Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 30956
Hints and tips by Senf
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BD Rating – Difficulty **/*** – Enjoyment ***
A very good Wednesday morning from Winnipeg where we still need rain but the wildfires are mostly under control.
For me, etc (I have to say that for Terence), much more like a Wednesday puzzle should be and no sign of the Reverend W A Spooner but there are a number of literary, cinematic, and theatrical references. Once again, I have managed to find another pair of half crowns at the back of my sock drawer and, again, they are telling me that this is probably a Twmbarlwm production.
Candidates for favourite – 1a, 11a, 13a, 1d, 2d, and 15d.
In the hints below, the definitions are underlined. The answers are hidden under the Click here! buttons, so don’t click if you don’t want to see them.
Please leave a comment telling us what you thought.
Across
1a Shipping line runs a small container – DON’T OPEN IT! (8,3)
PANDORAS BOX: Plenty of Lego® to start – a shipping line that can trace its origins back to 1822, the single letter for crickety runs, A from the clue, the single letter for Small, and a cuboid container.
7a Moral story following murder victim with a twist at the end (5)
FABLE: The single letter for Following and the name of the first (biblical) murder victim with the last two letters of their name swapped over (twist at the end).
8a Aunt chews exotic snack item (6,3)
CASHEW NUT: An anagram (exotic) of AUNTCHEWS.
10a One standing in alley likely to get knocked over? (7)
SKITTLE: One of the ‘target’ objects in a game that preceded nine and ten pin bowling.
11a Enormous disaster brought to us by Cameron? (7)
TITANIC: A double definition – the second is a 1912 maritime disaster memorialised in 1997 by film director James Cameron.
12a Country relations advanced 50 yen (5)
ITALY: A two letter term for ‘relations’ in the bedroom(?), the single letter for Advanced, the Roman numeral for 50, and the single letter for yen (in Japanese currency).
13a Actor for Macbeth? For starters try ringing old McKellen maybe (9)
TRAGEDIAN: The first letters (for starters) of Try and Ringing, a synonym of old, and the first name of a well know actor with the last name McKellen.
16a Back in Beirut, a ref’s only having a horror show (9)
NOSFERATU: A reverse lurker (back in) found in four words in the clue – if it’s not already on THE LIST it soon will be!
18a Meryl has no right, dear (5)
STEEP: The last name of an actress with the first name Meryl with the single letter for Right deleted (not right).
19a A twit so daft got the job done (3,2,2)
SAW TO IT: An anagram (daft) of A TWIT SO.
22a Fit-looking ball-boy regularly knocked out beefy individual? (7)
BUFFALO: A synonym of fit-looking and ball-boy with alternate letters deleted (regularly knocked out) – I’ll let you decide which ones.
23a Make new approach when acquiring the ultimate in holy books (9)
APOCRYPHA: An anagram (make new) of APPROACH containing (when acquiring) the last letter (the ultimate in) of holY.
24a Diarist Jones stripped off long narrow top (5)
RIDGE: The first name, of the novelistic and cinematic diarist Ms Jones, with the outer letters removed (stripped off).
25a One helping the flow when Holmes has a tricky problem? (4-7)
PIPE CLEANER: Something that Sherlock Holmes, and others, might have used/use when there is a problem with the device used for their nicotine habits.
Down
1d Innkeepers up from the south served up one pound tins (9)
PUBLICANS: UP from the clue reversed (from the south), the reversal (served up) of all of the Roman numeral for one and the Latin based abbreviation of pound (weight), followed by a synonym of tins.
2d Rotating neon “Go” sign that’s seen on the road (2,5)
NO ENTRY: The reversal (rotating) of NEON followed by a synonym of GO (as in attempt).
3d Torches trained around those stuck in pit (9)
ORCHESTRA: A lurker (around) found in two words in the clue.
4d Adult Hardy girl put up cash, for example (5)
ASSET: The single letter for Adult followed by the reversal (put up) of a fictional girl created by Thomas Hardy.
5d Rest – have a dip outside walls in Rome (7)
BREATHE: A term for have a dip (in a pool or in the sea) containing (outside) the outer letters of (walls in) RomE.
