Mostly very straightforward clueing from Brummie today, and a quick solve for me, though I was held up by the parsing of 11a.
I was almost immediately tipped off to the theme by 1a: we have a lot of space misions in the grid, and some related words: I can see at least 12 – GEMINI, RANGER, GULLIVER, MARS, JUNO, PATHFINDER, VEGA, GALILEO, APOLLO, VOYAGER, VIKING and ROVER, which is impressive grid-filling. Thanks to Brummie.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | GEMINI | Sign, say, over vehicle (6) E.G. (“say”) reversed + MINI (car), for the astrological “sign” |
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| 4. | RANGER | Park employee called King Edward? (6) RANG (called) + E.R. |
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| 9. | SLOG | Work away, almost leisurely, to get a lot of money (4) SLO[W] (“leisurely”) + G (grand, 1000 pounds or dollars) |
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| 10. | ICONOCLAST | Denouncer‘s unorthodox antics ‘cool’ (10) (ANTICS COOL)* |
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| 11. | GLITCH | Bit of a mishap: Grand Canal emptied and burning (6) G[rand cana]L + ITCH (burning). I spent a while trying to make this out of GC and LIT for “burning” |
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| 12. | GULLIVER | Pull back, being a much-travelled character (8) LUG reversed + LIVER (one who lives, a being). Gulliver is a proposed European mission to collect samples from the Martian moon Deimos, so called because Gulliver’s Travels describes the scientists of Laputa knowing of two moons orbiting Mars, over a century before they were actually found |
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| 13. | CORPOREAL | Energy-packed NCO material (9) E in CORPORAL |
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| 15. | MARS | World title cracked by amateur (4) A[mateur] in MRS (title) |
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| 16. | JUNO | Don Juan’s undone and missing a godly partner (4) Anagram of DON JUAN minus AND. In Roman mythology, Juno is the wife of Jupiter |
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| 17. | ADJECTIVE | Qualifier, Jet, overwhelmed with advice (9) (JET ADVICE)* |
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| 21. | INACTIVE | Trials take place here shortly — one has to be still (8) Trials taks place IN A C[our]T, + I’VE (I have = one has) |
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| 22. | MARTYR | For example, Sebastian Drive, backing onto ancient city (not eastern) (6) Reverse of RAM (to drive) + TYRE less E. St Sebastian was a third-century Christian martyr |
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| 24. | PATHFINDER | Pioneer father secures source of hieroglyphic discovery (10) H[ieroglyphic} + FIND (discovery) in PATER |
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| 25. | VEGA | Greens getting a conspicuous star (4) VEG (vegetables, greens) + A |
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| 26. | TROUGH | Roger, protected by criminal, arrives at low point (6) R[oger] in TOUGH (criminal) |
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| 27. | TERROR | Alarm — time to put on slip (6) T + ERROR. The opposite construction (removing T from TERROR to give ERROR) has already appeared twice in FT puzzles this week, so I was primed for this one |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | GALILEO | Inquisition victim, young woman associated with international sign (7) GAL (girl, young woman) + I[nternational] + LEO (another astrological sign) |
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| 2. | MIGHT | Force could, possibly (5) Double definition |
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| 3. | NEITHER | In no case loose the rein (7) (THE REIN)* |
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| 5. | APOLLO | God represented by parrot wearing a ring (6) POLL (parrot) in A O |
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| 6. | GALLIVANT | Impertinence shown by terrible old ruler — time to run around (9) GALL (impertinence) + IVAN (the Terrible) + T |
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| 7. | RASHERS | Artist, British actor and, finally, Francis Bacon (7) RA (artist) + SHER (Sir Antony Sher, actor) + [Franci]S |
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| 8. | ROUGH AND READY | Crude hooligan, Desperate Dan, has cash (5,3,5) ROUGH (hooligan) + DAN* + READY (cash) |
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| 14. | PINOCCHIO | Obvious liar about to cut Chopin composition, Zeus’s lover (9) C (circa, about) in CHOPIN* + IO (Greek mythology this time – Io was a mortal lover of Zeus). Pinocchio was an “obvious liar” because of the nose-growing thing |
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| 16. | JUNK ART | Vessel on which folk duo member found objects of rubbish (4,3) JUNK (vessel) + ART (Garfunkel, as in Simon and..) |
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| 18. | ELM TREE | Term wasted with eel that’s prone to disease (3,4) (TERM EEL)* – the British Elm population was devastated by Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s |
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| 19. | VOYAGER | Drake versus duck with a grey cast? (7) V[ersus] O (zero, duck) + (A GREY)* – as a definition-by-example this really needs a “maybe” after “Drake” |
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| 20. | VIKING | Marauding type of short woman married to ruler (6) VI (woman’s name, short for Violet) joined or “married” to KING (ruler). Perhaps a better definition than “pirate”, as in Monday’s Quiptic |
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| 23. | ROVER | Dog collar’s hem old parson turned up? (5) Last letter or “hem” of collaR + O + reverse of REV. I wonder if any dogs are still called Rover (or Fido) these days |
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Totally missed the theme. I am unfamiliar with maybe half of those space missions.
