A gentle saunter from Nutmeg today with nothing to frighten the horses (and nothing much for me to say about it). No obscure words, no convoluted wordplay, just a straightforward and pleasant solve.
Across
1 Most of group left in care, causing local irritation (9)
CARBUNCLE – BUNC[h] (most of group) L (left) in CARE
6 Get to eat out with head of firm (5)
FETCH – F[irm] (head of firm) ETCH (to eat out)
9 Advanced Guardian leader penned by a couple of journalists (5)
EDGED – G[uardian] (Guardian leader) in (penned by) ED ED (a couple of journalists)
10 Union engaged in similar outlandish adherence to form (9)
RITUALISM – TU (union) in (engaged in) an anagram (outlandish) of SIMILAR
11 Is rent scam their undoing? (10)
MISCREANTS – an anagram (their undoing) of IS RENT SCAM &lit
12 No pressure to maintain large part of boat (4)
KEEL – KEE[p] (no pressure to maintain) L (large)
14 Perish in passage, a nasty way to die (7)
GAROTTE – ROT (perish) in GATE (passage)
15 Play part on cross in cathedral? That’s right (7)
EXACTLY – X (cross) ACT (play part) in ELY (cathedral)
17 Good man churlishly giving up last dessert (7)
STRUDEL – ST (good man) RUDEL[y] (churlishly giving up last)
19 Too frank, essentially: he didn’t get a place (4-3)
ALSO-RAN – ALSO (too) [f]RAN[k] (frank, essentially)
20 Backward country’s government relinquished control (4)
REIN – NI[g]ER (country’s government relinquished) reversed (backward)
22 I lend an ear, desperate to get a booster (10)
ADRENALINE – an anagram (desperate) of I LEND AN EAR
25 Post Office admitting stolen figure’s a facsimile (9)
PHOTOSTAT – PO (Post Office) around (admitting) HOT (stolen) plus STAT (figure)
26 On reduction of toll, tenor went on a bender (5)
KNELT – KNEL[l] (reduction of toll) T (tenor)
27 Jerseys may be kept here, we’re told, for customer (5)
BUYER – sounds like (we’re told) ‘byre’ (Jerseys may be kept here)
28 The Parisian stopping goals needs cunning all the time (9)
ENDLESSLY – LE (the Parisian) in (stopping) ENDS (goals) SLY (cunning)
Down
1 Terrific comic, not second best (5)
CREAM – [s]CREAM (terrific comic, not second)
2 Medic thrust end of stretcher into lift (9)
REGISTRAR – GIST (thrust) [stretche]R (end of stretcher) in (into) REAR (lift)
3 Subject to schoolwork, he may get the chance to go on (10)
UNDERSTUDY – UNDER (subject to) STUDY (schoolwork)
4 Air coming up through middle buttonhole, perhaps (7)
CORSAGE – GAS (air) reversed (coming up) in (through) CORE (middle)
5 Informally christen unbeliever heading off round Thailand (7)
ENTITLE – [g]ENTILE (unbeliever heading off) round T (Thailand)
6 KO said to cause fracture (4)
FLAW – sounds like (said) ‘floor’ (KO)
7 Ringer gets end of bell-rope in a tangle (5)
TWINE – TWIN (ringer) [bell-rop]E (end of bell-rope)
8 Like the Yeti greeting someone from further east? (9)
HIMALAYAN – HI (greeting) MALAYAN (someone from further east)
13 Decrepit sheep has to hobble (10)
RAMSHACKLE – RAM (sheep) SHACKLE (to hobble)
14 Elite eatery brought up posh wines in container (9)
GASTROPUB – U (posh) PORTS (wines) in BAG (container) reversed (brought up)
16 Fish first to sink to the bottom after time delay (9)
TARDINESS – T (time) SARDINES (fish) with the initial S moved to the end (first to sink to the bottom)
18 Unorthodox young lady‘s announcement’s in character, almost (7)
LADETTE – AD (announcement) in LETTE[r] (character, almost)
19 Vigilante extremists blocking rum trade warded off (7)
AVERTED – V[igilant]E (vigilante extremists) in (blocking) an anagram (rum) of TRADE
21 Four lines written about ordinary 1 down (5)
IVORY – IV (four) RY (lines) around (about) O (ordinary)
23 Posh folk with no capital coming in (5)
ENTRY – [g]ENTRY (posh folk with no capital)
24 Excursion to game taken up (4)
TOUR – TO RU (game) reversed (taken up)
“Gentle” and “pleasant” describe this puzzle perfectly, Gaufrid. Thank you for the blog.
