i Cryptic Crossword 4051 by Skinny

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳

An IoS reprint that is as such things should be – pretty straightforward, entertaining, and with wordplay to lead you safe home and sound even if you don’t know the answer. In the latter category for me would fall the party game at 18d which we know under a different name in these parts, and the banana, which I sort of knew but wasn’t 100% certain of. Finished in a jiffy nonetheless. Enjoy.

CoD? I’ll go with 3d – “Livestock here help, so it’s said, to supply a drug dealer (10)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from February 2020:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/16/independent-on-sunday-1564-skinny/

i Cryptic Crossword 4050 by Radian

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳

So, did you spot the theme? All of it, I mean, because I sort of caught glimpses, 21d’s you might say. I’d go so far as to say that I thought we were just looking at the tale 4d is featured in, but there was a little more than that going on. In my defence I would say that this was on the easy side, and that I was finished within the one egg-timer, but what I could not say was that I parsed everything. But that’s the way I rock, especially when I’m in a hurry. Nice puzzle though.

CoD? I’ll go with 17ac – “Scatter most of the crumbs (7)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from January 2020:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/01/28/independent-10387-radian/

Inquisitor 1839 Minimalist by Nathan Panning

Minimalist the grid certainly is.

And the clues.

Perhaps we could argue that this blog should be too?

RILEY would be the man we’re looking for, and IN C, which is apparently rather well known. No, I haven’t listened to it, and suspect it probably isn’t my kind of thing, but there it is, and call me stuck in my ways.

Perhaps that empty box below the grid would trouble me less if I did. Is it significant? Or, given the space available, is the editor just giving us some handy working-out space? Or are things other than bars missing this week?

Not that we needed much space to work things out, this being a fairly gentle affair, COMMODORES and the surrounding clues being something of a gift, and ditto the bottom of the grid.

I even noticed the pleasing symmetry, meaning that towards the close it was pretty clear where things had to go, forming a great big letter C.

Are the bars and blocks entered significant too? We’ve been asked to chuck them in. I have. They look scrawled, as is my writing. I bet Kenmac’s on Fifteensquared will be a lot neater, especially as he won’t have many clues to write-up. But short straws, long straws, straws for drinking, and anyway, whose idea was it to stay up until the early hours watching TOTP on BBC Four? But 1984 was a good year.

As 1964 possibly was too, but I will leave that to others better qualified than myself to judge.

i Cryptic Crossword 4049 Peter

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳

This was a little tougher than I was expecting. I generally feel that I can tune in to a puzzle from Peter quite quickly, but with this one I had a bit of a slow start. Once I got going, though, things fell into place steadily enough, and I was a little surprised to see that I hadn’t gone into the ⏳⏳⏳ time-zone.

This satisfying puzzle was all solved without the need to pick up the dictionary or go online. However, there were a few entries I thought I ought to check up once I had worked them out. These were the S-shaped curve, the balletic figure and the tree; all new to me.

The curve was my Last One In. Regular readers will know that your blogger crumbles before the sight of a four-letter clue where we don’t get the initial letter from a crossing entry. I very nearly failed on this one, but somehow dredged up the entry from the depths of my memory (probably of a previous crossword) and a quick dictionary check proved it so.

I can’t say any one clue stood out for me, but the surface reading of 6ac made me laugh so that gets to be my Clue of the Day: “Bra recycled into little lad’s garment (6)”.

Here’s the link for the answers and explanations:https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/09/independent-on-sunday-1563-by-peter/

i App Cryptic Crossword S0112 by Phi

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

We had some typical Phi features today: excellent long anagrams, plenty of deletions, and a nifty idea our setter used to kick off his grid fill – this time it was 4 sets of paired lights in a very user-friendly grid. The only unknowns – TAIKO and LABIALISM were both clued as clearly as you could wish for.

We also had some novel twists: I especially liked ‘switch of leaders’ which seemed to give the clue for YASHMAK an elegance when you might have thought it an awkward word to clue. However, it’s a reverse (or DIY) anagram that gets my vote for CoD today. I always like them, and this one has satisfyingly managed to extend the theme of the answer into the wordplay:

6/24 Lighthouse location implied to be sodden yet? (9,5)

Apologies for brief blog. Just leaving Spain this morning to return home after a work trip so I have a plane to catch.

Las respuestas: www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/21/independent-10408-by-phi

i Cryptic Crossword 4048 by Gila

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳½

Good stuff, pretty much down the middle of the range of difficulty hereabouts, and with enough quirks and bits of trickery to keep me engaged for probably 3 of those egg-timers, but I think that was largely down to my inability to see the longer anagrams today for some reason. Once they emerged from the fog, especially 1a, things became a lot easier, and I’m expecting most commenters here to say 2.

