Crossword roundup: is Waylon Smithers named after Wayland’s Smithy? | Crosswords

In the sample clues below, the links take you to explainers from our beginners series. The setter’s name often links to an interview with him or her, in case you feel like getting to know these people better.

The news in clues

Good news! Of course the news of 2024 itself is rarely what you’d call good, but it is good news that Neo has fashioned it into crossword shape in the Financial Times in that paper’s monthly news puzzle. It is staggeringly up to date.

17a Glower from Garrick user say barred at first (5)
[ wordplay: MEMBER (‘Garrick user say’) without its initial letter (‘banned at first’) ]
[ definition: glower (as a noun) ]

1d Conservative, corrupt turd, erected huge venue (2-2,4)
[ wordplay: abbrev. for ‘conservative’ + synonyms for ‘corrupt’ & ‘turd’, both reversed (‘erected’) ]
[ C + reversal of EVIL POO ]
[ definition: huge venue ]

So that’s EMBER and surely the first appearance of CO-OP LIVE in a puzzle; there is also a startling reference to the hapless MP Mark Menzies.

Puzzling elsewhere

Guardian solvers will certainly enjoy episode six of the current series of Taskmaster, though they might want to first solve or re-solve this Sphinx puzzle from September last year. To be further discussed presently!

Latter patter

Our new quick cryptic is already as popular as its older sister and its setters are consistently using words that are a pleasure to write, or type in, or say. Case in point, from Carpathian:

1a Hermits seen moving tiny fragments (11)
[ wordplay: anagram of (‘moving’) HERMITSSEEN ]
[ definition: tiny fragments ]

So, SMITHEREENS. As its diminutive ending suggests smithereen (smidirín), like “colleen (cailín) ” and “poteen (poitín)”, is an Anglicised version of an Irish Gaelic word with its “een (ín)” giving the exciting sense that these are smaller versions of something larger. No one, though, seems to have found an earlier “smither”.

That word itself now most often, in “smithers” form, means a toady, from the Simpsons character Waylon Smithers. I think it could be given another sense.

Wayland’s Smithy (pictured, top), a Neolithic barrow not far from the Uffington white horse, has a name which – it’s immediately clear – is very, very close to Waylon Smithers, Mr Burns’s adoring assistant on The Simpsons. The ancient Oxfordshire ridgeway is a long way from the Simpsons writing room, it’s true.

But then, if you think about how anglophile The Simpsons writing room has historically been, and look again at the closeness of the two names, it really does feel too much to be a coincidence.

Unfortunately, the people who were there say that they took at least the first part from the name of a puppeteer:

For me, then, a “smither” is something which can’t possibly be a coincidence, but is. And reader, how would you clue FLUKE?

Cluing competition

Thanks for your clues for HAIL. What a versatile word it is.

The audacity award is JasCanis’s for “Saying ‘Hey, Y’all’?” which I suspect had many of us pronouncing these words in increasingly strange ways.

The runners-up are Phitonelly’s plausible “Almost fell taking a shower” and Smallboat01’s lean “Shower praise”; the winner is the instantly evocative “That’s funny, I recall taking 5th Ave”.

Kludos to Nestingmachine. Please leave entries for the current competition – and especially non-print finds and picks that I may have missed from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments.

Clue from elsewhere of the fortnight

Opportunities for a trick like the one in this Times Jumbo clue don’t come along often:

49d From what we hear, this is why you seize a desert plant (5)
[ wordplay: the sound of ‘why you seize a’ ]
[ Y, U, Cs, A ]
[ definition: desert plant ]

So I’m very glad this setter took that chance for this YUCCA. Yum.

The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop