Gemelo in his usual Sunday Observer slot – probably be Azed today when this blog is published, as today is the first Sunday of the month.
I made better initial progress with this puzzle than I have done with previous Gemelos I have blogged. Inevitably though, there was a fair bit of dictionary searching to complete the puzzle.
I have fallen foul of the Women’s Institute / West Indian / WI trick before, but perhaps a JOHN CANOE is performed at Women’s Institute Christmas parties.
The wordplay was clear throughout, with many clues and entries in the puzzle similarin difficulty to those found in national daily cryptics. In addition to JOHN CANOE, new words for me were QUOAD, SOLIVE, TRUMEAU, MACHREE, MJÖLLNIR, PAREU, EN PRIMEUR, YNAMBUS and ANDVILE. Having grown up in Scotland, STEAMIE was a word I knew. I still enjoy learning new words via crosswords.
| No | Detail |
| Across | |
| 1 | Impossible goals see me struggling between poles (7)
NEMESES (things that cannot be achieved; impossible goals) Anagram of (struggling) SEE ME contained in (between) (N [North Pole] and S [South Pole]) N (EMESE*) S |
| 7 | Yemen originally regulated weed for some (4)
YARR (dialect word [for some] for the corn spurrey, a type of weed) YAR (international vehicle registration for Yemen) + R (first letter of [originally] Regulated) YAR R |
| 10 | Ladies maybe travel by boat for WI celebrations (9, 2 words)
JOHN CANOE (West Indian [WI] celebrations including a dance of the same name) JOHN (toilet; the ladies, for example) + CANOE (travel by a boat of the same name) JOHN CANOE |
| 11 | Broadcast covering tense place (4)
STOW (put, lodge or place) SOW (broadcast) containing (covering) T (tense) S (T) OW |
| 12 | Narrative from which Napoleon escaped, to strike back (7)
PARABLE (a fable or story told to illustrate some doctrine or moral point; narrative) (ELBA [an island from which Napoleon Bonaparte {1769 – 1821} escaped in February 1815] + RAP [strike]) all reversed (back) (PAR ABLE)< |
| 13 | Sapling‘s cultivator (6)
TILLER (a sapling) TILLER (one who cultivates the land) double definition TILLER |
| 15 | Backtracking, don’t tell the truth about pig meat commonly in Spam? (5)
EMAIL (many EMAILs end up in one’s spam folder) (LIE [don’t tell the truth] containing [about] ‘AM [a common pronunciation of hAM [pig meat] excluding the H]) all reversed (backtracking) (E (MA) IL)< |
| 16 | Depart university after a final word (5)
ADIEU (final word before leaving) A + DIE (depart this world) + U (university) A DIE U |
| 18 | Price to reclaim crossbeam when short of time (6)
RANSOM (price of redemption or reclamation) tRANSOM (crossbeam) excluding (when short of) T RANSOM |
| 20 | So far as love goes in court (5)
QUAOD (so far as) O (character representing zero [love score at tennis]) contained in (goes in) QUAD (a courtyard or court) QUA (O) D |
| 22 | Pick healthy alternative to drug? (5)
ELITE (choice; pick) In cryptic crossword terms, an E LITE [low in calories] drug might be considered a healthy alternative to a standard ecstasy tablet (drug) E LITE |
| 23 | Maintains Y/N criteria, not entirely matching (6, 2 words)
IN SYNC (matching) IN SYNC (hidden word in [not entirely] maintaINS Y/N Criteria) IN SYNC |
| 26 | 8 changing European article for another in Ancient Scandinavian (5)
RUNIC (Ancient Scandinavian) RELIC [entry at 8 down) with the EL (the Spanish word for the definite article) replaced by (for another) UN (the French word for the indefinite article) to form RUNIC – changing European article. RUNIC |
| 28 | Peculiar characters regularly dropped graduate off (5)
AURAE (the peculiar sensations [character?] that precede an attack of epilepsy, hysteria, or certain other ailments) Anagram of (off) gRAdUAtE excluding characters 1, 4 and 7 [regularly] G, D and E AURAE* |
| 29 | Home support that will do stirring (6)
