A third Nestor in a row on my watch … maybe the Indy editor has settled his contributors into a 5-weekly cycle that, coincidentally, matches our Saturday Prize blogging rota? Not that I’m complaining too much – another enjoyable puzzle – but they do say that variety is the spice of life…
Some long entries around the perimeter, although my first instinct is usually to go for the shorter ones, in the hope (sometimes in vain!) that they will be easier.
I enjoyed some of the surface reading/misdirection – 1A suggesting a musical/religious ‘Mass’ with fewer ‘notes’ than usual – when the answer is from the world of Economics; and 5D suggesting we are maybe looking for a pioneering scientist, when the answer is actually a cricketing term.
By contrast, a few went in on the strength of what looked like the definition and some of the wording – with the parsing coming later – e.g. 23D mentions ‘America’ and ‘leading man’, so once I had the O, and an A, OBAMA went straight in without worrying too much about the workings. Similarly, 9D mentions ‘science’ and ‘energy’, so once it had H second letter and looked like it ended ‘I?S’ I put in THERMODYNAMICS, then came back later to dissect the clue… maybe a risky approach, and I do sometimes have to resort to the Tippex (other correcting fluids are available) when I get too hasty.
The ‘cryptic definition’ for RAWLPLUG was probably my favourite – painful flashbacks for this inept DIYer! That one took some work and thought before I put it in – much like when I try to use one in real life!
Last one in for me was LE MANS – although the enumeration, crossing letters and ‘endurance’ reference should have got me there earlier.
No particular theme or Nina that I could see – but a nice steady solve again from Nestor.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
| 1A | ECONOMY OF SCALE | Reason for Mass production using reduced set of notes? (7,2,5) | Reason for mass production / ECONOMY OF (reduced use of) + SCALE (set of musical notes) |
| 10A | HINDRANCE | Back with career crossing new barrier (9) | barrier / HIND (back) + RA_CE (career, rush) around (crossing) N (new) |
| 11A | LEG-UP | Help boxer back onto labradoodle’s flanks (3-2) | Help / LE (flanking letters of LabradoodlE) + GUP (PUG – boxer, dog – backwards) |
| 12A | RELY | Bank only just cutting off Buenos Aires (4) | Bank (on) / (BA)RELY – only just – without (cutting off) BA – Buenos Aires |
| 13A | BLUEBOTTLE | Colour associated with steel, brass or copper? (10) | copper? (as in policeman) / BLUE (colour associated with steel) + BOTTLE (nerve, or brass) |
| 15A | OUTPOSTS | Is blogging more often than not the local branches? (8) | &lit-ish double defn/local branches / a local branch of an organisation is an OUTPOST, and if a blogger produces more posts than someone else, they OUT POST them |
| 16A | LE MANS | Endurance test centre keeping graduate in contact, say (2,4) | (Motorsport) ‘Endurance test’ centre / LE_NS (contact lens) around MA (Master of Arts, graduate) |
| 19A | YEOMEN | Ceremonial guards sign on still, short of time (6) | Ceremonial guards / YE(T) (still, short of T – time) + OMEN (sign) |
| 20A | BALLYHOO | Hype to expand rapidly, almost engaging vacant youth (8) | Hype / BALL_OO(N) (expand radidly, almost) around (engaging) YH (YoutH vacated by its middle letters) |
| 22A | ABOMINABLE | Hateful and possibly bitter, adopting abandoned bambino (10) | Hateful / A_LE (bitter, possibly) around (adopting) BOMINAB (anag, i.e. abandoned, of BAMBINO) |
| 24A | JOWL | Brief shock, taking in wife’s sagging flesh (4) | sagging flesh / JO_L(T) (shock, briefly, i.e. short of a letter) around W – wife |
| 26A | IDAHO | State of birdbath not regularly cleared (5) | State (of USA) / alternate letters (regularly cleared) of ‘bIrDbAtH nOt’ |
| 27A | ALL COMERS | Perhaps Yo-Yo Ma’s cello? That’s about right for everyone turning up (3,6) | everyone turning up / anag (i.e. yo-yo) of MA’S CELLO, around R (right) |
| 28A | SCAREMONGERING | Regressive European banker gets into branding, maybe causing alarm (14) | causing alarm / SCAR_RING (branding) around EMONGE (E, European + GNOME, banker, gnome of Zurich – all regressive) |
| Down | |||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
| 2D | CANALETTO | Painter put beer in tin, lifting too much (9) | Painter / CAN (tin) + ALE (beer) + TTO (OTT, over the top, too much, lifted) |
| 3D | NORM | Standard lack of room? (4) | Standard / NO (lack of) + RM (room) |
| 4D | MONOLITH | A few weeks to cover damaged oil stone block (8) | stone block / MON_TH (a few weeks) around OLI (anag, i.e. damaged, of OIL) |