6d Social network switching over one new element (5)
XENON: the one-letter social network, the reversal (switching over) of ONE, and the single letter for New.
7d Asians, if hot, changing one into cool clothing (11)
FASHIONISTA: An anagram (changing) of ASIANS, IF HOT.
9d T-bone chop he cooked – IT’s not for her (11)
TECHNOPHOBE: An anagram (cooked) of T-BONE CHOP HE – perhaps the gender specificity could be removed from the definition by adding ‘or him’ at the end.
14d Foreshadow a speechless judge (9)
ADUMBRATE: A from the clue, the term for the condition of being unable to speak (speechless), and a synonym of judge – if it’s not already on THE LIST it soon will be!
15d Reportedly, the compiler defames resident of northern island (9)
ICELANDER: A homophone (reportedly) of the compiler represented by the first person singular pronoun and a synonym of (verbally) defames.
17d Journey fuelled by self-confidence? (3-4)
EGO TRIP: A ‘journey’ (action or experience) which inflates one’s own opinion of oneself.
18d Raised Ms Batty’s clothing – fine, feminine, orange-yellow coloured (7)
SAFFRON: The reversal (raised) of Ms Batty’s first name including a possessive S containing (clothing) single letters for Fine and Feminine.
20d Loud cry beginning to wind bear up (5)
WHOOP: The first letter (beginning to) of Wing and the reversal of the second half of the name of a fictional bear whose first name is based on the name of a real bear named for the largest city in Manitoba.
21d Subject closed, constable placing one under arrest (5)
TOPIC: A two letter synonym of closed (perhaps when discussing the position of a door) followed by the letters for a (police) constable containing (place . . . under arrest) the Roman numeral for one.
Quick Crossword Pun:
JAY + DEE + VANS = J D VANCE
I bet 14d goes on The List!
I found today’s guzzle a strange one in that answers kind of “appeared” rather than my working them out. I don’t think a 9d is always a lady and I’m not sure how 11a works. I did like the shipping line at 1a and the beefy guy at 22a. My COTD is the Macbeth actor at 13a, which I thought was very clever.
Thank you, setter for the brain stretch. Thank you, Mr. Mustard for the hints.
Going to be hot over the next few days here in The Marches. I know many folks love the heat but I can’t stand it. I think it has something to do with having been born in the bad winter of 1947. It’s easy to get warm when it’s cold but not so easy to get cool when it’s hot.
For 11A, think of film directors, not ex PMs.
Ah! Thanks, Eeyore. 👍
The sooner this country gets over its bizarre aversion to air conditioning, the better. One in the sitting room and one in the bedroom hugely improves one’s quality of life.
Yep cheap too, I had an AC/heat pump installed for under a grand, instant heat in winter, cold as you like in the summer. Funny thing is though, the cats will always go upstairs into the hottest room in the house and lay there panting and staring at me as if its my fault, but will they set foot in the air conditioned room? not on your life mate.
I do have an air conditioning unit and it’s quite good. I was referring more to being outside, especially when I have to walk Hudson. He was born in the hot summer of 2018 and has no problem with the heat despite having two coats.
I have said that about heat ever since we arrived in Florida in 1982, and when you couple the summer heat with the humidity… There are only so many clothes you can take off 😊. I am also a product of the 1947 winter, born shortly before Christmas 1946 so you might be right about our affinity with the cold. A warm jumper and a log fire is my idea of heaven,
Interesting. I was born on the hottest day of the 1947 summer and have always loved summertime and warmth.
Most enjoyable guzzle today. So good to get 1a straightaway. Thank you to Hudson and Senf.
This was excellent, as is the case with Wednesdays at the mo.
1a kicked things off splendidly and it went smoothly from there.
3d is an excellent lurker which makes a change from the usual anagram variations for this oft seen answer.
People don’t need to look into 9d too much. The compiler has just set a scene with a couple at home. He could have added ‘or him’ but it’s better that she didn’t like his cooking rather than both of them.
