Guardian 26,570 by Brummie

by

Enjoyable but not too tough, with the left hand side going in very quickly. Favourites 3dn and 17dn. Thanks Brummie.

Across
9 UPLIGHTER
Increase open cargo boat’s atmospheric illumination? (9)

=a light fitting that throws light upwards. UP=”Increase”, plus LIGHTER=”open cargo boat” used to load and unload ships
10 EXTOL
Magnify one’s end many times over (5)

[on]E, plus reversal (“over”) of LOT=”many”, plus X=”times” in the sense of multiplication
11 SQUEAKY
Half-square key with a movement in need of oiling (7)

SQU[are], plus (key a)*
12,21down MARIANA TRENCH
Tramp’s boxing arena rebuilt with tin — you can’t get lower than that (7,6)

the deepest part of the world’s oceans. MARCH=”Tramp”, around (arena tin)*
13 RAISE
Speak highly of no power boost (5)

[p]RAISE=”Speak highly of”, without P[ower]
14 MELODRAMA
Histrionics forced earldom into a reduced state (9)

(earldom)* in MA[ssachusetts]=”reduced state”
16 SAN ANDREAS FAULT
Meeting place of California’s Plates Movement (3,7,5)

cryptic def, referring to tectonic plates
19 YORKSHIRE
County Kerry: so lax about greeting (9)

(Kerry so)* around HI=”greeting”
21 TAPIR
Nosey creature‘s salt-covered “eye” (5)

TAR=sailor=”salt”, around P[rivate] I[nvestigator]=private “eye”
22 BONKERS
They’re thumping mad? (7)

double def: bonk=’thump’; and BONKERS=”mad”
23 OLEARIA
A Loire variation on a flowering shrub (7)

(A Loire)*, plus A
24 TOPIC
Subject to image being reduced (5)

TO, plus PIC[ture]=”image being reduced”
25 FORECOURT
Where to get tanked up with pro at end of the play area? (9)

=where you fill a petrol tank. FOR=”pro”, plus the end of [th]E, plus COURT=”play area”
Down
1 MUSSORGSKY
Greek character, awfully gross — heavens, it’s a man of music! (10)

=the Russian composer [wiki]. MU=”Greek [alphabet] character”, plus (gross)*, plus SKY=”heavens” 
2 ILLUSION
“I live with soul in torment” misconception (8)

I L[ive], plus (soul in)*
3 AGNATE
Start off a captain of industry, related on the male side (6)

[m]AGNATE=”Start off a captain of industry”
4 STAY
Brace of salmon’s source? British river (4)

=a prop or support. S[almon] plus TAY=”British river”
5 PROMULGATE
Announce Portugal’s heaving with ’em (10)

(Portugal’s em)*
6 GET RID OF
Understand “fiord” is rendered as “ditch” (3,3,2)

GET=”Understand”, plus (fiord)*
7 ITHACA
Greek island with a cat that’s externally weightless (6)

[w]ITH A CA[t], with its external weight removed
8,22 FLEA BITE
Feel a bit sorry for trifle (4,4)

(Feel a bit)*
14 MARRIES OFF
Manages to get issue to a union? (7,3)

cryptic def, where issue=offspring and union=marriage
15 AFTERTASTE
Persistent sensation of behind getting smack (10)

AFTER=”behind” plus TASTE=”smack”
17 NASCENCE
Beginning to sound like Scottish lacking in brains? (8)

Sounds like “no [nae] sense” in a Scottish accent
18 UPPERCUT
Superior cleavage that could stun you (8)

UPPER=”Superior” plus CUT=”cleavage”
20 RUN-UPS
They usually precede deliveries of cultivated Prunus (3-3)

…RUN-UPS precede cricketing “deliveries”. (Prunus)*
21 MARIANA TRENCH
See 12
22 FLEA BITE
See 8
23 OKRA
Former Hollywood studio turned up a lady’s fingers (4)

RKO Pictures [wiki] is the “Former Hollywood studio”, reversed (“turned up”), and plus A

46 comments on “Guardian 26,570 by Brummie”

  1. Very enjoyable but the clue for SAN ANDREAS FAULT wasn’t really cryptic at all, as far as I can see. Favourites were FLEA BITE, MARRIES OFF and MUSSORGSKY. Thanks to Brummie and manehi.

  2. Thanks for the blog, manehi

    I enjoyed this, especially EXTOL, TAPIR, once I realised that “eye” wasn’t indicating a homophone and stopped wondering where the P came from, AGNATE, GET RID OF, FLEA BITE and NASCENCE.

    Thanks, Brummie – it was fun.

  3. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    Sadly, I am not having a very successful or enjoyable week in cryptic crossword land so far!

    I failed to solve 19d & 8d – even though I put in “BITE” I failed to realise that the answer was an anagram of “feel a bit”. And I needed help to parse or fully parse 21a, 14d, 2d (did not know that L = live), 7d, 22a, 10a.

    I liked 6d.

    New words for me were OLEARIA and UPLIGHTER (although I am familiar with “uplight”).

  4. Thanks manehi and brummie.

    I too thought SAN .. FAULT was just a definition so hesitated to put it in. A very mini geological theme, then.

    Enjoyable

  5. Thanks Brummie and manehi.

    I found this fun, but needed help with parsing TAPIR and OKRA. Thought at first that 16a might have something to do with baseball, but once SAN was in the penny dropped.

    I particularly liked EXTOL, AGNATE, NASCENCE, RAISE, MARRIES OFF and GET RID OF !

  8. roger @ 6: PROMULGATE is just an anagram (of Portugal and em – without the s). It can mean ‘to proclaim’.

  9. . . . manehi, you might like to correct the blog re PROMULGATE – see my previous comment. Thanks.

  10. Thanks manehi. Knowing the fault and the trench I found the answers going in one after another speedily – though 1A, 23A and PI were new to me.

  11. Thanks Brummie & manehi.

    I wondered how Paul might have clued BONKERS, and then I found out: ‘Crazy lovers?‘

    I think maybe the SAN ANDREAS FAULT clue was supposed to relate cryptically to California licens/ce plates.

    I particularly liked NASCENCE & GET RID OF.

  12. Thanks to Brummie, and to Manehi for a fine blog.
    Michelle @3 – as far as I know, L=live only in electrics, alongside N=neutral and E=earth. I for one am very glad that plugs these days come already wired up.
    Was anyone else puzzled that the clues for both 14a and 24a contained a ‘reduced’ that wasn’t really necessary?
    My favourite was TAPIR – but then they’ve always been my favourite animals. Hope the one in Belfast zoo is still there, as shy and wondrous as ever,

  13. Perhaps a new abbreviation is needed for things like 16a (and some of Rufus on a Monday) – MiC – Mildly cryptic.

    Did like Nascence, but got it quickly having heard it often off of Scottish relatives.

    Thanks to Brummie and Manehi.

  15. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    Valentine @ 14: you fill your petrol tank in the forecourt of a filling station.

    hth

  16. Sean Dimly @12 – thanks for the info

    Valentine @ 14 – a forecourt is “an open area in front of a large building or petrol station.”

  18. Thanks manehi and Brummie
    Pleasant solve, though I too wondered where the P in TAPIR came from, and I still don’t see the cryptic definition in MARRIES OFF.
    Favourite was LOI, FLEA BITE.

  19. I still don’t get 14 down. Does the blog mean ‘issue’ means something like ‘outcome’ rather than ‘offspring’? Even if ‘off’ were short for offspring, ‘marries’ doesn’t mean ‘manages’. If it’s supposed to be a cryptic def then as written it still doesn’t mean ‘manages to procure a union’. The nearest might be ‘manages to procure an outcome to a union’, but a union isn’t an ‘outcome to a union’ Please can someone elucidate?

  20. Tyngewick@19: My understanding is that it simply means ‘manages to get your child to marry’ (implying there’s some difficulty in doing so) i.e. to marry off.

  21. The best clue for BONKERS is ‘Mad passionate lovers’ which was in The Guardian some time ago.

    There were 11 anagram clues in this puzzle.

    11a ‘key with a movement’ doesn’t indicate the anagram very well for me; 11a is a very weak idea for cd; I think a QM for salt-covered is better, and the quotes don’t seem necessary; 22a ‘thumping mad’ is not a phrase I know; 23a hard to get from anag, which is not really ‘on’ the A in an across clue; 25a why the QM?; 1d I see that GROSS could have been reversed; 2d does L = ‘live’ anywhere in general usage?; 5s there’s no ‘S in the anag; 7d clumsy and senseless; 14d I cannot understand this; 15d why ‘of’? Clumsy.

    But better than yesterday’s by a long way.

    HH

  22. I found this tricky but fairly entertaining, and needed Check to finish the SW corner. Failed to see the PI in TAPIR – spent too long trying to fit I into a chemical formula for a specific salt. OREALIA was new to me (I hate clues that expect expert knowledge of plants), as was AGNATE, though the latter was guessable. Last in was UPPERCUT – which was obvious once all of the crossers were in place. Liked NASCENCE…

    Thanks to Brummie and manehi

  23. [It was the SE corner that caused me trouble – E and W are just too close together on the keyboard]

  24. Dear HH@21

    re 22ac – come play rugby you would very quickly become familiar with it
    re 2d – go look at a plug, knowing what L E and N are is very useful
    re 7d – in your opinion – I liked it
    re 14d – OK agree here – neither can I

    lots of love

    Andy

  25. Like others above I got TAPIR without grasping PI, struggled with OLEARI, could not justify the first L in ILLUSION, and did not link FORECOURT to a petrol station but still managed to find solutions fairly quickly. Thanks to Brummie and to manehi for the parsing.

