Another excellent puzzle from our favourite pirate, which revealed its secrets gradually and satisfyingly. Thanks to Picaroon.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | INSURMOUNTABLE | Cover put around album not working? It’s beyond remedy (14) (ALBUM NOT)* in INSURE (to cover) |
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| 9. | TRUMPET | Behind blocking name of offensive broadcast (7) RUMP (behind) in TET (famous offensive of the Vietnam war) |
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| 10. | CHATTEL | Things one has to discuss by phone (7) CHAT + TEL. – shouldn’t it be a singular “thing”? |
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| 11. | RANEE | Foreign royal smuggled drug repeatedly (5) RAN (smuggled) + E(cstasy) twice |
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| 12. | POTPOURRI | Mixture to decant into pan, covering for ravioli (9) POUR (decant) in POT (pan) + the “covering” of R[aviol]I |
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| 13. | ADDRESSEE | Notice incompletely attired earl, one getting a talking-to? (9) AD (notive) + DRESSE[D] E[arl] |
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| 14. | SINEW | Power of great city is ebbing (5) Reverse of WEN IS – from the description of London as the Great Wen |
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| 15. | INGOT | Some abstaining, others in bar (5) Hidden in abstainING OThers |
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| 17. | SKEDADDLE | Flee or fly in traveller’s seat (9) KED (fly) in SADDLE |
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| 20. | NEOGOTHIC | Frantically on the go, I see, like the Houses of Parliament (9) (ON THE GO)* + I C |
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| 22. | OCTET | Retrograde and the like in religious book group (5) Reverse of ETC in O[ld] T[estament] |
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| 23. | LACTATE | What mums do at night, bored by routine (7) ACT (routine) in LATE (at night) |
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| 24. | A PRIORI | Time for fooling around carnival city, theoretically (1,6) RIO (famous for its carnival) in APR 1 (April Fool’s Day, time for fooling) – I was bit worried about the definition: a priori means “from first principles”, but I suppose “theoretically” just about covers it |
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| 25. | SINGAPORE SLING | Thus drinking in break, one leaves wine cocktail (9,5) IN GAP in SO (thus) + RIESLING (wine) less the first I |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1. | INTERNATIONALE | Hold reason for beheading number of revolutionaries (14) INTERN (hold) + [R]ATIONALE – The Internationale is an anthem of various left-wing and revolutionary groups |
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| 2. | SPURNED | Turned down drive with little room to reverse (7) SPUR (drive) + reverse of DEN (little room) |
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| 3. | REPRESENT | Transported again after theatre show (9) REP (repertory theatre) + RE-SENT (transported again) |
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| 4. | OCTOPUS | Main inhabitant has work after a month (7) OCT[ober] + OPUS (work) |
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| 5. | NECKTIE | Gent’s clothing down, on the game (7) NECK (to drink, down) + TIE (game of football etc, as in “cup tie”) |
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| 6. | ALAMO | Recalling medic for a mission (5) Recalling or like a medic is A LA M.O. |
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| 7. | LATERAN | Charged after having departed Roman site (7) LATE (dead, departed) + RAN (charged) |
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| 8. | ALL‑IN WRESTLING | Knackered wife to relax with swimmer’s sport (3-2,9) ALL IN (knackered, tired) + W + REST + LING (fish, swimmer) |
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| 14. | SEABOARDS | Rocky base affected roads in coastal regions (9) BASE* + ROADS* |
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| 16. | GNOCCHI | Coaching cooking, tossing out a dish (7) Anagram of COACHING less A |
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| 17. | SCHLEPP | Swimming, Phelps maintains top speed in hard journey (7) C (speed of light – top speed) in PHELPS*, with the surface referring to swimmer Michael Phelps |
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| 18. | EN CLAIR | Put plainly, any number tucking into cake (2,5) N (any number) in ÉCLAIR |
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| 19. | DETTORI | Horseman and I went off to the north (7) Reverse of I ROTTED (went off) – for those unfamiliar with the jockey (horseman), see Frankie Dettori |
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| 21. | ORANG | Primate called round to begin with (5) O (round) + RANG (called) |
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My views on this crossword exactly coincide with Andrew’s prologue. Thank you to him and Picaroon – a great crossword – I particularly like the idea of drinking a 25a singing 1d after a bout of 8d 🙂
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
Great puzzle, but, as always with Picaroon, there were things I didn’t see – in this case, KED as a fly and APR 1 (I spent some time trying to work out why L had gone from April).
