Quite a US-centric Cyclops this fortnight – heaven help us when he gets his teeth into the playground spat at the end of the bromance between Ronald T Dump and Melon Usk…
There are two Trumps (one with the obligatory golf reference), a headless Vance, a Yank, a ‘Fed chief’, a ‘key Republican’, the ‘USA in turmoil’, a ‘president, despot’, some ‘fake news’ and an ‘American second-rate party’.
I guess that just reflects the state of the ‘news’ agenda recently…Ronald’s original intention was to ‘Make America Grate Again’, but with all his TACO-u-turns on tariffs he has everyone’s heads spinning – he is making America gyrate again!
Anyway, away from the whining orange (seventy) 8-year-old, we have a twisted Ed Balls at 22A DECATHLON, a dead parrot at 28A/1A EXIT POLL (my favourite, btw!), and a Rolling STONE cosying up to Blair at 7D. 2D has ‘Nigel’ and ‘moderate’ in the same sentence – surely an (oxy)moron? And a couple of yesterday’s Tories, Hunt and TUGENDHAT, pop their heads above the parapet.
No sign of Kemi, or Keir/Rachel/Angela, so the incumbents get off lightly this time. And easy on the smuttery, although there is a BUM, some LUREX and an ORGASM…ooo-errr…
The bottom row is portentous, with a day of RECKONING coming to us all at our EXIT…
On that sombre note, I will offer thanks to Cyclops for another entertaining solve, and I hope all is clear enough below:
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
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| 1A | POLL | See 28ac. (4)
see 28A |
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| 3A | OFF COURSE | Naturally, welcoming Fed chief is probably not Trump’s preferred situation (3,6)
OF_ COURSE (naturally) around (welcoming) F (first, or chief, letter of Fed) [Ronald T Dump, of course, prefers to be ON a golf course…] |
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| 9A | ISTANBUL | Bust ruptured with nail? Capital! (8)
anag, i.e. ruptured, of BUST + NAIL |
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| 10A | ACTION | Lawsuit makes e.g. Momentum f-off (6)
( |
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| 11A | PIECEMEAL | Patchy article on male “transitional” (9)
PIECE (article) + MEAL (anag, i.e. transitional, of MALE) |
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| 12A | REEF | Key Republican charge is repelled (4)
R (Republican) + EEF (fee, charge, repelled) [key as in island, cay] |
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| 13A | ANUBIS | God‘s book hijacked by USA in turmoil (6)
ANU_IS (anag, i.e. turmoil, of USA IN) around (hijacking) B (book) [Egyptian god] |
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| 15A | BARONET | Title: “Pub Reversed Net Zero” (7)
BAR (pub) + ONET (O, zero, NET, reversed from ‘net zero’) |
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| 17A | DECLAIM | Kinky medical spout (7)
anag, i.e. kinky, of MEDICAL |
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| 19A | DREDGE | Medic on the brink – look for a body! (6)
DR (doctor, medic) + EDGE (brink) [as in dredge a canal or river for a body] |
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| 20A | SPAT | Sex just started to get glib for Barney (4)
S (start of Sex) + PAT (glib, off pat) |
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| 22A | DECATHLON | Balls twisted on faulty latch – no contest (9)
DE (ED Balls, twisted!) + CATHLON (anag, i.e. faulty, of LATCH ON) |
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| 25A | ORGASM | Alternative fuel must start coming (6)
OR (alternative) + GAS (fuel) + M (start of Must) |
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| 26A | MONARCHY | Our nation‘s anchor – casually dumped in well (8)
M_Y (interjection, well I never!) around ONARCH (anag, i.e. casually, of ANCHOR) [our nation, the UK, still being a monarchy, last time I checked…] |
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| 27A | RECKONING | Bill‘s final judgement? (9)
double defn. – the arrival of the bill is a financial RECKONING; and the final judgement will be a day of RECKONING… |
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| 28A | EXIT (POLL) | & 1ac. Parrot’s gone to meet its maker – early indication of who’ll get in? (4,4)
punning double defn.(?) – a theatrical direction for a parrot (Polly, Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage) to die on stage might be EXIT POLL; and an EXIT POLL is an early indication after an election of who might get in |
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| Down | ||||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
||
| 1D | POSTPONED | President, despot – no balls-up put off (9)
P (president) + OSTPONED (anag, i.e. balls-up, of DESPOT NO) |
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| 2D | LEASE | Let Nigel finally moderate (5)
L (nigeL, finally) + EASE (moderate) |
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| 4D | FALSE | Fake news ending, “contained in strong beer” (5)
F (music, forte, strong) + AL_E (beer) around (containing) S (ending of newS) |
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| 5D | CRAWLER | OBN candidate, babe who wants to go places? (7)
another punning double defn! – someone fishing for an OBN – Order of the Brown Nose, to the Eye – might be a CRAWLER; and a babe, or baby, wanting to go places pre-toddling would have to be a CRAWLER! |
