Another very witty puzzle from Bluth, who first appeared as an Independent setter a few months ago and seems to have settled in as a regular contributor.
The clues range from fairly easy (such as 18a) through pleasantly challenging to slightly obscure (18d), but all make sense once you see them, and the surfaces raise a few smiles. 1d would rank as a very clever anagram in any puzzle, but here it’s beaten by the brilliant anagram / clue-as-definition of 21a. Thanks Bluth for another great puzzle.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | EARMARKED | Packing touring chest after time finally set aside (9) |
| ARMED (packing = slang for carrying a gun) around (touring) ARK (chest, as in the Ark of the Covenant), all after the final letter of [tim]E. Earmarked = set aside = reserved for a specific purpose. |
||
| 10 | BEIGE | Sort of brown insect eats midge, missing odd bits (5) |
| BEE (insect) containing (eating) the even-numbered letters of [m]I[d]G[e] (missing odd bits). | ||
| 11 | GUAVA | Ava Gardner initially returns carrying posh fruit (5) |
| AVA + G[ardner] (initially = first letter), all reversed (returns), with U (posh, as in U and non-U) inserted). | ||
| 12 | WOE BETIDE | Warning: whore, regularly found on live stream (3,6) |
| Alternate letters (regularly) of W[h]O[r]E + BE (live, as a verb) + TIDE (stream). | ||
| 13 | ENABLED | One wept after heartless Etonian’s given power (7) |
| A (one) + BLED (wept: either word can mean to leak or ooze liquid, not specifically blood or tears) after E[tonia]N (heartless = middle letters removed). The surface obeys the unwritten rule that the Independent crossword should contain at least one dig at Boris. | ||
| 14 | DEBACLE | The Spanish half-heartedly taxied back to find disaster (7) |
| EL (“the” in Spanish) + CAB[b]ED (taxied: half-heartedly = one of the two middle letters removed), all reversed (back). Chambers and Collins accept both “taxi” and “cab” as verbs meaning “travel in a taxicab”, though “cab” in this sense is mainly US usage. | ||
| 16 | FUTON | Somewhere to sleep in Corfu tonight (5) |
| Hidden answer in [cor]FU TON[ight]. | ||
| 18 | BUM | Behind tramp (3) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 19 | NASAL | Bunch of scientists left sounding adenoidal (5) |
| NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration – in this case it is rocket science!) + L (left). Adenoidal = nasal = (a voice) affected by disorders of the adenoid or other regions of the nose and throat. |
||
| 20 | AVOCADO | Online shop? First save peeled fruit (7) |
| OCADO (online grocery retailer), with [s]AV[e] (peeled = outside letters removed) coming first. Botanically a fruit (specifically a berry), but some regions of the world treat it more or less as a salad vegetable. |
||
| 21 | HOUDINI | Hi, I undo buckles (7) |
| Anagram (buckles = crumples) of HI I UNDO. Clue as definition: Harry Houdini, escapologist. |
||
| 23 | INCOGNITO | Disguised in company – go outside idiot! (9) |
| IN CO (company) + GO, containing (outside) NIT (idiot). | ||
| 25 | TASTE | Sample a bit of Seurat visiting gallery (5) |
| First letter (a bit) of S[eurat], inserted into (visiting) TATE (originally the Tate Gallery, but now a group of four art galleries under the Tate name). | ||
| 26 | NURSE | Nightingale, famously put game back within three points (5) |
| RU (Rugby Union = game), reversed (back), within NSE (three points of the compass). Florence Nightingale, the nurse after whom a series of temporary hospitals have been named recently. |
||
| 27 | TRIANGLES | Shapes Tarantino’s first Salinger adaptation (9) |
| First letter of T[arantino] + anagram (adaptation) of SALINGER. As far as I’m aware, Quentin Tarantino hasn’t made a film based on the work of J D Salinger, but it sounds like an interesting idea. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | LEAGUE OF NATIONS | A felonious agent disrupted intergovernmental organisation (6,2,7) |
