Monday 30 August 2021

Bank Holiday today so we get another couple of puzzles in addition to the usual weekday offerings. 

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3359)

A lot easier than Saturday's offering.  A fairly straightforward anagram at 4a first of all, then a reasonably standard charade at 1d.  I was a bit surprised to see a proprietary name as the answer at 2d, but it was clearly clued and couldn't be anything else.  5/6 was then guessable from the enumeration and the definition.

Which left 3d - another of those damned spoonerisms!  I had to guess this from the enumeration and the crossers, because there's no way I'd have got it from the spoonerism - presumably FUR TOUT ("animal pelt seller") becoming TUR FOUT and then re-spaced to TURF OUT ("expel").  As I said last time, I rarely come across one of these clues that isn't strained in some way or another, and I'd be happy never to see another one.  Their only saving grace is that they're instantly identifiable from the name "Spooner".  (Although I think there was one legendary clue - in the Radio Times maybe? - where "Spooner" turned out to be part of the anagram fodder, and a lot of people were thrown off the scent!)

 

Concise (#3359)

CEASE-AWE ("seesaw") was the top line pun, which I rather liked.  Didn't have much trouble with this but was held up for a bit by 5d (ERELONG), which I've always considered to be two words - my own dictionary, the Concise Oxford, doesn't list it, although some of the online dictionaries include it as a single word.  The only one I wasn't sure about was 17a (HARISSA), which I had to look up.

Glad to see 20a (INFER) given its correct definition of "deduce" and not "imply", which I come across far too often.

Codeword (#3037)

The letters given were M, K and Z - as on Saturday, one medium-frequency letter and two rare ones.  The giveaway entry today was 4-11-10-Z, which had to be QUIZ once I noticed that there was a single occurrence of 4 in the grid (and that it was followed by 11 in both directions).  Filling in these letters gave me M-2-13-Q-U-I-26-2, which could only be MOSQUITO.  Next to go in was TEMPEST, giving me the E, after which it was fairly straightforward to complete the grid.  (One oddity was three X's.)

I didn't recognize the singular from of OUTSKIRT, which appeared in the fourth column - again it's not in the Concise Oxford, although some online dictionaries have it as an alternative to the much commoner "outskirts".

 

Jumbo General Knowledge

An extra one today for the Bank Holiday, which I liked rather more than Saturday's puzzle.  Two Radio 4 references in the Across clues got me off to a flying start:

 

1st pass: Across 11, Down 15½ 

2nd pass: Across 3, Down 5

3rd pass (after checking Across answers): Down 4 

A couple of answers had to be corrected along the way: GENEVA to ZURICH at 39a, and PETE SAMPRAS to JOHN MCENROE at 63a.  I also had MADDY PRIOR instead of SANDY DENNY at 43/23, failing to appreciate that she was still alive!

Of the ones I didn't get at all, 40a (EARWAX) was one of those sneaky "familiar word clued by an unfamiliar one" clues, but most of the rest were unfamiliar, with the exception of 8d (INDIAN INK), which I'd completely forgotten about. 

A to Z

This one only appears on Bank Holidays and can scarcely be termed a "crossword", but I'm including it for completeness.  Solved in under a minute, only going wrong with ARRAS instead of ARIAS in the first instance.  I don't know why it's not included under the children's puzzles, to be honest.

 

Cryptic by Peter (#3295)

Link to idothei (blogged by Saboteur)

Link to Fifteensquared (May 2017, blogged by Pierre)

This was a nice straightforward one for the most part, rated at one star by Saboteur.  Personally I'd give it two since some of the wordplay was a little tricky, but it was definitely something a beginner could attempt, although there was one entry in particular that didn't seem quite right (see below).

There were a number of ingenious anagrams, sometimes accompanied by fitting anagram indicators: "fixed bayonets" in 2d/8d and "innocent abroad" in 18a both make for a particularly smooth surface reading, being established phrases in their own right.  22a was a clever anagram as well, but I think my favourite was the one at 14a, which was rather unexpected and is probably my Clue of the Day.  (Saboteur's Clue of the Day was 13d, which I thought was very cleverly put together.)

 

"S" for "Saint" in 27a was unfamiliar, and like others I didn't know that SHERPA was a language in 19d, but both were guessable.

I couldn't parse 28a properly; I thought it might be COM [= half of COMEDY, i.e "half wit"] + PA [= "attending"???] + SS [= "secondary school"], and when I saw the actual answer on Fifteensquared I was distinctly underwhelmed; a "comp ass", indeed!  Does anyone still say "comp" for "comprehensive"?

 

I've a small quibble at 3d regarding the use of the hyphen: to me "beer-drinking party" means "party consuming beer" and therefore should lead to ALE in DO, rather than DO in ALE, for which I'd expect "beer drinking party" without the hyphen.  Perhaps the hyphen was added by an overzealous editor?

A rather bigger quibble about 1a.  First of all, the spelling RIBBAND is not in the Concise Oxford at all.  Secondly, RIBAND is given, but only as an archaic spelling of "ribbon".  The term for "the winner of a competition or a mark of great distinction" is BLUE RIBAND.  This fits in both with my own intuitions and with most sources I can find on the internet.  The main definition of RIBBAND appears to be "a long narrow strip or bar used in shipbuilding", although this may be American.

 

So, although the answer was gettable from the wordplay, I don't believe that either RIBAND (on its own) or RIBBAND is in current usage meaning "award for achievement".  However I don't currently have access to all dictionaries (Fifteensquared says it's in the Shorter Oxford).  I may return to this in a later post.  

 

Despite the above, an enjoyable puzzle which suited the Bank Holiday well!