For the second year running it has fallen to me to blog the Christmas special by Maskarade, who now occupies Araucaria’s place as the compiler of the holiday special puzzle.
This was a challenging puzzle, to put it mildly. There were two identical grids, and the two sets of clues were run into each other with no indication of the join. To make matters more difficult, a different letter of the alphabet had to be added to one of each pair of solutions, making a new word which was not clued or defined. As I commented last year, Maskarade’s style is concise, not to say terse, something illustrated by clues such as 7 across and 17 down (both in the left hand grid). Maskarade has obviously paid particular attention to the surfaces of the clues so that they read very smoothly, concealing the join, although at a cost of some unnecessary linking words. I had a few issues with some of the wordplay, but respect is due to the compiler for setting such a complex and satisfying puzzle.
In some ways this puzzle was similar to the December Genius puzzle by Picaroon (they even share an answer – I can’t say which one, as the deadline for the Genius isn’t until Saturday) but Picaroon’s puzzle also involved adding letters (although only to the across clues) which, in order, made a quotation. I certainly completed the Genius puzzle in much less time than I needed for this one. If you finished this one, then you should certainly consider tackling a Genius puzzle.
The additional letters are shown in red in the blog; but in the diagram I have also used green where the addition occurs in a down clue [except for the L in OVERPLAY which I omitted by accident] and I have indicated the probable division between the clues with /. Definitions are underlined and * indicates an anagram. Many thanks to PeeDee for his help in constructing the blog.
Across
7 EXCITED/ATROPOS
Was heartless, left/ a leading tutor with terribly poor student to start with — that’s fate (7;7)
EXI(s)TED. A typically concise clue to start with. Took me a long time to parse it/A T(utor) *POOR S(tart). Atropos was the Fate that cut the thread of life. The word was familiar to me from the CS Forester Hornblower novel.
8 BASEMAN/BOUNDED
US sports player, one from HQ,/linked with forward daughter under the sheets (7;7)
Cryptic definition/ON D(aughter) in BED.
10 LINEAR/TWINGE
Queen’s make-up/ showing a pinch of colour — a bit of white included (6;6)
Double definition (e.g. the QE2)/W(hite) in TINGE.
11 EMERALDS/PHEASANT
Greens and last of the medlars cooked/ for rustic pageants — no good, sadly (8;8)
*(th)E MEDLARS/*PA(g)EANTS
12 NEEPS/BRIEF
Vegetables seen with potato topping, mashed/ with cheese Berliner oddly supplied (5;5)
*SEEN P(otato)/odd letters of BeRlInEr.
13 BARBITONE/SCROUNGES
Character from Italian seaport, chorister,/ begs union leader to enter reactionary Congress (9;9)
A charade of BARI TONE/U(nion) in *CONGRESS.
15 ALTERNATION/CLEANLINESS
Neat tailor affected adjustment to/ sleek appearance with special purity (11;11)
*NEAT TAILOR/CLEAN LINES S(pecial).
19 ORDINANCE/SERENGETI
Red canon arranged such a survey/ having seen tiger wandering in reserve (9;9)
*RED CANON/*SEEN TIGER.
21 BERKS/WIZEN
Small county idiots/ with children outside foreign capital (5;5)
Double definition/I think the wordplay is WIth childrEN, indicated by “outside”. If so, it seems unduly loose, even by Araucarian standards.
23 BANJOIST/FLAMINGO
Musician at bar and beam/ is irritatingly angry (8;8)
A brilliant charade of BAN JOIST/A cryptic definition, unless I’ve missed something.
24 ORPINE/VICTIM
Give views showing compliance regularly/ for Patsy and two lads (6;6)
Even letters of cOmPlIaNcE/charade of VIC TIM.
25 ADORNED/STATUTE
Publicity department departs — tarted up/ small gallery having accepted university sculpture (7;7)
AD ORNE (Département in France (!)) D(eparts) (with thanks to PeeDee for help parsing this one)/U(niversity) in S(mall) TATE.
26 BUY A PUP/COWSHED
Be swindled when a customer at a dog’s home apparently,/ hit hard by price that drunkard suggests (3,1,3;7)
Cryptic definition – easy to guess from the enumeration and the definition, so first one in for me/sounds like “cost” as pronounced by a drunkard.
