Independent 7,386 by Phi
Posted by Simon Harris on June 18th, 2010
An enjoyable and fairly challenging Friday Phi. The grid seemed to fill from the bottom up for me, and I was perhaps held up by some unfamiliar terms, for example at 15ac and 19ac. Still, those proved to be solvable from wordplay and checking letters, so all in all a very pleasing solve.
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | MERGANSER – ANS in MERGER. A childhood membership of the YOC continues to pay dividends. |
| 6 | BLAND – B + LAND. |
| 9 | TOMPION – (I’M NO TOP)*. |
| 10 | FALLACY – F + (AC in ALLY). |
| 11 | GET THE RUNAROUND – nice reverse cryptic: “hunter” is (THE RUN)*. |
| 12 | NEHRU – HEN< + RU[n]. |
| 13 | ANDROMEDA – A + MODERN* + D + A. |
| 15 | CARTOUCHE – CAR + TOUCHÉ. |
| 19 | DECKO – DECK + 0. |
| 21 | RENEWABLE ENERGY – (BEEN + GREEN LAWYER)*. |
| 22 | CHAOTIC – CHA + OTIC. |
| 23 | ORIGAMI – (I’M A GIRO)<. |
| 24 | POKER – PO[r]KER. |
| 24 | EMERGENCY – EMERGE + (C[risis] in NY). |
| Down | |
| 1 | MUTAGENIC – (MAGIC TUNE)*. |
| 2 | REMATCH – REM AT CH. |
| 3 | A FISH OUT OF WATER – [o]AFISH + OUT OF WATER. |
| 4 | SANGRIA – SANG + AIR<. |
| 5 | REFINED – FINE in RED. |
| 6 | BALLROOM DANCING – (MOR[e] + OLD)* in BALANCING. |
| 7 | AS A RULE – RU in A SALE. |
| 8 | DRYAD – DRY AD. |
| 14 | ANONYMITY – (M[agnify] + IT) in (AN + ON + Y + Y) . |
| 16 | RANSACK – RAN + SACK. |
| 17 | CUBICLE – CUB + (L in ICE). |
| 18 | EYESORE – E + YES + ORE. |
| 20 | CURTAIN – CURT + AIN['t]. |
| 21 | RECAP – PACER<. |
June 18th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Thanks, Simon.
I thought there was some super stuff in this. Having done a bit of twitching in an earlier existence I got MERGANSER from the definition and then smiled at the wordplay; GET THE RUNAROUND fell eventually but then took ten minutes after finishing to see what was going on; and EYESORE was a clever charade. I’m sure others will have enjoyed different ones, though.
I knew DECKO at 19ac but was motivated to look online for its derivation (Hindi, apparently).
Does the final A in ANDROMEDA come from ‘acting’ as abbreviated? A for ‘orses, but A for acting? No doubt missing something.
June 18th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Happy to be corrected, but Chambers does have lower-case “a” as an abbreviation for “acting”.
June 18th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Great blog, Simon, and puzzle, which I found on the easy side with fairly straightforward wordplay for the less familiar words. Favourites GET THE RUNAROUND and POKER, the RENEWABLE ENERGY one had a nicely appropriate surface too.
June 18th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
ANDROMEDA: I too was wondering where the final A came from (or Y from day was lost)
I particularly liked ANONYMITY – but I’d better keep quiet about that.
Similarly, I’m not going to make a big thing of it, especially as I’ve seen DECKO spelled like that elsewhere in crosswords of late, but I would spell it DEKKO.
June 19th, 2010 at 12:10 am
Didn’t know of Tompion but it could hardly be anything else. Spent far too long trying to get Androcles to fit (I know it’s a fable but). Got there in the end, thanks Phi.
June 19th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Re comment 4, while DEKKO is the more usual form, dicts give DECKO as an alternative spelling.