Nestor is often difficult, and this was no exception. But as it should be — one looks back when parsing a clue and says “well that really wasn’t too hard”. There are some quite outstanding clues here and the fact that they took me a long time to solve didn’t detract from the enjoyment.
In the unches along the top we have ‘B MOVIE’ and along the bottom ‘MODEL T’. But I can see no further. You’d think that there was something, since The Indy usually has more when it has anything.
| Across | ||
| 7 | ENCLOSURE | Pen pal finally stops once hurt, certainly (9) |
| {pa}l in (once)* sure | ||
| 9 | NINJA | Some pain in jalapeños that may hit unexpectedly? (5) |
| Hidden in paiN IN JAlapeños | ||
| 11 | REBUT | Shoot down, touching short back of rifle (5) |
| re but{t} | ||
| 12 | FLAGEOLET | Standard rented houses flipped more, evicting letters of Mr Bean (9) |
| (flag let) round [= houses] ({m}o{r}e)rev. | ||
| 13 | STRANGEWAYS | Nick‘s quirky behaviour? (11) |
| 2 defs, one of them referring to Strangeways Prison | ||
| 15 | SUE | Petition wanting e.g. Trident-carrier fractionally curtailed (3) |
| Sue{z} — or take your pick from any of the letters that might finish ‘sue’; there aren’t many in the dictionary: it might be a classical allusion; I went for ‘z’ because I’m vaguely aware that there is some ship in the Navy called ‘Trident’ and this ship may sail through the Suez Canal. But very doubtful. And what is the great significance of ‘fractionally’ being in italics? Or is this like Azed’s habit of apparently random italicisation? | ||
| 16 | LEADED | Asked to dump van with toxic additive (6) |
| {p}leaded | ||
| 18 | UNDOCK | Bones in trash with head going separate (6) |
| {j}un(Doc)k — ‘separate’ a verb — what a good clue | ||
| 20 | AIR | Broadcast what emerges from singer’s lungs? (3) |
| 2 defs, but the second is not an inaccurate one: it refers I think to another word for a song | ||
| 21 | CARPET SNAKE | Poles bound by Latin and English instructions to seize reptile (6,5) |
| carpe t(SN)ake — carpe and take are Latin and English instructions to seize | ||
| 24 | SCRAP IRON | Fight decrease in stuff for recycling (5,4) |
| scrap [= fight] iron [= decrease, or at any rate de-crease] | ||
| 26 | RINGO | Adornment for piercing, its shape once often seen on skins (5) |
| Ring O — the shape of a ring is an O — skins is a slang word for drums and this refers to Ringo Starr — but I don’t understand ‘for piercing’, unless it’s a reference to a napkin ring, which is pierced by the rolled-up napkin | ||
| 27 | MASAI | African people like being protected by chief, mostly (5) |
| m(as)ai{n} | ||
| 28 | DOLGELLAU | Old age’ll set off university town in Wales (9) |
| (old age’ll)* u | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BEARDS | Confronts Vandyke etc (6) |
| 2 defs — one of them referring to a Vandyke beard | ||
| 2 | MOLTEN | Liquid that’s first injected into chopped lemon (6) |
| t{hat} in (lemon)* — liquid an adjective | ||
| 3 | OUTFIELDER | Futile swimming in central European river, one that’s deep (10) |
| (futile)* in Oder (no, not something like ‘Pole r’) — cricket fielding positions | ||
| 4 | VERA | Meat cut outside King’s Lynn, say (4) |
| ve(r)a{l} — ref. Dame Vera Lynn | ||
| 5 | INCENSED | Fumed or fuming? (8) |
| 2 defs, one of them a bit whimsical: if something is incensed, ie has incense burning round it, it will have fumes all around | ||
| 6 | ENGLISH CHANNEL | Exploding shell enhancing D-Day landers’ first obstacle? (7,7) |
| (shell enhancing)* | ||
| 8 | CYBERTERRORISM | Maybe hacking cough initially upset boy, boy fluff is getting inside (14) |
| c{ough} (Bert error is) in (my!) rev. — took me ages to unravel that | ||
| 10 | ANTHEM | Soldier possibly on edge in number of patriots (6) |
| ant hem — is it necessarily a number of patriots, ie a patriotic song? It might be, but it might also be a number of football supporters or a number of choristers, so should this not have finished with a question mark to alert the solver to the definition by example? | ||
| 14 | ACUTE ANGLE | Report of an imbroglio when lining up is less than right? (5,5) |
| “a queue tangle” — less than a right angle | ||
| 17 | DICAPRIO | Actor‘s advance reduced after hallucinogen shows up (8) |
| (acid)rev. prio{r} | ||
| 19 | BALSAM | Son replaces husband in part of South London base for medicine (6) |
| s replaces h in Balham | ||
| 22 | SORREL | Edible leaves of horse chestnut? (6) |
| After looking at this for ages I decided that it was 3 defs — a rare type of clue that always gives trouble, to me at any rate; I think this was my last one in | ||
| 23 | ECONUT | Environmentalist seeing carbon monoxide in air rising (6) |
| CO in (tune)rev. | ||
| 25 | RUDD | Red-eye grounded, having gone missing regularly (4) |
| {g}r{o}u{n}d{e}d — a rudd is a type of fish also called a red-eye | ||
*anagram
another great head-scratcher from Nestor.
