The very pleasant crossword that we have come to expect from Gemelo. There are several misleading and intricate pieces of wordplay.
My guess is that anyone who does these crosswords will have a copy of Chambers to hand and so won’t need everything to be spelled out. In the parsing I have confined myself to explaining when the wordplay is not immediately clear.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | AUKS |
Australia contains a thousand seabirds (4)
|
| Au(k)s — a nice easy one to get us started | ||
| 4 | RED DWARF |
Sitcom star (8, 2 words)
|
| 2 defs: this sitcom and a type of star | ||
| 10 | SNAKEHEAD |
Chinese criminal‘s son almost exposed source (9)
|
| s nake[d] head | ||
| 11 | KAIAK |
Animal occasionally found in middle of trekking canoe (5)
|
| a[n]i[m]a[l] in [tre]kk[ing] — an alternative form of kayak | ||
| 13 | YEARN |
Long story requiring energy after introduction (5)
|
| yarn with E appearing after its first letter | ||
| 14 | UNDERPLANTED |
Perhaps put shrubs between ground elder and nut pine at first (12)
|
| *(elder and nut p[ine]) | ||
| 17 | INSULA |
Briefly disparage a Roman house (6)
|
| insul[t] a | ||
| 19 | ETIOLIN |
String instrument originally covered in extremely erodent yellow pigment (7)
|
| violin, its original v covered by e[roden]t | ||
| 20 | ARUM |
Perennial American suspect (4)
|
| A rum — Chambers gives queer, droll, odd, strange for rum. Suspect I suppose. | ||
| 21 | AURA |
Feel money in Iceland running short (4)
|
| aura[r] — 1/100 of a krona | ||
| 23 | NET GAME |
Spooner’s become famous for some tennis (7, 2 words)
|
| “get name” — a net game hardly seems to me to be much of a thing, but Chambers thinks otherwise | ||
| 25 | STATED |
Set forth conclusion of report in full (6)
|
| s([repor]t)ated — full = sated as in agreeably fed up | ||
| 27 | ASTONISHMENT |
Wonder Woman, having dismissed lead, sent this cast (12)
|
| ([w]oman sent this)* | ||
| 29 | GAITS |
Ways to move Scottish children (5)
|
| 2 defs | ||
| 30 | MOTIF |
Irish girl provided that idea (5)
|
| mot if — Chambers doesn’t actually say that a motif is an idea: the sense which just about covers this is ‘a dominant or recurrent theme in a musical, artistic or literary work’ | ||
| 32 | MAY AS WELL |
Not just April? Why not? (9, 3 words)
|
| May follows April, so we have a nice little joke where the first part gives a cryptic indication and the underlined part the definition | ||
| 33 | NON-ELECT |
Unchosen knight once let out (8)
|
| N (once let)* — the word isn’t defined so far as I can see, but is in the huge list of ‘non-‘words, where the answer is pretty obvious | ||
| 34 | OPUS |
Vase that’s from ancient Egypt but can work (4)
|
| [can]opus — but = except for | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | AS SURE AS A GUN |
Certainly soft waste to give one locally (12, 5 words)
|
| ass {a ‘soft’} urea {waste} sag {give} un {one locally} — I don’t usually give the matches of words in the clue to words in the answer, because it clutters and doesn’t in my opinion usually help, but the parsing here is so tortuous that it might do so. | ||
| 2 | UNKNOT |
Free country welcoming national poll (6)
|
| U(n)K not — in order to have a nice misleading surface, the second meaning of ‘not’ is used, although it actually says ‘polled’ not ‘poll’; not sure how they’re the same | ||
| 3 | SKI |
Runner hides missing poles (3)
|
| ski[NS] | ||
| 4 | REARM |
Again take weapons back before noon (5)
|
| rear m | ||
| 5 | DECLINED |
Avoided prison, not quite caught in act (8)
|
| de(clin[k])ed | ||
| 6 | DAYANS |
Senior rabbis with article in Times (6)
|
| day(an)s — a (probably silly) pet hate of mine is ‘with’ as a link-word | ||
| 7 | A NATURA REI |
From the case’s quality bats, retain 21 (10, 3 words)
|
| ah, Latin — so it now makes sense. I thought I had made a mistake — surely it doesn’t end in I — *(retain aura) | ||
| 8 | RARE |
Extraordinary feature of previous answer (4)
|
| Hidden in ‘a natuRA REi’, the previous answer | ||
| 9 | FUNDAMENTALS |
Basics of pleasure: mistress with new bed support set up (12)
|
| fun dame n (slat)rev. — are beds supported by thin strips of wood etc? | ||
| 12 | ADMIRATION |
Approval somehow isn’t lost by government (10)
|
| admi[nist]ration and nist is *{isn’t) | ||
| 15 | E-BOAT |
