A mix of tricks in the clueing made this difficult to parse in a number of places. My favourites were 21ac, 22dn, and 23dn. Thanks to Kite for the puzzle
| ACROSS | ||
| 1, 5 | SCIENCE FICTION |
Type of novel ice, not scenic if cracked (7,7)
|
| anagram/”cracked” of (ice not scenic if)* | ||
| 5 | SCIENCE FICTION |
See 1
|
| 9 | REEVE |
Ray meeting first lady magistrate (5)
|
| RE + EVE [in the Garden of Eden]=”first lady”
‘ray’ is an alternative spelling of ‘re’ the musical note as in do-re-mi |
||
| 10 | ITINERANT |
Vagrant makes one point before shouting (9)
|
| I=”one” + TINE=”point” + RANT=”shouting” | ||
| 11 | OVERSPEND |
Concluded special finish to exhaust (9)
|
| definition: ‘overspend’ came mean to exhaust oneself by spending
OVER=finished=”Concluded” + SP (special) + END=”finish” |
||
| 12 | PAYER |
The old boring mean settler (5)
|
| for the definition, to ‘settle’ a bill is to pay
YE=and old way to say ‘the’=”The old”, boring into PAR=average=”mean” |
||
| 13 | SMASH |
Ruins potatoes? (5)
|
| “Ruins” is split ‘Ruin’ + ‘s’
definition is just ‘Ruin’ then ‘s’ + MASH (potatoes) gives S+MASH |
||
| 15 | MASTERFUL |
Expert ship’s captain mostly occupied (9)
|
| MASTER=”ship’s captain” + FUL-[L]=”occupied”, mostly | ||
| 18 | ANTIPASTO |
Liking the present, love? It’s a starter (9)
|
| to be ANTI (against) the PAST could mean “Liking the present”; plus O=zero=”love” in tennis scores | ||
| 19 | SIREN |
Alarm son accompanying trim Papas’ woman (5)
|
| S (son) + IREN-[e] (reference to Irene Papas the Greek actress, ‘trim’ indicating a shortening) | ||
| 21 | TUTOR |
Coach tyres unable to operate reliably at the beginning (5)
|
| beginning letters from T-[yres] U-[nable] T-[o] O-[perate] R-[eliably] | ||
| 23 | TARANTISM |
Lacking love, Chinese philosophy embraces yelling and uncontrolled dancing (9)
|
| definition: a hysteric compulsion to dance
TA-[o]-ISM=”Chinese philosophy”, minus O=zero=”love” in tennis; and around RANT=”yelling” |
||
| 25 | MARACAIBO |
Instrument associated with West African city and lake (9)
|
| definition: the name of a city and a lake in Venezuela
MARACA=”Instrument” + IBO=a member of the Ibo people in Nigeria=”West African” |
||
| 26 | DODGE |
Move out of the way of car (5)
|
| double definition, the second definition refers to Dodge as a US brand of car | ||
| 27, 28 | THERMAL SPRINGS |
Sounds right wearing underwear at first in hot baths (7,7)
|
| R (right) inside/wearing PINGS=”Sounds”; with THERMALS=”underwear” placed first | ||
| 28 | THERMAL SPRINGS |
See 27
|
| DOWN | ||
| 1, 18 | SERIOUS ATTEMPT |
Determined effort to meet upstairs for massage (7,7)
|
| anagram/”for massage” of: (to meet upstairs)* | ||
| 2 | INELEGANT |
Unsophisticated member enthralled by trendy European worker (9)
|
| LEG=”member” inside IN=”trendy” + E (European) + ANT=”worker” | ||
| 3 | NEEDS |
Press’s outspoken demands (5)
|
| sounds like (“outspoken”): ‘kneads’=”Press’s” | ||
| 4 | EPIDERMIS |
Skin rash oddly deep, I’m starting to itch, unfortunately (9)
|
| anagram/”unfortunately” of (rs deep I’m i)*, with rs from odd letters of rash, and the last i from the start of i–tch | ||
| 5 | FRIED |
Type of food (French) that is delicious starter (5)
|
| FR (French) + IE (id est, Latin for “that is”) + start of D-[elicious] | ||
| 6 | CHEAPNESS |
Guy with cape swallowing drug that 12 might like (9)
|
| definition: a PAYER (12ac) might like things to be cheaper
CHAP=”Guy” + NESS=headland=”cape”; around E (ecstasy, “drug”) |
||
| 7 | ITALY |
I can show one score, not 150 (5)
|
| definition: I for Italy, for example in the context of International Vehicle Registrations
I=”one” + TALLY=”score”, minus ‘one L’ i.e. minus ‘one fifty’ as L=fifty in Roman numerals… …and then “150” is to be read as ‘one-fifty’ |
||
| 8, 20 | NATURAL NUMBERS |
Maybe Cocaine’s indicative of normal songs (7,7)
|
| I think perhaps “8, 20 Maybe” is a definition, using the clue numbers as examples of natural (i.e. whole) numbers?
