My apologies for the late posting of this Friday’s offering from Phi – I have had baby-sitting duties today and thus very little time to myself.
Indeed, on a day of bottle-warming and nappy-changing a quicker solve might not have gone amiss, but I am not complaining! I think that this is very much a puzzle for the connoisseur rather than the occasional solver, and I hope that not too many of the latter were put off after a first glance at the clues. I found this a real challenge, not so much in terms of realising what Phi was doing (pairing up animals by row in the across clues, as per the boarding of Noah’s ark), but more in terms of solving the clues. I think I was not expecting there to be so much extraneous vocabulary, and was thus surprised to find that 17, 23 and 25 were completely new to me; that 20 I only vaguely remembered from a barred puzzle; and that 24 would have been another vaguely remembered word had it not appeared in a recent puzzle I blogged!! I suppose the constraints imposed by the grid forced Phi to resort to more obscure entries. The fact that in some pairs of across clues – 12/13, 25/26 – the definition is implied rather than stated, while in others the definition does double duty as part of the wordplay – 7/8, 15/17, 20/21, 23/24 – cranks up the level of difficulty yet further.
My favourite clues today are 19, where the answer was obvious but the wordplay eluded me for a good long while; 3, which cleverly combines a number of Scottish elements in one and the same clue; and 18, with its original wordplay.
*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in double-definition clues
| Across | ||
| 07 | DANE | Ball not caught (paired with – think 6 23D) … DAN<c>E (=ball); “not caught (=C)” means letter “c” is dropped; the animals entered Noah’s ark (=entry at 6 23D) two-by-two by species, hence each row in the grid contains a pair (“paired with”) of related animals, i.e. two dogs, large cats, birds, etc |
| 08 | BEDLINGTON | … black dog let in mistakenly before end of session B (=black) + *(DOG LET IN) + <sessio>N (“end of” means last letter only); “mistakenly”; the first pair of animals are dogs, the definition appearing in one of them applying to both |
| 10 | COUGAR | Endlessly give information to Arab (paired with) … COUG<h> (=give information; “endlessly” means last letter dropped) + AR (=Arab) |
| 11 | CHEETAH | … cat he repeatedly trained *(CAT + HE + HE); “repeatedly” means “he” is used twice in anagram; “trained” is anagram indicator |
| 12 | CRESTED TIT | It’s creed, etc, flying, losing a little energy, (paired with) … *(IT’S TRE<e>D ETC); “losing a little energy (=E)” means letter “e” is dropped; “flying” is anagram indicator but also suggests a bird |
| 13 | RHEA | … overhead, to some extent Hidden (“to some extent”) in “oveRHEAd” |
| 15 | MUSTANG | Encouraging cry, with point for horse (paired with) … MUS<TANG (=point, i.e. sting, spike) for H (=horse)> in MUSH (=encouraging cry, i.e. to sleigh dogs) |
| 17 | SUMPTER | … puts me out before start of race *(PUTS ME) + R<ace> (“start of” means first letter only); “out” is anagram indicator; a sumpter is a pack horse or mule |
| 20 | SEPS | Initially, snakes explain particularly strange (paired with) … S<nakes> E<xplain> P<articularly> S<trange>; “initially” means first letters only are used; a seps is a very venomous snake mentioned by classical writers |
| 21 | DEATH ADDER | … hated, macabre – awful dread follows *(DEATH) + *(DREAD); “macabre” and “awful” are anagram indicators; a death adder is a poisonous Australian snake |
| 23 | STERLET | Fishy letters (paired with) … *(LETTERS); “fishy” is anagram indicator; a starlet is a small sturgeon |
| 24 | ALEVIN | … beer and French wine ALE (=ale) + VIN (=French wine, i.e. the French word for wine); an alevin is a young fish, especially a salmonid |
| 25 | GREEN-DRAKE | Still-developing sea-captain (paired with) … GREEN (=still-developing, i.e. immature, unripe) + DRAKE (=sea-captain, i.e. Francis Drake); a green-drake is a mayfly |
| 26 | GNAT | … good with nasty ant G (=good) + *(ANT); “nasty” is anagram indicator |
| Down | ||
| 01 | BATON ROUGE | Stay in endless violent Eastern state capital BAT ON (=stay in, i.e. in cricket) + ROUG<h> (=violent; “endless” means last letter dropped) + E (=Eastern); Baton Rouge is the state capital of Louisiana |
| 02 | VERGES | Limits church officials banning one rector VERGE<r>S (=church officials; “banning one rector (=R)” means that one letter “r” is dropped |
| 03 | ABERDEEN | Scottish city – a mountain peak there frames river (Scottish one) [R (=river) + DEE (=Scottish one, i.e. river) in [A + BEN (=mountain peak, in Scotland)] |
| 04 | SILENT | Lot of glass put in position without a sound LEN<s> (=glass; “lot of” means last letter dropped) in SIT (=position, as a verb) |
| 05 | AGITPROP | Island accepting government support, prompting revolutionary comment [G (=government) in AIT (=island)] + PROP (=support) |
| 06 | NOAH | Historic sailor concerned with rising exclamation NO (ON=concerned with; “rising” indicates vertical reversal) + AH (=exclamation) |
