A tough puzzle. As the minutes ticked by I was worried that my attempt to solve and blog this might turn out an embarrassing failure, but in the end there is only one that I can’t fully explain. Thank you Loroso. Enjoyable in retrospect!
| Across | ||
| 1 | ATOMISED | Made it so terrible to be nuked (8) |
| (MADE IT SO)* anagram=terrible | ||
| 6 | MORTAL | Killing time, just about (6) |
| T (time) inside (with…about) MORAL (just) | ||
| 9 | BELLOC | Call only child a poet (6) |
| BELL (call) O (only) C (child) | ||
| 10 | STAMP OUT | A politician into drink – Scotch (5,3) |
| A MP (politician) in STOUT (drink) | ||
| 11 | EMISSARIES | Agents from Spain fail to seize house (10) |
| E (Spain) MISS (fail to seize) ARIES (house, of the zodiac) | ||
| 12 | INDY | Motorsport almost dying out (4) |
| amagram (out) of DYINg (almost) | ||
| 13 | INNATE | Natural part of 8, say (6) |
| sounds (say) like “in eight” (part of 8) | ||
| 15 | LIP BALMS | I’ll take lead in small plastic trap preparations (3,5) |
| I with PB (Pb, lead) in SMALL* anagram=plastic | ||
| 18 | PALMETTO | China police turn over plant (8) |
| PAL (china, rhyming slang) MET (police) T (turn) O (over) | ||
| 20 | MODENA | Instant retreat to a part of Italy (6) |
| MO (instant) DEN (retreat) with A | ||
| 21 | FRAU | Mostly cheating wife (4) |
| FRAUd (cheating, mostly) | ||
| 23 | CUTTLEFISH | This FT clue troubles user of black ink? (10) |
| anagram (troubles) of THIS FT CLUE | ||
| 25 | TV DINNER | One from the set menu? (2,6) |
| cryptic definition | ||
| 26 | EARFUL | Failure to drop one off results in 7 (6) |
| anagram (results in) of FAiLURE missing I (one) | ||
| 27 | CLASSY | Fine soil covering a pair of spades (6) |
| CLAY (soil) contains (covering) S S (Spades, twice) | ||
| 28 | PATHOGEN | Old info on way to produce virus (8) |
| O (old) GEN (info) following (on) PATH (way) | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | THEOMANIA | Religious extremism of the Middle Eastern area (9) |
| THE with OMANI (middle eastern) and A (area) | ||
| 3 | MILES | Very much energy put into little climbing (5) |
| E (energy) in SLIM (little) reversed (climbing) | ||
| 4 | SACRAMENT | Order issued to restrain a crowd (9) |
| SENT (issued) contains (to restrain) A CRAM (crowd) | ||
| 5 | DISTILL | Initially, don’t insert but extract (7) |
| Don’t Insert (initial letters of) and STILL (but) | ||
| 6 | MEANS | Income is important (5) |
| 7 | REPRIMAND | Space station for one going up with rocket? (9) |
| MIR (space station) PER (for one) reversed then AND (with) | ||
| 8 | AGUED | Shivering in old nursing uniform (5) |
| AGED (old) contains (nursing) U (uniform) | ||
| 14 | ARMOURIES | They supply our occupying forces (9) |
| OUR inside (occupying) ARMIES (forces) | ||
| 16 | PIMPLIEST | Most spotted point that suggests cuts (9) |
| PT (point) contains (that…cuts) IMPLIES (suggests) | ||
| 17 | MINUSCULE | Wee – awful clue (9) |
| MINUS (-) and CLUE* anagram=awful | ||
| 19 | OUTCROP | Edge of flowering fruits? (7) |
| OUT (flowering) CROP (fruits) | ||
| 22 | RIVAL | Fight against entering Iranian capital (5) |
| V (versus, against) in RIAL (Iranian capital, currency) | ||
| 23 | CANDY | Sweet tin deliberately emptied (5) |
| CAN (tin) DeliberatelY (emptied, no middle letters) | ||
| 24 | FARGO | US city provides much work (5) |
| FAR (much) and GO (work) | ||
*anagram
definitions are underlined
Yes, very tough but I got there finally, LOI 2d.
Re 6d we can talk about someone being a person of means ie. importance.
Thanks to setter and blogger both.
If the clue for MEANS is a double definition then one definition for MEANS would be “income” in the sense of “earned money” and the other would be “important” in the sense of “owned money”. These seem barely different to me.
Also “of means” and “of importance” are equivalent, but I’m not convinced that “important” and “means” are equivalent.
I confess this one defeated me but was a tour de force. Well done, PeeDee — and I agree with your scepticism about MEANS. Great puzzle, Loroso — you don’t normally force me into submission.
