Another easy one I think, polished off in under 30 minutes.
First in was ASTIGMATISM and last was ESTAMINET
If any of my explanations don’t make sense then feel free to ask for further elucidation.
The technical stuff:
Clues are in blue with the definition underlined. Anagram indicators are in bold italics.
Notation:
DD: Double definition
CD: Cryptic definition
DDCDH: DD/CD hybrid where a straight definition is combined with a cryptic hint.
&Lit: “all in one” where the entire clue is both definition and wordplay.
(fodder)* denotes an anagram of the letters in the brackets.
Rounded brackets are also used to add further clarity
Squiggly brackets {} indicate parts of a word not used
Deletions are struck out
Square brackets [] expand a symbol, abbreviation or shortening like M[illions].
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Rocket Man singer starts to open for Thin White Duke (4,2,5) |
| JOHN OF GAUNT – (Elton) John, O{pen} F{or}, GAUNT. Although John of Gaunt was undoubtedly white I don’t think he was known for it so I think the “white” is only there for the Elton John / David Bowie surface. | |
| 7 | Maga? It’s … it’s converted millions, it’s an issue for the viewers (11) |
| ASTIGMATISM – (Maga it’s it’s)*, M[illions] | |
| 13 | Little, like champagne bottles desired by Brexiteers? (4-5) |
| PINT-SIZED – DDCDH | |
| 14 | Bill punches Charlie’s predecessor in valorous display (7) |
| BRAVADO – AD[vertisement] in BRAVO (NATO alphabet) | |
| 15 | Fibre periodically woven in ship’s sail (5) |
| SISAL – Alternate letters | |
| 16 | Sound again, Greek character bored by forerunner to EU (2-4) |
| RE-ECHO -RHO around E[uropean] E[conomic] C[ommunity] | |
| 17 | Old royal pursuing wild boar living in the forest (8) |
| ARBOREAL – REAL after (boar)* | |
| 18 | Puzzle session on plush cushions (7) |
| NONPLUS – hidden | |
| 20 | Standard customers for 12 sunloungers? (3,4,3,10) |
| MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN – DDCDH – Noel Coward song that includes the line ‘mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun’ | |
| 23 | Spooner’s inundation chart that’ll help to deflect dirty water (7) |
| MUDFLAP – Spoonerism of FLOOD MAP | |
| 24 | Devilish Malaysian dish not finished, mostly agreeable (7) |
| SATANIC – SATA |
|
| 26 | Leonard’s headgear that should be removed when shooting (4,3) |
| LENS CAP – LEN’s CAP | |
| 28 | My English heart (4) |
| CORE – COE, E[nglish] | |
| 29 | Burning issue? (4,4) |
| FIRE EXIT – neat CD | |
| 32 | Meal including free ales, hot pork pie (9) |
| FALSEHOOD – FOOD around (ales)*, pork pie being CRS for lie | |
| 35 | Back in often? I’m at Seb’s café (9) |
| ESTAMINET – hidden | |
| 36 | Poor bum Piers is poorly rated (8) |
| SUBPRIME – (bum piers)*, sub-prime is now the preferred term for junk as in bonds, loans etc. with a low credit rating. | |
| 37 | Bench in class (4) |
| FORM – DD | |
| 39 | Blow up walls in Eindhoven loggia, revealing back of house (7) |
| ENLARGE – E{indhove}N, L{oggi}A R{evealin}G {hous}E | |
| 41 | Rack supplying material for second person? (7) |
| RIBCAGE – biblical CD | |
| 44 | One with abdominal issue mixing cola with ice (7) |
| COELIAC – (cola ice)* | |
| 45 | Boris’s co-star made a bolt for it on film (13,7) |
| FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER – CD referencing Boris Karloff | |
| 49 | Magnificent aurochs broken by fabulous horseman (7) |
| CENTAUR – hidden | |
| 50 | Mildness of the weather has bike chaps cycling (8) |
| CLEMENCY – CYCLE MEN er, cycled | |
| 51 | Spread out, withdrawn, we suffer endlessly (6) |
| EFFUSE – reverse hidden | |
| 53 | Break the surface, missing black fish (5) |
| ROACH – BROACH without B[lack] | |
| 54 | Remote location not allowed mail (7) |
| OUTPOST – OUT, POST | |
| 55 | Ace article in French Times — also, let me see, great leader (9) |
| ALEXANDER – A[ce], LE, X, AND, ER | |
| 56 | High-level worker peels jacket off (11) |
| STEEPLEJACK – (peels jacket)* | |
