1 - By order, behead no stupid person (8) - BONEHEAD*
5 - Creep on dam, do! (6) - {WEIR}{DO}
9 - Standard a couple of females at home have for what paper may be coated with (8) - {PAR}{A}{FF}{IN}
10 - What one did on the doormat pretty much is plain (6) - STEPPE
12 - Strip of wood is almost bluish-grey (4) - SLAT
13 - Thinner bit of raga included in composition of inept tune (10) - {TU{R}PENTINE*}
15 - Help get comfy at bedtime (4,2) - TUCK IN [CD]
17 - A piece of the action in golf? (5) - DIVOT [CD]
20 - Wrongdoer abandons soft part of target (5) -
21 - Managed to be back on tier that's of little breadth (6) - {NAR<-}{ROW}
24 - Rep felt cup is broken and becomes tense (10) - PLUPERFECT*
27 - Enemy surrounding large ice sheet (4) - F{L}OE
30 - Without a crew, deprived of strength of mind (8) - UNMANNED [DD]
31 - Company of players to gather, we hear (6) - TROUPE(~troop)
32 - Rummage broken lunettes (8) - UNSETTLE*
DOWN
1 - Give the skip to a kind of surgical procedure (6) - BYPASS [DD]
2 - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
3 - Sound set provided in Hampi's outer limits (4) - {H{IF}I}
4 - What you might say as you leave in France (5) - ADIEU [E]
6 - Consumed bit of what neta eagerly passed back (5) - EATEN [T<-]
7 - Respite for church official covering public relations unit (8) - {RE{PR}{I}EVE}
8 - You can't make one without breaking an egg (8) - OMELETTE [CD]
14 - Say “I'm happy” as a Siamese might (4) - PURR [CD]
16 - Ruler, one replaced by you, said to have endless fun in martial art (4,2) - {K(-i+u)UNG} {FU
17 - Abandon an ornament (4) - DROP [DD]
18 - Discourage girl's rip-it posture (8) - {DIS}{PIRIT*}
19 - Hint that disparate union is about to wind up (8) - {INNU{END}O*}
22 - Scheme by the alien for a heavenly body (6) - {PLAN}{ET}
23 - Dog, with its tail docked but possessing a bit of dependability, for church official (6) - BEA
25 - Provide oriental bit of wit (5) - {E}{QUIP}
26 - About unknown clergyman (5) - {C}{ANON}
28 - Feeling of malice in chacha telling (4) - HATE [T]
Hi folks
ReplyDeleteQuite a refreshing start to the Gridman assembly line. Enjoyed solving pretty fast.
SLAT and WEIRDO flashed at once because of recent appearance of SLATE and WEIR.
9A - Liked this.
10A - Nice pun on 'plain'.
17A - DIVOT - @ Deepak, many golfing terms blasting in these days.
24A - Again, a nice pun on 'tense' and a nice anagram.
29A - Good clue.
30A - UNMANNED - anno of the latter half not clear. Yet to check the blog anno.
3D - Nice clue. 'Sound' likely to give a homophonic idea. I guess in modern usage, the hyphen in HI-FI is dropped although it is the abbreviation of a hyphenated word HIGH-FIDELITY.
14D - Anno not clear. Will check the blog entry.
16D - Liked this.
23D - Best of the day, according to me. DOG's tail in BEAGLE dropped and a bit of DEPENDABILITY inserted, giving us BEADLE.
I thought regular clues relating to Christianity and the Bible were only part of MM's crosswords. Gridman has three today. :-)
14D - Say “I'm happy” as a Siamese might (4) - PURR [CD]
ReplyDeleteI beg your pardon. I took it as PAIR, because of the Siamese (twin) reference.
Deepak
ReplyDeleteI like the pictures that you select and insert more than the solutions themselves!
Further to CV's point, I wonder where you find the time to fish out all these pictures !
ReplyDelete11 D Reno is a town in Nevada. There doesn't seem to be one in California, though there are Renos in some other states. However the clue was solvable even taking this into account.
ReplyDeleteRichard (as you might have realised)
ReplyDeleteUNMANNED as in a certain kind of railway levelcrossing in India or scores of a certain kind of satellites that are hurtled into space
The pictures add a nice dimension to the solution.
ReplyDeleteThanks CV re UNMANNED. I have heard of such level-crossings and satellites. It is the reference to 'deprived of strength of mind' that foxed me.
