I had a premonition yesterday evening that it was going to be Monk today so I was glad that I had agreed to stand in for PeeDee again today as he is one of my favourite setters. However, this feeling changed a little today when I found that I was unable to complete the grid.
With only six entries (three across and three down) during my first pass through the clues it was clear that progress was going to be slow and indeed it was. Most of the remaining entries were gradually filled in until I was left with 3dn and 4dn. I had already spent nearly twice as long as I normally do on a cryptic puzzle at the more difficult end of the spectrum and these last two delayed me even further.
3dn succumbed when I eventually parsed the wordplay and then checked Wikipedia to verify the result (I had never seen this spelling before though was aware of its siege). 4dn continued to elude me.
I was hoping that an adjournment for some breakfast would help and that I would be able to solve this clue when I came back to the puzzle, or whilst writing this post, but it didn’t and I haven’t! 🙁
There is always something extra in the grid when Monk sets a puzzle so what is it today? ALERT appears in column 9 but there doesn’t seem to be anything else to go with it so that cannot be all. It’s not, further perusal revealed a number of symmetrically placed anagrams namely: 7/24, 9/23, 10/22ac, 12/19, 15ac/8 & 5/13.
Across
7 Pony by beach chomping the odd head of lettuce (8)
SHETLAND – an anagram (odd) of THE plus L[ettuce] (head of lettuce) in SAND (beach)
9 Hardened university with debt, maybe, all-consuming (6)
INURED – IN RED (with debt, maybe) around (all-consuming) U (university)
10 A virgin flower finally in blossom (4)
MARY – [flowe]R (flower finally) in MAY (blossom)
11 Irrelevant idea mooted at first by the cloth (10)
IMMATERIAL – I[dea] M[ooted] (idea mooted at first) MATERIAL (cloth)
12 Want teacher to be thrown into a river (6)
DESIRE – SIR in (to be thrown into) DEE (a river)
14 Bright legal eagle ultimately into hi-tech play? (8)
GLEAMING – [lega]L [eagl]E (legal eagle ultimately) in (into) GAMING (hi-tech play)
15 Discovered items, grain and seeds, sown in rows (13)
DISAGREEMENTS – an anagram (sown) of [i]TEM[s] (discovered items) GRAIN SEEDS
17 Family once financed by fiddles are ruing when broke (8)
GUARNERI – an anagram (when broke) of ARE RUING – this family of violin makers
19 Board, perhaps filling in president (6)
RESIDE – hidden in (perhaps filling in) ‘pRESIDEnt’
21 Kippers originally smoked by fellers (10)
SLUMBERERS – S[moked] (originally smoked) LUMBERERS (fellers {of trees})
22 Force having power? (4)
ARMY – cryptic def.
23 Spoilt daughter following sport during English (6)
RUINED – RU (sport) IN (during) E (English) D (daughter)
24 French writer formerly dealt with NHS break up (8)
STENDHAL – an anagram (break up) of DEALT NHS
Down
1 Words of actor at last filling stage (6)
PHRASE – [acto]R (actor at last) in (filling) PHASE (stage)
2 Stop castaway escaping regularly (4)
STAY – [ca]ST[aw]AY (castaway escaping regularly)
3 Gangsters mostly good to tour US state capital (8)
MAFIKENG – MAFI[a] (gangsters mostly) G (good) around (to tour) KEN (US state) – this capital
4 Not at all chicken as far as kids are concerned? (6)
?I?T?E – I have absolutely no idea! 😥
5 Short slim chaps into wacky food (10)
NUTRIMENTS – TRI[m] (short slim) MEN (chaps) in (into) NUTS (wacky)
6 Chasing runs, snipe at beaten covers yet again (8)
REPAINTS – R (runs) plus an anagram (beaten) of SNIPE AT
8 Technically, they reduce one’s level of attraction (13)
DEMAGNETISERS – cryptic def.
13 Legal document concerned with odd cuts in Salmond’s tax (10)
INSTRUMENT – RUM (odd) in (cuts) IN STENT (Salmond’s tax)
15 Fold dress worn by French conservative, perhaps (6,2)
DOUBLE UP – DO UP (dress) around (worn by) BLEU (French conservative, perhaps {blue in French})
16 Their aims are better than most (8)
MARKSMEN – cryptic def.