1ac & 8d were my favourites today. Thank you, Nutmeg.
Thanks, Gaufrid and Nutmeg. I agree with JuneG’s comment.
My own favourites were REGISTRAR, GASTROPUB and, especially, TARDINESS.
Thanks Nutmeg and Gaufrid
Not one of Nutmeg’s best, I thought (though she sets a high standard). I cheated FLAW (it’s not a homophone of “floor” for me!) and didn’t parse CREAM or TARDINESS.
In what sense is REAR “lift”?
A GASTROPUB is hardly an “elite eatery”, but, much to my surprise, I found “heathen or pagan” in Chambers for “gentile” – I thought it just meant “non-Jew”.
Favourite was KNELT.
muffin
“In what sense is REAR “lift”?”
Two excerpts from Chambers: “to raise, cause or help to rise”, “to lift up or off”.
Thanks Gaufrid. I wouldn’t use it in that sense – I can’t think of a sentence in which it would be the best word to use.
It may not have been top on the toughometer but it scored maximum for elegant cluing-a thing of beauty.
Thanks for the puzzle and blog. I know that it’s listed as a synonym in dictionaries but is ‘tardiness’ actually the same as ‘delay’? I can’t think of a sense when the two could be interchangeable. You might say ‘the rain caused a delay’ but not…….? Surely a ‘delay’ [time period] is a result of ‘tardiness’ [fact/quality] so you’d say ‘my tardiness caused the delay’.
muffin @5, I quite often see it used when something unpleasant “rears its ugly head”.
Good one, Cyborg – I’m convinced.
Very nice puzzle. Favourites were KNELT, FETCH, STRUDEL and TARDINESS. Only query was that I thought ENTITLE a bit loose for ‘informally christen’. Got rather delayed by trying to find an anagram of ‘sheep has to’ for ‘hobble’. Many thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
Thanks Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
A most enjoyable puzzle with many lovely clues, MISCREANTS, TARDINESS, REGISTRAR, RAMSHACKLE, UNDERSTUDY, HIMALAYAN and I could go on.
I liked this one but found it much harder going than everyone else – definitely pleasant but not so straightforward. I was stymied in the NE corner by ‘eat out’ in 6a and ‘Ringer’ in 7 and FLAW was therefore my last in. Other clues such as CARBUNCLE and GASTROPUB weren’t obvious either. ‘Went on a bender’ as the def. for KNELT was good, as was the image conjured up by a ‘Decrepit sheep’ in 13.
Thank you to Nutmeg and Gaufrid
Nutmeg is becoming one of my favourite setters – no fireworks here but plenty of gentle misdirection. CORSAGE was last in.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
Muffin @3: I agree with you regarding FLAW/FLOOR. It was my LOI. Rhoticism rears its ugly head once again. I wonder how many solvers outside the Home Counties are annoyed by this sort of thing. On the other hand BUYER/BIRE didn’t bother me.
Aside from that, a good puzzle overall.
