(Apologies for the late appearance of this post – all my fault.) This was an excellent seasonal puzzle from Crucible, with a nice level of difficulty for a prize puzzle. The special instructions read:
Fourteen solutions need a seasonal adjustment before being entered in the grid, resulting mostly in non-words.
After some puzzling, we worked out that the seasonal adjustment was “ring out the OLD, ring in the NEW” – i.e. where OLD was found in the answers, it should be replaced with NEW before entering into the grid. This familiar phrase is apparently from the Tennyson poem, “Ring Out, Wild Bells”.
Across
1. Fletcher’s cellmate stole 50 German variations (8)
GOLDBERG -> GNEWBERG
GODBER = “Fletcher’s cellmate” (referring to the characters from Porridge) around (“stole”) L = “50” + G = “German”
Definition: “variations”, referring to The Goldberg Variations, by J. S. Bach
5. Poet translates Lorna Doone’s first letter (6)
ARNOLD -> ARNNEW
(LORNA D)*
Definition: “Poet”, referring to Matthew Arnold, I think
9. Drain Scotch? Feel benefit mostly (8)
ENFEEBLE
(FEEL BENE) – “scotch” is the anagram indicator
Definition: “Drain”
10. Stop early during strike (4,2)
HOLD IT -> HNEW IT
OLD = “early” in HIT = “strike”
Definition: “Stop”
11. Weathermen occupy steelworks (8)
ELEMENTS
MEN in (STEEL)*
Definition: “Weather”
12. Up out of bed but not here, so I’m told (6)
AWEIGH
Sounds like “away” = “not here”
Definition: “Up out of bed” referring to the sea bed and raising an anchor, as in “Anchors Aweigh”
14. Actor can these days cram in the worst parts (4,6)
JOHN CLEESE
JOHN = “can” (both US slang for a toilet) + CE (“Common Era”) = “these days” around LEES = “the worst parts” (in fermentation)
Definition: “Actor”
18. Wealthy comic holds deposit back for The King’s Speech feature (3,5,2)
THE ROYAL WE
ORE = “deposit” reversed in (WEALTHY)*
Definition: “The King’s Speech feature”
22. Northwest town’s clapped-out transmitter (6)
OLDHAM -> NEWHAM
OLD = “clapped-out” + HAM = “transmitter” (as in “ham radio”)
Definition: “Northwest town”
23. Maidenhead exports English cask to East Jerusalem, say (4,4)
HYMN TUNE
HYMEN = “Maidenhead” without E (“exports English”) + TUN = “cask” + E = “East”
Definition: “Jerusalem, say”
24. Refurbish room with centre of column in gilt (6)
ORMOLU
(ROOM)* + [co]LU[mn] = “centre of column”
Definition: “gilt”
25. Motorway load diverted through former European principality (8)
MOLDAVIA -> MNEWAVIA
M = “Motorway” + (LOAD)* + VIA = “through”
Definition: “former European principality”
26. Carpets Sunday school instals [sic] without warning (6)
SCOLDS -> SCNEWS
SS = “Sunday school” around COLD = “without warning” (e.g “a cold start”)
Definition: “Carpets”, in the sense of “tells off”
27. Watch man that goes into orbit (8)
EYEPIECE
EYE = “Watch” + PIECE = “man”
Definition: “that goes into orbit”, the “orbit”, anatomically, being the eye socket
Down
1. Turn left to study appearance of 24 (6)
GOLDEN -> GNEWEN
GO = “Turn” + L = “left” + DEN = “study”
Definition: “appearance of [ORMOLU]”
2. Hug lovelorn idiot in close (6)
ENFOLD -> ENFNEW
END = “close” around FOOL = “idiot” without O (“lovelorn”)
Definition: “Hug”
3. Picked up rock, a comparatively heavy type (6)
BOLDER -> BNEWER
Sounds like “boulder” – the homophone indicator is “Picked up”
Definition: “a comparatively heavy type” referring to bold typefaces
4. Both sides take ecstasy first of all, showing kinship (10)
