Guardian 26,737 / Nutmeg

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Another fine puzzle from Nutmeg, with characteristically elegant cluing and some ingenious / well-hidden definitions and great surfaces throughout. Many thanks, Nutmeg – I enjoyed it a lot.

Across

1 Pays attention to compliments (7)
REGARDS
An easy double definition to start us off

5 Criminal waits to put an end to the job (3,2,2)
SAW TO IT
Anagram [criminal] of WAITS TO

9 Blemish beneath skin of onions cut out (9)
CONTUSION
Anagram [out] of ONIONS CUT

10 Poet‘s admission to chateau denied (5)
AUDEN
Hidden in chateAU DENied

11 We’re told to put together basic bird food (4)
YOLK
Sounds like [we’re told] ‘yoke’ [put together]

12 Heralds launch report of noblemen’s overthrow (6,4)
COUNTS DOWN
A possible newspaper headline for the overthrow of noblemen

14 Bizarre sport’s body’s hiding (3,3)
FAR OUT
FA [Football Association – sports body] + ROUT [hiding]:  I was all set to ask for help in parsing WAY OUT and then the penny dropped – both Collins and Chambers give this a hyphen

15 Knock not deliberately fast (7)
RAPIDLY
RAP [knock] + IDLY [not deliberately]

16 Officer slow to check everything’s in order (7)
COLLATE
COL [Colonel – officer] + LATE [slow]

18 Gets out of limitless task nursing invalid (6)
AVOIDS
[t]AS[k] round [nursing] VOID [invalid] – lovely surface

20 One way to transcribe solo, in fact? (5,5)
TONIC SOLFA
Anagram [to transcribe] of SOLO IN FACT: another great [&littish] surface – or is it a true &lit?

21 Litre spilt by Jack’s companion carrying a can (4)
JAIL
JIL[l] [Jack’s hill-climbing partner minus l {litre}] round A – a very nicely allusive surface

24 Last of rabbits in burrow finding a place to sleep (5)
ROOST
[rabbit]S in ROOT [burrow]

25 Muckiest stones, extra black, blocking gate, regularly removed (9)
GRUBBIEST
RUBIES [stones] outside [extra] B [black] in [blocking] G[a]T[e]

26 Unfinished document about uniform put down (7)
DEFLATE
DEE[d] [unfinished document] round FLAT [uniform]

27 Sea god suppressing yen to attempt seduction (3,2,2)
TRY IT ON
TRITON [sea god] round Y [yen] – great story-telling surface, which made me laugh

 

Down

1 Hard or easy to move (5)
ROCKY
Double definition

2 Lots of nerve cells giving crew back trouble (7)
GANGLIA
GANG [crew] + a reversal [back] of AIL [trouble] – plural of ganglion

3 Family of cooks providing basis for sauce (4)
ROUX
Double definition, referring to the brothers Albert and Michel

4 Verbal gaffe that might make a trainer uncomfortable? (4,2,3,6)
SLIP OF THE TONGUE
Cryptic definition

5 Unexpected turn, as a sand flea exposes geological feature (3,7,5)
SAN ANDREAS FAULT
Anagram [unexpected] of TURN AS A SAND FLEA

6 Could cod be the answer to Bunny’s question? (5,2,3)
WHAT’S UP DOC
COD is a reversal [up] of DOC in Bugs Bunny’s catchphrase

7 Two top awards, first with no primary colour (3,4)
OLD GOLD
[g]OLD GOLD, two top awards, the first with no first [primary] letter

8 Something given by letter X, illusory, lacking force (7)
TENANCY
TEN [X] + [f]ANCY [illusory], minus f [force]

13 Where horses may run during All Saints’ Day, a North American location (4,6)
NOVIA SCOTIA
ASCOT [where horses may run] in NOV[ember] I [All Saints’ Day] + A – my favourite clue, I think

16 Progressed easily up, ignoring note provided (7)
CATERED
CA[n]TERED, progressed easily, minus n [note] – I’m not sure why ‘up’ is there

