Independent 10,065 by Monk

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After a run of Monk’s crosswords always being blogged by me, there has been a long gap since I had the pleasure. This is because (being so difficult?) he seems to confine himself almost completely nowadays to the Saturday Prize Puzzle.

Actually I’m not sure it really was much of a pleasure. It was remarkably difficult and it took me ages to do all but two (one of which is I now see the unconvincing homophone I had rejected), and there were some very difficult clues, with rare words and not always convincing (to me, at any rate) equivalences of words. Some years ago I used to look out for Monk crosswords because they were so good. Perhaps I’ve changed over the years.

Definitions in maroon, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics (not many of these, which partly explains the difficulty).

There is a reason why Monk has appeared on a Wednesday (being an exception to what is normally one of the gentler days of the week): this was a tribute puzzle to Dac, who used to appear on Wednesday. Along the top and bottom it says “Au revoir, notre ami” and down the middle it says “Dac”, who was a French teacher.

Across
9 LANTERN After November, around noon, getting light (7)
la(n.)ter N — later = after? No doubt someone can come up with two sentences where they are interchangeable
10 INCENSE Enrage because of commentator’s opinion (7)
in [= because of] “sense” — in = because of? Again no doubt …, likewise sense = opinion?
11 SET A GOOD EXAMPLE Principal introducing thorough test about English to inspire others? (3,1,4,7)
s(E)ta(good exam)ple
12 EMBRACE Include up-front ethnic minority couple (7)
e{thnic} m{inority} brace
14 RATE-CAP Better to follow speed limit, sort of (4-3)
rate [= speed] cap [= better]
15 WASTEPAPER BIN In which Old Bill might stop between stages of a cycling tour? (10,3)
This is too much for me. Evidently the answer is right, but goodness knows what’s going on: it seems to be some sort of a CD, with the Old Bill possibly being the old nose, and paper tissue from the old nose being thrown into a wastepaper bin between stages of recycling …
20 ATISHOO Mentioned in question report of involuntary escape from trap? (7)
“at issue”, the involuntary esacape from trap is from the mouth, a sneeze — “at issue” = atishoo will not be accepted by all, as is so often the case with homophone clues
22 MEDINAS Setter runs out of foreign currency leaving quarters for natives (7)
me [= setter] dina{r}s
23 DISARTICULATION Elbow may split due to this affront prior to talking (15)
dis [= disrespect, affront] articulation — not absolutely sure about the surface: does it refer to the elbow on one’s arm, or to the pop group?
25 ARMOIRE Branch officers initially anger cabinet (7)
arm o{fficers} ire
26 SIDEARM Piece of plan to stop missus coming back (7)
idea in (Mrs)rev.
Down
1 A-LISTER Worthy Scotsman? (1-6)
2 defs — OK an A-lister is arguably a worthy, but what about the Scotsman? Is it just ‘a Lister’, saying that Lister is a fairly widespread Scottish surname — it can’t be referring to Joseph Lister and I don’t know any other well-known Listers. [Silly of me: obviously it’s Alister, the boy’s name.  Thanks to Andrew @1 for pointing this out]
2 UNIT Short term for Harvard, perhaps student’s last one (4)
uni{versity} {studen}t
3 RED GIANT Diamonds pinched by, say, outwardly merry megastar? (3,5)
r(e(D)g)iant
4 ENCORE Corporal maybe about to undermine base again! (6)
E NCO re
5 VINE-PROP Prone to change input to notable support for wine producers (4-4)
VI(nepro)P, the nepro being (prone)*, VIP a notable (noun)
6 OCTANT 45 degrees required to get brown in a month (6)
Oc(tan)t
7 INSPECTION Check incision around opening in pericardium (10)
ins(p{ericardium})ection — insection = incision, as I later discovered
8 RECEIPT Perhaps slip on ice when twisting drill (7)
re (ice)* PT
13 BRAVISSIMO Excellent supporter very independent old spinster rejected (10)
bra v I (o miss)rev.
16 PROVIDER Demonstrator collecting papers for supplier (8)
prov(ID)er
17 RED PANDA Creature‘s face bitten by climbing snake (3,5)
pan in (adder)rev.
18 SANDMAN Fictional character giving and receiving pain, extremely authoritarian (7)
s-and-m [= sadomasochism] a{uthoritaria}n — I was defeated by this, expecting it to be one of the thousands of possible specific literary characters and grumbling to myself as a result, but should have known this I suppose
19 TSUNAMI By 2 am, second terrible natural disaster (7)
(unit am s)*, 2dn being UNIT
21 HERMIT That girl getting on with German in solitary (6)
her [= that girl] mit [= with, in German]
22 MOUSSE What may go after cheese, overshadowing small dessert (6)
mous(s)e
24 IMAM Second in race, in a short distance, becomes leader (4)
{r}a{ce} in (1 mm)

*anagram

17 comments on “Independent 10,065 by Monk”

  2. Didn’t enjoy this as much as I usually do for a Monk.

    I also thought the Scotsman in 1d was Alister but this seems to be the anglicised version of the Scottish Alasdair as Andrew says @1.

