Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 27602
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
We get four mini-puzzles for the price of one today. My order was NW, SW, NE and SE – how about you? Do let us know how you got on.
If you click on any of the areas showing ‘Click here!’ you’ll see the actual answer so try not to do it by accident.
Across Clues
1a Bust, Rodin’s last put in park but vandalised (8)
BANKRUPT – the last letter of Rodin is put inside an anagram (vandalised) of PARK BUT.
5a Give out drugs to get higher as an exercise (4-2)
PUSH-UP – this is a gymnastic exercise which brings back horrible memories, although in Britain the more usual term for it starts with press. A verb to give out or peddle drugs is followed by an adverb meaning higher.
9a Swift, perhaps, educational test facing girl getting tense (8)
SATIRIST – the abbreviation for a standard test in schools is followed by a female name and T(ense).
10a Trouble with greed, say, upset Greek idol (6)
ADONIS – after the usual word for trouble we have to reverse (upset) what greed is an example of. As a reversal indicator ‘upset’ works better with a down clue.
11a Draw back tool initially with trouble — a screwdriver? (8)
COCKTAIL – a charade of verb to draw back the firing mechanism of a gun to ready it for firing, the initial letter of tool and a verb to trouble.
12a Place for pilgrims kept by councillor in Norfolk resort (6)
CROMER – the city visited by many Roman Catholic pilgrims is inserted (kept) inside the abbreviation for councillor.
14a Moan at sign that’s whipped up hostility (10)
ANTAGONISM – an anagram (whipped up) of MOAN AT SIGN.
18a Protective garment pierced by dislodged stake in industrial feature (10)
SMOKESTACK – a loose protective garment traditionally worn by artists contains (pierced by) an anagram (dislodged) of STAKE.
22a Popular diplomat’s skill is undiminished (6)
INTACT – charade of an adverb meaning popular or trendy and a diplomat’s skill.
23a Best vehicle leaves without time to go to hotel (8)
VANQUISH – string together a light commercial vehicle, a verb meaning leaves without the T(ime) and the letter that Hotel represents in the Nato Phonetic Alphabet.
24a Artist following a writer in foreign language (6)
ARABIC – the abbreviation for an artist follows A (from the clue). After that we need the proprietary name for a type of ballpoint pen (writer).
25a Conflict rages sadly in exit (8)
DISAGREE – an anagram (sadly) of RAGES goes inside a verb to exit or shuffle off (or, as John Le Mesurier phrased it, ‘conk out’).
26a Come out from English commercial move ending prematurely (6)
EMERGE – E(nglish) is followed by a coming together of two or more companies without its final letter (ending prematurely).
27a Measure taken by American in church yard, place of rest (8)
CEMETERY – put the American spelling of a measure of length inside abbreviations for church and yard.
Down Clues
1d Cut in British cricket, perhaps, that’s not new (6)
BISECT – B(ritish) followed by what a cricket is an example of without the N (not new).
2d Sign relating to hearing organ in confines of nave (6)
NOTICE – an adjective meaning relating to the ear goes inside the outer letters (confines) of nave.
3d Bit of sun around river? It is an unusual occurrence (6)
RARITY – a glimmer of sunlight contains R(iver) and IT (from the clue).
4d Hand over a note touring island being enthusiastic (10)
PASSIONATE – a verb to hand over, A (from the clue) and the seventh note of tonic sol-fa go round (touring) a Hebridean island. [Thanks to Rabbit Dave for the correction.] [Correction no. 2 – thanks to BD. The wordplay should be: A phrasal verb to hand over (4,2) followed by (over) A and a note from tonic sol-fa with the single-letter abbreviation for island inserted (touring).]
6d Cook lightly bit of gristle? Such is unlikely to succeed (8)
UNDERDOG – a verb to cook lightly (produce a rare steak, for example) is followed by the first letter of gristle.
7d Female attendant established, we hear, measure of animal first (8)
HANDMAID – a homophone (we hear) of a verb meaning established or constructed with the unit of measurement of horses preceding it (first).
8d Finished with strike over one beef (8)
PASTRAMI – an adjective meaning finished or over and a verb to strike or batter precede (over, in a down clue) the Roman numeral for one.
13d Sickly son fidgeting in each car (10)
SACCHARINE – S(on) followed by an anagram (fidgeting) of IN EACH CAR.
15d Assess car that’s covered northerly road (8)
ESTIMATE – a type of car with plenty of room for luggage or goods contains the reversal (northerly, in a down clue) of the designation of the Leeds-London motorway.
