Guardian 27,302 – Nutmeg

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Characteristic elegant and witty clueing from Nutmeg today. I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to surface readings, but there are some good ones here: hardly anything that “could only be a crossword clue”. Thanks to Nutmeg.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. CARBON Faithful copy of old motor VIP’s rejected (6)
CAR (motor) + reverse of NOB – “old” belongs to the definition because carbon paper is not (much) used any more
5. WELSHMAN National lawmen on the move, keeping quiet (8)
SH in LAWMEN*
9. CONCERTI Compositions needing correction, cutting or adapting (8)
Anagram of CORRECTION less OR
10. MIXING Current vote within dynasty for merger (6)
I (symbol for electric current) + X (vote) in MING (Chinese dynasty)
11. FLOATING DEBT Tangled bit of elastic’s a short-term liability (8,4)
(TANGLED BIT OF)* – “short-term debt that is regularly refinanced in order to fund a government’s or company’s continuing operations”
13. THOR God‘s house in Tangier evacuated (4)
HO (house) in T[angie]R
14. ENTIRELY New flag adopted by diocese without reservation (8)
N + TIRE (to flag) in ELY
17. CRUDITÉS Veggie hors d’oeuvre — butcher cursed it! (8)
(CURSED IT)*
18. PAYS Brings in petitions Republican’s left (4)
PRAYS less R; “my job pays/brings in £x a week”
20. HONEYMOONING On trip with mate, one stops Henry showing too much cheek (12)
ONE in HY + MOONING (“showing too much cheek”)
23. SETTLE Light seat for two or more (6)
Double definition – “light” as in “alight”
24. HOT WATER Trouble bather gets into? (3,5)
Double/cryptic definition, the bather being someone having a bath rather than a swimmer
25. GRANDEUR State old lady regretted, on reflection (8)
GRAN + reverse of RUED
26. RATIFY Approve first of great escapes please (6)
GRATIFY (please) less G[reat]
Down
2. ALOE Last drop of rain falling from isolated succulent (4)
ALONE less [rai]N
3. BACKFIRED Announcement of player’s dismissal had the wrong effect (9)
BACK (player, as in football etc) FIRED
4. NARROW Constrict end of iron bolt (6)
[iro]N + ARROW
5. WHISTLER’S MOTHER Worthless hermit, criminal destined to hang? (9,6)
(WORTHLESS HERMIT) – the painting officially called Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1. Perhaps “.. that’s destined to hang” would have been a more satisfactory definition
6. LAMINATE Hard-skinned alien creature seen from below (8)
Reverse of E.T. ANIMAL
7. HEXED Spellbound, consider snatching kiss (5)
X (kiss) in HEED (consider)
8. ANNE BOLEYN Consort — for Henry the Second (4,6)
Just an extended, slightly cryptic, definition – Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s second wife, so “for Henry, the second”
12. CHARIOTEER Old racing driver‘s less rash, nursing fractured toe (10)
TOE in CHARIER
15. REPUGNANT Odious current guards backed up (9)
Reverse of UP in REGNANT. Elizabeth II is the current/regnant Queen, I suppose, but regnant is really in contrast to “Queen consort”. However, I see that Chambers also gives regnant = prevalent.
16. STAMPEDE Did Frank ultimately change career? (8)
STAMPED (did frank) + [chang]E
19. VICTOR Bouncer dismissing England opener’s a winner (6)
EVICTOR less E[ngland]
21. EATEN Scoffed in ridicule at enemy (5)
Hidden in ridiculE AT ENemy
22. PELF Penny added to mischief-maker’s money (4)
P + ELF – a new word for me, though easy enough to guess from the clue (it seemed more likely than “delf”). Chambers says it’s probably related to “pilfer”

38 comments on “Guardian 27,302 – Nutmeg”

  1. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

    Very good, though not very difficult, although I didn’t parse REPUGNANT, and spent a while wondering about the part of speech for LAMINATE (apparently it can be verb, noun or adjective!), and how to get rid of the E in PRAYERS to give PAYS (the penny dropped eventually).

    Favourites were HONEYMOONING and CHARIOTEER.

  3. A ski-jump for me. A while waiting around going nowhere, then the gate opened and off i whooshed. a few i entered slightly in hope – settle, pays – and i also couldn’t parse Repugnant. But i liked honeymooning and that g decided me.

