A fun puzzle with a subtle theme of misdirections.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed the theme here, except that I managed to join the first 20 minutes of John Halpern’s zoom call last Saturday, where he mentioned that his intention with this puzzle, if I understood it correctly, was to lead the solver up the garden path by having some clues where you might immediately spot a common cryptic device, but that wouldn’t be the right parsing of the clue. I’ve tried to note down examples of these misdirections in the post below!
Thanks, Paul, for an enjoyable puzzle to solve and blog about!
Across
1. Fantastic flyer in the Guardian alongside other pages (7)
PEGASUS
US = “the Guardian” beside (PAGES)*
Misdirection: looks like it might be an anagram of “flyer” in “us”, which would fit the enumeration
Definition: “Fantastic flyer”
5. First of rambutans thus covered by food found in dish, tropical fruit (7)
SOURSOP
R[ambutans] + SO = “thus” in SOUP = “food found in dish”
Definition: “tropical fruit”
9. Ancient region largely unoccupied, charity recalled (5)
LYDIA
L[argel]Y = “largely unoccupied” followed by AID = “charity” reversed
Definition:
10. Current unit left without cover, one produces reversal of policy (5-4)
VOLTE-FACE
VOLT = “Current unit” (though this is a mistake – volts are units of electrical potential, not current) [l]EF[t] = “left without cover” + ACE = “one”
Definition: “reversal of policy”
11. Sort out English newspaper in revolt (10)
REORGANISE
E = “English” + ORGAN = “newspaper” in RISE = “revolt”
Misdirection: “Sort out English newspaper” really looks like an anagram of E NEWSPAPER, which would be the right length
Definition:
14. People screened by doctor, capricious character — prepare for impact! (5,7)
BRACE ONESELF
RACE = “People” in BONES = “doctor” + ELF = “capricious character”
Definition: “prepare for impact!”
18. Thatcher’s children in agreement originally about Leader of Opposition? (2,10)
ME GENERATION
Lovely clue! O[pposition] = “Leader of Opposition” in (AGREEMENT)*
Definition: “Thatcher’s children”
21, 12. Guy heading for Tianjin, China, perhaps (3,3)
TEA SET
TEASE = “Guy” + T[ianjin] = “heading for Tianjin”
Misdirection: perhaps it’s just me, but “China” in crossword clues always makes me think of “mate”, “pal”, etc.
Definition: “China, perhaps”
22. Wobble acquired, I’d like to add muscle (10)
QUADRICEPS
(ACQUIRED)* = “Wobble acquired” + PS = “I’d like to add”
Definition: “muscle”
25. Something slippery within grasp, creasing up (9)
CRINKLING
RINK = “Something slippery” in CLING = “grasp”
Misdirection: this read like a hidden answer to me because of the “within”. Probably not intended by the setter, but I also got really stuck when my crossers matched CLINGFILM, which looked like it might almost work!
Definition:
26. What a hairy thing to twirl around! (5)
TACHE
EH = “What” + CAT = “hairy thing” all reversed (“to twirl around!”)
Definition: The whole clue: it’s an &lit.
27. A little frog gets energy back that’s saved for another day (4,3)
NEST EGG
Hidden reversed in [fro]G GETS EN[ergy]
Definition: “that’s saved for another day”
Down
1. Very little, partly gone (6)
PALTRY
(PARTLY)*
Misdirection: looks like the answer might be hidden in “Very little”
Definition: “Very little”
2. Israelite judge, criminal doing time, finally (6)
GIDEON
(DOING E)* – the E in the anagram fodder is from [tim]E = “time, finally”
Definition: “Israelite judge”
3. Beyond belief, what drunkard may be doing? (10)
STAGGERING
Double definition: “Beyond belief” and “what drunkard may be doing?”
4. Number second, like two? (5)
SEVEN
S = “second” + EVEN = “like two?”
Misdirection: Perhaps just me, but “Number” jumps out at me as crossword code for “anaesthetic”.