To be fair, shouldn’t 4d have “short month”?
Favourite was TRUMPET.
[ALAMO reminds me of my favourite Dilbert cartoon.]
Such a class act. So cool to have TRUMPET without the obvious wordplay!
Thanks all.
What crypticsue said – what a lovely picture! [And hear, hear, copmus.]
20ac is horribly up-to-the-minute.
Yes indeed, a very good offering from Picaroon. Quite a tough slog in the north for me, but a much gentler stroll down south. Particularly liked the two 14-letter words, and the use of ‘opus’, rather than the usual shortened version, which meant 4d took far longer than it should have.
I was wondering if there is any significance (a hidden message, perhaps) in the high double-letter count in the answers: R,S,P,C and L (once each), and D,T and E (twice each). Been trying to make an anagram, but no luck.
Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Syllable of the week so far in cluing is LATE: three times for Chifonie on Monday, twice here (23a and 7d). Maybe more to come later. I enjoyed the four long entries round the edge, and the three endings in -I that they made one look for, once they were in. Altogether classy, as others have said: thanks to Picaroon, and to Andrew for sympathetic annotation.
Being a lazy so-and-so I’d settle for the drink and song and pass on the 8d, crypticsue@1. Nice puzzle from the pirate as ever, but I had to rush it (I blame Mrs ginf, who was in a hurry; besides, she, retired Psych, has always said Those damn things make your brain more addled than it already is; not true of course).
Anyway, like Andrew the ‘things’ in 10a gave me a headache, thinking ‘chattel, collective noun…??’, and dnk Lateran (Sistine and St Peters about my limit), and now I do remember great Wen as London, not sure whence, but could not recall, so sinew went in with a wt..? Also dnk the jockey from a bar of soap, tho gettable. And was slow to twig rump for behind in 9a, and to stop trying for an obscure martial art (Tie-Fo?) in 8d. There’s more, but I’ll refrain.
All in all I made a bit of dog’s breakfast out of a very smooth offering. Hey ho. Thanks A and P.
Nutmeg and Picaroon on consecutive days. They are really going to be hard acts to follow.
Excellent crossword, many thanks Picaroon. I needed help with a couple of parsings, so thanks also to Andrew.
I thought 15a was brilliant.
There was a week recently when I struggled to complete every day and thought I was losing it. But this week the answers are coming very smoothly. I suspect it is the setting, rather than my brain, that has changed.
This was very enjoyable with just 2 niggles or comments. At 12ac I was looking for an anagram (decant) of (INTO PAN) followed by RI. But then POTPOURRI jumped out at me. But I don’t see the wordplay. Andrew has POUR in POT but it isn’t. It’s POUR after or from? POT.
The other had a quietly satisfying outcome. It bothers me when I see “orang” used to refer to an orangutan because that portion of the name is simply “man” from “man of the Forest”. Where I live I am an orang putih – white man. But I know it is in dictionaries, so all I can do is quietly grumble. But today the definition portion of the clue was simply “primate” and since humans are primates and Andrew didn’t elaborate – everyone’s happy!
So special thanks today to Picaroon and Andrew.
Very enjoyable solve with SKEDADDLE and the ‘Main inhabitant’ my favourites. Another to have been thrown by the lack of an ‘s’ for CHATTEL and I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of the famous LATERAN Palace and Basilica in Rome.
We’ve had a few instances recently of the same word appearing in two different crosswords on the same day, but there’s an even more unusual coincidence today with the same word appearing in exactly the same position in the grid here and in another of today’s Fifteen squared offerings. I won’t give the game away with any more details.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew
Hi KLColin @19
Re POTPOURRI – you have to read the whole clue: it’s POUR (decant) in ” POT (pan) + the “covering” of R[aviol]I”, as Andrew says.
Top notch from Pickers requiring some heavy duty parsing making it all the more satisfying to finish. Faves have all been mentioned above.
Thanks to Picaroon for the challenge and Andrew for the unraveling.
Thanks Eileen@12. So obvious now. I fell for the beginner trap of putting too much emphasis on the comma.
Oh my that was good. A few things I either didn’t know or had forgotten I knew – that The Alamo was a mission building, London as the Great Wen and the ked fly. Sure I’ve seen it in a crossword before but it had passed from my mind. The great thing was that all the slightly unusual bits were so well clued around that things fell in to place if I persisted and came at it from different angles. LOI, alamo, was mainly because I found “a la mo” too groanworthy (and so close to “a la mode” which is a peculiarity of American diners, referring to “with ice cream” when added to a pie offering).
