Thank you to Carpathian. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
8. Heaven is found in March (8)
PARADISE : IS contained in(found in) PARADE(march, as in “to parade down High Street”)
9. Oscar for each adult musical drama (5)
OPERA : O(letter represented by “Oscar” in the phonetic alphabet) + PER(for each/for one, say, person) + A(abbrev. for “adult”).
10. Deftly remove odd pieces of jambalaya (4)
ABLY : 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th letters(odd pieces of) deleted from(remove …) “jambalaya”.
11. Finds extra strangely spellbound (10)
TRANSFIXED : Anagram of(… strangely) FINDS EXTRA.
12. Supports couples (6)
BRACES : Double defn: 1st: Pieces of strong material giving support to a structure; and 2nd: Pairs of things.
14. Grannie’s distributed profits (8)
EARNINGS : Anagram of(… distributed) GRANNIE’S.
15. Driller of hollow is finally spent? (7)
DENTIST : DENT(a hollow/a cavity) + IS + last letter of(finally) “spent”.
Defn: One who drills into your teeth, in which there might by cavities too.
17. Easy to read stage direction involving one boy leaving initially (7)
LEGIBLE : [LEG(a stage/section of a journey or process, say, a competition) + E(abbrev. for “east”, direction towards where the sun rises on the horizon)] containing(involving) [ I(Roman numeral for “one”) + 1st letters, respectively, of(… initially) “boy leaving”].
20. Complete halt for period in US (4,4)
FULL STOP : FULL(complete/not omitting anything) + STOP(halt/cease).
Defn: That which is called a ….
22. Limited penalty limiting appeal (6)
FINITE : FINE(a penalty/a sum of money paid as punishment for committing an offence) containing(limiting) IT(informal term for “sex appeal”).
23. Favourite Prince quotation (10)
PREFERENCE : P(abbrev. for “prince”) + REFERENCE(a quotation/a passage from another source).
24. Repress expression of surprise by king (4)
CORK : COR!(an expression of surprise) plus(by) K(abbrev. for “king”, as in chess notation).
Defn: …./to restrain, as in “to cork up your feelings about …”)
25. Love unaltered in Spring (5)
OASIS : O(letter representing 0/love in tennis scores) + AS IS(unaltered/without change).
26. Charms enclosed by hotel workers (8)
ENCHANTS : ENC(abbrev. for “enclosed”, used in letters to indicate that there is a separate document included with the letter) + H(letter represented by “hotel” in the phonetic alphabet) + ANTS(social insects that have a caste of workers).
Down
1. Pack carried drug to festival (8)
JAMBOREE : JAM(to pack/fill fully) + BORE(carried/supported) + E(abbrev. for “ecstasy”, the drug).
2. Reluctant to exert oneself putting axis in place (4)
LAZY : Z(an axis in three dimensional space) contained in(putting … in) LAY(to place/to put in position).
3. Opening greeting by you and I (6)
HIATUS : HI!(a form of greeting) + AT(a preposition indicating location/by, as in “he stood at the table”) + US(pronoun for you and I together).
Defn: …/a gap.
4. Out of date book excited (7)
BELATED : B(abbrev. for “book”) + ELATED(excited/extremely happy).
Defn: Delayed beyond what it should have been.
5. Keep prisoner present (8)
CONSERVE : CON(short for “convict”) + SERVE(to present/to deliver, as in “to serve a meal”, or “to serve a writ”)
6. Sense clarity (10)
DEFINITION : Double defn: 1st: …/meaning; and 2nd: …/the degree of sharpness of an image or sound.
7. Pat returning, say, grand to scoundrel (3,3)
BAD EGG : Reversal of(… returning) DAB(a pat/a small amount of something) + EG(abbrev. for “exempli gratia”/for example/say) + G(abbrev. for “grand”, a thousand dollars or pounds).
13. Mollusc lifts cute waving horns at first (10)
CUTTLEFISH : Anagram of(… waving) LIFTS CUTE + 1st letter of(… at first) “horns”.
16. Ridicule – it arises unexpectedly (8)
SATIRISE : Anagram of(… unexpectedly) IT ARISES.
18. On fire and irate about women of letters? (8)
LITERATI : LIT(on fire/burning) plus(and) anagram of(… about) IRATE.
Defn: Well-educated men and …/interested in literature.
19. Critics pan nerd clutching tool (7)
SPANNER : Hidden in(… clutching) “Critics pan nerd”.
21. Displace happy Aussie native over time (6)
UPROOT : UP(happy, in contrast to down/sad) + ROO(short for “kangaroo”, an animal native to Australia) placed above(over, in a down clue) T(abbrev. for “time”).
22. Rob’s coat (6)
FLEECE : Double defn: 1st: …/swindle; and 2nd: …/covering of a sheep or goat
24. Nail Conservative principle (4)
CLAW : C(abbrev. for a member of the Conservative Party) + LAW(principle/rule).
Defn: Curved, pointed and horny … of, say, birds.
Pleasant stroll with DEFINITION holding out longest and I was looking for a pangram but no Q. Typically smooth surfaces from the setter and I liked JAMBOREE, BRACES, DENTIST and LITERATI best amongst others.
Ta Carpathian & scchua.
Enjoyable – for a moment I thought it must be Monday, with a bonus
double helping of jam. Thanks both.
Monday again already? Still not seeing much evidence that Carpathian is ready to step into the cryptic slot. Ticks for LAZY & JAMBOREE
IO in the FT for those in need of a stiffer challenge 🙂
Cheers S&C
HIATUS
Not happy with ‘you and I’ for us. You and I would give subject form ‘we’ not ‘us’.
And it’s after the preposition ‘by’, too.
LITERATI
I suppose I have to accept this, as my Chambers defines it as ‘men of letters, the learned’ and I take ‘men’ to mean ‘mankind’.
But if universities insist upon the ghastly ‘alumnae’ for females, I would have thought that perhaps ‘literatae’ should be approved too.
3 down (the ‘you and I’ = us clue) reminded me of Vlad’s GRAMMAR POLICE (8 down) but without the resolution. Otherwise a lovely solve, thank you Carpathian and sschua.
After the Z and J, I too was looking for a pangram.
Fun puzzle. Liked PARADISE, UPROOT, HIATUS
Thanks Carpathian and scchua
3d unforgivable.
Anna @ 5: Never seen “alumnae”, but the correct Latin plurals are “alumni” for masculine (or mixed, sorry) and “alumne” for feminine.
Thanks sschua – a straighforward enough puzzle, but despite staring at LEGIBLE for ages I couldn’t figure out the parsing apart from IBL. Like a fool I was too fixated on ‘stage direction’ to think of separating them. And, although it didn’t bother me at the time, I have to agree with those who have pointed out the unnecessarily ungrammatical construction in 3d. Thanks for a nicely illustrated blog, and thanks to Carpathian too, of course.
Anna @5. The Chambers app has men and women of letters.
So, shouldn’t really say that I found this a bit of a Lance Stroll this morning, but I did rather motor through this. Monday’s puzzle has so far proved the most challenging one this week IMHO. Last one in BELATED. Lovely illustrations as ever from Scchua to brighten up my day…
Auriga @ 8
No, they’re not.
alumni for m and alumnae for f.
With a name like auriga, you should know better.
(Of course, if you’re talking about the later, so-called Vulgar Latin, that would be different).
Nothing too tricky which was refreshing for a change. The English teacher in me couldn’t help but circle “you and I” in the clue for 3d HIATUS (though I didn’t use a red pen) – it must be so hard to be a setter, with grammarians ready to pounce. Favourite was the “Driller of hollow” for DENTIST at 15a, my LOI. Many thanks to Carpathian and scchua.
[I get the “stroll” bit, ronald@11 but not the Lance Stroll idea.]
…oh dear, I’ve suddenly remembered that I got soundly defeated by Ludwig earlier in the week. Must have buried that one somewhere in my subconscious…
JAMBOREE and BAD EGG
Both use the ‘WP to Def’ format. WP leading to Def?
HIATUS
Should the surface not be ‘Opening greeting by you and me‘?
Can’t believe that I’ve got to be a septuagenarian Australian without realising that JAMBOREE wasn’t a word from one of the Australian First Nations’ languages! I probably assumed that because it was familiar to me in the guiding/scouting world in my youth, and by association with corroboree, which is an indigenous word. I thought the rest of the world borrowed it from us! But it’s been around since at least the 1800’s. Etymology unclear, possibly Swahili or First Nations American languages.
And then we have jambalaya in the wordplay for ABLY, with West African and Spanish French influences. I wouldn’t be deftly removing any pieces of that, as per the clue. Yum!
MOH @ 9 – thought LEGIBLE for a while without entering it, and assumed LEGE was some possibly ancient stage direction I just hadn’t heard of. Way to make it harder for myself…
Thanks Carpathian and sschua, tidy work all around.
Carpathian is using a device common to several female setters (Arachne in particular) to remind us that some types of people may happen to be women. In the modern era, when even actresses may not be described as such, female nouns are an endangered species, so I doubt if we will be seeing literatae in a crossword any time soon.
I see the comments, both here and in the Guardian, are full of “write-ins” and “Mondays”, but this was a nice crossword full of smooth surfaces neatly concealing their secrets: not fiendishly difficult, but hard enough to keep this bear of little brain amused. Like AlanC @1, DEFINITION held out longest, though BRACES ran a close second: sometimes these things just won’t appear.
Favourites JAMBOREE, PARADISE, ABLY (for the ambiguity about whether we are removing odds or evens) and -ugh!- DENTIST. I wasn’t sure about the Z axis, but I see it exists – and whether an OASIS is a spring, though it may contain one.
Yes, I had trouble with LEGIBLE too.
Barely three sips of my cup of tea… we must be building up to a toughie.
Pdm @16, I thought it was ex-subcontinent, like kedgeree, hey ho 🙂 . As for you and I, I sometimes suspect setters of stirring…
[Coming here after Io in the FT reminds me of Mrs ginf and i seeing Reservoir Dogs, and what a blessed balm it was to get home and watch an ep of The Bill].
Nice stroll, thanks C and S.
You could solve most of these without crossers, so I’m sure everyone will be happy today *checks comments, oh well.
I found it easier than yesterday and it all worked for me. My favourite was FINITE and JAMBOREE is always a good word. LOI was OPERA, continuing my bad habit of finishing on something easy.
Thanks to Carpathian and to Scchua for a good blog.
Hovis@10: I don’t claim any special knowledge, but in many Romance languages the masculine form can refer to groups of mixed sexes, e.g. in Spanish a group of 100 women would be ‘ellas’, but if one of them is holding a baby boy, it’s ‘ellos’. If this applies in Latin, women of letters with no men present would be ‘literatae’.
Just for clarification, Chambers (2016) has….
literati plural noun (sing literātus (Latin) or literato (Italy))
Men and women of letters, the learned
alumnus noun (pl alumnī)
A former pupil or student
alumna noun (pl alumnae)
A female alumnus
[BC@3 see also Vulcan/Imogen (aka Fieldfare) in today’s Speccie]
@1a this is more a query about style, more than a complaint- I am a novice here so forgive my ignorance-the clue states “March” [capitalised] so I assumed that it MUST be to do with the month, not a homophone, I got paradise, by fiddling round with “ides” {of March) but then couldnt parse “para” then i got the “parade” with “is”, Is this acceptable and I’m being to literal? should it not have been ‘march’ [lower case m]? I do know the idea is to mislead.
Priscilla @25 My understanding is that the setter can give an ordinary noun an upper-case initial letter in order to mislead or for the sake of the surface, but a setter is not permitted to give a proper noun a lower-case first letter. So here, ‘march’ (=parade) becomes March, mainly in order to create a coherent (as well as a potentially misdirecting) surface. We old lags are not misdirected for long by this sort of ruse.
I think Carpathian shot herself in the foot with LITERATI. It doesn’t matter if that form is used for mixed or unknown gender: if you’re going to start to use female words like women, then you have to continue to use female nouns, if they exist, imo.
To illustrate me@27, consider “actors” which can mean both male performers or those of either sex. Which is more jarring: “actresses and other women” or “actors and other women”?
26 Thank you Balfour, its nice to learn the conventions. I can easily be misled! As you seem to know (I’ve asked this before, but cant remember the response) do setters ‘own’ clues? are they frowned upon by other setters if they copy and use someone else’s clue?
pdm@16: Webster’s says that the word jambalaya is Louisiana French, from Occitan; Collins says Provençal rather than Occitan, but that’s a different name for the same thing. The dish itself: like all Louisiana cuisine, it’s what you get when you force West Africans to cook for people of French and Spanish extraction using American ingredients. It’s sort of a mash-up of paella and jollof rice. And it’s indeed delicious. (I last had some about two weeks ago. Despite being served in Illinois, it was as good as any I’ve had in New Orleans.)
Balfour @26, yes that is the “rule” as set out by Ximenes. I think the reasoning behind it was that any word could potentially have an upper-case initial, for example in the title of a book, but that a proper name would never have a lower-case initial. But surely the second half of the rule is totally out of date now. Ximenes was writing in the sixties, but these days we are very used to seeing proper names in lower case. The most obvious example is in email addresses; there are also company names in lower case. Look at user names on this site — today we have ronald, gladys, grantinfreo, amongst others.
4D was my LOI, I was fixated for a while on an anagram involving DATE.
It’s nice to have a puzzle with no obscure vocabulary, not-so-general knowledge, or lesser-known flora and fauna.
poc@22: unfortunately, this is the kind of issue that is inevitable when the intelligentsia shoehorn Latin words into a Germanic(ish) language that long ago shed most noun declensions. And then there are people who pretentiously try to overextend Latinisation, e.g. insisting on -a for plurals of words ending in -um (e.g. stadia). I like to refer to such people as the illiterati.
For 12ac I had crucks as these are supports that work in pairs but I suppose that too literal.
Pleasant solve, although the grid with lots of first letters missing made it a bit more difficult than it could have been. I liked the Grannies EARNINGS, the wordplay for OASIS, and the well-hidden SPANNER.
Thanks Carpathian and scchua.
Thanks for the blog , I thought this was really good , I would have loved it when I was learning . Maybe it should have been swapped with Monday but really there should be two puzzles a week like this for newer solvers . I think Carpathian should get a regular Monday slot .
Priscilla@25 , there is only one rule – The setter sets and we try to solve .
The convention is as described by Balfour @26 and personally I do not like the fake capital .
My view is that if a word needs a capital it should have one , if it doesn’t it shouldn’t . Setters can try to mislead us by hiding it at the front .
Roz@35: I agree that a spurious capital in the middle of sentence is somewhat out of place and, to me, just looks clumsy. I admire setters who manage the issue by using natural capitalisation and look forward to someone incorporating a well disguised “bell hooks” in a clue about Gloria Watkins.
Malkin@33 nice suggestion. I’ve only ever used that word in the context of a cruck barn. Although my grandmother’s childhood Derbyshire home had crucks with an indoor swing suspended from them.
I thought that the bad grammar in the HIATUS clue could only be signalling WE rather than US. It would have been acceptable if that had been the case, in my opinion.
I have always thought of literati as Italian, not Latin. Wouldn’t the Latin have a double t, as does littera = letter? I wondered if “women of letters” would be LITERATE, the Italian feminine plural, but the crosser settled that.
Jack OFT @35 that is quite a challenge .
Nice is the classic example at the start of a sentence , trying to make us think pleasant when there is a French connection , or vice versa , works both ways .
Maybe I am just old-fashioned because I never type except on here , I even have to put everyone’s name with a capital even if they do not use one .
Why do grammarians always give the impression of being so joyless? See “you and I” and get upset because in a sentence this would be substituted by “we” and not “us”. But 3d isn’t a sentence; it’s a crossword clue. What do “you” and “I” make when brought together? “It’s us!”. Not a grievous mistake but appropriate cluing.
I fear you and I / us will have to agree to disagree on this.
Thanks Carpathian for a pleasant stroll with my top picks being FULL STOP, PREFERENCE, and OASIS. Thanks manehi for the blog.
Thanks Carpathian and scchua
Carpathian is one of my favourite setters, but there were some howlers in this. There is no excuse for “I” in 3d as “me” would work just as well. She has painted herself into a corner in 18d as the “i” ending in plural Italian is only correct when at least one of the cohort is male (however unfair that may sound!), so if all are females, it should be literatE.
Favourite OASIS.
I also liked OASIS, though I thought the whole puzzle was pretty good. I can’t get excited about minor grammar errors if they don’t confound solving the clue, it’s far preferable to the laboured and convoluted surfacing beloved of other setters. Would welcome Carpathian alternating with Vulcan in the Monday slot.
muffin @43: shouldn’t the plural be literatae or literatas? Or does that mean something else?
btw there’s an almost foolproof method the sort out the “you and I/me” problem. Just leave out the “you and” and see which works better.
(You and) me went to the pictures – wrong!
The picture impressed (you and) I – wrong!
Mandarin @44
But there’s no reason why the correct “me” couldn’t be used – it still works with the surface.
Robi @45
I’m using my knowledge of Italian (OK) rather than Latin (almost non-existent).
I whole-heartedly agree, Van Winkle @40. Strict grammar sometimes just gets in the way. Earth Day is coming up this Tuesday. Walt Kelly, in his Pogo cartoon to mark the very first Earth Day in 1970, has the eponymous possum, on looking out over a despoiled landscape, utter the deathless line: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
What happened? I was able to solve it, and quite rapidly. Either it was a particularly easy (for the able solver) cryptic or I am getting better at solving such puzzles…I suppose the former!
Thanks sschua for the blog and Carpathian for an enjoyable puzzle.
Can someone help me where can I find the rest of Ludwigs crossword puzzles on The Guardian website,
My Collins Italian dictionary doesn’t list “literato” at all. The Italian for “man of letters” is “letterato”, woman of letters would be “letterata” as they both write “letteratura” (literature). “Literato” occurs in both Spanish and Portuguese but I think it just means “can read”.
I find it amusing that even the host of University Challenge pronounces “alumni” as “alumnae” just as most people pronounce the plural of”fungus” as though it were “fungae” (non-existent Latin plural) instead of “fungi”
Van Winkle @40 (and others defending “you and I” = “us”): For me, the objection to such grammatical slips is that they make solving a sloppy, imprecise process. Plural nouns should be clued as clearly so. Past participles should not be clued with infinitives and adjectives should not be clued by adverbs, so why should an accusative case be clued by a nominative?
This is not pedantry – it is a reasonable imposition of rules on both setter and solver so the latter can solve with some degree of certainty. Even with this rule, setters still find many innovative and fun ways to misdirect and challenge solvers. It also does not mean I (and others who have commented?) abhor a bit of wickedness and rule-breaking. Quite the contrary. But as muffin has pointed out, the slip here is unnecessary, does not require any convolution to avoid and adds nothing to the clue surface. I consider that combination good grounds to quibble.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
[David Mansell @50: Books I have by both professional and amateur mycologists such as Sheldrake, Fortey, Stamets suggest that there is little agreement within the expert community about the plural, down to hard or soft g, the ending being pronounced “aye” or “ee”, or even using “funguses” so it’s not one I worry about!]
I agree with those who say “you and I) does not equal “us”. I also agree with Van Winkle @40 when he says in essence “so what”. I also agree with Walt Kelly (see Coloradian@47) that “he is us” sounds much better than “he is we”. How’s that for consistency. Consistency of course is a hallmark of the English language, isn’t it?
I sensed a lack of clarity in the definition at 6d, but I was wrong.
Thanks Carpathian for the fun puzzle, and scchua for the colourful blog. I didn’t know what a cuttlefish looked like, so thanks (I think) for that.
Jack of Few Trades @51 – read my post again. I am not defending “you and I” = “us” as being grammatically correct. I am treating the clue as a clue and not a sentence. In cryptic construction, “you” plus “I” can happily give “us”. “You and me” would have been better, but the clue still works. No crime has been committed.
VW @54
But why not clue it as “you and me” and thus avoid all the discussion? There’s nothing wrong with the alternative.
Coloradan @47, Cellomaniac@53: Walt Kelly was playing off a well-known quote (more famous then than now). Commodore Perry, in the dispatch announcing his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812, stated, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” “He is us” also plays off the fact that the critters in “Pogo” often spoke with a backwoods grammatical structure. The fact that the whole sentence rightly puts the problem of pollution squarely in the lap of mankind shows Kelly’s genius at work.
Van Winkle @54: It’s not that I didn’t read your post, it’s that I did not understand it. I agree a clue must often be parsed other than as a sentence in order for wordplay to work – for example, a verb in the clue (“snake”) might be a noun in the answer (boa). But the link “snake” could not become “vipers”, nor “serpentine” because the word cannot be either a plural or an adjective.
But equally, I don’t think anyone would accept a clue which read “Sam initially snake down” to give S + adder because the verb does not agree with the subject. Even though it is a clue not a sentence, the grammar should be consistent, shouldn’t it?
[EleanorK @56: Well said. Thanks for the added context.]
Very interesting Coloradan and Eleanor , I will look into this further .
JackOFT@57 the clue is fine as an instruction – Sam (pause) initially snake down –
( Sam is trying to escape from Colditz ) .
Roz@59: I did think about that and decided that it could be rewritten as an imperative but would probably need an exclamation mark to make that clear, or at least a comma after “Sam”.
This is where misleading punctuation is useful. “Sam, initially snake down!” No wonder we are usually told to ignore it (except that sometimes the . or , or even the … turns out to be the definition).
Thanks to Carpathian and sschua.
On the grammar point: I respectfully but firmly take issue with the – rather ironic – censoriousness with which Van Winkle (@40, inter alia) chides “grammarians” for “always” being, or at least seeming “so joyless”.
The problem with latitudinarianism in crossword-setting is that solvers can never know how far it extends, and hence whether any apparent solecism is lazy happenstance, or a significant part of the clue.
That makes completion just a tad less satisfying, because of the nagging sense (as I had today with “hiatus”) that the questionable grammar might have involved the latter rather than the former.
Separately – though probably entrenching Van Winkle’s opinion of my own joylessness – can I wonder aloud whether the Graun Cryptic, certainly this week, is abandoning its laudable efforts to be less Britocentric and mid-twentieth-century?
Cricket terminology (“leg”), and IT for “sex appeal” spring to mind – but that may be an unrepresentative carp.
And thanks to Roz @35 for that pithy summary of the “one rule”.
Priscilla @29,
I think setters try to avoid repeating other people’s (and their own) clues simply because plagiarism is frowned upon. However, certain words lend themselves to obvious wordplay ideas and generate multiple similar clues. Try searching this site for OUIJA for example!
Late to the (excellent) party. If anyone is still chatting in the kitchen….
BRACES my COTD, but I`m probably overthinking:
Beyond the DD of “props” and “pairs”, I think there is a mechanical concept of a brace as a coupling.
Does BRACES as a pair extend beyond game? I`m guessing the derivation may be from a pair of eg pheasants hung up by the string tying them together. If so, this ties in neatly with the trans Atlantic braces / suspenders fun. Either way, I shall think of a brace of rugby props in future. ( Although it would be more accurate to say that the props “suspend” the hooker. )
Further overthinking, I`ve convinced myself that “support couples” could be “belt and”.
Further, further overthinking, “support” is prime fissile material. As a fusion experiment, however, would “sup port coupling” be a viable Pauline alternative ?
Anna @ 12.
Yes, I should know better. Apologies, I was getting confused with Italian.
Came here to make sure that we all hate 3D as much as I do.
And I agree about LITERATI too. If you particularly wanted to refer to women of letters and not men, you’d write LITERATAE instead.
Nice to see Carpathian’s name today — it’s been a while. Always like their puzzles. I was able to complete this one and enjoyed it
18a LITERATI, our language is designed to divide us into male and female, a division that is completely artificial. There’s no reason why we can’t use the same terms for everyone — actors, ushers, alumni…and literati! And singular “they”. Dr. WhatsOn @28, “actors and other women” sounds just fine to me. Rock on Carpathian! 🙂
“You and I”, on the other hand… No one has mentioned the editor — it’s their responsibility to catch that mistake
Like some others, DEFINITION was my loi. Funny, I was looking up the “definition” of various other possibilities — the joke was on me!