The complicated rubric read:
The grid should be considered to consist of three zones, each containing the same number of cells but with shapes and locations to be deduced. Thirteen answers are too long for the space available so some letters (dependant on the zone in which they would have been located had there been sufficient space for the entry) must be removed to make them fit. A single letter must be removed from eighteen other clues before solving. In clue order, these letters give an instruction which solvers must follow in the context of the deleted letters.
So there are three types of clue: 1) Normal, 2) a letter to be removed from the clue before solving and 3) a letter or letters to be removed from the answer before entry. The second type give us an instruction and the third type give us three letters to help us complete the instruction.
Three “zones” in the grid of equal size. The grid is 15 x 10, so the obvious decision would be for it to be divided vertically into three equal sections of 50 squares. This would be reminiscent of a flag. This would fit with the title, one of the meanings of standard being flag.
After much thought spread over three days I had the “instruction” as DEPICT NATIONAL FLAG.
But whose flag? I found that the type 3 clues were both better hidden and also more difficult to decipher than either of the other two types. My first discovery was in 1D where the definition “it turns” resulted in REVOLVER which could be fitted into the grid without its Rs as EVOLVE. So a) the left hand section of the grid had Rs to be removed and b) possibly the removal of letters left real words – a fact not mentioned in the rubric, but very helpful nevertheless.
I struggled on and next discovered that the right hand section of the grid had the letter I removed from its type 3 answers. e.g.in 33D MOIRE became MORE and 8A CUISSES became CUSSES.
This left the middle section. I walked down to the shops on Monday afternoon and solved 4A and 5D on the way, but had to wait until my return before checking. They were SOOTING and TOILE both entered without the Os.
So the three letters in section order were ROI, which in Chambers can mean Republic of Ireland or Republic of India. Now the Indian flag consists of three equal horizontal bands of orange white and green with the “Wheel of Law” depicted in the middle, 
whereas the Irish flag is Green White and Orange vertical bands.
The latter would be easy to depict in the grid, so that is what is shown below. P.S. My wife pointed out that another reason for the Irish flag to be on show was that the puzzle came out in the week of St. Patrick’s day, the 17th of March 2022.
The remainder of the time was devoted to parsing some intractable clues and searching for the (initially) eight missing type 3 clues.
Excellent Kruger. I’m sure that a consultation with Ho will sort out my missing parsing (and it has!) so there we have it.
In the table below, I have indicated the removed R, O and I with the relevant background colours, and the grid entries are in blue, but I have listed the type 3 clues below for clarity.
R removed in 20A, 1D, 3D, 30D; O removed in 4A, 39A, 5D, 8D; I removed in 8A, 40A 14D, 23D, 33D: a total of 13 removals
| Across | |||
| Clue definition [omitted letter] | Answer/Entry | Wordplay | |
| 1 Ro[d]e (to set an example) to Grammar School (4) | EGGS | EG (example) + G(rammar) S(chool) | D |
| 4 Spreading smut’s comforting, not hard (5) | S |
SOOT(h)ING (comforting) minus H(ard) | |
| 8 Pieces of armour worried Cassius and leader of expedition before leaving (6) | CUISSES | [C(a)SSIUS + E(xpedition)]* minus A(nte) (before) | |
| 12 Star[e] at peer endlessly – an attractive person once (6) | PIPPIN | PIP (star) + PIN(k) (peer) | E |
| 13 Spots a real old English cross (7) | AREOLAE | [A REAL O(ld) + E(nglish)]* | |
| 15 East German [p]once is about to follow sailor (4) | OSSI | IS reversed after OS (Ordinary Seaman) | P |
| 16 Soldiers meet outside after American treaty (9) | AGREEMENT | A(merican) + GREET (meet) round MEN (soldiers) | |
| 18 SET[I] to reveal something unknown (5) | TELLY | TELL (reveal) + Y (unknown) | I |
| 20 Rascal no longer permitted to pursue assistance for whistle-blower (5) | VARLET | LET (permitted) after VAR (Video Assistant Referee – help for whistle-blower in football) | |
| 22 Satisfactorily finished (&) occupying toilet (8, 3 words) | IN THE CAN | Double definition (CAN = toilet) | |
| 24 Giving power to revenue ultimately [c]an counter conspicuous wealth (8) | ENABLING | (revenu)E + NA (an counter) + BLING (conspicuous wealth) | C |
| 27 Bore bird using other hand (5) | EAGRE | EAGLE (bird) with R for L | |