17 Fielder way past his best? (4,3)
LONG OFF
Cryptic definition

19 Terms for the regions set up by faction initially exiled (7)
DIALECT
Reversal [up] of LAID [set] + [s]ECT [faction, minus its initial letter]

22 Language giving joy, without going to extremes (5)
LATIN
[e]LATIN[g] [giving joy]

23 Follow youth leader after gong for service (4)
OBEY
Y[outh] after OBE [gong for service]

40 comments on “Guardian 26,737 / Nutmeg”

  1. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    Lovely. Particular favourites were AVOIDS (for the misleading “invalid”), JAIL, WHAT@S UP DOC, and NOVA SCOTIA. I was confused by the “up” in 16d too, and couldn’t parse FAR OUT (I thought it was a mistaken ROU in FAT for body!)

    Michel Roux Junior adds to the Roux family, Eileen.

  2. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    Lovely. Particular favourites were AVOIDS (for the misleading “invalid”), JAIL, WHAT’S UP DOC, and NOVA SCOTIA. I was confused by the “up” in 16d too, and couldn’t parse FAR OUT (I thought it was a mistaken ROU in FAT for body!)

    Michel Roux Junior adds to the Roux family, Eileen.

  3. (Sorry about that – I’ve been having difficulty logging on to this site this morning. It keeps timing out, and I thought it had done it again.)

  6. Thanks Nutmeg. I had the same trouble with FAR OUT as you, Eileen. But we should be glad this wasn’t Paul, who might have clued it as ‘Awesome gas leak overcomes the dark blues’.

  11. Thanks, Alan @9 – of course!

    I was meaning to add, in the preamble, that part of Nutmeg’s cleverness lies in the misdirection, not only of her definitions but also her apparent indicators: 9ac, ‘skin of’ suggesting deletion; 11ac, ‘report’, a homophone; 14ac, ‘hiding’, hidden answer – and 16dn, ‘up’, either a reversal, in a down clue, or an anagram.

  12. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg.

    I concur about the surface of 20, but as someone who has spent literally years of his life transcribing solos, I have to add that I would have enumerated the second word as sol-fa.

  14. brian @13

    That’s how I parsed it in the blog, except that I was taking rout and hiding both as nouns: sorry if I misled you @11 – I meant that ‘hiding’ *suggested* a hidden answer.

  15. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg
    And thanks too to Alan Swale @9 for sorting out the ‘up’. An enjoyable puzzle. Clever cluing as others have said. I don’t think I would have got some of them without the crossers but it is a crossword after all.

  16. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen (and Alan Swale @9).

    A fun puzzle, but I entered LAST LEG at first in 17d which held me up for a while (I now see LONG OFF is a cricket fielding position).

    Favourites were TRY IT ON, JAIL and AVOIDS!

  17. I was nearly misled into WAY OUT at 14a. Misdirections seem to be very much Nutmeg’s thing – like I am sure many others, the ‘up’ in 16d had me looking for a reversal, and until I came here I couldn’t parse the answer.

    One gripe: Chambers has SOL-FA only hyphenated and it’s more than arguable that the enumeration should have shown it. Maybe other sources are different. But (5,3-2) would have made 20a pretty much a write-in, or at the very least more gettable. I had looked at the anagram fodder and nothing made sense out for *O*F*, until the TONIC became obvious.

  18. For some reason I got stuck on this, and couldn’t finish about a third – the most difficult puzzle for me this year! Favourites were ROCKY, GANGLIA and LATIN. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  19. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. I too started with “way out” and had trouble parsing DIALECT and NOVA SCOTIA. I got the “off” in LONG OFF but needed help from Google to get the “long” (once again my lack of cricket terms provided an extra hurdle) and TONIC SOLFA (new to me) was last in. Lots of clever clues so great fun.

  20. I did okay until I got to the lower left. As one might expect, I cheated on LONG OFF to unblock that corner. I knew it would be a cricket fielding position, which I don’t know all that much about. So many of them (excuse the mixed sports metaphor) seem out in left field. How can you take seriously a sport that has something called “silly point,” for example? (Before you get defensive, I’m basically kidding.)

