Puzzle from the Weekend FT of January 20, 2024
I found this enjoyable solve with 9 (LOUSE) my first-in and 25 (UNSHACKLE) my last. My favourites are 1d (FELL OVER) and 16 (ASSESSES). As usual with Zamorca the puzzle is a pangram.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | FESTER |
Sense endlessly arresting innocent person’s really beginning to rankle (6)
|
| ST (innocent person) in (arresting) FEE[l] (sense endlessly) + R[eally] | ||
| 4 | STABBING |
Shooting clubs returned by search engine (8)
|
| BATS (clubs) backwards (returned) + BING (search engine) | ||
| 9 | LOUSE |
Bounder’s discovered in scandalous exploits (5)
|
| Hidden word (discovered in) | ||
| 10 | PARTY GAME |
Simon says ‘Perhaps Labour’s ready to step up’? (5,4)
|
| PARTY (perhaps Labour) + GAME (ready to step up) | ||
| 11 | ON AND ON |
Often disheartened with working all the time (2,3,2)
|
| O[fte]N + AND (with) + ON (working) | ||
| 12 | ADOPTED |
Trouble with naughty pet daughter’s taken on (7)
|
| ADO (trouble) + anagram (naughty) of PET + D (daughter) | ||
| 13 | EXIT |
Go out with former lover taking one final jaunt (4)
|
| EX (former lover) + I (one) + [jaun]T | ||
| 14 | SCULPTOR |
Carver starts to struggle cutting poultry not completely cooked (8)
|
| S[trujggle] C[utting] + anagram (cooked) of POULTR[y] | ||
| 17 | HESITANT |
Timid man has place taken by soldier (8)
|
| HE (man) + SIT (place) + ANT (soldier) | ||
| 19 | JAWS |
Opening of talks (4)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 22 | CHIANTI |
Shout about Italy’s mid-price wine (7)
|
| I (Italy) in (about) CHANT (shout) + [pr]I[ce | ||
| 24 | EMIGREE |
After regime changes direction, one’s leaving the country (7)
|
| Anagram (changes) of REGIME + E (direction) | ||
| 25 | UNSHACKLE |
Launches new nursing booklet essentially for free (9)
|
| [boo]K[let] in (nursing) anagram (new) of LAUNCHES | ||
| 26 | AUNTS |
When heading off, pokes fun at relatives (5)
|
| [t[AUNTS (when heading off, pokes fun at) | ||
| 27 | EVENSONG |
Service, at the end of the day, is still no good (8)
|
| EVEN SO (still) + NG (no good) | ||
| 28 | IDLERS |
Lazy people lied about taking runs on vacation (6)
|
| Anagram (about) of LIED + R[un]S | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | FELL OVER |
Chap very nearly came a cropper (4,4)
|
| FELLO[w] VER[y] | ||
| 2 | SQUEAMISH |
Likelier to get upset with each minute stuck in crush (9)
|
| EA (each) and M (minute) together in SQUISH (crush) | ||
| 3 | EMENDS |
Edits key conclusion in manuscript (6)
|
| E (key) + END (conclusion) in MS (manuscript) | ||
| 5 | TURN A BLIND EYE |
Pretend not to see criminal lying stripped under table (4,1,5,3)
|
| Anagram (criminal) of [l]YIN[g] UNDER TABLE | ||
| 6 | BOYCOTT |
Snub old cricketer (7)
|
| Double definition with the second referring to the great Geoff Boycott | ||
| 7 | INAPT |
Not appropriate to fall asleep during sex (5)
|
| NAP (to fall asleep) in (during) IT (sex) | ||
| 8 | GREEDY |
Gluttonous King George eyed crumble (6)
|
| GR (King George) + anagram (crumble) of EYED | ||
| 10 | PANIC-STRICKEN |
Alarmed by crack in step in building (5-8)
|
| Anagram (building) of CRACK IN STEP IN | ||
| 15 | REARRANGE |
Make a new plan to foster diversity (9)
|
| REAR (to foster) + RANGE (diversity) | ||
| 16 | ASSESSES |
Checks out female donkeys? (8)
|
| Double definition | ||
| 18 | SANDALS |
Almost everyone’s in beach shoes (7)
|
| AL[l] (almost everyone) in (in) SANDS (beach) | ||
| 20 | ACCUSE |
Allege account by copper’s occasionally askew (6)
|
| AC (account) + CU (copper) + [a]S[k]E[w] | ||
| 21 | LIZARD |
Reptile found in southernmost tip of England (6)
|
| Double definition with the second referring to The Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. | ||
| 23 | ISSUE |
Problem with groups of cells shedding skin (5)
|
| [t]ISSUE[s] (groups of cells shedding skin) |
I enjoyed this too
Plenty of ticks including STABBING, PARTY GAME, CHIANTI, UNSHACKLE, PANIC STRICKEN and REARRANGE. On the other hand, I thought Zamorca was stretching English a bit far in several places, even for Crossword Land. I had never heard of the Lizard Peninsula and did not find it online, so thanks for explaining it.
Thanks Pete for the great blog and thanks Zamorca for an entertaining puzzle
Lovely route from A-Z as usual from Zamorca.
I needed the pangram to settle my penultimate one, JAWS, as nothing was really jumping out at me here until I was left with ‘J’ and ‘W’ and I finally understood the double definition.
Thanks to Zamorca and Pete.
