Excellent puzzle from Basilisk as usual.
Very enjoyable. I was held up by entering A STAB IN THE DARK, and INTERVENE (my football knowledge is next to nothing and I found a player called “van Veen” and hurriedly thought that would do). Wanting 1d to work the other way round and mean “LIVID” also had me going around in circles. But no complaints at all – fairly clued and most satisfying when it all fell into place.
Basilisk usually includes a Nina but I’ll have to leave it to you to find!
Double definition
TELE (set, television) about MP (politician)
([pr]EDIC[ta]BLE (ignoring PART))* (*about)
G MEN (FBI agents) infiltrating SET (group)
GO (attempt) to follow LIN[e] (policy, curtailed)
COOPER (craftsman) + ATE (had)
BLANDISH (perhaps rather tasteless) + MEN (blokes) + T[ry] (start to)
IN (popular) + (CONTENT (subject matter) about S (saint) + IS))
INTER (football team) and “SEED” (highly rated player, “reportedly”)
S[hort] (introduction to) + TALE (story)
[hi i]T IT AN IC[eberg] (in the main) &lit
Cryptic definition
Referring to a fishing line and river (e.g.) bank
[b]RACKET (supporter, losing B (billions))
SKIT (parody) + (THIS)* (*involved)
PALE (livid); DD (theologian) gets into
RENT (cost of accommodation) charged by CE (church)
HOBO BLING (homeless person’s jewellery) lifting G (good)
(OFF LICENCE ENDS)* (*suspect)
Double definition (golf)
(PAPER)* (*new) + RE (about) + D[inosaur] (origin of)
[t]E[n]A[n]T[s] (regularly) blocking ENTRY (doorway?)
Cryptic definition
Double definition
I (one) occupying MINSTER (religious office) &lit
EC (European Commission) STATIC (interference)
(TIPI WA[s] (almost))* (*destroyed)
(THE G (grand) + N[ationa]L (first and last))* (*jumps)
(ANGER)* (*stirred up)
Thanks Basilisk and Oriel.
Excellent it is.
1d sent me on a wild goose chase as well.
DECIBEL:
My suggestion
anagram of predictable (broadcast) minus anagram of part (about)
A SHOT IN THE DARK:
AS HOT-equally dangerous
IN THE DARK: ignorant
Liked ANGLING a lot. Liked HOBGOBLIN as well.
Thanks, Basilisk and Oriel!
After solving an excellent Serpent crossword on Saturday I thought this would be a walk in the park but I found this more challenging and less rewarding because I did not spot a nina. That’s a minor complaint, however, because there were many fine clues including DECIBEL, SKITTISH, RECENT, HOBGOBLIN, and ECSTATIC. I missed INTERCEDE (I had “intervene”), PADDLE (livid = pale is new to me), and COOPERATE. Thanks Oriel for the helpful blog.
I took 15d to be HIND (browser) plus SIGHT (feature used for training eg. a gun) with the definition being ‘valuable perspective.’ I too strugged with 1d, my LOI. Thanks setter and blogger.
Steven@5
Your parsing of HINDSIGHT looks more apt. Thanks.
HIND is a female deer (and hence a browser)
A great week of crosswords so far continues with this offering from Basilisk.
Not as venomous as past puzzles but plenty of lovely surfaces like those for ANGLING and SELF-CONFIDENCE. My top choice though is HOBGOBLIN.
Interesting that in 1d ‘livid’ can variously mean dark bluish, ruddy or, in this case, pale.
Thanks to Basilisk and Oriel.
Thanks for the blog, really enjoyed this. Good explanations from KVa@2 for A SHOT IN THE DARK and from Steven@5 for HINDSIGHT. I think ECSTATIC needs “creating” as part of the defintion.
DECIBEL was very precise , for subtraction anagrams it is important to indicate when the word removed is also mixed up. HOBGOBLIN was a very neat construction, MINISTER a simple and effective &Lit.
LIVID is a strange word, can be pale or ashen complexion or blue and purple for a bruise.
Once again I see I agree with Diane although I am much slower to type.
