HIC!!
ACROSS
1 This pope regularly communes with extremely regressive evil
spirit (6) TIPPLE {ThIs PoPe}{LivE}
4 Only female servants employed in 19? (6) BARMEN {BAR}{MEN}
9 Sailors docking start to celebrate with British beer (4) BREW (-c+b)BREW
10 Banned Heroin within and without 8, say (10) UNHALLOWED {UN{H}ALLOWED}
11 Stocious rowdies giving up the last of their rupees for
fruitcake (6) WEIRDO ROWDIEs*
12 How Vito Corleone spoke of God: Twit in hiding (8) HOARSELY {HO{ARSE}LY}
13 Many a 1 leads to slippery nipples (9) COCKTAILS [CD]
15 A half dozen quarters of Burgundy and Bordeaux (4) VINS {VI}{NS}
16 Might be single but can make you see double (4) MALT [CD]
17 Clues sent out might be delicious (9) ESCULENTS*
21 Vegetable gave little sibling convulsive colic (8) BROCCOLI {BRO}{COLIC*}
22 Thousands of noughty Serbians initially dwelt here (6) KOSOVO [GK]
24 Pickled, Mini’s crass, developing an excessive fondness for the
glass (10) NARCISSISM*
25 1 on ships is not right at all (4) PORT [CD]
26 In conclusion, overwhelmed by essay (6) TRENDY {TR{END}Y}
27 Guzzles down a quarter, beginning to totter in boozemakers
(6) STILLS S(-w+t)TILLS
DOWN
1 Scotch wrecked poor Ted (7) TORPEDO*
2 Juice is Acton’s corrupter (5) POWER [GK]
3 Encountering cunning clue, doctor’s taken aback and gets a white
sight blight (7) LEUCOMA {CLUE*}{OM<=}{A}
5 Like ice cubes in a drink, but not ‘on the rocks’! (6) AFLOAT [DD]
6 Still made, mostly at night (9) MOONSHINE [CD]
8 Sacred agent in sacramental wine? (3,4,6) THE HOLY SPIRIT [CD]
14 Unit of yesteryear. A drink finally — one for the road! (9) KILOCYCLE {K}ILO{CYCLE} Anno pending
16 18-year-old chap takes ringroad leading to entrance of TASMAC
for cutting (7) MORDANT {M{O}{RD}AN}{T}
18 Dishevelled drunk empties boxes (7) UNKEMPT [T]
19 Servant might get plastered in these (7) TAVERNS*
20 Might get wasted when employed in such a fashion (6) SOUSED {SO}{USED}
Heady hangover after downing an early morning Skulldugger Skrewdriver and singing Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, I raised a toast to this spiritually inclined crossword. Missed a couple, but saw through the double MALT. Liked quite a few like VI N S and TR(END)DY definition ‘in’ artfully concealed.
ReplyDeletehaha , kishore. feel giddy already.skull dugger must have guzzled a drink or two before setting his cw
ReplyDelete22 Thousands of noughty Serbians initially dwelt here (6) KOSOVO [GK]
ReplyDeleteWas wondering if there was more to it: thousands could be Ks. Noughty could refer to the three noughts Os. but then I am stuck for further explanation
I was thinking along these lines:
DeleteThousands = K,
noughty (is this a valid word?) = O
Serbians = S (why?)
initially = Ovo (but Ab Ovo means from the beginning)
and gave up.
Kishore,
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Kosovo initially had higher designs than just a GK clue. In my notes I have, in addition to the clue in its current formulation: Five thousand noughty Serbians initially lived here. Which i still meant to work on so it wasn't the muddled mess it is. So it has a lot of the elements you saw going on, but somehow it got sent off in its drawing-board state. Sorry for the confusion. I blame it on the booze!
I was going to challenge the surmise by Gayathri at 08:38 above but the setter has subsequently confessed to have had a couple while setting this crossword.
ReplyDeleteBe that as it may, if Gridman's crossword has GETS IT OFF, INTERCOURSE, RANDY, COME-HITHER LOOK, LINGERIE and words of thes ame kind, no conjectures may be made, please.
How much of himself does an author put in his work? Elucidate.
Come Hither ;-)
Deletereminds me of:
Hi! slippy hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao!
Has hither come from the Hindi 'idhar'
The above hitherao reference is from kishorerao
DeleteHow much of himself does an author put in his work? Elucidate.
Delete"All of it" I thought ? Fact, fiction, fantasy all included, since surfaces, devices and wordplay components are selected by the author without any compulsion.
Felt like I had a 'couple' on the rocks- everything seemed blurred! (until of course I saw the blog)
ReplyDeleteswamiye sharanamayyappa :-P TT now. this puzzle is not for me
DeleteAny clues on the Anno for 14D, or is that also the result of one too many?
ReplyDeleteWas about to ask the same question !
