Vulcan in his customary fortnightly Monday slot
This was mostly straightforward, with the usual medley of anagrams, simple charades and double and cryptic definitions.
Thanks to Vulcan for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Finish brilliantly in two languages (6-6)
FRENCH-POLISH
Self evident, I think – it seems a long time since I’ve seen this one
9 A national symbol came into being (5)
AROSE
A ROSE (national symbol)
10 Model car, a true sport (9)
MINIATURE
MINI (car) + an anagram (sport) of A TRUE
11 Country hotel, so fashionable (7)
LESOTHO
An anagram (fashionable) of HOTEL SO
12 Getting better, weโre told, in hookerโs job (7)
HEELING
Sounds like (we’re told) ‘healing’ (getting better)ย – a hooker heels the ball in rugby
13 Damning evidence of bad habit: oneโs shot (7,3)
SMOKING GUN
SMOKING (bad habit) + GUN (one’s shot)
15 An indistinct band? (4)
BLUR
A cryptic definition, referring to this band
18 Large dog returning, holding this in mouth? (4)
BALL
A reversal (returning) of L (large) + LAB (dog)
19 Be given a red card? Show mercy (4,1,5)
HAVE A HEART
Double definition
22 Realist waving flag (7)
SALTIRE
An anagram (waving) of REALIST, for the flag of Scotland
24 As written, I must be punishable by death (7)
CAPITAL
Double definition: The pronoun I must be a capital letter
25 Witty person alert for cheat (4,5)
CARD SHARP
CARD (witty person) + SHARP (alert) – Chambers has this as hyphenated, Collins as one word
26 Conscious of a solemn vigil (5)
AWAKE
A WAKE (solemn vigil)
27 Flashers risk lenient sentence at first (6,6)
HAZARD LIGHTS
HAZARD (risk) + LIGHT (lenient) + S[entence]
Down
1 Pays for device to make leg-rest (9)
FOOTSTOOL
FOOTS (pays for) + TOOL (device)
2 Blue blanket: current charge may follow this, very exciting (8)
ELECTRIC
‘Electric’ may be followed by any of the first, second, third or fourth words of the clue
3 Small role, but was offered Oscar (5)
CAMEO
CAME (was offered?) + O (Oscar – NATO phonetic alphabet)
4 Cooped up at home, a luxurious one (9)
PENTHOUSE
PENT (cooped up) + HOUSE (home)
5 Child finishing their time at school, no friend of EU (6)
LEAVER
Double definition
6 Middle Easterner first to suffer actual unpleasantness dating Iraqi (5
SAUDI
Initial letters of Suffer Actual Unpleasantness Dating Iraqi
7 Anecdotes about British places to eat (6)
TABLES
TALES (anecdotes) round B (British)
8 They say he canโt choose protein in pub (6)
BEGGAR
EGG (protein) in BAR (pub) – a reference to the saying ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’
14 The Kingโs home, elegance over acres (9)
GRACELAND
GRACE (elegance) + LAND (acres) – the home of Elvis Presley, The King
16 Always set off, at any rate (9)
LEASTWAYS
An anagram (off) of ALWAYS SET
17 Party manager to bind up neck injury (8)
WHIPLASH
WHIP (political party manager) + LASH (bind up – secure with a rope)
18 Fundamental principles I start to challenge in low voice (6)
BASICS
I + C[hallenge] in BASS (low voice)
20 Shoot ploughman (6)
TILLER
Double definition – I didn’t know the first
21 Celebration: is it safe to dance? (6)
FIESTA
An anagram (to dance) of IT SAFE
23 Grub, a scoop from popular vanilla (5)
LARVA
Hidden in popuLAR VAnilla
24 Cold spring month, almost all in upmarket resort (5)
CAPRI
C (cold) + APRI[l] (spring month, almost)
Another lovely offering from Vulcan, this was a mixture of the usual write-ins and chewier constructions. FRENCH-POLISH was FOI and I also liked SMOKING GUN, HAVE A HEART, HAZARD LIGHTS, PENTHOUSE, BEGGAR and WHIPLASH. Very pleasant start to the week. Iโm off to see GRACELAND for the first time in mid-November.
Ta Vulcan & Eileen.
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen
I wasn’t convinced by CAME for “was offered” either, and I too didn’t know the shoot meaning of TILLER. Apart from those, nice and straightforward. Favourite LOI HEELING.
Thanks Eileen for the link to the lesser known meaning of TILLER. The problem now is remembering it for the next time it comes up in a crossword!
Eileen, FIESTA is an anagram of IT SAFE.
