Monk is a notoriously tough setter, and no exception to that this morning.
Plenty to enjoy in this morning’s puzzle, but I’m afraid I’m stumped on 27d so I’ll leave it to one of you to assist and then update the blog. EDIT: Hovis has the solution, so I’ve amended this in the blog. Thank you!
There’s a bit of repetition going on in the north-west corner but if there is something cleverer going on, I’m afraid I’m not seeing it.
All the same, many thanks to Monk!
DE< (<back, of, French) + DIES (passes)
A (adult) + STEROID (drug)
[pi]RAT[e] (filibuster, stripped of his external PIE (prize))
O (old) + LOG (record) in (E (English) + STYMIE)* (*novel)
AIR (bearing) + SHOT (ruined)
(RAIN HIT)* (*unexpectedly) &lit
Entering ET (Egypt), BOA (stole)
E (European) + LANCE (weapon) fencing EG (maybe)
MP (member, Member of Parliament) cutting LL (lines) on CABE[r] (tree trunk, most of)
[r]OSIER (more promising, when pollarded)
OVER[h]EAT (to burn, after H (husband)’s done a bunk)
CA (about, circa) to check ALDER (tree)
ID< (identify, <round) + SPA (spring) linked to RAGING (furious)
[h]ATE[r] (saving skin)
(BEAST[s] (most of) + DIE)* (*sadly)
A (answer) + DROIT (right)
(TIE + BEARD)* (*tangled)
DETER (hinder) + ORATE (harangue) about I (Italy)
EYE (busy) with S (small) + HOT (stolen)
“Busy” and “eye” are slang terms referring to a policeman of sorts
S (singular) + TO A T (exactly)
OT (books, Old Testament) stashed by ERICA (heather)
(I[nternationl] B[oxing] O[rganisation] (heads of))< (<held up)
SIR (teacher) caught in DEE[d] (act, scratching bottom)
YET (still) interrupting (EEYO[r]E)* (*sadly, not right)
(GAELIC HARP)* (*playing) on O (love)
(CELTIC + [ac]CE[nt] (essentially))* (*jarred)
B ROAD (minor route) + EST (is, in Paris, i.e. in French)
Cryptic definition
Wordplay on the two meanings of “peer”
OED (dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary), (GLIB)* (*unusually) inside
SOR[t] (pick out, nearly) + DID (cheated)
[unit]ED ART[ists]< (holding, <up)
SEAworthy, SEAmen, SEAled, SEAmy, SEAson (all may follow this)
I reckon 27 is just referring to SEAWORTHY, SEAMEN, SEALED, SEAMY & SEASON all being words. Really liked DESIRE clue. Didn’t know EYE for ‘policeman’ and can’t see ‘sort’ meaning ‘pick out’. Got stuck then saw that column 6 could be STOBART which helped me finish but what Nina this is part of (or whether just lucky) I don’t know.
I now see ‘eye’ and ‘busy’ are both detectives. D’oh!
I usually find Monk’s enjoyable, but I mustn’t have been on the right wavelength today, having to cheat for a few and ending up with a record “Huh?” list of eight. AIR SHOT, EYESHOT, SEA, SORDID, ELEGANCE, EYE TO EYE, PEERAGE & CAMPBELL. Coming here resulted in several groans.
Never heard of EBRIATED. Interesting that it’s an obscure synonym of “inebriated” — a bit like “flammable” and “inflammable”, I guess.
Hovis @1: Ah, of course. Thanks for the enlightenment. I’ll amend the blog!
1A Eddie leads right into Stobart, possibly the Eddie Stobart of haulage company fame, who’s now a nonagenarian, but I didn’t see anything else related. I didn’t parse SEA as last one in until after I set the puzzle aside for a while. Thanks to both.
A puzzle of two halves for me. Most of the right half went in without too much of a struggle, but the left was another story. No hope in parsing SEA (thanks Hovis @1), CAMPBELL was hard and I’m still not too sure about PEERAGE. Saw STOBART but had no idea who it referred to.
Like GDU @3, I’ve never heard of EBRIATED without the “in”. Favourite was the surface for DESIRE.
Thanks to Monk and Oriel
Not actually Monk’s toughest but the quality is always there.
STOBART seemed familiar but I didnt pursue it any further.
