Club Monthly No. 20111 – December 2009

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Monthly Club Special
Solving time: 50 minutes, of which 10 wasted on 4dn

Happy New Year to all readers and fellow bloggers. I am sure that we all have better things to do today, but here is one I prepared earlier.. 🙂

The Club Monthly is surely one of the most entertaining crosswords of the month. It has all the high standards of the daily Times cryptic, together with a little added bite from the use of vocabulary that is normally the preserve of the barred crossword. I thought this one was a particularly good example. I had no queries or complaints, and compliment the setter. I finished it a bit quicker than last month but perhaps that was just the slight frisson of urgency caused by knowing this time that I would be blogging it.

The January crossword is due to be put up today, but at the time of writing it hasn’t appeared. On past form it might be another week yet.

Across
1 LONGSPUR – LONGS (as opposed to shorts) + PUR(e) = a subspecies of bunting
5 OVIEDO – purposely omitted.. ask if needed
10 GOMPA – GO(MP)A, a Tibetan monastery
11 WAPINSHAW – WA+PSHAW containing IN = favoured. The abbreviation and sometimes the capital city of all US states is basic required crossword knowledge. Has anyone ever actually said “pshaw!” I wonder? Wapinshaw itself is an interesting word, for which Chambers gives 8 different valid spellings. Never come across it myself, but it is only a short leap from the better known “wapentake.”
12 TACHYLYTE – (YACHT)* + LundY TidE
13 RULER – RU(L)E+R, l & r being one side, then the other
14 NEW LAID – DIAL and WEN backwards, a wen being a rather medieval swelling
16 PALOLO – PA+LOL+O lol
18 GNETUM – purposely omitted.. ask if needed
20 LIQUATE – a homophone, and a pretty correct one at that, eh, Jimbo?
22 TWEER – ie more twee, plus one of several alternative spellings for Tuyere, “The nozzle through which the blast is forced into a forge or furnace “ (OED)
23 ZANZIBARI – ZambiA + NZ + BAR in II, or two, making an inhabitant of one of the world’s more exotic parts
25 FEBRICULA – (CURE IF LAB)* – straightforward but I irritatingly put febricule, which led to a delay in getting 20dn
26 IROKO – a hard metal cut = IRO, around fine = OK to make a favourite wood for garden furniture now teak’s nearly all gone. I took “around” as meaning containing, but I guess KO = around fine, too!
27 ENDURO – finish = END + (OUR)*
to make one of those buzzy offroad bikes that so plague the green lanes and bridleways here in Kent
28 LANGLAUF – (A GUN + FALL)* = a member of the Nordic skiing sport family along with my favourite, the biathlon
 
Down
1 LEGATINE – cricket’s On, or LEG side + A TINE
2 NOMIC – NO + MIC, short for microphone
3 SEALYHAM TERRIER – Hmm, SEAL (“pup, perhaps”) + mY + HAM(S)TER RI(S)ER = a fluffy dog which has been mucked about with as only pedigree dog breeders can (or would want to) do
4 UNWAYED – UNWED = single, containing a melodY to make “not accustomed to tracks” (obs) – Chambers. Not that hard, but in my case made much harder by carelessly writing tachylite for 12ac, which took me a while to find
6 VENTRILOQUIZING – VENT = escape + RILING = maddening, containing One’s QUIZ. Very clever, though not so hard once the V appears
7 ECHOLALIA – E = energy + C(H)OLA + AIL rev. I am always quick to complain about being required to know much about drug culture, but thankfully they do seem to have held back on it a lot lately, and H = heroin is not so esoteric..
8 ONWARD – second of lorries = O + DRAWN rev.
9 UPLEAP – purposely omitted.. ask if needed
15 WINTER BUD – WIND = snake containing TUBER*
17 DEMI-WOLF – note = MI is in FLOWED = was fluent, rising, to make a word so useless that nobody but Shakespeare appears ever to have used it, and even he spelled it differently: “Demy-Wolues are clipt All by the Name of Dogges” – OED
19 MAZOUT – MAZ(e) + OUT
20 LANGAHA – LAN(e) + A HAG rev. to make a pretty weird looking snake
21 STIFLE – = gag, (ITSELF)* with parody being an inventive anag. indicator.
24 AROBA – AA = “drivers’ company,” containing ROB = loot, maybe, to make an arab carriage.

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

5 comments on “Club Monthly No. 20111 – December 2009”

  1. Good blog Jerry, very helpful to newcomers to the monthly puzzle. I don’t think you’re required to leave clues out (unless you particularly want to) because (a) time to complete the blog isn’t the issue it can be on the daily ones and (b) no solution appears on the Times helpline.

    I thought this an excellent puzzle that I really enjoyed. No, I can’t fault the homophone but I did have an English literature teacher who used to say “pshaw”. I think it’s rather dated now and was possibly always a bit affected.

    We must try to get more solvers acquainted with this puzzle.

    1. Good spot re the missing clues Jimbo, I dutifully followed tradition but in the case of the club monthly, as you say no help is available until the closing date and then the full solution appears immediately.. if anything, it is easier to just work through the card – so in future I will.

      I understand that even some of our most august contributors do not always bother with the club monthly and for the life of me I don’t understand why. Still, now it is getting regular exposure here I’m sure all that will change 🙂

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