Good stuff from Hypnos. Over the last few months there has been discussion on whether the IoS’s reputation for gentle puzzles still holds true. Here we have gentle and tricky in the same puzzle. Thanks Hypnos.
| Across | ||
| 1 | IN HOCK | Popular wine put behind bars (2,4) |
| IN (popular) and HOCK (wine) | ||
| 4 | SCRUTINY | Element in rugby mostly getting negligible examination (8) |
| SCRUm (element in Rugby, mostly) with TINY (negligible) | ||
| 9 | DE NIRO | Hollywood star captivated by sudden irony (2,4) |
| found inside sudDEN IROny | ||
| 10 | PROTOCOL | Body of rules confused poor clot (8) |
| anagram of POOR CLOT | ||
| 11 | CAPRICCIO | Model exuding energy and bit of chic I love in free work? (9) |
| CAPRICe (Caprice Bourret, model) missing E (energy) then Chic (first letter, bit of) and I O (love, zero in tennis) | ||
| 13 | EXILE | Love of old Corsica among natives – it marked out Napoleon? (5) |
| EX (love of old) and ILE (island in French, Corsica for example in the native language) | ||
| 14 | NICK SKELTON | Rider‘s condition key perhaps with loss of energy later (4,7) |
| NICK (condition) SKELeTON (key perhaps) missing the second (later) E (enegry) – this defeated me. My wife has a cousin called Nick Skelton and this was the first thing that came into my head when I read the clue, which I promptly discarded as obviously not being a realistic solution. | ||
| 18 | SAUSAGE ROLL | Meaty item found in list following South African custom (7,4) |
| ROLL (list) following SA (South African) USAGE (custom) | ||
| 21 | AWAKE | Come to a train (5) |
| A and WAKE (train) | ||
| 22 | AGENT NOUN | Writer, maybe, chap with a lot of sense in article (5,4) |
| GENT (chap) with NOUs (sense, a lot of) in AN (article) – a noun that denotes someone or something that performs the action for a verb | ||
| 24 | HORRIFIC | Awful choir off-key imbibing religious instruction by fellow (8) |
| anagram (off-key) of CHOIR contains RI (religious instruction) then F (fellow) | ||
| 25 | EN BLOC | Note limited group that’s divided city as a whole (2,4) |
| NB (note) and LOt (group, limited) inside EC (city, City of London postcode) | ||
| 26 | MANTEGNA | Old artist in collection ultimately kept by loaded magnate (8) |
| collectioN (ultimate letter of) inside anagram (loaded, drunk) of MAGNATE | ||
| 27 | BRUTAL | Inhuman routine in scientific establishment retracted (6) |
| RUT (routine) in LAB (scientific establishment) reversed (retracted) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | INDECENT | Blue recess housing this in Notre Dame (8) |
| INDENT (recess) contains CE (this, French, as spoken in Notre Dame) | ||
| 2 | HAND-PICK | Carefully select some bananas and cream (4-4) |
| HAND (some bananas) and PICK (cream, of the bunch) | ||
| 3 | CORGI | Queen’s favourite decor, gilded walls (5) |
| faound inside (walled by) | ||
| 5 | CAR BOOT SALE | October alas misjudged for popular form of retail? (3,4,4) |
| anagram (misjudged) of OCTOBER ALAS – does misjudged really mean rearranged? | ||
| 6 | UP THE ANTE | Rising heat with ten playing to magnify the risk (2,3,4) |
| UP (rising) then anagram (playing) of HEAT with TEN | ||
| 7 | ISCHIA | Is friend boycotting Northern island? (6) |
| IS CHInA (friend) missing N (northern) – I’m not sure why Northern is capitalised in the clue | ||
| 8 | YELLED | Emitting painful expression, sensational journalist made loud noise (6) |
| YELLow (sensational, of journalism) missing OW (painful expression) and ED (editor, journalist) – one could also read YELLOW ED as a sensational journalist | ||
| 12 | COEDUCATION | Minor training with no gender bias? (11) |
| (barely) cryptic definition, a minor is a child. “training with no geneder bias” is a literal and unambigous defintion for coeducation, so how does adding “minor” at the front make it cryptic? Perhaps I am missing something here. | ||
| 15 | SYSTEMISE | Rearrange messy site and impose order (9) |
| anagram (rerrange) of MESSY SITE | ||
| 16 | MONOGLOT | No good line occupying discussion – that’s characteristic of the English? (8) |
| NO G (good) L (line) in MOOT (discussion) | ||
| 17 | CLINICAL | Plain like some medicine? (8) |
| double definition | ||
| 19 | MAYHEM | PM put on edge in chaos (6) |
| MAY (Theresa May, PM) on HEM (edge) | ||
| 20 | PATRON | Country singer switching centre for proprietor (6) |
| Dolly PARTON switching the middle letters | ||
| 23 | TENOR | Pavarotti, say, vocalised note (5) |
| sounds like (vocalised) “tenner” (note) | ||
*anagram
definitions are underlined
17D. I don’t think clinical means plain. To me, in its metaphoric sense, it means precise.
Also not convinced by clinical, but it fitted. Hadn’t heard of Mantegna or agent noun, and didn’t know the meaning for capriccio, but all gettable from wordplay so fairly straightforward. Thanks to S&B
I found this tricky in places. I thought initially that 4ac was very sneaky, having parsed it as SC (chemical element scandium, symbol Sc) + RU + TINY, and that not many solvers would know scandium – only when I looked at it again did I see the correct parsing. And I wasn’t sure how to parse EN BLOC – ‘note’ could have been simply N which would have left one wondering about what word BLO was part of.
But there were some great clues; EXILE, ISCHIA and INDECENT were my favourites
Gasmanjack @1 and Paul A @2: Chambers gives ‘plain’ as one meaning of ‘clinical’.
Thanks, Hypnos and PeeDee
Re 12d: I think minor is necesssary to specify school training (i.e. education) rather than anything more general.
1ac. IN HOCK only means pawned as far as I know. Does that count as “behind bars”?
Good fun … thanks to Hypnos and PeeDee
Thanks Hypnos and PeeDee
Geebs @ 4: Chambers gives ‘in hock’ as 1: In Debt, 2: In prison; 3 Having been pawned, in pawn.
hth
Thanks Simon …new one on me …
G.