Silvanus is a regular, but comparatively infrequent, setter for the Indy and the Sindy. This puzzle was just right for the Monday slot, I thought. What did you think?
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Shame of police officer vacuously slandering ethnic group
DISGRACE
A charade of DI, SG for the outside letters of ‘slandering’ and RACE.
5 Familiar river duck, small, vanishing from Irish county
COMMON
[ROS]COMMON
10 Shocking debts faced by, say, Sir Elton once
EGREGIOUS
A charade of EG for ‘say’, REG and IOUS for ‘debts’. Sir Elton changed his name from Reg Dwight. A good move, I fancy, since if he’d carried on being Reg he might not have pulled off all the sequined suit routines so effortlessly.
11 Barely using energy, wife shows physical strength
SINEW
‘Barely’ here means ‘in the nude’, or ‘without clothes’. This gives you the SIN element, then you need E and W.
12 Prayer of Scotsman about English failure essentially
ANGELUS
And here, ‘essentially’ means the middle letter of. So it’s E and L inserted into ANGUS. Ian has been in touch this morning. He’s not happy. The ANGELUS is a Catholic devotion, and its name is derived from the first four words of the prayer: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ, The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. It is often accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell.
13 Island job for rural vet, some say
CURAÇAO
A vet in a rural area might be tasked to CURE A SOW, which is a pretty good approximation of the pronunciation of the Dutch Caribbean island. The cedilla under the second C is an indication that we’re talking about porcine and not bovine animals.
14 Cook, legend with wok, displaying practical skill
KNOWLEDGE
(LEGEND WOK)*
17 Language of nameless politician gets close to berserk
GREEK
A charade of GREE[N] and K for the final letter of ‘beserk’.
18 Once again needle retiring German banker
RESEW
A reversal of the German River Weser.
19 Weed spread under logs
GROUNDSEL
(UNDER LOGS)* Nice surface.
22 First person to confront social worker is very determined
ADAMANT
A charade of ADAM and ANT.
23 Trade‘s somewhat erratic if far too westward-looking
TRAFFIC
Hidden reversed in erratiC IF FAR Too. The reversal indicator is ‘westward-looking’.
26 Truck that is bought to drop off heat-treated milk originally
BOGIE
A charade of BOG and IE for id est or ‘that is’. The BOG bit is constructed from BOUGHT without the UHT bit. ‘Originally’ is hinting that it’s an acronym.
27 Echo of Conservative’s ultimate career
EVOCATION
A charade of E for the last letter of ‘Conservative’ and VOCATION.
28 Can’t stand trial following extremes of disease
DETEST
A charade of DE for the outside letters of ‘disease’ and TEST.
29 One expelled from Spain left, collected by river
DEPORTEE
An insertion of E, PORT in DEE. The insertion indicator is ‘collected by’.
Down
1 Eid perhaps represents a problem for established services?
DIEBACK
I am having modest success with introducting rat for reverse anagram thingy, but this isn’t quite that – more of a reverse reversal thingy, which doesn’t offer up such an attractive acronym. Silvanus is indicating that DIE, in a back-to-front way, would give you EID.
2 Scanning his rota, unimpressed gendarme initially gives characteristic gesture?
SHRUG
The initial letters of the first five words of the clue. The gesture would be the classic gallic SHRUG, of course.
3 Imperial pint, maybe making a comeback
REGAL
A reversal of LAGER.
4 Angry journalist is thwarted
CROSSED
A charade of CROSS and ED.
6 Hormone gets one frisky – or upset inside?
OESTROGEN
An insertion of RO in (GETS ONE)* The anagrind is ‘frisky’ and ‘upset’ tells you to reverse OR.
7 Nicknames, informally, former White House intern’s picked up
MONICKERS
A homophone (‘picked up’) of MONICA’S, referencing Ms Lewinsky, famous mainly for her affair with Bill Clinton, who memorably stated ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman.’ Hmm.