I have a feeling that we have had 14d before but I could be wrong. A truly excellent word with a nice etymology – ‘umbra’ is the Latin for shade.
My picks for the pody are 1a, 13a and 20d.
MT to the supersetter and the Manitoban Mountie.
2*/5*
On reading Senf’s comments after completion, I find he has favourited all five of my ticks amongst the six he chose! Sacre bleu!
A decent midweek backpager which was slightly held up by my misspelling of 23a, even though it is a familiar word.
Hands across the water to Senf and thanks to the setter.
Took me ages to work out 19A even though I had all the letters! Otherwise, I found today’s puzzle a stroll in the park and very enjoyable.
Lots of clever clues but I’ll plump for 15D.
Thanks to the setter and Senf for the (un-needed) hints.
Really enjoyed this one, and delighted to get 14d from the wordplay and a faint sense of familiarity. Thanks to Senf for the parsing of 21d, which I stared at for *an age* without enlightenment. It also took a while for 1a to become clear, despite it being the first one in from the definition alone (and what a helpful start that was).
CoTD is the inestimable Mrs Batty, by gum, wrinkled stockings and all. Kathy Staff played her for 35 years, astonishing given she was no spring chicken when it started. **/****
A delightful and amusing puzzle from first to last, proof that a puzzle can be both very gentle and extremely satisfying. Beautifully crafted and amusing throughout, plenty of fun name-dropping, nothing unfair and all familiar – even 14d featured in a back pager only a month or two ago. My only notes and scribbles took the form of ticks, alongside almost every clue. Narrowing them down, therefore, honours to 1a, 24a & 18d, with runner-up 20d.
Many thanks indeed and “Chapeau!” to the setter, whomsoever it may be (a fiver each way on Hudson or Twm), and to Senf for the hints.
Well remembered about 14d, Mustafa. It was 30900 by X-Type on April 14th — in which it was, co-incidentally, also 14d (despite a very different grid design)!
Thought this was nicely challenging for a Wednesday.
3*/4*
Good fun
14d new word and slightly GK heavy but great none the less.
Thanks to setter and hinter
Not as hard as I’d reckoned it might be yesterday, with some really great clues to be had.
Took me a while to see why the first five letters of 1a worked, but when I wrote it down on the paper the mist evaporated.
Last one in was 12a, and even with three letters in it, I was still looking for a small obscure country maybe in Asia or Indonesia, until the obvious hit me straight between the eyes!
My two of the day are 9d and 13a, great puzzle, great fun.
I’ll go all in it’s a Hudson production & thought it a light delight. Ticks galore but if forced to pick a fav it’d have to be the call me Dave allusion
in the surface at 11a.
Thanks to the setter & to Senf.
Well done! Hudson has claimed it.
After a very slow start that all came together fairly readily. Some excellent clues, with 15d and 20d raising the biggest smiles. 14d is one of my favourite words (learned from reading Anthony Powell) and I used to enjoy deploying it from time to time in my working days as part of my campaign against plain English. Thanks very much to the setter and to Senf.
Thanks for the SD plug – they were great at The Horn Sat night
A shortage of humour in this one although I did enjoy 25a and 20d with mentions for the little 19a and 21d.
Thanks to our setter and to Senf for the review and the film clip – I remember crying copious tears at the end of that one!
Glad to have found a fellow aficionado of the what Katy did books. I loved them as a child. Katy and Clover etc etc.
Didn’t have the adventure you did with Lady Chatterly, though…..
A cracking puzzle with an abundance of fun – thanks to our setter and Senf.
My list of top clues includes 11a (very amusing), 13a, 22a, 25a and 20d.
A quick solve todayand pretty straightforward, although I found someTV/popular culture reference baffling at first As far as I know there are 9downs of both sexes so that clue was a bit odd. However, 23a was a clever anagram and 25a an equally clever cryptic definition. My COTD was the reverse lurker at 16a. Thanks to Senf for the hints and to the compiler.
