Club Monthly 20130 – July 2011

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Monthly Club Special
Solving Time: Forever, or at least it felt like it. Despite this month’s offering being light on the latin and rather heavier than usual on science and technology, still I had a lot of trouble finishing it. I managed to get through most of it in about 45mins, but the NE corner took another hour to polish off. At the time of writing 33 correct solutions have been submitted (with leaderboard) according to the crossword site, compared to 58 for the June version and 43 for May, and only three in less than an hour, so maybe it is somewhat harder than usual.

Still, I do recommend you have a go at the current offering. It has never been necessary to finish a crossword in 8 minutes or less, or indeed to finish it at all, in order to learn from it and get enjoyment from it. Technically these club monthlies are of the very highest class, and there is no better way to improve your solving of the daily cryptics than to have a go at these too.

Across
1 capric – CAP + RICH, capric (as in capricorn) meaning to smell like a goat..
5 squabash – “chaos on extreme right” = S + QUA = “as” + party = BASH
9 sodium pump – oil reservoir = SUMP, containing dislike = ODIUM + P
10 voar – see = V (for Vatican) + blade = OAR.
11 petaflop – this clue scarcely needs explaining once “performing at a given speed” is seen as the definition. That adjectival usage is a bit of a stretch for me, but it’s in Chambers, so..
12 pay bed – another clue that is just a cryptic def. and which took me, in hindsight, a quite unaccountably long time to spot.
13 ossa – PASSES GO. Ossa is what one piles Pelion upon..
15 landdros – LORDS* containing AND.
18 jazerant – “van in jeopardy” = J + a storm = A RANT containing ZE = “evacuated zone.”
19 duke – “up for settlement” = DUE containing K = “desk, finally.”
21 obiter – O + BITTER. The central decision of a court case is the ratio decidendi, while incidental comments along the way are known as obiter dicta.
23 oxpecker – “box without first” = OX + PRECHECK* to make an oxpecker, which eats ticks and similar parasites. No self-respecting rhino would be seen without one.
25 clou – CLOUD. A clou is an “idea that dominates.” There is an awful joke about “Sorry I haven’t a Clou” in there, somewhere..
26 emalangeni – OK, let’s see: elected = IN + for one = EG, + term = NAME containing a large = AL, all rev. African small change seems to be a recurring theme in recent Club Monthlies.. one interesting thing about this one is that emalangeni is actually a plural for lilangeni, which promises some interesting language lessons if you wish to learn Swazi.
27 synastry – (SAY, N)* + S + TRY
28 kinase – blood = KIN + AS E
Down
2 arose – (OR SEA)* – a nice easy one to start us off
3 ruin agate – game = RU + I + keep bothering = NAG AT + E
4 camply – roughly = C + AMPLY = enough
5 slumpflationary – (INPUT AS FORMALLY)* – I hate these types of word, so facile and so meaningless and so crass, and those coining them always think themselves so very clever, even though they are usually journalists
6 unpoping – “cockney” hung = UNG containing call briefly = POP IN. I see the usefulness to setters of “cockney = drop an H” but it always makes me shudder, nonetheless
7 bivvy – sadly I do actually possess a bivvy bag. This is BEVVY with the E for European replaced by I = one. There was an adverse comment on the crossword website about this clue but I see no particular harm in it
8 slave-fork – one thousand rand = KR + OF EVA’S containing left = L, all rev. The reference is to Eva Braun, whose taste in men could be called into serious question. The slave-fork itself seems of very doubtful utility, hardly calculated to improve workforce productivity.
14 swag-belly – promotion = SWELL (not sure about this swell-as-noun usage initially, but Chambers allows it) + yen = Y, containing WA + GB. A potentially useful word, this one, eg: “Unhand my daughter, you capric swag-belly!”
16 dodecagon – cook = DO + did best when serving up = ACED rev., + good = G + leg = ON
17 yahrzeit – a husband = AH contained in your = YR, + Z + obligation = TIE rev. In German it would be Jahrzeit, but this is Yiddish.
20 sprack – fire = SACK containing pair = PR.
22 thuja – THUS + German yes = OK = JA
24 ennis – hidden, rev., in investS IN NEw.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

2 comments on “Club Monthly 20130 – July 2011”

  1. I was quickly onto this setters wavelength and did not experience any great problems with this one.

    As ever, a very high standard of clues. I can’t see anything wrong with BIVVY

  2. Agreed. First-class puzzle. Even if it did take me more than two hours combined on three separate solving occasions. Some classic instances of The Jimbo Imperative: ask not whether you know the word, ask only whether the wordplay can get you there fairly — 26ac being a classic case in point.

    I knew a whole six words clued; but can’t complain.
    QED to Jim.

    Edited at 2011-07-30 10:20 am (UTC)

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