Another long preamble from Lato … 11 entries are unnumbered – thematic or unclued, so about 20%. It’s all about X: thematics cryptically reveal the identity; unclued give a description, field of activity, achievements, what was often completed, a vital aid. Full name & title to be written below. (Oh, and something fiddly going on with 4 – what’s that all about?)
Need to solve the clues to understand the preamble, need to understand the preamble to sort out the entries. Let’s crack on.
Not too hard to make inroads into this, and before too long a good stab at ‘0’down was PRODNOSES (thematic) and at ‘0’across was PARALYMPICS (unclued), later amended to PARALYMPIAN. So up pops Tanni Grey-Thompson as a prime contender. ATHLETICS, MANY TITLES, A LAP (unclued) soon followed, along with MARGERY and the rest (thematic). The “vital aid” is CHAIR – the best shape seems to be in the bottom right quadrant. (PARALYMPIAN + ATHLETICS = MANY TITLES + A LAP + CHAIR, with P-added from 4 down.)
Grid filled & highlighted, but X not yet confirmed – sleep on it.
MARGERY = mar–GERY = GREY started to run around my brain, and then rum–INANT = TANNI and MOTH–eaten = THOM, and soon we see that X is indeed TANNI GREY-THOMPSON, BARONESS, coming from the thematics, again with P-added from 4 down.
What “full name and title” will fit below grid? Wikipedia has Carys Davina “Tanni” Grey-Thompson, Baroness Grey-Thompson, DBE; alternatively Baroness Grey-Thompson DBE, Tanni Grey-Thompson appears on her website; both are too long, so I settle for Tanni Grey-Thompson, Baroness.
A lot of thematic material packed in, as seems common with puzzles from Lato – thanks, but this one did seem a tad contrived.
I fail to understand the wordplay for 12a (table below includes the clue), nor do I completely see it for 24a (ditto); and not too happy with 1d, for that matter.
CABLE in the wordplay for 36a is OK, but I prefer puzzles to be more ‘timeless’ – how long will he live in the memory? And, yes, I know that OASIS at 8d is a “group”, but I wouldn’t expect an answer of CAMEL or EMBASSY to be well-clued by “cigarette”.
{PS Most commenters seem to have highlighted the racing wheel-CHAIR with a long base and no ‘wheel’, and they are indeed backed up by the published solution. I recall thinking that the wheel was more “vital” than the racing aspect, and wish it hadn’t been ambiguous; see comment #5.}
| Thematic | |
|---|---|
| Answer | Wordplay |
| MARGERY | EG< (like) in MARRY (join) |
| MOTH-EATEN | THE after MO (second) + [NEAT]* |
| PRODNOSES | PROGNOSES (prospects) with D(ull) for G(overnment) |
| RUBBRA | BB (books) in RURA(l) (pastoral) |
| RUMINANT | [AM TURNIN(g)]* |
| WAGONS | GA (Georgia) in SNOW (cocaine) all< |
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| No. | Answer | Wordplay |
| 7 | ROAD | A in ROD (gun) |
| 9 | TAPA | AT< PA (secretary) |
| 10 | ONAN | AN (article) after ON (about) |
| 11 | CEDE | homophone: SEED (kids) |
| 12 | HOON | something to do with HOOKER + ON ??? {“US prostitute working for old Aussie pimp”: what’s going on with the wordplay here?} {see comment #1} |
| 13 | DEGAS | AGED< (grey) S(ociety) |
| 14 | HOD | DOH< (why didn't I see that?) |
| 15 | SLOPY | SLOPPY (inclined to be careless) − P (quietly) |
| 16 | NEO | [ONE]* |
| 18 | EDOM | MODE< (way) |
| 19 | ODETTE | (v)ETTED O(ught)< |
| 20 | SUSIE | [ISSUE]* |
| 21 | RUM | double definition |
| 22 | VISIT | V (against) I(ndependent) SIT (press) |
| 24 | MOLARS | MO(re) + LARS (Swede) {“Swede with more lost teeth”: can’t figure out the wordplay order, or the use of “lost”} {see various comments} |
| 27 | SING | SIN (wrongdoing) + G (force) |
| 28 | BURROS | BURR (something that clings) + OS (very large) |
| 29 | AVE | (h)AVE (own, Cockney) |
| 31 | ANNAL | ANAL (obsessive) around N(ew) |
| 32 | BAG | B(lack) + AG (silver) |
| 33 | CERIA | CIA (company, abroad = Ital, Sp) around ER(bium) |
| 35 | LAST | double definition |
| 36 | ABLE | CABLE (Lib Dem politician) − C(onservative) {not keen on this – too ‘of the moment’} |