WordPlodder@12: Thank goodness someone else found it tricky! The NE corner got me too. All perfectly fair in retrospect, but I doubt I’d ever have thought of ‘etch’ for ‘eat out’. I will in future though. And the clue for TWINE is really nice.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
poc@14: I’m from the west of Scotland (Gourock), so ‘flaw’ and ‘floor’ are far from homonyms for me. However, it would be a shame if homonym clues were somehow barred just because we all have different accents. Occasionally, I’ve seen setters hinting at a particular accent for a homonym. If there’s no hint, I just assume it’s an AR accent. (Angela Rippon)
I liked the ingenious wordplay in GASTROPUB and like drofle fell for what looked like an anagram indicator (decrepit) and tried to make “sheep has to” into something that meant “hobble”. Loved it when a crosser or two pointed the way to one of my favorite words.
Really liked this – probably the quickest we’ve ever completed one! Didn’t have a problem with FLAW/FLOOR, but we’re Mancs so I guess the accent thing didn’t ~floor~ us, or indeed, create a ~flaw~…!!! (Oh gosh, can’t believe I just said that, sorry!!!)
Only thing that confused us was ETCH: to eat out??? Didn’t prevent us getting the answer, or indeed the parsing, but I still don’t really get it… Can anyone help?!! Thanks Nutmeg & Gaufrid – really enjoyed this! 🙂
Or is ‘out’ the indicator of position & it’s just ETCH: to eat??? Still a bit stumped!!!
WordPlodder @12, SeanDimly @15, let’s make it three! I took this at average speed, not quickly, until a delay in the NE and its near-neighbour, CORSAGE – for what it’s worth, this is an unfamiliar word for me, though I could guess what was going on.
LilSho @ 18 & 19
From Chambers under ‘etch’ – “to design on metal, glass, etc by eating out the lines with an acid”.
A flaw is a defect not a fracture so the clue is wrong or at best misleading.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid. I too had some difficulties here, in part because LADETTE and REGISTRAR (in the medical sense) were new to me but also because of the (clever) clues for REIN, KEEP, and KNELT. Lots of fun once I caught on.
Gave up on FLAW, loved HIMALAYAN. All in all, lots of delightful fun.
This was not quite like the last Nutmeg I solved, which I praised for the precision in both wordplay and definition. It’s only in the definitions department that I have any quibbles with the puzzle today.
I left three words unsolved in the NE corner: FETCH, FLAW and TWINE. I didn’t know ‘etch’ meant eat out, or ‘flaw’ meant fracture or ‘twine’ meant tangle (or entwine, presumably). I put these down to my own ignorance, and I’m sure these can all be justified with the right dictionaries around you. There were a couple of other minor quibbles, but they have been commented on already.
I’m no good at homophones, so that made 6D (FLAW) extra hard, but I was chuffed to get 27A (BUYER) (a homophone of ‘byre’) straight away in a blank grid!
This wasn’t a ‘gentle saunter’ for me, Gaufrid, as I found it a bit of a challenge, but it was all the more enjoyable for that, and I compliment the setter again on the trouble she evidently takes with clue construction and wordplay. The only weak clue, I thought, was 20A (REIN), and my favourites were 2D (REGISTRAR), 21D (IVORY) and 15A (EXACTLY).
… also, my thanks to both Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
I think cause is part of the definition of fracture – still a bit loose but to me that makes more sense since a flaw can cause a fracture…
I meant “cause is part of the definition of flaw”
beery hiker
Yes, a flaw can cause a fracture – but it might not. (And of course ’cause fracture’ is not a definition of flaw.) A definition like ‘something that could cause a fracture’ is sound but hardly what the setter would have wanted!
Interpreting ’cause’ as a filler (which I did after trying other ways to read the clue), I thought the answer must mean ‘fracture’ – hence my earlier comment and hence my puzzlement.
I think this is why I can sometimes complete more difficult puzzles but not the easier ones!
I can’t say I liked this much. Like some others I got stuck on the NE corner- FLAW was my LOI- but I found most of the rest of it hard going as well.
Not a satisfying solve for me
Still, thanks Nutmeg.
