It was a traditionally wet Bank Holiday Saturday, and there was nothing on the television. Luckily we had a nifty little Inquisitor to occupy the time. Apparently it was the start of Ladies’ Month too, though this doesn’t seem to have been advertised very widely.
“Not bad,” said the editor, “but nearly half the clues have a wrong letter in their definition part that needs to be corrected.” “Did you notice,” replied the setter, “that the corrections spell a hint as to how the solver should resolve eight clashes in the grid?”
“Ah. Excellent. Hope they work it out OK.”
Which I must admit tickled me unduly, as did the grid fill, which by Inquisitor standards wasn’t too taxing, though there’s a nice trap for the unwary at 5d, where we have a choice of MOCHY (which is to do with the weather, but doesn’t parse), and MOCHA (to do with leather, and has the distinct advantage of actually parsing).
The corrected letters spelt out the beginning of a Latin phrase that I didn’t know, but that Google as per did.
DE MORTUIS NIHIL NISI BONUM
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum dicendum est – of the dead nothing but good is to be said. Or words to that effect. I would say that the less common form (mortuis nil…) which seems to be Google’s favourite is one likely to trip up solvers, but unless you were assiduous about parsing everything correctly (I never am), well, it wouldn’t have. Unless Google Translate has let me down badly, that is, and there’s a subtle yet cunning difference between the two I’ve missed.
I’m not ashamed to admit that a considerable length of time would pass before I worked out exactly how this was supposed to resolve the clashes. I never did claim to be particularly quick at this sort of thing.
We have several words to do with dead things / the dearly departed in the clashes: NUMB, LATE, BODY and, um, DEAD.
To resolve the clashes, I reckon we’re being nudged in the direction of resolving with synonyms for good, or keeping tactfully mum: DUMB, MUTE, HOLY, and WELL.
Is the fact that keeping quiet (DUMB and MUTE) (rather than presumably speaking ill of the dead) is to the left of the grid (sinister – bad), and the good to the right significant? I think I could be onto something there. Or overthinking things.
Pretty neat, anyway, eh? As was the puzzle. Short, sweet, to the point, and lacking in gratuitous pomp and circumstance.
| Clue | Answer | Corrected Misprint | Wordplay | |
| Across | ||||
| 1 | Amateur notion, mostly, for compound (5) | AMIDE | AM IDEa | |
| 5 | Money and base crimes sadly dominating the mint (8) | MESMERIC | D | M E + an anagram of “crimes” |
| 10 | Be less critical of exceptionally opulent (7, 3 words) | LET UP ON | Anagram of “opulent” | |
| 11 | To stupefy with a rod, for example, is no use after this (5) | HOCUS | E | HOC (this – Latin) + US (U/S – unservicable) – hocus, to stupefy with drink |
| 15 | Reactionary American leader: one rejecting western culture (5) | RASTA | A TSAR, all reversed | |
| 16 | With hint of glee propel ball in air pass (4) | GLOB | M | G LOB |
| 17 | Hide shifty peeks inside letter from abroad (9) | SHEEPSKIN | An anagram of “peeks” inside SHIN, a Hebrew letter | |
| 18 | Band made end to end refutation about changing form at beginning (7) | ABUTTAL | O | reBUTTAL, “about” – RE at the start, “changing form” to A, which can also of course mean about |
| 20 | The French sea briefly shone long ago (5) | LEMED | LE MED | |
| 22 | Audible shout to drive away Thai gibbon? (7, 2 words) | SHOE TIE | R | Sounds like shoo Thai. Groans. |
| 23 | Predecessors to do towards the end (4) | LATE | Think the musical notes running up to “do” – LA TE | |
| 25 | Millions in state of excited eagerness for Eden perhaps (5) | MAGOG | T | M AGOG – eten, a giant |
| 26 | Cold and cheerless Charlie quitting old group of ten (4) | DEAD | DEcAD, losing the C for Charlie | |
