Hard going but fair & fun, I thought, although not helped by an irritating mis-numeration.
Plenty to enjoy and admire, but the patently wrong numeration at 4d did seriously hold me up. Never mind, cracked it in the end. Thanks to PHSSTHPOK.
| Across | ||
| 1 | DEFIANCE | Notes intended to be threatening (8) |
| Musical notes D & E + FIANCE (one’s ‘intended’). | ||
| 5 | DOT-COM | Internet trader’s disaster takes on tragicomic extremes (3-3) |
| DOOM (‘disaster’) includes ends of ‘TragicomiC’. | ||
| 10 | REGALIA | Crown, sceptre and grail are mysterious without king (7) |
| Anagram (‘mysterious’) of ‘GRAIL ArE’ without R[ex]. | ||
| 11 | REIGNED | Sat, fell, was picked up (7) |
| Homophone (‘picked up’) of ‘rained’ (‘fell’). | ||
| 12 | SINEW | Stitch secured in ligament (5) |
| S.EW (‘stitch’) includes ‘IN’. | ||
| 13 | GREEN BELT | Devotee of martial arts field is protected here (5,4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 14 | ANNOUNCEMENT | Broadcast article with part of speech on cover (12) |
| AN (‘article’) + NOUN (‘part of speech’) + CEMENT (a kind of ‘cover’). | ||
| 18 | CAUSE CELEBRE | Controversy because cereals deficient in arsenic are adulterated (5,7) |
| Anagram (‘adulterated’) of BECAUSE + CEREaLs, minus ‘AS’ (= ‘arsenic’). | ||
| 21 | SHOOT-EM-UP | With extra power, mouse gets hot playing computer game (5-2-2) |
| Anagram (‘playing’) of P[ower] + MOUSE + HOT. | ||
| 23 | GLAZE | Good loaf icing (5) |
| G[ood] + LAZE (to ‘loaf’). | ||
| 24 | OPINION | 6 conceals irrational belief (7) |
| PI (an ‘irrational’ number) hidden in ONION (answer to 6d). | ||
| 25 | ISOLATE | Is love dead in exile? (7) |
| IS + 0 (‘love’) + LATE (‘dead’). | ||
| 26 | SPEAKS | Get tip of spikes, needles and points out (6) |
| S (= ‘tip of Spikes’) + PEAKS (‘needles’ as in, inter alia, the Isle of Wight ‘peaks’). Chambers gives ‘speak’ at def 6 as “To give… information… by any means”, perhaps as in “I’m only speaking [‘pointing out’] the truth”. | ||
| 27 | PERSPIRE | Drip from a steeple (8) |
| PER (‘a’ as in ‘potatoes 50p a pound’) + SPIRE. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | DURESS | You reportedly wore frock under this, reluctantly perhaps (6) |
| U (homophone of ‘you’) in D.RESS (‘frock’). | ||
| 2 | FAG END | Rage for seizing lowdown butt (3,3) |
| FA.D (a passing ‘rage’) includes GEN (‘information, the ‘low-down’). | ||
| 3 | ALLOWANCE | Grant everybody that hurts a new church (9) |
| ALL + OW! + A + N[ew] + C [of] E (‘church’). | ||
| 4 | CHANGE ONES MIND | Clue for demons in seesaw (14) |
| Reverse anagram: “To ‘change’ ONES MIND” might give “DEMONS IN”. Clearly, the numeration should read (6,4,4). | ||
| 6 | ONION | Bulb is in use – electric current running (5) |
| ON (‘in use’) + I (‘electric current’) + ON (again, = ‘running’). | ||
| 7 | CONVEYED | Bore politician with scanned verse first (8) |
| CON[servative] = politician, electorally, + EYED (‘scanned’) preceded by V[erse]. | ||
| 8 | MEDITATE | Referee took time to ponder (8) |
| T[ime] in MEDIATE. | ||
| 9 | FREE ENTERPRISE | When unregulated, the market interferes with peer review (4,10) |
| Anagram (‘review’) of INTERFERES + PEER. | ||
| 15 | EGREGIOUS | Soldier replaced heron’s tail with mouse innards – gross! (9) |
| The last letter of EGREt (a ‘heron’) is replaced by GI (‘soldier’), then the ‘innards’ of ‘mOUSe’. Curious image… | ||
| 16 | SCISSORS | Is cross dismembered with spades or shears? (8) |
| Anagam (‘dismembered’) of IS CROSS + S[pades]. | ||
| 17 | PUT ON ICE | Hold up dress with diamonds (3,2,3) |
| PUT ON (‘dress’) + ICE (‘diamonds’). | ||
| 19 | TATAMI | Mat’s goodbye note (6) |
| TATA + MI for the Japanese ‘mat’. | ||
| 20 | SERENE | Collected baked noodles and egg starters (6) |
| SERE (very dry, ‘baked’) + 1st letters on ‘Noodles’ and ‘Eggs’. | ||
| 22 | THINK | Fancy slender king (5) |
| THIN + K[ing]. | ||
*anagram
Re 4d -or at least “three words_”?
