Guardian 28,753 / Nutmeg

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Another stylish puzzle from Nutmeg.

 

 

There are several straightforward charades and some neat anagrams to help with the solve, with some rather chewier parsings to keep the interest. Lovely surfaces throughout, as always.

I had ticks for 1ac TEASER, 9ac ITSELF, 18ac DANISH BACON, 13dn WAR CRIME, 19dn BRECHT and the two little gems at the end, 20dn SCAT and 21dn ANNA.

Many thanks to Nutmeg.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

 

Across

4 Bringing forward time of festival causes problem (6)
TEASER
EASTER (festival) with the T (time) brought forward – I liked this one, with its nod to the controversy that surrounds the date of Easter: in fact, the date was fixed in 1928 by the Easter Act, which was passed but never brought into force, see here 

6 Scientist ordered to abstain initially refused (8)
BOTANIST
An anagram (ordered) of TO [a]BSTAIN (minus (refused) the initial letter

9 Reflexive pronoun is left out (6)
ITSELF
An anagram (out) of IS LEFT

10 Pub extended primarily behind region of vestibule (5,3)
INNER EAR
INN (pub) + E[xtended] + REAR (behind)

11 Stylish sports side eliminated (8,3)
POLISHED OFF
POLISHED (stylish) + OFF (side, in cricket, for instance)

15 Scraps applications for medical treatment (7)
PATCHES
Double definition

17 Pound secures extravagant type of cheese (7)
COTTAGE
CAGE (pound) round OTT (Over The Top – extravagant)

18 Elsinore’s philosopher/statesman possibly becoming rasher? (6,5)
DANISH BACON
Cryptic definition: Elsinore’s = Danish and Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman – with perhaps just a nod to Hamlet’s
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” … or just me being fanciful

22 Public toilets, just half serving men, one gathers (8)
CONVENOR
CONVEN (half of CONVENiences – public toilets) + OR (Other Ranks in the army – serving men)

23 Making craft turn, bearing east (6)
SEWING
SWING (turn) round E (east) – I liked the definition

24 Fluid feeder we left on patio ultimately getting drier (3,5)
TEA TOWEL
TEAT (fluid feeder) + [pati]O + WE + L (left)

25 Most hesitant mum so far cradling son (6)
SHYEST
SH (mum) + YET (so far) round S (son)

 

Down

1 Sovereign states dealing with charity (6)
REALMS
RE (dealing with) ALMS (charity)

2 Press going through borders work together (4,6)
JOIN FORCES
FORCE (press) in JOINS (borders)

3 Let fly, as good dressmakers should? (4,1,3)
HAVE A FIT
Double definition

4 Exhaust Spooner’s dim individual (8)
TAIL PIPE
Spooner’s pale (dim) type (individual)

5 Pure substance dissolved in addition to salt (8)
ABSOLUTE
AB (Able Seaman – salt) + SOLUTE (substance dissolved)

7 Mountain dweller to remain in climbing team (4)
IBEX
BE (remain) in a reversal (climbing,in a down clue) of XI (team, in football or hockey, for instance)

8 National workers’ group taking on half of work (4)
TURK
TU (Trade Union – workers’ group) + [wo]RK

12 Ground where one’s introducing current US president (10)
EISENHOWER
An anagram (ground) of WHERE ONE’S round I (current)

13 Male in scrambled aircrew fighting atrocity? (3,5)
WAR CRIME
M (male) in an anagram (scrambled) of AIRCREW, for a shockingly topical clue – excellent anagram indicator

14 Exclusive party in extremity adopting new name (3,5)
HEN NIGHT
HEIGHT (extremity) round N (new)  + N (name)

16 Commotion behind boundary where birds may be sheltering (8)
HEDGEROW
ROW (commotion) after HEDGE (boundary)

19 Playwright‘s brother with genuine following in his own country (6)
BRECHT
BR (brother) + ECHT (German for genuine, assimilated into English) and the playwright is the German Bertolt Brecht – wonderful surface

