I made very heavy weather of this one, it took me an absolute age to finish it. In retrospect I cannot see any reason for this. The clues are very straightforward and there are no devious tricks in here at all. I think making a straightforward puzzle seem tricky must be considered a form of deviousness in itself. Thank you Picaroon for somehow pulling one over on me!
| Across | ||
| 7 | SIMULATE | Criminal must lie, covering up a sham (8) |
| anagram (criminal) of MUST LIE containing A | ||
| 9 | AIRMEN | Broadcast Mass in French for people in service (6) |
| AIR (broadcast) M (mass) and EN (in, French) | ||
| 10 | ZANY | Axes keep paint evenly off the wall (4) |
| Z and Y (two axes on a graph) containing pAiNt (even letters of) | ||
| 11 | MOTHERWELL | Look after water supply in Scottish club (10) |
| MOTHER (look after) WELL (water supply) – Scottish football club | ||
| 12 | KILLER | Orca about 45 inches back in the drink (6) |
| ELL (measurement, about 45 inches) reversed (back) in KIR (a drink) – a killer whale | ||
| 14 | LOCKSTEP | Way to march forwards on pitch, then sulk on the way back (8) |
| LOCKS (forwards on a rugby pitch) then PET (sulk) reversed (on the way back) | ||
| 15 | OUTSIDE | Not in wrong camp (7) |
| OUT (wrong) and SIDE (camp, eg opposing side/camp) | ||
| 17 | PANGRAM | Criticise lightweight’s characterful text (7) |
| PAN (criticise) and GRAM (a light weight) – some text containing every letter of the alphabet, so a full set of characters. Like this puzzle. | ||
| 20 | ALPHABET | Literary captain stores record and French letters (8) |
| AHAB (literary captain, Moby Dick) contains LP (record) then ET (and, in French) | ||
| 22 | BORDER | Edging in front of brown Fiat (6) |
| Brown (front of, first letter) then ORDER (fiat) | ||
| 23 | INFRINGING | Disobeying one far-right group going around (10) |
| I (one) NF (National Front, far right group) RINGING (going round) | ||
| 24 | ROUX | Herb said to make basis for sauce (4) |
| ROUX sounds like “rue” (a herb) | ||
| 25 | UNLACE | Nice one! Pro on lake is to remove bindings (6) |
| UN (one in French, in Nice perhaps) then ACE (pro) following (on) L (lake) | ||
| 26 | TRAVESTY | Artist very cutting in short farce (8) |
| RA (Royal Academician, artist) inside (cutting in) TESTY (short, bad tempered) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TIRAMISU | Sweet farm animal I dressed in fancy suit (8) |
| RAM (farm animal) I inside anagram (fancy) of SUIT | ||
| 2 | QUAY | Platform by the sea‘s as rickety in the end (4) |
| QUA (as) and ricketY (the end letter of) | ||
| 3 | JAMMER | Jack’s replaced head of tool: it blocks signals (6) |
| J (jack) replacing first letter (head) of hAMMER (tool) | ||
| 4 | VALENCIA | Knight, south of sunken area, spies Spanish city (8) |
| N (knight, chess) underneath (south of) VALE (sunken area) then CIA (spies) | ||
| 5 | BROWN SUGAR | Brother returning sauce bottles has sweetener (5,5) |
| BR (brother) RAGU (sauce) reversed (returning) contains (bottles) OWNS (has) | ||
| 6 | WELLIE | Vigour of compilers primarily liking deception (6) |
| WE (crossword compilers) Liking (primarily, first letter of) and LIE (deception) | ||
| 8 | EXTOLS | Praises sex changes, receiving flipping good deal (6) |
| anagram (changes) of SEX containing (receiving) LOT (good deal) reversed (flipping) | ||
| 13 | LAST HURRAH | Ultra harsh, after trashing final performance (4,6) |
| anagram (after trashing) of ULTRA HARSH | ||
| 16 | DEBUNKED | Drivel in legal document is shown to be wrong (8) |
| BUNK (drivel) in DEED (legal document) | ||
| 18 | ADEQUATE | Decent English queen caught in a tryst (8) |
| E (English) QU (queen) inside (caught in) A DATE (tryst) | ||
| 19 | STRICT | Severe Conservative dismissed by press (6) |
| conSTRICT (press) missing (dismissed by) CON (Conservative) | ||
| 21 | LINING | Bit of muslin in glove? (6) |
| found inside musLIN IN Glove – definition is &lit | ||
| 22 | BIG MAC | Super computer’s menu choice (3,3) |
| BIG (super) MAC (computer) | ||
| 24 | REEF | Run and charge around in rocky area (4) |
| R (run) and FEE (charge) reversed (around) | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
Thanks PeeDee. I agree, a real challenge. And I have to admire the nina signposted by 15, 17 and 20,22. It is a remarkable achievement to account for all 26 letters this way. it was only due to this that I wrote 6d in, I still don’t see what ‘wellie’ has to do with ‘vigour’.
