Financial Times 16,783 by MONK

I didn’t find this as hard as the last couple of Monk puzzles I blogged. No less enjoyable though. Thank you Monk.

As is often the case I have no idea what is hidden in the grid. Can anyone help out?

All the A’s and D’s are unchecked in the grid:  the A’s in the across entries, the D’s in the down entries.  Thanks to Pelham Barton for spotting this.

ACROSS
8 PRAISE
Commendation of power lift (6)
P (power) and RAISE (lift)
9 INORNATE
Excessive, heartless, simple (8)
INORdiNATE (excessive) missing middle letters (heart-less)
10 NEAT
Tidy trade in backing just the regulars (4)
every other letter (just the regulars) of TrAdE iN reversed (backing)
11 TAKE THE AIR
The Karate Kid centrally broadcast in promenade? (4,3,3)
anagram (broadcast) of THE KARATE and kId (middle letter, centrally)
12 HIERARCH
Chief priest caught lofty principal (8)
HIER sounds like (caught) “higher” (lofty) then ARCH (principal)
13 NASSER
Old Middle Eastern dignitary new to state forcefully ousted at the end (6)
N (new) and ASSERt (to state forcefully) missing last letter (ousted at the end)
15 AGAINST THE GRAIN
Once more straighten out how one could cut deal, perhaps (7,3,5)
AGAIN (once more) then anagram (out) of STRAIGHTEN – deal is timber, wood
18 QUANGO
Board question a jazz guitarist after losing record player (6)
QU (question) djANGO (Django Reinhardt, jazz guitarist) missing DJ (a record player) – Quasi Autonomous National (or Non-) Government Organisation
20 INSANITY
Madness caused by, ultimately, years in emptiness (8)
yearS (last letter of, ultimately) inside INANITY (emptiness)
22 ASTROLOGER
Expert seeing future developments emerging from present houses? (10)
cryptic definition – someone who predicts the future from the houses of the Zodiac present at one’s birth
24 HAEM
Colour photo made her smile in seconds (4)
second letters of pHoto mAde hEr sMile
25 ALTER EGO
Change nothing without, say, close friend (5,3)
ALTER (change) O (nothing) contains (without) EG (for example, say)
26 WALK IT
Easily win appeal after rule overturned by king (4,2)
IT (appeal, e.g. sex appeal) follows LAW (rule) reversed with K (king)
DOWN
1 BREEDING
Old transport company wanting uncapped stock production? (8)
BR (British Rail, old transport company) then nEEDING (wanting) missing first letter (uncapped) – production of livestock
2 DISTORTION
Row about risotto getting processed colouring (10)
DIN (row) contains (about) anagram (getting processed) of RISOTTO
3 DEXTER
Right to prevent grasping by crime- fiction writer (6)
DETER (to prevent) contains (grasping) X (by, multiplied by) – anyone know what right is doing in here?  Two definitions for the price of one.
4 DICK WHITTINGTON
Tight-knit CID now busting a Lord Mayor (4,11)
anagram (busting) of TIGHT-KNIT CID NOW – Richard Whittington, character from pantomime tale
5 OOSTENDE
Nothing needs to change place according to some Europeans (8)
O (nothing) then anagram (change) of NEEDS TO – being in a multilingual country it has more than one spelling: Ostend or Oostende
6 UNDE
Oscillatory element of gun deaths (4)
found inside (element of) gUN DEaths
7 STRIDE
Turkey breaking team’s step (6)
TR (Turkey) inside SIDE (team)
14 STRONGHOLD
Wretched ghost beginning to nettle Lord Nelson, maybe (10)
anagram (wretched) of GHOST with Nettle (first letter, beginning to) and LORD – I don’t quite get the definition, a Nelson is an example of a STRONG HOLD (5,5) rather than a STRONGHOLD (10)?
16 SHOULDER
Ought Her Majesty to jostle? (8)
SHOULD (ought) ER (her majesty)
17 INTREPID
Brave prediction dashed following loss of split company (8)
anagram (dashed) of PERDIcTIoN missing (following loss of) CO (company) – split indicates that C and O are lost individually, not as CO
19 UNSOLD
Hollow vase – small antique still in store? (6)
UrN (vase, hollow) then S (small) and OLD (antique)
21 SHREWD
Wily daughter oppressed by aggressive woman (6)
D (daughter) follows (oppressed by, underneath in a down-entry) SHREW (aggressive woman)
23 RUED
Rough getting picked up felt remorse (4)
sounds like (getting picked up) “rude” (rough)

17 comments on “Financial Times 16,783 by MONK”

  1. Struggled with this and ultimately failed on the crossing 5d & 13a.

    In 3d, I took “Right” as a second definition. I had similar misgivings on 14d.