I am ahead of myself this morning as George was off at the crack of dawn organising a Rotary Kids Day Out for 100 disabled children and their carers at Wimpole. . 91 1/2 yrs old! I treated myself to a coffee and guzzle in the shade and what a pleasure. I liked the Winnie Bear clue and the Holmes 25a. Many thanks to Messrs Setter & Senf.
Ticks aplenty on my page today. An excellent Wednesday offering. I especially liked the construction of 1a and the reverse lurker at 16a but my podium comprises my 1970’s O level English lit Hardy text in 4d, 13a with 25a in top spot. A full literary pick. Thanks to compiler and Senf.
A puzzle that did not need help any sort because the ones that were immediately doable left enough checkers to get the rest. As for 14d I am sure we have had this word before and I commented on it being used in the Betjeman poem ‘East Anglian Bathe’ which was one of hos typical of his awful middle class mania. So it is my favourite today.
My thanks to Senf who explained why some of my solutions were correct and many thanks to the setter for providing a crossword puzzle that followed the rules of the crossword as understood by me.
What a lovely midweek puzzle. I needed Senf’s help to parse the first part of 21d.
Top picks for me are 1a, 18d, 13a and 20d.
Thanks to Senf and the setter.
Such a great start to the day and so much to applaud. Got the answers in unaided but did need to look at the hints to see just how some of them were arrived at logically rather than intuitively.1 across was a great start.Never heard of the film but it was handed to us on a plate. 10 , 13 and 25 across with 7 and 14 down were top notch but loving the detective from a young age the favourite was 25 across.
Thank you Senf and our mystery compiler
A very enjoyable and clever puzzle. Thank you setter…Twm, Hudson??
I seem to concur on favourite clues with many of those who commented before me, but my list is a little longer:
1a, 11a, 13a, 16a, 18a, 22a, 25a, 2d, 3d, 14d, 15d and 20d. Too hard to pick a top three, so you’ll all have to budge up a bit on the podium.
Thanks to our blogger, Senf. Sorry, but it’s me again tomorrow.
2.5*/4*. A middling challenge which I enjoyed apart from 9d. I have no objection at all to the use of her or him; either would be absolutely fine. However, the definition relies on using “IT” while, for the surface to make sense, it needs to be “It”.
21d was my favourite.
Many thanks to the setter and to Senf.
The most straightforward I’ve found a cryptic crossword in months — most of the answers filled in in the first pass through the grid. Plenty of fun with with the 1a shippling line, Meryl having no right in 18a, the neon sign in 2d, the 3d trained torches, and the 15d defamation. For my favourite I’m going for 20d and “bear up”.
A slight hold-up at the end, with the crossing 13a and 14d remaining. I hadn’t realized there was a word for 13a, and while I knew the word at 14d I’d forgotten that meaning.
Thank you to the setter for the entertainment, and to Senf for the blog, especially for explaining the murder victim in 7a and “closed” in 21d
A lovely puzzle on a beautiful day with a nice theme running through. There were too many excellent clues to pick one, I did only get 14d from the word play having forgotten the word (if I had ever come across it before).
Many thanks to the setter and to Senf for the hints.
Can’t say there was much fun to be had for me today particularly thanks to drawing complete blanks on 16a, 7d and 14d. Thanks to setter and to Senf for making life easier for me.
For this Wednesday, this was a puzzle of two halves … some I liked and some I did not, and it was not a case of top half/bottom half, but more a percentage of the puzzle.
Several words not in everyday use in conversation for me.
3.5*/2* for me
Favourites 1a, 13a, 25a, 4d & 9d — with winner 13a
Smiles for 1a, 18a, 19a & 1d
Thanks to Twm (most likely as his clueing gives me issues) & Senf
Found half within my solving ability, and then applied the advice from an earlier blogger, to ignore the clues and just work with the checkers. Didn’t help me with 16a, 23a and 14d though. Why “lady” in 9d? The term can be applied to men as well. Rest was a nice exercise. Thanks to setter and Senf.
Hi BL
He could have said ‘him’ but it may have confused people, i.e did he cook it for himself or a guy who is with him?
Another option which Senf has suggested is that he could have added ‘or him’. But, it reads better if she didn’t like his cooking rather than both of them.
