Another outstanding crossword from Anax — difficult of course and if I hadn’t been doing the blog and had been struggling on paper, without the kick start provided by the cheating buttons online, who knows how long this would have taken? But all seems perfectly sound and there is nothing here that I question, apart from 6dn, where the failure — if it is failure — is no doubt mine. (Yes it was)
He has achieved quite a difficult grid fill, with four fifteen-letter answers both across and down. No doubt to do this he needed to have unchecked letters at the edges, a recipe for less than 50% checking. But Anax seldom transgresses on this front (if indeed it is a transgression) and there are only four answers which have 7/15 checking, which is as close to 50% as you can get.
For a long while we didn’t see Anax during the week. I’m glad he’s returned, since he was only appearing on Saturdays, a day when I seldom solve the Indy.
Definitions in italics.
Across
3 Salt, like vinegar, should be cut back slightly (3)
TAR
tar{t} — if something is like vinegar then it is tart
8 As glue is regularly put in drink it’s killing cat (6)
JAGUAR
a{s} g{l}u{e} in jar — a killing cat is a cat that kills
9 Master said to drink single drink (8)
ORIGINAL
oral around (1 gin) — think of documents and photocopies etc and the original
10 Changing this clue in full, I hoped to say “I ‘oped” (4,4,7)
DROP ONES AITCHES
A very clever clue — I thought for a long time it was an anagram of words in the clue, but in fact it’s an anagram of (ten across I hoped) — this clue in full is ten across — actually this is a definition by example, so it could be argued that it needs a question mark or a perhaps or some such at the end
11 Bigotry everyone (pay attention) sensed when whipped after S&M (5-10)
SMALL-MINDEDNESS
sm all mind (sensed)* — all = everyone, mind = pay attention
13 Facing house of men in solitary (7)
ONSTAGE
on(stag)e — stag = men only = of men
14 Measure short nurses for one patient (7)
STOICAL
scal{e} around (to 1) — the inclusion indicator is ‘nurses’ — for = to — well it doesn’t really, but in a sense it does and this is often used in a crossword
17 Financial institution / putting up with the public (8,7)
BUILDING SOCIETY
2 defs I think — one of them referring to the nounal sense of ‘building’ — you put people up in a building
19 By feeding John I am without sin, backing faith (15)
PRESBYTERIANISM
Pres(by)ter I a(nis)m — nis is (sin)rev. — Prester John
20 They’re not the same bible classes, idiot savant accepts (8)
VARIANTS
R.I. [Religious Instruction] in (savant)*
21 Plain fish without bones (6)
TUNDRA
tun(dr)a — bones = doctor is something I’ve only ever come across in crosswords
22 Gives birth to a son on east wing of hospital (3)
HAS
h{ospital} a s — but is this a mistake? My first thought was that it is, and that it should be ‘west’, since the west wing of ‘hospital’ is h, but it must be read as ‘(a s) on east, wing of hospital’, where ‘wing of hospital’ is h — there are two wings of ‘hospital’, and one of them is h
Down
1 Farm hand scores over a million in the end (8)
DAIRYMAN
(myriad)rev. a {millio}n
2 Impish type cast its spell (about time) in weird family (15)
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
(its spell)* around t, in (rum kin)
3 Hard to keep wild orgasm in female becoming something else (15)
TRANSMOGRIFYING
Excellent clue, typical of Anax — trying around (orgasm in f)* — trying = hard in the sense of giving someone a hard time
4 Staff writer edges away from sea voyage to Italy (7)
ROSSINI
{c}rossin{g} I — Rossini was a composer, thus someone who wrote things on a staff (musical notation)
5 TV’s so incisive it excited defenders of animal testing (15)
VIVISECTIONISTS
(TV’s so incisive it)*
6 Car feature which is, in fact, minimally used (3-12)
AIR-CONDITIONING
I’m not sure here: my reading of it seems thin and I suspect there is rather more — in our climate we seldom have any need for air-conditioning in a car, and ac is both short for this and also the middle two letters of fact (thanks Ian SW3 @1)
7 Apparently woman wheels in pet (6)
CARESS
The fanciful idea ‘car-ess’ is a female car, or woman wheels
12 The Sun or the Earth? One has to go (3)
SOL
so{i}l — another very good surface
13 Sovereign artefact carried by conveyor belt (3)
ORB
Hidden in conveyOR Belt — an artefact of the sovereign is her orb and sceptre
15 Genius Paul’s partner is shot (8)
ARTISTRY
Art is try — Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel
16 Ugly one’s so flipping quiet (7)
OGREISH
(1 ergo)rev. sh
18 Hoo-ha as United player paid a hooker, ultimately (6)
UPROAR
U pro a {hooke}r — a pro is a player paid
*anagram
Air conditioning = AC, “minimally,” used in fACt.