Roz@9
Agree with you on ECSTATIC
Thanks to KVa, Steven and Roz for those added layers of meaning which show just what a finely nuanced puzzle this is.
I couldn’t parse HINDSIGHT and missed the extra layer to A SHOT IN THE DARK – thanks for the explanations above. Seems I’m not alone in being surprised that ‘livid’, which I thought would be the def, can mean pale, so this held me up for 1d. I liked the simple MINISTER &lit too, though describing an &lit as simple seems like a contradiction in terms, particularly for the setter. Favourite and last in, after staring at it blankly for some time, was the ANGLING cryptic def.
Thanks to Basilisk and Oriel
I’m another who entered A STAB IN THE DARK and therefore couldn’t get COOPERATE. No problem with HINDSIGHT which was clever. I feel there must be a nina or theme but, apart from recognising a couple of film titles (9d, 24a), I haven’t spotted one.
A Shot in the dark was about my first in
Delightful puzzle as usual-thats three out of thee GIFTS good today
Thanks
Good fun. It’s good to know I wasn’t the only one who had A STAB IN THE DARK.
Another fine crossword. HOBO BLING indeed.
I also liked ANGLING and LENGTH
Subtraction anagrams seem to be all the rage.
Googling I found this:
“Hindsight is an open source tool for parsing a user’s Chrome browser data and allows you to analyze several different types of web artifacts, including URLs, download history, cache records, bookmarks, preferences, browser extensions, HTTP cookies, and local storage logs in the form of cookies.”
Spooky.
Thanks B&O
Another great crossword from Basilisk – my guess was a SHOT which helped
Can’t spot any Nina but then that’s nothing new for me
Many thanks to Basilisk and Oriel
Many thanks to Oriel for the excellent blog and to everyone who has taken the time to comment. KVa@2 and Steven@5 have the correct parsings of A SHOT IN THE DARK and HINDSIGHT, respectively. FrankieG@17: I had no idea that there was an open source tool for the Chrome browser called Hindsight – how serendipitous!
Apologies if this is the wrong place to include this comment. Been following this blog for a while now, trying to solve cryptic puzzles for a year. I find them perplexing and love them. Any suggestions for how to get better, aside from just constant attempts and reading blogs like this? Also, I try to avoid using outside resources, but is that fair game? Again apologies for the intrusion in a random puzzle blog but finally decided to go for it. Thanks in advance.
Thanks, Basilisk & Oriel. Persistence paid off with this one – not just in finding the correct solutions but in being determined to unravel the extra layers of wordplay in what at first looked like fairly lacklustre cryptic definitions. I knew there had to be more to them than that. Nicely done, Basilisk!
Osyk – there’s no substitute for practice, but keep reading the blogs too – see how the clues you couldn’t solve work and you’ll gradually learn by osmosis. If you’re really keen, I recommend Don Manley’s Chambers Crossword Manual, which is as good a grounding as you’ll find anywhere, I reckon.
I’ve been doing cryptic crosswords for over 30 years, on and off, and still hold out hope of becoming good at them one day.
[Re @20 and @21: Osyk, because you are doing the puzzles for your own entertainment, it is up to you what is fair or not. The weekend and monthly themed puzzles usually say that Chambers dictionary is recommended, which to me sounds like an invitation to use that outside resource. The online version has thesaurus and word-search functions. I don’t have Chambers, but use other word-search tools and anagram solvers when I get stuck, or else I would spend too much time staring at blank cells. Also some themes are so obscure that I need Wikipedia or some other encyclopedia or Google searches to try to figure out what the theme might be or to read up on the details needed to solve the puzzle. I would say in 10 years all this outside help has made me a better solver — once I see a word that I recognise might be correct for a particular clue and then work out why that is so, the clues become easier to parse over time. I have tried at times to complete the simplest daily puzzles without help, but usually get stuck on a handful of clues. I guess I am not a purist.]
Well, Oriel, I can’t see any Nina and neither apparently can anyone else so far!
Thanks for the encouragement widdersebel and ub. It is great fun, and more so when I am solving them. So I’ll do anything to stick with it and get better. Thanks again!
Osyk. Yes but still no wiser as to the Nina?