Preamble: Answers to the 24 normal clues extend beyond the boundaries of the grid; “extended” letters spell two thematic phrases to be entered below it. Wordplay in each remaining clue leads to the entered answer plus an extra letter; in clue order, extra letters spell three thematic words. Letter counts refer to entries within the final 11×11 grid, which are all real words, phrases or proper nouns.
By the time this blog is published I’ll be in Tenerife for a couple of weeks relaxation so I don’t know if I’ll be able to see or respond to comments. I’ll be concentrating on the 4 S’s – Sun, Sea, Sand and … San Miguel.
Putting myself under pressure, I chose not to swap with anyone so forcing myself to have everything done and dusted within 5 days so I was dreading getting a 5 on the jH scale. Thankfully, this crossword was reasonably gentle though I didn’t finish it in one sitting. I had to let my subconscious stew on it overnight. Puzzle finished on Sunday morning and blog finished by Sunday evening is something of a record for the, normally, procrastinatory, kenmac.
Anyway, you’re here to read about the puzzle. I got off to a fairly quick start and before long I surmised that the extended letters occupied every odd-numbered column and row and that the extra letters were generated by the clues in the even columns and rows. This turned out to be the case. Reading the extra letters quickly suggested LEPER which I instantly dismissed on the assumption that that word is a little antisocial for “polite” cruciverbalists.
Trying to make sense of the perimeter letters proved quite tricky as we were given no indication of how they were to be read. At first I thought that they were to be read left to right and that HEART (rows 1, 2 and 3) played a part. Another possibility was reading clockwise but that wasn’t making any sense either.
Time for subconscious to take over on the night shift. Next morning, the idea of Latin occurred to me and the whole thing fell into place. The two thematic phrases are HOMO SACER and PERSONA NON GRATA (to be written below the grid) and the extra letters spelled out LEPER, EXILE and PARIAH – all social outcasts (or OUTSIDERS, as per the title.)
Unfortunately there are a couple of clues which I can’t fully justify. Otherwise I really enjoyed the puzzle. All real words everywhere certainly helps and a nice unusual grid construction.
Thanks a lot Serpent and congratulations on getting the EV on the same weekend.
In the grids below, I’ve indicated the perimeter letter in red in the “entry” column – I hope this helps.
| Across |
|||
| Clue |
Entry |
Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 Disturbing emotion that harbours antipathy principally (3) |
HATE | &lit; Emotion That Harbours Antipathy (principally; anag: disturbing) | |
| 4 Mischievous god goes to church (4) |
ARCH | L |
LAR (god)+CHurch |
| 8 Sources of agar and gel liquid? (4) |
ALGAE | &lit; Agar+And (sources of)+GEL (anag: liquid) | |
| 12 Wish to get pound out of nobleman consumed by absolute depravity (7) |
AVARICE | E |
&lit; EARl (nobleman; minus L (pound)) inside Absolute+VICE (depravity) |
| 13 Age of one acting disgracefully (3) |
AEON | ONE+Acting (anag: disgracefully) | |
| 16 Visionary painter wants light (3) |
SEER | [Edwin] landSEER (painter; minus LAND (light)) | |
| 17 Table covers mugs containing game (9) |
DUCHESSES | P |
DUPES (mugs) containing CHESS (game) |
| 19 Trainer’s opening half of stable when returning ponies (3) |
TATS | Trainer (opening)+STAble (half of; rev: when returning) | |
| 20 Partner to save vacant shop being occupied by casual offender (5) |
SCRIMP | ShoP (vacant) containing CRIMinal (casual offender) | |
| 21 Undercover plant established on the inside (11) |