20 Suspicion at first about tenor’s singing style (4)
SCAT
S[uspicion] + CA (circa – about) + T (tenor)

21 Freshly made naan bread dropped by Indians (4)
ANNA
AN anagram (freshly made) of NAAN; bread is slang for money and the anna is a former Indian currency unit – a little classic to finish with

47 comments on “Guardian 28,753 / Nutmeg”

  1. Perfect summary Eileen. Thanks Nutmeg for a puzzle that had a lovely mix of straightforward and tricky.

  2. I struggled, but it was ultimately satisfying. Thank you both. I always enjoy both Nutmeg’s puzzles and Eileen’s blogs.

  3. For some reason I struggled with a few of these. Good explanations in the blog. Non-UK solvers may have wondered about DANISH BACON which was however familiar to me. I did like INNER EAR for the deceptive definition

  4. As always a really entertaining puzzle from Nutmeg – loved ABSOLUTE, IBEX and WAR CRIME in particular. Eileen – you have BACON RASHER rather than DANISH BACON in your intro! Many thanks to N & E.

  5. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg
    Excellent puzzle. My favourite was REALMS.

    [I stopped at a motorway services last week. Some of the cubicles in the gents’ loo had signs on that read “Toilet out of use. We apologise for the inconvenience.”]

  8. I liked DANISH BACON and BRECHT. I, too, wondered about Horatio. There was almost a mini sewing theme, which misled me for a while for “one gathers”. Thanks, both.

  9. Yep, hard to find even a hint of a clunk or a nit to pick … classic Nutmeg. Peering hard, you just might say that if borders in 2d has to be a verb, then joins should strictly be adjoins, but it’s the merest quiblettino (of which I’m happy to be disabused). Agree about the two gems in the corner, Eileen, both so elegantly apt. Great fun, many tas both.

  12. I find Nutmeg more of a challenge than many of the other setters as she’s so good at misleading definitions. Solved but with a lot of staring, head scratching, then PDMs. TEASER went in quickly, followed by DANISH BACON on first read through, but much of the rest took longer to flip in the right directions to solve. Ultimately very satisfying.

    I too wondered about a sewing theme, but joins are not edges in sewing, but continuations.

    Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg.

  13. I don’t comment often but have to acknowledge a call out to Anna myself in oz and the other in Finland? An old chestnut clue from straight crosswords and yet very cleverly disguised here loved it. The rest was great too thanks nutmeg and aunt Eileen as Tokyo Colin used to call you. Lurking and liking.

  14. An excellent crossword except for 3dn I thought. It was a clever clue but a very weak definition. Thanks to setter and blogger.

  18. I really thought that I was in for a failure on this one but, as so often with Nutmeg’s puzzles, patience and persistence paid off and the solutions gradually revealed themselves. Another super puzzle from one of my favourite compilers.

  20. This felt very much a separate skirmish with each of the quarters of the puzzle in turn. Or the way I found myself solving it today. Several chewy 4 letter clues resisted till the very end, with the last one in TURK. HAVE A FIT was the only one that I didn’t think quite had the precision of the other splendid clues today. TAILPIPE was a penny (ANNA?) dropping moment, and the interconnecting TEASER lived up to its name. Many thanks Nutmeg and Eileen…

  21. I solved only one clue on my first pass (WAR CRIME) and guessed at BACON as part of 18ac. Short of time today, I decided to come read the blog instead!

    Thanks, both.

  22. 4Ac reminded me of an Araucaria bank holiday special from (I think) the early 1980s, entitled “Easter Teaser”.

  23. Another little gem from Nutmeg.

    I worked steadily through, solving the bottom half first. I particularly liked the LOI REALMS for the charity, INNER EAR for the vestibule, CONVENOR for the surface, TAIL PIPE for a good Spooner’s, and ABSOLUTE for the misleading salt, which I assumed for a bit was Na.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

  24. Excellent puzzle, as always with Nutmeg. Some peaches in there with my favourites being TEASER, COTTAGE, TAILPIPE (a delightful Spoonerism), BRECHT and, my COTD for the neat surface, the brilliant IBEX.