Liked: MARTYR, PINOCCHIO, PATHFINDER, INACTIVE.
Did not parse JUNO.
Thanks B+S
Like michelle@1 I missed the theme, although something seemed to be going on. Couldn’t parse RANGER! Liked PINOCCHIO among others. Thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
In the clues, we also have the ‘Pioneer’ program, and if anyone is wondering if we are alone in the universe, they could try using the Drake equation. Sadly no ‘Canals’ on Mars though.
And on the animated features front, there was PINOCCHIO in Outer Space.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew. Right up my street.
(And I liked the hint of Spooner at 18d)
A mostly gentle workout, from the write-in PINOCCHIO to the obscure MARTYR. Luckily I knew that St Sebastian was a martyr. The theme was obvious. No new words or expressions.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Haven’t read Gulliver since childhood, so thanks Andrew for that reminder of the good Dean’s ‘prescience’ about Mars having moons. So, yes, mild by Brummie’s standards, though a dnf because for loi 9ac I bunged in plug and checked it and only then got slog, which even then was a bawb (bung and work backwards..I pinched that from elsewhere). Otherwise, a fun stroll. Thanks both.
Oops, don’t know how my name sneaked in…no matter..
Great fun and I spent a silly amount of time at 4a trying to find a homophone for potato (aka KING EDWARD) 🙂 See also trying to anagram “crude hooligan”
Loved RASHERS for the sheer silliness
Today’s lockdown musical inspiration has a folky flavour: The Indigo Girl’s GALILEO and maybe a bit of Suzanne VEGA
Cheers all
The top went in more readily than the bottom today, though there were only a couple I had to agonise over: LOI INACTIVE and MARTYR. I was thinking there had to be a Seb Martyn somewhere, but couldn’t parse it. VIKING was a write in after Monday. RANGER, GULLIVER and CORPOREAL were my favorite acrosses, and GALILEO, GALLIVANT and JUNK ART for the downs. Missed the theme. Thanks, Brummie and Andrew.
Very enjoyable puzzle today, slow and steady with some good parsing.
Like bodycheetah @7, I was trying work out some sort of hooligan anahram until cobro set me straight.
SW was the last to unfold, with JUNO our LOI.
Favourites were GALILEO and GALLIVANT.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew!
*anagram*
This was great, and the theme helped on a few. I really liked 4a RANGER and 7d RASHERS which both raised a smile.
Re 19d, Sir Francis Drake was certainly a great VOYAGER. Is the question mark at the end of the clue sufficient to be a definition-by-example indicator?
Many thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Thanks, both, for an enjoyable puzzle and blog.
Like michelle, I didn’t know all the space missions, so didn’t really latch on to a theme. It took me a while to parse GLITCH, too.
I particularly enjoyed 1ac GALILEO, 22ac MARTYR, 7dn RASHERS and 14dn PINOCCHIO.
Helped by the theme for once. 22 took me much longer than it should have done.
Thanks to Andrew and Brummie.
Glad others found this easy – I didn’t! It all fell into place bit by bit but my orbit was mismatched with Brummie’s for a while! I loved the theme here – unforced theme entries with cunning definitions, theme words in clues and solutions and even parts thereof – “io” came to mind as a moon before a lover of Zeus, which tells you about my education!
Smartly done and many thanks Andrew for the blog, and essexboy for the additional themesters.
I concur with this being mild and fun with a clear theme.
Thank you essexboy (@3) for the Drake Equation which I didn’t know of.
Yes, fairly striaghtforward and fun although I didn’t properly parse PATHFINDER and bunged in MARTYN mistakenly, so a DNF. Unfamiliar with Sir Anthony Sher. Liked MARTYR and PINOCCHIO in particular.
Thanks to Brummie and Andrew and to bodycheetah for the musical references
A (hopefully) interesting snippet with cruciverbalist connotations is brought to mind by todays theme which, for once, jumped out at me. We were fortunate enough to have a second home for a decade in the Western Highlands of Scotland close to a village called Glenelg. Glenelg was also the name chosen by NASA for the objective of the Curiosity mission to Mars in 2012. They chose a palindromic name on the basis that the mission visited Glenelg twice – on the way in and on the way out. Enterprising Scottish locals arranged for the village and the landing site to be twinned and I think I’m right in saying it’s the only example of Terran/Martian twinning. It’s even mentioned on the road sign welcoming visitors to the village. See here and here.
