A public school which isn’t Eton, a couple of hiddens, a US President – what’s not to like? I’ll tell you what’s not to like, and that’s two clues which rely upon two other clues already having been solved. Booo! Anyway, all good fun and overall I enjoyed it as always. Gingerly I venture to say that this is on the easier side, because it detained me for only 06:36. Hope you were entertained too.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Correct a method at once (5,4) |
| RIGHT AWAY – a clever start, since the clue misleads you (well, it misled me) into thinking that it’s an anagram of “a method at” (indicated by “correct”). It isn’t: it’s RIGHT for “correct” + “A WAY” for “a method”. 1-0 Mara. | |
| 6 | Part gripped (3) |
| BIT – double definition, the second requiring a moment’s pause to see – think “the tyres bit/gripped”, for example. | |
| 8 | American introduced to stuff by principal in Italy, pasta! (7) |
| FUSILLI – US for “American”; that goes inside (“introduced to”) FILL for “stuff” + I for “principal in Italy”. A rather clunky surface. | |
| 9 | Boy, I understand that! (5) |
| ROGER – double definition: a male name (the clue would have worked just as well with “Man”)/a word used for “affirmative”. ROGER in the second sense comes from the early days of radio communication, when recipients of a signal would signal back the letter R for “received”. Around WW2, the spoken word ROGER started being used instead, since that stood for R in the US spoken alphabet. (Roger lost out to Romeo, however, when NATO formulated its own spoken alphabet.) | |
| 10 | Try sport in school? (5) |
| RUGBY – today’s random public school is RUGBY, a gloomy place near Birmingham where the eponymous style of football was invented by William Webb Ellis in 1823. It involves scoring tries, and so it’s a “try sport”, ho ho. [How to classify this? Well, never ever ever call something an &Lit, or the Clue Police will have you in cuffs up against the wall faster than you can say Ximenean. So I’m going to call this … a cryptic definition. They never pull you up for that.] | |
| 12 | A street in play, comfortable and warm (6) |
| TOASTY – A ST is “a street”; that goes inside (“in”) TOY for “play” (e.g. “the cat toyed with the mouse”). | |
| 14 | Clairvoyant seeing wealth with banker (7-6) |
| FORTUNE-TELLER – “Aha!” thinks your blogger, seeing the word “banker”, “Good job that I am now a Wise Old Hand who knows that this is always a codeword for river!” After much futile racking of brain for suitable rivers, I realised that today it just means an actual banker (TELLER). I can hear Mara sniggering quietly. 2-0 Mara. | |
| 16 | Something sparkling captured by astronaut in selfie (6) |
| TINSEL – hidden (“captured by”) inside “astronaut in selfie”. | |
| 17 | Reporters appearing in Ypres slowly (5) |
| PRESS – hidden (“appearing in”) inside “Ypres slowly”. In revenge for Mara doing me like a kipper over “banker”, I’m going to award a penalty against him for having two consecutive hiddens. My blog, my rules. 2-1 Mara. | |
| 19 | Different parent loses head (5) |
| OTHER – {m}OTHER. | |
| 20 | Giant in unlikely story? (7) |
| WHOPPER – double definition. As a boy I used to do logic puzzles about three tribes – the Pukkas (always told the truth), the Shilly-Shallies (sometimes lied, sometimes didn’t) and the Wottawoppas (always lied). You’d be given a set of statements and had to work out who was who from their internal logic. That was our idea of fun in the 70s, no wonder kids prefer iPhones. | |
| 22 | Parent dreadful at dancing, primarily (3) |
| DAD – a sideways swipe at the notorious phenomenon of dad-dancing (Collins: “enthusiastic but inelegant dancing to pop music, regarded as typical of middle-aged men”). It’s the first letters (“primarily”) of “dreadful at dancing”. | |
| 23 | When shattered 13 down energy — keep going (9) |
| PERSEVERE – this is an anagram (“shattered”) of 13d + E for “energy”. It feels as though Mara was running out of E for energy at this point and just thought “to heck with it, that’ll do”. Using the answer for one clue as the anagrist for another is a stonewall penalty so that’s 2-2. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | A few notes on leader of revolution overcoming a very strong rabble (4-4) |
| RIFF-RAFF – I needed the first R and F as checkers before I could get this. RIFF is “a few notes” (I’d been trying variants of do-re-me, or even ABC) + R for “leader of revolution” + A + FF for “very strong” (musical notation). Phew. | |
| 2 | Fuel cut, briefly (3) |
| GAS -GAS{h}. | |
| 3 | Finally, assailant and comrade agree (5) |
| TALLY – T is “assailant, finally” + ALLY for “comrade”. “The numbers TALLY/agree.” | |
| 4 | Informer, train dispatcher? (7-6) |
| WHISTLE-BLOWER – double definition. At Charing Cross the platform staff blow a whistle precisely one minute before the train leaves at such ferocious decibel levels that I have learned never to be within 5 yards of them. | |