Definition: “Number”
5. Go to town in jet, scoffing buffet (6,3)
SPLASH OUT
SPOUT = “jet” around LASH = “buffet” (as in “the ship was lashed/buffetted by the waves”, I think)
Definition: “Go to town”
6. Old guns held, odd bits dropping off (4)
USED
[g]U[n]S [h]E[l]D
Definition: “Old”
7, 28. Beginning to be filled with despair, not flying — from here? (8,7)
STANSTED AIRPORT
START = “Beginning” around (DESPAIR NOT)*
Definition: “from here?” in the context of the whole clue – a semi &lit.
8. Flipping remarkably, fitter person’s gobbled tart up (8)
PRETTIFY
Hidden reversed in [remarkabl]Y FITTER P[erson]
Misdirection: “Flipping” and “remarkably” are both plausible anagram indicators
Definition: “tart up”
13. Stripper, dreadfully tired and aloof (10)
DEFOLIATOR
A very nice clue: (TIRED ALOOF)*
Definition: “Stripper”
15. Revelry cold, then hot (9)
CAROUSING
C = “cold” + AROUSING = “hot”
Definition: “Revelry”
16. Book upside down, I study image of colon, hyphen and round bracket, say? (8)
EMOTICON
TOME reversed = “Book upside down” (since this is a down clue) + I + CON = “study”
Definition: “colon, hyphen and round bracket, say?” – the example is the classic smiley “:-)”
17. Case an American soldier brought up for old bishop (8)
IGNATIUS
SUIT = “case” (as in law) + AN + GI = “American soldier” all reversed
Misdirection: possibly that “bishop” is so often an indicator for B, RR or sometimes ODO, whereas here it’s part of the definition
Definition: “old bishop”, from some Googling probably referring to Ignatius of Antioch?
19. After uprising, monster with European money securing material (6)
VELCRO
ORC = “monster” + LEV = “European money” (the lev is the currency of Bulgaria) all reversed
Definition: “securing material”
20. A suggestion for climber’s challenge (6)
ASCENT
A + SCENT = “suggestion”
Definition: “climber’s challenge”
23. Belief in female attending to litter? (5)
DOGMA
DOG MA or a “dog mother” might be a “female attending to litter?”
Definition: “Belief”
24. Island broadcaster on the radio? (4)
SKYE
A homophone (“on the radio”) of Sky (as in the network of TV channels) = “broadcaster”
Definition: “Island”
This was a good challenge with several clues putting up a fight, including the unfamiliar VOLTE-FACE (entered only after I figured out that it wasn’t ABOUT FACE) and the rare true &lit TACHE. I also nearly entered MY GENERATION at 18a before noticing that the anagram fodder didn’t include a Y. Lots to admire, but I’ll single out TEA SET and SEVEN for their clever misdirections (didn’t realize that the misdirections constituted a theme!).
Thanks to Paul and to mhl for the parsing of VELCRO.
Thanks to Paul and mhl. I did not catch the multiple misdirections but still made gradual progress though I took forever getting TACHE and VELCRO.
Thanks mhl. Not sure I understand your point about a theme but I found it another of the good and fair tests we have come to expect from Paul. As usual, very little yielded to inspection on the first pass but I made steady progress after that. My only quibble, as you have pointed out, would be with ‘Current’ in 10a, the unit of electrical current is the ampere; volt is the measure of potential.
Took a few days of coming back and looking again, but all well and good in the end. I had MY GENERATION for a while, wondering why it was Thatcher’s – surely too late for Pete Townshend? [Reminded me of going to see a high school rock band in the 80s. When they did ‘My Generation’, I said to the lead singer “It’s my generation Pete was singing about, not yours!”] Only when I checked the anagram fodder did I see the right (and appropriate) answer. A lot to answer for, Maggie. I liked STANSTED AIRPORT (my first thought was Heathrow, which fitted but didn’t parse). I quite agree about ‘volt’ – at the time, I thought the physics police will jump on this. PALTRY and SEVEN took far too long – really kicked myself when I saw them. Good fun, Paul, and thanks to mhl.
