A lovely puzzle to end the year on. Lots of great clues, particular favourites were 1d, 22a and 23a.
Across
4 Move aimlessly and pick up something useful (6)
GADGET
=”something useful”. GAD=”Move aimlessly” plus GET=”pick up”
6 Image of record artist-in-residence curtailed (8)
HOLOGRAM
=”Image”. LOG=”record” plus RA=”artist”, both inside HOM(e)=”residence curtailed”
9 Fabled compiler’s not entirely stupid (6)
MYTHIC
=”Fabled”. MY=”compiler’s” plus THIC(k)=”not entirely stupid”
10 Outside left looking hard at bird (8)
STARLING
=”bird”. L(eft) with STARING=”looking hard” outside it
11 Cooking implement getting first-rate cooker’s first-rate backing, inducing non-specific neurosis (11)
PANTOPHOBIA
The fear of everything, =”non-specific neurosis”. PAN=”Cooking implement” plus TOP=”first-rate” plus HOB=”cooker” plus rev(AI=A1)=”first-rate backing”
15 Misguidedly train as practitioner of 12 (7)
ARTISAN
=”practitioner of HANDICRAFT”. (train as)*
17 Sideways, subsequently, on a plate (7)
LATERAL
=”Sideways”. LATER=”subsequently” plus A L(earner plate)
18 Split a horny model’s nose job (11)
RHINOPLASTY
=”nose job”. (Split a horny)*
22 Blade’s about to become increasingly promiscuous? (8)
CLAYMORE
=”Blade”. C(irca)=”about” plus LAY MORE=”become increasingly promiscuous”
23 Film: Daddy’s Girl (6)
PATINA
=”Film”. PA=”Daddy” plus TINA=”Girl”
24 Dater’s compromise? (5-3)
TRADE-OFF
=”compromise”. TRADE OFF in crosswordese implies (trade)*=”Dater”
25 Never, ever, ever restricting worship (6)
REVERE
=”worship”. Hidden in “NeveR EVER Ever”
Down
1 Countryside interrupting outcome? (6)
MEXICO
=”Country”. XI=”side”, inside (come)*=”out / come”
2 Drink rings bell in Market Road (10)
PORTOBELLO
=”Market Road”. PORT=”Drink” plus O O=”rings” with BELL inside
3 Party-giver accepting clipped old coin for feast (3,5)
HOG ROAST
=”feast”. HOST=”Party-giver” plus GROA(t)=”clipped old coin”
4 Strategy requiring instrument to keep quiet (4,4)
GAME PLAN
=”Strategy”. GAMELAN=”instrument” around P(iano)=”quiet”
5 Let off school during engagement (8)
DETONATE
=”Let off”. ETON=”school” inside DATE=”engagement”
7 Purveyor of pork pies raised by bird (4)
RAIL
=”bird”. Rev(LIAR)=”Purveyor of pork pies”
8 Thatcher dispatching soldier’s fount of wisdom (4)
MAGE
=”fount of wisdom”. MAG(G.I.)E=”Thatcher dispatching soldier”
12 Art of Chinese sleuths raised aquatic transport (10)
HANDICRAFT
=”Art”. HAN=”Chinese” plus rev(I[ntelligence] D[epartment])=”sleuths raised” plus CRAFT=”aquatic transport”
13 Renown of big eater eating what’s left to eat, initially (8)
PRESTIGE
=”Renown”. PIG=”big eater” around REST=”what’s left” plus E(at)
14 Misconstrued Fay’s plea to hedge bets (4,4)
PLAY SAFE
=”hedge bets”. (Fay’s plea)*
16 Shady lady’s second instrument (8)
STRUMPET
=”Shady lady”. S(econd) plus TRUMPET=”instrument”
19 Quit application, finally causing ferment (6)
LEAVEN
=”ferment”. LEAVE=”quit” plus (applicatio)N
20 Improvised performance in musical, back to front (4)
SCAT
=”Improvised performance”. CAT/S is the musical, with the “back” S moving to the front
21 Island’s translation of Bible into German? Yes! (4)
JAVA
=”Island”. A(uthorised) V(ersion)=”translation of Bible” inside JA=”German [for] Yes”
*anagram
Yes, this was great fun. Thanks to Shed and manehi (my favourites were the same as yours).
Thanks manehi and Shed
Really enjoyable. Too many good clues to mention. The only problem I had with it was, without any crossers, I had to “Check” whether to write in RAIL or LIAR at 7dn (both just about possible, I thought, though I had chosen RAIL).
I was surprised that GAMELAN was an instrument as well as an orchestra, but ti was the first definition in Chambers.
Is “rings” doing double-duty in 2dn? It gives the two Os, but also it is needed to say that they surround the bell.
