As expected, this was a somewhat challenging Saturday puzzle from Nimrod. Several of the clues were deceptively straightforward, but there were quite a few that were fiendishly constructed, really stirring up the grey matter! There was a bit of a theme affecting six answers, but we’re not aware of any particular event that this might relate to.
We needed to check several of the solutions, as the definitions were not immediately obvious (although perfectly fair when we finally figured them out).
We’re still a bit puzzled by the parsing of 15ac, and 18d and 26d seem to include superfluous words that do not really add to the surface reading. As the setter is Nimrod, we must be missing something! Can anyone help us out?
We’re not sure which of the homonym solutions to 20ac is the intended answer – so we’ve included both, as either fits the grid!
| Across | ||
| 1 | Following two years of growth, it’ll be seen as excellent when the Ashes are retained! | |
| TURNIP TOP | TIP-TOP (excellent) around or ‘retaining’ URN (‘ashes’). Apparently, the turnip top is the green sprout of a turnip in its 2nd year, used as a vegetable. | |
| 6 | Lover of the 60s somewhat broad in the beam! | |
| HIPPY | Someone who is broad in the beam could be described as being ‘hippy’ | |
| 9 | Awfully sorry to pen note demanding one compiler should spot it | |
| SYNTAX ERROR | Anagram of SORRY (anagrind is ‘awfully’) around or ‘penning’ N (note) + TAXER (‘demanding one’) | |
| 10 | Fast runner finds them acceptable | |
| EMU | ‘EM (them) + U (acceptable) | |
| 11 | Astute about 12 being passed round part of theatre | |
| NO FLIES ON | NOON (12 midday) around FLIES (part of theatre) | |
| 12 | See 15 down | |
| See 15d | ||
| 14 | Spotted in the litter is cool cheesecake | |
| PIN-UPS | IN (cool) ‘spotted in’ PUPS (litter) | |
| 15 | The curse of Crusoe, waving to sailor? | |
| ISOLATOR | Anagram of TO SAILOR (anagrind is ‘waving’) – we’re not sure about the definition here – we can find no reference to ‘Crusoe’s curse’ – he was obviously isolated on his island, but the definition doesn’t seem to fit the solution | |
| 17 | Communicator of information on long dress material | |
| ORGANDIE | ORGAN (communicator of information – as in a newspaper) + DIE (long) | |
| 20 | Origin of the Clash? One represents its sound | |
| CYMBAL / SYMBOL | Homonyms – we’re not sure which version should be entered – the clue could lead to either answer – the origin of the clash could be ‘cymbal’, whereas a ‘symbol’ would represent something | |
| 22 | One regularly holding hands arrested in 1212? | |
| EAST | Hidden or ‘arrested’ within tEAS Teas (12 across repeated) – a reference to one of the four card players in Bridge for example | |
| 23/28 | To bum, haircut’s just dreadful – animation results | |
| SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS | SPONGE (bum) + BOB (haircut) + SQUARE (just) + PANTS (dreadful). Fortunately we’re too old to have had to suffer this cartoon series | |
| 27 | The language heard later from utterer of 3 4 5 6 7? | |
| IDO | I DO – words uttered by the bride and groom at a wedding – see 3/4/5/6/7 down | |
| 28 | See 23 | |
| See 23 | ||
| 29 | See 1 down | |
| See 1d | ||
| 30 | A way of painting that’s infectious | |
| DISTEMPER | Double definition | |
| Down | ||
| 1/29 | Try striker in international | |
| TEST MATCH | TEST (try) + MATCH (‘striker’) | |
| 2 | Shabby synopsis | |
| RUN-DOWN | Double definition | |
| 3/4/5/6/7 | One man on show, bearing ring, requiring frightfully honest response….. | |
| I CALL UPON THESE PERSONS HERE PRESENT | Cryptic definition – I (one) HE (man) REPRESENT (show) around or ‘bearing’ CALL UP (ring) + an anagram of HONEST RESPONSE (anagrind is ‘frightfully’). Apparently these are words spoken by the groom (and bride) as part of the wedding vows to call on those present to witness the marriage (hence the cryptic definition) but neither of us remember saying them when we tied the knot. However, that was in 1971, so maybe it is our memories that are at fault! | |
| 8 | Nimrod solver’s no stomach for sadist, minding ps and qs? | |
| YOURS TRULY | YOUR (solver’s) + S |
|
| 13 | Regular announcement by old clergyman makes no promises, unfortunately | |
| SPOONERISM | Anagram of NO PROMISES (anagrind is ‘unfortunately’) | |
| 15/12 | I see summer in Boulogne as refreshment for many | |
| ICE TEAS | I + C (see) + ETE (French for summer) + AS | |
| 16 | Pope roughed up in seedy alley? They’ve not followed orders | |
| LAYPEOPLE | Anagram of POPE (anagrind is ‘roughed up’) in an anagram of ALLEY (anagrind is ‘seedy’) | |
| 18 | Facing Pompey, I run game | |
| GOSPORT | GO (run) + SPORT (game) – Gosport is on the other side of Fareham Lake from Portsmouth (Pompey). We wondered about the need for ‘I’ in this clue – does anyone have any explanation? | |
| 19 | Take possession of Ezra’s introduction? | |
| IMPOUND | A play on the possibility that Ezra Pound might introduce himself with the words “I’M POUND” | |
| 21 | British Library having to admit what the bigger picture is | |
| BLOWN UP | BL (British Library) + OWN UP (admit) | |
| 24 | Is it a woman? Conflicting answers not vocally expressed outside treatment room! | |
| NERYS | N |
|
| 25 | Wells up about very attractive attribute of potential partner? | |
| GSOH | HG (Wells – the author) reversed or ‘up’ around SO (very) – abbreviation for ‘good sense of humour’ as used on dating sites etc. | |
| 26 | Exhumed from Isle of Man – it’s a Roman emperor! | |
| TSAR | We’re really puzzled by the parsing of this one – If you remove or ‘exhume’ ‘I o’ Man’ from ‘it’s a Roman’ you’re left with TSAR, but this could have been a simple hidden answer without any reference the Isle of Man, and we’re asked to ‘exhume’ the emperor from the IoM, not the other way round! | |
Another enjoyable Nimrod – well done B&J – two brains are definitely what is required to blog one of this setter’s puzzles.