I greatly enjoyed disentangling the wrapping of 14-letter answers around this Christmas present, was delighted to see Trump appear without so much as a nod, and loved the international(e) flavour with Yiddish (Schlepp), Italian (Gnocchi), French (En Clair, Pot Pourri), Latin (a priori), Mexican Spanish (Alamo) and Malay (Orang). All this while our Government debates how to go about closing our borders…
1 down : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DTbashsKic
on 10ac CHATTEL a number of commenters have queried its equivalence to a plural “things”. I certainly found it odd, and this clue was one of my LOIs. The OED has some collective senses – they are all obsolete legal terminology, as far as I can see. “Thing” would have made things simpler as it were, but the surface perhaps less smooth.
An impressive puzzle, and a typically enlightening blog – thanks Andrew and Picaroon.
Thanks both. I enjoyed this, apart from NECKTIE which the grumpy pedant in me thinks requires an American indicator. Any British gent would say “tie”
A dnf as I had an unparsed SHUNNED rather than SPURNED for 2d and MrsW was too busy to be asked for her thoughts. Once I get a viable solution in my head I have great difficulty of seeing other possibilities and assume it’s some piece of knowledge I’m missing – which was indeed the case with KED.
I also didn’t fully parse INSURMOUNTABLE as the way I crossed the letters out left me with ISRUNE rather than INSURE. And the APR1 part of A PRIORI escaped me (and I do think the definition is a bit of a stretch).
All in all a bit of a pig’s ear to go with ginf’s dog’s breakfast – thanks to Picaroon and Andrew for a splendid puzzle and blog.
Thanks both,
I need rather more help than usual with the parsing today, especially Singapore Sling. Until this was so elegantly parsed I was muttering about the lack of wine in the ingredients.
Nuff said @1 by crypticsue, really.
Super puzzle, many thanks to The Pirate.
Nice week, all.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. Generally found this tough going and though I nearly got there, I needed to come here to clarify some parsing (same as mentioned by others, e.g. ked and wen). However a DNF for me albeit by one letter. I put in internationals unparsed for 1d because it was the only word I could think of that would fit. However, after a very slow start I was pleased with what I did get and particularly liked trumpet and necktie. Thanks again to Picaroon and Andrew.
Should have realised that as FOI was All-in Wrestling that this was going to be quite a struggle. It certainly was, but very enjoyable…
This took me quite a while – in retrospect everything makes perfect sense, but both INTERNATIONALE and INSURMOUNTABLE were blanks for ages (conversely SINGAPORE SLING and ALL_IN_WRESTLING went in very early. Also took me ages to stop looking for a synonym of corniche that was an anagram of rocky base, because apart from the first one which I didn’t have, the crossers would have made sense. So a satisfying solve, and as always a top class puzzle.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew
Absolute Goldilocks puzzle for me, with east proving tougher than west. I took KED on trust to be a fly, and was confused by CHATTEL, which I assumed simply to be a lack of appropriate knowledge on my part. Comforting to know that others were similarly challenged!
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Thanks, P&A
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. Tough going for me, especially in the parsing. I had trouble with ked=fly, wen=London, neck=drink, and ALAMO and did not know DETTORI, but I did run into the anomaly mentioned by WordPlodder@11.
Re 14a, in what sense does “great city” give “wen”? Yes, London is known as the Great Wen, in crosswords if nowhere else. But are all cities wens, then, with London just being a great one? I am suspicious that this is like cluing “big city” for “apple”. But I might just be ignorant.
Van Winkle @27
Perhaps this will help:
Chambers: An enormous congested city as in the great wen, ie London
Collins: A large overcrowded city (esp London in the phrase the great wen)
ODE: Archaic a very large or overcrowded city: the great wen of London.
Gaufrid @28. Yes, I had looked at the Chambers entry (and should have mentioned it). It seemed to me that the “great” and the “wen” come locked together to give “wen” the sense of being a city rather than a wart. Are there are any other citations where a city is just called a wen?
Great puzzle, FOI RANEE. One error, ended 1d with an ‘s’. Never heard of wen but checkers came in handy.
Van Winkle @29
I can’t remember where now but I have certainly seen Glasgow referred to as a wen. Dictionary.com perhaps makes a clearer distinction:
“British. a large, crowded city or a crowded urban district: London is the great wen of England.”
This indicates to me that Manchester, for example, is a wen but, being the largest city in the country, London is the great wen.
