Independent 6984 by Nimrod
Posted by nmsindy on March 5th, 2009
Tough puzzle from Nimrod with 6 15-letter entries. Solving time, 46 mins.
* = anagram < = reversed
ACROSS
8 NON-PROFESSIONAL Well-concealed with the misleading ‘Lay on line’.
Definition is ‘lay’ (On line f sopranos)*
9 A PERT URE Refers to Midge Ure
10 AB LATE
11 PISTOL Not understood apart from the definition “Small arm? Motion now will be restricted”
12 HEAT WAVE (we’ve a hat)* Good surface
13 OF FA Another good surface
15 KEN DO
16 YEA R
17 PILC HARD clip<
18 CI (CAD) A
20 INCU(r) BI
21 PE (A GREE) N
22 PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH Cryptic definition with excellent misdirection
DOWN
1 DOLPHIN-FRIENDLY (Phi donned frilly)* New to me, and pleased to work it out from the anagram when I’d sufficient crossing letters. Quick look in dicts does not turn it up but Google certainly does.
2 SPIRIT Double definition and my favourite clue.
3 GO OUT /LIKE/ A LIGHT (get off). Got this straight away – the enumeration helped.
4 HE BE From Greek mythology – a word learnt from solving
5 ESCALATOR CLAUSE (so a = one recalculates)*
6 HOL (LOWA) Y prison AWOL<
7 CAPTIVE AUDIENCE Cryptic definition
12 HONED Hidden Definition: Sharp now
14 ARC TUR US rut<
19 COR PUS
21 PL(A)Y
March 5th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
i down caused me to do a little dance in the street, thus embarrassing part of South Leicester. What a clue!
nmsindy, you see ‘dolphin friendly’ on cans of tuna and the like.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Couldn’t quite manage 3 clues of this one, but otherwise very enjoyable, with an impressively high number of 15-letter answers (something of a Nimrod speciality it seems). I spent far too long thinking that 1A must be the name of a song until the penny finally dropped. Loved the anagram at 1D and the Midge Ure clue.
I guessed PISTOL for 11A but have absolutely no idea on the wordplay!
March 5th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Re PISTOL.
Could it be something like motion = p is to l (where p is something and l is length)?
Or is pl. an abbr. for proposal (motion)?
Thinking cap still on!
March 5th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
All that is nonsense.
If a person has a regular arm, motion is unrestricted.
If small, …
March 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
11 Ac: I think the wordplay is meant to be PL (= Poet Laureate, currently Andrew Motion) with IS TO (= will be) “restricted”, although I can’t think of a sentence in which ‘is to’ and ‘will be’ are interchangeable, so the syntax doesn’t seem to work. A bit of carelessness there from Nimrod, I think.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I suspect IS TO = “now will”, with the “be” merely connecting it all together. I suppose in some dialects “be” means “is”, but I don’t feel confident that’s how it’s meant here.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Thanks, Richard, for explaining PISTOL. Re 6 above tho I think the ‘now’ might be attached to Motion i.e. he’s the Poet Laureate now. I think Nimrod may have used Motion = PL before, but I’d forgotten it.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:15 am
I normally do the Indy one day later and come to FifteenSquared to look for missing answers; of which I have two
13 A Dyke-builder of note (4)
Since I have ?F?A, this must be OFFA which is not in Chambers; so why does this blog not have the explanation?
19D My matter works (6)
I have C?R?U? and your blog said corpus but why and what’s the wordplay?
March 6th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Uncle Yap
13 OFFA = OF + FA (4th note of the scale)
19 COR (Cor! = my!) + PUS (= matter)
March 6th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Interesting to see Midge Ure appearing in the Guardian and Indy today. I prefer Nimrod’s indication (‘A Live Aid organiser’) to Brummie’s ‘aging rock star’. Crossword-friendly surnames like Ure and (Brian) Eno guarantee a little bit of cryptic immortality at least.
Loved ‘dolphin-friendly’, the best among a bunch of well-concealed definitions.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Uncle Yap (8 above) – I should have provided a more detailed explanation.
OFFA is a proper name so not in some dicts and would also be unfamiliar outside the UK. Cor is also very much a UK word.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Uncle Yap
Perhaps I should have added explanations. Offa was an 8th century king of Mercia (roughly, central England) and Offa’s Dyke is an earthwork built to mark the boundary with Wales; unlike Hadrian’s Wall it was probably not meant as a fortification.
The term ‘corpus’ (Latin for ‘body’) is often used to describe the complete works of an author, poet, etc.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I’ll have to admit that I’ve tended to take the view that, as this site is Internet-based, there was no need to explain definitions of the actual answers, as Wikipedia, Google searches etc etc, would usually explain a mystery word such as OFFA in this case.