Independent on Sunday 1,629/Hoskins

21 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,629/Hoskins”

1. I wouldn’t say it was his best work, but as an entry level and lite-on-extra stuff it certainly beats the hell out of the Everyman effort and is, unusually for him, error free.

   As for the blog, loved it because it really enabled the description of the clue types for 18 and 21a to shine!

2. Decent stuff.. not too complex n made me laugh a couple of times… nice start to Sunday… didn’t know the chess player n thought the abbreviation for Missouri was MI which wasn’t helpful..
   Thanks Hoskins n Pierre

3. Looks like ninety minutes of your life well spent, Pierre. A flawless blog from you this week. Succinct – indeed, barely a superfluous word, with some neat puns, a couple of clever devices and plenty to laugh about… Oh, I’m meant to be commenting on the crossword.

   No setter’s name appeared online this morning and, given that setters do occasionally refer to each other in clues, the first appearance of Hoskins in 11a didn’t confirm the identity. And then I recalled some recent repartee and guessed correctly at our setter/blogger combo. Typically tight clueing from Hoskins (which is hardly surprising given the several beers, the gin, the stiffener and the beers wot he drunk in Belgium’s Orval Abbey. Mind you, some stodgy food to soak it up – French bread, pancakes, drop scones and a balti. Some diet!). I particularly enjoyed the mental image of EWOKS sizzling in a pan although it does rather buy into the stereotype of the Chinese being willing to eat anything.

   Thanks to both

4. Some slightly rude stuff as usual from Hoskins, and the more enjoyable for it. I couldn’t parse BALTIMORE, not seeing ‘Two’ as a sneaky cross-reference, and trying to fit in a lieutenant. A few superfluous indefinite articles, I thought, but not important. At 3D, I first saw ‘fancy’ as the anagrind before twigging. Very enjoyable so thanks Hoskins and Pierre.

5. [Undrell @2: I missed Bluth’s puzzle on Friday and have just done it. I see you felt a curry coming on – you didn’t have to wait long!]

6. Vintage Hoskins. Not too tricky and a pleasure to solve from start to finish.

   Many thanks to Hoskins and to Pierre.

7. What Rabbit Dave @6 said. Great fun and just the right level of difficulty for my 91 year-old cryptic crossword student, though I’m sort of hoping some of the rudery might pass her by as she grapples with the construction of the clues! Thanks to Hoskins and Pierre, whoever they are.

8. I thought there was a convention regarding how other clues are referred to in a puzzle but perhaps it’s not one that the Indy follows. Nevertheless, that’s my excuse for struggling to fully parse BALTIMORE.
   As RD commented @6, this was vintage Hoskins and very enjoyable – my favourite being GROOM.

   Thanks to Hoskins for the fun and to Pierre for the review.

9. Thanks for the entertainment Hoskins. However, Joyce was somewhat dismayed that you should feel that marriage is a perilous journey. Bert and I celebrate 50 years of marriage this July and neither of us feel that ‘perilous’ describes our experience. Hopefully the clue was not meant to be taken seriously!

   Thanks Pierre for the blog.

10. I guess I’m too old but I’ve never heard of a singer named GRASS. Just googled and found Isaiah Grass – is that it? I would think that if you expect solvers to know a name, it ought to be someone that most people, even those over 70, should have heard of.
    Of course, if GRASS is a verb meaning to sing, or tell on, then the definition part shouldn’t be SINGER.
    I really appreciate the work done on this blog. Thanks.

11. Les. You are pretty much correct except that GRASS can also be a noun for somebody who grasses/sings/tells on. Hence a “singer”. Crops up a fair bit in cryptic crosswords.

12. Some very nice clues but I have issues with some.
    18A: cooks are TOSSERS because that day they toss pancakes?
    26A: standard for clue answer inclusion is to use numeric possibly with across or down.
    1D: Here ‘?’ must mean &lit. But I don’t get the “and a cad” reference.
    2D: According to Chambers, BALTI is an Indonesian dish created in Britain, not an island dish
    16D: should be (A+RR) \\ N.ATIVE

13. Hey Les, lemme see if I can help.

    18A: Yes, another sort of nominalization – bread and butter for cryptics as Hovis mentioned. Having said that, I think Tossers and Singers are both in Chambers (not that I go from Chambers) as I have them in this puzzle and they are certainly both Mick Jaggers …

    26A: When a crossword convention is unnecessary as this one is in my opinion, I feel a setter can break it to two ends. The first is to change an unnecessary restrictive convention and open up more possibilities for clues that will please and mislead the solver, and the second is to remind solvers to think outside the box, which is part of what a cryptic is all about. However, should there be a two across and a 2 down in the same puzzle then the setter should really indicate which in the clue.

