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.
I’m sure you’re right about the corn; ‘wheat’ didn’t sound right even as I wrote it.
And you’re right about the film.
The Cockney rhyming slang APPLES AND PEARS (stairs) is a little misleading, or even unfair imo.
I know that capitalisation is supposed to be immaterial in clues, but by doing so the setter has clearly indicated the original London police force The Bow Street Runners.
But that Bow Street isn’t in the east end, and therefore has no obvious connection with CRS. Sure the setter uses ‘A’ Bow Street ie it could be any street in Bow-which IS in the east end. But in that case RUNNER really shouldn’t be capitalised.
The setter seems to be having it both ways there.
FYI St Mary-le- Bow in Cheapside ( Home to Bow Bells) is only about 1.5 miles from Bow Street (Covent Garden) and certainly within hearing range of said bells. Whereas Bow, in East London is 5 miles away, where you might just hear them on a quiet clear day with the wind in the right direction.🙂🔔🔔
Good point, Raffles. Other things to bear in mind are that the distance the sound travelled would have been far greater pre-industrialisation when the traditional definition came into use. Also and perhaps more importantly, in the 19th century as the City started to become a centre for banking and business it gradually lost its residential population who migrated further east extending the Cockney identify further in that direction.
On the general point re capitalisation I have always understood that one of the main features of cryptic puzzles is that clues often mislead by making solvers assume one thing whilst referring to another. The Times convention on capitalisation is well established, that upper-case must be used when referring to proper nouns etc, but can also be used in other contexts at the setter’s discretion in order to deceive. It’s not having it both ways or being unfair but part of the fun of the game.
Quite. A house’s runner in a street in Bow can legitimately be a Bow Street Runner in crosswordland.
The art of deception is crucial to cryptic clues, yet people still complain that the compiler is trying to trick them!
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”.
So does the printable version.
The last letters of SARACENS’ being so close to the answer made this a little hard to see at first.
Every version has Saracens’ back (i.e. a defensive player for the rugby team Saracens) as far as I can tell – newspaper, pdf, Crossword Club version, and Puzzles section version – so I’m not sure where the confusion is coming from.
It seems I had a senior moment, but I could swear that when I did the club version this morning it was Saracen’s, which is what raised my query. And I was wearing my screen specs!
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.
There’s a film in there somewhere, John. Get in touch with Ken Loach’s agent!
Bob Mortimer can play a young you.
Great idea Hugh 🤣I’ll bring my fishing gear!
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.
I’m 52 and I still frequently learn new things about the classics (never studied formally), Shakespeare and pre 1980s pop culture from the Times crosswords. One of the attractions for me, particularly at the weekends, is the rabbit holes a solve (or even a failed solve such as this) can lead to on Wikipedia or other such places.
The Times crossword today is definitely more accessible to younger, non classically educated, people now than before the recent (?) changes on what can and can’t be referenced. The ability to check ones work much quicker, without waiting for tomorrow’s paper, is also a great help (if you use the online version) as it massively shortens the feedback loop on the non-prize crosswords.
I’m commenting principally on the bias in the general knowledge. The crossword could be just as hard and just as enlightening with a better balance in the basis of the GK references. I suspect there are around 10 times more references to the likes ORPHEUS and Peter Sellers films than there are to EMINEM (who came up recently once) and Will Ferrell films.
You may well be right but be careful what you wish for. You could easily end up alienating the current audience, without actually attracting a new one to replace it. Young folk have about 30 different puzzles to choose from in The Times each day. It is not clear to me that they would flock to the crossword if there were more eminems and fewer Peter Sellers films. And even if they did it is not clear to me that total solving numbers would materially increase.
I regard The Times cryptic as Britain’s senior and best daily crossword, and it is entirely right that general knowledge beyond the average, and language knowledge, is a requirement for solving it. I wouldn’t want to see it dumbed down into just another crossword to pander to modern simplification, so that everyone feels they’ve achieved an A+ .. there are plenty of other crosswords to choose from, after all. Including The Times own “quick cryptic.”
I also end up going down these rabbit holes and frequently enjoy it. I certainly have no wish for the Times Crossword to be “dumbed down”, it’s more an annoyed dissatisfaction with myself that my GK sometimes lets me down in Times, and thinking “I want to be able to solve these crosswords, but how on earth do I get properly up-to-scratch on vernacular so before my time/dialectical/technically specific in a certain area”. I am trying to read older novels to help with this.
In defence of our talented setter, I would suggest that Lemony Snicket is just such a bone.
True – but no need to have any idea what it was or what it meant to solve the clue, because it isn’t the answer!
