A great puzzle again, but a tricky one. Thank you Monk.
DADGAD is Celtic guitar tuning – see Wikipedia for the details.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | DOMICILE | Note received by compliant home (8) |
| MI (note, music) inside (received by) DOCILE (complaint) | ||
| 9 | EGOIST | Narcissist first to pursue, say, Oscar (6) |
| IST (first) follows (to pursue) EG (say) O (oscar, phonetic alphabet) | ||
| 10 | ASTI | Alcohol served in western fruit salad (4) |
| found inside (served in) fruIT SAlad reversed (western, heading right-to-left on a map) | ||
| 11 | ART NOUVEAU | The old are opening new school in France (3,7) |
| ART (are, the old=archaic) before (opening) NOUVEAU (new). I’m not convinced that my explanation is correct. Can anyone do better? | ||
| 12 | DIBBER | Here’s one for poking in bed (6) |
| cryptic definition – in a flower bed perhaps | ||
| 14 | CHAIRMAN | Check pilot who’s in charge on board (8) |
| CH (check) AIRMAIN (pilot) | ||
| 15 | GAOLER | Failing to open hole in rough slate when turning screw (6) |
| hOLE (failing to open) inside RAG (a rough slate) reversed (when turning) | ||
| 16 | OCTAVE | Interval of time in old grotto (6) |
| T (time) inside O (old) CAVE (grotto) | ||
| 19 | GAS STOVE | A range of votes cast following vapid talk (3,5) |
| anagram (cast) of VOTES following GAS (vapid talk) | ||
| 21 | QATARI | Question about the American Revolution is primarily a national one (6) |
| first letters (primarily) of Question About The American Revolution Is – one is a person, a national of a country | ||
| 23 | AMELIORATE | Make better material with one’s outside broadcast (10) |
| anagram (broadcast) of MATERIAL with OnE (outside letters of) | ||
| 24 | HYMN | Song they amend intermittently (4) |
| every other letter (intermittently) of tHeY aMeNd | ||
| 25 | DEFECT | Abandon fault (6) |
| double definition | ||
| 26 | RETRYING | Bell outside semi-detached property affected hearing again (8) |
| RING (bell) contains (outside) anagram (affected) of propETRY (semi-detached, half of) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BONSAI | Art form developed in Bosnia (6) |
| anagram (developed in) of BOSNIA | ||
| 2 | WIFI | Network built by Dutch not quite current (4) |
| WIFe (dutch, not quite) and I (current, electrical symbol) | ||
| 3 | DISAGREE | Decline to enter dreadful English contest (8) |
| SAG (decline) inside (to enter) DIRE (dreadful) E (English) | ||
| 4 | FEDORA | Cover journalist in public meetings (6) |
| ED (editor, journalist) inside FORA (public meetings) | ||
| 5 | CONVERSANT | Familiar worker chasing opposite, mostly (10) |
| ANT (worker) follows (chasing) CONVERSe (opposite, mostly) | ||
| 6 | ESCAPADE | Lark these days in flight (8) |
| AD (these days) inside ESCAPE (flight) | ||
| 8 | ENTICE | Tempt novice after first four quit (6) |
| apprENTICE (novice) missing first four letters | ||
| 13 | BOOKSELLER | Vendor I engage to hide deception (10) |
| BOOKER (I engage, someone who books) contains (to hide) SELL (deception) | ||
| 15 | GRAMMIES | One cutting weight succeeded in awards (8) |
| I (one) inside (cutting) GRAMME (weight) then S (succeeded) | ||
| 17 | COQUETTE | Company still heartless over extremely tiresome flirt (8) |
| CO (company) QUiET (still, heartless) then TiresomE (outer letters, extremely) | ||
| 18 | REPAIR | Fix match, not for the first time (6) |
| RE-PAIR to match again (not for the first time) | ||
| 20 | OPORTO | Nothing ordinary’s left inside European city (6) |
| O (nothing) O (ordinary) contains (…has…inside) PORT (left) | ||
| 22 | REMIND | Prompt check about married daughter (6) |
| REIN (check) contains (about) M (married) then D (daughter) | ||
| 24 | HIYA | Greeting more dignified in speech (4) |
| sounds like (in speech) “higher” (more dignified) | ||
I did enjoy the battle – I spotted the Nina and looked it up too!
Thanks to Monk for a nice brain-stretching and to PeeDee for the blog
Demerits to the test-solvers and the editor for GRAMMIES defined as awards. Grammys (and Tonys and Emmys) are irregular plurals. Chambers includes “Grammies,” but who are they to overrule the organization that presents the award? NARAS is clear and consistent — Grammys, not Grammies.
In the last FT Monk crossword, there was some doubt as to whether the “retirement” theme referred just to his job or to his setting. Thankfully, he is still setting (and has given us an Independent puzzle in the interim).
Didn’t know there was any issue with “Grammies” so thanks Jon for pointing that out. This proved just a tad too hard for me but that’s what I like. Used a word fit to get DISAGREE then kicked myself for not working it out. Pleased to get GAOLER but guessed BOOKSELLER without parsing it. Parsed ART NOUVEAU as in the blog. Wondered what that DADGAD was but didn’t bother googling it. Did look in my dictionaries but to no avail.
Thanks to Monk and PeeDee.
Lovely puzzle, with a theme close to my heart (I do – or did until very, very recently – folk guitar for a living. Do check out Pierre Bensusan, the DADGAD genius).
There were very few write-ins today. Everything had to be worked for and that’s the way I like it in these finger-drumming times.