Cocaine could be a ‘natural numb-er’, an anaesthetic that makes one feel numb and, NATURAL=”normal” + NUMBERS=”songs” |
||
| 14 | HYPERICUM |
Overexcited setter to noisily approach flowering plant (9)
|
| HYPER=”Overexcited” + I (the setter of this puzzle) + CUM which sounds (noisily) like ‘come’=”approach” | ||
| 16 | SHOWROOMS |
Places that display musical boards? (9)
|
| SHOW=”musical” + ROOMS=”boards” (as in lodgings) | ||
| 17 | FORBIDDEN |
In favour of ex-president (Democrat), blocked and debarred (9)
|
| FOR=”In favour of” + BIDEN (Joe Biden, former US president), with D (Democrat) blocking inside | ||
| 18 | SERIOUS ATTEMPT |
See 1
|
| 20 | NATURAL NUMBERS |
See 8
|
| 22 | TERSE |
Some barristers examine brief (5)
|
| hidden in (“Some” of): [barris]-TERS E-[xamine] | ||
| 23 | TRIAL |
Test introduction of tandoori bread in the Middle East (5)
|
| first letter/introduction of T-[andoori]; plus RIAL=Iranian currency=bread (slang for money) in the Middle East | ||
| 24 | NADIR |
Bottom part of horrid android’s turned up (5)
|
| hidden in (part of): [hor]-RID AN-[droid], reversed/”turned up” |
This turned out to be much better than I originally thought after some head scratches along the way. I eventually twigged that SMASH was the end of ruins plus mash but I kept thinking of the hysterical aliens in the advert. ITALY was also nicely misleading with the 150 trick, which also took a while. I liked the four perimeter clues and TARANTISM. My loi was MARACAIBO after a lot of TRIAL and error. Bit of a grind but satisfying in the end.
Ta Kite & manehi.
Didn’t know the flowering plant, and RE=Ray was new to me. Some of the parsings (SMASH) were odd, but I liked ITALY once I spotted the trick.
I’ve been to MARACAIBO. The ‘lake’ is open to the sea, and so not I suppose really a lake, though it is called that.
Thanks for parsing SMASH – not a device I can recall seeing before, and not one I particularly want to see again. I liked the double use of 8,20 as NATURAL NUMBERS though, so maybe I’m a bit inconsistent in my views. Thanks to blogger and setter.
Re 13: SMASH was a 1970s brand of dried mashed potato which some might argue ruined potatoes.
After being partially beaten up by IO (AKA Enigmatist) in yesterday’s FT, I was slightly down on confidence and after a good start here, I began to doubt myself.
I didn’t know the Ibo people (who I had actually heard of) or Irene Papas (who I hadn’t) but those two became apparent. I fully parsed everything else.
I liked the ITALY clue, which was LOI, and was pleased to get TARANTISM from the clue alone.
Other likes include NATURAL NUMBERS, SMASH and FORBIDDEN.
Thanks Kite and manehi.
(I also remember the manic metal aliens and the awful white substance my primary school served up – Smash not COCAINE.)
MavisGrind@4 – I’m old enough to remember that white mush that resulted from mixing powder with water and/or milk, but as I recall it didn’t really matter if you were using SMASH, flour or decorator’s plaster: the taste and consistency was pretty well the same for all. Thankfully my Mum and Dad were happy to ‘peel them with their metal knives and smash them all to bits’, and they didn’t care how much that made the little tin aliens laugh at them.
I used to parboil sliced leeks and then add Smash to produce “leeks Lucullus” following a recipe in Katherine Whitehorn’s Cooking in a Bedsitter.