Modern references in solutions are a good thing, but their appearance in *clues* is what’s more likely to attract casual younger solvers initially.
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.
I finally gave up on this after about an hour. I hit reveal for ORPHEUS (glad I did, would never have got it, still haven’t got used to “term” mean “last letter of”) and DAHL, which on reflection (sorry), I could have got had I not been so frustrated and minded to give up.
NHO the film, but once the M was there, I couldn’t see what else the first word could be and I had a couple of other crossers by then. In my experience, “I’m all right Jack” is an idiom used either to mean, “thanks for letting me know that you are unaffected by what I thought was a shared problem” in a direct conversation, or as a sort of noun meaning somebody who tends to always look out for themselves at the expense of others that they perhaps should be taking into account. No idea if the idiom as I understand it reflects any part of the film or not, maybe one of the people who has seen it could comment?
NHO PLAINCHANT (although I suspect it has come up before), but I worked it out from the spoonerism once I had enough checkers to see that the second part was probably CHANT.
Could not parse BRICKIE (I knew what stretcher means in this sense, but had that as BRICK, and wondered why IE could mean soldier, not knowing that it too is a type of brick and therefore the whole thing was a cryptic def). Also CNP ROUGHNECK, only now, as I write this, have I finally twigged that neck = down as in “neck / down a pint”.
I, like a few people here, also had RED DEER for a while, which held me up. Once I corrected that I got the last few (bar the ones I cheated on) pretty quickly.
I enjoyed the (failed) solve, thanks Setter and thanks for the parsings Jerry.
I knew it was originally a naval expression so I put Gemini onto it:
The phrase “I’m all right, Jack” is a quintessential British expression that captures a spirit of smug self-interest. While it gained massive cultural traction thanks to the 1959 Boulting Brothers film starring Peter Sellers, its roots go back much further.
Naval Origins
1. The most widely accepted origin lies in the British Royal Navy. The full version of the phrase was originally: “F*** you, I’m all right, Jack.” In this context, “Jack” refers to Jack Tar, a common nickname for a British sailor. It was used to describe a person who, having secured their own safety, comfort, or promotion, has no regard for the plight of their shipmates.
2. Post-War Social Commentary
By the time the film was released in 1959, the phrase had evolved into a stinging indictment of the “New Britain.” The “Affluent Society”: Following the austerity of WWII, the late 1950s saw a rise in consumerism and individualism.
The Sentiment: It was used to mock the perceived selfishness of both the rising middle class and the increasingly powerful trade unions. It suggested that as long as an individual “got theirs,” they didn’t care if the rest of society suffered.
3. The 1959 Film
The movie I’m All Right Jack is a satire of British industrial relations. It features Peter Sellers as the rigid union leader Fred Kite and Ian Carmichael as a naive upper-class worker. The title was chosen specifically because it encapsulated the “me-first” attitude the film aimed to lampoon. Management was portrayed as corrupt and greedy. The trades unions were portrayed as lazy and obsessed with petty rules.
The phrase was so evocative of the era that it was later referenced by Pink Floyd in the song “Money” (“I’m all right, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack”), cementing its place as the ultimate slogan for 20th-century materialism.
I got ACCOMMODATION and APPLES AND PEARS straight off the bat, but there was little else which came easily to mind and a lot which eluded me altogether. Tough, indeed, and a DNF by a distance.
54:31. I found it very tricky indeed, with multiple guesses and erasures. I finished up with ORPHEUS and EASTER EGG.
in defence of the hunters of the ROE DEER, a few are hunted for trophies, but 99% are shot for population control. Almost all of them go into the food supply. The meat is very sustainable and delicious.
Utterly defeated today. Had vaguely heard of Orpheus, had no idea he was a bard and wordplay did not help me. The shark did not come for ages because I had wrongly entered continual. Eventually got college on a biff but brickie totally flummoxed me – we’re supposed to know the intricacies of bricklaying now?? Also beaten by peace corps and roughneck.
Enjoyable puzzle but as Fred Trueman used to say too good for thee son. Thx Jerry and setter
A LOT taken on trust here, I’m alright Jack, achieved but not understood, why is it a picture? Mackerel Shark, achieved but never heard of. Orpheus but did not get the wordplay or know he was a bard (actually confused in my head with Odysseus tbh). Loved the CRS and loved Dahl, a good fun morning, thanks all! Cx
I’m All Right Jack is a Peter Sellers film and Chambers for example has “a cinema film” under Picture. Quite old-fashioned but must be handy for crossword compilers now and then.
I spent an hour and six minutes on this beast, partly I hope because I’m unusually solving electronically as I’m over in Crete visiting my parents. On the other hand this is also the reason I had two typos, with a PLAIMCHANT and a RIGJT spoiling things rather.
