The usual (although he is a fairly new contributor) good crossword from Klingsor. There is a nice range of clue-types and some of them are very clever.
Maybe there is some Nina here but although as soon as I looked at the completed grid I saw ‘Bad’ and ‘Rem’ straddling some across answers, I suspect there is nothing in this.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | REVERB — (breve r{ecording})rev. — a nice &lit. I think because this seems quite a good way to define reverb |
| 5 | AD JUST |
| 9 | OUGHT — I’m not quite sure here: it seems to be {r}ough t, where ‘can be hard’ is ‘rough’, but quite apart from the possible dodginess of the syntax, does ‘rough’ really equal ‘can be hard’? |
| 10 | ROTATORY — A Tory with Rot coming first |
| 12 | NURTURE — (turn)* Ure |
| 13 | MONITOR — 2 defs, although some might say that a monitor is not part of a PC but an adjunct to it |
| 14 | CON G{aol} A |
| 16 | NOSTALGIA — (a lost ag{e} {pi}ni{ng})* — another good &lit. |
| 18 | {w}I{n}N{i}N{g} KEEPER — def ‘He should look after draughts’ |
| 21 | REMIT — (timer)rev. |
| 22 | UN(A WAR)E — ‘boxing’ indicates the act of surrounding |
| 24 | A M(PO{t})ULE |
| 26 | BELGRADE — (Beadle)* around g{ross} |
| 27 | LOG I{ndustry} C |
| 28 | murAL COVEring |
| 29 | DO SAGE |
| Down | |
| 2 | ELGAR — (leg)* a r |
| 3 | ENTOURAGE — encourage (= egg on) with c replaced by {toas}t |
| 4 | BURGEON — (grub)rev. (one)* |
| 5 | ARTEMIS — (I met)rev. in ars |
| 6 | J {g}ET ON |
| 7 | S TRAT A GEM |
| 8 | CONNECTICUT — Stamford USA is in Connecticut, connect = bridge, I, cut = give up (?? not sure here) |
| 11 | BREAK THE ICE — if you break ‘the ice’, in other words form an anagram of it, you can get ‘techie’ |
| 15 | N(ON PAR)EIL |
| 17 | ACROPOLIS — a crop (silo)rev. — This always reminds me of Les Dawson — if you can do better than I did and find a YouTube clip of this then I recommend it — Later: try this |
| 19 | PEERAGE — a joke: a pee-rage is arguably a fight in the toilets and Ladies are examples of those in the peerage — very good |
| 20 | REAR-END — {ca}r (need a)* around R{olls} — rear-end as a verb |
| 23 | AG(GR)O |
| 25 | {f}UN GAG |
Is 9 (t)OUGH +T and 8d Cut as in cutting ones lossings and giving up?
lossings? losses! Klingsor as Alberecht has been around for a while methinks.
Thank you, John, especially for parsing several that I couldn’t. Anybody else find this hardish? NURTURE and AMPOULE were my best ones this morning.
I think CONNECTICUT just about works, although ‘giving up’ is really ‘cutting out’. It’ll do for me.
Thanks for your blog, John, and for a very entertaining puzzle, Klingsor.
I agree with flashling that it’s (t)OUGH + T in 9d, and that there’s no problem with CUT= “give up” in 8d (Chambers lists “to reject or renounce” for CUT as in “to cut one’s ties with one’s family which seems to fit the bill nicely I think).
I loved some of the clues here today – PEERAGE is very clever, and so too is the misdirection in CONNECTICUT. BREAK THE ICE was another favorite, so too UNAWARE.
I found 8d particularly hard, very crafty stuff – I was thinking of “cut and run” as a possible example of cut=give up. Superkiwigirl has a better one though – Chambers is usually the clincher.
This was an excellent puzzle from Klingsor. Quite hard but not spectacularly so, I thought. Some really great clueing – my favourites were DOSAGE, ELGAR, BURGEON, BREAK THE ICE and UNGAG. Many thanks for the great blog, John.
Excellent stuff from Klingsor, as usual. One expects some musical connections from him, with ELGAR the obvious one here, and more remotely REVERB and NOSTALGIA (a music, or at least CD, genre according to some). Last to go in, needing a word finder, was PEERAGE but a laugh out loud moment when I got it.
Favourites? The aforesaid PEERAGE and the beautifully misdirected CONNECTICUT.
19d is simply silly.