Independent 9338 / Monk

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The last Monk puzzle we blogged was back in April. Once we’d sorted out 17d (our LOI) we ended up smiling – always a good way to finish a solve.

 

The grid screamed ‘nina’ and in April the nina actually helped us complete the puzzle. It was’t until the last answer was in – after we’d altered 15ac and carried out a search for 17D that we wondered whether Monk’s prime objective was to fill all the top and right hand side unches with vowels and the bottom and left hand side with consonants. We can’t see anything else, but maybe we’ve missed something? See ChrisM@7 for more information.

Joyce is in charge today whilst Bert sets off to attempt the Three Peak Challenge tomorrow. If you are near Ingleborough, Whernside or Pen-y-ghent and you see a party of 10 tired individuals – give them a wave!

ACROSS
8   British campaign that is backing oil producers (6)
BRUNEI B (British) RUN (campaign) IE (that is) reversed or ‘backing’
9   No charge for this on iTunes, unlimited or otherwise (8)
NEUTRINO An anagram of oN ITUNEs without first and last letters or ‘unlimited’ and OR – anagrind is ‘otherwise’
10   Cheese crisp? Not quite (4)
BRIE BRIEf (crisp) without last letter or ‘not quite’ – a new meaning of ‘crisp’ for us
11   Grasping penis here, left aroused (10)
PREHENSILE An anagram of PENIS HERE and L (left) – anagrind is ‘aroused’ – say no more!
12   Finish off nuts and fruit (6)
BANANA BANANAs (nuts) without last letter or ‘finish off’
13   Become keen on act (4,4)
TURN INTO INTO (keen) after or ‘on’ TURN (act)
15   Is debate with hag about question regarding affairs of state? Au contraire (5,3,3,4)
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA An anagram of IS DEBATE WITH HAG – anagrind is ‘about’. We had ‘What’s the big deal’ for quite some whole until we rechecked the anagram after getting stuck in the SE corner. We’re not sure about the definition here. Is it to do with swapping things around so to becomes ‘regarding state of affairs’ or is the fact that you are not ‘stating something’ but rather ‘thinking’ it instead.
18   Toxic plant manufacture also reactive, initially contained (8)
MANDRAKE MAKE (manufacture) ‘containing’ AND (also) R (initial letter of reactive)
21   Drug taken by radio host with gong and drum (6)
DJEMBE E (drug) inside or ‘taken by’ DJ (radio host) and MBE (gong) – a new word for us
22   Resident of 1 caught between road and river going round foreign peninsula (4,6)
NOVA SCOTIA SCOT (resident of 1d) inside or ‘caught between) AI (road) and AVON (river) reversed or ‘going round’
24   See you around food that’s picked up (4)
CIAO Sounds like or ‘picked up’ CHOW (food)
25   Endurance  game (8)
PATIENCE Double definition
26   Big bird‘s eggs found by gate – that’s logical (6)
NANDOO NAND (logic gate as used in Boolean Algebra) OO (eggs)
DOWN
1   Northern supporter runs with promise to deliver port in the north (8)
ARBROATH BRA (supporter) R (runs) OATH (promise). ‘Northern’ refers to the fact that BRA is reversed or going up i.e. northwards – we’ve not seen it used like this before. The surface reading works well but the parsing feels a bit ‘clunky’ in our opinion! – see comments on 6d.
2   Empty place south of Muswell Hill, say – used, vacated housing (10)
UNTENANTED The clue relies on the fact that Muswell Hill’s post code is N10 so it’s N TEN ANTE (place as in ‘bet’) inside or being ‘housed by’ UseD (first and last letter only or ‘vacated’)
3   Display map that initially shows life form not seen on earth? (3-5)
AIR-PLANT AIR (display) PLAN (map) T (first or ‘initial’ letter of ‘that’). Air plants are found above ground.
4   Off-colour pants, say, squashing two articles (5,3,7)
UNDER THE WEATHER UNDERWEAR (pants, say) around or ‘squashing’ THE and THE (two articles)
5   Perhaps Spielberg‘s heartless conjecture about one of his films being rejected (6)
AUTEUR We think that this is AUgUR (conjecture) with the middle letter omitted or ‘heasrtless’ round ET (one of his films) reversed or ‘rejected’
6   Circus attraction in London aching to travel north (4)
EROS SORE (aching) reversed or ‘travelling north’. The circus is Piccadilly Circus. ‘Travelling north’ is the more common way of saying that the letters are reversed or ‘going up’ which is probably why Monk used Northern in 1d.
7   Stuff found between coupled identical proteins (6)
ENGLUT If you place two identical proteins next each other the answer is ‘found between’ glutEN GLUTen
14   Shot in air raid, regularly going down (10)
IRIDESCENT Regular letters in aIr RaId and DESCENT (going down)
16   Country connection having long lost item in the Camp David drawing room? (5,3)
INDIA INK INDIA (country) lINK (connection) without L (lost) – the American way of spelling Indian ink – hence the reference to Camp David. Does anyone use ink anymore? Actually quite a shame – Joyce’s Grandmother always wrote in green or purple ink which seemed very exotic at the time.
17   Decorate Nobleman with head turned around? (8)
EMBLAZON OMG – this had us puzzled. We ended up doing a word search in Chambers as we really couldn’t sort out whether we were missing something. The penny suddenly dropped – its an anagram of NOBLEMAN with the first ‘N’ or ‘head’ turned to become a Z – the anagrind is ‘around’ 
19   Bore   outdoor gear (6)
ANORAK Double definition
20   Climb, emerging topless (6)
ASCENT nASCENT (emerging) without first letter or ‘topless’
23   Run out of caustic chemical (4)
ACID ACrID (caustic) without R (run)