RELATIONAL
RL = “Both sides” around ELATION = “ecstatsy” + A[ll] = “first of all”
Definition: “kinship”
6. Extensions to do with north Wales ground (8)
RENEWALS
RE = “to do with” + N = “North” + (WALES)* (“ground” is the anagram indicator)
Definition: “extensions”
7. Harry told his granny: “I’m boring grandad” (3-5)
OLD TIMER -> NEW TIMER
(TOLD)* (“Harry” is the anagram indicator) + ER (The Queen) = “his granny” around IM (“I’m boring”)
Definition: “grandad”
8. Stop city centre hotels blocking upland (8)
WITHHOLD -> WITHHNEW
[c]IT[y] = “city centre” + HH = “hotels” in (“blocking”) WOLD = “upland” =
Definition: “Stop”
13. Sign for forward exclusively — Wayne “Loony”, perhaps? (3,3,4)
ONE WAY ONLY
(WAYNE LOONY)*
Definition: “Sign for forward exclusively” – a lovely clue
15. Tinny PA’s last to be scrapped in South America (8)
STANNOUS
TANNO[y] = “PA’s last to be scrapped” in S = “South” + US = “America”
Definition: “Tinny”
16. Actor Gary goes round without granny (3,5)
OLD WOMAN -> NEW WOMAN
OLDMAN = “Actor Gary” around WO = “without”
Definition: “granny” (symmetrically with “grandad” = OLD TIMER in the grid)
17. Argue about Manchester City’s old rules (5,3)
ROMAN LAW
ROW = “Argue” around MAN = “Manchester” + LA = “City”
Definition: “old rules”
19. Loud start, awfully loud middle, quiet close (4,2)
FOLD UP -> FNEW UP
F = “Loud” + (LOUD)* + P = “quiet”
Definition: “close” – a lovely clue
20. Philosopher accepts 5 euros for Joe’s 4WD (6)
HUMVEE
HUME = “Philosopher” around VE = “5 euros”
Definition: “Joe’s 4WD” – perhaps this is referring to G.I. Joe?
21. Odzooks! Look up for the last time (3,3)
OLD AGE -> NEW AGE
EGAD! = “Odzooks!” + LO = “Look” all reversed (“up”)
Definition: “the last time”
After the run of easy ones after Christmas this was a welcome challenge, which became much easier once the special instruction started to make sense. I confused myself early on because three of the first four I got included OL but they weren’t all followed by a D. So I was trying to make something tenuous out of NOEL (OL->NE) but once I saw OLDHAM/NEWHAM it became clear. With the various corrections and non-words the completed grid was decidedly untidy.
There is a typo in the grid answer for 26 which should be SCNEWS.
Thanks to mhl and Crucible
I enjoyed this, with several clues getting ticks (e.g. HYMN TUNE, where I particularly liked Maidenhead without e for Hymen – e =HYMN). Thanks for parsing ROMAN LAW, where I guessed the right answer but was unable to explain it. I thought that there must be a reference to the former City star Denis Law, but I think that was just misdirection.
Thanks mhl and Crucible.
It took a number of raids on this puzzle before I saw what was happening. A first awareness of what was going on came with the initial incompatibility of 13d with 25a’s base answer ‘Moldavia’. Eventually the penny dropped and the puzzle’s tangles unravelled.
I read 6d ‘renewals’ (too late to help) as a hint at what was going on.
I am not sure I wholly like a puzzle ‘resulting mostly in non-words’ but solving it increased my affection for it – a sort of reverse sour grapes!
I should add that, like bridgesong, I particularly liked 23a, which must be the most devious clue I have solved for some time.
Thanks, mhl & Crucible. This was an enjoyable solve, as I’ve come to expect from Crucible (the recent Genius puzzle notwithstanding).
