Independent 8236/Phi
Posted by John on March 8th, 2013
The usual good crossword from Phi that I found a bit harder than usual. I’m still quite lost on 25ac and would be grateful for some help here: it will surely be forthcoming and then I’ll realise how feeble I’ve been.
For once I have some clue about the theme — the books of Salman Rushdie. Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and Shame are all referred to, but no doubt there is more.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | ABIDES — bid in (sea)rev. |
| 4 | DAN{e} GER{MAN} |
| 9 | M(I(D)N)IGHT — 12 midnight, nothing to do with the answer to 12 |
| 10 | {RE}VERSES |
| 12 | LET IT ALL HANG OUT — 2 defs overlapping I think, ‘Be relaxed’, and a whimsical one ‘Be relaxed about bunting?’ |
| 13 | B(RACE L)ET |
| 14 | SHAM E |
| 16 | CRAS{he}S |
| 18 | OBLIGING — 2 defs |
| 20 | ELECTROMAGNETIC — (in comet get clear)* |
| 23 | {f}ORI(E)NT |
| 24 | CHILDREN — (ld (ER)rev.) in chin |
| 25 | TRENCH — sorry, lost here: it seems to be r [= end of river] in tench, but tench is not church; somehow the church might be the last two letters, but how does ten ch equal church? |
| 26 | A({o}RGY)LL |
| Down | |
| 1 | AUDITORIA — Audi (a riot)* — I really should know that a vehicle manufacturer is always Audi; atria was misleading me |
| 2 | I D(1)OT 1 C |
| 3 | ETHYL ALCOHOL — (health coolly)* — ethyl alcohol is ordinary alcohol |
| 5 | A VE(R)NUS |
| 6 | GUST O — o = over, as in cricket |
| 7 | RO(SE{t})TTE{n} |
| 8 | EMIL — (lime)rev. — is this particularly a German name? |
| 11 | W(HIT EL)EATHER — I couldn’t understand this at first, but it’s simply that white leather is a type of leather or skin, and the Valencian, who had been a mystery to me, was simply ‘the’ in Valencian [ie Spanish] |
| 15 | AU NATUREL — (a rule)* in (tuna)* |
| 16 | C(HER)OOT — I had always thought that a coot was simply a fool rather than an old fool: is it that a coot is an old word for fool? |
| 17 | prisonerS AT A NICk — a clever hidden that was not immediately apparent |
| 19 | GUNPLAY — (plan)* in Guy — not a word I was very familiar with, but it refers to dexterity rather than transport |
| 21 | {t}EX{t}ILE |
| 22 | CANE — (enac{t})rev. |
March 8th, 2013 at 11:29 am
John I think 25 TREN(t)CH with CH covering the last (end of) TRENT
March 8th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Another good one from Phi, and another theme that passed me by.
I agree with flashling about 25ac.
Re 8dn, the only Emil I ever met was German; and of course there’s the famous ‘Emil and the Detectives’ by Erich Kästner.
11dn took me some time to figure out, too. The use of ‘Valencian’ was quite clever; the language of Valencia is Catalan rather than (Castilian) Spanish. However, ‘the’ is ‘el’ in both languages.
Thanks, John, for the blog.
March 8th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Good stuff as always from Phi, although the theme of course passed me by as usual. I parsed TRENCH the same way as flashling (living close to the River Trent is always a help when it comes up in puzzles) and I thought DANGER was particularly well clued.
Thanks to John for blogging.
March 8th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Phi’s an odd one, I often send copies to my sister who’s not an expert solver but usually enjoys them as much as I do. But then he slips one like this in which I managed a total of three answers before giving up. Nothing wrong with it at all, just on a different planet today.
March 8th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
How did that get in here?
March 8th, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Hi allan_c @5
It was spam which somehow evaded the Akismet spam filter. Since its inception, the site has received over two million spam comments (the current rate is between 60,000 and 70,00 a month) and it is a credit to Akismet that so few get through to appear in posts. I am usualy able to delete those that do fairly quickly so most of the time very few people see them.
March 8th, 2013 at 6:49 pm
I found this quite hard work, the usual fault of getting some fixed ideas stuck in my head being the problem. I failed to parse 11 because I was convinced the Valencia bit was at the end of the answer and didn’t think about it following strike. 21 also stumped me for a long time because I became convinced that the clue was omitting 1 T for the word for material and adding another T at the end rather than removing both Ts, so I thought it must be something like evict. I also failed to parse trench – now that I see it, I think it’s quite an interesting clue variation.
Didn’t spot the theme, but then again I haven’t read a single book by Rushdie, so not very likely that I would.