Thanks Eileen. I thought there was just enough misdirection to make it interesting. A motoring themelet maybe: CAPRI; AUDI; MINI; FIESTA; HAZARD LIGHTS. Even WHIPLASH and ELECTRIC (car) possibly?
AlanC @4 – thanks. I’ll amend the blog now. (Still rather gobsmacked by Fed’s Tuesday FIESTAS!)
bullhassocks @ 5. Agreed, surely too many to be coincidental.
Thanks to Eileen, and Vulcan, for a lovely start to the week.
Difficult puzzle.
New for me: FRENCH-FINISH; TILLER = a lateral shoot from the base of the stem of a plant.
I could not parse the CAME bit of 3d and 12ac – I saw it was a homonym of healing but did not understand the heeling = hookerโs job. Oh, itโs to do with rugby. I have never watched a game of rugby and do not intend to – lifeโs too short and I have plenty of other things to do ๐
Vulcan did essentially the same TILLER clue on June 2nd last year.
I went to it more confidently as a result – without trying to claim I’d fully absorbed the knowledge.
Eileen is better informed on the intricacies of rugby than I am. HEELING was my last one in. I think of hookers throwing balls in at lineouts. I’ve looked it up now and understand their role in the scrum.
It was a good Vulcan puzzle and a pleasant start to the week.
Thanks Vulcan and Eileen.
The original Ford Model T came/was offered only in black?
The ‘shoot’ definition of TILLER feels somewhat out-of-sync with the otherwise distinctly Monday tone. FIESTA my fave.
Thanks both
HAZARD LIGHTS was a delight. Didn’t twig to the Rugby relevance despite playing HOOKER for a short while (in primary school, Rugby league – got out of that horrid game asap and took up the far superior game of Aussie Rules). Thanks, Vulcan and Eileen.
My biggest head scratch was CAMEO, and it’s reassuring to see I’m not alone. My lack of knowledge of rugby or the Scottish flag were my only other speed bumps.
Very enjoyable. I liked the four-way clue for ELECTRIC.
3down โcameโ = โwas offeredโ is fine I reckon (โthis job came to meโ โthis job was offered to meโ, and it makes for a great surface. Iโve today learnt itโs properly CARD SHARP not CARD SHARK (had Jaws โshark alertโ?? in pencil). Lovely puzzle thanks Vulcan and Eileen
Enjoyable puzzle as usual for this very competent setter.
Now that the game of international rugby has been embraced by the girls (long overdue), it amuses me to wonder if one of the England fowards travelling to the USA, would enter “Hooker” under the “Occupation” section of the ESTA immigration form.
Chambers has โOfferโ as โto present to the mindโ.
So, for example, โan idea came to meโ cf โan idea was offered to meโ.
Best I could do.
GDU @12: I liked the ELECTRIC clue too, but isn’t it actually a 5-way, with very exciting as the 5th?
My playing position was hooker, so I had it in mind that 12ac might have something to do with scrummaging (although the use of the heel was out of favour by the time I played). I interpreted CAME in a retail sense – โour drinks come in regular or large sizesโ.
Thanks to Eileen for parsing ELECTRIC. I also had never heard of that meaning TILLER.
CAME=’was offered’ continues to mystify me. Doesn’t seem to make any sense.
22a SALTIRE means a diagonal cross in heraldry – the Scottish flag is just the best known example.
2d A pleasing and fairly rare(?) clue type in crosswords, though very familiar from the ‘Only Connect’ wall.
Thanks both
Lovely stuff from Vulcan. LOI was HEELING; no complaints about the clue, but I was held up by the fact that the hooker actually heeling is (unfortunately) a thing of the fairly distant past now. I wasn’t sure about CAME for ‘was offered’, but convinced myself it was OK: “the Ford Focus came with a year’s free insurance.” I was less happy about fashionable as an anagrind, but now I’ve had my coffee I can see I just wasn’t doing the required mental gymnastics: you can fashion LESOTHO out of ‘hotel so’, so ‘hotel so’ is fashionable into LESOTHO.
Thanks Eileen and Vulcan.
Thanks to Vulcan and Eileen.
I think PostMark@10 explained the “was offered = came” question very nicely.
The clue for GRACELAND was my favourite. Enjoy your trip AlanC!
Another here with a bit of puzzlement over CAME(o), and HEELING LOI.
Punctuation in ELECTRIC is cleverly misleading
There was some discussion about FOOT a while back, and I think it said that while “foot the bill” means “pay the bill”, “foot” doesn’t mean “pay” in isolation or with other objects. Some agreed, some didn’t, I think, at the time.
