Solving time: 65 minutes
This one was really tough for me, and I’m not entirely certain of some of the answers. If there is anything a blogger hates, it’s having to blog an answer that’s on the shaky side. If you say it’s a bad clue or vague clue, you’ll probably discover that this is because you don’t understand the first thing about some marvelously clever bit of wordplay. So I’m going to admit frankly that I have no confidence in a couple of my answers, and I expect to have to cross out and replace some part of this blog.
Music: Mozart, Piano Sonatas, Eschenbach
Across | |
---|---|
1 | EXCERPT, EXCE(R)PT. A cleverly-disguised chestnut. I sometimes wonder why constructors never clue ‘GOP’ as ‘Republican’. |
6 | STEPS UP, STEPS(ON) + UP. I struggled to see what was meant by ‘wife’s son’, trying to work in a ‘w’ somehow. |
9 | Omitted, a rare easy one. |
10 | PREPARATION, anagram of P[ower} + PRAETORIAN. |
11 | WARRANTY, WAR + RANT + sounds like WHY. Rather obvious from the crossing letters, if you can get them! |
12 | CINEMA, A + MEN + I[n] C[harge] backwards. |
15 | DRAW, D[emocrat] + RAW. I found this surprisingly difficult for such a simple clue. |
16 | MINESTRONE, anagram of NONE MERITS, not seen before by me. |
18 | SKIN GRAFTS, S KING + RAFTS. |
19 | CRAM, CRAM[p]. This may well be wrong, but what else might it be? |
22 | RANSOM, R(ANS)OM, where ROM = Romans, not memory. |
23 | PENITENT, PEN + I + TENT, my first in. |
25 | TROJAN HORSE, double definition. A Trojan Horse actually does no damage, although it does permit remote evildoers to see what you are typing. |
27 | DOT, cryptic definition, there is a dot over ‘i’, but not over ‘u’. |
28 | HEALTHY, [-st+H]EALTHY, a rather tricky substitution clue, where ‘well’ is the literal rather than part of the cryptic as you might expect. |
29 | MONEYED, MON + EYED, another easy one. |
Down | |
1 | ENDOWED, END + O + WE’D, where the ‘o’ is mischievously defined as ‘circular letter’. |
2 | CONURBATION, anagram of ON TOUR IN CAB. I had a lot of trouble with this, wanting it to be ‘conturbation’. |
3 | REPEAL, RE(PE)AL. I thought ‘strenuous’ was the literal for quite a while, but it is actually one of those extended definitions that can fool the experienced solver, who expects terseness. |
4 | THEATRICAL, anagram of ART inside anagram of ETHICAL. The literal is quite clever. |
5 | SNAP, S + NAP. OK, here we have serious doubt. My proposed answer fits the cryptic well enough, where ‘shilling’ = ‘S’ and ‘down’ = ‘nap’, but the literal is another matter. I strongly suspect I have not gotten to the bottom of this clue. |
6 | EMACIATE, E + MA(CIA)TE, where ‘second’ is used in the sense of helper or assistant….I think. |
7 | SRI, another one where the cryptic is unclear, although the answer looks correct. |
8 | PINNATE, P(INN)ATE, one I can blog with confidence. |
13 | ECO-FRIENDLY, anagram of FORCE LED IN + [stephne]Y. |
14 | KETTLEDRUM, KETTLED + RUM. Solvers are expected to know the less common meaning of ‘tattoo’. |
17 | IGNORANT, [s]IGNORA + NT. |
18 | SCRATCH, SC(RAT C[irca])H, a brilliant clue if you understand the literal, but probably quite annoying if you don’t. |
20 | MUTATED, MU(TATE)D |
21 | PIGEON, double definition. If you don’t see it, you’re unlikely to try an ‘o’ for the fifth letter, which makes it tough to get by going through the alphabet. |
24 | WHEY, WH[it]E + Y. |
25 | Omitted, look for it! |
I can confirm that a SNAP is a dialect word for a packed lunch (Yorkshire? Tyneside? Somewhere up there ….).
Edited at 2013-02-11 02:42 am (UTC)
I also decided on CRAM(p) to explain 19ac.
GOP has turned up before now because that’s where I learnt it.