I too wasn’t sure which word to put in 20a but the online version today is the musical one. My ‘confusions’ about the other clues were the same as yours.
Anyone wanting further torment from this setter should have a look at Big Dave’s blog after 12 noon as there is a puzzle set by Enigmatist for the S&B Gathering in Manchester. My ‘single’ brain is now going back to wrestling with writing the explanations for it!
Well done to Bert and Joyce for untangling the wordplay of the long answer. I worked out what the answer should be once I had some checkers in place and didn’t see why I should torture myself trying to unravel the clue.
I was very pleased to finish this without recourse to aids.
My take on 18d is that the definition is ‘Facing Pompey I’ and the ‘I’ is there as a misdirection, and the same goes for the seemingly superfluous words in 26d. In both cases they made me think about the answer more than I otherwise would have done, so the misdirections worked.
I was also unsure which of CYMBAL/SYMBOL was required, entered the former, and was pleased to see that it was correct when I entered my final answer (online).
Thanks B&J and Nimrod. A suitably chewy Saturday puzzle. I think 20a has to be the musical version, simply by the convention that the definition is at the beginning or end of the clue – I can’t make that work with SYMBOL, whereas CYMBAL becomes a kind of dd. No wiser than you on 15a, however. For 18d, how about “I” as part of the definition (isn’t it a bit loose, otherwise?)? And 26d I just took as general obfuscation of a very simple ha clue (the Roman bit certainly had me looking for Nero, eg).
And thanks, crypticsue, for the x-ref. I was aiming to be in Manchester but instead am at home nursing a cough, so further diversion will be welcome.
Sorry, Andy B, we crossed.
Well done. This was a brilliant puzzle but must have been very hard to blog. I’m still not totally sure about some of the parsings.
11a – I took this a bit differently, with “about 12” as NOON (either a reversal or, more probably, a straight definition – “noon”, i.e. noontide, can mean more than just the instant of 12 o’clock, hence about 12). So the definition for me is astute – a bit loose I think (“no flies on Bob,…” = “Bob (being) astute,…”? “No flies on Bob!” = “Astute Bob!”?- I suppose it works…)
15a – Crusoe’s curse is presumably whatever isolated him? That’s how I took the definition.
18d – I took the definition as the old-fashioned formulation “Facing Pompey, I” (cf. “No socialist he”, i.e. he’s no socialist, and similar)
26d – I see what you mean but this seems scrupulous – the answer is the bit of “It’s a Roman” you exhume from I(sle) o(f) Man (strictly this is more accurate than saying you exhume it from “It’s a Roman”, which would include the buried treasure as part of the earth, so to speak). But the simple HA is available too I suppose.
I couldn’t help seeing 9a as a (pretty “demanding”) challenge to find out whether the syntax really worked in these clues.
In 20a I was sure it was SYMBOL until the congratulations message failed to appear. “Representing” for “represents” would have cleared it up for me at the time, and I’m still not quite sure how to read this clue. I suppose it’s “One represents” = definition of symbol, which you then take as “its (the answer’s) sound”. But SYMBOL does seem to work too.
In general I sometimes have a problem with objections to “superfluous words”. If a clue could work perfectly well without a word that word is in a sense superfluous, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong with the clue. The word could still be fulfilling a function, on a different reading, syntactically and grammatically. Only if the word cannot be interpreted as part of a meaningful, grammatically correct cryptic reading leading us to the answer is there a problem, in my opinion.
