The mind can do some funny things when it comes to word association. As soon as I saw it was Nutmeg this morning I immediately thought of rice pudding, followed very quickly by the episode in Yes Minister where Sir Desmond Glazebrook was trying to get Jim Hacker to sanction a high rise development for his bank’s HQ. How odd!
Anyway, on to the puzzle. A higher than usual number of &lit and/or extended definition clues, offset by some that would perhaps be better suited to a Quiptic. I would have expected something a little more challenging on a Thursday, and was hoping so when I agreed to cover for Andrew, but it was not to be. However, that said, it was a pleasant enough start to the day.
Across
9,19 down Re plan: clear up date using this? (9,8)
PERPETUAL CALENDAR – an inferred anagram of RE PLAN CLEAR UP DATE with an extended def.
10 The latest thing notorious 16 announced (5)
CRAZE – sounds like (announced) ‘Krays’ (notorious 16 {twins})
11 Louisianan prison guards just reduced by half (5)
CAJUN – CAN (prison) around (guards) JU[st] (just reduced by half)
12 Worker organised love-in, not a normal story (9)
ANTINOVEL – ANT (worker) plus an anagram (organised) of LOVE-IN
13 Lots of notice for this amount of work (3-4)
MAN-YEAR – MANY (lots of) EAR (notice) – ear=attention=notice can be confirmed in Chambers
14 Current / type of beer (7)
DRAUGHT – double def.
17 Verne‘s English physicist deprived of love by son (5)
JULES – J[o]ULE (English physicist deprived of love) S (son)
19 Those ending tragic affair may (3)
CRY – [tragi]C [affair]R [ma]Y – &lit
20 Part of grant is ring-fenced for some weeks (5)
TISRI – contained in (part of) ‘granT IS RIng-fenced’ – (in the Jewish calendar) the first month of the Jewish civil year, seventh of the ecclesiastical, usu part of September and October (Chambers) – the print version managed to include a superfluous ‘a’ in the clue
21 No bother (almost) slicing bread in Rio (7)
REFUSAL – FUS[s] bother (almost)) in (slicing) REAL (bread in Rio)
22 PM protected by detective and special police alarms (7)
DISMAYS – MAY (PM) in (protected by) DI (detective) SS (special police)
24 Novel by incomer in its early stages (9)
EMBRYONIC – an anagram (novel) of BY INCOMER
26 Soft part of foot’s become very dry (5)
PARCH – P (soft) ARCH (part of foot)
28 Return of public transport turned out well (5)
SMART – TRAMS (public transport) reversed (return of)
29 Union leader in fight with editor knocked down (9)
AUCTIONED – U[nion] (union leader) in ACTION (fight) plus ED (editor)
Down
1 Energy producers deal with constant depression (4)
OPEC – COPE (deal) with the C (constant) moved to the end (with … depression)
2 Hard worker making veiled threat to PC? (6)
TROJAN – double def.
3 Parties forbid abstentions, each admitting vote’s close (10)
BEANFEASTS – BAN (forbid) around [vot]E plus FASTS (abstentions) around [vot]E
4 Foreign worker‘s phoned appeal to father in Paris? (2,4)
AU PAIR – sounds like (phoned) ‘Oh pere’ (appeal to father in Paris)
5 Behind time, heading off in high spirits (8)
ELATEDLY – [b]ELATEDLY (behind time, heading off)
6 Medical check barely sufficient (time lacking) (4)
SCAN – SCAN[t] (barely sufficient(time lacking))
7 Nevada city girl entertaining star (3,5)
LAS VEGAS – LASS (girl) around (entertaining) VEGA (star)
8 Famous Swiss / count (4)
TELL – double def.