A splendid puzzle from Brummie today. Too many favourites to mention. All smoothly clued. My only quibble is whether I’d describe Simon and Garfunkel as folk but that’s probably a matter of personal taste. Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Zeus apparently had a lot of lovers, but was glad that that it was one of the easier ones to spell, IO, fitting nicely on the end of PINOCCHIO’s long nose. For once I did spot the theme, with GALILEO and APOLLO my first ones in…
Enjoyed this puzzle. The theme was cleverly woven in. I was thinking the theme was classical so didn’t spot it till it was too late to help.
Boris fleetingly sprung to mind for 14D but was soon dismissed. Quite a few write-ins when a few crossers were in place from the first pass which made this easier than it should have been, I felt.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Allowed myself a window to do it and ended up having to reveal just 13 (I didn’t know NCOs included corporals, although less time-pressure might have let me get there from the crossers) and 1a. The latter was particularly annoying since 1d which uses ‘sign’ in exactly the same way was a write-in. I hardly ever detect themes, so that didn’t help.
I very much liked PINOCCHIO, which fell into place after I realised we couldn’t be talking about Hera, Leda or Juno (he did put it about a bit, didn’t he?)
My dog, Rover, is no longer with us but he is buried in our garden and has a small headstone.
I got GEMINI, VIKING and APOLLO in my first pass – so the theme was clear more or less from the outset and, for once, was enormously helpful. It meant VEGA, and PATHFINDER sort of leapt out at me, with MARS and ROVER following close behind, which honestly doesn’t happen too often! I, too, had the moon-version of IO before the Zeus-version. Mind you, once I had the G & O in 26a, my first try was “plough”, until 16d put me straight.
Like Bodycheetah, I tried to find an anagram in “crude hooligan”. RASHERS made me grin. Thanks to Brummie for reminding me of my childhood pleasure assembling airfix models of NASA missions, to Andrew for the blog – and to Mark for the brilliant anecdote about Glenelg!!
That’s two themes clocked in two days, which may well be a personal best. I was about half way in by then and immediately went looking for APOLLO (which worked) and Pioneer (which didn’t). All western missions etc I think, no Vostok or Soyuz to up the already-high awkward letter count.
Allowed myself a chuckle with Hmmm in Oz @4. PINOCCHIO was no write-in to me but my penultimate. One man’s meat…
A straightforward solve, never a 9Ac. ‘Overwhelmed’ as an anagrind? Hmmm…
Nice story, Mark @17. My dull home village in Bucks is twinned with the moon (no atmosphere).
Two themes in two days also a PB for me Trailman@23. PINNOCHIO went in about half way through which meant INACTIVE was second last in when I spotted my spelling mistake. MARTYR was loi. I liked the MIGHT triple definition which took a while as GEMINI didn’t leap out despite being obvious with hindsight. Many thanks to Brummie and Andrew.
Thanks, should have seen the theme. Answer to 7d. I got RA, and the final S, but was trying to fit ASHER (Jane) but of course that gave me an extra A. Never heard of SHER.
Yes 2Scotcheggs@24, I hmmmm about ‘overwhelmed’ as an anagrind. In the sense that overwhelm and, say, trounce, can be interchangeable (Utd overwhelm City = Utd trounce City in a sports headline – although they don’t actually mean the same), it could be argued as ok. But I like anagrinds that signal some form of movement and I’m not sure overwhelm does that. As the occasional amateur setter of crosswords, there is always the attempt not to make the anagrams startlingly obvious….which I suppose is going to continue the extension of anagrind lists.
Thank you, Brummie and Andrew. Delightful puzzle, insightful blog.
For awhile Zeus’s lover had to be either IO or somebody with a long name beginning with P. That seemed more likely, since if “obvious” was the definition it wasn’t likely to be a word ending in -io. It also seemed to be one of those clues that had too much stuff to fit in one word. All of those problems went away when I saw that the definition was “obvious liar.”
I followed Mark’s links to Glenelg, Scotland (and by extension, Glenelg, Mars) and found that a visitor to the Scottish one was an astronaut of Scottish ancestry, and that she had flown on the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, both later doomed. I wonder how many other astronauts had also flown on both?
I totally missed the theme. Par for the course. I didn’t know all the space missions either.
MIGHT isn’t a triple definition, since it isn’t interchangeable with “possibly.”
Valentine @ 28:
Think of a surly teenager. “Are you going to tidy your room?” “Might.”
JohnOfNZ @26: I was lucky enough to see Anthony Sher in Richard III in 1984. He had the challenge of taking on a role that had been defined by Olivier, against whom any successive performer would be judged. And he succeeded in spades. One of the most electrifying stage performances I’ve seen. I recently read the book ‘The Year of the King’ which is Sher’s diary of the lead up to the play, the influences on which he drew to create the character, the quirks and coincidences that ended up making their mark on stage. I strongly recommend it to anyone. It wasn’t Sher’s only role of course but, in my book, probably his greatest.
