Well I’m back from a land down under and first up is Imogen, not really the name you want whilst jet lagged.
Many thanks to Gaufrid for his sterling efforts when so many of us were away.
Looks like Imogen is in need of extra dosh, see the perimeter Nina…
Across
8 This may suggest I held capital (3,5)
NEW DELHI
A NEW [I HELD]* is suggested
9 On the surface, some accommodation is empty (6)
AFLOAT
A FLAT is empty i.e. is has nothing=0=O inside it
10 Country poetically taking sheep to its heart (4)
ERIN
One of those names for Ireland, it’s (m)ERIN(o) a spanish sheep you’ll probably only ever see in crossword land.
I’ve just got back from Oz yesterday and the early settlers, i.e. not the convicts were called Merinos I learnt
11 Mixed salad prepared in island (Guam) (10)
SALMAGUNDI
[ISLAND GUAM]* is prepared. No I’ve never knowingly eaten it either.
12 Doctor accepts criticism, taking a strong drink (6)
GRAPPA
GP takes in RAP (criticism) & A
14 Be prone to run into officers in ships (8)
COLLIERS
Not totally convinced but this seems to be LIE (prone) & R(un) in COL(onel)S, colliers are coal laden ships
15 Plentiful work endlessly offered by library (7)
OPULENT
OPU(s) endlessly & LENT something Lending Libraries used to do before the interwebs came along.
17 Call to be silent — it leaves some out (7)
ENTITLE
Hidden answer
20 Winger spoils shot, receiving tackle from in front (5,3)
MARSH TIT
MARS (spoils) & T(ackle) in HIT. I’ll leave this as an exercise for the reader to think how Paul might have clued this rather differently.
22 Noisily eat all round one city (6)
MUNICH
1 inserted in MUNCH
23 Mean to take double-length science magazine among papers (3-7)
ILL-NATURED
Double L(ength) = LL & NATURE (science mag) in I.D. (identity papers)
24 Free cover includes at first nearly all there (4)
SANE
S(elftamped) A(ddressed) E(nvelope) has N(early) at first inserted
25 Awaiting summons from head of court in plain wrapper, to be returned (2,4)
ON CALL
C(ourt) in LLANO a South American grassland – plain reversed
26 One that breaks down, as nearly mad (8)
ANALYSER
[AS NEARLY]* goes mad
Down
1 After damage, no longer use one shed (8)
TEARDROP
TEAR (damage) then DROP (no longer use). No use crying to me if you didn’t get it.
2 Not right for sculptor to make a god (4)
ODIN
Scuptor (r)ODIN has no R(ight)
3 State of a chess champion spoken about (6)
ALASKA
A & hom of LASKER who was a rather good chess player if you can’t be bothered to click the link
4 Short book of words about beer that not all may understand (7)
DIALECT
ALE in DICT(ionary) shortly. Fenton a sadly now deceased friend was a geordie, hard enough to understand at the best of times, but he also had a cleft palate. Unfortunately he was also crap at signing language too.
Wouldn’t be so bad but he was one of our fireworks crew and it really helps to know when someone shouts “RUN LIKE F*** NOW”
5 Sort of belt in vehicle — a girl is knocked over (3,5)
VAN ALLEN
It’s a science thing, sorry well not at all, I’ve had to remember to much substandard literature to do crosswords.
VAN (vehicle) & A LASS & NELL reversed. Edit fixed as per #1 not sure how that happened.
Not convinced by the surface here, seems like two ideas that ought to work jammed together.
6 English currency Scotsman holds in error — such mysteries (10)
ELEUSINIAN
Hmm how many of you got this on first pass? Well, after a bit of thought it’s E(nglish) & LEU (currency in Romania) & SIN (error) & IAN (the hackneyed crossword Scotsman). No I’ve never heard of it either but it is in the BRB.
7 Cyclist punched by a surprise assailant (6)
RAIDER
A in RIDER, gosh an easy one.