| 31 Foreign character in per[t] case in Stratford? (5) | PETAR | PR (per) round ETA (foreign character) | T |
| 34 Lacking grace, inane ge[n]t beginning to look stupid (9) | INELEGANT | [INANE GET + L(ook)]* | N |
| 35 Fe[a]ster puts on a bit of loose weight (4) | ROTL | ROT (fester) + L(oose) | A |
| 36 Condition cover[t] introduction of experiment with parent (7) | FEATHER | E(xperiment) in FATHER (parent) | T |
| 37 Neighbour from Cromer visiting pub – that’s natural (6) | INBORN | BOR (Norfolk neighbour) in INN (pub) | |
| 38 In better condition, I tried exercising (6) | TIDIER | [I TRIED]* | |
| 39 More than one of you in Brest welcomes European navy with many vessels (5) | VEN |
VOUS (French plural you) round E(uropean) N(avy) | |
| 40 Manage formerly wooded countryside for Wordsworth, you say? (4) | WIELD | Sounds like WEALD (poetic wooded country) | |
| Down | |||
| Clue definition | Answer | Wordplay | |
| 1 It turns lever over – potentially wasting energy (6) | REVOLVER | [LEVER OV(e)R]* (omit E(nergy)) | |
| 2 Main point of climbing Everest significant (4) | GIST | Hidden reversed in EveresT SIGnificant | |
| 3 Moveable icon’s extremely poor in area set aside (5) | SPRITE | P(oo)R in SITE (area set aside) | |
| 4 Ol[i]d hospital pet still mostly lousy (7) | SPITTLE | [PET STIL(l)]* | I |
| 5 Maybe ladies cut material (4) | T |
TOILE(t) (maybe ladies – cut) | |
| 6 Taking everything into account, I name friend quitting hostel in LA (5, 2 words) | IN ALL | I + N(ame) + ALL(y) minus Y (American YMCA – hostel) | |
| 7 Slight nightdress – courtesan initially wears [o]ne (10) | NEGLIGENCE | NEGLIGÉ (nightdress) + C(ourtesan) in NE | O |
| 8 To produce offspring, prince’s given up being sheathed (6) | PROCREATE (produce offspring) minus PR(ince) | ||
| 9 Me[n] retreated months before battle (5) | SOMME | MOS (months) reversed + ME | N |
| 10 Killed (&) a great number of Americans (4) | SLEW | Double definition | |
| 11 Block (&) lease in M[a]ine (4) | SETT | Double definition | A |
| 14 Those not in favour of having Arabian trees of the mulberry family (6) | ANTIARS | ANTIS (those not in favour) round AR(abian) | |
| 17 Beagle possibly able to function without backing of constables (6) | CANINE | CAN (able to) + SINE (function) minus (constable)S (backing) | |
| 19 Cheeky young kids surrounding lady’s innocent-looking children (7) | CHERUBS | CUBS (cheeky young kids) round HER (lady’s) | |
| 21 Call on ear[l] – not a great man (6) | RINGER | RING (call) + E(a)R (ear – not a) | L |
| 23 Freshly put down lawn died abruptly. Ridiculous! (6) | NEWLAID | [LAWN DIE(d)]* | |
| 25 Traditional Chinese response over key Indian [f]eats (5) | BALTI | BI (traditional Chinese response) round ALT (key on computer keyboard) | F |
| 26 [L]one German hosting races – he was a man of great stature (5) | ETTIN | EIN (one German) round TT (races) | L |
| 28 Any currently unused money spent by Geordie friend (5) | ARROW | MARROW (friend in NE) minus M(oney) | |
| 29 Nick left broken-down Fi[a]t (4) | LIFT | L(eft) + [FIT]* | A |
| 30 Resolutely oppose daughter supporting rude fellow (4) | BEARD | BEAR (rude fellow) + D(aughter | |
| 32 Ascertain [g]unman’s holding some Japanese (4) | AINU | Hidden in AscertAIN Unman | G |
| 33 Watered nothing in boggy ground (4) | MOIRE | O (nothing) in MIRE (boggy ground) | |
Excellent indeed. All thanks to Kruger and Hihoba.
I guessed “flag” from the title and soon found that the message plausibly ended with that word. But then I got sidetracked into the madness of finding a flag with a Red stripe at left and an Orange one in the middle…. Fortunately the imminence of St Patrick’s Day caused a rethink before the horror of visualizing a right-hand stripe of Indigo.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me who went off looking for Red, Orange and Indigo coloured flags, David. In my case, my son pointed out the error of my ways.
I didn’t consider the Indian flag, but the vertical stripes seemed to be indicated by the removals – the R’s, O’s + I’s falling into those bands. At least that is how I sketched it out, writing out R, O and I above each column to indicate the bands before I coloured them in (badly).
A complicated preamble, but as ever all became clear once I started solving. Good puzzle, and not overly difficult as it turned out.
I toyed with red, orange, for a while until I found my first “I”. Then, living as I do in Ireland, I realised what was required. A nice tribute to March 17th.
Incidentally, “Republic of” is not used so much these days. I believe it’s now officially known as Ireland.