SOLIVE (a joist or beam of secondary importance; support for a house / home) SO (that will do) + LIVE (alive; stirring) SO LIVE |
| 30 | Marks found in straight, gold pillar between openings (7)
TRUMEAU (a piece of wall or pillar between two openings) (M [deutschmarks; marks] contained in [found in] TRUE [straight]) + AU (chemical symbol for gold) TRU (M) E AU |
| 31 | Feature of costume drama that’s eliminated extremes of poem (4)
ODIC (of an ode; of a poem) bODICe (an item of clothing [feature] often seen in costume dramas) excluding the outer letters B and E [that’s eliminated extremes]) ODIC |
| 32 | What makes acid drop bright green? (9)
QUICKLIME (calcium oxide, a chemical that is highly alkaline with an ability to neutralise acids; what makes acid drop) QUICK (clever; bright) + LIME (shade of green) QUICK LIME |
| 33 | Rational number with irrational number following it (4)
SANE (rational) SA (sex appeal; it) + N (number) + E (base of natural logarithms, an irrational number) SA N E |
| 34 | Bananas reach me in Irish address (7)
MACHREE (Anglo-Irish term for an affectionate form of address, my dear, my love) Anagram of (bananas) REACH ME MACHREE* |
| Down | |
| 1 | Old man goes off nurse after getting up (6)
NESTOR (an old man) (ROTS [goes off] + EN [Enrolled Nurse]) all reversed (getting up; down entry) (NE STOR)< |
| 2 | Late-starting celebration of summer in Los Angeles (7)
ESTIVAL (American [Los Angeles] spelling of aestival [of summer]) fESTIVAL (celebration) omitting the first letter (late starting) F ESTIVAL |
| 3 | Marvel at first mostly happy in overturning take showing Thor prop (8)
MJÖLLNIR (Thor’s terrible hammer; Thor prop) M (initial letter of [at first] Marvel) + JOLLy (happy) excluding the final letter (mostly) Y + IN reversed (overturned) + R (recipe; Latin for take) M JOLL NI< R |
| 4 | A bit quiet about date (5)
SHRED (fragment; a bit) SH (quiet!) + RE (with reference to; about) + D (date) SH RE D |
| 5 | Run empire badly before ageing? (9, 2 words)
EN PRIMEUR (of tasting, buying or investing in wine, when the wine is new; before ageing) Anagram of (badly) RUN EMPIRE EN PRIMEUR* |
| 6 | Trim bottom in bijou skirt (5)
PAREU (a wraparound skirt worn by men and women in Polynesia) PARE (trim) + U (last letter of [bottom of] bijoU) PARE U |
| 7 | Poor fliers in South America lend millions to come back (7)
YNAMBUS (very large tinamous [South American partridge-ground-dwelling are primarily ground dwelling but can fly weakly; poor fliers in South America) (SUB [lend] + MANY [millions]) all reversed (to come back) (YNAM BUS)< |
| 8 | Roman Catholic priest breaks his bone, perhaps? (5)
RELIC (in Roman Catholicism, any personal memorial of a saint, held in reverence as an incentive to faith and piety. A saint’s bone, for example) ELI (the crossword world’s favourite priest) contained in (breaks) RC (Roman Catholic) R (ELI) C |
| 9 | Sign to stop catching fish was staggering (6)
REELED (was staggering) RED (colour of a signal directing vehicles to stop) containing (catching) EEL (fish) R (EEL) ED |
| 14 | Compose short taunt with a spit? (9)
PENINSULA (a spit of land jutting out into water) PEN (write; compose) + INSULt (taunt) excluding the final letter (short) + A PEN INSUL A |
| 17 | Jerry and I do work for bad driver? (8)
JOYRIDER (one who takes a drive taken for pleasure, especially if reckless or surreptitious and in a stolen car; bad driver) Anagram of (work) JERRY and I DO JOYRIDER* |
| Second match – that is the point at which Celtic kits are washed? (7)
STEAMIE (Scottish public laundry [where kit could be washed]. Celtic Football Club is based in Glasgow) S (second) + TEAM (match) + IE (id est; that is) S TEAM IE |
|
| 21 | Elizabethan writer’s block that’s hard – also very unpleasant (7)