| 57 | Good European soldiers in notorious formation (11) |
| ARRANGEMENT – G[ood] E[urpoean] MEN in ARRANT | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Sucker embracing a bit of jesting (6) |
| JAPERY – JAY around PER. One definition of JAY (US slang, unindicated here) is an easily duped person. | |
| 2 | Hearts get all aflutter with Andersen fairy tale (6,3,6) |
| HANSEL AND GRETEL – (H[earts] get all Andersen)* | |
| 3 | Regarding school education: university life discharged according to plan (2,8) |
| ON SCHEDULE – ON, SCH[ool], ED[ucation], U[niversity], L{if}E | |
| 4 | Fine fabric not having uniform look (4) |
| GAZE – GAUZE without U[niform] | |
| 5 | One from Paris and the German go through subway (9) |
| UNDERPASS – UN, DER, PASS | |
| 6 | In the US, check top of container holding old paper (7) |
| TABLOID – TAB (ooh look, a US usage indicator!), LID around O[ld] | |
| 7 | Plucky male soon embraces old king (9) |
| AGAMEMNON – GAME M[ale] embraced by ANON | |
| 8 | Fish starter of tuna, sashimi-style, left (5) |
| TRAWL – T[una], RAW, L[eft] | |
| 9 | Reasons Earl cleared out weed (9) |
| GROUNDSEL -GROUNDS, E{ar}L | |
| 10 | Best man dined out, likely to have forgotten the ring? (6-6) |
| ABSENT-MINDED – (best man dined)* | |
| 11 | Take time out from abusin’ medication (7) |
| INSULIN – INSULTIN’ without T[ime] | |
| 12 | Interfere with embedded spy on street (6) |
| MOLEST – MOLE on ST[reet] | |
| 19 | Giza geezer? Say no about accepting part one (8) |
| EGYPTIAN – E.G. and NAY reversed around P[ar]T I | |
| 21 | Nick long-term prisoner kidnapping retired copper (7) |
| LUCIFER – LIFER around CU reversed | |
| 22 | Actor Moore featured in big budget movie Outbreak (8) |
| EPIDEMIC – DEMI (not Roger or Dudley) in EPIC | |
| 23 | Fish Bilk caught in Brooks? (8) |
| MACKEREL – ACKER (Bilk) in MEL (Brooks) | |
| 25 | State where cuppa’s taken around 10 (5) |
| TEXAS – TEA’S around X | |
| 27 | Tough guy from Australia ordered cool cider with port (9,6) |
| CROCODILE DUNDEE – (cool cider port), the eponymous protagonist of the 1986 Paul Hogan film | |
| 30 | Penetrate ends of open alimentary canal (7) |
| ENTERON – ENTER, O{pe}N | |
| 31 | Section of Shin Bet initially probing Trinidad regularly (5) |
| TIBIA – B{et} in T{r}I{n}I{d}A{d} | |
| 33 | Flambé (skinless) and dice piece of meat (4,4) |
| LAMB CHOP – {f}LAMB{é}, CHOP | |
| 34 | Shaw imparts a strange description of being quick-witted (5,2,1,4) |
| SMART AS A WHIP – (shaw imparts a)*. I’d say sharp as a tack myself. | |
| 38 | Empire previously cut short standard eastern banter (10) |
| PERSIFLAGE – PERSI |
|
| 40 | Complex organism you found in earth toy rake overturned (9) |
| EUKARYOTE – U in E[arth] TOY RAKE reversed. NHO so I had to piece this together from wordplay once I had the checkers. | |
| 42 | Strictly told to go to Foyles? (2,3,4) |
| BY THE BOOK – Sounds like ‘buy the book’, Foyles being a famous bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road. | |
| 43 | Comfortable prof relaxing here? (4,5) |
| EASY CHAIR – I wasn’t sure what to underline for the definition with here, relaxing here and the whole thing all candidates. The wordplay is EASY (comfortable) and CHAIR (professor). | |
| 45 | Trump’s half-time hot dog? (7) |
| FANFARE – a sports FAN might have a hot dog for their mid-match food (FARE). Great surface. | |
| 46 | Daughter visiting rapper beginning to enjoy a cold beverage (4,3) |
| ICED TEA – D[aughter] in ICE T, E[njoy], A | |
| 47 | Were waxwings his weakness? (6) |
| ICARUS – CD | |
| 48 | Rising that is occupying dry city (6) |
| BEIRUT – I.E. reversed in BRUT | |
| 50 | C&A stocks immoderate surplice (5) |
| COTTA – OTT in defunct, at least in the UK, clothes store C&A | |
| 52 | Enthusiastic male model packed with energy (4) |
| KEEN – KEN around E. Model as in toy as in Barbie’s ‘friend’ | |
FOI ASTIGMATISM, LOI FALSEHOOD. DNK Foyles, but inferred it was a bookstore. DNK C&A, but didn’t have to.
