Guardian 29,251 / Jack

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A fairly tricky but enjoyable and rewarding challenge, meticulously clued, with excellent surfaces, from Jack.

There are lots of super clues – I started ticking my favourites but had to give up, as there were so many, so I’ll leave it to you to name yours.

I haven’t managed to find a Nina or extra layer of ingenuity but, with this setter, that certainly doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I look forward to enlightenment if there is.

Many thanks to Jack for a great start to the day.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

 

Across

1 Cast ultimately drowned out by quiet beat (6)
THRESH
THRE[w] (cast, minus its last letter – ultimately drowned out) + SH (quiet)

5 Suspect had row about attachment (8)
ADHESION
An anagram (suspect) of HAD + a reversal (about) of NOISE (row)

9 Can book start to produce leads? (8)
PRESERVE
P (start to Produce) + RESERVE (book)

10 Want curtains covering entrance to room (6)
DEARTH
DEATH (curtains) round R[oom]

11 Punishes my refusal about accepting sanctimonious creature (4,8)
WHIP SCORPION
WHIPS (punishes) + COR (my – one for Lord Jim!) + ON (a reversal – about – of NO – refusal) round PI (sanctimonious) – here’s the creature

13 Somebody impregnated by leader of Conservatives in the past (4)
ONCE
ONE (somebody) round (impregnated by) C[onservatives)

14 Old part of bible was originally banned in foreign lands (8)
OVERSEAS
O (old) + VERSE (part of bible) + [w]AS, minus its first letter – originally banned

17 We do it up, somehow producing 12d (5,3)
WIPED OUT
An anagram (somehow) of WE DO IT UP – the answer to 12 (down) is ANNIHILATE, to which we must add the d from the clue

18 What leads to court officials backing line that shouldn’t be crossed (4)
OCHE
A reversal (backing) of EH (what) + first letters (leads) of C[ourt] O[fficials] for the line behind which darts players stand when throwing

20 Lie about half of unmarried women on offer (12)
MISREPRESENT
MIS[ses] (unmarried women) + RE (on) + PRESENT (offer)

23 Focus on pitch and contract (6)
TARGET
TAR (pitch) + GET (contract – an illness, perhaps)

24 Measure feeling of dread associated with memory that cannot be erased (8)
ANGSTROM
ANGST (feeling of dread) + ROM (memory that cannot be erased)

25 Human beings agree at an intellectual level (8)
MENTALLY
MEN (human beings) + TALLY (agree)

26 Makes a point about entering argument with different perspective (6)
TAPERS
A reversal (with different perspective) of RE (about – again) in SPAT (argument)

 

Down

2 Firm conned about contracts essentially (4)
HARD
HAD (conned) round [cont]R[acts]

3 English university announced sport in different location (9)
ELSEWHERE
E (English) + LSE (London School of Economics – university) + WHERE (sounds like – announced – ‘wear’ – sport)

4 Start of Irish National led by champion horse (6)
HEROIN
HERO (champion) + initial letters of Irish National

5 Treatment for adult with ‘proven hysteria’? (8,7)
AVERSION THERAPY
A (adult) + an anagram (treatment) of PROVEN HYSTERIA – &lit

6 Gas energy helping to avoid type of electricity generation (8)
HYDROGEN
HYDRO (type of electricity) + GEN[eration] minus (to avoid) e (energy) and ration (helping)

7 #smartandstylish (5)
SHARP
Triple definition, the first being the sharp symbol in musical notation

8 Curse year in which writers brought up manipulative treatment (10)
OSTEOPATHY
OATH (curse) + Y (year) round a reversal (brought up) of POETS (writers)

12 Completely take out a nail in the ground (10)
ANNIHILATE
An anagram (ground – I always enjoy this indicator) of A NAIL IN THE

15 US sportsman‘s flying visit? (9)
SHORTSTOP
SHORTSTOP is a position in baseball, an American sport; a flying visit could be a short stop

16 Shop arranged essential though not very patient service (8)
HOSPITAL
An anagram (arranged) of SHOP + [v]ITAL (essential) minus v (very)

19 Henry VIII’s position of influence (6)
HEIGHT
H (Henry – SI unit) + EIGHT (VIII)

21 I’m ready to avenge the conservatives (5)
RIGHT
Another clever triple definition

22 Special moment for you and me announced (4)
HOUR
Sounds like (announced) OUR (for you and me)

74 comments on “Guardian 29,251 / Jack”

  1. I couldn’t work out how “contract” could equal “get”, but your explanation, Eileen, is very logical. Didn’t parse PRESERVE, but should have. Never heard of an oche or a whip scorpion.

