Great fun from Serpent today who had us wrapped up in his devious coils quite a few times during the solve. We blogged three Serpent puzzles in a row in December and January but we have no complaints with blogging another one in February.
We loved 11ac – we hadn’t come across that device before or if we had, we don’t remember it.
We didn’t like 12ac initially where the two words in the parsing seemed to be round the wrong way – how wrong can you be?
| Across | ||
| 8 | Wind up in care for backing police search (7) | |
| DRAGNET | RAG (wind up) inside TEND (care for) reversed or ‘backing’ | |
| 9 | Member’s entrance to Jersey? (7) | |
| ARMHOLE | The Jersey or jumper is a garment you put on by putting your ARM through the HOLE! | |
| 10 | Compare some internecine killing with revolution (5) | |
| LIKEN | Hidden (‘some’) and backwards or ‘with revolution’ in ‘interneciNE KILlling’ | |
| 11 | Bizarre attempt to accept request initially, upsetting the balance (9) | |
| GROTESQUE | GO (attempt) around or ‘accepting’ R (initial letter of ‘request’) plus an anagram of the rest or ‘balance’ of rEQUEST – anagrind is ‘upsetting’ | |
| 12 | Apply particular programme to oust leader (9) | |
| APPERTAIN | |
|
| 14 | Rival reported leading articles in New Musical Express (5) | |
| ENEMY | If you say or ‘report’ the first letters in New Musical Express you would say EN EM E which sounds like ENEMY (rival) | |
| 15 | Lost control of business finally getting wound up (7) | |
| SKIDDED | S (final letter of business) KIDDED (wound up) | |
| 17 | Took a step backwards to hold husband showing no signs of life (7) | |
| DORMANT | TROD (took a step) reversed or ‘backwards’ around or ‘holding’ MAN (husband) | |
| 20 | Abandon area of London east of The Strand (5) | |
| DITCH | |
|
| 22 | Get out of former home, evicted from complex (9) | |
| EXTRICATE | EX (former) |
|
| 24 | Give up after tax returns overlooked (9) | |
| FORGOTTEN | FORGO (give up) NETT (after tax) reversed or ‘returning’ | |
| 25 | Row as leader of boat crew steps forward (5) | |
| FIGHT | |
|
| 27 | Rejected players no longer available (4-3) | |
| CAST-OFF | CAST (players) OFF (no longer available) | |
| 28 | Rent out again for free (7) | |
| RELEASE | If you LEASE (rent) something out again you would RE – LEASE it | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | Observation’s not about to evaluate work (4) | |
| MARK | ||
| 2 | Trapped criminal needs guards worked up (8) | |
| ENSNARED | An anagram of NEEDS – anagrind is ‘criminal’ around or ‘guarding’ RAN (worked) reversed or ‘up’ | |
| 3 | Magistrate abandoning rate reforms in disgrace (6) | |
| STIGMA | An anagram of MAGIST |
|
| 4 | Dark version of Crimson Tide rejected without it being completely abandoned (8) | |
| MAROONED | MAROON (dark version of crimson) plus a reversal or ‘rejection’ of |
|
| 5 | Training about education lifting writer’s block (6) | |
| IMPEDE | PE (training) round ED (short for education) with I’M (writer is) ‘lifted’ to the front | |
| 6 | Force original sinner to turn religious fanatic (10) | |
| TORQUEMADA | TORQUE (force) ADAM (original sinner in the Garden of Eden) reversed or ‘turning’. Torquemada was the Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition. Bet you didn’t expect the last link! | |
| 7 | Present sociology’s case for unorthodox view (6) | |
| HERESY | HERE (present) SY first and last letter or ‘case’ of ‘sociology’ | |
| 8 | Corrupt landlords leaving North Dakota for American capital (7) | |
| DOLLARS | An anagram of LA |
|
| 13 | Decorator is not commonly wearing lead belt (10) | |
| PAINTBRUSH | AIN’T (a ‘common’ way of saying ‘is not’) inside or ‘wearing’ PB (lead) + RUSH (belt) | |
| 16 | This colours audience’s perception of Stamp’s hard man (8) | |
| DYESTUFF | Sounds like (audience’s perception) DIES (stamps) TOUGH (hard man) | |
| 18 | Drops popular artist before season in New York (8) | |
| RAINFALL | IN (popular) with RA (artist) before it + FALL (‘season in New York’) | |
