i Cryptic Crossword 4123 by Bluth
April 24, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳
Well, that was rather good, wasn’t it? Over quite quickly (though not necessarily fully parsed), with more than the average number of smiles along the way. Were you expecting a different Johnson to be the subject of 9ac? Well, of course you were. Did the A=Adult parsing pass you by at 8d, necessitating a little pause for thought? No doubt it did too, never mind how obvious the answer was. But I’m sure you also guessed when this was published from the (then) timely reference to social distancing in the same vicinity. And to add a little more meat to the bones, a textbook example of how to clue as plain as day an unknown word at 3d. Worth noting that for those of us who start at the bottom of the grid we will have begun at a sprint and slowed to a brisk jog, but that didn’t hinder a rapid solve overall.
CoD? My favourite was 4d, but there were loads to pick from – “Two cups overturned following half Arabic source of fizz (6)”.
All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from June 2020:
https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/06/20/independent-10511-by-bluth/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Really nice to see Bluth’s name again, especially seeing on Fifteensquared how he’s destined to become a regular contributor. Took me a while to hit on the right Johnson – isn’t it the most common surname in America? And the singer required in 6d was very elusive, but otherwise a fairly breezy, jolly solve.
My favourite was POLKA DOT, so interesting to note Dansar’s criticism of it in the final comment, which evidently doesn’t matter much. It’s the point that came up in Phi’s puzzle at the weekend and, if he’d wanted to, Bluth could have got round it by writing ‘Today Klopp WILL BE lacking finishers’.
An enjoyable puzzle, a little over ⏳ with many if not most clues of expert quality, in particular 1+2d, 4d, 7d, 16d and 27+28d. NHO BOUILLON, maybe my veggie upbringing. I did indeed expect to identify another Johnson at 9a, but, when I had solved the anagram, decided the individual suggested might fit.
I like surfaces to both make sense and comprise good grammar, put am puzzled at the suggestion that the wordplay also needs to do either. A solver needs to unpick the wordplay, separate juxtaposed words, convert nouns into adjectives or verbs (eg, often, doctor), give them different meanings (think of bat, stole, contract) or in the case of anagram fodder or as here, convert them into meaningless strings of letters. The notion that they could then make any sense let alone be grammatical seems to run counter to the whole philosophy of cryptic crosswords.
…but am puzzled…
Like instructions in a recipe cryptic instructions need to say what you should do. So that polka dot clue should have read ‘Today Klopp are lacking finishers’ to be cryptically hyper correct. Does that make sense?
Yes, to Dansar, apparently
Loved this. I can see that Bluth could become a favourite to be savoured.
I particularly liked AVABOLIC STEROID and ADULTERY. However, I couldn’t parse BOUILLON, despite having UILL written out in my margin.
Welcome back! Hope you had a good break!
We certainly did. The sky was blue and the sun shone. That alone would have been enough, but Andalusia is wonderful…
(Missed the dogs, though).
Thanks for covering, Jonofwales. Much appreciated.