Muffin “rings bell in” says put bell in oo
12dn I had CID as the intelligence department with RAFT for the aquatic transport. However I think yours is better.
Johnh42 @ 3
Thanks – I hadn’t seen that.
Great puzzle thank you Shed and manehi too. My top favourite was the d’oh moment inducing 1d.
Muffin@4
Re 12d I parsed it the same way as you
Enjoyed this v much, especially 18ac, 22ac, 3d & 23ac. LOI 7d. For 12d, I parsed it as Han+CID(rev)+raft. Happy New Year to all setters & solvers when it comes.
Thanks, manehi.
I often find Shed challenging, but I managed this one without too much trouble, so perhaps he was being gentle with us today. Or maybe I’ve got better in the last 365 days.
I thought PANTOPHOBIA was a Christmas-related affliction, but happen I’m wrong.
The print version had “quite” instead of “quiet” in 4d which was a little off-putting, but I got there in the end.
Finbar @10
You’re right. I just didn’t notice that when I was solving it!
Very enjoyable crossword, thanks Shed.
Thanks manehi, I parsed HANDICRAFT as Muffin @4 – I guess both work.
Favourites as per manehi.
Thanks, manehi. I had the same favourites as you, too, with the addition of 6ac, for the ‘artist-in-residence’ and I liked the horny rhino in 18ac.
[I had the same thoughts as K’s D re 11ac. 😉 ]
Many thanks to Shed for a lovely end to the year, as manehi said.
Enjoyed this puzzle. Think that 12D is “Han” + “DIC” i.e. CID backwards + “raft” for aquatic transport.
Thanks all – I agree that RAFT fits “aquatic transport” a lot better.
I was held up by confidently entering ‘Sinatra’ for 15A, assuming 12D would turn out to be ‘stagecraft’ or ‘witchcraft’ or similar. Was that just me?
Mistersawyer @16
I did have Sinatra in the frame, but withheld entering anything until I had crossers!
Thanks all
A big improvement over yesterday. Favourites were 11 ac,5d. Last in logogram andrail.
Nearly all done before needing to get help but very enjoyable nonetheless and most of the looked up words I didn’t know anyway. 1d confused me as I had no way of knowing countryside needed to be split in two: did I miss something?
Thanks, manehi.
Nice puzzle to finish the year – at the easier end of Shed’s spectrum, I felt.
I thought 7d was rather ambiguous, and lightly entered LIAR at first, but switched it round once I had a crosser. Like muffin (@2) I had not come across GAMELAN as the name of an individual instrument rather than the whole sonorous collection. There it is in Chambers, as he points out – but nowhere else, as far as I can see (certainly not SOED, Wiktionary or even Wikipedia). I suspect it may be one of those idiosyncratic Chambers inventions that regularly receive disapprobation here!
Favourites were 1d (two lift-and-separates in one clue: tremendous), 9a and 12d (which I also parsed as HAN+ <(CID) +RAFT).
One error, and not my cup of tea.
Very good puzzle, with GADGET and MEXICO (which wouldn’t get past the editor in the Times, I think) the pick of the crop.
Thanks manehi and Shed
Very enjoyable. I too parsed 12d as muffin et al.
Happy New Year to all.
Done in between a few bits of shopping and prep for the last meal of 2013. A fine finish to the year from one of my favourite compilers. Thank you, Shed.
Mind you I was all ready to point out the error with gamelan = instrument till I read the blog. Ditto ‘quite’ in the same clue but I assumed this was a Grauniad typo. PATINA last in, CLAYMORE penultimate and probably the last ‘ah-ha’ moment of the year.
A straightforward but very enjoyable solve. I particularly liked the shady lady. Gervase – the OED defines gamelan as a tuned percussion instrument, albeit as a rare usage. On this occasion Chambers is not the sole authority for the definition.
Happy New Year to all.
I liked it all except PATINA which should be daddy girl surely?
Hi Viscosity @26
It works if you take ‘Daddy’s girl’ as ‘Daddy has girl’.
[Blimey, hardest sum yet: ? x 9 = seventy two!]
Wolfie @25: Thanks for that info. Why Chambers should list the meaning first when most sources don’t have it at all and the OED describes the usage as ‘rare’ is just one of those little mysteries. However, I do think that the usage is probably rare because it is erroneous – although ‘wrong’ usage is one of the ways in which language evolves, of course.
Many thanks and happy New Year to you all.
Re 4d – whoops, my typo, which inexplicably got past the editor, and even more inexcusably got past me when I was proofing it. Sorry about that.