13 An occasion in early spring when uplands may flourish (4,6)
PALM SUNDAY
[UPLANDS MAY]* flourish
16 A short denial (3,2,3)
NOT AT ALL
18 Large cubes seen floating about in drink he supplies? (8)
LICENSEE
L(arge) & ICE (cubes) & SEEN* floating
19 Guide for the night has no shelter to sleep, clutching short black coat (4,3)
STAR MAP
lee (shelter) removed from S(lee)P and then a short TARMA(c) inserted
21 Lion tamer’s head not straight (6)
ASLANT
ASLAN (witches wardrobes etc) & T(amer)’s head
22 Hothead’s plan to arrest officer (6)
MADCAP
ADC (aide de camp) in MAP (plan)
24 So Tom’s called for this milk (4)
SOYA
Sounds like Mark Twain’s Sawyer
*anagram
Thanks Imogen and Flashling
I needed some help in parsing 6d and 19d.
In 5d I think you mean NELL (reversed)
First time ever spotted the nina! Lots of new words for me. Thanks Imogen and Flashling. 1ac. I parsed it as Knew Delhi…
Phew – hard work and maybe a bit dry – I can live without 6d – many clever clues though, as expected, but not much levity. Yesterday’s act hard to follow. Missed the Nina of course.
I read 5d as per Kevin @ #1
10a – Merino are the standard fine-wool sheep in Australia – very common.
Thanks to S&B
16d: not at all = not a tall = a short
@2.Ilippu again: sorry, that should be 8ac.
Together with Banjo Paterson, we should acknowledge JollySwagman @3 as an expert in merinos, and of course all Jumbucks.
The number of merinos in Australia would run into the tens of millions. They could not be described as an endangered species.
I remember learning at school that as a flat-bellied sheep they did not get as many grass seeds in their belly wool as other breeds and were well-suited to the conditions on Australian sheep stations, often mixed with wheat farms.
Thanks, flashling – and welcome home!
I’ve enjoyed all of Imogen’s puzzles so far but I’m afraid I found this a hard and fairly thankless slog. I did know ELEUSINIAN but not LEU, unfortunately, so it took a long time to get.
And I knew ERIN was poetical Ireland but couldn’t parse it, because, to me, the wordplay suggests that the sheep has taken the country to its heart.
[I hadn’t heard of Lasker, either.]
I’m afraid the very clever Nina [which, of course, I didn’t see] doesn’t make up for my lack of enjoyment in solving.
Thanks, Imogen – I’m sorry I wasn’t on your wavelength today.
Thanks for ELEUSINIAN (never met either the currency or the mysteries) and ALASKA (never heard of him). And as for 24d – not the way I say it, it doesn’t! But you can’t win with homophones.
JS: dry is just the word I was looking for – all very clever, but not much to smile at.
16D “Not a tall”
Thanks for the blog, Flashling.Yes very interesting to imagine Paul cluing 20.
I think all those flash suits are made from Merino wool(I didnt parse it at the time but the nina made me see that it couldnt be Iran.A tough puzzle for a weekday Graun. But thats not a bad thing.
Gave up after managing only a handful of answers. Looking at the blog there’s a lot of clever stuff here, but also a lot that’s obscure and might be better suited to an advanced cryptic.
Well, one man’s meat etc. I found this delightful from start to finish, thanks to the variety in the cluing and thanks to the fact that the more obscure words (with the exception of Salmagundi, which was my LOI) were all old friends of mine. This doesn’t happen very often, I’m afraid. Thanks Imogen, you brightened up a dreary December morning, and thanks flashling for the blog!
Thanks Flashling and Melon Woman. Thought this a bit over-contrived in places. Not sure that salmagundi is really a salad(11ac) and (13dn) Palm Sunday is not always in early spring. It can be as late as 18th April but I won’t be alive to experience it.
24ac “stamped” rather than “self”?
