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Toughie 3443

by Gazza  

Toughie No 3443 by Django
Hints and tips by Gazza

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ****

Great fun from Django in a puzzle that’s not too tricky but with a few clues where the parsing needed a bit of thought – thanks to him.

Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you liked about the puzzle.

Across Clues

1a Breezy, like Sark when she finally visits (8)
CAREFREE: The island of Sark has a law prohibiting a certain class of vehicles from its roads and so is 3,4. Insert the final letter of she.

5a Maybe Sandals has a day to replace old parasols? (6)
SHADES: start with what uncapitalised sandals are examples of and replace the abbreviation for old with A and the abbreviation for day.

9a Go into chippy wanting fish (5)
ENTER: remove a freshwater fish from the worker that chippy is an informal name for.

10a Invading force of American soldiers carrying goods on ship (9)
AGGRESSOR: abbreviations for American and rank-and-file soldiers bracket two abbreviations for good, a preposition meaning about and our usual abbreviated ship.

12a Occupying home, lease house initially on condition of having children (10)
PARENTHOOD: an informal word for a home or lodging contains a verb to lease, the abbreviation for house and the initial letter of ‘on’.
13a Obscure type of music on the radio (4)
WRAP: a verb to obscure or cloak which sounds like a type of music.

15a Programmed algebra in – was he dealing with subtractions? (11)
BRAINWASHED: hidden.

16a Beast in Winchester, possibly moving north (3)
GNU: what a ‘Winchester’ is an example of with the abbreviation for north shifted.
17a Dicky taking seconds to wipe slate clean (3)
ILL: the second letters from three words in the clue.

18a Sadly a riveting tale is censored for Trip Advisor (6,5)
TRAVEL AGENT: an anagram (sadly) of A R[i]VET[i]NG TALE after we’ve removed ‘is’ (i.e. two occurrences of the letter I – positively Elgarish).
20a Grass recalled withholding name (4)
REED: remove a verb to name from the word ‘recalled’.

21a In which one might rule candy canes out (10)
ASCENDANCY: an anagram (out) of CANDY CANES.

24a TV follows nerd cycling around in China? (6,3)
DINNER SET: a TV apparatus follows the cycled letters of NERD containing IN.

26a Modern day edition oddly missing supplement (3,2)
ADD TO: the abbreviation for the modern day and even letters of edition.

27a Extravagant breaks according to snooker player (6)
POTTER: an abbreviation meaning extravagant goes inside a preposition meaning ‘according to’.
28a Beware of bear the man had caught (4,4)
TAKE HEED: a verb to bear or transport and what sounds like a contracted form of ‘the man had’.

Down Clues

1d Mysterious native American withdrawing on small horse (6)
CREEPY: a member of a native American people and a small horse without its ‘on’.

2d Spinner runs outdoors occasionally (5)
ROTOR: the cricket abbreviation for runs and occasional letters from outdoors.

3d Group of footballers joining golf club – going on course easily (3,3,4)
FAR AND AWAY: assemble the abbreviation for the governing body of football in England, the abbreviation for a famous Scottish golf club and a synonym of course or route.

4d Alice ultimately going – content to leave Humpty Dumpty? (3)
EGG: the ultimate letter of Alice and the outer letters of ‘going’.

6d Hotel ovens regularly failing – getting tools (4)
HOES: the letter that hotel represents in the Nato Phonetic Alphabet followed by the odd letters of ovens.

7d Tried playing record to start run down (9)
DISCREDIT: an anagram (playing) of TRIED is preceded by a musical record.

8d Second hour with board raising a collection of coins? (8)
SHRAPNEL: abbreviations for second and hour are followed by a synonym of board or fascia with it’s A being raised.

10/11d Proverb from China ages badly – effectively halt broadcast (1,6,2,2,4,2,1,4)
A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS A REST: start with an anagram (badly) of CHINA AGES and add an expression (2,4,2) meaning effectively or virtually. Finish with what sounds like a verb to halt.

11d See 10d

14d Half of them study book and are worn out (10)
THREADBARE: string together half of ‘them’, a verb to study, the abbreviation for book and ARE.
15d Tree trimmed by complete crank (9)
BUTTERNUT: truncate ‘by’ and append an adjective meaning complete and an informal word for a crank or obsessive person.

16d Agree to change before party – ready (6,2)
GEARED UP: an anagram (to change) of AGREE followed by a political party in Northern Ireland.

19d In extremis – medically – what may create a doc’s shocked expression (2,4)
MY WORD: the extreme letters of medically and the application which may create a ‘doc’ (or a ‘docx’?).

22d Prompt return of brown envelope to garage (5)
NUDGE: reverse a greyish brown colour and add the outer letters of garage.

23d Present ambassador hosting former monarch (4)
HERE: the abbreviated title of an ambassador contains the cipher of our most recent former monarch.

25d Anthea Turner’s lunch? (3)
EAT: hidden.

Top clues for me were 1a, 24a and 19d. Which one(s) made your shortlist?

23 comments on “Toughie 3443”

  1. I found it more difficult than Gazza did but would agree with his enjoyment rating and that the top clues were 1a, 24a and 19d. I’d also add 16a to that list

    Thanks to him and Django

  2. Great fun! Slightly beyond my abilities to parse everything myself, but that’s what this site is for. 18a’s “is censored” is my favourite wordplay of the clues I solved by myself; 19d’s “what may create a doc” is my favourite of the ones I needed Gazza to explain — for which, thank you.