  4. A neat and enjoyable puzzle. I’m with muffin@1 and Rewolf@3 in really liking 20a HONEYMOONING.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

  5. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew. I battled with this one for a while and could not parse a couple. “Stampede” defeated me, and I only got “crudites” from the crossers. Like Muffin, I can’t see how “laminate” derives from “hard-skinneD”. Loved “honeymooning”, once I spotted it.

  6. Greg @6
    I’d go for laminate as in the colloquial description of laminate flooring or laminate worktops. Not very grammatical, I agree, but fair enough in crossword context.

  8. LAMINATE works for me as an adjective.

    What an excellent puzzle! My first one in was the poetic ALOE. I didn’t know PELF but it had to be, and funnily enough I didn’t know SETTLE as a seat, so I was hung up on SETTEE. I missed the parsing of STAMPEDE, so thanks very much Andrew.

    HONEYMOONING stands out though every single clue was a joy.

    Many thanks Nutmeg

  9. I first learned of settles as seats at the age of about 11 from the description of Badger’s house in The Wind in the Willows, where Rat and Mole end up after their terrifying adventure in the Wild Wood, and the word always has that association for me. I know it’s off-topic, but I can’t resist quoting the relevant paragraph:

    The floor was well-worn red brick, and on the wide hearth burnt a fire of logs, between two attractive chimney-corners tucked away in the wall, well out of any suspicion of draught. A couple of high-backed settles, facing each other on either side of the fire, gave further sitting accommodations for the sociably disposed. In the middle of the room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm-chair stood pushed back, were spread the remains of the Badger’s plain but ample supper. Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs. It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over everything without distinction.

  10. Another one who failed to parse repugnant – I share Andrew’s reservations now I know – and stampede (excellent now I know). Why is grandeur state? Probably being thick.
    Excellent puzzle. Loved it.

  12. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew. A delightful puzzle. I too had trouble with REPUGNANT and SETTLE vs. settee and also took a while seeing ALOE, even with the crossers, but like Andrew with SETTLE I did know PELF from a favorite passage where I first encountered it. In the final lines of Jonson’s The Alchemist the con artist Face, now returning to his real life role as Jeremy the butler, gets a reward from Lovewit, the master of the house, and tells the playgoers: “this pelf, / Which I have got, if you do [ac]quit me, rests / To feast you often and invite new guests.” As I read this epilogue, though the play may be over, the con games will continue.

  13. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew.

    Good crossword, great clues!

    I did particularly like STAMPEDE and HONEYMOONING. Is HY really an abbreviation for Henry? It doesn’t seem to be in the main dictionaries. SETTLE/SETTEE was a difficult one. I thought I had parsed SETTEE as ‘to light’ ‘to set (down)’ and TEE for a golf ball seat, oh dear!

  14. Robi @13
    “Is HY really an abbreviation for Henry?”

    I queried that as well because it’s not in Chambers, Collins or ODE. However, Dictionary.com does have:

    “Electricity.
    1. (formerly) henry.”

    It must be a rather long ‘formerly’, or an American usage, because I’ve been involved with electronics and electrical engineering for 55+ years and have never come across this abbreviation for the electrical unit of inductance.

  15. Andrew@9, I have to say how much I enjoyed that delightful addition you posted regarding 23a SETTLE as a definition for “seat” in 23a. It is good for the soul to be reminded of the delights of “Wind in the Willows”. I guess it is a word that might now be regarded as rather archaic by the younger generations.

    ACD@12 even though I have read some Ben Johnson, albeit a long time ago, I was not familiar with that quote; I found it very interesting in terms of the extra dimensions it added to my understanding of the word PELF at 22d.

    My thanks to you both for enriching the forum.

  16. Found this one hard work, but as always from Nutmeg it is beautifully crafted. WHISTLERS MOTHER was unfamiliar and I needed that to finish off the SW corner, with HONEYMOONING last in.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew

  17. Restarted my cryptic solving a good few years back now with Nutmeg and her colleagues in the Quiptic, so it’s a delight to see that she’s now part of the gig economy with the main Grauniad puzzle. Loved this one, especially HONEYMOONING.

    You are right, Andrew: CARBON paper to make copies is not much used any more. But I bet we’ve all sent an e-mail today with the option to fill in the box marked ‘cc’, CARBON COPY. Here’s a mission, should you wish to accept it: ask someone under 25 what cc stands for in said box on e-mail. I’d warrant that a good percentage of those answering would say ‘dunno’.