Searched every which way to find a nina but apart from the above, diddly.
thanks Monk and Oriel
Ah! Kathy Stobart British tenor sax player
Nice to see Eddie Stobart making an appearance; a regular motorway pastime with little children used to be spotting and counting Eddie Stobart lorries, so another for the tally.
Seeing the explanation for RAT, I think that is the hardest bit of parsing I have seen for ages, and am amazed at it passing without comment. Compare that to the clue for ATE.
The definition for EROTICA is quite funny – ‘there’s porn in this clue, but don’t worry, it’s soft’. Is there even such a thing these days?
Thanks Monk, Oriel
Thanks for the blog, totally missed the EDDIE STOBART but had a look now. I think a lot of entries use those letters, all the perimeter words and a few others.
I liked CAMPBELL with the the Scottish idea continuing with caber .
ARCHIPELAGO was very neat.
James @9 it is not just little children, our MiddleSprog is 25 and she still collects them, they all have girl’s names which you can see on the cab, she has a notebook in the car full of them.
The LH side of this crossword was much trickier than the right, even though I spotted Eddie Stobart. Lots to enjoy as you expect from Monk, so thank you to him and Oriel.
We used to look for Norbert Dentressangle lorries – I think our sons were intrigued by the name.
Re1D, I must confess to being “inebriated” a time or two but I didn’t know the missing “in”.
“Sordid” = “mercenary”. Hmm – a bit of a stretch, methinks.
“Busy” and “eye” are slang terms referring to a policeman of sorts” – I have heard of “busy” but only know of “eye” as in “private eye”.
Wasn’t 27D a bit convoluted?
Who in the world is “Eddie Stobart” and why does he have any relevance to 1A?
I refuse to comment on 6D as I have no knowledge of the subject and have no idea of the difference between “hard” and “soft” versions. In the words of the Collin Raye song : That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It.
Thanks Roz for the extra hint. DIABETES + ADROIT has an anagram of EDDIE STOBART in it and similarly the left and right hand sides almost do (miss the repeated T). I wasn’t convinced with the parsing for RAT but couldn’t come up with anything better.
Thanks Oriel and Monk.
For 10a, I had prate (filibuster) stripped of the external letters of prize.
Thanks Monk and Oriel
22dn: “mercenary” is one of the meanings given for sordid adj in Chambers 2014, so not the least bit of a stretch there.
Incidentally, I had 10ac the same way as jvh@15.
prate minus p***e seems more direct, but doesn’t account for the ‘his’
Never thought of ‘prate’ for filibuster. Seems obvious in retrospect. As James says, the ‘his’ in the clue is a bit weird.
James@18: With Monk, I would take that seriously as indicating that “filibuster” must refer to a person, which would mean “pirate” rather than “prate”, so I seem to have swapped positions with Hovis. With certain other setters, I would be less confident about the need to explain the word “his”.
Yes, I am convinced by pirate, but also impressed at any sort of explanation, as I could have stared at it dumbly for a week. I’d be interested to know how much thought Oriel gave it.
I took “his” to refer to the rat, who perhaps receives a prize for his treachery.
James @21: The obvious solution to me was RAT, so I was working backward to parse it. In my mind, the clue calls for a “prize” external to “rat” so I started making up words: OBratE, NOBratEL (all nonsense of course). Next I went looking for synonyms for “filibuster” that contain RAT which is where I landed on PIRATE. While I do think PRATE is possibly better as a synonym for “filibuster”, the description ‘external’ is then referring to both the external letters of PRIZE and also describing it as external to RAT, so it doesn’t quite sit right. I don’t have the answer I’m afraid, but always great to hear everyone else’s ideas!
Admittedly, I sometimes find myself stuck when blogging and think: I’ll just look this one up on Fifteensquared! And then I remember…
Thanks; I also made up obrate, but knew neither pirate for filibuster or pie for prize.
Phew! We got there in the end except that SEA was a guess which we couldn’t parse; similarly RAT except that it was obvious from the definition. There are several others where we don’t fully understand the parsing, and we failed to spot the nina. Plenty to like, though, including ELEGANCE, CALDERA, STOAT and ARCHIPELAGO.
Thanks, Monk and Oriel.
Very late to the party. Sorry, I thought this was a dud overall, with some good clues. 19A should read: “Clan member cutting most of tree trunk on lines,” in order to work. I still do not understand 20A or 10A, even with the blog and comments.