Guardian Cryptic 27,121 by Nutmeg

by

There were some tough clues in this one, alongside a handgul of gimmes…

… and there’s one clue I can’t quite parse, so any help would be appreciated (6ac).  Thanks to ElTel and PaulW for the parsing.

Generally, the clues were fair, although some felt a bit contrived (24ac, for example).

23 dn doesn’t quite work, as you can’t abbreviate a letter, but the concept was good.

My favourites were 9ac, 16ac, 13dn and 22dn.

Thanks, Nutmeg

Across
1 DECKCHAIR Hack cried off, finding somewhere to relax (9)
*(hack cried)
6 COPT Faithful chap from Egypt, caught listening in (4)
 Homophone of COPPED
8 IN TANDEM Originally, Neil and I met dancing together (2,6)
N(eil) + *(and I met)
9 CYBORG Superman repelled by feeding clipped dog (6)
<=BY, “feeding” CORG(i)
10 LETTER Communication from landlord (6)
Double definition
11 RAMPAGED Press, given summons, went berserk (8)
RAM + PAGED
12 MULLET Order I’m not sure about — it’s fishy (6)
<= TELL (order) UM (I’m not sure)
15 LISTENER Person attending medical pioneer touring north-east (8)
(Joseph) LISTER “touring” N.E.
16 SLOBBISH Dirty and unkempt American bastard keeping liberal cleric out of work (8)
S.O.B. (son of a bitch, hence “American bastard”) “keeping” L(iberal), then BISH(op)
19 CARPET Tick off what fractious child may have on journey? (6)
A fractious child may have a PET (strop) while in the CAR, hence a CAR PET
21 MALIGNER German aboard mother ship who’ll try to run you down (8)
G(erman) “aboard” MA(mother) LINER (ship)
22 GROUSE Bring round after grand game (6)
ROUSE “after” G(rand)
24 DIWALI Feast from Italy with wife in control at first (6)
DI(W)AL (wife (W) in control (DIAL)) + I(taly)
25 INACTIVE Nutmeg caught in local doing nothing (8)
I (Nutmeg, the setter referring to herself, sorry for my original “himself”, Nutmeg) + C(aught) in NATIVE
26 OGLE Gawp at dog leaping fences (4)
Hidden in “dOG LEaping”
27 LIGATURES Regulations sadly lacking on theatre closures (9)
*(regulatis) (REGULATIONS without ON)
Down
1 DUNCE Moron expected sandwiches, not cheese, to start with (5)
DUE (expected) “sandwiches” N(ot) C(heese)
2 CHATTEL This bit of property changing hands would cause gossip (7)
If you changed the L at the end of CHATTEL to an R (ie changed left (hand) to right (hand)), you’d get CHATTER (gossip)
3 CEDAR Tree, one apt to give way by the sound of it (5)
Homophone of CEDER
4 ADMIRAL Leader at sea, reversing car across verge (7)
<= LA(RIM)DA
5 ROCK MUSIC Notes from Gibraltar? (4,5)
Cryptic definition
6 CABBAGE Vehicle, with case finally inside, leaves from farm (7)
CAB + BAG + (insid)E
7 PERSEVERE Keep going south, always in custody of Nancy’s dad (9)
S(outh) EVER “in custody of” PERE (“dad” in French, so in Nancy)
13 UPLOADING Paul doing puzzles for publishing online (9)
*(paul doing)
14 TRIENNIAL Contest with entry of nine arranged every three years (9)
TRIAL (contest) “with entry of” *(nine)
17 BRIGADE Force new partner to bag up silver (7)
BRIDE “to bag” <+Ag
18 HERRING Husband, not sinless but something of a catch? (7)
H(usband) + ERRING (not sinless)
20 ROOSTER Bird table visited by duck (7)
ROSTER “visited by” O (duck)
22 GIANT Good worker tackling tip of iceberg in Titanic (5)
G(ood) + ANT “tackling” I(ceberg)
23 SAVES “S” abbreviated means “shields” (5)
S + AVES. (abbreviated “averages”, or “means”)

*anagram

39 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,121 by Nutmeg”

  4. This was a difficult puzzle for me. I failed to solve 19a and could not parse 12a, 16a, 1d, 23d

    Thanks loonapick and Nutmeg

  5. All fair enough and no complaints from me. Was there a minor fish angle going on? Mullet rock herring? Is there an admiral fish? Giant squid?

  6. It took me a long time to fill in the NE quarter of this. I got 6a COPT though failed to parse it. I ended up bunging in CAREER at 19a thinking that perhaps it could be a synonym for journey, so really I didn’t finish the puzzle properly. CARPET didn’t occur to me and I now realise I should have been trying for a synonym for “tick off” rather than for “journey”.

    9a CYBORG was my last one in. No idea now why it took me so long to think of the tailless corgi.

    Favourite was 27a LIGATURES.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and loonapick.

  7. Thank you Nutmeg and loonapick.

    I found this puzzle very enjoyable, I always do with Nutmeg (by the way, 25a, that should be “the setter referring to herself”).
    The clue for LIGATURES was great, and I also liked CHATTEL, it reminded me of chattel houses in Jamaica, attractive little old wooden homes that can be moved.

    CYBORG was a word I did not really know the meaning of, but there is an article in the Guardian today that caught my eye.

  10. Thanks to Nutmeg and loonapick. I struggled but did get COPT, but could not parse SAVES and was defeated by DIWALI. Still, very enjoyable as usual from this setter.

  11. Thanks both,

    Another enjoyable solve. Favourite was 16ac. 24ac and 23dn held me up. I originally had ‘scuts’ or ‘scuti’ for 23dn thinking either of a possible derivation the word for a rabbit’s behind, or the Latin.
    Still no 22ac(s).