13 Ex-PM runs over press turning up (5)
MAJOR – R (runs) O (over) JAM (press) reversed (turning up)
15 One cream primarily applied to injured patients? (10)
ANTISEPTIC – I (one) C[ream] (cream primarily) after (applied to) an anagram (injured) of PATIENTS – &lit
16 Doubles result in tennis voided (5)
TWINS – WIN (result) in T[enni]S (tennis voided)
18 It provides a bit of help, essentially, at sea (8)
LIFEBOAT – an anagram (at sea) of A BIT OF [h]EL[p] (help, essentially) – semi-&lit or extended def., whichever you prefer
22 Extract essence from processed cod etc (6)
DECOCT – an anagram (processed) of COD ETC
23 An old hand’s adopting new protective gear (6)
APRONS – A PRO’S (an old hand’s) around (adopting) N (new)
24 It’s no trouble making regular use of metal, say (4)
EASY – alternate letters in (making regular use of) ‘mEtAl SaY’
25 Elusive mountain-dweller still single (4)
YETI – YET (still) I (single)
27 Obscure papers ambassador’s brought round (4)
HIDE – ID (papers) in HE (ambassador)
Lovely economical cluing from Nutmeg as always. Favourites included BEANFEASTS, ANTISEPTIC and SMART. Couldn’t parse OPEC. Many thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
What a good crossword week this has become! A fine puzzle from Nutmeg today following yesterday’s very enjoyable Arachne. There was enough challenge in this one for me, Gaufrid, though I must admit to a higher than usual fill-in rate on my first pass, which pleased me as I am a terribly slow solver.
I am not quite sure what an ANTINOVEL (12a) is, but that was all it could be given the anagram. I have to admit to guessing 13a MAN-YEAR – I am only familiar with the term “man-hours” but trying “man-hour” when 3d BEANFEASTS was the only possibility, I had to rethink that and got it by seeing MAN-Y for “Lots of”. Also 20a TISRI and 22d DECOCT were unknown to me, but gettable.
I couldn’t parse 1d OPEC or 27d HIDE, and solved them both from the definitions rather than the wordplay, so I really appreciate your help, Gaufrid. I am still really not sure about the “depression” indicator for moving the “c” in COPE, or why HE means ambassador.
Sorry to be a bit negative, but, even though it is my family nickname and I was rather pleased to see it in a crossword, I found 17a JULES a bit too obvious and a rather weak clue.
But, as Eileen would say, “too many favourites to mention” otherwise, with circles around 10a CRAZE, 11a CAJUN, 24a EMBRYONIC, 29a AUCTIONED, 4d AU PAIR and 18d LIFEBOAT.
Thanks to Nutmeg for the fun I had while solving.
[I liked your “Yes Minister” word association story, Gaufrid.]
I take no credit for spotting this (that goes to aztobesed at the other place), but there is a hidden theme here which passed me by.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid (and aztobesed)
Julie@2
HE means His or Her Excellency. Even I know that when my brain engages. Thanks all for a pleasant though rainy Thursday morning.
Thanks, Gaufrid.
I don’t usually notice [or care about] pangrams, but did see that we were only a couple of letters short of one here. In looking for the missing ones, I saw the theme that Aoxomoxoa comments on, @ 3 – very clever!
I’m much more impressed by proper &lits and thought 18dn was a beauty.
Many thanks to Nutmeg for an enjoyable puzzle, as always – and especially for the icing on the cake. 😉
PS: I meant that I’m much more impressed by &lits than pangrams, not ghost themes, which I do [usually] like!
Help! I can’t see that hidden theme. I must be thick!
Thanks for the elucidation re HE, Martin@4.
A few answers that were new to me: PERPETUAL CALENDAR, ANTINOVEL, TISRI and DECOCT, although the latter rings a vague bell. Some answers took a while to parse, e.g. BEANFEASTS and REFUSAL. All in all, I thought this was at the very least an average difficulty level for this tough setter. I also thought 18d was brilliant although I would class it as a semi &lit since the initial 2 words are not part of the cryptic reading strictly speaking. Thanks to all.
OK so we all know that Nutmeg can turn the screw, and I’ve seen a few comments that this puzzle is on the easy side, in parts, but it is fantastically written IMO and that’s apart from the very clever theme which I certainly didn’t spot.
Every bit as good as the other puzzles this week; perhaps my favourite.
Thanks to Gaufrid and Nutmeg
Also scratching heads here about hidden theme
Look at 22A and 22D and see what they contain, then look around
All the months of the year (abbreviated) are hidden in the grid; presumably also linked to PERPETUAL CALENDAR.
@12 Jason – and perhaps to 13a as well?
I’ve solved quite a few crosswords over the years with an identical ghost theme so I did actually spot this one fairly early on.
