What the 15 across?

Author   glhPosted on Categories Announcement
Solving time : Ever get that sinking feeling? After 12 minutes, I’m staring at 15 across, knowing that it is an anagram, knowing the fodder, and suspecting it’s one of those phrases that is going to be dead simple for someone with a classical education, but is not going to be a turn of phrase you’d pick up in a schoolyard west of Melbourne. And this was the case, I completely incorrectly guessed at the answer, then went to Chambers and found I’d transposed two letters. So DNFF, of which three of those letters stand for Did Not Finish. Pity, up until there I was rather enjoying this one. Pressed for time to finish the blog, so here we go…

Across
1 ARTICHOKE: ARTIC is the lorry, then OK in HE
6 TO,PIC(k)
9 VALIANT: NAIL reversed in VAT
10 TERRA(p)IN: didn’t get this until late in the piece, but enjoyed the wordplay
11 deliberately omitted
12 FROSTBITE: anagram of (BEST FOR IT), nice surface
14 BAY: A inside BY
15 NIHIL OBSTAT: and not NIHAL OBSTIT as you can find in my grid. From “nothing hinders”, a book censor’s permission to print, according to Chambers
17 TOILET WATER: wonder if this is the first time that connotation has been noted?
19 RO(a)D
20 TOM(b),SAWYER: lovely clue, fictional home of the Twain hero
22 AS,PIC
24 WARLOCK: RAW reversed, then LOCK. I liked this because we had a different meaning of wizard earlier in the week
26 TAN,DOOR: yum
27 LULL,Y: now the only thing I can say for sure I remember about Jean-Baptiste Lully is that he had a bizarre death, gangrene from hitting himself with his own baton. Way to go, J-B
28 DO DUTY FOR: weird twisty clue, (FORTY-ODD)* out of (around) U
 
Down
1 deliberately omitted, check your ear if you’re stuck
2 T,ALLBOY: liked the wordplay here
3 CHALLENGE: crafty wordplay again – ALLEGE (maintain), about N with CH on the top
4 OUT-OF-THE-WAY: double def, one of few here
5 EFT: last of seE, then Financial Times (which I have never seen but hear is pink)
6 TAROT: O (nothing) in TART
7 PIANIST: A SIN reversed in PIT
8 CONCEITED: CON is the politician, and at least to me, the rest does sound like SEATED. Homophonophobes, state your case
13 OBLITERATED: (TREATED BOIL)*
14 BATH TOWEL: (ELBOW THAT)* – I wonder if the clue was meant to read “that one gets off the rails, perhaps”?
16 BAR,MAGNET: MAG in BARNET, the 19ac is part of the definition
18 IMMORAL: I, then M in MORAL – a new meaning of GNOME for me (meaning 2 in Chambers)
19 RE,PROOF: odd but I guess PROOF by itself can mean a raincoat
21 AGONY: GO (a popular game when I was in University in the late 80s) in ANY
23 CARER: CAREER without an E (you pick which one)
24 KI(n)D: “treat with kid gloves” is a phrase I hear often here, meaning to try not to hurt someone’s feelings. I’m not very good at it.

50 comments on “What the 15 across?”

  1. re 19 dn, think it’s just re(water)proof. We’ve had nihil obstat somewhere else recently, possibly Indy.
  2. Little Latin, less Anglo-Saxon? I thought they were common currency in Fitzroy!
    Was I the only one who found the letter deletions a bit tedious? And is “do duty for” an expression anyone has ever used?
    As to the bath towel, George, I guess the clue works such that “one off the rails” is the def and “gets” is just pointing us towards it (link word).
    28 minutes and a bit on the zzzzzzzz side.
    1. One-letter deletions: I didn’t notice that there were more than usual, and don’t know how much more than usual 4 (6, 10, 23, 25) is. I suspect most setters have devices that they use more than the others if you look hard enough.

      With you about the bath towel.

      1. Plus 19. Then there’s a few where you add a single letter. But it’s just me and my tendency to solve randomly that made them stick out today.
    2. Not an expression one often comes across, I agree, but I have met it before, and I might even have used it myself on occasion, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit! At least it provided the raw material for some ingeniously convoluted, though I think fair, wordplay.
  3. 25 min after stalling in the NW, having entered some stream of consciousness drivel in 1 dn. Also got stuck on the latin, but eventually guessed correctly. All in all, a nice crossword, one step up from a beginners’. No stand out clues for me (yesterday’s doorbell is still ringing).
  4. About 25 minutes ending with the Latin phrase. I needed all the checking letters for it, but remembered it as being related to an imprimatur. My other holdup was with BAR MAGNET, since ‘attractive’ led me to think the answer was going to be an attractive person (like a chick magnet), and it was only after solving it that I realized that ‘ROD’ was part of the definition. I had wondered whether BAR MAGNET was UK slang for an attractive woman in a pub. Regards all.
  6. I think 19dn is just a double definition, “work on raincoat” being to re-proof it.
  8. 10:20 – “nihil obstat” was new to me but saw nihil as the definite first word and rejected ‘abstot’.

