The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26873
A puzzle squarely in my Goldilocks zone for blogging – not too difficult, but with enough substance (particularly in definitions that were not obvious) to avoid seeming a pushover.
| Across | ||
| 8 | PREACHER | Her caper corrupted minister (8) |
| An anagram (‘corrupted’) of ‘her caper’. | ||
| 9 | EXHALE | Discharge from old well (6) |
| A charade of EX (‘old’) plus HALE (‘well’). | ||
| 10 | EARL | Nobleman has yen to leave before time (4) |
| A subtraction: EARL[y] (‘before time’) less the Y (‘yen to leave’). | ||
| 11 | SWEETBREAD | Food is dear — money needed (10) |
| A charade of SWEET (‘dear’) plus BREAD (‘money’). | ||
| 12 | SHODDY | Cautious about rum that’s poor quality (6) |
| An envelope (‘about’) of ODD (‘rum’) in SHY (‘cautious’). | ||
| 14 | PROGRESS | Image-building maneater to forge ahead (8) |
| A charade of PR (‘image-building’) plus OGRESS (‘maneater’). | ||
| 15 | TRAMWAY | Force wife into river from transport system (7) |
| An envelope (‘into’) of RAM (‘force’) plus W (‘wife’) in TAY (‘river’). | ||
| 17 | STAUNCH | Check firm (7) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 20 | IMPLICIT | Spirit’s allowed? That’s understood (8) |
| A charade of IMP (‘spirit’) plus LICIT (‘allowed’). | ||
| 22 | CHERRY | Fruit for girl to shout about (6) |
| An envelope (‘about’) of HER (‘girl’) in CRY (‘shout’). Looking at the blog on the Guardian site, I see that the answer given there is a misprint. | ||
| 23 | UNATTACHED | A hunt acted badly on its own (10) |
| An anagram (‘badly’) of ‘a hunt acted’. | ||
| 24 | SHIP | Move old Bob’s joint (4) |
| A charade of S (shilling, ‘old Bob’) plus HIP (‘joint’). | ||
| 25 | RECOUP | Make good soldiers triumph (6) |
| A charade of RE (‘soldiers’) plud COUP (‘triumph’). | ||
| 26 | NATIONAL | Subject Antonia disseminated to student (8) |
| A charade of NATIONA, an anagram (‘disseminated’) of ‘Antonia’ plus L (‘student’). NATIONAL as a noun. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BREATHER | Respite for swimmer boxing soldier (8) |
| An envelope (‘boxing’) of RE (‘soldier’) in BATHER (‘swimmer’). I have argued before for RE as ‘soldier’ singular, a person in the regiment (and placed after his name e.g. Captain Francis Fowke RE), as well as plural (as in 25A RECOUP), the whole regiment. | ||
| 2 | HAUL | Drag prince round university (4) |
| An envelope (’round’) of U (‘university’) in HAL (‘prince’). | ||
| 3 | WHISKY | Beat youth leader? That’s the spirit! (6) |
| A charade of WHISK (‘beat’) plys Y (‘Youth leader’). | ||
| 4 | PRE-EMPT | Steal a march on man with bad temper (3-4) |
| A charade of P (pawn, ‘man’) plus REEMPT, an anagram (‘bad’) of ‘temper’. | ||
| 5 | SEA TROUT | Cause defeat for swimmer (3,5) |
| A charade of SEAT (’cause’) plus ROUT (‘defeat’). | ||
| 6 | CHARTREUSE | Plan to recycle liqueur (10) |
| A charade of CHART (‘plan’) plus RE-USE (‘recycle’). | ||
| 7 | ALWAYS | Gangster practices continuously (6) |
| A charade of AL (Capone, ‘gangster’) plus WAYS (‘practices’; note the nounal spelling’). | ||
| 13 | DEMOLITION | Light Infantry in degrading defeat (10) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of LI (‘Light Infantry’) in DEMOTION (‘degrading’ in the sense of downgrading). | ||
| 16 | ARC LAMPS | Artist raised brackets for lighting (3,5) |
| A charade of AR, a reversal (‘raised’ in a down light) of RA (‘artist’) plus CLAMPS (‘brackets’). | ||
| 18 | CARNIVAL | Foursome involved in erotic festival (8) |
| An envelope (‘involved in’) of IV (Roman numeral, ‘foursome’) in CARNAL (‘erotic’). | ||
| 19 | ITCHING | Inquisitive and tense when absorbed in Book of Changes (7) |
| An envelope (‘when absorbed by’) od T (‘tense’) in I CHING (‘Book of Changes’). | ||
| 21 | MANNER | Married princess with royal appearance (6) |
| A charade of M (‘married’) plus ANNE (‘princess’) plus R (‘royal’). | ||
| 22 | CADETS | Rascal set off after young soldiers (6) |
| A charade of CAD (‘rascal’) plus ETS, an anagram (‘off’) of ‘set’. | ||
| 24 | STOP | Blockage in colon, say (4) |
| Double definition, the second being a punctuation mark. | ||
Thanks and agree, PeterO re degree of difficulty, though not sure abt your “Goldilocks” reference. Several answers took me longer than they should have. Last one in was 4d PRE-EMPT because I assumed 11a, needing money, was going to be SHORTBREAD. Too stubborn for my own good or I would have re-thought it sooner. Favourites were 17a STAUNCH, 6d CHARTREUSE and 18d CARNIVAL. Many thanks to Chifonie.
