Hello again. This crossword I thought was harder than average, with a strong American flavour and couple of clues I have had significant trouble parsing… perhaps they will come to me as I blog. What did you think?
I use the standard conventions like underlining the definition, CD for cryptic definition, DD for a double one, *(anargam) and so forth. Nho = “not heard of” and in case of need the Glossary is always handy
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Board deal (13) |
| ACCOMMODATION – A dd to start us off. Not so hard once you have a couple of checking letters, quite hard otherwise! | |
| 9 | Boys in art tutorial originally housed by place close to Uffizi (5) |
| PUTTI – T(utorial) in PUT (place) + (uffiz)I. This clue also took a little working out. | |
| 10 | Does my pun put out Lemony Snicket? (9) |
| PSEUDONYM – *(DOES MY PUN). Apparently the nho Mr Snicket is the pseudonym of an American novelist. I might have gone for George Orwell myself, or George Eliot.. or Robert Galbraith, anyone? | |
| 11 | Hunters’ targets smartly foiled? (6,4) |
| EASTER EGGS – Well I see that one can go on an Easter egg hunt, done it myself, and that they are usually covered in foil. So I presume it is just a CD, unless I’m missing something. | |
| 12 | Writer, turning 50, led up the garden path (4) |
| DAHL – L (Roman 50) and HAD, conned, all rev. A rather problematic character, these days. | |
| 14 | Moves up when Saracens’ back stifles constant passing (7) |
| ASCENDS – C(onstant) + END (passing), all inside AS (when) + (saracen)S. Harder to parse than to solve! | |
| 16 | Game king and queen crossing over European river (3,4) |
| ROE DEER – O(ver) + E(uropean) + DEE (river) all in R (rex, king) + R (regina, queen). I put red deer at first, even though it doesn’t parse. To my surprise the roe deer is indeed a game animal, and literally millions of them are shot each year. For fun.
Another fun fact: if in your car you collide with and kill a deer, as happens every day hereabouts, it is illegal to stop and pop the deer into your boot. If you are in the car behind, however, it is not illegal to do so. My son-in-law has acquired a respectable amount of venison this way. |
|
| 17 | Driving icy and slippery, stopped by motorway (7) |
| DYNAMIC – M(otorway), in *(ICY AND) | |
| 19 | Reserve defender left good ball from the right (7) |
| BACKLOG – BACK (defender); + G(ood) + 0 (ball) + L(eft) all rev. I wasn’t sure about this because I think of a reserve as a deliberate store, and a backlog as an inadvertent problem. But they are both reserves of a sort, I suppose. | |
| 20 | Couple rolling around kiss and leave (4) |
| EXIT -TIE (couple) reversed with an X (kiss) poked in | |
| 21 | Singing only in unison, Spooner’s line works (10) |
| PLAINCHANT – Our friend the Rev. Spooner would say “Chain plant.” Allegedly. What I would term plainsong, and about as far from the sort of music I like, as music can get. Well, apart from rap perhaps. | |
| 24 | Yahoo’s broken down (9) |
| ROUGHNECK – Well a roughneck can be a yahoo, and I can also see that DOWN can mean neck, swallow. But beyond that I don’t understand this clue and await enlightenment. What am I missing? Can ROUGH really mean broken? | |
| 25 | Something bought in case Mario Javier’s around (5) |
| RIOJA – hidden, as above. I blush to admit that I have indeed bought Rioja by the case (sorry, anyone from Provence 🙂 ) but more usually, just by the bottle. Google Contino, for some of the very best there is. | |
| 26 | Swimmer sporting leech marks in front of boat (8,5) |
| MACKEREL SHARK – *(LEECH MARKS) + ARK, boat. I thought “front of boat” would obviously be B, but it wasn’t .. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | On which a Bow Street Runner might be laid? (6,3,5) |
| APPLES AND PEARS – CRS for stairs, on which a runner might be put. In Bow. Would you Adam ‘n Eve it? (Runner: a narrow rug or carpet, as for a passage. Collins) | |
| 2 | Mentions spectacles being picked up (5) |
| CITES – Sounds like “sights,” spectacles. | |
| 3 | I mend a damaged pick handle no longer in use? (6,4) |
| MAIDEN NAME – *(I MEND A), + NAME (pick). You can name/pick your successor, for example. A bit churlish, to point out that increasingly, maiden names are being stuck with rather than ditched. | |
| 4 | Bard’s complete works missing introduction about terms in English verse (7) |
| ORPHEUS – (englis)H + (vers)E in (c)ORPUS (complete works). This clue took a bit of assembling! Orpheus had an interesting life, he was an Argonaut who saved the Argo from the sirens, by playing better, luder music than them and drowning them out. He descended to Hades to recover his dead wife Eurydice, and very nearly (but not quite) got her out. He died by being torn to pieces by female followers of Dionysus, because he preferred men: “the Ciconian women, followers of Dionysus, first threw sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the women tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies.” C’est la vie. | |