  26. Enjoyed this – some good things, and not too taxing on the brain!

    Thanks to Brummie & manehi.

  27. AndyK @24 – agree on the first three, but on 14d – drofle @20 is right – if you manage to get your child/issue to a union/wedding, you may have married them off. You just have to read it that way.

  28. There’s a blockbuster film on its way called SAN ANDREAS, a poster for which I happened to see changing trains. It made 16a even easier, not that it was cryptic in the first place.

    But overall the puzzle was much better than that. It can’t be easy to clue MUSSORGSKY, after all.

  29. The SE corner stumped me. I still don’t understand 14d and in 15d, don’t see how smack = taste.

  31. JohnM @29 –

    try Chambers:
    smack2 verb, intrans (always smack of something) 1 to have the flavour of it. 2 to have a trace or suggestion of it. noun 1 taste; distinctive flavour. 2 a hint or trace

    I don’t think I can make 14d any clearer unless you are struggling with issue meaning offspring…

  32. Re hh @21. Thumping mad is not the phrase. They are thumping = bonkers, to thump is to bonk; the definition being mad

  34. I kept getting interrupted so this took rather longer than it should have done. I thought this rather more straightforward than is usually the case with this setter but, despite the interruptions,I thought this very enjoyable. Loved MUSSORGSKY and NASCENCE.
    Thanks Brummie.

  35. beery hiker@22 – I assume your “orealia” is a typo because the R in OLEARIA is checked. I had never heard of it either but it seemed like the only sensible arrangement of the anagram fodder so specialist knowledge wasn’t required.

  36. #32 I believe the query relates to the surface, not the cryptic.

    However, there are some examples of its usage, if HH is disposed to visit Google with a certain amount of patience.

  37. Andy B @35 – thanks for pointing that out – it just shows there’s no chance I’ll remember it right if it comes up again. If I’d seen uppercut earlier it would have been much easier to guess!

  38. I enjoyed this and made steady progress to the end.

    I was going to come on here to say that I failed to parse 16A. Seems I was wrong as it wasn’t cryptic. I’d assumed it was &littish and spent ages looking for the cryptic content. 🙂 Unless we are all missing something I thought this a pretty weak clue for the usually excellent Brummie.

    Thanks to manehi and Brummie

  39. I think the intended cryptic meaning for 16a was as in ‘people who are passionate about crockery’. Movement = a group of people with a common ideology, esp a political or religious one (Collins)
    Not all clues can be great ones.

  40. Thanks to Brummie for an easier than usual offering; and to manehi for an enlightening blog.

    Talking points for the day: the San Andreas Fault was a write-in from the enumeration and the thinly disguised definition. The fault is the junction of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates that move relative to each other along the line of the fault; the capitalisation of California’s Plates Movement to make it look like an organisation is (IMO) a flimsy attempt at misdirection. Definitely not a cryptic clue. It would feel more cryptic if one of the capitalised words was replaced by a synonym – as in tramp formarch in 12a.

    Surely 16d is an &lit clue. ‘marry off’ means to find a marriage partner for, so the clue is a direct definition of the solution.

  42. Hedgehoggy, that Bonkers clue, a favourite of Enigmatist btw, was coined by Spurius for the Independent, apparently.

  43. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    I parsed 10a as (on)E X to L (10 to 50) being many times (40 in fact) over. Did anyone else think this way? Can someone who is better at this than me confirm tat it is a valid parsing or explain why not?

  45. Thanks Brummie and manehi

    Found this to be one of the more straightforward Brummies that I have done – all time record, finishing in just over half an hour. Started off with the SAN ANDREAS FAULT as a write in across the middle which opened the whole puzzle up immediately.

    Still there were some little sticky spots, particularly around the parsing – took a while to track down RKO Pictures and didn’t know the Australian OLEARIA flower or that a FORECOURT was a part of a petrol station.

    Smiled at NASCENCE (or ‘NAE SENSE’) and thought that the cheeky UPPERCUT was good as well.

    Kevin, I think that your parsing nearly works – 10-50 is certainly many times, but not convinced that the ‘over’ is adequately dealt with.

  46. SeanDimly @12

    FWIW, sometime during the UK’s slow and piecemeal compliance with European electrical codes, L=Live was changed to L=Line.

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