I still think of Wire as one of the ‘new’ Indy setters, but in fact he made his debut nearly four years ago now. I really liked this offering from him – a wide range of subject matter always hits the spot for me. Geography, Music, Biology, Religious Studies, Mathematics, Technology … like going back to school, but in a good way.
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 Extreme torpor partly receding for now
PRO TEM
Hidden reversed in extreME TORPor. A Latin phrase – in full pro tempore – meaning ‘for the time being’.
4 Beer smuggled by Captain in book Island Capital
ABU DHABI
An insertion of BUD in AHAB, followed by I. Captain AHAB appears in Moby-Dick, and BUD is a common abbreviation for Budweiser beer. ABU DHABI is capital of the United Arab Emirates.
9 Who needs 20 beforehand to get drunk?
LISZT
The solution to 20dn is BRAHMS, and BRAHMS and LISZT is cockney rhyming slang for ‘pissed’, or more politely, ‘drunk’.
10 Mammals wild cat can see
CETACEANS
(CAT CAN SEE)* The order Cetacea includes whales, dolphins and porpoises, which are aquatic mammals.
11 It can hold a bun or a buck, you might say
HAIRNET
A ‘bun’ is a hairstyle that might require a HAIRNET to hold it; Wire is also whimsically suggesting that a male HARE or ‘buck’ might also be held in a net if you caught it. ‘First catch your hare’ and all that. The homophone indicator is ‘you might say’.
12 Left out ‘hand’ in abridged dictionary
OMITTED
An insertion of MITT in OED for the Oxford English Dictionary.
13 Bring up what you can bring up
REAR
A dd.
14 Potato skins perhaps go with fish
PEELINGS
A charade of PEE and LINGS. Some will object (and I might join them) that the plural of fish is not formed by adding an S. One ling, two ling, three ling …
17 First institute established by nobleman
EARLIEST
A charade of EARL, I and EST.
19 Tiller in shelter onboard essentially destroyed
CAIN
CA[B]IN. Our GK is getting a workout this morning. Genesis 4:3 has:
And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord (King James Version)
So, CAIN being the first farmer, we could certainly describe him as a ’tiller’. As you probably remember if you paid attention in Sunday School, the Lord was not best pleased with Cain’s offering, preferring that of his brother Abel, whom Cain subsequently killed. Harsh.
22 Electronic wheels on back of car in use again
RECYCLE
A charade of R for the last letter of ‘car’, E and CYCLE.
24 Bear with oddly brash character in G&S opera
POOH-BAH
A charade of POOH, the famous ‘bear’ and BAH for the odd letters of ‘brash’. A character in The Mikado.
25 Those mares mostly reprocessed
HORSEMEAT
(THOSE MARE[S])* and a cad.
26 Stuff stored in empty glass units
GRAMS
An insertion of RAM in G and S, the outside letters of ‘glass’. The insertion indicator is ‘stored in’.
27 Riveting place for novel launch
SHIPYARD
I think this is just a cd: a SHIPYARD is a place where a ship would be riveted together, and from which it would subsequently be launched for the first time.
28 Get down from sill on front of farmhouse
FLEDGE
A charade of F for the first letter of ‘farmhouse’ and LEDGE. Referring to a young bird developing ‘down’ or feathers.
Down
1 Footage upset tough little swimmer
PILCHARD
A charade of CLIP reversed and HARD.
2 Irregular beat is not very firm
OBSTINATE
(BEAT IS NOT)* with ‘irregular’ as the anagrind.
3 Old lodger rejecting a new amount
EXTENT
A charade of EX and TEN[A][N]T.
5 Pi representing something that goes on forever?
BOTTOMLESS PIT
If PIT were ‘bottomless’ then you’d end up with PI, wouldn’t you? This construction came up in a Quince puzzle that I blogged in December, so the solution came to me quite quickly.
6 Choice of words daughter used for fellow in tale
DICTION
Wire is inviting you to replace the F in FICTION with a D for ‘daughter’.
7 Accepted award (briefly revealing behind)
ABAFT
A charade of A for ‘accepted’ and BAFT[A].
8 Fiend and swindler together regularly doing time
INSIDE
The even letters of ‘fiend’, followed by the odd letters of ‘swindler’.
10 Queen finally going to eat eastern fruit
CATHERINE PEAR
An insertion of E in CATHERINE PAR[R], Henry VIII’s sixth wife, who outlived him.
15 Kids climbing over A-road? Might be right
STARBOARD
A reversal of BRATS, followed by O, A and RD. The reversal indicator, since it’s a down clue, is ‘climbing’.
16 Nut aches badly having fallen
UNCHASTE
(NUT ACHES)* ‘Fallen’ in the biblical sense, I guess.
18 Fan of 23s feeds boxer in part of garden
ROCKERY
23 is CORGI; Her Maj, or ER, is a fan; put that in ROCKY for the cinematic ‘boxer’ and you’ve got your solution.
20 Male composer in female clothing on ship
BRAHMS
A charade of BRA and HMS for ‘Her Majesty’s Ship’.
