Friday 3 September 2021

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3363)

I began with the cleverly concealed (Malcolm) SARGENT (2d); he died in 1967, and was a distinguished conductor in his day, but I'm not sure how many other people remember him now.  Next in was LEGAL TENDER (5/6), guessed mainly from the crossers and the definition.  Two fairly standard charades followed: REPLIES (3d) and CURATE (4a).  This left only 1d, which had to be QUALITY; I paused a bit over the definition of QUAY as "seaside", since a quay can be on a river as well, but it's good enough I suppose.

Concise (#3363)

I almost wrote ELBOW as the answer to 1a before realizing it was unlikely to be the first half of the top-line pun; instead WRIST and then REIGN led me to "restrain".  No problems after that until I got to 16a, which I originally misread as "militaria"; not knowing the actual word, I simply had to wait until the crossers gave me something plausible for the answer.  A trip to the dictionary confirmed that "miliaria" is indeed the medical term for PRICKLY HEAT.  Something learned today.

Codeword (#3041) 

L, B and J given today (reference to the former US President?).  Two identical 25s on each side of the solitary J almost certainly had to be E, which easily led to ABBEY and then NEBULAE in the SE corner, and the rest came without difficulty.  I rather enjoyed the revelation of MULTITUDINOUS along the middle row.

Cryptic by Tyrus (#3299)

Link to idothei (blogged by Saboteur)

Link to fifteensquared (June 17, blogged by bertandjoyce)

I solved this in about my average time.  That doesn't mean I thought it was of average difficulty; I think it thoroughly merited the five stars awarded by Saboteur - possibly even six, if such a thing were allowed.  It was absolutely mind-bending, and yet I could see what Tyrus was up to all the way through to the very last clue (1a), which I failed on, having succeeded on much harder ones without any outside help until then.  Sod's Law strikes again!

For this one I kept a detailed log of solving order, as I suspect it may be somewhat different to the experience of some others.  There was a theme of "solecisms", or ungrammatical expressions, which I fortunately clocked early, otherwise I think I'd have had a tremendous struggle.

12a PAEAN - took me a while to find a way in, and quite a while before I got my second clue.

6d DON'T PANIC - guessed from enumeration, definition and the solitary P, then verified on the wordplay.

7/3 BETWEEN YOU AND I - I thought the enumeration was unusual here, and I noted that it was non-standard English.

16a SOLECISTIC - having solved the above, I had a inkling of what the "gateway" clue might be, as it was probably something to do with ungrammaticality, and ended in C.  This was about the only option, and it enabled me to get the next two more or less straight off.

10/26 TEN ITEMS OR LESS - all I needed was to identify a supposedly ungrammatical sign for shoppers (even though "ten items or less" is perfectly correct English, if "less" is construed as a pronoun).

15/13 WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION - again it had to be ungrammatical, and was guessable from the enumeration, the crossers and the surface.  I didn't check the wordplay.

8/24 RUMOUR - ouch.  Why was it split into two pieces like this?  Fortunately I remembered Jose Mourinho, but I thought it was sneaky.

6a DEBARK - I've never been sure if this was an actual word.  It was only 8d that stopped me from writing DEBUNK.

17d EREMITE - God knows where I dredged this up from; it's an old word for "hermit".  I don't think it belongs in a puzzle like this.

20a SPEAK - very clever if you happen to remember the former Speke Airport in Liverpool, as I fortunately did.  Probably incomprehensible otherwise.

15d WRINKLIES - somebody's bound to be insulted by this one!

23a DOMINION - fairly straightforward for once.

18d TRAINED - I wasn't actually sure about this, but it's simply "strained" without the S.

27a DRIVE-INS - "4" to be read as "IV", it seems.  Don't like that sort of thing.

22d HAITI

25a INSTIL

19/4 AIN'T SHE SWEET - I finally had enough crossers to get the other "ungrammatical" answer - a song title from 1927.  I remember it from childhood, but how well known is it generally?

21a ATHENIAN - is "are" supposed to be the metric unit of measurement of area here?  That's the only justification I could see for abbreviating it to A.  Since it's hardly ever used outside the derived unit "hectare", it seemed rather obscure.  In addition, "man" for IAN (or any personal name) is one of my least favourite clue types.

2d ABSTENTIONS - goodness, a straightforward anagram for once!  Although whether "uncommitted voters" is a synonym is a moot point - surely voters are people and abstention is an abstract concept?  I was past caring at this stage.

9a ASSURE - took me ages to parse this but I eventually got it.

14a ETUI - from definition and crossers.  Using "essentials" to strip off the first and last letters of "get in" seemed a bit contorted, though it just about works.

5d SETTLED

11a NEONATAL - surprised to see this was simply an anagram.

19a ABUT - I left this until nearly the end as I could only think of ANUS, and I was sure it couldn't be that!  Shouldn't "butt" be marked as American in the sense of "bottom"?

1a: couldn't solve, with ?A?Y?S?S as the crossers.  Went to Crossword Solver for the first and only time, which told me it had to be SANYASIS (a type of Hindu ascetic).  Couldn't connect it to the clue at all.  Gave up and looked at Fifteensquared, which told me it was CALYPSOS, which I really should have got from "songs".  No idea why it's not in Crossword Solver, since the singular is in there.

How on earth this sort of stuff ends up in a daily newspaper crossword, I've no idea.  I imagine that all but the most experienced solvers will have given up with it.

Clue of the Day?  Probably 22d, for being relatively "normal".  Don't think I want too many puzzles like this in future!