A lovely puzzle from the lyre of Orpheus. There is one serious obscurity but three out of five letters were checked and with those the answer was obvious even if (like me) you’d never come across the word. Slightly below average for me at 07:55; I hope you all enjoyed it too. Whether you did or didn’t, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Sawbill’s from last weekend – it’s excellent. Link here.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Popular medic attempts endlessly to take in new teaching (8) |
| DOCTRINE – obviously this means “teaching” and starts IN [popular] + DR/MO/MB [medic]. Oh. Can’t make that work. Let me look at 1d. Got that, so first letter now D. Ah, ok, so actually it obviously means “popular” and starts with DR. No, can’t make that work either. Umm – ok, finally got it. DOC is “popular medic” (I think because it’s slang and thus “popular”); TRIE{s} is “attempts endlessly”, and it contains N [to take in new]. As you can see, I made a bit of a hash of that. | |
| 5 | Young rascal failing to complete swindle (4) |
| SCAM – much easier. A “young rascal” is a SCAM{p}, remove the last letter [failing to complete]. | |
| 8 | Sadly digests opening of this geographical aid (5) |
| ATLAS – ALAS [sadly] contains [digests] T [opening of this]. | |
| 9 | Diplomacy originally informing Civil Service manoeuvres (7) |
| TACTICS – TACT [diplomacy] + I [originally informing] + CS [Civil Service, didn’t know the abbreviation but it wasn’t hard to work out]. | |
| 11 | Songbird’s dark period buffeted by strong wind? (11) |
| NIGHTINGALE – NIGHT [dark period] + IN GALE [buffeted by strong wind]. Excellent clue. | |
| 13 | Seize pass, lake and river to begin with (6) |
| COLLAR – COL [pass] + L [lake] + AR [and river to begin with]. | |
| 14 | Batch of newborn puppies possibly? Rubbish! (6) |
| LITTER – double definition. The first one is a “definition by example”, indicated by the question-mark, because other animals have litters too (pigs, for example). | |
| 17 | European still showing no strong feeling (11) |
| EMOTIONLESS – E [European] + MOTIONLESS [still]. | |
| 20 | Afternoon show in English inspired by ship’s officer (7) |
| MATINEE – IN [in] + E [English] going inside [inspired by] MATE [ship’s officer]. Not for the first time I am struck by the peculiarity of a word deriving from the French “matin” (morning) mutating to mean specifically an afternoon performance. | |
| 21 | Priestly vestment initially attracting rodents (5) |
| AMICE – A [initially attracting] + MICE [rodents]. “A rectangular piece of white linen worn by priests around the neck and shoulder under the alb, or formerly on the head”. Thank you Collins; forty years of Anglicanism had not taught me that. Fortunately the wordplay meant it was always going to be “arats” or “amice”, so the checkers made the answer inevitable. The customary argument between “far too obscure for a QC, why wasn’t it agile or alive, setters just don’t know what they’re doing” and “isn’t it good to learn new words” may now take place between the usual tribes. | |
| 22 | Call round (4) |
| RING – another double definition. | |
| 23 | Wasted fish, we hear, like a favoured boy? (4-4) |
| BLUE-EYED – I really struggled with this, my LOI by some distance, but when the penny dropped it was very satisfying and so this is my COD (fishy ho ho). Two bits of aural wordplay combine to make this a tough clue – BLUE for “blew” [wasted] and EYED for “ide” [fish – “a small slender European cyprinoid fish, Idus idus“, aka the orfe. It lives in the Crosswordland Aquarium in the tank next to the eft.] A BLUE-EYED boy is a favourite or darling. The expression always reminds me of ee cummings’s poem “Buffalo Bill”, which ends
“and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death”
|
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Distribute timber somewhere in Kent (4) |
| DEAL – ooh, the lesser-spotted triple definition. “Distribute” as in “deal the cards”; “timber” as in softwood, typically pine; and “somewhere in Kent” as in the coastal town just north of Dover. Very good. | |
| 2 | Senior officer — a bit of a nut, by the sound of it (7) |
