DT 31254

Welcome to June, and to Monday’s Telegraph crossword. We’re back from a week in Herefordshire to go to the Hay Festival (which is a festival about books, not about hay). Talks enjoyed by various members of the family included those by Susie Dent, Elizabeth Strout, Richard Coles, Ian Hislop, and a couple of Beano writers.

In yesterday’s Telegraph Puzzles newsletter, Chris Lancaster mentioned “dedicated online communities can always offer a helping hand by breaking down the clues”. You’re all part of this community, so please do your part by leaving a comment below, making sure to follow Big Dave’s house rules.

Across

1a Imagine wild cat regularly peered around (5,2)
DREAM UP: We need a species of wildcat and some letters taken regularly from ‘peered’, then to turn the combination around to be entered from right to left.

Pic credit: © Nigel Parr, CC BY-NC 2.0

5a Miser‘s self-regard or empty callousness returned (7)
SCROOGE: First concatenate: a word meaning ‘self-regard’; the ‘or’ from the clue; and the result of emptying out ‘callousness’, getting rid of all its internal letters. Then make the combination return across the grid, by entering it from right to left.

Altogether now, “No cheeses for us meeces”:

9a Conman Mark visited by Madame (7)
SCAMMER: The French abbreviation for ‘madame’ visits inside a word for a mark (perhaps on your body).

10a Bright light in the sky troubles sailor (3,4)
DOGSTAR: A transitive verb which can mean to cause trouble for is followed by one of the usual sailors.

11a Officer parking by new coalmine (9)
POLICEMAN: Put the letter that indicates parking by a new arrangement of the letters of ‘coalmine’.

12a Confess Cambridge University’s on notice (5)
ADMIT: Ignore the misleading capital U: the Cambridge university we want here is one in a Cambridge in the USA (more specifically in Massachusetts). The abbreviation it’s usually known by is placed on (after) a usual notice.

13a Northern guys ignoring lead sculptures out of habit? (5)
NUDES: Start with the letter indicating ‘northern’. Then we need the plural of a word for a guy, one that Chambers label as “colloq N Amer, especially US”, and to remove its leading letter.

15a Number for Spice Girl making a comeback? That’s fine! (2,7)
NO PROBLEM: Enter in order: the abbreviation for ‘number’ (not #, because that would be silly, and make a mess of 4d); a synonym for ‘for’, in the sense of ‘in favour of’; and the name of a Spice Girl coming back across the grid. We need a short form of the Spice Girl’s name, but not one of the ‘Spice’ nicknames.

17a Gaelic bar cryptically using symbols instead of numbers (9)
ALGEBRAIC: Put the letters of ‘Gaelic bar’ in a cryptic order.

19a Board members and former partners retaining copyright (5)
EXECS: We meed the plural of the usual former partner, then to make that retain the single letter that is the basis of the copyright symbol. Or feel free to use an actual copyright symbol if you’re solving on paper — it’s your newspaper, so don’t let anybody stop you.

22a Change a minute tip (5)
AMEND: Enter in order: the A from the clue; the shortest possible abbreviation for minute(s); and a word meaning ‘tip’ (as in an extremity, not the council amenity for taking things that don’t fit in the bin).

23a Cut strange, extremely porous wood (4,5)
RUMP STEAK: Enter in order: a word meaning ‘strange’; the extremes of ‘porous’; and a type of wood.

25a Husband aghast, changing social media feature (7)
HASHTAG: After the abbreviation for ‘husband’ we need the letters of ‘aghast’, changed into a different order.

26a Smartypants with Kelvin these days barely calls (4-3)
KNOW-ALL: Enter in order: the physics symbol for Kelvin; a word meaning ‘these days’; and ‘calls’ from the clue, made bare by removing its outer letters.

27a French philosopher produced rent, on reflection (7)
DIDEROT: I hadn’t heard of this person (possibly because most of my knowledge of philosophers comes from Monty Python’s Bruces’ Philosophers Song). Form their name from a verb meaning ‘produced’ or ‘accomplished’, followed by a word for ‘rent’ (as in the past participle of ‘rend’) which has been reflected to read from right to left.

Portrait of the answer by Louis-Michel van Loo (1767)

28a Apricot tagine includes cheese (7)
RICOTTA: The cheese is found lurking in consecutive letters of the apricot tagine. If this clue inspires you to make an apricot tagine with cheese in it for lunch, do leave a comment below letting us know how it tastes.

Pic credit: © Blue moon in her eyes, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Down

1d Stand-up moving cleaner’s equipment (7)
DUSTPAN: Move the letters of ´stand-up’ to spell out the answer.

Thank you to Steve Cowling for recently reminding us of this stand-up comedian’s joke about cleaners’ equipment:

2d Messaged English servant about French article (7)
EMAILED: Start with the single-letter abbreviation for ‘English’. After that we need a type of servant, placed about one of the grammatical articles in French.

3d A pair of notes about copy (5)
MIMIC: Enter in order: the phonetic spelling of a tonic sol-fa note; a second phonetic spelling of a tonic sol-fa note; and a Latin abbreviation for ‘about’.

