This was a absolutely beautiful puzzle to solve.
Not only does it have a highly interesting “chain” of 4 answers, but it is also a pangram!
I suspected it was a pangram early on after getting 10a WAXY after earlier getting the long 8d which had a Z in it. With the WXYZ in place I thought a pangram was on the cards. It certainly helped me to finish the puzzle because the last answer to fall was 1d for which by then I had -O-A-U and the knowledge , after checking all the other answers, that there was likely a K in it.
In fact solving was off to a flying start with the first across clue solved on first reading – this did not last as I subsequently failed to get any of the crossing Down clues. However, by the end of the first pass I found I had more than that stilted start suggests, especially in the bottom half and the down clues. I had left those curious 4 clues with cross-references till last thinking I likely couldn’t get them without getting the referenced answer first. Of course when I came to look at them I realised they all cross referenced each other and I thought I had no way in. What sort of theme is this?
My way in was 12a the bird. Soon after getting 3d from the anagram when looking at —M-R I realised FULMAR would fit but how could it relate to the others. Then I saw the U of FULMAR could relate to the U I had for 9a so far E—U- and EARFUL tumbled out, followed swiftly by the other two. That was an excellent penny-drop moment.
It is a linked Hidden Word quartet made up of 4 3-letter fragments.
The 9 12 19 23 chain : EAR FUL MAR LIN EAR
I think I have seen harder puzzle than this from Monk but rarely one so satisfying to solve.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 7 | BOTTLE UP | Suppress courage completely (6,2) BOTTLE (courage) UP (completely) First one read and First One In! |
| 9 | EARFUL | Reprimand received by 23 12 (6) Hidden in linEAR FULmar (see preamble) |
| 10 | WAXY | Possibly gooey kiss planted in style (4) X (kiss) inside WAY (style) |
| 11 | HELLS ANGEL | Guardian magazine almost switched round small part of chapter? (5,5) S[mall] inside HELL[o] (magazine, almost) and ANGEL (guardian) |
| 12 | FULMAR | Bird trapped in 9 19 (6) Hidden in earFUL MARlin (see preamble) |
| 14 | MUNTJACS | Climbs, dropping over/around short squat deer (8) JAC[k] (short squat, as in “jack squat”, little or nothing) inside M[o]UNTS (climbs, – O[ver]). Definition deer is plural |
| 15 | CYCLING SHORTS | Reordering drinks for those providing fundamental sports coverage (7,6) CYCLING (Reordering) SHORTS (drinks). Misleading wordplay masquerading as an anagram indicator. Great definition! Some might say not enough coverage |
| 17 | HOROWITZ | Chord discovered, ingenuity having fed Australian pianist (8) [c]HOR[d] discovered, in the sense of outer layer removed, then WIT (ingenuity) inside OZ (Australian). One of the greatest pianists in the world link |
| 19 | MARLIN | Swimmer submerged in 12 23 … (6) Hidden in fulMAR LINear (see preamble) |
| 21 | IMPERSONAL | … upset with Poe’s objective? (10) (MARLIN + POE)* AInd: upset. I didn’t see this wordplay till doing the blog |
| 22 | EXAM | Jimi’s third guitar returned for test (4) [ji]M[i] AXE (guitar) all reversed |
| 23 | LINEAR | One-dimensional component of 19 9 (6) Hidden in marLIN EARful (see preamble) |
| 24 | SANSERIF | In fairness, unusual type (8) (FAIRNESS)* AInd: unusual. I thought this was two words San serif, but checking, I find that is Sans-serif, but this spelling variant is allowed. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | NOGAKU | Monarchy suffering endlessly upsetting drama (6) UK (monarchy) AGON[y] all reversed. Last one In. I knew this as Noh theatre. |
| 2 | STAY | Stop castaway cutting braces (4) Double letters removed from [ca]ST[aw]AY |
| 3 | SEPHARDI | Jewish guy praised for working outside hospital (8) (PRAISED)* AInd: working, around H[ospital] |
| 4 | NELSON | Old sailor in the hold (6) Double def. One of them the Wrestling hold link |
| 5 | GRAND JUROR | Who could slam disheartened robber with judge on guard? (5,5) ( R[obbe]R J[udge] ON GUARD )* Aind: Slam. Near-&Lit clue, or at least has an extended definition |
| 6 | QUIESCES | Church blocking question on dodgy issue goes shtum (8) CE inside Q and (ISSUE)* AInd: dodgy |
| 8 | PULP MAGAZINES | Unruly pupil manages to hide unknown rags (4,9) (PUPIL MANAGES + Z (unknown))* AInd: unruly |
| 13 | MICROMETER | Gauge foreign capital in new metric (10) ROME (foreign capital) inside (METRIC)* AInd: new |
| 15 | CHOW MEIN | Separated husband and wife stopping to receive food (4,4) H[usband} and W[ife] separately inside COME IN (to receive). Hang on, if you are receiving you are the host rather than the visitor coming in? |
| 16 | HOMELAND | Literally divided insecure country of birth (8) Divide insecure into IN and SECURE to make the charade HOME (in) LAND (secure). Another set of wordplay I didn’t see till blogging. |
| 18 | INSERT | Little picture capturing bottom of Friar Tuck? (6) [fria]R inside INSET (little picture) |
| 20 | ITALIC | Digital icon partly used in style (6) Hidden in digITAL ICon |
| 22 | EVEN | Flat numbers 7 and 11 have this in common (4) Found in sEVEN and eleven |
Wow, this was hard. I guessed LINEAR from definition then guessed MARLIN leading to FULMAR and EARFUL. Phew! Others took some head scratching such as HOMELAND and GRAND JUROR (thought the AND part corresponded to ‘with’, which held me up a bit). NOGAKU also my LOI, also only known to me as NO or NOH. Chambers confirmed this version. Didn’t know MUNTJACS but was pleased (and a bit lucky) to guess it from wordplay. Also guessed a pangram was on the cards early on. As usual, Monk writes lovely surfaces to very challenging clues – a real talent. Thanks to Monk (now where’s the paracetamol) and to beermagnet.
