A tricky and fun start to the week, with neat wordplay and surfaces, and with quite a bit of general knowledge required. Favourites were 14ac, 16ac, 26ac, 29ac, and 22dn. Thanks to Pan
| Across | ||
| 1 | EDAMAME | Mead brewed with American and European bean (7) |
| definition: soy beans, often served in the pod (Mead)* + AM (American) + E (European) |
||
| 5 | CITADEL | Peculiar dialect used in a Salvation Army meeting hall (7) |
| definition: a name used for some Salvation Army churches (dialect)* |
||
| 10 | ARAN | Pattern knitted into popular anorak (4) |
| definition: Irish knitwear pattern(s) from the Aran Islands hidden inside [popul]AR AN[orak] |
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| 11 | EMANCIPATE | Free bananas came in savoury paste (10) |
| (came in)* with “bananas”=crazy as anagrind; plus PÂTÉ=”savoury paste” | ||
| 12 | RIG-OUT | Clothing from soldier turned up during disorderly retreat (3-3) |
| definition: an outfit GI=”soldier” reversed/”turned up”, inside ROUT=”disorderly retreat” |
||
| 13 | TAMARIND | Monkey died in tree (8) |
| definition: an African fruit tree TAMARIN=a type of “Monkey” + D (died) |
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| 14 | CHIPBOARD | Fruit found by animal in the edges of cultivated wood (9) |
| HIP as in ‘rose hip’=”Fruit” + BOAR=”animal”; all inside the outer letters/”edges” of C[ultivate]D | ||
| 16 | RAVEN | Bird (chicken) not caught (5) |
| C-RAVEN=cowardly, “chicken”; minus C (caught, in cricket) | ||
| 17 | STUNT | Trick where fruit turns into stone (5) |
| NUT=”fruit” reversed/”turns”; inside ST (stone, unit of mass) | ||
| 19 | PENSTEMON | Plant in enclosure confused tailless monster (9) |
| definition: a type of flowering plant PEN=”enclosure” + (monste |
||
| 23 | CASTRATO | Old-time singer and performers meeting retired sailor at end of oratorio (8) |
| CAST=”performers” + TAR=”sailor” reversed/”retired” + [oratori]O | ||
| 24 | ECLAIR | Note covered in pieces of rice cake (6) |
| LA=musical “Note”, inside (rice)* | ||
| 26 | BURNS NIGHT | Vessels seen by navy entering bay for celebration north of the border (5,5) |
| URNS=”Vessels” + N (Navy); all inside BIGHT=”bay” | ||
| 27 | SLIP | Cricketer‘s garment (4) |
| double definition – first meaning is a cricket fielding position | ||
| 28 | DESERTS | Rats in areas of wasteland (7) |
| double definition | ||
| 29 | SEVERED | Get furious about 5 being cut (7) |
| SEE RED=”Get furious”, around V=5 in Roman numerals | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | DERVISH | Muslim ascetic put Queen Victoria’s head in bowl (7) |
| ER (Elizabeth Regina)=”Queen” + V[ictoria]; all inside DISH=”bowl” | ||
| 3 | MENTO | Setter given books on old West Indian music (5) |
| definition: a style of Jamaican folk music ME=”Setter” + NT (New Testament)=”books” + O (old) |
||
| 4 | MAESTRO | Mother’s store for recycling plastic? (7) |
| definition: name of a credit card MA=”Mother” + (store)* |
||
| 6 | INCOME | Collapsed mine swallowing company’s takings (6) |
| (mine)* around CO (company) | ||
| 7 | ASPARTAME | Food additive in a box ruined meat (9) |
| definition: an artificial sweetener A + SPAR=fight/practise with another boxer=”box” + (meat)* |
||
| 8 | ENTENTE | Friendly alliance welcomed by independent enterprise (7) |
| hidden inside [independ]ENT ENTE[rprise] | ||
| 9 | LANTERNE ROUGE | Let a runner go out with drug for rider in last place (8,5) |
| definition: the last-place cyclist in a race (Let a runner go)* + E (ecstasy)=”drug” |
||
| 15 | PENITENCE | Vice-president holding up English money in show of contrition (9) |
