Toughie No 1300 by Kcit
Hints and tips by Bufo
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty */** – Enjoyment ***
A straightforward Thursday puzzle. Only the time spent justifying the last couple of answers raised it above 1* for difficulty.
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.
Across
1a Bucket filling boat’s pipes (6)
TUBING: A bucket goes inside a boat that tows
4a Logo British Library originally displayed in wider spaces (6)
EMBLEM: The abbreviation for (and first letters of) British Library goes between two occurrences of a space in printing that is wider than an ‘en’
8a Pure metal used in lever (8)
PRISTINE: A metal goes inside ‘to lever’
10a Confident guy to escape during bank job, heading off (6)
EGOIST: ‘To escape’ goes inside an armed robbery with the first letter removed
11a Function not covering a large town (4)
CITY: Take an 8-letter word meaning ‘the position or function in which one does something’ and remove a 3-letter covering and the letter A from the front
12a Outrageous order to soldiers now part of history? (4-3-3)
OVER THE TOP: The order is one given to soldiers in the trenches during WW1
13a Source of eloquence in sonnet barely translated (7,5)
BLARNEY STONE: An anagram (translated) of SONNET BARELY
16a Better push to secure good meal (6,6)
FINGER BUFFET: ‘Better’ round G (good) + ‘to push’
20a Wet and raw, spinning on bank? It may be (5,5)
WATER WHEEL: An anagram (spinning) of WET RAW + ‘to bank’. The answer may spin by the bank of a stream
21a Christmas mostly expressing manger, primarily, as this? (4)
CRIB: Take an informal 6-letter word for Christmas and remove the last letter and also the letter M (first letter of manger). The manger in the stable in Bethlehem was used as such
22a Modern artist‘s nonsense: hard, and the reverse of acceptable (6)
ROTHKO: The surname of a US painter (1903-1970) = nonsense + H (hard) + a reversal of ‘acceptable’
23a Personal cover question following violin getting cut (5,3)
STRAW HAT: A type of headgear = a violin with the last letter removed + a question
24a No rubbish with English being put on paper (6)
NOTATE: NO + rubbish + E (English)
25a Disease of sailors? Sailor initially affected with the bends (6)
SCURVY: S (the first letter of sailor) + ‘bendy’
Down
1d Wrong and wrong again — no profit in Mexican food (8)
TORTILLA: ‘Wrong’ + ‘wrong’ + AGAIN with a word meaning ‘profit’ removed
2d Domineering sons jabbing schoolfellow? (5)
BOSSY: S (son) and S (son) inside a male child
3d Unpleasant rumour about senior honour (7)
NOISOME: A rumour goes round an honour restricted to a maximum of 24 living recipients
5d Conductor left, avoiding endless turmoil (7)
MAESTRO: Remove L (left) and the last letter from a word for ‘turmoil’ derived from a whirlpool
6d John feels upset about article expected to have more sheets (5-4)
LOOSE-LEAF: A john (toilet) + an anagram (upset) of FEELS round A (article)
7d Nuts throttling firm’s good luck symbol (6)
MASCOT: Nuts (e,g from oak, beech and chestnut) round the abbreviation for a firm
9d Various events — timeless happenings — matching in worth (4-7)
EVEN-STEVENS: An anagram (various) of EVENTS + ‘happenings’ with the letter T (time) removed. Not much of an anagram is it?
14d Attack with the gun could do for flier (5-4)
RIFLE SHOT: The first word is an anagram of FLIER and the second word is an anagram indicator
15d Cycle aid cracked, displaying fragile quality (8)
DELICACY: An anagram (cracked) of CYCLE AID
17d Not a vintage town (7)
NEWPORT: This is a town in the Isle of Wight or Shropshire (and a city in Wales). When split (3,4) it reveals that a type of fortified wine is not vintage
18d Belt for weapons, stark (not entirely opulent) (7)
BALDRIC: ‘Stark’ + ‘opulent’ with the last letter removed
19d Artistic group that’s gathered round bar (6)
SALOON: An artistic group (or exhibition of artistic works) goes round O (round) to give a bar in a pub
21d Ranch-hand, dodging blow, is to show fear (5)
COWER: Take a 10-letter word for a herder of cattle and remove a 5-letter word for a blow (with the fist)
What can I say that hasn’t been said before?