Down
1 OX LIVER/STEWART
Comrade — Stan’s — at/ Scottish house, showing skill with Irish cooking (2,5;7)
This was very hard. Not only was it one of the answers that was completely transformed by the additional letter, it also affected the enumeration. Another very concise clue, offering little help to the solver. Oliver Hardy was of course Stan Laurel’s comrade/a charade of STEW and ART.
2 FIRE OPAL/CORNMEAL
Flame-coloured gem, one of pearl, variegated /one in cherry tree, concerning viewer? (4,4;8)
*(1 OF PEARL)/A in CORNEL. As Adam has pointed out, a cornel is a cherry tree (genus Cornus).
3 METRO/COVEY
Rail network between Vendôme and Trocadéro/ having curved junction, mate (5;5)
Hidden in VendoME and TROcadero when the “and” is omitted/double definition. One meaning of cove is “a curved junction of wall and ceiling (architecture)”.
4 WATER BUTT/FOREGOING
Barrel I removed from maître d’ on strike,/ doing without board in trim smithy (5,4;9)
WA(i)TER BUTT/GO IN in FORG(e). Another very tricky one. First, the additional E just changes the spelling without affecting the meaning. See Phil Page’s comment below. Board = GO IN seems distinctly dubious. Perhaps there’s a better explanation?
5 LEVANT/UNISON
Conservatory, not round, was off-centre/ getting TU’s agreement (6;6)
LEAN-T(o) – not quite the same as being off-centre, in my view/double definition.
6 BANDANA/PEONIES
Fruit, black fruit/ and flowers open out in early spring, primarily (7;7)
B ANANA. Another very concise clue/*OPEN, I(n) E(arly) S(pring).
9 LEGAL NICETY/SPECULATION
Courtroom subtlety genetically engineered/ embezzlement that involved police at United Nations (5,6;11)
*GENETICALLY/*(POLICE AT UN).
14 NEGATIVES/MARGINATE
Vetoes reversed images/ of harbour gate — not half! That’s steep (9;9)
Double definition/MARINA (ga)TE.
16 OVERPLAY/SUITCASE
Cough up too much for bowlers’ wages/ and travel bag — it causes trouble (8;8)
Charade of OVER PAY/*(IT CAUSES).
17 ORLANDO/DEPLETE
Novel compiler/ having to get rid of the summer in France! (7;7)
Double definition/DE L’ÉTÉ.
18 SKINFUL/BESIDES
Wicked small function — almost perfect!/ — having live teams, moreover (7;7)
SIN(e) FUL(l)/BE SIDES.
20 INJURE/EMMETS
Some Lancaster University members up for season/ as visitors and workers (6;6)
Hidden and reversed (“up”) in Lancaster University/double definition.
22ROQUE/AVION
Wanton lad left meat savoury/ and a larger part of French wine on French plane (5;5)
ROU(LAD)E. ROQUE is apparently a version of croquet played in North America on a walled, hard-surfaced court, according to Chambers./A VI(n) ON.
This one was tough, but appropriately so for the occasion, I thought. I didn’t know the words roque or emmet, but got there in the end.
4D: Forgo only means go without, but forego also, and I think usually, means go before, precede. Is that right? As in ‘the foregoing paragraph.’
Phil @1: you’re right about FOREGO – I will amend the blog in a bit.
Too hard for me ðŸ™
Happy New Year to all.
Thanks bridgesong for your hard work on this, and to Maskarade for providing such an enjoyable challenge.
The only solution I didn’t get was 3D (grid 2) – ‘COVEY’ and I’m still not sure how this was arrived at (I ended up putting ‘YOGEE’ for this!).
Several others were guesses for me, but correct ones at least.
Nearly managed it, only missed ox-liver, linear and covey. Will someone please explain 2d(right) I put in cornmeal, with the M, but I don’t see what corneal has to do with cherry trees.
Thanks bridgesong and Maskarade.
Took a week to finish, and enjoyed every minute (although the last 24 hours were devoted to sorting out 7A/10A/1D in the LH grid, which had just become blind spots . . .)
