Ramsay’s third appearance in the cryptic slot
I didn’t instantly recognise the name and, searching the archive, I was surprised to see that I’d blogged his / her previous puzzle on May 21 – but then discovered that I’d missed solving the first, because it appeared on December 30, a busy time.
The first puzzle, appropriately, had FIRST APPEARANCE in the top row and the second SECOND COMING, based on Yeats’ poem. Both puzzles went down very well and elicited ponderings on what might occur in the next one, which turned out to be THIRD TIME LUCKY at 1/6 across!
This puzzle was every bit as absorbing and enjoyable as the previous ones, with Ramsay’s refreshingly ingenious approach to cluing, involving witty misdirection, interesting constructions and lovely surfaces. I found several bits of the parsing tricky but, after a bit more sleep, managed to whittle down my problems to just one, at 21 down – but there are one or two places where I’d be grateful for confirmation. I had too many ticks to list but I’d be interested to know which were your particular favourites.
Many thanks to Ramsay for a most entertaining puzzle – a lot of fun!
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1, 6 First two things haplessly tried – I’m disregarding poor start, having courage! (5,4,5)
THIRD TIME LUCKY
I think this is clue as definition: an anagram of T[hings] H[aplessly] TRIED + I’M + [p]LUCKY (having courage) minus p[oor]
See Jay @3 for a better version
9 Swapped walls of daub in mudbrick house (5)
ABODE
ADOBE (mudbrick) with ‘walls’ of’ D[au]B exchanged
10 Current mishap of setter in spot of bother (3,6)
JET STREAM
An anagram (mishap) of SETTER in JAM (spot of bother)
11, 6 Metal wreckage after helicopter tragedy (6)
HAMLET
An anagram (wreckage) of METAL after H (helicopter – symbol on a helipad: I don’t remember seeing this before but we’ve had ‘rugby post’ using a similar device)
12 Something guaranteed, that is incorporating fact I managed to get qualification (11)
CERTIFICATE
CERT (something guaranteed) + IE (that is) round an anagram (managed) of FACT I
14 Rolling first joint, dopehead rubbed the wrong way! (7)
RANKLED
R[olling] + ANKLE (joint) + D[opehead]
15 Blues and dancing featured in clip of session (7)
SADNESS
An anagram (dancing) of AND in SESS[ion]
16 Reads aloud and translates for the audience? (7)
RECITES
Sounds like (for the audience) RESITES (translates)
19 Discovered Cuban music and heavy metal, as forgotten (7)
RUMBLED
RUMB[a] (Cuban music) + LE[a]D (heavy metal) minus (forgotten) both As
22 Elder fellow carries foreign currency with equal value (11)
GRANDPARENT
GENT (fellow) round RAND (foreign currency) + PAR (equal value)
23 Latin continent and Spanish state (3)
SAY
SA (South America – Latin continent) + Y (‘and’ Spanish) – a little gem
24 Check temperature after period of chill weather (9)
RESTRAINT
REST (period of chill) + RAIN (weather) + T (temperature)
26 Shocking cry from bird (5)
BOOBY
BOO (shocking cry) + BY (from?)
27 Go away from pack, pursuing south (5)
SCRAM
S (south) + CRAM (pack)
28 Brought in the crops but, tragically, he starved (9)
HARVESTED
A lovely anagram (tragically) of HE STARVED
Down
1 Maestro account among three in circulation (7)
TEACHER
AC (account) in an anagram (in circulation) of THREE
2 One runs attached to bloke for three-legged race (7)
IRONMAN
I (one) + R (runs) + ON (attached to) + MAN (bloke)
3 Cleaned kettle spattered with bits of tea and prevented from boiling over (2-9)
DE-ESCALATED
DESCALED (cleaned kettle) round an anagram (bits of) of TEA
4 If Jack takes 3rd place, guaranteed to get hurt (7)
INJURED
INSURED (guaranteed) with the third letter replaced by J (Jack)
5 Requires guts to oust royal (7)
ENTAILS
ENT[r]AILS (guts) minus r (royal)
7 Foamy head on coffee/tea, without a burn (7)
CREMATE
CREMA (foamy head on coffee) + TE[a]
8 ‘Ramsey’ misspelling garners a thousand whinges (7)
YAMMERS
An anagram (misspelling) of RAMSEY round M (a thousand)
13 Ever supreme, furiously led with ambition (11)
INDOMITABLE
An anagram (furiously) of LED + AMBITION
16 Communist party admitted newspaper revolved around spies (7)
REGARDS
REDS (Communist party) round a reversal (revolved around) 0f RAG (Newspaper)
17 Blimey, pinching bottom is less civilised (7)
COARSER
COR (Blimey) round ARSE (bottom)
18 Sucking up / swallowing six (7)
SLAVISH
/ (slash) round VI (six)
19 Emerging from green terrace, go back in (2-5)
RE-ENTER
Hidden in gREEN TERrace
20 Express anger and cry after a little bit of singing (4,3)
LASH OUT
LA[y] (a little bit of singing?) + SHOUT (cry)
21 Without getting emotional, adored every other piece involving French pop (3-4)
DRY-EYED
This one has me beaten – over to you
25 Butter or jam (3)
RAM
Double definition
I enjoyed this a lot, so thanks Ramsay and Eileen. The key to 21d is that YEYE is a French term for sixties style music (like yeah yeah yeah). Also, I think LA in 20d is just that – la la la.
