Music: Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade, Kondrashin/LSO
At first I thought this was going to be another impossible Monday, but once I started following the cryptics I began to make a little progress and get the crossing letters I needed. There are many obscure and outrageous uses of language at work here, and you have to be prepared to stretch a little. There are still a few that I still don’t get, but maybe they will become clearer as I write the blog….and if not, then the commenters will have to explain them.
I also have one general blog announcement. Our long-time blogger Jerrywh will no longer be able to blog the Club Monthly after December, and I am looking for a suitable replacement. Unfortunately, the Club Monthly is a very diabolical puzzle indeed, and I can only think of a few from the current crew who are qualified to blog it. I am certainly not, as the closest I ever came was two or three answers short.
| Across | |
| 1 | Crack, angle to one side (4) |
| TILT – Double definition, as in ‘have a tilt at’ – I think. | |
| 3 | One minding one’s own business — a fishmonger? (4,6) |
| SOLE TRADER – Double definition, what is called a ‘sole proprieter’ in the USA. | |
| 9 | A part of the nose is cut (7) |
| ABRIDGE – A + BRIDGE. | |
| 11 | Unfashionable lines make better fashion design (7) |
| COUTURE – C(OUT)URE. | |
| 12 | Entwined, a moonlit scene ultimately passionate (9) |
| EMOTIONAL – anagram of A MOONLIT [scen]E. | |
| 13 | Fool recalled note played sweetly (5) |
| DOLCE – CLOD backwards + E. | |
| 14 | Use a match well! (6,1,5) |
| STRIKE A LIGHT – Double definition, the second UK-centric. | |
| 18 | No oil painting, and incapable of drawing? (12) |
| UNATTRACTIVE – A double definition, no doubt – audience participation invited to explain the first one. Upon reflection, it is possible that ‘no oil painting’ might be a slang expression for an ugly person. | |
| 21 | Bright metallic element, blue (5) |
| AGLOW – AG + LOW. | |
| 22 | With piano gone, pair playing large keyboard instrument (4,5) |
| PIPE ORGAN – anagram of P + GONE + PAIR, where the setter is trying to trick you into removing the ‘p’ from ‘pair’. | |
| 24 | Cheeky couple after party gifts (7) |
| DONATES – DO + NATES, yes, cheeky. | |
| 25 | Suspicion held by leader about Liberal (7) |
| INKLING – IN K(L)ING, a rather indirect cryptic. | |
| 26 | Speed trap? (10) |
| MOTORMOUTH – Cryptic definition, where each element is separately defined. | |
| 27 | Rejection of noted formula for food thickener (4) |
| AGAR – RAGA backwards. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Come across dancers in vacant trance (8) |
| TRAVERSE – T(RAVERS)E | |
| 2 | Something clarified about male left on ship (8) |
| LARBOARD – LAR(BOAR)D, where for once it’s not ‘port’. | |
| 4 | Cinema showing extract from episode one (5) |
| ODEON – Hidden in [epis]ODE ON[e] | |
| 5 | Magnificent old lover recoils when shot (9) |
| EXCELSIOR – EX + anagram of RECOILS | |
| 6 | Where the hands go continuously (5,3,5) |
| ROUND THE CLOCK – Double definition, the first a bit on the literal side. | |
| 7 | Spit in drink (6) |
| DOUBLE – Double definition, as in the ‘spit and image’, which some pedants consider a back-formation. | |
| 8 | Jacket — dope in it? (6) |
| REEFER – Double definition. | |
| 10 | Cryptically as is brew, a terrible non-alcoholic liquid? (8,5) |
| DRINKING WATER – reverse hidden, where [bre]W A TER[rible] might be said to be ‘drinking water’. | |
| 15 | Bully into a gripping history course (9) |
| ANTIPASTO – anagram of INTO A around PAST | |
| 16 | Partner for dining often welcoming outsiders in grand American party (8) |
| WINGDING – WIN(G[ran]DING, a rather dated word, used in the 40s and 50s. | |
| 17 | Youth has eaten wrong half of Frankfurter, perhaps? (8) |
| TEENAGER – anagram of EATEN + GER[man]. | |
| 19 | Chance money order (6) |
| RANDOM – RAND + O.M. | |
| 20 | Earth, say, where flower perhaps stores energy (6) |
| PLANET – PLAN(E)T, where a flower really is a plant! | |
| 23 | Characteristic purpose (5) |
| POINT – Double definition. | |
I have not done the club monthly in years, I seem to recall it being not as witty as the regular crossword and just obscure and difficult for the point of being obscure and difficult. Has it gotten any better? Maybe I’ll try a few.
“A raga consists of at least five notes, and each raga provides the musician with a musical framework. The specific notes within a raga can be reordered and improvised by the musician, but a specific raga is either ascending or descending. Each raga has an emotional significance and symbolic associations such as with season, time and mood. The raga is considered a means in Indian musical tradition to evoke certain feelings in an audience. Hundreds of raga are recognized in the classical Indian tradition, of which about 30 are common.”
