Thanks Vulcan for today's puzzle – my favourites were 10ac, 18ac, 28ac, and 2dn.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PURSUIT |
Almost perfect clothes for leisure activity (7)
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almost all letters from PUR-[e]="perfect" + SUIT="clothes" |
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| 5 | PLASTIC |
Still retaining ultimate method of payment (7)
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definition: plastic as in a credit card PIC=a picture, a still photo="Still", around/retaining LAST="ultimate" |
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| 9 | BIDET |
Old president finally gets changed, going to basin (5)
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Joe BIDE-[n] the former US president, with the final letter changing |
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| 10 | WHITE LIES |
Perhaps tactful remarks describing snow that has settled (5,4)
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snow is WHITE, and it LIES on the ground once settled |
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| 11 | LAY HANDS ON |
Bless attack (3,5,2)
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double definition: to give a blessing (in Christianity) through touch; or to harm through touch |
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| 12 | ULNA |
Paul Nash guarding part of his arm (4)
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definition: a bone in the forearm hidden in (guarded by): [Pa]-UL NA-[sh] |
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| 14 | GOBBLEDEGOOK |
Jargon from mouth was spouting: I approve (12)
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GOB="mouth" + BLED="was spouting" blood + EGO="I" + OK="approve" |
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| 18 | AERONAUTICAL |
Concerned with flying a Lear, caution must be exercised (12)
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anagram (exercised) of: (a Lear caution)* |
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| 21 | COPY |
Text for printer is not original (4)
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double definition: text to be set in type for printing; or a copy of an original |
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| 22 | STALINGRAD |
Daring last desperate stand here for Soviets (10)
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definition refers to the battle of Stalingrad in World War II – the definition is possibly the whole clue, or possibly "stand here for Soviets" i.e. a place where Soviets made a stand anagram/"desperate" of (Daring last)* |
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| 25 | DORMITORY |
Such a sleepy town? (9)
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not sure whether to call this a cryptic definition as a whole, or whether to separate it into parts: a dormitory is a name for a town where people live, but will typically go to work or to leisure elsewhere i.e. the town is "sleepy" in the sense that not much activity goes on there …and "sleepy" also hints towards the meanings of dormitory as a place to sleep |
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| 26 | E-TYPE |
Sports car of energy and character (1-4)
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definition refers to the Jaguar E-Type sports car [wiki] E (energy) + TYPE=nature, characteristics="character" |
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| 27 | GWYNETH |
Why gent fancied Welsh girl (7)
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anagram/fanciful version of/"fancied" of (Why gent)* |
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| 28 | RESERVE |
Substitute that offers protection for game (7)
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double definition: a reserve player or substitute e.g. in a sports team; or a reserve as in a habitat for game animals |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PEBBLE |
One on the beach said not to be alone (6)
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reference to idiomatic sayings like 'you're not the only pebble on the beach' to suggest that someone is not the only person of a type |
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| 2 | RED EYE |
Faulty effect of snapping night flight (3,3)
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double definition: 'red eye' can be an unwanted effect when taking photos/snaps of people; and a red-eye flight is one that departs at night and lands the next morning |
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| 3 | ULTRASOUND |
Diagnostic aid extremely reliable (10)
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ULTRA="extremely" + SOUND="reliable" |
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| 4 | TOWED |
Dragged – why to the church? (5)
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one might be dragged to the church to get married i.e. TO WED |
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| 5 | PRIMO LEVI |
Prudish Olive re-read author, a Holocaust survivor (5,4)
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definition: the author Primo Levi [wiki] PRIM="Prudish" + anagram/"re-read" of (Olive)* |