| 5 | One getting back at vegan cooking eclair without filling (7) |
| AVENGER – *(VEGAN) + E(clai)R. Nice to see ER clued un-royally for once, perhaps because 16ac got there first? | |
| 6 | Nervous with Dodges racing (4) |
| INDY – WINDY, with the W(ith) missing. An American form of motor racing. | |
| 7 | Unique legal right overturned to retain acceptable standard (9) |
| NONPAREIL – ON PAR (acceptable standard) in LIEN rev. (legal right) | |
| 8 | Picture fitting in one shopping centre lift (2,3,5,4) |
| IM ALL RIGHT JACK – RIGHT (fitting) in I MALL (one shopping centre) + JACK, a lift, eg a car jack. I’m All Right Jack was a comedy film from 1959 starring Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers. The cast list reads like a roll call of famous British actors and actresses. Uniquely British I would say, in the way it points fun at British ways, comedy but with an edge to it. I suppose you young millennials can be forgiven for not knowing of it, but it is a fine film in its way, and worth looking out. | |
| 13 | Non-combatant volunteers and training expert declared man alive! (5,5) |
| PEACE CORPS – PE ACE (training expert) + CORPS, sounds like cor, man alive. The American equivalent of VSO. I didn’t like this clue much. Never said “Man alive!” myself, and it’s not in Collins. | |
| 15 | University I’m considering supporting with cash, an ongoing thing (9) |
| CONTINUUM – CON TIN (with cash) + U(ni) + UM, I’m considering. Con as in con brio, or similar. Tin, slang for money. | |
| 18 | Short prayers — half of them, say — initially entreat Jesus? (7) |
| COLLEGE – COLL(ects) + EG (say) + E(ntreat). Jesus college, Cambridge, though perhaps the other place has one too 🙂
Collect: a short church prayer generally preceding the lesson or epistle in communion and other services (Collins) |
|
| 19 | Labourer putting soldier on a stretcher? (7) |
| BRICKIE – a cute reference to bricklaying:
Soldier: a brick laid vertically with the narrower long face out (only in the US Collins entry, but it is in the OED) Stretcher: a brick or stone laid horizontally with its length parallel to the length of a wall. As opposed to a header, laid across the wall. |
|
| 22 | Looking up, calm doorman periodically scratched nose (5) |
| AROMA – CALM DOORMAN, rev. Nose, aroma as in wine tasting argot | |
| 23 | Elegant chapter on Cicero’s here (4) |
| CHIC – C(hapter) + HIC, Latin for here as in Hic, haec, hoc etc. | |
I paused over ROUGH too, but it can certainly mean “broken.” “Broken English” came quickly to mind, and then Collins has as the first definition “(of a surface) not smooth; uneven or irregular.” At Thesaurus.com, “broken” is among the “Strong” synonyms for “rough”—although “rough” is not found anywhere under “broken”!
A real toughie bit I have to admire it. I managed maybe three-quarters of this after taking around 10 minutes to even get started. I thought ‘red deer’ would be my first in but like the setter, I couldn’t parse it before thinking of the correct ROE DEER. Thought the ‘front of boat’ in mackerel shark would be ‘bow’, causing problems. I watched I’M ALL RIGHT JACK only recently and agree it’s a great film with Peter Sellers playing a character not unlike Alf Garnet. NHO PLAINCHANT. Bifd BRICKIE but didn’t know that meaning of soldiers.Thought DAHL was very good once I saw ‘led up the garden path’ for ‘had’. Failed on ORPHEUS. Was looking for a synonym of ‘nervous’ instead of ‘racing’ for INDY. Soundly beaten today but really appreciated the wordplay.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
I found this quite tough, as I couldn’t see any of the four long answers until well into the puzzle, and then I wrote accomodaation, thoroughly messing up my attempt to finish with 4 down. Getting apples and pears was really a breakthrough, although for a while I was thinking apples and lemons, not right at all. I couldn’t parse I’m All Right Jack, brickie, or Easter egg, and had no idea who or what Lemony Snicket might be, and was working on the theory that it was a reference to a UK sweet I had never heard of. Oh, well, there are no pictures on scorecards.
Time: 57: 26
37 minutes. Quite hard work with several clues like ORPHEUS and BRICKIE not fully understood. I also gave up on the parsing of ROE DEER once I had the crossers in place – incidentally, sorry to be picky, but the O (for ‘over’) isn’t included in the parsing above.
