Poins has been more prominent as a compiler in the Independent on Sunday, but today he’s making an appearance in the daily Indy cryptic. Good puzzle, in which I found the top half much more tricky than the bottom half, for some reason. One solution I’m not sure about, so help welcome.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letters missing
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Hard to grip top of plastic fastener
STAPLE
An insertion of P for the first letter of ‘plastic’ in STALE. Think bread.
5 American policy, initially dividing opinion, causes a state of nervous uncertainty
SUSPENSE
Another insertion: of US and P for the first letter of ‘policy’ in SENSE. Think ‘It’s my sense/opinion that Poins is an excellent setter.’
9 Film obscene act
FOUL PLAY
Possibly not the best ever known film, but it was released in 1978 and starred Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. A charade of FOUL and PLAY. Good surface.
10 Convince son to invest in a safe
ASSURE
I bolloxed up the NE corner by putting in PESTER, having got the S from ESSEN. It kind of works: S in PETER for ‘safe’. But what passes for my brain didn’t really twig that PESTER is not really a synonym for ‘convince’. It’s in fact S in A SURE.
11 Exercises horse around north of island
PENANG
The Malaysian island is PE for ‘excercises’ and N inserted into NAG.
12 Old king with hint of narcissism gets put on occasionally
OFF AND ON
A charade of OFFA, he of the dyke fame, N for the first letter of ‘narcissism’ and DON for ‘put on’.
14 Occurring occasionally when meaning to accept an end to it
INTERMITTENT
An insertion of TERM and IT in INTENT.
18 Start with a remark about soldiers attending church
COMMENCEMENT
Another insertion: of MEN and CE in COMMENT.
22 Vegetable eating wholly brought about King George’s disease
PELLAGRA
Never heard of it. Nor have I had it, which I’m happy about, because its symptoms include diarrhoea and mental disturbance. An insertion of ALL reversed and GR for ‘King George’ in PEA. In Alan Bennett’s The Madness of King George, his disease was porphyria. Allegedly.
25 Helping to make Alfie’s Tasmanian holiday
FIESTA
Hidden in AlFIES TAsmanian.
26 Children’s writer endlessly absorbing until becoming a poet
MILTON
An insertion of TO for ‘until’ in MILN[E]. The creator of Winnie-the-Pooh and the creator of Paradise Lost featured here. Similar themes to both books.
27 Plant book Maria’s edited covers osmosis at the beginning
AMBROSIA
I’m rubbish with plant clues, so this was my LOI. (B MARIAS)* with O for the first letter of ‘osmosis’ inserted.
28 Present gripping work on leader of postal strike
STOPPAGE
An insertion of OP for opus or ‘work’ and P for the first letter of ‘postal’ in STAGE for ‘present’.
Down
2 Absorbent cloth protecting tip of roofing tool
TROWEL
An insertion of R for the first letter (again) of ‘roofing’ in TOWEL.
3 Element of hesitation shown by architect for the most part
PALLADIUM
Element number 46 in the periodic table is PALLADI[O] plus UM for ‘hesitation’. Never heard of the Italian architect, but luckily had heard of the element.
4 The last thing Len broadcast is free from prejudice
ENLIGHTEN
Another last letter indication. The last letter of ‘the’ followed by (THING LEN)*
5 Jane maybe, in retrospect regrets keeping ring belonging to me
SEYMOUR
RUES with an insertion of O MY all reversed. The reversal indicator is ‘in retrospect’. The only gripe I’d have about this clue is that there are a lot of Janes in the world. This one is one of the six wives of Henry VIII, and the only one who bore him a son. It was such an ordeal that she died twelve days later, purportedly from sepsis following the birth.
6 It’s used in building to give support
STAFF
I’m not rightly sure about this. I want to make it a dd, since STAFF is a ‘support’. But the ‘building’ bit I don’t see. Some kind person will help, I’m sure.
7 Starts to excavate sacred site extremely close to Egyptian city
ESSEN
The first four letters of ‘excavate sacred site extremely’ and the last letter of ‘Egyptian’. Nice surface.
8 Overcome and almost certain to need support
SURMOUNT
A charade of SUR[E] and MOUNT in its nounal sense.
13 Ready to be transported without resistance
APT
[R]APT
15 Geoff oddly ignored during ridiculous life ban – it’s beyond words
INEFFABLE
Poins is asking you to insert EF for the even letters of ‘Geoff’ in (LIFE BAN)*
16 Right to take part in Hamlet for example
TITLE ROLE
A charade of TITLE and ROLE.
17 Senseless love isn’t for Joyce perhaps
NOVELIST
(LOVE ISNT)* Referring to James Joyce, perhaps best-known for Ulysses, but author of many other great works as well.
19 Time fuse eventually found by soldiers
ERA
The last letter of ‘fuse’ followed by RA for Royal Artillery or ‘soldiers’.
