Peto’s puzzles are never easy, but I really got bogged down about three-quarters of the way through this one.
I cannot fault the clues, which are excellent, although CARABINERO and TALMA are perhaps a bit obscure for a daily crossword. I thought that the level of difficulty might have been in the service of some theme, but I do not see one.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PATENT |
Obvious when persevering without hint of inconvenience (6)
|
| PAT[I]ENT (persevering) minus (without) first letter of (hint of) I[NCONVENIENCE] | ||
| 4 | EDUCATED |
Learned of the French whip found in river on the way back (8)
|
| {DU (of the [in] French) + CAT (whip)} inside (found in) DEE (river) reversed (on the way back) | ||
| 10 | TRANSFORM |
Convert managed to fill extremely tedious document (9)
|
| {RAN (managed) inside (to fill) outside letters of (extremely) T[EDIOU]S} + FORM (document) | ||
| 11 | RELIC |
Roman Catholic priest breaking souvenir (5)
|
| ELI (priest) inside (breaking) RC (Roman Catholic) | ||
| 12 | AVER |
Allege as a fact when edging away from partygoers (4)
|
| [R]AVER[S] (partygoers) minus outside letters (when edging away from) | ||
| 13 | SKATEBOARD |
Means of transport with broad seat designed to carry king (10)
|
| Anagram of (designed) {BROAD SEAT} around (to carry) K (king) | ||
| 15 | COSIEST |
What is suffered to obtain seating at the front that’s most comfortable (7)
|
| COST (what is suffered) around (to obtain) {first letter of (at the front) S[EATING] + I.E. (that’s)} | ||
| 16 | CONCUR |
Run together with Italian scoundrel (6)
|
| CON (with [in] Italian) + CUR (scoundrel) | ||
| 19 | SLAP-UP |
Excellent debut of singer to delight in (4-2)
|
| First letter of (debut of) S[INGER] + LAP UP (delight in) | ||
| 21 | HARISSA |
Expression of disapproval over soldiers returning with Afghan’s original hot sauce (7)
|
| {HISS (expression of disapproval) around (over) RA (soldiers) reversed (returning)} + first letter of (original [of]) A[FGHAN] | ||
| 23 | OPERATIONS |
Companies providing musical dramas forced into cuts (10)
|
| Anagram of (forced) INTO inside (cuts) OPERAS (musical dramas) | ||
| 25 | LACK |
Want chop left for husband (4)
|
| [H]ACK (chop) [exchanging] L (left) for H (husband) | ||
| 27 | WORKS |
Goes for frying pans stocked by Rackhams primarily (5)
|
| WOKS (frying pans) around (stocked by) first letter of (primarily) R[ACKHAMS] | ||
| 28 | BALLERINA |
Elegance at the outset possessed by L Blair amazing North American dancer (9)
|
| First letter of (at the outset) E[LEGANCE] inside (possessed by) anagram of (amazing) {L BLAIR} + NA (North American) | ||
| 29 | BALANCED |
Weapon hidden in disagreeable stable (8)
|
| LANCE (weapon) inside (hidden in) BAD (disagreeable) | ||
| 30 | FORGED |
Devised in order to acquire endless diamonds (6)
|
| FOR (in order to) + GE[T] (acquire) minus last letter (endless) + D (diamonds) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PITTANCE |
Nathaniel briefly turns to the church after depression caused by poor wage (8)
|
| PIT (depression) + NAT (Nathaniel “briefly”) inverted (turns) + CE (the church) | ||
| 2 | TRAVERSAL |
Right about a woman going over, seconds before closure of level crossing (9)
|
| RT (right) inverted (about) + A + {VERA (woman) around (going over) S (seconds)} + last letter of (closure of) [LEVE]L | ||
| 3 | NOSE |
Announcer’s familiar with narrow margin of victory (4)
|
| Homophone of (announcer) KNOWS ([is] familiar with) | ||
| 5 | DEMOTIC |
Popular book about head of ICE in Washington (7)
|