| Anagram (disrupted) of A FELONIOUS AGENT. | ||
| 2 | ARMADA | One royal nearly made a lot of ships (6) |
| A (one) + R (abbreviation for Royal) + MAD[e] (nearly = last letter omitted) + A. From the Spanish / Portuguese for a naval fleet, most notably the Spanish one that failed to invade England in the 16th century. |
||
| 3 | CASABLANCA | Film cast able, without feet, to dance naked! (10) |
| This one had me puzzled for a long time. CAS[t] ABL[e] (without the feet = bottom letters, because this is a down clue), but then I spent far too long looking at [d]ANC[e] (naked = outer letters removed) and wondering where the final A came from. In fact the dance is a [c]AN-CA[n]. | ||
| 4 | SKEWED | Sloped gardens in Kent sold at last (6) |
| KEW (botanic gardens in London) in SE (South-East England, including Kent) + last letter of [sol]D. | ||
| 5 | ADDENDUM | Extra named Dud cast (8) |
| Anagram (cast = thrown) of NAMED DUD. | ||
| 6 | OBOE | Instrument has nothing on tenor (4) |
| O (zero = nothing) + BOE (Alfie Boe, tenor singer). | ||
| 7 | HIBISCUS | More than half of biscuit dunked in that man’s – sort of – tea (8) |
| More than half of BISCU[it], inserted into (dunked in) HIS (that man’s). Hibiscus is a common ingredient in herbal tea = “sort of tea” because it doesn’t actually contain anything from the tea plant. |
||
| 8 | VENEREAL DISEASE | See seven are made poorly eating supermarket crabs, for example (8,7) |
| Anagram (made poorly) of SEE SEVEN ARE, containing (eating) ALDI (supermarket chain). Crabs = slang term for a specific example of what are now termed sexually transmitted infections. |
||
| 15 | BANQUETING | Report describing end of Stein’s quite fancy dining (10) |
| BANG (report = sound of an explosion), containing (describing) the last letter of [stei]N and an anagram (fancy) of QUITE. | ||
| 17 | TWO SCORE | Forty crews too disorganised (3,5) |
| Anagram (disorganised) of CREWS TOO. | ||
| 18 | BLOVIATE | British adore eating one at Trump’s talk – in a grandiose fashion (8) |
| B (British) + LOVE (adore), containing I (Roman numeral for one). American (hence Donald Trump’s) slang for “talk at length in an inflated manner”. Perhaps a comment on the President’s public speaking style? |
||
| 21 | HOODIE | Top cricket game in garden (6) |
| ODI (One-Day International = cricket match) in HOE (as a verb = garden = remove weeds). A sweatshirt top with a hood. |
||
| 22 | INSULT | Hormone; take second in time for smear (6) |
| INSUL[in] (a hormone), taking away the second IN, + T (time). Smear = slander = insult. |
||
| 24 | GEEK | Nerd‘s language not right (4) |
| G[r]EEK (a language), without the R (right). | ||
Another thoroughly enjoyable Bluth crossword. My favourite was the 1d anagram.
Went through the same thought process to finally parse CASABLANCA.
Didn’t know BLOVIATE or Alfie Boe.
Thanks to S & B.
As Hovis says, another thoroughly enjoyable crossword from Bluth. I particularly liked 21a. I hadn’t heard of 18d but the wordplay was very helpful
Thanks to Bluth and Quirister
Hovis@1 – if you have a grandson called Alfie, predictive text will always add the word Boe when you are trying to compose a message about him. I had heard of the singer but I don’t necessarily need him to turn up in my texts
What Hovis and crypticsue said – I thoroughly enjoyed it too!
Same favourites + HIBISCUS – great surface (and I’m rather proud of the one in my garden at the moment).
Many thanks to Bluth and Quirister.
Thanks for the blog Quirister – and for the comments. I’m amused to see dance/cancan giving people essentially the same issue that I had with ale/alec in Tees’s puzzle yesterday!
Much pleasure today with many “Aha!”s and a smile. 8d and 21a were personal faves.
Almost kicked myself for being slow and Monday-ish a few times; eg was just about to Google (other) Salinger works before I twigged the anagram, bravo.