| 19 | Tense cast regularly seen in this place (7) | |
| THEATRE | T (tense) plus |
|
| 20 | Failing double agents might do this (6) | |
| DEFECT | A play on the fact that spies or double agents may defect if things don’t seem to be going too well or ‘failing’. | |
| 21 | Ring dove periodically ignored bird (6) | |
| HOOPOE | HOOP (ring) |
|
| 23 | Hard nuts climbing naked here? Probably not! (6) | |
| TUNDRA | If you take the first and last letter off |
|
| 26 | Objective bird has a change of heart (4) | |
| GOAL | GAOL (bird) with the middle letters or ‘heart’ changing around. When Bert entered the answer for this one Joyce was initially unhappy with the clue. The ‘bird’ she was thinking was a GULL and thought that Serpent was stretching it a bit when he seemed to be asking us to change U and L to two other random letters O and A. Apologies to Serpent from Joyce! | |
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great puzzle. I’m a bit too old to have been into The Fall, whose front-man Mark E. Smith died just recently, but there is a Nina to that effect.
I don’t know if there is more thematic material in the grid.
Thanks to Serpent and B&J
Apologies to everyone including Serpent. We wrote the blog in a bit of a hurry and forgot to mention the theme. We spotted the nina as baerchen has pointed out and a quick google found GROTESQUE, EXTRICATE and DRAGNET as more thematic material. Maybe there are more – nit a group we are familiar with.
Great stuff as usual from this setter.I must have a listen sometime.
Thanks Serpent and B&J
Particularly excellent, even disregarding all the hidden extras. The device in GROTESQUE was brilliant – new to me at least. I also loved MAROONED, DYESTUFF, TUNDRA. Very pleased to have taken a punt on ARMHOLE as FOI which got it all off to a good start. The E>F move I usually have trouble spotting, as it’s quite rarely used and there’s not really an obvious concise way of indicating it. Also, is E>F forwards or back? Anyway, clear enough here.
Thanks Serpent, B&J
Thanks, both.
This, and the other puzzles this week, reminded me why the Indy is my daily puzzle of choice. Intelligent clueing, variety of subject matter, nice devices (FIGHT, REQUEST, ARMHOLE, GROTESQUE). Oh, and the knowledge that I can come here to find out what other folk thought about it without having to wade through acres of irrelevant, self-aggrandising bullshit (yes, Another Place, I’m talking about you).
Saw the nina on completion but wasn’t that bothered to find out more about it or look for references.
Well done, Serpent, on a pleasing and well-constructed puzzle.
I saw the Nina! I enjoyed solving the crossword too – worth all that battle with three lots of adverts and two lots of just a grid before I finally got the clues to turn up too!
Thanks to Serpent for the fun and B&J for the explanations
All done and all correct, but I failed to parse a few and I missed the nina.
Quite tough but enjoyable crossword with some excellent clues.
I didn’t see the NINA, and it wouldn’t have helped the solve very much.
With respect to 11a, which many liked, isn’t this strictly using double-duty for request, once for the ‘R’ and secondly for the EQUEST? Anyway, a nice idea and perhaps I haven’t understood it properly.
I did particularly like the ARMHOLE. Thanks to Serpent and Bertandjoyce – BTW, I thought GOAL was GULL with a different centre, doh!
Thanks Serpent & BnJ
Robi @ 8: I wondered about that, but concluded that it’s a verion of lift & separate. If you take away part of something what’s left is the balance, so it works fine for me.
Robi@8 your gull to goal explanation is perfectly logical and fits the clue so why not?
K’sDad, I couldn’t agree more with your comment about smugville.
Many thanks Serpent I enjoyed this, some very clever constructions making for a lot of fun. I loved TORQUEMADA when I saw it, I’d been looking for the wrong original sinner – hope that doesn’t reveal some untoward bias of mine. I also loved HERESY and in particular THEATRE, all delightful.