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| 6 | AMEN |
The last word in service (4)
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cryptic definition: the last word in [a religious] service the surface can mislead by suggesting instead 'a definitive example of good service' |
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| 7 | TRILLION |
Adding together twelve 0s and a 1 makes a huge number (8)
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a 1 with twelve 0s added, written as 1,000,000,000,000=a trillion |
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| 8 | COSSACKS |
Big bags carrying lettuce for tsar’s cavalry (8)
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SACKS="Big bags", underneath/carrying COS=a variety of "lettuce" |
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| 13 | REMAINDERS |
Jogs round area and sells leftovers (10)
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definition: to remainder can mean to sell excess inventory of e.g. books to remind is to jog the memory, so REMINDERS="Jogs", around A (area) |
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| 15 | BLUETOOTH |
Method of communication depressed canine (9)
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BLUE="depressed" + TOOTH e.g. a canine tooth |
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| 16 | WATCHDOG |
One clamped on wrist perhaps to keep close behind guard (8)
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WATCH=a wristwatch, something clamped/worn on the wrist; plus DOG=to follow, to pursue="to keep close behind" |
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| 17 | PROPERTY |
Distinctive feature of a piece of land one has (8)
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double definition |
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| 19 | PRAYER |
Petition Lord’s, for example (6)
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for example, the Lord's Prayer in Christianity |
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| 20 | ADHERE |
Stick notice in this place (6)
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AD=advertisement="notice" + HERE="in this place" |
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| 23 | LAYER |
Sportsman removing top in bed (5)
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[p]-LAYER="Sportsman", removing the top letter |
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| 24 | FILE |
Dossier of wasted life (4)
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anagram/"wasted" of (life)* |
Thanks Vulcan and manehi
I’ve never heard the expression in 1d, so that parsing was baffling to me.
Quite a tough Vulcan I thought with some great surfaces. My favourites were GOBBLEDEGOOK, AERONAUTICAL and STALINGRAD. I didn’t know that meaning of DORMITORY and having just read the excellent The Prosecutor by James Fairweather, PRIMO LEVI was a write in.
Ta Vulcan & manehi.
I liked the double and cryptic definitions. I had a slow start but in the end, all good.
Thanks both.
A curious mixture of the almost uncryptic – E-TYPE, AMEN, FILE, etc., and the downright tricky – PEBBLE (nho) PRIMO LEVI.
PURSUIT for leisure activity seemed a bit loose.
Enjoyable start to the week, however.
I’m not a big fan of cryptic definition only, idiom-based clues (hello 1d). They’re completely fair of course, but either you’ve heard the idiom, as I hadn’t, or there’s just no way in. Had I known the saying, I’m sure I’d feel like it was completely fair and gettable.
I felt like I was missing something with TRILLION, but I guess not? And I have encountered gobbledigook and gobbledygook before, but never gobbledegook, so no chance for REMAINDERS.
I failed to get ULTRASOUND, but a very fun clue!
Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
Started very slowly, then it went well until WATCHDOG and DORMITORY held me up in the end – needed quite a while to get my head around those (didn’t know this meaning of the latter, either). A very enjoyable wordplay, as always with Vulcan. Favourites STALINGRAD, WHITE LIES, ULTRASOUND, GOBBLEDEGOOK (haven’t seen this spelling but it’s the only one that fits the clue). Thanks a lot Vulcan and manehi!
That was fun. 16D was my LOI, I have no idea why, it was a very fair clue.
Fantastic to see the great Primo Levi in a crossword, I’m unpacking at the moment after a house move and I put his Periodic Table on the shelves earlier today, that will be my afternoon reading.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
This was an enjoyable unfolding and it’s always great when I don’t have to “look anything up” (except for Chambers’ spelling of 14a GOBBLEDEGOOK). I liked 13d REMAINDERS. Needed help to parse 5a PLASTIC and 4d TOWED which I got from definitions only and now seem so obvious.
I think watchdog has more layers – a watchdog might be clamped to one’s wrist (serving its purpose) and the to keep close (dog) follows the guard (watch)!
Beaten by PURSUIT but everything else went in OK after a slowish start. I found TRILLION and PRAYER but didn’t understand the cryptic parsing of them. Seems I was looking for something a lot cleverer. Nice Monday-ish crossword.
