A Puzzle by Teeby
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The puzzle is available by clicking on the above grid.
As usual, the setter will be delighted to receive feedback from you, the solvers. We do ask that you remember that for most setters this is a new experience, so please only offer constructive criticism.
A review by Prolixic follows:
Overall this was an improvement on Teeby’s first crossword. The commentometer has reduced to 5/30 or 16.7% from the previous 26%. However, this is still a relatively high score. Unlike other rookie setters, where high scores usually result from too many incorrect cryptic constructions (and there were a few of these), in Teeby’s case, it is a result of being over ambitious in the use of cryptic references where there are too many steps required to get from the clue to the solution. It is the classic taking a riddle wrapped an enigma inside a mystery. The basics and flair are there but sometimes the clues get carried away with themselves.
Across
1a Reactor shutdown shielding energy’s high-pitched sound (6)
SCREAM: A five-letter word for an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor includes (shielding) the abbreviation for energy.
5a She roots fervidly for country sportsmen? (8)
SHOOTERS: An anagram (fervidly) of SHE ROOTS. As the anagram involves only moving the letters ER to the right, it does not make a particularly good anagram.
9a A drink he hated terribly, until the end (2,3,5)
TO THE DEATH: A three-letter word for a drink followed by the HE from the clue and an anagram (terribly) of HATED.
10a Harrow‘s money drawer (4)
TILL: Double definition.
11a Variety of pear juice preceding media event (5,10)
PRESS CONFERENCE: A variety of pear preceded by a five-letter word meaning to juice.
13a Policeman dropping by? Dispose of tool for spinning yarns! (6)
BOBBIN: A five-letter word for a policeman without (dropping) the BY followed by a three-letter word meaning dispose of.
16a Miniature 3D models shown by a Christian section of Damascus (8)
DIORAMAS: The surname of the designer Christian followed by four of the letters (section of) from Damascus.
18a Face variable MI6 blood purification procedure (8)
DIALYSIS: A four-letter word for a clock face followed by a letter representing an unknown variable and the abbreviation for Secret Information Service (MI6).
20a Luckily avoids cardinal interrupting one of The Lord’s shows (6)
CHEATS: The abbreviation for His Eminence (cardinal) inside a four-letter name of a show co-created by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Describing The Lord to the composer is both giving him a status more than his baronetcy deserves. More importantly, to get from Lord to the particular Lord to a show that they have composed is too many steps for the solver.
22a Leader of an organisation‘s unswerving or sweeping (8,7)
DIRECTOR GENERAL: A six-letter word meaning unswerving followed by the OR from the clue and a seven-letter word meaning sweeping.
26a Hack drive (4)
TAXI: Cryptic definition of a vehicle that might give you a lift (so long and it’s not south of the river).
27a Yellow colour table; part of green triangle? (10)
CHARTREUSE: A five-letter word for a table or map followed by a five-letter word forming a tryptic of words for the sustainable use of materials, the others being reduce and recycle.
28a Series of race events where a stern conversation might be had? (8)
REGATTAS: Cryptic definition of a series of boat races.
29a Sent out to sea… returning oddly mentally sharp (6)
ASTUTE: The odd letters (oddly) reversed (returning) in the first four words of the clue.
Down
2d Singers bunched – other machines tangled, dropping the new seam? (5)
CHOIR: An anagram (tangled) of OTHER MACHINE after removing (dropping) the THE and an anagram (new) of SEAM. Try to avoid repeating wordplay indicators. Dropping was used as a deletion indicator in 13a.
3d Alien TIE fighter loves people’s disposition (5)
ETHOS: The eponymous film alien followed by the letter that has the shape of a TIE fighter and the letter representing love pluralized. I think that this clue was too ambitious. TIE fighter to describe the letter is probably too obscure. Also when using abbreviations, when in the plural it means to repeat the abbreviation (news means NN not NS). To capture the S in the solution you would need love’s.
4d Old Italian banker reported any small remedies (9)
MEDICINES: The five-letter name of an old Italian banking family followed by a homophone (reported) of any (giving two letters) and the abbreviation for small.
5d Blemished Russian leader abolishing left education (7)
STAINED: A six-letter name of a Russian leader without (abolishing) the L (left) followed by a two-letter abbreviation for education.
6d Earthy-brown staggering coach horse (5)
OCHRE: The even letters (staggering) in the final two words of the clue.
7d Maybe crown servant’s under cover? (5,4)
TITLE PAGE: A five-letter word of which crown is an example followed by (under) a four-letter word for a servant.