Completely thrown by Snicket which where I come from means a small passageway or alley so had no chance with that clue . As for Man alive =cor …..What, when where ??
Three clues turned this into a stinker time wise (which I have forgotten to note). Annoyingly two of them COLLEGE and BRICKIE were my first thought but I was reluctant to put them in. There was a knowledge gap around bricks and prayers which meant I would never have got there other than by the method of being unable to think of anything else plausible.
LOI PLAINCHANT was new to me. Not helped by uncertainty in two crossing answers and my belief it probably ended in -craft.
Vaguely heard of INDY but considering F1 is the sport I would least like to watch and I have been assured American varieties of motor racing are much more boring I don’t think I am going to get more acquainted any time soon.
Liked the APPLES AND PEARS after for a long time not having a clue what it was trying to tell me to do. There were a few that felt like that which I do enjoy in a puzzle.
Thanks blogger (certainly needed today) and setter.
My thanks to JerryW and setter.
Very interesting Xword, mainly biffed it.
9a nearly crashed here; misread as “tutorial originally housed by pAlace close to Uffizi” and biffed Pitti! Fortunately spotted it was wrong.
A toughie, but an enjoyable one, all done in 45 minutes. It did not strike me as overly American, unlike some other puzzles, though I have never heard of ‘man alive!’. ‘Snakes alive!’ certainly, but very rarely. A MER, like our blogger, with BACKLOG=reserve. That is not how I regarded a backlog during my working career. I was held up for far too long at the bottom of the puzzle, having got it into my head that the second part of 26ac had to be SMACK, and only seeing the error of my ways when I realised – rather late in the day – that the first part was an anagram. I have no problem with references to old films or other artistic creations if they deserve to be regarded as part of our cultural heritage.
FOI – PUTTI
LOI – COLLEGE
COD – I’M ALL RIGHT JACK
Thanks to Jerry and other contributors.
Showing my age: I’m All Right Jack was a write-in; Orpheus was an easy get (though a harder parse), and NHO Lemony Snicket. I wasn’t keen on Indy — the idea was clear, but Indy really is an adjective describing a particulary kind of racing, and isn’t really racing itself. Unlike the use of F1, I’ve never heard Indy used as a substitute for ‘racing’.
Can’t win department: in addition to doing for Orpheus because he wouldn’t join their celebration, the Bachae did for Pentheus because he, sort of, did try to join it.
I thought this was going to be harder than it turned out to be, an enjoyable challenge. DNF because I failed to get DAHL for no good reason and COLLEGE because I had entered ROUGHNUCK. Slight raised eyebrow at “sporting” as an anagrind but I suppose in the sense of “playing about” it works. My favourite was BRICKIE. Thanks for the blog.
Must put IARJ down for our weekend film-night. Know of it, but never seen. We’ve just had a three-part Elvis Presley season — Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and It Happened at the World’s Fair. All good, even the last — which is not generally seen as one of his best. Seattle in ’63! Great scenes. Struggled at end with PEACE CORPS and DAHL. All done in 33’11”. Once again well below the SNITCH I fear.
Gave up with four left: ORPHEUS, DAHL, PSEUDONYM and the Sellars film.
I found it very hard work, and couldn’t parse COLLEGE, BRICKIE and the Cockney rhyming slang clue.
Thanks for the excellent blog, and thanks setter
10A Lemony Snicket alias Daniel Handler had a few years on the young teenage bestseller lists with “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, and sequels, in the Addams Family line. Authors’ names Snicket, and Dahl.
1D A runner on the stairs? Trying to bump off granny? Sounds very EastEnders. Need some stair-rods. Runners in the hall are subject to slippery lino. Mind how you go or it’s base over apex and no mistake. The British Apples & Pear Growers Association is headquartered in Louth, Lincs. Can’t see a link with policemen, unless plates of meat on the apples and pears.
4D A “corpus” more often includes the work of many authors.
Stubbornly persisted until just now. Off and on, obv. But in the end defeated by BRICKIE (nho) and ROUGHNECK, which was gettable if I had given it another few hours probably. Entertaining puzzle. At one point for ROUGHNECK I had the crossers _ _ U _ H _ _ _ _ and noticed that “Houyhnhnm” would fit! Sheesh. I knew it couldn’t be, of course, but it was terribly distracting. (For non-fans of Gulliver’s Travels, this is the name of the intelligent horses who call the humans “yahoos”.)
35.26
Very late entry, volcano duly climbed (inter alia). Enjoyed it muchly. I think this would have been one of yours Jerry anyway but thanks again for covering and an excellent blog for quite a tricky one.