18 Corrects setter about odd fragments (6)
EMENDS – ME (setter) reversed (about) ENDS (odd fragments)
20 Depeche Mode gutted over article’s put down (6)
DEMEAN – D[epech]E M[od]E (Depeche Mode gutted) AN (article)
22 Assistant exposed plunderer (4)
AIDE – [r]AIDE[r] (exposed plunderer)
Hi Gaufrid,
I needed google to confirm Mafikeng too.
I think 4dn is LITTLE – think acorns, and change the spacing to “not a tall”.
I noticed the pairs, apart from the 13 letter ones! I thought 16 dn DOUBLE UP might be a hint about these pairs.
Hi Muffyword
“I think 4dn is LITTLE – think acorns, and change the spacing to “not a tall”.”
I did try ‘not a tall’ but it still made no sense, and in any case where is the indicator for this?
Sorry but your “think acorns” hint doesn’t help me at all. What have they got to do with ‘chickens’ or ‘kids’?
Chicken Little, who thought the sky was falling in? I could be wrong.
But I agree there is no indication to change the word spacing.
I think you’re right about Chicken Little, but “not at all” can be left as it is, as in “he was little (= not at all) concerned by…” It doesn’t seem a completely convincing synonym though.
Jason@4 – yes, that works as a double definition. I always knew the character as Chicken Licken myself.
Absolutely ridiculous – after half and hour I only solved one clue – back to the DT toughie for light relief
After half and hour only managed to solve one clue. Ridiculous crossword. Back to the Toughie for some light relief.
Although it was tough, it was for me anyway the most enjoyable of today’s cryptic battles, especially when I noticed the ‘pairs’ which helped me solve a couple I hadn’t got.
Although I knew the dreadful chicken as ‘licken’ (it was number one son’s favourite book for an interminable period when he was little) I did know he could be ‘little’ too.
Thanks to Monk and Gaufrid too.
I made slow progress with this, and failed (or rather gave up) on 3d and 4d.
I wasn’t very happy with 2d. I’m fine with “regularly” meaning alternate letters in a word, but if they have to be skipped in pairs like this, then I think it ought to be indicated in some way.
I gave up after completing about half. However enjoyable the challenge, the time comes when one says ‘life’s too short.’ Well done, Gaufrid, and thanks for the challenge, Monk.
Thanks to Monk for a toughie – I get exactly half way before quitting – and to Gaufrid for his enlightenment.
However, I am baffled by ‘IN STENT’ being implied by ‘Salmond’s tax’. I have Googled the latter and now have some idea of what it is, but where does ‘IN STENT’ come from?
declanor @11
Sorry, I had intended to explain that more fully but spent so long looking at 4dn that I forgot to go back to it.
IN is part of the wordplay. Alex Salmond is the First Minister of Scotland and Chambers gives STENT as a Scottish word with the following definitions:
noun: an assessment; a valuation; a tax
transitive verb: to assess; to tax; to levy
Relieved that everybody (so far) else seems to have found this very testing. I found progress very slow and was glad I was not at work today as I went way over my commute time. I could easily have abandoned it but gained renewed impetus when I spotted what Monk was up to. Very clever and also very helpful as it enabled me to really break into the puzzle. I still failed on 3 down but was well pleased with my effort nonetheless. Re Tom_I @ 9, I have come across this before with Monk and am consequently “on alert” Re Declanor @ 11, STENT is a dip into Azed territory and is a Scottish tax.
Thanks Gaufrid and Monk.
Thank you Gaufrid @ 12 and jmac @ 13 for explaining STENT.
When I Google ‘stent’, all I can find is the medical meaning and related origins. I have to enter ‘stent Scotland’ to find the tax meaning. We live and learn …
I think I need to get Chambers or the Concise OED to bridge the great Atlantic divide …
Thanks, Gaufrid. Monk is apparently in your Top Ten and rightly so – he’s in mine too.
Just like you I failed on 4d (and on MARKSMEN [I don’t like Monk using cryptic definitions but he will surely disagree]).
