Thanks Vulcan for the puzzle – my favourites were 10ac, 17ac, 20ac, and 7dn.
GIG-LAMPS was a new word to me and needed a check
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | FISHTAIL |
What mermaid has to swing from side to side? (8)
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definition: fishtail describes the back end of a car swerving or skiidding from side to side a mermaid has a FISH TAIL |
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| 9 | RANSOM |
Demand to be released (6)
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cryptic definition – the amount demanded in exchange for release, rather than a request for the release itself |
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| 10 | RARE |
Bloody unusual choice (4)
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triple definition: rare/bloody steak; unusual; or 'choice' as in premium, special |
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| 11 | REMARKABLE |
On appeal, exam papers may be extraordinary (10)
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exam papers that are appealed for a re-mark may be described as re-mark-able |
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| 12 | STUMPS |
Temperature in reservoirs is baffling (6)
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T (Temperature) in SUMPS="reservoirs" an oil sump is a reservoir for oil in a combustion engine |
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| 14 | GIG-LAMPS |
Soldier uses upmarket tent, having old-fashioned specs (3-5)
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definition: an old-fashioned slang term for glasses / spectacles GI (Soldier) + GLAMPS="uses upmarket tent" 'glamps' is from 'glamping' or 'glamorous camping' |
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| 15 | FRETSAW |
One with lots of teeth worries a wife (7)
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definition refers to the teeth that make up a sawblade FRETS="worries" + A + W (wife) |
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| 17 | HELIPAD |
Bring chopper down here, smashing part of mouth into skull (7)
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in definition, "chopper" meaning helicopter LIP="part of mouth", in HEAD="skull" |
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| 20 | GREEN TEA |
A drink where golfer finishes — and starts, we’re told (5,3)
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[the putting] GREEN="where golfer finishes"; plus TEA which sounds like (we're told) 'tee'=where golfer "starts" |
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| 22 | OINKED |
Sounded like a pig has nothing put in pen (6)
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O=zero="nothing" + INKED="put [wrote] in pen" |
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| 23 | ON THE BENCH |
Where reserve judge sits? (2,3,5)
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a sort of double definition: a reserve in e.g. football sits ON THE BENCH; and ON THE BENCH means to be appointed as a judge |
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| 24 | BLOW |
Go like the wind? (4)
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double definition, or maybe cryptic definition to BLOW can mean 'leave'/'depart'="Go" |
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| 25 | SEARED |
Branded waterway’s name as being in wrong order (6)
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RED SEA="waterway", with the two parts of its name put in the other order |
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| 26 | NORMANDY |
Historic duchy, as standard, has a Duke (8)
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NORM="standard" + ANDY=Prince Andrew, Duke of York |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PILASTER |
Column‘s parts lie in ruins (8)
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definition: a square column projecting from a wall anagram/"in ruins" of (parts lie)* |
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| 2 | THEE |
Article on Spain for you once (4)
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THE=definite "Article" + E (España, "Spain") |
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| 3 | BAIRNS |
Vetoes keeping Irish children in Scotland (6)
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definition: Scots word for children BANS="Vetoes", around IR (Irish) |
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| 4 | PLUMAGE |
Wisp of smoke hiding silver feathers (7)
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PLUME="Wisp of smoke", around AG (chemical symbol for "silver") |
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| 5 | PROROGUE |
Stop meeting professional villain (8)
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definition: to postpone or discontinue meetings PRO (professional) + ROGUE="villain" |
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| 6 | ON VACATION |
Taking a break when empty? (2,8)
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ON VACATION could also be read as 'when vacated'="when empty" |
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| 7 | DOLLOP |
Helping toy to work (6)
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definition: "Helping" as a noun e.g. 'a helping of food' DOLL="toy" + OP (opus, "work") |
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| 13 | MATTERHORN |
Mountain‘s substance: keratin (10)
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MATTER="substance" + HORN (as the name of a material)="keratin" |
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| 16 | ANTIBODY |
As defence against infection, do any bit ordered (8)
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anagram/"ordered" of (do any bit)* |
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| 18 | ADENOIDS |
Did a nose so affected make breathing awkward? (8)
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adenoids are glands in the nasal cavity that can affect breathing anagram/"affected" of (Did a nose)* |
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| 19 | DAWNING |
Daughter needs sunshade at start of day (7)
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D (Daughter) + AWNING="sunshade" |
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| 21 | RENDER |
Hand over plaster covering (6)
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double definition: =give, hand over, e.g. 'render unto Caesar'; or a coat of plaster on the external walls of a house |
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| 22 | OTHERS |
Testament of woman, not us (6)
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OT (Old Testament) + HERS="of woman" |
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| 24 | BRAE |
Remarkably bare Scottish hillside (4)
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definition: Scots word for a hill-slope anagram/"Remarkably" of (bare)* |
Very gentle start to the week, but nicely done. My favourite clue, GIG LAMPS, was new and FRETSAW raised a smile. SEARED was also neat.
Ta Vulcan & manehi.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi
I had never heard of GIG LAMPS either, but the clue was straightforward enough.
