Nick: Very tough cluing this week from Azed.
13ac, 31ac, 4dn, 16dn and 27dn caused me a few moments of head scratching trying to parse the clues correctly.
Finally 18ac was a right stinker. Without the Internet I would never have solved this clue, and even with the unches in, one would never be able to guess the correct answer unless you knew what the ‘opposite’ of ‘like that grange’ homophone was from the ‘sermon on the mount’. What also confused me is that motte² is a ‘mound, esp. with a castle’ so at first I was twigging that a mound is opposite to a moat. Very tough indeed.
Good stuff today!
| Across | |||
| 1. | Great Scottish jewellery with a stone inset – it precedes metallic spray (12, 2 words) | ||
| GRIT BLASTING | GRIT+((A+ST) in BLING) | ||
| 10. | Aussie mite, non-existent? That’s me, snatched by joey (5) | ||
| RAZOO | AZ in ROO | ||
| 11. | Paymaster turning up errs with distribution (6) | ||
| PURSER | (UP<)+(ERRS*) | ||
| 13. | Part: one in The Merchant endlessly visible to audience? (7) | ||
| PORTION | PORTI(a)+ON[stage] Reference Portia from The Merchant of Venice |
||
| 14. | Need aerosol, maybe (6) | ||
| MISTER | dd | ||
| 15. | Cereal currently popular for little monkey (6) | ||
| SAGOIN | SAGO+IN | ||
| 18. | Like that lonely grange, we hear, with beams? Far from it! (5) | ||
| MOTED | homophone: MOATED what a stinker! I didn’t have a clue about this, but on a hunch googling ‘lonely grange’ revealed Tennyson’s Mariana and I found out it was a MOATED grange. Now, looking in C at ‘mote’ and for ‘beams’ there is a reference to ‘The Mote and the Beam’ – see here, so far from [it] a beam in your eye it’s moted! |
||
| 19. | Eastern chieftain exercises one, king having bagged wife (8) | ||
| PEISHWAH | PE+I+(W in SHAH) | ||
| 20. | Westward affinity with eastern goddess (4) | ||
| NIKE | (KIN<)+E westward = reversed |
||
| 21. | Head of store goes to the back for old drugs (4) | ||
| HOPS | SHOP with the S at the back | ||
| 23. | Former master sat with me suitably dressed as fellow in hall? (8) | ||
| MESSMATE | MES+(SAT, ME*) | ||
| 26. | Protein served at table, Greek character tucking in (5) | ||
| OPSIN | PSI in ON[the table] | ||
| 29. | E.g. plum stone causing tough obstruction (6) | ||
| NUTLET | NUT+LET | ||
| 30. | Badly cast one having lost head, cutting line (6) | ||
| SECANT | (CAST+ON(e))* | ||
| 31. | Early ancestor of Homo (discredited) – French, homme? (7) | ||
| DAWN-MAN | DAWN[French!]+MAN took ages for the penny to drop on the correct parsing of this clue |
||
| 32. | Episodic glimpse of enlightenment in retreats? The reverse (6) | ||
| SERIAL | (E(nlightenment) in LAIRS)< | ||
| 33. | Jock’s easily managed, one won in marriage (5) | ||
| TAWIE | (A+W) in TIE | ||
| 34. | ‘Distance doctoring’? Poorly, I met decline before end of life (12) | ||
| TELEMEDICINE | (I MET DECLINE*)+(lif)E | ||
| … Down |
|||
| 1. | One listening to old records? You might find him agitated with organ stop (12) | ||
| GRAMOPHONIST | (HIM+ORGAN STOP)* | ||
| 2. | Gunners long for old-style transport (6) | ||
| RAPINE | RA+PINE | ||
| 3. | Sweet cakes put decay on course to rise (6) | ||
| TORTES | (SET ROT)< | ||
| 4. | Maggot ma at intervals removed from food in waterside inn? (5) | ||
| BOTEL | BOT+((m)E(a)L)! | ||
| 5. | Latin song, what’s taught by dominie? (4) | ||
| LAIR | L+AIR scot. lair=lore |
||
| 6. | Being a renegade, a job when unknown (8) | ||
| APOSTASY | A+POST+AS+Y | ||
| 7. | Brilliant bird, vamp, forward (6) | ||
| TROGON | TROG+ON | ||
| 8. | Novelty wine, fizzy, with a dash of enzian (5) | ||
| NEWIE | (WINE*)+E(nzian) | ||
| 9. | Being admitted to Court and entering fresh pedigree (12, 2 words) | ||
| GRANDE ENTREE | (AND in GREEN)+TREE | ||
| 12. | Rare Caledonian moulding on centre of frontal (7) | ||
| SCOTIAN | SCOTIA+(fro)N(tal) | ||
| 16. | He may make better money – soaks mine up! (7) | ||
| TIPSTER | (RETS+PIT)< great clue – def. is very misleading! |
||
| 17. | Water swallowed, no longer fresh – it’s not bitter (8, 2 words) | ||
| SWEET ALE | WEE in STALE | ||
| 22. | Folkloric creature changing form is, like, Protean (6) | ||
| SILKIE | (IS, LIKE)* | ||
| 24. | Waterproof clothing I see marks native Canadians (6) | ||
| MICMAC | MAC around[clothing!] (IC+M) | ||
| 25. | One with name in money, producer of taste in wines (6) | ||
| TANNIN | (AN+N) in TIN | ||
| 27. | One’s initially pulped contents of what it’s served in? (5) | ||
| PUREE | P(ulped)+(t)UREE(n) + self referential another stinker to parse |
||
| 28. | Part of funeral entirely for e.g. slow marches (5) | ||
| LENTI | hidden funeraL ENTIrely | ||
| 30. | This soldier is hoisting jacks (4) | ||
| SWAD | DAWS< | ||
| … | |||
Thanks for the blog.
It seems that my experience solving this puzzle was almost identical to your own…
…including the great ah-hah moment when the penny dropped about Dawn French.
But I’m still not sure how ‘far from it’ becomes the definition in 18d (though I don’t have Chambers 2011 to hand, and wonder if ‘moted’ may also have meanings related to ‘remote’).
I also found the Tennyson quotations to ‘moted grange’ AND to ‘moted sunbeams’ through Google. N.B. beam = sunbeam
Even thinking about 18ac all week, and now with your comments, I still really don’t know what is the correct way (or meaning) to parse this clue – nor it’s intended cryptic solution.
Nick
Thanks Azed for an enjoyable puzzle and Nick for the blog. There have been times when a blogger said that the puzzle was comparatively easy and I have taken a near maximum time to solve it. This one was the other way round, but that just shows how subjective these things are.
18ac: As I read it, the first part is the wordplay “Like that lonely grange, we hear” (homophone of MOATED) and the rest is the definition “with beams? Far from it”. A mote is a particle of dust, or a speck, either of which is far from a beam.
I’m rather late with my comment thanks to a long weekend up north (the Sheffield S&B) and a 16-hour power cut when we got home. Apparently there’d been a bit of wind!
Thanks for the blog, Trafites, and Azed for the puzzle. Like Pelham Barton I didn’t find this one too hard although I didn’t think of Dawn French so couldn’t solve DAWNMAN.
I was happy with 18a; remembering the ‘moated grange’ and assuming the rest of the clue referred to the ‘mote’ and ‘beam’ in the Bible verse …
Matthew 7:3-5
King James Version (KJV)
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?