  2. Thanks Monk and PeeDee

    Every across answer has an unchecked A and every down answer an unchecked D. These are the only As and Ds in the grid.

  3. Maybe not my day, but I found this just as hard as Monk usually is and on top of a difficult solve anyway I wouldn’t have had a hope of spotting the Nina – well done, Pelham Barton @3. NASSER, OOSTENDE, the uncommon INORNATE and finally the never heard of UNDE gave me trouble at the end and stretched out the solving time. Sorry to be picky, but I think QUANGO stands for “Quasi-autonomous non-government organisation”, not “… local organisation”.

    My pick today was the double-definition with wordplay for DEXTER. I presume the ‘remorse’ definition at 23d was just co-incidental.

    Thanks to Monk and PeeDee

  4. I should really have said that Monk has done this before, and I think someone else spotted it before me on that occasion.

  5. Thanks for spotting that WordPlodder. I was getting my local/national confused there.

    I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it lists some other variations too. Apparently it originated as Quasi-NGO and then from there came QUANGO and then some backronymns (a new word for me!) where retrospective terms were invented to best suit the particular body being described.

  6. Game of 2 halves.. R proceeded nicely.. real struggle with L, in particular 5dn 13ac n 14dn n 24ac… all too convoluted for me..
    Thanks MONK n Peedee

  7. A good half-hour’s worth and overall satisfying. Needed my Chambers for UNDE and HAEM, which were entirely new to me, and to check INORNATE, but they were all clear enough from the wordplay. Slightly irritated – as often – by the fact that I couldn’t enter RUED until I had the crossers, since the clue could equally well have given “rude”. The rest fine, with 15a as my favourite.

  8. Really not entitled to be here since I just dropped in to see how PeeDee was doing, but find myself intrigued about the “A”s and “D”s – was there a reason to suspect something hidden in the grid (or am I being infra-infra-red)?

    (I love “backronyms” – must watch out for those. I suppose the “Wars of the Roses” (or indeed the name for any/most war/s would qualify, á la WW1?).)

  9. Alphalpha – Monk has had something hidden in the grid on every puzzle I have solved from him. Knowing that there is something to look for isn’t much of a help as the the artifacts hidden in there are so varied. What they do have in common is that they are not a necessary part of solving the clues, one can choose to look for them or be totally unaware of them, it does not make much difference.

  10. Well I’m glad my first Monk was one of his easier ones! We got there in the end, but it took a few sessions with everything parsed except NASSER and INSANITY. UNDE and HAEM were new to me but more simply clued to compensate for their obscurity. Coming here to discover there is always a Monk hidden bonus adds another level. Thanks to him, PeeDee and other commenters.

  11. Mostly straightforward, though with some unusual (to us, anyway) words such as INORNATE and HAEM. Our first shot at 25ac before we had any crossers was ‘bosom pal’ which did have an unchecked A (not that we were aware of what was hiding in the grid) but woluldn’t parse. We came unstuck, though, on 5dn, our LOI, where all we could think of was ‘continue’ taking ‘nothing needs to change’ as the definition and wondering if ‘continue’ could be ‘continent’ in one of the lesser-known European languages; had we twigged the business with As and Ds we would have seen the error of our ways. Lots to enjoy, though. Favourite was DEXTER.
    Thanks, Monk and PeeDee.
    PS, Alphalpha @11&12, you’re thinking of a retronym, as in ‘acoustic guitar’ which was just ‘guitar’ till electric ones came along.

  12. That was hard work — I needed a word finder for the unfamiliar QUANGO and OOSTENDE and I failed with the unknown HAEM. Was pleased to figure out another unknown, DICK WHITTINGTON, with just the third “i” and the “g” placed. Favourites were UNSOLD and INSANITY. Overall a worthwhile crossword. Thanks Monk, and PeeDee for the blog.

  13. Thanks Monk and PeeDee
    Didn’t find this at all easy and failed badly on OOSTENDE (even after having contemplated an anagram) but instead plumping for CONTINUE on the same basis that allan@15 outlined. Didn’t twig to the theme, even though they are almost a standard feature of the crosswords by this setter.
    Plenty of other clues to enjoy, after they fell, and quite a few that required a decent amount of general knowledge. After more than half a dozen sittings, did resort to a lot of electronic help to get the grid filled, albeit not all correctly.

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