| {TOME (book) inverted (about) + first letter of (head of) I[CE]} all inside (in) DC (Washington) | ||
| 6 | CARABINERO |
Chilean cop’s vehicle seen by graduate around one in front of coffee shop (10)
|
| I think this parses as: CAR (vehicle) + BA (graduate) inverted (around) + I (one) + [Caffè] NERO (coffee shop) | ||
| 7 | TALMA |
Cape Town’s top dancing girl (5)
|
| First letter of (top [of]) T[OWN] + ALMA (dancing girl) | ||
| 8 | DECIDE |
Settle for some homemade cider (6)
|
| Hidden in (some) [HOMEMA]DE CIDE[R] | ||
| 9 |
Appropriate for Yeats perhaps to embrace luck? Not half (6)
|
|
| POET (Yeats perhaps) around (to embrace) second half of (not half [of]) [LU]CK | ||
| 14 | KEEP TABS ON |
Monitor the activities of son after quick look over bill (4,4,2)
|
| PEEK (quick look) inverted (over) + TAB (bill) + SON | ||
| 17 | UNSPARING |
Merciless international organisation hits back in Gabon (9)
|
| UN (international organisation) + RAPS (hits) inverted (back) + IN + G (Gabon) | ||
| 18 | BACKHAND |
Endorse article after Henry died from a stroke (8)
|
| BACK (endorse) + H (Henry) + AN (article) + D (died), as in tennis | ||
| 20 | PLIABLE |
Penny likely to be easily influenced (7)
|
| P (penny) + LIABLE (likely) | ||
| 21 | HANDLE |
Deal with bad weather reportedly around North Dakota (6)
|
| Homophone of (reportedly) HAIL (bad weather, i.e., HALE) around ND (North Dakota) | ||
| 22 | COBWEB |
Horse we bought at the start from fairy queen’s retainer (6)
|
| COB (horse) + WE + first letter of (at the start) B[OUGHT], referring to one of Queen Titania’s attendants in A Midsummer Night’s Dream | ||
| 24 | ENROL |
Record producer’s last to be gripped by reflective single (5)
|
| Last [letter of] [PRODUCE]R inside (to be gripped by) LONE (single) inverted (reflective) | ||
| 26 | VETO |
Withhold assent to examine duck (4)
|
| VET (to examine) + O (duck) |
Glad I’m not alone in making hard work of that. Thanks both
Thanks for puzzle and blog. Agree about parsing of CARABINERO, though I can’t imagine myself saying “I’ll see you in Nero” rather than “… in Caffè Nero”. On the other hand I might well abbreviate Pret a Manger to Pret. Can’t really explain the inconsistency.
I am of the age where the first Alma that comes to mind is Alma Cogan, rather than the Alma of “Dance With Me”, although she did sing Mambo Italiano and Tennessee Waltz. Is “caused by” in 1d just a link word? I was another who found this hard.
More “PTO” than PETO, for me.
Solved, but, move on.
Some syntax connections jar, with me.
1(d), PITTANCE. wordplay is “caused by”; the definition? The wordplay should provide the definition.
23(ac). Companies = Operations. OK.
But is the definition “providing” the wordplay?
2(d), TRAVERSAL, has to rank as the most contrived mish-mash, reliant on the woman, who is VERA. Of course.
Then , ALMA, the dancing girl, in 7(d).
16(ac) , CONCUR? Well, I don’t.
26(ac), BALLERINA. Another dancing girl. Awful clue.
Nothing in this puzzle, for me, but we all dance to our own heartbeat. Fine blog, Cineraria.
Yep, similar. Dnk the dancing girl so revealed the m of the nho talma. And needed guess and check to get the c for cobweb and then tidy up the last couple in the SW. Pretty chewy but quite tasty, ta PnC.
I missed a few, but got CARABINERO. This despite the fact that my friends and I think the lettering the café uses could almost lead you to think it is CAFFE NERD, so that’s what we call it.
Like others, I found parts of this difficult. It was several overly-complicated charades (such as HARISSA and TRAVERSAL) that slowed me, and also some of the difficult clues crossing.
