A challenging puzzle from Shed that seemed at first to be on the easy side for a prize, but soon presented a real challenge. There were several anagrams or part anagrams in the bottom half of the grid, but the top half was more varied. I didn’t help myself by failing to get 1 across till the very end. I do have a couple of quibbles, but also considerable respect for some clever cluing, particularly 23 and 25 across.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SUPERSTRUCTURE | Bob cut cloth back, stitching around upper part (14) |
| CURTS(y) REP (all rev) in SUTURE. A curtsy is a bob and rep can be a type of cloth. | ||
| 9 | INSIDER | Popular teacher of French introduced to privileged dealer (7) |
| IN, DE in SIR. | ||
| 10 | BRITISH | Native putting this mouldy lot of cheese first (7) |
| BRI(e), *THIS. | ||
| 11 | GLEAN | Pick up good, nutritious meat (5) |
| G(ood), LEAN. This detained me for far too long; having GRASP in my mind I couldn’t think of something else, even though I knew it must be wrong. | ||
| 12 | LEAF-GREEN | Vegetable pigment breaking free with 11 (4-5) |
| *(GLEAN, FREE). In the end I got this before I got 11: the anagram with FREE was obvious, but the phrase was unfamiliar to me. | ||
| 13 | NORMATIVE | Old regulars meeting for starters in local, demanding consistency (9) |
| ORM(first letters) in NATIVE. I’m a little unhappy with the definition; is consistency what a norm demands? | ||
| 14 | SUTRA | Texts university faculty turned outside (5) |
| U(niversity) in ARTS(rev). | ||
| 15 | INGOT | Bar from doing otherwise (5) |
| Well hidden in “doing otherwise”. | ||
| 17 | MORMONISM | American parent adopting dysfunctional minor’s religion (9) |
| *MINORS in MOM. | ||
| 20 | SYMBIOSIS | Mutual support for boys? I miss out (9) |
| *(BOYS I MISS). | ||
| 22 | SPROG | Babe getting right into Republicans’ comeback (5) |
| R in GOPS (rev). Trouble is the Republicans are the GOP (“Grand Old Party”), not the GOPS. | ||
| 23 | CULVERT | Channel turning minister 1 down part 2 (7) |
| REV(rev) in CULT. A very clever reference to INSECT (in sect). My COD. | ||
| 24 | FLANEUR | Stroller’s fishy funeral (7) |
| *FUNERAL. | ||
| 25 | PRIMA BALLERINA | Dance queen (Bausch) maintains edge on a dance queen (5,9) |
| RIM A BALL ER in PINA. A reference to the famous choreographer Pina Bausch provides a very neat clue. Omission now rectified: thanks R_C_A_D | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | STINGING INSECT | Eg ant’s time on duty, drinking double spirit dry (8,6) |
| GIN GIN SEC in STINT. I saw the structure quite early on, but couldn’t get SHIFT out of my mind instead of the similar STINT. | ||
| 2 | PASTEUR | Stick with original scientist (7) |
| PASTE, UR. Louis Pasteur, whose name is in the dictionary as a result of its being used to describe a process. | ||
| 3 | REDUNDANT | Greyish-brown hairdo let outside, wasting space (9) |
| DUN DA in RENT. DA (duck’s arse) is in Chambers, although it is by now rather dated slang. | ||
| 4 | TORELLI | Composer to get up in worse health? (7) |
| TO, ILLER(rev). Once I saw that this clue ended in I, it seemed certain to be a musical composer, probably an Italian one, that we were looking for, but I confess to not having heard of Giuseppe Torelli. | ||
| 5 | UMBRAGE | Offence taken at bird drinking 7 Up (7) |
| GARB in EMU (all rev). A nice surface image. | ||
| 6 | THING | Object to 11, first to last? (5) |
| THIN G. Cleverly exploiting the synonyms LEAN and THIN. | ||
| 7 | RAIMENT | Intend to line ripped costume (7) |
| AIM in RENT. | ||
| 8 | PHANTASMAGORIA | Premier holds county without a marketplace, securing one set of special effects (14) |
| A in HANTS in PM, I in AGORA. | ||
| 14 | SNOWSCAPE | Winter scene featuring cattle head to tail in Suffolk village (9) |
| COWS (with first letter last) in SNAPE. | ||
| 16 | GAMBLER | Female Ibsen character embracing male one of Dostoevsky’s (7) |
| M in (Hedda) GABLER. | ||
| 17 | MASH-TUB | Prohibitionist’s last ambush wrecked brewer’s equipment (4-3) |
| *(prohibitionis)T AMBUSH. | ||
| 18 | RESTFUL | Agitate, fluster, calm (7) |
| *FLUSTER. | ||
| 19 | ISRAELI | Citizen raising 21s, typist’s occupational hazard (7) |
| ILEA, RSI (all rev). ILEA is the plural of ILEUM. | ||
| 21 | ILEUM | Currency secreted in compiler’s gut (5) |
| LEU in I’M. The leu is the standard monetary unit of Romania and Moldova. | ||
*anagram
Thanks bridgesong. I needed help with Pina Bausch and with Hedda Gabler but didn’t have too much trouble otherwise. I hadn’t heard of Torelli but the answer was plain enough.
I thought 22 was OK if the apostrophe is indicative of a missing S.
Thanks bridgesong. My quibbles were with 13A as well – the “demanding” threw me, and I came up with ‘normalise’ – and 7d where the ‘intend to – line ripped’ grammar is OK, but only just. Otherwise it was fair enough.
Molonglo @ 2
I parsed 7D as AIM (intend) “to line” (be included in) RENT (ripped).
I had ‘normalise’ too!
Thanks bridgesong and Shed
Clear cluing and some very good surfaces. I particularly liked 20a, 7d and 14d.
Thanks for the blog.
You are missing an “A” in 25 … RIM A BALL etc.
I found quite a few of these tricky too. Enjoyable puzzle.
I didn’t find this one difficult and I thought it was an un-Shed-like puzzle from the perspective that I was able to enter quite a few answers from the definition alone. The four long answers fell into this category so the cleverness of the cluing was wasted on me. With Shed puzzles there are usually a few clues for which you have to trust the wordplay to lead you to an obscure (to me) answer, but in this puzzle only TORELLI was like that.
Thanks for the feedback and comments so far. It occurs to me now that it is conformity rather than consistency that is demanded by a norm. I also agree with Andy B about being able to enter the long entries (e.g. PHANTASMAGORIA) by a combination of the definition and the crossing letters, with the wordplay serving merely to confirm the correctness of the guess.
Thanks, bridgesong.
Enjoyable puzzle, though surprisingly straightforward for a Shed, particularly a Prize puzzle.
I think 22a does work. “Republicans” would certainly be (the) GOP, but Shed has the word in its genitive form. “Republicans’ comeback” = “Grand Old Party’s comeback”, ie GOP’s comeback.
Thanks, all. Re 13ac, if one demands adherence to norms, surely one is demanding consistency (as well as conformity)? And I really don’t see how you can get NALISE to mean ‘local’. Gervase #8 has followed my line of thought re 22ac.