Wow! OUTSIDE – PANGRAM – ALPHABET – BORDER! Of course I completely failed to notice this when solving it but it’s brilliant!
Biggles: as in “give it some wellie”.
Thanks to Picaroon and PeeDee. I too had trouble getting started, partly because several items were new to me (MOTHERWELL as football club, LOCKS in LOCKSTEP from rugby, WELLIE as vigor), and my LOI was INFRINGING (I took a while before spotting NF as right wing), but the clues were sufficient (along with a little help from Google). Very enjoyable.
Just to be clear there’s a nina listing all the letters of the alphabet, a pangram, outside, around the border of the crossword!
The pangram took this to a whole new level – Picaroon is a very clever setter to have managed the alphabetical border! I missed it, of course. Again, couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Well done to those solvers who picked up the indicator in 15, 17, 20 and 22 across and therefore could relish spotting the nina/pangram!
I had a lot of trouble with the puzzle and found it very hard. Like ACD@3, I was unfamiliar with the Football Club MOTHERWELL at 11a, and WELLIE meaning vigour or energy at 6d. Oddly enough, the latter word (different spelling) then came up the day after in the Stuart MacBride novel I was reading, where young bystanders disparingingly called out to a police officer chasing a crook: “Come on, Piggy, put some welly in it!”.
Having slotted in several guesses, I really appreciated your explanations and clarifications, PeeDee.
My favourites were the two four letter words – devilishly simple in retrospect, but they still took me a while – 10a ZANY, and 24a ROUX (which led me to look up and re-read Ophelia’s herbs and flowers speech in “Hamlet”),
This was a brilliant offering from Picaroon, I thought.
Thanks PeeDee. Missed JimS#2 points since I don’t write them in. Just needed help for the ROUX clue and to verify the unlikely synonym of vigour in 6D. Some tricky parsings here eg the last two across clues but all in all a decent challenge, thanks Picaroon.
I don’t fully understand 14a – how is “sulk” = “pet” ? Nevertheless I finished it. 22D was favourite, ROUX was new to me and last in.
Wow! I got PANGRAM early, and thought “Aha! this is going to be a pangrammatic puzzle”, but forgot to check that when I finished it and certainly never suspected the feat which I first appreciated from BigglesA’s comment.
I was, luckily, quite familiar with the phrase, “Give it some wellie!” I think it’s cognate with “Boot it!” and imagine it’s to do with heavy pressure, as from a Wellington boot, on the accelerator pedal of a car. I could be completely wrong of course.
Wow! How does somebody do that?
I didn’t find this especially tough though if i’d realised the devilish brilliance of the complete pangram i might have been intimidated! Shown by my entering tangram instead of pangram. Well at least that’s a sort of puzzle!
Thanks PeeDee. And congratulations to Picaroon for this witty, elegant grid. It gives us a border pangram, an outside alphabet, an outside pangram, a border alphabet, a pangram border, an alphabet outside, an alphabet border and a pangram outside!
Salesman – to pet means to sulk, I don’t know the derivation of the word but I don’t think it is related to animal friends.
I had not spotted that the pangram is around the border. Nice one!