@lilibet #14 Err, yes it should be stamped, shouldn’t it. I’m amazed how free of errors the blog is 🙂
Very much my sort of puzzle. 6d was first in, solved on sight. Merino as the main Australian breed of sheep was part of my primary school eductaion (in Wales) in the early 1960s. Missed SANE (I think the clue’s inaccurate: an SAE is not free, it’s just that someone else pays for the postage). Didn’t notice the nina, but it made me laugh when I read the blog, so thanks Flashling. I seem to remember SALMAGUNDI as an Azed Xmas puzzle cluing competition word some years ago
Thought you might be interested to know that aslan is the Turkish word for lion.
education
Thanks NINA, sorry I mean Imogen – nice setting to fit the message in.
Thanks flashling for a good blog, despite jet-lag.
The unusual words, plus some answers having less than 50% checkers made for a slow solve. The cluing, though, was fairly faultless. Yes, the SOYA hom. works for me.
I did particularly like the ‘short black coat’ for TARMA(c), TEARDROP and ANALYSER
Started this at the dentist, though it would be most unfair to suggest that drawing teeth would be preferable. The W side came much easier than the E, no doubt because of the SALMAGUNDI / ELEUSINIAN crossers. After a while I couldn’t be bothered looking for the anagram combination for the former and resorted to an app.
Had earlier dashed in IRAN at 10 so poo to that. The nina would have helped but I never thought to look. And I have merino garments too.
Hahaha #6.
This is excellent, and I disagree that it lacks fun (witness the Nina). I am glad to see that the perimetrical addition does not preclude the use of simple words.
Except for ELEUSINIAN and SALMAGUNDI, both I’d never come across.
😀
cholecyst @13, SALMAGUNDI, OCED 1 a dish of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions, etc, and seasoning. 2 a general mixture; a miscellaneous collection of articles, subjects, qualities, etc. [French salmigondis, of unknown origin]. Perhaps the word salm, salmon, could have something to do with it.
I am sorry to read your news.
cholecyst @13. I see now what you mean by it not really being a salad, at least as we know it today. Checked SALMAGUNDI, French salmigondis, in Larousse – de sel et anc fr condir, assaisonner, i.e. ‘salt’ and seasoning. Then checked salad in OCED – M.E. via Old French salade, ultimately from Latin sal ‘salt’. The word SALMAGUNDI has nothing to do with salmon. Both salmagundi and salad have their origins in ‘salt’.
Blimey, that one was a bit tough! It did get a bit easier after spotting part of the NINA, but my last in (ELEUSINIAN) was unfamiliar to me, as was the currency. Couldn’t parse ERIN so thanks for the merino, or SOYA which is groanworthy. Plenty to enjoy, including NOT AT ALL, LICENSEE and NEW DELHI.
Thanks to Imogen, thanks and welcome back to Flashling.
Cookie @22 – according to Wikipedia:
“In 1943 an ecclesiastical Full Moon fell on Saturday March 20. As this was just before the equinox it was the next Full Moon (the Paschal Full Moon) on Sunday, April 18 which determined the date of Easter – April 25. It will not fall as late again until 2038 – a span of 95 years”
If we accept spring as starting at the equinox, even April 18th could just about be regarded as early spring…
… but it could be in late winter!
When I flew out of Oz on Monday they were calling Dec 1 the first day of Summer…
Perhaps Imogen is a northernhemisphereist?
For those of you who have been following England’s tour of Sri Lanka, column 9 names our new star opener MOEEN Ali. And I remember Mark OATENm but who is ADAM COS?
Thanks Imogen and flashling
I didn’t really enjoy this, and not just because I gave up on ELEUSINIAN, and the SANE/SOYA crossers (so obviously I didn’t see the NINA). Several others I didn’t parse too.
Although I did, in fact, have the necessary general knowledge, I thought the clues for ALASKA and ASLANT weren’t fair; LASKER in particular dates from ages ago and isn’t at all well known. Most solvers would be pressed to get much further than Fischer, Spassky or Kasparov as world champion chess-players, I would guess.
muffin @29 – I’m no chess expert but what abot Carlsen? And Karpov (I remember the Korchnoi match and the colour coded yogurt controversy). According to Wikipedia Lasker had the longest reign as champion too, so hardly the most obscure.
I got the Nina because I spotted IMOGEN in the top corner, but it took quite a but longer for the whole thing to become apparent…
bh @30
I remember “Korchnoi’s complaint” ………oh, hang on, that’s not quite right.
I could name quite few others too, but then I used to play chess.
Well I finished it, but much of the wordplay was too cryptic for me, so in effect I was left doing a quick crossword. Thanks flashling for explaining 24a, 25a, 6d, and 21d.
beery hiker @25, thanks, now I can cheer up! That takes the biscuit, as said before cookies are only half baked.
Thanks, flashling.
I enjoyed this a lot more than most others seem to have done. Missed the Nina, of course.
SALMAGUNDI was my second entry, as it happens – it was obviously an anagram and I knew the word. ELEUSINIAN was a lot more elusive, but I spotted the Romanian currency immediately I conjured up the answer. CS Lewis’s Narnia novels are well enough known, not least through TV and film adaptation, for ASLAN to be reasonably gettable, I would have thought – and much more so than LASKER (not known at this address…)
Like Eileen @7, I thought the clue for ERIN was back to front, but I did see the Merino parsing.
Favourites were SANE, NOT AT ALL and ENTITLE (LOI! – a very cleverly hidden ‘hidden’ clue).
Thanks Imogen and flashling.
Having got over the imminent death of cholecyst @13, I can now get on with the parsing.
Stupidly did not spot the anagram at 13d (13 again Grrr). I had ALMS (uplands), DAY (when) and PUN (wheN UPlands), PALM SUNDAY. Of course it does not really work.
I found this crossword hard, but enjoyed going through flashlings parsing.
Found this a tough solve not helped at 6d by part of the wordplay being as obscure to me as the solution. Missed the cunning nina.
I must be extra thick today (cold outside, broken CH) but I’m not getting the point of Flashling’s joke/anecdote @4d.
Thanks, Gervase @34 – I was on the point of asking if I was the only one to have a problem with the wordplay at 10ac.
@DP just a personal remembrance, he died suddenly aged 40 three years ago today.
Certainly challenging, but we thoroughly enjoyed this – had to make heavy use of word searches, but did succeed in parsing nearly all. I did remember the van Allen belt; the chess master Emanuel Lasker (also known as a mathematician); the words Eleusinian and salmagundi (though not their meanings) and the Leu was the unit of currency in Romania the first time I visited. We also hesitated about an S.A.E. being free, but enjoyed Tom Soya.
A pity we missed the Nina, and guessed wrong for 10a.
Will have to console myself with a glass of 12a!
I really don’t see why ‘Soya’ and ‘Sawyer’ should be considered homonyms. Harrumph.
Well soya and sawyer are pronounced nearly the same by me and Imogen and Rush in their hit song.
I’ve got that Rush tune running through my head now.
Great stuff.
I really liked everything (including ELEUSINIAN which I thought really well-clued, and quite amusing for surface), apart from SALMAGUNDI, which I thought a bit recondite for an anagram, nice though it was. A very nice puzzle.
Now watching Arsenal-Southampton on BT Sport and the sound keeps going off. Bah.
Crosswords do highlight differences in previous experience – SALMAGUNDI was an easy one for me, as I have seen several recipes. I must cook it one day!
Well I’m afraid I found this a little dull.
The difficulty only derived from esoteric answers and dodgy cluing .(IMHO of course 🙂 )
Took ages to get ALASKA which was annoying as on the bookcase 5 feet to my left sits Lasker’s Manual of Chess (Compulsory reading for all Russian Chess Team members allegedly.) Lasker rewrote it in English so that the translation would be OK!!!)
Not much entertainment here!
Thanks to Flashling and Imogen
I thought this pretty naff. About half the clues were interesting -mostly on the W side-others almost inexplicable e.g. COLLIERS. Can’t say I enjoyed it much!
While Picaroon is the one closest to what I think is ideal clueing, while I think Paul is extra-something, Imogen is another heavy-weight champion.
In the first ten minutes we had no entries at all.
In the end we failed on 4 solutions: the more or less obscure (with no help at hand) ELEUSINIAN and SALMAGUNDI [though it was clear how it worked in both clues], COLLIERS (which I suggested and thought it might be right) and VAN ALLEN (which we missed but shouldn’t have).