Bloviate was new to me and I needed Quirister to explain the “three points” in NURSE.
My only grizzle was Kent = SE; is this a regular one I need to remember?
Many thanks Bluth and Quirister.
Bluth @5: good to know that crossword setters sometimes struggle like the rest of us! Thanks for checking in.
EggCustard @6: yes, the South-East and North-East of England often show up in crosswords as SE or NE, but I don’t remember similar abbreviated references to other regions.
Great stuff, thoroughly enjoyed and some terrific anagrams. I couldn’t work out how Earmarked was parsed till I came here. Bloviate was new to me and doesn’t appear in any of my dictionaries or word lists, but eventually found it by searching online. I suggest 1D should have had ‘once’ at the end as the League of Nations no longer exists, but that’s a minor quibble. Thanks Bluth and Quirister.
Thanks Quirister for resolving dance for me (and others!). Cancan is a noun in Chambers and Collins (though I could imagine it being used as a verb), which would mean the preceding “to” becomes a juxtaposition indicator, one not everyone favours – I think I’m just finding an excuse for not even looking for the name of a dance!
I thought the puzzle was excellent – and exemplifies that puzzles don’t need to be difficult to be good. Many thanks Bluth, another fan here
I’m probably in a minority of one but do we really need answers like 8d in crossword in a daily newspaper? A pity because this was otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle.
A minor point is the inclusion twice of “one” to clue A. 18d was a new word for me but readily derivable from the wordplay.
Quirister @7, I’ve seen SW for Cornwall.
With plenty of choice for a favourite, 1d, 21a & 21d made it onto my podium.
Many thanks to Bluth and to Quirister.
I was beginning to despair that anyone else was bothered by 8d. To be honest, had I spotted it earlier in the solve, I’d have ditched the puzzle forthwith. It isn’t clever and it’s not even vaguely amusing and yet it’s apparently one of the mainstays of the compilation. Such a shame particularly when its opposite number at 1d was a very good clue.
Not for me, Bluth, but thanks anyway – and thanks to Quirister for the review.
@jane (11) & Rabbit Dave (10) Well, there you go, Rabbit Dave… you’re definitely not in a minority of one. I am mystified as to why anyone takes against a word, but each to their own. I won’t try and persuade you to like it – but I do find the sense of judgement in comments like, “it isn’t clever and it’s not even vaguely amusing” rather misjudge the intention.
It’s just some words. Personally, what I enjoy about them is nothing to do with what you’re imagining, but the simple coincidence of seeing a supermarket brand name staring at me and realising that the rest of the letters allow for a convincing surface. I suppose, if anything, the fact that some people don’t like to say the words is a reason why it becomes an area of language cloaked in slang/analogy/metaphor all of which lend themselves to misdirection. It is, in essence, exactly the same pleasure I get in spotting that ODI is hiding in plain sight in Hoodie, no more, no less. Rather than assuming everyone else has some sense of distaste about words and that this must therefore be the point of using them, maybe you could at least accept that some of us just don’t think like that and just think they’re words to be played with, just like all the others!
Well I thoroughly enjoyed all of this one and look forward to another Bluth soon!
I have often been one to moan about smutty crosswords (other than in Private Eye, of course), but to be honest 8d was so much less objectionable than some I have seen that I didn’t even pause, let alone raise an eyebrow. And it was more than clever and amusing enough. I was impressed with the smoothness and wit throughout. Bluth, you’re either a quick learner or (like many of the rest of us) you have too much time on your hands these days! Many thanks, and to Quirister as well.
Bluth @12 – thank you for responding. I understand that you are a comedian in another life and as such it seems reasonable to assume that you are only too well aware of the power of words – they are far more than simply a collection of letters that may or may not contain the name of a supermarket. I accept that I am possibly more easily perturbed than some others may be by the inclusion of certain words and phrases in puzzles but equally I don’t doubt that even our esteemed puzzles editor has his own fixed lines that he will not cross.