Another back-pager masquerading as a Toughie, thanks to Kcit and Bufo.
Well, I enjoyed it! Doesn’t have to be ultra-clever for me to get satisfaction from the solve. I liked 14D and 19D in particular. Thanks Kcit and Bufo.
Finished reasonably quickly, but struggled a bit with the clues that involved thinking of a bigger word only to leave most of it out, like 11a (have only just realised what the function is!) and 21d (I couldn’t think of the right blow despite having the answer)
very enjoyable, liked13a (topic of a recent DIY Clueing contest), 16a, and the repeating clues 1d (wrong & wrong) and 9d (event and event – though i thought actually using event twice in the clue might have been more interesting)
stupidly struggled to parse 1a stuck on tub for bucket
Many thanks Kcit and bufo
Good solve today!
Faves : 10a, 16a, 23a, 1d, 17d & 18d.
Still have to do the Cryptic!
Seem to have more time for the toughie these days as the back-page cryptics are, I feel, becoming generally less difficult. A **/*** for me ,and agree with Expat Chris that toughies can still be enjoyable even if not too onerous,13a was a proper anagram, and generally the clues were logical, needed the explanation for 11a-thanks Kcit.
I share dutch’s problem with subtraction clues and thank Bufo for the function in 11a. Otherwise a rather mundane puzzle.
22a caused a chuckle – are we sure it isn’t an “all-in-one” clue describing the Artist & his work?
Thanks to Kcit and Bufo.
Even though I am not very keen on curtailed words in clues, like our friend Dutch, I must say that I start to get used to them. 5d is therefore my favourite today although the mentioning of the blarney stone made me laugh. I did “bung in” 11a and 7d. Looked for the connection between mast and nuts but couldn’t find anything. Thanks to Kcit and to Bufo for putting some sense into the more difficult clues.
We were a bit short of solving time and this level of difficulty suited us just fine. We agree that clues that need the solver to identify what is missing are often the hardest and we have a few here. Last in, can’t see why now, was 19d. We enjoyed the solve.
Thanks Kcit and Bufo.
Gulp. After the wonderful feeling a short while ago of solving the last two Elgar Toughies without excessive blood, sweat and tears, I have suddenly struggled badly with this week’s Toughies (and also Monday’s Rufus!). I was rather distressed to find that the blog and most comments found this easy. My weakness, i believe, is vocabulary limitations and my strength is lateral thinking. Today there were quite a number of words either totally unfamiliar or needing dredging out of parts of the brain long abandoned. Funny place crosswordland – this week has put me humbly back with feet on earth. Not sure yet if I will try tomorrow’s Toughie, unless it’s Elgar.
Funny how things work. I always comment on how impossible Elgar is to me. You are clearly the proof that the exception is not the rule but I do take my hat off to you
It’s not Elgar tomorrow – it’s Elkamere.
Gulp again. I may be wrong but I associate Elkamere with my last absolute Toughie disaster when after lunchtime went into extra time I was still staring at an almost blank grid. It’s clues featured about a dozen movies and I think I managed to fit “Sound of Music” or something similar. Not my idea of a crossword. But it makes me sympathetic to complaints (by bloggers) of excessive use of cricket-speak in crosswords in general even though I speak cricket pretty well
Giovanni, then pub tomorrow lunchtime
Bring on Elkamere..
At last, my first Toughie solve of the week. I needed a few hints and explanations, but at least I made it to the end today. Good fun this one (for me at least) After some very straightforward back page solving this week, this one took quite a bit longer for me to complete. Thanks to Kcit for the challenge and to Bufo for some most enlightening explanations.
This is the second toughie this week I barely got started on. No way this is a back pager!