| 5 | Measure of distance unknown, a grade miscalculated (7) |
| YARDAGE – Y is the “unknown” + an anagram (“miscalculated”) of “a grade”. | |
| 6 | Wrong label, tag with error initially, minor detail (9) |
| BAGATELLE – an anagram (“wrong”) of “label tag” + e for “error initially”. This sense of BAGATELLE (as in “a mere bagatelle”) is its oldest usage in English, going back to 1645 according to my Shorter Oxford. It comes from the Italian “baga” for package, possession, from which we also get baggage. I first knew it as a word for a children’s game involving firing a metal ball onto a pinboard. | |
| 7 | Cutting pastry dish (4) |
| TART – double definition: a TART/cutting remark. | |
| 11 | Decorated with herbs say, his garden embellished (9) |
| GARNISHED – anagram (“embellished”) of “his garden”. | |
| 13 | Keep piano book (8) |
| PRESERVE – P for “piano” + RESERVE for “book”, as in “I must reserve/book a table”. That threw me, because I was fixated on “book” as a noun. 3-2 Mara. | |
| 15 | Free run past turning (7) |
| UNSTRAP – anagram (“turning”) of “run past”. I found that a remarkably difficult anagram to solve, no idea why. | |
| 17 | Page came up for written work (5) |
| PROSE – P for “page” + ROSE for “came up”. | |
| 18 | US president supportive of daughter (4) |
| FORD – FOR for “supportive of” + D for “daughter”. Gerald FORD was the 38th President of the United States from 1974 to 1977. I’d barely heard of the guy before I started doing crosswords; now I write him in without a second thought. (In checking his dates for the blog I learned he was very lucky to be alive, since a member of the Manson Clan tried to shoot him at point blank range during a walkabout. Fortunately she didn’t understand how the gun worked and there was no bullet in the chamber, or he’d have had it.) | |
| 21 | 7 down spoiled, odd bits discarded (3) |
| PIE – if you take out the odd letters of “spoiled” you are left with PIE, which is close enough to a TART (7d) to count for dictionaries, whatever Escoffier thinks. In my view using the answer to one clue as the definition for another is poor form, and so that’s another penalty against Mara resulting in a 3-3 draw. *shakes hands* | |
Felt to be the easiest for some time, short holdup in the NE corner sorting out 6d.
Sneaked in at 9:52, a rare sub-10 for me. As others have said, a slow start with my FOI TOASTY, but then most of the rest of the acrosses came on the first pass. COD DAD.
Thanks to Mara and Templar.
“Much easier than yesterday” I muttered to my wife halfway through this Mara but then I began to slow up and hit a few buffers. Not helped by biffing TAT at 21d, discarding the R from TART to give me spoiled, odd bits. Oh well. Enjoyed RIGHT AWAY and RIFF RAFF and cod to WHISTLE BLOWER! Eventually solved the SE corner, but 25 minutes or so. Great blog Templar and thanks Mara
06:58
No real hold ups. LOI rugby.
COD roger, oveur, what!
Templar, considering you are such a stickler for word meanings, you are surprisingly easy going with &lit interpretations. Hope this doesn’t come up in trial!
Relatively gentle I thought, though I can’t remember seeing BAGATELLE before, so I was relieved when I saw I’d spelt that correctly. All done in 12:45. I thought RUGBY was a double definition too, by the way. Thanks Mara and Templar.
It was a smart move, Templar, to refrain from calling an &lit. “Try sport in school” has two definitions, the jocular and the quite literal. Only the first involves wordplay—being a cryptic definition, playing on “Try”—and the two do not overlap.
I think Crispian may have posted while I was writing this. Mara seems to have been on a double definition kick here. Edit: Though it may be preferable to call the first, cryptic definition a mere cryptic hint.
Yes, easier than average. Finished it just over halfway through my train journey. Thanks Mara, and I loved the scoring in your blog, Templar! I think it would be fun to use this device again.
18 min finish. Pretty good considering I was going through the cross clues and Rugby @ 10a was my FOI but after that they flowed. Whooper and pie going in last. Great puzzle thanks Templar and Mara
A late solve and one that started off with 1a/1d but quickly became scrappy. Coming back
after supper it all flowed nicely. This was a well-pitched QC. I’m another who dislikes cross-referencing clues. Thoroughly enjoyed the blog – thx Templar.
FOI 1a Right Away
LOI 17d Prose
COD 4a Whistle Blower – amusing
Almost beat my record with 7:50, my knowledge of French helped me with BAGATELLE
A poor 13 minutes.
Others solved this so quickly compared to me.
Got about 3/4 of big puzzle. Lousy as ever.
A miserable week. I spend around 2 hours each day on this and I never, ever achieve a result that I regard as satisfactory.
18:07 with no errors. Not one of my better times for Mara (one of my favourite compilers) but enjoyable as always. FOI – TOASTY, LOI – FUSILLI, COD – DAD. Thanks Mara and Templar