Good puzzle and managed to solve it quite quickly till I got to the SE.
Some lovely clues including: FESTER, CHIANTI, AUNTS, INAPT, SQUEAMISH
Like Diane @ 2 looking for a pangram helped me get JAWS my LOI
Thanks Zamorca and Pete
With the passing of Nutmeg and the infrequent appearances of Rosa Klebb we only have a few setters who compose clues with such masterful surfaces — Zamorca is one of them. It’s silly to list favourites in a crossword this good but here I go: PARTY GAME, ON AND ON, ADOPTED, EXIT, CHIANTI, EMIGREE, EVENSONG, IDLERS, EMENDS, and INAPT. Thanks Zamorca for the fun and thanks Pete for the blog.
Although I thought I had seen the spelling EMIGREE before, my Chambers only has emigré and the same is true of my Collins. As such, even if it is in the OED, it is a bit iffy for inclusion in a crossword imo.
HESITANT
Does SIT mean ‘(a/the) place taken’? If yes, then the clue works fine.
I was looking at ‘place’=(to) SIT but the ‘taken’ was hanging loose.
And ‘taken by’ can’t mean ‘placed next to’, I think.
Thanks for the blog, very good puzzle and I agree with the lists above. Like Hovis I could not find EMIGREE , initially I had S for the direction but ASSESSES stopped that.
SQUEAMISH I had slightly different – EA for each , M for minute inside SQUISH .
Thanks for the blog, Pete, and to Zamorca for an elegant puzzle. I hadn’t realised there was a pangram going on. I liked Roz’s explanation, finding EA for ‘each’ a bit more convincing than just E. Also, squish is a much more satisfying word.
Well, Hovis, I don’t say that I’m not iffy but just as I would be a ‘fiancée’ so I would be an ’emigrée’ (as a female of the species) and it is in French dictionaries!
I do agree that Roz’s ‘ea’ inside ‘squish’ parses better.
Diane. Yes, it’s strange not to be in the 2 dictionaries I mentioned, which normally give male and female variants of words. I felt that I might have seen emigrée pop up in Countdown but even my spell checker doesn’t recognise it. As such, I still think it’s a bit iffy, albeit strangely so.
Like Diane @2 I only got JAWS, my LOI, by remembering Zamorca usually writes pangrams and I hadn’t used a J yet.
You do see EMIGRÉE in older books or writers that follow French feminine noun formations in borrowed words, so I’d seen it before.
I parsed SQUEAMISH from squish too.
Fun puzzle, thanks Pete Maclean and Zamorca.
Thanks Zamorca and Pete
17ac: I read this one with SIT (transitive verb) given by “place” and “taken by” meaning “followed by”.
24ac: I have found emigree (with acute accents on the first two Es) in Collins 2023, but could not find it in Chambers 2016 or ODE 2010.
2dn: I had it the same way as Roz@7. I think Pete’s parsing is missing the I.
3dn: Taken on its own, this could equally well have been AMENDS. I do not belong to the school of thought which is happy for ambiguities to be resolved by the need to fit with other answers.
Pelham Barton @12, for 3d I originally entered amends, not EMENDS, until the crossers disabused me, so I agree it was ambiguous.
KVa@6 – I parsed HESITANT as HE (“man”) SIT (“place”, transitive verb) [“taken by” = “put next to”] ANT (“soldier”)
loi – a week later – JAWS – the singular/plural trick held me up.
Thanks Z&PM
Parsed SQUEAMISH as Roz@7 – SQU(EA+M)ISH – [SQU(E)A(M)SH doesn’t work – no “i”]
Thank you all, I have corrected the explanation of SQUEAMISH.
Regarding HESITANT I was thinking of ‘sit’ in the sense of a house-sit or a pet-sit but now agree that ‘place’ by itself works better to clue SIT.
An academic request:
Someone may give me a sentence that uses ‘taken by’ in the sense of ‘put next to’.
(I was not sure earlier but it’s clear now (as PB and FrankieG have mentioned it) that taken by=put next to. I just want to have more clarity. Hence the request).
oed.com has emigré (émigré in citations), but no emigrée/émigrée.
Oxford Dictionaries Premium – as used by Susie Dent on Countdown – has émigré only.
But there is this: The Émigrée (1993) poem by Carol Rumens
https://wiki.apterous.org/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=emigree&go=Go
emigree has never been used on Countdown, nor listed as a better possibility – probably because it wouldn’t be allowed.
Had no problem picking EMENDS for “Edits” rather than AMENDS. Amending involves change for the better, something editing doesn’t always achieve.
Google “Giles Coren nosh” – I see there’s something by his sister Victoria that I missed last time I looked.
Thanks FrankieG for going that extra mile and checking the Countdown records. I now find that EMIGREE appeared in an Aardvark puzzle back on Dec 22, 2021. Maybe that was where I ‘remembered’ seeing it before.
3dn replying to Frankie@21: For what it is worth, the overall view in the dictionaries I routinely cite is that emend carries a very slightly stronger overtone than amend of improvement rather than simple alteration. However, I do not think there is enough difference between the two words to say that one of them is a better answer than the other on very minor shades of meaning. I would instead invite you to consider this possible variation on the clue:
“Edits author’s first conclusion in manuscript.”
To my mind, that would be a perfectly valid clue for AMENDS (but not, of course, for EMENDS). It follows that AMENDS is a valid solution for the clue as written.