I have tried it a couple of times recently and follow your description, ‘just obscure and difficult for the point of being obscure and difficult.’ And rather disagreeably short on wit too!
I would argue that The Club Monthly should be ‘clubby’ and therfore rather more inclusive!
Meldrew
FOI 3ac SOLE TRADER
LOI 27ac AGAR I DNK raga but it has not affected my life thus far.
COD 7dn DOUBLE tee-hee!
6dn ROUND THE CLOCK was a bit Evening Standard
Taxi for one!
Although it has been covered already I am happy to confirm 100% that ‘no oil painting’ means a person who is not particularly attractive. An alternative I’ve heard is they are ‘no looker’.
I agree with all the negative things that have been said about the Club Monthly. Although along with the TLS I have never managed to complete one, at least I enjoyed attempting the TLS and could see the point of it. The CM is just sheer torture and Jerry deserves many congrats for persevering with blogging it for so long.
My last in was TILT, and I very nearly put TELL. You TELL/crack a joke, and I was thinking of the TELLs on a sail which sort of angle to one side with the action of the wind. This seemed too obscure even for this setter though so I kept thinking.
I rather like the Club Monthly: yes it’s hard just for the sake of it, but then so is Mephisto. It’s always very well clued. However I very rarely have time even to solve it these days so I certainly don’t have time to blog it.
Not keen on this one, but not really sure why. I think it was the mix of the very easy with the quite easy but raised eyebrow.
Mostly I liked the attempt at originality in Drinking Water. And spit in drink was ok.
Not keen on: excelsior as adjective, Bully as anagram indicator, characteristic as point.
‘No oil painting’ is a well known phrase in my neck of the woods.
Thanks setter and Vinyl.
I always enjoy phrases like STRIKE A LIGHT as long as I know them. If I don’t, they’re outmoded and have no place in a crossword. I knew this one from dodgy Cockney impressions.
I still enjoy solving it, and blogging is not too hard as it’s only once a month. But I have been disappointed in the way the Crossword Club has gone this year, and my enthusiasm for The Times crosswords generally has waned rather. I have a crossword from June stuck on the wall of my office, the last printed-out one that I could easily read..
TILT likewise, but I think Vinyl’s nailed it. PIPE ORGAN suckered me in to an unjustified biff, and I only spelled ANTIPASTO with an I not an E because the cryptic was persuasive. Since it surely means “before pasta” (or something else in Italian/Latin) E looks more likely. And I had ROUND AND ROUND as a first shot: seems to work just as well.
“A distinctive feature or characteristic, typically a good one, of a person or thing.
‘he has his good points’ ‘There have been no problems settling into the West Lothian town, even if some of the area’s finer points have escaped him so far.’”
Edited at 2017-11-20 09:44 am (UTC)
30mins for all but TILT and the unknown LARBOARD. Bah humbug!
Like Jack and many others I suspect, I only knew of WINGDING in the plural form as a strange font.
I have finished the Monthly – once – and I do still have a go at them but generally give up well before the grid is filled. Congratulations to Jerry for sticking with it.
I’ve noticed that the setter of the Monthly usually likes to include at least one word with an unlikely combination of letters, which is rather fun – so although I can usually complete it, I do need to rely on aids such as Quinapalus’ Word Matcher.
On the other hand, I liked several things, especially the fishmonger (you can’t be a proper member of The Internet if you don’t like a fish pun), but mostly wanted to be the fourteenth person to say I enjoyed the cheekiness of NATES.
Roin
Roin
Club Monthly – I haven’t been using the Club site for a while so have by-passed it of late, I seldom managed to finish it and got bored more often than not. I’ll have a few more goes to see if I can solve it, before making any rash offers to blog. Generally agree with those above, it is hard for the sake of being hard, I don’t mind hard but I’m not a fan of very obscure or obselete words as answers. Unless they are antelopes or plants, of course.
The TLS is much more fun.
Edited at 2017-11-20 02:39 pm (UTC)
And as for WINGDING, all I can say is that anyone who isn’t familiar with the song New Frontier on Donald Fagen’s Nightfly album deserves everything they get.
Yes we’re gonna have a wingding,
A summer smoker underground.
It’s just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down.
We’ve got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier
On edit, that album I do know, and one of the finest out there IMHO.
Edited at 2017-11-20 03:05 pm (UTC)
If you can’t find anyone who is keen to do the Club Monthly, I could swap it for my Saturday Jumbo… I like hard puzzles. Did the IQ and Listener this weekend in between my lines in 6 Jane Austen adaptations, the Club Monthly would be more grist to my mill!
Respect to Verlaine for such a quick solve.
Thanks as always to B &S.