My last blog for the year and it’s a Monk, you know you’ve got your work cut out with him.
I found this quite tricky in places, but I think it’s all done, Monk very often has a Nina of sorts but if there is one or a theme I’ve missed it, merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all.
| Across | ||
| 1 | KICKS | Thrills jerks (5) |
| Double Defintion | ||
| 4 | SNAKESKIN | Creeps having relationship that may be cast off (9) |
| SNAKES & KIN | ||
| 9 | NIAGARA | Get to retreat before half of foreign peninsula falls (7) |
| GAIN rev & ARA(bic penisula) | ||
| 10 | TIME-LAG | Delay treatment of unnamed ligament (4-3) |
| N removed from [LIGAME(n)T]* | ||
| 11 | PLAID | Tartan army’s leader invading pitch, teasing out cover (5) |
| A(rmy) in P(itch) itch=teasing removed & LID | ||
| 12 | EN PASSANT | By the way, The Guardian ultimately wants to change a worker (2,7) |
| (th)E (guardia)N & PASS (change) & ANT, tricky I thought. | ||
| 13 | ALICE BAND | Wound core of ordinary cable that contains shock? (5,4) |
| [(or)DINA(ry) & CABLE]* | ||
| 15 | WHELP | Young man‘s back, but not before start of work (5) |
| HELP = BACK after W(ork) | ||
| 17 | NICKS | Steals nothing, according to report (5) |
| Sounds like NIX, nothing | ||
| 19 | ASSAILANT | Attacker got out of very powerless police trap (9) |
| ASSAI (very – musical term) & (p)LANT | ||
| 21 | MARES-NEST | Sort of Rent-a-Mess ? (5-4) |
| [RENT A MESS]* and a &lit-ish clue | ||
| 24 | HOLST | He scored, left mobbed by crowd (5) |
| L(eft) in HOST | ||
| 25 | GRANITE | Rock and rolled in Provençal cottage? (7) |
| RAN in GITE | ||
| 26 | WHOS WHO | Show how novel is a collection of biographies (4,3) |
| [SHOW HOW]* | ||
| 27 | POLITESSE | Chivalry demands single woman to be put in post (9) |
| 1 & TESS in POLE | ||
| 28 | NUDES | Result of undies one stripped off? (5) |
| 1 removed from UND(1)ES* | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | KING PRAWN | Rook pinned in by two other pieces—that’s fishy (4,5) |
| R(ook) in KING & PAWN, prawns aren’t fish but… | ||
| 2 | CHAPATI | Bread and tea to be served on terrace shortly (7) |
| CHA (tea) & PATI(o) | ||
| 3 | ST ANDREWS | Almost suffer getting pulled before start of sandwich course (2,7) |
| STAN(d) & DREW & S(andwich), a different course to Sandwich. | ||
| 4 | SHAVE | Knock off heroin in bar (5) |
| H(eroin) in SAVE (bar) | ||
| 5 | ANTIPODES | Posted in a mobile home for Anzacs (9) |
| [POSTED IN A]* | ||
| 6 | EMMYS | Mount some asymmetric trophies (5) |
| Hidden reversed, reversal indicated by mount | ||
| 7 | KILDARE | County doctor from long ago (7) |
| Double def I think, unless there’s some word play I can’t see. | ||
| 8 | NIGHT | Ignorance is a terrible thing (5) |
| [THING]* Slightly unusual def | ||
| 14 | AWARENESS | Grasp head following struggle in hospital department (9) |
| WAR in A&E and NESS | ||
| 15 | WEIGH DOWN | Depress radio version of the King’s swansong? (5,4) |
| Sounds like WAY DOWN which was the last single released by Elvis Presley | ||
| 16 | PETIT POIS | Alien in hole is buried under pressure over little green things? (5,4) |
| ET in PIT & P(ressure) O(ver) & IS | ||
| 18 | CURTAIL | Cut short hanging with altered hem? (7) |
| CURTAIN with the last letter changed, perhaps me being a bit thick today but I took a while to get this. | ||
| 20 | ALLOWED | Not one person settled, take it for granted (7) |
| ALL OWED, no-one’s paid. | ||
| 21 | MUG UP | Cram face completely (3,2) |
| MUG (face) & UP (completely) | ||
| 22 | SKIRT | Women roughly right to interrupt sketch (5) |
| Interesting def from Monk, R in SKIT | ||
| 23 | TAWSE | Wife wearing short stunning number reveals strap (5) |
| W(ife) in TASE(r) | ||
*anagram
Thanks flashling
“… Monk very often has a Nina of sorts but if there is one or a theme I’ve missed it …”
Have a look at the middle row and column. 😉
Thanks Gaufrid, I did see the Ws and Es but thought no more of it, grr 🙂
Thanks Monk for a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle, flashling for the blog, and Gaufrid for pointing out the Nina.
