Poor old Filbert has had me now three times in a row. In past blogs I have been very enthusiastic about his crosswords, They are hard going, but they always seem to have been really worthwhile. There were a few clues here which have defeated me, and perhaps that’s why I’m less enthusiastic this time than I have been. Some of them are extremely good, though.
Definitions underlined, in darkviolet. Anagram indicators in italics.
Nina? I can’t see anything, which means little.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | TOASTY | Well heated, for a hovel (6) |
| to a sty — to = for, which I expect it is in some sense; after all they are both dative in Latin, as I learned when young — but goodness knows what sense | ||
| 4 | CHATTELS | Rabbits changing hands as property (8) |
| chatters with the R becoming L — to rabbit on is to chatter | ||
| 10 | ECTOPLASM | Cap broken mescal bottles in which the spirit leaks out (9) |
| *(mescal) bottling, surrounding, top [cap] | ||
| 11 | REVUE | Show minister Uxbridge, where there’s a vacancy (5) |
| rev. U{xbridg}e, ‘where there’s a vacancy’ the indicator of the removal of the contents | ||
| 12 | TURF | Horse-racing windfall leaving one taken aback (4) |
| (fru{i}t)rev. | ||
| 13 | SUBHEADING | Direction of U-boat maybe a secondary issue (10) |
| The direction of a U-boat is the direction in which the sub is heading, maybe — actually I don’t see why it’s ‘maybe’: surely it’s quite clearly the direction in which the sub is going | ||
| 15 | REPROBATE | Unprincipled soldiers given test of will (9) |
| RE probate — both unprincipled and reprobate are adjectives here | ||
| 16 | BATH | Husband joins club; a wife’s place? (4) |
| bat h — ref ‘The Wife of Bath‘, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales | ||
| 18 | EDIT | Improve by cutting what you eat, putting energy first (4) |
| e di{e}t — but the wordplay surely leads to e die{t}; ‘cutting’ doesn’t indicate a cut from inside a word, does it? If the idea is that the e of diet is put at the front then could it not have said this somehow? [Nerissa and Muffyword between them have it: the definition is ‘Improve by cutting’, then it’s diet [what you eat] with the e moved to the front; thanks to them] | ||
| 19 | HIBERNATE | Hurry round capital city, costing sleep (9) |
| hi(Bern at)e — at = costing as in ‘what price is it at/costing?’, to hie is to hurry (archaic or poetic, according to Chambers) | ||
| 22 | OFF-MESSAGE | Fellows in some muddled advisory group disagreeing with the PM? (3-7) |
| ff in (some)* SAGE — the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies | ||
| 24 | DEEP | Hard to fathom? (4) |
| A CD which I think relies on ‘fathom’ being a verb meaning discover the depth of — and if it’s hard to fathom it’s deep, so is it really a CD? Perhaps it’s an &lit. Not sure. | ||
| 26 | FALSE | Logical result of Cornish river and home counties being adjacent? (5) |
| Fal SE — the Cornish river is the Fal | ||
| 27 | OURSELVES | Solver Sue’s beaten us emphatically (9) |
| (Solver Sue)* | ||
| 28 | BROOKLYN | Borough of Hamlyn cut in two by beck (8) |
| brook {Ham}lyn — Brooklyn is a borough of New York — but you can also parse this as beck Ham{lyn} — Brooklyn is the name of David Beckham’s son — very nice | ||
| 29 | UNUSED | Journalist follows university students straight out of the factory (6) |
| U NUS ed. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | TWEETER | Speaker‘s pretty terse before start of speech (7) |
| I’m a bit vague here: it seems to be twee [pretty, although twee doesn’t really mean pretty], then ter{se}, in other words it is the part of ‘terse’ before the letter s, which is s{peech}. This seems a bit loose and I suspect I’m getting it wrong, so would welcome any improvements. | ||
| 2 | ARTHROPOD | Creature with shell, or hard top, alternatively (9) |
| (or hard top)* | ||
| 3 | TYPE | Class of thirty cleared out before tiring lesson (4) |
| t{hirt}y PE | ||
| 5 | HUMPHREY BOGART | Actor that’s annoying and creepy regularly scratched graffiti in the toilet (8,6) |
| humph! {c}r{e}e{p}y bog art — humph! = that’s annoying, bog art could be described a scratched graffiti in the toilet | ||
| 6 | THREADBARE | Worn-out type in this puzzle, with pop-up blocker installed? (10) |
| three [TYPE in this puzzle is 3dn] round ad bar, which could be taken as a definition of a pop-up blocker | ||
| 7 | ENVOI | Parting words starting barely halfway through drunken voicemail (5) |
| Hidden in drunkEN VOIcemail — I don’t quite see why it’s ‘barely halfway’, since to me that indicates that it starts only just after halfway through, and here it starts just before it | ||
| 8 | SLEIGH | Butcher reportedly pulled vehicle, helped by runners (6) |
| “slay” | ||
| 9 | NATURAL HISTORY | Born Conservative admits evidence of male entitlement, writing about life (7,7) |