My best guess for SUE is SUB (Trident carrier) with the curved bits of the B snipped off. But I wouldn’t put any money on it.
Thanks very much to Nestor & John
@John
further to SUB…..
In your blog, you refer to the word “fractionally” being in italics.
I solve the Indy puzzles online using Firefox on W10 from the Indy website (not the paid-for app.) and there are no italics, ever.
I’m curious, because the files I send to Eimi for my Indy puzzles (Knut) occasionally have italics but they never appear on screen.
Hard, but not unreasonably so, even if I missed a couple including SORREL and couldn’t parse a few others – too lazy to even attempt 8, and no idea about 15. I like your explanation baerchen – v. original thinking and you may well be right! OUTFIELDER and CARPET SNAKE were a few of the many good clues. A bit frustrating not being able to work out the significance of the Ninas – someone will presumably know how they fit in.
Thanks to Nestor and John
My thought about 26a was that an RING might go in a pierced ear.
Good thinking from Baerchen about the truncated SUB – I was puzzled by that.
I can’t make anything more out of the Ninas, unless Leonardo DICAPRIO was in a B-MOVIE about the MODEL T…
I hadnt experienced a Nestor for a while.I’d forgotten how tricky he was and was out of tune with his frequency band so it took ages to even gain a foothold and even then I had to use anagram scrambler, word wizard,you name it-then the final clues were so brilliant like VERA and RINGO etc that it all seemed worth it. But I was too knackered to notice that two ninas.
Bravely blogged-top puzzle
Or does Nestor mean: remove BMARIN from SUBMARINE?
It is then ‘curtailed’ on the inside, fractionally?
Just an idea.
Thanks Nestor and John
This was tricky for me, not helped by initially having a wrong entry for the second half of 24.
Andrew @ 4: not just for ears…I’ll say no more
My thoughts on SUE are the same as Baerchen’s, especially if “fractionally” should be italicised – to me that suggests that the curtailment doesn’t extend as far as a whole letter. Excellent puzzle.
I don’t get italics on Windows 8/Internet Explorer either. Still, after the paper version of the Indy went west we’re probably lucky to get the crosswords at all!
I’m afraid, cruciverbophile, that I still don’t get it.
It’s the E at the end that puzzles me.
A pity that Nestor himself didn’t show up to explain.
Perhaps Eimi himself can make life easier for us?
I generally don’t comment until other people have had a chance to explain things, and if they do then I don’t need to say any more. In the case of SUB, I think people have explained it well enough above, but for anyone who still doesn’t get it, here goes. The phrase “eg Trident-carrier” does indeed refer to the SUB that carries the Trident “nuclear deterrent”. Then that is “fractionally curtailed”, meaning a removal of approximately 0.5 letters from the end, so that the B becomes an E.
As for the Nina, it’s just phrases with enumerations (1,5) and (5,1) to fit the spacing of the unchecked cells in the top and bottom rows.
Many thanks Nestor for making things superclear.
And yes, I should have read Baerchen’s post a bit better.
Mea culpa, all this fuss.