Thank you, brian-with-an-eye – reassuring to know that I would never have got that! 😉
1a I think TH comes from the first two of THings and “haplessly” acts as the anagrind.
I think DRY-EYED is DRD (every other letter from aDoReD) around yéyé (French/Canadian music genre).
I see brian-with-an-eye beat me to it. Totally agree with Eileen’s reaction: “refreshingly ingenious” indeed.
21 down – Ye-Ye is a form of French pop music from the 1960s, inside DRD, alternate letters in ADORED.
Ye-ye was epitomised by brooding blonde female singers, like the early Francoise Hardy and France Gall , who won the Eurovision Song Contest (for Luxembourg) with the prototype bubblegum song “Poupée de cire, poupée de son”.(Ye-ye is thought to be the closest the French could get to “Yeah yeah yeah”)
Thanks Jay @3 – you’re right, of course: I think I did initially have that. I’ll amend the blog now.
I notice that Ramsay has ‘signed’ the puzzle using the two three-letter solutions in the lower half.
A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle.
I also took ‘a little bit of singing’ to be from la la la, but LAy works too.
I was never going to see YEYE, so thanks to BWAE@1.
And, of course, thanks to Ramsay and Eileen.
Comment #9
Balfour@7, good spot!
Well spotted, Balfour @7: I remember saying last time, ‘This puzzle just gets better!’
Auriga @8 – I prefer your idea, thanks!
Absolutely lovely stuff. I was delighted to see yé-yé mentioned and I’m glad BWAE@1 was here promptly to help out with it. I wasn’t particularly happy about ‘by’ for from, and I hope we won’t get into homophone discussions today, because all of that would seem churlish given the overall picture here.
Thank you very much to Ramsay and Eileen.
Guessing simply double definition for 26 just because some of excessively tender heart might find it a shocking exclamation?
Tom@12 ‘He got that from / by reading the book on the subject’? Actually I failed on BOOBY but I can’t fault the clue just blame myself. Hadn’t noticed the ‘signature’ – nice spot Balfour.
Re 26A I think BY = FROM as in The latest single from/by The Beatles.
I agree with all of @1–4 above. (Slow to compose this message, I see there have been several more posts in the meantime.) In 21d I’d NHO YÉ-YÉ myself, but having guessed the solution (IIRC with one of the crossing Ys already) and with the DRD accounted for, that was what was left—so I looked it up for confirmation. If “haplessly” in 1a was only for the H, it would leave both “two” and the anagram unexplained.
I found this comparatively smooth going overall, but some very creative cluing kept it interesting: notably the “swapped walls of daub” in 9a, the “as forgotten” in 19a and the SLASH in 18d.
Really enjoyed this, even though I did not know the obscure reference to YeYe French pop music.
Lots of lovely constructions in here, favourite being DE-ESCALATED.
Thoroughly classy from start to finish.
A host of delightfully inventive clues, with SAY and SLAVISH taking the rosettes.
Many thanks Eileen and Ramsay – and I can’t wait to see what the fourth offering contains…
I had to solve this from the more accessible bottom upwards as I couldn’t get on the wavelength of the top to begin with. Well done to Eileen for spotting the relevance of THIRD TIME LUCKY, which reminds me of Pangakupu’s remarkable sequence. Well done BWAE @1 and Balfour @7 for their good spots. IRONMAN, DE-ESCALATED and HARVESTED were my favourites but there wasn’t a dud anywhere. Super puzzle.