CLANDESTINE | E |
CELANDINE (plant) containing ESTablished |
| 23 America stops compensation (5) |
AMENDS | AMerica+ENDS (stops) | |
| 25 Civilised ancient city rejected scourge (3) |
BANE | urBANE (civilise) minus UR (ancient city) | |
| 27 Mobile phone captures gunmen putting stuff in vault (9) |
CELLARING | R |
CELL (mobile)+RING (phone) containing RA (Royal Artillery; gunmen) |
| 30 Stern parent (3) | REAR | double def | |
| 32 Drink from US gets recycled (3) |
SOUR | I really can’t see how this one works | |
| 33 Examine love letters in earnest (7, 2 words) |
EX ANIMO | E |
EXAMINE+O (love) (anag: letters) |
| 34 Faceless assassin entering, pistol drawn (4) |
GAUNT | gUN (assassin; minus first letter (faceless)) inside GAT (pistol) | |
| 35 Opening number in T Rex broadcast (4) |
RENT | X |
Number inside T REX (anag: broadcast) |
| 36 Worry about drips (3) | WETS | STEW (worry; rev: about) | |
| Down |
|||
| Clue |
Entry |
Extra letter |
Wordplay |
| 1 Like something one might row about when in love with publicity (4) |
OARED | RE (about) inside O (love)+ADvertisement (publicity) | |
| 2 Small group that performs as classical quintet (5) |
TROUT (Trout Quintet) |
I |
TRIO (small group)+UT (does UT mean performs as, I couldn’t find it) |
| 3 Very good, very bad or average? (3) |
MEAN | Triple def. | |
| 5 Corroded rod twisted around spoke (5) |
ORATED | ATE (corroded) inside ROD (anag: twisted) | |
| 6 Reform Lords and silence interference (11, 2 words) |
CROSSED LINE | L |
LORDS SILENCE (anag: reforms) |
| 7 Recoils from beetle found in sports jacket? (4) |
SHIES | HIE (beetle – as in hurry) inside SportS (jacket) | |
| 9 Perhaps porters like to carry empty luggage (3) |
ALES | AS (like) containing LuggagE (empty) | |
| 10 Enters, seeing nothing unusual (6, 2 words) |
GOES IN | E |
SEEING+O (nothing) anag: unusual |
| 11 Punish dog that’s dropped its guts (3) |
CANE | CAniNE (dog; minus center letters) | |
| 14 Uneven parts of pitch subject to denunciation (7) |
THUNDER | P |
PiTcH (uneven parts)+UNDER (subject to) |
| 15 Father is ejected from unruly clergyman’s home (7) |
RECTORY | A |
REfrACTORY (unruly; minus FR (father)) |
| 18 What might be said on agreeing fare from Japan (4) |
AMEN | R |
RAMEN (food from Japan) |
| 19 Brilliant setter’s entered culmination of career (4) |
ACME | I |
I had this as: ACE (brilliant) contains ME (setter) until I was forced to change the E to an I. Now I can’t see it. |
| 22 Writer put letter at the bottom of first page? (6, 2 words) |
LE FANU | A |
Not sure of this one: LEAF (page)+ A NU (letter) |
| 24 It’s wrong leaving mixed antipasti in shallow pan (5) |
PATINA | ANTIPAsti (minus ITS (anag: wrong)) anag: mixed | |
| 26 Conductor in cells because of head-on crash (5) |
ANODE | H |
HEADON (anag: crash) |
| 28 Attention for working party in London study (4) |
LEARN | EAR (attention) replaces ON (working) and DO (party) in LondoN | |
| 29 Relish making us toasted sandwiches (4) |
GUSTO | makinG US TOasted (hidden: sandwiches) | |
| 30 Musical note fills space used in typesetting dash (3) |
ELAN | LA (musical note) inside EN (space used in typesetting) | |
| 31 Raise £1 bet here! (3) | RENO | &lit; ONER (£1; rev: raise) | |
| 32 Broadcast to deny sacking policeman (3) |
SOWN | diSOWN (deny) minus DI (policeman) | |
I thought this was fun – and relatively straightforward. What about I’m (Setter’s) inside Ace for 19 Down?
This one proved beyond my capabilities. I made a start in the NE and SW corners but little else. Although looking through the solutions, I was on the right lines with several more and perhaps if I’d entered a few educated guesses I might have made some breakthroughs.
Thanks to Serpent and kenmac.
