Guardian Cryptic 27338 Crucible

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There are some nicely unusual clue constructions in this puzzle. Thanks to Crucible. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

9 I admitted to lethargy, travelling a long way (5,4)

LIGHT YEAR : I contained in(admitted to) anagram of(…, travelling) LETHARGY.

10 Relative, one in Berlin, recalled Modern Times (5)

NIECE : Reversal of(…, recalled) EIN(“one” in German, as spoken in Berlin) + CE(abbrev. for the Common or Current Era, a substitute for the AD – anno Domini – notation of the specific number of years since the traditional birthdate of Jesus Christ. Thus 2017 CE is equivalent to AD 2017. What’s in a name?).

11 Boring job enlisting a large group of American singers (7)

CHORALE : CHORE(a boring and tedious job;task) containing(enlisting) [ A + L(abbrev. for “large”) ].

Defn: An Americanism for a choir or chorus.

12 Running test in dock (2,5)

ON TRIAL : ON(running, as with a machine) + TRIAL(a test;an ordeal).

Defn: …, in a court of law.

13 At first, solver always beat Mephisto (5)

SATAN : The 1st letters, respectively, of(At first) “solver always” + TAN(to beat;to spank someone).

14 Head doctor immerses wound on time (9)

MESMERIST : Anagram of(… wound) IMMERSES plus(on) T(abbrev. for “time”).

Defn: A practitioner of Mesmerism, after F.A. Mesmer, who theorised that there was an invisible natural force that could be used to heal by inducing a hypnotic stupor on the patient, hence a “head doctor”.

16 Mac UNIX emoticon represented sentence by church (15)

EXCOMMUNICATION : Anagram of(… represented) MAC UNIX EMOTICON.

Defn: …, as a censure imposed on the offending member.

19 Floodlights not working? Ground vessel on delta (5-4)

PITCH-DARK : PITCH(the ground on which a sporting game is played) + [ ARK(a vessel, famously built by the Biblical Noah) placed after(on) D(letter represented by “delta” in the phonetic alphabet).

Defn: If the floodlights, say, at a sports ground or stadium aren’t working, then it would presumably be extremely or totally dark.

21 Firm packed in socialist dogma (5)

CREDO : CO(abbrev. for “company”, a commercial firm) containing(packed in) RED(descriptive of one having socialist ideals).

22 Dress in store showing smears (7)

MALIGNS : ALIGN(to dress;to arrange in straight lines, like a parade of soldiers) contained in(in) M(&)S(abbrev. for “Marks and Spencer”, a chain of department stores).

Defn: …, as a verb.

23 Toxic liquid‘s been sprayed over school (7)

BENZENE : Anagram of(… sprayed) BEEN containing(over) ZEN(a school;a doctrinal division of Chinese Buddhism).

24 Promised choice of two or three headings (5)

SWORN : [SW(abbrev. for “south-west”) OR N(abbrev. for “north”)](choice of two headings;compass directions); or

[ S(abbrev. for “south”), W(abbrev. for “west”) OR N(abbrev. for “north”)](choice of three headings).

25 Glower, then log in with difficulty (4,5)

NEON LIGHT : Anagram of(… with difficulty) THEN LOG IN.

Defn: Glow-er, something that glows.

Down

1 Boycott’s humble character is a family disgrace (5,5)

BLACK SHEEP : BLACK(to boycott;to refuse to have dealings with the person or business that is blacked, as a way of taking industrial action)‘S + HEEP(Uriah, character in Charles Dickens’, humble, but insincerely so).

2 Incas got liquidated, questioning their gods? (8)

AGNOSTIC : Anagram of(… liquidated) INCAS GOT.

3 Kind, good person drops wrench (6)

STRAIN : ST(abbrev. for “saint”, a good person) + RAIN(drops of water).

Double defn: 1st: A particular breed, stock, or variety of an animal or plant; and 2nd: To pull something forcibly.

4 Old boundary miles before lake in Lyme Regis (4)

MERE : Double wordplay: 1st: M(abbrev. for “miles”) + ERE(poetically, before timewise;prior); and 2nd: Hidden in(in) “Lyme Regis“.

Double defn. too.

Two complete clues in one!

5 Handle badger crossing moist ground (10)

BROOMSTICK : BROCK(a badger) containing(crossing) anagram of(… ground) MOIST.

