Solution to 13A has been deliberately left unsolved and is to be answered only by a non-regular / novice commenter, with proper annotation. Those who have answered earlier in the week, please give others a chance.
Open for anyone to answer, if not solved by 1 PM.
ACROSS
1 Soldiers get time to capture distressed revolutionary at South (6) TROOPS {T}{POOR<=}{S}
4 Witnessed the struggle with married (6) VIEWED {VIE}{WED}
8 Excitement at the best book counter (7) EMOTION {NO 1}{TOME}<=
9 Incentive like vehicle spoil society (7) CARROTS {CAR}{ROT}{S}
11 Rewrote cool motive to train, say (10) LOCOMOTIVE*
12 Maiden over by star (4) HERO {HER}{O}
13 Authoritarian's back (5) S?E?N (Addendum - STERN [DD] - See comments)
14 Engaged with officer-in-charge, god of love, filled with energy (8) OCCUPIED {OC}{CUPI{E}D}
16 Plan is good in following nurse with ease reportedly, right? (8) ENGINEER {G}{IN}<=>{EN} with {EE}{R}
18 I am in, drunk to maximum (5) LIMIT {L{I'M}IT}
20 Flippers by Fawad in Nasik stadium initially (4) FINS Acrostic
21 Food items made with herb, sugar and some mayonnaise (10) HAMBURGERS {HERB+SUGAR+Ma...e}*
23 Instrument's note is profane (7) VIOLATE {VIOLA}{TE}
24 Troubles females during caste stir (7) AFFECTS {A{FF}ECTS*}
25 Aisle damaged? Yes without doubt (6) EASILY {AISLE*}{Y}
26 Secures copies by changing directions (6) CLOSES CLO(-n+s)SES
DOWN
1 Beat them heartlessly near the river (5) TEMPO {ThEM}{PO}
2 End result was dismissed caught, duck, with me at other end... (7) OUTCOME {OUT}{C}{O}{ME}
3 ...master catch while leader is away after mid-lunch leading to declare (9) PRONOUNCE {PRO}{pOUNCE}<=>{luNch}
5 Picture that is covered by publication? On the contrary (5) IMAGE {I{MAG}E}
6 Glorify Destroyer perhaps, one leaving for Ohio (7) WORSHIP W(-a+o)ORSHIP
7 Discouragement's not right, good to replace cleaner (9) DETERGENT DETER(-r+g)GENT
10 Weight measure of milk or gas in error (9) KILOGRAMS*
13 Section engineer invites new tender (9) SENSITIVE {SE}{INVITES*}
15 Brilliant pass, our leading footballer's high-class leader primarily (9) COLOURFUL {COL}{OUR}{Fo...r}{U}{Le...r}
17 Offences and sins with lady in union territory going wrong (7) INSULTS {SINS+L+UT}*
19 Centres of attraction featuring in publication online on Sunday (7) MAGNETS {MAG}{NET}{S}
21 Inn is the old incomplete construction (5) HOTEL {THE+OLd}*
22 Judges rarely articulate tenets engrossingly simple for beginners (5) RATES Acrostic
Reference List
Time = T, South = S, Society = S, Over = O, Energy = E, Good = G, Nurse = EN(Enrolled nurse), Note = TE, Female = F, Yes = Y, Caught = C, Right = R, Section engineer = SE, Pass = COL, High class = U, Lady = L, Sunday = S
11a AD?
ReplyDeleteMotive as it is?
+1 it is only a trivially cryptic clue
DeleteNitpicking with no malice.
ReplyDelete4a 'the' is redundant.
26a Should be direction without the s
25A- there is no direction. Y from yes and (aisle)*
DeleteWithout is part of def.as indicated by Col.
Paddy, doubt is abt 26a.
DeleteN to S is either u-turn or change of directions!!
+1 for 4a and 26a both. Whether on the surface or in the cryptic sense, only one direction is being changed.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete16a) what's the role of reportedly?
ReplyDelete1d) heartlessly to remove h is something I'm unable to comprehend. Even if we consider heart = h (not sure if it's a standard abbreviation), it should be heartless and not heartlessly.
Or is it T(he)M + poe . Some friend said, poe is river. Am not convinced
DeletePo is Italian river.
DeleteReportedly is for getting EE from Ease.
DeleteEE's reportedly HP
DeletePo - an Italian an river is a clear bouncer if not a beamer to.me-)
DeleteI find Tempo is a small river in Northern Ireland
DeleteCol.'s anno is clear.
DeleteThem hearlessly is them- H= Tem
Po is river
1d agree. Once heart (we had this discussion whether hearts suit/h can be synonymous to heart indicating a card in the suit. But its become regular in int crossies.) Then lessly isnt a stand alone word whereas less is.
