It’s a Felix. There must be a theme. Can I tell you what it is? Reader, I cannot. It could be musical/pop related, given 1a, 5a and 7a, and I did notice that 24a is the title of a single by Tom Robinson in 1982 (my era). I got no further and await enlightenment!
Ah yes, the puzzle. Lots of lovely clues and I found it very easy – until suddenly it wasn’t, when after 5 minutes a trio of harder clues stopped me in my tracks. In the end I got one of them wrong, so a big fat DNF for me today grr. Hope you were more successful!
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Signal in card game by the French (7) |
| WHISTLE – WHIST is the “card game”; LE is “the French”. | |
| 5 | Churchwarden, say, to narrowly defeat English (4) |
| PIPE – a CHURCHWARDEN is a type of pipe – hence “say”, to indicate that this is a definition by example. PIP is “narrowly defeat”, + E for “English”. CHURCHWARDENs have a very long stem and are a prized find for the Thames mudlarking community (of which I am an occasional member). In German they are called “Lesepfeife” (which means “reading pipe”), because the long stem keeps the smoke away from your book. | |
| 7 | Can try interesting novels: how they begin! (3) |
| TIN – “can” of beans, TIN of beans. First letters (“how they begin”) of “try interesting novels”. | |
| 8 | Fur perhaps of tailless racoon vet upset (8) |
| OVERCOAT – another DBE (“perhaps”), because most OVERCOATs are not made of fur. An anagram (“upset”) of “racoo vet” – you have to remove the final N from “racoon” because it is “tailless”. | |
| 10 | Derby runner maybe coming in sixth or seventh (5) |
| HORSE – hidden inside “sixth or seventh”. | |
| 11 | Equipment, hour to hour, is ok (5,2) |
| RIGHT OH – RIG for “equipment”; then H-TO-H for “hour to hour”. Very clever, I enjoyed that one. | |
| 13 | Objects seen in drunken nights (6) |
| THINGS – anagram (“drunken”) of “nights”. | |
| 15 | Heavily defeat female, gaining a couple of meters (6) |
| HAMMER – HER for “female”, inside which (“gaining”) is AMM for “a couple of meters”. “Norwich hammered Ipswich 1-5 at Portman Road”, for example. | |
| 17 | A group of musicians performing in desert (7) |
| ABANDON – A BAND ON = “a group of musicians performing”. Here we want the verb to desert, rather than the noun. Sneaky. | |
| 18 | Remove from garden container for warehouse? (5) |
| DEPOT – a pot is a garden container; if you remove a plant from a pot, you “de-pot” it. Ho ho! | |
| 20 | Head of heron with beak: a flier (8) |
| HANDBILL – this was the first one to give me pause, because I was fooled into thinking that I was looking for a bird as the “flier”. Not so: here it’s one of those little bits of paper handed out by bored people in the street advertising a new bar or similar. The wordplay is H for “head of heron”; AND for “with”; BILL for “beak”. | |
| 22 | Lead taken outside university bar (3) |
| PUB – PB is the chemical symbol for “lead”, coming from the Latin “plumbum” (from which we get our word “plumber”). Inside it goes U for “university”. | |
| 23 | Top man getting promotion (4) |
| HEAD – I tried to make this work as a double definition, tossing up between HEAD and “lead” (neither of which really work as a DD but both of which are sort of in the right postcode). But actually it’s HE for “man” + AD for promotion. Durr. LOI for me. | |
| 24 | Cautious about British sailor making arrival during conflict? (3,4) |
| WAR BABY – WARY is “cautious”, which goes around (“about”) B for “British” and AB for “sailor” (Able Seaman). A WAR BABY is “a child born in wartime, especially the illegitimate son of a soldier” (Collins), hence the clever, indirect, definition. Very good, COD from me. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Observe small, separate, revolutionary thing on wrist? (10) |
| WATCHSTRAP – WATCH for “observe”, S for “small”, then TRAP is “part” backwards. Here “separate” and “part” are both verbs – “they parted/separated at Paddington Station”. Funny how clues sometimes arrive in groups, like buses – 18d on Monday was “Observe item on strap (5)” (Mara). | |
| 2 | Tavern I hesitate to say is private (5) |
| INNER – INN for “tavern”, ER for “I hesitate to say”. Your INNER life is “private”. | |
| 3 | Like trousers — or ties often? (3-6) |
| TWO-LEGGED – cryptic definition. Trousers have two legs; in sport, a cup-tie in particular is often played over “two legs” (home and away). “Norwich beat Ipswich 4-2 over the two legs of the 2015 Championship play-off semi-final”, for example. | |
| 4 | Some supreme, erstwhile Islamic rulers (6) |