Despite the above, we enjoyed every single minute of the rest of it.
For once, I am not with Eileen’s verdict.
And we missed the Nina, even if I looked whether there would be one.
Perhaps a stupid question but can anyone explain this Nina to me, please? Because I don’t get it. 🙁
Well done, Flash, and welcome back!
Thanks for the great explanations. I really struggled with a lot of this and just gave in to cheat and reverse parse everything. Your links and notations are valuable to newbies like me.
Sil @46 the Nina says TO ADVERTISE HERE APPLY TO IMOGEN, flashling thinks she must be hard up for money. Just a joke. On the other hand I guess someone could ask a setter to clue in an advertisement!
Maybe he’s just offering to sell Ninas. I don’t think it stands up to any more sophisticated analysis…
Hi beery hiker, I forgot Imogen was a man. Yes, a border Nina would be a good way to get a message across. Thanks again for yesterday, and the other day. btw see Sil’s ps @52 in PeterO’s blog of Dec 2 Picaroon (FT of Nov 13, not Nov 1).
Dropping by late as I’ve just completed it – finishing with the two unknowns ‘salgamundi’ and ‘Van Allen’ – after two sessions on two different evenings on the iPad, and wanted to express my appreciation to the setter for a first-rate puzzle. A joy from start to finish, with ‘Eleusinian’ perhaps my favourite. If ever there is an example of a word that is evocative, this surely must be it. In this day and age, anyone merely wishing to invent a word expressing mysteries would end up with a word that merely expressed their own striving.
Salmagundi – I wasn’t lying when I said I’ never heard of it!
I got SALMAGUNDI rather easily since I used to frequently eat a restaurant by that name. Missed a good few others including ELEUSINIAN. Love the Nina!
Fresh From The Past is a cookbook we published on 17th century British cooking, which included both text on culinary history and the original recipes along with their modern interpretations. So I’ve both made and eaten what Hannah Glasse referred to as “Salamongundy”. A later corruption to Solomon Gundy may have inspired James Orchard Halliwell’s macabre nursery rhyme and possible warning for letting salmagundi sit out too long: “Solomon Gundy, born on a Monday, christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, took ill on Thursday, worse on Friday, died on Saturday, buried on Sunday, that is the end of Solomon Gundy”
Henry @54, have you looked into the West Indian recipe for Solomon Gundy? It is a fish pâté pickled with salt. The name seems to come from salt and seasoning, see @23. The West Indies as regards English usage etc. is very interesting, much of it derives from Elizabethan times. There is a similar recipe in Nova Scotia, pickled herring and onion.
Re: Halliwell’s poem @54: should be Solomon Grundy, not Solomon Gundy.
Thanks Imogen and PeterO
I think that I enjoyed this … I did most of it after a few early work Christmas drinks on Thursday night!!
SALMAGUNDI was one of my first in – had heard of the word, but after looking it up am sad to say that it doesn’t look at all appetising to me – what an odd combination of food items.
Again, ALASKA went in quite early with only the L and S in – I’ll put it down to alcohol-fuelled lateral thinking; it was the only US state that fitted … with a “I’ll have to google a LASKA sound alike a bit later!
It was the LHS that was last for me – ASLANT (took an age for the ASLAN penny to drop), GRAPPA and TEARDROP were my last three answers.
Didn’t spot the nina, but smiled when it was spelled out here!
Hope you enjoyed ‘down here’, Peter and that you had a chance to solve a David Astle puzzle in a Friday Melbourne Age !
@Bruce, I was near Perth so didn’t see the Melbourne paper alas, and I’m Phil not Peter! A fine time was had sampling some excellent wines too straight from the winery. Hic 🙂
Hope to return about the same time next year.
Apologies Phil … forgot to scroll to the top and got the wrong blogger. .
Glad that you got to enjoy some of the WA wines … they’re some of the best! There are also some very good ones over here in the east as well. Along with that, there are some cracking boutique beer breweries if you are of that persuasion.
It’s great that you enjoyed it and will be back !!