Guardian 27,761 / Nutmeg

by

It’s Nutmeg here to brighten our Wednesday.

I’ve had to rewrite this preamble, as I solved the puzzle in my newspaper and was disconcerted to find an unfortunate error in the clue for 4dn, which I said I hoped, in view of the customary wit and sparkle, along with a delightful theme, in the rest of the puzzle, would not have spoiled your enjoyment too much – if, indeed, you spotted it.

Fortunately, I had a quick look at the online version before preparing to post and found that the offending clue had been amended.

Many thanks, Nutmeg, for a lovely puzzle, which I really enjoyed.

Definitions are underlined in the clues

Across

1 Tried to get a bite, admitting mum’s flipping hungry (8)
FAMISHED
FISHED [tried to get a bite] round a reversal [flipping] of MA [mum]

5 Contrary host carrying too much finds something to sit on (6)
BOTTOM
A reversal [contrary] of MOB [host] round OTT [Over The Top – too much] – Nick, the weaver

9 One way to prepare food, cold, stopping on the way (2,6)
EN CROUTE
C [cold] in EN ROUTE [on the way]

10 Fruit, 75 penceworth regularly nicked? (6)
QUINCE
QUI[d] -75% of a pound + alternate letters of NiCkEd – Peter, the carpenter

12 Race official in modest accommodation (7,4)
STARTER HOME
STARTER [race official] + HOME [in]

15 Uranium and hydrogen extracted from river water (5)
URINE
U [uranium] + R[h]INE [river minus h {hydrogen}]

17 Interpreter can’t head off before returning register (9)
ANNOTATOR
[c]ANNOT [can’t] + a reversal [returning] of ROTA [register]

18 Iberian leader repelled in a former German duchy (9)
FRANCONIA
FRANCO [Iberian leader] + a reversal [repelled] of IN + A

19 Retired doctor aboard express delivers quads (5)
YARDS
A reversal of DR [doctor] inside SAY [express] – lovely surface

20 American capital seen as May’s speciality? (11)
SPRINGFIELD
FIELD [speciality] of SPRING [May, for example, hence the question mark]

24 A loose relation (6)
AUNTIE
A + UNTIE [loose] – not the first time we’ve seen it but it’s a nice clue

25 Old Inuit set adrift, weakening (8)
DILUTION
An anagram [set adrift] of OLD INUIT

26 With difficulty drew Rocky, using the other hand (6)
LUGGED
[r]UGGED [rocky] with L [left] replacing r [right]

27 Malodorous emission from sheep tucking into mowed grass (5,3)
SEWER GAS
EWE [sheep] in an anagram [mowed] of GRASS

Down

1 Thugs said to support charges, around 500 for fodder etc (10)
FEEDSTUFFS
FEES [charges] + TUFFS [sounds like {said} toughs – thugs] round D [500]

2 Michael Caine set off (ie fired) automatic (10)
MECHANICAL
An anagram [set off] of MICHAEL CA[i]N[e] minus [fired] ie] – introducing the theme, the six ‘rude mechanicals’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

3 Partners playing on public grass (5)
SNOUT
SN [partners playing {bridge}] + OUT [public] – Tom Snout, the tinker, plays the part of 22dn in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, the play put on by the 4dn

4 They aim to divert trainees sent abroad (12)
ENTERTAINERS
[This is obviously intended as an anagram of TRAINEES SENT and it was only when I came to write the blog that I realised that it doesn’t quite work: one s needs to be an r – see preamble]
Amended clue:  ‘Internet era’s original hosts? (12)’ is an anagram [original] of INTERNET ERAS

6 Like the overendowed tup, lonely when doctored (9)
OPULENTLY
A witty anagram [when doctored] of TUP LONELY – sheep aren’t having a good day today

7 Nurse often demanding sample (4)
TEND
Contained in ofTEN Demanding

8 Submissive maiden: ‘You’re scaring me’ (4)
MEEK
M [maiden, in cricket] + EEK [you’re scaring me, in comics]

11 Increase area within ski slope, maybe? (12)
MOUNTAINSIDE
MOUNT [increase] + A [area] + INSIDE [within]

13 Contents of oven fed to bird, a malnourished one (10)
STARVELING
[o]VE[n] in STARLING [bird] – this was the one that alerted me to the theme – Robin,  the tailor

