Thanks to Pangakupu, who doesn’t seem to have set a weekday cryptic since mid-August (though there have been Quiptics and a Prize from him), so a welcome return.
As always I looked for the Maori Nina, and saw KARAUN in row 2 and ATANGA in row 14. ATANGA means to adorn or embellish, but for the former I can only find KARAUNA, meaning a crown. I’m no expert on the language so maybe the shortened version is a variant. The other thing to look out for in Pangakupu’s puzzles is a reference to their sequence number. I believe this is number 53, and 1953 is the year in which the late Queen was CROWNed (and also the year of my birth, as it happens, though I was a few months late for the coronation).
| Across | ||||||||
| 1 | POETIC | Lyrical film about regular parts of forest (6) Alternate letters of fOrEsT in PIC (film) |
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| 5 | MR BEAN | Comic character being nasty about R’n’B (2,4) R and B in MEAN (nasty) |
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| 8 | BELLINI | Roar in Italy for opera composer (7) BELL IN I – bell can mean to roar or bellow |
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| 9 | GELATIN | Grand yarn twisted in glue (7) G + reverse of TALE (a yarn) + IN |
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| 11 | SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT | Excitedly recording chats about origin of Sasquatch, a creature that may not exist (12,3) S[asquatch] in (RECORDING CHATS)* – referring to the famous thought experiment of Quantum Mechanics |
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| 12 | JAMS | Blocks German agreement most regularly ignored (4) JA (German “yes”, agreement) + alternate letters of MoSt |
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| 13 | BIDDING WAR | Waiting to involve extra director before mostly heated attempt to secure rights (7,3) BIDING (waiting) with an extra D + WAR[m] (heated) |
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| 17 | MONTGOMERY | Wartime leader the writer found occupying French elevation, covered in blood (10) ME (the writer) in MONT (French mountain, elevation) + GORY (bloody) |
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| 18 | FOIL | Scotch: old fool at first returned one litre (4) Reverse of O[ld] F[ool] + 1 L |
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| 20 | INATTENTIVENESS | Failure to notice sensitive tenant is upset (15) (SENSITIVE TENANT)* |
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| 23 | GUESSES | Reckons French are investing in good applications (7) ES (as is French tu es = you are) in G USES |
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| 24 | ICINESS | Film aboard spacecraft getting cool reception? (7) CINE ([relating to] film) in ISS (International Space Staion) |
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| 25 | EDISON | Inventor is absorbed by revolutionary point (6) IS in reverse of NODE. “Inventor” as a definition of Edison is always bit of a giveaway |
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| 26 | GENTLE | Amiable spy with beer ignored by Americans (6) AGENT + ALE less both A[mericans] |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 2 | OKLAHOMAN | Fine US city initially helps odd chap from another state (9) OK (fine) + LA (Los Angeles) + H[elps] O[dd] + MAN |
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| 3 | TAILOR | Make adjustments to weaker batsmen over runs (6) TAIL (the weaker batsmen in a cricket team) + O[ver] R[uns] |
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| 4 | CRITICISM | Disapproval is following involuntary response in a lot of bad behaviour (9) TIC + IS in CRIM[e] |
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| 5 | MAGOG | Millions curious to see legendary giant (5) M + AGOG |
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| 6 | BULLRING | Papal directive to surround Birmingham market area (8) BULL (papal directive) + RING (to surround) |
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| 7 | ANTIC | Temperature in a French resort almost doing for lark (5) T in A NIC[e] |
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| 8 | BASE JUMPING | HQ excited with parachute action (4,7) BASE (HQ) + JUMPING (excited). The BASE in the name of this perilous sport is an acronym from the types of thing participants can jump from: Buildings, Antennas (radio masts), Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs). |
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| 10 | NATURALISTS | Experts in botany, say, are left enthralled by uncovered figures (11) A (are, the unit of area) + L[eft] in NATURISTS |
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| 14 | DERAILING | Obstructing Democrat’s opening for energetic complaining (9) D[emocrat] + E[nergetic] + RAILING (complaining) |
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| 15 | WHOLEMEAL | Response to accusation almost completely about the French flour (9) LE (French “the”) in WHO, ME? (reponse to an accusation) + AL[L] (completely) |
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| 16 | EGOTISTS | Say it’s so wrong to involve first of these show-offs (8) E.G. (say) + T[hese] in (IT’S SO)* |
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| 19 | BENIGN | Friendly African country welcoming invasion by Gabon (6) G (International Vehicle Registration for Gabon) in BENIN |
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| 21 | AHEAD | Sounded surprised about Australian leading (5) A[ustralian] in AHED (i.e. said “ah”, sounded surprised) |
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| 22 | NISAN | March/April period in Japan is angelic (5) Hidden in japaN IS ANgelic. Nisan is a month in the Hebrew calendar, occurring in March-April |
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This went in pretty quickly. The only oddity was NISAN: my wife is Japanese and I have enough of a smattering of the language to know that NISAN means two- three, which sounds like Feb & March rather than March-April! So I was nicely misdirected. Thanks to P & A.
