Moley has transformed herself into Mary Poppins this morning.
If you talk to setters, they will say that compiling ‘easy’ puzzles is actually the hardest thing to do, because you’ve almost got one hand tied behind your back. Moley has produced a purler for us here, in my opinion: plenty of anagrams to get you going, no obscurities, really lucid cluing and excellent surfaces throughout. When you’ve finished reading the blog, go back to the puzzle. Only two of the clues use more than one line. That’s awesome, as my kids would say.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definiton
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Lads I’m organising are gloomy
DISMAL
(LADS IM)*
4 Young animals‘ muscles
CALVES
Beautifully concise clue. A dd.
9 Shape of a cricket ground
OVAL
Another dd. I’m predicting 5-0 to the Ingerland, 5-0 to the Ingerland …
10 Madly indiscreet and sparkling
IRIDESCENT
(INDISCREET)*
11 Alas, I’m turning into a sausage!
SALAMI
(ALAS IM)*
12 Reveals United Nations shelters
UNCOVERS
A charade of UN and COVERS
13 Ballots touch on conclusion initially agreed
REFERENDA
A charade of REFER, END and A for the first letter of ‘agreed’. One coming to a constituency near you very soon.
15 Cane harvest
CROP
A dd.
16 About to copy garment
CAPE
Batman’s garment of choice is C for circa or ‘about’ and APE for ‘copy’.
17 Completed course of study by degrees
GRADUATED
Another dd.
21 Crimes changed one’s life
FELONIES
(ONES LIFE)*
22 Mature woman in the band
GROW UP
That’d be Debbie Harry, then. An insertion of W in GROUP.
24 Winner Ian’s answer about things from earlier times
VICTORIANA
A charade of VICTOR, IAN and A. ‘About’ is not the anagrind, because you don’t need one, but rather part of the definition.
25 Pronounced way of walking to make an entrance
GATE
A homophone of GAIT. The homophone indicator is ‘pronounced’, which, Gott sei Dank, is in a completely unambiguous position.
26 Minimised risks and sat on the fence
HEDGED
A dd cum cd.
27 Cretan mixed a delicious drink
NECTAR
(CRETAN)*
Down
1 Turn away and cleverly evade it
DEVIATE
(EVADE IT)*
2 Saucy dance
SALSA
A cd cum dd. I might have fancied a question mark here.
3 Idiotic, like one over the eight
ASININE
A charade of AS I (for 1) and NINE, which is the number after ‘eight’. Some might argue that ‘one’ is doing double duty, but the clue worked for me.
5 Era before New York welcomes in conservative business
AGENCY
A charade of AGE and C in NY.
6 Turned around AV service in disarray
VICE VERSA
(AV SERVICE)*
7 Hot spot where star has elevated role
SUNTRAP
A charade of SUN and PART reversed. The reversal indicator is ‘elevated’, because it’s a down clue.
8 Drill city squad endlessly retrained to produce a sort of electronic display
LIQUID CRYSTAL
(DRILL CITY SQUA[D]) with ‘retrained’ as the anagrind.
14 Adventure journalist made the most of
EXPLOITED
A charade of EXPLOIT and ED.
16 Chapter on problem shire exposes treasure
CHERISH
A charade of CH and (SHIRE)* with ‘problem’ as the anagrind.
18 Disgrace ex-student diving into river
DEGRADE
Well, when you’ve got E as your last letter, a seven-letter clue indicating an insertion into a river means that DEE comes to mind, doesn’t it? And so it proved: GRAD in DEE
19 English quota made up right on the line
EQUATOR
A charade of E, (QUOTA)* and R.
20 Enter church below jetty
PIERCE
A charade of PIER and CE.
23 Should nothing come from thought?
OUGHT
Leave the trickiest one to parse until last, why don’t you? It’s a dd, and I think Moley is suggesting that ‘should’ and ‘nothing’ are both synonyms for OUGHT, and then that they both ‘come from’ [TH]OUGHT. The ‘should’ definition is obvious; but the ‘nothing’ is archaic. If I remember well, which I might not have, it derives from A NOUGHT, through a process whose name I can’t recall where the first N becomes part of the indefinite article. Which is why in Middle English the snake was called A NADDER. I’ll shut up now and thank Moley for a fine crossword.
And Mary Poppins? Well, for those who know the film, she was ‘practically perfect’. Which is what this Quiptic was.
I agree with Pierre that this is a good puzzle, well-judged for the Quiptic slot. There is nothing spectacular or flashy about it, no ‘compileritis’, just solid, honest cluing. I too was unsure about 23d, though. The answer is clear, but the method less so. I came to the same conclusion as Pierre – a double definition of a word which forms part of THOUGHT.
Thanks to Moley and Pierre.
Thanks Moley and Pierre.
A lovely puzzle, so well clued, and just right for a Quiptic. I especially liked SUNTRAP, CHERISH and ASININE, which had me fooled for a while.
Ref comment under 23dn
The word you were looking for is syncopation, I think.
I am writing this from memory and haven’t checked.
PS
I haven’t succeeded in checking. If ‘syncopation’ is not it, will someone provide the term and put me out of misery. This thing is from my college days more than fifty years ago.
The captcha is from my pre-school days. I + ? = 2. Very relieved.
Me again.
Managed to track it down.
Quote
This wackiness of mishearings creating new words has a few different names. It’s called misdivision, metanalysis, and rebracketing ([[napron] becomes [an][apron]—the brackets have moved).
Unquote.
Rishi @3 and later
I think you were half-remembering “syncope” which, according to this Guardian article, is letters in the middle of words no longer being sounded.
Glad others liked it as much as I did. Thanks for the research, Rishi. I seem to remember that the word UMPIRE has a similar history, so I had a bit of a flirt online, and it does. From the Old French nonper, into Middle English as a noumpere, and from the 17th century on, an umpire.
As I’ve said many times before, you don’t learn stuff like that from Sudoko, do you?
I agree that this was a near perfect Quiptic. I thought that the only disappointment was the repetition (or similarity?) of GRADUATED and GRAD in 17a and 18d.
My favourite was 3d.
Thanks Moley and Pierre