Monk always offers up challenging crosswords and at the end there are always a few things which one is not sure about, but as usual you will I am sure come to the rescue and I shall see how my misgivings were not in fact justified. Actually this one was less devilish than some of his, so far as I could see.
Definitions underlined and this time in maroon (except for one of them, which I forgot; I had to insert the colour by hand later and couldn’t get it to match the others).
| Across | ||
| 1 | BLOCK | Scotch beef initially put on hold – on the contrary (5) |
| b{eef} lock — I suppose that it is on the contrary because strictly speaking A on B is BA, but this accuracy isn’t always observed in the Indy anyway so one wonders why Monk has bothered | ||
| 4 | CHRISTEN | Name snitcher that’s insane (8) |
| (snitcher)* | ||
| 8 | TELEGRAM | English set about interrupting public transport message (8) |
| (E (gel)rev.) in tram | ||
| 9 | KNIGHT | Extremely thick to retreat when boxing near champion (6) |
| (t{hic}k)rev. round [= boxing] nigh | ||
| 10 | HEN-PARTIES | In which woman’s knickers may end up in a slight twist? (3-7) |
| The slight twist is the swapping of r and n in ‘her panties’, and there is some sort of &lit. action here | ||
| 11 | SINH | Speaker, incredibly, never had to open function (4) |
| S{peaker} i{nevitably} n{ever} h{ad} — a sinh is a mathematical function whose obscurity causes Monk to set a clue whose wordplay is simple | ||
| 12 | ESTOPS | Legally hinders eastern and western situations (6) |
| e (spots)rev. | ||
| 13 | SUPREMES | A well-known trio presumes otherwise (8) |
| (presumes)* — but are they really all that well-known? The use of ‘well-known’ suggests that something unusual is going on, but I can’t see anything. | ||
| 15 | SAN DIEGO | Smooth self-confidence about one in the city (3,5) |
| sand (1) ego | ||
| 18 | EXPIRE | Die upon retirement, one’s final message set in a flower (6) |
| (RIP)rev. in Exe — the river or flow-er | ||
| 20 | EGAD | Red Guard regularly purged – what a surprise (4) |
| {R}e{d} g{u}a{r}d | ||
| 22 | GIANT PANDA | Possibly bear private worker, even if in past (5,5) |
| GI ant p(and)a. — several things here that I wasn’t comfortable with: a panda is a species of bear, surely: no ‘possibly’ about it; ‘and’ = ‘even’ or ‘and’ = ‘even if”? Well possibly, but I can’t quite think how: Collins calls ‘and’ an obsolete word for ‘if’; and I couldn’t find pa. = past either in Chambers or Collins, but no doubt it’s somewhere | ||
| 23 | VIRAGO | House providing shelter for a shrew (6) |
| Vir(a)go — the sign of the zodiac being a house, and not a particular type of shrew, rather a catty and fierce woman | ||
| 24 | REPRISAL | Electoral system is stopping existing tit for tat (8) |
| re(PR is)al | ||
| 25 | EYEHOLES | Breach in European right, such as spies might employ? (8) |
| E ye(hole)s | ||
| 26 | CHESS | Relatively recent musical game (5) |
| 2 defs, the musical (‘relatively recent’ seems odd: true, I suppose, but one suspects something from it) and the game | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BREWERS | We pay them to give us a good wallop (7) |
| CD using the fact that wallop = beer | ||
| 2 | OVERPROUD | Excessively arrogant couple making comeback after too much promotion (9) |
| over PR (duo)rev. | ||
| 3 | KOREROS | More irritated, certainly about talks in NZ (7) |
| (sorer OK)rev. — obscure but in the dictionaries | ||
| 4 | COMMISSIONAIRES | Front-of-house staff mostly declared among cuts (15) |
| commission(aire{d})s — it seems to be a point of honour among setters to clue long words as pithily as possible and Monk has succeeded brilliantly here | ||
| 5 | RAKES UP | Finds inclination to drink (5,2) |
| rake sup | ||
| 6 | SPINS | Cuts back brief journeys (5) |
| (snips)rev. — but this could also be (spins)rev. and there are no checkers to tell us which is the correct one. All we can do is to get the feeling from the clue that the reversal refers to the first word and not the last two, but as those people who do competitions would say, they would challenge the umpire if they got the so-called wrong answer, with some hope of success. | ||
| 7 | ENHANCE | Increase endless possibilities following heartless eviction (7) |
| e{victio}n {c}hance{s} | ||
| 14 | EMPHASISE | Unfortunately, see mishap causing stress (9) |
| (see mishap)* | ||
| 16 | ANGRILY | In a bitter fashion, some carrying daughter with upset stomach (7) |
| any round girl with the stomach of girl [=ir] reversed | ||
| 17 | EGG ROLL | Chinese-American food, say, good to start (3,4) |
| eg g roll [= start, as in ‘roll the cameras’] — I can’t quite see how the American comes in: perhaps this food is eaten a lot in America as well as China | ||
| 18 | ECTOPIC | Community subject in an abnormal position (7) |
| EC topic | ||
| 19 | REDRAWS | Sod turning up following order regularly knocks up fresh bill (7) |
| {o}r{d}e{r} (sward)rev. — not absolutely clear about the definition here; something to do with bills of exchange I think | ||
| 21 | DEATH | Want to remove resistance, inviting mortality (5) |
| dea{r}th | ||
*anagram
Very nice. This being Monk, there is of course a nina.
Here’s how my morning went…
It’s Monk, & all those floating marginal lights mean there has to be a Nina…
‘SEVEN’ appears in the SW corner…
11across is surely SINE but I can’t parse it so it doesn’t go in until the ‘Aha!’ of THE SEVENTH SEAL and SINH it has to be…
Check: yup, there’s the KNIGHT, DEATH & CHESS…
But I’ve only ever heard of the hyperbolic sine in the Caltech football cheer:
‘Square root, tangent, hyperbolic sine!
3.14159!
e to the x, dy, dx!
Slide rule! Slipstick!
Tech! Tech! Tech!
Which led me into a Google-hunt to find out more about three-dimensional geometry than I wanted to know, and also back to Tom Lehrer’s ‘Bright College Days’. Crosswords, don’t you love ’em? Huge thanks to both.
There might possibly be a connection between some of the entries and the nina, or am I reading too much into it?
Thanks, Monk and John
@2 Grant: My take on the relation of some answers to the nina was different and rather more vague; but seeing yours and googling for more information I see there’s another connected answer, BLOCK. Are there any others?
I’m always looking for some sort of nina in Monk and The Seventh Seal(great film) led me to sinh- but i wasnt sure which way to dive on spins/snips- didnt affect the crossers. The NZ was unknown to me so chalk it up to Monk. Great fun as usual esp with chess, knight and death.
Thanks for blog, thanks Monk.
As someone who did maths at university level, 11ac was the easy clue today. The rest, less so. Quite a few I guessed (sometimes wrongly) and most of the top left corner is still blank. Not to my taste.
Good to get such a lot in without too many tricky words. I didn’t know KOREROS or SINH, but they were the only ones. Thanks to Grant Baynham for that rhyme – I love it!