Much enjoyed today’s replies. Thanks all. As a further link to the theme, can I mention that IO (as in 14d) is the name of a moon of Jupiter. Stunning photos of its active sulphur volcanoes were obtained from the VOYAGER mission to Jupiter.
A reasonably gentle solve for a usually tricky setter. I agree with you Mark@17 that S&G can hardly be classed as purely folk – only have to think of the wonderful soundtrack to the Graduate. Pinocchio was my COD. Ta B & A
Oh and Anthony Sher was also wonderful in the series, The History Man
Highly enjoyable, especially the tricky INACTIVE and the twin answers of GALLIVANT and GULLIVER. Don’t think I’d have got VIKING without knowing the theme.
Don’t know about anyone else, but 17a brought back lovely memories of Gladiators in the 1990s
Boffo @34: your reminder of the formidable ladies in the Gladiators brought this Monty Python clip to mind! A favourite from my younger days which, whilst undoubtedly politically incorrect, still brings a smile. Apologies to any who find this too risque though the rather out-of-focus footage blurs the sensitivity!
Thanks, Andrew. An enjoyable puzzle, and for once I spotted the theme.
At 16d, I think “found” is part of the definition, junk art being made from objets trouvés.
Lord Jim @11 – yes, I’d say the the question mark in 19d (VOYAGER) does the same job that a “maybe” would in indicating definition by example.
Very slow solve for me today and took a while for the theme penny to drop. FOI was 8d which probably says more about me than it does about the clue… All good fun though and gave me something to do whilst sitting in the lab waiting for software to compile. Again.
I enjoyed this – a steady challenge. For once I spotted the theme in time for it to help with a few answers. Although it also convinced me for a while that M _ R _ Y _ was going to be a Soviet space mission.
SW corner was the last to yield for me, not helped by initially going for CRUCIBLE for 21a from the C and E crossers – trials certainly take place in the play, which I persuaded myself was a short one, and I decided that CRUCIBLE and STILL could be synonyms due to the heating of liquids in each, without really giving it enough thought. Once I’d realised that was probably wrong it still took me a while to finish that corner, but I got there in the end without any checking, so a satisfying solve for me.
For once I spotted what I thought was an obvious theme, especially coming one day after the moon landing anniversary. I did fail at some of the clues but that’s seems par for the course when I attempt a Brummie crossword. Favorites were MARS and GALLIVANT. Thanks Andrew for parsing — I noticed the repetition of TERROR this week — setters must rely on the same computer programs for fill — there’s been a litter of Skye’s on both sides of the pond this year. Thanks Brummie
Very nice puzzle, the top was mostly a write-in but the bottom held me up quite a while, not least as I misspelled Pinocchio as Pinnochio for some reason… Thanks Brummie for some smiles on a sad day – RIP Tim from Cardiacs.
I did see the theme but quite late in the proceedings so it didn’t really help..VIKING was LOI. I took an age to see, the now obvious, PINOCCHIO. I was trying to do something with Persephone if you see what I mean.
Quite a nice puzzle. I’ve got to like Brummie’s style of setting and this was quite a good example.
Thanks Brummie.
I got stuck in the bottom left for a bit, but everything fell nicely into place after that, and I enjoyed the theme as it unfolded.
Thanks Brummie and Andrew.
Anthony Sher is actually South African by birth…..
Did anyone else notice FAMISH in 11ac? “Bit oF A MISHap: Grand Canal emptied and burning”. If you think of alimentary canal it sort of works. I’m not very good at noticing hidden words, so to spot one which wasn’t the correct answer is something of an achievement.
Briefly misled at 2d by the equally parseable ‘maybe’ – going on a Star Wars idea that The Force ‘may be’ with you. Soon corrected by the crossers, though. Otherwise a fun puzzle, in which, as ever, we totally missed the theme.
Overwhelmed by the number of posters here who found this easy. My excuses are legion. I never seem to get on Brummie’s wavelength. I hardly ever spot themes. I was tired after cycling through wind and rain. The pub in which I was attempting the crossword had a lot of banter going on, which made it hard to concentrate.
Looking at the answers today, I still struggle to get on Brummie’s wavelength. So it must be just me.
Enjoyed Mark’s Glenelg diversion much more than the crossword.
Came to this one some days after it was posted. A very enjoyable puzzle, and for once I saw the theme. I enjoy ones like this, that (to me) look very intractable to begin with, but once a toehold is gained, yield steadily to the final completion.
Thanks to Brummie for the workout, and to Andrew for the blog, especially for the parsing of JUNO, which I didn’t see.
Why is Roger “R” ? Is there another alphabet like the one where “R” is Romeo ?