A Tuesday puzzle with a bit of a bite to it.
Cor that was a bit of a head scratcher in places, given quite a run around with all those referring clues. Got a bit of wordplay for some kind soul to explain [Done thanks] . Thanks Picaroon.
Across
9 Guardian’s embracing party atmosphere (5)
ODOUR
DO party in OUR guardian’s. Nice easy start today.
10 Locomotive working, given one right smack on the outside (4,5)
IRON HORSE
ON working inside 1 & R(ight) & HORSE (heroin, smack). Old fashioned def.
11 Try to move ladies, cracking joke rejected with frown (5,4)
DIRTY LOOK
TRY* moving & LOO ladies for example all inside cracking KID joke, reversed rejected,
12 One ex-25 follows van in rear entrance (5)
RIVET
1 & VET (old 25 – SOLDIER) all following the van (front of) of R(ear). As in a rivetting performance. What was I saying about easy?
13 1, 3, 5, 7, 22, 23, 25, 26 across, 28 and 29 together, they 8 (7)
TENANTS
They 8 – RENT. Took a while to twig this. All the referred lights are ANTS and there’s TEN of them.
15 Join up again in detachment (7)
RESERVE
To RE – SERVE as in rejoin the army.
17 Beastly neckwear — it’s wrong to fiddle with zip at the front (2-3)
OX-BOW
I thought an OX-BOW was a river shape but it’s also a collar for cattle. X wrong & BOW fiddle & 0 zip, nothing at the start
18 Kim Jong-un’s ready to move to the west today (3)
NOW
WON (Korean currency) reversed (moving to the west)
20 Suffer from hot dog (5)
INCUR
IN (hot popular) & CUR dog
22 Ruler is funny ha-ha or peculiar, primarily? (7)
PHARAOH
[HA HA OR P(eculiar)]* funny
25 Person getting on with senior about part of 3 (7)
SOLDIER
Part of 3 – ARMY. OLDIE in S(enio)R
26 Oppressed 5 in bar swallows litre (5)
SLAVE
5 is WORKER, so SAVE bar swallowing L(itre)
27 Dish that’s left I mostly cook with alcohol (3,2,4)
LEG OF LAMB
L(eft) & EGO (I) & FLAMB(é) mostly
30 Bit of underwear yet to be fixed? That’s awkward (9)
CROTCHETY
CROTCH bit of underwear & YET* fixed
31 Country sport really regularly cancelled (5)
RURAL
R(ugby) U(nion) & ReAlLy with every other letter cancelled
Down
1 Solicited English to go for deal, say (4)
WOOD
E(nglish) removed from WOO(e)D. Deal is a type of wood
2 Hit with cane, twirling round old handle (8)
DOORKNOB
O(ld) in BONK (hit) & ROD(cane) all reversed twirling. Some setters seeing BONK and ROD may have interpretted this differently 🙂
3 Host with nuts putting away starter (4)
ARMY
(b)ARMY nuts with initial letter removed
4 Sort of cattle car drops back (8)
LIMOUSIN
Well I had to look this up I’ll admit, never heard of it. LIMOUSIN(e) dropping its back.
5 Misery ending in poker, with kings in hand (6)
WORKER
WOE misery & (poke)R with R&K – two kings inserted
6 Fancy that Yankee 25 with hands round hot dancer? (6,4)
CHORUS GIRL
COR fancy that & US yankee & GI (25-soldier) & R(ight)&L(eft) hands with H(ot) inserted. Looks like Yankee is doing double duty but that’s to mislead, it isn’t.
7 500 + 23 = 1 (6)
DRIVER
1 – WOOD=DRIVER in golf. D 500 & 23 – AMAZON a river, a def by example not indicated.
8 Regret abandoning exercise to get ripped (4)
RENT
P.E. – exercise removed from RE(pe)NT regret
13 25s needing time to pull pants up (5)
TROOP
25s – soldiers. T(ime) & POOR (pants) reversed (up in a down clue)
14 It provides reports of recent remark about low-down Conservative (4,6)
NEWS AGENCY
NEW recent & SAY (remark) about [GEN (info, low down) & C(onservative)]
16 Howler monkey shaking head (5)
ERROR
(t)ERROR losing head, my best explanation is via a naughty child being both monkey and terror
19 Partner, swapping tips for frauds, ropes in gangsters (4,4)
WISE GUYS
21 Noble ideals in Switzerland lead away from conflict (8)
CHIVALRY
CH (switzerland) & (r)IVALRY conflict
23 Retailer‘s short shock — no returns (6)
AMAZON
Short AMAZ(e) & NO returning
24 Is this top a stopper? (6)
HALTER
Double def
26 28 rifle (4)
SACK
28 – FIRE so a double def.