I missed the parsing of GROTESQUE, but it’s very nice, and i need to brush up on my London geography – so thank you B&J for the help there.
I missed the theme so thanks Baerchen (again)
Another ‘gull’ to GOAL but I agree that ‘gaol’ works better. My favourites were TORQUEMADA, together with the blog’s unexpected’ link, and THEATRE. I parsed the latter as an &lit, with ‘this place’ as part of the wordplay = HERE and the whole clue as the def.
Saw the Nina but knew nothing about M. E. Smith and The Fall. Searched in the usual places and found the references to a few of their albums and a very funny quote about half way down the Mark E. Smith Wikipedia article. Definitely worth a look.
Thank you to Serpent and B&J.
Thanks Serpent and B&J.
The historical Torquemada is no doubt the one referred to in the wordplay, but no doubt we were meant to think as well of the other one.
Serpent as devious as ever, but we enjoyed the challenge. We too took a chance on ARMHOLE thinking it was almost too simple to be that. As the grid filled up we suspected there was a nina so googled ‘Smith the fall’ which confirmed our suspicion and enabled us to complete the top half of the grid. Even then we needed the blog to explain the parsing of 12ac
The SE corner proved tricky; we wondered if the bird in 26dn was a rail but couldn’t see how ‘rial’ (a currency in some Arab countries) could be ‘objective’ so it was a real facepalm moment when we got FIGHT for 25ac and realised it wasn’t that sort of ‘bird’ at all!
Some brilliant clues – GROTESQUE, EXTRICATE, TORQUEMADA and PAINTBRUSH were our favourites.
One very minor quibble about the same sense of ‘wind up’ being used in two clues, but at least the second time it was in the past tense.
@4James: The forward/backward question crops up from time to time on fifteensquared. It all depends how you look at it and I think it’s one of those ambiguities one just has to live with. The meaning in a particular case is usually clear enough.
Thanks, Serpent and B&J.
We did this today as Pan was over too quickly and I’m glad we did. I agree with the highlights as already mentioned but want to give an extra tick to 23d for one of the best hidden words ever with a great amusing surface.
Thanks Serpent and B&J – I was another GULL.
This was one of those puzzles where I found parsing the clues considerably trickier than filling the grid. Didn’t quite make it in all cases – and am so happy to have company with the gull! It was all I could think of but I didn’t like it, so am very relieved to find there was indeed a sound explanation.
GROTESQUE was another I missed. Very clever and devious. I also failed to unpick APPERTAIN – d’oh! No excuses there.
While I stated above that I filled the grid ok, one of my original guesses was wrong. I’d decided that 1d had to be TASK – without knowing why, of course – and needed to be set straight.
For all that, lots of fun. I particularly liked TORQUEMADA and TUNDRA. I’d rather have tussles understanding the wordplay than in filling the grid, tbh. It’s what cryptics are all about. I enjoyed the beating today and will be back for more!
Thanks to Serpent and to Bertandjoyce (with extra thanks to Joyce, as well as the commenters who also admitted to it, for the gull!).
P.S. It was nice to actually spot the nina, though I was too lazy to do anything other than come here for extra info on the theme.
Just been looking at 20ac again and there seems to be a bit more to it. The definition is, of course, ‘abandon’ and we parsed it by seeing ‘ditch’ as the part to the east, i.e. the right in an across clue, of ‘shore’ (= strand) of the word ‘Shoreditch. But then there’s another layer of meaning in that geographically Shoreditch is east, or possibly northeast of The Strand.
allan_c @ 17
Yes, I thought that too, but my knowledge of London geography is sparse, so I thought it safer not to mention it 😉
Many thanks to Bertandjoyce for the usual excellent blog. And thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to comment.
Great puzzle with innovative clueing.
Here’s the quote from Mark E. Smith’s Wikipedia article I referred to above :
“Asked during a mid-1980s interview with Smash Hits as to what policies he (Smith) would adopt if he became Prime Minister, he said “I’d half the price of cigarettes, double the tax on health food, then I’d declare war on France.””
Not sure what to say!