Toughie 530

Toughie No 530 by Elgar

Fatal Distraction!

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BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment *****

Greetings from the Calder Valley! We finish an absolutely brilliant week of puzzles with one of Elgar’s crackers. I thought that following the dazzling Dada debut would be tough, but Elgar has managed it with a puzzle that contains lots of really fine clues. Because there are two long answers that spread round the perimeter, they provide you with quite a solving foot in the door. There’s also a sort of sub-theme with a lot of the answers being of a Gallic nature.

Please leave a comment telling us what you thought. You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post. Favourite clues, and there are a few are highlighted in blue.

Across

1a & 26a    Ignoring Chief of Police, it’s M. Dupin here re gruesome truth to be outed {3,7,2,3,3,6)
{THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE} One of my very favourite crossword setters was the late Bunthorne from the Guardian, and he produced some of the most amusing and challenging puzzles which often had a big, appropriate and amusing anagram. This clue echoes Bunthorne in that it’s a splendid appropriate anagram. Remove P (Chief of Police) from Dupin and anagram (outed) M DUIN HERE RE GRUESOME TRUTH and you will get a famous story that featured the detective Auguste Dupin.
8a    Crazy Spooner’s slower route to Scotland? (7)
{HAYWIRE} Clues with the word Spooner in usually mean that you have a cryptic definition that needs to be Spoonerised to get the answer. So a slower route to Scotland would be a “WAY HIGHER” (think of the song Loch Lomond). Spoonerise this and you get a word meaning loopy, or crazy.

9a    Pay half fare from Rotterdam? (2,5)
{GO DUTCH} If you share the cost of something, you are said to do this, and “from Rotterdam” qualifies the answer.

11a    Lbw, say, hitting pad at high speed (4,3)
{FLAT OUT} A word for a type of pad, in the accommodation sense is followed by what the cricketing term LBW indicates. Put them together to get a word meaning very fast, at high speed.

12a    Second person in Paris to catch early bird (7)
{TINAMOU} In French, if you conjugate a verb, the second person singular, i.e. “you”, has a pronoun which you need to find. Inside this goes an informal expression meaning early. This will lead you to a type of bird.

13a    Border city tail removed by Australian paceman (5)
{LILLE} A city on the Belgium/France border is found by taking the name of a very famous Australian bowler and removing the last letter (“tail removed”).

14a    The cupholder’s a little restaurant I promoted (9)
{BRASSIERE} If you take the name for a type of French restaurant and move the letter I up you will get a garment that has a couple of cups. Lovely witty clue, typical Elgar!

16a    Scrabble letters do this the London way (3,6)
{OLD STREET} An anagram (indicated by “scrabble”) of LETTERS DO give the name of a London thoroughfare

19a    Looked around for a hot drink (5)
{DECAF} One of those clues I really dislike. Two definitions connected by a reversal indicator (around) but which do you enter? Obviously if you get the first or last letter, you can work it out, but I do feel these are a bit unfair.

21a    17 might get caught on this slogan (3,4)
{TAG LINE} A word for a slogan is also something that may catch the solution to 17. It says here: “it is a line which is attached to the halyard near the release clip on the outrigger”. Er yes.

23a    Essentially American hero (7)
{PERSEUS} A two word Latin phrase that means “essentially” is added to an abbreviation that means American to give the name of a famous mythological hero.

24a    One dispossessing Echo V? (7)
{EVICTOR} A word for someone who deprives you of your above is found by adding together what “Echo” means in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet and what the letter V indicates.

25a    Elegantly-dressed female’s self-confidence runs over throughout function (7)
{SOIGNÉE} A typical Elgar devious clue. Reverse a word for self-confidence and then “put it on top”, i.e. space it out within the name of a mathematical function. This gives you a word for a lady dressed to the nines.

26a    See 1a

Down

1d           What’s composed by a lyrist for a member of the wind ensemble? (7)
{TRYSAIL}  An anagram of A LYRIST gives an word  that is part of the kit that deals with the wind on a ship.  Nice misleading surface reading.

2d           Fine example one’s entered in old record book (7)
{EPITOME}  I (one) goes inside an old record abbreviation (think of Twist and Shout by the Beatles) plus a word for a weighty book.  This gives you a word meaning a shining example.

3d           Foxes dapper sailor with rubber clothing (9)
{UNEATABLE}    Hmmm.   Probably the most contentious clue.  A word meaning dapper plus the abbreviation for a sailor goes inside a word for a tree that yields a latex-type solution.  This gives you a word that in a famous quotation from Oscar Wilde, described the animals that are being hunted.   I feel that the “foxes” should have been qualified somehow.  I know it would really mess up the surface reading though.

4d           A finger’s needed to poke it (5)
{DIGIT}  A word for a finger is made up from a word meaning to jab or poke added to IT.

5d           Divisions Three down South and up North (7)
{RIDINGS} I  really ought to solve this clue given where I live!  This is a cryptic definition of the word for the old divisions in Yorkshire, of which there were three, a North, West and East, but no South (although Winifred Holtby would have us believe otherwise!).  Hence the down in the clue refers to lacking.

6d           Adult eventually insulates interior layers (7)
{INTIMAE}  A (adult) goes inside  a phrase meaning eventually and leads to a medical terms for the inner walls of organs, etc.

7d &10d               Frequently he goes to bingo in autumn with our girl, so the story goes (3,4,2,3,5,2,5)
{THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER}  No big anagram here! A PhD Wordsum as follows:

(Frequently + HE + what the Americans shout when they have filled the card in the numbers drawing game) inside the phrase the Americans use for autumn +  a two word phrase that defines our + HER

10d         See 7d

15d         Starter and piston broke — he’s left the AA dealing with it (9)
{ANTIPASTO}  An anagram of PISTON AA and T (he’s left the) gives a starter you will find in your local trattoria.

17d         Shark’s good, if rising in capital? (7)
{DOGFISH}  Not a capital here, but a word which means capital, i.e. money.  Inside this goes G plus IF reversed to give the name of an aquatic creature.

18d         Chubby player wanting another card causes a storm (7)
{TWISTER}  A Triple definition.  Think of someone who had one of the biggest hits of the 1960’s which concerned a dance craze.  Another meaning is someone in Pontoon who wants another card and a third definition is a nickname for a violent storm, often found in the US.

19d         J.M.’s family favourite (7)
{DARLING}  A double definition.  The family in a famous book by JM (Barrie) is another word for a favourite person.

20d         Tends to enter church free from guilt (7)
{CLEANSE}  A word that means “tends or inclines” goes inside CE (The Church) to produce a word that means to free from guilt or absolve.

22d         Fearful ogre ultimately plunged into lake (5)
{EERIE} Inside the name of a famous American lake often found in standard crosswords goes E (the last letter of OGRE) to reveal a word that means fearful, or describes the book at 7, 10d.

Thank you to Elgar for a splendid challenge and I hope you agree on the excellent clues.  See you next Friday.