Guardian 28,820 – Nutmeg

by

You can’t go wrong with Nutmeg, and this was a typically elegant and enjoyable example of her work: perhaps not as tricky as she can be. Thanks to Nutmeg.

 
Across
1 STAR CHAMBER Stiffen precious material, naturally preserved for Tudor court (4,7)
STARCH (to stiffen) + AMBER (naturally preserved, and highly-regarded, material)
9 PALADIN Noble champion and mate having a row (7)
PAL + A DIN
10 AUTOCUE Display for announcer reporting traffic tailback? (7)
Homophone of “auto queue”
11 INTERCITY Rail link — cretin trashed it years later (9)
CRETIN* + IT + Y
12 WHEAT I failed to pick up that energy-packed cereal (5)
E[nergy] in WHAT (what did you say; I failed to pick that up)
13 GONE Left over (4)
I think this is a double definition, but with two very similar meanings; perhaps there’s a better explanation
14 MODERNISER Renovator tipped varnish to restore front of mantel (10)
A rather remarkable reversal, of RESIN (varnish) + REDO (restore) + M[antel]
16 ARISTOCRAT Peer at actor, desperately holding teacher back (10)
Reverse of SIR in (AT ACTOR)*
19 KIRK One king flanked by others in church (4)
1 R in K + K
20 AVIAN Article by naturalist, primarily about birds (5)
A (article) + VIA (by) + N[aturalist]
21 OCTAGONAL Old Caledonians initially join a league comprising 8 sides (9)
O[ld] C[aledonians] + TAG ON (join) + L[eague]
23 CHINOOK Indigenous American‘s trousers not quite acceptable (7)
CHINO[s] (trousers) + OK
24 QUININE Square on which Parisian supplies drug (7)
QUI (French “which”) + NINE (square number)
25 ENFORCEMENT Hard setter on the Guardian ultimately supporting application (11)
[th]E [Guardia]N + FOR (supporting) + CEMENT (“hard setter”)
Down
1 SPLIT INFINITIVE Desert in 5, housing in it to gradually disappear, perhaps (5,10)
IN IT in SPLIT (leave, desert) IN FIVE, with a defintion-by-example
2 ADDER One putting on left-wing prosecutor’s rebuffed (5)
Reverse of RED D[istrict] A[ttorney]
3 CENTIMO Screen regularly to exclude rejected currency (7)
Alternate letters of sCrEeN + reverse of OMIT. The centimo was one hundredth of the Spanish peseta, and is still the minor unit of some Latin American currencies
4 ANALYSE Examine reverse of Turner? Yes, surprisingly (7)
Reverse of LANA (Lana Turner, US actress) + YES*
5 BOTSWANA Tossing boat in which we see bird land (8)
SWAN in BOAT*
6 ROCKET SCIENTIST One aims for space playing cricket in tests, bagging duck (6,9)
O (zero, duck) in (CRICKET in TESTS)*
7 SPRING BALANCE Measuring device, which we bank on at Easter time? (6,7)
Double definition
8 HELTER‑SKELTER Kestrel there flying round lake, confusedly (6-7)
L in (KESTREL THERE)*
15 STAND-OFF Spectators’ place not available for rugby player (5-3)
STAND (spectators’ place) + OFF (not available)
17 CHOCKER Having taken wine in church, rector’s bursting (7)
HOCK (wine) in CE + R[ector] – a slangy shortening of “chock-a-block”
18 ANTIQUE A northern wood said to be of great age (7)
A N + homophone of “teak”
22 GRIME Filth, say, rising across border (5)
RIM (border) in reverse of E.G. (say)

63 comments on “Guardian 28,820 – Nutmeg”

  1. Nice to see “The Chook” get a mention in CHINOOK. A neat way of sidestepping the non-useful torque you get from a single rotor, plus two rotors make it more stable with longitudinal shifts in c.g.
    I’m guessing I’m not the only one to have started trying to think of deserts in Botswana for SPLIT INFINITIVE but that ended up being my favourite.

  2. GONE: Looks like there is nothing more to it. Well. Someone could always come up with a better explanation.

    My picks: SPLIT INFINITIVE and SPRING BALANCE (I might say one def +one cryptic def).

  3. Thing I learned today: for some reason I thought the STAR CHAMBER still exists but was one of those little known anachronistic bodies that advises the Queen or similar. Did not know it was a Tudor institution only. I also needed to be reminded of CENTIMO, having convinced myself that ’emit’ might mean exclude and bunged in CENTIME which held me back for a while.

