Flipping heck, I only put my hand up to blog the Monday Indy on the grounds that it was ‘easy’.
Easy this wasn’t. I got really stuck on two or three occasions, and not getting the gateway clue early was not a help. Apart from a couple of random bits of cluing, it was all fair, just tricky. The theme is GREAT WAR POETS, and dotted around the grid we have Robert GRAVES, Siegfried SASSOON, Rupert BROOKE and Wilfred OWEN.
There are some other poetic references too. The grid – not specially solver-friendly – did scream out Nina, and one did become apparent. The top and right-hand-side unches have MY SUBJECT IS WAR, which I discovered is part of Wilfred Owen’s draft preface for a collection of war poems that he hoped to have published in 1919. There is a link here to the original, hand-written draft. It is of course the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War this year, but I don’t think there is any particular anniversary today that would account for the subject matter. I could be wrong.
Quite a sombre theme, but a crossword which I enjoyed. You?
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) missing
definitions are underlined
Across
8 Battles on, defended by gun, not prepared to retreat
GREAT WAR
An insertion of RE for ‘on’ in GAT, followed by RAW reversed.
9 Police section back on area caught one tart
ACIDIC
A charade of A, C, I and a reversal of CID.
10 Places of worship for example admitting decline over year
ABBEYS
Another reversal: of EBB, plus Y in AS for ‘for example’.
11 Theatre-goers here present for heartthrob
GOD’S GIFT
A charade of GODS (as ‘up in the gods’) and GIFT. I don’t think ‘heartthrob’ and GOD’S GIFT are the same thing: the former is positive but the latter has a sense of only the man himself thinking that he is attractive to the opposite sex.
12 River that’s out of this world? Oder perhaps
POET
Well, it’s a charade of the river PO and ET for ‘extra-terrestrial’, and the River Oder is in Germany. But the suggestion is that Oder is also a poet, but I can’t find any reference to him or her. Can anyone help?
Edit: Muffyword has kindly explained this at comment no 1.
14 School member has wander without male companion
ROACH
A charade of ROA[M] and CH for Companion of Honour. I think it’s just suggesting that a ROACH, being a fish, could be part of a ‘school’ of said animal. Although from what little I know of the species, I think they are solitary creatures.
16 Seafaring group finally escape out of wrecked liner
RNLI
Scorpion is asking you to take E for the last letter of ‘escape’ out of LIN[E]R and make an anagram (‘wrecked’). For overseas solvers and lurkers, it’s the abbreviation for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.
17 It’s not nice when regularly observed, everyone standing by
ON CALL
The even letters of nOt NiCe followed by ALL.
18 8 12 holding party in central Kingston
GRAVES
The first of our World War One poets, Robert GRAVES. An insertion of RAVE in GS, which are the central letters of ‘Kingston’.
21 One wades in the same place shortly before heading for surf
IBIS
IBI[D] plus S for the first letter of ‘surf’. IBID is short for IBIDEM, Latin for ‘in the same place’ and is used in indexes to refer to a work that has already been cited. And a chance for the obligatory Pierre bird link, from which you can see that he is definitely a ‘wader’. Not a UK resident, but occasionally one gets lost and turns up here.
23 Revolutionary within colonial system executed
SLAIN
Hidden reversed in coloNIAL System.
24 What’s sprayed to de-ice?
THAW
Clever. It’s (WHAT)* with ‘sprayed’ as the anagrind.
25 Foreign royals? They might be served at teatime
BOURBONS
A dd. The house of BOURBON is a European royal house and is also a biscuit. The two facts are apparently related.
27 Hints at going over ridge
CUESTA
A charade of CUES and a reversal of AT. ‘A long, low ridge with a steep scarp slope and a gentle back slope’, says Collins. And it’s the Spanish word for ‘slope’. So now you know.
29 Alsatian I found on sun terrace somewhere in the Balkans
SKOPJE
A charade of S for ‘sun’, KOP for ‘terrace’ (most famously at Anfield, where Liverpool play and it’s called the Spion Kop after the Boer War battle) and JE. Why JE? Because Alsace is a beautiful region of Eastern France, notable for its Germanic character and cuisine. So an Alsatian would say JE for ‘I’.
30 A certain cosmetic that Sarah Millican uses?
ONE-LINER
A charade of ONE and (EYE) LINER. Referring the the South Shields-born comedian. If you ever go to see her live, be prepared: she’s a great deal ruder than on the telly. But also very, very funny.
Down
1 1990s film cut down, limiting extremely riotous behaviour
MRS BROWN
An insertion of RS and BR for the outside letters of ‘riotous’ and ‘behaviour’ in MOWN. Judi Dench as Queen Vic and Billy Connelly as her servant John BROWN. Tongues wagged, and behind her back she was referred to as MRS BROWN. Good film.
2 Knocked up English poem in University
YALE
A reversal of E and LAY for an archaic word for ‘poem’.
3 Posh Londoners here taking seconds by limo to find patisserie
SWISS ROLLS
I wasn’t mad keen on this clue. It’s a charade of SWI for Londoners who live in the ‘posh’ postal code of SW1, SS for ‘seconds’ and ROLLS. SWISS ROLLS for ‘patisserie’ is a bit random, I think.
4 Top-class game by chap capturing a nation
URUGUAY
A charade of U (as in U and non-U), RU for ‘Rugby Union’ and A in GUY. Their football team lacks bite.
5 12 save daughter
BARD
A charade of BAR (‘bar none’) and D.
6 Dance with nameless Europeans ending in aft part of boat
JIGGER-MAST
Well, to get the Nina in I guess there had to be some obscure clues. It’s JIG, GERMA[N]S and T for the last letter of ‘aft’.