Brilliant, Picaroon. Somewhat relieved to discover that I was not alone in missing the border pangram and indicators. I feel that completing the grid was like eating a cordon bleu dish without noticing its special flavours, but I have enjoyed reading these comments.
Thanks to all.
Thanks Picaroon and PeeDee
Brilliant – for once I spotted what was going on. For what it’s worth (which isn’t much!) it’s only two letters short of a double pangram.
I think my last in was ZANY but after noticing ALPHABET and PANGRAM the z was the only one missing in the set.
Thanks PeeDee and Pickers.(forgot the Roux brothers!)
There are times when crosswords come close to being works of art. This is one of them.
Very clever and lots of fun.
I saw 22D as a double definition. There is a computer called Big Mac.
I found this quite straightforward but I missed all the skilful embroidery. PANGRAM was my LOI and I assumed the puzzle was one but I didn’t bother to check. So,a very much better puzzle than I first thought.
Thanks Picaroon.
I found this quite pleasant but rather easy.
I still don’t understand all the excitement about a pangram!
“All the letters of the alphabet are used in the puzzle!”
“All the letters of the alphabet are arround the border of the puzzle”
Whoopy dooooo!!!
I know that someone will now say that the internal indicators made this an aid to solving. Well that’s very useful in a puzzle so easy that no extra assistance is required.
I do understand that the most boring bit of setting is initially filling the grid so it’s understandable that setters try and make it more interesting for themselves with pangrams, themes etc. However this is of no interest to me whatsoever.
My feelings on normal pangrams are well documented. Looking for these is of course counterproductive as the overall time spent far exceeds the time saved in the odd case when a puzzle actually is a pangram and knowing so helps!!!!
P.S. I did actually notice that this was a pangram after I had completed it. This of course was purely down the to “PANGRAM” as a solution.
I raced through all but INFRINGING and UNLACE perfectly as straightforward as those that went before.
Of course I missed the ALPHABETICAL BORDER despite the pointers !
Hats off to ye Picaroon and thanks PeeDee and other posters for explaining it all so well
In the FT section of this site I once blogged a puzzle by Monk that was a triple pangram, every letter of the alphabet included three times. Embarrassingly I failed to notice it was a pangram at all until some kind person pointed it out to me in the comments.
I am grateful to Picaroon for including the word PANGRAM so I at least managed to spot something. Sadly I failed to notice OUTSIDE BORDER etc but I am am learning and I will get there eventually.
I think someone setting for the The Hindu once produced a standard 15×15 quadruple pangram (in English), though I am not sure where to find it.
PeeDee @ 21
Maize’s debut (I think) 9392 in the Indy last November was a quadruple pangram.
Thanks Simon. I see Maize gives a link to the THC quadgruple pangram in his commnent at the end of the blog. For anyone interested the links are here…
After Dark in The Hindu
Maize in The Independent
I am generally on BNTO’s side when it comes to pangrams.
However, they can be helpful in finding the final bits [as it was for me today].
That this crossword was a pangram was, of course, clearly signposted (in, at least, 17ac).
But that was not really what Picaroon wanted to share with us.
This crossword (which I overall found rather pedestrian for a Picaroon) had ‘pangram’ as a kind of theme.
I have to admit that I saw the full information in rows 8 and 10 only at the very end.
Finally seeing Picaroon using all the letters of the alphabet around the perimeter, did add to my appreciation of the crossword.
I don’t think Picaroon is a setter who likes to show off.
I even think he is (like many others) someone who cannot be bothered too much about pangrams.
This was different, and surely very different from Maize having that quadruple pangram.
In that respect, the fact that it is almost a double pangram is 100% irrelevant.
For us and for Picaroon.
Many thanks PeeDee for another one of your many blogs.
I didn’t realise this was a pangram until I solved 17a, and at that point I’d done most of the puzzle. Only aa V was missing, and I already thought that the “very” in the clue for TRAVESTY was indicating one, so it didn’t help me complete the puzzle. Unlike some commenters, though, I enjoyed the puzzle itself and also got an extra kick out of discovering the pangram and particularly the border.
Thanks, Picaroon and PeeDee.