German warship about to be destroyed when other part of EU is involved (5)
|
| (about)* but you replace the u by the other part of EU, which is e | ||
| 16 | BINDI-EYE |
Red mark round aperture in Australian plant (8)
|
| bindi eye — a bindi is a red mark (the facial decoration traditionally worn by Indian women) and an eye is a round aperture — clever use of round not as one of its three wordplay indicators | ||
| 18 | SAGUM |
What covered Roman soldier‘s face when climbing (5)
|
| (mug as)rev. | ||
| 22 | MENSAL |
Periodic table-related (6)
|
| 2 defs | ||
| 24 | MAN-FLU |
Man United touring Liechtenstein: cold, but not too bad (6)
|
| Man(FL)U — another where I though I was wrong somewhere — ends in U? — and I really should learn that FL is Liechtenstein and not LN or LI or something | ||
| 26 | GHOST |
Shadow Home Secretary going around centre for injured (5)
|
| ‘got’ = ‘injured’ (‘get’ as in ‘I’ll get you for that’) and the centre of that word has HS around it | ||
| 28 | SAGO |
Chat about shape of Cheerios cereal (4)
|
| (gas)rev. O — O is the shape of Cheerios (a Cheerio anyway) | ||
| 31 | TWO |
Couple caught by rising window tax (3)
|
| Hidden reversed in windOW Tax |
2D: Chambers has “poll” defined as “polled,” under adj. Good blog.
I agree that the parsing of AS SURE AS A GUN was tricky because the only part of it I understood was UN before writing it down and staring at it for quite a while. I also took at while to get A NATURA REI because I couldn’t remember it so I needed help from most of the checking letters and also “solving” the next clue so I knew it must contain RARE. I laughed when I worked out the clues to MAY AS WELL and MENSAL, and was annoyed with myself for not remembering that Liechtenstein: was FL until after I had guessed MAN-FLU.
I eventually found in Chambers that ‘poll’ can mean ‘polled’ as Cineraria@1 had mentioned.
Thanks, John and Gemelo.
Thanks for the blog , another very good solid Plain puzzle .
GHOST was very neat and the long answers were well constructed .
SKI is a bit imprecise and MANFLU very weak but the rest were fine .
19. Gemelo likes to use “extremely” as an indicator for outside letters, this is not the first time we have seen it.
Azed would not approve. In the 1186 slip he writes, “I have noticed a growing tendency among crossword setters to use “extremely” to indicate the first and last letters of the following (or preceding) word, but can see no justification for it. ‘Extremely’ means ‘in an extreme way; very’ and I can’t equate that with an instruction to the solver to take the extreme letters of a word.”
I tend to agree with Azed but feel the ship has sailed. I mention this only as a point of interest, not as criticism of the setter.
Thanks for the blog.
I thought 19 was a bit imprecise, not only for “extremely” but also “originally covered with” – how does covered mean “replaced by”? Never heard of the phrase at 1dn, but UN was clear and I just worked through the rather tortuous parsing.
A problem with using the Chambers app is that the child meaning of GAITS is right at the end after a long list of GET and i never found it till last night.
Re 9dn, the horizontal pieces of wood that go across a bed frame are usually called slats and they support the mattress, so I think the description is fair enough.
The slats are famous from The Great Escape and similar films .
The Imp of Crossword Coincidence strikes again .
Extremes are outermost points with “extremely” an adverb associated with it, so, though I’m far from an expert on this, it seems OK to me referring to the outside letters of a word.
I agree with that. Can never understand why Azed takes such a position — words are used in different senses. “Extremely”, when it is used to mean “very”, clearly doesn’t indicate the first and last letters of a word, but it seems perfectly OK for a setter to use it in the sense which nmsindy gives.
Technically, “extremely” means in an extreme manner – it doesn’t mean “relating to extremes” (just as hopefully – grammatically – means in a hopeful manner, rather than relating to a hope). You wouldn’t, for example, say, “Earth is extremely cold”, meaning that it’s cold in the polar regions. I understand Azed’s position, although I guess my reaction to the clue is more of a shrug than a frown.