| (natural tory) round his — natural = born, his = evidence of male entitlement — I’m not quite sure why natural history is specifically writing about life | ||
| 14 | BOTTLENECK | Jugular nerve out of order, a constriction (10) |
| neck bottle reversed (ie out of order) — neck = jugular [which means ‘relating to the neck’, and so does, in a sense, neck], nerve = bottle | ||
| 17 | TEA LEAVES | Thieves duck where icicles hang down (3,6) |
| teal eaves — Cockney Rhyming Slang for ‘thieves’ is ‘tea leaves’ | ||
| 20 | EXPOSED | Fair sex denied vote, daughter found out (7) |
| expo se{x} d | ||
| 21 | CONFAB | Jaw cold immediately after ice-lolly (6) |
| c on Fab — jaw as in jaw-jaw, the Fab is a brand of ice lolly (fruit and berries) that was new to me but there it is | ||
| 23 | FOLIO | Paper to do origami missing last two bits (5) |
| Sorry, completely at sea here. Help! I can’t think of a word for doing origami of the form folio.., nor can I split folio up in any sensible way. [Nerissa has it again: it’s fol{d}, then two binary bits; thanks again] | ||
| 25 | MEAN | One-one; close (4) |
| me an — me = one, an = one | ||
Great fun. Filbert is very good at disguising the edges of semantic blocks.
18. I had [cutting what you eat]=diet, with the e promoted.
23. [to do origami missing last]=fol(d) + 2 binary bits
Thanks Filbert and blogger.
18 I had def as “Improve by cutting”.
Oh yes! Thanks Muffyword. Slippery.
Very tough. Failed on TURF and MEAN. In 13a, I put “maybe” in with the definition part. Parsed 18 and 23 ad Nerissa but agree with Muffyword. I think anyone who put CHATTERS as the answer for 4a may feel cheated as the clue doesn’t make it entirely clear imo. (Maybe the “as” in the clue makes CHATTELS the only possibility?)
I parsed 1d as in the blog and think it is a perfectly fair but toughish clue. Thanks to Filbert and John.
For me Filbert’s puzzles are right at the top of the difficulty scale but worth the effort, and this was no exception.
I spent ages trying to justify NEON as the answer to 25 down. NEON is close to “one-one” in that it uses most of the letters. “One-one” gives 11 which is close to 10, the atomic number of neon. Did anyone else do this?
Thought not.
Hovis suggests that it’s not clear whether it’s CHATTELS or CHATTERS; I think Filbert is OK here: he puts the ‘changing hands’ by the ‘Rabbits’, so it is clear that the changing hands refer to that word; if it had been the other one then there would have been a messy ‘as’ getting in the way.
1D Twee = pretty + ter as in terse before the s ( start of speech) to give Speaker . I think tricky stuff . . Ectoplasm not seen a while
A struggle but we almost got there – we had ‘sledge’ for 8dn; no wonder we couldn’t understand the ‘butcher’. Come to think of it the definition should have put us right, as a sledge often runs free whereas a sleigh is pulled. But we did manage to parse everything else.
10ac held us up for ages as we were trying to insert ‘cap’ rather than ‘top’ into the anagram of ‘mescal’.
We liked BATH and HIBERNATE (even though they took a while to get).
THanks, Filbert and John.
When Filbert (under a different name) puts comments on Fifteensquared, I often totally agree with what he says.
I regularly find myself on the same wavelength.
However, and not for the first time, that wasn’t fully the case when solving this puzzle.
I found it really hard and, more than once, I had to resort to word searches or to just having a guess.
I almost gave up in the NW with 1dn and 12ac being the last ones in.
Almost – don’t worry, I can have a difficult crossword.
When solving a Nimrod crossword I always end up with at least a handful of clues that I mark with an X, meaning “I do not fully get it”.
Today, I had a similar experience.
Looking back at it all, a very good crossword, though.
A couple of levels up from the usual Wednesday fare but, as I said, I can have it.
Many thanks to John & Filbert.
Very tough. I ground my way through, only to be slain by SLEIGH, like allan_c @8 putting in an unparsed ‘sledge’.
Thanks to Filbert, John and to those clever people who could parse FOLIO.
Am I really the only person who confidently entered DRAW for 25D only to find it was wrong?
It is, might I suggest, a better answer to the clue than MEAN though of course the crossers later ruled it out.
I still can’t see how 28 actually works. Yes the elements of Beck Ham and Brooklyn are there but Hamlyn cut in 2 by beck (=brook) is Hambrooklyn.
how does the wordplay lead to just Brooklyn?
reddevil@11: I think DRAW wouldn’t be any good for 25dn because it is a definition by example. There are lots of scores that are draws (0-0, 1-1, 2-2, etc, as well as by agreement in chess, and lots of other scenarios), so Filbert would have said something like ‘one-one, perhaps’. Too good a setter not to do so. But as you suggest I bet it at least crossed people’s minds.