14 Leaders here keeping identity secret, initially (10)
PRESIDENTS
PRESENT [here] round ID [identity] + S[ecret]

16 Immoderate vices enlivened with sex close to bedtime (9)
EXCESSIVE
An anagram [enlivened] of VICES with SEX + [bedtime]E

21 Instrument showing temperature inside pipe (5)
FLUTE
T [temperature] in FLUE [pipe] – Francis, the bellows-mender]

22 Part of building with everything? (4)
WALL
W [with] ALL [everything]

23 Positioned comfortably, arms raised (4)
SNUG
A reversal [raised] of GUNS [arms] – the joiner [Shakespeare didn’t give him a first name]

60 comments on “Guardian 27,761 / Nutmeg”

  2. I believe the theme is Midsummer Night’s Dream – many characters are referenced – Bottom, [the rude] Mechanical etc – event the wall!

     

  3. Didn’t know the theme.

    Not sure if it was deliberate on Nutmeg’s part, but there does seem to be a lot of double letters here. 8 in the solutions and a lot more in the other rows and columns.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  4. Sorry, got so excited at prospect of being first comment that I blurted and included typos.  Even forgot to thank lovely Nutmeg and equally lovely Eileen.

  7. Enjoyable solve as always with Nutmeg, but I never seem to spot the themes until they’re pointed out to me by all you clever people in here. Must concentrate harder…

  8. I hadn’t noticed that the anagram in 4 dn didn’t quite work, just saw the fodder and assumed.  If the clue and answer have been amended, how does that affect the rest of the puzzle?

    Not too happy about 6 dn being an adverb?

    Didn’t know 20 ac but it was obvious from the crosers.

    Got held up by wanting a TUBA to be present insteead of FLUTE.

    LOI were 22 dn and 26 ac.  The only really challenging ones.

    otherwises, a nice enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

     

  10. Thanks, Eileen. I totally missed the theme, though I should have been alerted to it by STARVELING, as you were; and I once played Francis FLUTE in a production of MSND. “Nay, faith, let me not play a woman. I have a beard coming.”

  11. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    I was so pleased that I had spotted the anagram for ENTERTAINERS without writing out the letters that I didn’t notice it didn’t work!

    Favourites YARDS for the multiple misdirection, and AUNTIE.

    I know I’ve asked this sort of question before, but could someone explain where the ‘s of May’s goes in SPRINGFIELD?

  14. I can’t believe I missed the theme, but I did! Thanks Eileen for the revelation .

    Muffin @11, I suppose May’s speciality could be a SPRING FIELD if one takes the two words together.

    Good clues; I ticked QUINCE, OPULENTLY and EXCESSIVE, although there were quite a few other good ‘uns. Thanks Nutmeg.

  17. RH @16

    Both could refer to lots of people gathered together.

    Thanks Eileen and Robi. I’m not entirely convinced, though!

  18. Classy stuff as always from spice Girl. A tad early for the theme but with the climate/weather today…anything goes.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  19. An excellent crossword. ENTERTAINERS was my first in, and it was when I wrote in the final S that I noticed the error. Pleased to see the corrected clue, which is a good one.
    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  20. *Both could refer to lots of people gathered together.*

     

    That is, lots of people with ill intent! Thanks yo blogger and setter for today’s work…

  21. Great theme. Spotted it when Snug and Wall nestled in alongside each other. My dad played Puck in an Old Vic production of ‘the Dream’ many moons ago. Consequently we grew up with a cat called Titania. My brother and I could be heard calling for her in the street: “Titty! Titty!” Marginally better than Bottom?! Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen. Brightened up a dull day.

  22. Lovely from Nutmeg; easy, but elegant surfaces… no treacle or tar. Starter home and Franconia not familiar but clear. Mechanical was was a ?, but via my ignorance. Ta Nutmeg and Eileen.

  23. I was going to say that this crossword was brilliant and that it had made me ponder on what it is that makes a really good puzzle. That was before coming here and seeing that there was a great theme too.
    Thanks, Nutmeg and Eileen.