| Mike PENCE=US “Vice-president”; around a reversal/”up” of: E (English) + TIN=slang for “money” | ||
| 18 | TRADUCE | Bad-mouth picture put up by Mussolini (7) |
| ART=”picture” reversed/”put up” by Il DUCE=”Mussolini” | ||
| 20 | SHEATHE | Cover article supporting nut tree (7) |
| THE=”article”, after SHEA=an African “nut tree” | ||
| 21 | OLIVINE | Fruit containing popular mineral (7) |
| =a type of mineral, usually olive-green OLIVE=”Fruit” around IN=”popular” |
||
| 22 | BARNET | Alien found under farm building’s thatch? (6) |
| definition: hair / a hairstyle ET (Extra Terrestrial), after BARN=”farm building” |
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| 25 | LISLE | Fabric in shawl is Lebanese (5) |
| definition: a type of cotton yarn hidden inside [shaw]L IS LE[banese] |
||
Clever stuff and not too challenging. But not sure I agree with the definition of 26 ac BURNS NIGHT – we in Northumberland and Tyneside celebrate this with at least as much enthusiasm as our northerly neighbours!
Thanks manehi and Pan.
A bit too tricky for the start of the IMO.
Start of the week of course
I think our blogger’s description was spot on and my favourites pretty well matched.
Had to resort to outside help for the plant at 19 but apart from that a very enjoyable start to the week.
Thank all
A wolf in sheep’s clothing for me this morning.
Several UNUSUAL words – PENSTEMON, EDAMAME, MENTO, OLIVINE but all fairly clued.
Thought STUNT was the pick of the bunch with its smooth surface.
Struggled with the SE corner due to being fixated on _ _ _ _ I U M for the mineral.
Being a fan of Le Tour, LANTERNE ROUGE was an early entry. It was traditionally the red light hung on the rear of the hindmost carriage of a freight train which the signalman would check for to ensure that none of the couplings had become disconnected.
Good, tougher start to the week, many thanks, Pan.
..unusual..
No ticks at all from me. I didn’t find it clever, just very thesaurus & gk friendly. Maybe a bonus point for upcycling Puck’s recent “Most are recycling one sort of plastic (7)”
For me that was the hardest crossword in ages. Too much outside my fields of knowledge or interest.
Well, I’d never heard of MENTO, PENSTEMON or the SHEA nut, though the wordplay was sufficient to be confident of the answers, but the one that did for me was the (in retrospect) obvious RAVEN. I’d somehow got stuck with SCARED as the only synonym for chicken with a C in it, and couldn’t get my mind out of this dead end groove. Other than that, a good start to the week.
Thanks Pan & manehi.
Same unknowns as William @5. Good crossword with some interesting clues; I liked those for EMANCIPATE, STUNT, INCOME and BURNS NIGHT.
In 12A, ‘turned up’ is surely inaccurate as it is usually for use in Down clues, and turned around or some such could have been used. I don’t really understand DESERTS as the rats were ‘desert rats,’ surely?
Thanks Pan and manehi.
bodycheetah @7: while I agree with your overall sentiment, surely you have to give a tick for the nicely clued BURNS NIGHT?
Robi @10: I had the same thoughts about rats/DESERTS but I guess the verbal form works, as in to desert one’s party or side.
Six of these crossed the line between GK and obscure, for me. I suppose pennies are dropping for some other nerd, though. The clues are serviceable, except “turned up” in 12A should be “returned,” IMO.
Robi @10 (agreeing with William @12):
Chambers gives “desert or change sides” as a definition for ‘rat’ as a verb
I can’t make my mind up whether or not this puzzle has a nut/fruit/tree theme.
I’m also very surprised to see “turned up” as a reversal indicator in an across clue at 12.