| 37 | AIRT | AIR (plane) T(hailand) |
| 38 | ANTE | [E(mm)A T(hompso)N]* |
| 39 | ARAR | A RAR(e) (extraordinary) |
| 40 | GREASY SPOON | [GUYS ARE]* − U (you) + SOON (promptly) around P(apa) |
| Down | ||
| No. | Answer | Wordplay |
| 1 | AÎNÉE | TRAINEE (course) − TR(anslator) {TRAINING = “course”, but TRAIN?} {see comment #1} |
| 2 | ARNA | ARENA (field) − E(ast) |
| 3 | YACHTER | CAY< (island) + [THE]* R(ight, side) |
| 4 | PADDED | PAD (home) DEAD (knackered) − A(nte, before) |
| 5 | IN ESSE | [IS SEEN]* |
| 6 | EPOPOEIA | POPE< (poet, Alexander Pope) (c)O(m)E(s) I(n) + A |
| 8 | OASIS | O (love) + A SIS(ter, sibling) {a nod to Britpop?} |
| 17 | TAILGATER | GATE (scandalous ending, Watergate analogy) in [TRIAL]* |
| 23 | SPARID | [RAPIDS]* |
| 25 | ABLATE | AB (muscle) + LATE (dead) |
| 26 | MOCHA | MO (doctor) + CHA (tea) |
| 30 | VIRGO | VIRAGO (amazon) − A |
| 34 | EARP | PRATE< (chatter) − T(ime) |
|
|
||
I like these – where the theme kicks in just as I was getting to the point of surrender.
12A – Ho is American prostitute – from whore
I’m equally baffled by 24A
33A – CIA is nicknamed the company
1D – Aintree is the course – minus the TR
My chair was a different shape – more racing-chair shape – or could be an armchair too, I suppose.
(And Oasis weren’t Britpop!)
24A: MO is an archaism for ‘more’, so it could be described as ‘lost’.
I had a racing shape chair, with the R from ‘virgo’. I don’t get the ‘molars’ wordplay, but on the whole I really enjoyed this. Lato does always cram a lot in, and I agree it can appear a bit contrived, but I like it when all the various parts all eventually slot into place, and the (at first undecipherable) preamble becomes clear.
I was certainly under the impression that Oasis were Britpop…
Like OPatrick@1 were almost on the point of surrender. We thought it must be Tanni Grey-Thompson but it took quite a few sittings before RUM INANT appeared and the rest is history! The use of 4d was ingenious but very devious!
We were also happy with Oasis as Britpop.
We couldn’t parse 24ac which was our last one in – we’d pencilled it in very early on but only when everything else was complete were we confident that it was correct. We had a different answer for 7ac which held us up for a while – we had the definition being gun. However we overwrote the letters so heavily that we can’t remember what it was.
We also had a ‘racing chair’.
Thanks to Lato and HolyGhost.
Some fun to be had with the undefined clues in this one, but I was ultimately underwhelmed. The final 2 steps seemed arbitrary or at least unfair – do you go for CHAIR with the R as a ‘wheel’ or using the R from VIRGO (I went for the latter, on no basis other than it linked to the I without using a diagonal); is the name Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (my entry) or Tanni GT, Baroness (which I suspect Debretts might approve of), or with DBE etc etc?
As to 24a, I haven’t checked in BRB but assumed ‘more lost’ is ‘archaic more’, so ‘mo’, and didn’t have a problem with ‘with’ allowing the 2 clued parts to be adjacent on either side.
OK, I may be out on a limb with the Oasis-not-Britpop thing – but I’m standing by it.
I had ROAR (gun) at 7A for a while – but that wouldn’t hold you up, except in that it didn’t seem right. ROR feels like it should be an abbreviation for something.
Glad I wasn’t the only one to use the R from Virgo!
I enjoyed this, cheers Lato.
(and FWIW, I’m firmly in the Oasis being Britpop camp)
I didn’t so much give up on this as run out of time and steam. By midweek, I had about half the grid filled in but still no clue as to the theme. Further sessions failed to add any more answers, and the sessions became fewer as the week progressed.
About par for the course for me. And I did get 12ac purely from the word play and had to check the answer in Chambers, but I suppose knowing an American slang term for prostitute is hardly something to be proud of.