And the Brooklyn clue works if you read ‘by’ as ‘next to’; Hamlyn cut in two is lyn, and this is next to (following, actually) Brook.
reddevil@11. I agree that DRAW is a better answer (draw/close curtains). I already had crossers when I came to it (and failed, as mentioned @4). For 28, you need to think of “cut in two” as “halved” to get just “Lyn”. I wasn’t mad keen on the construction since it is essentially saying “cut in 2” and “throw away one of the halves” but I still think it’s ok.
John @12. We crossed. You may well be right about the lack of any “perhaps”. Definitions by example, without any indication, are not that rare and, as a solver, it isn’t that easy to keep track of which setters would not do this.
Not poor old Filbert at all, John; thanks for blogging again and sorry for any feeling that it’s poor old you. If the clues aren’t clear when you’ve got the answer that’s my problem not yours.
Thanks all for commenting.
I like reddevil’s point about ‘cut in two’ and thought I’d be lucky to escape having that questioned. As Hovis says, I haven’t discarded the unwanted bit, so it’s just a slightly woolly way of saying ‘halved’ that worked with the geographical surface and let me use the Beckham reference which amused me.
On DRAW: yes, a good alternative that I didn’t spot. I am not as bothered about indicators for definitions by example as I am obliged to be. Some things, like unusual names, are so obviously examples that it seems like pointless box-ticking to point it out. In this case, though, one-one has so many possibilities as word-play that if it was just an example of a draw I would have indicated that. Not that that helps now. Incidentally, the maybe in 13a goes with the U-Boat, as an example of a submarine. Maybe that indicator could safely have been omitted.
On the TER[se] in TWEETER: I think that trick was pinched from Serpent, so thanks to him.
Nerissa, hello, thanks for commenting. The style of your second sentence made me look up your (unfamiliar) name, which was enlightening (I think).
Quick thanks to John, Hovis & Filbert for their helpful comments – more steps towards enlightenment!
Too many late nights, so I’ve been feeling a bit rough today, so maybe that’s why I found this difficult. I thought I’d finished but I’d entered NEON for 25dn as it was the only thing I could think of. Another case of too much of a slog to be really enjoyable.
Hi Filbert. Rumbled, it seems. I’ll try to suppress those tells.
I rarely venture here, and even more rarely dare say anything: I’m pretty much in awe of others’ solving skills on display. But I couldn’t sleep, and wanted to see what the blogger made of the WP plus bonus clue in 28, which I thought was fabulous. Interestingly, no-one has told you off for showing off..
Filbert & John, three times in a row … for followers of athletics a whiff of nostalgia: The names went together, Filbert Bayi of Tanzania and John Walker of New Zealand, dominating the mile and 1500m races in the mid-1970s
Realise I am one day late, but anyone is still reading and can enlighten me as to how 25dn answer mean is a synonym for close I should be most grateful – I have no access to the ‘proper’ dictionaries, but can not find an answer elsewhere
If someone is mean in the sense of being tight with their money, they are close. Chambers defn no 15 is ‘stingy, miserly’.
h.eckler, thanks for that, very interesting to read about those two. When Bayi beat Walker at the Commonwealth Games in 1974 I was 0, so hadn’t heard of them. Amazing that they were both 6ft, but Bayi was 15kg lighter than Walker (according to wiki), which I guess would explain his tactic of running the 1500 as fast as possible from the front.
Thanks to John and Filbert
1a prepositions are notoriously fluid but here I think “this letter is for/to Mr Smith” is probably ok.
12a should there be a ? somewhere? Not sure where it would go though.
22a marvellous.
7d the answer fell instantly but I still don’t understand the positional indicator. Would “misbegotten” have helped?
9d if someone can explain “evidence of male entitement” = “his”, I’d appreciate it.
I’m aware of the accepted wisdom that a setter should put up a decent fight and then retire gracefully but, for me, most throw in the towel too soon.
Filbert doesn’t and I like it.
I guess i am too late but 25d really bugs me. Not only mean as close (a big stretch) but why does me=one? Otherwise all very clever.
Ericw I too foundered on mean and close, but it is in the dictionary, Chambers at least, so fair game I suppose. I’ve never heard it myself. I’ve always admired the Mexican euphanism – over here, a miser is referred to as being elbow (“codo” used as an adjective). Why? Because when it is time for them to pay for anything, and put a hand in the pocket, elbows are all you’ll see as their hands twitch up to the neck region. Wonderful expression.
Me = one = the Royal one, substituting the indirect pronoun use for the first person, as beloved of senior members of the Royal family.
Thanks ElGwero – I feared it might be that but surely then we should have a royal indicator as it’s not something any normal person would consider equivalent.