Gaston has a CHORUS LINE for us this week – but will be all be singing from the same hymn-sheet?…
[My apologies for the delay in posting this – slipped my mind in a busy week…]
The preamble states that:
“Six thematic names fill the perimeter of the grid; four are second names, one a first name, and one a nickname. Three clues consisting only of wordplay give the same answer, but this is not to be entered in the grid; instead, solvers must enter the CHORUS LINE, enumeration referring to the new entry length. Solvers must highlight 11 contiguous cells, thus revealing the theme. Unchecked letters in the perimeter might give CUT ARCTIC DOCKYARD JOB. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”
The nice thing about unclued/thematic perimeters is that there are fewer clues for the blogger to parse and write up! But you do need a few crossers, and usually a bit of research/guesswork to fill them. And so it proved here.
The inside of the grid filled at a reasonable pace, and I eventually twigged that the three wordplay-only clues led to ‘RELATIVES’. 35A had to be SISTERS; 12A started COUS, so COUSINS; and 7D then had to be AUNTS.
So far, so good – I had a bunch of crossers sticking out into the perimeter, and some RELATIVES…but not a lot else! There were too many permutations of those unchecked letters to try and work the perimeter logically, and I have to confess to resorting to a little Wiki-oogling of CHORUS LINE SISTERS COUSINS and AUNTS, which led me to a lot of information about HMS PINAFORE by G&S.
The cast list of said operetta then supplied the thematic names – BUTTERCUP; JACKSTRAW; PORTER; JOSEPHINE, DEAD-EYE and (Captain) CORCORAN, with the CHORUS LINE involved in the following from ‘The entrance of Sir Joseph’:
Sir Joseph:
I am the monarch of the sea,
The ruler of the Queen’s Navee,
Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants.
Cousin Hebe/chorus line:
And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
Which I guess works as a rhyme, depending on how you pronounce AUNTS and CHANTS!
It only remained to trace out the boat-shaped ‘HMS PINAFORE’ in the middle of the grid, and all was complete:
My thanks to Gaston for an enjoyable solve – and an educational one, as I learned a few things about ‘HMS Pinafore‘ along the way. An impressive amount of thematic material squeezed into and around the grid, and a few interesting words and chewy parsings. GORY-DEW, ECBOLE, VOETGANGERS, A FOND and PESCARA were all new to me. In the end, I never used the extra information about the unchecked perimeter letters – I hope I have got them all right!
The back-and forth between 11A and 34D was a clever trick – took a little while to spot it but the definitions were fairly clear and the words were only 4 letters, so not too unfair.
As a fairly keen cricket fan, I have to shamefacedly admit that 1D TWENTY was my last one parsed – I was searching for games called ‘forty’ or ‘twenty-twenty’ and completely failed to spot Twenty-20 as a cricketing term until I was writing up the blog! The other cricketing reference – Shoab Bashir as an off-spinner – might have been a stretch of GK for some solvers, especially given how under-used he has been by England in recent tours/series…
Anyway, enough waffling – time to hit publish…I trust all is clear below…
| Across | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/Parsing |
||
| 8 | NOWISE | Proceed gingerly around Caribbean islands? Not at all (6)
NO_SE (proceed gingerly) around WI (West Indies, Caribbean Islands) |
||
| 10 | REVUES | Critiques when broadcasting shows (6)
homophone, i.e. when broadcasting – REVUES (shows) can sound like REVIEWS (critiques) |
||
| 11 | AMEN | Approve dodgy 34 (4)
anag, i.e. dodgy, of NAME (34D) |
||
| 12 | RELATIVES / COUSINS | Reviewed prophet holding key (7)
SE_ER (prophet) around VITAL (key) = SEVITALER, all reviewed, or reversed = RELATIVES |
||
| 13 | ENTICE | Tempt novice with 40% off (6)
( |
||
| 14 | SCOTER | Undone corset that might be velvet (6)
anag, i.e. undone, of CORSET [type of duck, velvet-duck, or velvet-scoter] |
