Guardian 26,530 – Crucible

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An enjoyable and reasonably straightforward puzzle, though I made things harder for myself by careless entering a couple of vaguely-plausible but wrong answers early on. Thanks to Crucible

There’s a theme of weather and forecasts, explained further at 22d.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
9. OVERBOARD Chair’s position in need of rescuing? (9)
The chairman of a company is OVER the BOARD
10. REALM Field football team, missing second half (5)
First half of REAL Madrid
11. PRESAGE Prince Harry agrees to forecast (7)
P + AGREES*
12. LASHING Heath suppressed a quiet whip’s job (7)
A SH in LING (heath or heather)
13. NEARS Poles admit appreciation is getting closer (5)
EAR in N S
14. BY THUNDER Bolt pursued thus? Emphatically so! (2,7)
A lightning bolt may be followed “pursued” by thunder
16. WEATHER FORECAST Future conditions overcome on behalf of English actors (7,8)
WEATHER (to overcome, as in “weather the storm”) + FOR E CAST
19. TIME BOMBS Chap declines to carry old maiden — they go off eventually (4,5)
TIM + O M in EBBS
21. OXEYE Daisy and what’s fixed thereon? (5)
The ox-eye daisy (I would use a hyphen, but apparently the unhyphenated version is also used), and the ox’s eye might be on Daisy the cow, though as “ox” usually refers to a castrated bull, maybe not…
22. FOXTROT It precedes golf dance (7)
Double definition – Foxtrot precedes Golf in the NATO phonetic alphabet, and it’s a dance
23. PREDICT Foresee bull chasing priest (7)
PR[iest] + EDICT (as in Papal Bull)
24. SYRIA State where open society’s in revolt (5)
Reverse of AIRY S, and an &-littish surface reading too
25. IGUANODON Old herbivore‘s droppings suffice in bags (9)
GUANO (bird droppings) + DO (suffice) “bagged by” IN
Down
1. SOPPING WET Spooner’s East London clique drenched (7,3)
Spoonerism of “Wapping set” – I carelessly put SOAKING WET here at first, for “Woking Set”, but of course Woking isn’t part of East London
2. DEMERARA A rare medic all but rejected sweetener (8)
Reverse of A RARE MED[ic]
3. U-BOATS Threats once to a sub at sea (1-5)
(TO A SUB)*, and again &-littish, though U-boats were presumably more of a threat to surface vessels
4. GALE Old physician contracted a lot of wind (4)
GALEN less his final letter
5. IDOLATROUS As an adoring fan, I perform with our last cast (10)
I DO + (OUR LAST)*
7. VARIED Divers struggled to ford a river (6)
A R in (i.e. crossed by, or forded) VIED
8. SMOG Some regularly flee rising pollution (4)
S[o]M[e] + reverse of GO (flee)
14,6. BAROMETRIC PRESSURE It’s measured by the glass (10,8)
Cryptic definition – a barometer can be called a weather glass. As General Stanley’s daughters sing in The Pirates of Penzance, “How beautifully blue the sky / The glass is rising very high”
15. RETREATING Conceding defeat, sailor goes over to be in Paris (10)
ETRE (French “to be”) in RATING
17. HIBERNAL It’s wintry in Ireland, except for one lough (8)
HIBERN[I]A + L
18. AMERINDS Crow, say, makes changes circling Rhode Island (8)
RI in AMENDS – reference to the Crow Nation
20. MIXERS French 21 down embrace 9 sociable types (6)
IX (9) in MERS (French seas)
21. OCEANS Where canoes founder? (6)
CANOES*, &lit
22. FISH His forecast originally was wrong (4)
Anagram of HIS + F[orecast] – I imagine this will have come as a total mystery to many, but it refers to the UK’s Great Storm of 1987, and a weather forecast the previous day in which Michael Fish told people not to worry about claims that a hurricane was on the way, though he later claimed he was misquoted or misunderstood. As well as WEATHER FORECAST at 18a, there are numerous references throughout puzzle to both weather conditions and forecasts
23. POUR Listened to “Hole in bucket“? (4)
Homophone of “pore”, a kind of hole; and pour = bucket as in “pouring [with rain]” = “bucketing [down]”

33 comments on “Guardian 26,530 – Crucible”

  1. An enjoyable romp! Thanks for the crossword and the blog. I too put Soaking Wet for 1d which left me puzzling over 11a for longer than was necessary. I particularly liked 10a.

