Alan Connor finds a double whisky and a package of Luckies in his pick of the week's best – and most Draper-friendly – cryptic clues
Cluing coincidence
On Wednesday, two setters seemed to have a wee midweek dram on their minds. In the Times, we were asked …
6d Failedto keepquiet, so produced whisky (9)
… for DISTILLED just as Brendan in the Guardian was announcing …
3d Whisky, for instance, Ievennow put infruit (10)
… en route to DISTILLATE. Slainte!
Culture clue
Spoiler alert if you are on series one of Mad Men: Jambazi – known locally as Tramp– reveals biographical details regarding Don Draper in Tuesday's Independent, which incorporated lots of Madison Avenue detail in a way that demanded no knowledge of the series on the part of the solver, as with …
9ac/5ac Field to operate, dashingopening to SterlingCooperhitad (12)
… the name of Draper's agency in the clue for ORTHOPAEDICS and the Sterling Cooper client of interest to hallucinogenre-busting shockumentarist Adam Curtis…
4d/19d Head off daringwalk-out– something to drag on? (5,6)
… that is, via PLUCKY, LUCKYSTRIKE.
What's another word for euphemism?
There was a, ahem, cracking clue this week from Klingsor …
15ac Primarily, any thing embodyingpartsevilanddoubly good? (7,3)
… for CURATE'S EGG, one of those phrases that is in danger of losing what the Mad Men ad men would call its USP.
The phrase comes from an 1895 Punch cartoon in which a polite cleric insists that a bad egg served by his host is "good in parts", and so offers us a handy allusive way of denoting an upbeat description of something that is irredeemably bad. Inevitably, it's also used by some speakers and writers to quite literally mean "good in parts", which is a shame as we already have a phrase which does that job: "good in parts".
It's a similar loss of power to the one we see in "Up to a point, Lord Copper." In Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, we meet a newspaper magnate, Lord Copper, and learn that it is unwise to contradict him:
Mr Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said, 'Definitely, Lord Copper'; when he was wrong, 'Up to a point.'
'Let me see, what's the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn't it?'
'Up to a point, Lord Copper.'
'And Hong Kong belongs to us, doesn't it?'
'Definitely, Lord Copper.'
Meanings always shift, of course, but it's a shame when a unique or colourful one is lost. "Up to a point, Lord Copper" is a funny way of saying "my answer is no but I'm being polite"; some people, though, when they mean to say "up to a point" then add a "Lord Copper", thus making "up to a point, Lord Copper" mean "up to a point" which is, well, kinda pointless.
The original sense of "curate's egg" was apparently well enough remembered in 1992 for a cartoon in the final edition of Punch to make sense: the curate, a century of social liberalisation later, barks "This f***ing egg's off!".
Punch contributed a small number of words to English, including DIZZYITE for an admirer of Benjamin Disraeli and, it seems, ROPY in the sense of unsatisfactory. The subtitle of the magazine also familiarised British readers with a French term.
Originally referring to the noise made by people banging kettles and tea-trays to express disapproval of a marriage, later used to denote the "rough music" with which mobs serenaded more generally unpopular people and things, the word was the name of a French satirical journal and is the subject of this week's challenge: reader, how would you clue CHARIVARI?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for the unbearable corporate euphemism RIGHTSIZING. Moaljodad managed to include another – HR – in "In HR gig it's wrong to include last redundancies" and yungylek insinuated a dark intention to the manager class in "Firing employees – or might, as biz king, cut their heads off". Of the clues which eschewed a relevant surface reading, I was intrigued by MaleficOpus's unconventional "Down----- down------".
The runners-up are gleety's factually arguable but eminently readable "Tories' fastening on rejection of Europe will lead to job losses" and andyknott's old-school "'Optimising' Irish gang – it's last in, first out, unfortunately"; the winner is the refusenik cynicism of harlobarlo's "I rig things around unknown variable, taking austerity measures". Kudos to Harlo – please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the week
If, like me, you're following the influence of newfound fatherhood on Paul's puzzles, it was instructive on Tuesday to note …
21ac Early expression from baby's movement (4)
… that he clued DADA with a double definition that did not refer to the fact that "Dada" is one of his noms de guerre. And how unlike Paul not to play on the sense of "movement" associated with nappies. Or did he …?