Great puzzle- like most from this chap- scratching head for ages until the eureka moment esp in NW corner. Then in retrospect- what was the fuss about?
Many thanks to blog in particular for the minus in minuscule ( I think I spelt it wrongly-miniscule!)
Thanks, PeeDee – and congratulations: I can imagine your rising panic! 😉
I was getting practically nowhere with this, so went off to do something different. I came back to it over my lunchtime sandwich and, slowly, answers started dropping in, with many an aha or grr!
Too many favourites to list, as usual with this top setter.
Re 6dn: Chambers has “mean: [with much, little, etc] to be of much, little importance [with to]” – as in ‘This means a lot to me’?
I took ‘trap’ as being part of the definition in 15ac.
Brilliant stuff, Loroso – many thanks.
Thanks Eileen – I overlooked ‘trap’ in the blog. Trap=mouth, very clever!
I think it is the [with to] bit of the definition that I am stumbling on. All the examples I can think of involve adding some extra words to ‘means’ to get it to mean ‘important’ or ‘is important’.
I didn’t have time to look up Collins before going out. It gives:
“mean: to have the importance of: money means nothing to him” – which is perhaps a bit nearer, I think.
I think there is some grammatical mismatch that I cannot get my head around. Sorry for being dim. Eileen, you are knowledgeable in this area, please can you help me out?
I can see that “Money means nothing to him” = “Money (has the importance of)nothing to him”.
But substitute “is important”: Money (is important) nothing to him. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
“has the importance of” and “is important” seem grammatically different to me, but I can’t explain why.
You are not being dim, PeeDee – I agree with you. That’s why I quoted the dictionaries, to see what you made of them.
Thank you Eileen for putting my mind at rest.
I realise what is bothering me now: one is a comparison of two things “money means everything”, the other is a simple statement “money is important“
Thanks Loroso and PeeDee
6dn: I took the second definition as being along the lines of “means” = “is meaningful” = “is important”, but cannot quite support that from Chambers. If it works – of which I am not so sure after reading the blog and comments – then it meets my criterion for a good double definition clue, in that the first definition is mean³ and the second definition is mean¹, so we have words of different origin which have converged in spelling.
Simply marvellous.
Got it all except 2d (for which I needed help from Mrs Chambers).
Not easy, perhaps even harder than recent Anax puzzles (I think), but what a splendid example of The Dean’s tricks and treats.
It may be clear that I enjoyed it immensely.
Further to my comment @11, I think for my reading of the second definition, I need mean¹ to stand alone as an intransitive verb, which Chambers does not support.
Hi PeeDee, hi all, and thanks for your feedback. In retrospect ‘has import’/’is important’ doesn’t quite hit the mark in the way intended, but hope the rest was fun.
Thank you for dropping in anax. It certainly was fun, and would have been more so if I was not panicking about not finishing in time!
What a horrible crossword!
That’s a very useful comment, Bobby.
But is it?
Tell us why or what you actually mean.
I, for one, disagree completely with your verdict but can accept it, though only if reasons are given.
Posts like this are not in line with Fifteensquared’s policy.
Thanks Loroso and PeeDee
Didn’t get to this one during the week and only managed to start looking at it after a gorgeous morning on the beach (and a SU paddle) – found that this was a lot harder work !!! Threw pride to the wind and resorted to the electronic help much earlier on in the process than I normally would today.
Didn’t get too hung up on 6d and found in Collins:
Mean: to have the importance of , (in the context of: money means a lot to him / money has a lot of importance to him);
Maybe not exactly there, but I’ve seen a lot looser synonymic connections between words in puzzles
Didn’t see the anagram of FA[I]LURE at 26a … and I don’t know why.
Finished in the NE corner with INDY (an aha moment), AGUED (an unexpected word but clearly derived) and the very clever MORTAL as the last one in.
It is interesting seeing comments like Bobby@16 – one gets the feeling, if the going gets tough, then the puzzle ‘is horrible’ – either learn to put in more effort or walk on by (and find one that better fits your skill / effort level) would be my advice !! This certainly was not horrible.
Thanks Loroso and PeeDee.
I found this tough going.
Loroso’s style is quite different to other setters and so I never felt that I was on a roll – every answer had to be ground out and like Bruce I had to revert to electronic aids much sooner than I care to admit.
So on the whole it was mostly a series of ‘that must be it’ rather than ‘aha’ moments with a few ‘grrs’ thrown in.
I did enjoy MINUSCULE and had a mini snicker at trap for mouth in 15ac.
I took the second part of 6dn as having import so saw no problem.
In the end, my only gripe is “part” in 20ac where the answer is a city rather than an area/region surely.
Hi Hamish, Modena is a province as well as a city, see Province of Modena. I think Loroso is trying to misdirect us as Modena is probably more known by UK solvers as a city.