Alan Browne @25
As Gaufrid’s blog suggests, I think TWINE and TANGLE are synonyms as nouns here, otherwise the presence of the article in the clue is a bit problematic. I was unfamiliar with that meaning of the word, but it’s confirmed by Collins online (and probably others).
Thanks phitonelly.
I tried this as a noun and as a verb (and I agree it ought to be a noun because of the article), but, given ‘tangle’ and not yet having the answer, I couldn’t find any word with that meaning that would go in the grid. A search after the event would indeed find it if it is valid, and I accept it. I just didn’t know this meaning of twine.
My real problem was not getting FETCH, which I would have got on a better day (but again, I had a problem with the meaning of ‘etch’ and I still do). Given FETCH, my other two missing words (FLAW and TWINE) would have been easy too.
Some nice clues – Himalayan was particularly satisfying.
Some of the single letter parts of the wordplay were less so: I know it’s quite commonly used in cryptics, but I’ve never really been convinced that T is a standard abbreviation for time (yes ok it’s part of GMT etc but still…) T being clued as Thailand also seems a bit iffy to me? Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh.
Pedrox
Good point about ‘standard’ abbreviations – or not!
I’m sure ‘t’ for time is standard now – it is in my two dictionaries and probably in all of them.
As for Thailand, T is its IVR (International Vehicle Registration) and ‘th’ its Internet domain name. These are all fair game in crosswordland, and we have to get used to them!
Hi Alan,
Yes, sadly, I think you’re right. (Still, I do prefer clues that work without too many specialist “crosswordland” conventions.)
Wot WordPlodder, SeanDimly, Trailman and Peter@30 said
Thanks Gaufrid and Nutmeg
Wow – a gentle saunter?! One long, hard slog for me, and ending in defeat. Some of the parsing seemed tenuous to me, in both the ones I initially guessed at that turned out to be correct, and also the ones for which I had to rely on Gaufrid to explain. Didn’t enjoy this much, and that’s not because I found it difficult (not an uncommon occurrence). For me, some of the clueing just didn’t sit well. It must be me, because everybody else can’t be wrong. Maybe just having a dumb day.
I found this a pleasant solve although I did get held up in the NE corner mainly due to my own stupidity. (I won’t go into details for shame 😉 )
Just for those discussing the flaw/fracture issue the SOED has
flaw
…
5 A crack, fissure, or breach. e17.
Swift He that would keep his house in repair, must attend every little breach or flaw.
…
Thanks to Gaufrid and Nutmeg
Gaufrid @21
Sorry I missed your post @21 regarding ‘etch’ in 6A, where you quoted Chambers’ definition – I missed it on my first read through and therefore didn’t refer to it when commenting on this clue earlier.
As you said, the Chambers entry says ‘etch’ – “to design on metal, glass, etc by eating out the lines with an acid”.
However, Chambers seems to be using a phrase here – ‘eat out’ – that is in the dictionary but not with this meaning! ‘Eat out’, according to Chambers, means ‘have a meal away from home’ or ‘encroach upon’. ‘Eat away’ would seem to be the right phrase to use in the definition of ‘etch’. ‘Eat out’ even sounds wrong. I think Nutmeg must have used Chambers to help with this clue!
Thanks Brendan @38
I just knew somebody would find a dictionary entry somewhere that would have something similar to ‘fracture’ in its definition for ‘flaw’!
As I said earlier, it’s mainly my own ignorance that held me up in the NE corner.
I completed this but it was more of a chore than a pleasure. There were too many clues where you had to guess a word then subtract a letter. An example is 20a which would be impossible without the crossers. How many 5 letter countries are there? “Rule (reign) without government control” would have been fairer.
