i Cryptic Crossword 4275 Tees
June 24, 2024
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳
This was a little more challenging than we normally get from Tees – but only a little, and I don’t think there is anything impenetrable. All the definitions seem to be intuitively clear, and none of the word-play was so tightly bound that it was too hard to unpick.
Like some other recent puzzles, this one assumes a broad range of general knowledge. Speaking for myself, I didn’t know the case of bullets, which was my last one in, but it was readily worked out from the crossing letters and word-play. My only other visit to Wikipedia was for the Turkish leader; likewise easily worked out, and it did seem highly likely we were being referred to the Ottoman Empire.
The Pioneers flying were people I remember learning about at Primary School, although I doubt that they are taught about much these days, as the Younger Person in the house didn’t recognise their names. I was rather surprised to read of a little consternation on Fifteensquared about raise in this clue. It seemed fine and pretty obvious to me, as it is what our two boy-dogs do when we take them out (the girl-dogs stoop). A commenter on 225 did point that out.
This was first published in 2020 at the time of lock-down and there are a few references redolent of those days. But nothing that no longer makes sense. Good fun, and a satisfying solve.
My Clue of the Day is 1ac: “Carried on board or stored in hold, depending on circumstances (2,3,4,3,2)”.
Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2020/07/27/independent-10542-by-tees/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
I usually enjoy Tees amd this was no exception. Whereas I struggled yesterday with a puzzle most foumd easy, I was on form today and almost sailed through in a little over two ETs.
The pioneers and bullet case took ages to come to mind; there were no obscurities and no weak clues, although that for EN MASSE was less slick than the rest. I thought that REPRESENTED rather than MISREPRESENTED would have been more accurate at 25/7, which with MELBOURNE were my favourites.
A pleasant and not-too-challenging puzzle this morning, and it did help to be of a certain age. 1d brought back memories of a cold and misty morning in 1971 when MrsG and I visited the actual site in Galway where A&B landed. What brave (foolhardy?, although a Daily Mail Prize of £10,000 [about a million now] was on offer) men. This was the 1919 equivalent of Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon fifty years later, but is now almost forgotten. As for Johnson, the only 25/7 thing about him is his ability to tell bare-faced lies (if you ignore Trump!). NDY.
About two egg-timers today, with the only real problem the unknown pioneers and associated wordplay. Interesting puzzle.
Excellent Tees again. Failed to get the parsing on WELLINGTON BOOT, but the answer was plain enough.
I do like it when the long entries are inventive like this without resorting to them a being anagrams.
I think the way to avoid long entries relying on anagrams is to start with the long entries using phrases that can be clued as cryptic or double definitions. Otherwise, leaving it to Crossword Compiler to finish filling the grid will almost always fill long lights with single words that are difficult to clue without resorting to anagrams. As an occasional setter I’ve had that problem myself. Of course one can avoid the problem by choosing a grid without any long lights but that might be a bit restrictive in other ways.
Nothing too taxing from Tees this time, although the two girls at 14ac and 15dn took a while to come to mind.
As for raise = cock, superscript letters or figures are sometimes referred to as ‘cocked-up’.