Ta Ramsay & Eileen.
fuddleduddy@14 and PWLW@15 good enough for me, I think! Thanks both.
I also had to look up YEYE as “a style of 1960s pop music” – who knew? Well, Ramsay obviously did, but I certainly didn’t, though I remember the Eurovision song.
I think BOO is a cry meaning “(that’s) shocking!”.
Held up by guessing CRASSER for 17d – entirely my fault: should have read the clue properly. Some nicely different cluing here: I liked SAY, ABODE, SLAVISH – and some good surfaces like HARVESTED. I’d forgotten Ramsay’s trick of numbering (and signing – well spotted, Balfour!) the puzzles: I guessed THIRD TIME LUCKY after a while but failed to parse it. Personally I dislike the way HAM/LET is split into two unrelated words, but that’s just me.
Lovely crossword!
Thanks to Ramsay, to Eileen, and to various contributors who have sorted out any quibbles.
But I think the word spattered is important in the clue for DE–ESCALATED. The letters of TEA are spattered in the word DE-SCALED – with the E near the beginning, and the A and T later on. So DE-SCALED is not really round an anagram. Or am I missing something?
No complaints regarding the puzzle itself, but why is 11,6 not indicated as 11,6d? This seems to have started happening quite recently (i.e. in the last few months).
It is 11/6D in the paper .
Thanks for the blog , excellent set of clues with so many nice touches . THIRDTL and DE-ESCALATE are neat constructions . SLAVISH and DRY-EYED very original .
I am not keen on Latin continent , the Paleo-Indians got there first .
Fourth dimension could be next with a theme based on Minkowski .
The Android app was acting a little strangely today, but it didn’t cause any trouble. I continue with the positive reaction to the puzzle.
YAMMER is the former name of Microsoft’s “enterprise social networking platform.” Looking through the definitions: lament, wail, whine, whinge, outcry, talk loudly etc. one can see why they renamed it as Viva Engage. It’s harder to see why they chose YAMMER in the first place.
Thanks Ramsay and Eileen. Let’s hope the next outing isn’t too far into the fourth dimension. Oh, Roz got there first.
Thought there were some very interesting, fresh-feeling clues today, though I had no idea how the tiddler SAY was put together, so many thanks Eileen. Not trying to second guess, but I wonder whether we’ll get something along the lines of The Four Horsemen or something from The Four Quartets in Ramsay’s very next offering.
Couldn’t help being reminded, on seeing IRONMAN at 2d of an extremely fit young woman, daughter of a friend, who recently took part in the Welsh Ironman version at Tenby. Didn’t quite manage to finish the last leg, the running marathon, as she had been so badly stung by jellyfish during the first leg swimming in the sea there and had had to give up…
Ronald the 27th , the setter seems to be using ordinals not cardinals .
Martin@26 , you were first but I manipulated the space-time continuum .
Thanks Ramsay and Eileen
I only had about a thrid done before I had to go out, carrying lots of bafflement!, but looking again when I got back in the rest suddenly clicked. My only problem was SAY, where I didn’t spot either part of the wordplay.
Re 21d Seem to remember Petula Clark singing Ya Ya Twist in 1962 and on googling find it was an example of Ye Ye which topped the charts in France.
Perhaps next time we’ll get the Fourth Estate, with lots of references to newspapers, magazines, journalists etc. But the Fourth Dimension would be fun, and has the advantage of being exactly 15 letters long.
Roz @28: 😊
The first pass through the Across clues yielded little, but then I started to find Ramsay’s wavelength, and in the end it took just two complete passes. Like many others, yé-yé was new to me (despite having lived in France), so congratulations to those who knew it.
Many thanks Ramsay and Eileen
I was slow starting this one, but it repaid patience. A superb puzzle all round. Thanks to setter and blogger.
The lower half yielded first, the upper was a bit trickier, but in the end it all worked, delightfully so. Looking forward to Ramsay’s next. Thanks Eileen.
Isn’t Guardian Ramsay a cook?
I thought of “fa la la” at first, but it could also be ”fa sol la.” Lovely puzzle.
Same as AlanC. Bottom up.
What delightful cluing! Wonderful surfaces.
Chiming in to agree with the consensus that this was a superb puzzle, with a lot of fresh wordplay and also some elegant but accessible anagrams to help me get started, which I appreciate! And many clever concealments of the definitions too.