I, too, found this harder than some – not my favourite way of cluing – I prefer word games rather than missing letter games, if you see what I mean – I did like TARDINESS (LOI)
Thanks to Gaufrid & Nutmeg
As another who didn’t find it “a gentle saunter”, I got most of the left half fairly easily but had to work quite hard for the right half. I got it all in the end except that I failed to parse REGISTRAR, even though I did think of GIST at one point. FLAW and BUYER didn’t bother me as I’ve accepted that in cryptics variants of “sounds like” refer to near-homophones, not exact ones. I think British solvers, at least, should be familiar enough with RP and traditional BBC accents (and AR too, as SeanDimly put it @16) to be able to solve such clues.
Favourites were HIMALAYAN and (once I realised that “decrepit” wasn’t an anagrind) RAMSHACKLE.
Thanks, Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
jennyk
You may not see this, but never mind.
I enjoyed reading your comment @43, especially your common-sense view on sound-alikes. I agree totally. I just wish I had the ability to call to mind pairs of sound-alikes given hints (as in crosswords) of what the two words mean. I’m very poor at that, in complete contrast to homonyms: when I see ‘resort’ in a clue, for example, I tend to see the two senses immediately, even where the context is (deliberately) misleading. That’s not down to just reading ability but crossword training as well! With sound-alikes I have a mental block, which is why, for me, getting BUYER so quickly was a godsend (it helped that whole corner).
By the way, in my speech FLAW and FLOOR are homophones, as are BYRE and BUYER.
Also by the way, I meant to add RAMSHACKLE to my list of favourites too – a neat clue.
Alan Browne @44
Thank you for your response. When I have time, I tend to check these blogs at least daily until there have been no new comments for 24 hours.
When I wrote “should”, I didn’t mean that all Brits should be able to solve those clues, just that their personal accents shouldn’t be the major barrier. I certainly don’t always see ‘sound alikes’ quickly or easily. BUYER took me quite a while because “byre” didn’t immediately spring to mind as the place to keep cattle, but not being exact homophones for me (not even the same number of syllables) wasn’t a factor.
Thanks all
I failed to solve flaw,true it is a very inaccurate homonym for me but the problem was compounded because I do not equate flaw with fracture. The latter is much more damaging and obvious.
Last in was twine,
Sorry, I meant homophone!
jennyk @45
I don’t wish to extend this duologue unnecessarily, or keep troubling Gaufrid(!), but I wanted to thank you for your reply and say that I understood you perfectly. I realised what you meant by “should”.
It’s not my personal accent (plain SE) that is a barrier – it’s my synapses! I have very little recall of pairs of sound-alikes. True homophones are easier (like FLAW and FLOOR for me), but near-homophones have to be formally announced to me before they register. (Don’t take that too literally.)
Mercifully, sound-alikes that are not homophones are rare in cryptic crosswords.
Thanks Gaufrid and Nutmeg.
A steady plod for me too I’m afraid and I was ultimately floored by the sixes. 6ac had to be CATCH or FETCH but I wondered if 6dn could be an obscure pronunciation of CIAO – fracture as in split/part.
Probably just tired at the end of another slog of a day.
I did like STRUDEL though. I wonder what m’em sahib has planned for dinner?
Thanks Nutmeg and Gaufrid
Did this one near publish date but only got around to checking it off tonight.
Didn’t find it as easy as the first half of posters nor as hard as the latter half. I did note the multitude of clues making use of single letters – some 13 clues … and more where it played with 2-letter adds / subtracts. Chifonie is the only other setter that would go close to that …
Still, there was a lot of nice stuff going on here – such as HIMALAYAN, REGISTRAR and GASTROPUB.
Finished like many others in the NE corner with TWINE, FETCH and FLAW the last few in.
How strange, Bruce. I also checked this off here in Istanbul today, 10th April – 12th anniversary since my Dad died. I am a long-time reader, and occasional commenter. All the best.
Hi Rob
It is coincidental isn’t it … how a puzzle set nearly 6 weeks ago could bring someone from Turkey and someone from Australia to the same page of a web site based in England … :).
… I lost my dad later, in the September of that same year.
Warmest regards to you too … 🙂