Thanks for enjoyable blog and crossword.
‘Bones’ (short for ‘sawbones’ = old name for doctor/surgeon) was Captain Kirk’s (almost) constant (nick)name for Dr McCoy in Star Trek.
Thanks, also, for explaining the hospital wings. This crossword defeated me (except for orb) so I was entranced by the blog.
Thank you to setter and blogger (& to Ian SW3 @1). Hard but not impossible and a good challenge. I missed the subtlety of 22a and couldn’t parse 1d or 7d – thanks for the explanation. I was looking for a Nina based on Paul and his partner in 15d, or maybe 4d, but no luck.
And so to bed.
Thanks, John for the blog and esp for explaining 10A which I did not understand. Re HAS, I thought maybe the abbrev H = hospital was being used with the rest (AS) to the East of it. But your explanation works also, I think!
I am looking forward to Anax’s clue for the non-killing variety of cat.
I managed to finish this without recourse to aids but I didn’t parse all of the clues, e.g. 10ac, 4dn, and 6dn, so thanks for that John and Ian@1.
If I hadn’t seen 3dn and 5dn reasonably quickly I think I would have struggled to get a proper foothold in the puzzle. At least the 3-letter answers were relatively easy to get. STOICAL was my LOI after ARTISTRY.
Well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs … I finished a Radian and an Anax in the same Indy week. Enjoyed this one, although there were a few I couldn’t parse, so thank you to John and Ian. Don’t have a favourite today; it was all good.
A very rare occasion when I actually solved a whole Anax puzzle, although it did take a couple of sessions. thanks to him and John too.
Thanks Anax for a thoroughly satisfactory and enjoyable crossword and John for the blog.
10ac: In my classification, this is the benign type of indirect anagram. I am completely happy with it as “this clue in full” is very specifically “ten across” – did Anax place the answer here deliberately to allow this clue or did he think of it afterwards? I strongly suspect the former. If you define indirect anagrams as automatically unacceptable, but still like the clue (as I very much hope you do), then you must think of a different name for it. As always, I have no quarrel with anyone whose views differ from my own: this applies both to the question of whether you like a clue and how you classify clues.
22ac: I read this the same way as nms@4, taking “on east wing of” to mean “after” in an across clue.
6dn: Thanks Ian@1 for the explanation of this. I was trying to do something with CONDITION in AIRING.
The obscurity of many of the cryptic indications was nicely offset by the simplicity of many of the definitions, so entries could often be confidently written in and then reverse-engineered!
(BTW, I’m sure this is my third Rumpelstiltskin this month).
Thanks A, J and all.
We’re very glad that we started this earlier than usual. We managed to complete it without resorting to cheating but we couldn’t parse 10ac and 6d. So, thanks to Ian SW3 and John for sorting them out.
Many thanks to Anax for another good mind-bender. We were very impressed that there were no unusual words in such a grid with so few black squares.
Too much like hard work. Ended up having to make a lot of wild guesses, and rather surprised that they were correct as I could parse an awful lot. Even so, three I couldn’t get.
Difficult, difficult.
I did this one on paper, therefore no cheat buttons for me.
Chapeau to you, Bertandjoyce for completing it without.
I always had Chambers Crossword Dictionary at hand but it was of no use for 3d.
So, Bertandjoyce, no unusual words? TRANSMOGRIFYING ….. 🙂
[I entered at one point “crossmagnifying” whatever that is 🙁 ]
I got there in the end.
Just like others I didn’t understand my entry at 10d – clever.
Anax is in a league of his own, isn’t he?
Very satisfying, ultimately.
It’s no secret that 19d is an anagram of “I’m Britney Spears”.
Am I?
Thanks John.
Re your comment at 6 down, John. Sorry to be off subject, but air con is a boon throughout the year. I use mine constantly.
(I posted this a day late so as not to clog up the ‘relevant’ responses to this gem of a puzzle.)