Graun not alone in editorial lapses
Thanks GB
I was done by 4d, but I knew it was one of those ‘answers as clues’ and I should have worked out it was more than the indicated one word. These things do happen I suppose, so can’t whinge.
The parsing of FAG END and EGREGIOUS was beyond me – yes, the image suggested by the wordplay for the latter doesn’t bear thinking about!
Maybe not very exciting clues, but for some reason SERENE and PERSPIRE appealed to me today.
Thanks to Phssthpok – welcome back, it’s been a while since we’ve seen you – and Grant.
Indeed, welcome back Phssthpok!
I actually didn’t find this crossword particularly ‘hard going’.
Between the FOI (22d, THINK) and the LOI (of course, 4d) there were some nice touches.
My only quibble today was Phssthpok’s love for the past tense in containment clues: ‘secured’ (12ac), ‘wore’ (1d) and ‘took’ (8d).
Similarly, ‘was’ in 11ac [which the clue doesn’t need anyway].
Some setters do it, others (the majority, I think) are a bit more strict.
Many thanks to Grant & Phssthpok.
My first Phssthpok crossword — I hope there are many more to come. I liked the cluing for 24a and 7d in particular; I only missed 4d — when I entered the letters I had into a word finder the only thing that was suggested was CHANGE ONES MIND. Thanks Grant for the discussion.
How do mistakes in enumeration occur?
A widely used crossword software, like some others as well, allows setters to choose the option for it to insert enumerations without our having to do so by hand.
If the gridfills are single words, there is no problem.
If a fill is a phrase, the sw will insert the enu as per word divisions but the particular phrase has to be in the in-built word list that is chosen by the setter initially.
If not, the sw simply inserts the number of slots.
I now checked. With a chosen dictionary and with a certain knowns and unknowns in a letter string, I do not get CHANGE ONES MIND.
In the View/Edit mode, the sw will show the entry as CHANGEONESMIND. We can edit it to CHANGE ONES MIND when the enu in a box lower down will change to (6,4,4). Then we can be sure that the sw will insert the enu correctly.
If we fail to do this at the edit stage, we must always check the enus of phrases in the copy.
Thanks Phssthpok and Grant
Was a puzzle that I did very early yesterday morning and was able to get it out in the single sitting. A lot of interesting constructions and many odd clue surfaces.
A couple of interesting definitions kept one on one’s toes along the way – ‘sat’=REIGNED, ‘cover’=CEMENT, ‘needle’=PEAK, the more common now ‘a’=PER and ‘bore’=CONVEYED. EGREGIOUS was a new term for me, and the surface was a ‘blah’.
Finished with DEFIANCE (with another tricky ‘intended’=FIANCE), CHANGE ONE’S MIND (the enumeration was an aha moment, after working out the word play) and had to go back to SPEAKS (which took ages for me to equate needle and peak).
(Interesting take on the enumeration, Rishi. Funny I always print and complete the crossword by hand, so don’t think of the compiler doing any different – in the day and age though, assume that software based generation of puzzles is how it is done!)
Hi to Bruce et al.
Not that it matters at all but I’d like to sign off with the observation that ‘enumeration’ – rather than the simpler ‘numeration’ – seems to have become crossword standard for the description of the numbers in brackets.
Language is as we all know never set in stone but ‘enumeration’ in my head at least means a ‘counting off’ rather than just a numbering exercise for which ‘numeration’ is sufficient. ‘Enumeration’ feels like
sesquipedalian over-elaboration. La, la.