I agree about I’M ALL RIGHT JACK. As Quadrophenia says, an excellent film which is more than just a comedy and what a cast; Stanley Holloway is about the only one missing. I must admit PLAINCHANT isn’t my cup of tea either.
Favourite and LOI was APPLES AND PEARS. No other EASTER EGGS in the grid that I can see.
Not to forget the great Terry-Thomas as personified here by The Rotter for so many years. I think he got his “shower” (pronounced “shaaar”) line in too as this was a sequel to Private’s Progress and he and Ian Carmichael were playing the same characters transferred to civilian life.
Have put the O in, thanks…
At the risk of spoiling your day, Jerry, could not the queen in this case be simply ‘R’ for Regina? So, R O E D E E R, as there’s four ‘Es’ in the current parsing.
Ah right, so there are .. corrected, ta. Tricky clue, this!
Puzzled by last two – ROUGHNECK (the rough bit) and, of course, BRICKIE.
25:43
I nodded off at one point so I have no solving time, but it was not easy and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been much under an hour to the point where I gave up and used aids for my LOI. This was ORPHEUS, which I would never have solved from wordplay as I didn’t understand it until I came here.
I agree about the Americanisms but at least they were tempered by the very English I’M ALL RIGHT JACK and APPPLES AND PEARS (my favourite clue today).
I also liked the EASTER EGG clue which I don’t think has any more to it than Jerry has already identified, but it seemed rather neat.
35:29 and a very good puzzle I think. I was only bemused by BRICKIE and came here for the parsing. The film was a NHO but the expression is widely known. ROUGH for ‘broken’ seemed fine – I agree with the above comments re ‘broken English’. my LOI was DAHL. COD for me … well there were so many fine clues here but I really liked PEACE CORPS.
If I do utter a ‘cor!’ these days it is generally used on seeing dragons, pterodactyls etc. flying overhead. ‘Man alive!’ I reserve for less frequent sights, such as Network Southeast trains actually running on weekends.
22 minutes – but as much by luck as judgement – I did not parse a single part of ORPHEUS, nor did I know he was a bard! One of the downsides of being a physicist is a complete lack of classical education.
Like Jack, I nodded off, at more than one point, but ny time awake was long enough. I couldn’t have told you what APPLES & PEARS meant, but having assumed X AND Y, and then biffing APPLES, I got the PEARS. Another RED before ROE. The SHARK was inaccessible for a long time as I’d bunged in CONTINUER long before thinking of UM. Never parsed ORPHEUS. Loved “I’m All Right Jack”–wouldn’t have understood T-T’s ‘shower’, but I remember Peter Sellers as the shop steward (the Soviet Union: ‘all that wheat, and ballet in the evening’), and the scene where Ian Carmichael, the scales having fallen from his eyes, flings his valise full of cash into the TV audience.
Wasn’t it ‘All them cornfields, and ballet in the evening’, a slight improvement, for which the brilliant writers Frank Harvey, John Boulting and Alan Hackney were responsible?
And what does it matter (in response to a later post) that the film was made so long ago? If a film is good, and this one is, it deserves to be remembered. Every era has good films and some younger people recognise this.
Hard, never recovered from RED DEER, and was convinced “bards complete works missing introduction” would be {f}OLIO.
Several good clues missed including CONTINUUM and DAHL
COD, which I didn’t get, APPLES AND PEARS
DNF beaten by ORPHEUS, PEACE CORPS and COLLEGE. Grrr. Pretty tough today but I did pick up on the American theme.
I liked the CRS and EASTER EGGS.
Note to blogger, absolutely no offence taken, I love Rioja and I sometimes have it delivered direct from Spain! 🍷
Thanks Jerry and tricky setter
15:57, but with a careless ASCENTS. Some of the wordplay was indeed quite tricky and I obviously got lazy. An excellent puzzle.
ROE DEER are indeed shot for fun, but they also need to be culled in large numbers every year. They are voracious browsers with no natural predator so they will devastate the local flora if left to their own devices.
We saw the excellent Giant about the life of Roald DAHL last year. A man whose public expressions of vile bigotry had a surprisingly modest impact on his public standing and reputation during his lifetime. He didn’t write under a PSEUDONYM though.
DNF
Very hard, leaving too many pencilled-in entries, as well as the uncorrected RED DEER. I had five left when I gave up. Some thoughts:
PUTTI – NHO but considered it as enough of a possibility to give a vital checker for APPLES AND PEARS
PSEUDONYM – one of my children read most of the Lemony Snicket books, so while I had heard of them, I had no idea about the PSEUDONYM – tough anagram if you have only a couple of checkers
ASCENDS – wasn’t entirely sure that I had it worked out, so left pencilled pending more confirmation checkers
ROE DEER – I bunged in RED DEER and never corrected it, meaning that….