*Roger was singing about – Pete only wrote the words.
Like acd, that se corner had me fixed for a long time, party because I couldn’t believe 20 was so easy so didn’t enter it for a long time I was fooled by the misdirections at first, though never saw the theme. Soursop was new to me and had to call on a little help to get it. All in all a very satisfactory puzzle which I enjoyed. Though, I still don’t get 18. Help? But thank you once again Paul, and thank you Mhl for the blog.
Er, that should have been “foxed”, not “fixed”
Enjoyed though sadly a dnf as I’d bunged in merino and twine instead of velcro and tache, damn silly.
Yes I could hear the pre-echoes of “Oh no!” at ‘unit of current’ clued as volt…surely along with other setters the erudite Paul will have previously clued current as ‘i’ and knows the difference?
Thanks mhl. Theme? Beats me, as did the P….Y in PRETTIFY. It all went in OK with more than a few shrugs for Paul puzzles eg ‘hairy thing’ for CAT.
Tripped up right at the end with this as I didn’t get CRINKLING because I had EIRE for 24 (homophone of airer, Irish name for the island of Ireland).
Shame about VOLT. Seems no way to get around the inaccuracy. IGNATIUS came up recently, quite amazingly. Always the way – you wait ages for an obscure saint, then two come at once.
Thanks, Paul and mhl.
I too had a ? re 18, Jaydee@6…always thought ‘the me generation’ was what Thatcherite neocons in the Murdoch press sneeringly called my lot, ie baby boomers into self-exploration, personal growth, wellbeing and all that. It seems the expression has migrated and now relates to the ‘greed is good’ advocates themselves…ironic if so.
This one did not strike me (while solving) as any more misdirecting than usual. After all, don’t the majority of clues by all setters contain what you might call ambiguous ingredients – otherwise they’d all resolve very quickly? Nice puzzle, though, not complaining!
Btw out of the grid, EIRE (airer) would seem to fit for 24d.
I was DNF as I missed tache 26a and Velcro 19d. Initially I had aspire for 20d. Aspire for challenge and ‘a spire’ as a suggestion to a climber. But stansted airport fixed that. Like others I was impressed with Eire for 24 d but saw it was wrong when nothing would fit with three i’s in 25 a!
Thanks to Paul for a good workout that I went back to off and on during the week and to Mhl for explaining tache and Velcro. Lev was new to me but a very fair clue if I’d taken the inclusion of ‘securing’ seriously enough.
Paul, along with Puck and Brendan, seem to set my favorite crosswords and this was no exception. I agree with Dr. WhatsOn about this puzzle not being any more misdirecting than usual. And like CanberraGirl I missed VELCRO and TACHE. (I wrote “toupe” in for 26a and figured it was a cryptic definition.) Favorites were REORGANISE, BRACE ONESELF, TEA SET, and PALTRY. Thanks to both.
No I don’t really get how misdirections can constitute a theme either, but never mind – still enjoyed every part of this puzzle. Like DaveinNC@1 et al, I started thinking 18a was My GENERATION rather than ME GENERATION (I actually wish it had been) and then sang that iconic song by The Who in my head for the rest of the day [btw, I am usually very cynical about the use of the word “iconic”, but no other adjective seems to fit there.] [Loved your story about resisting cultural appropriation, TassieTim@4, and, gif@11, had to laugh at your succinct description of “my lot” – the baby boomers!] It did take me a long time to see PALTRY as the anagram in 1d – again in sync with TT@4 – and maybe that was “partly” due to the clever misdirection. I particularly liked 25a CRINKLING, 26a TACHE, 3d STAGGERING, 15d CAROUSING and 23d DOGMA. Thanks a million to Paul and mhl.
Bit moan-y about this one. Our son who has just finished his maths degree is with us at the moment and joined in. He found the volt mix up very off-putting and I can see why.
I was more irritated by tache which may be the worst clue ever set in a national newspaper crossword.