Perhaps we simply have to agree to differ but it’s a shame to see you follow this route, I thought you had the makings of becoming a good setter for a far wider audience.
I’m no stranger to close-to-the-bone clues, if they be construed that way, and I certainly don’t think the toilet humour/Julian & Sandy/Carry-On stylings are out of place. Furthermore, I don’t think the use of such answers/clues taints the rest of a setter’s output, but that’s just me.
As for this puzzle, I thought it was a hoot, and HOUDINI was terrific. As Ian @14 says, this is a mightily quick and impressive progression, and I shall keep a lookout for further puzzles.
Thanks to Quirister and Bluth
Thanks for blogging, Quirister (and especially for parsing CASABLANCA for me).
Another tractable but enjoyable offering from Bluth, which I much enjoyed. I thought HOUDINI was a great clue-as-definition type, and LEAGUE OF NATIONS was a clever anagram spot.
VENEREAL DISEASE was my favourite clue today, because it’s clever and amusing. If you’re prudish enough to object to it, then good luck. But let’s not pretend that this setter (or others) are distancing themselves from a ‘wider audience’ by writing clues like this. On the contrary. People who are truly ‘offended’ by stuff like can ditch the Indy crossword completely and try the Times or the Telegraph, where as far as I know clues of this nature wouldn’t be accepted.
Thanks to Bluth for this one.
Thanks Barbj, Ian, Skinny & Kathryn’s Dad for the kind words.
And Jane – all that I’m asking of you, is to stop assuming that those who enjoy the clues you don’t like are doing so with prurient, schoolyard humour. It’s perfectly possible to enjoy 8D and 21D in the same way and for the same reasons and not to be moved either way by whatever it is that makes you dislike the words. I think your assumption that I (and others) enjoy them in this way, colours your perception of them more than is necessary. Once you realise that we don’t necessarily see them that way at all, you might continue to personally dislike them, but perhaps you won’t see them as the affront that you seem to at present. There are lots of ways of narrowing one’s audience as a setter. You can do it by writing clues that require a knowledge of Greek Gods or Wagnerian opera also. I don’t think people shouldn’t do that because it narrows their “appeal” – I think they should express themselves and play with words and that we should all give one another the benefit of the doubt and enjoy the rich variety of it all.
To be honest, we weren’t overly impressed with this. WOE BETIDE as a phrase seems incomplete; one expects the continuation as in “Woe betide you if you’re late” or “Woe betide the compiler who fails to follow Ximenean principles”. We can see the analogy between Ale/Alec and dance/can-can but in the former case there were really only two possibilities where as ‘dance’ opens up a whole
can(-can) of wormslot of possibilities. And whilst Kent is in the SE of England, the SE also includes, inter alia, East (and probably West) Sussex and London, so we thought ‘Kent’ should have been qualified with ‘say’.But there was quite a lot we liked, including NASAL, TWO SCORE, HOODIE and (once we’d checked in Chambers that it was a real word) BLOVIATE.
Thanks, Bluth and Quirister.
@allan_c – Well, woe betide has its own standalone entry in Chambers without any kind of “usu with you” or what have you so, personally, it seems to me to be fair game. I guess some times it just depends on the mood you’re in. It turns out that Monk wrote a very similar clue for SKEWED that was published in April this year – I didn’t know, honest! – but he used Gardens in Kent for the skewe and you didn’t seem to mind at all at the time – http://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/04/16/independent-10455-monk/
But maybe it’s human nature that, when one thing starts to niggle at you, one starts to find fault elsewhere that would be easily brushed aside in other circumstances
Thank you Bluth for commenting and (so far) I agree with everything you have said
And I agree with dutch – also with what he said at the end of his comment @9.
I enjoyed this crossword very much, nice ‘n’ neat.
The only thing that perhaps should be said is that Bluth uses ‘eat(ing)’ as a containment indicator, not once, not twice, three times!
Not wrong, of course, but still.
My clue of the day was actually 3dn (CASABLANCA), with 1dn getting the silver medal.
Many thanks to Quirister for a fine blog & Bluth for showing so much passion when it comes to crosswords.