21 O2 deleting digit in writer’s long number
GOOGOL
I am going to have a stab at parsing this, but someone may have a better idea. Nikolai GOGOL is a Russian ‘writer’. If you delete one ‘digit’ or zero in this and replace it with two zeros, or O2, then you get the number that is 10100 . Complete balls, you say? Thought so.
Edit: not complete balls, but not quite right. Mev has the exact parsing for us at comment #4.
23 Graphics technology captures outline of our dog
CORGI
An insertion of OR for the outside letters of ‘our’ in CGI for Computer Generated Imagery. The insertion indicator is ‘captures’.
Many thanks to Wire for the start to the Indy week.
I parsed GOOGOL the same way. Bunged in CAIN from the wordplay. Took ages to get CATHERINE PEAR, having never heard of the fruit. Never heard of ABAFT either, so needed dictionary help for that (also it is missing in the blog grid).
Well, Pierre, that makes three of us so far who’ve gone for the ballsy parse!
I don’t think I’ve heard of a CATHERINE PEAR – just vaguely, perhaps. More annoyingly, I’ve heard of (or should that be read) Katherine Parr ever since school and this is the first time I’ve encountered her spelled with a C. I was astounded to see Wikipedia giving the C version as the primary one with Katherine, Katheryn, Kateryn or Katharine given as alternatives. (That said, I’d have been even more astounded if it had been a mistake in the puzzle!)
Hard to get into this, this morning, but once it cracked it proceeded to a very satisfying solve. HORSEMEAT is brutally sad but very good and I had it down as an &lit. CAIN, CETACEANS, PILCHARD, BOTTOMLESS PIT (very neat), UNCHASTE and the original (at least, in my book) clue for BRAHMS all got ticks from me.
Thanks to (newbie) Wire and Pierre
Well, Rick Wakeman used the Catherine Parr spelling in his ‘six wives of Henry VIII’, so I’m most familiar with that.
I parsed GOOGOL, as deleting the digit 2 from O2, and putting what’s left – the O – “in” the Russian writer. My favourite was FLEDGE. Cheers to Wire and Pierre.
Thanks, Mev, that is a much more precise parsing and no doubt what the setter intended.
A gentle introduction to the week? Er…, no. Never heard of CAIN as a ‘Tiller’ nor a male hare as a ‘buck’ so I couldn’t parse either. ABU DHABI, ABAFT, CATHERINE PEAR and GOOGOL (parsed as per Mev @4) also took some working out – I don’t remember having seen BUD for ‘beer’ before.
I liked our ‘tough little swimmer’.
Thanks to Wire (28 puzzles and still a newbie apparently!) and Pierre
WP @6: I was being ironic! Ref Pierre’s intro.
Hovis @3: thanks for the earworm. Might have to go and revisit. Didn’t know it was spelled with a C there, either. PostMark the Unobservant 😀
I dont reckon Cain was Adam’s son. The snake sounds like a lounge lizard
And on that bombshell……
Quite tricky, I needed help from a word list for several and spent too long trying to fit New Delhi into 4A. But very enjoyable so thanks Wire and Pierre.
Too tough for me. A combination of Monday lassitude and a wavelength thing (CATHERINE PEAR?) – my first Wire.
Thanks both – better luck next time.
Thanks both. Resorted to a thesaurus to produce ABAFT which helped me to realise others such as GOOGOL and CAIN would be beyond my knowledge also, which proved to be the case. Perhaps a tougher Monday challenge recognising the shorter working week for many
From the crossers 10 down had to be CONFERENCE PEAR, which is one of the few varieties I have heard of. I had similar failings throughout the crossword (another New Delhi). Not on the setter’s wavelength today – a case of crossed WIREs.
Something of a challenge for a Monday but we got there in the end, LOI being CAIN. POOH-BAH was a bit of a writ-in for us., but we’d never heard of a Catherine Pear, although we found it in Chambers.
We liked PEELINGS despite sharing Pierre’s reservations about the plural form for fish (there are some which add S but they’re in a minority and even then you might speak about, say, two herrings at the fishmonger’s but a shoal of herring in the sea).
Thanks, Wire and Pierre.
(Turns out it’s my second Wire puzzle. Must do better.)
Thanks to Pierre and Mev for explaining some of the parsings – GOOGOL, CAIN and HAIRNET. We pondered over HAIRPIN and NEW DELHI for quite a while.
Thanks to Wire for the Monday challenge.
Floundered like so many on CAIN and needed a wordsearch for ABAFT which I’d never heard of but was easily parsed once in. Some lovely clues. UNCHASTE made me chuckle particularly.
Ta to all for the explanations for those I couldn’t / couldn’t be bothered to work out.
And thanks to Wire for the entertainment.
Thanks, Pierre, for the blog: I still consider myself a new Indy setter: where did four years go?? CATHERINE PEAR remembered from school, I think. Any hoo, cheers to all who have commented.
Just to say that any resemblance between bud (the US version) and beer is purely coincidental