NB Bertandjoyce et al – the puzzle has no reference to Oasis being “britpop”, it was just a passing comment by HolyGhost. They were often referred to as part of britpop, but neither they nor their most serious fans ever seem to have accepted the description, understandably as they clearly had no desire to be “pop” as opposed to “rock” – in fact they often presented themselves as Britpop’s (and in particular Blur’s) antithesis.
Incidentally I don’t think one can realistically complain about Lato using “group” as the definition. Obviously Oasis still has other meanings, but it’s incredibly famous as the name of a group. I don’t think anyone’s ever objected to “group” cluing “Queen” or “Status Quo”, both of which have other older meanings too, and Oasis are at least as famous as either of them.
By the way, why not indicate all those anagrams and indicators in the theme clues, in case anyone missed them? For the record, it goes
Rub (indicator) BRA = BAR
Prod (ind.(!)) NOSES = ONESS
Rum (ind.) INANT = TANNI
Mar (ind.) GERY = GREY
MOTH eaten (ind.(!)) = THOM
[then the “P added” from 4] = P
Wag (ind.) ONS = SON
It took me a long time to realise there was an indicator in all of them, and I think it’s pretty amazing Lato managed make it work so smoothly.
I thoroughly enjoyed this, although the chair, which I did with the single right-angle (to make it look like the racing chair, I thought) was a bit of an anticlimax. Like others, I can’t quite make the Mo-lars wordplay work smoothly either.
PS. re 33a cia is the Italian abbreviation for company – see chambers. I haven’t come across the CIA “company” nickname @1
Just saw Ross @5 – that seems a good explanation for the “MO” at 24a. I think of “mo'” as very modern “street” English but there it is in Chambers, surprisingly to me, listed as archaic! “Mo’ Better Blues, goodman Snipes, i’ faith”, as they used to say in Sir Spikeforth Lee’s famous magic lantern presentation…
I loved this. I had all of the unclued entries but couldn’t for the life of me work out what they had to do with TANNI GREY-THOMPSON until I spotted THOM’s an anagram of MOTH. A very clever puzzle with a wonderful PDM and I thought the use of PADDED, twice, was brilliant. I disagree about the puzzle being ‘contrived’ — all barred-grid puzzles are contrived to some extent and it’s amazing how much Lato makes use of the theme in his puzzles. I too had an L-shaped CHAIR for my entry. I wondered whether Lato was going to use GREASY SPOON somehow as whenever I glanced at that word in the grid I saw GREY-THOMPSON.
Wonderful puzzle
I don’t see how MARGERY comes from “Like climbing in to join woman”. (I can see MAR RY – join, but how does GE mean “like”?)
Followers of sport would have enjoyed this no doubt, but having led a sheltered life I have never heard of this woman and so I don’t think I would ever have got her.
Tony@12 – GE is e.g. (climbing)
Thanks, OPatrick. That did occur to me a while after posting. It would be all right if MARGERY were a down clue, then EG would be climbing, but here the letters are simply reversed. Also, does e.g. really mean like? Could you say “like” instead of “for example”? It’s a weak clue that doesn’t quite work, I think.
Oops – it is a down answer. I’m stupid. However, I still don’t like like for e.g.
Like is fine for eg. Chambers says ‘for example’ can mean ‘as an illustration’ and Chambers thesaurus gives ‘like’ as a synonym for eg. Some people loved this puzzle (like me)
Oasis are not Britpop. But they’re still rubbish.
Can we end the discussion now?
Oasis are like Britpop.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I enjoyed this, filled the grid, got the general idea, but then refused at the final fence. I know the name of only one paralympian, and a tribute to him seemed unlikely.
I like this type of puzzle and Lato’s puzzles in general though I did struggle with the endgame here I have to say
I am really surprised that some haven’t heard of Tanni Grey-Thompson, she has been in the news for some twenty years.
I am also surprised that some think Oasis weren’t Britpop. Here are the top ten ‘Britpop’ anthems according to a recent BBC Radio poll:
1. Common People by Pulp
2. Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve
3. Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis
4. Wonderwall by Oasis
5. Parklife by Blur
6. Animal Nitrate by Suede
7. Girls & Boys by Blur
8. Slight Return by The Bluetones
9. Disco 2000 by Pulp
10. Girl From Mars by Ash
Thanks to HG for the blog and to others for their comments.
Don’t really think the R under the A is a valid alternative for highlighting. Wouldn’t a racing chair viewed from the side show two wheels – the small front one and one of the two larger rear ones? IMO the ‘correct’ highlighting better approximates the streamlined shape.
Can’t agree about timeless puzzles either. Aren’t crosswords are by nature ephemeral, written for a modern audience rather than some hypothetical future solver? Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree there, HG.