Klingsor has produced a fine crossword today. Many of the clues are quite excellent, and although one might criticise the fact that perhaps rather a lot use the device of getting one or two letters via words like ‘ultimately’ or ‘principally’ this is a small thing and doesn’t detract from their quality; nor does the fact that there are three words ending …NESS, two of them at the bottom right of the grid — something that some people might dislike.
I’m not quite comfortable with 6dn. No doubt I have it wrong and the correction will soon be displayed.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | UNCONSCIONABLE — (council’s ban on)* {sal}e |
| 9 | HUMONGOUS — def huge — (hum on US) around go |
| 10 | acquiRE GORgeous — hidden rev. — a word used in signalling etc |
| 11 | LA 1 U S — a Greek mythological king of whom I hadn’t heard, but I guessed this from the wordplay |
| 12 | SEDUCTION — this took a long time to parse, although the answer was clear enough — so far as I can see it’s (c{lergy} e{xplain} {Lea}d us {not} into)*, def temptation, the anagram indicated by ‘unorthodox’ |
| 13 | AVER S(I)ON |
| 15 | BODEGA — (age d.o.b.)rev. |
| 17 | LE TOUT — Nancy is the town in France, so its ‘the’ is ‘le’ |
| 19 | MOUSS{e} AKA — also known as |
| 22 | ASSAILANT — (1 as)rev. in aslant |
| 23 | A G{r}APE — an agape is a feast in celebration of selfless Christian love |
| 24 | C(H{ip-hop})AFE |
| 25 | ITALICISE — (Idealistic – d)* — right-leaning characters (letters) are italicised |
| 26 | NEWSWORTHINESS — (sworn witness he)* |
| Down | |
| 1 | UNHOLY ALLIANCE — 2 defs |
| 2 | C O(M{embership’s} B{asic} I{mplications})NE |
| 3 | NONE S — one of the hours of the Divine Office |
| 4 | COOK SHOP — if you cook ‘shop’ you form an anagram of it and get ‘posh’ — a mandolin is a cooking utensil and a cook shop is (although I was unaware of this) a shop selling kitchen equipment |
| 5 | ON SIDE — side = team and on = acting, as in ‘on stage’ |
| 6 | ATROCIOUS — the only way I can get this one to sort of work is to say that it’s (r out socia{l life})*, but to do so is to say that the first half of ‘social life is ‘social life, for a start’, which doesn’t seem quite right to me (crypticsue at 1 has it right, many thanks) |
| 7 | L IGNITE |
| 8 | BRAND AWARENESS — (s{u}r{f}e{r} saw banner ad)* |
| 14 | SAUCINESS — 2 defs, playing on the two meanings of salsa, a dance and a sauce — I’m not quite sure what ‘say’ is doing: a characteristic of salsa is sauciness — surely there is no definition by example (which would explain ‘say’) here? [Brass is a characteristic of salsa, say] |
| 16 | CONT(R)ACT — at first it seemed that there was something wrong and that this was one of those ‘clued without definition’ clues that are sometimes part of a barred crosword, but contract can mean touch as well as get in touch — the definition is I think just ‘Get’ in the sense of contracting a disease |
| 18 | {inheri}T ESTATE — an &lit. I think, but to be testate is to have made a valid will and I suppose your latest will is the valid one — a bit of a stretch perhaps |
| 20 | A V(A{t} R{iches})ICE — now this is an &lit. which really works, and a good one it is too |
| 21 | C(ALIC{e})O — I didn’t really understand this, but I see that (in N. America) a calico is a spotted animal, esp a horse |
| 23 | ALIBI — (bailiff – ff)* |
I found this quite a tricky challenge and Tippex was used in more than one clue.
I think that 6d is R (rule) and an anagram (bust) of OUT SOCIA[L] the start of Life “going”
Thanks to John for the explanations and Klingsor making me work really hard for an enjoyable result.
I struggled to parse 6d too but no tippex required today (good job as I don’t own any!)
Very nice Klingsor even if I misled myself thinking where is the musical stuff…
Ta John for an eerily quiet blog.
Surely ‘say’ in 14D is because salsa is just one example of sauce.
Must own up to using a word finder once or twice – and then thinking “how obvious!”
And I too was expecting some musical stuff from Klingsor, but he very cleverly fooled us with “mandolin”. I was going to object that the kitchen utensil is “mandoline” but Chambers gives both spellings for both the instrument and the utensil.
Thanks, John, for the blog – I needed it to understand some of the clues. And thanks, Klingsor, for the mental workout.
Enjoyed this one, which was a good challenge this morning. Liked UNHOLY ALLIANCE especially, and AGAPE came to me in a flashback from my RE teacher at school explaining the difference between that and EROS. Possibly the most exciting bit of RE that I ever encountered.
Thanks to Klingsor and John.
Well, it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to blog Alberich in today’s FT, so I’ll just say I enjoyed solving him in both guises today. This one was the more challenging of the two, I thought, but the other one had some very nice references in it – it was a good double treat.
Thanks crypticsue, you’re obviously right that in 6d the ‘going’ refers to the omission of l. Not quite sure how I’ve been eerily quiet, flashling: am I normally rather noisy? hounddog: my point is that it’s simply true, without qualification, that a characteristic of salsa is sauciness.
Err quite John not exactly what I meant, odd we lost 2 bloggers today and here was I wondering if I’d agreed to sub for someone and missed it.
Many thanks John for the blog and to the posters for their kind comments. I usually go out of my way to avoid words ending in NESS as they can be a swine to clue, and I honestly hadn’t noticed that three of them had crept in here. Hounddog at 3 is spot on with my reasoning for the “say” in 14D. As I saw it, any sauce will display sauciness and salsa’s just one example, which is why I qualified it. I prefer to err on the side of caution in the case of definition by example.
The FT blog is now up and as I’ve said there, people must be wondering what they’ve done wrong to get me twice on the same day!
Thanks to all
Klingsor