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Crossword roundup: E-ologisms, anyone?
Ring ring - reverse charge inapplicable here. Photograph: Alan Connor
If you want to solve the puzzles mentioned before reading on, they are Guardian 25,455 by Orlando, 25,456 by Pasquale & 25,459 by Boatman; Times 24,981, 24,983 & 24,984 [subscription]; FT 13,829 by Bradman [PDF]; Independent 7,802 by Anax, 7,803 by Dac & 7,804 by Anarche and i 215 by Monk [not online] and Sunday Telegraph 2,610 [subscription].
Misdirection of the week
Bradman in Thursday's FT had a clue which actually became trickier the more of its letters you got from the others:
15d Vehicle outside shed loaded quickly and carelessly? (9)
I had S_O_E_L_D and spent fruitless time trying to incorporate the letters of "shed"; they're all there, but not as they seem to promise: "shed" indicates HOVEL, and the vehicle that goes outside it is a SLED, giving us SHOVELLED.
Also, apologies to Arachne, whose LOLsome clue in Thursday's Independent...
25ac Lovers more than touched (7)
...had its pitch inadvertently queered for any solver who had read this blog's most recent Meet The Setter, where Enigmatist celebrated a similar BONKERS. (Not that I got it as quickly as that might suggest.)
Cluing coincidence
At last week's roundup, ConfusedSolver drew our attention to a pair of clues playing with MANCHESTER. Orlando in Monday's Guardian seemed to be giving a poignant image of John Ruskin and his teenage wife divided by the Pennines...
11ac Effie is in Sheffield but he is in Manchester (4,6)
...but was really on about the middle letters of those place names, Sheffield and Manchester, for CITY CENTRE. Dac in Wednesday's Independent also wanted you to notice the "he" in "Manchester", this time so you could take it away...
3d He's driven out of Manchester, possibly, and replaced by one who's a trouble maker? (9)
...and I for one put I for "one" in its place to give a MISCREANT. Surely Morrissey had crosswords - specifically this week's - in mind when he sang "Manchester / So much to answer for".
Newer words
Dac also had one of two clues indicating newish words with a technological flavour - e-ologisms, if you will. I hope you won't. He deviously used "River Amazon", which the eye can't help reading as a single phrase...
21ac I'll board transport returning on River Amazon? (1-6)
...but the "River" is the R at the end of E-TAILER. A gift you might buy from Amazon, say, was indicated by Monk in the same day's i...
23ac Animals, virtually caught, walk on by going backwards (9)
...namely, some CYBERPETS.
Blue clues
What is it with stripping and the Times? Having just had a Saturday prize puzzle...
1ac Boy framing colour sketch in strip (3,4,3,3)
...tell me to GET ONE'S KIT OFF, I barely blushed on Tuesday...
9ac Relax on holiday in a way that calls for gradual exposure? (10)
...which, as you may have guessed, is STRIPTEASE. You expect a parade of flesh 'n' filth from some Wapping titles, but hardly the Times; perhaps it's the work of a single rogue setter.
The news in clues
In a relentlessly impressive puzzle in Tuesday's Guardian, Pasquale found an apposite anagram for one of the expressions de nos jours:
11ac,7d,17d The Tories tell a whinger about 23 across's message (4,3,2,4,8)
Twenty-three across was OSBORNE, and so the multi-part answer has to be WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, which also recently starred as the soundalike in the clues at the top of a Telegraph Quickie: WEIR / AWL / INN / KNIT TOGETHER.
Not that Pasquale gives the opposition an easy ride: Ed Miliband is used - in the Miliband-means-ED style discussed here recently - to clue SLOW-FOOTED.
Crosswords about crosswords
For any newbies, people who dissect cryptic clues for fun use the phrase "& lit." for a clue that indicates the answer using wordplay and literally serves as a description of the answer in itself. Here's an example from the Sunday Telegraph: "Dairy product of fine character from Greece", where you can add F to η to give FETA - a dairy product of fine character, from Greece.
The phrase "& lit." doesn't often appear in crosswords themselves, for the obvious reason: not wanting to make most solvers go "yousaidwhowiththewhatnow?". Boatman, though, required no knowledge of this shibboleth in Friday's Guardian...