    INTERCITY, KIRK, CHINOOK, QUININE, BOTSWANA, HELTER SKELTER and ANTIQUE were all big ticks for me with the lovely disguise in OCTAGONAL making it COTD. I suspect some younger solvers might not know of Lana Turner whose heyday was some time ago now but she remains more useful to setters than Wichowski or Del Ray.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

  5. As Andrew says, you can’t go wrong with Nutmeg and I really enjoyed this, particularly CHOCKER, the HELTER-SKELTER anagram and SPLIT INFINITIVE. Many thanks to N & A.

  6. Superb as ever from Nutmeg.

    Muffyword @4 – brilliant! I can see KIRK and PALADIN, and STAR but no trek. Any more? Wil WHEATon?? 😉

    Tim C @1 – ditto re deserts in Botswana – lovely misdirection. (And thanks Tim for the education re CHINOOK.)

    PM @3, your feeling about STAR CHAMBER was quite right, but for the Queen, read Margaret Thatcher.

    French QUI = ‘which’ was a bit cheeky, as most English people think of it as meaning ‘who’, but she knows you know.

    Many thanks N & A.

  10. Superb and elegant and elegant, as you say Andrew, with the lovely misdirection (Kalahari desert) in SPLIT INFINITIVE being the pick of a very big bunch such as STAR CHAMBER, ENFORCEMENT, INTERCITY and HELTER-SKELTER. I don’t think there’s anything else going on with GONE.

    Ta Nutmeg & Andrew

  11. Boldly went to the very first with the kids, but that were it, so well spotted Muffyword @4. Usual smoothness from Nutmeg, nice groan at auto queue. Thanks both.

  12. Tough but enjoyable.

    New: STAR CHAMBER, traffic tailback = traffic jam; PALADIN; SPRING BALANCE; STAND-OFF = a rugby player.

    I did not parse 14ac.

    Liked WHEAT, ARISTOCRAT, AVIAN, CHOCKER.

    Thanks, both.

  13. Lovely puzzle, thanks Nutmeg, and Andrew for parsing those I had to guess.
    Rocket, anyone?
    Loved AUTOCUE!

  14. Took me a while and needed some help for a few but managed to parse all but 2 which was a great improvement on yesterday.

    Favourites included: SPLIT INFINITIVE, KIRK, ANTIQUE, ANALYSE, CHINOOK

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

  15. As I said, i sent my entree of Bluth back and saved my appetite for this.
    I love Nutmeg’s puzzles-faultless, classy and witty. Not a dull moment
    Thanks Andrew and herself!

  16. CENTIMO came up in another puzzle recently. Was it this month’s Genius?
    Funny how words in crosswords arrive like buses, two or three at a time. WYVERN was a word I didn’t know a few weeks ago but has come up three times since then.
    Thanks to Nutmeg for another elegant puzzle, and to Andrew for the blog

  17. After being upbraided recently for hinting at (rather than revealing) a theme, I appreciated muffyword@4’s hint today. (For a moment I thought Kala Hari was a Star Trek character, and a rare example of thematic misdirection). I didn’t see “tipped” as a reversal indicator in 14ac. Is that common in across clues?

  18. Strange solving experience this morning. Needed the helpful long anagrams at 6 and 8d to get going. Then had Centime in instead of CENTIMO and therefore couldn’t solver MODERNISER, even with 5 crossers in place (one was wrong of course). Also needed every one of the 6 crossers already in place to get LOI, ENFORCEMENT. Very much liked AUTOCUE, but neither of ADDER or STAND OFF, which I felt was rather clumsy. All in all though, much to like as always with a Nutmeg challenge…

  19. Really enjoyed this. Another here who first thought about a desert in Botswana in SPLIT INFINITIVE. Favourite clue.

    Thanks to Muffyword@4, essexboy@6, and my husband (at tea) I can now appreciate the theme in the broader sense.
    I find it pays to judiciously take care to not overly expose my limitations.

  20. …and topically for me at the moment, I’m very much guilty of the SPLIT INFINITIVE in my emails, and the SPRING BALANCE brought back unpleasant memories of Physics practicals at school.

  25. I do not think there is a theme here to get all excited about. There are, however 25 well-written clues, composed by an expert. Unfortunately this elegance is not found uniformly in Guardian puzzles. Would that it were, of course 🙂

  26. I agree entirely with your preamble, Andrew. Many thanks for the blog and thanks, as ever, of course, to Nutmeg for the puzzle.

  27. Wonderful puzzle! A joy from start to finish.

    Special praise for SPLIT INFINITIVE, STAR CHAMBER and BOTSWANA. (Yes I was frantically thinking of deserts too.)

    The reversal at 14a was remarkable!