Oh, and I parsed ART NOUVEAU exactly as PeeDee.
Thanks to both.
Thanks PeeDee – like others, I parsed 11ac the same way as you did.
I did look for a nina but only saw ‘tuning’ (after dismissing ‘dadgad’ as being something).
I don’t think it would have helped me finishing the crossword.
All good from my first one in (HYMN, 24ac) to my last (DIBBER, 12ac).
There’s just one thing I wondered about.
In 10ac ‘western’ should be seen as ‘to the west’, and that’s fine.
But what about, say, ‘western winds’? They blow from the west.
It looks like ‘western’ can be used either way, doesn’t it?
Again, many thanks to PeeDee.
And to Monk for the entertainment.
Btw, off-topic.
Have we all seen the masterly anagram,
EASILY SURVIVES TRAVEL NORTH TO CASTLE
Becomes:
STAY ALERT
CONTROL THE VIRUS
SAVE LIVES?
H’m.
Grant at 6 – I think it works better if you make an anagram from the Government’s message, not the other way round!
Jon @2 – Chambers and other English dictionaries do not define what words should be, they catalogues words as they are used. If Grammies gets used in real life then it gets into the dictionary.
Sue at 6, I agree, otherwise we’re getting the punchline before the set-up.
PeeDee @8 — Forgive me if I remember wrong, but some time back in objecting to the use of “touring” in clues, you had a good point that certain setters have a standard under which such a usage would be out of character and catch you by surprise. As it happened this was an Azed, who reaches a consistently high standard for precision. Because I consider Monk in the same category, I agree with Jon that Grammies was wrong — or to put it another way out of character for a highly regarded setter.
Hi Ub,
I’ve no wish to declare Grammies either right or wrong.
Jon asks “who are Chamber to overrule…etc”. Well they are a dictionary: they don’t overrule anybody. They catalogue how writers and speakers of English use words in real life. Presumably people really do write the plural this way sometimes. The OED has Grammies in the index too.
Thank you PeeDee for your characteristically forensic blog, and to all bloggers for comments.
GRAMMIES seems to me to be fair game by its presence in all of Chambers, Collins, OED, ODE, WordWeb, Australian Oxford and New Oxford American Dictionary. (My version of the) SOED does not list the plural, and Canadian Oxford alone gives the plural uniquely as Grammys without alternative. I have not checked other (offline, dead-tree) dictionaries, but this set probably comprises a pretty exhaustive and well-thumbed solvers’ Oracle.
Production teams of setters, testers and editors invariably work by the eminently sensible protocol of being able to confirm entries via an approved list of readily available sources that embrace common usage, so to deem plurals or inflections listed therein to be definitively wrong seems, even to my pedantically mathematical and algorithmic mind, unjustifiable.
Of course, a good many solvers, and many a good solver, know of examples where dictionaries do indeed contain ‘root-word errors’, particularly in specialist technical jargon, but puzzles editors I’ve known have almost without exception stood firmly by dictionary entries, which have the homogeneous merit of allowing solvers to confirm without ambiguity the entry sought; if any ambiguity remains thereafter, then it is indeed the ‘fault’ of the team!
Stay safe, everyone.
Thanks Monk and PeeDee
I really enjoyed this, and having got TUNING & then DADGAD, I threw the crossers I had from the top & bottom rows at a guitar-playing chum to see if there were more. Fruitlessly, as it turns out…
But I do have a query over 17D
Company = CO
still > quite, heartless = QUTE
over (containing) extremely tiresome = TE
surely gives COQUTETE
unless ‘over’ is doing double duty.
Or am I missing something?
We struggled with this and had to use wordfinders and anagram solvers to finish, but got there in the end.
Thanks to setter and blogger
PS: We didn’t have any problem with 17dn – ‘over’, this being a down clue, means ‘on top of’
Regarding 17d. I took STILL to be QUIET so heartless becomes QUET inside of CO and TE as before
Simon S, still = quiet (you wrote quite). So, it’s CO over QUET over TE = COQUETTE.
I found this puzzle to be one of the most difficult that I have done in my 25+ years of doing these puzzles. But, I am proud to say, I finished the Monday, May 25 puzzle.
I enjoy reading everyone’s comments.
Stay safe.
OK, I was missing something.
Thanks
Simon – you were not missing something, I had a mistake in the blog. Well spotted! Fixed now.
Looks like we read what we wanted to read, not what was there.
Thanks Monk and PeeDee
Quite a chunky work out which took about average time across three sessions to complete. Was not able to properly parse BOOKSELLER here, although was able to parse the same answer in the recent Saturday puzzle by Redshank with his different word play. Did see the TUNING part of the nina, but not the rest.
There seemed to be a lot of charade type clues with ‘over’, ‘cutting in’, ‘poking in’, ‘received by’, ‘about’, ‘inside’, etc. being in use throughout the puzzle – nothing wrong of course, was just something that became noticeable to me whilst solving. Having said that, I did enjoy piecing together the answers from these instructions in some instances and deconstructing a solution into its component parts in others.
Finished in the SW corner with GAOLER (whose definition was cleverly disguised), the unparsed BOOKSELLER and one that raised a grin when I first read the clue – and a word that I didn’t know in DIBBLE, as the last one in.
I think there is still a small change needed in the blog for 17d (discussed in comments 13-18): “reversed (over)” should be removed. I agree with @14 that ‘over’ simply means ‘on top of’.
fixed now. thanks Jamie