Quite enjoyable. Three NHOs and three “Huh?”s — well within the legal limits.
The wordplay for SMASH defeated me.
I thought this was enjoyable and mostly straightforward but with some tough ones that slowed me down towards the end. I’m hopeless with plants and flowers, so I needed all the crossers and a dictionary for HYPERICUM. I managed to spot MARACA but it was down to Google for the rest of the answer which was my LOI. Thanks to Manehi and Kite.
Keen to comment in favour of Smash. Yes it was muck. But Good Lord it was an immaculate vehicle for butter and grated cheese as a child.
As you were…
I liked some of these (ANTI-PAST-O and the Ibo maracas were fun) but many others were too much like hard work – ITALY was just too many tricks in one clue, Ray=RE was a bit contrived, and as for working out the fodder for EPIDERMIS… I’m afraid I gave up and revealed TARANTISM, which turns out to be a word with interesting associations: it used to be thought that strenuous dancing was a cure for the bite of the tarantula – so you danced the tarantella. I’d guess TARANTISM comes from similar roots.
I’m sure somebody will post a link to the SMASH Martians before long.
Never heard of Smash or Irene Papas. I have heard of Ibo and much good it did me.
“Ye” has never been a form of “the.” If i don’t say it somebody else will — “the” used to be spelled with a letter no longer in the English alphabet called a thorn that looks slightly like a y and is pronounced like “th”. The word “the” was pronounced in olden times just the way we pronounce it today.
What’s with the metal beings? Love to see a link.
“”Room and board” mean two separate things — a place to sleep and things to eat. They aren’t the same.
Quibbles over, thanks to Kite and manehi.
Here you go Gladys and Valentine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPoycMLEDC0
I took Papa to be referring to Ernest Hemingway who had a famous friend known simply as Irene.
Yes I found this was a notch up in difficulty on this week’s three previous puzzles. I’ll be adding TARANTISM, MARACAIBO and HYPERICUM to my lexicon. A dnf, but enjoyed the the struggle today…
…and does the device that produced SMASH have a name, in the fashion of terms such as Lift and Separate…?
A bit of a mix of doable and difficult. I needed help parsing some (e.g. italy; I noticed the tally for score, but did not see how to subtract cl for 150… and I tried to explain cheap in 6d by an anagram of cape with a H for heroine inside, but couldn’t parse the ness). Some NHOs (tarantism, the ibo people). Liked antipasto. Thanks, Kite and manehi
Anybody else wonder what sMama or sCass had to do with alarms?
I would echoDutchGirl #17 – a mix of doable and difficult, though some lovely clues along the way. Slightly more challenging than the rest of the week Good fun
Thanks Kite and Manehi
I could not parse 10ac apart from RANT=shouting, 27/28ac, and I wondered about 5d FRIED = type of food. It makes sense but is not really a word I would use on its own to describe a type of food, ditto boiled, poached, roasted, stir-fried etc.
New for me : TARANTISM, MARACAIBO, HYPERICUM.
My favourite was ANTIPASTO which made me smile. Interesting that we had RANT twice, as “shouting” in 10a and as “yelling” in 23a. That’s not a complaint — I quite like a bit of this sort of repetition.
Valentine @12: what you say about the letter thorn is of course quite true, but, as I understand it, when moveable type came along the letter Y was quite often substituted for it, so “ye” could be said to be “the” in that sense. In any case we need it to be for that classic clue by Crucible, “He wrote the Ancient Mariner (6)” 🙂 .
Thanks to Kite and manehi.
Thanks Lite and manehi
Not particularly enjoyable. I didn’t get past the dried potato for SMASH, and am not keen on the trick.
NHO Irene Papas, so that was unparsed too.
150 for “one L” in ITALY was a clever idea.
Ray is only an alternative spelling for the note re in that appalling song from The sound of music.!
Hypericums are “St. John’s Worts”. This is quite a common wildflower in Britain.
I still don’t fully understand 8,20 (and to the extent that I do, I don’t like the ‘maybe’ device). What is ‘indicative’ doing in the clue? And for that matter, cocaine as a definition does not seem to work: far from making one ‘numb’, it is a stimulant associated with irrational euphoria.