    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

  28. Another elegant and spicy offering from Nutmeg.

    I liked the AUTOCUE homophone, ENFORCEMENT for ‘the hard setter on the Guardian’, and of course SPLIT INFINITIVE for the enigmatic definition.

    For those struggling with links, just copy the URL and paste directly into the link space over the top of what’s there – that removes the first http://.

    Thanks Nutmeg for the entertainment and Andrew for the instructive blog.

  29. I don’t know how many references constitute a theme – more than this I suspect – but it was interesting to find KIRK, STAR and ROCKET along with the infamously SPILT INFINITIVE.

    “Lana Turner” might have done the trick on her own, in supplying the first two syllables of ANALYSE. Other setters might have used coarser methods to get there, but it was great to be reminded of one of Hollywood’s golden age greats.

    Great stuff as always from Nutmeg. My favourite was AUTOCUE as I love a silly pun. I couldn’t parse MODERNISER until I read Andrew’s blog, but what a clever reversal. Thanks to both.

  30. Loved it! Favourites already canvassed but I also liked 6d ROCKET SCIENTIST. Many thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

  31. Not sure it’s Nutmeg’s style to do themes. She sets like a Times compiler.

    Great stuff anyway.

  32. If Nutmeg had intended a theme, I think there would have been more to it than this. However, I loved SPLIT INFINITIVE. I have heard CHOCKER for choc-a-block used verbally but didn’t know it had progressed beyond slang and into dictionaries, or how to spell it.

    (Hard setter on the Guardian, long word ending in T? Oh dear, one too many letters for ENIGMATIST..)

  33. 13a I don’t think the two meanings are all that similar. The first is about space, the second about time. If I’ve left, I’m gone, I’m not here any more. If summer is over, its time has passed.

    14a It seems to me that RESIN is not so much varnish as an ingredient of varnish.

    CHINOOK to me is a memory of living in Calgary in Western Canada, it’s a wind. (I have a mental collection of winds with names, like “mistral” or “harmattan” or “williwaw.”) East of the Canadian Rockies a warm dry wind comes down in winter and can melt the snow in an hour. Parka weather becomes t-shirt weather for a day. And you know a chinook wind is coming tomorrow if you see the “chinook arch” in the clouds over the mountains to the west.

    Lovely puzzle, thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

    Is SPRING BALANCE a thing? An expression anybody actually uses? Yes, my account has a balance in spring, but so what? I’d say this is a cryptic definition rather than a double one.

    CHOCKER is new to me.

  34. enjoyed the Hard Setter, struggled with the Western downward answers and ultimately had to reveal a few to get on with my day. fun puzzle and a decent challenge

  35. I know, it’s in the dictionaries, but I’ve never come across CHOCKER in real life. Chock-a-block, chock full and chockers, but not chocker. Other side of the tracks?
    Thanks both.

  36. Thanks Nutmeg, it’s always a joy solving your crosswords. I had many ticks including WHEAT, MODERNISER, AVIAN, ANALYSE, ROCKET SCIENTIST, and ANTIQUE. I could not figure out AUTOCUE or KIRK, both new to me. Thanks Andrew for filling in my parsing gaps.

  37. In current usage. It’s just that no-one can be bothered to say ‘block’, which leaves ‘chock-a’.

  38. The discussion about a possible theme reminded me of the birthday problem: in a room of only 23 people, there is a 50% chance there is a pair that share a birthday (so of course with more people, there are better chances). That’s the kind of thing that seems to be going on here.

  39. Needed the reveal button for MODERNISER, and then 225 to explain the parsing, but otherwise a fair challenge today, thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

  40. It’s a theme Jim, but not as we know it. The few references there are constitute the bare Bones of one, so far from the real McCoy that it would be illogical to suggest otherwise.

    I shall boldly go now.

  41. Is it me or has this been a tough week so far? (I thought at first that the tough setter might be Enigmatist but soon realised my error.) Still, this was enjoyable today. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew.

  42. I had no issue with the dd for GONE. I figured left = went out/away and over = finished, both of which fit the answer.

  45. Valentine @ 33: A SPRING BALANCE is a deviced for measuring weight, by seeing how much it extends a spring. It’s a bit of a misnomer as there’s no balancing involved (or perhaps the force of gravity is balanced by the spring).

  46. Interesting that a few answers suggest the theme. I’m not convinced either, but I wonder if Nutmeg started out trying for a Trek theme and gave up?
    On a different note, it might have been nice to try to use “We three kings” in the KIRK clue.
    Good solid puzzle. Thanks, N&A.