…PEACE CORPS – got the second word but not the first
BACKLOG – yes I thought ‘reserve’ was an odd definition too
ROUGHNECK – also pencilled in, thoug just about gettable if you squint a bit
CONTINUUM – my favourite today
ORPHEUS – not a clue. Didn’t know he was a bard, and completely failed to parse
BRICKIE – while in retrospect, feel I’ve heard of soldiers and stretchers, completely forgot about them for the purposes of this clue
WINDY = nervous – didn’t think of it
I’M ALL RIGHT JACK – not seen it, but probably should…
Thanks Jerry and setter
Slow and WOE. Not as expected in biffed LOI ORPHEUS but in PaTlI. And why not? A(rt) T(utorial) inside PL = Place + the I. NHO PUTTI obvs but OTOH I have HO Lemony Snicket.
I’m sure Hic meant “this” a few days ago.
More admirable than enjoyable but I did like the CRS stairs.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
This here, or that there? The Romans had a lot in common with us.
Very good and very tough puzzle -32 mins. Not helped by thoughtlessly entering RED DEER at 16A and inserting the wrong word lengths for MAIDEN NAME. It’s a long time since I last encountered BRICKIE. Did not know MACKEREL SHARK and doubted whether ‘reserve’ = BACKLOG; thanks Blogger for explaining PSEUDONYM’s wordplay. First in was PUTTI, last ROE DEER. Favourite four clues: to ROUGHNECK, APPLES AND PEARS, I’M ALL RIGHT JACK (one of my favourite films) and COLLEGE. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
Smashing puzzle. Couldn’t justify the def of ORPHEUS but that’s my bad. Pleased to guess at the concept behind APLLES AND PEARS but needed a few crossers to jog the memory – very neat clue.
PEACE CORPS another favourite. And, yes, JerryW, there is a Jesus College in Oxford, too. Pleased to finish in a shade over 25 minutes for what started off as a quite tricky and slow solve.
Thanks both
Flew through this lovely puzzle as my GK chimed with the clues. Had heard of the Lemony author, love CRS, corrected the obvious red to ROE, and the children at church had the hunt recently in the churchyard. Could talk about the CONTINUUM hypothesis if asked. I am encouraged to watch the film again.
ORPHEUS was POI, was determined to parse it.
LOI was BRICKIE, when I remembered stretchers. However, importantly, a BRICKIE is not a labourer, but a skilled worker.
17’12”, thanks jerry and setter.
About 20 minutes.
– Remembered PUTTI from previous crosswords
– Had to trust that there’s a MACKEREL SHARK
– Didn’t know ORPHEUS was a bard
– Was aware of I’M ALL RIGHT JACK as a phrase without knowing the film
– Had no idea what was going on with BRICKIE
Thanks Jerry and setter.
FOI Cites
LOI Orpheus
COD Maiden name
23.50, with DAHL going in after an alphabet trawl (twice!) and deciding against PAUL because I couldn’t make the UP bit work. I assumed almost anything can be an epithet for a brick, so soldier might as well be. I had most trouble with ASCENDS, because Saracen’s back is surely N, and that doesn’t work. Has the greengrocer’s apostrophe crept in?
I liked the CD for APPLES… much more than the EGG one: the first is clever, the second rather prosaic. I also thought the yahoo/ROUGHNECK equivalence was iffy: they’re either hard workers on oil rigs or Starship Troopers, though I see Chambers disagrees.
Great blogging today, especially the discursus on Orpheus.
The apostrophe thing .. as a paid-up member of the Apostrophe Protection Society ( https://www.apostrophe.org.uk/ ) I should know the answer to this .. since we are looking for an S, it must be belonging not to Saracen but to Saracens, plural, so I suspect it is orl correct.
Appreciate likely known but the newspaper has “Saracens'” rather than “Saracen’s”.
38 minutes, a good workout.
There is indeed a Jesus College in Oxford. It is in the middle of town between Broad Street and the High Street, hence the rather laboured old joke about the Church of England: “it goes from the Broad to the High, bypassing Jesus on the way”.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
46:29
i kind of floated through this solve, not trying too hard and just putting in what came to mind without thinking too much about parsing. It seemed to work. An intuitive sort of puzzle, I thought, that rewarded the solver’s instinct.
Thanks, Jerry.
Cracking puzzle about three quarters completed and pleased to have solved so many tricky clues.