We agree with Dutch, Sil, Kathryn’s Dad and anyone else who thought 8d was fine.
Thanks to Bluth and Quirister.
Bluth @18, I did not complain about 8d, but I can understand where the uneasiness comes from. My own objection to certain racy clues is not that I can’t enjoy them or that they give me the vapours, it’s that some people like me have children who enjoy doing crosswords with us. My daughter can’t yet do a whole cryptic with ease, but she likes to try, and she asks me to explain solutions she does not understand. I have encountered some clues or answers that would have been very awkward indeed to explain to her. As for today’s 8d, I think I could have got away with some sweeping generalisation and a little mumbling and diverted attention to the ingenious wordplay.
I have the same issue sharing some venerable Radio 4 panel games with her. It is a pity we’re all so sophisticated these days that we no longer give any consideration to whom we might offend or embarrass. This is not a dig at you, Bluth, just a reflection on the world in general. Hell … handbaskets … etc. Modern life is … complicatedish.
@Sil van den Hoek (22): re the overuse of eat/eating – I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve used it too many times, here. This was the fourth published but the third I submitted. A later one was shuffled to the front of the queue last time on account of it containing some topical clues. It is – in part because of notes like this – that I have started making a very concerted effort to sweep up niggling things like this. I can’t promise there won’t be some in future crosswords, but it is something I wasn’t really looking for when I submitted this one and am now. Thanks!
But I genuinely like your, what I called, ‘passion’ @22.
About a year ago someone told me to sort of ‘get a life’ when I raved about the finer points in crosswords – well, crosswords can be important in one’s life, can’t they?
As an ex blogger here I thought this an excellent Monday puzzle. Mostly easy but with a few twisters that’s ok. I’ve made it plain in the past i think some naughtiness is fine. I did feel solving that 8d would have some moaning but well that’s life. Bluth regardless of his more fame is actually pretty damn good. Can’t believe 21a hasn’t been done before though.
Went in very smoothly, with some good laughs on the way, although it took me ages to get 21dn, my LOI. I thought the construction of 8dn brilliant.
Thanks for explaining the can-can in 3dn. I couldn’t see where the final ‘a’ came from, too.
Thanks to Quirister and Bluth
9a “armed” = “packing” is a great spot – hours of fun to be had there.
Designated box splits packing – post office’s last!
12a “woe betide” is perfectly valid, but I’m not sure “warning” is an adequate synonym/description. “Type/form of warning” might be better , and also allow the colon to be dispensed with.
13a here the wordplay suggests that “heart” stands for all internal letters, whereas the next clue (more traditionally and, to me at least, correctly ), implies “heart” means the central one or two letters.
26a For me “Nightingale famously” gives “Florence”. “Nightingale, famously was one game back within three points”, might work
3d The “to” can only really be a positional indicator but it isn’t necessary, (and dancing on stumps is a grisly image):
“Film cast ably finishes off dance naked!”
4d “Kent” = “se” is a chestnut but I’ve never liked it. “Kent area”, “outskirts of Stevenage” etc might be better.
I quite liked it overall
Deprived of a co-solving team, I ventured in on my own, and got about halfway through before having to go to work – 8d was my favourite, regardless of subject matter, because it was an amusingly hidden supermarket in a nicely crafted surface that joined well with the definition. It isn’t the loveliest of phrases, but there were no complaints when recta made an unexpected appearance last week, which you’d have thought would also be something you’d avoid talking about at the dinner table, and 8d wasn’t clued in an unpleasant way.
Thanks to S&B
Opprobrium? I think Bluth should get a clap for 8dn.
Despite your over-eating, Bluth, this was a very fine crossword! And, just to be clear, 8d was great – no smut in the clue (though I’m not one, personally, to complain about the occasional mild blue joke in a clue if it’s properly funny) and the type of disease is just that – a disease. Kids are, or should be, well aware of it. Many other illnesses are even nastier, and bring to mind death or suffering, but no one bats an eyelid. Keep ‘em coming!
Thanks for all the comments. It really is appreciated.