28 Car racing about, showing zeal (4)
FIRE
Formula 1 (a type of car racing) & RE about.
29 Cow lacking male chromosome? On the contrary! (4)
BULL
BULL(y) without a Y chromosome
*anagram
19D WISE is WIFE (“partner”) with one tip of “frauds” (the “F”) swapped for the other (the “s”). And WISE GUYS is a US term for the Mafia. I think your explanation of 16D is correct.
19: Partner (wife), the tip of ‘swapping’ (s), for (replaces) tip of frauds (f)
Thanks, flashling, for a top blog – ‘bit of a head scratcher’ a bit of an understatement, for me.
Wonderful puzzle – the pdm at 13ac was one of the best I remember, coming just over halfway through, which certainly didn’t mean the rest was a write-in. I hadn’t heard of all those ants!
I’ve a friend coming round for coffee soon, so no time to comment on all my favourite clues – far too many.
Many thanks to Picaroon for so entertainingly getting my brain in gear this morning.
I read 19d as swapping tips of (f)raud(s) so wife becomes wise. Great crossword! Very entertaining.
26d was essentially the same clue as 16d in yesterday’s Quiptic.
Thanks Picaroon for a decent struggle with a good crossword.
Thanks flashling – the PDM never came! ðŸ™
AMAZON and PHAROAH took me off the scent.
Many good clues, I thought RIVET was very misleading.
Thanks flashling. Pretty tricky, needing TEA assistance on two of these. Couldn’t fully parse 12A, 26A and 6D so thanks for unravelling them. I did like the theme when it shone through at last( what did all those words have in common ??) as well as the convoluted 11A which earned a grim grin. Good work, Picaroon.
What a good start to the week this has been, let’s hope it keeps up.
I had roughly seven ants in place before I worked out what the link was. Then 13a became a joy to write in.
Loads though that I couldn’t parse, thanks flashling and pretty much all bloggers to date, and Picaroon for such a good puzzle.
Great puzzle, and thanks for the blog. Ashamed to say that I’d got all ten answers, and 13a (from the crossers) and still didn’t make the connection. Needed the blog to explain the parsing for several answers. Felt more like a Prize puzzle to me but very welcome all the same.
Thanks, flashling.
Very clever puzzle – and very tricky for a Tuesday, with some imaginative constructions, very intricate charades and misleading definitions. All of which gives some excellent surfaces. (There are a lot of single letter removals, but it would be churlish to complain!)
I had most of the hymenopterans before I suddenly realised the significance of 13a.
Many good clues, but I particularly enjoyed 18a, 7d, 29d.
Thanks Picaroon and flashling
There are eleven ants.
I found this fun, but really challenging, so thought I would get my own back by ‘digging out’, or should I say ‘calling up’, another ant.
Too tired to list favourites.
Too difficult for me. It had me thinking of Enigmatist or Imogen in a bad mood. Thank you flashling for filling in the gaps, and for explaining several of those that I got.
I had and still have high hopes of Picaroon, though the last one he did, and this one I feel, have their problems. Here it moves once or twice towards compileritis, with bizarre ideas, and I had a number of problems. 11a ladies is dbe. 26a has a grammatical in my view, 31a surface is odd, 3d ‘with’ is awkward, 4d is just really hard, 7d dbe again, 16d really hard too, and 28d dbe.
As I say I still think P is essentially a good writer, but he could try a little less hard I feel.
I really enjoyed this — my colleague Picaroon is class and he exploited a clever idea well, used some nice misdirection, and in his clue for ‘error’ provided a new touch for an old treatment. If I have one quibble, it is about defining loo by ladies. I would want ‘e.g. ladies’, even at the risk of spoiling the smoothness — maybe ‘ladies or gents’ would have been a possibility, though I guess most loos are unisex!
Pretty tough for a Tuesday as you say – even after getting the TEN ANTS the rest took a bit of cracking – had BULL, FIRE and PHARAOH early but needed the RENT to make progress. Last in was CROTCHETY. Failed to parse WISE GUYS, IRON HORSE and DOORKNOB so thanks for those. Enjoyed the challenge and the theme (despite a lack of formic knowledge).
Thanks to Picaroon and flashling.
Thanks flashling and Picaroon. Wonderful crossword. One of those which, although I find tough, I can’t put down until I’ve sorted out the inherent theme. I’d found nine of the theme words before 13ac came to me. Excellent idea.