Things like “Orpheus” were left blank, as couldn’t parse them, and got in to a tangle with the shark (working off a wholly incorrect anagram of “leech marks in” + “b”).
“Apples and pears” and “Easter eggs” were excellent I thought.
Thanks to our blogger for unravelling the unknowns and to our setter for an enjoyable challenge.
Another big fat DNF. NHO PUTTI so went for PLATI. That made CITES impossible. I should have re-thought PLATI but ran out of the will to live.
So much NHO and obscurity here. I’M ALL RIGHT JACK really annoys me – do you want to engage young people at all? Go for a film from the last 50 years. I got as far as I’M ALL RIGHT YANK before looking it up.
I think this is a shame because there are some clues that I thought were terrific.
Well that filled in a fair bit of the morning! Finally got going at EXIT. Picked off CHIC, AROMA and RIOJA, then stalled until ASCENDS materialised. MAIDEN NAME and AVENGER were welcome breakthroughs, and I eventually emerged from the morass after 51:37 with last 2 in PSEUDONYM and ORPHEUS emerging after I’M ALL RIGHT JACK. Great film! I heard a lot of PLAINCHANT as a youngster as it was used a lot in the old Latin Mass. I can still hear Frank Finnegan singing Credo in unum De-e-e-um. He was my Sponsor at Confirmation and a crack billiards player too. Regularly got 100 breaks in the Miner’s Welfare, where we had 4 tables, one assigned to Billiards only, and the other 3 used for Snooker, Snooker Plus (with orange and purple balls for 8 and 10 points) and one for Pool, (not the Eight ball type, this was a gambling version on the full sized table, where each player had a coloured ball and 3 lives. You paid your stake to join the game, and tried to pot the other players balls. If you got potted 3 times you were out. Last man left collected the Pool of cash). Liked APPLES AND PEARS too. That was a big help with all the crossing letters, as was ACCOMMODATION. Thanks setter and Jerry.
DNF. Worked through all of this (if not necessarily parsing everything!) apart from DAHL which eluded my alphabet trawl. ROE DEER something of a PDM after focusing too long on possible children’s games. My brother and brother in law were BRICKIEs, so no problems with headers and stretchers.
Thanks Jerry and setter
35 with a careless MACKEREL SMACK – a placeholder I forgot to return to but I didn’t see the anagram and am not sure I would have done
Spectacular DNF today, with only about 70% done. As someone in their mid-twenties, and without a classical education, I found a lot of this very difficult and a little disheartening.
I don’t think I’d heard of I’M ALL RIGHT JACK, despite being a goons/Sellars fan. Simply couldn’t see the DD at 1ac, despite a few checkers. Missed the teasing cryptic at 11ac. Never stood a chance with ORPHEUS lacking checkers: no idea he was a bard and the cryptic was very obtuse by my standards. DNK ROE DEER was a type of game, but this one should have been gettable from the cryptic. NHO ROUGHNECK.
All of those I could have got with some perseverance and luck. But never in a million years would I have solved BRICKIE. I did not know this was a colloquial term for a bricklayer, nor that soldier or stretcher were related terms.
I guess the positive note is that I saw PLAINCHANT almost immediately, being a singer, and I knew a COLLECT was a short prayer.
Thanks Jerry for showing me exactly where my ability was lacking; incredibly helpful to be able to come here and at least learn something for next time.
Hopefully tomorrow will be more of a success story.
Agree with much of what you say – they don’t throw many bones to the under 35s! I know about ORPHEUS from the recent Netflix show Kaos.
Hard, but no real holdups, like sometimes happens on the easier one. DNK Orpheus was a bard, knew he went to hell from Orpheus in the Underworld + Nick Cave. Not sure I’ve heard of a mackerel shark, and I used to be a part-time ichthyologist. Knew Lemony Snicket from kids’ books (apostrophe appreciation) but not as a pseudonymic author. Is plainchant like Gregorian chants? Loved Enigma’s 1990 AD but not sure they got the numerals right: MCMXC? or XMM? or MXM? I’d go for the third. Heard of the film, but never seen it… might have to, Peter Sellers is brilliant, and if he’s one of many stars it must be good. Slight MER at backlog, no other problems. I’ve hit many kangaroos while driving, and amongst others a cow and an emu, but never a deer. Saw “The Road Kill Cookbook” but never been tempted.
Forgot to say I liked Jesus (the answer). COD.
11ac was a mystery until I remembered the Easter egg hunt. BRICKIE I took on trust. Lemony Snicket vaguely familiar. I initially entered Dumpynose, but I think he’s a setter somewhere. Maybe Dumpynose uses that name for a reason.