Guardian 27,656 / Nutmeg

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Another beautifully-crafted puzzle from Nutmeg to round off a generally good week.

As usual, there are lots of witty, elegant clues – I’ll pick out 12, 14, 16 and 27ac and 4 and 6dn as examples, for both construction and surface – making for a most enjoyable solve. Many thanks, Nutmeg.

[I hope the young man I talked to on the train on the way to the York S and B last Saturday is reading this: the puzzle is an excellent illustration for those starting out on cryptics, as well as being satisfying for the more experienced.]

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 Clear account and retire (6)
ACQUIT
AC [account] + QUIT [retire]

5 Dashed after Euro-politician’s returned for part of Wales (8)
PEMBROKE
BROKE [dashed] after a reversal [returned] of MEP [Euro-politician]

9 Final episode unable to be shown regularly (8)
EVENTUAL
EVENT [episode] + alternate letters [regularly] of UnAbLe

10 Editor behind contracted group pressuring cast (6)
LOBBED
ED [editor] after LOBB[y] [group pressuring, contracted]

11 Lip, bloody lip! (4)
BRIM
B [bloody] + RIM [lip]

12 Player with little French put into cold changing room (10)
COMPETITOR
PETIT [little French ] in C [cold] + an anagram [changing] of ROOM

13 Tense concerning 11 (2,4)
ON EDGE
ON [concerning] + EDGE [brim – answer to 11ac]

14 Male introduced to change rear part of motor (8)
CAMSHAFT
M [male] in CASH [change] + AFT [rear]

16 Female leading feeble corporal, perhaps, in dance (8)
FLAMENCO
F [female] + LAME [feeble] + NCO [corporal, perhaps]

19 Quiet woman, at heart excessively contrary (6)
SOOTHE
SHE [woman] round [at heart] a reversal [contrary] of TOO [excessively]

21 Eg, seat belt adjusted for six-footer (4,6)
STAG BEETLE
An anagram [adjusted] of EG SEAT BELT

23 Star having first of her five a day? (4)
VEGA
VEG A might be the first of  one’s five daily vegetables / fruits

24 Game, part of it inspiring local backs (6)
TENNIS
A reversal [backs] of SET [part of a tennis game] round [inspiring] INN [local]

25 Cock-up – general initially missing part of motorway complex (4,4)
SLIP ROAD
SLIP [cock-up] + [b]ROAD [general, minus its first letter – initially missing]

26 Man’s man possibly wiser to go without wife across country (8)
ISLANDER
[w]ISER minus w [wife] round LAND [country]

27 Unctuous Farmer George given a piece of cake (6)
GREASY
GR [King George {III – nicknamed ‘Farmer George’ } – see here]  + EASY [a piece of cake]

 

Down

2 Info often enclosed, giving indemnity to landlords? (8,7)
COVERING LETTERS
Cryptic definition

3 Anonymous nude man sculpted (7)
UNNAMED
An anagram [sculpted] of NUDE MAN]

4 Club‘s empty restaurant served up meal without starter (9)
TRUNCHEON
A reversal [served up] of R[estauran]T + [l]UNCHEON [meal without starter]

5 Controversial European music putting US off (7)
POLEMIC
POLE [European] + M[us]IC

6 Nutmeg’s run into by learner – called AA initially (5)
MILNE
L [learner] in MINE [Nutmeg’s] – for the creator of Pooh et al

7 Refuse two bachelors, one in haste (7)
RUBBISH
BB [two bachelors] + I [one] in RUSH [haste]

8 Sign by restricted area, advice to those in rehab? (4,3,3,5)
KEEP OFF THE GRASS
Double definition

15 Gathering has to take only its fourth call (9)
MUSTERING
MUST [has to] + the fourth letter of takE + RING [call]

17 Mum putting a bloke in the shade (7)
MAGENTA
A GENT [a bloke] in MA [mum]

18 Our best buckles not so smart (7)
OBTUSER
An anagram [buckles] of OUR BEST

20 Front of brochure primarily poet’s work (7)
OBVERSE
O]f] B[rochure] primarily + VERSE [poet’s work]

22 Relaxed dressmaker turning up in odd places (5)
EASED
A reversal [turning up] of the odd letters of DrEsSmAkEr

61 comments on “Guardian 27,656 / Nutmeg”

  1. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    A rapid start but a very slow finish, especially in the SE. I didn’t parse VEGA or the ROAD part of SLIP ROAD.

    I hadn’t met POLEMIC as an adjective before, but apparently it is a valid alternative to POLEMICAL.