PS I too wondered about COME IN for ‘receive’ and decided it was as in coming in to money for example?
Yes – hard, but satisfying. I used a teeny bit of assistance to get the last few, but never mind. I had to verify the Jewish guy and didn’t know the full version of no(h). Really liked the daisy chain of hiddens and IMPERSONAL, which took me a while to twig.
Thanks to Monk and beermagnet.
Absolute corker of a puzzle and my favourite today. I loved the interlinking clues and then I was left with 1d.
Normal word searches to no avail then I noticed I was one K short of a pangram(like one sandwich short of a picnic) and then a lightbulb or a tea tray happened when I saw UK-yes!
Thanks Monk and beermagnet.
Cracking puzzle, many thanks Monk. At first I despaired at the cross-references at first but LINEAR showed me what was going on.
Thanks beermagnet, I had not completely parsed STAY ( my last one in), GRAND JURY, and HOMELAND.
I loved INSERT and CYCLING SHORTS
Loads of super stuff in this, but as is my Saturday wont I fell short.
Honours go to all the clever stuff and the defs of 11 and 15a. As for the future? I’ll crack you next time Monk!
Cheers to The Tonsured One for the fun and torture and also to BM for a great solve-focused blog.
Excellent stuff! I also groaned when I saw the circular-referenced clues, but eventually guessed 21a from the crossers, and reverse-engineered the anagram to get MARLIN. I also had the crossers for LINEAR, and the penny dropped. You can’t help but admire the sheer ingenuity of it.
Loved CYCLING SHORTS.
Re 15d, Chambers gives COME IN as “to receive (money, income, etc.)”.
Definitely a struggle but we chipped away at at it. Quite a lot of clues where we guessed what was going on but couldn’t find the right ‘bits’ to make them work and when we did we couldn’t parse them. And we couldn’t make head or tail of the 9 12 19 23 chain till we got the crossers for LINEAR and the rest began to fall like ninepins. LOI for us too was 1dn which we did get from a wordfinder – Chambers Word Wizard – having failed to notice the pangram possibility.
One small quibble – we think that ‘muntjac’ is the same in both singular and plural. But we’re open to correction as neither Chambers nor Collins gives any indication of the plural form.
Thanks, Monk and Beermagnet.
alan_c@7 my iPad chambers app (which I adore) gives me muntjac muntjacs muntjak muntjaks when i type in muntj*.
though in the dictionary entry there is no mention of the plural as you say.
Excellent puzzle, which I found very hard. After getting only about half for a start, I had to spend the night away from it to clear my head. At a fresh look, the rest went in gradually, though I fell at the last at 1d, even though I thought there must be a pangram. LINEAR was my way in to the connected clues. Couldn’t parse HOMELAND, which was clever, and quite a few others were entered first (often in hope!) then parsed later.
The def. for CYCLING SHORTS was my highlight.
Thanks to Monk, and to beermagnet for a sterling job in explaining everything
Admittedly I am a relative novice and much of this was beyond my level, but could I request a deeper explanation of the parsing for 2d – I don’t see how what is removed constitutes double letters?
To The Man With The Board On The Sideline @10:
‘braces’ are ‘couples’.
Therefore Monk asks you to remove (implicitly, in a regular way [although, true, Monk doesn’t tell you]) ‘couples’ from ‘castaway’.
Hope that helps.
Meanwhile, it’s typically Monk to look for variations to indicate ‘regular’ choices.
A few years ago, he used ‘on prime locations’ i.e. you had to take the 2nd, 3rd and 5th letter of the fodder.
Thanks to everyone for the very positive comments, especially to beermagnet for a super blog. I think all the correspondence covers existing queries, so I’ll only add that Eimi (the editor) did indeed flag NOGAKU and SEPHARDI, especially given the effectively undefined chain; we both thought it might be hard, and evidently it was. (Having grown up in north-east London in the 1960s, SEPHARDI and ASHKENAZI were in my schoolboy lexicon — though NOGAKU was most certainly not!)
Credit where credit’s due: the chain idea was inspired by John Grimshaw’s ingenious 13×13 Times-2 puzzle of 20th May 2017, after which Ross Beresford apprised me on how to close the chain (the hard part) using rather arcane features of his Sympathy package. Clever peeps!
Finally, Hoskins@5‘s “Tonsured One” reference is presumably based on a glimpse of my burgeoning bald patch at the 2017 London S&B 😉