For what it’s worth, this Murcan has never come across JAY=sucker (it’s not in ODE, but is in my English/Japanese dictionary, without any indication of region).
Very enjoyable. NHO SMART AS A WHIP, nor has Brewer’s and enquiries online suggest it’s an Americanism. Brewer’s offers “As smart as paint” which I also NHO.
Mainly plain sailing but don’t get 13a, why would Brexiteers desire pint-sized champagne bottles? They’d be too small. Also don’t understand the definition of 10d, why would an absent-minded person be likely to forget a ring more than any other object.
Didn’t get 1d (didn’t know the US slang) or 40d. Never heard of estaminet, cotta or smart as a whip but bunged them in.
Best clue: 29a.
Worst: 40d. Eukaryote guaranteed that this would be a DNF.
In the case of both 13a and 10d I think the question marks get the setter of the hook. In 13a it suggests a bit of whimsy, with the idea being that a Brexiteer, being an EU-sceptic, would prefer his or her weights and measures to be imperial.
For 10d the QM is indicating a definition by example, the ring being just something an absent-minded person might forget. It (the ring) has been chosen to keep the surface reading on its nuptial track.
I only know ESTAMINET from crosswords so park it away as it will come up again.
This is a specific reference to a law passed by the last government allowing the sale of pint-sized bottles of Champagne. Trumpeted as a Brexit benefit, it is of course completely pointless because bottle and champagne producers are never going to go through the effort and investment needed to start producing a completely new format of bottle just to serve a small subset of the UK market.
French wine producers are bound by EU regulations anyway, so even if they wanted to use pint bottles for export they would be prohibited. Some UK vineyards produce sparkling (and still) wine in pint bottles which may be as “desired by Brexiteers”, but of course this wouldn’t be champagne as specified in the clue.
I don’t think they do. Some people produce ‘metric pint’ (50cl) bottles but AFAIK nobody’s doing imperial pints.
Regulations cover the point of sale, so champagne producers would be allowed to make them, they just wouldn’t be allowed to sell them in the EU. So they’d wouldn’t do it!
Thank you for the answers.
Quite straightforward, but I was a bit unsure about JAPERY (never heard of JAY in this sense) and even more unsure about FORM (didn’t recognise the ‘bench’ meaning).
SUBPRIME refers to mortgage lending to people with poor credit ratings. The ‘polite’ term for junk bonds is ‘high yield’. The two are connected because loans securitised on the former turned out to be the latter, although the credit ratings agencies largely gave them a clean bill of health when they were issued. The Big Short tells the story.
The benches you sat on as a littl’un in assemberley (sic) then flipped over and tried to balance on in PE an hour later were called forms. This would have been in Hants then Kent.
Chambers def 24 agrees. I didn’t think twice when solving.
Gawd knows what I was thinking re sub-prime vs high yield. Brain fart for a corporate treasurer. I blame impending retirement.
We really enjoyed this. Quite easy, although there were three clues where we didn’t fully understand the parsing. One of those was “real” for “old royal” – I guess that’s a coin?
Also missed the parsing for Mackerel – brilliant clue!
As I go through the crossword, I put a tick by any clues I think are especially amusing or clever. Too many to list on this occasion! But I think Mad Dogs and Englishmen was my favourite.
Hi Paul, REAL is an obsolete (hence old) adjective meaning royal.
Real and royal are linked in my head through Real Madrid.
Interesting! Thank you.
Yup, easy, straightforward and good 👌.
I got John of Gaunt (dredged from somewhere in the back of my brain!) but despite being happy with it, spent a long time trying to find the nickname the
‘White Duke’! To no avail. I think your explanation is correct: it’s an (unsatisfying?) addition simply for the Bowie surface. Somebody enjoying their pop trivia too much? 😏😂
John of Gaunt was Duke and head of the House of Lancaster so would be appalled by the name the White (Yorkshire) Duke.