Muffin@2 and Finbar@10: my thinking was that since ‘by’ is as it were the equals sign in ‘Purveyor of pork pies raised by bird’ it should be clear that it’s the pie-purveyor, not the bird, that needs to be raised. Though I’m aware that not all compilers are strict about this, and it annoys me a lot when some of them aren’t.
12d was indeed meant to be parsed HAN/DIC/RAFT, though manehi’s reading (which hadn’t occurred to me) does work too. I’m also kicking myself for not noticing that ARTISAN is an anagram of ‘Sinatra’ – I’d have used ol’ blue-eyes as the anagram fodder if I had done.
Very enjoyable, and as usual with Shed a word that I didn’t know, in this case PANTOPHOBIA, was clearly clued. I’d like to think that it is no coincidence that this word was included in a puzzle published at this time of the year.
The NW corner held me up the longest and GADGET was my LOI after GAME PLAN. I did a little research on “gamelan” post-solve and apparently it is an Old Javanese word that means both the instrument and the orchestra, so there is no reason why both meanings shouldn’t have come across into English even if one of the meanings is far more common than the other.
I agree with Ulaca@22’s comment about the clue for MEXICO, but the variation in editorial styles is one of the reasons that I enjoy doing the Guardian puzzles as well as those in the Times and the Independent.
Very enjoyable puzzle from Shed as usual. One of his easier ones though which was a little disappointing as I was hoping for a longer solve.
Shed has beaten me to it re the HANDICRAFT parsing which I too parsed as CID reversed. (I actually don’t think manehi’s parsing is as good as RAFT is definitely aquatic and ID for Intelligence Department” is very much rarer than CID.
My only brief hold up was in the SW corner. I was looking at 16d and 22a as the last two to be entered. I came up with SCRUBBER but apparently the CRUBBER isn’t a relative of the CRUMHORM! Of course it’s STRUMPET but never have I seen two clues so different in tone. After the so coy “Shady lady” as a defibtion for STRUMPET I was not expecting the not so coy “LAY MORE” as a charade for “increasingly promiscuous”. Held me up a little but made me laugh when I saw it.
Thanks to manehi and Shed
Tough solve, needed your help Manehi.I may have to steer clear of Shed unless I improve fairly quickly, it this is him at his fluffiest.
I was saying to Shed at the Sheffield bash that it was a while since he had appeared in print. He told me that this was coming.
So I anticipated it in two senses of the word. And have been disappointed in neither. Thanks.
Thanks for the blog and also to Shed for a very enjoyable puzzle. It’s a shame he’s so rare these days.
Apart from the last five clues – all in the left-hand side of the grid – I didn’t find this too tricky but those remaining clues really held me up. MEXICO was one of my favourites, being rather partial to such word split clues. I also went with SINATRA too, until it clashed with DETONATE.
Possibly too late to comment now, but ulaca @22 and Andy B@30 – I would have agreed with 1d not getting past the Times crossword editor had I not seen this clue in Times crossword 25,606 (Oct 15th):
You could have knocked me down with a feather.
Happy new year to all here – setters, bloggers, commenters and lurkers.
A bit late – New Year and all that – but I thought this was a lovely puzzle. Couldn’t manage NW corner as the Guardian typo led me to put in FAIR PLAY but no problems with Gamelan. a Balinese instrument favoured by Messaien and. Britten
Nice puzzle.
I have never come across GAMELAN as meaning anything other than the whole group. A gamelan consists of a variety of percussion instruments and no single one of them has a special claim on the name.
I once attended a concert by such a group in Ubud, Bali, complete with mime. Unfortunately we knew one of the participants so we had to. It went for about two hours – it seemed more like a whole day. Fortunately I had a digital camera with me so I passed the time familiarising myself with the vast menu of that tiny machine, occasionally taking snaps to give the impression that I wanted a souvenir of this marvellous occasion.
Technically it’s incredible. Every part is memorised and there are several players on each part – yet no wrong notes were heard. They use a different scale – and even their own scales differ from one another – so it doesn’t make a lot of sense tonally to the western ear.
Re 16d – I own a 1946 Olds Trumpet, which makes an unfortunate pun with that word.
Many thanks Shed and manehi
Seasons greetings to y’all.
ClaireS @ 34 – I think the difference is that the literal in the Times puzzle is ‘legit’ (‘place in the the theatre’) while the literal here is ‘para-legit’ (‘COUNTRYside’). But like the Dick Emery character might have said, it might be ‘awful’ but I like it.
Been absent for a while and now making a very tardy return. BUT:
12 down doesn’t work both ways. ‘Intelligence Department’ ignores “sleuths raised” (in a down clue” which clearly indicates Criminal Investigation Department = CID reversed, followed by ‘raft’.
Wishing all a preposterous New Year