    I have been known to abandon Jack’s offerings, but completed today’s and enjoyed it.

  2. Thank you Eileen. I liked the triples SHARP and RIGHT. Is there something going on there with HARD and SHARP and RIGHT and HEIGHT?

  3. This was a real struggle for me.
    I hadn’t realised how clever (the d from 12d) the clue for WIPED OUT was until I read the blog, so thank you Eileen.
    I’m not convinced about “different perspective” as a reversal indicator. I know I wouldn’t be game to use it.
    My particular favourite was DEARTH for a great surface.

  4. As Eileen said, so many good clues, hard to mention them all. I liked ONCE for the chuckle.
    I found HYDROGEN a bit tricky to parse, even after I got the deletion of e and ration from generation. Every time I thing I’ve got it, I lose it, and get confused as to what clues the hydro part.
    ANGSTROM fav, because it’s good, and it’s all science, and I got it.

    Nitpick with AVERSION THERAPY. I liked the clue, although my first reading had version for treatment, as in a play.
    But hysteria is no longer a disorder, and I don’t like its origin, as female, coming from the word for uterus. I did learn something though that made me appreciate the clue in a way that perhaps Jack intended. Hysteria is now called conversion disorder (Wiki) so aversion therapy would be a good antidote.

  5. There are a lot of Hs here – half the down solutions, and a diagonal line of black Hs in the grid.

    Thanks Eileen and Jack

  6. So good. Like Eileen, far too many ticks to mention. But Elsewhere and Angstrom are especially beautifully constructed. Don’t disagree with your nitpick Paddymelon@4 although the apostrophes cover up all kinds of sins! Strictly speaking, I think treatment is doing double duty and the ‘a’ for adult is part of the anagram.

  7. Retired defeated. All the wheels fell off in the NE corner, where I failed to parse THRESH (deceived by cast ultimately =T, so couldn’t account for HRE) or PRESERVE, or to solve HEROIN at all. Failed on HYDROGEN and TAPERS too. Nothing too difficult about any of them: just pure stupidity on my part. But I did work out the WHIP SCORPION.

  8. As Eileen says, tough! But with very good and interesting cluing, and some really good surfaces. My favourites were TAPERS, ANGSTROM and OSTEOPATHY. Thanks to J & E.

  9. Neediled the blog to fully parse some of my half-parsed solutions – a lot I got half the parsing and a word that matched the definition, like in HOSPITAL, I had the total and the shop to hosp but not how the ital came about. Otherwise all in and solved.

    Thank you to Eileen and Jack.

  10. As much a personal bugbear as a nitpick, the # hash/number sign is NOT the same as the musical sharp sign (as the linked wikipedia page notes). The musical sharp sign has two vertical lines, whereas the hash sign has two horizontal.

  11. The SE was going to defeat me until I eventually thought of SHORTSTOP, so I’m delighted to have finished. Brilliant off the wall clues. Couldn’t unravel HYDROGEN so thanks Eileen. Loved the simplicity of HEIGHT. Why is HOUR a special moment please?

    Ta Jack & Eileen.

  12. Yes, DuncT @5. I think the point is that with all the down solutions beginning with H, H is commonly used as a one-letter abbreviation.

  14. COTD: SHARP, which is how I always read #.
    Thanks Eileen, for finding the D for me in WIPED OUT and thanks to Jack for the fun.

  15. Thanks Jack and Eileen
    Very difficult in places. I struggsled in the SE, and also went astray on THRESH – I had an unparsed THRASH until it didn’t work.
    Why is HOUR special?
    The clue for 13a had many possible answerrs. Fortunatley most didn’t fit!

  18. AlanC @11 – I thought HOUR might raise a query: I was thinking in terms of expressions like ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ or ‘Now is the hour…’ but I’ve just looked in Collins and found ‘a special moment or period: our finest hour‘.

  21. AlanC @11. I wondered about the special moment too. I thought maybe linked to the expression “cometh the day, cometh the hour”

  23. Lots of great clues here. I think maybe my favourite was the simple but brilliant ONCE.

    For HOUR = special moment, I thought of Elrond’s words from The Lord of the Rings: “This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great”.

    Thanks Eileen for a great blog and in particular for pointing out the d in WIPED OUT – I’m kicking myself because of course there is no 12 across. And thanks for the mention at 11a – yes, “my” = COR strikes again!

    And many thanks to Jack.

  24. Enjoyed this tough puzzle but could not finish. Got totally stuck and failed to solve 24,26ac and 19,22d.

    Favourites: SHARP, OSTEOPATHY.