Defn: … of, well, a broom.

6 Curse a nasty man stealing articles (8)

ANATHEMA : A + anagram of(nasty) MAN containing(stealing) [A and THE](two articles in grammar).

7 Unrestrained family bull almost blocks big road (6)

MEDICI : “edict”(an example of which is a bull, an official order from the Pope himself) minus its last letter(almost) contained in(blocks) MI(M1, the north-south expressway;big road in England, with the Roman numeral substituted for “1”).

Defn: Powerful;unrestrained family in Italy until 1737.

8 Call a Brontë sister, secretly (4)

BELL : Double defn: 1st: Informally, to call on the telephone; and 2nd: The surname of the pseudonyms used by each of the literary Brontë sisters, ie. someone who was secretly a Brontë sister.

14 Invitation to congress in Mantua puzzled writer (10)

MAUPASSANT : PASS(an invitation to congress;to have sexual intercourse) contained in(in) anagram of(… puzzled) MANTUA.

Answer: Guy de, French writer.

15 Artist‘s model keen on swimmer surfacing (10)

TINTORETTO : T(the early model of car from the Ford Company) + INTO(keen on;very interested in) + reversal of(… surfacing, in a down clue) OTTER(an aquatic mammal and a good swimmer).

Defn: …, Italian from the Renaissance school.

17 Lots trap a boar in wood (8)

MAHOGANY : MANY(lots;plentiful) containing(trap) [A + HOG(a boar) ].

18 Marine blocks small diver by Channel Islands, heading north (8)

ICEBERGS : Reversal of(…, heading north, in a down clue) [ S(abbrev. for “small”) + GREBE(a diving bird) plus(by) CI(abbrev. for the Channel Islands) ].

20 A couple of lines in drag essential in soap (6)

TALLOW : [ A + LL(a couple of abbrevs. for “line”) ]contained in(in) TOW(to drag;to pull).

Answer: Fatty substance mainly from sheep and cattle used for making soap.

21 A hundred and fifty start to enjoy what’s wicked (6)

CANDLE : C(Roman numeral for “hundred”) + AND + L(Roman numeral for “fifty”) + the 1st letter of(start to) “enjoy“.

Defn: Wick-ed, having a wick.

22 State weight (4)

MASS : Double defn: 1st: Abbrev. for the US state of Massachusetts; and 2nd: What directly determines weight, but are not equivalents (as taught in physics 101).

23 Smell fine reserve (4)

BOOK : BO(abbrev. for “body odour” produced by bacterial action on sweat) + OK(okay;all right;fine).

Defn: … a dinner table, say.

50 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27338 Crucible”

  2. Thanks, scchua, fine blog to an excellent puzzle.

    Perhaps nearer the easier end of the setter’s spectrum but nonetheless enjoyable for that.

    Haven’t seen the wicked gag for some time – it was like meeting an old friend.

    Struggled with NEON LIGHT for some reason. I don’t think I saw the GLOW-ER ruse.

    Only ever said PITCH BLACK and not PITCH DARK. Must be related to where one was brought up I presume.

    MEDICI was clever and BROOMSTICK to ages to spot.

    Lovely stuff from an accomplished setter.

    Nice week, all.

  3. Although the bottom left defeated me, I enjoyed the theme, unmentioned above, which relates to the rites of the church – particularly exorcism – for which we have BELL, BOOK and CANDLE (not to mention SATAN!)

  6. Is there a theme? I’m not entirely sure, as some of the answers (eg CREDO, EXCOMMUNICATE, AGNOSTIC) don’t seem very strongly linked.

    But when I saw BELL and CANDLE, I started looking for BOOK.

    Nice puzzle from Crucible, for which many thanks, and to scchua for explaining those I couldn’t parse.

  7. Hmm…failed as usual to spot the theme.

    Wasn’t Tolstoy excommunicated and also write a book about Guy de Maupassant?

  9. Thanks both. I agree with William@2 about PITCH DARK.

    13a seems poor grammar – wouldn’t “solvers” be better?

    Is there a theme referring to the play “The Crucible” (also setters alias)? ON TRIAL, EXCOMMUNICATION, MALIGNS (perhaps), BROOMSTICK plus all the ones mentioned.