23 An arrangement of stars wrongly set as &Lit (1-4)
...where an anagram of AS and LIT gives A-LIST, as part of a puzzle filled with stars of two kinds - the astronomical and the astronomically-rewarded - a combo theme that recalled a recent Brendan puzzle and none the worse for that.
Themes and tricks
1ac Rubbish dumps (4-4)
I snorted at Anax's one across in Tuesday's Independent - POOH-POOH clued as "Rubbish dumps" - so hard that it took me some time to twig that the top and bottom of the grid each had a pair of pairs of pairs: BERBER, GRIS-GRIS and POMPOM joining POOH-POOH at the top, with ONE-ONE, BERIBERI, TESTES and HOTSHOTS at the base.
This arbitrary quirk of the grid can't have been easy to execute. Perhaps Anax just likes making life difficult for himself. Perhaps we should ask him. (TESTES, since you ask, was clued as "Earth originally smeared on some cricket balls".)
Clue of the Week
Remember "& lit."? You must do - we just mentioned it, two sub-headings above. Got it now? Good. And if you didn't do Wednesday's Times, bear the idea in mind while you look at this clue:
4d Another time straighten twisted wood — it's hard to work this way (7,3,5)
There we go: AGAINST THE GRAIN When cluing's that thoughtful, it's a pleasure to work this way.
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User Comments
baerchen
24 October 2011 2:02PM
When you say you snorted at Anax' 1ac POOH-POOH, was it with laughter or with indignation that (like me) you had taken offence to AA Milne's creation being reduced, completely incorrectly, to a comparison with a bowel movement?
Anax is undoubtedly clever, but I wouldn't want to go for a pint with him.
Not that he'd want to go for one with me, mind.
anaxcrosswords
24 October 2011 2:13PM
Aw, I'd never want to cause offence baerchen - and sincere apologies if I did. It was intended only to be a bit of wordplay fun.
alanconnorgu
24 October 2011 2:22PM
I hadn't thought of the adorable bear until the photo at the top of the post, for which I take responsibility. Sorry for any further off. caus.
BUT. What order did these differing senses and spelling of poo* come in, then? This is not my strong suit.
I have an Oxford dictionary to hand, which records "pooh" for "excrement" as mid-20th-Century and "pooh-pooh" for "express contempt for" early-19th.
Pooh-sticks is of course E20th.
Is the near-soundalike of Pooh Bear and Gilbert & Sullivan's Pooh-Bah a coincidence? We need to know more. Who knows more?
Incidentally, your username and picture half-suggest you like bears, baerchen. I'm not saying you're not neutral. I like to see you ursine lot sticking together.
RogerApex
24 October 2011 2:35PM
Pooh-pooh was a grand clue, Anax.
It's also, of course, what two bears do in the woods. Perhaps baerchen would have been happier with that.
Matteo567
24 October 2011 4:02PM
I'm a relative novice when it comes to crosswords (I rarely manage anything more challenging than Monday's "Rufus") so maybe I'm missing the point. However, concerning the Clue of the Week, would not:
"Once more straighten twisted wood - it's hard to work this way"
work just as well but sound better?
Still a lovely clue though.
avagold
24 October 2011 4:45PM
@anaxcrosswords
Aw, I'd never want to cause offence baerchen - and sincere apologies if I did. It was intended only to be a bit of wordplay fun.
Even before I spotted Alan's OED check, I thought the same as him about your clue, that it was a very clever pun about showing contempt. I think offence was only taken by a minority who may never heard of pooh-poohing as an act of contempt generally, rather than as a comment on a childhood favourite.
alanconnorgu
24 October 2011 4:46PM
Well, the ear loves what it loves, Matteo. If I had to choose, I might choose yours; the anonymity of Times setters means that I don't know who I'd be grossly offending if my opinion about that sort of thing mattered a jot.
Tiresias, either I'm being slow or you're being daft.
gueuze
24 October 2011 6:01PM
Great blog Alan.
But if I were to be pedantic - and let's face it, few of us reading this blog would want to miss an opportunity - I'm not sure that the example you gave of an "& lit." is entirely representative.
