An excellent workout from WANDERER that I was only able to crack with dogged determination. Thanks to Setter (!!)
D stands for DOG throughout the crossword
FF: 10 DD: 9
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BRAVADO | Swagger of female going both ways during bedroom party (7) |
| AVA (female, going both ways i.e. palindrome) in [ BR (bedroom) DO (party) ] | ||
| 5 | BARKING | Mad Ds? They might be (7) |
| cryptic def; Ds – Dogs, might be barking | ||
| 9 | RHEUM | Hot Englishman’s head, smothered in strange watery discharge (5) |
| [ H (hot) E (Englishman, head, first letter) ] in RUM (strange) | ||
| 10 | CHAUFFEUR | Driver in a bad mood? On the contrary, even initially when bitten by D (9) |
| { [ A in HUFF (bad mood) ] E (Even, initially) } in CUR (D, Dog) | ||
| 11 | ENHANCERS | Better makers of mobile screen includes people in China (9) |
| SCREEN* containing HAN (people in china) | ||
| 12 | RETRO | Old-fashioned content of treasure trove (5) |
| hidden in “..treasuRE TROve” | ||
| 13, 15 | BULL TERRIERS | Rubbish volunteers? Terrible slur, if working Ds (4,8) |
| double clued; BULL (rubbish) TERRIERS (volunteers) / [TERRIBLE SLUR]* | ||
| 18, 19 | BLACK AND TANS | Former police Ds (5,3,4) |
| double def | ||
| 22 | OGDON | Performing D, working as pianist once (5) |
| [ DOG (D) ]* ON (working) – john ogdon, pianist from england, early 20th century | ||
| 24 | GREAT DANE | D-day in teenager’s revision, needing an A for English (5,4) |
| D (day) in [ TEENAGeR (with A replacing E – English) ]* | ||
| 26 | LONG IRONS | Young female briefly replacing daughter in capital’s clubs (4,5) |
| GIRl (young female, briefly) replacing D (daughter) in LONdON’S (capital’s) | ||
| 27 | SCENT | What Ds follow, finding cocaine in 10’s Rolls (5) |
| C (cocaine) in [ TEN’S (10’s) ]* | ||
| 28 | ELOIGNS | Moves a distance away, as 70s group sing badly (7) |
| ELO (70s group, Electric Light Orchestra) [SING]* – new word for me | ||
| 29 | DOODLER | One idly drawing D’s head, right after D with no head (7) |
| D (first letter of D, Dog) [ R (right) after pOODLE (D, dog, without first letter) ] | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1, 20 | BORDER COLLIE | Doorbell starts to ring, consequently ensuring instantly 5 across D (6,6) |
| [ DOORBELL RCEI (starting letters of “..Ring, Consequently Ensuring Instantly..”)]*; anagrind is 5a – mad | ||
| 2 | ALEPH NULL | Smallest transfinite cardinal has drink with invalid outside pub (5-4) |
| [ ALE (drink) NULL (invalid) ] outside PH (pub, Public House) | ||
| 3 | AMMAN | Capital of Vietnam? Map’s upside down (5) |
| hidden, reversed in “..vietNAM MAp’s..”, capital of jordan | ||
| 4 | ORCHESTRA | Actors playing with the musicians (9) |
| [ACTORS THE]* | ||
| 5 | BLABS | Tells tales of black Ds (5) |
| B (black) LABS (Ds, labradors) | ||
| 6 | REFORMIST | One advocating gradual change in desire for mistress (9) |
| hidden in “..desiRE FOR MISTress”; took me forever to spot this | ||
| 7 | INEPT | At home with new pet, likely to make D’s breakfast or dinner? (5) |
| IN (at home) [PET]*; to make a D’s (dog’s) breakfast or dinner is to make a complete mess | ||
| 8, 21 | GORDON SETTER | D that gets 12 10’s D excited (6,6) |
| [ RETRO (12a solution) TEN’S (10’s) DOG (D) ]* | ||
| 14 | LICENSING | Giving permission for nice single short to be drunk (9) |
| [ NICE SINGLe (short)]* | ||
| 16 | REDRESSED | Put right, like Irish 21 that’s thrown up most of pudding (9) |
| RED (like irish 21 i.e. irish setter, specifically irish red setter ) tRESSED (pudding = DESSERt, most of, reversed) | ||
| 17 | RING A BELL | Call girl’s bottom must now be beginning to sound familiar (4,1,4) |
| RING (call) [ A BELL ( girl = BELLA, with A – bottom, last letter moving to the front) ] | ||
| 20 | See 1 | |
| 21 | See 8 | |
| 23 | DINGO | Rabid D oddly isn’t a wild D (5) |
| [ DOG (D) IN (IsN’t, odd letters) ]* | ||
| 24 | GOODS | Small D raised to carry round merchandise (5) |
| [ reverse of S (small) DOG (D) ] containing O (round) | ||
| 25 | TASSO | Tosa’s injured a linesman (5) |
| [TOSA’S]*, Italian poet from the 16th century | ||
Wasn’t keen on this one myself. ELOIGNS is archaic and 4d is just plain wrong. Surely Wanderer should have seen this. It would have appeared before if the anagram actually worked.
BLACK AND TANS, TASSO and OGDON were all new to me.
I enjoyed this, despite the faulty anagram in 4d, particularly the way some of the dogs were used in wordplay rather than just as definitions.
John Ogdon lived from 1937 to 1989, which is hardly “early 20th century”.
WOOF!