But some very nice ones too.
VOLTE-FACE was my first in, and I decided I was relaxed enough not to quibble about potential difference and current. But my last was TACHE, which I’d never seen spelled that way, as opposed to ‘tash’, and I confess I only found it by starting to trawl through Chambers starting with the TAC.. entries, prepared to move on to other vowels if necessary. Obviously it showed up almost immediately, but I feel that’s really a DNF here too. Oh, and I couldn’t parse TEA SET. But I enjoyed the rest, even if I didn’t spot the ‘theme’. So thanks, Paul, and mhl.
What’s not to love about a Paul puzzle? Apart from VOLT! Still, that notwithstanding, I thought this was lovely pretty much all round. Had to wait and wait before entering PALTRY and SKYE, thinking they were both too simple for Paul, but was held up by VELCRO trying to work OGRE in to it somehow. I thought CRINKLING was especially good, working on getting a snake in there, before the penny dropped. Good part anagram for STANSTED AIRPORT, which hurried things along nicely on the right hand side, and really liked TACHE.
As always with his crosswords, I was sad when it was over! I love them!
Bravo Paul and thanks to mhl for the blog!
I was another merino and twine for 19d/26a, the former in the vain hope that ‘onir’ might be a Greek mythological monster, perhaps one with power over dreams. I should have remembered the orcs (we had a great one not so long ago 😉 ) – although frankly, having sat through what seemed like six hours of The Battle of the Five Armies, I’d rather not.
I did like STANSTED AIRPORT.
Thanks Paul and mhl
mhl – Regarding ME GENERATION, it is an anagram of (IN AGREEMENT) +O, not just (AGREEMENT).
But I was completely misled by this one, assuming it was MY not ME, having never heard of the term, and thinking it was something to do with Townshend et al, or that Paul was just the age for his generation to be Thatcher’s. And think I had to live through Thatcher’s 1980s. I also did not recognise ‘originally’ as an anagrind – in Chambers Crossword Dictionary’s five-page list of indicators it does not feature (though ‘original’ does).
Some good clues here, though like DrW@12 I did not really pick up any theme of misdirection. Liked STANSTED AIRPORT, TEA SET and PEGASUS, and TACHE as my LOI, when I realised a cat and a moustache are both hairy things.
With IGNATIUS, I thought of St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. I am not sure he was a bishop, though – but who cares for accuracy if ‘current unit’ can be VOLT?
Thanks, mhl and Paul
Thanks Paul and mhl for a lovely puzzle.
No specific comment other than to recommend the Zoom calls – most enjoyable.
Thanks to Paul for this and to mhl for the blog plus the added enlightenment that the setter intended to misdirect us. I;m not sure that adds anything as surely it is the raison d’etre of a setter to misdirect us, and of the solver to be misdirected (and enjoy it!)
Mainly came here to find out what I’d been missing regarding the egregious current/volt error. I was expecting to replace my tea tray but consensus seems to be it was just a snafu and another indication of the two cultures, both in the setting and editing (where this should have been picked up) and also in the comments on the G thread below the Friday puzzle where I was appalled to read things suggesting two electrical unit are synonymous, or that one has 240V AC therefore it must be a unit of current. If people are ignorant of an area that’s OK, but weighing in on an argument about it seems, at best, unhelpful. As every scientist pointed out on the thread, it is an error. Move on.
Very entertaining. I liked 5a SOURSOP – one of those clues where you work it out, think “can there be such a word?”, look it up and there it is. 8d PRETTIFY was good in that it took me quite a while to twig that “tart up” could be the definition. I wrote “hmm” next to 26a TACHE – “a hairy thing” for “cat” is a bit of a stretch – but it was quite amusing.
I like the idea of a clue misleadingly suggesting that a particular device is being used. A while back on here we had a discussion about possible clues using the word “Spooner” other than to indicate a Spoonerism, and one puzzle did include such a clue. I’m afraid I can’t remember who the setter was.
Many thanks Paul and mhl.
