The IVY LEAGUE was also a close harmony group from Lincoln who had a string of hits in the early sixties, which included a fine cover of ‘Rag Doll’.
Initially I had 6dn as MODERATE which did not help – MODESTLY being correct of course.
FOI 27ac CRIMINAL LOI AGAMEMNON
COD 26ac EISENHOWER – WOD IVY LEAGUE
Roll on Tuesday
I read 25ac as clued by both {w}ITCH (charming…female) and {b}ITCH (malicious female) but I now see that {w}ITCH serves both.
Edited at 2017-03-13 05:59 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-03-13 09:22 am (UTC)
NAHUM was irritating (as ever, I thought ‘why do this?’ It’s so unnecessary) but I happened to guess right.
I thought 21 was a homophone too, as well as a reference to the film festival. Neat.
Edited at 2017-03-13 07:43 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-03-13 07:49 am (UTC)
Still, turns out it was actually quite a difficult one. I confess to not having parsed VIVACIOUS or IVY LEAGUE at all, and SUBSET was my LOI as I’m sure it was everyone else’s. I did think the latter was really quite a good clue after mulling it over!
I nearly gave up on SUBSET but the penny did drop in the end. It’s a clever idea, but it seems like a very bad example of a subset — rightly or wrongly, ‘crew’ is often used to mean everyone except the officers. Chambers, for example, has “a ship’s company excluding the officers” as a def. for crew. “Officers and crew” is commonplace, in which case one is not a subset of the other. This makes for a very confusing clue.
On edit: sorry, for what suddenly has become a duplication!
Edited at 2017-03-13 09:22 am (UTC)
“Able seamen in crew …” might have been less contentious (but not half as much fun to talk about).
b. Naut. The whole of the men belonging to and manning a ship, boat, or other vessel afloat. (Now the leading sense.)In a general sense the ship’s crew includes all under the captain, but in a more restricted sense it is applied to the men only, to the exclusion of the officers.
Dereklam
Sorry to be Mr Grumpy this morning but I’m afraid some GK is assumed for The Times cryptic and that definitely includes all the books and a lot of the individuals in the bible.. rather that than Dickens or Hardy, though for my preference..
I’ve decided the best response to a personal obscurity like this is to sigh, shrug and try to remember it for next time.
Heyer, Dickens, now which one of those is the page-turner .. hmmm.
Edited at 2017-03-13 09:29 am (UTC)
… but with VIVACIOUS, IVY LEAGUE and ‘submen’ unparsed… well two out of three ain’t bad…
Oh, and NAHUM irritated me for the same reason that it irritated Keriothe above. CANNES seems to be missing something… I can see what it’s getting at (“the film goes in the can/to cannes”), but just didn’t feel right.
Used the same logic as Keriothe to plump for NAHUM over NUHAM.
Tough for a Monday. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
I was quite happy that film goes in cans. How the French pronounce the place is irrelevant,
Just a thought. How long before Eisenhower ceases to count as General Knowledge?
IVY LEAGUE has to be the poorest clue for some time
davidcawte@gmail.com
I very nearly put in SUBMEN, but couldn’t justify it and kept on looking, despite knowing that I was already on a 50/50 chance for 22d. It very much didn’t help that the first story I heard when I turned on Radio 4 this morning was about the launching of the distinguished Boaty McBoatface, a sub which is very definitely not a warship.
In the end, though, I found SUBSET, was happy enough with it, and then guessed right for NAHUM. I agree with other commenters that while I’m happy enough to read Three Men in a Boat or Jane Eyre for my crosswording education, the Bible seems a step too far.
Use of a Concordance was forbidden.
For some reason we had to learn all the books of the Bible, in order, at school and can still manage most after 40 odd years. Prefer literary and cricket GK to musical which is where my gaps are.
Good start to the week..
Roin
Edited at 2017-03-13 12:23 pm (UTC)
Thanks to Vinyl’s fast completion and posting, the blog appears under Sunday for me, rather than Monday.
SUBMARINERS. Impeccable reasoning, I thought …….
Time: all correct in 25 mins.
Thank you to setter and blogger.
I seem to be the only one who biffed CAMERA at 21a (when A was the only checker). It’s where film goes and “judged by audience” (as opposed to jury) seemed like a reasonable, if indirect, way to refer to trials “in camera”. Eventually I got there, kicking myself since I used to live just outside Cannes (not to be confused with Cagnes a few miles towards nice nor Caen in Normandy).