Thanks, Turbolegs – fortunately, I didn’t see the significance of your preamble before I started the solve. it was 7dn that gently opened up the theme for me,
Just brilliant! I really enjoyed working it all out and learned some new words on the way.
I’m afraid I simply thought, ‘Strange, I haven’t seen that anagram for ORCHESTRA before’ – well spotted, Hovis. What a pity.
Thanks for that, Andrew – I had the same reaction. I remember John Ogdon: he was born just a year before me. 😉
Huge thanks, Wanderer – a real fun start to the day.
Who let the dogs out?! Thanks Wanderer for the great fun I had solving this one. Personally, when considering the skill involved in setting such a tight and well-connected grid with such humorous word plays, I’m inclined to overlook the faulty anagram. Like Eileen, I thought it was ORCHESTRA and moved on without a backward glance. On my first read-through, I was put in mind of Noel Coward and half-suspected there’d be a NOON DAY GUN in there somewhere! RING A BELL was where I began and worked anti-clockwise finishing up with ELOIGNS, which I only got being a francophone though the definition was easy enough in retrospect. BLACK AND TANS and BORDER COLLIE were favourites. For BULL TERRIERS, I was thinking along the line of bin-dippers, then Foxes which led me to the required result, confirmed by the anagram. (Sorry to any LCFC fans – I’m an East-Midlander myself!) ALEPH NULL was new but parsable, fortunately.
Thanks very much to Turbolegs.
Thanks Wanderer, I enjoyed this very much. A lucky guess on my part regarding D helped immensely. Favorites included BRAVADO (amusing surface), REFORMIST, and REDRESSED. I liked ELOIGNS because I never heard of the word yet I solved the clue. I did not solve GREAT DANE, however, because I did not think to separate D from day, and I was working with the wrong letters. Thanks Turbolegs for parsing, esp. ALEPH NULL and CHAUFFEUR.
Thanks to Turbolegs for the blog, and to others for your comments.
My apologies for the faulty anagram error at 4dn. I think perhaps it felt so good to find an alternative to the ‘carthorse’ chestnut that I failed to check it out properly, and the error then wasn’t spotted during testing/editing either, which is most unusual.
Oh, and with the current 5G debacle, 11ac raised a stifled giggle.
Woof! Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs. Did this with my B-LAB (5d) at my feet, so caught on pretty quickly to the theme! Needed help with DINGO, LOI, and had to look up ELOIGNS and John OGDON. 29a puzzled a bit because “Doodle” is also a breed name, a hybrid like “Labradoodle” or “Golden Doodle” – but works better with “poodle”.
We guessed the significance of D at once when we saw 5ac. That was the easy bit, but the rest eventually came to heel though we couldn’t quite collar all the parsings. And it looks like the setter’s in the doghouse.
Some new words for us. ALEPH NULL was deduced from wordplay and crossers then confirmed by googling, and LONG IRONS we guessed to be a golfing term, having little or no knowledge of the subject. Pity about 4dn; we didn’t spot the error, either – we just saw what we wanted to see.
Favourites were two non-themed answers, CHAUFFEUR and ENHANCERS.
Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs
Yup, it was dogged as does it for me, too, & I was another not to spot the faulty anagram.
‘Aleph null’ was one of those clues that has one scurrying around in search of enjoyable new knowledge, an aspect of crosswords which I never resent.
Fun, I thought. There have been some enjoyable FTs this week.
Thanks to all.
I thoroughly enjoyed this – many thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs. I also just wrote in Orchestra for 4d without checking. The anagram (and surface) does work if ‘the’ is changed to ‘her’.
4 triggered such pattern recognition that I wrote it in without checking the anagram. 28 was a completely unfamiliar word and I guessed the spelling incorrectly. Thanks to Wanderer for a fun puzzle, no deduction for 4 because I didn’t notice.
Excellent fun. And Aleph Null as FOI – maths degree proves useful at last!
Slightly tangential, but is there any reason why the weekend crossword can’t be revealed sooner while there’s no prize? I’m really stuck on two clues in 16526 – bit tedious having to wait a week… (13 & 16 if you’re feeling generous)
Hello Kev – 13 is an insertion into an anagram and the def is right at the start. The def for 16 is at the end; the wordplay is on the first two words.
I was going to ask you about 15 and 24 but I instead went searching in Chambers which meant that I could get 24. Another excellent crossword!
(searching for 15)
Thanks Luchador for the help and thanks to Turbolegs for the email. Turns out I had 6d wrong – clappered instead of clapboard – so was hindered somewhat (lazily – I should have been able to work out the two missing anagrams and spot the error)
Are you still after 15d? Anagram with a silent P but don’t grouse about it!
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
This one spilled over until Saturday and after a busy weekend and first two days of this week have only got around to checking it off. As others have said, a pity regarding 4d and can’t remember another time that this setter has slipped up like that. – didn’t impact me as I was another who passed over it without noticing. (Note to self: never volunteer to be a test solver !!)
A strong theme that was easily spotted but with the clever use of it, didn’t bring too many cheap clues. I didn’t end up parsing GORDON SETTER at all notwithstanding knowing it was an anagram and apart from RETRO, wasn’t able to spot what is now obvious about TEN’S and DOG.
A couple of new terms in ALEPH NULL and ELOIGNS and like Grant, I always appreciate new learning from this pastime.
Finished in the SW corner with that ELOIGNS, DINGO (spotted and guessed it earlier, but took a while to see why) and the unknown piano player, John OGDON.
Actors playing with the purportedly divine rulers.
Theocrats