20 Send out spring issue
EMANATE
I think that this is a triple definition.
21 A series of letters from Charles Tringham
STRING
Hidden in CharleS TRINGham. I discovered that Charles Tringham is to do with a scandal involving Charles Dickens. You learn stuff from crossies, don’t you?
23 Distracted lute player’s first to stop
LET UP
A charade of (LUTE)* and P for the first letter of ‘player’.
24 Information primarily about storing old port
GENOA
An insertion of O in GEN and A for the first letter of ‘about’. We’ve had a lot of first and last letter devices in today’s puzzle.
Many thanks to Poins for setting this one for us.
Thanks for the great blog Pierre! With respect to 6 down, have a look at …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_(building_material)
For those who can’t be bothered to follow the link, it says there that:
“Staff is a kind of artificial stone used for covering and ornamenting temporary buildings”
The things you learn when doing crosswords! (-:
Reasonably kind start to the week and a very pleasant way to spend an hour or so. I initially considered ‘pester’ for 10 as well and also tried to shoehorn ‘porphyria’ into 22. By the way, PELLAGRA is well worth looking up on Wikipedia, especially the ‘History’ section. I guessed STAFF as a building material without having any idea what it was; thanks for the link, Rick @1. My favourite part of the crossword was the juxtaposition of ‘prejudice’ and ‘Jane’ in the clues for 4 and 5d, with the predictable instant (and equally predictably incorrect) answer of you know who. I’m ashamed to admit that the Jane SEYMOUR I immediately thought of was er… Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Thanks to Poins and Pierre.
Thanks for the blog, Pierre.
Put me down for an original ‘pester’, too: since learning it from crosswords, ‘peter’ is now the first thing I think of when I see ‘safe’.
I would never have thought of looking up ‘staff’, even though I couldn’t see how the clue worked. That’s my new word for the day, too. I dimly remembered having heard of PELLAGRA, which I worked out from the excellent wordplay.
When setters use names that I haven’t heard of in clues, I always google to find out whether they’ve made them up, so I was delighted to find that Charles Tringham was a pseudonym Dickens used to conceal his dalliance, over which Pierre has drawn a discreet veil – see here for details: http://www.postcards-from-slough.co.uk/home/charles-dickens/ It’s always good to learn something new.
Many thanks for the puzzle, Poins – most enjoyable.
Tom Lehrer said
I wanna go back to the Swanee
Where pellagra makes you scrawny
I’ll join the list of ‘staff’ newbies too.
Ingenious stuff Poins – groovy blog Pierre.
I suspect the “staff” might be one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_staff
3d. Palladio was a 16th century Venetian architect who transformed the city of Vicenza on the mainland. Inigo Jones discovered him a 100 years later and brought his style to England where it has been extensively adopted. My wife spent a delightful day there last year.
Went to the normal URL for the Indie puzzle this morning and I couldn’t get the crossword up. The site looked a mess. Tried from another computer and when I tried to print a blank puzzle it was so blank it had no blacked squares. Went back to the first computer and as an experiment, switched off Adblock Plus and then I could get the puzzle, and even after switching it back on, I can still get to the puzzle. Odd.
Glad I wasn’t the only one to think of the actress Jane Seymour. And I, too, knew PELLAGRA thanks to Tom Lehrer.
Thanks for the explanations of STAFF. I could have looked myself in my dictionaries, of course.
And Jane SEYMOUR the actress works just as well.
I was very doubtful about STAFF and couldn’t parse it; I wondered about SCARF as a possible answer – a scarf can be a joint between two lengths of timber that might be used in building but couldn’t really justify that either.
The Jane I first thought of was Eyre and I thought ‘in retrospect’ might mean those letters reversed.
Btw, Pierre, you’ve left out 29ac: EMERGE – RE (about) + ME (note) all reversed + GE (vehicle registration code for Georgia – the country, not the US state).
Dormouse @7: The grid always prints with no blacked squares. You can get round it by taking a screen shot of the grid with grey squares that appears at the start of the print process; you then have to reunite it with the clues which is not too difficult though a bit fiddly but there are several ways of doing it.
Thanks, Poins and Pierre
allan_c: I’ve been printing off the crossword every morning since the paper Indie stopped at Easter, and this was the first time I’ve had the problem of no black squares, and I got the black squares at my second attempt today.
Dormouse: Curiouser and curiouser – must be something to do with browser and/or printer. Actually, I’ve got used to the grey squares and they certainly save ink.
allan_c: By black squares, yes they are grey when I print them, and have been for most of the last however many months. What I got this morning was a totally white grid. The vertical and horizontal lines were there and the numbers, but no filled in squares, either black or grey. (I recall a couple of puzzles a while back where they did print black, I presume the’d been experimenting and then went back to the old system.)