The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29447.
A pleasant easy start to the week.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ANTIDEPRESSANT |
This can treat low vitality and a persistent shaking (14)
|
| An anagram (‘shaking’) of ‘and a persistent’. | ||
| 8 | SPINS |
What off-break does: cuts back (5)
|
| A reversal (‘back’) of SNIPS (‘cuts’). | ||
| 9 | APOSTATE |
Defector runs away from a section of male body (8)
|
| A subtraction: A P[r]OSTATE (‘a section of male body’) minus the R (‘runs away’). | ||
| 11 | LUSHEST |
Sleuths turn out most attractive (7)
|
| An anagram (‘turns out’) of ‘sleuths’. | ||
| 12 | IMPLIED |
Suggested little devil spun a tale (7)
|
| A charade of IMP (‘little devil’) plus LIED (‘spun a tale’). | ||
| 13 | TANGO |
Try to follow beat in dance (5)
|
| A charade of TAN (‘beat’) plus GO (‘try’). | ||
| 15 | CONGER EEL |
Leave part of fishing tackle in fish (6,3)
|
| A charade of CONGÉ (‘leave’, most often in the sense of permission to leave) plus REEL (‘part of fishing tackle’). | ||
| 17 | ZOROASTER |
Prophet put back a tiny amount of weight on very hot day (9)
|
| A charade of ZO, a reversal (‘put back’) of OZ (ounce, ‘a tiny amount’) plus ROASTER (‘very hot day’). | ||
| 20 | LATTE |
Towards the end, almost getting coffee (5)
|
| A subtraction: LATTE[r] (‘towards the end’) minus its last letter (‘almost’). | ||
| 21 | RWANDAN |
African managed to confine sickly-looking daughter (7)
|
| An envelope (‘to confine’) of WAN (‘sickly-looking’) plus D (‘daughter’) in RAN (‘managed’). | ||
| 23 | SIGNORA |
Make a gesture or answer Italian woman (7)
|
| A charade of SIGN (‘make a gesture’) plus ‘or’ plus A (‘answer’). | ||
| 25 | TINCTURE |
Metal cruet prepared for drug solution (8)
|
| A charade of TIN (‘metal’) plus CTURE, an anagram (‘prepared’) of ‘cruet’. | ||
| 26 | TREVI |
Fountain: priest thrown into it backwards (5)
|
| An envelope (‘thrown into’) of REV (‘priest’) in TI (‘it backwards’). Cue Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni. | ||
| 27 | BEEF WELLINGTON |
Rich food – complaint gets the boot (4,10)
|
| A charade of BEEF (‘complaint’) plus WELLINGTON (‘boot’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ABSOLUTE ZERO |
To be sure, Zola shivered in a measure of cold (8,4)
|
| An anagram (‘shivered’) of ‘to be sure Zola’. | ||
| 2 | TAILS |
Follows a possible fall of the pound? (5)
|
| I suppose the reference is to the heads or tails result of a tossed pound coin. Not my favourite clue. | ||
| 3 | DESDEMONA |
Wronged wife hides demon admirer, but not completely (9)
|
| A hidden answer (‘but not completely’) in ‘hiDES DEMON Admirer’, with reference to Othello, of course. | ||
| 4 | PLASTIC |
Possible pollutant finally wrapped in film (7)
|
| An envelope (‘wrapped in’) of LAST (‘finally’ – is there any exact grammatical match without AT LAST?) in PIC (‘film”). | ||
| 5 | EROSION |
Men surrounded by clamour turning up and eating away (7)
|
| A reversal (‘turning up’ in a down light) of an envelope (‘surrounded by’) of OR (other ranks, ‘men’) in NOISE (‘clamour’). | ||
| 6 | SIT-UP |
Postpone bedtime for physical exercise (3-2)
|
| Definition and literal interpretation. | ||
| 7 | NUTRIMENT |
It’s nourishing, with or without a little mustard (9)
|
| Both NUTRIMENT and NUTRIENT (‘without a little Mustard’) can be food. | ||
| 10 | ADULTERATION |
Watering down of grown-up portion, with drug introduced (12)
|
| An envelope (‘introduced’) of E (‘drug’) in ADULT (‘grown-up’) plus RATION (‘portion’). | ||
| 14 | NORMALISE |
Make regular opera with pronounced deceit (9)
|
| A charade of NORMA (‘opera’ by Bellini) plus LISE, sounding like (‘pronounced’) LIES (‘deceit’). | ||
| 16 | ENLIGHTEN |
Make aware of pain at the back after shot in the leg (9)
|
| A charade of ENLIGHTE, an anagram (‘shot’) of ‘in the leg’; plus N (‘paiN at the back’) | ||
| 18 | TONSURE |
Brother may have this nurse to fancy (7)
|
| An anagram (‘fancy’) of ‘nurse to’; the ‘brother’ being in a religious order. | ||
| 19 | RUSSELL |
Philosopher’s whisper is audible (7)
|
| Sounds like (‘is audible’) RUSTLE (‘whisper’). | ||
| 22 | DECAF |
Not prepared to hear about cold drink (5)
|
| An envelope (‘about’) of C (‘cold’) in DEAF (‘not prepared to hear’). | ||
| 24 | OVERT |
Finished on time, that’s plain (5)
|
| A charade of OVER (‘finished’) plus T (‘time’). |
I did wonder how many solvers would have heard of HUSSERL, before ZOROASTER put me right. Ah, Bertie, of course. Very nice Monday level, Vulcan, and thanks PeterO.
PLASTIC
Chambers has ‘at or in the end, finally’ under ‘last (adverb)’.
Someone needs to help with an example sentence.
‘X came last’, with ‘last’ in the sense of ‘at or in the end’ comes
to mind but unable to think of a sentence with last=finally.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO!
@kva: “… and finally, the british swimmer…” as in: “and last, the british swimmer…” seems to work?
I found this enjoyable, thank you Vulcan, my only lexicon expanders CONGER EEL and its CONGE. My limited knowledge of cricket didn’t help with SPINS, but it could hardly have been anything else. And I couldn’t work out how TAILS worked, but your explanation, PeterO, seems perfectly plausible.
Like GDU@4, I had to guess what an off-break does, and then TAILS was my last in. Interesting to find a non-Biblical prophet in ZOROASTER. Favourites ANTIDEPRESSANT and TREVI for nice surfaces.
I went down the hole of TAILS and (dog) pounds and couldn’t work out what ‘possible fall’ had to do with it before lighting on the coin toss. Conge in CONGER EEL I hadn’t heard of and had to check in the dictionary.
TAILS isn’t the whole clue also a definition and therefore also an &lit? and/or CD?
Thanks for explanation of PLASTIC – I was thinking this was the film, so down the wrong track.
Enjoyable otherwise.
Thanks PeterO and Vulcan.
When the first few down clues resisted me on first attempt, I thought this was going to turn out to be tricky. And then things started to fall and the lower part of the grid all came together enabling those earlier problems to be readdressed. Some very nice surfaces in here including SPINS, CONGER EEL, RWANDAN, SIGNORA, TINCTURE, DESDEMONA, NUTRIENT, ENLIGHTEN and TONSURE. Like one or two others, CONGE was new to me.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Last but not least.
Somewhere in the murky depths of my memory CONGE was lurking. I didn’t bother to check it.
I didn’t start well, with only SIT UP in the top third, 14 letter anagrams with no crossers. are a little discouraging, but lower down things started to come together. Loved TAILS.
Thanks both.
I thought .. and last / finally we hear Braverman is not standing .. worked.
Very Mondayish puzzle with some neat anagrams, I like the spot for ANTIDEPRESSANT and LUSHEST /sleuths.
I tried all sorts to parse TAILS and failed.
Thank you to Vulcan and PeterO
Enjoyable puzzle.
New for me: CONGÉ = leave.
Like PeterO, I wondered about 4d LAST = finally.
I parsed 2d TAILS in the same way as PeterO.
Thanks, both.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
Loved Antidepressant – mainly because I was completely misdirected; 14 letters…got to be a medical term meaning persistent shaking. Oh well, that accounted for about a quarter of my solving time. A really pleasant start to the week
Pretty straightforward but enjoyable nonetheless. Some of the clues seemed very familiar – 27 across, 12 and 13 across, for example. Liked the long anagrams. Thanks to Vulcan and Peter O.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Exactly the same experience as Tim C @6.
DESDEMONA was clever.
Appreciation post for Fifteensquared. I came back to crosswords after failing to get anywhere as a student attempting Araucaria and gave up for years. The Saturday quick cryptics gave me a way back in, and this blog has been super valuable in unravelling the mysteries of parsing. So today’s despite being “pleasant and easy” took me an hour and was only the third weekday puzzle I’ve completed. So very chuffed. So many contributors here must have years of experience and planet-sized brains to be able to whizz through the average Paul. Please don’t lose sight of use newbies!
Good level Monday puzzle. TAILS was my LOI as I missed the coin toss reference. I did remember ‘congé’, but it only came to me once I had solved the clue from the crossers. ANTIDEPRESSANT was the star turn for me also.
I’m left with an image of the SIGNORA in the TREVI fountain ordering a DECAF LATTE and getting a blank stare from the barista…
Thanks to S&B
Ilan Caron@3 and Sofamore@9
PLASTIC
LAST
Thanks.
@Mark #16. Congratulations. They get easier and, to a large extent, more enjoyable.
Some things only come with repetition – odd definitions for normal words, how an individual Setter uses clues, regular solutions etc.
Very enjoyable puzzle. I found the grid with the long borders very solver- friendly.
I solved TAILS from the definition but couldn’t parse it. Thank you Peter O for the explanation, I’d never have gone there.
CONGER EEL was good. I only knew CONGE (e acute) from French, as in ‘un jour de conge’ = a day off work or a day of leave. I hadn’t realised it’s used in English.
I also liked ABSOLUTE ZERO, APOSTATE, DESDEMONA, ZOROASTER, TONSURE.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
Couldn’t parse CONGER EEL or PLASTIC, and ZOROASTER took a while, but an enjoyable, gentle Monday solve here…
I didn’t find this as easy as others but this was full of witty clues. Parsed TAILS as Peter and had to look up CONGÉ. ANTIDEPRESSANT, DESDEMONA, ABSOLUTE ZERO and ADULTERATION were my favourites.
Well done Mark @16, welcome back to our obsession.
Ta Vulcan & PeterO.
Straightforward due to a lower than average number of DDs and CDs, which always annoy me in Vulcan puzzles.
@Mark #16 Congratulations on a completion. Crosswords are wonderful fun. Yes they need years of experience but not (at least in my case) a planet sized brain.
Mark @16 – I’m a huge supporter of the Quick Cryptic and giving newbies a way in. Really good to see you’ve managed these cryptics from there. Congratulations!
I started solving at uni too, gave up around the now adult child.
I love a puzzle that makes me feel clever – until I start to suspect it is really just too easy. How hard it is to satisfy the human mind.
A fun Monday morning romp, though I found the NE chewy for some reason. I have a friend who, Like Mark @16, is working into cryptics via the Saturday QC and there were a number of clues she was able to sort out the structure of and begin to solve today, which is all to the good.
As a scientist I wrote in “absolute zero” with barely a blink and then thought “ooh that ‘z’ will be useful” before realising that there are quite a few biblical names stuffed up that end of the alphabet so it was surprisingly little help!
many thanks Vulcan and PeterO for the enlightening blog.
An easy Monday to follow Everyman sucks me into the harder graft of the rest of the week. Natural order of things or at least what we’re used to.
Thanks both.
This was good fun. Luckily 1a and 1d went in straight away which was a good start. Then of course I immediately looked at the prophet beginning with Z, thinking Zachariah? But no that didn’t work (and I’m not actually sure if he was a prophet). ZOROASTER is I think better known as Zarathustra because of the book by Nietzsche and music by Richard Strauss.
Some very nice clues, favourite probably ENLIGHTEN. Can part of an answer be a jorum? (Maybe Eileen can rule on this.) If it can, then congé was one for me.
Many thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
That was a lovely start to the week. A few clues gave me a smile, but I agree that with PeterO that my least favourite was TAILS. I didn’t have an issue with LAST = finally, for the same reason as Sofamore@9 – I was thinking “last, but not least”, which gives the idea of “finally”.
I went down a similar rabbit hole to you Lord Jim@29 with regard to the prophet when I got the Z, but the R gave it away. I don’t know much about ZOROASTER apart from that was Freddie Mercury’s family faith. Zechariah was indeed a prophet and the writer of the Old Testament book bearing his name.
Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.
TAILS seemed quite straightforward to me, and actually quite clever. As so often around here, what was easy for many was hard for me, and vice versa.
Anyway, thank you Vulcan and PeterO.
Thanks both…I enjoyed the homophone of Bertrand Russell.
I hadn’t heard of the prophet, but fairly clued. Just CONGE needed Mr.Google.
Lovely puzzle.
Beautiful day in South London.
A pleasant puzzle, where I got 1dn but not 1ac until 3am when I woke up for a while. I got 7 more then, which finished the puzzle. Good fun.
The problem is having “finally” and “last,” not “at last” be in interchangeable spots in a sentence. How about “Joe came in finally/last in the race”?
PeterO at 7d I don’t think a NUTRIENT can be food, any more than flour is bread. You don’t sit down to a bowl of nutrient. Vulcan said it can be nourishing, which it can.
I don’t think ENLIGHTEN = “make aware of.”
Thanks, Vulcan and PeterO.
V@33 Chambers somewhat inevitably begs to differ on ENLIGHTEN
I really liked TAILS, and SPIN for the cricket reference. Prostate was fun which isn’t something you get to say very often as you get older 🙂
Cheers P&V
Valentine @33 It probably implies a touch of sarcasm, but “please enlighten me” can certainly mean “please explain”, which is close enough.
I enjoyed this a lot, with SPINS being particularly clever because an off break starts its flight towards the off side of the stumps before cutting back as the spin takes hold on bouncing. I thought TAILS was clever too, though it seems to be attracting as many down votes as up.
I rashly wrote in ERODING at 5d, having not thoroughly absorbed the word play, and just spotted DIN = ‘clamour’, but fortunately I immediately saw where I had gone wrong. CONGER EEL was among my last into the grid and was also a clever clue, I thought, though it took me a little while to retrieve congé from the memory banks
Valentine @33. I think the definition is ‘make aware’, as underlined by our blogger, with the ‘of’ as a link to the word play; bodycheetah@34 – in my Chambers it just has ‘to make aware or uplift by knowledge ‘ with no ‘of’.
Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.
Did no-one else try TURNS for 8 across? It was my first thought and is a fair double definition. You turn on your heels when you cut back. Didn’t go back to it for ages although the crossers it provided were giving me serious doubts. As a result I fell well behind Mrs Job who beat me hands down this morning. Like Tassie Tim at 1 I Also toyed with the unlikely Husserl at 19 d as i couldn’t believe there was another prophet beginning with Z. Not my finest hour today but I did admire TAILS once I’d sorted the crossers out. A definite win for Vulcan.
Valentine @33
On the subject of Chambers:
nutrient any nourishing substance
nutriment anything which nourishes, food
Job @37
Prophets all: Zechariah, Zephaniah (whichever was your choice) as well as the non-biblical Zoroaster. Husserl was indeed a philosopher, but I think you would need to ignore the wordplay , as the Venn diagram of the meaning of hustle and whisper is O O
Very enjoyable puzzle, thanks Vulcan and PeterO! Special tick for DECAF coming up with something that isnt’ FACED backward, though I did spend a while trying to extract that from the wordplay before the penny dropped.
And a second to Mark@16; when I started doing these I was often completely banjaxed, and the 15^2 crew was invaluable in helping me get on the setters’ wavelength. As Matthew Newell says @19, it gets easier with practice. Don’t be afraid to bung and parse (with me it was “CONGE” must be something) and to use the check button!
Mark @16: when I started doing cryptics about 30 years ago at university, the easy ones took an hour and I couldn’t finish the hard ones. Now the easy ones take fifteen minutes, and…well, there are still some hard ones I can’t finish! There’s a long learning curve, stacked mostly with common little tricks that the setters use. The more you do, the easier those get–it’s a matter of seeing a trick once and stashing it away for use later. (In my case, when I was hooked on these to the point where the available American cryptics weren’t enough, I also needed about five years’ worth to become conversant enough in British English and British culture to do British cryptics; I don’t know if you have that hurdle too. I remember how patiently people here explained the references I couldn’t get; I’m still grateful.) Anyway, you’ll find this community to be truly kind and helpful, so if you have questions, ask away.
Oh, and I hadn’t heard of CONGÉ, but I had heard of the eel, so even though I had that one in, it was a mystery until I came here.
All straightforward enough, as our blogger suggests, but CONGER EEL and NUTRIMENT were my last two in and only because nothing else would fit. CONGE was unknown to me (so thanks for the education), but what is going on with the clue for NUTRIMENT? A definition and then absolutely no word-play from which the solution can be constructed strikes me as a bit offside. I don’t see how that clue could have been solved on its own and without at least some of the checkers being in place. So slightly less than gruntled by that one, but otherwise a fair start to the week which entertained and diverted.
I’m just retired and cryptics is my new hobby, although I’ve been slowly building up for a few weeks. Didn’t complete today but this was one step forward ahead of the inevitable two steps back later in the week,
Mark @16: Many of us regulars are indeed experienced solvers – I also started as a student but had a break for a decade or two until my sons had grown up and left. But I’m not in the class of those who enter the Times competition and can polish off a crossword in the time it takes most of us just to read the clues. As mrpenney says, practice teaches us the common tricks that setters use, and while superior intelligence must be helpful, a large vocabulary certainly is!
I always used to find that if I got bogged down in a puzzle – a mild panic can set in when nothing seems to pop out – setting it aside for an hour or two and coming back to it often seemed to unblock things. But you probably know that anyway 🙂
Excellent advice from Gervase @43, it sounds like we’ve had a similar solving “journey”.
Vulcan is my favourite regular Monday setter, and I thought this was a fine example of why. I didn’t think it was super easy. Unusually, I find myself in disagreement with Peter – I had TAILS as my favourite clue today!
Like Mark@16 I’ve been making some progress thanks to 15 squared and the new Guardian quick cryptic. Still struggling with the one in the Saturday supplement so came to today’s Guardian with no expectations. Wow – finished with no help from word search. Very pleased. Thank you Vulcan & Peter. LOI was 18dn – thought the anagram was “to fancy” until I got the crossers – then the penny dropped!
Fun crossword.
I took tails as the dogs tail in a pound would be down, not up and wagging.
TAILS my favourite, Rufus-worthy (my highest compliment 😊). @Mark#16, nice post, FWIW I reckon tenacity, not IQ, is key; congrats on today.
Where are the answers for prize 440 by Paul?
15a, 17a, 21a, 25a, 27a were too much for me.
2d – I guessed TOILS, as I had no idea what the clue was getting at.
3d – NHO, and I didn’t know it was hidden anyway.
4d – makes no sense to me despite the explanation.
5d – I had ERODING ( I thought the definition was EATING AWAY)
7d – I had NUTRITION
14d – I thought this was an alternate letter clue because of “regular”
16d – no chance for me if I have to find letters from somewhere else in the clue to make an anagram.
18 & 19d – I’d lost the will to live by this point.
Overall, not easy for me at all.
PtP @ 48
That puzzle pdf was posted in error. The correct Prize puzzle that weekend was the one by Kite, but for some reason the pdf link initially went to one by Paul.
It was subsequently corrected.
Steffen, if you’re still here: the definition for EROSION is indeed “eating away”. I had ERODING at first too, thinking that “clamour” was DIN, but that left me with an E and a G I couldn’t account for. Then I realized my mistake: you have to treat “eating” as a gerund rather than a participle to make that definition work. (Gerunds are noun versions of verbs–think of all the special features on DVDs entitled “The Making of [this movie]”. Or in this specific instance: “the eating away of women’s reproductive rights in America is disturbing” means exactly the same thing as “the erosion of women’s reproductive rights, etc.”)
For 3d, DESDEMONA is Othello’s wife. The gist of the play is that Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him, even though nothing could be further from her mind; Othello kills her by suffocating her with a pillow (and then is immediately told he made a grave error, and then offs himself in his grief). So the definition here is beyond accurate. Anyway, it’s one of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, so do yourself a favor and curl up with a copy. Or if you prefer, just watch the opera, which is one of Verdi’s Greatest Hits.