| 27 | Feel in burnt out state in these places when performing at first in successful numbers (7) | ASHPITS | U | AS H(P)ITS |
| 29 | Stopped allowance covering part of cycle (5) | PEDAL | Hidden in the first two words of the clue | |
| 33 | English to the end, nominee for Turner Prize – artist – left fold? (7) | MINERAL | I | (Tracey) EMIN moving the E to the end + RA L – foid, an internationally agreed term for feldspathoid, being a mineral |
| 35 | Exaggerate nature of tipple at one unknown dive finally (9) | DRAMATIZE | DRAM AT I Z E | |
| 36 | Revere Wessex novelist endlessly (4) | HARD | S | HARDy |
| 38 | Carefully move front of loose support (5) | EASEL | EASE L | |
| 39 | Quietly make first payment in the local coffer (5) | PARLE | N | P ARLE (an archaic or dialect term meaning to make the first payment) |
| 40 | Ones scoffing at previews starting out late (7) | RAILERS | tRAILERS | |
| 41 | Satirical sketch about private detectives is most awry (8) | SKIEYEST | I | SKI(EYES)T |
| 42 | Heard to groan and observe Chinese bullion (5) | SYCEE | Sounds like sigh see. Equally groan worthy. | |
| Down | ||||
| 1 | Rage with the French all over sour lust (6) | ALEGAR | H | RAGE + LA, all reversed, to give a “sour ale or vinegar made from it”. |
| 2 | Sickness involving European grain (4) | MEAL | M(E)AL | |
| 3 | Unsensible bishop slumping in seat after top of needle’s inserted (4) | NUMB | I | N + BUM with the B lowered |
| 4 | Implicates Ely disastrously in relation to knowledge (13) | EPISTEMICALLY | An anagram of “Implicates Ely” | |
| 5 | Mellow weather: more vintage tea? (5) | MOCHA | L | MO (archaic – more) + CHA to give a soft leather |
| 6 | Grass obscuring weeds where loafers can be seen (8, 2 words) | SHOE SHOP | S(HOES)HOP | |
| 7 | Hero sings poem about development and charge of organs (13) | MORPHOGENESIS | N | An anagram of “Hero sings poem” |
| 8 | Slovak money used in Russia for cakes given to children (5) | RUSKS | SK (the Slovak koruna) contained by RUS | |
| 9 | Fortuitous Latin bet reserved for clerics in church (7) | CHANCEL | I | CHANCE L |
| 12 | Money we put up for nut that needs roasting (6) | CASHEW | CASH + WE reversed | |
| 13 | Bulky look of second university extension’s top (4) | MOUE | S | MO U E |
| 14 | Come together with society top-drawer girls (4) | GELS | ||
| 19 | Small Rover is excellent when baron is lost (4) | RILL | I | bRILL |
| 20 | Rich supper for some in Vegas (4) | LUSH | Double definition | |
| 21 | Suspiciously treated European woody plant fearing fruit (8, 2 words) | DATE TREE | B | An anagram of “treated” + E |
| 23 | Male snakes – sources of red dye (7) | MADDERS | M ADDERS (a herbaceous plant (Rubia tinctorum) whose root produces a red dye) | |
| 24 | Differently-structured firm revolutionised empire (6) | EPIMER | O | An anagram of “empire” |
| 28 | Highland drizzle in southern peasant farming community (4) | SMIR | S MIR (a peasant farming commune in pre-Revolutionary Russia) | |
| 30 | Somewhat incomparable Middle-Eastern map (4) | ARAB | N | Hidden in “incomparable” |
| 31 | Sugar: a large portion added (6) | ALDOSE | A L DOSE | |
| 32 | Red-robed African pastoralists who rarely hint may say it all briefly (5) | MASAI | U | MAy SAy It |
| 34 | A tizz when appropriate technology is dropped for honour (5) | IZZAT | AT (appropriate technology) dropped in “A tizz” | |
| 36 | Lad keeping date for lass (4) | BODY | M | BO(D)Y |
| 37 | Seldom encountered early long ago (4) | RARE | Double definition |
Assiduous as I am, Jon_S … 😉 (and as people on here know me to be by now) … I must disagree with your parsing for 14D as being a double definition. For that to work, the clue should surely read ‘Comes together …’ so the correct passing is as GEL S (for Come together with society), definition being top-drawer girls.
