[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
After the veritable smorgasbord of fancy themed and Nina’d centenary/Christmassy puzzles across all sources over the past few weeks, Nimrod brings us back down to basics with a good, honest hard-working cryptic prize puzzle…a ‘Ronseal’, if you like – it just does what it says on the tin…
There are 7 (yes, seven) fifteen-letter answers – which must have taken some doing. And although, once they are got, longer answers immediately give more crossing letters, the trick is in the getting – which wasn’t always immediate!
There are two long drinks at 4D and 5D – but surely we’ve all given that up for January (?), and maybe a nod to the January sales in BARGAIN BASEMENT at 14A. Also VICARAGE at 6D could be a mini-tribute to Araucaria’s legendary Grantchester clue…? And there was a a little legal topicality with ‘Nigella’ making an upside-down appearance in 15D ALLEGING.
But generally, it was a welcome form of ‘cold turkey’ from all that festive frippery, and a mercifully relatively quick solve and blog for someone contemplating going back to work after all that time off.
(The only thing I couldn’t initially resolve was the ‘former’ in 20A – maybe ‘lavish’ had some obsolete meaning of ‘free’? – as I thought the ORANGE FREE STATE was still a province of South Africa. But a little Wiki-oogling explained that it was renamed as ‘Free State Province’ after the first multi-racial elections in 1994…a sort of reverse Henry Ford – ‘you can have any colour you like in your rainbow nation, as long as it’s not orange…’?)
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
| 9A | ELECTRO | One votes finally to swap for printing plate (7) | printing plate / ELECT(OR) (one who votes) swapping final letters round = ELECTRO |
| 10A | RAILCAR | In retrospect, this isn’t one telling the truth about AA vehicle! (7) | vehicle / An ‘RAC LIAR’ might be someone not ‘telling the truth about the AA’ (RAC and AA being UK motoring organisations) – and ‘in retrospect’ would be RAIL CAR |
| 11A | PURE MATHEMATICS | Numbers – no application from them puts America to trouble (4,11) | numbers – (with) no (practical?!) application / anag (i.e. to trouble) of THEM PUTS AMERICA |
| 12A | GUTTA-PERCHA | Spill tea on belly, something water-proof (5-6) | something water-proof / GUT (belly) + TAPER (spill, or wick, for lighting a candle) + CHA (tea) |
| 13A | ETH | Old character living in Market Harborough (3) | old character (Old English letter, barred D – Ð or ð) / hidden word in ‘MarkET Harborough’ |
| 14A | BARGAIN-BASEMENT | Lay hands on back…lowering around hip…down here…snip! (7-8) | down here – snip / GRAB (lay hands on) backwards, plus ABASEMENT (lowering) around IN (hip, trendy) |
| 16A | LEA | Open country guide not going as far as Germany (3) | open country (meadowland) / LEA(D) – guide, leaving off (not going as far as) D (Deutschland, Germany) |
| 17A | LEON TROTSKY | Revolutionary backing “wrong” Christmas broadcaster (4,7) | Revolutionary / NOEL and TORT (wrong, and Christmas, both ‘backing’) + SKY (broadcaster) |
| 20A | ORANGE FREE STATE | Nobody called the manor about lavish former province (6,4,5) | former province (of South Africa) / O (nothing, nobody) + RANG (called) + ESTATE (the manor) about FREE (lavish) |
| 21A | ALMONER | Social worker’s money purloined by a recluse (7) | Social worker / A + LONER (recluse) around (purloining) M (money) |
| 22A | SENESCE | Get very mature, synthetic essence (7) | Get very mature / anag (i.e. synthetic) of ESSENCE |
| Down | |||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue | Definition (with occasional embellishments) / Logic/parsing |
| 1D | SEA-PIG | Page 1’s unusual marine animal (3-3) | marine animal / anag (i.e. unusual) of PAGE + I (1) + S |
| 2D | TERRITORIAL ARMY | Reserve it, or I’ll have to panic (filling nappy) (11,4) | Reserve (forces) / TERRY (towelling nappy) around IT + OR + I + ALARM (panic) |
| 3D | STEMMA | Canonised person with a novel family tree (6) | family tree / ST (saint, canonised person) + EMMA (novel, by Jane Austen) |
| 4D | SOUTHERN COMFORT | What’s unusually served out hot from counters? … (8,7) | What’s served (usually cold! – from counters/bars) / anag (i.e. out) of HOT FROM COUNTERS |