    I could not parse 6d.

    New for me: WHIP SCORPION

    Thanks, both.

  25. Thanks to Jack – this was an enjoyable solve but also a good challenge at the same time, just the way I like it!
    Well spotted re the letter H, DuncT@5!
    Re AVERSION THERAPY at 5d: following on from the comment from paddymelon@4 and others above, I found out some very interesting material about past treatments for female “hysteria” when I went down that rabbit-hole.
    9d HEIGHT was fun (cf AlanC@11).
    I jotted “finest hour” beside 22d HOUR, so I am pleased to see that’s what Collins thought too, Eileen@18.
    Thanks to Eileen for the usual thorough blog.

  26. Aha! Clever stuff. Thanks to everyone who builds up the gradual realisation that in the 4H-grid Jack has used nearly all the Chambers H or h abbreviations. I like the way Jack’s mind works. And like gladys @7 here, I was misled by 1ac into first looking for HRE, then failing to see how Jack had expressed the missing W. I agree with Eileen @18 about HOUR. ‘Now is the hour’ – wistful memories of dusk at Cardiff Arms Park and a more innocent time. In reply to Undefined @11, yes, but couldn’t the ‘hash’ 9 – my dinner today, by the way – be regarded as a de-italicised sharp?

  28. [And appreciated your sharp eyes which spotted two more Hs and the link with HOSPITAL at 16d, AlanC@13]

  29. Loved it. Ticks aplenty with top marks to ANGSTROM, WIPED OUT & DEARTH

    Was baffled by the presence of TPERS in the wordplay for TAPERS until the penny eventually dropped

    Cheers E&J

  30. I spotted the H nina but don’t understand why DuncT says only half the down solutions have an H – they all do. The H abbreviations are a nice addition.

  32. I was very keen to come on here after completing this extremely (for me) challenging puzzle this morning. To have several of the parsings of these explained by Eileen – so glad it was you! A mixture of relief and satisfaction in the end. I thought the intersecting and in effect connected anagrams for WIPED OUT and ANNIHILATE a bit of a boon to get me started on what seemed at first a rather impenetrable empty grid. Last one in was SHARP, even if I wasn’t particularly today. HEIGHT and MENTALLY took the eye amongst several excellent clues…

  35. Given the Nina and the end of my username I suppose I ought to comment…
    Precisely what Julie @25 said. A tough, but most enjoyable, solve. Thank you, Jack; and thank you Eileen for clearing up the couple of answers on which I wasn’t sure of the parsing.

  36. Thanks Jack and Eileen

    One of Jack’s signatures is that if the grid has letter shapes in it he constructs his solutions around that letter – he’s certainly done it with L, and I think there are a couple of others besides.

    I remember this grid being used a few years ago (Brendan? Puck?) where the column 1 solutions began sequentially A to G, and the Hs ran across the grid.

  37. Simon S @36

    I do remember seeing the H motif – more than once, I think – in Jack’s Serpent puzzles – but, of course, I missed it today! Many thanks to those who did see it.

  38. Very tricky, but very satisfying even though I had to rely on Eileen for some of the parsing, so thanks to both setter and blogger today. I missed the H link, but did get as far as Heroin/Hospital; Hydrogen/Height; SHarp/SHortstop and Osteopathy/(h)Our before grinding to a halt. OCHE seems to pop up everywhere at the moment?

  40. By way of a quadraitchical-grid tribute, Hack has ingeniously included in symmetric locations HARD/HOUR, HEROIN/HEIGHT and HYDROGEN/HOSPITAL, all of whose abbreviation is H. Oh, and yet another Masterclash 😉 of clueing. Thanksh!

  41. revbob@39 yes, the theme is AITCHES, and there are 4 black ones in the grid.
    H can abbreviate HEIGHT, HOUR, HARD, HOSPITAL…

  43. Undefined@10, I suspect that “7dn With head held firm and nether parts dressing slightly to right, #smartandstylish” would have raised a few eyebrows in the Home Counties? 🙂

  44. I’ll just say how good this was, the many gems having been highlighted already. I liked WIPED OUT, THRESH and HEROIN most of all.

    Thanks Jack and Eileen.

  45. For 23A I thought of options trading, the two types of contract being “put” and “get”. Just me?

    Overall this was tough for me, with several unparsed. 17A was particularly clever in hindsight. Thank you Eileen and Jack.

  46. I enjoyed this, but found it VERY hard. Missed the H thing entirely, of course.

    I wish to express annoyance on behalf of all the baseball fans in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Dominican, who all take their baseball more seriously than we do here, and who are quietly wondering why the SHORTSTOP in question is necessarily American.

