Club Monthly 20138 March 2012 – Morbidezza, anyone?

Author   JerryWPosted on Categories Monthly Club Special
Solving Time: c45 minutes, faster than usual for me

When I solved this I thought that the setter was on good form, and that I was too.. But the crossword website tells me I got one wrong. Having done the blog, I can’t spot the error so maybe it was just a typo, unless you know better? (Keriothe knows better, see 3dn)

Lots of good surface readings in this and some very elegant clue constructions as well – 20ac and 25dn stand out but many others too. Top class

cd = cryptic definition, dd = double defintion, rev = reversed, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*

Across
1 caste – hidden in regrETS ACtively, rev.
4 camanachd – C + A MAN + ACH(E)D
9 asmoulder – A SHOULDER, with minutes = M replacing the H (= hours)
10 navew – not available = NA + W = with, containing “gutted vegetable” = VE
11 ewking – E W(OR)KING, with “or” = other ranks = men
12 rifampin – stuff = RAM + PIN = fix, containing condition = IF
14 janitrixes – JAN I + short excursion = TRI(P) + relations = SEX, rev.
16 Pius – more, in the musical sense, = PIU + S = saint. I have learnt (much) more about music, composers, and musical notation from doing crosswords than I really wanted to..
19 gamb – good = G + “front of artificial” = A + MB = bachelor of medicine. Is it finally time to inaugurate spinsters of medicine? Heraldry is another subject I could not care less about. It is bad enough acquiring all this useless knowledge in the first place, but recognising it as utterly useless even as you acquire it is irritating.. mutter, mutter..
20 Quezon City – QUERY, with the R replaced by (TO ZINC)* – what a cleverly assembled clue! And this is useful knowledge, to boot.. About 2.7m people live in this monument to President Quezon of the Philippines (coincidentally, it was built on land he happened to own 😉
22 flat-pack – if this were a daily cryptic, I’d leave this one out..
23 ex voto – English rugby team = E XV gets round to = O TO.. Another neat construction. Surprisingly perhaps, ex-voto is a noun, an offering given in fulfilment of a vow
26 thorn – reduced still = THO(UGH) + RN. A thorn – þ – is pronounced th and has been replaced by it, but in its later form y it still survives, eg in “ye olde” etc.
27 lancejack – tricky.. It is (JANACEK + CL)* – cl being the outside of choral
28 piepowder – food = PIE, + might = POWER clutching D = old coin, literally a denarius, which is old indeed, though known to most as the abbreviation for an old English penny. Piepowder is a wonderful old word meaning wayfarer, a corruption of the French pieds poudrés, dusty feet, and after which the court in the link was named
29 taunt – T + AUNT
Down
1 claret jug – Irish county = CLARE + TUG containing J = judge.. The wife bought me a beautiful one for my birthday last year
2 shmek – pusS witH firM accuratE kicK. Shmek is not a word I could find in any dictionary, but apparently it is an American slang word for heroin, as is horse. I rather object to being expected to know vocabulary of this kind.. It just seems wrong for The Times to rub our faces in the criminal drug culture
3 equinate – EQUATE containing IN = popular. An Arab horse is equinate. Not too sure how “just” or “being just” means “equate.” On edit: no it isn’t it’s EQUINITY, same principle but equity = “being just” is clearly a better fit
4 cedi – I + DEC., rev.
5 morbidezza – MOZZA(RELLA), containing (POO)R + BIDE, as in “bide a wee while,” a staple phrase of good old Dr Finlay’s Casebook, and similar cod-Scottish drama. The joke here is that morbidezza is a musical term meaning “with delicacy,” not a culinary one..
6 non-fat – (volu)NT(eers) containing ON FA. Note that NT is the precise centre of “volunteers”
7 cevapcici – garcon’s “Here with” tips, = ici avec rev., = CEVA + ICI containing copper = PC. The unlikely word ćevapčići turns out to be a kebab, one of my favourite foods when home cooked, and least favourite when bought..
8 diwan – it is departs = D + IVAN, only with the V becoming a W “another five alongside…”
13 sipunculid – drink slowly = SIP, + UNCU(t) _ LID
15 namma hole – celbbrity = NAME containing LO + HAM, rev.
17 skyrocket – SKY + ROCKET, to which for some reason the wife is extremely allergic..
18 inexpert – IN + EX + PERT = saucy
21 spinto – (POINTS)* a spinto soprano (also tenor) being a dramatic performer, the archetypal fat lady that sings, perhaps..
22 fit up – PUT + I(vylea)F, rev. To fit someone up is to frame them, as all ex-watchers of The Sweeny will recall. A ground-breaking series in many ways, but having watched one recently I found it shockingly violent. Didn’t seem to bother me so much in the 1970s!
24 otaku – alternate letters of OuTbAcK rUm, for Japanese geeks (or nerds? Discuss..)
25 gnar – ken = RANG(e), rev. Neat surface!

Author: JerryW

I love The Times crosswords..

8 comments on “Club Monthly 20138 March 2012 – Morbidezza, anyone?”

  1. Jerry 3dn is EQUINITY.
    I found this one relatively straightforward too but I was stuck for ages on 5dn MORBIDEZZA and 20ac QUEZON CITY. Very enjoyable as always.

    Edited at 2012-03-30 07:51 am (UTC)

    1. Thank you keriothe, entry duly edited.. careless of me, not to conclude that something was wrong with 3dn, despite having seen it didn’t look right.. spend the £100 wisely, if you get it 🙂
      1. I solved this on paper and didn’t send it off, so I suspect my chances of getting the £100 are like my chances of winning the lottery.
  2. Oh, and SHMEK is in Chambers as a variant of SCHMECK. I only found this because I was using the iPhone app.
  3. Jerry, thanks for the the blog. I needed it after giving up after doing the SE corner. A recent one (Jan?) was a lot easier.

    Au fait, at 7dn, it should be ‘ici [sic] avec rev., = CEVA + ICI’, non?

  4. For a regular guy who has limited time this seems like a crossword set by someone who has little else to do except finding obtuse words no-one ever uses ! I thought the skill of the setter was to test the edges and concede gracefully? If there are more than two words I have never heard of before in the answer, I think it reflects on the setter – or am I becoming Victor Meldrew?!
    Graeme, Bath
    1. I do see your point of view, but it’s the Meldrew thing I’m afraid.. this crossword is set specially each month for members of the Crossword Club and in my opinion, fwiw, it is the best cryptic crossword regularly available.
      Those who complete crosswords regularly soon discover that it is possible to solve a clue perfectly satisfactorily without knowing the word itself, as the results show. The quickest correct solution so far was entered in 15m55s.. this ability is useful to all regular solvers since the setter cannot reasonably be expected to know the limits of your vocabulary!

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