| 09 | DUCATS | Money mostly owing by jazz fans DU<e> (=owing, i.e. of money; “mostly” means last letter dropped) + CATS (=jazz fans) |
| 14 | EXEGETICAL | Shake a leg and excite, according to interpretation *(A LEG + EXCITE); “shake” is anagram indicator; an exegesis is an interpretation of a text, especially Biblical |
| 16 | TASSELED | Decorated American took charge after seats vandalised *(SEATS) + LED (=took charge); “vandalised” is anagram indicator; tasselled is the US spelling of tasselled, hence “decorated American” |
| 18 | UNHEATED | Ban-Ki moon, say, hosting extremists in the cold T<h>E (“extremists in” means first and last letters only) in UN HEAD (=Ban-Ki Moon, say, i.e. Secretary General of the United Nations) |
| 19 | MANTRA | Sacred text stripping seductress of power MANTRA<p> (=seductress); “stripping of power (=P)” means letter “p” is dropped |
| 21 | DELUDE | Fool stylish guy adopting the Spanish fashion EL (=the Spanish, i.e. the Spanish word for the) in DUDE (=stylish guy) |
| 22 | DREDGE | Deepen irritability after doctor comes over DR (=doctor) + EDGE (=irritability); to dredge is to deepen e.g. a river with a dredge |
| 23 | SARK | Harsh, timeless island S<t>ARK (=harsh; “time (=T)-less” means letter “t” is dropped) |
Indeed tricky without the definitions and obscure answers too, the hint in 7a about 6/23d gave this away for me seeing NOAH S-ARK but even that didn’t reallly break some of the (to me) rare words in the grid.
Not Phi at his easiest for our birthday present 🙂 Thanks RR for getting blog up despite it all.
I was slow to get going with this one despite solving 6dn and 23dn straight away. I managed to finish it without recourse to aids, but for a while I didn’t think I’d be able to.
Some of the answers, like SUMPTER, GREEN-DRAKE, SEPS, EXEGETICAL and STERLET went in from either the wordplay or the anagram fodder with fingers crossed. My first guess for 23ac was “stetler” but that made 19dn unsolvable. Once I changed 23ac to STERLET I finally saw MANTRA/mantra(p) at 19dn and that was my LOI.
Thanks Phi for a very satisfying solve and RR for the blog. I got the idea from 20ac/21ac (where the wordplay really could not give anything else) and only got 6dn/23dn about half way through. While solving, it did not occur to me that there were any definitions in the across clues.
One quibble relates to 6dn: Unless you are thinking of a different Noah, I do not think it is right to define him as “Historic sailor”.
A really ingenious offering from Phi; less difficult than it might have been, though, in that several answers were fairly obvious from crossing letters and/or wordplay, even if the words were unfamiliar and needed googling to confirm their definitions.
Thanks to Phi and, particularly in the circumstances, to RatkojaRiku.
I was so absorbed by this crossword that I finished it at one sitting to the exclusion of other things I should have been doing. Like RR I found it fairly easy to see what Phi was doing, but not so easy to understand the clues. Each one seemed to contain a definition of sorts except 12/13 and 25/26 where RR thinks one is implied. However, “flying” in the former can hardly imply RHEA which is a flightless bird, and in the latter ANT’s only connection with the solutions is its being an insect. As a trout-fisher I recognised both GREENDRAKE and (spent) GNAT as terms used to describe adult forms of the mayfly, but I suspect their pairing by Phi is just a coincidence.
Thanks Phi for a thoroughly enjoyable crossword despite my quibbles above, and to RR for the blog.
I’ve had ‘the animals went in two by two’ floating round in my ideas list for ages. Once it had occurred to me to put them in pairs on rows, the issue of how to clue them came up. I was reluctant to put ‘dog/dog’, ‘cat/cat’ in adjacent clues, as that would be too early a penny-drop. But quite early on ‘dog’ fell out of ‘Bedlington’, and I wondered if I could do definition-less clues that nonetheless gave a strong indication of the required entry. At that point, ‘cat’ fell out of ‘cheetah’, and the die was cast. It did lead me to some out-of-the-way entries, though the only one I’d never encountered was ‘greendrake’, and I’d probably still fall over one without recognising it. I did wonder about fish on the Ark, mind.
Definitely on the hard side for a Friday. Took me ages to see what was going on as I was having difficulty getting any of the across clues. And when I did get it, I confidently put “black adder” for 21ac and it was only when word searches failed to come up with anything useful for 18 and 21dn I rethought this. About half the across answers I’d never heard of.
We saw what was going on fairly early on despite not having solved 6 23d. A slow start and even after realising what we were looking for, a slow finish due to the number of unusual words.
Definitely a harder Phi than usual but quite an achievement.
Joyce wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as Bert but nevertheless a good challenge,
.
Tanks Phi and RR.