I see that the flat-out incorrect (let’s not beat around the bush) YE has been addressed, so I will just add one historical footnote. The thorn character (þ) was already being displaced by the digraph ‘th’ in words such as the, then, and that by the 14th C. The death knell was the rise of movable type: British typesetters got their lead primarily from the continent where þ was not in use, so they began substituting Y, which resembled another style of writing þ. This was relatively short-lived, with th quickly becoming universal, but lasted long enough to spawn a thousand Ye Olde Tea Shoppes. In particular the first (but not subsequent) printing of the KJV used ye in a few places.
Anyway, NHO of the flower (as usual), Irene Papas (just me, perhaps?), neither Ibo nor Maracaibo, nor reeve.
Jacob @22. Cocaine is a powerful surface anaesthetic. Apparently, it is still used for this purpose in (crossword staple) ENT departments.
Smash was a bad clue
Steve The Pirate @14 I like your Hemingway connection better than the Greek actor, although unfortunately it conflicts with the punctuation.
Thanks for the great blog by Manehi and for all the comments. Yes, it might be wrong but ‘ye’ does substitute for ‘the’ popularly in Ye Olde Tea Shoppes etc as above. The parsing for NATURAL NUMBERS was supposed to be: definition, Cocaine maybe, giving NATURAL NUMBER (see Martin @23) with ‘S, and NATURAL being normal with NUMBERS being songs.
Jacob@22: The only time I ‘ve had cocaine up my snout was for a minor operation to remove polyps, and it did indeed make it numb.
Martin @23 Thank you for that info. I suppose that makes it technically correct, but such a narrow usage and so much in opposition to the much more commonly known effects, I still can’t view it as a good clue I’m afraid.
Definitely a step up from the last few days. Enjoyed some bits, a few bits I found quite obscure. Was convinced that somehow I needed to remove CL from something for 150 until all the crossers put me out of misery. TARANTISM was probably my favourite overall, with 8d/20d a LOL moment. Thanks manehi for explaining stuff like the Ibo, and Kite for the puzzle.
Comment #30
Does anyone else think that Kite missed a trick with 17d? They could have had something like “two ex-presidents with one democrat debased and debarred”?
And, no, I’ve never heard of Ms Papas either.
Very tough. I laboured to the finish with help from word solvers but didn’t really enjoy it. I class this dnf.
Nho TARANTISM but realised it must be related to the dance tarantella. Also nho MARACAIBO though I did remember the Ibo from the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s.
Couldn’t parse PAYER, SMASH, THERMAL SPRINGS, EPIDERMIS or ITALY.
I never knew NATURAL NUMBERS were a thing but had to be right.
Favourite FORBIDDEN.
I’m afraid this has turned into a bit of a whinge! My problem.
Anyway thanks to Kite and manehi.
Thanks Kite. This was on the tough side for me and I failed to parse a number of clues. I revealed the nho HYPERICUM and others were just good guesses. IMO SMASH was unfair. I still thought my effort was worthwhile, however, because I was entertained by clues like ITINERANT (I noticed that RANT appeared twice in the puzzle), ANTIPASTO, DODGE, SERIOUS ATTEMPT, NATURAL NUMBERS, TERSE, and TRIAL. Thanks manehi for a much needed blog.
Good stuff from Kite. SMASH was my first thought but it took a long time for penny to drop and for me to put it in. Didn’t have a clue for ITALY where I just went through all my I abbreviations.
MARACAIBO I fell backwards into when not being able to choose about whether the clue needed MARACA or CAIRO before it jumped out.
Thanks Kite and Manehi
Thoroughly entertaining, thanks Kite and manehi! TARANTISM, NHO to me, was a rewarding leap of faith in the setter. SMASH is infuriatingly simple once you see it, no?
I made a SERIOUS ATTEMPT, but the bottom left-hand corner beat me easily.
Though I could almost hear Reggie Perrin on his morning commute, muttering unhappily to the smug chap in his railway carriage who’d just finished the Times crossword.
“I’m afraid I don’t actually know any lakes in northwestern Venezuela.”
Thanks to Kite for the challenge, and to manehi for the very helpful blog.
One of my best friends at university was Ibo, this at the time of the Biafran war. It seems that the current usage is Igbo, as used by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Normal = natural
Songs = numbers
Cocaine is natural and it numbs.
Dewey @38. Yes, that’s all I thought it was. Pretty straightforward.