Spent half the week thinking 4D(L) was ‘waterbath’ and that the final ‘h’ had been left unclued, but twigged just in time. Also was convinced that the Scottish House was ‘Stuart’, so checked and learned something there.
jxm@5:
the cherry tree is one (‘a’) in cherry tree ‘cornel’
. . . you know what I mean . . .
A real tour de force, both in the setting and (as I came to think after nibbling at it for more than a week) in the solving. One of the best holiday specials ever. Thanks Maskarade (and Bridgesong).
Not made easier by many of the crossing letters being Es or Is, as in WIZEN, my last one in.
Interesting that quite a few of the ‘straightforward’ solutions ( ie not involving an added letter) turn out also to be words from which the deduction of a letter produces another word: eg UNISON, AVION, TWINGE. It makes me think that Maskarade had a few such words left over after using the ones needed for his alphabetical exercise but managed to get them in anyway.
Happy New Year, and I look forward to another year of being entertained, enlightened and (occasionally) infuriated by this lovely site.
Thanks AdamH, I would never have got that. A quick google says cornel is dogwood, and only mentions cherry as an afterthought. But then I’m not much of a gardener.
Thanks for all comments so far. I’ve updated the blog to add further explanations of COVE and CORN(M)EAL.
Much too tough for me !
Even when getting the original clue the extra letter was a stumper – for me in the case of ‘opine –> orpine’ and ‘marinate –> marginate’.
I did enjoy some of the easier transforms which I did solve though : sinful–>skinful, coshed –> cowshed and banana –> bandana were all neat – amazing what a letter can do.
Thanks to setter for a real challenge and bridgesong for explaining it all.
Happy New Year
Eoin
Thoroughly enjoyed Maskarade’s puzzle and thought the clues were of very high quality for such a difficult setting task. We particularly liked ox liver but there were plenty of other entertaining clues. It took two days of mother and daughter collaboration to finish the puzzle but we had ‘lovey’ instead of covey.
Thanks all – this certainly was a challenge. Another amazing construction, and I wonder if it will be the only one of its kind – are there any other possible Q words?
I liked this despite it being extremely difficult and taking a long time. The undefined parts were the most taxing especially when there were viable alternatives- I’m sure I wasn’t alone in having ALTERCATION rather than ALTERNATION for 15 across.LOI was BANJOIST/INJURY- the first,in retrospect, was easy; the second was a guess,and I still don’t understand it. Both OXLIVER and COWSHED were especially difficult.
Thanks very much for the blog and thanks to Masquerade.
Happy New Year.
Peter @ 15: it’s IN(J)URE, not IN(J)URY. To become inured to something is to be hardened or (perhaps) seasoned to it.
Peter @ 15: my solving partner Timon and I also went for ALTERCATION originally.
What a fantastic piece of setting. Thanks Maskerade; a very tricky, but ultimately satisfying solve.
Thanks bridgesong for a good blog – a Herculean task, no doubt.
Well, I eventually solved it with steam coming out of my computer and a little help from the interweb. This really must be one of the most impressive puzzles I’ve seen.
Thanks Bridgesong and Masquerade. I was surprised hoe quickly I finished this – despite it making my brain hurt trying to think of two things at the same time. But wasn’t happy with 22D ROULADE = meat savoury. It can be but need not be . All the ones I’ve had have been sweet or veggie.
Almost got there with the help of my 96-year old mother. We put ROGUE instead of ROQUE, which didn’t help, and missed out on WIZEN and MARGINATE. Great puzzle – many thanks to Maskarade and bridgesong.
What a great puzzle! This took me several days of picking away at it but I got there in the end. Perfect for the Christmas holidays.
What I found impressive was that all this was achieved with only a couple of obscure words in there. Of course, not everyone will agree on which of the words they are!
Thank you to Bridgesong and Maskerade.
Clever, but hard, hard, hard!
After a week of sweat, completed it except for 1d L, 7a L, 10a R and 3d R – some of which seem to have given others a headache 🙂
I think some of the clarity of the cluing may have been sacrificed to the smoothness of the surfaces, but this nit-picking
Many thanks – a very long struggle, but got there in the end. Main problems were in the NW corners, especially OXLIVER, LINEAR, CORNMEAL and COVEY. Also WIZEN was one of the last ones in.