  13. Like Cookie, I’m a fan of Nutmeg. Got a bit stuck on SW corner before getting DIWALI and SLOBBISH (but couldn’t parse). Favourites were LIGATURES, OGLE, CARPET, MULLET and UPLOADING. Many thanks to Nutmeg and loonapick.

  14. DIAL for control seemed like a bit of a stretch until I looked at my hi-fi amplifier and the central heating control. Didn’t spring immediately to mind while I was staring at the clue however, hence DIWALI last in. But I did recall LADA for car!

    I didn’t see what was going on in the likes of SLOBBISH and SAVES till I came here, so thanks loonapick.

  15. I struggled a bit with the wavelength today – Nutmeg is very good at misdirection but they are all clear enough once you see them. CARPET was last in.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and loonapick

  16. This was a tale of two halves for me: the top half went at a pretty fair clip, while the bottom half was a real struggle. I cheated on DIWALI finally.

    I did not know that S.O.B. was an Americanism, by the way (and I failed to parse that one anyway).

  18. Thanks loonapick and Nutmeg.

    Found this quite easy for a Nutmeg for the first three quarters of the clues, but had to keep chigging away at the rest.

    [The definition in 8ac is not underlined and is TOGETHER]

  19. leroyjean @12 and Mark @17, for me never, neither my late husband nor I had had partners before we were married, which we were happily for 30 years.

  20. Tough and enjoyable as ever from Nutmeg. Didn’t parse saves until we saw the blog but everything else was fine. Thanks to everyone.

  21. Thanks Nutmeg and loonapick.

    Great fun: enjoyed PERSEVERE, ROOSTER,CHATTEL and many others, but couldn’t parse CARPET, SLOBBISH (Doh!) and SAVESso thanks to loonapick for those. In a spirit of etc. the L in SLOBBISH stands in this case for “liberal” not “left” as indicated; fair enough as it has already acted out that role in CHATTEL.

  23. I found this extremely difficult esp the NE corner. Once COPT went in, both CABBAGE and CYBORG followed reasonably quickly but I spent longer on this corner than the rest of the puzzle!
    I came closer to getting on this setter’s wavelength than I usually do. I liked SLOBBISH- and surely SOB is/was an Americanism – and LISTENER.
    Thanks NUTMEG.

  24. Thanks Nutmeg and loonapick.
    24a Diwali is a festival and not a feast. IMO it is a blatantly wrong definition. Like all festivals, a feast may be made but the feast itself is never called Diwali. It has another common spelling Deepavali as folks in southern India call it. Both “Deep” and “Diya” mean light, and it is a festival of lights. Sorry.

  25. I was tired last night when I started this puzzle. I solved the first few clues reasonably quickly but for some reason I just wasn’t enjoying it – possibly my tiredness but possibly also a sense that some of the clues were a bit contrived, as Loonapick noted. MALIGNER was one example for me. So I decided to pull up stumps – a DNF. Thanks to Loonapick and apologies to Nutmeg if this reads like a whinge – I did enjoy a few clues here – HERRING for example.

  26. ilippu @24, and others, a feast according to the COED can be “a gratification of the senses or mind” or “an annual religious celebration”, and Diwali certainly is a “feast for one’s eyes”.

  27. ilippu@24: One of the meanings of “feast” is a religious festival, although that usage is far less common nowadays than the meaning “a large rich meal”.

  28. Am I missing any redness here? LETTER, MULLET, CARPET, GROUSE, ADMIRAL,
    CABBAGE, HERRING, ROOSTER, GIANT, CEDAR, BRIGADE

  31. Went to sleep with a quarter unsolved – woke this morning and finished in 5 minutes – how does this work?! Favourite was CARPET – big smile – and couldn’t parse SAVES. And of course I hadn’t seen the red theme – a nice reward for 7d-ing. Thank you Nutmeg, loonapick and Rarevisitor.

  33. No one who uses statistics EVER used “aves” as an abbreviation for “averages”. It doesn’t even look like “averages”. “avgs” maybe, even “avrg” but not “aves”.

  34. amalthaea @33, it is sometimes used apparently, but I wonder if Nutmeg meant “avenues”, Aves, for “means”?

    Dictionary.com gives for avenue

    a means of access or attainment:
    avenues of escape; avenues to greater power.

    a way or means of entering into or approaching a place:
    the various avenues to India.

  35. This is late, but I wanted to say that I enjoyed both the crossword and the blog very much. There was a neatness about all of the clues, and some were decidedly clever.

    My one disappointment was 23d SAVES, which I accept is a perfectly formed clue (and I had sussed its construction correctly), but, not knowing that ‘shield’ could mean ‘save’, I had to leave it unsolved until I got the ‘V’, and then it was a write-in. ‘abbreviated means’ was particularly neat in retrospect, and my immediate interpretation of that was ‘avenues’ and not ‘averages’.

    Favourites were 16a SLOBBISH, 1d DUNCE, 4d ADMIRAL and 13d UPLOADING.

    Thanks Nutmeg and loonapick.

  38. Graham C @36
    To carpet means to scold (or ‘tick off’). The word is perhaps used more often as a ‘carpeting’, which means more of a reprimand than a mere ticking off, but I thought ‘tick off’ was an adequate indication in the clue.
    As for your other query, I also found it hard to make ‘shields’ mean anything that fitted the clue and the grid, and ‘south’ (as in South Shields) is as good as any of my early attempts – but not good enough!

  39. How can you tell if 2D is CHATTER or CHATTEL? My reading of the clue led me to think that gossip represented the definition.

Comments are closed.