RED SEA didn’t immediately spring to mind as a “Waterway”. I liked HELIPAD.
GIG LAMPS for a kid with spectacles is what Rudyard Kipling was called at school: how many children now know what a gig is, let alone what its lamps look like? Anyway, Vulcan tells us clearly enough that it’s old.
A tad more challenging than a normal Monday offering from Vulcan; but still fairly straightforward, with the exception of GIG LAMPS (I know I’m not alone…). Some fine clues. I especially liked NORMANDY, DOLLOP and SEARED. With thanks to Vulcan and manehi.
Nice to see ON VACATION being promoted to definition after so long being the wordplay. FRETSAW was my favourite. I was going to post earlier, but I felt AlanC should go first, as usual.
I seem to remember GIG LAMPS from 1920s/30s detective stories as well. I didn’t think of the duke, although I got the Duchy. I wished I had left 17ac until after breakfast. But thanks to both, anyway.
Most enjoyable. Never heard of GIG-LAMPS (and nor had my dictionary). I liked REMARKABLE.
I liked HELIPAD which I only got by building it from the parts, GIG-LAMPS – and I thought Kipling when I solved it too, but probably from Stalky & Co, based on his schooldays (he was Beetle), and FRETSAW.
Thank you to manehi and Vulcan.
Thanks manehi.
Did nobody else try “turn” for 24a?
My late mother always used to call glasses “gigs”, and finally I know why.
Liked this, but took an inordinate amount of time to see RARE at the very last. Couldn’t parse SEARED, wasn’t at all sure about Andy for the disgraced Duke at 26 ac, but apart from that another cricketing term that wasn’t in this case anything to do with the clue at 12ac…and I do like the word DOLLOP for sounding rather like what it is – shan’t even attempt to spell the word that describes this kind of thing….
Old specs… pince-nez? lorgnette? monocle? None of the above, oh well. Nice Monday, ta V and m.
…looked it up…onomatopoeia…
Thanks, Vulcan and manehi!
BLOW
Chambers: ‘to depart, esp hurriedly’
Go like the wind?
The whole clue in the above sense and in the usual
sense of wind movement can be= BLOW.
Fun crossword with a few challenges. My favourite was OINKED because I spent so long trying to parse it (and I happen to have a couple of pet kunekune). Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
Thanks Vulcan; I liked this one and was glad I didn’t have to look up anything. Even though I was also unfamiliar with GIG-LAMPS at 14a that was all it could be. A big tick for the triple definition at 10a RARE. While I also found the clue for 17a HELIPAD a bit gruesome, it was a clever clue. Thanks to manehi for the blog as well.
Didn’t know gig-lamps but knew the vehicle gig and glamping and specs so got the picture. In my youth thick spectacles were called coke bottles.
me@14
On second thoughts, it is a cryptic def. Not a DD or an &lit.
@18
I was referring to BLOW.
Are we all supposed to be on familiar first-name terms with the disgraced Duke of York? ‘A duke’ for ANDY was too much of a stretch for me, though having NORM for ‘standard’ made the answer completely obvious. And ‘waterway’ for RED SEA had me stumped for quite a time, not to mention the weird construction: what is the function of ‘as’ in this clue?
Otherwise a fairly straighforward start to the week.
Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.
FISHTAIL
Though this is used as a verb as well as a noun, I think in today’s clue
it works as a verb better.
Even the ‘to’ now left out as a link word could be used up this way.
Sheffield hatter@20
SEARED
The ‘as’ doesn’t seem to have any function in the wordplay.
Without the ‘as’ the surface might get a bit rough. Can’t think
of any other reason why it’s there.
ronald @13: my favourite word from English ´O’ Level.
SH @20: I also wondered about ‘name as’ and thought it might be an anagram (in the wrong order) but the only name I could come up with was REED + AS.
kva and sheffield hatter
Seared maybe anagram of (river) Rede and as. The Rede is a Northumberland river
Liked as Petert@5: 6d – ON VACATION – “Taking a break when empty?” – a ubiquitous piece of wordplay, being clued with its real meaning, and what it indicates.
25a – SEARED – The RED SEA is certainly a “waterway” – remember the Ever Given?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/how-a-container-ship-blocked-the-suez-canal-visual-guide
Thanks for the blog, I thought this was just right for a Monday puzzle, FISHTAIL my favourite, I see Mermaids most mornings.
The second leader article in The Guardian today is about the crossowrd.
Stuck for ages in the NE corner trying to force an anagram from exam papers for 11ac. Thanks to Vulcan and manehi.
A gentle start to the week, for which thanks Vulcan. I didn’t parse NORMANDY although the answer was obvious – kept thinking of ‘normalcy’ and how to substitute letters. NHO GIGLAMPS, but got glamps from the clue and then thought GI was the most likely of the two letter ‘soldier’ answers e.g. OR, RE, (any others?). PROROGUE brought back unpleasant memories of Rees-Mogg misleading HM The Queen. Thanks Manehi for the clear explanations in your blog.
