Not the usual Phi on Friday, so something special. You’ll have to wait to find out what. I enjoyed this, some nice clues, although some might object that more than a third of them contain anagrams. But I don’t mind: they usually make things easier, and I have struggled with Hob in the past.
Definitions in darkgreen, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
It’s World Emoji Day. Make of that what you will. Around the outside the unches read ‘face with tears of joy’.
| ACROSS | ||
| 5 | YAOUNDE | One 22D wasted going round university in African capital (7) |
| (One day)* round u — 22dn is DAY, Yaounde is the capital of Cameroon | ||
| 7 | SALCHOW | At first such a large dog makes one 16! (7) |
| s{uch} a l chow — a salchow is a jump in ice skating — 16 refers to 16ac, which is JUMP | ||
| 9 | OPAL | Going back a bit, recall a poster showing one of the Stones (4) |
| Hidden reversed in recalL A POster | ||
| 10 | PIECEWORK | Two compositions for which payment is determined by amount produced (9) |
| piece work — a piece and a work are both musical compositions | ||
| 12 | GOTHS | Ghost out of place in group dressed in black? (5) |
| (Ghost)* | ||
| 13 | PASTRAMI | Wrongly made out it’s Parma beef (8) |
| *(it’s Parma) | ||
| 16 | JUMP | See 14D |
| 17 | EMOJI | See 21A |
| 18 | MITT | The very thing described by first appearances of Man Tipping Hand (4) |
| it [the very thing] in M{an} T{Ipping} | ||
| 19 | FLOTILLA | Rolling On The Floor Laughing initially – Hob’s going to head up admiral’s first fleet! (8) |
| *(O{n} T{he} F{loor} L{aughing}) I’ll a{dmiral} | ||
| 21/17A/22D | WORLD EMOJI DAY | Lost mojo weirdly, with ad for symbolic annual celebration (5,5,3) |
| *(mojo weirdly ad) — well there you are, that’s why Hob has displaced Phi today — emojis are symbols | ||
| 22 | DROOPIEST | Least upstanding spin doctor caught out importing baked food (9) |
| pies in *(do{c}tor) | ||
| 24 | NIGH | Almost knocked over hot drink (4) |
| (h gin)rev. | ||
| 26 | OYSTERS | Aphrodisiac fare of novel sort? Yes (7) |
| *(sort Yes) | ||
| 27 | SHUT OUT | Call for round gets you tense inside bar (4,3) |
| sh(u t)out — a call for a round of drinks is a shout, and Hob has clued ‘you’ as the textspeak u, something that is becoming increasingly common without any indication that it’s textspeak; not universally popular | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FULL STOP | Period when stuffed shirt finally gets seduced by bribe? (4,4) |
| stuffed [full], then {shir}t in sop | ||
| 2 | ADEPTS | Answer given by department’s experts (6) |
| A[nswer] dept’s | ||
| 3 | CAFE | Angry Face? Here, you can stuff that! (4) |
| *(Face) — in a café you can stuff your face | ||
| 4 | ECHOER | One that’s imitating diva, framing ‘Love’ with Red Heart on top (6) |
| {r}e{d} Ch(0)er | ||
| 6 | ASP | Like piano used for Killer Queen? Quite the opposite, allegedly (3) |
| as p — the definition isn’t all that clear to me: the group Queen’s third studio album was ‘Killer Queen’ and on the initial Google page indicating this it says ‘… Sheer Heart Attack (ASP)’ yet I can find no ASP reference in the page it sends you to; and so far as I can see ASD stands for Atrial Septal Defect and when I enter ASP Heart Attack it asks me if I meant ASD. What is really happening will be clear to some I’m sure. But not me. Well that’s rather a slog. Much simpler is that Queen Cleopatra was killed by an asp, so it wasn’t a Killer Queen but it was quite the opposite: a Queen Killer. But this is only alleged. | ||
| 8 | OIK | Lout given Thumbs Up around lunchtime? (3) |
| OK [Thumbs Up] round 1 | ||
| 11 | ESPIONAGE | Intelligence shown by ponies about to mature (9) |
| (ponies)* age — I’m a little unsure of the definition: isn’t espionage the gathering of intelligence, not the intelligence itself? | ||
| 12 | GRUEL | Food not finished by setter dismissing starter as unappetising fare (5) |
| gru{b} {g}el | ||
| 14/16 | SKI JUMP | Shigetaka Kurita’s invention originally, bound to provide springboard for long-running event? (3,4) |
| S{hig…} K{ur…} i{nvention} jump [bound] — so far as I can see this Japanese person has no connection to ski jumps | ||
| 15 | MATED | Old Woman youthful chap in 50s married (5) |