The beauty of an "& lit." is its economy - the whole clue should work as the definition, or as the cryptic indication. In the example of the clue for FETA, when you consider the clue as a cryptic indication then the words "Dairy product of" don't count for anything, and need to be ignored.
My favourite example of an "& lit." is "I'm a leader of Muslims (4)". The whole phrase acts as a definition for IMAM; when you read it as a cryptic indication you get IM followed by A followed by M ("leader of Muslims"). No part of the clue is wasted.
I know some people who care about this sort of thing would describe the clue that you quoted as a "semi & lit.". But when we get to that level of distinction then it's probably time for us all to get out more.
alanconnorgu
24 October 2011 6:41PM
NO. You are quite right to say so, gueuze. Thank you! I'll certainly try to be more circumspect when we get to this type of clue in the spotlight-on-devices strand: for me, now that I think about it more carefully, I kinda tend to say &lit to describe a family of clues including the strict terse awesome IMAM-type examples, and also the FETA-ish ones. Possibly unhelpful.
It did flash across my mind as I was thinking about the clues of last week which are, let's say, of "the &lit family". Another contender was this from the Dac puzzle with the Manchester-to-MISCREANT clue:
Final stages of summertime swell, then very cold conditions, according to this (3,6)
For an answer of MET OFFICE, that's a semi-&lit as well, I suppose - what do you reckon?
anaxcrosswords
24 October 2011 6:54PM
Correct! &Lit and Semi-&Lit are easily confused but there is a very direct way of remembering.
A true &Lit clue consists of wordplay only; absolutely nothing is added.
Semi-&Lit clues contain something outside the wordplay which very loosely points to a definition. It could be something as insignificant as "this" or "it", but that makes it Semi-&Lit.
You do see clues where, in addition to a valid definition, there is wordplay that seems particularly apposite, but such a clue isn't &Lit in any way (for the time being at least - I do wonder if a name could be invented for such clues to give them a bit more recognition than they currently get).
georgethebastard
25 October 2011 12:53AM
Hi Alan - thanks for the link love (I've added a link here on George v Listener).
If you're basing it on the calendar week, well, I am slightly biased because I did the blog for it at Times for the Times, but I'd say last Thursday's Times had some of the best clues of the week - the jaw-dropper was 17 across
Carefree Scottish dance, missing two bars in opening (9)
With EIGHTSOME becoming LIGHTSOME by losing two of the bars from the letter E
Along with paired clues for DOWN TO THE GROUND and FROM TOP TO BOTTOM in the 15-letter entries in the middle columns.
attempt1of3
25 October 2011 9:33AM
Anax,
to my mind there is no such clue type as a "semi-&lit". It's either &lit, or it ain't.
Just to check I'm not missing the point:
"What's tea passed around in? (5)"....&lit
"Describing onset of eugenics? It is in Galton's heart (7)"...not &lit for me...is this what you'd call "semi &lit"?
Tramp1
25 October 2011 11:07AM
attempt1of3
I've used the term 'semi-&lit' when the wordplay forms part of the definition; something else is added to complete the definition. Not sure where I got the phrase from!
Tramp1
25 October 2011 11:22AM
For me, "What's tea passed around in? (5)" is semi-&lit because of the "what's" but then what do I know? I can't solve the other one.
anaxcrosswords
25 October 2011 12:18PM
attempt1of3
What's tea passed around in? (5)
This works as &Lit because "What's" works as a pointer to the wordplay, even though it can equally point to a definition. If the clue was:
Tea passed around in this? (5)
...then it would be Semi-&Lit because "this" can only point to a definition.
I haven't worked out your second clue yet!
attempt1of3
25 October 2011 1:58PM
Refer to Times Championships, Grand Final, puzzle 3, a clue earlier rejected by the Telegraph because, ahem, "it wasn't an &lit".
It was never intended to be.
Tramp1
25 October 2011 2:53PM
I don't see why clues have to be pigeon-holed anyway. Surely it shouldn't matter if a clue is &lit, semi-&lit or whatever as long as it's fair?
Tombo
24 October 2011 1:07PM
I agree, that Pasquale puzzle was outstanding. Really challenging, but I found myself going back to it time and again and getting a little further each time. I'm now one infuriating clue away from completing it - must not give in to the lure of the crossword solver!