  47. Lautus @35 – always CHOCKA for me, as Paul b @37 says. Lovely cluing, Nutmeg, great blog, Andrew.

  48. erk@45 I know that there is such a thing as a spring balance. But for this clue to be a double definition, “spring balance” also has to be a definition for something else. There isn’t another thing called a spring balance, certainly not a bank balance in the spring, so the second half of the clue is a charade, “what we bank on” + “at Eastertime.

    “Chock-a-block” originally had a nautical meaning. You move heavy objects such as a yard with a sail on it by means of a block and tackle, which is two pulley blocks (looks like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/299278337711015593/)
    When the two blocks are pulled all the way up against each other, the hauled object can’t move any farther and the rig is chock-a-block.

  49. phitonelly @46:

    Forsaking all others, We Three Kings wait outside church (4)

    Petert @ 44: that was truly worful.

  50. Nice, just 2 short, which is good for me with any setter, doubly so for a Nutmeg production. 14 and 25 were the missing offenders, thanks for the heads up.

  51. Tassie Tim @ 47 well, I didn’t mean to imply that ‘chocka’ is the correct spelling. I can find chocker (in Collins), but not chocka. Chock-full is widely used, and is in Collins and the cheapo version of online Chambers I use.

  52. Needed a little help to solve, but much better than usual for a Wednesday. I spotted KIRK and ROCKET SCIENTIST as a potential theme, but most of the others passed me by. Very enjoyable though.

  53. Thank you Valentine@48 for the nautical origin of chock-a-block.
    Lautus@35. CHOCKERS where I come from too.

  54. I started with ROCKET SCIENTIST and HELTER SKELTER and gradually worked westward from there. Eventually got stuck and had to reveal SPRING BALANCE (not the most inspirational of clues) but managed to complete the remainder thereafter. Thanks to Andrew and to Nutmeg for the challenge. I agree with JerryG@41, this has been a hard week so far. I still could not explain what constitutes a SPLIT INFINITIVE – my Grammar School was not hot on grammar – but at the age of 70 I have decided that, all things considered, dilligaf.

  55. TimC @3 I think there was a move to reinvent the “STAR CHAMBER” in the last decade or two.
    Enjoyed this a lot and for a change parsed it all I think.
    Thanks both

  56. Thanks Nutmeg

    Loved SPLIT INFINITIVE

    Never seen CHOCKER in singular form though – always ‘chockers’

  57. In reference to the article linked by Paddymelon@23. The author says he doesn’t know why split infinitives were considered a no-no. My understanding is that it was because, in Latin, the verb is always a single word so an adverb can’t be placed inside it. Apparently there were a number of people in the past who thought English should copy Latin grammar.

  58. Late to the party, as MODERNISER completely stumped me. I still had no idea how to parse it even when I saw the answer. So thank you Andrew. As you say, remarkable.

    I didn’t help myself by putting Centime instead of CENTIMO. I didn’t know the word, and managed to convince myself that Emit could mean Exclude.

    Perhaps I won’t have been the only one. Just going to read the other comments to find out…

  59. Moth@58 yes I nearly fell into that trap too but I couldn’t quite stretch to believing emit=exclude, then Chambers threw up CENTIMO as well and I was much happier !

  60. Am a day late having had no time on Wednesday for the crossword, but it was worth doing this one before getting started on the Thursday grid. Not a fan of the device of using a word to denote its initial letter (as I’ve said before) so was not impressed with OCTAGONAL – and the parsing needs +A as well as +L(eague). Totally thrown off track by the non-existent Botswanan desert; brilliant clue. AUTOCUE another favourite, and brilliant to see Lana Turner get a mention. Thanks Andrew for parsing of MODERNISERS, QUININE, and GRIME. Thanks Nutmeg.

  61. I expect I’m talking to myself by now, but I enjoyed this and finished with a bit of help. I liked SPLIT INFINITIVE which, despite my own penchant for grammatical definitions by example, took too long to spot.
    Paul @60, my copy of Chambers, which confusingly has New Edition on the spine when it’s about 30 years old, has L as an abbreviation for League, presumably the unit of distance.
    Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

  63. Even later than the above late ones, I’m still catching up on my backlog after two short breaks in the last fortnight. Enjoyed this one from Nutmeg, which as Andrew also found, was a bit easier than her usual fare as far as I was concerned.

    I’m not sure what Paul @60’s problem is with OCTAGONAL – O=’old’ is standard, ‘Caledonians initially’ is fairly clued for the C, and ‘league’ is also a standard abbreviation, as in EFL for English football league. Setting clues is hard enough as it is, but if all initialisations were forbidden, as it seems this Paul would prefer, it would become downright impossible.

    Thanks to Nutmeg, and to Andrew especially for the parsing of MODERNISER, which I gave up on in the end, though the answer was clear enough.

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