  24. Lots of fun from Nutmeg – with quite a few smiles along the way. Certainly forgave her for 4d (error on my original printout), which was well and truly outweighed by so many good clues – then there was a terrific theme to boot! Faves were 5a BOTTOM, 24a AUNTIE, 16d EXCESSIVE (loved the surface for that one!) and 23d SNUG (the first and last of those twigged me to the theme!). Many thanks to Nutmeg for the enjoyment and Eileen for the explanations for a couple – 75 p’worth as in three quarters of QUID in 10a QUINCE, and the CANNOT part of 17a ANNOTATOR.

  25. Nutmeg comes close to a pangram for the second time this year. No Q or X on Jan 10th, no J or Z here. I think the only other instance of two-short so far has been Pasquale on Feb 5th (K-Z). Plus of course there was Brendan’s Lipogram tour de force in the prize puzzle for Feb 2nd. I started noticing these things after Picaroon’s equally fine puzzle of July 13th last year, when he used J in every answer. Still hoping for more like that – just occasionally. Thanks meanwhile to Nutmeg for today’s terrific themed puzzle, and to Eileen for doing justice to it.

  26. Everyone seems to love Nutmeg, so from the start I thought I’d introspect my solving process a bit to see if I could pin down why, at least for me. What I found was that for the majority of clues, my first attempt to parse failed, but the 2nd or 3rd succeeded; the surfaces sound so natural. No cases involved fiddly piecing together of countless fragments. So straightforward and satisfying, but not too easy. The theme was subtle enough to not cause an avalanche.

    The correction of 4d didn’t come in until well after I had finished. You would think that a situation like this would prompt a setter to pop in here and say something, so maybe Nutmeg is one of those who don’t read this blog? I hope not.

  27. Dr. Whatson @26

    Nutmeg apologised some time ago on the Guardian site, so presumably she doesn’t read this blog.

  28. How could I have missed the theme?  Thanks, Nutmeg, for a good ‘un, and Eileen as ever for a delightful and welcoming blog.

    The SPRINGFIELD here is the capital of Illinois, but there are many of them in the US.  In fact, the reason the Simpsons live in Springfield (state unspecified) is that there are supposedly more of them in the country than cities or towns of any other name.  I lived in one myself, Springfield, Massachusetts, home of the Springfield rifle.  Now I live in Hartford, Connecticut, home of the Colt pistol, about which our former resident Mark Twain had some choice things to say.  Dunno why I keep living in gun factory towns.

    Actually, Wikipedia tells me that there are 88 towns or cities names Washington and only 41 Springfields — five of them in Wisconsin, for heaven’s sake.  I didn’t know there were any states with more than one of the same town in them.  Here’s a link https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-common-town-and-city-names-in-the-u-s-a.html.

  29. muffin @27 – Nutmeg certainly does read this blog. She apologised most graciously for an ambiguous clue in puzzle 27,605. [‘We’re all fallible’, she said – and don’t I know it!]

  30. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. I have to agree with the above sympathies in that I thought this was a very nice puzzle. That said, not unusually, I failed to spot the theme. As a dinosaur with the paper open in front of me, I was a bit bemused by 4d, but given I had all the crossers, I figured it must be an error because it could not really be anything else. However I needed to come here to clarify the parsing of 11d, and favourites were quince, meek and auntie. Thanks again to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  32. Great puzzle. My first reaction on seeing a correction would be to hope that the setter first apologise on the Graun thread – which she did – and here only afterwards.

  33. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen (for many parsings – I found this a bit of a wrestle, albeit an enjoyable one).

    I liked AUNTIE and LUGGED and was glad to get them – it looked like I might get stuck in an isolated corner: is this an unusual grid?

    On the subject of setters popping in, Paul dropped in at the end of yesterday’s discussion of his offering.

  34. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. For once I spotted both the error and the theme, but the former did not detract from the fun.