If it is indeed “not a tall chicken” I fear I have to dislike it. These kind of Guardianesque devices are OK as long as they are reasonably obvious but this one wasn’t. I think the clue needs a split-indicator if our parsing’s right.
[I seem to remember a Donk puzzle in the Indy in which he indeed indicated the split in a situation like this, it was the first across clue]
I completely missed the anagram pairs.
It has been done before, a few years ago in the FT the much missed Cinephile had all the across clues paired.
But it’s still clever!
There was one other thing that caught the eye tonight.
In three clues (11ac, 14ac and 20d) Monk asks us to apply the device to more than one word. A Tramp-like thing that I am not a great fan of – but it’s technically OK, I guess.
When I saw the grid I was expecting a Nina around the perimeter but alas. Enough compensation for that though.
Was it tough?
I think Monk is one of those setters (another one is Alberich/Klingsor) that isn’t that hard (or should I say: becomes less difficult) if you have an antenna for his style.
Oops, 6 minus two doesn’t seem to be 4 nowadays ….
I shared everyone’s pain with this.
However, we should always applaud a setter who (fairly) gets the better of us.
That said, to set a very hard crossword, and going to the trouble of putting the mirrored anagrams into the grid without in any way indicating their existence to the solver, just smacks of smartarse arrogance.
Belated thanks Gaufrid for the blog, and apologies to all who found this hard, as a result of which I reviewed the clue notes and yet could identify nothing arcane/unfair in the wordplay; there was certainly no explicit intention to crank up the difficulty above the usual level.
Re the troublesome 4dn, my clue note says {2 meanings, [little=not at all, adv., Chambers] + [ref. (cf. “?”) to Chicken Little, nursery tale character]}, so I think it is 100% fair.
Re Sil#15, I think I view the “device applied to two or more words” in what mathematicians call a (linearly) distributive way, i.e. if A is the operator (here, the device) and B, C are its intended operands, then I used the mathematical rule A(B+C) = AB + AC. But this is not hard-and-fast for, if it were, we would simply point an app at our puzzles in order to solve them automatically.
Re Nun#16, the deliberate non-indication of the anagram pairings was intended to be positive on the two fronts of (a) giving solvers the potential joy of the nina penny-drop, and (b) not effectively reducing the number of clues from an already low 26 to a short-changing and/or unchallenging 20.
The above issues fall under the aegis of a point made by a (very experienced) setter “in another blog”, to wit: effectively, upon (acceptance for) publication, responsibility (for the kind of issues identified throughout many blogs) passes out of the hands of the setter.
Actually my point (@15) re devices with multiple fodders was not that it’s wrong, of course not. But I was surprised to find this three times in one puzzle. A bit too much to my taste. So (or as we mathematicians say, hence 🙂 ), my query was about the quantity, not the quality. I mentioned the name Tramp as he is one who uses it more frequently than most other setters.
Yet, for some reason, I still don’t like it very much even if I have nothing against it from a cryptic POV (and will probably use it myself, every now and then, that is).
And re 4ac: explanation 100% clear now.
This time 9 x 2 doesn’t seem to be equal to 18 ….
Thanks for covering for me Gaufrid, and for naming me as one of your favourite setters 🙂
Apart from MAFIKENG, which defeated me, I did not find this particularly hard (for Monk). I parsed LITTLE like Jason@4, perhaps not a great clue but nothing wrong with it cryptically.
I failed to spot the anagrams, but nothing new there.
Thanks Monk.
Thanks Monk and Gaufrid
Another catch up puzzle which I started on Friday and finished yesterday.
Agree that it was quite tough, but was able to complete the grid. Had no idea what was going on in the parsing of INSTRUMENT or DOUBLE UP and they were left as confident unparsed answers.
Completely missed what was going on with the anagrammed pairs and failed to see the DOUBLE UP ALERT indicator.
Had no issue with LITTLE and immediately latched on to Chicken Little as that was how I remember Henny Penny – had to check and verify the ‘not at all’ definition of LITTLE … and there it was.
MAFIKENG was the last in – hadn’t seen that spelling of it – but at least I could parse that one.
Really enjoyable puzzle … maybe more so as I solved it more like an early weekend prize :)).