Needed your help parsing 4d. I had E (ecstasy) between R and L (both sides), followed by A (first of all), but that left me with RELA and no idea whence TIONAL came. I’m so used to seeing ecstasy = E (or X) that ELATION never occurred to me. A refreshing change from the usual usage of ecstasy.
beery hiker: thanks, typo fixed now – we made a couple of errors doing the substitution when actually filling the grid too 🙂
Thanks mhl, and Crucible for a new year treat – particularly pleased to be able to say this after the Genius.
Thanks for the blog, mhl.
I’m with tupu @3: “I am not sure I wholly like a puzzle ‘resulting mostly in non-words’ but solving it increased my affection for it – a sort of reverse sour grapes!”
I’m afraid I was decidedly mardy [a local expression, which I’m amazed to see hasn’t yet reached Chambers, but which I’ve used since primary school] when I couldn’t immediately, on Saturday morning, see what Crucible was getting at – having experimented unsuccessfully with No-el – and wasn’t really interested in ending up with non-words and gave up in disgust. [For me, the ‘season’ was still decidedly Christmas.]
However, I’m a huge fan of Crucible and I know that he always plays fair, so came back optimistically on Sunday and the problem I’d had with the ‘irreconcilable’ 17dn / 16ac suddenly made sense and it was all downhill from there.
I agree that 23ac was outstandingly good.
Many thanks, Crucible – how could I have doubted you? [Especially having blogged your ‘Ring in the New’ puzzle this time last year! http://www.fifteensquared.net/2012/12/31/guardian-25832-crucible/#more-53278 ] 😉
Non-words? Making what I can only describe as a cross-nonsense and resulting in one(speaking for myself)cross solver. Am I alone in finding this substitution business a step too far? (Have been waiting all weekend to vent my spleen!)
Happy New Year to All anyway.
Thanks mhl, and high praise to Crucible. The nonwords at first made me gnash my teeth but then after much chewing I began to beam and kept on doing so. Despite fixing on NO-EL as a key, like beery hiker #1, then in my case failing to go on to OLD-NEW (remaining baffled by the DWs). Only small quibble was cold=warning at 26a which went in with a shrug last.
Hi molonglo @10
It’s ‘cold= *without* warning! – and if you receive as many of those calls as I do, having registered not to do so…
Great explanation of what was, for me, way too hard.
Seasonal adjustment is too vague as an instruction esp, when the adjusted clues are not marked in any way. Like some others, I had assumed seasonal = Noel, and therefore remove L (or even EL ?) from solutions and could make no headway after a first dozen or so. Like some other poster I do not equate ‘New Year’ with a season, especially on the 28/Dec.
Too bad – it is a great idea, and some great clues – 23A & 7D(definitely not ones I got !) especially. Just could have done with a wee bit more handholding to get started.
I gave up on this one after a couple of days about half-way through. I simply didn’t get the required adjustment.
I acknowledge the ingenuity that must have gone into compiling it.
I applaud those who completed it.
Water under the bridge now! Tomorrow?
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. I’m very glad that I solved it online because my grid would have looked a right mess had I been solving it on paper. I started very slowly, entering the answers as I saw them from the clues without making any adjustments. With about half of the answers in I finally noticed “old” appearing in several answers and the penny dropped. I made the required adjustments and because I knew there would be several more “olds” turning up it made the completion of the puzzle much more straightforward than I thought it was going to be at one stage. ENFEEBLE was my LOI.
Thanks, mhl.
Great challenge from Crucible.
What made the puzzle particularly intriguing was that there was no indication as to whether the ‘seasonal adjustment’ was a subtraction or a substitution. Like Eileen, I toyed with ‘Noel’ = NO L (remove an L before entering into the grid), but that didn’t work. I ‘solved’ fourteen clues without making any changes, thinking that I had perhaps found the ‘straight’ ones, but OLDHAM -> NEWHAM suddenly leapt out and I realised that several of my entries contained the string OLD.