    Could someone explain how BROKE in 5a is given by “dashed”? Wouldn’t it be “broken”, for a line?

    Lots to like, with COMPETITOR favourite.

  3. Rattling through this up until the SE corner and managed for 19 to get P(soft) SHE(woman)C(ontrar)Y turned round making PSYCHE

    Had to be wrong but it was so near although no def to back it up.But Nutmeg is very precise and I struggled to get back on track.

     

    Wiped the grin off my face.

  4. Thank you Nutmeg and
    Nutmegged by Nutmeg !
    How many of us have fallen for the sucker punch, yet again?
    I know I have. It had to be VEGA, but the why made it my last in, so
    it gets clue of the day for me.

    I wonder if it foxed our star, Auriga?
    Thank you Nutmeg and Eileen.

    PS My tea tray appears to be a good solid piece of Turin
    stainless steel, so I’m going to resist the temptation.

  5. I was pleased to see GOOD KING GEORGE get a mention.
    A few of our present heads of state around the globe
    could learn a lot from a study of GR III.

    Didn’t he collect thimbles ?

  6. muffin @1 – re 5ac:: I thought immediately of  ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone’, then looked it up. Chambers has ‘to break by throwing together’.

  8. lovely – 1AC also my LOI and held me up but a straightforward Friday with a mix of write-ins and head-scratchers, with the odd tea-tray. Thanks Nutmeg, and Eileen for clearing up the parsing on a couple. Milne was straightforward but that didn’t stop it being a gorgeous clue.

    Obverse is possibly a contronym, or Janus word as it means both the front of something – that facing the observer – and the opposite or reverse of something. See also cleave,

  9. Delightful rapid solve from beginning to end. Held up only by MILNE as I couldn’t see the (wild)wood for the trees even with all the crossers for a good 10 minutes – even AA batteries were under consideration!

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen for a great start to a lovely day.

  10. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg.

     

    Like muffin, a quickish start, but the last few were a struggle – ACQUIT (but so obvious now), SOOTHE and MUSTERING. I was trying to shoehorn something into MEETING.

    2d (a final S missing, Eileen): was it entirely  a CD? LETTERS are landlords; and COVERING is indemnity?

     

  12. As for copmus@3, rattled through the top half thinking “Friday?! The gun solvers will eat this”, only to fall flat on my face in the SE, writing scathy (vicious, nasty) at 19a and an unparsed adverse at 20d, That’ll teach me! Should know by now that you never have to bend obscure meanings with the elegant precision of Nutmeg.

    Otherwise smooth and enjoyable, thanks Nutmeg and Eileen (and happy birthday again to 225).

  14. Confidently entered ‘settle’ in 1a initially but otherwise a fairly benign solve thanks to Nutmeg’s smoothness.

    I agree with David E @10 re the parsing of 2 (covering letters don’t provide indemnity).

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  15. It was with joy that I saw that our setter was Nutmeg. So precise, so witty. And this did not disappoint. A fairly steady solve with many noteworthy clues (12a, 16a, 23a, 25a, 4d, 15d, 22d). Man’s man was a real tea-tray moment (or should that be TT-tray moment!).

    My only minor gripe: I wasn’t too happy with ‘inspiring’ for ‘within’ in 24a. And if that’s all I can complain about, it speaks volumes about the high quality of the clue-setting.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. Great stuff.

  16. I really enjoyed what turned out to be a steady solve after a very sparse grid on the first pass. All is can say is that I am so grateful that Nutmeg always provides some anagrams that are gettable, which gave me a toehold (21a STAG BEETLE and 3a UNNAMED, in this case). And sometimes it’s just lucky when gems such as 8d KEEP OFF THE GRASS leap off the print-out. Those solutions broke it open for me.
    Favourite was 6d MILNE (I see others liked it too!) – I considered all the mis-directions like Al Anon, and your Automobile Association in the UK, and then it seemed so obvious when I saw it!!! [BlueCanary@9 – I didn’t even think of AA batteries – but your foray there made me smile.)
    Sorry to whinge, but I really didn’t like the clue for MUSTERING at 15d, which seemed contrived. (Is that a silly comment – after all, so many clues in cryptics are “contrived”?) We call it a “slip lane” here in Australia, I think, not a SLIP ROAD (25a). I didn’t get “Farmer George” at all, but that’s okay, as GREASY 27a ended up being a reasonable guess. These grumbles sound so petty in the light of such a really good puzzle.
    Many thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. Great that you could plant yet another seed with a young puzzler, Eileen.