Found it hard to get going until I had the two central long words.
Was relieved to find confirmation of HOMO SACER, which, as an ex-classicist, I should have known, but didn’t. Found a fine painting, on Google Images, of a poor homo sacer about to be killed by a bloodthirsty mob.
I saw LE FANU as LE(A)F A = page one, + NU.
and also TROUT as TR(I)O = small group that performs + UT = as,classical,(i.e Latin), with quintet as def., which could equally be preceded by “classical”
I chose not to write in the external words outside the grid, as, like kenmac, I assumed that writing them below the grid would imply that was unnecessary, even though not explicitly described as such in the preamble.
Quite a nice puzzle – tho’ it took me a while to find HOMO SACER even once I’d found PERSONA NON GRATA – I think I wasn’t sure of two or three “extended” letters along the top.
Agree with Murray Glover @3 regarding the wordplay for LE FANU and also that for TROUT. I initially had 19d ACME as ACE around MY until it became apparent that the extra letter was I not Y, then reached the same conclusion as Caryn @1: “setter’s” isn’t possessive but an abbreviation of “setter is” leading to “I am”, i.e. “I’m”.
As to the wordplay for SOUR at 32a, “from US gets recycled” gives OURS (from us) and then the terminal S is recycled to the start.
Thanks to Serpent and to kenmac for the blog … the weather looks as if it’s very pleasant in Tenerife at the moment.
I enjoyed this – a nice idea, nicely executed. As it happens, it’s about the ideal level of difficulty for me (though I couldn’t get 14D). Even though the positioning of the outsiders became clear reasonably early, it remained tricky to the end. Thanks to Serpent and Kenmac (and HolyGhost for the sour explanation).
I made a good start on this but then stuttered slowly to the end. I think I’d parsed everything just about to my satisfaction (including 19D, where I’d had the same problem with getting an E rather than an I, worked it out in the end, but then forgot how until Caryn reminded me again above), except for GAUNT at 34A. I’d congratulated myself on having GAT rather than GUN for the pistol part, but then hadn’t though to consider GUN=assassin. However, there were several clues I wasn’t entirely happy with so I didn’t really feel ‘closure’. Nonetheless, I enjoyed most of it and I admire the construction. Oh, and I’ve learnt something new with ‘homo sacer’.
A bit of a failure on my part, I’m afraid. Solved all but the far SW corner but just couldn’t seem to make progress there and threw in the towel. One I meant to come back to, but as is often the case with ones you mean to come back to, I didn’t.
Still don’t understand how you get ‘sour’
Gordon, I think that “from US” should, parsing-wise, be read as “from us” = ours, recycleable as SOUR, and not as meaning “from across the pond”. In other words a typical example of “punctuation and typography may be misleading”. Although the def. could be also read as “drink from US”.
Enjoyed; the usual thanks to Serpent and Kenmac. Saw PERSONA NON GRATA first, resonating happily with the title; didn’t recognize HOMO SACER even with all its outsider letters pencilled in, but it looked plausible enough and was easily confirmed. As for words from extra letters in wordplay, PARIAH gave me the most trouble because (as usual, alas) I’d written down at least one wrong letter.
Like Murray Glover above I ended up reading “from us” as “ours” to justify the answer SOUR.
Though i enjoyed this enormously, I have to say I could find no mention of HOMO SACER on my Google search, so concluded (wrongly) that i must have got one of the down clues wrong
Many thanks, kenmac, for the excellent blog. I’m delighted by the positive comments, so thanks to everyone who’s posted and expressed their appreciation.
I have a soft spot for the phrase ‘persona non grata’, which was one of my mum’s favourite and most overused phrases and the starting point for the puzzle. Like bingybing I hadn’t heard of ‘homo sacer’ until I was looking for synonyms for outsiders. It was a happy coincidence that the sum of the letters in the two phrases was suitable for a mutilated 13 x 13 grid and neither phrase was going to be easy to spot until almost all the clues were solved.
Cheers!