  36. Er,I must admit to getting ENTERTAINERS without realizing there was an error which says something about my solving. I’m also ashamed to say that I didn’t notice the theme despite QUINCE which should have given it to me. It was LOI,mind you.
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

  37. Thank you all for your comments and Eileen for her generous blog.

    I apologised abjectly on the Guardian website for the error in the printed vesion of 4dn, but the blog on 225 didn’t appear until I’d logged off so there wasn’t the opportunity to apologise here. I hope there aren’t too many of you whose enjoyment was spoiled by the mistake

  38. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen, splendid work.
    I saw the theme when prompted to look, it always make me think now of the entertaining alternative treatment of the ‘Fair Folk’ in Terry Pratchett’s ‘Lords and Ladies’.

  39. Andrew @10: Likewise. For my very first professional engagement as an actor, I was cast as 23D. “Have you the lion’s part written? If it be so, I pray you give it me now, for I am slow of study”.

  40. The cast also included Ronnie Barker as 10A, Nicol Williamson as 21D, David Warner as 3D and Jimmy Bolam as 13D.

  41. Everyone has said it all already–I missed the theme, but love it now that I see it–but I can’t not comment on a puzzle that includes my state capital.  Around here, “Springfield,” said with a certain roll of the eyes, is metonymy for the state government, and thus also for the kind of government that evinces a certain roll of the eyes.  I’m sure New Yorkers do the same thing w.r.t. Albany.

  42. Many thanks, Nutmeg, for dropping in @37. I think it’s clear from the comments [so far 😉 ] that no one’s enjoyment was spoiled.

  44. A bit late in the day! Thanks for dropping in, Nutmeg, and for the great puzzle! Also thanks to Eileen for a great blog. In FRANCONIA it took me a while to see that it’s not “in a” reversed but only “in”. I can only assume Ash Wednesday has dulled my brain.

  46. My cheating didn’t go well today. Crossword Solver didn’t have ‘feedstuffs’, offering only ‘feedstocks’ and then the usually omniscient Crossword Puzzle Help could only suggest ‘Frankenia’, my second error. Astonishingly, Crossword Solver didn’t even hold ‘presidents’ in its inventory, giving only the bizarre ‘prosodions’. What is the world coming to?

    I got all the others right and, in a few cases, all I used was my own brain.

    Nice puzzle. Thanks Nutmeg & Eileen.

  47. Rather late in the day to comment, but re muffin @11’s query about May’s speciality, isn’t this a reference to Theresa May running through fields of wheat? – she said this was the naughtiest thing she had done as a child and was mocked by Boris Johnson for it. It would explain the apostrophe.

  48. mrpenney@41

    I’ve wondered, though not often, what the term for a person from Illinois is – Texas leads to Texan, New York to New Yorker, what comes from Illinois? The denizens of particular States appear regularly under the guise of “Statesman”, so not entirely off topic I hope.

     

  51. Stared at 4d for a while before accepting it could be a misprint and not something more devious.  I only thought of the Mechanicals when I entered Flute although I already had all the others! I particularly liked the picture painted by 20a which I parsed the same as Scalliwag@47.  Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  52. slipstream & Bluedot: me too! Completely missed the theme, as always.

    Thanks, as always, Nutmeg & Eileen.

  53. Being abroad on hols I solved this on line never having done so before though I probably wouldn’t have spotted the error at 4d anyway.
    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

  54. I was hoping that someone would explain how “snout” = “grass.” If anyone is still out there reading this, would you be kind enough to put me out of my misery?

  55. Certainly Dave @ 54. ‘Snout’ and ‘grass are both colloquial terms for a police informer.

  56. I think ENTERTAINERS too is a thematic word as some of the “mechanicals” enact a play within MND.

  58. Thanks, Rishi. I was alerted to your comments on today’s Qaos blog.

    I took the theme of the puzzle as being the MECHANICALs and so I highlighted their names in the blog. In my parsing of 2dn, I said that it was the introduction to the theme and provided a link to an item that explained their role in the play.

    I also referred to ENTERTAINERS [and WALL] in my parsing of 3dn [SNOUT].

     

  59. Eileen@58
    Indeed, Eileen. Sorry if I did not say what I meant to say – that the two words could have been coloriszed.

  60. I too saw SPRINGFIELD as Scalliwag and Fohan, which made it witty and my favourite clue. I also liked OPULENTLY for its clever surface.
    A stylish example of Nutmeg’s elegant setting.
    Many thanks to her and Eileen, of course, for her selfless efforts.

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