  17. I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle and I’m probably being dense but I am still puzzled by the Broke/Dashed thing. Do we not need the past participle in both cases?   I can’t think of a sentence where broke and dashed are interchangeable. (I would get out more but someone has taken a truncheon to my camshaft).

  18. A superduper puzzle as always from Nutmeg. Like others I was held up by the SE corner, particularly GREASY which was my LOI. Loved it. Re comments by David@10 and Robert@14: I thought 2d was crystal clear: covering = indemnity, as in insurance, and letter = landlord. Many thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

     

  19. MichelinPoiters @17 – surely they’re both straightforward past tenses? [I’ve now looked in the SOED, which gives, for  ‘dash’,  ‘to strike with violence, so as to shatter’.]

  20. Eileen@19 . You’re quite right. I’ve looked in Chambers which gives a similar definition. I suppose I’ve got used to seeing one’s hopes as the only things ever being dashed and that’s nearly always in the passive.  As an aside, in a recent article about words that are nearly always seen in one idiomatic form,  “amok” was given as an example, with a quote from Woody Allen ” If you’re feeling tired we can walk amok”.

  21. Eileen @19

    “I dashed it” is equivalent to “I broke it”, though the former sounds a bit odd; however “it was dashed” would be equivalent to “it was broken”. I think Nutmeg is in the clear because of the first example.

  24. I have said before that Nutmeg is one of my favourite compilers, and today’s puzzle is another delight. It gives me some consolation that others took a while to twig Pooh’s creator in 6d: having got the crossing letters, I spent a little time trying to convince myself that there was such a word as ‘malce’. Parses beautifully, but a complete momble: happily, the penny eventually dropped.

  26. As others say, very enjoyable and well-crafted. My two favourites were very simple but elegant with nice misdirection: MILNE, STAG BEETLE.

    I too needed help parsing VEGA, and I had completely forgotten GRIII’s epithet.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  27. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. I am another who enjoyed this a lot. My experience sounds like others in that the last few took longer than the rest put together. Soothe was last one but I was also slow on others in the SE and on covering letters. I had the letters bit but for some reason struggled to get the first bit (even though it seems obvious now). Another fan of Milne and I also liked camshaft and flamenco. Thanks again to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  28. Enjoyed this one – a little easier than the last couple but as you say beautifully crafted. MILNE was last in!

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

  32. Like many others I liked (of course) 6d, though, given my moniker, it took me far longer than it should have.

    As usual, thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  33. Like Eileen says enjoyable without being too taxing – the art of elegant setting. Loi was also SOOTHE – apart from having an incorrect OCCULT for 1a! Not sure how I justified that – other than not coming up with ACQUIT 🙁 and then going out without further reflection. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  34. Loved this! Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen. Held up in the SE corner too, especially with SOOTHE which we solved but took ages to parse (and my OH won’t let us fill them in unless we know ‘why’!!!) re 2D, we took that as a DD: indemnity would ‘cover’ people, and landlords are ‘letters’ – is that right??!!

  37. ‘Elegant precision’, as grantinfreo said – enjoyable throughout – not taxing, nor a write-in.  MILNE (‘AA’) took me longest to twig, but the NW was the last corner to fall, with ACQUIT (one of the simplest clues in its construction) the LOI.  I had no problem at all with BROKE and ‘dashed’.

    Many thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  38. So is a COVERING LETTER a letter that provides what Americans call coverage but Brits call cover (i.e., insurance) or is it what an American would call a cover letter (a brief bit of correspondence that says, “Enclosed please find…”)?  Needless to say, “covering letter” isn’t an American phrase at all.

  39. This was quite a surprise. I usually find Nutmeg more tricky than this but ACQUIT went in straight away followed by BRIM and then I was away. I liked MILNE,KEEP OFF THE GRASS and,oh,quite a lot more. I didn’t parse VEGA but, as I had the crossers, it couldn’t be anything else. I didn’t like OBTUSER but I suppose it’s all right.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

  40. Being bowled first ball dashed my hopes of becoming a cricketing legend, i.e. I didn’t break my duck. Good weekend to all and thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  41. mrpenney @38 – it seems it’s what you would call a ‘cover letter’: Chambers – ‘a letter to explain documents enclosed with it’ [‘Info often enclosed’, as in the clue] and nothing to do with insurance cover [sic] – unless it comes from an insurance company! ‘Indemnity for landlords’ [i.e. ‘cover for letters’] is the cryptic part of the clue.
    Another illustration of our two nations being divided by a common language. 😉

  42. Yes, Bear of Little Brain, me too! Although I know the AA Milne gamut inside out, after countless readings to sundry offspring, and love it all,I failed to spot Milne even with the M,L and E in place. Ashamed of myself! Barking up alcoholic and automobile dead ends! Nevertheless,
    a scrumptious crossword all round. Good food is best eaten slowly and I sure took my time! Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

  43. Although I see it has been (sort of) addressed, I feel that B for bloody is a very suspect and IMHO lame usage of a random abbreviation to make a letter fit a clue.