Thanks for the parsing of SAY which I did not get at all. Had thought it might be SKY, as S for Spanish plus KY for the state of Kentucky, and ??? Latin continent–there’s often something I don’t know! Though this time I seem to be one of the only ones who knew about yé-yé, an amazing bit to work in!
Agreed with Clyde@22 about the spattering, another novel but logical device.
Thanks Ramsay and Eileen!
Very good. Nice crossword.
This one reminded me of the Robert Cray Band. Very tight, balanced, precise and economical. Some indeed are jewels. Unlike the somewhat self-indulgent style of other good setters.
Thanks Ramsay and Eileen (for your explanation of the tougher ones)
Welcome back, Ramsay! I appreciated this puzzle, but even more so after Eileen pointing out the THIRD, and Balfour@7 the signature.
“Butter and jam” for RAM is an extraordinary finding, what a clue!
If we’re taking foreign language applicants for earworm of the day, a certain term is well known in Spain through Concha Velasco’s Chica ye-yé.
Thanks to all involved 🙂
Last night in bed with no internet access I put in 21d DR____D from aDpReD, then thought of DRY=EYED, and decided that yeye must be something French and pop. Popped it
Since when does “recite” = “read aloud”? The point of reciting is that you do it without reading. And how does re-siting something mean translating it, without going to Latin ‘latus?
nho CREMA or the H symbol for helipad.
“Rankle” as a transitive verb meaning “annoy” is a newfanglism., I think It used to appear in sentences like “that rankles with me.”
Thanks to Ramsay and Eileen. Welcome back, Ramsay!
Valentine @43
Translational motion involves moving from one place (“site”) to another.
On the same note, bishops are “translated” from one see or diocese to another.
Very good crossword! Thanks.
Medieval saints’ bones were often “translated” from their original burial site to a fancy new shrine in a more important church.
Thanks both and a bit of a slog for me, an enjoyable enough slog but nonetheless…….
It was worth it all to have IRONMAN defined as a ‘three-legged race’ – a real thigh-slapper which I will use. “When I was asked to take part in a three-legged race for charity I readily agreed. Unfortunately….”
Roz@28…a cardinal sin on my part…
Gladys@31 – THE Fourth Estate would be 15 letters but it does not have to be 15 , today was 14 . My guess is – It’s time unfinished motor got scrapped (6,9) – not one of mine , from my diary . One of my rare clues will appear tomorrow .
AlanC@32 , it is a long wait but perhaps – twenty-fourth – will have a reference to KPR . A good intervention from you yesterday , I felt the same but not my place to say it , needed someone Irish .
Ronald@49 , just an ordinal sin I think .
Tough but good.
25D was the last one to solve.
Could ‘butter or jam’ be rhyming slang rather than a double definition?
I thought ‘rum’ but couldn’t connect it to jam.
Then I thought ‘RamJam’ (the band) and settled on ‘ram’ but had to check here for the definition.
Highlander @51
I thought the “butter” was a ram (sheep), known for it, and to ram something into a case maybe is to jam it?
I thought I’d seen 25d before. But not quite – in 2022 Tramp had ‘Cold butter and jam (4)’.
I shared Valentine’s qualm @43 that _recite_ usually implies speaking from memory—it certainly didn’t occur in my initial mental search for “read aloud” synonyms—and I also think RESITE must be pretty rare (and compared to e.g. _relocate_, _reposition_ or even _resituate_, sounding rather jargony). But IMO the former isn’t unreasonably loose, allowing some poetic licence so to speak, and the latter is not actually a fault. I’m most familiar with _translation_ meaning displacement in mathematics, referring to shifting coördinate axes in analytic geometry (& computer graphics) and to a kind of symmetry in the study of tilings (& in crystallography). Thanks to RobAdelaide @45 & gladys @47 for noting another context.
I shared Valentine’s qualm @43 that _recite_ usually implies speaking from memory—it certainly didn’t occur in my initial mental search for “read aloud” synonyms—and I also think RESITE must be pretty rare (and compared to e.g. _relocate_, _reposition_ or even _resituate_, sounding rather jargony). But IMO the former isn’t unreasonably loose, allowing some poetic licence so to speak, and the latter is not actually a fault. I’m most familiar with _translation_ meaning displacement in mathematics, referring to shifting coördinate axes in analytic geometry (& computer graphics) and to a kind of symmetry in the study of tilings (& in crystallography). Thanks to RobAdelaide @45 & gladys @47 for noting another context.
