[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
A sharp intake of breath preceded the whitening of the knuckles, as I gripped the arms of my chair in sheer trepidation at seeing the name of the setter today. And so it happened, the tussle with my nemesis Gaff. And at the end of it all, I can (barely) stand up and aver that I fought like a man, relentless in the face of a barrage of one inscrutable clue after another.
Long story short, it was a very difficult challenge and but for a couple of quibbles, I think the grid overall would be a treat for any avid solver. I couldnt crack 16d.
FF (Fun Factor): 7
DD (Difficulty Denominator): 9
| Across | ||
| 8, 14 | PANAMA CANAL | Mains connection that’s been locked for 100 years (6,5) |
| Technically, the entire clue can be the cd. However, I think just the first two words do justice enough. Mains refers to Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The lock refers to the transit device found in canals for regulating water depth for passage of boats / ships. The canal is celebrating its 100th anniversary today. | ||
| 9 | NEUROSIS | Name serious disturbance (8) |
| Anagram of N (name) SERIOUS with the defn doing double duty as anagrind. | ||
| 10 | ERIE | Osprey finally leaves nest for lake (4) |
| E[y]RIE (Nest, without y – Osprey finally) | ||
| 11 | ALIMENTARY | A fruit never contains tip-top nutritive (10) |
| A LIME (fruit) [NARY (never) contains T (Tip-top)] – A very neat clue this. | ||
| 12 | See 4 | |
| 13 | PICKPOCKET | Twist unsuccessfully. Tool appropriate? (10) |
| PICK (tool) POCKET (appropriate, verb form) | ||
| 17 | ETUI | A case of decoration in perpetuity (4) |
| Hidden in “..perpETUIty”. Wiki here. | ||
| 18 | NINJA | Japanese spy English extract from conflicting German responses (5) |
| N(e)IN-JA (German for No and Yes – conflicting responses, with E – English removed) | ||
| 19 | EACH | Everyone’s top fruit (4) |
| pEACH (fruit, topped i.e. without the first letter). I find this clue to be as brilliant as it is concise. This meaning of ‘top’ was new to me. | ||
| 21 | THINK ILL OF | Hate insubstantial ice when sea freezes (5,3,2) |
| Charade of THIN (insubstatial) KILL (ice) OF (To be read as 0 degrees Fahrenheit – temperature when water is supposed to freeze, except that water freezes at 0 degree Celsius, not Fahrenheit – so not sure if I am missing something here) | ||
| 23 | See 27 | |
| 24 | MANCHESTER | United, maybe by broken hearts, men start to cry (10) |
| Anagram of HEARTS MEN C (start to cry) | ||
| 28 | SHIP | Transport by quiet address (4) |
| SH (quiet) IP (address, on the internet) | ||
| 29 | AUDITORY | Inspector at very end of hearing (8) |
| AUDITOR (Inspector) Y (verY, end) | ||
| 30 | SPINAL | How press advisers present a slight lack of backbone (6) |
| SPIN (How press adviser present) A L (slight Lack) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | FAIR RENT | Just split what landlords should get (4,4) |
| FAIR (just) RENT (split) | ||
| 2 | CALEDONIAN | Went up Greek sea without leaders of Scotland (10) |
| sCALED (went up) iONIAN (Greek sea) – both without leaders, i.e. starting characters. | ||
| 3 | RAWALPINDI | Uncooked medallion found in supermarket in India (10) |
| RAW (uncooked) [ PIN (medallion) found in ALDI (supermarket) ] – Rare occasion where I dont like a Gaff clue one bit. Rawalpindi is in Pakistan and I think any allusion to pre-partition days is too contrived. | ||
| 4, 12 | ANTI HERO | Heir not a frantically unsympathetic character (4-4) |
| Anagram of HEIR NOT A | ||
| 5 | BUDE | In Cornwall, resort to shoot-’em- ups first (4) |
| BUD (shoot) E (’em-ups first) | ||
| 6 | ROOT | Rummage for jumper and shirt (4) |
| ROO (jumper) T (shirt) | ||
| 7 | PIERCE | Bond previously cut (6) |
| DD – Pierce Brosnan played James Bond. | ||
| 14 | See 8 | |
| 15 | PEAK FOREST | Poets freak out in Derbyshire village (4,6) |
| Anagram of POETS FREAK | ||
| 16 | CREATE SPIN | Turner’s ability produces immobilisation on the board (6,4) |
| Charade of CREATES (produces) PIN (immobilization on the board, in the game of chess) | ||
| 20 | CERVICAL | Clergyman back to front with a lot of room round about neck (8) |
| [RVICA: Clergyman – Vicar, back to front] with CEL around (a lot of room round, Chambers has this as the American spelling for a hollow cavity) | ||
| 22 | HIATUS | Sample sushi at usual interval (6) |
| Hidden in “susHI AT USual” | ||
| 25 | COIL | Wind may prevent conception (4) |
| DD. I originally had penned in CLIP with the same parsing (DD) – Wind/Clip referring to speed and also to tubal ligation as a method of preventing conception. I realize now that the Wind/Clip parsing wouldnt have been entirely accurate. | ||
| 26 | ETON | Pitch up at college (4) |
| NOTE (pitch, reversed) | ||
| 27, 23 | TOY STORY | Plays Cameron in film (3,5) |
| Charade of TOYS (Plays) TORY (Cameron, the David variety) | ||
*anagram
Thanks Turbolegs
Might I point out that, as well as 8/14, there can be 11/14, 24/28/14, 29/14, 30/14, 2/14, 5/14, 6/14, 15/14 & 20/14 so perhaps there is a theme. 😉
There’s also an Erie Canal in New York state (10/14).