According to google. KARAUNA TANGA means coronation, so that’s the link.
Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew
Not difficult if you had the requisite GK, but very enjoyable. Favourites BULLRING for the misleading “surrounding”, and WHOLEMEAL for “Who, me?”
Only one unparsed was AHEAD, as AHED didn’t look like a word to me.
Slip of the keyboard at 1a – POETIC
Thanks Panga and Andrew. I found this fairly gentle for a Panga.
The answer for 1A is incorrect, you have CRITICISM instead of POETIC though you have the correct parse
Nice straightforward puzzle from Pangakupu. Thanks Andrew. Faves were MRBEAN and SCHRÖDINGERSCAT.
A good challenge.
I couldn’t parse 15d apart from LE (French “the”) and the 2nd A in 10d.
New for me: NISAN, BASE JUMPING, BELLINI = opera composer (I’m more familiar with the family of painters) – also BELL = roar of stag or buck.
Well, having spent the day convinced that there was an unaccounted-for ‘a’ in NATURALISTS, I’m now unlikely to overlook ‘are’ for a while. Live and learn.
@Drofle1 I had the same thought about NISAN (and I believe number words are used in the names of months?).
Wasn’t keen on ‘ignored by’ in the surface of 26A – seems to me that ‘ignoring Americans’ would’ve been truer to what the solver was expected to do. Many highlights tho – among them WHOLEMEAL, MONTGOMERY and SCHRODINGER’S CAT.
DNF for me. I put in DAMS not JAMS, and so just couldn’t see an option for HQ excited, and revealed the parachute action. Would have thought I would pick up rudimentary German from something like the television series Bad Banks, but nyet.
1 across amended
Friendlier than usual from Pangakupu. Most my troubles were from a mistyped SHRODINGERS CAT blocking a lot of fairly straight forward answers including the BULLRING which I used to walk through every workday.
Liked BIDDING WAR and OKLAHOMAN
Thanks blogger and setter
Is it me, or are this setter’s puzzles getting easier? I used to give up on them (even one “quick”) but this was manageable and enjoyable. MAGOG & NISAN were new to me. Bell/roar was perplexing, and I couldn’t account for the A in NATURALISTS, despite having seen the are trick before. Derailing and obstructing probably aren’t quite the same.
Bell=Roar was the only aspect at 8ac that I wasn’t at all sure about. And I misread the clue at 26ac, not noticing that there were 2 American A’s to subtract. Wondering therefore why Gent=Spy…
Apart from those two, this was a very smooth and satisfying solve this morning. Many thanks setter (I’m forever struggling to correctly spell that name) and Andrew…
Agree with the general consensus that this was on a milder side of Pangakupu. Very enjoyable. I would question MAGOG being a “legendary giant” – never heard of such; it is usually considered to refer to either a land or a tribe/people. And, though I know I’m splitting hairs, the uncertainty about SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT is not whether it exists but whether it is dead or alive. Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew!
How do you get the number 53 out of this?
Layman @14
Wiki has a long article about Gog and Magog. Originally Magog was the land that Gog ruled, as you said, but the meaning seems to have travelled a long way from that!
I knew Magog from the Gog Magog Hills near Cambridge – I have even walked the length of them.
When, oh! when will I remember A for ‘Are’? Grrr hate it when I repeat mistakes.
Nho BELL for roar but standing by to forget it next time.
COD for me was the elegant EGOTISTS.
Many thanks both.
As others have said, more straightforward than usual for this setter. I did raise a eyebrow at 11a. The point of the thought experiment is not the existence of the cat but whether it’s alive or dead.
Thanks for pointing out the significance of 53, I found the Ninas last night but couldn’t make sense of them. Like others, I found this fairly straightforward but most enjoyable as ever. I thought the two long anagrams were particularly good and also liked ICINESS, GENTLE, CRITICISM, BULLRING and WHOLEMEAL.
Ta Pangakupu & Andrew.
poc @18
I’ve always thought that the cat would be capable of collapsing the wave function.
(When she was about 10, my daughter used it as her challenge in a family “Twenty Questions”. She had heard about it from a physicist friend and taken in the concept!)
At the gentler end of the scale and yet another one who missed the are for a trick in 10D. Thanks to P and A.
muffin@16 – the article is long indeed; I’ve skimmed through it but haven’t come across a giant with that name – do you have a particular reference in mind?