DeleteW.r.to CV's comments yesterday- it is now clear that the 'hardness' of a CW lies in the minds (and abilities or the lack of it)of the solver and nothing to do with setter or his intentions- like they say "The beauty is in the eyes of the beholder". Except for a handful of seasoned solvers( maybe experts)The bar is set high for the others. It is up to us to stand up and reach it.
ReplyDeleteCol.'s opening remark- no, a single word- says it all.
14d- A kilocycle is a unit that's barely in use anymore,(having been replaced by the unit kilohertz)- hence unit of yesteryear
ReplyDeleteA drink finally gives K - abbreviation for Kilo
And cycle is one for the road.
I agree that to get kilo from K is a bit unorthodox; cruciverbalists generally give expect you to take the abbreviation from the whole and not the other way around. But I figured this was fair too. What are your thoughts?
Sorry, it ain't all that fair IMO. K, when expanded could mean so many things while kilo, when shortened would lead us to just one, that is, K. I think that's exactly why the latter is considered more fair and common than the former.
DeleteI feel an indication to expand K (if inserted in the clue) would have made things clearer.
DeleteOnce explained it seems fair, but couldn't think of it on my own : )
DeleteIn that respect I'm happy to accept it. If pressed, I prefer for the K to stand on its own instead of having to derive it first and then expand (although the derivation in this case is trivial)
Google says that 'Ilo' is a city in southern Peru that was populated by the local Chiribaya civilization before the arrival of Spanish. Could this in anyway connect to yesteryear?
ReplyDeleteAdmit that I belong to the second category of VJ's comment at 3:30 PM yesterday. May take ages ........
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I thought something to do with MILO :-( Thanks for giving anno Skuldugger
ReplyDelete14 Unit of yesteryear. A drink finally — one for the road! (9) KILOCYCLE {K}ILO{CYCLE} Anno pending
ReplyDeleteI didn't see this earlier; even if I had, I doubt if I would have been able throw light.
The solver can derive k from 'A drink finally' but to expect him to go on to expand it to kilo is a stretch, I think.
It is original, maybe OK as an occasional idio but I don't think we can accept it as a convention that other setters might follow.
Tough going today, but for the evident theme might have given it up midway. KOSOSVO was a pure guess because of the Siberian connection. Liked the wordplay and the interconnected clues.
ReplyDeleteA question (just out of curiosity, not a beef): Is 'might be delicious' a good enough def for ESCULENTS?
Tough one, missed out on a couple, but found it very interesting thanks to my own penchant for spirits :)
ReplyDeleteHad a question on 16D: Mordant == cutting as an adjective, so at least to me the surface seemed a bit odd
Day by day,it is becoming increasingly difficult to solve the puzzle.At least,for the kind of us,please lower the standards,but not at the cost of pure entertainment,provided by the wordplay and such other intelligent devices.Aakhir aam aadmi ka aawaaz bhi kuch cheez hai sun ne ke liye!
ReplyDeleteSeshagiri,
DeleteYou have Sankalak, Gridman, Arden and Mover who provide 18 CW's between them out of the 31 CW's we get in one round which is more than 50% of relatively easy CW's so I don't think there is a case for lowering any standards which by itself has a different connotation.
Keep at it and one fine day yyou will find that nothing is difficult.
Col.Saab,Excuse me,I wantonly wanted to use the word"lowering"under the impression it won't attract any demeaning connotations.Perhaps I could not have exactly expressed my feelings.Your advice is well taken.Thank you for the confidence reposed in me.I will try my best.
DeleteTo think that we have to face Klue Klux Klan tomorrow - no samosa for any one except probably for Col. or Bhavan.
ReplyDeleteAdd Kishore & Suresh to the list.
ReplyDeletePlease add me to that list, too! Today was a real toughie, and I wonder how I'll do tomorrow. Still, good to know I'll have some company!
ReplyDeleteweird puzzle..
ReplyDeleteThe use of K for Kilo as VJ and Chaturvasi pointed out, is perhaps a tad unfair to the solver and is something I will be chary of employing again.
ReplyDelete@VP on 16d. Cutting in the sense of mordant is adjective. But as used in the surface reading it certainly comes off as a verb. Perhaps it'll help to know that in my circle, 'cutting' is synonymous with drinking booze. 'Do you want to cut tonight?' is the same as ' Would you like to drink tonight?'. I'm not sure how prevalent the usage of 'cutting' as 'drinking' is ( making its parsability rather niche ), but I have heard it used frequently in Chennai and Bangalore, among the youth.
Thanks for the explanation. Yes, I have heard "cutting" used here in India the way you describe it. Even more so in the TASMAC context (where I guess cutting is used as a slang for a quarter ?). To clarify, I have no problems with the surface as such. It makes complete sense to me. It is perhaps just one of the things which is stuck in my head - that an adjective definition should be defined by an adjective to be absolutely fair.
Delete