Welcome to a new setter, Jack, with a well-crafted puzzle.
The special instructions were concise and unambiguous: “Each across clue’s wordplay indicates a repeated letter not required in its solution and each down solution requires a repeated letter, not indicated in its wordplay”.
In practice this device made the down clues much easier than the across ones, although I’m not sure exactly why. I only worked out the parsing for several of the across clues when I came to write the blog. In any event the puzzle was considerably less taxing than last month’s, for which I was grateful.
For the across clues I have given the wordplay, including repetitions without spelliing out which letter was repeated (it should be obvious). Equally, in the down clues I haven’t spelled out which letter is repeated, since there is only one repeated letter in each solution (except for 13 down, where D is the repeated letter).
So thanks to Jack and I look forward to more puzzles from him (or her).
| Across | ||
| 8 | BORE UP | Managed to cope with Nick going back to join the army again (4,2) |
| ROB (rev); RE-UP (an American term meaning to re-enlist). | ||
| 9 | REASONED | Argued about when one needs odd characters to leave (8) |
| RE AS ONE ED (even characters of nEeDs). | ||
| 10 | COMPREHEND | Climax doesn’t end with arrest after leader escapes grasp (10) |
| COM(e) (a)PPREHEND. | ||
| 11 | MIEN | Attitude that is displayed by soldiers? (4) |
| IE in MEN. | ||
| 12 | TRAMPLED | Stampede did this enough to dam river flowing west (8) |
| AMPLE in DART (rev). | ||
| 15 | ACTORS | Company does put up rent, subject to a 25% discount (6) |
| TOR(n) in ACTS. The last one in for me, although the solution seemed obvious, the wordplay was not. I suppose “put up” does serve as an inclusion indicator, but it took me a long time to see it. | ||
| 16 | AWED | Did cow essentially eat grass? (4) |
| (e)A(t) WEED. | ||
| 17 | DRINK | Drive opens up delicate chip shot at the nineteenth? (5) |
| D(rive) in DINK. | ||
| 18 | IDLE | Stopping retrograde cell division is futile (4) |
| Hidden and reversed in “cell division”. | ||
| 20 | SCALES | Witness does this holding state symbol of justice (6) |
| CAL in SEES. | ||
| 22 | LITIGATE | Had settled game with it before dispute (8) |
| LIT (settled) TIG (children’s game) ATE (had). The change in order of the elements of the charade made this a particularly difficult clue to parse. | ||
| 24 | STYE | Viewer’s complaint lambasted set incorporating empty theatricality (4) |
| T(heatricalit)Y in *SET. | ||
| 25 | REPRESSION | Free press I only partially control (10) |
| Hidden (“partially”) in “free press I only”. | ||
| 28 | MENSWEAR | Workforce curse about introduction of regulation clothing (8) |
| R(egulation) in MEN SWEAR. Perhaps the least successful of the across clues, since there is absolutely nothing to tell you where to insert the superfluous R, and the clue works perfectly well without it. | ||
| 29 | HUSSAR | Soldier mounted stairs, skipping every other one, in pursuit of swimmer (6) |
| HUSS (swimmer) S A R (alternate letters of StAiRs). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TOMORROW | The future leaders of the Marxist revolution were all estranged by Mao in the end (8) |
| Initial letters of “The Marxist Revolution Were” and the final letter of MaO, which is inserted so as to separate them (“all estranged”); the unclued repeated letter is obviously the additional R. | ||
| 2 | PEEP | Go and take a quick look (4) |
| PEP. | ||
| 3 | APPEAL | Charm one with the sound of bells (6) |
| A PEAL. | ||
| 4 | TREE | Box for one found to the right of aisle’s opening in theatre (4) |
| The last three letters of “theatre” (to the right of the a(isle)). | ||
| 5 | AARDVARK | The Bible describes way this vessel rescued animal (8) |
| RD (“way”) in AV (“the Bible”), ARK. | ||
| 6 | FORMATTING | Document’s style supports reproduction (10) |
| FOR MATING. | ||
| 7 | VENEER | Thin coat able to be removed in August (6) |
| VENER(able). The capital letter in August is (deliberately) misleading. | ||
| 13 | MIDDLE EAST | Location of Emirates Stadium’s entrance let media broadcast (6,4) |
| S(tadium) in *(LET MEDIA). | ||
| 14 | DRILL | Training ground starts to demoralise latest recruits immediately (5) |
| Anagram of first letters. | ||
| 17 | DISCREET | Unlikely to reveal spoilers by rolling credits (8) |
| *CREDITS. | ||
| 19 | LITTORAL | Drunk has spoken of close relationship to the drink? (8) |
| LIT (here used to mean drunk; see 22 across), ORAL. | ||
| 21 | CUTTER | One who self-harms is more attractive (6) |
| CUTER. | ||
| 23 | TEETHE | Start to develop bite by nipping end off tie (6) |
| TETHE(r). | ||
| 26 | PURR | Queen’s response to fuss possibly upset rector at university (4) |
| R UP. | ||
| 27 | SASS | Talk back to American army unit (4) |
| SAS. | ||
*anagram
Jack has actually set a couple of Genius puzzles before this one: see here.