8d Unwilling cutlery set missing fork at first, and no teaspoons (9)
RELUCTANT: An anagram (set) of CUTLERY without the letter that has a fork in its shape followed by the initial letters (at first) of the final three words of the clue.
12d Outward tidal flow has selection of pebbles (3)
EBB: The answer is hidden (selection of) in the final word for the clue.
14d Institute give a speech covering one Eli’s invention, say (9)
ORIGINATE: A five-letter word meaning give a speech around (covering) the letter represented by one and a textile machine invented by Eli Whitney.
15d Laboratory promoted linear regression for person demonstrating attitude? (9)
BALLERINA: A reversal (promoted) for the abbreviation for a laboratory followed by an anagram (regression) of LINEAR. I don’t think that regression works as an anagram indicator.
17d Clipped arrows shooting round breast, realises group often using bows? (9)
ORCHESTRA: The first four letters (clipped) of ARROW reversed (shooting) around a five-letter word for the breast. Using clipped to indicate the deletion of more than one letter is not allowed.
19d Read letters after confusing postscript reveals pages pieced together (7)
SPREADS: The abbreviation for postscript reversed (confusing) followed by the letters in read. I don’t think that the final S has been indicated in the word play.
21d “Express Haircutting”- feature of helipad (3)
AIR: The HAIR from haircutting removing (cutting) the letter that would be seen on a helipad. Not all editors will accept the unindicated lift and separate to get from haircutting to hair cutting.
23d Turn a Queen – case of one no trump implied without saying (5)
TACIT: Reverse (turn) an animal sometimes referred to as a queen followed by two letter that are obtained by turning one no trump into 1NT and taking the outer letters (case of). I think that too many steps are required here to get to the solution.
24d Bail out everyone! James’s Esprit carries torpedo heads! (5)
EJECT: The initial letters (heads) of third to seventh words of the clue.
25d Perhaps security provided by a second set (5)
ASSET: The A from the clue, the abbreviation for second and the SET from the clue. I would have provided a synonym for the final three letters, such as group.
Welcome back to Rookie Corner, Teeby. I was disappointed not to see any improvement over your debut offering from a few months’ ago. You do have some very good ideas but there are still a lot of “nearly but not quite” clues and some basic errors.
I found the solve overall very tough and, although I completed the grid, I am still unable to parse four clues. Some of your surfaces are good, but some are surreal.
I will leave most of the points of detail to Prolixic, so please do take notice and heed his good advice. I’ll just mention a few of the scribbles on my page.
There are three clues where I think that the wordplay is not fair on the solver:
3a – if I have parsed this correctly, the fact that a TIE fighter is H-shaped is not a fair way to clue the letter H.
14d – similarly, I don’t think that just the inventor’s first name is sufficient to clue his invention.
23a – converting “one no trump” to 1NT and using the outer characters (“case of”) IT as part of the wordplay is a step too far.
A couple of other comments:
15d – I am not keen on “regression” as an anagram indicator.
17d – I don’t think you can use “clipped” to indicate removal of the last two letters of “arrows”.
And now, the good news! I have ticks for 11a, 13a, 18a, 29a, 5d & 25d. You have clearly got the ability to compile a good cryptic crossword. Your challenge is to create one full of clues like these.
Many thanks, Teeby, and thanks too in advance to Prolixic.
I didn’t find this crossword that difficult – I’d finished my cereal but my cup of tea was still warm.
There are several places where you rely on the solver knowing ‘stuff’ eg the reactor shutdown in 1a, and the TIE fighter in 3d. Several pennies dropped while I was getting ready to comment, eg the green triangle in 27a, so I now only need Prolixic to explain one clue. I enjoyed lots of clues, eg 22a and 28a, but my top favourite has to be the “The Lord’s shows”
Thanks Teeby – I hope you’ll return with another puzzle once you have taken on board the wise words of Prolixic and other comments today
Some pretty specialised knowledge required in the opening corner (reactor shutdown, TIE fighter) made me think that this was going to be a real Toughie but things eased up after that and I enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks to Teeby.
Top clues for me were 11a, 13a, 18a and 22a.
Thanks for the puzzle Teeby. I enjoyed it, and managed to solve it fairly easily. I’m not sure I’d have twigged the H/TIE fighter connection if I hadn’t spotted it in a previous comment though. There’s a few other clues I haven’t managed to parse properly yet either. Favourites for me were 13a, 4d, 5d and 7d.
