The preamble states:
The puzzle is a tribute to two people whose names appear in the completed grid. (There is a numerical link between them.) X and two of his products are in a combination of solutions. Y appears step-wise; his nom de plume is formed by the first letters of solutions to the asterisked clues in reverse order. His best know product appears twice in the grid, once homophonically.
There’s always that moment of apprehension when you realise that you have a puzzle by Enigmatist or Nimrod to blog. Will we have to phone a friend for some advice or just admit that we are baffled? Well, we did almost have to contact someone for some help with this one as we took ages to get started. Fortunately it started to unravel at last and we were so pleased that we were able to complete this unaided as the theme of the puzzle involves one of the very people who we would have contacted! However, we do need some assistance with the parsing of 6ac and there are a couple of others that may need some tweaking.
This was however a real treat. The theme involves our very own Gaufrid aka Geoff Moss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Thankfully Bert had read that there was a new Complete Edition of Mozart’s work to mark the 225th anniversary of his death in 1791 on 5th December – the day the puzzle was published. Click HERE for more details. The grid construction was amazing as it included so many themed words. 225 (28d / 1d homophonically) and Fifteensquared (7d / 19d) are also placed symmetrically.
Thanks Enigmatist – a pleasure to solve and difficult to blog – as we have said there are a couple of clues which we are unsure about. We may well have parsed them differently on our initial solve but we left it a while to write up the blog and we cannot remember our explanations.
| Across | ||||
| 6 | Hip flask initially spotted and ignored by golf club further on (5) | |||
| INFRA | IN (hip) F (initial letter of flask) …. we are stumped or should we say ‘in the rough’ for the rest of the parsing | |||
| 8 | Announcement of Pac-Man? (8) | |||
| WOLFGANG | ‘Pac’ sounds like (‘announcement of’) PACK – a pack of wolves could be described as a WOLF GANG | |||
| 10 | Piece of work, in brief, for teacher (6) | |||
| EFFORT | Hidden in ‘briEF FOR Teacher’ | |||
| 11 | Terms omitted from warning about St David’s Day prayer (3,5) | |||
| AVE MARIA | |
|||
| 12,2,17 | Heritage affair comically enacted with groom? (3,8,2,6) | |||
| THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO | A cryptic definition or &lit if you prefer it – it’s an anagram of HERITAGE AFFAIR and GROOM (anagrind is ‘comically enacted’) – the second of 8/9/3’s ‘products’ – one we definitely have heard of! | |||
| 13 | Alien in outer space wanting tip from Peter Sellers (11) | |||
| AUCTIONEERS | An anagram of IN OUTER S |
|||
| 15* | D | Waste a long time in prison (7) | ||
| DUNGEON | DUNG (waste) EON (a long time) | |||
| 18 | Headless corpse’s sent west for certain journey (7) | |||
| ODYSSEY | ||||
| 22 | With mud for slinging, how to spread rumour? (4,2,5) | |||
| WORD OF MOUTH | It’s a cryptic definition and an anagram of MUD FOR and HOW TO – anagrind is ‘slinging’ although spreading things by ‘word of mouth’ is not always about ‘rumours’ or ‘mud slinging’ thankfully. | |||
| 25 | What appears when fiery enclosure’s consumed body features? (3) | |||
| URN | Another cryptic definition . This time you have to think of this as |
|||
| 26* | I | Seaweed used as fish feeder, even space filler? (5,3) | ||
| IDEAL GAS | ALGA (seaweed) inside or ‘feeding’ IDES (fish). We are not sure about the use of ‘even’ in the clue though – perhaps it’s something to do with the definition of an ideal gas? | |||
| 27 | Detective‘s drunk inn out of Pinot Noir, unfortunately (6) | |||
| POIROT | It’s P |
|||
| 29* | R | Resistance encountered by radio broadcast about new surgeon’s heart bypass (4,4) | ||
| RING ROAD | R (resistance) + an anagram of RADIO (anagrind is ‘broadcast’) around N (new) and G middle letter or ‘heart’ of surGeon | |||
| 30 | Sun a little upset for Nobel Peace Prize winner (5) | |||
| SADAT | S (sun) A + TAD (little) – reversed or ‘upset’ | |||
| Down | ||||
| 1* | F | I will get so many together for sex (4) | ||
| FIVE | This seems to be a very cryptic definition – we think it relies on the fact that when you add the answer FIVE (‘so many’) and one (I) together you get 6 (‘sex’ in Latin) | |||
| 2 | See 12 across | |||
| 3 | Cabled vehicle on route up carrying Australian music maker (6) | |||
