Guardian Cryptic N° 26,289 by Nutmeg

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The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26289.

Nutmeg in her Cryptic hat has produced some tricky puzzles, but this one seemed to me more on a level with her Quiptics (with the exception of 8D, perhaps), but none the worse for that. The puzzle would be a pangram apart from the missing Y, which makes one wonder if, like yesterday, there has been a mid-course correction.

 

Across
9. Sportsman, one of five in pursuit of fast runner crossing line? (9)
HARLEQUIN An envelope (‘crossing’) of L (‘line’) in HARE (‘fast runner’) plus QUIN (‘one of five’).  There are many sports teams with Harlequin in their name, mostly in rugby, and most notably the Harlequin Football Club, based in Twickenham Stoop, London.
10. Pack animal from America quite contrary (5)
LLAMA A reversal (‘contrary’) of AM (‘America’) plus ALL (‘quite’).
11. Throat remedy brought us together on air (7)
LINCTUS A homophone (‘on the air’) of LINKED US (‘brought us together’).
12. Fried food reduced in savoury starters before fish (7)
RISSOLE A charade of RIS (‘Reduced In Savoury starters’) plus SOLE (‘fish’). The word brings to my mind The Captain’s Paradise with Alec Guinness and Yvonne de Carlo.
13. Such a chorister featured in cathedral tour (4)
ALTO A hidden answer (‘featured in’) in ‘cathedrAL TOur’.
14. Charitable inclination to pen free e-novel (10)
BENEVOLENT An envelope (‘to pen’) of EVOLEN, an anagram (‘free’) of ‘e-novel’) in BENT (‘inclination’).
16. Rough criminal may be caught thus, embracing one-time lover (7)
INEXACT An envelope (’embracing’) of EX (‘one-time lover’) in IN ACT (‘criminal may be caught thus’).
17. With other people, setter’s on edge (7)
RESTIVE A charade of REST (‘other people’) plus I’VE (‘setter’s’).
19. Maintenance chappie prevents soldier from flying (10)
GROUNDSMAN A charade of GROUNDS (‘prevents … from flying’) plus MAN (‘soldier’).
22. Fawn caught in river, falling over (4)
ECRU An envelope (‘in’) of C (‘caught’) in ERU, a reversal (‘falling over’) of URE (‘river’).
24. Facing front, daughter’s taken on work (7)
OPPOSED A charade of OP (‘work’) plus POSE (‘front’) plus D (‘daughter’).
25. Queen backs relations getting together again (7)
REUNION A charade of RE, a reversal (‘back’) of ER (‘Queen’) plus UNION (sexual ‘relations’).
26. Go after opponents at table, then take action? (5)
ENSUE A charade of E N (‘opponents at table’, bridge) plus SUE (‘take action’).
27. Decline to follow sun, wanting experience of shade (4,5)
SAGE GREEN A charade of S (‘sun’) plus AGE (‘decline’) plus GREEN (;wanting experience’). I would not apply ‘decline’ to my ’66 Latour. My ’44 me is another matter.

Down
1,20. Elaborate finale, then we go to Paris for sight of another country (3,7,5,2,4)
THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA An anagram (‘elaborate’) of ‘finale then we go to Paris’.
2. Gambler briefly hampers race — it’s not fair! (8)
BRUNETTE An envelope (‘hampers’) of RUN (‘race’) in BETTE[r] (‘gambler briefly’). My first reaction was that ‘hampers’ should put RUN on the outside, but I suppose that if you read it as “puts in a hamper” it works.
3. Official measure causes damage to the ears (5)
HERTZ A homophone (‘to the ears’) of HURTS (’causes damage’). The definition is rather vague for the physical unit of frequency.
4. Most decorated lidless tarts in fact short of filling (8)
FUSSIEST An envelope (‘in’) of [h]USSIES (‘tarts’) without the first letter (‘lidless’) in FT (‘FacT short of filling’).
5. Disloyal individual sacked from squad with regret (6)
UNTRUE A charade of UN[i]T (‘squad’) without the I (‘individual sacked’) plus RUE (‘regret’).
6. Mr Gore converted US homes as accommodation for needy (9)
ALMSHOUSE A charade of AL (‘Mr. Gore’) plus MSHOUSE, an anagram (‘converted’) of ‘US homes’.
7. Persuade old king to hold up agreement in Munich (6)
CAJOLE An envelope (‘to hold’) of AJ, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of JA (‘agreement in Munich’) in COLE (‘old king’. Whoever he was, the nursery rhyme assures us that he was old).
8. Gets away early to take home sensational coats for the lady (5,3,7)
MAKES THE RUNNING An envelope (‘coats’) of HER (‘the lady’) in MAKE (‘take home’ as a wage) plus STUNNING (‘sensational’). The most difficult clue to parse in this puzzle.
15. Record breaker‘s time is shown above in headline (9)
BANNISTER An envelope (‘in’) of ‘is’ plus T (‘time’) in BANNER (‘headline’). The 60th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute mile was celebrated last month.
17. Aggression one’s driven to display? (4,4)
ROAD RAGE Cryptic definition.
18. Apt to give a description of 1 20 (8)
INCLINED Double definition.
20. See 1
– See 1
21. Girl coming aboard’s shown up male perversion (6)
SADISM An envelope (IN SS for ‘coming aboard’) of ADI, a reversal (‘shown up’ in a down light) of IDA (‘girl’) in SS plus M (‘male’).
23. Get moving statement from the chancellor abridged (5)
BUDGE A subtraction BUDGE[t] (‘statement from the Chancellor’ of the Exchequer) ‘abridged’.