 

13 comments on “Independent 9338 / Monk”

  1. Thanks Monk and B&J

    While I enjoyed this, I had a distinct question mark over 5, as I don’t see AUGUR & CONJECTURE as being synonymous, and they don’t appear as usages in either Chambers Dictionary or Thesaurus. To my way of thinking, to augur means to presage a future event, while to conjecture is to have a fairly nebulous idea of what (the reason for) something might be, and could equally apply to an event in the past.

    Other than that I thought it an excellent puzzle.

  2. Thanks for blog. I was searching like crazy for the hidden extras that make a Monk complete but I too could only find the rows and columns of vowels and consonants.
    Tough but very good.

  3. 15ac I think is just something said to put things into perspective. Think mountains and molehills.
    Thanks to Monk for a challenging Thursday workout and to B&J (or just J) for the blog. Would never have parsed Untenanted.

  4. Thank you Monk and Bertandjoyce.

    A most enjoyable puzzle, but I could not parse UNTENANTED, well done B&J! EMBLAZON was fun.

    Good luck for the Three Peaks Challenge tomorrow, Bert.

  5. I had to cheat on ENGLUT (see it now, of course) and NANDOO (nope) but otherwise managed to parse everything, even noting the unusual “Northern” indicator for reversal-in-a-down-clue which seems a bit un-Indyesque, I thought.
    I can only wish Bert more success I’ve had than on my 3PC exploits – three times completed, number of mountaintop views of any sort=0.
    Many thanks to Monk&J

  6. Quite tough, particularly the SE corner, which was the last to fall. Oddly enough, on my first pass I guessed what the ‘gate’ in 26ac referred to, but I was thinking it would end in ‘or’ (as in ‘condor’) or maybe ‘nor’. And I also think the vowels/consonants arrangement of the unches was deliberate, as once I realised that seemed to be the case it certainly helped complete the SE corner. DJEMBE was new to me, just about gettable from the wordplay but needed confirmation by googling, also NANDOO which I might have come across before and then forgotten. Certainly needed the blog for several parsings.

    CoD? Well, 11ac raised both a smile and the eyebrows.

    Thanks, Monk and (B&)J.

  7. Thanks Monk and B&J

    I think there may be more to the vowels & consonants – all across solutions start with a consonant and end with a vowel, and vice versa for the downs

  9. The RH side took me a lot longer to solve than the left but I enjoyed the experience – 19a did make me smile. Monk is obviously in vowel/consonant mode as his last Telegraph Toughie had something similar (I can’t remember exactly what, and haven’t got time to look it up)

    Thanks to Monk and B&J – hope the Challenge isn’t too challenging.

  10. Thanks to B&J for blog and all for comments.

    Just to clear up the query on 15ac, my note for the clue is [is debate with hag]* ; D = question on state of affairs (re Chambers: “what on earth is going on?”)

    Also, re query of Simon S @1: under augur in Chambers, one finds intransitive verb: to guess or conjecture 😉

    Good luck with 3PC Bert: on hol this summer I’ve done Meall Dearg and Sgorr nam Fiannaidh on the Aonach Eagach ridge in Glencoe, Beinn Mohr in Argyll and Ben Rinnes in Morayshire. Thanks to cloud and rain, on only the last of these was there any view, and that was painful to procure when squinting into gale-force winds. Though it’s too late for this attempt, check out some great hiking maps (1:16,000, laminated and cheap), by searching for (in this case) “Around & About ‘xl’ — Yorkshire 3 Peaks, Whernside, Ingleborough & Pen-y-Ghent at the site of the marvellous and relatively new “Yellow Publications”. And no, I’m not on commission!

    Monk

  11. This felt like the output of a setter trying too hard to impress. Too many obscure words and too many clues where one could see an answer but had to reverse engineer it to fit the clue.I completed it in order not to be beaten rather than because I was enjoying it.
    I am disappointed. This setter seemed to have improved recently, but to me this was a reversion to bad habits. I can only hope that it was an old puzzle.

  12. Isn’t ‘reverse engineering’ an answer to fit the clue something solvers do all the time? OK, not every time – some clues can be fairly obvious, or ‘write-ins’. But very often an answer suggests itself either from the definition (if you can work out which part of the clue is the definition) or from crossing letters with little idea of the wordplay being apparent. Sometimes simply entering the answer in the grid then makes the wordplay obvious; sometimes the penny drops a while later – and sometimes it’s a complete mystery until someone explains it on fifteensquared.

  13. This didn’t so much defeat me as wipe the floor with me.

    First session as lunchtime, half an hour and nothing entered in the grid. Later in the afternoon, an hour and maybe six answers. Just now, two more. This is taking too long. I’ve just given up.

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