Got there in the end, but had to look up 4 or 5 of these after I had worked out the wordplay. Tried to convince myself for a while that 19ac might be PERSIMMON, which I knew, but not the LOI PENSTEMON. Thought it a bit harsh to lead off with 1ac another solution/word EDAMAME that I hadn’t come across before either…
Thanks for the blog manehi.
A bit more of a challenge than usual for a Monday – but that’s not a complaint. I learned some new words, including the interesting LANTERNE ROUGE [one of my favourites, for the surface.] I also enjoyed CITADEL, RAVEN, SEVERED, MAESTRO, TRADUCE and BARNET, which made me smile.
I was surprised at ‘turn up’, too. I pondered turning up soil and consulted Chambers, which has ‘to grub up; to disturb’.
Many thanks to Pan for a heart kick-start to the week.
A commendable puzzle with solid wordplay and enough of a challenge to keep me happy.
Thanks to Pan and manehi.
Baerchen @ 15 Are you including 23 in your theme?
@robert ouch
Thanks to Pan and manehi.
Tricky but enjoyable, with some answers more reminiscent of Pasquale than normal Monday fare.
I looked up tamarin/tamarind – interestingly they come from entirely different roots: tamarin is “Fr, from Carib”, and tamarind is “Ar tamr-Hindi date of India.
And while I had my trusty Chambers out I checked the famous definition of 24ac: “cake, long in shape but short in duration”.
Chewy but nice.
Thanks to Fruit and Nut – sorry, Pan and manehi
[Any excuse to remember the delightful Frank Muir]
It’s a sign of skillful setting when a clue points so strongly to a string of letters that I enter it, then go to Collins to find that by gosh, it’s actually a word! That happened several times today, and like Eileen @17 I enjoyed the learning experience. Solid cluing throughout, aside from the aforementioned “turned up,” so thanks to Pan for the education and the fun, and to manehi for the blog.
bodycheetah @7: You probably used up all your ticks on the unusual instrument in Saturday’s crossie.
Agree this was a tougher solve than most Mondays but nice for a change. Plenty of new words for me but only in the solutions – all the wordplay seemed more than fair.
More generally it’s odd to me that with the Quiptic being a Monday puzzle, the Monday Cryptic slot is still generally where the easiest daily puzzle of the week tends to get published. It would seem to make more sense to either generally have a harder main Monday puzzle or publish the Quiptic later in the week so the two puzzles from the same day are more obviously at differing levels of difficulty. All a bit of a moot point today where this was in fact absolutely the case.
Can someone please explain in what sense CHIPBOARD=wood? I know it is used in lieu of wood in some construction projects, and it is indeed made from little pieces of wood, but isn’t that the same as saying a sand castle is rock? Thanks.
DrW @25 I had the same thought but my Chambers describes it as “Reconstructed wood made by …” so I think it raises a philosophical question or two
I too found this fairly tough. I didn’t know edamame, olivine or lanterne rouge which was my LOI after I had all the crossers. I had sting for 17 whoops! I wondered why I couldn’t parse it!
Thanks Pan and Manehi
Thanks for the blog.
Not very keen on puzzles that rely on obscure GK – shea, mento, penstemon, really? I blame “crossword compiler” or whatever tool Pan used to fill in his grid. I bet Pan didn’t know that shea was a type of nut tree prior to compiling the puzzle.
I expected (along with sheffield hatter @9) for “sared” to turn out to be some species of East Timor woodchuck …
Far too much googling required. Sucks the fun out of the challenge for me. Aren’t there enough options in an average vocabulary, without cakewalking?
I’ve been trying to figure out why this fell so flat with me. I counted IN / INTO used 12 times as a link word which, along with a hatful of crossword cliches ET, ER …) probably didn’t help. In 7d IN is a link word but looks like an envelope indicator – misdirection or just misleading?
Is there a theme of each answer having at least one other complete word hidden within it? EDAMAME – DAM, SLIP – LIP, etc. That would help explain there being so many oddballs. I can see something obvious in all but a few of them.