But the difficulties were exacerbated by me being convinced early on that 7A(R)was LOTTERY (terribly poor = TOTTERY, left a leading tutor, student to start with (replace T with L = LOTTERY = fate).
Phew.
Re: 1d I think there’s a little bit more going on here than just Oliver Hardy. Oliver was also Roland’s comrade-at-arms in the legend. Very tough crossword, but very satisfying. Thanks to setter and blogger.
A terrific tour de force – the grid construction alone is fantastically ingenious. I found it pretty tough, but did manage to finish it on the second day with plenty of help from the dictionary. Managed to get all of the missing letters right first time, more by luck than judgment, and last in was OX-LIVER.
Thanks to Maskarade and bridgesong – must have been a tough one to blog
An absolutely top notch puzzle. I don’t think that I have ever put so much effort into trying to solve a puzzle and still fail to complete it. OLIVER and EXITED defeated me despite every effort. A combination of the puzzle structure and the cluing put this puzzle up there amongst the very best; Maskarade take a bow. Thank you also to bridgesong; you must have been pretty daunted after the first couple of hours!
Thanks, beery hiker and MANG: yes, it was a tough one to blog, and I didn’t finish the puzzle till Christmas Eve, although I didn’t fully understand it till later. Mind you, I suspect it took a lot longer than that to compose the puzzle. A tour de force, indeed.
Loved, loved, loved it!
I too was hung up on LOTTERY at 7ac right for quite a while. Also started off with BRINE and ALTERCATION.
I am now hooked on these harder puzzles e.g. Azed, Genius etc (thanks to my good friend met at SandB York!) and very rarely venture back into the ordinary cryptics these days, which is why I don’t appear here very often now.
Thanks to the setter for a wonderfully challenging and superb puzzle, and to the blogger.
A truly impressive piece of work by Maskarade and worthy of the Christmas prize slot (which was my introduction to crosswords fifty odd years ago).
Couldn’t finish it on my own, so thanks, and respect, Bridgesong. Finally thanks to all bloggers and the administrators of the site which is such a great resource to solvers. Long may you continue.
Oh, that was hard, but it was a fascinating challenge, even allowing myself all the dictionary aid I could get. And I still managed to (ouch!) get ORGANDY instead of ORLANDO on the grounds that it was book-muslin and could be used to compile a book. (And it’s not as though I’ve not read the book in question or am unfamiliar with the compiler in question. So that was embarrassing.) Still, that filled in quite a bit of the holiday in a very entertaining way. Thank you very much, Maskerade, and bridgesong for the blog – particularly the explanation of ADORNED – which I’m not embarrassed to have failed to parse.
A very happy New Year to everyone.
This was certainly hard work, but we had differing opinions about whether it was fun or not (Jenny: Yes! Me: Not really.) The frustration for me was that the clues that were left at the end were almost all ones that seemed dubious. e.g. I’m not sure how you can justify LINER = “Queen” – the “liner” is “the QE2” or “Queen Elizabeth”, not just “Queen”, surely? We assumed the answer must be LINEAR, but didn’t feel confident about putting it in until the near the deadline for submission. Similarily, B + ANANA we thought of early on, but ANANA is so obscure compared to ANANAS that we didn’t feel confident that we weren’t missing a better solution. I was waiting for the blog to find out what I was missing with OLIVER = “Comrade – Stan’s”, and the reference to “The Song of Roland” (mentioned by BF above) seems very obscure, especially given the tricky insertion. WI[th childr]EN was also one of our very last. In addition using grids with so few crossing letters made finishing it off very difficult.
That said, the construction of the grids with the 26 extra letters being added is undoubtedly very impressive, and I certainly enjoyed the early part of solving, but the frustrations mentioned above spoiled it for me. Clearly I’m in a minority, though, given my partner’s views and all those above!
Just surprised that no-one else thought that 9D (left) — “courtroom subtlety genetically engineered” — is one of the most brilliant clues I’ve ever seen, well up to Araucaria standard.
I’m surprised that no-one else thought that 9D (left) — “courtroom subtlety genetically engineered” — is one of the most brilliant clues I’ve seen, well up to Araucaria standard!