| COLONEL – sounds like [by the sound of it] “kernel” [bit of a nut]. This is a very old pun: read all about Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Knuts (1914) here | |
| 3 | Leaving statement that shows acceptance (11) |
| RESIGNATION – double definition. | |
| 4 | Write music on stave prepared at Eton (6) |
| NOTATE – aaaaand there it is, today’s reference to Slough Grammar. Anagram [prepared] of “at Eton”. | |
| 6 | Outstanding feature associated with a mate in Bow (5) |
| CHINA – Bow indicates the east end of London, which in turn indicates Cockney Rhyming Slang. China plate = mate, me old chinas. CHIN [outstanding feature, unless you’re a chinless wonder like Gilbert the Filbert] + A [associated with a]. | |
| 7 | Her maid’s carelessly picked up wrong information (8) |
| MISHEARD – anagram [carelessly] of “her maid’s”. | |
| 10 | Thoughtful judge supporting argument against team (11) |
| CONSIDERATE – RATE [judge] going underneath [supporting] CON [argument against] + SIDE [team]. | |
| 12 | Banner headline involving elite in southeast Russia principally (8) |
| SCREAMER – I’m not sure how I knew that a tabloid headline is called a SCREAMER but I did, which made this easy. To construct it from wordplay would be a bit harder: CREAM [elite] inside [in] SE [southeast] + R [Russia principally]. | |
| 15 | Swear, being touchy about Kipling poem? (7) |
| TESTIFY – TESTY [touchy] containing [about] IF [Kipling poem]. | |
| 16 | Fictitious peacekeepers ready for Brazil (6) |
| UNREAL – UN [peacekeepers] + REAL [the currency of Brazil, ie “ready” in Brazil]. “Ready” or “capital” meaning “money” often catch me out but today I twigged. | |
| 18 | Like some cereal consumed in borders of Oman? (5) |
| OATEN – ATE [consumed] inside [in] ON [borders of Oman]. Fortunately Mr Waitrose sells Duchy Organic Oaten Biscuits or I might have struggled here. | |
| 19 | Part of rosary venerable scholar read out (4) |
| BEAD – rosaries have BEADs and that’s pretty much all I know about them. Sounds like [read out] the Venerable Bede. | |
A lovely 10:19 solve, with AMICE the only unknown. The BLUE-EYED BOY held me up longer though; BLUE was clear enough, but I couldn’t bring the fish to mind. Once again, Jane Austen (Persuasion, I think) gets the credit for what knowledge of England I have, in this case knowing that DEAL (my COD) is a place. And in her time, a “morning call” was paid in the afternoon, and I suspect MATINEE may be a related development.
I defend AMICE on the grounds that it was very fairly clued and gives the QC solver practice in trusting the wordplay.
Thanks for the sweet puzzle Orpheus, great blogging Templar.
10:02 here, with LOI BLUE-EYED being held up by a typo on BEAS. On reflection, I suppose it’s probably better to have a typo on a crossing letter.
Thanks to Orpheus and Templar.
7m
Pretty quick. I thought I was going to get breezeblocked on LOI doctrine but was once I saw the interesting doc = popular medic I was home.
COD nightingale.
19 mins…
After a flying start in the top half, I screeched to a halt in the SE corner and disappointingly ambled in around 19 minutes. I also initially thought 12dn was “Streamer” but having failed to parse it, and struggling with 13ac, I realised it was the rather odd “Screamer” instead. Some good clues overall though.
FOI – 1ac “Doctrine”
LOI – 19dn “Bead”
COD – 20ac “Matinee” – very satisfying when I finally realised the parsing.
Thanks as usual!
15:25
NHO AMICE but it couldn’t be anything else. Couldn’t parse DOCTRINE (didn’t see where popular went) or BLUE EYED (NHO ide). LOI TESTIFY.
Avoided the STREAMER / SCREAMER dilemma by getting COLLAR first.
6:40. Lovely puzzle. mostly straightforward until you got to the couple of clues put in to gull the unwitting… just as it should be!
6.51, with rather less page skipping than yesterday.
10 mins
When I got -?Y?D for 23A I initially put in WIDE-EYED, and parsed it as “why died?” i.e. why did you kill this fish if you weren’t going to eat it!? It was a stretch though, and luckily the last crosser sorted me out. Had no idea about the parsing.
6D had too many steps for me, I didn’t know that Bow = Cockney or about the rhyming slang. TIL.