    I am curious about one thing which I’ve encountered in my own setting attempts – the use of ‘on’ in 24a as an insertion/containment indicator. I was warned off it as a device. The use of ‘on’ as an adjacency indicator has often been discussed and I’m sure this use has also but I don’t recall the latter debate. I quite like the idea of, say, ‘XYZ on N’ = ‘XNYZ’ or ‘XYNZ’ and we would have no problem with ‘N in XYZ’ giving us either of those solutions. As always, most interested to hear the views of folk that properly understand this stuff!

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

  25. Nice puzzle from Nutmeg which I found a bit more challenging than usual.

    Favourites were INNER EAR, CONVENOR, IBEX and BRECHT. My only quibbles were for the wordplay of HAVE A FIT and that ‘hedge’ and HEDGEROW are practically synonymous.

    PostMark @24: Surely the ‘on’ in the clue for TEA TOWEL indicates adjacency and not containment?

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

  26. PM @24; I don’t think most people would use ‘on’ as a container/ inserter. We indeed have had the adjacency debate many times. I think most setters/editors would use ‘on’ meaning ‘after’ in an Across clue (as Nutmeg has used here), and ‘on’ meaning ‘on top of’ in a Down clue.

  27. Thanks Nutmeg for a hugely enjoyable puzzle with an excellent mix of fun and challenge. Lots of favourites and especially liked BRECHT, DANISH BACON and ANNA.
    Thanks also to Eileen for the blog.
    And many thanks to bodycheetah@17 for the R&M link – I thought ‘Cottage Cheese Calypso’ should have made the top 20 but my better half said ‘No Whey’!

  29. Tim C @3, I did indeed wonder about DANISH BACON, but it seemed more probable than HAMLET BACON, so it went in pretty quickly. Looks like it’s a brand? That isn’t even properly Danish anymore? Did I get that right?

    Anyway, as usual for Nutmeg puzzles, this solved slowly but surely for me. I got there in the end. Thanks to her and Eileen.

  30. Gervase and Robi @25/6: I see it now. Many thanks. It read like container/insertion – which, as you can imagine, surprised but I’ve got my head around it.

  31. Lovely bit of hiding and frontier-infringing action – as well as the beautifully-crafted clues we expect and always get from Nutmeg. Smuggled several things through without checks until a certain Strekoza in the Guardian – a shooting goat? – insisted on a recount of the hitherto complacent cross-border poll, as hinted by NNI here (15). Clever stuff and so much easier in crosswords than what those people in HMG seem – it is only seem – to imagine possible. Always suspect the great M I when she uses one of those strange grids.

  32. Beautifully constructed and lots of fun.

    Loved INNER EAR, SCAT and ANNA

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

  33. A lovely solve and blog. Many thanks Nutmeg and Eileen… but smile of the day goes to Bodycheetah for the R&M link. The world will never be quite the same ?

  34. A fair cop!

    I had to go out this morning and, scanning through the clues when I got back, I did note NNI’s comment @15, thought, ‘Well, there’s POLISH, DANISH and TURK’, then forgot to go back for a second look until just now seeing Komornik’s comment @31, after a second return home. I’ve now found eight and I suspect there may be more. Any offers?
    I should know better by now but somehow I still don’t readily associate Nutmeg with ghost themes and Ninas. Must try harder.

    Thanks, both, for the tip-offs.

  35. I’ve never heard of Danish bacon. The only nationality our bacon sometimes has is Canadian bacon, which I think is what you in the UK just call “bacon.” What we just call “bacon” is what you call (I think) ‘streaky bacon.”

    We don’t have hen nights either. I think we call them “girls’ nights out,” but I’ve never been ot one myself.

    To me, exhaust isn’t the TAIL PIPE, it’s what comes out of it.

