During the first pass I thought this was going to be easy for a Monk because some of the clues were so obvious, but subsequently the solving process slowed a little proving that Monk has not lost his touch when it comes to deceiving solvers.
17d was the last to go in because my initial thought, given the checked letters, was GILMAN (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist author) but the apostrophe in “Feminists’ victory” was in the wrong place for it to be a single person and also I was unable to parse the subsequent wordplay so this had to be wrong.
Across
5 QUARTO ART (article) in QUO (classic rock band)
7 CONTESSA CON (not for, against) AS SET (confirmed) reversed
9 UTTERING UTTER (extreme) I[deas] N[eeds] G[uts] – I wonder why Monk didn’t go for ‘Expressing extreme ideas needs guts initially’ which would have given a better surface
10 ADVICE A [mai]D VICE (lust)
11 WATER VAPOUR *(WAVE TAR) POUR (bucket)
13 A-ROADS cd – the A1 goes from London to Edinburgh and the A2 from London to Dover
15 SETTEE SET (fix) TEE (peg)
18 REFRIGERATE RE (about) ER (HM) in FRIGATE (escort vessel)
21 NURSES RUN (rush) reversed) [bos]SES (managers not half)
22 MAZELTOV MAZE (complex) *(LOT) V (very)
23 TALK DOWN dd
24 MUESLI *(MULE IS)
Down
1 GREEN TEA *(TEENAGER)
2 NOSIER dd
3 INFAMOUS N (northern) FAM[ily] (half-relations) in IOUS (debts)
4 SERVER dd
6 UNTOWARD *(DRAWN-OUT)
7 COGNAC C (about) CAN GO (is able to pass) reversed
8 SECT C (clubs) in SET (clique)
12 GENE POOL *(PEE ON LOG) – interesting anagram indicator, ‘after a few drinks’ rather than ‘after getting drunk’
14 SOFT SPOT OFT (frequently) in S (second) SPOT (place)
16 TRAWL-NET cd – ‘sole’ as in fish
17 WIMMIN 1 MM (a short length) in WIN (victory) – a variant spelling of women, used esp by feminist writers in order to omit the root ‘men’ from the word (Chambers)
18 RUSSKI SUR[e] (almost certain) reversed SKI[t] (short satirical sketch)
19 ECZEMA C (cold) in MEZE (Greek starter) reversed A
20 CUBA CUB (apprentice) A
Thanks Gaufrid.
The outer squares spell out ‘QUANTITATIVE EASING’, but I can’t see a connection between this and any of the clues
Thanks ChrisM
With this setter, and the nature of the grid, I thought there had to be something else going on. I checked to see if it was a pangram but didn’t look at the perimeter unches because I had to go and keep an eye on a painter who is doing some work for me.
Sounds like a euphemism to me!
Excellent puzzle and, considering what it undertakes to provide – surprisingly free from tricky words.
Apologies for posting here but I couldn’t think where else to ask. When is 13192 (w/e 26/27 Sept) going to appear please? Thanks
Hi bamberger
The blog of #13192 will appear tomorrow (8/10/09), after the closing date for submissions.
Re 9 across: this was to avoid the hackneyed “initially”. IMHO, “left-wing ideas …” actually has the better surface!
Monk
Thanks for your input. “left-wing ideas” would indeed have been good (and challenging to parse) but unfortunately the pdf version of the puzzle had the clue as “Expressing extreme first ideas needs guts?” which didn’t seem to read very well to me.