16d Computer stuff mistaken for waste (8)
SOFTWARE – an anagram (mistaken) of FOR WASTE.
17d Fine work by engraver that’s attractive (8)
FETCHING – the abbreviation for fine (used to categorise lead pencils) is followed by what an engraver may produce.
19d Sixteen, maybe, and uncool (6)
SQUARE – double definition. Sixteen is an example (others could be nine or twenty-five).
20d Note heartless Chancellor of the Exchequer being brutal (6)
FIERCE – the informal term for our smallest note without its central letter (heartless) is followed by the abbreviation for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Watching Only Connect Pointless last night I learnt that a Lady (Godiva) is rhyming slang for the note and that a commodore is £15 (because of The Commodores’ hit song ‘Three times a lady” – clever or what?).
21d Trite characteristic of a fondue? (6)
CHEESY – double definition.
My favourite clue today was 20d. Which one(s) tickled your fancy?
Today’s Quickie Pun: SHATTER + LANE = CHATELAINE
I enjoyed this one today, and for me, it was much better than the last few Tuesday puzzles.
Many thanks to setter (Shamus perhaps?) and to gazza for the review.
3*/1*. I am sorry to say that this was not to my taste at all today, and I found it an unrelenting slog. I am pleased to see that Gazza and Jezza enjoyed it (one man’s meat, etc…) because I do appreciate how much effort all the setters put in to compile a crossword.
I needed Gazza’s hint to explain the wordplay for 20d as I was completely flummoxed by how the first four letters could be clued by a heartless note.
Thanks to the setter and to Gazza.
I totally agree with you Rabbit Dave
With you all the way, tedious!
Also in agreement. A real chore today. Thanks anyway to the setter for furrowing my brow and to Gazza for much needed help.
Agree with difficulty rating, at least a*** for me. I got the same answer for 4d but by a totally different route.i.e The verb for Handover,+ ‘i’ for island and anagram of ‘a note’.
Not the most enjoyable crossword for me, but thanx to Compiler and to Gazza for his Review.
I don’t think that quite works for 4d. If the container indicator for the I is ‘touring’, then where is the anagram indicator?
I worked it out as “Hand” = Pass (i.e pass me the salt), with “Over ” as the anagram indicator.
Yes, that would work. I wonder which Mr Ron intended.
Perhaps he will pop in later and tell us?
By the way, I think you have an extra A in your hint which would work OK if you take “a note” to be the note in question
Thanks – now amended.
I actually parsed this one as PASS ON (hand over), the A from the clue and a musical note around I(sland). It’s bad practice for a clue to contain a surplus indefinite article.
That’s obviously correct – thanks BD. I should have looked a bit further instead of jumping to the conclusion that Iona was the island.
Take a four letter verb meaning to hand over followed by an anagram (touring) of A NOTE around (touring again) I(sland).
Well at least none of you clever people didn’t start off with aficionado for 4d – I rather thought it may not be right but it did have Iona in the middle – it played havoc with that corner for quite a while. Oh dear!!
Just reading comments again and have noticed a glaring grammatical gaffe – do hope that RD (and everyone else) has missed it.
?
I should have said in my previous posting that your explanation was far better. The answer was obvious from the placed letters but I was trying to parse it. Just goes to prove I read the reviews eh!!
Many thanx.
We had the right answer for 20d but had not worked out the first part of the wordplay. Good fun and we expect that Jezza’s guess at the setter could well be correct.
Thanks Mr Ron and Gazza.
A good challenge for me today – I struggled to get started and then very slow progress! It was a puzzle where I realised what the answers must be and then had to go back to the clue and try to figure out the logic, which still eluded me for some even at the end.
But when done, I had a real sense of achievement! So I would rate this one as 3*/5*
Definitely four corners today but I can’t remember which order they fell in. I wondered if there was a touch of the ‘mad hat’ about today with a smidgeon of the wrong envelope about it. Whoever set it, I quite enjoyed it, given that I am finding it very hard to concentrate on crosswords as I have bee stings on my face which isn’t doing much for my week so far.
The Toughie is of Tuesday level difficulty if anyone wants to have a go.
Ouch!
Did you mean Pointess, not Only Connect?
Welcome to the blog, Elizabeth. It could well have been Pointless – I did watch half of that as well. My little grey cells must be dying off faster than I thought!
It definitely wasn’t Only Connect!