Delete1D: If it was half-heartedly, problem would be solved!
Delete1A. Where is the revolutionary? Or is it used as a reverse indicator of poor?
ReplyDeleteCol. has marked clearly. Revolutionary is reversal indicator for poor( = distressed)
DeleteThanks. I was fixated with R and Che-).
Delete9A. As "carrots" is plural, should the definition not be "incentives"?
ReplyDelete10D. Same doubt; should the definition not be "weight measures"?
9a +1.
Delete10d the unit of weight is KG. Weight is measured in kilograms.
+1 for 9A and 10D both. If the solution is plural, the definition should also be plural and vice-versa for singular words. Reminds me of an NJ classic: "Refreshments in a mess (4) MEAL" (!!!)
DeleteThanks for a lovely puzzle AD.
ReplyDelete13a STERN = Back (rear)
ReplyDeleteCommon defn for authoritarian and back
Well solved. It is a double-definition clue type.
DeleteI think some plurals are acceptable as singular in a given context.
ReplyDelete26A Secures copies by changing directions.
N and S are changing directions.
For 9A, carrot as well as carrots can be taken as an incentive like peanuts. Well, you guys have a good point though.
Whether on the surface or in the cryptic sense, only one direction is being changed.
DeleteSurface reading: If you can only face one direction (singular) at a time - for example let's say you are facing North - then how can you change directionS (plural) when you are changing from North to South?
Cryptic reading: if there is only one N that is being changed to one S, how can that be described as changing directionS (plural)?
Re: 9A, since the solution is plural, the definition ought to be plural. But the clue has yet another problem. Even if we change the definition to "Incentives", the plurality does not match "vehicle". It has to be changed to "incentives like vehicles spoil society", which in turn leads to {CARS}{ROT}{S}, which leads us back to having to rewrite the clue.
DeleteIf reworking such a clue, I would do away with "with" as a linkword. "Incentives made from vehicles cracked by rust" also leads to {CAR{ROT}S} and has the added advantage of being grammatically correct.
If there are two parties (as in a game of football at halftime) then it is appropriate to say that "sides" (plural) are being changed.
DeleteThe grid design was good, well connected with the right half being easier than the left half as separated by 10D KILOGRAMS. Around 1/3rd of the grid had good clues with decent surface readings. 8A was a well-clued reversal; 13A an acceptable DD; 21A, 24A and 25A were decent anagrams; 5D and 19D were nice charades; and 13D an anagram with AD's customary abbreviation use.
ReplyDeleteThe remaining two-thirds of the grid were characterized by grammatically incorrect surface readings & cryptic readings, unnatural English, redundant link words and disparate chunks of wordplay stitched into Frankenstein clauses - the sort of language that is unfortunately used wantonly by lazy thumb-typists on Whatsapp these days.
There's nothing wrong with using shorthand - the problem arises when this shorthand becomes one's default mode of thinking. It leads to grammatically offensive sentences like "4A Witnessed the struggle with married" or 9A (discussed in comments above); and to superficially related clauses taped together using commas like the clue 14A. Separating thematically alike items with commas (as in 18A and 2D as 2 more examples apart from 14A) is common to construct lists in programming languages, but a list is ultimately a data structure and is no substitute for a sentence, while English is certainly not a programming language. At least these prior examples had similar phrases concatenated using commas - 7D had two disparate phrases attached to one-another like the outcome of a blindfolded game of "pin the tail on the donkey"!
One wonders how a "master catch" can "lead" to "declare" (a verb without an object) on the surface of 3D. It would be more natural to say a sentence like 21D as "THE inn is the old incomplete construction" or "AN inn is AN old incomplete construction" but we have "Inn is THE old incomplete construction" for the sake of making the cryptic wordplay work. There are nicer ways of cluing the same anagram. For example: "Renovating the bulk of old inn". One concludes that in order to solve an AD puzzle effectively, one must first relearn English from AD.
In 23A, "note" was used to define TE whereas the notes are DO RE MI FA SO LA "TI". In 26A, "directions" were clued whereas only a single direction was to be changed. The plurality of the definition and the solution were mismatched in 9A. "Say" was not required in 11A as "train" is synonymous with LOCOMOTIVE. In 12A, "Maiden" was used to indicate HER - "that maiden" would have been grammatically appropriate. "Ohio" = OH is a standard abbreviation, but it was given to mean O in 6D.
If there is a silver lining to trudging through 3 or 4 AD grids every month, it is that Dr. X is certain to follow with light at the end of the tunnel.