I thought this was pretty good; maybe it was milder for the setter, maybe we’re all just improving. I was going to share what BASE stood for, but Andrew already did. I shared POC and Layman’s thoughts on SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT, but I still enjoyed that one. WHOLEMEAL was my favourite. I don’t think I’ll waste any brain cells remembering NISAN.
Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew.
poc@18 I think in cruciverbalese we can equate “exists” with “lives”?
Solid puzzle with nothing to scare the horses but maybe a bit lacking in surprise and delight
Cheers P&A
Layman@22 – see the third definition here
Thanks to Pangakupu and Andrew
Thanks, Pangakupu and Andrew. I agree with the general view that this was on the easier side for P, but lots to enjoy. WHOLEMEAL my favourite. NISAN is worth remembering; I’m sure I’ve seen it several times in crosswords, particularly in Azeds. It’s also Turkish for April, if that’s any help.
I like Pangakupu’s crosswords, nicely chewy and can [nearly always] finish them. Not altogether happy to see O for ODD and OVER in the same puzzle, or with AHED but it works for me. Couldn’t properly parse GENTLE – I omitted the A in ALE but didn’t think about the first A, so was left thinking about a gentleman spy or something. Favourite was SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT.
On the easier side. I put in MAGOG after the Gog Magog hills without further thought. Now more enlightened. Ditto SCHRODINGER’S CAT though Layman@14 makes a good point. Needed help with a couple of parsings.
Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew.
I can’t remember how many times I’ve forgotten the ARE for A trick. Maybe the clue for 21 down will finally help fix it in my memory… Living in France I’m quite used to seeing areas expressed in hectares, abbreviated “ha”. So the mnemonic goes: “A?” “Aha…” “A!!!”
Wolf@27 – In the clue for TAILOR, “over” = O.
But in the clue for OKLAHOMAN, “odd” doesn’t really equal O. Rather, “initially helps odd” = HO.
So I think it’s okay.
Enjoyable solve with some good clues. I liked the good anagram for SCHRODINGER’S CAT, the bloody leader MONTGOMERY, the bare NATURALISTS, and the response to accusation leading to WHOLEMEAL. I was another, like ronald @13, wondering why Gent was a spy, doh!
Thanks Pan and Andrew.
For Gog & Magog as giants, see Brewer.
I enjoyed this, especially the “WHO ME?”
Spent a couple of minutes going nina-hunting. Was puzzled by KARAUN because it looked like it was trying to be a nina, but I know that no regular Polynesian words, not just Maori, end in consonants.
As an adolescent I learned that, according to legend, having defeated the giants, Brutus set Gog and Magog to guard the gates of his palace in London. Also, in Greek references, before the island was renamed Britain (for Brutus), it was known as Albion, a name that still occasionally appears in the expression “Perfidious Albion”.
Only much later did I learn of the Biblical usage.
Like others, I found this at the gentler end of this setter’s offerings. I particularly liked the constructions for WHOLEMEAL (pity about the surface), MONTGOMERY and GUESSES, and the two long anagrams. (As S’s CAT is just the protagonist of a thought experiment, we can be confident that it does not exist – no doubt here!)
NISAN is the only Hebrew month I know, because Pesach (Passover) falls within it.
Thanks to Pangakupu and Andrew
DuncT@25 and Jacob@34, thanks a lot – interesting!
Nice that the film isn’t ET for once.
Gelatin is glue?
nho BASE JUMPING, but guessed BASE from HQ.
Does anybody actually say “two-three” in Japanese for some reason, or is it just the juxtaposition of the syllables? (For a trip to Japan many years ago I learned some of the language, and could count to 100. Can’t now. My favorite thing to say in Japanese was “on the twenty-first,” which is “ni-ju ichi-nichi ni.”)
Rumpkestiltskin@15 1953 was the year of the Coronation.
Thanks, Pangakapu and Andrew.
Valentine @37: I also wondered about GELATIN, but old fashioned glue made by boiling bones and concentrating the broth was more or less that.
…it always makes me smile that the Gog MAGOG Hills just outside Cambridge that Muffin@16 refers to are only 75 metres tall at their highest point, hardly gigantic in stature as hills. Though of course if an actual giant stood that tall, then that would be something. There’s a very good and successful farm shop and cafe that takes its name from those hills close by…
Michelle @7: I know you don’t often circle back round after you comment, but BELLINI is best known for composing Norma, Crosswordland’s favorite opera, which I’m sure you’ve bumped into. (He did write several others of note; I’m also fond of I Puritani.) Norma, in turn, is best known for its aria “Casta diva.” Here’s Callas singing it.