Thanks Geoff @1 and Tom @2! Should have picked them out with a finer tooth comb, having seen the relation between three of them as I solved the grid. Many thanks for the full list.
Not sure if Gaff comes here, he deserves a big thumbs up for this.
Thanks, Turbolegs – and bravo!
This was a real struggle but very satisfying and I’d give it a higher fun factor rating than you did – but then I wasn’t blogging it! 😉 I ran into the buffers in the bottom right corner. I knew 20 must be CERVICAL but I was fooishly trying to do something fancy with ‘clerical’. I would never have seen 16dn, not knowing the chess term – and I’m not keen on the grammar of ‘turner’s ability’ = ‘create spin’.
But that’s only a minor quibble. I had ticks for PANAMA CANAL [which went straight in, as I heard about the anniversary on the radio, first thing] CALEDONIAN, MANCHESTER and PEAK FOREST [poets freak out!] and then it was a real joy when the penny dropped re the two kinds of canal.
Great stuff from Gaff, to whom many thanks for a lot of fun.
Also I was wondering if its ok for a clue like 27,23d which is enumerated as (3,5) to be actually written as (4,4)?
Hi Turbolegs
It’s OK so long as it splits into actual words – quite clever, in fact.
Hi Eileen @4, I kid you not – My preamble is pretty accurate. This is by far, my best solve of any Gaff puzzle I have attempted. Understandably, the fun part was an afterthought. 🙂
Thanks for the blog to a pretty tricky puzzle.
Re 21a – OF is fine – pure water freezes at O Celsius, but salt water (the sea) freezes at 0 Fahrenheit (approximately, and depending on the degree of salinity).
Also, does anybody have an alternate parsing for 21ac?
Hi shikasta @8,
In fact, I did already consider than and did some snooping around on the internet only to find that most of the sources that I came across suggested that the freezing point of saline water while lower than plain water, is still not 0 F. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater and http://www.sci-experiments.com/ice_cream/saltwater.html, for example.
The below is interesting as well. I hope that the discussion on freezing etc does not detract away from what is a fine puzzle overall. And also, I didnt mean to hog so much of the comments space. Sorry about that.
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1722
Q:
At what temperature does saltwater freeze?
– Anonymous (age 11)
Bangor, ME
A:
Saltwater has a much lower freezing point (the freezing point is the temperature where something freezes) than freshwater does. And the more salt there is in it, the lower the freezing point gets. So in order to know the exact temperature that it’s going to freeze, you have to know just how salty it is. For saltwater that’s as saturated as it can possibly get (i.e. there’s no way to dissolve any more salt in it no matter how hard you tried), the freezing point is -21.1 degrees Celsius. This is when the saltwater is 23.3% salt (by weight).
-Tamara
p.s. As the water starts to freeze, the salt gets left in the liquid. So if you start out with water that isn’t saturated with salt, as it freezes the leftover water will get saturated. So if the water starts to freeze at, for example, -10°C, more will freeze as it’s cooled further until finally the last bit will freeze at -21.1°C. Thus for un-saturated saltwater the freezing happens over a range of temperatures, not all at one exact temperature, unlike pure water. Mike W.
Hi Turbolegs @ 10
If I remember correctly, at 20% salinity water freezes just above 0F. The sea isn’t that saline so 0F is not the freezing point of the sea but it would certainly be frozen – so I think the clue still works – “when sea freezes” would be neater if 0F was the freezing point, but it still is true.
Turbolegs – sorry I should have refreshed before posting – yes your links fit with what I recalled.
Oh dear, Turbolegs. I would be appalled to be someone’s blogging nemesis! Although I have to say that no-one could tell this from the accuracy of your analysis. And without the pressure of blogging, I suspect you’d have spotted the theme and maybe enjoyed the puzzle more as a result.
A few comments:
13A – the definition is intended to be ‘Twist, unsuccessfully’, a reference to Oliver T.
21A – ‘when sea freezes’ to give 0F is probably not exact, but I thought it close enough to what the original physicist thought, that it was covered by the setter’s ‘you know what I meant’ defence.
20D – CEL is intended to be ‘a lot of CELL (room)’
Finally 3D – you are right not to like this clue, but for the wrong reason. Please don’t tell anyone, but I was not being contrived, merely ignorant. All my knowledge of the city comes from it’s history in pre-partition days, and it never occurred to me to check. Interestingly, this blunder got past two independent checkers, who also apparent rely on their schoolboy history! Abject apologies !
Thanks to you and to Eileen, in particular, for the kind comments, but all the feedback on this site – good and bad – is invaluable for us setters.
As a PS, my wife and I went through the Panama Canal in our own sailing boat a few years ago, and an amazing experience it was too. The story of how the Americans picked up a disastrously failing project and turned it around is a fascinating one and well worth reading about.
Many thanks to Gaff for dropping in – it’s always so much appreciated.
Once I latched on to the canal theme, I’d been so surprised to find that Bude had one that I googled to see if Rawalpindi did and found a dental clinic in Rawalpindi – so thanks for the extra smile. 😉
Didn’t find it that hard despite missing the canals… Cheers Gaff for a nice Friday fun.
Hi Gaff @14,
Echoing Eileen@15, thanks a lot for stopping by and taking the time to comment. More often than not, your puzzles have always been a humbling experience for me so thank you for trying to make me a better solver! 🙂 And you are right – had I spotted the theme much earlier, this would have been a lot more fun!
Thanks also for the specific inputs on the parsings. I will fix 13ac right away.
And no worries about 3d – it was just a minor Gaff(e). 🙂
Cheers
Hi Gaff@14. Delighted to hear from you — you are my nemesis too, but today you were easy on me. Thanks. And well done, Turbolegs, for ploughing through the slough of despond.