| Ma ted — a youthful chap in the 1950s was a teddy boy, colloquially called a ted. This is an improvement on The Times, whose setters tend to clue a ted as a lout. This annoys one ex-ted, who always posts angrily when this happens, saying that he wasn’t a lout. I think they were called teddy boys because they followed Edwardian fashion, though I always doubted this. | ||
| 17 | ELL | Length of old Lying Face, say (3) |
| The face of ‘Lying’ is L, which sounds like ‘ell’ — an ell is an old unit of length | ||
| 18 | MARINATE | Get soaked by rain out in China (8) |
| (rain)* in mate | ||
| 20 | TROUTS | Tutors working in school sometimes, but rarely (6) |
| (Tutors)* — the collective noun for trouts specifically is a hover; ‘school’ is used for fish generally, and only rarely for trouts | ||
| 21 | WOTCHA | Greeting 2 when cycling before tea (6) |
| 2 doesn’t refer to 2dn, but to two, and when it’s cycled it becomes wot; cha = tea | ||
| 22 | DAY | See 21A |
| 23 | PURR | Getting up, interrupted content Grinning Cat’s sound observation? (4) |
| Hidden reversed in inteRRUPted — content a noun, not as it seems an adjective | ||
| 25 | GNU | Antelope found in growing numbers (3) |
| Hidden in growinG NUmbers | ||
Mostly easy fora Hob. Pleased to recall SALCHOW but needed help on YAOUNDÉ. Geography was never one of my fortes.
Don’t know how well known this is but EMOJI comes from E (picture) + MOJI (character). This contrasts with “emoticon” (emotion icon) so the initial 3 characters EMO mislead.
Thanks to Hob and John.
Obviously, “fora” should have been “for a”. Also, I parsed ASP in the Cleopatra sense which I feel must be correct even if it is not a proven historical fact.
Shigetaka Kurita has no connection to ski jumps, but he is credited by some as the inventor of emojis.
Well, if I hadn’t done this I would never have known.
I had trouble, as expected with Hob, in getting YAOUNDE, SALCHOW and ECHOER at the end, but once everything was in, the Nina and link to the Big Day was revealed. Thanks for explaining the subtleties of TROUTS, about which I was unschooled, and that a TED was not necessarily an OIK.
ASP and Cleopatra are an instant word association for me, so that’s how I saw 6d, without thinking about the Queen album.
Thanks to Hob and John (and to Hovis and Andrew for their contributions as well)
Thanks for blogging, John. Darkgreen not my favourite, though.
Shigetaka Kurita was obviously there for a reason other than his initial letters, so curiosity got the better of me and his identity led to solving WORLD EMOJI DAY, and then the perimeter nina became obvious, which was a help to finish. It’s not been specifically mentioned, so just to say that Face with Tears of Joy is, er, an emoji.
I can barely bring myself to use an exclamation mark more than once a year, so the theme left me cold, but you don’t get this kind of stuff in the Times, so it was entertaining in a contemporary sense. Thanks to Hob for this one and a good weekend to all.
A bit of a battle but worthwhile, if only to come here and read about K’s D only using an exclamation mark once a year !
For me too ASP and Cleopatra always go together. Hard to pick a favourite from so many, so I won’t
Thanks to Hob 🙂 and to John
Once again, what crypticsue said (except that I knew about K’s D’s exclamation mark phobia).
Guessing that Phi had been bumped in favour of Hob we thought there might be a date-related theme today and disovered that in addition to the anniversary of several events in history (such as the start of the Spanish civil war) 17th July is, as already revealed, World Emoji Day. So we weren’t surprised by 21/17/22, nor by Shigetaka Kurita’s appearance in the clue to 14/16.
But there was lots more to enjoy as well. We got ASP simply from the Cleopatra connection. Favourites were YAOUNDÉ and CAFÉ. And we liked the nina, too. :’-)
Thanks, Hob and John
I found this quite tough and needed word searches for 5ac and 7ac. The former, I’d even thought it might be an anagram of “one day u” but dismissed that thought as that could never form a word.
I’d actually heard earlier that today is World Emoji Day which helped getting 21/17/22.
Hopelessly bad with this one, nowhere near the right wavelength for answers or parsings. That NINA is me today. Well, the first three words, anyway.
Thanks Hob and John.
Just as an aside, the concise crossword in Friday’s i had ’emoji’ as one of the answers.