I wasn’t going to bother to comment here, having little to add to what has been said but I would say that my take on the obscure words was (largely) that they were well clued. I’d not heard of the term for a SA meeting hall, but the anagram was straightforward. Penstemon was new but came with a couple of crossers. Mento was totally new but what else could the clue be saying? Lanterne rouge took a bit of work to unscramble, but once “rouge” was guessed with a couple of crossers, the rest came and was very satisfying. Ditton the “shea” part of sheathe. I found olivine the weakest as both spheres of knowledge, fruit and minerals, is so large. But most of these turned out to be a lot easier than they seemed, and unambiguously clued so as to teach me something. Tough for a Monday, but it’s a bank holiday south of the border (sorry to the Scottish crowd, but you are another country these days…) so good to have a challenge.
Maestro is debit card owned by Mastercard and is gradually being replaced by Mastercard debit, it is still available in USA and Italy. In the UK it took over Switch. Here in France it was never issued but Maestro is a brand of plastic pallet in France for storing and transporting goods, and a classic car in UK.
Thanks Pan and Manehi
After Unlock Stage 1 enabled an 8d tres cordiale with family, with quite some rouge, came home and thought I’d have a fun rip through the Monday, only to be 23-minus-o-ed by 19 and 21, both nhos. Yes, yes, a bit contrived and gk-ish, but well done Pan, and ta manehi.
Clive @33. I doubt many ex-owners of an Austin Maestro would describe it as a classic car other than by virtue of its age. I would, from bitter experience, describe as the nadir of British automotive engineering.
I might have got LANTERNE ROUGE rather more quickly if I’d listened to my late stepfather in law who was a commentator on Sky for various cycling races -but I didn’t so it was LOI.This took rather longer than I was expecting. I knew MENTO and TAMARIN-D but SHEATHE was a guess. I managed to dredge MAESTRO up from,well, somewhere and I think I’ve come across PENTSTEMON probably from an old crossword. Bit too much GK perhaps?
Thanks Pan.
Phew – not the usual Monday fare, but managed to complete it. Like others, hadn’t heard of LANTERNE ROUGE, PENSTEMON or MENTO; nor the particular meaning of MAESTRO. Took forever to get ECLAIR. But an enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Pan and manehi.
Other nhos were the bean, the WI music and the nut tree, but all gettable.
Like others a number of words with which I was not familiar but got there from the wordplay & then confirmed with Mr Google. Additionally I was unable to fully parse 3 others so all in all a pretty tough start to the week as far as I’m concerned but I’ll chalk it in as a finish.
Thanks to Manehi for explaining my answers & to Pan for the challenge
Despite not completing this crossword — PENSTEMON and OLIVINE were beyond my grasp — I enjoyed it nonetheless. ARAN, MENTO, and BARNET were also new to me but fairly easy to derive. Favorites were BURNS NIGHT (I have an Irish neighbor in the States who celebrates this), CASTRATO, SEVERED, and DERVISH for its amusing surface. Thanks Pan and Manehi.
The Stanchion @ 35 – surely the Austin Allegro was the nadir?
I was living in Germany at the time the Maestro first appeared. The German press unkindly wrote that the long indentation down each side made it look as if it had been in a crash already.
Ta for the Frank Muir link essexboy (@ 20-something), he’s much missed. Our auntie ABC used to broadcast Brit comedies daily, 5am; Mrs ginf used to elbow me to shut up for giggling at them, listening on my pillow-trannie. My Word, My Music and The Goons were constant, with the others (ISIRTA, ISIHAC, etc) filling in. I miss them terribly.
My wife has a tube of Shea butter handcream for use after gardening. Olivine might not be well-known, but it is thought to be the most abundant mineral in the planet (though mostly in the mantle rather than the crust). Penstemons are quite popular garden flowers – we have lots.
I had a similar experience with MENTO, though.
Thanks Pan and manehi.
17 throws the fruit and nuts all into one bowl. Sort of a trail mix of a clue. Gorp.
I think 3 runners might be 2 too many. Other than that, I enjoyed it, despite having never heard of LANTERNE ROUGE. With all the crossers in, that was all it could be.