    Agree about re-proofing defective raincoats in 19D as suggested above.

    Lully’s “baton”: I believe it was similar to the kind used here – he rammed it into his own foot.

    1. From the video evidence, I would have said he might have been at greater risk from being hit in the side of the head by a raised trombone. Have there been any recorded deaths from this? My second question would be how do the five baton twirlers keep in sync? Or is it all an elaborate con and each guardsman has a click track playing through a speaker hidden under his bearskin?
      1. I don’t think Lully’s band was marching… I’m sure the synchronised baton twirling comes from the same practice by which the band march in straight lines.

        As a trombonist myself, I’ve heard of serious damage to slides in bizarre incidents, but not to people.

      2. I once watched a trombonist, a few feet away from me, fall fast asleep then teeter backwards off the side of the stage at the local town hall. The brass section’s extended lunch at a nearby pub may have had something to do with it and probably helped him survive the four foot drop uninjured. Sad thing was that no one in the audience showed any sign of having noticed, so I suspect most of them were asleep, too.

        The trombonist was later found sleeping it off in the gents (I’d have to defer to Pete on whether any of this is a common experience for trombonists).

        1. The only “trombonist in the toilets” story I know is one of those “operatic disasters” – in Don Giovanni, the trombones play when the Commendatore’s statue comes to life. Some producer sent them off to play in the gents, thinking that the acoustic would add something to the sound quality, but forgot about the automatic flushing system.

          Big drop story: a trombonist in some elevated gallery losing his grip on the slide hand stay, and watching in despair as the outer slide plummeted to the ground. (Not from direct experience, so possibly embellished in retelling and possibly complete fiction.)

  9. This would have been a walk in the park were it not raining so heavily in Solihull. One thing remembered from a Catholic childhood, all religious texts had Nihil Obstat on the title page. One thing forgotten from childhood reading, that Tom Sawyer was set in St Petersburg. One thing I did not know, that there was a Battle of Barnet.

    I had the same thoughts as George about the Bath Towel clue. I agree that it works as printed but it is rather clumsy.

  10. 30 minutes or thereabouts, only briefly troubled by the Latin. I seem to remember the last time we saw wizard I tried valiantly to shoehorn warlock into the available space without success and was amazed to see it fit first time here. I’m quite enjoying this week’s offerings, perhaps because it isn’t seemingly taking all week to finish them.
  11. 21 minutes – a relief after celebration of daughter’s graduation last night followed by returning part-way up M25 to return her phone her mother had hung onto followed by serious jam going back South. Strange to get artic looking at me first off. Rather liked the not entirely PC 2.
  12. 40 minutes. This puzzle didn’t make it to the train today as I wrote in the last answer just as it arrived at the platform.

    Another lively and interesting one peppered with a few old friends to boost the confidence. I didn’t know the Latin phrase but I spotted NIHIL as the first word and the remaining letters didn’t offer much choice for the second. I also didn’t know the TOM SAWYER reference so I relied on wordplay and checking letters at 20ac. ARTIC came up only a couple of days ago and ensured a quick start at 1ac.

  13. 18 minutes today with no major obstacles, and even though 28 ends with a preposition it gets my personal NIHIL OBSTAT! Last in (because I failed to lift and separate) BAR MAGNET, CoD TALLBOY.
    Getting stuck for 45 minutes at Snaresbrook on the Central Line gave me plenty of time for the Qualifier as well. Some days you just get lucky!
    1. I’d second your nomination of TALLBOY for COD. Very neat, with lovely surface reading – on a par with that for BORDELLO yesterday.
  14. This took exactly three times as long as the Other Puzzle. Bottom in easier than top. Nihil etc last in after a lot of the NE corner. Agree about the single letter thingy. (Irrelevant aside I could not resist sharing:- I first met nihil on the London Underground ad cards for wool, wonderful rhymes in many languages including dog Latin whose last line has stayed with me for life – “Nihil exstat lanem vicem” – the first line was “Corstopitum! gemunt Romani vallum tenente Hadriani”. )
  15. 29 minutes. Took me a while to see that 13 down was an anagram. Agree with Anonymous above that 6 down could be COURT: I think that’s only the second genuine “double” I’ve seen in the Times in twenty-odd years.
    1. Although I went for TAROT at 6dn,and think it the solution most probably intended by the setter, I agree that COURT (now that it’s been pointed out to me)would be an equally good answer, satisfying both the wordplay and definition indicated in the clue. A rare genuine “double”, as you say. But would it have been allowed as an acceptable alternative by the Cheltenham invigilators? I think we need a ruling by Peter B.
      1. Sorry if I’m missing the point. Surely both would be acceptable if solving ‘cold’ but there’s no doubt what was required in the context of today’s puzzle because of the checking letters so the same would apply at Cheltenham?
        1. Exactly right. The question would only arise if the clues to intersecting answers were so fiendish that even the solvers who wrote TAROT couldn’t solve them inside the time limit. As far as I know, no championship puzzle has ever defeated the whole field, so this scenario is hyperhypothetical.
        2. You are, of course, absolutely right, Jack. Pure carelessness on my part. As you say, COURT, though perfectly acceptable in itself as an answer to the clue, is not reconcilable with the checking letters, as a genuine “double” would have to be, and as I mistakenly thought COURT was at a first cursory glance. Genuine doubles must, indeed, be very rare. Have any ever occurred and been accepted at Cheltenham?