A lovely start to the week, thanks Vulcan for a delightful puzzle. Came here to understand Tiller and Cameo. Despite having seen this use of Tiller before, it didn’t come to mind this morning. Tom@20, I think you have best explanation so far for Came, thanks. And thank you Eileen for the blog
Vulcan obviously hasn’t watched rugby for a few years. The ball rarely goes anywhere near the hooker these days
Cheers E&V
The same head scratch over TILLER and CAME as others. Thanks Eileen and PostMark@10.
GDU@12, isn’t admitting a lack of knowledge of rugby grounds for deportation from DU?
Thanks for explaining Tiller, Eileen. It was the one thing I didn’t ‘get’ in an otherwise fun puzzle.
Iโm with you Hadrian #13 – my three score years and six have been spent under the illusion that a dangerous opponent in cards was a โcard sharkโ! You do live and learn.
PeteHA3@25: only two states take any form of rugby seriously – New South Wales and Queensland. The others follow real footy – and even then the current Premiers are Brisbane, who have won three in a row.
Percybass@27, Hadrian@13: although the original was indeed “card sharp”, over time “card shark” has become a perfectly acceptable alternative under a process linguists call “reanalysis”, whereby people think that something close to the original makes more sense.
It’s the same way “pease” became “pea” (“surely pease is plural?”), “Welsh rabbit” became “Welsh rarebit”, and “burger” detached itself from “hamburger” to become a word in its own right, attachable to many other words.
J@29 that explains the damp squid ๐
I remembered tiller=shoot from some previous crossword, but was puzzled by my ignorance of the on-field role of hookers. And came=was offered made no sense to me at all, though I see it does to others. I liked BALL.
Clyde @21: thank you.
I was one of the few rugby fans at my (US) university, long enough ago that hookers were expected to heel the ball. It was only today that I learned that it has fallen out of favor. Occasionally it helps to be old. It also helped with FRENCH POLISH, which is not an American thing, but which was a perennial in British crosswords fifty (or more) years ago.
I had to check TILLER, not knowing the shoot meaning.
And yes, Alan@10 settled any doubts I had about CAME = was offered.
VinnyD@33 not just fallen out of favour, but physically impossible to do, if you look at the way modern professional scrums are set up, and the relative heights of the front rows. This explains why the law has been updated to maintain the language requiring the scrum half to put the ball in straight, but to add a line saying they’re allowed to align their shoulder with the middle line — the upshot being a perfectly legal feed directly to the second row!
There are now attempts to tweak this again, and it will be messy, like all the other well-intentioned tweaks to the laws over the past couple of decades, which try to keep something of the old law despite huge changes to how the game is played.
Sorry, sorry, I’ll find myself a RU forum!
Thanks as ever, Eileen.
Rugby a closed book to me, so HEELING a bung-it-in-and-hope. Nor did I know the botanical meaning of TILLER. Ah, sure we can always learn.
Martin @9
I’ve been out since before your comment appeared and am only now catching up. I must confess that my supposed ‘knowledge of the intricacies of rugby’ came entirely from Google this morning and has been shown by later comments to be rather sadly lacking. (I do enjoy watching Six Nations games on television but can’t pretend to understand it.)
Re CAME, I wondered if the definition part was simply “was” and “offered” was explanatory. “I came third” = “I was third”. A bit far-fetched, but so are the other possibilities.
[AlanC @1: while in Memphis, you must go to the Civil Rights Museum–it’s excellent. It’s built into and around the motel where MLK was shot. The striking thing for me about GRACELAND was the level of poor taste Elvis had. It’s like he had all this money, and had no idea what to spend it on.]
The only time I remember seeing a quintuple definition before was in an Arachne puzzle way back in 2013. A masterpiece of succinctness, just five words in the clue!
I may be the only one who was completely fine with CAMEO but for some reason took over-long with LEAVER, as where I live, children finishing time at school arenโt referred to that way. So I had LEARNT, with T for time and the signal for past tense, until it ran into a problem with the now notorious HEELING, for which I had no referent whatsoever. I really liked the constructions and misdirects, looking for royalty in the Kingโs home as just one example. Kudos to Vulcan and thanks to Eileen for this post.
Nice puzzle…although anyone who thinks that A WAKE is a solemn vigil has never attended one in Ireland!
Thanks Vulcan & Eileen
Eileen @36 well, I rather doubled down on my ignorance with my comment! I’m the fairest of fair-weather fans, and I feel slightly guilty for having found myself totally surrounded by rugby union royalty on a few lucky occasions that others would have killed for.
Was offered = CAME?
The only one I didn’t parse was ELECTRIC. Very clever and worth a smile.
I’m another to not know shoot = TILLER
Last in was GRACELAND, as I was trying to think through the various homes of a very different King, as was doubtless Vulcan’s evil intention. (He says with another smile.)
Enjoyable if not particularly difficult even by Monday standards.