Along with muffin @43 I recognise Shea from some gunk that my wife has, and 20D was my favourite because I spent so long trying different combinations for the parsing and definition before getting there.
Agree wholeheartedly with DaveinNCarolina @22 (and others) that being able to get MENTO, OLIVINE, LISLE and PENSTEMON (Ok, with a lucky guess at the anagram there) despite never having heard of them indicates very clear/fair cluing so thanks Pan for all of this, which I found tougher than Paul on Saturday (assuming I got all that right, we’ll see).
Thanks manehi for the clear explanations as usual.
And for Stanchion @35 – as a kid I remember being very excited when the Maestro came out as it had a digital speedo and display rather than the boring needle/dials – of course this turned out to be true only for the top-end models+MG and our “L” was a little less space age – although much better than his old Vauxhall Viva, according to my dad.
Great start to the week. I couldn’t figure out CHIPBOARD or MAESTRO, and I had to Google and find out that Barnet came from Cockney slang for hair. My American brain always struggles with this thatch=hair=Barnet (Fair), and friend=mate=China (plate) business! Are there other such???
Jay @47
Hundreds – see here, for example.
There were several words in here which were previously unknown to me, but – and I know this may sound alarming to some contributors – I Now Know Some New Words! Seriously, guys, isn’t it part of the *point* of crossword solving to increase your knowledge?
Muffin @48. That’s great. I can imagine an entire crossword built on that list and me getting nowhere with it. Thanks. I’ll add it to my bookmarks.
Things I didn’t know:
Rig-out, mento, slip (cricket), maestro (plastic), shea, lanterne rouge, tamarin, penstemon, citadel (Salvation Army)
Despite that, I almost managed to finish, but I was vanquished in the end by penstemon.
I don’t mind if a crossword contains obscure words (which I define to mean “words I don’t know”!) as long as they’re clued in a way that allows the solve to work them out, as these were. Even the one that defeated me is perfectly fair now that I see it.
My most extreme moment of stupidity: I had all the crossers for 6dn and thought to myself, “well, I guess there must be a word ENCOMI that I’ve never heard of.”
solve -> solver, of course. I wish I noticed these things before I hit “Post”.
ginf @42
BBC Radio 4 Extra regularly broadcasts the Goons, ISIRTA, ISIHAC, Round the Horne, Hancock, Hitchhiker etc. It’s easy to get here online (and digital), but not sure if there’s a barrier to getting it in Oz?
muffin @48: OMIGOD – that is intimidating! I’ve bookmarked the page…
Can we get Vulcan back please? My head hurts.
I thought this was a great puzzle – the last 3 solutions had to wait until the end of the day when MrsW cracked them – LANTERNE ROUGE, RAVEN and SEVERED. As always GK depends on whether you know it or not – and like muffin I knew them except MENTO – but whether you knew them or not they were gettable from the clues. Many thanks to Pan and manehi.
Thanks muffin@48 for the Cockney Rhyming Slang list. I solved everything with the aid of Google and my crossword aid discovering 4 brand new words and extra meanings to many others (MAESTRO to me is an orchestral conductor), so it was all a bit laborious. But will I remember all I have discovered for next time?
Well, it was a Monday so I saved it to knock off in an hour or so after supper. Big mistake. Only just finished it this morning after retiring hurt overnight at 1am! Thanks to Pan for an excellent and very fair puzzle, and to Manehi for explaining MAESTRO (loudest “d’oh” moment).
I’m fascinated by the comments on today’s puzzle. I normally struggle, even on a Monday, but enjoy the effort. Today’s, however, went in effortlessly (apart from a brief moment trying to work out why sting might be the answer to 17ac). Only word new to me was mento but there could be no other answer. I loved it! One man’s meat, I guess…
This was one of those that I wondered afterwards why I had found it so hard. I need the blog to SEE RED: I was trying to fit in SEETHED. Duh… When I came and saw it was a Pan a lot became clear. Thanks to Pan and Manehi.