Jason
Oh dear … I have just seen the published solution ! Did you really intend us, Serpent, to send our entries in like this, with HOMO SACER and PERSONA NON GRATA written in twice … once outside the printed grid, and then again below the grid ? The request to write the thematic phrases below the grid seemed to me to require us merely to do the latter. If you DID intend us to carry out this belt-and-braces tautography, then either a castellated grid, as in solution, or a less ambiguous preamble, would have made your intention clearer.
Yet another instance of where, had this been a Listener, solvers could make a good case for both entries being acceptable ? But presumably Derry Street simply compare their three selected prizewinning entries with the printed solution ? Vae victis. I will now go and brush the sour grapeskin from my teeth !
Before this gets out of hand…
“Answers to 24 clues extend beyond the boundaries of the grid”. That’s why I spent ages making sure there was room on the periphery of the grid for those letters to be written there.
“…”extended” letters spell two thematic phrases to be entered below it [the grid].”
Just in case there are solvers out there who erased the peripheral letters (quite an unusual course of action, given what is written in the preamble), I’d like to assure you that those peripheral letters shown in the solution (as an aid to anyone who didn’t solve the relevant clues) were not necessary for a submitted solution to be deemed correct.
And while I’m on my editorial high horse…just a reminder that this is The Inquisitor Crossword, not The Listener Crossword. I shan’t be publishing solvers’ stats at the end of the year, so I don’t think there’s any need to make the sorts of comparison/contrast that Murray makes above.
Nimrod
Hi all, a bit late to my own party but I’ve managed to secure internet access.
Thanks for the comments and for sorting out the few I couldn’t quite parse. Not too happy with SOUR (32a) the capitalized US is misleading in my opinion. It’s not like we write “us” as “US” in common writing.
Nimrod, I really don’t think that Murray’s comments require the editorial high horse to be mounted, nor that there is any danger of things getting “out of hand”.
I too wondered when I saw the printed solution whether we should have included the peripheral letters in our submission, but concluded – rightly, as it turns out – that it probably did not matter. I suspect that many solvers complete a photocopied grid, as we do, and make all the necessary amendments on that before neatly filling in the original for submission, since newsprint does not lend itself to a lot of erasing or tippexing over the course of several sessions. For those solvers who do that, the decision to be made here was about the addition (or not) of the peripheral letters on the fair copy rather than about their deletion, which would indeed have been unusual.
I suspect, too, that many of us tackle the Listener on a regular basis, so comparisons and references to it are bound to be made from time to time – or is it aenigma non grata?
There is often a distinction between answers and entries, and it is the latter that we are expected to write in the grid & submit. Here the preamble says: “Answers … extend beyond the boundaries of the grid” and “entries within the final 11×11 grid … are all real words, phrases or proper nouns.” So I thank the editor for the extra space in which to note the “extended” letters, but I think that the published solution should have stated that they were there “as an aid to anyone who didn’t solve the relevant clues” – quite often there is additional highlighting for information only.
Just got back to solving the Inquisitor again after a summer break. Very enjoyable and I got this 100% complete including all the parsing so quite chuffed really.
I’m a bit mystified by the (serious?) debate on whether the submitted puzzle should have letters written round the outside or not and whether the instructions were absolutely explicit about this. Seems to me some people should just try and get out more.
Glad you had a good break, PeeDee, and thanks for the kindly advice.
Would be delighted to get out more, if it would help me with preambles like this, but, as I’m well into my ninth decade and living with the aftermath of a stroke, plus heart problems, this is not really possible.
I, and one or two other less sharp pencils in the drawer, found the instructions less explicit than you did … this would have been my preferred alternative version:
“Answers to 24 clues extend beyond the grid. These “extended letters”, which spell out two thematic phrases, should be entered accordingly outside the grid, and then again below the grid.”
Daft, maybe, but unequivocal !
Sorry to hear about about your disabilities Murray, no intention to offend.
My thought was that the instructions are not explicit on that point because, as John H says @14, it really doesn’t matter. Do it whichever way you like. Nothing there to complain about.