7 Engineer providing iron in the Spanish arena
EIFFEL
An insertion of IF and FE in EL for one of the Spanish words for ‘the’. I think ‘arena’ is there just to help the surface. He of La Tour Eiffel fame, although from memory I think he also had something to do with the Statue of Liberty.
13 Written copy one nicked from school’s underground cell, we hear
TRANSCRIPT
A charade of TRA[I]NS and CRIPT, which is a homophone of CRYPT.
15 Sort of clobber excited drunk
HIGH-NECKED
Another fairly random definition, I thought. A charade of HIGH and NECKED.
19 Disease putting former worker on edge
EXANTHEM
Not a word I’d heard of, but to be fair to the setter, it’s clear enough: EX, ANT and HEM. It’s an eruptive skin rash.
20 8 12 cuckoo visited early
SASSOON
An insertion of ASS in SOON. ASS for ‘cuckoo’? Referring to Siegfried SASSOON.
22 8 12 stand around castle
BROOKE
An insertion of ROOK for the chess ‘castle’ in BE for a very approximate synonym of ‘stand’. Rupert BROOKE.
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
26 8 12 heads out of cow pen
OWEN
This is how I finally got the gateway clue. It’s [C]OW [P]EN. Wilfred OWEN, perhaps the best-known (or most-studied) of the War Poets, and the writer of the perimeter Nina.
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the completely unimaginable horrors of the Great War.
28 12 creates such energy on film
EPIC
A charade of E and PIC.
Thank you to Scorpion for a thoughtful puzzle to start to the Indy week.
Great blog and puzzle.
Re 12:
An “oder” might write odes (I bet you are cross now Pierre!).
D’oh! Yes, I am cross, but thank you, Muffyword.
Thanks Pierre, and especially Scorpion. I am truly blessed. A puzzle bang in the middle of my home ground. My old prof was Sassoon’s second-in-command on the Western Front, fyi.
I expect the rest of the week will be television, pop music and sport, just to chasten me. 🙁
Thanks for a great blog, Pierre, and especially for the very interesting link and well-chosen quotation. [And the bird.]
‘Enjoyed’ is probably not the right word, considering the theme, but I found this an absorbing puzzle. Because I boringly tackle clues in order, I didn’t spot any theme until the very end – I thought it was clever to manage to group three of the poets together.
Many thanks to Scorpion for the puzzle – ‘thoughtful’ is a good word, I think.
I loved this. It was a real treat for Monday morning. I do find that themes add such a lot to these puzzles. It is a fairly new concept for me having only relatively lately found the Guardian and Indy crosswords where they seem to abound. They seem so much cleverer than unthemed versions.
My favourite clues, however were not themed ones, but because it took me ages to see why after I had the answer – 14ac and 21ac.
Thx to Scorpion and Pierre.
An excellent puzzle that was definitely on the tricky side for a Monday, IMHO. I saw the theme quite early on, and I also saw the nina once enough of the relevant unches had been filled in, but it still took me a fair time to finish. The CUESTA/EXANTHEM crossers took a while and both went in from the wordplay with fingers crossed. I never did manage to parse SASSOON so thanks for that. Very annoyingly I needed aids to get my LOI, BOURBONS. I’m not sure why “foreign royals” needed a question mark because the clue works perfectly well without it, and it made me think there was more going on than there really was. Maybe that was Scorpion’s plan.
Indeed very tough, especially for a Monday. Got there in the end, but needed a search to get 1dn. (And when I did get it, I got it confused with Mrs Brown’s Boys.)
Took me a while to get the gateway clues – got 26dn first but that didn’t help. Didn’t know 19dn and 27ac but got them from the word play and then checked them.
I was trying for ages to work out why BATTENBURG didn’t fit for 25ac.
Thanks Pierre, missed the Nina whilst solving, did think pangram with skopje which on its own does half the work.
Tough again for a Monday. Suspect this was due for the normal theme Tuesday slot so intrigued about tomorrow.
I didn’t find this nearly as difficult as I expected to when I first looked at it. The two unknown words exanthem and cuesta held me up for a while and I was pleased to get them both from the wordplay. I didn’t follow sassoon – “visited” to me doesn’t really imply containment, so I was just looking for something on top of soon. I thought cuckoo might be some code word used in the SAS.
According to a feature in the i today, the first shots of the Great War were fired in the night of 28-29th July (between Austria-Hungary and Serbia). Which no doubt accounts for the puzzle appearing today.
Got the gateway clue early on having figured that 18ac could only be GRAVES, helped by doing the puzzle online so that I had the check button available.
Thanks, Scorpion and Pierre.
I’ve just read the article in the i, Allan. I’m sure you’re right.
Thanks for the blog Pierre and interesting to read all the comments. Joyce solved BARD early on but had no idea why it was correct until Bert guessed GREAT, WAR and POET although not necessarily in that order!
Tricky start to the week. Quite an achievement by Scorpion to get a theme and a nina with so few unusual words. Thanks for the challenge.
Echo all the remarks from everyone about how difficult it was; hard enough without a couple of words (exanthem and cuesta) that were completely new to me. In fact exanthem is so unusual that I’m getting that little squiggly line under it to suggest I’ve made a typing mistake.
I thought the syntax of 14ac was a bit odd: ‘…has wander …’. Felt that ‘visited’ (in 20dn) was at least misleading as an inclusion indicator (I initially thought it was ‘aniseed’ — ani + an early version of ‘saw’, but hardly a Great War poet). And is it only a poet who produces epics? Surely any writer produces epics. So wouldn’t 28dn have been fairer with ‘may create’ rather than ‘creates’?
Wil @13
I feel syntax OK if you take “wander” as a noun…..
This was a terrific puzzle. Thankyou, Scorpion and Pierre.