Crossword blog: what do Aretha and Jethro have in common?

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

Ye gods! A themed puzzle in the Times? Some kind of historic event?

9a Monarch to have something going on tomorrow (5)
[ wordplay: abbrev. for current monarch + synonym for ‘to have’ ]
[ CR + OWN ]
[ definition: something going on tomorrow ]

Ah yes, literally so. CROWN. “Meg”, “parade”, “queen-to-be” and others also feature. Elsewhere? Gaff has told us of his propensity for a theme, and there it is …

16a Famous street choir at noon performed without second thought (10)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘performed’) of CHOIRATNOON without second letter of THOUGHT ]
[ anagram of COIRATNOON ]
[ definition: famous street ]

… CORONATION in the Financial Times.

Latter patter

A different take on our titled friends in the Guardian. The annotated solution is now available for Brendan’s prize puzzle, which celebrates Duke Ellington, Lady Gaga and other members of the musical nobility. There is room of course for a musician who had her royal title awarded rather than having simply claimed it:

26a Old American statesman is blunt, taking nothing back (8)
[ wordplay: synonym for ‘blunt’ + reversal (‘back’) of synonym for ‘nothing’ ]
[ FRANK + backwards NIL ]
[ definition: old American statesman ]

21d A change of heart for 26, queen of her genre (6)
[ wordplay: A (‘A’) + anagram (‘change of’) HEART ]
[ definition: solution to 26a, ‘queen of her genre’ ]

So we see first FRANKLIN and then ARETHA, who’s sometimes a goddess as well as a queen of soul. Her name is not shared with many other Arethas: such is the way sometimes and a name becomes associated with one person and one only. It probably comes from the Greek “aretē”, meaning excellence; likewise excellent is the subject of our next challenge.

Resembling the Hebrew “excellence”, “Ithra”, it was the name of Moses’s father-in-law and popular for a while among Puritans. Then no one really used it for a long time until some hairy musicians named their band after the Berkshire agriculturalist who perfected the horse-drawn seed drill and so the name enjoyed a 1970s revival. Reader, how would you clue JETHRO?

Cluing competition

Many thanks for your clues for PIVOT and I especially appreciate how many of them adopted the physics sense rather than the corporate lingo.

Someone is clearly courting the audacity award in “Pilot out by 45° three fifths of the way through turn” – and it’s worked. Well played, Porcia.

The runners-up are Rakali’s not-inaudacious “Progressive characters in politics will develop through constructive focus” and Montano’s apt “Belonging to SNP, I voted for change of direction”; the winner is the sly “Turn around Porto v Ipswich’s reverse fixture”.

Kludos to Thespectacle. Please leave entries for the current competition – as well as your non-print finds and picks from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments.

Clue of the fortnight

This one’s from the category “you have to stare at it for a while and take the sentence to pieces”, from Pangakupu.

23d Instruction to depart for one uppity solicitor (3,3)
[ wordplay: reversal (‘uppity) of synonym for ‘for one’ + synonym for ‘solicitor’ ]
[ reversal of EG + TOUT ]
[ definition: instruction to depart ]

GET OUT, you say? OK, see you next week with our copies of Close Quarters.

Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop