Cryptic crossword No 29,680 by Carpathian

61 comments on “Cryptic crossword No 29,680 by Carpathian”

1. About right for a Monday and still on my first cup of tea. Held up briefly by 17D and entered NONETHELESS mostly unparsed. I still can’t equate NET with PLAN, despite loonapick’s help.
   Thanks to both setter and blogger

2. I’m another one who couldn’t quite get “net” and “plan” to mesh… but otherwise this was a pleasant stroll, thanks to Carpathian and loonapick

3. Thanks Carpathian and loonapick
   Delightful. I loved PATRONISE, EMPHASIS, BEEKEEPER (I don’t usually like Spoonerisms, but I did like this one), and IN-LAWS (extended definition?).
   I too didn’t see the parsing of NONETHELESS.

4. Thought this was 12a on the Mohs scale (or on MOH‘s scale), apart from 17D NONETHELESS – that one’s a diamond for me. I still don’t get it…

5. No ‘net = plan’ here either, but no doubt someone will produce an example.

   I’m aware that it piques some beginner solvers to crow how easy a puzzle was…so I won’t.

   Thanks both.

6. …unless plan is a typo for LAN?

7. 14: what a delightfully smooth surface! Also, like muffin @3, appreciated 20 for its definition within a definition. Nothing to carp about here (save perhaps for the catch in NONETHELESS), so thank you, and thanks too to the loon.

8. Definition 6 in Chambers…. “net = A plan to trap or catch someone or something”.

9. The NET – PLAN bit passed me by as I had enough crossers to make the answer obvious anyway. Good Monday stuff, and I’m hoping for a better showing in the week ahead than I managed last week.

10. A net is a plan for a 3D shape.

11. I confidently entered ‘soared’ at 1d, assuming that it was just a (very) bad homophone of ‘sought’.

12. Easty @10 really? If so, it gets the setter off the hook, but it’s a bit specialist to say the least.

13. I never find Carpathian as ridiculously easy as some people seem to: most were straightforward enough (and what felt like an awful lot of anagram plus odd letter clues, today) but I was held up by POSSESS/SEDUCING, PEAKED/PATRIOT and SORT, and failed to parse NONETHELESS. A good entry-level puzzle, and we need some of those.

14. Loved the surface for 14A. A nice way to start the week after the beating I took last week.

15. Chambers nonwithstanding, I thimk that the clue for NONETHELESS is an unfortunate distractor in an otherwise okayish Monday cryptic. I can’t think of a sentence where that would be used as a synonym for a plan/strategem. And “net” wasn’t the only trap in thst clue.
    Carpathian’s surfaces are usually very good, but there were a few clunky ones today.
    I liked ENGAGING and SORT.

16. William@12 If you google 3d shapes and their nets you’ll see lots of examples. It’s part of the maths curriculum at primary school nowadays (though I’m sure it wasn’t when I was at primary school)

17. Why the need for “university” (leader) in the clue for principal/PRINCIPLE?

18. 3D nets in primary school? Don’t they do basket-weaving any more?

    Maybe that’s it! I think I read on Meet the Setter that Carpathian has been/is a primary school teacher.

19. Net as in dragnet I suppose, a police operation to catch a criminal.

20. A pleasant Monday solve but nonetheless it took me ages to see NONETHELESS. Not sure I was doing 3d nets at primary school. I think my brain wanted it to be NON-(some word for moving) even in the absense of a hyphen.

    Good stuff for a Monday in what might be an escapee from the Quiptic.

    Favs today INTREPID and RESOLUTION

    Thanks blogger and setter.

21. Thanks, Easty@10 and 16. Of course, you are spot on about NETS = 3D plan. I suspect a lot of us here spent our primary school days doing long division of £.s.d. and converting feet and yards into furlongs.

22. Yes 18a NONETHELESS was the only one that gave me pause as I wasn’t happy with that parse of “NET” for “plan”, so thanks to those who’ve shown me a different point of view. Thanks to Carpathian and loonapick.

23. Pleasant. Liked LUBRICATION and BEEKEEPER.

    Ta Carpathian & loonapick.

24. Thanks to Carpathian for this solid Monday fare.

    I don’t remember PRINCIPAL bring used for UK uni heads… isn’t that an American thing? I always knew them as (vice) chancellors.

    EMPHASIS was my favourite.

    Thanks both

25. Meandme@21 – spot on! Don’t forget pecks and bushels either.
    A Monday puzzle with lots of straightforward anagrams. Like loonapick i liked EMPHASIS, but I have a feeling it’s appeared before. I think the NONETHELESS mystery has been comprehensively solved now. Thanks to Carpathiand and loonapick.

26. Re 18A, HE = MAN has become a crossword staple, but I can’t think of a sentence in which the one could replace the other.

    And in 6D, in what context does P = PLAYERS?

27. Offspinner @ 26

    It’s SPORT with no “players initially”, ie P.

28. William @ 12, Easty@10 – Yes indeed, net is a pretty standard, well-known word to describe the shape one cuts out to construct a box, say. Known by me since childhood, when it’s perhaps more common, I’m surprised it’s passed you by….

29. Yes, Simon S @27, of course – I’d failed to notice “initially”.

30. Easty @ 16 and mine above – well, I was a schoolboy when first I met it well over 60 years ago!

31. My dad is a retired apiarist, so that was extra easy. Didn’t Vulcan do a very similar posse based clue earlier this year?

    Thanks to Carpathian and loonapick

32. Why is tense abbreviated to “t”? Enjoyable puzzle.

33. Eddie @32… used in dictionaries, pa.t. = past tense

34. Isn’t it the case that any word in a clue can signify its first letter? That’s how I always look at it. I find official abbreviations like Ho for House, Pi for Pious and RR or DD for Bishop more challenging, as you need to learn those.

35. Good Monday solve, although I was a bit held up at the end by the POSSESS and SORT crossers. I liked POSSESS, NONETHELESS and EMPHASIS.

    Thanks Carpathian and loonapick.

36. Martin N @34 – no, single letter abbreviations should be in the dictionary(ies) – or be described as taking the first letter (so from this week’s Quick Cryptic we had pudding primarily to give P). The other way single letters are clued are through the NATO phonetic alphabet, so Charlie or Hotel, or Papa for P or chemical symbols.

    Nice to see Carpathian in the Monday slot – hopefully this will encourage more Quick Cryptic-ers to try their luck at the Cryptics.

    Thank you to Carpathian and loonapick.

37. A doable transition from quick cryptic to cryptic I thought, so long as newer solvers had the patience to stick with it; just right for a Monday. Thanks Carpathian and loonapick.

38. Holmes hoped that Moriarty would fail to see the plan/net … hmm, doesn’t really fly …

39. grantinfreo @38- the schoolchildren considered the nets/plans in the question to see which ones would work (standard maths question – which of these nets will form a cube)

40. As Tim C @8 says ‘net’= ‘plan’is there in Chambers, so the setter is correct to use it, whether you agree with Chambers or not. I think a net in the sense of a trap or scheme is close enough to a çunning plan

41. William F P@28 (and many previous contributors over the years) – no matter how unheard-of it is, sooner or later, someone will pop up to say how surprised they are that so many people haven’t heard of xxxxx….

42. If you haven’t subscribed to a ‘PLAN’, you can’t access the ‘NET’ – my interpretation

43. Thanks for the blog , perfect Monday puzzle , give Carpathian a regular Monday slot . A cube has 11 distinct nets/plans all giving the same 3D shape .
    Everyone too polite to mention the naughty theme .

44. [ Aloha AlanC @23 I trust that you are wearing your Hawaiian shirt . I never want to put links but today I could be tempted by a certain 70s TV theme tune . ]

45. I get a bit fed up with “it’s in Chambers, so it must be right”, though I will accept (as Mike @40 implies) “it’s in Chambers, so it’s fair game for a setter”. Chambers is (intentionally) descriptive, so if a word is misused enough, it will eventually get in.

46. [You’ve got me there Roz? Intrigued.]

47. [ AlanC , you do surprise me , you should know this one and I have told you before .
    A further clue – Book ’em Danno . ]

48. muffin @ 45 I think you mean “If a word’s meaning evolves, the new meaning will eventually be recorded by dictionaries”. All dictionaries are descriptive, which is why the invaluable OED cites earliest and subsequent usages.

49. [I got the series OK but missing the Five O connection. Apologies for being a bit stupid.]

50. Simon S
    Yes, but if two words with different meanings become interchangeable, that is unacceptable. Take irritate/aggravate, for instance.

51. [ AlanC , I think you are teasing me or being deliberately obtuse , cast your mind back to Saturday afternoon . ]

52. [Teasing you and thanks for the reminder. Hope Sprog 3 had a good day.]

53. Lovely start for the week. I take “net” to mean “plan” as in the net of a cube, but I admit that NONETHELESS was a definition-only solve (do we have an acronym for that?). Net could also mean plan in the sense of a nodal graph, eg the plan of a computer network.

    THRONGS was a favourite but it took a while to remember that I didn’t have to translate from American and could thus freely assume underpants.

    Thanks to loonapick for easy to follow logic, and bothering to put all the synonyms for homphone in

54. AP @24 — I (an American whose entire career has been spent in higher education) have never seen PRINCIPAL used to mean a university leader. Primary and secondary schools have principals; universities have presidents, provosts, deans, chancellors, and trustees (among others), but never principals in my experience. I assumed that you lot called them principals over there; if not, then I agree that the phrase “university leader” in this clue is puzzling.

    Even after reading all the comments, I’m still not terribly happy with “plan” for NET, but I won’t lose sleep over it.

    And as an astronomer, I’ll add that I don’t think that Sirius (the DOG STAR) is any more of a guiding light than any other bright star, although I suppose it’s no less of one either. (The only stars that are particularly notable for being guiding lights are Polaris (the North Star) and the star that guided the wise men to Bethlehem.)

55. Ideal Monday puzzle. The “key beeper” made me smile.

56. Didn’t anyone else like 10? Loved the surface.

57. The explanation of 15 down should be the other way round:

    If uttered by the Rev. Spooner, BEE KEEPER may have come out as KEY BEEPER (“important alarm”).

58. Net = Plan must be uk schools. In my time (1970s) in engineering drawing classes, this was called “development of surfaces”
    I’ve graduated to solving Mondays following cryptic clues.

    Thanks Carpathian and loonapick

59. Thank you for the blog.

    Does Chambers list “FAILURE, noun, STEFFEN MCANDREW”?

    I managed to solve 9 clues.

60. paddymelon@18 I was taught 3d-nets in primary school in Devon in the mid seventies 🙂

61. A very pleasant solve. Hopefully a return after two weeks means more Carpathian puzzles on Mondays

    Mostly straightforward, but failed to solve NONETHELESS — grrr! I don’t agree that “plan” = NET. From the Chambers definition, we should take the whole phrase “plan to trap”

    Loved the Spoonerism at 15a. The physician has three beepers — one for the hospital, one for the university, and one for the spouse. Which of the three is the KEY BEEPER?

    Great job Steffen @59 — keep it up!

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