I’m glad I was not the only one to be flummoxed by the wordplay for 20d (my last one in). Also glad to be reassured that I didn’t doze off during Only Connect and miss the references to rhyming slang.
I also did not see the wordplay for 20d, it was my last fill. Fair in hindsight, though (thank you gazza!) – i was completely misdirected by note. I did the four puzzles NW, NW, SW and then struggled with SE. I liked 16d, and smiled when i got the fondue characteristic, but this wasn’t one of my favourite puzzles. I went through the same deliberation and decided “over” had to be an anagram indicator in 4d (hand over a note touring island..)
Thanks gazza and setter
Thank you setter. Not too sure how much enjoyment I derived from this. More a sense of relief and achievement when it was over. Of the four puzzles I found the SW corner the easiest of the four. I needed your review Gazza to explain more than one of my answers. They were correct although I couldn’t get the wordplay. 20d is certainly in that category. Also I followed the Wayne route to 4d. So a bit of luck there. So many thanks Gazza for your help in decoding and explaining why I had some correct answers
Cant quibble with a ***/***,my sequence was NW,NE,SE,SW. I always try to start in the NW as this seemed logical when I began crosswords and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks so I;m stuck with it, Apart from the ‘American measure’ in 27a,which took longer than it should have, right up my street, thanks to Gazza for the blog-thought Mr H Wolf may have featured in the image for 18a-or is that too cryptic
I’ve added it just for you.
Thanks Gazza-what a awesome voice- very scary man i believe.
The Manfred Mann version is better, in my opinion anyway, although that might have something to do with Paul Jones!
***/*** for me as well and pretty much ‘four corners’ although I spent a little while debating cricket terminology
6d & 8d were favs. with a mention for 11a.
Needed Gazza to explain how I SHOULD have arrived at 20d – I’d done a ‘bung it in’.
Best bit of the entire exercise was listening to The Commodores again – thank you, thank you.
I too bunged it in Jane but I did have four of the six letters.
Hi MP – me too, but having totally missed the reference to the naked horsewoman I started to wonder whether I’d gone astray with the one letter that wasn’t part of an across answer. Also, I didn’t particularly like it as a definition of ‘brutal’ – feasible, obviously, but well down the list.
I’m surprised that Kath struggled with this one – in fact I’m always surprised if Kath struggles with any of them!
I struggle quite often – almost always on Fridays.
Hi Kath, how come you can reply to me when the clock’s still counting down on my message? Am I missing something here?
Naked horsewoman?? Have I missed something?
Lady Godiva.
Ah, thanks – I was looking for something in the clues.
The bit that I don’t understand is how Jane and MP had four checking letters in 20d. Am I being dim?
_I_RCE. Kath
OK – I give in. I only count a checking letter as one that’s been proved to be right from letters from another clue that you’re sure about – yet again, one chance to be right and what am I . . .
The C was pretty obvious from Chancellor Of The Exchequer.
I will bet a deep sea diver that not many peeps will get the note at 20d so thanks Gazza. Sorry for being a misery yesterday. No excuses. I have always liked Johnathon Swifts comment “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him”. Nice puzzle SE corner stumped me for a while.
Super crossword today, many thanks to the compiler and to Gazza for the review. The Warbler toughie today is also great fun and quite doable.
I agree, a super puzzle today. Lots of lovely clues of which my favourite was 19d.
Thanks to Mr Ron and Gazza for his review. A commodore, I ask you! Brilliant!
***/**** for me. NW, SW, NE and finally SE thanks to 20d. Definitely was a case of bung it in and hope it’s right. 1d held me up awhile due to the wrong spelling of a cricketing term. 11 and 18a were my favourites today. Thank you to the setter and Gazza for the hints, plus, quite frankly, a brilliant bit of trivia about slang terms for money. Made me smile as I get over ‘girl flu’.
Oh also bunged in 12a…before seeing why it was right.
Now, now Hanni – Kath made us promise not to mention colds and flu in front of Gazza! Glad to hear that you also dabbled in the realms of men in whites for 1d – I’d hate to be the only one who missed the blindingly obvious!
Hi Jane
20d I really did struggle with.
Well I almost put that it was quite ‘cold’ on the moors today but then I remembered Kath’s warning ;-). 1d did flummox me for some time. Your reply made me laugh though…my other half plays cricket so does that qualify me to comment about dabbling in men in white.
Good level of challenge for a Tuesday. I went NW, SW, NE, SE and completed it but needed the blog to understand 2d and 20d. 3*/3* for me.