I agree that this was a bit easier than the norm. I’m going to be blogging the August puzzle, so I hope the pendulum doesn’t swing too far the other way…
aka Serpent in t’Indy.
Thanks, both: I hadn’t come across him under this name before.
I couldn’t parse 22a, LITIGATE, though it couldn’t be anything else, and I still don’t understand why “settled” is LIT.
I had OWED for 16a right up until filling in the answers online, even though it didn’t quite seem to work, because it was “the only word that fits” (ahem!).
Was 26d a reference to David Cameron’s controversial statement that HM “purred” in response to the news of Scotland’s “remain” vote, I wonder?
In 17a, it’s both the D and R (“opens”) of drive, isn’t it?
Tony @ 4: LIT is here used in the third sense of “light” given in Chambers, a verb meaning (among other things) to settle, for which the past participle is lit. The best example I can think of is “he lit upon a solution to the puzzle”.
In 17A, the R of drive is the extraneous letter, which I should have indicated as it appears in the wordplay.
bridgesong @5
Hmm … that’s not in the online Chambers C21st Dictionary, although light upon (= “to come upon or find it by chance • suddenly lit upon the idea”) is, right at the end.
Btw, I meant to say, I got completely stuck on this puzzle for about two weeks with only about a third of the lights filled, then just got up one morning and finished it off. Can’t remember now which clue got me back in.
bridgesong, I think the extra letter in 17a is actually D – drive gives DR (as in the names of streets), not just D, so the wordplay leads to D(DR)INK. R isn’t doubled so it can’t be the extra.
Tony – nice idea about the purring Queen, but the vote wasn’t really a ‘fuss’… (In case anyone is wondering, Queen is common crosswordese for a female cat, who might purr in response to being fussed over.)
Hi all
Thanks to Jack and Bridgesong
I think the crossword is even clever than has been said so far, unless you all saw what I’m about to say, but did not mention it.
First of all, each set of two repeated letters is contiguous in both across and down clues. Just being repeated did not mean that they had to be.
Secondly the letters removed from the across clues read in sequence “REPEATED LETTERS”. Similarly the letters added to down clues read “REPEATED LETTERS”.
Thirdly because of point two above the letter removed in, say, the fifth across clue [letter ‘A’ in clue 12A, as it happens, is the same as the letter added to the fifth down clue [added ‘A’ in 5D]. That is repeated through each of the 15 across and down clues. So that is like transferring the letter from the Nth across clue to the Nth down clue. So that confirms what Andrew @7 states, it has to be a ‘D’.
For a while I tried to make ‘PEE’ in 2D having come from the definition ‘GO’. However Jack is not Paul, so it wasn’t to be!
Cheers everyone
Hi again
I meant to add that I noticed the across/down pairing of letters quite early on, after I had done about 7 or 8 clues. and I guessed it was not a coincidence. That led me to suspect which letter to add or subtract if I had already solved the companion across or down clue. That worked. It made solving a bit easier.
After getting about half the crossword done, it became clear the letters read “REPEATED LETTERS”. That made the rest of the solving even easier, although no less satisfying.
Andrew @ 7
Re 17a, I believe you’re right:
DR opens up DINKRe 26d, good point about queen=female cat, but if the Scottish referendum was nae “fuss” why are so many against having it all over again?
Gordon @ 8,9
!! Genius, indeed! If only I’d spotted that when I was stuck!. Bet Jack’s relieved it didn’t go over everyone’s head.
Thanks, bridgesong, for the blog and to everyone that has commented. Thanks particularly to Gordon who noticed and pointed out REPEATED LETTERS.
Jack
Andrew @7: you are of course completely correct in your parsing of DRINK (as has been confirmed by subsequent posts).
Gordon @8: I said it was a well-crafted puzzle! But I hold my hand up and admit that I completely missed the symmetry and significance of the omitted letters that you have identified. Had I chosen to set them out in the blog, then I suspect that it would have become obvious. As Tony @10 comments, it would have made solving the puzzle easier.
Serpent (Jack): thanks for dropping in, and apologies for not knowing who you were. I had relied on the alphabetical list of setters by newspaper on this site, and hadn’t searched more widely.
I think the Genius spot is the only one where can find Serpent in the Graun.
Very welcome too. Thanks er Jack and bridgesong
Anyone know where the winner is announce, btw?
Hi Tony @14
The Guardian crossword editor used to name the winner in his monthly letter, but has not done so for many months – unsure why. If you win [as I know because I did once] you get an e-mail on the Monday morning after the Saturday close for submissions. So it sounds as if neither you nor I were successful this month. Sorry.
Thanks, Gordon. I was pretty sure I would have heard if I’d won, but it’s nice to see who did anyway. Oh well, on with this month’s (assuming I can work out what those instructions mean).