As usual an expectedly difficult but good crossword from Monk. Most of the answers seemed fairly obvious after the event; it was just that they were so hard to see in the first place. Perhaps this is because of the high proportion of the definitions that are single words, making it hard to isolate them.
One can criticise the grid for a number of reasons, although it is a standard one that is often used by setters: it doesn’t allow for much of a range of answer-lengths (they are all 5, 6, 7 or 8 letters); four of the answers have less than 50% checking, something that I know doesn’t bother everyone but I don’t like it; and very quickly you end up doing a number of separate little puzzles.
Down the right-hand column of unches is the word ENDINGS. Is this all? Probably more, but I can’t see it.
| Across | ||
| 6 | COQUETTE |
Right out of potato cake? Get mash (8)
c{r}oquette — yes coquette = mash, it’s there in Chambers |
| 8 | AROUSE |
Evoke a flower in Yorkshire (6)
a R. Ouse — flower = flow-er |
| 10 | BEDLAM |
Lads regularly getting round in bar, causing pandemonium (6) (L{a}d{s})rev. in beam |
| 11 | DEMIJOHN |
Knocked back medium can, having consumed one bottle (8)
(med.)rev. john [= can] round 1 |
| 12 | NAPOLEON |
Emperor in north cut off, retreating after a long time (8)
N a (lop)rev. eon |
| 13 | TONKED |
Struck by flyweight after swapping sides? (6)
fly = ked, ton = weight, so flyweight = kedton and if the two syllables are reversed you get tonked — not all crosswords would allow ‘flyweight’ to = ‘fly weight’ but the Indy does and it doesn’t worry me, although I know it does some |
| 14 | INFERNO |
Just after turning back, first arrive at hell (7)
(on [= just after])rev. with, first, infer [= arrive at] |
| 17 | RAVIOLI |
Run garlic sauce around very small pasta (7)
r a(v)ioli |
| 20 | HAMMER |
Bone meat and cut nothing more (6)
ham mer{e} |
| 22 | UNBUTTON |
Relax strike in disheartened association (8)
butt in un{i}on |
| 25 | LAWSUITS |
Cases girl mostly going round with diamonds, say (8) la(w suit)s{s} |
| 26 | SPRING |
Economical, suppressing a rise (6)
sp{a}ring |
| 27 | NAPLES |
Poles eating cored fruit in port (6)
NS round ap{p}le |
| 28 | ANDROIDS |
Radio broadcast about new, extremely devious robots (8)
n in (radio)* d{eviou}s |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BULLDOZE |
Intimidate tormentor, not unknown to go off (8)
bull{y} doze |
| 2 | STYMIE |
Using pen, setter reported snooker? (6)
sty “me” |
| 3 | READING |
University study (7) 2 defs |
| 4 | DALMATIA |
Help housing company in Detroit for backing old region (8)
(ai(Tamla)d)rev. — Tamla Motown |
| 5 | DONJON |
Keep scholar’s book (6)
don Jon. — keep as in tower — Jon. = Jonah, the book of the Bible |
| 7 | OPERA |
Works round problems, primarily given time (5)
O p{roblems} era |
| 9 | SCHNELL |
Schoolgirl interpreted so quickly in Berlin (7)
sch Nell — I’m not sure if ‘interpreted so’ is part of the definition or if it’s because again we have the AB = A B thing that we had in 13ac — or perhaps it’s just so that the surface makes some sort of sense — or again perhaps it’s because schnell is a translation [= interpretation] of quickly |
| 15 | NIAGARA |
Reach up above aerial, oddly a long drop from here? (7)
(gain)rev. a{e}r{i}a{l} |
| 16 | NARCISSI |
Flowers, ones thus having managed to climb (8)
(1’s sic ran)rev. |
| 18 | INTERCOM |
Temporary officer replacing a single means of exchange? (8)
interim with the second i replaced by CO |
| 19 | OUTSPAN |
Remove harness from stunned couple (7)
out [= stunned] span [= couple] |
| 21 | MYSELF |
One to one at Buck House? (6) I need help here I think: it seems to be suggesting that those at Buck House, i.e. the Royal Family, say ‘myself’ when they mean ‘I’. But do they? I thought that it was the self-aggrandizing who use ‘myself’ in this way. |
| 23 | BESIDE |
Overlooking chap bitten by insect (6)
be(Sid)e — presumably by ‘bitten’ Monk is saying ‘goes round’, as one’s upper and lower jaws go round somtheing they bite; but it can also be interpreted the other way round I think: a gnat that bites us is in a sense insinuating itself into the body |
| 24 | OWNED |
Had expressed disapproval following father’s departure (5) {fr}owned |
This was much too hard for me: I had one answer after puzzling over all the clues. Looking at the clues again they still seem too hard; the profusion of obscure words didn’t help. And I prefer the old principle of ‘easy clues for difficult words’, which would mean not using the obscure KED to clue the equally unfamiliar TONKED, or TAMLA in DALMATIA, or the indirect JON for ‘book’ in DONJON.
