Beelzebub 1,308

by

It may be my imagination, but I do seem to be drawing an easier share of the weeks than Gaufrid recently.

In this case I managed all but a single square unaided. That would be terribly frustrating for many puzzles, but for a Beelzebub I’ll count it as an achievement. It was the ‘H’ in RHINE that eluded me, though it was located easily enough with a quick poke around in Chambers.

*=anagram, []=dropped, <=reversed. Hover to expand abbreviations.

Across
1 THRIFTLESS – (RIFT + L) in (THE + SS).
10 ROWNTREE – ROW + ENTER*. Joseph Rowntree was the chap behind Rowntree’s chocolates, and the founder of several Charitable Trusts.
11 LWEI – W in LEI. An Angolan unit.
12 ARSENAL – (LANES + RA)<.
13 MOSAIC – MO + SAIC.
17 GYRE – [ener]GY RE[ading].
18 SERAPE – PARES< + [winceyett]E.
19 FOOTBAR – BOAT* in FOR.
20 PREPARED PIANO – PR + (I APPEARED ON)*.
21 ACCURST – CURS in ACT.
23 WAR CRY – CR in ACT.
25 ROUP – R + OUP.
28 ENROLL – E + (R in NO) + L + L.
29 TREFOIL – REF in TOIL.
30 NEST – [robi]N EST[ablished].
31 SEDERUNT – DENTURES*.
32 PRESS MONEY – PRESS + (ONE in MY).
Down
1 TRANSPARENT – TRA[i]NS + PARENT.
2 HORDE – Homophone of “hoard”.
3 INES – [l]INES.
4 TRAVERSE – RAVERS in TE.
5 LELY – L in LEY.
6 SCOLOPAX – (COOL* + P) in SAX. “Bird” was the nickname of Charlie Parker, very much associated with the saxophone.
7 SWAYBACK – S[tallions] + WAY BACK.
8 BEIRA – B + (I in ERA). The second largest city in Mozambique.
9 VICEROYALTY – (RAY + VELOCITY)*.
14 PRECURSE – RECURS in PE.
15 SPARKLER – SP + ARKLE + R.
16 GODWARDS – GO + (WAR in DDS).
22 CONEY – CON + YE<.
24 RHINE – HIN in RE.
26 UTES – [m]UTES.
27 AFRO – (OR + FA)<. I shan’t expand the latter abbreviation as this is a family-friendly site!

 

6 comments on “Beelzebub 1,308”

  1. I’m away from home at the moment so I don’t have last week’s puzzle to hand, but I do recall getting through this fairly quickly, with a couple at the end giving problems. I think one of them was 24dn, but I cant remember what else.

  2. I got worried that an easing up was in process, as have Gaufrid and Simon also. I thought that everything except 24 down here could have been in a daily cryptic.

    Glad to see normal service resumed in today’s puzzle. Much wit and flair along the way. I’ll say no more until next week, but welcome back to health to the Fiend.

  3. Well, I didn’t feel it appropriate to comment last week (there are two of us, you know). But this one and the current one are both mine, so I feel slightly more authorised. Do I think about difficulty when writing the clues? No. It’s something I find almost impossible to judge, apart perhaps from some vague sense that a puzzle with no anagrams in it is likely to be harder to get into than one with several. But my main aim is to write clues that make at least a semblance of sense and paint a picture – those criteria are more observable for the cluewriter than what the difficulty might be.

    I have found that a nice easy ‘hidden’ is the one that trips people up, while a complex structure can elicit a ‘Nah, obvious’ response. In some ways, difficulty can be cut through, Gordian-like, by a flash of insight – ‘This feels like it should be X – now how does it work?’. That may make a ‘difficult’ clue feel easy – the answer was written in quickly and smoothly, even if the clue itself was only plumbed with a bit of effort. I suspect the reverse is true – a clue which has actually held you up a bit suddenly seems blindingly obvious, and thus also attracts a sense of easiness.

    With both processes in action, it is probably impossible to determine a satisfactory – and widely agreed – definition of difficulty.

  4. Thanks, B. Very interesting insight there. I can believe it must be impossible to judge difficulty whilst setting.

    With the greatest of respect to Conrad, he has slightly misrepresented me though. All I was saying was that recently my weeks have seemed more tractable than the odd-numbered puzzles.

    That may simply be because I’ve managed to find some rare uninterrupted pub time to tackle them.

  5. Thanks Master.

    I meant no disrespect, and perhaps it is just a wavelength thing from time to time. It is just that I look forward to (at least) a three pipe problem on Sundays, and am a bit at a loss if I sail through it. (Some people say life is the thing, but I prefer crosswords.)

  6. Beelzebub, if either or both of you are still reading here, perhaps you can get Michael Curl to change your entry in Crossword Who’s Who.

    I have tried, but got nowhere.

Comments are closed.