33 comments on “Guardian Cryptic N° 26,289 by Nutmeg”

  1. Re: 2 down, “hamper” means “to prevent the progress of”. So why shouldn’t RUN go on the inside? 🙂

    I agree about 8 down. It was my LOI, but, as usual, after finally figuring it out, I was left wondering why it took me so long. (I suspected early on that “coats for the lady” indicated an insertion of HER somewhere in the answer.)

  2. BTW, Nutmeg, if you’re reading this, my mother recently got two kittens. As usual, I was charged with naming them. The first one I named Nina, and the second I named Nutmeg 😉

  3. Had to wait for the blog to fully understand 8d, my LOI, as I got it from the crossers and then got hung up on ESTHER being the lady! But it was 12.45am so I was a little sleepy.

    Otherwise all good. Liked 11ac and thought at first 14ac might be something to do with KIND+LE!

    Can someone please put me out of my misery and tell me if S is really a standard abbreviation for ‘sun’ or just a crossword convention – (but It didn’t catch me out today as I was ready for it)

  4. Thanks Peter. Because I didn’t know ECRU, 8D took a good while – a lot more than the rest of the puzzle in fact. Needed you for the parsing; like almw3 I kept staring at Esther.

  5. Another delight from Nutmeg. Increasingly I look forward to seeing that she is the setter. I too looked for a pangram, but the puzzle didn’t need any further enhancement in my view, and I thought that, while it was not too demanding, it was comfortably above the level of difficulty that the Quiptic should present.

  6. Like others, it was the HER that led me to 8d, plus a guess that it ended in -ING. Given that, maybe BANNISTER should have been earlier than my LOI. Thanks for the parsing, PeterO, for that and BENEVOLENT, which for a long time I had down as TOPENFREEE* until the checkers made that nonsense. A nice little bit of misdirection for this solver at least.

  9. almw @ 3

    I think S for sun stems from S M T W T F S, or Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat. I could well be wrong, of course 🙂

    Thanks Nutmeg & PeterO

  10. Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO

    Spent ages looking at 8d and 22a until I chose the correct meaning of “fawn”.

    I don’t understand the “official” in 3d. In fact I can think of several ways that the first part of the clue could be improved.

    Trailman @6
    Me too for 14a.

  11. Another enjoyable challenge from Nutmeg. I vaguely remembered ECRU from another crossword, but MAKES THE RUNNING still took me a long time, and annoyingly the last in was HERTZ – I think it was “Official” that threw me too, and I agree with muffin @10 on that. Maybe the Y got edited out to avoid upsetting one of our regular evening commenters – the chances of two consecutive accidental ones would be astronomically large, but let’s not reopen that debate…

    Thanks to PeterO and Nutmeg

  12. An enjoyable puzzle from Nutmeg, although I’m another who is of the opinion that it was nowhere near as difficult as her other non-Quiptic puzzles. I had no problem parsing 8dn and I saw “stunning” before “her”. I finished in the SW with SADISM after GROUNDSMAN and OPPOSED.

  13. Quite agreeable until 22A and 8D

    I finally got 8D but still failed on 22A. It’s obviously unfair for women to clue such words. They surely know that we men only have about 10 colours in our vocabulary and manage the spectrum with the addition of “light” or “dark”. No place for the likes of “tope”, “aqua marine” etc. And now I have one more to add “ecru”!!!!! Sounds like a currency to me.