    Also curious why “her” is in 23A (VEGA)? I don’t dispute being gender-equal when need be, but why even use a possessive at all? The clue would have been fine without it and “her” just wasted time trying to fit it in somehow… ?

    I will say ACQUIT was my last in… and it was so perfect and obvious!!! Grr! 🙂

  44. glenn @43

    Arachne always makes indeterminate people female in clues, and Nutmeg (another female setter) is following her lead. I agree, though, that the clue would be fine without the “her” altogether.

    My “B___ hell” was partly in jest, but it is also commonly seen in publications that shy away from “bloody”.

  45. Also initially thought of OCCULT at 1a with the checkers but it didn’t fit the definition. Fun as usual from Nutmeg. LOI SOOTHE.

  47. Hi, muffin @44…

    Thanks! I always complain about those random letter abbreviations, but I’ve also come to just accept them. B_____ abbreviations! 🙂 🙂

  50. Pianoman @49

    I don’t want to be perverse, but the SE here gave me more trouble than any of Puck’s yesterady.

  51. What a lovely crossword! I agree with everything Eileen said, apart from the bit about this being a good week. Perhaps I’ve been unlucky, but turgid and tedious and I’m giving up crosswords are words that spring to mind rather than ‘good’ for the offerings I tried. Brilliant Nutmeg! Now I remember why I like crosswords.

  52. Easier for most, I accept, but my first same-day solve of a non-Monday puzzle. I’ll take it! More power to me!

  53. Only two short today, in the SE corner…due to getting 8d wrong…have I been in too many areas where there is the risk of large stones falling down cliff sides…or is my knowledge of drugs too leant towards class A…I had ‘keep off the rocks’ ! ?

  54. Liked it too. Thanks Eileen for clarifying GR for Farmer George. Had never heard of it. One quibble, which left me stuck:never heard of ‘quiet’ being used as a verb, so couldn’t get to soothe. Favourite ‘Milne’ which my husband got. I had, like George Clements, got as far as ‘malce’… having been through all the AA’s I could think of……

  55. In defence of HER.

    If we take star to mean Suzanne VEGA, a star of the folky/pop genre I think,
    the clue reads wonderfully well on two levels.
    In term of navigation, I’ve always looked on Polaris as feminine.
    Protective and reliable, much as a sailor regards
    her craft, I suppose.

  56. il principe dell’oscurità @55 – since it’s my blog, although it’s late, I think I should respond, though I don’t wish to be POLEMIC 😉 and will say no more. [I don’t expect anyone to be reading this, anyway.]

    Thanks for that interesting contribution but, as another female, I don’t think ‘her’ or Nutmeg needs a defence. glenn @43 and muffin @44 think the clue would be fine without the “her” altogether,  which would leave ‘first [of?] five a day’ – not up to Nutmeg’s standard of smoothness. Unfortunately, English lacks an indefinite personal pronoun and has to resort to the ungrammatical ‘their’. I wonder if muffin [or anyone else] would have raised an eyebrow at ‘his’? [Rhetorical question – I’m really not coming back!].

     

  58. Thank you, John @57 [although I said I would not come back.]

    I love your profile and would concur with much of it – but I do try not to be sarcastic. 😉

  59. Last again – but maybe Eileen will read this…. LilSho @34 – know the feeling about it can’t go in till it’s parsed…
    Thought this was going a little too well for a Friday and then we got stuck in the NW corner. And can anyone tell me why I find it impossible to get TENNIS from ?e?n?s – especially as I love watching it? Enjoyed 8d, 7d and 3d especially. As well – how do you get the updates from the blog? I can’t work it out…

  60. Hi Wombles @59

    LilSho @34 – know the feeling about it can’t go in till it’s parsed… no, of course not!

    And can anyone tell me why I find it impossible to get TENNIS from ?e?n?s – especially as I love watching it? Afraid not – it happens to most of us from time to time.  😉

     As well – how do you get the updates from the blog? If that’s addressed to me, bloggers get emails of all comments on their blog. If you want to keep up yourself you can find all comments by clicking on ‘Comments’ at the top right of the page.

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