ReplyDeleteRe 11d: Veer too elsewhere noted the rare mistake in a Gridman crossword. Must have slipped in different stages of checking. Indian crossword composers are handicapped (this may be construed as non-PC as someone in the Letters column of TH objects to the use of expressions such as 'lame excuse' 'limping back to normalcy' - anyway) by lack of 'test solvers' and 'crossword editor'. The onus is ON US, they may say!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Gridman believes that women cannot become nervous! Ha, ha, ha!!
ReplyDeleteFair amount of messy stuff like turpentine, paraffin etc today
ReplyDeleteGridman arrives - a spell of cool showers after a long, hot summer.
ReplyDeleteRegarding 30A - Without a crew, deprived of strength of mind (8) - UNMANNED [DD], On hindsight I think I should have classified as CD as 'Without a crew' and 'deprived of strength of mind' mean the same. No one controlling an unmanned craft means the craft is deprived of the strength of mind
ReplyDeleteWe had something more like a storm here in Bangalore last night as a result of which large parts of Bangalore were without power for the best part of the night. Hopefully that's the end of our summer for the year.
ReplyDelete2 - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
ReplyDeleteI had put as Norman , as norm is just and Norman fitted for the boy without affecting 12 AC slat.but your solution fits perfectly for the young boy also.
Thanks CV & Richard,
ReplyDelete"A picture is worth a thousand words" is in my mind when I am searching for them
@Dr RP
ReplyDelete2 - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
This is how I see it
Just = Definition
condition = NORM
met by = connector or can also be seen as a position indicator
young boy = AL
Just = {NORM}{AL}
LNS
ReplyDeleteIf Gridman were to read this he might think you were saying the clues for TURPENTINE and PARAFFIN were messy. He needs to be reassured that you were merely commenting on the substantive nature of the materials in question! Richard, don't start on 'substantive', 'substantial', 'sum and substance' etc! Just put in a word that came to me.
@ CV: :-)
ReplyDeleteRichard
ReplyDeleteI am relieved to find that 'substantive' does mean 'relating to substance'.
I think Gridman's a devout Christian. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a Reverend.
ReplyDeleteGridman a devout Christian? A Reverend? lol!!!
ReplyDeleteLet me inform you all that I am also a member of the club of admirers for the Colonel's cute and apt pictures!
He may also be a WEIRDO or a BONEHEAD with HATE in his heart. One who can never get a REPRIEVE.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJust to get away from Gridman's personality disorders (he may have to have a few, considering some of his devious clues that we all so enjoy, :-)), I had a question about 23Dn just so I can file one more cryptic solving tip away:
ReplyDelete23 - Dog, with its tail docked but possessing a bit of dependability, for church official (6) - BEAg{D}LE
Assuming here DOG = BEAGLE, then, the phrase, "with its tail docked" should only imply "BEAGL(-e)", is it not? Is it considered ok for Dog to do double duty as it does here: Dog = Beagle as well as deleting "g" from Bea(-g)le?
Thank you
@Veer,
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right, I too had the same doubt, I too feel Gridman has erred here
Could it be that doG's tail, the letter G, removed from BEAGLE? I took it that way.
ReplyDeleteCV: I was gardening all day today (Sunday) just to avoid stuff like WD-40, Windex, paints and thinners. I had a great afternoon and tried THC after a break. And there it was, leaping at me, like the Revenge of Montezuma, thinner, turpentine, paraffin etc etc. :)
ReplyDeleteRichard has got it! He has read Gridman's mind!
ReplyDeleteDog, - BEAGLE
with its tail - G - tail of DOG, as 'it' can go back to dog
docked - cut from BEA[g]LE
but possessing a bit of dependability, - placing D
for
church official
Richard, I doubt it. Can DOG be a "definition clue" as well as a source for letter deletion? I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteChaturvasi, that's a nice explanation.
ReplyDeleteBTW, you don't like Gridman either huh? ;)
CVasi Sir: Do you happen to have examples of the reversion device that you are suggesting used in other published clues? First time I have seen it in my small experience and it is very intriguing as a device.
ReplyDeleteMy comment about about Gridman was not meant to be taken literally!
ReplyDeleteSandhya, don't know about the rest, but people living in this part of the country, Chennai that is, wouldn't even dream of taking it literally - at least not during this time of the year.
ReplyDelete@VJ: See the Col's comment about the storm in B'lore :)
ReplyDeleteOK Sandhya, got it.
ReplyDeleteWe miss you Mr Kishore
ReplyDelete