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| 6D | UTTERANCE | Out-and-out Trump subordinate heading off comment (9)
UTTER (out-and-out) + ( |
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| 7D | STONE | Jagger‘s cosying up to Blair? (5)
S (‘s, contracted is after Jagger) + TONE (someone acquainted with, or cosied up with, Tony Blair might call him ‘Tone’!) |
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| 8D | OBSESS | Society in old Elizabeth I’s rule (6)
O (old) + B_ESS (diminutive of Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess) around S (society) [If something obsesses you then it might rule your mind?] |
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| 14D | BACKTRACK | Support Hunt – make a U-turn (9)
BACK (support) + TRACK (hunt) |
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| 15D | BUM | Stuck up character after bishop’s seat (3)
B (bishop) + UM (mu, Greek character, stuck up) |
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| 16D | TUGENDHAT | Yank and the flustered Tory leadership contender (9)
TUG (yank) + ENDHAT (anag, i.e. flustered, of AND THE) [Tom Tugendhat, ran against Kemi B for the Tory party leadership] |
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| 18D | ABDOMEN | American second-rate party guys from which shit originates (7)
A (American) + B (second rate, B-list) + DO (party) + MEN (guys) |
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| 19D | DATING | Courting lawyer takes money, quite a bit of money (6)
DA (District Attorney, lawyer) + TIN (money) + G (grand, £1000, quite a bit of money) |
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| 21D | PURGE | Pressure put on press – Russian leader’s action? (5)
P (pressure) + URGE (press) |
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| 23D | CUMIN | Herb‘s about, er, to get elected (5)
C (circa, about) + UM (hesitation, er) + IN (elected) |
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| 24D | LUREX | Tempt with a kiss and glam wear? (5)
LURE (tempt) + X (representation of a kiss, in a txt, or at the end of an e-mail, or even at the end of a hand-written letter?!) |
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Thanks mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. For some reason I didn’t get on with this particular puzzle. A couple went in on first pass then nothing for ages. Finally got there after a few pennies dropped. Lurex? I always thought it a horrible word, worse still, it conjures up images of a certain Mr Glitter, yeugh!
Thanks for a great blog , yes very US this time . I hope people are using TACO all the time over there .
STONE is very neat and I liked BUM for the stuck-up character . TUGENDHAT a very good construction , I needed the grid to spell it , hard to know where the H goes .
ISTANBUL not been the capital for over 100 years .
I have a lot of Mary Quant that has been passed on to me , a fair bit of LUREX but not Gary Glitter style .
I was stuck on 12A, mainly because a REEF is not the same as a KEY! I guess you do find them in the same place, but with the REEF surrounding or adjacent to the KEY. Unusually poor wordcraft for Cyclops IMHO.
I had missed the TACO tag for his Orangeness, possibly because I don’t read the FT much, well at all really as I don’t have that kind of money, so thanks for that I’m sure I’ll find a use for it.
I did notice that Ankara wasn’t the answer, and that reef=key was dodgy but didn’t worry about them, BUM was plenty of compensation.
I struggled a bit on 8d Obsess, but after all Good Queen Bess wasn’t hard to find so I BIFD it, thanks for the parsing mc_rapper67 and thanks to Cyclops for the puzzle.
Obsess, just couldn’t get it.
Exit Poll definitely the best clue
Didn’t finish this one till tonight, yet I finished 806 in a day! Probably put about the last quarter or third of the answers in in the past three days. Just wasn’t in the right headspace for some of the clues in this.
I do have to say that I only got 23D once I had all crossers, and I have afforded myself a goog grumble at CUMIN being referred to as a [h]erb…
Other than that, I couldn’t parse PAT with the clue and had to look it up after being sure it must be SPAT, I had to check the Wikipedia disambiguation page for OBN to crawl slowly towards getting CRAWLER in, spent a lot of time ascertaining that REEF was okay for “key” (I was satisfied enough after some Googling, though I see others aren’t too happy), was a bit bemused by TONE for Blair, and when “Bess” finally popped into my head for Liz I (second-to-last answer I put in) I still absolutely couldn’t grok OBSESS for “rule” without making the same stretch as mc_rapper67. I had already dismissed OBSESS as a candidate several times by that point.
Didn’t catch the Istanbul/Ankara thing either, though I recall a similar issue with a Cyclops clue recently that threw me pretty much exactly the same way — “occupied territory” for SINAI in 803. I don’t think there’s any problem with saying “previously” or “ex-” in a clue in these situations, especially given Cyclops’s propensity for using “ex-PM”.
Only finished it yesterday – largely due to getting enactment rather than reckoning. And I think that actually parses better and hit the one crosser that I had (n).