8 City company finally invested in Geordie undertaking
NEW YORK
An insertion of Y for the last letter of ‘company’ in NE WORK, the initial particle referencing the fact that Geordies like myself come from the NE. The insertion indicator is ‘invested in’.
9 Tipsy chef is entertaining, mind!
PSYCHE
Hidden in tiPSY CHEf.
15 Attack indiscriminate gunshot outside US city
ONSLAUGHT
An insertion of LA in (GUNSHOT)* The anagrind is ‘indiscriminate’ and the insertion indicator is ‘outside’.
16 Performer Jude’s parents? They’re legislature members
LAWMAKERS
Referencing the actor Jude LAW, whose parents, whimsically, would be LAW MAKERS.
18 Network Rail supporter, elevated to the Lords possibly without notice
ROADBED
An insertion of AD in ROBED. The reference is to the bed on which the ballast, sleepers and track of a railway are laid.
19 Having jilted Ray, threatened to go out, extremely disappointed
GUTTED
I’m afraid I have no idea how this works, so will be happy to award a Fifteensquared sticker to anyone who can come to my rescue. I thank you in advance. I got as far as thinking about removing RAY from BETRAYED, if that’s any help. No, didn’t think so.
Edit: Hovis wins the sticker. His parsing is in the first comment. I would never have got that in a million years.
20 Occasionally bonus to be available for result
OUTCOME
A charade of OUT for the even letters of bOnUs To and COME.
21 Grant freedom
LICENCE
A dd. To work, both parts have to be nouns, otherwise you would need LICENSE, which is the word meaning ‘to grant’. The Bond film is called Licence to Kill, which means he has freedom to kill. You are licensed by the DVLA and they give you your driving licence. I’m not convinced LICENCE is a synonym for ‘grant’ in its nounal sense.
24 Fashionable daughter, excited primarily leaving for Texas mission
ALAMO
A LA MO[DE]
25 Hard place to find in North Wales
FLINT
Another dd. My Chambers gives ‘flint’ as an adjective meaning hard, so the setter is on firm ground here.
Many thanks to him for the start to the Indy week.
I parsed GUTTED as GUTTERED (threatened to go out) – RE (which can also be spelt RAY according to Chambers). Seemed a bit of a stretch for what is allowed IMO.
I wonder if the definition for DIEBACK is referring to the wild service tree. I think it’s in the ash family which is, of course, suffering from dieback. I also took ‘originally’ in BOGIE as an instruction to put the modified ‘bought’ at the beginning, before IE. I parsed GUTTED like Hovis but with a SHRUG
I was thrown by two wrong answers that I didn’t think to challenge: I had MONNIKERS which is an acceptable alternative to MONICKERS according to Google but, worse, I came up with GESTERONE as the anagram instead of OESTROGEN. Didn’t even notice it hasn’t got quite the right fodder and didn’t check it’s a word. After all, progesterone is a word, so it had to be….
Favourites today were ROADBED, EGREGIOUS, GROUNDSEL and LAWMAKERS. Thanks Silvanus and Pierre.
Whenever I OD’d on 12 I’d probably say CURE A COW in some Irish accent
(That is a lie btw)
I managed to fill the grid OK, but not a purist’s solve as I couldn’t parse DIEBACK or GUTTED. ROADBED as a support for a railway was also new. Like PostMark @2, I initially spelt MONICKERS with a double N (though Chambers gives only the single N and no C alternative) making the homophone wordplay for the ‘Island’ at 13a impossible to work out until I re-thought the spelling.
Apologies in advance if you meant it this way, but I parsed the SIN in 11a as coming from from ‘Barely using’ meaning ‘using’ without the first and last letters, rather than ‘Barely’ being a SIN in itself.
Thanks to Silvanus and Pierre.
No idea about that meaning of guttered but I’ll take your word for it. I also wondered about politician Green. I can only think of Damian but surely he was too minor and ephemeral to be in a crossword clue? Or is it a The setter suggesting that every Green voter is a politician?