“So you’ve met a new partner, Daphne? Does he have the ‘gosh’ factor?”. I had trouble working out exactly how much of it was ‘up’. A lot of it was in the ‘bad-lands’ of intuition – and I agree with Andy B that I worked the long ones from letter-counts without bothering to untangle. Needed a couple of steers with some, for which I thank you for the blog and of course, also thank the challenging setter.
‘For a lot of it I was in the ‘bad-lands’ of intuition’, would be clearer, rather than suggesting the puzzle was. Funnily enough, I never gave the CYMBAL a second’s thought. It made clear sense to me on first reading. It was only when I looked in here that I saw the possibility of ambiguity. I have to read it with a slightly rogue emphasis to make SYMBOL work. I agree with GOSPORT, I being the definition reading, something not unusual in crosswords.
I fell off my drum stool in Gosport.
Thanks, Bertandjoyce (if you or anyone else is still reading). Like you, I had no recollection of ever having said (or heard) the phrase “I call upon these persons here present…” As near as I can tell from an incomplete but wide perusal, it doesn’t occur in any Anglican marriage service (and neither, by the way, does the response “I do” — which should of course be “I will”). Googling revealed that the phrase is used in some statutory version (perhaps governing civil or non-conformist ceremonies, but I haven’t found the source), though most hits I found seemed to be Australian. Apparently, it introduces the “for richer, for poorer” bit — which incidentally comes after “I will” rather than before it, as suggested by 27a.
Despite not knowing the phrase, I was able to piece together “these persons here present” but then had to resort to Google to find the whole phrase. The fact that I had to resort to such crude methods, and that despite some time trying to divine the origin and legal standing of the phrase I am none the wiser, made this a rather unsatisfying clue — and as it occupied so much of the grid, crossword — in my view.
[Neither, by the way, does the response “I do” — which should of course be “I will” ] – comment #9
Not too sure about that, Ian SW3.
I’m not an expert on those services but “I do” rings a bell or two re what’s said at weddings.
I think “I do” may be one of those phrases — like “Elementary, my dear Watson” or “Play it again, Sam” — that everyone knows but that doesn’t actually appear in the text. What the C of E marriage service actually says is
“Will you take N to be your wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?
He answers: I will.”
There are variations, of course, across versions, but not as to “I will.”
Right. Now that I’ve had time to peruse the Marriage Act 1949, I see that “I call upon these persons here present …” is indeed part of the prescribed language for marriages in registered buildings in England & Wales (and it appears to have been introduced in the Marriage Act 1836 which first authorized civil marriage). The phrase does not apply to marriages according to the rites of the C of E (or to Quaker or Jewish ceremonies), which explains why it doesn’t ring any bells. I have actually attended a registry office marriage once, but I can’t say that the phrase stood out.
It still seems a rather obscure clue. Did anyone else actually recognise the answer as part of a marriage ceremony, or, like me, just assume from the clue surface that it must be?
Neither, in my case. I got enough crossing letters to assume how the answer started and googled it, thinking it might be some obscure quotation. Got several references to the marriage ceremony and then made the link with the clue. Don’t think I even attempted to parse it.
Maybe it’s because the last wedding I attended, in March, was in a registry office that once I had a few crossers in PRESENT the answer jumped out at me with no checking/googling needed. So, yes, I did recognise it as part of the marriage ceremony.
Many thanks for the blog – the full parsing of 9a, 8d & 24d eluded me. Indeed, I failed to enter NERYS as I was unconvinced by my parsing of it, which turned out to be correct. I’ve clearly let Nimrod psyche me out. Like others, I also plumped for SYMBOL but agree with MikeC above that it doesn’t really work.
A satisfying work out, possibly on the easier side of Nimrod’s range? [I’m more familiar with him as Enigmatist but I don’t think there’s a huge difficulty difference between these two guises – unlike Pasquale & Quixote say.] Favourite clues included HIPPY, YOURS TRULY, GSOH and SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS.
I hate to be churlish but it was a little unfortunate that the blurb on 225’s main page for this blog included the mention of the wedding ceremony theme. I try not to look at them but it did catch my eye last night when looking at the Genius blog. My own fault I spose.
We’re sorry if the preamble let the cat out of the bag. We usually manage to avoid that during our weekday blog. We also forgot that some people access the puzzle a week later on-line. We’ve removed the offending item!
I was delighted to solve a JH puzzle.However I have hit the buffers again with his Friday toughie !
A puzzle from the 27th of April finally solved today, the 26th of … July.
I was really behind with solving but did make quite some progress during the first of my holiday.
So, there we are.
I am not always doing Nimrods but this time I persevered.
Ultimately, I needed my PinC for the Long One.
While I agree with IanSW3 that it is perhaps unsatisfying that it rules over the complete North, I must also say in favour of Nimrod that this was a terrific clue.
BTW, Bertandjoyce, we (she?) parsed the first bit as I (one) HE (man) RE (on) PRESENT (show) – which is slightly different from your approach.
Satisfying stuff.