After that, the rest fell out fairly easily, though some parsings took a while to tease out.
Too many good clues to choose a favourite. Thanks a lot, Crucible.
I’m another who went for no-l first.
But more to the point, is this new to the Guardian? Adjusting solutions before entry is Listener territory.
I enjoyed it. I’d like more, but on special occasions only.
rhotician @16: Adjusting solutions before entry is not new to the Guardian; see Genius puzzles 114, 115, 119, 122, and 124 from last year. I couldn’t tell you, however, whether that device has appeared previously in a non-Genius puzzle. I’ll defer to someone with a better memory (or more patience for digging through old puzzles).
I’ve never looked at Genius. So now I know where to go if I fancy a bit (of this sort of thing). Thanks.
If the puzzle had appeared on New Year’s Eve/Day, the special instructions would have been more appropriate, but my failure to see this despite seemingly getting most of the answers right, spoiled this for me.
I nearly didn’t bother with this, thinking a solution of non-words would probably just be irritating, but I persevered and was glad I did; there were some very enjoyable clues here, so well done, Crucible. I didn’t really think of the New Year as representing a seasonal change, but once I twigged that Gary was Oldman it finally clicked. My last in was ROMAN LAW where I had some mental block that stopped me thinking of Manchester City as anything other than a single unit – the Dennis Law connection didn’t help either! A Happy Seasonal Adjustment to all, and thanks for the blog, mhl.
I really enjoyed this.
At first, like others, I was looking for the old chestnut Noel (i.e. No “L”)
Finally saw FOLD UP and HYMN TUNE didn’t cross correctly and saw the theme.
I liked the “NEW”s already in some solutions which put some doubt in one’s mind.
A great seasonal tester and best puzzle of last year possibly.
I don’t understand the moans against non-words entered in the puzzle. All the solutions were real words so it’s totally fair. Obviously these people don’t do the Genius. (I’d love to see their reaction to a typical Listener puzzle 😉
Thanks to mhl and Crucible
Very clever and very rewarding. It took me a long time to get the right seasonal adjustment, but it was a real ‘ah-hah’ moment when I did. Isn’t that why we do these things?
I can’t see the problem with non-words (now and then, and with due warning). And in any case the pre-insertion answers were all proper words.
Thanks to mhl for the blog and to Crucible for what I thought was an absolutely cracking prize crossword.
I didn’t have an earthly what the seasonal adjustment could mean so decided to treat it a bit like an alphabetical: writing my answers next to the clues. Luckily, several of my early answers all contained OLD and a flash of inspiration struck. This was confirmed by the crossing of ENFOLD and GOLDBERG (my first answer). As all the actual answers were real words I didn’t have a problem with non-words being entered in the grid either.
Eileen @8 – I’m surprised mardy isn’t in the dictionary. Even this soft southerner has heard of it 🙂
Mardy is actually in my 1993 Chambers (a book) although I never actually use this as I have the WordWeb Pro SOED on my PC. Mardy actually refers one to the mar entry which includes definitions for mardy and the more correct (if you’re from Lancashire) mard. Mard is annotated as (Spenser)
I personally don’t like Chambers as I find it a little inconsistent. It also seems to define its own world of science!
The SOED has entries for both mardy and mard.
This would have been great if I’d spotted the correct adjustment, but I stuck at “No El”, toying with 0 “L” too.
Unfortunately, unlike a good clue solution, there was no way of deducing what it should be among the many possibilities.
Happily, there was plenty else to divert me at this time of year.
HNY all.
I too fixated on ‘no el’, and despite solving the clues per-se, and despite realising straightaway that there were several entries containing ‘old’, I never twigged replacing ‘old’ with ‘new’ – so the grid population ended up slightly askew in a few lights.
I’m all for occasional developed themes like this.
Happy New Year to all.
Very late now I know but just wanted to say thanks Crucible for a really great puzzle. Can we have more like this please?
Thanks to mhl too.