I won’t repeat the previous comments, but a few other things I spotted:
In 25d, I think you could have used a synonym for “set” (“group” or something would have worked), as it is, 3/5ths of the answer is just copied from the clue (4/5ths if you include the “a” on the front too). There might be something similar going on in 19d, although I haven’t quite worked the parsing out there yet.
I’m not convinced by the use of staggering in 6d to mean every other letter.
Thanks again, and in advance to Prolixic.
With his opening comment, RD is spot on, too many ‘bung ins’ that I couldn’t explain and I look forward to the wisdom of Prolixic to explain everything. As an example, for me, 20a is a deliberate act not involving luckily avoiding anything.
One of those puzzles where, several times, I was about to put my pencil down and then another clue gave up its answer. I got to the point where I entered the 85-ish per cent that I thought I had solved and ‘hit’ the ‘Check’ button to find that I was correct which sort of encouraged me to continue.
Thanks Teeby but I might not accept your next challenge and thanks in advance to Prolixic.
Re 20a, that’s what I thought too, Senf, until you consider “cheats death” and “luckily avoids death”. Then it worked for me.
Hmm – I must have been out in the sun for too long yesterday (Sunday) afternoon!
I think 20a is in the sense of “cheats death”. Chambers (online) has “to escape (something unpleasant) by luck or skill” as a definition for it.
I really enjoyed the large part of this prettly straightforward puzzle, thank you and well done Teeby.
OK, so some clues relied on a bit of biffing (1a, 16a, 8d), with a little unfair GK (3d, 14d) and some constructions that for me didn’t quite work (15d’s regression, 17d’s clipping, 19d, 23d), but these were hugely outweighed by the many that did work very well indeed. Not convinced that The Lord is synonymous with ALW, but I loved the clue nonetheless. Some great ideas on display, lovely PDMs (27a, though you can get green chartreuse as well, and the colour is green-yellow rather than just yellow), and a lot of wit. Oh – and 22a was the stand-out COTD for me.
I look forward very much to your next puzzle. Thanks once again, and also of course to Prolixic.
I felt that far too many of my answers went in courtesy of enumeration and checkers rather than following our setter’s instructions which made me think that he perhaps didn’t express himself sufficiently clearly. I’ll be very interested to read what Prolixic has to say on that score.
Clues that I particularly enjoyed were 11&13a.
Thanks,Teeby, hope you find the advice from Prolixic and our other experienced solvers valuable.
I remember enjoying your debut and I enjoyed this too, probably more so, with your banishment of triple unches and indirect anagrams! It was certainly bold to kick off with 1a/3d. But both were v gettable. “Reactor shutdown” is, of course, in Chambers and “TIE fighter” for one letter tickled me. The top flew in, the bottom was slightly stickier. This was proper fun. I liked your use of “staggering” in 6d and 4d’s “any” has long been one of my favourite homs. 11a was jolly; 13a too. 22a’s great and 20a’s just outrageous! There were some swings and misses. I don’t buy a couple – 15d, for one. There were possibly too many padding-ish “A’s” – “a drink”, “a queen”. 19d’s “read’ was a shame. 26a surely needs a QM at the very least. And 17d was naughty. But ‘twas very enjoyable. Lots to like. Many thanks. Come back soon!
Hello again Teeby,
I attempted the puzzle much later than normal so most of the annotations I made have already been discussed. I think there was a lot to admire in the invention behind the clues, but I was less convinced by the execution and fairness of them. Several had very complicated wordplay but others like 25d seemed much too straightforward, so I’m somewhat confused overall. I do agree with Mustafa that 22a is the best clue overall.
Please do pay heed to Prolixic’s review and I hope we’ll see you again before too long.
Thank you, Teeby.
Thank you, Teeby. We found the top half much easier to complete than the bottom half. We did have to reveal a couple of letters to finish the puzzle. Favourites were 22a, 11a, 13a,18a and 7d. We look forward to Prolixic’s review to unravel the parsing of a few clues.
Many thanks for the review, Prolixic, I was certainly glad of your decryption on this occasion! I do hope that Teeby takes careful note of your comments.
Thanks to all for their responses, particularly Prolixic, and I apologise to those who found this painful. I really appreciate you pushing through and leaving feedback in spite of it!
Looks like people received the puzzle in different ways and I will note the feedback on complexity and rogue indicators before coming back.
On 20a I refer to ALW as ‘The Lord’ . He is properly styled “The Lord Lloyd-Webber” according to Who’s Who and within thespian circles is sometimes nicknamed ‘The Lord’; however, I appreciate that this is too much of a stretch.