As William@4 notes, several of these clues seem barely cryptic, but they are balanced by some much more elaborately crafted ones. The STALINGRAD and GWYNETH clues neatly combine a smooth surface with the anagrind, anagrist and definition; the double defs are just tricky enough to be satisfying (PRAYER, LAY HANDS ON, RED EYE); and DORMITORY is, I think, a sharp (definitely not sleepy!) cryptic def.
A very enjoyable start to the week’s crosswording. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
I was also unsure about the spelling of GOBBLEDEGOOK, so looked it up in Chambers. Both a middle ‘e’ and ‘y’ are acceptable versions, so that didn’t help. Eventually I worked out the right one from the remainder of the wordplay.
I found this harder than usual for Vulcan. The PEBBLE expression was unknown to me, and REM(A)INDERS meaning ‘jogs’ only works if ‘jog’ is a noun in the sense of the clue. I suppose it might be but it’s a stretch.
Enjoyable. I couldn’t work out the parsing of PEBBLE, having never heard the phrase. (We don’t have many pebble beaches, so don’t often talk about them!) I couldn’t work out where sells came from in 13d, as I’d not known REMAINDERS as a verb. Never heard of PRIMO LEVI.
My immediate thought with 16d with none of the grid yet filled in was to put Handcuff in there, but of course that was in no way a cryptic fit. (Have probably been watching too many crime dramas on the TV recently). Thought STALINGRAD an excellent clue. Also liked LAY HANDS ON. Many thanks Vulcan and Manehi today…
Calabar Bean@5 & Layman@6. I originally thought the GOBBLEDIGOOK spelling must be the answer as it parses beautifully: “I approve” = ” I go OK” but as my (severely battered) Chambers only gives the versions with Y and E I had to think again (J’avais perdu mon latin…).
Ah, fond recollections of my Auntie S-, now long gone, consoling me after a break-up: “Well, there’s plenty more pebbles on the beach, you know”. So, for me, PEBBLE was a barely-cryptic-definition write-in.
REMAINDERS was my LOI, and I couldn’t quite fit the “sells” into the parsing, so thanks to manehi for a reminder about remaindering; I should have remembered Clive James:
“The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered.
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-praised effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs…”
Thanks V&m.
poc @13: I felt the same re jog. For me, the noun would be “a memory jogger“
All smooth enough. I also didn’t know about the pebbles and had the same “I go OK” thought as Blaise @16.
LAY HANDS ON didn’t occur to me for a while, and makes me shudder, yuck.
Thanks all.
I didn’t start very well in the NW corner, overthinking that clothes was a containment indicator. I couldn’t properly parse a few, like DORMITORY, PEBBLE and REMAINDERS. I liked the snow in WHITE LIES, the good anagram for AERONAUTICAL, and the dragged to the church for TOWED.
Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
I continue my step up to Monday’s Cryptic from my regular pursuit of the Saturday QCs and Sunday Quiptics. And it was definitely a step up for me from yesterday’s Quiptic but that’s as it should be I guess. Did get through in the end 🙂
Despite there being too many cryptic definitions and double-definitions for my taste, I really liked parts of this. Then other parts I found frustrating which yielded only to guesswork with crossers, and some with wordplay I didn’t get. But all of that is now clear thanks to Manehi’s blog – thanks. And thanks to Vulcan for the Monday challenge.
I started so slowly that I questioned whether it was Monday, but then it all came together. Like others, the PEBBLE idiom was unfamiliar. I also didn’t get the second meaning of RED EYE.
4D TOWED elicited a groan when the penny dropped.
Enjoyed that very much. Hard for a Monday I’d say but much easier than yesterday’s Quiptic. So many favourites it seems rude to single out: BLUETOOTH PRAYER ULTRASOUND (which was my LOI with much autokicking) WHITE LIE TOWED.
Four churchy clues and two Russian. Are we supposed to find a theme?
