A new setter! How exciting. And judging by this puzzle (which is full of wit and tricks but still well-judged as a QC), an excellent addition to the Setters’ Common Room. Welcome, Bjorn. I’m already looking forward to your next puzzle, which will be Bjorn Again. This took me 08:20 which is pretty much bang on my average, so I am nervously predicting a QUITCH of about 100 and some reasonably happy punters.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Much-loved singer at No 1, one associated with a craggy face? (8) |
| CLIFFTOP – CLIFF is the “much-loved singer” + TOP for “at No 1”. A mountain face covered in crags might well have a CLIFFTOP. I knew that that post-it note saying “Living people are now allowed” would come in handy. [On edit: I should perhaps have explained for overseas solvers that Sir Cliff Richard OBE is a singer who has achieved huge popular success in the UK over a very long time: he is, for example, the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in each of five consecutive decades. He would qualify for unofficial “National Treasure” status and cluing him as “much loved” is fair enough.] | |
| 5 | Long bag containing sugar, perhaps unwrapped (4) |
| ACHE -my LOI and the parsing caused me much head scratching. I could see that “bag … unwrapped” meant that I needed to remove the first and last letters of a word meaning “bag” so as to leave a word meaning “long”, but just couldn’t see what it was. Eventually light dawned: it’s {s}ACHE{t}. The extra words “containing sugar, perhaps” were no doubt intended to be helpful but in fact just served to confuse this solver! | |
| 9 | Allow older female relative time (5) |
| GRANT – GRAN is your “older female relative” + T for “time”. | |
| 10 | Foxtrot jump I attempt finally in shabby theatre (7) |
| FLEAPIT – F for “foxtrot” (NATO alphabet) + LEAP for “jump” + I + T for “attempt finally”. A 1930s slang word for a rundown, grubby cinema or theatre. | |
| 11 | Rest while bar rustled up a tasty snack (5,7) |
| WELSH RAREBIT – anagram (“rustled up”) of “rest while bar”. | |
| 13 | With no-one at the helm following commercial split (6) |
| ADRIFT – AD for “commercial” + RIFT for “split”. Slightly loose definition since you could have no-one at the helm but not be adrift (eg when moored) and you could be adrift (eg having lost power or steerage) even though there is someone at the helm. But I quibble. | |
| 15 | The last word heard by one about to be shot? (6) |
| CHEESE – oh I did like this one, a proper cracker joke. The victim here is being “shot” with a camera, of course. I spent a while trying to think of a cinematic phrase which wasn’t “lights, camera, action”. | |
| 17 | Protracted groan wouldn’t hurt (4-5-3) |
| LONG-DRAWN-OUT – anagram (“hurt”) of “groan wouldn’t”. | |
| 20 | Student tucking into hot bread (7) |
| STOLLEN – L for “student” (think “learner driver”) which goes inside (“tucking into”) STOLEN for “hot”. Ah, that sort of “hot”, very good. STOLLEN is a rich, sweet fruit loaf, often including marzipan as well. | |
| 21 | Lifeless in Perth (excluding the outskirts) (5) |
| INERT – IN for “in” + ERT for the middle letters (“excluding the outskirts”) of “Perth”. | |
| 22 | Ladies’ fingers work bread regularly (4) |
| OKRA – every other letter (“regularly”) of “work bread”. OKRA came up in a puzzle by Alex which I blogged in August and the ensuing debate revealed that some people knew it in the guise of a “bhindi bhaji”; that lots of people tend to think of “ladies’ fingers” as long thin sponges; and that simjt was trying to grow OKRA in his allotment. Wonder how he got on? | |
| 23 | Supplement that’s sometimes removed by The Lancet? (8) |
| APPENDIX – double definition, the second being another cracker joke. A lancet (aka a scalpel) might be used to remove your appendix, and The Lancet is a well-known and highly respected medical journal, founded in 1823 by an English surgeon and still going strong. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Cautious about silver and yen (4) |
| CAGY – C for “about” (abbreviation of circa) + AG for “silver” + Y for “yen”. I’d have spelled this with an E (which the usual sources give as an alternative) but the wordplay was clear so in it went as FOI. | |
| 2 | Photo that is covering periodical (5) |
| IMAGE – IE for “that is”, going around (“covering”) MAG for “periodical”. | |
| 3 | Criminally falsified data — not a particularly healthy state (3,2,1,6) |
| FIT AS A FIDDLE – anagram (“criminally”) of “falsified dat”, which is “falsified data” eliminating one of the As (“not a”). Tricksy, especially because the “not a” in the surface makes you think that the definition is going to be the opposite of what it turned out to be. Until I spotted the “not a” device, I was working on this being “fat as a [something]” for an unhealthy state. | |
| 4 | Shoe kept in shoebox for dryness (6) |
| OXFORD – a very good hidden, inside “shoebox for dryness”. Oxford is a university for people who couldn’t get into Cambridge; its greatest claim to fame is that it has a shoe named after it. | |
| 6 | Clever dad featured in The Wire (7) |
| CAPABLE – PA is “dad” and he goes inside (“featured in”) CABLE for The Wire. Thank goodness this wasn’t about the TV show The Wire, which I decided not to watch after reading a review which said that the American dialogue was so incomprehensible that it was best to have the subtitles on. | |
| 7 | Having the right to a loosening of Lent diet? (8) |
| ENTITLED – anagram (“loosening”) of “Lent diet”. | |
| 8 | Internet tool arousing Chinese anger (6,6) |
| SEARCH ENGINE – anagram (“arousing”) of “Chinese anger”. Excellent, topical surface, given that China has banned Google. Bravo. | |
| 12 | Nymph stoical about circling lake (8) |
| CALLISTO – anagram (“about”) of “stoical” around L for “lake”. CALLISTO was a nymph who was seduced by Zeus (weren’t they all?), turned into a bear by his jealous wife and ultimately immortalised in the stars as the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). One of Jupiter’s moons is named after her too. What a CV. | |
| 14 | Private soldier expressed bitterness (7) |
| RANCOUR – homophone/aural wordplay with “ranker”. Because the indication that this is aural wordplay is in the middle of the clue (“expressed”) I wasn’t sure which end was the definition, dithered and decided to wait for checkers. | |
| 16 | Doze during picnic at Naples (6) |
| CATNAP – hidden (“during”) in “picnic at Naples”. | |
| 18 | Gents might use this upper-class bow (1-4) |
| U-BEND – U for “upper-class” (stop moaning at the back, it’s just a code) + BEND for “bow”. Pipes connected to the foul drainage system have a U-BEND which holds water and so acts as a barrier to gases rising from beneath; thus the “gents” (or indeed ladies) loos might use one. | |
| 19 | Saint axes Charon’s location (4) |
| STYX – many belief systems have a being who acts as a guide to the spirits of the newly deceased; the rather splendid word for such entities (no doubt appearing in a Mephisto near you soon) is a psychopomp. Charon is the Greek psychopomp: he was the ferryman who took souls across the STYX, the river separating the realms of the living and the dead. The wordplay is ST for “saint”, then Y and X for the two “axes” on a graph. A wonderful bit of deception and my COD. | |
Excellent puzzle.