Thanks PeterO and Chifonie.
Good puzzle. Clearly clued as usual.
Needed parsing for PRE-EMPT (man = p) and ITCHING, never having heard of Book of Changes.
Thanks, PeterO and Chifonie.
I echo the above. p = man the only puzzle.
Thanks Chifonie and PeterO
Another SHORTBREAD for a while here too. I really liked EARL and CHARTREUSE.
I had never seen LI for “Light Infantry”, but it is in Chambers.g
Thanks PeterO,
It was nice to see “princess” used to indicate someone other than Lady Di! The abbreviations “t” for tense and “p” for pawn were new to me.
Could someone explain how “seat”=”cause” in SEA TROUT?
The crossword app carries the same misprint for Cherry, only permitting the crossword to be recorded as complete if you enter Cheery!
matrixmania@5 the seat of a problem is the cause of it.
Shortbread held me up as I prefer it to sweetmeat but sorted in the end. Excellent Monday (or any day) puzzle,
For some reason I had a lot of difficulty with the right hand side of this puzzle, but finally filled it all in except 24a and 24d.
I too needed hep to parse p=man in 4d.
My favourites were WHISKY, ITCHING, EARL & PROGRESS.
Thanks PeterO and Chifonie.
I was also flummoxed by p = man, and it took some time before I got AL as the gangster in ALWAYS; but a nice puzzle for Monday. As PeterO says, not a pushover. I liked CARNIVAL, EXHALE, SEA TROUT and SWEETBREAD. Thanks to s & b.
P = pawn wasn’t an issue but I’m not crowing over my solving time on this one; it being Monday, a minor bank holiday, and Chifonie, I thought we would be in for something straightforward, and clearly that didn’t happen.
Eventually a bit of winkling out got me there, the NE last to fall, SWEETBREAD the entrée. A pretty serious, good crossword. Paul would be proud of CARNIVAL; other favourites included SEA TROUT and MANNER.
Julie in Oz @1 The Goldilocks reference used by our blogger relates to the fairy tale. Goldilocks finds some porridge too hot and some too cold…”but this porridge is just right!
Thnak you PeterO, needed your I Ching reference.
Include me as another shortbreader.
I enjoyed EXHALE & CHARTREUSE, but in the main this was not my cup of tea. Too many strained double defs and a general lack of fun for my liking. Nothing to complain about, of course, just a matter of personal preference.
Nice Bank Holiday, all (if you’re having one).
Thank you Chifonie and PeterO.
A fun solve. I especially liked CHARTREUSE, CARNIVAL, EARL and ITCHING.
N.B. for those wary of Chambers, p = pawn and LI = Light Infantry are also given by the COED.
Copmus @8 I presume you meant sweetbread?
Quite enjoyed this – one of Chifonie’s better ones. Found it quite tricky, but in retrospect I don’t know why, though there were a few slippery definitions and a lot of generic ones with lots of possibilities. PRE-EMPT was last in
Thanks to Chifonie and PeterO
Thanks Chifonie & PeterO.
I thought this was going to be easy at the beginning but there were some tricky clues later on. CARNIVAL was near the end because I didn’t see ‘foursome’ being equivalent to four. I-Ching needed checking but it couldn’t have been much else given the crossers.
Thanks, William@12, for the Goldilocks explanation.
As far as missing the obvious goes, in 24 across I somehow remembered that “kip” was synonymous with “joint” as a slang term for a sleazy dive or brothel, and confidently put “skip” as the answer. D’oh..
This was enjoyable. There were some nice surfaces – I liked the youth leader being beaten in 3D.
I’m a bit dubious about “inquisitive” as a definition for ITCHING at 19D. Ok, you can be itching to find out something, but equally you can be itching to do anything else.
Another SHORTBREAD here! I found this rather a slow solve and I’m not too sure why. Looking at the completed grid I can’t see anything especially difficult or badly clued. For example I made very heavy weather of SHIP and for the life of me I can’t see why.Just me, I expect!
Thanks Chifonie.