| EMEERS – hidden inside “supreme, erstwhile”. Took me a moment to see because I am more familiar with “Emir”. And the comma obstructed my view. | |
| 5 | Briefly choose illustration (3) |
| PIC – PIC{k}. | |
| 6 | Ghost wandering around Hampton (7) |
| PHANTOM – anagram (“wandering around”) of “Hampton”. Lovely surface. | |
| 9 | Kindly bachelor in Italy supporting cleaner (10) |
| CHARITABLY – B is the “bachelor”; he goes inside (“in”) “Italy” to give is ITABLY; that goes underneath (“supporting”) CHAR for “cleaner”. | |
| 12 | Drug Allan arranged for a type of fever? (9) |
| GLANDULAR – anagram (“arranged”) of “drug Allan”. | |
| 14 | One’s a friend found in caliph’s office (7) |
| IMAMATE – and this was my downfall. I’d never encountered this word before and piecing it together with most of the checkers in place decided that “One’s a friend” indicated “I’s a mate” rather than what turns out to be the correct “I’M A MATE”. So in went “isamate”, up popped the Dreaded Pink Square and rage ensued. Hey ho, every day’s a school day. | |
| 16 | Win I’ve contrived is discernible (2,4) |
| IN VIEW – anagram (“contrived”) of “win I’ve”. | |
| 19 | Oddly disappearing up Limpopo as girl appears (5) |
| PIPPA – remove the odd letters of “up Limpopo as” and PIPPA appears. | |
| 21 | Performed most of Queen of Carthage (3) |
| DID – DID{o} was the Queen of Carthage, familiar to classicists through the Aeneid and to lovers of Baroque opera through Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas. To others, perhaps not so familiar. Our local hills in the Highlands are full of limestone caves which my wife’s family historically called “Dido holes”; since her entire knowledge of the classics came from Asterix I had to explain to her that this was a reference to the cave in which Dido and Aeneas have sex. (He then abandons her, claiming that his duty to find a new home for the Trojans is more important than love, and in despair she kills herself. All very moral.) | |
15:36. I wasn’t happy with ISAMATE, so I googled it, and the first result that contains it as a single word is this blog post! So I took that as a sign that it wasn’t a real word and reconsidered.
COD to WAR BABY.
Thanks for the blog.
Sign me up for the Isamate club, which I joined in 17:23. On the whole, the puzzle felt tricky but fair, and if I’d thought a bit harder I could and should have avoided the DNF. Felix did a masterful job of misleading me with HANDBILL, for which I required all of the checkers and plenty of head-scratching.
Thank you for the very entertaining blog!
Tripped up like Templar with Isamate perfectly good parsing of a word NHO. Otherwise all good and fun
Returning to read the later blogs – as I often do – has cheered me up no end to see I was not alone with Isamate. And for everyone who reasoned “caliphs and imams are pretty similar, so maybe we can call something run by a caliph an imamate”, my congratulations. Next up, calling the UK a principality and Monaco a kingdom,on the principle that “Kings and princes are pretty similar, both royal”?
I hope Pumpa is OK?
I look forward to seeing his verdict most days.
Another ISAMATE failure here. Just following what appeared to be very clear wordplay. The rest was enjoyable and straightforward.
Had to search to correct ISAMATE… Had RIGHT HO but had to change that. Lots to like in this puzzle and it needed a fair bit of squinting to avoid the traps and make progress. Took a good deal less time than usual for me – maybe I got on the wavelength early.
FOI 5a Pipe – thought that was pretty straightforward
LOI 19d Pippa – took some diligent working out
COD – several but probably 20a Handbill – again, straightforward but nice misdirection
Add me to the Isamate club. I was thinking that Islam starts with “Is”, so why not the caliph’s office? Also don’t think I have seen the Emeers spelling. I guessed Pipe immediately, but couldn’t see the connection to churchwarden, so left it until I had both Ps as checkers. I wondered whether a churchwarden could be a type of organ pipe. DNK that Dido was Queen of Cathage, but had heard of her.
A very unnecessary and improbably example for Hammer
Not that anyone will be interested, but I got 20/29 on the big crossword in something like 2 hours.
I am trying!
DNF because of 14d. I had I A A E and the thought of IMAM and hence IMAMA E crossed my mind . . . But was instantly rejected as a silly idea. Ho hum.
19:15 today which is OK by me.
Lovely puzzle with some cracking surfaces. A little challenging but not too hard.
Churchwarden totally new to me, but got it from the checkers and wordplay.
HEAD LOI