Toughie No 3131 by Artix
Hints and tips by Gazza
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
BD Rating – Difficulty **** – Enjoyment ****
A proper ‘tough’ Toughie from Artix which I progressed through steadily rather than speedily and enjoyed the whole process a lot – thanks to the setter. The last Artix Toughie I blogged (3095) contained the names of the members of Queen (which totally escaped me). I wonder whether there’s a theme here? If so I can’t see it, but I’m sure someone will let me know.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
Across Clues
1a Impressing leading director primarily, show act adapted catchphrase (5,2,3)
WHAT’S UP DOC: insert an adverb meaning leading and the primary letter of director into an anagram (adapted) of SHOW ACT to get a Bugs Bunny catchphrase.
6a After sex, we rewound clock (4)
VIEW: what sex meant numerically to ancient Romans and the reversal of ‘we’.
10a Cheeky slap (5)
LIPPY: double definition, the second an informal word for make-up.
11a Reduced wow about archetypal Scot with remarkable strength (9)
AMAZONIAN: string together a verb to wow without its last letter, a preposition meaning about and a traditional Scottish male forename.
12a With everything unboxed, aged ones spot hole in our stock (4,4)
GENE POOL: remove the outer letters from four consecutive words in the clue.
13a Parrot — by Jove, bird getting chip! (5)
MICRO: we need homophones (parrot) of an exclamation of surprise (by Jove!) and a black bird.
15a Woodcutter‘s excuse after cutting end off a willow too short (3,4)
ALI BABA: assemble a truncated legal excuse, A and what a willow is for Ben Stokes, say, without its final letter.
17a Greek island welcomes pets, essentially? Not entirely (7)
SPETSES: hidden in the clue.
19a Tremble when eye of tornado moves on one (7)
TWITTER: an informal word for a tornado with its central letter moved on one letter in the alphabet.
21a Calm tract of forest next to Fulham (7)
RESTFUL: put forest adjacent to Fulham to find the hidden word.
22a Fish caught is cold (and old) (5)
CISCO: the cricket abbreviation for caught, IS and abbreviations for cold and old.
24a Series in which a punt is found on river by Kahn’s palatial residence (8)
ALPHABET: append A and a punt or wager to the name of the sacred river in the poem Kubla Khan by Coleridge. For years I thought the river was spelled like the forename of Mr Ramsey the football manager until I saw the poem written down.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where ****, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
27a Pulverised stones and hacked steel, for crying out loud (4,5)
ROAD METAL: homophones of a verb meaning journeyed on horseback (hacked) and a noun meaning steel or fortitude.
28a Picasso’s expression of enthusiasm about drip that’s yellowish-green (5)
OLIVE: a Spanish expression of enthusiasm contains the abbreviation for a medical drip.
29a Drains trenches (4)
SAPS: double definition, the second (new to me) meaning trenches via which an approach is made towards a fortified position.
30a Stretch, using butt to muzzle with remote control (4-6)
ARM’S LENGTH: the could mean the stretch of a weapon from it’s butt to it’s muzzle.
Down Clues
1d US film star has no space in March (4)
WALK: the surname of a US actor (who won an Oscar for his performance in The Deer Hunter) without the printer’s space.
2d American overlooks softly-softly service in Italy for cocktail (9)
APPLETINI: cement together an abbreviation for American, the musical abbreviation meaning doubly soft, a tennis service that has to be retaken, IN and the IVR code for Italy.
3d Island installing power network (5)
SKYPE: insert the physics abbreviation for power into a Scottish island.
4d Instrument, one Amundsen discontentedly used in Antarctic, not reaching southern tip (7)
PIANOLA: the Roman numeral for one and the outer letters of Amundsen go inside an adjective that could describe the Antarctic (or the Arctic) without its last letter.
5d Strange case, the second and third of Dorothy L Sayers? (7)
ORACLES: make an anagram (strange) of CASE, the specified letters of dORothy and L.
7d Hippy from Paris’s home? (5)
ILIAC: double definition, the first relating to the hip bone and the second a cryptic adjectival reference to the Homeric work in which the feats of Paris were recorded.
8d Twist that hurts and second discomfort in seat? (10)
WINDOWSILL: rivet together a verb to twist, an expression of pain, the abbreviation for second and a synonym of discomfort or malady.