Just finished after missing rather a lot of Christmas over this … and with much (slow) cheating tonight on crosswordsolver.org. I’m with mhl – very impressive but in the end not so much fun once you had got through the nice clues and on to the last difficult/dodgy quarter (unfortunately clustered towards the top and left). I suppose I’m a victim of the sunk cost fallacy – having invested so much time I couldn’t bear to give up. But yes, 9DL was excellent as were many others. Thanks Bridgesong and others for explaining some obscurities.
If it was hard for the fanatics, how was it for the dabblers? I think I am somewhere in between and gave up after a week with about half done. The extra letter idea was not for me.
And one last thing … I think no-one commented on 8A right BO(U)NDED – my LOI – where the container instruction “in” is itself cryptically clued! Surely that’s a level of indirection too far? Will we next see the material for an anagram clued rather than present?
Other clues would avoid the rather common “bed” – “… glued daughter into extracted skeleton” provides an attractive image, for example.
Fun idea, but a bit too hard for me. I like my Christmas puzzles a bit easier, as it’s the time of year when I try and rope-in some friends and family members who are often new to the whole thing.
It would be nice to have Maskarade a bit more frequently than the 4-a-year specials: a sense of familiarity (and trust) with a setter can be a real spur to the solver to carry on when the going gets tough.
Matt
Tough one! I had to tackle it without access to dictionary or internet. Didn’t get WIZEN or COVEY.
Wriggly Tin””, Queensland.
I’ve only just finished, with some help from a fellow (Berks-resident) solver.
Enjoyed it hugely, but I’m still stuck on how HEARTLESS = EXITED. Is this a bridge reference?
I agree that the NW corner was on the tough side, and I think some if the clues could have been easier- for instance, ORLANDO required the solver to know the Guardian compilers to be a fair clue, and it’s reasonable to suppose a Christmas puzzle like this may entice some non-regular solvers; a reference to Mr Bloom or the city in Florida may have been more apposite. But I quibble- it gave me a lot of enjoyment for rather longer than I’d usually devote to a crossword!
Hi James McGraw @39
“… but I’m still stuck on how HEARTLESS = EXITED. Is this a bridge reference?”
It’s ‘was’ = existed which when ‘heartless’ gives EXI[s]TED (left).
I managed to finish this after less than a week, but didn’t understand how two or three of the answers worked – this is where 15squared is a boon! It was hard, but really enjoyable, and what I’d look forward to in a bank holiday crossword. I don’t think new solvers should be too discouraged,as the BH ones are meant to be more of a challenge (but an enjoyable one).
I can only solve cryptic crosswords with the aid of several reference books, mainly the Chambers dictionary, a crossword dictionary (lists of categories e.g. rivers, kings etc), an old encyclopedia and a Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and, as a final desperate resort a crossword dictionary that gives lists of words alphabetically by length, e.g. all the three letter words beginning with a, b, c and so on. Looking on the Internet is usually a last resort, not such fun.
Very late, yet again, but I must thank James @39 for reminding me that ORLANDO is a Guardian crossword compiler. Bridgesong’s excellent blog didn’t explain that.
In an amazing X-word I only failed on the crossing solutions in the LH grid, at 17D and 25A; ORLANDO and ADORNED. I don’t think I would have got one without the other. I agree that there were more user-friendly indicators to ORLANDO than ‘compiler’ and I was unwilling to start guessing which novels fit -R-A— !
That is my only gripe because this puzzle gave me far more brain-exercise than any of the Genius ones and, once I got going, more pleasure despite my conviction that BRIE should become BRIDE or BRINE causing great problems with 2D (RH grid).
Thank you for your blog, Bridgesong and thank you Maskerade for a mostly entertaining work-out.
Jan@42: sorry that I didn’t spell that out; I assumed that everyone would know that, but I now see that that was an unwarranted assumption! I’m glad you agree that this was more challenging than a Genius puzzle, especially as I have to blog the January one.
Very late comment – just to say I’m with mhl@31.
Full of admiration for the brilliant construction.
Solved about 75% before getting exasperated with grid arrangement with its isolated corners (and crossing vowels).
Many thanks to Bridgesong.
Happy New Year (belatedly) to all.