| 5D | OPENER | Who’s in first contribution to develop energy? (6) | Who’s in first (e.g. in cricket) / hidden word in (contribution to) ‘develOP ENERgy’ |
| 6D | SALMONELLA | Germ in cut bread lines inside of vegetable dish mostly (10) | Germ / SA_LA(D) (vegetable dish, mostly) around MONE (money, or bread, cut short) + LL (lines) |
| 7D | ANGST | Strong flavours with temperature very low causing worry (5) | worry / (T)ANGS (strong flavours) with T (temperature) moved to the bottom (very low) |
| 8D | EXPRESSIONLESS | Hard to read fast with one leg shorter? (14) | Hard to read / EXPRESS (fast) + I (one) +ON (leg side, cricket) + LESS (shorter) |
| 9D | THERMODYNAMICS | Rise of science lots practise after those people got round resistance: it’s about energy (14) | it’s about energy / THE_M (those people) around R (resistance), plus SCI (science) + MANY (lots) + Do (practise), all ‘rising’ to give ODYNAMICS |
| 14D | HOLES IN ONE | Links feats with Spanish cheer, wrong among Polish (5,2,3) | (Golf) Links feats / H_ONE (polish, perfect) around OLE (olé!, Spanish cheer) + SIN (wrong) |
| 17D | ASHMOLEAN | Repository of relics and remains? Tick list (9) | Repositary of relics / ASH (remains) + MO (tick, moment) + LEAN (list, heel over) |
| 18D | RAWLPLUG | Something packed to allow purchase of thread (8) | CD (cryptic definition) / A rawlplug is ‘packed’ with material to allow the ‘thread’ of a screw to gain ‘purchase’ |
| 21D | NAVAJO | Old Indonesian islander looking up Arizona native (6) | Arizona native / O (old) + JAVAN (Indonesian islander) – all reversed (‘looking up’) |
| 23D | OBAMA | Central part in God Bless America, no less, or Eric’s leading man (5) | (America’s) leading man / O (central letter of gOd) + B(LESS) + AM(ERIC)A – with no ‘less’ and no ‘Eric’ |
| 25D | DOUR | Can this stern will produce frankness? (4) | stern / Candour, or frankness, is produce by adding ‘can’ to DOUR (this stern) |
Thanks to Nestor and mc_rapper67,
A good standard for a Saturday puzzle – hard enough, but not too frustrating for me at least. Maybe this is what you meant, but for 11a I had PUG as short for “pugilist” without bringing a boxer of the canine variety into it, though the faces of all three can look pretty similar!
Thanks again.
I parsed 11a that way too. Couldn’t parse 23dn, thanks for the explanation, can’t believe I missed that.
Thanks Wordplodder and Dormouse – I take your point – ‘pug’ is a type of dog, but not a boxer in the dog sense, and Chambers has pug as an abbreviation for ‘pugilist’.
I think I was taken in by the general canine surface reading of the clue – although what a boxer would be doing to a labradoodle’s flanks might be a bit too much for the imagination!…
An enjoyable solve. I found the top half much easier than the bottom half, although that might have had more to do with the fact that I saw 1ac straight away and it had some helpful checkers. RAWLPLUG was my LOI after the ALL COMERS/DOUR crossers.
I confess that LEG-UP went in without me stopping to think which type of boxer was being referred to.
This went along very nicely, though I ended up staring at my last two clues (RAWLPLUG and DOUR) for quite some time and had to come back to it a few times before I hit on the right frame of mind to see the obvious.
I rather liked 27A, but is it just me or are setters stretching poetic licence ever further in their search for anagrinds that produce a nice surface?
In 13ac I had “colour”=BLUE associated with “steel”=BOTTLE (“copper”=BLUEBOTTLE) and then puzzled over “brass”. Was it necessary – or is there some synonym of “brass” itself having same meaning as bluebottle (like money, prostitute etc?)?
I’m still not convinced – why is “brass” in clue?
Hi William at #6 – I guess only Nestor can say, but Chambers has ‘steel-blue’ as a colour, so as parsed above I assumed the phrase ‘colour associated with steel’ was BLUE, and then brass – slang for ‘effrontery’, or ‘neck’ – gives BOTTLE (courage/nerve).
Your reading gets to the same result, albeit with a seemingly superfluous word, but maybe Nestor originally meant it the way I parsed it.
As for the crossword itself, I found it as smooth as cream. Purely clued and a joy to solve. Awesome. Big thanks, Nestor!
And thanks to the rapper man….
Thanks for reply. I had understood all that from your clear blog. I’m still not convinced there isn’t something else going on. Nestor doesn’t seem the sort of setter to have a superfluous word.
Or maybe I’m being too hopeful/romantic and I’m holding on to it since it had become the only niggle in a particularly precise puzzle. And, of course, I’d been waiting for a week!
Thanks again…