9d It foreshortens buzz over French city (4,4)
ZOOM LENS: a verb to buzz or move quickly and the name of a city in northern France.
14d Romanticise wildly when this setter pulled fabulous creatures (10)
MANTICORES: pull a pronoun that the setter uses for himself out of ROMANT[i]CISE and make an anagram (wildly) of what remains to make Persian fabulous creatures (another word I’d never heard of).
16d Accepted media are historically on the side of the heads of Morgan Stanley (3,5)
ART FORMS: concatenate an old English word meaning ‘are’, a preposition meaning ‘on the side of’ and the first letters of Morgan and Stanley.
18d Toning down squeal outside several times (9)
SOFTENING: a verb to squeal or rat contains an adverb meaning several times.
20d Plant housing article amongst front page — this winds up editor (7)
REACTOR: insert one of our indefinite articles in a word for the front page of a document and append the letter that winds up or finishes off ‘editor’.
21d Ice creams‘ knock-on effects (7)
RIPPLES: double definition, the first ice creams with wavy lines running through them.
23d Southern music-maker’s off-key (5)
SHARP: the abbreviation for south and a musical instrument.
25d Notice above gong in mud hut (5)
ADOBE: an abbreviated notice and an award.
26d White Christmas engulfs school (4)
TECH: hidden in the clue.
My ticks today went to 6a, 10a, 12a and 7d with my favourite being 24a. Which one(s) cut the mustard for you?
Is the theme not just computer/IT words? Walkman, Apple, Skype, Zoom, Windows etc.
A true (not Friday) Toughie for a nice change. Needed to check the woodcutter and parse arms length after the event.
Could be. Oracle, Forms, applet, Adobe, Alphabet, Twitter, micro, Cisco, Alibaba are also IT-related companies or terms.
Exactly – even Microsoft across two answers.
I am not sure when, if at all, I last saw a lurker where one has to combine two words, not juxtaposed, first (21a). Clever.
There’s also Amazon, AliBaba and DocView in there.
….and Viewtech and, last (maybe?) but not least Sharp. I tried to think about 17a, but that’s all Greek to me.
Just spotted Arm and Core – he really has crammed a lot in!
…also IP, Restful (as in API), SAP, Ripple (a blockchain company).
Wahoo – I’ve come across several clues like that recently. Yet another thing to watch out for
Took an age to get anywhere with this bad boy. First pass I only managed 5 answers but trudged on to get there via some research! Hard work but enjoyed it nonetheless. All things computer apps seems to be the theme.
Thank you Artix for the challenge and Gazza for explaining it all.
Yesterday Mustafa thought it was Tuesday and today I had to check it wasn’t Friday given the 5* time it took me to solve today’s Toughie I did, however, spot the theme
Thanks to Artix and Gazza
Yep, my inner calendar has been thrown hither and thither this week by the Toughies!
Crikey, that was a work out. Great fun though. One of the gentler clues, I know, but I absolutely loved 5d. Very clever.
Anything to do with IT brings me out in a nervous rash but that’s no excuse for my dismal failure here. By the time I’d reached the fourth or fifth new term I turned to our blogger’s excellent review and let it lead me by the hand through the complexities. Well done indeed to those who managed to find their own way through the maze.
Of the ones I coped with unaided, I particularly liked the cleverness of 12a and the smile-inducing 21d.
Sorry I wasn’t up to the challenge, Artix, and many thanks to Gazza for his guidance.
Very tough for me, more so than the average recent Friday. Very clever theme, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much, requiring too much recourse to the latter definitions of some words in the BRB, with some rather loose definitions and many odd surface reads – the price paid for achieving an all-pervading theme.
Thanks Artix, but not one that did it for me; thanks also to Gazza.
There’s nothing like a toughie completed unaided and this was nothing like a toughie completed unaided as I needed the hints with only about half the clues solved, but with six never heard of’s it’s little wonder. Thanks to Artix for the thrashing and to Gazza for all the hints and let that be a lesson to me.
Wouldn’t you know it! A busy day and this happens. At least 5* on the Mohs scale for me, solved over 4 sessions. I sort of spotted the theme when I got 22a.
Lots of fiendish clues – favourites were 12a, 21a [one might object but it was very well signposted] 5d and 20d. 14d was no trouble, partly because it’s also the name of a rather obscure old record label – thus memorable.
Do we gat any time off tomorrow?
Thanks to Artix and Gazza.