My favourite clues were 21ac and 28ac, both of which I would call complete “& lit” clues. In 28ac, the definition seems to require one person removing the undies from more than one other, but to me it is well worth working that out to appreciate the clever wording.
17ac/18dn: Note the way that any possible ambiguity is avoided by getting the definition of the “wrong” answer in the middle of the clue.
I thought Monk let us off lightly today compared to some of his previous puzzles, and because of that I enjoyed it more.
SHAVE was my LOI after I went through the alphabet to find the letter that would complete SHA?E and fit the wordplay. However, I confess that I got EN PASSANT and ASSAILANT from their definitions so thanks for parsing those flashling, and thanks to Gaufrid for pointing out the nina.
A more strenuous workout than is usual for a Monday and enjoyable. A couple of queries.
9A Has anybody ever heard the usage “arabic (rather than “arabian”) peninsula? I haven’t.
16D If the definition is “little green things” then surely the answer has to be PETITS (plural) POIS.
Thanks to Monk and flashling.
gwep @5
9ac: I think the foreign peninsula is ARAbia.
16dn: I agree with you on this one. I missed it.
Re Arabic/Arabian/Arabia I did some web checking and got no real help, they all seemed to be in current usage. As for petits pois, yes this does look like a slip by Monk.
I wasn’t going to say anything about 16dn but, I’m sorry, I have to disagree with gwep, Pelham and flashling. The French for pea or peas is pois. Garden peas are petit pois (ie small peas). I am not aware that an adjective can (or needs to be) made plural.
Look at any packet of frozen peas and you will see either garden peas or petit pois. I don’t think Monk has slipped up on this one.
I agree with Pelham, I parsed 9ac as ARA[bia].
For what it is worth, Chambers 2011 and Larousse 1997 only give petits pois, which in my view means no more than saying that Monk could not be reasonably criticised if he had used that form. If petit pois can be found in an equally authoritative source, then I will be completely happy for Monk to use that.
Re 9ac, the point is that “foreign peninsula” must clue a noun or noun phrase that is six letters long, so that half of it can be ARA.
Further to 9, I have found on the Tesco website a picture of a product clearly labelled “PETIT POIS WITH LEEKS”. That is good enough for me.
My apologies to gwep, Pelham and flashling for doubting what you said. It’s been 50 years since I studied French at school and I had totally forgotten that petit does in fact have an ‘s’ added when the term is plural.
Before I posted my comment I’m sure that I saw petit pois for garden peas, as well as simply garden pea, in an English-French dictionary but I’m damned if I can find it again now. Perhaps it was a case of reading what I wanted to read. 🙁
A rare thing – a Monk puzzle that I finished! He must have been feeling kind. Thanks and Merry Christmas to him.
Thank you and Merry Christmas to you Flashling -nice to see you again on Saturday.
On a slightly different theme, dear EIMI, we thought that the Giant Crossword on Saturday was going to be cryptic. Time was when the Indy gave us big cryptics for Bank Holidays quite regularly. Some of us miss them!
Thanks CS, was an enjoyable day out and getting to meet old friends and some that were just pseudonyms in blogs and crosswords.
Lizard i completely agree!
Thanks flashling. Seeing Monk’s name on an Indy puzzle usually has me struggling for half an hour and then seeing if there is something more tractable in Another Place; but today it all fell out nicely, so I think I would describe it as Monk-Lite.
I liked KING PRAWN (although as flashling says, a prawn is not fishy …) And as for PETIT POIS, then yes, it should grammatically be PETITS POIS (I won’t give Gaufrid detention because it’s nearly Christmas) but you see PETIT POIS on packets so I think we can consider that an Anglicisation good enough for a crossword.
But if Monk should ever clue the plural of CUL-DE-SAC as CUL-DE-SACS, then he will be up before the Beak and be made to write out CULS-DE-SAC ten times.
Oh, and Doctor Kildare was indeed a 1960s’ import from the US which was shown on UK television. My big sister had a crush on him.
Thanks to Monk for today’s puzzle.
Oops: “things” should indeed be “thing” in 16dn. A case of pea culma, methinks. On which note, hope this single typo didn’t peas off solvers too much from their otherwise festive mood. Thanks, PB@3, for spotting deliberately unambiguous positioning of definitions relative to their operational elements. Season’s greetings to one and all 🙂
Got somewhat held up by thinking that Kildare was only a character from a TV series and not a county, so couldn’t possibly be the answer to 7 down. I only partially parsed 19 and 12 – got [p]lant but not assai and didn’t think of pass for change.
Thanks Monk, normally mathematicians are expected to be good at numbers but I know that’s not true. (it’s ok I was one in my days at fen’s poly :-))
Peas to all men, women and others who come here.
This took us longer than we normally expect for a Monday.
There were several slightly obscure synonyms which held us up for a while but we got there in the end. We completely missed the controversy over 16d and the nina! So thanks to flashling and Gaufrid plus other contributors.
Thanks Monk – an enjoyable start to the week. Seasons Greetings to everyone!