At times in the past I’ve really struggled to get my head around some of the offerings from Kruger, but I think that these days I’ve become much more accustomed to his particular style. This one felt like quite a gentle puzzle – the answers just seemed to fly in. Endgame was very nicely conceived and easy to follow. We Inquisitors have had recently to colour in the flag of Botswana (Sep 2021, Artix), now the flag of the Republic of Ireland (Mar 2022, Kruger) … so who will be setting us the next flag I wonder – and which coloured crayons had I better order in especially?
Many thanks to Kruger for an entertaining puzzle, to Hihoba for the blog and to fellow commenters for sharing their thoughts.
Thanks very much Kruger. I managed to get the instruction reasonably quickly but it was still a challenge to complete. And it took me until the middle of the week to realise the significance of the flag, d’oh!
Jon_S@2 is entirely right – the blurb indicated that the missing letters were all in the appropriate ‘zone’ which meant they had to be columns rather than rows.
I have nearly always got on well with Kruger’s puzzles, and I enjoyed this one despite not having fully parsed four of the special clues (two of each type). But I was still able to work out the complete message and determine the shape and location of each zone.
I think the grid must have been about three-quarters full when I finally cottoned on to the zonal pattern based on the removed letters R-O-I – a simple idea implemented very neatly and skilfully. (I thought only of Eire, not recognising that abbreviation as being applicable also to India.)
I was puzzled by the wording of the phrase within parentheses in the preamble. The two letters O in SOOTING (which is entered as STING) actually straddle the border between the left and middle zones (taking up zero space), but the letter O clearly belongs in the middle zone, and I was happy with that.
Thanks to Kruger, and to Hi (and Ho) for some of the parsing..
A lovely puzzle especially as I love a bit of colouring.
For once I had no real issues in understanding the preamble and realised pretty quickly that we would be removing 3 sets of the same letter – I don’t know if others noticed, but the letters in question are not only removed from some words, but they are not present at all in the entire section of the grid – very elegant.
My mind also jumped straight from “ROI” to Republic Of Ireland, rather than colours or India…lucky perhaps.
I was however mildly disappointed there were 13 extra words and not 12 (thereby breaking the symmetry), is this a sign that I’ve been doing Inquisitors for too long?
arnold @7 : QUOTE : ” I don’t know if others noticed, but the letters in question are not only removed from some words, but they are not present at all in the entire section of the grid – very elegant”
Very well spotted indeed, arnold … I’m happy to state that I personally had totally missed that. This is exactly why I love to read comments from my fellow members of the Inquisitor community. Many thanks, arnold. Well spotted, indeed.
I too missed the intentional omission of the letters R-O-I from their respective zones. It is just the sort of thing that makes me appreciate a puzzle all the more, and I too am grateful to arnold for pointing it out.
Indeed, me too. Thanks Arnold. An even better grid than I thought.
Can’t add much: eventually saw we were looking at three columns; had no idea what the French King had to do with it; gave up on the flag colouring; then I think some rugby came on the news and all become clear. Thanks to Kruger and Hihoba.
..: and even though there were 13 overlong answers, there were 5 of each letter R O I removed before entry — a pleasing symmetry.
But I did find this very easy, finishing the puzzle in a single (not very long) session — which included noting the ROI omissions from the relevant thirds.
Thanks nevertheless to Hi & Kruger. (I suspect it would have been difficult to construct a grid with the accurate aspect ratio of 1:2.)
We are glad that we were not the only ones who were looking at red and orange flags before discovering the other missing letter. It took us far longer than it should have though to realise the significance of ROI. We missed the fact that those letters were also missing from the grid – thanks Arnold for noticing that.
Maybe we were too relaxed to notice – we were on holiday!
Thanks to Hihoba and Kruger.
Naturally I didn’t attempt this, but I did read the rubric shown on the home page. Smacked wrist for Kruger – he means dependEnt rather than dependAnt.
Sorry muffin, Chambers allows either form.
muffin@14
I agree with you about the spelling. I can assure you, though, that in my ‘i’ paper for Saturday that word in the preamble is spelled correctly.
Hi @15
Both are valid spellings; they just mean different things. I taught in independent schools for 40+ years; I never heard of an independant one….
If you look in Chambers you will find dependent (also dependant) depending trying contingent relative. I would personally have used depending, but Kruger is not wrong.
Sorry spellchecker trouble: relying not trying.
I would just like to appeal for some consideration to be given to the point I made @16, namely, that in the (print) newspaper where the puzzle was published Kruger (or the editor) spelled the word ‘dependent’. (I actually said it was spelled correctly, and I am posting this just to clarify my point.)
Interesting. I wonder at what point the spelling changed? I would still have used depending though. Non-controversial.
I too would have written ‘depending’.