    Wasn’t too convinced by 15a either. I assumed the ‘paper’ part referred to the old (paper) bill, as in money between ‘waste’ and ‘bin’ (stages of a cycling tour?), with an &lit definition. But, unless cycling can mean recycling, I don’t see how this works. Not that it particularly works for recycling either. Maybe somebody can shed light on this.

  4. I presume you put an old bill or other piece of paper into a wastepaper bin and then when that is full, move the contents to the [re]cycling bin

    Please to note that I wasn’t the only one to find this very tricky even for a Monk

    Thanks to him and John

  5. Tricky even by Monk’s standards,

    I think Lister did a fair bit of work in Scotland but I await a bear of greater brain to parse that nasty one

    Similar message in Monk’s last one but that may have been a dog

    The nina helped but Monk is a tough nut to crack,

    THANKS Monk and John

  6. Lovely tribute as only Monk will do them.  In particular as there is/was some link between Monk, Dac and the French language in days gone by.

    Was always on the lookout for a nina, not just because it was a Monk puzzle but I needed a lot of help from it as well.  Found this very difficult to get into with the pace speeding up once I saw that the nina was all French to me.

    First thought that it was (once more) a tribute to his dog but just in the nick of time spotted the name in the middle column.

    Like others I didn’t fully understand 15ac but, yes, it probably is just a cryptic definition.

    I always thought that pandas were black & white creatures and so I was a bit surprised to see Monk offering us a red one.

    Many thanks to John (for the blog) & Monk (for a puzzle that I liked).

     

  7. I really enjoyed this. I found it a bit more difficult than usual for Monk because other than the north-west, my initial entries were quite stand-alone so it was difficult to get traction. Spotting the nina was a great help to finishing the puzzle. It seems to  me that  the success or otherwise of homophones and cryptic definitions is quite subjective but I have no complaints. I enjoy the rigour of Monk’s puzzles and thought there was plenty of top class clueing here.

  9. Yes it was a steady chipping away that left us not entirely comfortable with 20d and still puzzled by 15ac. Assumed that the capitals were a mislead and that an old bill would possibly end up in a wastepaper bin but nothing more than that. Monk please explain.

    Thanks to Monk and John

  10. I was pleased with myself for finishing this and seeing the nina but I’m still puzzled by 4dn. Where does the base come in? And in 17dn how does pan=face ?

  11. rosella@10 E is the base for natural logarithms – often meet this in cryptics. ‘pan’ is slang for face, as in a dead pan expression.

  12. Thanks to John and Monk

    And thanks to Hovis for the explanation of PAN = FACE, I have used/heard dead-pan= straight-faced for decades without wondering what PAN meant. English has such a rich and delightful reserve of idiom! None of which helps me to understand 15ac though- I got it from the crossers but I still don’t GET it.

    Can anybody help?

  14. A group effort: we put quite a few heads together to tackle this!  Best guess at WASTEPAPER BIN is as Sue @4 put it, but as Hovis @2 says cycling would need to mean recycling, and I can’t find dictionary support for that.

    It wasn’t until I was finishing the last few on the train home that I spotted the part of the nina at the top and bottom of the grid, but didn’t see that it was for Dac.  Very sweet.

    Thanks Monk and John.

  15. Glad it wasn’t just me who found this difficult.  My first pass this afternoon I got just one clue and then I went out for the evening.  When I got back I struggled for about an hour just to get a third of it before coming here.

  16. We got about half of this unaided yesterday evening then ground to a halt.  Kick-started it again this morning with wordfinder help for 15ac and 23ac, eventually completing by seeing the nina at the last minute and getting 8dn as our LOI.

    No real trouble parsing WASTEPAPER BIN as suggested by crypticsue, thinking that the recycling is simply one stage of a complete cycle.

    Favourites were BRAVISSIMO and MOUSSE.

    Thanks, Monk and John.

  17. As in “logarithms to base e”

    Still don’t see the cryptic reading (or any other parsing) of WASTEPAPER BIN.

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