Hi TDS65,
I agree: I thought 9d was an excellent clue and surface read. Perhaps it could have been even better if IT’s had not been capitalised to provide some minor misdirection?
Hi MM
I’m not sure what the rules are about capitalising words or making them lower case. I think it’s okay but I could be wrong.
For example, I’ve recall seeing the verb polish, with a lower case p, referring to Polish, i.e someone from Poland.
So, I guess it’s alright.
If so then I agree!
I disagree! 9d as written is fine in terms of definition and wordplay, but the surface is nonsensical as it is effectively saying: T-bone chop he cooked – Information Technology is not for her. These are two perfectly sensible clauses but they make no sense at all when linked.
It’s not relevant to this specific clue but the rule on capitalisation is that false capitalisation is OK e.g. Nice instead of nice when you want the solver to be misled into thinking about the city, but never the other way round, so that your example of polish should not have been allowed.
Exactly – IT is an abbreviation so it has to capitalised.
It seems to me that the setter has come up with an excellent idea for a clue, and then completely ignored the fact that the resultant surface reading is meaningless.
Thank you for that RD (and Senf)
I’m surprised that Hudson has broken the rules as he is such an excellent setter.
The Polish/polish was probably the other way round…….or is it around?
Hmm, a goodie….
I don’t think any “rules” have been broken here. “IT” is correctly capitalised as part of the wordplay. It’s just such a pity that the resultant surface makes no sense, spoiling what was an otherwise excellent puzzle.
My words were clumsy.
In my eyes, for a clue to work, the surface needs to make sense which this one now doesn’t.
Call it guidance that’s been ignored rather than a rule broken.
An excellent puzzle for me today. Liked loads.
Thanks to Senf and the setter.
Despite the forecast for warmer weather it is distinctly cool here…probably because of the wind.
I await developments tomorrow, though I tend to agree with SteveC that it is much easier to get warm than to get cool….and that I prefer the cool. Nothing like a cold rainy winter’s day when I can be inside with the crossword and the heating cranked up.
great fun today
9d if you split the answer 4 2 5 then that is the reason for her at the end
Many thanks to setter and Senf
But I don’t think PHOBE is a female’s name – PHOEBE is but that’s one letter too many.
I asked Google and it replied thus:
Yes, Phobe is a name. It is a less common variant spelling of the name Phoebe, which is of Greek origin and means “bright,” “radiant,” or “pure”. Phoebe is a well-established name, while Phobe is a less frequent variation.
The only variation of Phoebe I have been able to find is Phœbe.
1.5* / 4* plenty to like about this mid-weeker, learnt a couple of new words, will I remember them though?
Favourites alucard at 16a, beefy at 22a and Sherlock’s problem at 25a
Thanks to Setter and Senf
Good evening
I found today’s crozzie a bit of a challenge – though, of course, and enjoyable one. Several references required the assistance of Dr Google, eg the shipping line in 1a, and confirmation of the solution to 23a. Help with the parsing of 7a was also needed, and Senf’s hint for 5d, my last to fall.
16a wins COTD, hands down!
Many thanks to our setter and to Senf.
Needed the hint to see what on earth Cameron had to do with 11a and I followed the instructions for 14d and checked to see if it was a real word, to my amazement it was. I knew 16a. In general I thought this was excellent with good, precise and accurate cluing. Many contenders for favourite but I’ll go with 15d. Thanks to Hudson and Senf.
All good fun, 14d is now on my list! Thank you compiler and Senf
Enjoyable and clever puzzle, more votes for 25a 14d, 15d, also 17d. Eventually got 11a when I realised which Cameron! Didn’t know the shipping line in 1a, but “don’t open it” led me to the answer . Thanks to the setter and Senf for the hints
Thoroughly enjoyed this solve today. Particularly liked 20d. LOI was 13a and in hindsight I should have got this much earlier.
Need the hint to parse the first two letters of 21d.
Thanks to all.
3*/4* …
liked 21D “Subject closed, constable placing one under arrest (5)”