Late to the party but have to comment, even for my own satisfaction.
21dn was a write-in for me. I have a Chinese wife and have lived much of my life around Chinese speakers, and yeye (pron yeah yeah) is the affectionate word for paternal grandfather, I.e. “pop”. But I couldn’t figure out what “french” had to do with it.
muffin#52
Of course! ‘Butter’ for sheep/goat/antelope/Yosser Hughes, but I still find ‘jam’ as a definition of ‘ram’ pretty tenuous.
But if you ‘butter (or jam)’ something, then you ram it.
S completed handily, stuck on the N for a long time. Came very close to giving up. Finally broke it open with 11/6 HAMLET (duh!), which led to completion, though not all parsed. Once again, patience paid off. Very satisfying
I agree with Eileen that 23a SAY is a gem, my favourite (though Roz makes a good point @24), and that “he starved” is a neat anagram for 28a HARVESTED. I also liked 2d IRONMAN (“three-legged race”, funny), and 25d RAM
I wondered about a couple of the first letter indicators — 1a “First two things” = TH, 14a Rolling first = R. Do those work cryptically? Wouldn’t we expect, say, “First two of things” and “Rolling’s first”?
Many thanks Eileen and Ramsay
An uplifting solve for my Saturday coffees [in bed with my ever more painful foot – never sure whether more frightened by the intrusive intense agony, or by the possible long-term outcome, or most likely by the Wound Specialists and nurses bearing down with scalpels in hand – they even ‘clean’ the wound by scraping with a particularly sharp curette. Some of the time it’s even difficult to think straight; so when, as today, the pain is sufficiently managed – even 6 X end of life morphine level doesn’t touch it! – what a joy to be distracted by a puzzle that gives so much]
Like you, yeye was an unclosed gap, but, unlike you, I’d always thought YAMMER (on) described logorrhea solely and I knew nothing of it’s whingeing meaning..
Brilliantly connecting messages with Ramsay’s earlier offerings (that Eileen person – she may be over 40, just, but no danger of Alzheimer’s clearly!) added to my pleasant distraction, so my thanks for that…
And if I may be so bold …. I went through a period of some months during the Covid pandemic when different constraints (mostly time) left a welter of unattempted puzzles. But (and here I am apologetically making holes in eggs to be blown through) I made a note of the dates and have had the joy of (almost) catching up. (And it meant avoiding all those interminable Australian coffee mornings which seemed to invade 15² in those times!)
I’m glad I saved this nutritious serving from Ramsay for today, and will certainly smile next time I see her/his name…
[Apologies for my prolix post. The painkillers can make me voluble… but I think I just wished to say hallo; I only contribute here sporadically for now for obvious reasons]
In summary:
Many, many thanks both and all
I sometimes wish that Ramsay’s puzzles would appear more often, but then I tell myself that they are worth waiting for and savouring all the more for their infrequency.
The banter between Roz and AlanC is one of the reasons I look forward to 225 every day. Eileen’s engaging blogs and comments are another. This is such a vibrant and friendly community – thank you all for the fun.
And hang in there, William F P. Hopefully all will be well sooner than later.
I forgot to mention that for 21dDRY-EYED, having the DRD crossers I spent too much time trying to find an anagram with PERE (the French pop).
Hi Cellomaniac @60 – I totally agree with your first paragraph @60 (Ramsay has shot up my ratings!) and warmly endorse your best wishes to William F P @59.
I, too, dallied for a while with the French pop, too – never having head of yéyé! 😉
[I grinned last week at your and your wife’s incarceration in last Saturday’s Philistine, blogged today- 🙂 ]
16ac Someone who recites does not read aloud because they know the piece by heart. Bah humbug!
For RECITE, Chambers includes “to read aloud (rare)”
Cellomaniac @ 60 and Eileen @ 62
Bless you both!! It’s funny where we find our friends these days. I’m certainly hoping to meet Eileen face to face when, and if, I’m walking again… I’m now on the south coast, so more likely to be Derby than York…
In my newspaper the clue for 3d is different: “Cleaned kettle spattered regularly with bits of tea and prevented from boiling over (2-9)”.
The extra word ‘regularly’ is incorrect because the letters T E A are added to DESCALED but not with equal spacing.