||
| 15 | OCTAVE | Notes nearly half of month has hail (6)
OCT( |
||
| 17 | TRAPS | Locks personal belongings (5)
double defn – to TRAP can be to lock; and one’s TRAPS, or trappings, can be personal belongings |
||
| 20 | HYMEN | Song about Eastern god (5)
HYM_N (song) around E (Eastern) |
||
| 21 | GORY DEW | Leave island town with sign of damp (7, 2 words)
GO (leave) + RY_DE (town on the Isle of Wight) + W (with) |
||
| 22 | REMISS | Negligent about failure (6)
RE (about) + MISS (failure) |
||
| 24 | LARRUP | Whip one’s opener from untidy parlour (6)
subtractive anagram, i.e. untidy, of PARL( |
||
| 25 | OFFSPIN | Bashir supplies this by-product on cycle (7)
a SPIN-OFF is a by-product of something, and cycling it’s constituent parts gives OFF-SPIN [Shoab Bashir, England cricketer, bowler of off-spin!] |
||
| 26 | A FOND | Thoroughly French man frowned occasionally (5, 2 words)
occasional letters of ‘mAn FrOwNeD’ |
||
| 29 | THING | Bad night obsession (5)
anag, i.e. bad, of NIGHT |
||
| 30 | POSEUR | Dilemma having upper-class show-off (6)
POSE_R (problem, dilemma) around (having) U (upper-class, not non-U!) |
||
| 31 | EGRETS | Bemoans topless birds (6)
( |
||
| 33 | EARNED | Gained pound from savant (6)
( |
||
| 35 | RELATIVES / SISTERS | Several mistakenly taking it back (7)
RELA_VES (anag, i.e. mistakenly, of SEVERAL) around (taking) TI (it, back) |
||
| 36 | AMIE | French mistress stripping ends of Devil’s son (4)
( |
||
| 37 | ECBOLE | Sharpening of tone when bishop enters school abroad (6)
EC_OLE (French, i.e. abroad, for school) around B (bishop, chess notation) |
||
| 38 | CUMBER | Get in the way of scoundrel receiving medal (6)
CU_R (scoundrel) around (receiving) MBE (medal) |
||
| Clue No | Solution / Entry | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/Parsing |
||
| 1 | TWENTY | Score doubled in team game (6)
a ‘team game’ of cricket might be Twenty-20 – or a score, doubled! |
||
| 2 | TINT | Comic character losing popular colour (4)
TINT( |
||
| 3 | ESSIVE | Case of being soothing after scrapping vehicle (6)
( |
||
| 4 | RECCE | Even characters in brief cycle check out lie of the land (5)
even characters in ‘bRiEf CyClE’ |
||
| 5 | URUS | Sign lacking volunteers for extinct animal (4)
( |
||
| 6 | PESCARA | Soldier in regiment holding key Italian city (7)
P_ARA (paratrooper, soldier in paratroop regiment) around (holding) ESC (escape, keyboard key) |
||
| 7 | RELATIVES / AUNTS | Later on, Gaston has son (5)
RELAT (anag, i.e. on, of LATER) + IVE (I’ve, I have, from our setter Gaston’s point of view) + S (son) |
||
| 9 | VOETGANGERS | South African infantrymen, intermittently violent foremen (11)
VOET (intermittent letters of ViOlEnT) + GANGERS (foremen, of groups of labourers)) |
||
| 16 | AMISH | Strict group starve having no following (5)
( |
||
| 18 | PYROS | Experts welcoming unknown obsessives (5)
P_ROS (professionals, experts) around (welcoming) Y (unknown, e.g. in mathematical equation) [pyro being short for pyromaniac, someone obsessed with fire] |
||
| 19 | FEUD | Private enmity, but not many announced dead (4)
FEU (homophone, i.e. announced – FEU can sound like FEW, not many) + D (dead) |
||
| 20 | HEFT | Taking top off lift (4)
( |
||
| 23 | SPITTLE | Second PM and the French creating unpleasant issue (7)
S (second) + PITT (UK Prime Minister) + LE (definite article, the, in French) |
||
| 27 | FORK UP | Pay branch at university (6,2 words)
FORK (branch, e.g. in the road) + UP (at university) |
||
| 28 | NEEMBS | Born doctors – they produce medicinal oil (6)
NEE (born, feminine, indicating maiden name) + MBS (MB, Medicinae Baccalaureus, bachelor of Medicine, doctor, pluralised)) |
||
| 29 | TRIBE | Time to make fun of English race (5)
T (time) + RIB (make fun of) + E (English) |
||
| 30 | PASCH | Chaps skipping Easter once (5)
anag, i.e. skipping, of CHAPS [archaic, i.e. once, for Easter] |
||
| 32 | SEEN | Understood “secret” group losing heart (4)
SE( |
||
| 34 | NAME | 11’s dodgy reputation (4)
anag, i.e. dodgy, of AMEN (11A) |
||