I was also a tad annoyed by the wording for 3D, where to my mind inserted is totally unnecessary, as N doesn’t need to be inserted; the word after foots the bill quite nicely in that case.
Those minor niggles aside, I thought that this was a really lovely puzzle and very cleverly done: I particularly liked the way that the entries to be resolved were symmetrically placed, so that across was effectively overruled by down and vice versa. Very neat indeed. Some really lovely clues in there too.
Sadly, I was unable to parse the answer to 23A (thanks to Jon_S for sorting that out), so, given the first paragraph of my ramblings, I am of course, compelled to record a DNF on this occasion. 🙂
The combination of the eight clashes and the unknown number of misprints in the definitions made this puzzle quite heavy-going at first, especially where shorter answers were involved, but I was never stuck, and it was an interesting and satisfying puzzle to solve. One good feature was the even spacing of the clues that had the misprinted definitions – this was helpful later on (when that pattern became apparent) and more than made up for the (initially) unhelpful phrase ‘nearly half’ in the preamble.
I collected most of the letters of the Latin message – enough to look it up online, where I found versions with NIL and NIHIL. There was no doubt about WELL and HOLY being the choice to make in those two instances, but there are reasons to choose either of the possibilities in the other two. LATE is a polite word for ‘dead’, whereas NUMB is a neutral word – in this context a euphemism, rather like DUMB and MUTE.
It was a relief to find that the chatty and verbose nature of the preamble did not result in any loss of clarity (which, incidentally, is more than I can say of a recent puzzle in a different series, which used the same kind of approach, only much more so!). It made a pleasant change, but I prefer succinct preambles to wordy ones. I much enjoyed the puzzle anyway. I got temporarily stuck around LATE/MUTE in the grid, but it all came good in the end .
Thanks to Dash and Jon_S.
It seemed to me the grid-fill was suspiciously easy – and where were these clashes? But even as the grid was filling, the quote wasn’t coming (not helped by my belief the mineral at 33a was ‘gold’, a perhaps chemically under-researched assumption). Finally the Latin came into view, and the symmetry of the still-resistant parts of the grid – and everything clicked in a very pleasing way. An excellent challenge, many thanks to Dash and Jon_S.
Thanks Me_sat_here_at_home @1 – your parsing of 14d is obviously correct. I’ve updated the blog.
Enjoyed this — but I struggled for a long time to make sense of the message since I fixated on the NIL version but had “sour must” in 1D (fermented grape juice seemed compelling) until NIHIL occurred to me. So nothing bad to say about the puzzle.
Not a bad debut – thanks Dash.
I agree with M_s_h_a_h regarding 3d (N “inserted”?).
I felt for a while that 3 clashes in a 4-letter word (26a DEAD/WELL) with the 4th letter unchecked was a bit much … but forgiven because the affected words were symmetrically placed.
I noted that Chambers gives the NIL version, not the NIHIL one. Thanks to Jon_S for the blog.
A small point, but I really enjoyed the wordplay for LATE (‘predecessors to do’) – I’d not come across that before but I knew it had to be right and it raised a smile when I finally realised why.
What a fine blog Jon_S. I think John (our editor) is keeping quiet about it being ‘ladies month’. sadly, we ladies are becoming fewer and fewer though we still just about manage to fill a month (with Dash, Vismut, Skylark, and mine that usually gives a fairly gentle finish). Thanks on behalf of the ladies.