  10. I’d like to clarify that my comment @6 wasn’t meant to question ChrisS @3 or SimonBXL @4 & @5, as their comments hadn’t appeared when I was composing mine. So mine was intended as a free-standing question.

    I might rephrase it now: If there is a theme, it seems to be very fuzzy around the edges. I was wondering whether BROOMSTICK was part of the theme, but couldn’t work out how… though Shirl @9 could have a workable idea…

  11. Thank you Crucible and scchua.

    Terrific theme, well spotted ChrisS @3. BELL, BOOK and CANDLE are an archaic procedure used for EXCOMMUNICATION, the person being ANATHEMAtized and delivered to SATAN.

  13. Missed the theme, but enjoyed this nonetheless. 3 and 4d were both very interesting, especially 4d. I don’t recall having seen a double def and double wordplay clue before. Not part of the theme, but I liked the cricketing connotation for 1d and the ‘Invitation to congress in Mantua’ in 14d. No wonder the poor writer was puzzled.

    W = mg.

    Thanks to Crucible and scchua.

  15. William 2 and Shirl 9 – in cases like “pitch black” v “pitch dark” it’s instructive to look for the number of occurrences of each term on the Internet. Google very helpfully provides this information. There are more than 55 million instances of “pitch black” compared with 574,000 of “pitch dark”. So the numbers seem to indicate that you’re in the majority.
    And in today’s febrile environment, the clue for 14d could equally well have been “Sexual harassment in Mantua”

  16. I enjoyed this a lot. Favourites were PITCH-DARK, BENZENE, SWORN, TINTORETTO and BOOK. Many thanks to Crucible and scchua.

  18. If there is a problems at SATAN, it’s that the juxtaposition with ‘at first’ and ‘always’ makes little sense. That’s only on the surface of course.

  19. Thanks to Crucible and scchua

    Definitely on the easier end of the Crucible spectrum, with one or two write-ins (eg excommunication), but most enjoyable nonetheless. I did not know that chorale was American – I am more familiar with its definition as a piece of religious music, usually German.

    14dn reminded me of a joke about an Oxford Bookshop:

    “Do you have the Guide Michelin?”

    “No, but we do have Guy de Maupassant”

  20. Thanks to Crucible and scchua. Very enjoyable and, to my surprise, easier than anticipated. For once I managed to parse everything – and that is certainly not complaint.

  21. Marienkaefer @19 Ho-ho, very funny!

    David @15 So you do, never thought of doing that. Does that imply that the phrase “pitch black” is approximately 100 times more common than “pitch dark”? Not sure if the number of hits found by Google equates to commonality of usage, but it’s an interesting exercise.

  22. Thanks Crucible and scchua

    Very accessible, though I missed the theme, of course. Favourite was CANDLE.

    Why “unrestrained” for the MEDICI? They were powerful at times, and on occasion ruled Florence autocratically, but “unrestrained” seems an odd description.

  23. Thanks Crucible and scchua

    NHS @ 18: if you think in terms of two players of, say, chess who competed over a period of time, it’s possible that A always beat B at first, but as they carried on and B’s skill improved, then A would lose an increasing number of times.

    Come to think of it, you could apply the same analogy to setters vs solvers – I always used to get thrashed by most of them, but have got better as the years have gone by.

  24. Most of this went in very easily and then I came to a stop in the SE corner. CANDLE,BOOK and BENZENE took me an age but, having got them, they proved to be my favourite clues of the day.I didn’t spot the theme but I did wonder if BROOMSTICK and SATAN might indicate the approach of Halloween. Anyway,nice puzzle!
    Thanks CRUCIBLE.

  25. Unlike William@2 I hadn’t come across the wicked gag before, so here is the conversation this morning with Mrs W.
    Me “Why would candle be wicked (evil)?”
    Mrs W “Because it has a wick.”
    Me “Doh!”, and a smiley goes beside the clue.
    And on a similar theme does anyone else puzzle over a clue for some time, then read it out loud to someone, and solve it immediately – leaving the listening partner saying facetiously “I’m pleased I was so much help.” It happened twice today with 14 and 15d. I have a theory that we think better (or more broadly) as a result of external inputs and reading a clue out loud means we get an external input through our ears which we then process in a different way to just thinking about it – and hey presto an alternative interpretation emerges and there’s the answer.
    Thanks to those who highlighted the theme here and in particular to scchua for pointing out the BOGOF nature of 4d – brilliant. I was a little disappointed that the anagrams for 9 & 25a both led to LIGHT as part of their answers – other than that I thoroughly enjoyed solving a Crucible without feeling as though I’d been heated in one.

