Crossword roundup: when cryptics literally offer an escape from reality

The news in clues

When you see Gaff’s name in the FT, you know (as he told us) that you’re in for something timely. This timely time, if you didn’t get the theme from the top-left clue ...

1ac Rent free everything I found in non-fiction (4,4)
[ anagram (‘rent’) of FREE containing (‘found in’) synonym for ‘everything’ + I ]
[ REFE containing ALL I ]

... for REAL LIFE, or from the one underneath it ...

9ac Fizz with extremely sexy dream (7)
[ fizzy-drink brand + first and last letters (‘extremely’) of SEXY ]
[ FANTA + SY ]

... for FANTASY, then once you read down to find LANDSLIDE and REALITY, it became clear that these allusions to Bohemian Rhapsody were there to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of its creator. Bismillah!

(And if you’re not still looking away from the grifter-in-chief, no setter has used “worryingly” more appositely than Paul in the Guardian.)

Latter patter

Sometimes, when a clue’s surface meaning suggests something salacious, the entry is anything but. Not so with Phi in the Independent’s Inquisitor, who opened with a fruity book ...

15ac Fanny Hill’s opening has one enthralled by a German female? (6)
[ first letter (‘opening’) of HILL, then I (‘one’) inside German feminine ‘a’ ]
[ H, then I inside EINE ]

... and ended with a fruity word, HEINIE. Like FANNY, this can be a word for the nates. While the origins of FANNY are mysterious, HEINIE is with us because someone American wanted a cutesy form of “behind”, and HEINIE was already available as a racial slur for Germans, from the name Heinrich. From a name meaning “ruler of the home” to a bottom. Take that, Fritz.

This nation’s isles offer no shortage of other words for that body part. We could look at the Scots BAHOOKIE, which Oxford says is “apparently an alteration of BEHIND” taking in a variant of HOCK – though Collins counsels ...

but compare ho(o)key, Heriot’s School slang for a caning on the buttocks (a former punishment)

... or indeed at my own favourite, the nineteenth-century ULTIMATUM ...

View image in fullscreen

... but our next challenge should surely be a wonderful short word, one of those which comes from old Norse but is peculiarly and formally identical with a Sanskrit word for the same thing. Reader, how would you clue FUD?

Clueing competition

Robi23 had a wonderfully plausible surface in “Forget the facts, initially top, Tottenham Hotspur’s struggling”, ditto Harlobarlo’s inventive “Essentially exposes Twitter’s overused method of jumping to conclusions”.

Also tough but fair was Jeremypaul’s baroque “Stop – it’s confused most of the substitutes for MP in new leader’s version of the status quo”, while Phitonelly brazenly courted the audacity award with the mind-damaging “U ♡ RU x 3? BS!”.

The runners-up are Chrisbeee, who had my favourite of some splendid acrostics in “Primarily, populism overcomes substance, through twisted rhetoric – unpleasant to hear” and Alberyalbery, who can spell “strewth” how she likes with “Struth! – pot smoking causes one to ignore the reality”; the winner is Lizard’s “comp.anag & lit.” clue “Utter tosh – par for this era that’s devious”.

Kudos again to Lizard; please leave this fortnight’s entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.

Clue of the fortnight

When Morph (Meet the Setter) published this extraordinary Independent clue ...

15ac 0.9 (3)
[ a point of the compass (from the decimal point), then 9 in Roman numerals ]
[ N + IX ]

... with NIX as the answer, the question arose:

Over to you.