Top class puzzle from Basilisk, as ever.
A neatly crafted puzzle with some fantastic wordplay. It is a pangram, that I know. Is there anything else going on in the grid?
Many thanks to Basilisk!
FR (French) + ACAS (mediation service)
The UK’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
(AFTER)* (*changing) + ACT (law)
Cryptic definition
A play on the concept of cycling / going round and round
(TRUE + MCP (male chauvinist pig))* (*warped view of) semi &lit
The true definition here is ‘women’ which then doesn’t form part of the wordplay, however the full clue informs the solution, making it semi &lit
LOO (can) + [corrup]T (in the end)
[syndica]TES SELL AT E[xhibitions] (some)
F (female) + AMISH (religious community)
BICS (writers) following on from I AM (author’s, i.e. author is)
AN + AN< (articles, back-to-back) about TEN (X)
W (wife) replaces front of [s]IMPLE (plain)
(HI (greeting) + MP (politician)) hosted by CAN (Canadian) / ZEE (US character, letter)
[slim]Y [alga]E [wil]L [envelo]P (ultimately)
Cryptic/double definition
A (adult) + SOCIAL (party)
[barn]ES SAY IS T[his] (to some extent) & lit
Referring to Julian Barnes, more than just an essayist
31. Create discord with half-hearted idiot’s gibberish (6)
JAR (create discord) + GO[o]N (idiot, half-hearted)
FACT (truth) about FILE< (column, <brought about)
(MONARCH)* (*upset) + AN[d] (with, mainly)
IS supporting AX[es] (cuts, 50%)
ROCKS (tips) + RAT< (singer, <backing)
QU (question) + I (India) + LIB[e]RIA (African country) promoting E (English)
LP (record) covered by AHA (Norwegian band)
TIT (fool) + LED (was among the first)
Double definition
A ‘rating’ is a British non-commissioned sailor
(A[n]Y (frame of) + SET PHOTO)* (*spread)
(ENRICH)* (*broadcast) over IP with G (good)
(NEARNESS)* (*in a different way)
ZEN (form of Buddhism) stifling PP (very quiet, in music ‘pianissimo’) + ELI (priest)
SHE (woman) embracing CAT (queen?)
E.G. (for example) in VAN (position of leadership, derived from ‘vanguard’ in this sense)
IS (lives) disrupted by DEA[l] (treatment, incomplete)
(AV (Alternative Vote) + ON (supported by))< (<rising)
1A was definitely for Brits as I hadn’t heard of the “Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service”.
22A: I assume that “cipher” is American for “cypher”.
8D: I’m not familiar with the bird’s name for a fool, only for a slang name for a female body part.
23D: I have a problem with the definition; it sounds a bit judgmental.
Thanks Oriel.
TWEETER
Should the ‘who’ be part of the def?
VEGAN
Agree with Peter@1
Didn’t finish. Why is a rat a singer? Wasted too much time trying to find reference to RACAS as a mediation service. Didn’t occur to me that the R belonged with French. Is Aha a Norwegian band? Who’d’ve thunk it? And I’ve never heard of tit/fool. Collins says it’s British.
GDU @3. Rat as ‘singer’ appears a lot in cryptics so it’s worth remembering. It is ‘sing’ in the sense of ‘inform on/squeal’.
Peter, if it makes you happier, ACAS is Aged Care Assessment Services in this part of the world.
Hovis @ 4, now you mention it, yes, I do remember. Ta.
Me @ 5, not really mediation though.
Thanks Basilisk and Oriel
Peter @ 1 Both the OED and Chambers have ‘cypher’ as a variant of ‘cipher’, so the latter isn’t an Americanism.
CHIMPANZEE
Short for Canadian is Can?
There is at least one nina. I won’t spoil it for anyone who is still hunting.
KVa@9: CanAm Highway, for example.
Thanks for the blog, very clever set of clues , EQUILIBRIA my favourite along with the hidden ones . ACAS is very UK and was very famous when there were lots of strikes.
Cineraria@10 – She’s in the Indy, looking after some pigs. 🙂
Cineraria@11
Thanks.
Cineraria @10 Only Ninas I’ve seen are SEW, HEN and SKI. Others, if any, have eluded me… Good puzzle anyway. Thanks all 🙂
Nudge@15: Check the far right column and the center diagonals again.
Basilisk and I are rarely on the same wavelength, so it took some time to get going. But, I enjoyed this in the end and Roz @12 summed it up nicely for me (the first bit anyway – not being British, I did not have a hope of knowing ACAS). I add ZEPPELIN and ROCK STAR as favourites for their surfaces and ANTENNA for its clever use of back-to-back.
I thought there were a few dodgy synonyms, but someone will just quote Chambers back (that great work of English fiction) so I will not bother.
Thanks Oriel for a great blog, and thanks Basilisk for a clever set of clues.
Top class as usual
Thanks JC
Having spent quite a bit of yesterday searching in vain for a Nina in another of this setter’s crosswords, I was delighted to spot this one
Another entertaining exercise for the cryptic grey matter
Thanks to Basilisk and Oriel
Just looked back and noticed my tribute was missing from my last sentence @17
I meant to write “As someone wrote previously” at the beginning of the sentence “I thought there were a few dodgy synonyms, but someone will just quote Chambers back (that great work of English fiction) so I will not bother.” I think it was GDU that wrote something very similar, but whoever it was I thought it was brilliant
Thanks Oriel and Basilisk.
Made steady progress.
Likes
– CRUMPET
– FACELIFT
– ROCK STAR
– EQUILIBRIA
Enjoyable as (almost) always from this setter. We spotted the pangram though not the nina – apart ftom one of the words in a diagonal which we thought was just coincidence.
TESSELLATE and EQUILIBRIA were our favourites.
Thanks, Basilisk and Oriel.
One so far unremarked aspect of the nina is that the stairway descends in steps.
I did spot this, Simon. It reminds me of a previous puzzle by this setter (as Serpent), see here
That was hard work but worth the effort. I failed with ARTEFACT, VEGAN, and ASOCIAL and, despite searching, I did not spot the clever nina. Still I found a lot to like including LOOT, TESSELLATE, YELP, TITLED, AT SEA, and ZEPPELIN. Thanks to both.
Thanks Simon S @23. I would never have spotted the stairway. In fact, it took me several minutes to find even when I know what I was looking for. Remarkable that you managed to see it. Brilliant work by Basilisk
Cineraria@16 oops, slightly missed that. Thanks v much 😉
Canadians pronounce the letter ‘z’ as ‘zed’ not ‘zee’. FYI.
TonyM @ 28 ‘Canadian’ = CAN / ‘US character’ = ZEE. QED
Many thanks to Oriel for the excellent blog and to everyone who has been kind enough to leave a comment. Special thanks to Cineraria for pointing out the not-so-obvious nina.
Now that everyone who is going to comment has done so, could someone please put me out of my misery and explain in plain language the nina?
“Check the far right column and the center diagonals again.”
Or start with the S of AXIS and descend diagonally.
SM, thanks for getting me started at the right place.
FrankieG and others, the central diagonals led me to FCIN (left to right) and TPLANPEE (right to left), which left me baffled.
Not being familiar with Led Zeppelin’s oeuvre, the nina was a Thing I Today LearnED from Trump’s Army (the far right column).
30a – ESSAYIST – Well done, Basilisk, for not referring to Charles ‘Elia’ Lamb, whose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_of_Elia (1823) is 200 years old. About time he retired. Julian Barnes a more than adequate successor.