    I enjoyed the puzzle and the blog.

  21. Good. I thought the sport’s body’s was a mistake for a while, but it does work. Some defs were a bit loose for me, but this is good, and better than Nutmeg’s last one, which if I recall had a few niggles.

    HH

  22. Another polished and enjoyable puzzle from Nutmeg. Nothing too obscure, but I found this a little tricky in places, partly because of the grid. Last in was YOLK. Liked TRY IT ON and WHATS UP DOC

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

  24. mrpenney
    I think the “silly” positions (there’s silly mid-on and mid-off as well) are so called because they are so close to the bat that you would have to be silly to stand there!

  25. [I could add that the first game I played for our school 1st XI, at the end we had one wicket to take for the first win in 5 years. Everyone was round the bat. The batsman hit it at silly mid-off, where our captain was fielding. It hit his forehead and rebounded to gully where the catch was taken. He ran around the field shouting “We’ve won” with blood pouring down his face.]

  27. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

    Nutmeg is one of my favourite compilers and it’s always a pleasure for me to see her name above a grid.

    Not being a close follower of cricket, I took an early shot at ‘Last Leg’ which held me back for a while in the SW corner until suspicion aroused I removed the offending letters and was able to progress.

    My favourite was ‘WHATS UP DOC’ and LOI was DIALECT

  29. Pretty straightforward although I struggled with JAIL. I couldn’t sort out that Jack’s partner was Jill! Deprived childhood I expect. Both DIALECT and YOLK took some time to get too,despite both being well clued.
    Otherwise this was lovely.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

  30. My reading of 12a was that COUNTS DOWN = heralds the launch of a space shot as in “5 4 3 2 1 we have lift off”.

  31. jeceris @30

    I agree: in the blog, I underlined ‘heralds launch’ as the definition – and then tried to explain the wordplay.

  32. Unfortunately I missed all the wonderful misdirection and finely honed clues as I found this almost a write in.

    I was only briefly held up by YOLK and DIALECT.

    Looking back I can see that the puzzle is well clued but the wordplay was so obvious in most cases that the misdirection was a waste of time.

    I agree with HH that a few of the definitions were a little loose.

    This would probably have been more of a challenge if the two long down clues (4 & 5) hadn’t been so ridiculously easy. Combined with the a few other strategic easy clues this gave the solver too much of a “leg-up”.

    Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg

  33. BNTO @ 32 – Yes, I also found the long down clues ridiculously easy and thought the whole thing was going to be a doddle, but unlike you I was gravely mistaken! As I said above, for me it had the most unsolved clues by far in any puzzle I’ve done this year. It seems I wasn’t on Nutmeg’s wavelength.

  34. 4D held me up for ages because a trainer is not a shoe in my vocab. OK, I’m old, so bury me.

    Loved WHAT’S UP DOC

  36. For me this was a tough Nutmeg – releasing its flavours slowly – I needed a good night’s sleep before entering the final two. Also difficulty parsing one or two, so, thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  37. ‘Stupid mid-off’ and ‘What’s the Point’ might be better names for those poor fielders. i always prefeered being stationed at lonf off or deep square leg where I could have a fag and a glass of wine on the go between deliveries . . .

  39. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg.

    Thankfully not too testing for me to do on the Friday evening train home after a punishing week.

    Made life hard for myself by writing HOTEL at 24ac – don’t ask – and needed your help to parse 16dn because of the ‘up’.

    I did think JAIL was particularly clever.

  40. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    Did do this one last week and only got around to the final parsing run through and check off today. Was another who initially had WAY OUT entered at 14a – ended up looking at a Word Finder for alternatives when I couldn’t make WAY OUT work.

    Got the two long down clues early on, but still had a lot of work to get the rest of it out. Very pleasant work, though !!

    Finished up on the NW corner with CONTUSION, YOLK (clever) and ROUX (which I had to look up) the last few in.

    Lots to enjoy as is the norm with this setter.

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