Setter here, many thanks to Pierre as ever, Hovis is correct about GUTTERED (“threatened to go out” as in a candle), Postmark is right about DIEBACK, and WordPlodder is spot on about SIN in 11a. Eric W – the Greens are quite strong in the Bundestag!
The outside letter removal was what I meant in 11ac, WordPlodder – I just didn’t express it very well. Nudism is not a sin in my book.
Thanks Pierre. I think we’ve now got that clue well covered.
Postmark@2: the service tree, one of the rather large group of Sorbus plants, is a member of the rose family, Rosaceae, rather then the ash family, so your guess at DIEBACK is clever, but wrong.
Goujeers @9: “clever, but wrong” – story of my life! Thanks for enlightening me – but I do now find myself slightly confused by the definition element of the clue. In what way is dieback a problem for established services ? Pierre has underlined it as the definition but with no explanation. I’m sure I’m missing something obvious – only to me it ain’t 😀
And Silvanus @6 seems to indicate he was thinking along the same lines as me so it may be a misconception shared?
PostMark@10: I added the apostrophe in 1d because dieback could affect a number of different plants or trees, “established services” was being used purely as an example (for the surface!).
Quite a pleasant Monday puzzle, most of which didn’t cause us any problems, apart from 26ac, which we’re surprised no-one else has commented on. In the first place it can’t be a charade of BOuGht and IE because ‘that is’ comes before ‘bought’, and secondly there is no indication that the letters U H and T have to be removed from different places in ‘bought’.
Plenty to like, elsewhere, though.
Thanks, Silvanus, and to Pierre for blog No 701.
allan_c@12: the “originally” in 26ac is to indicate that IE is preceded by the rest of the wordplay. As far as the UHT being deleted from BOUGHT is concerned, if letters are removed in the same order that they appear in a word, even if they are not consecutive letters, then the convention is that no secondary indicator is required.
Thank you to all commenters, I should have mentioned that earlier when thanking Pierre.
A great shame that Silvanus is such an infrequent visitor to the Indy but what a pleasure when he does appear.
Apart from a slight problem with ‘be available’ in 20d I had a fairly smooth ride with this one and a long list of favourites including DISGRACE, GROUNDSEL, NEW YORK, ONSLAUGHT & LAWMAKERS.
Many thanks to Silvanus for the fun and to Pierre for the review – sorry you didn’t have the opportunity to include a bird link today!
Is rural in 13ac there just to stop us Googling the possible islands of Spayacat and Heladog?
Thanks Sil and Pierre and those who spotted how gutted worked. I’d never have seen that.
It wasn’t me (if you thought I was), Flash …
[but I couldn’t parse GUTTED either]
Late to this, but I thought it a very good Monday crossword. I don’t usually like the device in 2d, but this time it was worth it for the surface. I saw GUTTERED but could not go beyond that, and I’m still not sure that it’s fair – kudos to Hovis for figuring it out. I have to admit that I omitted the cedilla in 13A when solving! Thanks to Silvanus and Pierre.
Personally much too late to this, but I’ll leave my comment anyway. I thought I could genuinely read 18a both ways, so I had the river in first, which meant getting the two down clues for R and W took ages until I saw the light.
Thanks to all for clearing up GUTTED, and to Silvanus for popping in.
Never too late when the blogger is still listening in, Andy. You make a good point (and one I have been known to chunter about). If the reversal (or more often, homophone) indicator is in the middle of the two particles, then you are quite right to say that the clue can be read both ways: the clue is ambiguous and can only be pinned down with some crossers
I am even later still to comment, but I enjoyed the puzzle very much.
Some tricky stuff in 11a, 26a, 1d, 19d that I didn’t parse initially.
I also confidently entered WESER for 18a and with retiring sitting in the middle of the clue, I still think that this is a possible answer?
Good fun. Thanks Silvanus.