| MOZART | TRAM (cable vehicle) reversed or ‘on route up’ around or ‘carrying’ OZ (Australian) | |||
| 4 | Remarkable force altered yellow tincture’s density (2,6) | |||
| OF RECORD | An anagram of FORCE (anagrind is ‘altered’) + OR (yellow tincture) D (density) | |||
| 5* | U | Press carpet, after spinning more repulsive (6) | ||
| UGLIER | LIE (press) RUG (carpet) with UG at the start or ‘spinning’ the letters in a different order | |||
| 7 | 1 by 1 whenever T’s put after female name (7) | |||
| FIFTEEN | IF (whenever) TEE (T) after F (female) + N (name). The answer relies upon the fact that if you put 1 alongside (‘by’) 5 (1d) you get 15. | |||
| 9* | A | Film in the 14 divides Americans (7) | ||
| AMADEUS | MADE (‘in the can’ – 14d) inside or ‘dividing’ A and US (two Americans) | |||
| 12 | Jack Jones of Bow or the Fox of Falkirk? (3) | |||
| TOD | Double definition TOD (‘Jack Jones’ is Cockney rhyming slang for all alone – ‘on your tod’) and TOD is a Scottish word for a fox | |||
| 14,21 | Do without whichever gully (but preserve that one?) (6) | |||
| CANYON | CON (do) around or ‘without’ ANY (whichever), but also CAN (preserve) YON (that one). It’s not often that you have two wordplays and the definition in the middle. | |||
| 16* | G | Hateful Englishman’s last to join fellow noonday exposer up (7) | ||
| GODDAMN | Another one which foxed us for ages but it’s N (last letter of Englishman) joining MAD DOG all reversed or ‘up’. It relies upon the saying that mad dogs and Englishman go out in the midday sun. | |||
| 17 | See 12 across | |||
| 18 | A sample of two hundred working parties in Auckland? (3) | |||
| OHU | Hidden in or ‘a sample of’ twO HUndred. We had to google this to find that it is a Maori word meaning ‘communal work group’ | |||
| 19 | Feature of brutish creature who is outspoken cutting prime minister up (8) | |||
| YAHOOISM | HOO IS sounds like (‘outspoken’) ‘who is’ inside or ‘cutting’ MAY (Prime Minister) reversed or ‘up’ | |||
| 20 | Germany initially quits by itself (7) | |||
| SQUARED | D (Germany) with SQUARE (quits as in ‘all square’) at the beginning or ‘initially’ | |||
| 21 | See 14 | |||
| 23 | They’re last ones for supper a half-hour before marching ones are issued! (6) | |||
| ORDERS | We think that it’s connected to the fact that you have to place your last ORDERS in a pub half an hour before they ask you to leave or you are given your ‘marching ORDERS‘ | |||
| 24 | Gaelic poetical figure — or musical one, essentially? | |||
| OSSIAN | OSSIA (or in music) and N middle letter of one or ‘essentially’ | |||
| 28 | Bishop‘s Bar in Bath bars bishops! (4) | |||
| TUTU | |
|||
Royal (and) Ancient for 6 across.
Re IDEAL GAS:
Boyle’s Law is not perfect in reality, but an ideal gas would fill a space evenly and so I would agree with your parsing.
http://www.livescience.com/53304-gases.html
Many thanks Il Principe dell’Oscurita – we checked RA in Chambers but could not find any reference to a golf course. Having looked again this morning we realise that we did not check out the meaning of R&A.
Happy New Year to you.
such a great idea, so well executed.
Thanks to E&B&J
I very rarely attempt a Genius (apart from the odd one that I test solve 😉 ) but had time to spare and so gave this one a go. I was delighted to spot the theme – lovely to see Gaufrid and his sterling work on 15sq getting a mention – and I completed the whole puzzle and submitted an entry, so I’m very pleased with myself.
Thanks to Enigmatist, B&J, Gaufrid and Mozart too.
Thanks B&J, it’s a good job you took over my December Genius blogging slot!
Thanks also to Enigmatist for the tribute. I’m not sure that I deserve to feature in a puzzle but Fifteensquared certainly does. A most enjoyable solve, even without the ‘extras’.
Re GODDAMN, just to add that “Mad dogs and Englishmen” is a song written by Noel Coward in the early 1930s.
The question of how to fill in the “temporary” submission form has arisen in comments from time to time. I asked the Gruniad Crossword Editor, and received this reply:-
The solution to be entered in the solution form is the word or sequence of letters that is required for entry in the grid. It matters not if hyphens and spaces are included or left out. Nor does upper or lower case lettering matter.
And you are right. A small selection of potential winners is randomly selected from the file where they are all stored and then the solutions are manually checked until the first correct one emerges.