    Thanks to PeterO and Nutmeg

  14. “[M]ore on a level with [Nutmeg’s] quiptics”? Not for me, PeterO. Maybe I was dimmer than usual, but apart from a few write-ins, I found it a continual struggle and was defeated by several on the right-hand side. No complaints about the puzzle, though, and I appreciated quite a few of your parsings. However, IMHO this was a long way above quiptic level.

    Thanks to you and Nutmeg.

  15. B(NTO) @13
    I eventually remembered “ecru” because, when my wife knitted a Gromet (of “Wallace and…”) for my daughter, the colour wool she needed was “ecru”.

    (P.S. said daughter is now in her thirties)

  16. Thanks the nutty meg, found it too tricky to finish bur that was rather down to my eyes rather than the puzzle. Is everyone watching the footie? Very quiet today.

  17. We should start a glossary of words that only exist in crossword-land or their own subject-specific worlds.

    Ecru, eft, ellipsis…

  19. Tim Phillips @ 17

    Ecru exists outside crosswordland!

    It’s a standard paint shade, and from a quick gargle it’s still in (at least) the Dulux & Crown ranges.

    (OK, maybe it’s subject-specific)

    I will try to get out a bit 😉

  20. I have known ECRU since childhood [the colour of my grandmother’s crochet cotton] – cf muffin @15. I remember being quite fascinated by the sound of the word – but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a crossword.

    Incidentally, 22ac was almost my favourite clue – after 1,20. Nutmeg’s really good at the long anagrams, isn’t she?

    Many thanks to her for another fine puzzle – and to PeterO for the blog.

    [I have just had to post this again, because 8-1 = 7 was ‘incorrect’!]

    PS: as was 4+5=9

  22. Eileen @21 – now you come to mention it I can’t find any examples of ECRU in crosswords either, so you’re right as usual. Maybe I came across ECRU somewhere else – I got it from the wordplay by thinking of 3-letter rivers and it rang a distant bell, but now I’ve no idea why – probably either a book or a very old crossword.

  24. New to Guardian. Nice. All clues parse right. Needed this blog to understand some of it. Good thanks,

  25. Hi beery hiker

    I wasn’t meaning to argue with you! – simply saying that ECRU was lodged in my mind even before crosswords.

    I really did think it was a little gem of a clue – not least because it features my beloved Wensleydale river, which is usually the first three-letter one to spring to my mind.

    Welcome to ravilyn!

  26. Flashling @16 I also found this as hard as I expect from Nutmeg, by no means straightforward. I guess it depends how far ones thinking is similar to the setter.

  27. Got in a right kerfuffle because I so wanted 18dn to be apposite. Unfortunately the leaning tower of Pisa is an Arno site at best and the Po is on the other side of the country. Pity.

  28. I’m sure I’ve come across ECRU as an answer plenty of times before, but it could have appeared in the Indy Concise, Guardian Quick, Times (all versions), and the American puzzles I do regularly (Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times). Because I do so many I don’t keep track of where I see answers.

  30. Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO

    Didn’t find this ‘Quiptic-standard’ either ! The right hand side went in quite quickly – ECRU being one of those very well used answers in crosswords in Melbourne dailies. Having said that, needed to come here to see how 8d was derived. Also was cleverly diverted into the unlikely anagram fodder with 14a.

    Finished in the top left with LINCTUS (after lazily writing in lozenge initially) and FUSSIEST (hadn’t seen fussy in that context before).

    We’re very well served with the quality of setter in the Guardian stable at the moment.

    And finally … go those Aussie boys in Brazil … what a cracker match!

  31. Sorry,, Peter @17. Ecru is a word I come across and even use frequently. I would argue, however, that it’s not exactly the same as fawn, even though Chambers would lead one to believe so.

  32. Thanks Nutmeg (& PeterO). Excellent crossword. I almost gave up with only three clues solved – then got 1,20. Inched forward sporadically after that. Went to bed with 2 clues still unsolved (8 & 22), but managed to complete before midnight. Slept well.

  33. Wow! PeterO considers this Quiptic level? I really do feel thick. Perhaps because I worked on the puzzle on a brain-tired Friday or perhaps because of the number of Britishisms (harlequins, rissoles, and I’m still not sure I get the gist of ‘make the running’), I found this one of the most difficult puzzles I’ve attempted yet. Never, ever heard the word ‘linctus’. It sounds quite rude.

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