Thanks to Nutmeg for an entertaining crossword and to Gaufrid for the explanations
I’d ground to a halt on much of the LHS, until I stopped thinking there was some obscure knowledge required for the “Verne” clue. After that, things fell into place quickly. Didn’t spot the theme, though (I rarely do).
Thanks, Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
I was totally groping in the dark. All praise to the clever folk who saw (or found) the abbreviated months of the year. Lovely link to 9a19d PERPETUAL CALENDAR. For me, this revelation added a whole new level to Nutmeg’s cleverness in setting! So glad I am part of this forum, or I would be much the poorer.
The online version also had the superfluous “a” in 20A (“a some weeks”) when I saw it. I wonder if an early draft had “a month” until Nutmeg decided against the clear reference to the theme, and missed the “a” when editing.
Very enjoyable. Missed the theme in the Times2 and the Guardian. Muffin, following on from yesterday’s discussion, there is a connected fictional character in the Times cryptic crossword today.
So elegant. I agree with baerchen at 9. My favourite of the week so far. Nothing to do with level of difficulty and all to do with solver satisfaction.
Thank yo Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
What fun, I completely missed the theme, first tried MAN-HOUR for 13a, MAN-YEAR was new to me, but even that did not arouse my suspicions – TISRI was also new, another hint?
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” came to mind while parsing MAN-YEAR.
I thought I was on a roll when PERPETUAL CALENDAR went in straight away, and from then the answers kept on flowing. Solving from the print edition, the rogue ‘a’ gave me a little pause at 20a, but it couldn’t be anything other than TISRI, once I’d checked it was a real word of course.
Far too busy scouring the grid for a pangram to think about looking for a theme, but I see it now.
Thanks Nutmeg and Gaufrid
My three favourite compilers on consecutive days! Mind you, I wasn’t enjoying this all that much when the first pass of the across clues yielded only SMART; fortunately the downs were easier (though I too couldn’t parse OPEC). TISRI was new to me, but it’s an obvious hidden.
Favourites were CAJUN, MAN-YEAR, EMBRYONIC and LIFEBOAT.
[Thanks for the tip, PaulW @18, but I never get the Times.]
Many thanks Gaufrid and posters. I started out damning this with faint praise until I was led to see the light. I dont usually look for a theme in Nutmeg puzzles-very elegantly done. I must stop pigeon-holing setters although there is invariably a theme in Brendan, Brummei, Boatman etc.
The theme passed me by. First in was 18, which was oddly familiar (http://www.andlit.org.uk/cccwc/resultspage.php?comp_no=103). Anyone who frequents the CCCWC here will probably remember that there was a theme last year along the same lines as the one in this puzzle, LIFEBOAT being part of that theme. I hasten to add that I make no suggestion of plagiarism or laziness on Nutmeg’s part; it could very easily be a happy accident.
Such serendipity apart, a fine crossword, particular favourites being REFUSAL and TELL. TISRI was new to me.
Thanks Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
Good crossword, made even better by the revelation of the ghost theme.
I think ‘veiled’ is part of the definition for TROJAN. The NW quadrant was the last to yield, and I liked OPEC a lot!
Like copmus@23 I came here underwhelmed and with faint praise – and then realised there was much more to this than met my eye. I rattled off all bar 2 clues in the small hours which set the tone for my impression of the puzzle. And then when Mrs W woke up this morning and banged in the obvious APRONS that just left us with 3d. Except that having stuck MAN-HOUR in meant that we were never going to get it. Checking whether 3d ended “houses” revealed the error that allowed BEANFEASTS to emerge and finally MAN-YEAR!
And then to come here and discover the ghost theme was a joy. We used to call unexpected bonuses like this “Easter eggs” in the fashion retail business I was in – hidden pockets or trims that you wouldn’t see until you got them home and thought “that’s a nice detail and a surprise – someone’s taken the trouble to think about it”.
Thanks to Nutmeg for constructing a much better puzzle than I initially gave credit for, to Gaufrid for the blog and to all contributors for their insights.
Gaufrid — I see how you got rice pudding from Nutmeg of course, but how did you get from there to the Yes Minister episode? (Of which I’ve seen all too few.)
