I found this a little harder than average for Chifonie, though with his usual mostly straightforward style. Thanks to Chifonie.
| Across | ||||||||
| 4. | BOWLER | Hat left in shady spot (6) L in BOWER |
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| 6. | AMUNDSEN | Man used badly by Norse explorer (8) (MAN USED)* + N |
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| 9. | CRAVAT | Accessory for many an artist attracts tax (6) C (100, “many”) + RA (artist) + VAT |
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| 10. | COVENANT | Desperately want to keep grannie’s promise (8) NAN in COVET |
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| 11. | BLOCK LETTER | Check mail in print? That’s capital! (5,6) BLCK (to check) + LETTER (mail) |
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| 15. | THRUSTS | Hopes to keep husband in forces (7) H in TRUSTS |
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| 17. | NUT TREE | Biscuit old actor gives Hazel (3,4) NUT (biscuit, as in Ginger Nut) + [Herbert Beerbohm] TREE (actor) – a definition-by-example, so needs a question mark or “maybe” |
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| 18. | ELDERFLOWER | Blossom makes church official initially feel let down (11) ELDER + F[eel] + LOWER (let down) |
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| 22. | UNAWARES | Girl gets merchandise inadvertently (8) UNA + WARES |
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| 23. | EGOIST | I get so agitated no one should ignore me (6) (I GET SO)* |
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| 24. | STEP ON IT | Isn’t poet poorly? Hurry! (4,2,2) (ISN’T POET)* |
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| 25. | GANGES | Groups of workmen embracing oriental sacred flower (6) E in GANGS. The Ganges is a sacred river of Hinduism |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | REMARK | Comment on old currency (6) RE (on) + MARK (former currency of Germany, and elsewhere) |
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| 2. | IMPORTUNER | Trafficker retains a French solicitor (10) UN in IMPORTER |
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| 3. | IN SECRET | Six-footer entertains soldier surreptitiously (2,6) RE (Royal Engineer) in INSECT (six-footer) |
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| 4. | BACKBITE | Disparage defender’s incisiveness (8) BACK (defender in football etc) + BITE |
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| 5. | WEAPONRY | Arms becoming tired carrying piano leg (8) P[iano] + ON (leg side in cricket) in WEARY. A slight blemish that the word occurs in the clue to 20d |
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| 7. | STAR | Lead is found in Costa Rica (4) Hidden in coSTA Rica; star as in leading role |
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| 8. | NUTS | Heads out to lunch (4) Double definition |
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| 12. | EASY DOES IT | I see today’s problem! Take your time! (4,4,2) (I SEE TODAY’S)* |
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| 13. | BROWNING | Poet admitting to holding up branch (8) BR[anch] + OWNING (admitting to) |
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| 14. | DETRITUS | Rubbish put out? It rusted (8) (IT RUSTED)* |
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| 16. | SHERATON | Girl to betray furniture designer (8) SHE + RAT ON |
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| 19. | LOGJAM | Record and preserve an impasse (6) LOG (record) + JAM (preserve) |
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| 20. | GUNS | Comfortable about weaponry (4) Reverse of SNUG |
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| 21. | MACE | Mark gets superb staff (4) M + ACE |
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Thanks Chifonie and Andrew. I don’t get the lunch bit in NUTS
I found it pretty straightforward though toyed a bit with FIRST LETTER instead of BLOCK LETTER for 11a. Of course the parsing didn’t work and neither did the crossers.
Two NUTS – 8d and 17a (NUT TREE), two girls (22a UNA in UNAWARES and 16d SHE in SHERATON), two poets (24a in the STEP ON IT anagram and 13d BROWNING), and two flowers in 18a ELDERFLOWER and in the clue for 25a GANGES, made it feel a little repetitive though.
At least the old trick of the latter “flower” clue leading to the name of the river didn’t distract this time.
Thanks to Chifonie and Andrew.
Not quite a write-in, but nothing too taxing here either – would have been perfect for the Quiptic slot but I don’t understand why Wednesday is always easier than Tuesday…
Thanks to Chifonie and Andrew
@pex
“nuts” and “out to lunch” mean “crazy”.
Didn’t Hugh say Max Beerbohm Tree was a thing of the past in G puzzles? Good to see Sherlock has kept dear old Una going for a few more years though
Thanks baerchen. Learn something every day!
Easy peasy.
Took from bank to Canary Wharf on the dlr except for Browning.
Is Chifonie really a bloke?
Bit of a write-in, but enjoyable for all that with Chifonie’s smooth surfaces. I was surprised to see WEAPONRY (5d) as part of the clue for 20d, and ‘mark’ (part of 1d) below it. Many thanks to Chifonie and Andrew.
I think out to lunch must be an Americanism. Perhaps Mr Penny will drop in to tell us the origin.
Spent far too long looking for a capital city for the BLOCK LETTER clue.
Is ‘nut’ entirely fair for ‘biscuit’ I wonder? Are there any others, other than Ginger Nut?
A little on the straightforward side perhaps, but nice and short on an otherwise busy day.
Thank you, Chifonie, nice week, all.
Fairly straightforward. Though hadn’t heard of br for branch.
You can’t accuse the Guardian of not catering for all levels with this one after yesterday’s Tramp. As noted by JinA@2 devices were duplicated but there were plenty of nice clean clues. We tripped ourselves up by having THREATS (it works at a stretch) instead of THRUSTS and spent some time looking for someone like ADELEDOB as a furniture designer before correcting the error!