    Thanks for the Easter Act link, Eileen. It reminds me of the time (I heard somebody say, I’m not vouching for the authenticity of this) that one state, Tennessee maybe, passed a law that pi was going to be equal to three to save everybody trouble. Of course Easter is more a matter of choice than pi, but it is a world holiday that already has two dates, Western and Orthodox, and I’m imagining a third, “British Easter” that would have its holidays in yet another week.

    I’ve never been sure whether Hamlet was telling his friend that his outlook was a bit narrow or making a generalization in the same form as “Your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.”

    Lovely puzzle, Nutmeg, and thanks for the blog and links, Eileen. Just refreshed the page, and now I’ll have to look for all those nationalities.

  36. Valentine et al
    I don’t think “Danish bacon” is a style of bacon; the “Danish” just indicates where it came from. For a long time, a lot of bacon eaten in Britain was produced in Denmark.
    “Streaky” or “back” are the two styles, depending on where in the pig the cut was.

  37. Valentine @ 35

    For UK, the exhaust is “The part or parts of an engine, etc through which the waste gases escape”
    as well as
    “The exit of gases or fluids as waste products from the cylinder of an engine, a turbine, etc” (Chambers).

  38. Thanks Eileen & Nutmeg. Nice, fun puzzle. Agree with you, Eileen, on SEWING and BRECHT, which I would pick out as my favourites.

  39. Muffin@36 we also have MIDDLE and COLLAR although both seem to be far less common than they used to be.

  41. Roz @39
    I do remember middle bacon, though I haven’t seen it for years, but collar bacon is a new one on me.

  42. Thanks, Xjpotter @40. That completes my list of eight (with POLISH, TURK and DANISH) but I had SERB: Serbo is ‘a combining form representing Serb or Serbia in compound words, eg SERBO-CROAT’, which, coincidentally, was in the Pasquale puzzle I blogged last Wednesday.

  43. [Eileen @42
    As I remember from my visit to Yugoslavia (as it was then), Slovenian and Serbo-Croat are almost the same language, but written in different scripts; the latter uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
    I was there with a party of Venture Scouts, one of whom had a Slovenian mother, so he was quite fluent in the language. It didn’t save time in the markets, as he spent the time saved by speaking the language in explaining why an English Public School boy (from Dulwich College) was fluent in Slovenian!]

  44. Thanks Nutmeg for the challenge. I found myself playing the “guess, then parse” game far too often and sometimes I couldn’t even complete the parsing. I persisted, however, as Nutmeg always has gems like ITSELF, COTTAGE, TEA TOWEL, TAILPIPE, and HEDGEROW. BRECHT was simply brilliant. Thanks Eileen for explaining it all.

  45. [@35 Valentine: concerning “philosophy” I lean towards the second of your suggestions. As in: “That Philosophy syllabus they are teaching us at Wittenberg purports to account for everything under the sun, but it’s full of holes.”]

  46. 24 hours late with my comment as only got to the crossword late last night and, having slept on it, gave up and used a few “reveals’ to finish it off. Nutmeg and I never seem to be on same wavelength snd this was another case in point. When the correct answer is found it often seems to be a case of “well, I suppose that must be the answer”, rather than any big “tea tray moment”. Particularly disliked CONVENOR and the weak definitions in HAVE A FIT (as others have said) and also POLISHED OFF (for eliminated).

  47. Ian @46. I agree with you about HAVE A FIT, but thought the other two youy mention were fine. Another late finisher here, after a day out yesterday meant I didn’t even open my Guardian until the evening, and then hit a brick wall with four still unsolved. Those fell easily enough over a late breakfast (no BACON for me!). Last one in was SEWING, and I agree with Eileen that the definition was nicely done: ‘making craft’ indeed.

    As always, didn’t spot the ghost theme, but on reflection, why did Nutmeg have SCAT at 20d when SCOT would have added to the ghosts? And it’s in the opposite corner to TURK as well. Too obvious, perhaps. Oh, of course, it’s in PATCHES COTTAGE!

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

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