Hello everyone – & again: thanks for having me! Gosh, this was a tough one…but I did it! Was about halfway through before I saw TEN ANTS, although TENANTS went in on the first look through (after RENT, of course!) LOI was ERROR: couldn’t see it for the life of me: I solved it but couldn’t quite parse it…is that allowed?!! I’m quite strict with myself (partly cos I’m still learning!) that I don’t write them in until I understand why…although increasingly I let myself off right at the end! *Really* enjoyed this one; thank you Picaroon! You made my Tuesday!
Also (& apols once again if I’m being a bit thick!) – what does DBE mean?? If it’s obvious, then pls accept my apologies, but I just can’t figure it out!
perhaps we should let hedgehoggy answer that, but I think dbe = definition by example
I did add “by example” a couple of times but got bored of saying it. Not really too sure about Hedgy’s too hard complaint, there wasn’t much here really to touch Enigmatist levels.
Thanks Beery Hiker and flashling for explaining dbe. At 7d I nearly put DRIVEL, but then thought DRIVER a better bet, especially when an ant ran across the bottom.
Thanks flashling and Picaroon
A difficult and enjoyable puzzle. I too had my doubts about 11a both re loo and also because it seemed a bit clunkier than most, but the answer itself amused me.
Re 16d, I had a nagging feeling I had seen something like it before – see Brummie 9th Jan, 20d, where terror is the answer to a very comparable clue.
Thanks Picaroon and flashling
LilSho @ 17/18, welcome aboard. This is a very wide-ranging forum, ranging from those who think that compilers have to follow rules, which aren’t formally defined anywhere, to those who think that there are certain compiling conventions, but that it’s the setter’s prerogative to flout them in the interests of a good puzzle. It’s all a matter of opinion, and you make your own choice where you sit along that spread.
I thought this was a tough but top-class puzzle – wouldn’t want one like this every day of the week, but very satisfying to solve when they do come along.
Have fun, and stick around!
This was one of those cases where when you finish, you’re very proud of having done it. Very rough.
When “worker” and “army” had both gone in without any overt reference to ants, I figured out 13ac, so I got it earlier than most. Still didn’t help much, since I had just over half the puzzle left to do, and I hadn’t heard of half the ants!
I dislike excessively linked clues, usually, since they give you that many fewer entry points into the puzzle. In this case, the ants and the various army items worked so well together that it seems forgivable. Using “Amazon” in the “Driver” clue was maybe a bridge too far (or rather, a bridge too little), though.
Re dbe (definition by example) – it’s a bit confusing because hedgehoggy very often points them out but sometimes gets them the wrong way round. Here for example, there is no dbe in 28d – F1 is a kind of car racing so it’s right to have car racing in the clue and F1 in the answer. The other way round would be dbe, which many people think is unfair/wrong.
Oh, one other thing: “Deal” as a type of wood is best known to me from this poem, one of my favorites: The Emperor of Ice-Cream, which was also my first encounter with the word “concupiscent.”
I’m just sharing because I like the poem, really.
Very true herb, that’s why I didn’t put by example in the blog for it. Mind you it calls into question the whole unfair thing. Indirect anagrams are apparently unfair but same missing letters or reversed are ok. Def by example is out but but but… Xim or not – can you get to the answer and why is my only thing. Let the setters play on.
@mrpenney Deal is best known to me as an incredibly cold and wintry seaside town when I stayed there for six months when first blogging here…
Hard and fun. Robi@6 (if you’re still there) I too had PHAROAH for some time, which made completing SW challenging – the word being PHARAOH, of course!
Clever it may have been, but I hated this. I “solved” this by a combination of guesswork, crossovers and the check button. I didn’t get the theme but I’ve never heard of most of the ants and I found parsing these very difficult to say the least. Come back ENIGMATIST, all is forgiven.
I found this quite hard – cheating was needed. A marvellous construction and nice theme, but some of the clues just too hard
Must agree with Pasquale @14, much as it pains me, in saying that this was a class crossword and in quibbling over the use of ‘ladies’ for ‘loo’. ‘Ladies or gents’ is much more politically correct.
Left me feeling clueless.
‘F1’ is an example of car racing, so ‘car racing’ can’t define F1 except by example. I would have thought. See my circuit-ous logic there.
Pretty tough this one actually, but I’m a ‘Roon fan, and there were multiple delights, not to mention the nicely-handled theme.
Hard work but very satisfying, and I learned the names of a few ants. My only quibble was whether Crotchety means awkward, but I suppose it’s good enough. Many thanks to Picaroon and flashling.