Thanks Chifonie – no excuse to carry on with the garden tidy up now – and to Andrew.
”Out to lunch’ meaning ‘mad’ is very well-known and I don’t think an Americanism
@TC – care to expand?
Thanks Chifonie and Andrew.
Not a very friendly grid, and I also considered ‘threats’ for 15a.
I guess 20 should have read ‘Comfortable about 5.’ I quite liked the furniture designer.
Thanks both. Can anyone explain how M is an abbreviation for Mark?
I found this enjoyable, and a far easier solve than yesterday’s Tramp. I thought NUTS was great – my CotD. I also liked WEAPONRY and DETRITUS. I didn’t mind seeing “weaponry” in the clue for 20d.
Julie in Australia @2, my initial thought upon solving ELDERFLOWER (which I did before I saw that “flower” was used in the clue in 25a) was that it would be interesting, in a “man bites dog” way, if one of The Three Most Important Rivers in Crosswordland had been used to clue the FLOWER portion of the answer — e.g., “Blossom makes church official say, ‘Dee'”!
Tc @6, when I first read your post, I thought that perhaps “Took from bank to Canary Wharf on the dlr” might be an idiom — UK solver’s jargon meaning “I solved the clues more or less in numerical order, proceeding from the NW to the SW, straight through in a single pass”. But after Googling the phrase, it seems you were merely stating the fact that you were riding on the train at the time that you were (quickly) solving this puzzle. If it isn’t an idiomatic phrase, maybe it should be! Ha ha!
Thanks to Chifonie and Andrew and commenters.
Thanks Chifonie and Andrew
Shirl @ 13 M = Mark is from the former German currencies, the Deutschmark and the Ostmark. I think it was also a currency in the Middle Ages.
hth
“Out to lunch” is familiar to me, although that doesn’t necessarily make it an Americanism. I can’t find a source that says one way or the other.
I didn’t find this quite as easy as some. Hadn’t heard of furniture designer SHERATON (the hotelier by that name is more familiar to me), so that was last in. Also was puzzled by “nut” for “biscuit.” But few transatlantic differences are as profound, I’ve found, as our divergent names for baked goods, so that didn’t surprise me overmuch.
Thanks Simon S @ 15
Well, a nice gentle sortie from Chifonie – no complaints here!
Except….
Oh dear! 5d and 20d! Surely that’s a slip-up that ought to have been spotted and avoided, either by setter or editor. After all, in 20d, there are plenty of words, other than ‘weaponry’, that could have served in the clue. I see this as a blemish in an otherwise very good puzzle.
My only other comment is that, in AMUNDSEN, I’d have used a different word than ‘Norse’. Too much of a give-away. Scott referred (in his diary) to Amundsen’s team as ‘the Norskies’. And he wasn’t being polite!
Re NUT TREE – I don’t see any problem with ‘old actor’ clueing for TREE. Herbert* Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) was a leading light in the profession in his day. Isn’t that what cryptics are all about?
*n.b. not ‘Max’.
Thanks to Chifonie and Andrew. A quick solve for me but very enjoyable. I found an entry for OUT TO LUNCH on-line:
OUT TO LUNCH means inattentive (“She hasn’t heard a thing you’ve said—she’s out to lunch”), unaware, absent-minded, in a daze, not in touch with the real world, socially incompetent, stupid, naïve (“If he believes that story, he’s really out to lunch”), eccentric, weird, flaky, mentally unstable, crazy, nuts. It is an expression that originated on U.S. college campuses in the 1950s and its first appearance in print was in 1955. The imagery equates physical absence with intellectual absence or mental vacuity – not being all there – your mind went to lunch on a break and never came back! The lunch here is the meal and, in fact the expression spawned the 1990s mutation – ‘out to breakfast’ – meaning the same thing.
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/11/15/guardian-27355-chifonie/
Well, I’ve never heard of ‘Out to breakfast’ but I thought ‘Out to lunch’ was pretty well known. It’s also the title of a rather good album by Eric Dolphy.
The puzzle was pretty typical of Chifonie but none the worse for that and was a nice change from Tramp yesterday.
Thanks Chifonie.
Thanks Chifonie and Andrew
I try ones that give first letters first, so I was a little irritated that the first one I solved, 20d, could have gone in either way, so I needed to “check”. Straightforward enough after that, though I didn’t see how the s of “defender’s” in 4d disappears in the answer.
The puzzle is so repetitive (two MARKs as currency in addition to the ones mentioned previously), that I wonder if it was deliberate?
I got there in the end but if I’d been riding the DLR I’d have been all the way to Lewisham. IMHO 20D is a bit of a cheat.
My Chambers and Collins don’t support N = Norse, but dictionary.com does.
I wonder under what circumstances one uses the abbreviation br for branch? It’s in the dictionaries, so I have no objection to it; I’m just curious.
Ted @24
Here in the US (or at least in Maryland, where I live), “Branch” may be used in the same way as “Brook” or “Creek” in the place name of a small stream that is a tributary of a larger river system, e.g., “Crow Branch”. In such places, you may see “Br.” on maps giving the name of such stream.
I’m not sure if this is THE answer to your question, but it is at least AN answer.
An enjoyable solve with clear surfaces if fewer smiles than usual with Chifonie. 16D was one.
DaveMc @24 — That’s certainly a possibility. Although I’m American, I had forgotten about this US usage of the word.
This crossword was spoiled by the repetitions, notably WEAPONRY. All could easily have been avoided if the editor had asked Chifonie to find alternatives.