Just as others have written above, I too have never heard the pebble expression. And I thought the clue for trillion was a bit weak, unusually so for Vulcan. But otherwise, a rewarding puzzle. I’m surprised that Primo Levi is not that well known. 22ac reminded me of the Churchill quotation – the end of the beginning.
I was another “I go OK,” until it became obvious that it had to be REMAINDERS. Also another for whom there’s no saying involving pebbles. In other words, nothing to add, really. TRILLION and AMEN both didn’t seem very cryptic to me, but I guess that is a bit of a subjective judgment.
The version of the “pebbles”expression I’ve heard is “there are more fish in the sea”.
Yes, there are plenty more fish in the sea, but pebbles on beaches are rather rarer: that was my last one in.
Needed your help parsing trillion otherwise a good Monday puzzle. Thanks
A mixture of straightforward and much more tricky clues. Some excellent anagrams. AERONAUTICAL was a very clever one, with a good surface with the reference to a Lear Jet (as in Pink Floyd’s “Money”). STALINGRAD also a great anagram, and a suggestion of an extended definition (as manehi says). I liked the whimsical “fancied” as an anagram indicator in GWYNETH.
My one quibble is that I can’t see what “going to” is doing in the clue for BIDET (except being there for the surface).
I’m really surprised that so many people haven’t heard of the saying “Not the only pebble on the beach”.
Many thanks Vulcan and manehi.
I found this very difficult. Could not finish it – I failed to solve 21, 22, 25ac (never heard this expression before but I do know of commuter towns) and 17d.
Favourite: ULTRASOUND.
Of the ones I solved, I could not parse 1d (never heard this expression), and 7d – oh, that’s very clever – I can never remember what a trillion is!
I wrote in RED EYE without really thinking about where I first came across the AERONAUTICAL component but it suddenly hit me with today’s earworm… (about 80 seconds in, almost a DD?)
Thanks for the blog , AERONAUTICAL and STALINGRAD very good but I think that Monday should be easier than this for newer solvers .
You’re not the only pebble on the beach – an old music-hall song , possibly George Formby had a version or maybe his father .
Put me down as another one who’s NHO the idiom at 1D. As for the rest, nothing there to frighten the horses. Thanks to setter for a straightforward start to the week and to blogger, as ever.
Yes, quite tough to finish today, particularly in the northwest. STALINGRAD is a high quality clue, fit for any day of the week. TRILLION is rather, um, Qaos-lite. I needed the blog to understand the second part of the RESERVE clue.
LAYER is interesting. I think a bed is a rather specific layer, so this is really a DBE and probably merits a question mark. Also the sportsman can be either a generic player or a more specific one (Gary).
Good fun. Thanks, Vulcan and manehi.
[roz@32: 1896 it would seem. LoC. And sung here. I couldn’t find a Formby version, though that would have been fun.]
Incidentally, the meanings of billion and trillion in the UK were different – a billion was a million million, so 1 with 12 zeroes; a trillion had 18 zeroes. Current usage (as was always the case in the US) is 9 zeroes and 12 respectively.
The Oxford Library of Words & Phrases attributes the PEBBLE phrase to one Harry Braisted (19th century; 1896 according to the Library of Congress):
If you want to win her hand
Let the maiden understand
That she’s not the only pebble on the beach
…which doesn’t very easily equate in my mind to “said not to be alone”.
Despite the strangeness of some of the definitions – like ‘why to the church?’ – this was my first completion this year, as far as I can recall. And I actually got the not-cryptic-at-all cryptic definitions without staring at each of them for half an hour!
Thanks to Vulcan and Manehi.
@36 Indeed I wondered about that — but it turns out (thanks Gemini!) that the official UK change was quite some time ago, 1974 – thanks to Harold Wilson aligning with the US and the ROW.
