Alan Connor finds a malodorous menagerie in his pick of the week's best – and most bullish – cryptic clues
The news in clues
In the Independent on Sunday prize puzzle, setter eXternal evoked the unsurprisingly unpopular notion that the Cypriot poor should pay for the crapulence of the rich in a topically misleading clue …
8d Cyprusleditselfastraywithout consideration (15)
… for DISRESPECTFULLY. And Arachne used a novelist disingenuously charged with disrespect for the royal family in Friday's clue…
22ac For example, H.MantelonReformation? (8)
… for NONMETAL, giving as an example H (hydrogen).
Latter patter
A third outing for Hob in Tuesday's Independent, taking advantage of that paper's linguistic lenience with a clue …
24d HispetAlsatian startsbarking if extremely excited (7)
… for APESHIT. I especially enjoyed the use of a canine to get the solver to simian stools, since DOGSHIT and APESHIT have such different senses: noun and adjective, descriptive and allusive. Various animals have fertilised English vocabulary with their movements.
For horses and bulls, the feeling is one of deception or error, though BULLSHIT (1950s) is younger than the similar BULL (1910s) while HORSESHIT (also 1950s) seems to have dropped into the language fully formed, with ROCKING-HORSE SHIT coming later, via Australia, as the epitome of rarity.
Like BULLSHIT, CHICKENSHIT (1940s) has a non-excretory precedent: the use of "chicken" in a context of timorousness goes back as far as Cymbeline and both make a certain sense if you accept that Gallus gallus domesticus is as cowardly as a male Bos taurus is prone to headstrong decision-making.
The newest animal in this malodorous company is nature's foremost flying mammal. But which chiropteran characteristic should give BATSHIT its meaning? A good sense of direction? The expectation of a long life?
Nowadays, in the cheery online environment of flamewars and fisking, BATSHIT CRAZY is a well-worn way of dismissing someone else's opinions, but in the 20th century the phrase was used to mean "uninteresting", hence the Australian phrase "boring as batshit". Scholars of this topic should also note the New Zealand prime minister's recent description of David Beckham as "thick as bat shit" – and while we're in that hemisphere, Eric Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English lists a KANGAROO SHIT as "a defecation from the haunch sitting position".
Your theories are welcome as to why Australians are so inventive in this field; for every antipodean way of adding a new -SHIT to daily discourse, there is an American means of avoiding the word. As Winston Churchill (not that one) wrote in 1910:
"It isn't anything like as bad as goin' to the dentist. It don't amount to shucks, as we used to say in Missouri."
And that minced oath is this week's challenge. Reader, how would you clue SHUCKS?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for CHARIVARI. There was some smart misdirection to disguise the relevant wedding, such as phitonelly's "Raucous protest at the match", and the French setting, such as unclestaveley's "Nice way of banging on about marriage".
Of the irrelevant images painted by the surfaces, I was taken by harlobarlo's political "Replacing liberal with independent, arch-rival creates commotion" and JollySwagman's audacious, sporting "(First half) Charlton 4 - Arsenal 1 (S Lane missing – injured) caused wild celebration".
The runner-up is newmarketsausage's evocation of an intemperate music critic in "Baroque aria, very rich, or a bloody awful din?"; the winner is the smooth surface and andyknott's inventive "hearty triplets" device in "Rachael arrived bearing hearty triplets – it was a noisy delivery!"
Kudos to Andy – please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the week
Nominated by reader and crossword-onion-knower Dave Tilley is Friday's Telegraph Toughie, in which every answer had a pair of repeated letters: STARR, HARRY, SEA BREEZE and so on. Setter Notabilis hid his intentions well in one especially deft clue …
19d It's entirelyaboutprotectinguniversity (6)
… especially the definition. "Maybe even clue of the year thus far," says Dave. When it comes to finding sneaky synonyms for ALLURE, Notabilis has got it.