Goodness how difficult, but what a privilege to be able to blog a crossword like this. Maize has yet again excelled themselves. There are lots of excellent and original clues in this crossword. Two of them defeat me, but I’m hoping that by the time I’ve finished setting this up some inspiration will have arrived. Yes it did. Pretty obvious, and what caused the blindness goodness knows. I’ve left the original in one of them, but it’s a 10dn to admit to the other.
Definitions in dark magenta, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
As for a Nina, as usual I’m afraid I’m just happy to have finished. Your homework for today.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | HUSSAR | Soldier from America infiltrating Soviet Union to the east of Hungary (6) |
| H USS(A)R | ||
| 4 | OVERSEAS | Poetic lines penned by oddly absent royals – in Canada perhaps? (8) |
| verse in ({r}o{y}a{l}s) — referring to Harry and Meghan | ||
| 9 | GRANT | Permit enormous current to turn into river (5) |
| Giant (enormous) with its i (current) turning into r (river) | ||
| 10 | EQUIPMENT | Clobber funny guys in film (9) |
| E(quip men)T — you might call funny guys quip men, and ET is the film that appears incessantly in crosswords | ||
| 11 | JOHN CABOT | Place to go to rejected by taxi navigator (4,5) |
| John [place to go (no it wasn’t a very sensible choice of name)] cab (to)rev. — John Cabot was an Italian explorer | ||
| 12 | MAGIC | Charming river flowing west around German isle (5) |
| (G i) in (Cam)rev. | ||
| 13 | MONSTER | See 19 |
| 15 | NEXT | With hindsight 10 out of 10 then (4) |
| (ten)rev. round [out of] X | ||
| 16 | RAG | Traffic light acrostic for newspaper (3) |
| R{ed}, A{mber}, G{reen} | ||
| 19/13 | GILA MONSTER | Chimaera of tiger, salmon and lizard (4,7) |
| *(tiger salmon) | ||
| 20 | HADDOCK | Captain who’s drawn from harbour by drunk (7) |
| had [drunk, as in he drunk/had the beer] dock [harbour] — Captain Haddock is a character in the Tintin books, so is drawn | ||
| 23 | ADOBE | Simple brick home with retro interior (5) |
| 24 | SCRAMBLED | Rival of S Coe ran and ran desperately (9) |
| S Cram bled [ran] — a rival of Sebastian Coe was Steve Cram | ||
| 26 | SNOW GEESE | Long-haul flyers go and see new centre of Hiroshima rebuilt (4,5) |
| (go see new {Hiro}s{hima})* | ||
| 28 | KIROV | Russian ballet‘s cocktail of sound (5) |
| “Kir of” — Kir is this cocktail — I’d thought it was just a drink but see I’m wrong | ||
| 29 | FLEA BITE | Spooner’s journey from hive to flower causes minor irritation (4,4) |
| “bee flight”, as Spooner would say | ||
| 30 | TRADER | Communist subject turned marketeer (6) |
| (red art)rev. — is art a subject? Yes, a school subject | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | HIGH JUMP | On a trip before spring event (4,4) |
| high [on a (drug) trip] jump | ||
| 2 | SMASHING | Breaking Bad? Anything but! (8) |
| ‘smashing!’ is a term of approval that has gone out of fashion, but was common once. I expect The Famous Five stories are full of it | ||
| 3 | AZTEC | Ancient civilization originally capturing unknown tribespeople for evisceration (5) |
| A{ncient} c{ivilization} round (z t{ribespeopl}e), &lit. | ||
| 5 | VAULTING HORSE | 19th nervous breakdown? Get over it! (8,5) |
| (GILAth nervous)*, 19 being GILA | ||
| 6 | RIP | Tear shed first from soppy individual (3) |
| {d}rip | ||
| 7 | ENERGY | Go halves in teen beer orgy (6) |
| {te}en {be}er {or}gy | ||
| 8 | SHTICK | Gimmick which Connery uses to beat his enemy? (6) |
| ‘stick’ as Sean Connery might pronounce it | ||
| 10 | EMBARRASSMENT | Setter put up with jiggling man breasts, right to show self-consciousness (13) |
| (me)rev. *(man breasts R) | ||
| 12 | MIXED | Roman square in Mediterranean complex (5) |
| M(IX)ed. — the Roman square is 9, a square number, in Roman numerals | ||
| 14 | TWICE | ½ 12 ÷ (1+100) x 2 (5) |
| twe{lve} round (I C), giving twice, which is x2 — a most unusual clue which defeated me, but very good | ||
| 17 | COLLARED | Detained, being held up in Federal lockdown (8) |
| Hidden rev. in FeDERAL LOCkdown | ||
| 18 | SKYDIVER | Kids involved with very dangerous job? (8) |
| (Kids very)* | ||
| 21 | MASSIF | Service provided for Highland area (6) |
| mass [service] if [provided] | ||
| 22 | JOCOSE | Laugh-a-minute Mourinho’s entertaining company (6) |
| Jo(co.)sé | ||
| 25 | MAKER | Artisan beer we drink extra warm – bottoms up! (5) |
| {bee}r {w}e {drin}k {extr}a {war}m, these last letters reversed | ||
| 27 | GIB | Cryptically praise British rock (3) |
| To big up is to praise, and you can cryptically regard Gib[raltar] as (big)rev. | ||
Gobsmackingly brilliant. One of the best crosswords of the year for me.