  2. Thanks Crucible and Andrew
    I was a careless SOAKING WET for a time too (despite thinking “Woking isn’t in East London, is it?” – I’ve a vague memory that the Met Office used to be in Woking too, though now it’s in Exeter).

    Rapid start but protracted finish, as I was held up by REALM (is this a fair clue- there are a lot of football clubs, and this one isn’t even British?) and OXEYE, which I eventually entered on definition alone.

    Pedants’ corner: DEMERARA isn’t “a sweetener”; it’s an area of Guyana. The sugar that originally came from there is the sweetener.

  3. muffin – me too with SOAKING WET. Very good clueing, although I got stuck on POUR. Favourites were LASHING, REALM and IDOLATROUS. Thanks to Crucible and Andrew.

  4. Thanks Crucible and Andrew. Entered Fish without knowing why, so special thanks for your explanation. Was another of the careless soaking-wetters and arrived at oxeye by the wrong reasoning. In Germany, an oxeye (Ochsenauge) is a butterfly, which, I reasoned, might well land on an ox-eye. But of course, there’s no butterfly of that name in the UK. Or is there?

    Best wishes
    Andreas

  5. Thanks, both.

    Never completed a Crucible grid in this sort of time so must assume this one is nearer the easy end of his range. I expect it’s another of my famous “false dawns” where I start to believe I have finally cracked a particular setter’s style.

    I was another WOKING SET dupe, I’m afraid.

    I thought there some cracking constructions here but also a couple of less enjoyable ones.

    In the first category are PRESAGE, BY THUNDER, FOXTROT, REALM and, of course, the Michael Fish gag which was my LOI.

    Less keen on OXEYE and the pour/pore homophone will snag with folks north of the border I suspect.

    I was OK with Real Madrid but had a niggle with the bull “chasing” the priest in PREDICT. The clue is fair enough and eminently get-able of course but isn’t it strictly the priest chasing the bull in an across light?

    All in all, though, a very agreeable end to a good week.

    Nice weekend all.

  6. Thanks, Andrew – and congratulations on getting the Pirates in again. 😉

    This was a lot of fun. Favourites: REALM – I reckon if I can solve a clue about a football team it must be fair – PRESAGE, LASHING, IGUANODON, HIBERNIA and the &lit FISH [lovely!]

    William @5: if a bull is chasing a priest he’s surely ‘after’ him?

    Many thanks to Crucible – I really enjoyed it.

  8. Thanks Crucible and Andrew.

    I was another who got soaked. I did like SYRIA, RETREATING and PRESAGE among others.

    As for FISH, all I could think of was that when there were fish scale like clouds people would say “Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry” or “Mares’ tails and mackerel scales, tall ships furl sails”.
    Thanks for the explanation Andrew.

    Muffin, DEMERARA is in the OCED for the sugar, but it does add in brackets ‘in full demerara sugar’.

  9. I agree with the sentiment that this was towards the easier end of Crucible’s spectrum, but I enjoyed the solve. Although I considered “soaking wet” I didn’t enter it on the basis that Woking isn’t in London at all, never mind East London. Having said that, I did try and see if the unsolved 11ac would work with a K at the start just in case 1dn was a geographical faux pas. Once I’d finally got PRESAGE the Wapping alternative became clear.

  10. Add me to the WOKING debacle. OXEYE would have been a write-in had I been able to parse it (it’s a common crosswordism).

    William @5: as one who rails against dubious homophones, POUR/PORE is fine. The point is that both words sound the same, whether or not the final R sound is pronounced.

  11. poc @ 10: I reckon the POUR/PORE homophone is pretty dubious if you are Scottish, or employ well articulated RP! For such people POUR almost sounds as though it has a W in it.

  12. I’m much too near Wapping ever to have thought about Woking, so no probs there, nor with the wonderful FISH either. I’m not sure I can remember viewing the forecast, but I can certainly remember the storm!

    Like Nutmeg yesterday, an easier example than is usual from this setter, for me at least, but the theme was carried through well. I knew ling = heather but nor the broader = heath, so I’ve learnt something too.