          1. I can only recall one, which happened the very first time I entered – back in 1989. A clue that used HAT,PIN as the structure for HATPIN referred to a lady wearing a hat, and one inventive solver came up with HATTIE as her name, with the “attachment device” clue content that was intended to give PIN (or maybe HATPIN) giving TIE instead.
          2. I can only remember a couple of times when challenges were overruled.

            There was the WICKET/PICKET controversy from about three years ago, which cost John Henderson a place in the final. I felt John had a good point as I made the same mistake (although I was in the other heat so it didn’t matter to me), but he was overruled.

            Then back in the early 90’s at the Bristol regional finals, a crowd (well maybe 6 of us) all had BEAR when the correct answer was WEAR. Again the editor’s decision was final, and we were out of luck.

            1. I also remember the wicket-picket one but I was a beneficiary – there were about 5 or 6 I think who fell at this fence and I scraped into the final – a bit of a Foinavon moment (Grand National 1967 I think?)
            2. Anyone who wants to relive the PICKET/WICKET one needs puzzle 23758 from the archives, blogged here.

              It’s hard to know about the frequency of challenges – people whose challenge is rebuffed may talk to others about it, or may just keep quiet.

              Of the challenges I heard about, I can’t recall an occasion where I thought that an alternative was ruled out unfairly – including WICKET/PICKET and the previous year’s FUNCTION/JUNCTION.

              1. Many thanks, Peter. Having now looked at clue 20dn from puzzle 23758 – “Pale attempt to extend strike” – I find it difficult to see (sorry, linxit) how anyone could really have thought WICKET was a runner.
  16. Enjoyable puzzle of middling difficulty. Like quite a few others, I didn’t know the Latin phrase at 15ac, but was able to work it out from the wordplay, having spotted the anagrind fairly quickly, aided by a hunch that a Latin tag of some sort was probably required. Once NIHIL had been extracted from the available letters, OBSTAT was about the only possibility for the rest. That said, I must confess that I guessed the phrase to mean something like “let nothing stand”, i.e. an instruction by the censor to delete everything – the exact opposite (I now learn)of what it actually means. I liked BATH TOWEL (and agree with mctext’s reading of the clue).
  17. Coasted along through this (albeit with a Google check for 15ac), until I ground to a halt in the SE corner, with 22ac / 26ac / 28ac / 23d all blank. Got there in the end, with 28ac the last to go in, just within my lunchtime limits!

    It is only now, 20 minutes after solving, that I’ve worked out why 16d might be attractive. Doh!

    Also queried 14d’s ‘gets one off the rails’.

  18. finished except for blind spot over bar magnet (barbara windsor in her youth perhaps!), where i had not heard of the battle and failed to lift and separate.
  19. 19:29 .. quite a bit of scribbling to check through wordplay. Tricky three-letter words also made this a fair CHALLENGE (which was my last one in).
  20. 19:55 but felt I should have gone quicker. Couldn’t get arctic roll out of my head for 1 (what sort of person thinks of arctic roll before artichoke?).

    Got lucky with the latin but I still don’t like to see “obscure” “foreign” words clued with anagrams where you can end up just tossing the letters in any old how and hoping for the best.

    Poor on the GK today, not knowing the battle of Barnet, Lully, or the St Petersberg link.

  21. 18:21 today, although I should probably knock a couple of minutes off that for a phone-call half way through.
    I didn’t know the Latin phrase, but saw NIHIL and worked the rest out in the same way as Pete B. Also slowed down for far too long after putting REPROVE in for 19D.
  22. 11.02 As with many my biggest problem was the unknown NIHIL OBSTAT but getting the checking letters for the first word gave me only one option. Always nice to be reminded of TOM SAWYER. Didn’t know LULLY and took a while to see 28 which was a nice anagram
  23. 19 mins, couldn’t believe there was actually a battle at Barnet and had forgotten about the fictional St Petersburg. 2D TALLBOY would be my COD as well.

    Tom B.

    1. It does sound like something out of Private Eye, but judging by the length of Wikipedia articles, Barnet was nearly as important as Agincourt!
  24. Funnily enough, I had mani(c) la (p) for the capital yesterday. Seemed to work equally well.
  25. I managed to solve everything, but even after reading the blog and comments, I have no idea what “artic” has to do with trucks (lorries) or what “agony” has to do with “aunt.” I did pick up that “Barnet” was the site of a battle in the War of the Roses and that “moral” means “gnome” in some context or another. Quite a few obscure references in this one, at least for an American.
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