Quirister on the other side has picked out some very praiseworthy clues in his blog – in particular I hadn’t realised the &Littish quality of SCOOP – although he calls it an ‘extended definition’, which may be a better term. But I did appreciate the other &Lit he mentioned so that’s my CoD:

8d Evil organisation quietly residing in secret complex (7)

No problems with the vocab today. 21d YANKEE is a word that will always remind me of when, in 1985, I was in the car with my friend John and his £2 Yankee multiplier bet – that all four semi-finals of the FA Cup (in England and in Scotland) would be draws – came in on the radio. He got £600, and I got to share a bottle of champagne from the offie round the corner.

Here’s the link: www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/17/independent-10404-by-gila

i Cryptic Crossword 4047 Eccles

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳

Crosswords are meant to be enjoyable. We do them because we want to, not because we have to. Sometimes that enjoyment comes in the form of a challenge to untangle the most tightly-knotted word-play or to divine the most allusive of whimsical definitions. Today it comes in the form of smiles and perhaps out-loud laughter as we are entertained by this setter’s humour.

Not so much a laugh as a groan when I got Host. But definitely a laugh at the surface reading for trousers and more. Sometimes the humour is a little, let us say Hoskinseque – but that’s no criticism from me, in what is after all simply a matter of taste – as with the Bust up, possibly, the result of this, or of low quality. Eccles clearly puts great effort into his surface readings, making them not just plausible, but often quite vivid, such as the leading actress and the French port. But never at the expense of the word-play, which is often simple and straightforward and always impeccable.

My Clue of the Day could have been any of the above, or any of three or four others that I haven’t mentioned. However, it is the delightful 12ac: ‘Host’s possible answer to “Do you use hairspray to hold your hair back?” (6)’.

Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/05/independent-10394-by-eccles/

i Cryptic Crossword 4046 by Klingsor

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

So, Klingsor this Thursday, whose puzzles are always a pleasure. Nothing too difficult, no controversies I think, just lots of lovely wordplay to get your teeth sunk into. The hardest part today will probably be trying to find a clue to nominate. Let us just say then that beside the one below, the satellite at 1ac and “divine” at 11d both got several ticks. I’m sure you’ll mention loads more.

So, to the long trailed CoD, which for me was 29ac – “Male attire ultimately could be answer! (8)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from February 2020:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/06/independent-10395-by-klingsor/

i Cryptic Crossword 4045 by Knut

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳

A nice puzzle from Knut this Wednesday that I thought was straightforward for the most part, but with a little bite in the tail. The latter came courtesy of the soy beans at 2d, which of course is obvious in retrospect (and who doesn’t love a bit of Edam), but the sheer wordiness of the clue threw me a little. Perhaps it was meant too. And as for the “master” at 11ac, well, that was my fault, because I knew the required GK. Finished in a jiffy nonetheless, thanks mainly to the gifts in the borders, and generous definitions elsewhere.

And CoD? While the aforementioned 11ac was very nice, 27ac just edges it for me – “Producer of smash hit by Jackson family (group’s first) (6,4,4)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from February 2020:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/02/20/independent-10407-knut/

Inquisitor 1838 Blown Away by Ifor

Ah yes, it’s that book again. The ODQ. You know, the one you don’t have to hand on your bookshelf. I bet the Fifteensquared blogger will, except… Damn, well that’s me too, words to the same effect probably being heard emanating from Ifor’s direction when he found he’s got to put up with my ramblings again, because I think he did last time too, and it’s been a week since I solved this so I’m struggling to remember…

Ah yes, extra words. Some are linked to the unclued entries. Extra words I can cope with, and short unclued entries too.

What did you cope less well with, I hear you ask? Well, that would mostly be the general grinding to a halt I experienced on finding that my across and down entries clashed, because…

You misinterpreted the preamble too, didn’t you? That bit at the end about changing the across entries. You thought it was adjustments to the finished grid too, and smiled in anticipation at the prospect of putting a fancy JIF together. The boss on the other side likes those.

Anyway, all the across entries had to be anagrammed before we entered them. Got that fairly quickly, once I worked out that bit in the preamble.

Got the unclued entries too, which were indeed linked to some of the extra words, and yay, it’s PHILIP LARKIN, he of at least one famous quote and general misery-making I’m led to understand.

The rest, taking appropriate letters, would give the first and last lines from Gone with the Wind, which is presumably why we were meant to be blown away.

Now, all of this was quite jolly, and I was enjoying my Saturday afternoon.

But then that quote. As previously noted, I don’t have a copy of the ODQ, and it turns out Larkin was eminently quote-worthy, there being literally pages worth on every site I found, none of which appeared to be linked to the above.

Some time would pass, and then I located a bootleg copy of the aforementioned tome and in seconds the one we needed. You know, that one about a beginning, muddle, and end, which all fits together very nicely with the above, but by that point… By that point I had rather had enough of all that hunting around.

Oh well.