Ilan Caron@38
Not the ROW just the USA and some of English speaking World, here in France and throughout most of Europe and the World a billion is still 10^18, a milliard is 10^12. Perhaps we should now return to the old definition and devalue all these US billionaires, including the Orange One. The change in the US was reaction to French influence after the Independence, but later in the C 20th the French changed back to the original rules, Bi, Tri, Quad, Quin million etc,
Oops, 10^12, one million million, is a billion outside of the US and UK Milliard is one thousand million, 10^9
@38: “This will not affect the billion in your pocket…“
Maybe that dormitory town usage is a UK thing? In the US, we would refer to it as a “bedroom community.”
Pleasant diversion. Last one in was PURSUIT, mostly because I couldn’t parse PEBBLE and was a bit reluctant to put it in as a result. Thanks for the parsing – had never heard the expression.
I’m sure I have heard “not the only PEBBLE on the beach, not the only fish in the sea” as a compound expression, so that didn’t worry me. And the phrase I am familiar with is a DORMITORY suburb – but close enough. STALINGRAD was indeed excellent (the clue, not the event). Having an aunt named Gwenyth caused a glitch at 27a until crossers came to the rescue. Thanks Vulcan and manehi.
I hadn’t heard dormitory used in that way but enjoyed a few groans (esp. Ultrasound & Gwyneth). My best ever write in with only 5 blanks, not helped by assuming ‘handcuff’ for 16D and I didn’t know Primo Levi (yes, I know but there we are.) Thanks V & M.
We seem to have had a lot of tough puzzles lately. Couldn’t finish this one, with the LS incomplete. Satisfied to see many commenters with the same nho’s as me, as well as favourites
Always appreciate Roz@32 advocating for easier puzzles on Mondays…in exchange for tougher ones on Fridays, of course
Re 1d PEBBLE: as with others, I hadn’t heard of that saying…but…once I got the answer from the definition and crossers, it was easy to infer that there must be a phrase about pebbles on the beach. That constitutes a complete parse, in my view. An excellent clue.
Unlike almost everyone else, I spell GOBBLEDEGOOK exactly that way, so 14d was an early entry.
Re 13d REMAINDERS, I often use jog as an economical synonym for reminder, so I do not feel poc@13’s stretchiness.
And I share Eoink@7’s love of Primo Levi’s writings. He had a knack for going right to your heart.
Thanks V&M for the very merry Monday fun.
The usage of the PEBBLE expression seems to have morphed these days into “like pebbles on a beach”, meaning commonplace, as I personally have often heard. However, I’d not heard the original.
There was indeed a mix of some very simple beginners’ clues, which are always welcome on a Monday, along with enough tougher ones to make the puzzle still satisfy more experienced solvers. I know that this probably deprives some beginners of a complete solve, but I felt that yesterday’s balance was pretty OK, all things considered.
Cheers one and all.
Etu@48
It may be an age thing (I’m ancient) but I’ve never heard “like pebbles on a beach” and am familar with “you’re not the only pebble n the beach .
Pino, 49,
I’m in my eighth decade – not sure what that makes me?
Oh, and it was Sunday’s, not yesterday’s…
Etu@50
It makes you younger than me!
Baz has had surgery so we only got to Monday just now. For us it was very easy after a short struggle at 1a and 1d—we have both heard the idiom. And we always spell it GOBBLEDEGOOK. Like TassieTim@44 we know of DORMITORY suburbs, so it was easy to guess that there are DORMITORY towns. When we were in primary school (Australia) billions had 12 zeroes, but US usage has become standard, alas. Enjoyed WHITE LIES, STALINGRAD, AERONAUTICAL. Thanks for a nice straightforward puzzle—we needed it.
Bazandcaz, just so you know, some of us do read “late” comments, so they are not wasted. I hope Baz’s surgery went well, and that these crosswords will help with the recovery ennui.
Re 25 a, here in Canada we call them bedroom communities, but it’s not a huge leap from that to DORMITORY towns, so 26a was eminently solvable (soluble?).