  47. I was very pleased to see Jack’s name this morning though I knew I was likely to be in for a challenge, and so it proved. I had half the grid filled in over breakfast but have had to come back to it several times during the course of the morning, and have five left: all in the south. Too many favourites to list. I think we had OCHE in another puzzle quite recently (?) That certainly helped me solve that clue at least. With thanks to Jack and Eileen.

  48. Still waiting for a 60th anniversary Doctor Who theme — Here’s a word I first heard (but couldn’t spell) whilst hiding behind the sofa on 22 May 1965:
    ANNIHILATE a new catchphrase, making a nice change from the usual suspect. The Gallifreyan’s having a party elsewhere today.

  49. Wonderful surfaces made for a very enjoyable puzzle. I failed with OCHE and needed the wonderful Eileen to explain a couple more. Is ‘about’ doing double duty in 5A, as both an envelope indicator and reversal indicator? And is this ok? Thanks Jack for a great puzzle and thanks Eileen for the usual full and clear parsing.

  50. Very enjoyable. Thank you for explaining THRESH, I was a bit lost with that one. There were so many wonderfully constructed and clever clues; the stand out for me was SHARP for devious simplicity or simply deviousness.
    I missed the whole H pattern, such a bonus. However I did notice an IRISH nina in the SE corner. Significant?
    Thanks Jack and Eileen

  51. Tricky and a masterclass in setting as DuncT, Monk and others have pointed out.

    I liked ADHESION where I searched vainly for an anagram of ‘had row’ before the PDM, the wordplay of OVERSEAS, the ‘missing’ d of WIPED OUT (thanks, Eileen), the different perspective of TAPERS, ELSEWHERE for the announced sport, AVERSION THERAPY for a great anagram spot, and HYDROGEN, where the definition was not at all obvious (at least to me).

    Thanks Jack and Eileen.

  52. Thanks both,
    Beautifully clued. Re ‘hour’, I was thinking along the same lines as Lord Jim @23. Specifically about the English matelot who misunderstood when a French person said to him ‘A l’eau, c’est l’heure’.

  55. [ Tyngewick @ 52 – thanks for the reminder of my all-time favourite Franglais pun! (in the version I originally heard it was the motto of the French Navy…!) ]

  56. Thanks Jack for a brilliant crossword. I missed OCHE but all else fell into place with PRESERVE, DEARTH, OVERSEAS, ANGSTROM, HEROIN, and AVERSION THERAPY among many favourites. I knew there would be an extra layer to be found and I saw the symmetrical placement of the words that can clued as “H” just as Monk @40 described. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

  60. SueM48 @50: Irish was also in the clue for 4d. There’s also a nina of LEVY across the top but again I can’t see any significance.

  62. I have a musical mug that says: # that’s a sharp not a hashtag
    Now I will have to check the horizontal lines.
    Pleased to have solved this with many favourite clues but possibly

  66. Apologies for the late post – very busy day yesterday.

    Many thanks to Eileen for the excellent blog and to everyone who has taken the time to comment.

  68. I also found this quite tough, but I made it through. I had a bunch that I couldn’t fully parse, but upon reading the explanations, they all make sense now, except for one tiny quibble, which I don’t think anyone else has pointed out: in 22dn, the phrase “for you and me” is equivalent to “ours”, not to “our”. At least, I can’t think of a case in which “our” can be substituted for this phrase.

    But that’s the tiniest of flaws, hardly worth mentioning when there’s so much cleverness to admire and enjoy in this puzzle.

  69. Thanks for dropping in, Jack – I’ve only just seen your comment. Sorry I didn’t spot all the Hs!

    Ted @68 – I did think about that when blogging. We can’t perhaps directly substitute one for the other in a sentence but I decided that the equivalence of meaning is there: ‘When the children have gone to bed, that’s time for us / that’s our time’. It works for me.

  70. Apologies, Ted, if you’r e still there: I should have written ‘you and me’, not ‘us’.

    I agree with your second paragraph. 😉

  71. I learned about OCHE from a recent puzzle, though I think I’ve seen it longer ago than that.

    Is there a NINA other than the H shapes in the grid?

    FrankieG@57 Are you quoting “Mots d’heure gousse rames”? I’d forgotten all about it till now.

    I’ve been flattened by a cold, so I’m just getting around to this now. Nobody will read this comment but Eileen, but she’s the one who counts. Thanks, Eileen, for a super blog, clever parsing and quiet wit along the way.

  73. I feel better already. I think I’m at 85%, which is quite workable for daily activities. Wishing you and yours a delightful Christmas!

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