  13. Thanks Crucible, I wasn’t roasted this time.

    Thanks Andrew, my two concerns were the results of wrong parsing. I thought there was a missing apostrophe in divers as I parsed it as an anagram (struggled) of DIVER fording ‘a.’ 🙁 My other faux pas was the ‘golf’ in 22. I thought this was a VW Golf, with the smaller VW Fox preceding it in size. I was thus annoyed that golf was not capitalised. 😳

    Anyway, thanks for the correct parsings, so I have no complaints. Some really nice clues, like those for BY THUNDER and REALM.

  15. Thanks to Andrew for the blog. You explained several where I had the answer but not the parsing.

    Muffin @2: I think the Met office used to be in Wokingham

  16. chas @15
    That’s why my memory was vague, then!
    Julie @14
    In fact I would – can’t stand the stuff. Seriously, though, I see the point that you are making, but “Champagne” is never called “Champagne wine”, whereas “Demerara sugar” is what you will find on every packet of it.

  17. Thanks to Crucible and Andrew. Great fun.
    I agree with poc @10 that the homophone at 23d is fair. But then, I really do pronounce ‘pour’ and ‘pore’ identically. (Not ‘paw’ though.)
    It occurred to me yesterday that the accent required for a homophone could perhaps be hinted at by the part of the grid in which the solution lay. So, for example, Cornish in the SW corner, Newcastle in the NE corner, Irish on the left-hand side, etc.
    I’ll get me coat …

  18. The realignment ( 😀 ) of certain clue formats I found quite annoying here. So, ‘Wrong forecast originally his?’ for instance would have solved one of the problems. OCEANS is that really where canoes founder? You wouldn’t catch me in a canoe out there for sure. There are others that also come across as needing a rework. SYRIA for example, where the idea surely is ‘open revolt’ comes over with the opposite meaning, of an ‘open society’, which Syria never was! Anyway, at Prince Harry gave me a grin.

    HH

  19. Hoggy, canoes have always been used around, and between, the Pacific Ocean Islands (my Dad spent weeks in a canoe going around Samoa, Fiji and Tonga at the start of WW1).

  20. A gentle breeze to end another good week – definitely one of Crucible’s easier ones, though I’d never seen the abbreviation AMERINDS and GALEn was unfamiliar to me. Liked REALM, BY THUNDER and FISH.

    Thanks to Crucible and Andrew

  21. PS I did consider WOKING but decided it made no geographical sense, and thought of WAPPING before writing it in…

  22. poc@10 – of course, quite right. I was thinking of “poor” which is pronounced “poo-er” in Scotland.

  23. I didn’t get the nw corner as I am one of the soaking wet gang. It’s London as far as I am concerned, below Watford Gap.

  24. Pore/pour seems fine to me. Even for the relatively few people who put a different vowel in those two words, they surely say them the same when they’re talking quickly, and even when talking slowly it’s probably close enough that they can get the clue.

    (Ever seen the musical or film “Oklahoma!”? There’s a song in it called “Pore Jud is Daid”—spelled just like that. Though of course since they’re singing, there’s no way to know that they aren’t saying “Poor Jud is Dead,” since you lose the accent pretty much entirely. Some singers can manage to make you hear “daid,” but neither Gordon McRae nor Hugh Jackman do a convincing job of keeping their accent on poor/pore. Why? Because they’re homophones.)

    Back on point: I really liked this puzzle. Everything clever, and everything fair. (And yes, I’d say that if it’s a soccer team I’ve heard of, here in a country where soccer is just the fifth most popular team sport, it’s fair to include it in a crossword puzzle. I gather that depending on how you measure, Real Madrid is something like the second- or third-most popular sports team in the world.)

  25. SOPPING WET was my FOI and,while much of this was straightforward, I had problems parsing REALM,FOXTROT and POUR and ended up guessing all three with the latter being my LOI. So for me this was a bit of a curate’s egg.

  26. JohnM @23 – it could just about be described as outer London but it is SW not E, which is why I rejected it…

  29. Thanks all
    Enjoyable although as someone not familiar with London I too went for soaking wet!
    I particularly liked 22d and also 14 ac.

  30. @SeanDimly – 17

    I’ll have you know that your suggestion about homophone accents and grids will not work for some of us here – I live in Mumbai and NE for me has a lot of accents!

  33. Thanks all. Delighted to see that I wasn’t alone in getting lost in Woking. Nicely judged theme, with 22d genuinely making me “LOL”.

    I’m another Scot that has no problem with the pour/pore homophone, they both have a clear R. But I’m still never really happy with these clues as I always suspect they won’t work for everybody.

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