Alan Connor finds Noel Edmonds, DNA and mixed tongues in his pick of the week's best - and least omnishambolic - cryptic clues
The news in clues
One tip for solvers of the baroque Listener crossword is to keep an ear open for any anniversaries in the week of publication, as they might help identify an elusive theme in the endgame. The same occasionally goes for weekday puzzles, like Brummie's tribute...
2d Pulltail from de-energised insect (5)
8d Crossworder's focusnotas fixed with "Solver's Assistant" (6)
...to CRICK (via CRICKET) and WATSON, whose discovery of the structure of DNA 60 years ago was marked in a beautifully constructed grid which also contained DOUBLE, HELIX, MOLECULAR, BIOLOGY, STRUCTURE OF DNA and other nucleic treats.
Meanwhile, a topical word that setters now seem attached to made a couple of appearances this week. In Wednesday's Independent, Dac asked for...
5d Ruined, sonblameshim for relatively recent cock-up (12)
...the word coined by Tony Roche for The Thick Of It, OMNISHAMBLES, which is now common enough coinage to merely feature in passing in clues like Picaroon's...
14ac CIA's involvedingovernment departmentomnishambles (6)
...Thursday rendering of the term's nineteenth-century equivalent, FIASCO.
Culture Clue
Is Morph a fan of Deal Or No Deal? Apparently not, according to the surface reading of the clue in Thursday's Independent...
18d Every other word in Noel's show is a distressing experience (6)
...for ORDEAL, via the alternate words of the gameshow's title. Or perhaps Morph had been watching clips of the neo-poujadist Noel's HQ?
Latter patter
Wednesday's Times contained this evocative sentence...
9ac A mix of tonguesresoundedinFloridaislands (9)
...as a clue for FRANGLAIS, a word which dates to the late 1950s in the français part of the word and the early 1960s in the anglais. FRANGLAIS means different things to different people. In English humorous prose, it's Miles Kington's manglings of the two languages, such as the description of a hangover: "Il y a un petit homme dans ma tete, qui fait le demolition work".
To uptight defenders of the French tongue, it's the encroachment of English-language terms, often American, onto gallic soil. To the more playful practitioners of Oulipo, the "Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle", or workshop of potential literature, it's a good way of breaking down meaning and having fun with language - much in the same way that cryptic crosswords play on ambiguity for its own sake.
You can use the Oulipo dictionary L'égal Franglais if you ever want a lexicon of French and English words which have the same letters in the same order but different senses, like CHAMP and POUR, and since accents are ignored, D'ART and N'EST. The poetry which has been created with reference to L'égal Franglais shares with crossword clues a pointless poignancy such as "Mets attend the sale" which in French suggests to me something like "the dish is waiting for salty tea".
Your cluing challenge this week concerns an older, posher term for combining two or more languages in the same sentences. Reader, how would you clue MACARONIC?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for ASPIRIN. Great letters and cracking clues. I especially enjoyed some of the detailed definitions, like ixioned's "Moving pins during air travel may help prevents clots forming" and harlobarlo's "The rain in Spain strikes; then, in a deluge, causes temperature to drop". Peter Groves got extra specificity points for the intellectual-property lingo in "Endlessly aiming high, victim of genericide", while jonemm raised questions about whether it's misleading to describe an over-the-counter drug with the wonderfully concise "They're prescribed in pairs" - and see also LeSange's instructional wordplay "Pill given by doctor in pairs".
Some of the more helpful surfaces related to analgesia, like phitonelly's "A whisky perhaps? It's not present in a hangover cure" and kolf's "Provides relief from terrible RSI pain", while others were winningly misleading: Middlebro's "'Tablets not of Moses' sets Religious Instruction in a spin", ImmenseDisciple's "Troubled Parisian doesn't have a means by which to mitigate the summit's problems", phitonelly's "A trip round Rhode Island is good for the heart" and MaleficOpus' "Anodyne rap is somehow popular".
The runners-up are the entirely on-the-money reading of Prolixic's "Terrible pain sir? Not after taking this" and harlobarlo's lovely "Morning-after pill?"; the winner in a very tough race is steveran's ingenious "It relieves heads in a spin". Kudos to steveran - please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the Week
A mini-biography of a possible apostate from Quixote in Monday's Independent...
2d Started as religiousindividualbeforebeginning to doubt (9)
...in a pleasing parsimonious clue for PIONEERED. God bless!