The general knowledge was a bit of a stretch for me – NHO BELLINI, NISAN, MAGOG, dredged up MONTGOMERY after trying to make ‘management’ work for a while. But all fairly clued and all went in.
Comment #42
Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew. I was particularly taken with GENTLE; it felt elegant to dispose of the two As at one stroke.
@30, agree. But surely “chap” is part of the definition of an OKLAHOMAN? So, from where is MAN parsed? Or is there some UK GK holding that anyone from another state is an OKLAHOMAN? Quite possible….
aemmmnostt @43: chap = MAN; the definition is “from another state”, thus defining OKLAHOMAN as an adjective, as in “Tulsa is an Oklahoman city.” Not a common US usage, but common enough in BrEng. And it’s “another state” because the clue references LA. It would be less awkward if he’d let that stand for Louisiana rather than Los Angeles, so it wouldn’t be apples-to-oranges. But it just about works, since we all know where LA is.
Comment #45
Good crossword, not too hard but not simple by any stretch. NHO NISAN but it was still the first answer I put in (I tend to start on the shorter words). 15D was my favourite clue!
[Further on to my comment @44: Americans tend to use attributives rather than adjectives to say that something is from or associated with a particular state. As in, “I wish they all could be California girls”, not “Californian girls.”]
@44, very helpful, thanks. Not everyone who isn’t from LA, or even California, is an OKLAHOMAN but, as you say, it just about works.
@47, here we have to be more nuanced. Wilson and Love’s “California girls” are not synonymous with girls from California. Love explained, “I wanted the song to be a tribute to girls everywhere—not just in the United States, let alone California, but everywhere in the world.” Not an adjective, but a type.
Thanks for the blog , very good set of clues with some neat wordplay such as MONTGOMERY and WHOLEMEAL .
S’s CAT , much misunderstood in popular culture . First of all a wave function is not a wave or anything real , it is a complex state vector in Hilbert space . For the thought experiment the radioactive source had a 50% chance of decaying in one hour so the state vector is a superposition of decayed / undecayed states with equal amplitudes . This means that for a large number of boxes half of them will have a decay and a dead cat , the other half no decay and a live cat . The cat is always completely dead or alive after one hour regardless of observation .
Delightful puzzle that ceded fairly slowly and steadily
Hard to choose favourites — 5a MR BEAN (evoking the wonderful character), 11a SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT (also enjoyed by Mrs Mig), 24a ICINESS (I thought of ISS right away), 5d MAGOG (surface, also a small town in Quebec), 10d NATURALISTS (“uncovered figures”), 15d WHOLEMEAL (WHO, ME?), 19d BENIGN (loi), and many others
Roz@49, Mrs Mig understands your post, and is impressed that you really know your stuff!
Thank you both
The motorcycle gang in New Plymouth NZ are The Magogs!
Thanks Mig@50 , I ban my students from using the term wave function , it is so misleading .
I join the throng who couldn’t account for the second A in 10d. My only other miss was not knowing why the G in 19d doesn’t need a first-letter signal. Overall I made pretty steady progress; a few of the surfaces look pretty rough but the frequent misdirections make for good fun.
Although I’m not an opera fan, I did see _Norma_ once—I didn’t know it was a crossword staple. I think I’ve seen BELL with this meaning to describe the baying of hounds, on a fox-hunt perhaps.
Regarding ontology and 11a, to reinforce bodycheetah @24, I’ve seen BE clued fairly often by “live” or similar, and death can be regarded as a form of non-existence.
Like some other posters I was puzzled for a while by the GENT in 26a, but the penny dropped when I wondered why “Americans” is plural.
muffin#3
“ahed” is the past tense of “ah” as in “ummed and ahed” but it doesn’t mean “sounded surprised”, that would be “ahaed”.
Forgot to say, Wikipedia (to which I had to resort to confirm the then-NHO-but-plausible-looking solution) has the Birmingham BULLRING in two words (like the clue); the compound form, used by a shopping mall in the area, is apparently controversial.
Pino@54 Chambers has both “ah” and “aha” as expressions of surprise.
With regards to S’s CAT, scientists struggle to explain why the cat is always alive for at least the first eight iterations of the experiment.
Very enjoyable, thanks Andrew and Pangakupu. Late to the party, a DNF in the bottom right for me.
On S’s cat, I had a slightly different pedantic “complaint” to others about the definition. AFAIK, the point isn’t whether the cat is alive or dead (and whether this can equate to “exist”), the point is that (pre observation) it is simultaneously both dead and alive. Which sounds like a small distinction but was core to the point he was trying to make about physics theory at the time I think.
I guess Scchua’s doing the Friday blog?
Stuart @57 , Schrodinger devised this purely to ridicule the Copenhagen Interpretation and its obsession with human observation .