4d Soppy Romanian harbours burning desire (9)
PYROMANIA: The first couple of words of the clue harbour the answer, which is lurking among them.

5d American revolutionary ultimately obtained visa again for country (5)
SUDAN: We need to revolve an abbreviation meaning ‘American’, to make it face the other way; that obviously wouldn’t be possible with a single letter, which rules out it being A. Follow that with the ultimate letters of subsequent words in the clue.

6d Doctor runs over prodding Tom perhaps in complicated procedure (9)
RIGMAROLE: Start with a verb that can mean ‘doctor’, in the sense of tampering with or fixing. After that we need the cricket abbreviations for ‘runs’ and ‘over’ to prod inside the gender that a tom is an example of.

7d Best stone worn by Henman? (7)
OPTIMAL: The first name of a well-known figure with the surname Henman wears around its outside a precious stone.

8d Two hesitant expressions encapsulating traitor’s mistake (7)
ERRATUM: The start and end of this answer are ways of writing the sounds people make when hesitating in speech. They encapsulate an informal term for a traitor.

14d Newspaper employee hopeful lover’s collecting cot (9)
SUBEDITOR: Somebody who hopes to woo another collects inside them another term for a cot.what a cot is a type of.

16d Gerry’s backing musician showing a bit of heart (9)
PACEMAKER: The singular of Gerry Marsden’s backing group is also the name of a bit of the heart. I wasn’t aware of the latter until checking the answer in a dictionary, only knowing the term as the medical device sometimes fitted to hearts.

17d Embarrassed and humbled touring hospital (7)
ABASHED: Make a word meaning ‘humbled’ or ‘humiliated’ tour round the outside of the letter that indicates a hospital on road signs.

18d Thought visitor outspoken (7)
GUESSED: Think of another word for ‘visitor’, speak it out loud, and it sounds like the answer.

20d Graceful eastern soldier holding on (7)
ELEGANT: Begin with the abbreviation for ‘eastern’. End with a usual soldier. Between those make them hold the other name for the on side in cricket.

21d Last kid swimming for island group (2,5)
ST KILDA: The letters of the first two words swim around to spell out the answer. It looks beautiful in this photo, but I haven’t been in person. If you have, leave a comment below telling us about it.

Pic credit: © IrenicRhonda, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

23d Scares unclothed Conservative (5)
RIGHT: Think of another word for ‘scares’, then unclothe it by removing its outer letters.

24d Small involuntary movement after receiving Oscar for Marcus Aurelius? (5)
STOIC: Start with the clothing-label letter that denotes ‘small’. Follow that with an involuntary movement which has received the letter indicated by ‘Oscar’ in the Nato alphabet. I had to look up the person mentioned in the clue to confirm they are actually an example of the answer; well done to everybody who already knew them.

Quickie Pun

In today’s Quick Crossword the first 3 clues are italicized, indicating we can say their answers out loud to make another word, name, or phrase. For once I was able to get this without needing to solve any other clues beyond those: 7a and 8a felt unambiguous, and that was enough to give me the pun and confirm what 3a must be. Reveal the blobs below to check:

WANE + ROUX + KNEE = WAYNE ROONEY

And this one features a bonus pun from me, from early in the first coronavirus lockdown started, when not only did my spouse and I find ourselves having to home-school the children, but also suddenly provide their dinners every day:

Recent Reading

This is a delightful detective story, with the delight being provided by the detectives being sheep. Their shepherd, who used to read them bedtime stories, has been found dead, and they are determined to find out who killed him, and then to find a way of communicating that to other humans.

We are immersed in the sheep’s world, with the entire novel unfolding through the eyes, ears, and noses of various members of the flock. These aren’t fully anthropomorphized animals, but sheep that think like sheep: most of them have poor memories, are easily distracted by grass, and frequently misunderstand the human world: they think the vicar is called God, because they’ve seen he’s based in “the house of God”, and when they hear the butcher saying something is “meet and right”, they presume (with a shudder) he’s talking about meat.

That wordplay is even more impressive given that the book was written, by Leonie Swann, in German — though perhaps it’s no surprise if the English text has been enhanced by wordplay not in the original, given it’s been translated by the peerless Anthea Bell of Asterix fame. The start lists the Dramatis Oves, listing the main sheep in the flock together with their personality traits; these correspond to the numbers on the cover of our edition (pictured), which also features a flick-book leaping sheep animation through the entire book.

I originally bought this as a 7th wedding anniversary present, after my spouse relayed that the traditional gifts that year were wool or copper — sheep detectives seemed to neatly combine them both! Despite that blatant gimmick on my part, we both ended up being charmed by Three Bags Full: it’s original, clever, engaging and well written. I’ve just re-read it after we saw the family film The Sheep Detectives, which was loosely based on it. The film changes the murderer, the means, the motive, many of the characters (both human and ovine), and transplants the setting from coastal Ireland to a stereotypical English village apparently set in rural Hollywood. Both are good at what they’re trying to do, and they’re sufficiently different that neither spoils the other. If you like quirky, charming, cosy crime novels, give this one a go.