    I also particularly liked the golf club in 3d (once I’d stopped trying to fit G, and possibly C, into the answer), 15a’s magnificent lurker, and the surface of 24a’s cycling nerd. 9a’s chippy made me think of Radio 1 last week†, with a message from a listener who described themselves as a chippy, and one of the presenters presuming that was somebody who worked in a fish n chip shop. The other DJ explained what ‘chippy’ actually meant, and the first one said they’d never heard it. But then I’d never heard of a Winchester until 16a.

    I did like this grid as well, with the way it had the two parallel long answers going down the middle. Though I messed up keeping track of the letter counts and word boundaries on those, meaning those were my last in and even with all the crossing letters I was still wondering if there’s a lessor-known proverb: a rhino is as good as a newt. And if there isn’t, maybe there should be?

    Thank you so much to Django, for mangling my brain in the best sort of way.

    † Not my usual station (I’m a couple of decades past their target audience age), but I’ve taken to listening to Radio 1’s early afternoon show, then switching to Alex Lester on Greatest Hits Radio 60s. I suspect I’m in a fairly exclusive group of listeners who switch between that particular pair of stations …

  3. A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle albeit fairly straightforward. There was so much to like but I’ll mention 1A, 9A, 16A 17A and 4 and 8D in particular.
    I needed Gazza’s parsing for some and having explained 18A’s ” is ” as the letter ” I “”twice, that definitely has Elgar written all over it. Very clever indeed.
    Many thanks to Gazza for the blog and fun and to Django for the enjoyment.

  4. I much prefer Django’s puzzles when he is not being too wordy, so this one definitely floated my boat. Getting the two long parallel clues early on certainly helped, with 19d my favourite.

    My thanks to the aforementioned and Gazza.

  5. An enjoyably gentle challenge from Django today, a 1a solve which gave me sufficient checking letters en passant for the 10d/11d combination to leap from the page without really having to read the clue. Lovely variety of clue types, witty constructions and interesting devices, oodles of humour (and that’s even before getting to Gazza’s cartoon picks) and ticks everywhere. Will confine the honours board to 1a, 10a & 1d, with runner-up 19d, but TBH I could have had the best part of 2-dozen clues up there.

    Many thanks indeed to Django and Gazza

  6. Unusually for me I actually managed to parse everything including the 2 ‘is’, I wrote down the answer and crossed out what I thought was the anagram fodder noting down what letters were missing which were ii the penny dropped immediately. A lot of others were reverse engineered as well. An immensely satisfying solve which I thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks to Django and Gazza.

  7. 1a, which was quite a challenge for us, set the tone for what was a really enjoyable solve so it just has to be our favourite.
    Thanks Django and Gazza.

  8. More of a challenge than yesterday, but more enjoyable for it. Last to parse 19d. 8d favourite.
    Delighted that I have an extra grandson today, after 26 hours. Poor girl. All well though
    Thanks Django and Gazza for confirmation of what I suspected at 19d

    1. Congratulations 👨‍🍼 on the birth of a grandchild. All the best to mother and child, not forgetting the father who probably didn’t have a crossword to take the mind off

      1. Thanks for that Sloop. My son’s more of a Sudoku wizz than wordsmith. Bless them all.

  9. Came for help in the SW as I was foundering, I should have persisted a bit longer as the answers came quickly with a glance at the hint.

    Thanks to Gazza and Django, I hope he isn’t expecting more material from his nemesis as she is offline with a broken laptop 🙃

  10. Love a Django puzzle & today’s hugely enjoyable offering no exception – as with Hudson just wish we got more of them. A fairly laboured grid fill & then to task of parsing a good few of ‘em but got there in the end. Can’t say I’d know much about Sark but once the penny dropped as to the why it became my fav. Like MG I had ticks against a whole host of others too numerous to list but since nobody has mentioned them really liked 16,18&27a + 3&8d.
    Thanks to D&G

    1. Sark is a very interesting place and there is a connection to Mervyn Peake yesterday. He lived and wrote there for a while

      1. Sark also has some jurisdiction over the smaller Brecqhou, the private island home of the Barclay Brothers, former owners of The Telegraph. Personally I preferred the paper when it was owned by Conrad, erm, Bee — any relation?

        1. Not as far as I am aware, my long departed father did some work on the family tree and a few were found in Canada (St Catherine’s) but Conrad wasn’t one.
          Dad also found an as yet unproven link to David Livingstone. He got most of the info from an early Gaelic Bible owned by a Murdoch Black from Lochbuie on The Isle of Mull. We still have the bible with a well worn thumb print in the cover where he carried it to and from church every day

          1. It’s funny what comes up. My maternal grandmother’s family name was Huggan, and we’ve just found a tenuous link to Dr Thomas Huggan who was ship’s surgeon on the Bounty, reputedly drunk most of the time!
            Thanks for the kind remarks earlier

  11. Having read the blog, I kicked myself for my over- complicated parsing of 20a. For “recalled” I substituted “remembered”. A Member of Lloyd’s of London is known as a “Name”. Remove “member” (as an alternative for “name”) and one is left with the correct answer to the clue.

    1. That’s how I got there too. Clearly didn’t read Gazza’s hints thoroughly enough. 🙁

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