ANDVILE (Edmund Spenser’s [1552 – 1599], Elizabethan writer] word for anvil [a hard block of iron]) AND (also) + VILE (very unpleasant) AND VILE |
| 22 | Clergymen sending out press release – cheers! (6)
ELATES (raises the spirits; cheers) prELATES (clergyman) excluding (sending out) PR (press release) ELATES |
| 24 | Religious lesson leading children into church nativity scene (6)
CRECHE (a model representing the scene of Christ’s nativity) (RE [Religious education; religious lesson] + CH [children]) all contained in (into) CE (Church of England) C (RE CH) E |
| 25 | Body covering quality assurance under rising difficulty (5)
BURQA (a loose garment, with veiled eyeholes, covering the whole body, worn in public by Muslim women) RUB (difficulty) reversed (rising; down entry) + QA (Quality Assurance) BUR< QA |
| 26 | Stink to resound endlessly (5)
REECH (smell; stink) RE-ECHo (resound) excluding the final letter (endlessly) O REECH |
| 27 | Superhuman losing top of foot (5)
IONIC (descriptive of a metrical foot of two long and two short syllables) bIONIC (superhuman) excluding (losing) the first letter (top) B IONIC |
I was misled by the WI in 10a at first but solved the clue once I returned to it with a few checking letters. I thought 28a was a hard clue because, even though I had the right idea when I first read it, I found it hard to see which letters to remove without some checking letters to help me know what to keep. I thought the intended definition of ‘aura’ in Chambers was ‘distinctive character’ rather than the one in the blog.
I had seen ANDVILE before but it took me a while to to remember it, and I needed the V to guess the unknown SOLIVE. I also had trouble with 7a/7d because I couldn’t quite remember the IVR for Yemen and didn’t think the down answer would start with Y.
I suppose I can’t expect different crossword publishers to work together to avoid similar clues and the idea of ‘ELI in RC’ as wordplay for RELIC is a good one, but I wish I didn’t feel I had seen it used so often recently.
Thanks, duncanshiell and Gemelo.
Thanks for the blog , another very solid Plain puzzle . I did not need Chambers93 apart from all the checking later which shows the wordplay was very sound . There is a JOHN CANOE in the early Bond film Thunderball . If anybody tries to hand you a parchment of RUNIC symbols , do not accept it .
I’m pretty sure that I first came across John Canoe in an Azed puzzle twenty or more years ago. I agree that the clue to AURAE is difficult, since “regularly” almost always means every other letter, whereas here it means every third letter.
Checking the archive at the &lit website, I see that John Canoe was the competition word for the puzzle at Christmas 1999, which must be why I remember it, although my submission didn’t make it into the slip. We don’t seem to have heard anything recently about a similar competition to be judged by Gemelo.
28ac: like Matthew@1, I thought the relevant definition was “distinctive character”. For 33ac, I had thought SAN (“perhaps originally the same as sampi”) was the number, but the blog’s parsing makes far more sense.
A mixed puzzle: some, like 1ac and 9dn, were write-ins, while others took more work. It helped that I’d come across YNAMBUS befoe, while JOHN CANOE is one of those dictionary entries that always seems to catch my eye when I’m looking for something else, just because it seems so unlikely.
Small quibble: is a STEAMIE a “point”?
The ladies of the WI I found beautifully misleading. There was another Gemelo clue that struck me as similarly attractive a few weeks back. It had me wondering whether setters have such misleadingnesses come to them previously and carefully note them for future use, or if they’re ‘just’ the product of winging it on the day of creation.
Years ago when I played Scrabble regularly I often learned words by forming a picture or story, I still remember YNAMBUS as ‘sub many’!