On MYSELF, I guess the def is supposed to be ‘one to one’ (i.e. to oneself, one is ‘myself’), with some vague connection with the idea that the royals use ‘one’ to mean ‘me’.
Re myself, it’s that the royals refer to themselves as “one”. To one at Buck House, “myself ” is “one”. Hard but fair overall, I thought.
There’s “FINEM” along the bottom too.
Any puzzle requiring knowledge of the parasites of sheep gets the thumbs down from me. Much too hard for me, even though I managed about a third of it before deciding life is too short. I can’t think of a sentence where on = just after, so didn’t understand 14A, as one example of of my failure to engage.
Sorry to be grumpy, but this puzzle seemed to like itself more than I did, though I appreciate others do relish this sort of challenge.
Thanks to John for the blog.
Not my favourite puzzle. I wasted a lot of time looking for answers that would make something sensible out of the top and left unches – other words for ‘endings’, maybe, or perhaps ‘beginnings’.
But thanks, John, for the blog.
Sorry Monk, you had more than my three goes but I didn’t get very far at all with this one.
Thanks to you for the extreme challenge and to John for the blog
@3
I’ve seen on=just after in other crosswords. An example might be “On hearing he’d been reelected he removed the pig and got back to dismantling the public sector”.
I had one fewer answer than Mr A Writinghawk.
I agree that this was a difficult puzzle (but I always find Monk very testing). I enjoyed the first four across clues, then floundered, even thinking ‘donjon’ to be a quaint styling of Don Juan!! Thanks to both (especially blogger!).
Finishing a Monk always puts me in a good mood so you can probably hear me purring at the moment. I just think of the most obscure alternatives for the words in the clue like mash=coquette, fly=ked or bone=hammer and it seems to work. I was a bit put out by the German word Schnell but I see that it is in Chambers so I withdraw my complaint.
John, I fully support your campaign against answers that have less than 50% checking. Usually setters provide the extra checking by having a nina all around the periphery but not today, unless we are all missing something.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who found this v. tough. Missed out on 5 clues after struggling for hours. Still, no complaints from me – a few mini-victories along the way and some interesting new words despite failing in the end.
Thank you to Monk and John
Struck me that the setter has the completest ever thesaurus and wanted to show it off. Not my conacle of bing.
Very tough for me, and having seen the answers and other solvers’ comments I’m now quite pleased to have got within 4 clues of finishing, so thanks to both setter and blogger.
We seem to be just an X short of a pangram. Curious that he should miss by so little, unless it’s just coincidence.
Difficult yes and we wouldn’t have completed it without the check button and a few word searches. We should have trusted our first guess on a couple of occasions. It was only after a word search that we bothered to check some definitions and were able to deduce the parsings.
However, we had two brains which perhaps enabled us to enjoy the challenge more than others if the previous comments are anything to go by.
Thanks to Monk and John.
Another one defeated here. Got maybe half a dozen answers I was sure of and a couple more guesses that turned out to be correct.
I initially put TANNED and didn’t get the success message, and had no idea why I did get it when I guessed TONKED as a second choice, not having known KED. I was expecting more of a nina, which meant that I treated a number of answers as very suspect because they wouldn’t nina-ise, as ’twere, until I worked out that it was only the RHS. Otherwise it was a very precise and logical solve with all the little gears and mechanisms turning sweetly in harmony.
I parsed “cut nothing more” as MORE – O.
I’d also take issue with the blog’s idea that you could use “A bitten by B” to mean “B inside A” – I can’t see how it can really be other than “B outside A”.
Thanks to all for comments and to John for blog. Surprised that this caused so much trouble: apart from DONJON (pretty well known in Cruciverbia), the vocab is not obscure, and nothing was flagged at the editing stage about clues (some of which were altered) being too complex or difficult. There was additionally a sizeable Nina which seems to have been missed, despite a partial sighting by Herb@2. I hasten to add that it was not necessary to see the Nina to solve the puzzle.
Looking in out of curiosity and taking up Monk’s challenge @16 I see RESPICE on row 13 of the grid, which presumably forms a phrase with FINEM (“respect the end” is probably not the best translation). As well as ENDINGS identified by John in the final column, there is also TOOT in column 7, but that may well be coincidence.
Respice finem; look to the end (Chambers appendix, foreign quotes and phrases). Hence E/N/D/I/N/G/S in the final unches of each row.