AlanC back at Number 1 yet again and back on the scoreboard , it is now 29-1 .
Be very careful, further offences will lead to negative points.
As well as a performance, the word gig means a specific type of rowing boat here in the South West of England. I doubt they have lamps but clearly the carriage would have done.
Spectacles were often called bins, for binoculars, in my youth.
Roz @30: blinding me with mathematical functions again 🙂 Cliveinfrance @25: I see we were thinking along the same lines but not really convincing, don’t you agree?
Lovely Monday puzzle, thanks to Vulcan and manehi.
My late mother, whose conversations inventively combined Black Country dialect with expressions gleaned from a voracious reading habit, often referred to spectacles as “gig lamps”.
Failed to solve 25ac SEARED.
I could not parse 21d or 26ac apart from NORM.
New for me: GIG-LAMPS.
Thanks, both.
…from @26:
Just before blocking one of the world’s busiest waterways where 10 percent of world trade flows, the unfortunate Ever Given sailed an even more unfortunate course.
As usual with Vulcan I struggled on a couple of the cryptic defs (didn’t find RANSOM or BLOW especially cryptic, which makes them trickier!) – and had to guess on the arrangement of the non-crossers for PILASTER, although it did seem the most plausible. Is Prince Andrew commonly referred to as Andy?
Thanks both.
[AlanC I have been informed that KPR only avoided relegation last time because other teams were given negative points . ]
[Roz, not quite accurate but when the other not so Supa hoops (Reading) lost points, it gave us that last push].
[ Do you lose points for cancelling games? Sprog3 was very annoyed, he could not go to watch Burnley because the team they were playing use someone’s back garden to play in and the grass had not been cut or something like that ]
Roz@27… many thanks for that link. I rather like the New York Times’ dismissive comment in 1924, crossword solving in its opinion being ” an utterly futile finding of words”…
Yes Ronald it took them a while to relent.
The bit about men dominating competitive solving I assume refers to the Times. Does The Guardian not realise that most women would not dirty their hands on such a disgraceful rag ?
Aha – a Monday Vulcan – but not one which would have taxed Mr Spock!
Plenty to like here, FRETSAW, SEARED, RARE, HELIPAD worth upticks. For HELIPAD, the surface does look a bit gory though! Pretty obvious that we need a different sort of ‘chopper’.
Got stuck on GIG-LAMPS – never heard of the phrase, I thought the old-fashioned sort were pince-nez (as you see on old photos). And the parsing wasn’t straightforward either, never heard of ‘glamping’ (I presume the sort of tent we used to go camping with wouldn’t qualify…). So that was a write-in with a bit of guesswork – which turned out to be right.
I also wasn’t too happy about BLOW = ‘go’ but the write-in was obvious – and manehi has explained.
Thanks to Vulcan and Manehi.
Gig-lamps seems similar to the US term “coke-bottle glasses”–but the latter usually meant particular thick lenses.
Oh and also, OINKED. When I wrote that in I couldn’t help chuckling at the old joke:
“What’s the treatment for Swine Flu?” “OINKMENT!”
Must have graced a myriad of Christmas crackers ever since. I can hear you all groaning already…
[Roz @39: Sheffield Hatter’s yer man for this one].
[ AlanC @45 shhhh . ]
Enjoyable. Favourites were FRETSAW, ON THE BENCH, GREEN TEA and the very marvellous DOLLOP. Thanks Vulcan and Manehi for the blog.
That was a gentle crossword for the Cryptic. I did it on a train going through the Swiss Alps, so smiled at the MATTERHORN
Laccaria@42: Glamping is done in a permanently pitched tent, fitted out inside like a hotel room. As it is difficult to move a tent with a double bed and wardrobe inside, it tends to get rather muddy outside in wet weather. Glampers are not the hardy souls that ordinary campers tend to be either and are much given to complaining.
Many thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle and manehi for the blog. For 26 across I biffed in NORMANDY without thinking about the last four letters. But sheffield hatter @20 and Amoeba @36: I recall, many moons ago, that the current DoY was referred to as ‘randy Andy’. Not funny then, most certainly not funny now.
Amoeba @36 the duke of york was known in certain sections of the press as “randy andy” during his koo stark period
For anyone still unconvinced by GO/BLOW I present The Clash’s “Should I stay or should I GO“;
“Come on and let me know (Me tienes que decir)
Should I cool it or should I blow? (Me debo ir o quedarme?)”
Cheers V&M
Readers of The Eagle in the fifties might remember a bespectacled character in the P.C.49 strip nicknamed Giglamps.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi! A few new to me terms (gig lamps, prorogue) but the wordplay got me there. DOLLOP and HELIPAD were favorites for me.
Roz@41
I don’t know if the late Nutmeg ever dirtied her hands on The Times but she used to set crosswords for it. In fact of the 21 setters whose first names are given at the front of my book of 2018 puzzles she was the only female,
It’s not often that I need help parsing a Vulcan puzzle, so thanks for the explanation of GIG LAMPS and SEARED (which I really should have spotted). Thanks also to Vulcan for the slightly tougher challenge this week.