Thanks setter and Gazza for the explanations.
Sorry to Mr Ron, but I really didn’t like it.
Not on the wavelength at all and at least 4 stars from me for difficulty.
Obviously the four squares didn’t help,(and far too many words ending with ‘e’, six on the bottom line alone) but I only managed to complete the NE section without at least some help.
A miserable attempt from me altogether!
I’m in the poor camp today. Too many not quite working clues such as 5a, 18a,and worst of all 27a, the Americans don’t use metres however it’s spelt.
For me ***/*. Thx to Gazza for explaining the above clues.
Thanks to Mr Ron and to Gazza for the review and hints. A very good puzzle that I enjoyed a lot, even though I struggled all the way through. Managed the NE mini puzzle with the exception of 9a. Then SW & NE, with SE completely blank, couldn’t even get these with the hints. Favourite was 24a. Was 4*/3* for me. Getting a bit hazy now in Central London.
It’s taken me ages. The top right corner went OK, then I went all over the place getting nowhere very fast and eventually just had a completely empty bottom right corner.
The only thing that I seem to have done right today is understand the 20d ‘heartless note’.
I liked 3 and 6d. My favourite was 21d.
With thanks to whoever set this one and to gazza.
I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that I don’t think this is a Shamus if only because I don’t usually have too much trouble with his crosswords – maybe CS is right.
Not exactly a walk in the park .For me it was a puzzle of two halves…managed left side but needed a few hints for the right hand side. Thanks to gazza & setter.
WHEW!! That was a snorter, and I gave up in the end with about five missing. I just could not get on wavelength, and I sweated bullets with EVERY clue.
I had never heard of Cromer, but I should have been able to work it out, it only goes to show how far I was off the setter’s thinking.
There were far, far too many answers written in using the M’pops rule, e.g. 20d, therefore I needed many hints to know why they were right.
My fave was 9a, mainly because it was probably the only one that I was not taken in by the misdirection.
Thanks to setter, and many, many thanks to Gazza for unravelling this for me.
I found this trickier than usual for a Tuesday and I’m personally not over fond of this type of grid. Managed to battle through it however and found it quite enjoyable. Thanks to gazza and Mr Ron ***/***
Solved this in the same quadrants order as you, Gazza – so thank you for stopping me from feeling too much of an idiot! Definitely needed your help. Tried to make life too complicated by looking for a bird for 9a. I always seem to take ages to change tack once I’ve got fixed on an idea. Many thanks to setter. Currently learning how to gild with gold leaf – definitely not something to do while sneezing or in a draught.
I agree that once you have something in your head it’s very difficult to get shot of it – it’s probably about as difficult as learning to gild with gold leaf but a bit cheaper!
Another thing that you really don’t want to do in a draught, i.e. with the kitchen door wide open, is shake icing sugar over a fruit tart – oh dear – very sticky kitchen – floor and work surfaces – and very sticky collie who was seriously unimpressed!
I found this very much a slog at the beginning but as time went by I began enjoying it more and more. The difficulty probably lay to some extent on a poor night ‘s sleep. I stayed up reading too late .When I got 5a and then 11a and 23a things were definitely looking up.There were many other admirable clues. The setter 23a’d me over 9a. I kept thinking it was some very obscure bird, and I started thinking unkind thoughts about the Don. Somebody suggested Shamus, which I think it might be. Thanks Gazza and setter.
No wit, no pop, no style :-{
First glance – too difficult.
But once I got started, completed almost except for 20d.
This came to me later in the day.
Brilliant word play, I thought.
Many thanks to the setter for a most entertaining struggle, and to gazza for the review.
I found it quite difficult thanks Gazza for the hints. For me it was SW, SE, NE, NW
This was a bit if a grind. I hate these grids that give four puzzles in one, and I hate them even more when the clueing is so tortuous. I thought it more toughie territory than back pager, with few smiles along the rocky road. Like others, there were too many that I just put in because they fitted and then went back to try to decipher the wordplay, not always successfully, so thanks to Gazza for the help there, although I’m still not sure why 4d can’t be PASS-IONA-TE, which is how I read it, although I accept, of course, BD’s version as well. If I have to have a favourite, it would be 19d, which I thought really clever. 2*/4*
This was a stinker and not very enjoyable TBH.
And as Wednesday morning arrives, and the Telegraph site seems down, please don’t tell me that it is time for the annual four month IT-incompetence shut-down?