RELIC, DECIDE, PLIABLE, and POCKET got my ticks for their natural surfaces. SKATEBOARD as “means of transport” made me chuckle when the answer emerged.
Despite my struggles with TALMA (a very poor clue, I agree), all were parsed in the end.
Thanks Cineraria and Peto
A struggle but we got there, only needing a wordfinder for TALMA. Having got that we couldn’t understand ‘dancing’ since Alma is a girl’s name anyway (although some solvers object to feminine names clued simply as ‘girl’). However, Wikipedia informs us that the 1998 film Come Dance With Me gained an ALMA award, and that Alma Cogan (1932-1966) recorded a song, Come Dance With Me – not that we knew the former or remembered the latter.
We worked out CARABINERO from the wordplay and its similarity to the Italian Carabinieri, but several other entries went unparsed.
Quite a bit to like, though, including SKATEBOARD, HARISSA and PITTANCE.
Thanks, Peto and Cineraria.
My dictionary says alma is “any of a class of Egyptian singing and dancing girls who entertain at festivals and act as mourners” originating from the Arabic colloquial feminine adjective for brained or learned. I wonder whether Pelham Barton can find a different, relevant meaning in his dictionary pile?
Yesterday, I suggested it would be difficult for a setter to anticipate the words other people do not know. In this case, it must have been obvious that few people would know either alma or TALMA, the answer it was cluing.
BigAl@8 My “research” produced “Dance for me” by the Finnish singer Alma, hence my comments above. As it’s a single name, it seems she is the most likely candidate to be the dancing girl.
Correction. AI tells me that an Alma is an Egyptian dancer. It’s even in Chambers! And I see Martyn has pointed that out.
Martyn@9: I am not clear why you are looking for a different relevant meaning; I would have been ready to accept “dancing girl” cluing ALMA from the definition you cited. For what it is worth, Collins 2023 p 54 has “an Egyptian dancing girl or singer, who entertains or mourns professionally”. Chambers 2016 p 39 just has “an Egyptian dancing girl”.
Hmm. We were misled by ‘Alma’ being a personal name, so that we didn’t think to look in the dictionary for anything else. Incidentally, the appendix of personal names in Chambers gives the origin of Alma being quite different – it’s from Latin, meaning ‘fostering, loving, nourishing’.
PB@12 – many thanks. While my little dictionary has its limitations, the entries it does have seem to be accurate. Therefore, I was wondering whether there were other dancing almas defined in the books. I guess I was overthinking it, and I should have just asked for your opinion.
I actually have my own pile of dictionaries but it is currently locked away in storage and out of reach.
Further to Big Al@13: Chambers 2016 has two separate headwords with the spelling ALMA. alma¹ means “an Egyptian dancing girl” and is taken from an Arabic word meaning “learned”. alma² is “(Ital) soul, essence”. I think it is clear that the personal name Alma is related to the second of these.
Quite hard. I’m glad others agreed.
The thesaurus couldn’t pull up a TALMA. Dancing girl raised nothing useful and I hit the same meaning of Alma as Big Al. I got there in the end, but not in a satisfactory way.
I solved and parsed the rest, although DEMOTIC was new to me.
Thanks PETO and Cineraria
Thanks for the blog , good solid puzzle with a lot of neat clues . I think CARABINERO is pretty close to the Italian police so fair enough . I have seen TALMA quite a few times in Azed plus ALMA with both meanings .
Talma is a poor clue. I’ve never heard of the answer and don’t know the dancer.
Sort of clue that makes me wonder why I bother.
Otherwise, steady going, but I wasted my life trying to find that last wretched word. Should’ve given up earlier.
7d is a perfectly good clue: T from Town’s top, ALMA the Egyptian dancing girl, all making a cape popular in the 19th century. Like Moly#18 I didn’t know either the cape or the dancing girl, and so I didn’t solve the clue. My lack of the necessary GK doesn’t make it by definition a bad clue.
This was a toughie for me all round, so scoring 31/32 left me quite happy with my effort, and with the puzzle. Thanks P&C for the pleasant challenge and blog.