Ah well my hints went OTT must try to be less subtle and more overt, thanks those that commented. Ants in my pants making this fun from my hotel, night all. And no there’s no more clues in this post.
Gosh. Our small group of crossword setters found this hard. Only just finished it this late in the day. Still not used the cheat button this year but it was close today..
@Paul B
It’s the other way round. If you use the category (car racing) to define the example (F1) you are not defining by example. Otherwise using “tree” to clue “oak” would also be a “DBE”. I know “definition” can be a slightly misleading term of art in crossword setting, but you do also seem to be misusing the word “by”.
Me again! Thank you Simon S, I’m so glad to be here! & thanks all for the explanation of DBE, although it looks like I started a bit of a discussion! I didn’t actually have any probs with FIRE…maybe there is an advantage to being a newbie after all!! Goodnight you lovely people, & ‘see’ you tomorrow!
A superb puzzle. Lesser setters can no doubt only look on with envy – and maybe learn.
Regarding DBEs – even though eg Barnard made no exceptions to the requirement for DBEs to be indicated it is really nothing more than a convention and many are starting to question it as a hard and fast rule – it is after all nothing more than a convention and it is equally easy to come up with examples to ridicule it as it is to support it.
In Monday’s puzzle Orlando intelligently omitted many – with so many first names etc around it would have been repetitious to include them.
The commenters at #13 and #14 appear to be suffering from the delusion that there is one ideal way of writing crossword clues – that we all want it to be universally applied – everything else should be stamped out – and that they are experts in this field. None of those things are true.
20ac INCUR does not mean suffer; it means (from the Latin) to RUN INTO. Thus you incur (run into) debt or obligation or charges etc. ‘Suffer’ is thus a false definition.
I agree with a good deal of Flashling’s notions (nothing unusual there). But what a fascinating insight into hh. I thought LIMOUSIN a very easy clue. (No farmer I, but this is one of the most well-known cattle breeds). Amused to gather he found it so hard as to be unfair!! Not an easy puzzle, but certainly not tough. And very nicely put together. For what it’s worth, I found no fault in any clue.
Ah, good old JS putting the boot in! As usual, he pours his bile on those who want accuracy and tries to sound superior by spouting at length! For anyone who has an ounce of a sense of reason, my argument is watertight, but I am sure he will want to go on having the last word and portray me as some sort of ridiculous pedant. I shall wear it as a badge of honour.
Surely Pasquale’s phoney outrage doesn’t fool anyone for a minute. I wrote no bile. I simply disagreed – politely.
Here’s some real bile – from Pasquale of course (although one responder thought it must be a parody):
http://www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?action=read&id=1411495130.75532&user=dharrison&page=4
That’s mild compared with one of his acolytes who in reply writes:
Middlemarch to produce an R comes out of the same abominable cesspit of flawed devices [my bolding]
Of course he’s wrong to imply that word-splitting is a recent innovation. Barnard covered it in his 1963 book – in fact we both discussed that once on the Guardian Blog threads.
Here’s a polite and intelligent discussion (possible because Pasquale didn’t take part) on the subject of DBEs.
http://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/06/definition-by-example.html
See what I mean?
Crossbencher @ 41
Chambers gives suffer as a definition of incur, but not incur as a definition of suffer. I’m not sure where exactly that leaves us 🙂
I incurred a loss of one pound = I suffered a loss of one pound (similar example in Ox Thes Eng) — it’s absolutely fine!
I am completely happy about it, was trying to give Crossbencher a steer. I find it amusing more than anything else that the Chambers definitions don’t mirror each other 🙂
I agree with Pasquale about JS – there’s no need for that, because it is so aggressive.
That aside, he talks about ‘rules’ that don’t exist! Where are they in the Ximenes book? No, it’s about good grammar in clues, just as we have good grammar in writing – there’s no difference! Let him make his excuses for bad work however. It seems purely reactive to me, but I will say no more.
Has anyone heard from Rowland recently?
Dear lord JS don’t say his name three times…
Thanks Picaroon and flashling
Late to finish this after starting on Wednesday – was just a blank wall, but with a bit more time today to have one hard crack at it, finally starting making headway and then got TENANTS which enabled me to get all the ants in the down clues in the top half.
Think that it was a tough crossword, but no problems with any of it – was challenging, had a good mix of clue devices, some wry humour and a brilliantly constructed theme.
Missed the parsing of SOLDIER, but got the rest of them … last in was CHIVALRY.
Great crossword. Theme revealed itself at a great pace. Nice linking clues especially around 7 down.