The comments up to this point made an interesting read for me. I agree with those who said this was no pushover. I found all except the NE corner straightforward enough, helped by some good, precise clueing throughout.
Of the 7 clues left in the NE corner, 6D (CHARTREUSE) and 17A (STAUNCH) were the only ones whose construction I was sure of – 6D had to be a liqueur and 17A was one of those annoying double defs that I prefer to leave until the end. Rather than plod through hundreds of names of liqueurs, or try and work out all the possibilities of ‘plan to recycle’, I simply cheated. Just as I thought, that unlocked the NE corner, which took about a minute to complete.
All in all, this was an excellent puzzle, and the most enjoyable that I remember of Chifonie’s output. I really liked the quality and variety of the clues and the neat definitions and indications. I have no complaints about the clue I was stuck on – it’s my loss that I know so few liqueurs and could not recollect any at all of 10 letters. As it turned out, Chartreuse is a name I have seen in print many times.
Thanks to Chifonie and PeterO. I had the same problems as others (e.g., with P = pawn/man, LI = light infantry) and also took a while before seeing RECOUP, but I much enjoyed the process.
Re LI, oldsters like me can remember “I’m Geordie MacKay of the HLI” from the music hall song A Gordon For Me. Highland Light Infantry. That’s about it as far as old age benefits go.
Alan Browne at 21. I agree. I whizzed through the lhs and then came unstuck, taking ages to finish the rest. I wondered at first if it was partly to do with the grid not having much connection between the two sides, but I think it was just considerably more difficult. I found chartreuse in my solver, which has received quite a bashing tonight.
A pleasant solve, apart from P=man, which is poor cluing in my view – P stands for pawn, not man. To go from P to pawn to man is the kind of indirection which makes a puzzle impossible. On this basis ‘man’ could stand for almost any letter:
A = adult = man?
B = bishop = man
C = Charlie = man
D = Duke = man
E = Earl = man
F = Fellow = man
G = G-man = man
H = husband = man
I = isle = Man
J = Jack = man
K = king = man
etc. Hopeless.
Yes, my dear fellow citizen, that was my objection too.
P = pawn is fine, pawn = man is fine too.
But P = man is unfair.
Apart from that, a nice puzzle – not very exciting as to surfaces but challenging enough to be enjoyable.
Many Quiptic solvers today thought this crossword was easier than Pan’s puzzle there.
I cannot agree.
Chifonie took me/us about twice the time I spent on Pan.
Many thanks, Peter O for a neat blog.
Meg @24
I wouldn’t say the grid had anything to do with the difficulty we had with this puzzle. I just think a few of the clues were more challenging than expected. 6D (CHARTREUSE), the one I was stuck on, is my favourite clue, by the way.
I must post my thanks to Chifonie and PeterO as I omitted to do so in my earlier comment.
I struggled more with this than I expect to do with a Chifonie puzzle. At one point, the NE quarter was completely empty with the rest complete except for DEMOLITION (which ended up being my LOI). Fortunately, the penny finally dropped for SWEETBREAD, and then the rest of that corner quickly resolved itself. Favourites included PRE-EMPT, CHARTREUSE and CARNIVAL
Thanks, Chifonie and PeterO.
Quite a lot of loose cluing in this puzzle. Which appears to have been accepted.
Here are the worst:
“Seat” does not equal “cause”. In “Seat of the problem” seat indicates “location” and not cause. The “problem” in this phrase could mislead one to the meaning of “seat”.
“Itching” does not equal “inquisitive”.
As has been said “man” = “p” is unfair double indirection.
Thanks Chifonie and PeterO
Liked this … it had a little more grist than normal and none the worse for that. Struggled equating SEAT to ’cause’ as well – so thanks Shirley for clearing that up.
I actually smiled when the P for man thing dawned on me … maybe a step away, but added to the fun for me in what is generally an easier solve than average.
Finished in the NE corner with SWEETBREAD (no shortbread issue here as PRE-EMPT was one of the earlier entries), the troublesome SEA TROUT and finally the STAUNCH double definition.
Your parsing is clearly correct, but I took ‘to shout about’ to be a homophone indicator for Cherie in 22ac 🙂
Thanks all
Exactly as Ozzie Julie @1
I had shortbread
But therefore never finished pre-empt.
I also hesitated long over whether colon is a “stop”.
9ac: surely “ex” is “from”, and “hale” is “old well”?
Thanks PeterO and Chifonie.
Interesting point from Paradox. I parsed it as Peter but equally like the latter – I wonder if that was meant.
Like many others, I raced through the lhs and then worked my way back to the NE – although I did get CHARTREUSE early (I’m sure I’ve seen a similar clue a few times now).
I Ching was new to me so thanks for explaining that.