LOI CLIFFTOP.
David
Am I the only person who put THREE instead of CHEESE? Seems a reasonable answer to me, although I’ll admit I would have gone for the food if I’d thought of it first. Tougher than average I thought, but very enjoyable as others have said. 25:06 in the end. Thanks all.
I don’t understand why THREE works? Even ignoring that it doesn’t have enough letters
“Fire on the count of three.” It had six letters when I wrote it in. Not sure what must have been going through my brain at the time. It had been a hard day.
Welcome Bjorn! I rated this as very hard, with six clues still to go when I reached Winchester, but amazingly I did finish it. Now I think maybe it wasn’t so hard after all, and it was very clever with the misdirection. Could not parse Styx, Fleapit and Ache, so thanks for the explanation Templar.
Well, I count myself very lucky indeed to have crossed the line unscathed today, and in an OK time for me – 33 minutes.
Both CALLISTO and STYX were pure guesses, the former because I had NHO the nymph and the latter because I failed to parse the graphical meaning of axes and I had NHO Charon. I would contend that neither of these are really GK and so should probably be reserved for the 15×15.
I also had to biff both CAGY and ACHE, because I couldn’t fully parse either clue.
So, not a DNF, but it very nearly was.
Many thanks to Templar.
I would have thought graphs and axes were right up your street.
They are, but that meaning didn’t occur to me and the only STYX I know are the rock band from the 70s/early 80s (and still going, I believe). Shame it wasn’t clued in that way.
Great fun puzzle
Nuff sed
30:07
Really struggled with this one, especially as I was looking at the wrong anagram for SEARCH ENGINE. Never did parse LOI ACHE but with _C_E and a definition of long it had to be biffed.
What a great puzzle – thanks Bjorn. It was one of those where I tut to myself and go “aahh” when the Penny finally drops, as it did with CLIFFTOP ACHE and OXFORD – my last three in. Great anagrams – took me ages to see WELSH RAREBIT (which up until an age that I’m ashamed to admit I always thought it was Welsh Rabbit)!!
Looking forward to the next one.
Thank you Bjorn and Templar.
20 minutes.
Lousy performance as usual.
Dreadful week so far – a DNF and 2 SCC entries.
Cliff Richard even more impenetrable than the Weasley character yesterday.
Completed big puzzle but took forever. Snitch and comments suggest it was easy, so no reason to celebrate.
Really great puzzle. Enjoyed every clue. Looking forward to more from Bjorn.
I think this will be another one that experienced solvers find delightful and newer solvers find hard. In the latter camp it took me 28:13, but I enjoyed it a lot more than many of last week’s offerings. Welcome to Bjorn, and if you could turn the difficulty knob down a notch that would be lovely!
Thank you for the blog! I completely agree with the others: The Wire is truly fantastic and well worth watching with whatever aids you might require for the dialogue. Pretend it’s in a foreign language and stick the subtitles on. Wonderful stuff.
A satisfying mixture of the fairly obvious and that calling for some lateral thinking, so sachet, stollen: LOI ‘cheese’.
“Oxford is a university for people who couldn’t get into Cambridge.” Really?- better not tell my wife who was more than happy to decline the blandishments of Girton (she couldn’t see the place for fog at interview time) in order to take up a place at St Hilda’s …
Oh, Bjorn welcome and definitely set again, please. I loved this; a puzzle that got quicker and quicker as the checkers went in. I’m clearly on Bjorn’s wavelength. FOI the solid CAGY and LOI the impenetrable but wasn’t ACNE so had to be ACHE. Quick for me – around 20 minutes but another big gap in the middle. COD the glorious UBEND. And thanks to m’learned friend for the blog.
I can’t be the only one that read 1a as an &lit… 😉 !
Clever, witty and lots of fun. Thank you Bjorn
We found this a bit of a curate’s egg, as we were solving it while introducing our daughter to the setter’s art. Some of the clues proved a bit challenging for that but she was the one to solve “Fit as a fiddle” and Search Engine”, and parsing the yx in Styx. Oxford was solved courtesy of her tap shoes back in the day.
DNF with two not done – Clifftop and Callisto”.
CsOD – Styx and Cheese.
A good puzzle of the correct level of difficulty. Not a walk over but accessible. A promising start by this setter.