Don’t know about a nina but it is a pangram.
Thanks to Maize and John.
I really enjoyed this challenging pangram which contained a lot of very inventive cluing – this was a top drawer puzzle with a special mention for 14d!
Isn’t 5d an indirect anagram?
Many thanks to Maize and to John.
Great workout with cunningly engineered clues.I really enjoyed the battle which as I remember involved google, guesswork and check button. So thanks for filling the gaps on the parsing, John
And thanks to Maize for a great puzzle.Just about every clue was memorable so difficult to pick a fave
I couldn’t see how Rag worked but it’s obvious now. Not sure about Haddock – surely ‘drank’ fits but ‘drunk’ doesn’t. Very enjoyable anyway, so thanks Maize and John. Spotted the pangram.
This was a challenge, but a good example of a chewy crossword – one that you need to move into higher gear to solve, but which is rewarding when you finish it (which I did, eventually). A wide range of subject matter too, which always makes it more fun.
I don’t think 5dn is an indirect anagram, Dave – GILA is there in the solutions for you to find and add to the fodder. But it does of course reference the Rolling Stones song, so the surface is not as random as it might seem.
Thanks to S&B.
Tatrasman @4. I wondered about drunk/drank. I decided that “I have had/drunk enough” worked for me but others may have better explanations. Of course “drunk” is also archaic for “drank” so John may also be correct.
Thanks for the blog, John,
I agree with all of the above plaudits.
Tatrasman@4 – ‘drunk’ works if you think of it as a participle, rather than a finite verb: ‘I have had / drunk two glasses of wine already’.
Many thanks to Maize – most enjoyable.
Sorry, Hovis!
A superb puzzle.
Too many good clues to be able to single out one – but I am still chuckling over 8 down.
Thanks to Maize and John.
Took me a while to work through this one and I came completely unstuck over TWICE. Did have to google the captain in 20a but managed to work everything else out – eventually.
Thanks to Maize for the challenge and to John for the review – makes me feel better to know that you didn’t find this a walk in the park either!
Apart from needing a wordfinder for SHTICK and not knowing its secondary meaning as a gimmick (and not being particularly aware of SC’s pronunciation) we didn’t find this too difficult. Not that it was a doddle by any means and we went off on a number of false trails – e.g. thinking we needed a Canadian place name in 4ac – before getting the right answers. HADDOCK raised a smile when we got it but for CoD it’s a dead heat between 15ac and 25dn.
Thanks, Maize and John.
Difficult enough to be more than satisfying, even if I couldn’t parse SHTICK and had never come across the term ‘big up’ before (and never intend to again!). Highlights were the AZTEC &lit and that inventive maths formula.
Thanks to Maize and John
Quite a struggle for me, but seeing a pangram emerge actually helped on a couple of occasions. Printed it out so no checks or reveals, but needed two sessions to complete it.
Thanks for the blog John – spot on as ever. Sorry about 11ac!
This one started off after I saw Eccles’ brilliant use of ’10 Downing Street’ to help clue ‘Pistols’ back in March (Independent 10430). Once I’d got over thinking ‘I wish I’d thought of that’, the next thought was ‘What’s a bit like it?’. Hence the Stones song mentioned by KD above and the necessity for the light containing GILA at 19.
Thanks for kind comments one & all. Next one in the pipeline.
After struggling the rest of this week I came here deflated, but seeing the comments today makes me feel a bit better, and I reckon I did OK now. Only 25d MAKER and 27d GIB completely escaped me. Unfortunately the 1/2 at the front of 14ac didn’t appear in the online mobile browser version, which made parsing TWE impossible – I even ended up wrestling with the answers from 12ac or 12d but gave up in the end – should’ve checked on the online PC version, where it does appear. Strange. And I had 23ac as ABODE, having applied the “retro interior” operator to ADOBE, which was careless. My COD was 8d SHTICK which raised a smirk.
Of the four tough-ish puzzles so far this week, this was my favourite. Thanks Maize and John.