As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, Nimrod is something of a long-term nemesis of mine, having regularly made my life difficult back when I was blogging the Independent dailies.
These days I do enjoy the challenge and even finished this one unaided. Explaining everything may be another matter, though.
The two long answers give you ONE IS ONE AND ALL ALONE AND EVERMORE SHALL BE. That turns out to be a line from a song named Green Grow the Rushes, O which must be from before my time. Whether there’s any significance there beyond the loose “Endeavour Morse” pun, I could not tell you.
| Across | ||
| 1 | GAS POKER | It comes in useful when lighting up cheap cigarette collects fine (3,5) |
| OK in GASPER. | ||
| 5 | GELATI | Source of great happiness licking on ice creams (6) |
| G[reat] + ELATI[on]. | ||
| 9 | ON A LEVEL | Sharing plane heading for university? (2,1,5) |
| The suggestion is that someone doing their A Levels is heading for university. | ||
| 10 | ODD LOT | One or two shares – couple of things things that go with job? (3,3) |
| Because you can have an ODD JOB or a JOB LOT. If you have a few fractions of shares left over because of a rounding error caused by lazy programmers (yes you, TD Direct) then the reply to your complaint email will indeed use the term “odd lot”. | ||
| 12 | CLASSICO | Sweetheart fills commander with love of regionally-produced Chianti? (8) |
| (LASS in CIC) + 0. | ||
| 15 | DOWN-AND-OUTER | Have Daniel Thomas apprehended after dropping barrels, poor man (4-3-5) |
| OWN in (DAN + DOU[b]TER). | ||
| 19 | SUCCESS STORY | Fairy tale year following heir a little way inside (7,5) |
| (ST in SUCCESSOR) + Y. | ||
| 21 | GREEN | Settle wants a new plot at centre of village (5) |
| [a]GREE + N. | ||
| 26 | EXTRAS | Minor members of cast say bye-bye (6) |
| From cricket. A “bye” is an extra, and there are two of them here. | ||
| 27 | DEARIE ME | I’m dismayed second French wife’s out for a run (6,2) |
| (A + R) in DE[ux]IEME. “Ux” is short for “uxor”, the Latin word for “wife”. | ||
| 28 | SUPPLY | Equip with ease and grace (6) |
| Two definitions. | ||
| 29 | ADHERE TO | Go along with a little promotion as far as this (6,2) |
| AD + HERETO. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | GROW | Extend choice of ends for waking up (4) |
| (W OR G)<. The ends of the word “waking” reversed. | ||
| 3/16/14 | ONE IS ONE AND ALL ALONE | Advert for BOGOF sandwiches of Muslim meat in Brick Lane, maybe…(see 13) (3,2,3,3,3,5) |
| Not really sure here. I think we have ONE IS ONE AND ONE* i.e. one becomes two, which fits a buy-one-get-one-free type deal. Then we have ALLAL. I wondered if that was an alternative spelling of “halal”, as Brick Lane has a sizeable Muslim community. But if it is, it isn’t in my dictionaries. | ||
| 4 | EYEWITNESSES | Who saw it head into the turn for The Old Sheep? (12) |
| (IT + NESS) in (YE&;lt; + EWES). | ||
| 6/23 | ENDEAVOUR MORSE | Puzzling endlessly over murder, as one’s…? (9,5) |
| (OVE[r] MURDER AS ONES)*. | ||
| 7 | ALLSORTS | A walk uphill carrying special variety (8) |
| A + (S in STROLL<). | ||
| 8 | IN THEORY | Notionally, during Saturnalia, Government’s opted out (2,6) |
| IN THE OR[g]Y. | ||
| 11 | ROUND THE BEND | Out of sight, out of mind? (5,3,4) |
| Two definitions. | ||
| 13/22/2/25 | AND EVERMORE SHALL BE SO | (see 3)…prediction of 6 23’s MO, very roughly speaking? (3,8,5,2,2) |
| A very rough approximation of “Endeavour Morse shall be”. | ||
| 17 | AS A GUESS | Grilled sausages, I reckon (2,1,5) |
| SAUSAGES*. | ||
| 18 | SCREWTOP | Prevent sailors breaking bottle (8) |
| CREW in STOP. | ||
| 20 | YEO | Comedy turns regularly featuring deselected Tory MP (3) |
| [c]O[m]E[d]Y<. Tim Yeo is apparently still an MP, despite countless, shall we say, irregularities and being a thoroughly objectionable human being. It looks like they’ve kicked him out this time though, hence “deselected”. | ||
| 24 | REEVE | Wind up European steward (5) |
| VEER< + E. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations
I found this exceedingly tough and towards the end I was guessing heavily to finish it, usually not understanding how the clue worked.
Fortunately, I remembered singing the song at school and I was able to get the long answers almost entirely by the numeration.
Unlike Dormouse I found this very much easier than your average Nimrod puzzle. I too learnt the song in my (primary) school days and later enjoyed reviving it on long car journeys with two small children.
Simon, you’ve left out SO in the solution to the second long clue. Some years ago, when Morse’s first name was revealed, a correspondent to the Indy quoted the couplet, observing that it tied in neatly with Morse’s famous loner status.
Halal in Brick Lane (East end ?) would be pronounced ‘alal, the extra L from Lane…
Looking at the clue again, it seems to indicate sandwiches ONE IS ONE AND AL L AL ONE ?
I have a nasty feeling Chambers gives the abbreviation B for barrel, and since many setters and solvers allow this, clue 15a will probably be parsed by them as DOUbTER, dropping barrels.
Thanks for the blog. This was a nasty puzzle, with a few clues that to me seemed unreasonable (but we completed it so I suppose it was fair). I think we are skirting around the correct parsing for the BOGOF samdwiches. Hallal is a spelling in the dictionary so we don’t need the l from Lane, it’s only as you thought, that in Brick Lane Hallal becomes Allal, which is sanwiched by the “One is One and One”.
Thanks Nimrod and Simon, this was far too hard for me, but I enjoyed getting some of the clues and going through the parsing.
Hallal is not correct, my daughter-in-law is Moroccan and I can read Arab words, but it is probably given in Chambers…
Cookie@5: That is certainly how I parsed 15ac.
Very tricky indeed but I managed to finish it in one session without recourse to aids. Having said that I didn’t bother to try and parse the two long answers because I realised what they were once enough checkers were in place.
Cookie – B=barrels is used in the oil industry.
Well done Andy B. We have been through the barrel question before, see 26,287 Chifonie…
How odd! Just done this today on Crossword Solver (lots of help and check button required) but all week, for no reason I can think of, ‘Green grow the rushes, O’ has been running through my head and I’ve been trying to remember all the verses. I was on the point of googling for it, so thanks, Simon, for the link.
And I’d only just finished struggling with the recycled Nimrod in Thursday’s i.