This went smoothly. I didn’t know the jockey, though the clue was fair enough that I got it; I thought it was cute that he crosses the “saddle” in SKEDADDLE. I also didn’t know KED as a fly, but again it could hardly have been anything else. As others have said, the bottom was steadier going than the top.
I have heard CHATTEL used as a collective noun on occasion (or I suppose more often as an attributive, in which context it could just about be plural too–I can’t think of an example from the real world right now, but you’ll agree that, say, chattel rents would be money you earn from your (plural) chattels, in the same way that a horse barn generally holds more than one horse), but then again I took a couple legal-history classes in law school.
Gaufrid @31. Thanks. My suspicions are at an end.
“A priori” meaning “in theory” also showed up in today’s FT crossword by Neo.
By the way, “orang” for ape has the same effect on me as “latte” for coffee.
Like Whiteking@19 I had SHUNNED rather than SPURNED for 2dn.I got the LITTLE ROOM bit and assumed the former was correct. I’ve coke a cropper with partial parsing before so I should have learned by now although I didn’t know that KED= fly and that worked out. I had trouble with OCTET too, having finally dredged up Frankie DETTORI,BIFD for me.
Hardest of the week so far but probably a little easier than Picaroon usually is.
Thanks Picaroon.
I think that the definition for a priori is fine. The term is often used in contrast to a posteriori to refer to knowledge derived from pure reason, as opposed to knowledge derived from experience or observation. “Theoretically” can be used in precisely the same sense.
One could read Things as thing’s?
Did no-one follow my Dilbert link?
Thanks to Andrew for the blog and to Picaroon for a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle.
It was a tough mental workout for me (my first run through resulted in only two answers), especially in the north.
I failed to parse 23ac properly because I got stuck on breaking it up as ‘la-cta-te’, and I couldn’t fathom why ‘cta’ meant ‘routine’. D’oh!
Hi muffin @38, I did! I found this puzzle very hard even though ‘Great Wen’ and ‘ked’ gave me no problems since I remembered them from former Guardian Cryptics – also ‘chattel’ is of current usage in Jamaica, ‘goods and chattels’ (I agree with Andrew that the plural seems called for), a ‘chattel house’ being one that can be moved from one piece of land to another for example.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Hi Muffin@38 – yes indeed, and I’m living in Texas at the moment (though not in San Antonio – in El Paso) so Alamo references are always welcome! You were so nice to comment on my Yes Prime Minister link the other day, I felt I could do no less than return the favour. (Goodness – spellcheck on my computer is American and favour is giving me the red line of incompetent typing!)
Having found the parsing of 1a an INSURMOUNTABLE problem, I’m thankful to Andrew for sorting it out for me. Enjoyed this very much, thanks Picaroon, especially the number of revolutionaries.
Did anyone at all get 25a from the wordplay or did every one like me get it from the crossers and try to parse it later? I failed. On the other hand I got 17d from the anagram, though I didn’t know that C = speed of light.I may have seen it before but forgotten until coming here. I wasted time trying to fit in S for top speed.Agree with the others about chattel.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Like you, Pino, I got SINGAPORE SLING (25ac) very quickly from the crossers and then parsed it. I don’t see this as ‘failing’ but others may disagree.
S for ‘top speed’? Don’t tell Picaroon, please!
Many thanks to Andrew for the blog & Picaroon for a fine crossword that I found at the easier end of his output.
Bloody hell that was hard. 19d DETTORI defeated me. Rest was nice.
muffin @2 and 38 — Is the point of the Dilbert joke that Dilbert has never heard of the Alamo? So he’s dumb an ill-informed? Or is there something else?
http://dilbert.com/strip/1991-10-19
Valentine @46
It’s always difficult explaining jokes, but “Remember the Alamo” is an expression that most Americans would be familiar with – Dilbert is unable to remember “Dee Alamo”…
Really like a Picaroon but found this one very hard indeed – just counted up 7 that I failed to parse, and 5 words/terms that were new to me. I usually hate it when compilers use words that are not “proper English” (e.g. schlepp, skedaddle) although in this one there seemed to be a deliberate theme of words imported from other languages, so I guess it’s more acceptable. Started this at lunchtime and came back to it now and again through the day, with the LOI (never heard of Lateran before) going in at one minute before midnight, which seemed quite appropriate 🙂
Thanks, John E and muffin. I didn’t remember “remember the Alamo” and now I feel like an idiot.