Thanks for the blog , very neat set of clues with some imaginative ideas .
Dewey and Martin , I do agree but slight issue with the S . Cocaine= Natural number but then an S added to each , not a very natural definition , the wordplay is fine .
Opiates would work better but I do not know of a song called opiates , unlike Cocaine .
HYPERICUM Rose of Sharon is a brilliant shrub , flowers all summer , cut back hard in early spring . Half an hour of work per year , my sort of plant .
Roz@40: my garden has a hedge of the slightly taller Hypericum “Hidcote” – I agree, easy, hardy and beautiful.
I’m old enough to remember being given cocaine at the dentist: my problem with that clue was that I couldn’t remember which were the NATURAL NUMBERS.
[ Yes Gladys and they grow offshoots underground at each side , dig them out for a new plant with good roots , The sprogs now have two in each of their gardens . Your hedge must look wonderful and one cut per year . ]
The NATURAL NUMBERS are just the positive integers and sometimes zero . Every clue is a natural number so I am not buying the 8/20 idea .
Ros#40, If you read it as “8,20 maybe” that is one part of the cluing, then it fits the answer natural numbers. That can;t be applied to other clues as the maybe is an indicator. Cocaine being the second and together they are natural numberS (plural). Alternatively cocaine belongs to the class of natural numberS.
Perhaps you should take it up with the setter @26 .
ronald@16: I call the device in 13a “Rewrite the clue”, because that’s what you have to do (and is why I don’t like it).
[When I had a holiday job as a waiter in 1968 a customer asked me to compliment the chef on his duchesse potatoes. I thought it better not to tell the customer he was eating Smash. I won’t repeat the chef’s observation about the customer.]
Just to chip in on the 8,20 clue:
The parsing suggested by Dewey @38 and Martin @39 doesn’t work (IMHO) because there is no definition, just two cryptic readings. “Natural numbers” isn’t a thing, when read as meaning normal songs; nor is it a thing, when read as referring to something like cocaine that is natural and numbs. They are both made-up phrases that don’t have any substantive existence.
Thankfully we have the “8, 20 maybe” which defines an actual concept with a commonly accepted name.
Girabra@46 and yet Kite, the setter, confirmed @26 that “8, 20” was not part of the parsing.
I think the concensus is that it wasn’t a very good clue.
Judge @47 — Ah, thank you! I missed that. In that case I concur with muffin @48.
I wondered how long it would be before someone mentioned the little Smash aliens, and my fellow solvers didn’t disappoint (unlike the product, which did).
muffin@48
Have you given your spellchecker the day off?
Pino @51
It must be on strike – it didn’t pick that up (or me thanking the setter Lite earlier!)
An odd mix of easy and impossible. Unfinished yesterday, but there was some movement at the end of the day, so I gave it another day. Ultimately defeated by the long four-syllablers, 23a TARANTISM, 25a MARACAIBO, and 14d HYPERICUM, as well as 7d ITALY. Didn’t help that I had mistakes at 13a SMASH (SNAPS — potato crisps?), and 16d SHOWROOMS (SHOWBILLS — programs?). All in all a bit of a mess. Ah, well. Lots to enjoy, though, so thank you both
The talk of SMASH dried mashed potatoes brings back traumatic childhood memories. I completely agree with BigNorm’s assessment @6 🙂
Late the next day but I’ve a pebble in my shoe: can anyone reveal the answer to the clue by Crucible, “He wrote the Ancient Mariner (6)” cited by Lord Jim @20?
A very annoying pebble as I know I’ve seen this before and was stumped by it before and remember a good thrashing with the tea-tray when someone wised me up – but it just goes to show that some things don’t change.
Alphalpha@54, you got me pondering, because I forgot, too. Cue the tea-tray…POPEYE!
Thanks Mig.
Thwhack!!
Thwhack!! Thwhack!!
[Mig@55 – thanks! I’d reach for the tea-tray had Alphalpha not destroyed it!
Alphalpha @ 54/56 Thanks for asking!]
The puzzle was a little stiff and rocky, but it would be churlish not to thank compiler, blogger and commenters
Ed#24, Smash was a good clue.
And my comment is about as bad/good as yours.
Fortunately, others explained why they thought the clue was bad or good, and that discussion was interesting.
Cellomaniac@58 That was a good comment