  27. The wicked joke is, I am afraid, rather old. ‘Very bad candle will be’ appeared in Guardian before I was born, I see from records. But this was a nice puzzle in any case.

    4 is interesting, made well, as the whole x2 clues work seamlessly.

    Very good indeed.

  29. I really enjoyed this, and felt it compared very well with the other fine puzzles this week. Unfortunately I completely missed the theme — a real forehead slapper, now that I look back at it, especially given the setter’s name (tip of the hat to Shirl @9). Like others above, I admired Crucible’s clueing in 3d and 4d. Other favorites included TINTORETTO, ICEBERG, and NEON LIGHT. I did not realize that CHORALE is an Americanism. Thanks to Crucible, scchua, and the other commenters.

  30. I’m thrilled that I have at last found a clue that I can shake my head sadly over, and with the benefit of my specialist knowledge bemoan its inaccuracy. Sorry, Crucible, 20d not “essential in soap”, in fact not used much at all nowadays – most soap made with vegetable oils (coconut, palm etc.)

    Apart from that, loved the crossword!

  31. Malagachica@30, sorry, but in defence of the setter, the dictionaries and wiki indicate rhat “tallow” could also mean similar fatty subatances, including such made from vegetables, and commercial tallow can include fat from plant sources, as implied by “mainly” in my parsing.

  32. WhiteKing @25 You raise an interesting point. I do what you say all the time. I read out a clue I’m puzzling over to the memsahib but she now barely even acknowledges the question as she knows I so often get the answer straight away. In my case I think the effort of describing the problem goes a long way to solving it for ones self.

    In the same way, mums may solve physics homework problems for their kids, even though they have the scantest of knowledge of the subject.

  33. I thought TINTORETTO was ridiculously difficult, and MAUPASSANT almost as bad. Would it kill setters to be more helpful, e.g. with “Italian artist” and/or French writer”?

  34. El Ingles @33
    I thought that it was easy enough to get MAUPASSANT (when the crossers were in place); it was the “invitation to congress” that passed me by (I might have been more on the right wavelength if Paul had been the setter!)

  35. muffin@34
    I did consider the possibility that “invitation to congress” had a sexual connotation, but I dropped the idea when it became obvious that LET’S F*CK would never fit.

  37. Those two clues are very difficult, as the wordplay, while fair, is not very specific. ‘Invitation to congress’ is tough to get; ‘puzzled’ is not the most obvious anagrind; ‘swimmer’ could be any fish or aquatic mammal. And, the definitions are minimalistic, as you say. You’d certainly have done well to put them in as your first two answers, but this is a Thursday puzzle after all.

  38. Good puzzle.

    Chorale is not an Americanism, btw. It is a form or musical composition that has been in use in Europe since before the year 1600.

  42. Good range of clues from write-ins to the impossible. Enough to satisfy the average solver like me, I believe.

  43. Simon @ 42

    As I implied yesterday, but was misconstrued, stick at it. Your success rate will go up, as will your satisfaction.

  44. I didn’t realize/realise that chorale was an Americanism either. The Hooterville I grew up in had one and I thought it was an odd term even then. I always expected to see cows wandering among the singers. Thank goodness the Gay Men’s Chorus went with that name – Gay Men’s Chorale evokes all sorts of unsettling images.

  45. BlueDot @ 44

    (possibly non-PC these days)

    Back in the 1980s, the UK’s Black Dyke Mills Band had to change their name when they wanted to perform in the US

  46. The theme of E COMMUNICATION, obscure enough in the case of Tolstoy/MAUPASSANT, is arguably there in TINTORETTO, who painted ‘The Excommunication of Frederick Barbarossa’.

  48. MASS defined as “weight” is a shocker – I’m disappointed to see that only the original blogger has commented on this, especially as so meny cryptic solvers have science/maths backgrounds.

  49. To my mind some good clues making three quarters of a good puzzle. Matter slightly by one or two overly oblique references, especially those around Maupassant, Benzene and Tintoretto.

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