For 11ac, doesn’t REORGANISE mean to sort out again. Sort out suggests ORGANISE to me. Thanks Paul and mhl.
Started confidently – 10A obviously ended -WATT, which meant 7 must be STARTING… it did not get better from there. Ah well, thanks to Paul for the torture and mhl for the relief.
Sjshart@20
Jesuits make vow not to seek or accept any preferment in the Church unless ordered to by a superior so St Ignatius Loyola wasn’t a bishop. There have been many J bishops, including the current pope, though they remain Js in name only. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another Paul error as the founder of the Jesuits is the best known Ignatius and the ones who became bishops are pretty obscure.
An enjoyable solve as usual. I do like Paul’s whimsies like DOGMA. Thanks to Paul and mhl
Liked this- and I’m another who can’t see that misdirection constitutes a theme. Surely all setter’s misdirect to a greater or lesser extent? Anyway,I didn’t see it. I just thought it was mid range Paul a I enjoyed it.
Thanks Paul
21, 12 Of course I thought of “mate,” but I also thought of “tea,” as in “China or Indian?” Took me a while to remember that meaning of “guy.”
I knew of soursop, or guanabana in Latin America, from my Cuban-ish neighborhood in New York in the 70s, where you could get batidos — something like milkshakes — in various fruit flavors, including that one. They were all delicious.
Dryll @18 I got held up by “ogre” too, for much too long.
Oh, where are my manners? Thanks to both Paul and mhl for pleasant night and morning.
Thanks paul and mhl.
I was certainly misdirected by PEGASUS and PALTRY (LOI).
It a credit to the denizens of 15^2 that nobody blanched at the current/potential issue. It clearly held no-one up. Keep the powder dry for dissection of intransitive gerundives.
Or somesuch.
Alphalpha@30 It held me up
SKYE is this year’s AMERICANO…
Alphalpha @30 As with Dave Ellison, I beg to differ. It was one of my last ones in and entirely because I could not jump from “current unit” to “volt” any more easily than I could jump from “poem by Kipling” to “The Faerie Queen”. It was not only wrong, it was impossible to get right without totally disavowing the information in the clue, and crosswords don’t work like that.
Thanks to both for an enjoyable after lunch diversion and the explanations. Like IGNATIUS, TACHE came up recently in another crossword so I was forewarned. Just as well as a blank was the result of my first two reads. Being a Paul crossword I didn’t realise I was being more misdirected than usual, apart from things electrical. That did cause a head scratch, accompanied by “surely not”. All in all, an enjoyable winter treat.
I put EIRE in instead of SKYE too.
I did have some trouble getting VOLTE-FACE, but once I thought of it, I just assumed Paul didn’t know the difference, which it turns out was right. To be fair, he put his hands up to it right at the start of the Zoom meeting, having apparently been told off about it by email early the morning the puzzle came out (not for the last time, obviously). I doubt he’ll make that mistake again.
I did fall for a couple of the crossword cliches set as traps. I thought “partly gone” was a brilliant bit of deception.
Btw, Mhl, you missed out a couple of definitions.
My AMERICANO comment probably needs explanation. AMERICANO was last year’s most popular solution, and SKYE is the first this year to reach 5. Guardian cryptic and prize puzzles only.
@ beery hiker, ah, I was going to ask about that. I thought you meant that sometime last year there was a clue for AMERICANO that could equally well be answered with a different word (as EIRE for SKYE)
Tony @35 thank you for confirming that it was simply a mistake and that Paul held his hand up to it, albeit in a not very wide forum. Perhaps the Grauniad could get round to either publishing a note about it, or a correction (“potential unit…”). I hope it will put paid to the apologists claiming that it should be OK because they don’t know the difference either!
Great minds – Grantinfreo @8 and essexboy @ 19 – merino and twine also!
Zed, I suppose if you didn’t know the difference yourself it would seem to matter very little. A shame if it seriously impeded anyone who just couldn’t imagine not knowing the distinction.