| 5D | GREEN CHARTREUSE | … eco-party’s plan to recycle what’s served out in bars (5,10) | what’s (also!) served out in bars / GREEN (eco) + CHART (plan) + REUSE (recycle) |
| 6D | VICARAGE | By church, house a festive riot of students in depravity (8) | House, (usually) by (a) church / VICE (depravity) around A + RAG (festive riot of students) |
| 7D | SCRIVENERS PALSY | Scroll halfway down, finding one’s special friends in pursuit of sex (a deficiency for writer) (10,5) | a deficiency for a writer / SCR(oll) (half of scroll) + I (one) + VENERY (pursuit of sexual pleasure), around S (special) + PALS (friends) |
| 8D | BRASS HAT | Badly behaved child keeping as quiet as a military officer! (5,3) | a military officer (slang) / BRAT (badly behaved child) around AS + SH (quiet) |
| 14D | BALMORAL | Retriever raised right (not wrong) bonnet (8) | (Scottish) bonnet / BAL (Lab, or labrador, retriever) + MORAL (right, not wrong) |
| 15D | ALLEGING | Without legal proof declaring this person cooks quite a lot up on Government (8) | Declaring (without legal proof) / ALLEGIN (Nigella – Lawson, person who cokes (allegedly), sorry, cooks(!) quite a lot – upwards) + G (government) |
| 18D | ON SONG | Part characterised by Bronson, gunslinger in fine form (2,4) | in fine form / hidden words in ‘BrONSON Gunslinger’ |
| 19D | Y-LEVEL | I support telescope and, looking up, see 17 ascending (1-5) | I (i.e. something that will) support (a) telescope / YLE (Ely, cathedral see) looking up, plus VEL (Lev Davidovich Bronstein. aka Leon Trotsky, at 17A) ascending |
My quickest Nimrod solve ever: a single post-Saturday lunch 40-minute session rather than a week-long piecemeal effort. In 20A I took ‘lavish’ to mean ‘free’ in the sense of ‘she was free with her favours’, and in 7D assumed that I+S represented ‘one’s’. I had a small problem with the construction of 6D in that ‘hot’ seemed to be doing double duty as part of both the definition (ending at ‘hot’) and the anagram fodder, but that’s a minor quibble and it didn’t hold me up.
It took me a while to get on Nimrod’s wavelength but I got there without aids in the end, although because of time constraints this morning I entered some of the long answers from their definitions without trying to parse them. 11ac, 14ac, 2dn and 7dn fell into this category. ELECTRO was my LOI, which in retrospect seems very strange because it was one of the easier clues.
Polly @1 – if you mean 4d re “hot” etc. I think it’s an & lit.
Herb @3: I did indeed mean 4D. You could well be right about the &lit; I leave all the arguments about that kind of clue to the likes of the learned Pelham Barton, never having got my head around the term enough to be sure of using it correctly.
A very enjoyable and user-friendly Nimrod – thank you to him and mc_rapper too.
This is only the fourth Nimrod that I have managed to finish, out of 38 attempts, so I am slightly disappointed that other solvers found it relatively easy.
I first saw this puzzle only as today’s printed solution, and the first thing that strikes one is the grid construction, with 7 of the 23 lights being 15 letters long (giving an average of 9.43). By coincidence, FT 14493 from one month ago has 20 lights and an average word length of 9.80, but in that there are only 3×15 (plus 2×14 and 3×13). So hats off to Nimrod for getting 7×15 using only straightforward vocab.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback.
Polly & Herb – I did think that 4D was at least a ‘semi-&lit’, but I have had my fingers burned before ‘mis-labelling’ &lit clues, so I ducked out of making such an assertion here – cowardice, or discretion being the better part of valour?!
lenny at #6 – we don’t mean to belittle your efforts or put you off when some of us ‘show off’ that this was an ‘easier’ Nimrod. We are all at different levels, and one man’s easy Nimrod could be another man’s impenetrable Anax – and sometimes it is just a case of being on the setter’s ‘wavelength’ that day, or hitting on an area where all the clues seem to go in quickly.
Monk at #7 – interesting analysis – although, to paraphrase John Cleese’s great Shakespearean actor: ‘It’s not just a matter of the number or length of the clues, I mean, solving them and getting them in the right order is just as important’…(;+>)