    Thanks, both.

  19. Good fun and not too difficult, though with the usual few unparsed including REPUGNANT. Fell hook, line and sinker for the ‘old motor’ in 1a; are SUV’s really as common as that now? Thanks to Andrew @9 and ACD @12 for the literary quotations though only highlights my ignorance I’m afraid.

    As is pointed out in the blog for today’s Indy (Serpent) the grids for the two puzzles are the same, though the Indy has a clever related Nina which escaped me.

    Thank you to Andrew and Nutmeg.

  21. Robi@13 and Gaufrid@14

    Hy was the accepted abbreviation for Henry in the various street directories of English towns produced by Kelly’s, Gores etc in the early part of the 20th century eg the 1937 Kelly’s Directory of Hanmersmith.

  22. I was another SETTEE but I suppose—. Enjoyable puzzle though with HONEYMOONING being a particular favourite, and CHARIOTEER
    an able runner up!
    Enjoyed the Wind in the willows extract. I performed in this during my University days and loved every minute of it.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

  24. An enjoyable solve for me today. Like NHS @20, my favorite was CRUDITÉS, which had nice wordplay, and a surface that for me was almost &littish. (Not to mention a personal connection to this clue, as I have been following a strictly whole food plant-based diet for many years!). I also enjoyed WHISTLER’S MOTHER and HONEYMOONING. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

  25. Haha, took me a while to get my post @24 accepted. I’m not sure what answer the captcha was looking for to the equation “two + one =” but it was definitely not “3”! I had to copy to a new post and submit from there.

  26. Took me forever to get VICTOR, running through the alphabet again and again, but I really enjoyed this. Favourites were CRUDITES, STAMPEDE and HONEYMOONING,. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

  28. Most enjoyable. Favourites for me were ENTIRELY because of the misdirection for flag; CRUDITÉS because it took me ages to see the anagrind and its fodder; and STAMPEDE, again for its misdirection. I also liked the use of punctuation to mislead and make smooth surfaces. Like others I didn’t parse REPUGNANT or the cryptic bit of ANNE BOLEYN.
    I like Andrew’s sense check – “could only be a crossword clue” – and much prefer puzzles that have few (none) of this type – like this one.
    I also had the same captcha problem as DaveMc yesterday – let’s see what happens now. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew.

  29. Re Kathryn’s Dad@17. I asked our 12 next generation people aged between 29 and 41 and 3 of them knew what cc stood for – so 75% didn’t. Interesting that one of them is the MD of a magazine publishing company who handles 200 emails a day and he didn’t know :-). He’s a bit of a wag, so he did ask what “To” stood for.

  34. I love WHISTLER’S MOTHER for the wonderful anagram of “worthless hermit.” I’m a sucker for a good’un.

    I actually don’t think cc stands for “carbon copy,” though I am old enough not only to remember them but to have used the dratted things. A nightmare when you make a typo, which I did all too often! But I think “cc” is the plural of “c”, just as “pp” stands for “pages” and “ll” for “lines.” Think of bibliographic references — :op. cit pp 3-5″, or “Ode to a firecracker, ll. 10-14.” (Don’t look for that poem, I just made it up because I’d otherwise have to find line numbers from a real one.)

  35. I must say that settles look pretty uncomfortable to me. Straight-backed wooden benches with not even any arm rests unless you happen to be sitting at the end. Not something I’d have by my fireplace!

  36. Those of us who had to memorize the passage from Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel that begins “Breathes there a man with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said/ ‘This is my own, my native land!'” know the word “pelf”. I don’t know that anyone has ever used the word other than poets looking for a rhyme with “self”.

  37. Valentine@34

    My understanding is that cc (or CC) really did stand for “carbon copy”, and then became “courtesy copy” for e-mails.

  38. I have been too busy to try either this puzzle or the following day’s Brummie until now, and I’m so glad I saved this one to solve later. A delightful puzzle as many others have said.

    I loved the anagram for WHISTLER’S MOTHER, although like Andrew I think the clue should have had “that’s” in the appropriate place. I also liked CHARIOTEER, ANNE BOLEYN, PELF and HONEYMOONING very much.

    I left SETTLE until last and hastily put in SETTEE (SET + TEE?). Of course, it can only be SETTLE.

    Belated thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

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