To me the word reminds me that my home state of Connecticut’s unofficial nickname is “the nutmeg state,” not because nutmegs grow in chilly New England. It’s referring to a probably apocryphal tradition about Yankee pedlars during the Reconstruction (the period after the Civil War), when all sorts of Northerners went south to exploit and cheat Southerners. Supposedly they spent the winters carving wooden nutmegs, then journeyed south come spring to sell them to unsuspecting Southerners. It seems improbable, since carving a fake nutmeg would be so much work that it wouldn’t pay for your time. Another explanation I’ve heard is that because nutmegs actually do look like wood, that being told you had to grate them to get the spice made some customers think that wood is what they were. At any rate, “Nutmeg this or that” is a common name for businesses here — there is a Nutmeg truck rental near my house.
Connecticut’s official nickname (can a nickname be official?) is the Constitution State. Much more fitting to The Land of Steady Habits, another unofficial nickname.
Why is TROJAN a threat to PC?
I dunno about ELATEDLY as a word. Grammatically yes, but — ‘Here comes Freddy!” exclaimed Aunt Ethel elatedly.’ Can anybody think of a context where the word wouldn’t sound forced?
Valentine @ 27
A Trojan is a piece of malware that sneaks onto a PC in another guise, then executes and proceeds to do its dirty work. So its means of entry is akin to that of the Trojan horse.
hth
Another top class puzzle from Nutmeg – this has been an excellent week so far. TISRI was new to me, BEANFEASTS last in. Needless to say I missed the theme.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid
Valentine @27
It would take far too long, and bore too many people, if I gave you the full explanation. Suffice to say that in the episode “The Quality of Life” the term ‘rice pudding’ was used on three occasions.
Edit: A search using the series and episode titles will bring up a link to a Wikipedia article outlining the episode and also links to where it can be viewed on youtube.
I wasn’t expecting this to be so straightforward as I rattled it off- and then I came here and discovered it wasn’t! Ah well,I usually miss themes so I shouldn’t be surprised. I haven’t come across ANTINOVEL or TISRI but they went in readily enough. I was delayed by SCAN and CRAZE. The latter, I thought,was quite brilliant.
Thanks Nutmeg.
A good crossword from one of the setters from whom I look for inspiration for my own amateur clue-writing. Having had doubts at first about 1d EPIC and 2d TROJAN, I now like the use of ‘veiled’ to indicate ‘disguised’ in the latter, a trojan indeed being malware in another guise, as Simon S explained @28.
I also liked the ‘&lit and/or extended definition clues’ in this puzzle, and appreciated even more the theme that (of course) I didn’t see at all while solving.
Many thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid.
Very well-written.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Gaufrid. I needed help parsing OPEC and BEANFEAST was new to me, but (even without spotting the theme) I much enjoyed this puzzle.
Muffin: Ten thousand subjects by unknown mathematician (8)
Managed to finish this but often from the extended definitions. But will somebody PLEASE tell me what the wretched theme is? I just can’t see it.
maggi Hayward @36
See Jason’s comment @12.
Must just be me, but I can’t see all the months. Where’s Apr?
Cm8032
APR – 23dn
Ignore me – I saw it!
Thanks Gaufrid. How clever – love it!
It’s taken me 7 hours to notice that I referred to 1d EPIC instead of 1d OPEC in my comment @32. EPIC was my first answer to this clue, hoping it would work with E (for energy) and PI (a constant) in the answer, but it didn’t work, and my final answer was OPEC, which agrees with the blog.
Ah well – it happens.
Gaufrid @30 — thanks. I’ll track it down.
A very enjoyable puzzle with some satisfying surfaces, clever but fair clues and apt anagrams. Once the hidden theme was revealed to me (from posts above; I wouldn’t spot this in a month of Sundays, as it were) my admiration grew to Araucarian levels. To include 3 letter abbreviations for all twelve months, plus YEAR, plus CALENDAR: splendid work! I was engaged in a fruitless search for Prime Ministers, what with MAJOR and May appearing. Incidentally, I liked the fact that MAJOR’s solution involved two cricketing terms as he is a noted fan.
DECOCT and TISRI were new to me, but the clues were straightforward. I was a little queasy about the evil SS being neutrally referred to as special police; if someone can tell me about a respectable branch of the force known as the SS, I will react ELATEDLY, belatedly.