Edited at 2013-02-11 02:49 am (UTC)
“Not The Craw … The Craw!” (Get Smart).
However, this is a DNF because I went for TAI at 7dn — as an allowable variant of THAI (T’AI). Figured this was half of TAI-lor; where “ready-made” is “tailor-made”. That left a completely unjustifiable SWEPT-UP at 5ac.
So can’t help with SRI then. As noted: much out of practice.
SRI (which is common in Malasia and India) was easy enough from the def, but I have no idea about the rest of the clue.
I see no problem with CRAMP=restraint – think school woodwork classes.
In 14dn what does “kettled” mean? – the OED does not have “kettle” as a verb and “kettled” only as an obscure geological term.
Derek
derek
As for ‘ready’ = ‘rial’ I don’t buy it, particularly as it’s an alternative spelling anyway. ‘Ready’ = ‘ripe’ seems much more likely to me.
kettling > noun [mass noun] a method used by police to maintain order during a large demonstration by confining demonstrators to a small area.
I suppose the S could be accounted for by ‘(i)S not half’ which leaves us with RI. I wonder if it’s an obscure currency or abbreviation for a currency clued by ‘ready’.
“Asian gentleman’s not half ready” giving us S+RI(pe)
“is” = {apostrophe}S + RI{pe}.
Don’t like the first bit; but there it is! Don’t think the RI{al} solution (below) holds water; but it’s better than “residual income”!
Edited at 2013-02-11 08:46 am (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettled
“‘s” is a knee-jerk substitution for both “is” and “has” in Mephistoland and ready=ripe is surely obvious enough.
I had some doubts about the “you” in 27A but assume this to be a reference to “u” used in texting?
I like the “she” in 18D and wonder if the setter is a lady?
I don’t understand 27ac either: is the idea just that the word “you” doesn’t have a letter with a dot on it, or does “you” mean U? And if the latter, how?
I think the “small” is the indicator for I=i and you=U
SNAP Should have got this much quicker, as it was a common term from my childhood in South Staffordshire. All workingmen had a “snap bag”, which was invariably a rectangular, khaki bag with a shoulder strap, readily available for a shilling or two from the Army Surplus stores. These bags might have been used for gas masks during the war.
Knew ‘kettled’ from UK news reports about police riot control.
There were some excellent clues, notably 1ac, 28, 13.
Chris.
Keep blogging! Many thanks.
Edited at 2013-02-11 07:06 pm (UTC)
Not my favourite puzzle.
I knew as soon as I saw it that I probably wasn’t going to solve it(!) I suspected that it was S + either dialect word for “down” or S + word for “down” plus dialect word for “packed lunch”
So I left it blank. And I can’t ever remember deliberately doing that before.
I think what i really dislike about it though is the pointless apostrophe S after shilling …
So many great possibilities for SNAP as well, surely …
Edited at 2013-02-12 12:08 am (UTC)
“She” is as suitable as “he” for nouns that aren’t gender-specific, but I must admit that seeing “she” tends to make me think that there’s more to the clue than meets the eye simply because I’m so used to seeing “he”. I’ve only seen “she” used in this way by one of the female setters for the Guardian/Indy and, since I think she also sets for the Times, it’s possible that this is also her handiwork (though her puzzles generally have a lot more humour than this one did). We also had a “she” recently in the clue for PEREGRINE FALCON and I seem to remember another one a couple of months back. Maybe she’s the new pants?
Edited at 2013-02-12 01:20 am (UTC)
Time to consider an alternative host?
If you want to display a collapsed section of the thread you only need to click Expand at the side of the first hidden comment and all the hidden messages attached below it will be revealed. It works perfectly well once you are used to it.
Edited at 2013-02-13 01:21 am (UTC)
I’m aware that there are collapsed threads – I’ve always thought this was extremely user un-friendly although as you say one gets used to it. There aren’t often more than 50 posts though which makes getting used to it a slow process (!)
Probably because you don’t see GOP as often in clues as R. But I have seen it: in fact I think it was once used to clue GOPAK
Wordplay RAT=sneak C=about,circa all housed by SCH=abbreviation for school. That is, SCH houses RAT C.
Definition: She has no handicap – think a scratch golfer with a handicap of 0, or a runner in the Stawell Gift running off scratch, with no handicap as head-start.
Rob