    1D: There has been a move by bloggers to search for another term for an &lit that is more readily understandable by solvers, CAD (clue as definition) is one of these showing that the surface reading of the whole clue is the def.

    2D: The wordplay is T. in BALI with BALI being defined as ‘Indonesian island’. In an easier-end puzzle I often try to narrow down word choices to help the solver. There are something like 30 four letter islands, 4 synonyms and two abbreviations and other possible options, I would imagine, so the Indonesian qualifier narrows things down. However, one does run the risk of the extra information becoming misleading in itself, but I’d argue that wasn’t the case here.

    16D: If I understand you correctly, I fancy you’ll have to take this one up with The Foxy Frenchman!

    Hope that helps. 🙂

14. Great fun. For a while I had Abe pinching id for ABIDE.

15. Les, apologies for the typo in NARRATIVE. Now corrected. The use of ‘cad’ for ‘clue as definition’ is listed in the rubric at the start of all my blogs.

    Thanks to Hoskins for the other clarifications.

16. Re Bertandjoyce at #9, never a CROSS WORD, but many a CROSSWORD, I’d say. Congrats on the upcoming landmark.

17. Huge thanks to all who took the time to solve, comment and blog me puzzle today.

    I been outta the loop for quite a while after the Orval arrest (Belgium prisons not as liberal as The Graun had led me to believe), but is great to be back and see so many old – but still sexy, I hope – and new faces here. Oh how I look forward to the return of S+B events and meeting everyone in person again or for the first time … I can’t wait for that, even if the thought of a drunken Harry approaching you in the damnable real life is more than you can countenance!

    Post Mark, I fancy you’re right that using Chinese can be seen as problematic. I recall on writing it I considered using ‘large’ instead, but then reckoned that one man’s adventurousness to all things edible is another women’s frightened fussy eater and confused myself so much that I couldn’t decide whether it might actually be a positive or negative qualifier!

    B+J … well, like my man Wilde, I would never say anything in seriousness unless I was being trivial. Having said that, I do have to declare that in a speech wot I wrote back in the day for my late father’s 70th birthday party, I did plagiarize a bit of Groucho and declared my Ma and Pa had been married for 40-odd years out of spite! Although this got much laughs for being true, it is not the whole story of their, or any, long union. Marriage is a wonderful thing, and never more so than when a Bert has a Joyce and a Joyce has a Bert, but for a Hoskins who is aware both the delectable Bert and the whip-smart Joyce are already taken by each other and there is no room for me it is simply panic stations for who would take on a drunk such as I?

    More importantly, 50 years, eh? When is that coming up? Double more importantly congratz on that milestone – I live in awe of unions that last and are so obviously right that I have had to have a little lie down just thinking about it (played merry hell on the imbibing of my booze, but I managed it in the end). Me and you against the world is just such a perfect concept that when it actually works a lie down is all anyone should consider, I fancy. You are both so lucky you can do that together as I have been reliably informed (by Allan C, no less) that it is much more fun that way.

    Triple more importantly … do you have a caterer for the Golden event? Reason I ask is I happen to be on good terms with a down-on-her-luck supplier of drinks (has her own trolley and everything) that might just could be tempted out of retirement for the right event …

    Anyhoo, enough of my ramble. All that remains for me to say is thanks to all for being kind and especially those who have stuck with me; cheers to The Foxy Frenchman for playing stellar last-line defence today; and kisses and hugs (from a distance, natch) to all from yer long-lost Lost Boy Harry.

    Onwards and upwards xxx

18. As promised to Hoskins this was next in our growing backlog (lockdown easing reducing time for crossword enjoyment) and we are glad we did! Top half easy, bottom half harder (that sentence sounds like part of a Hoskins clue) but enjoyed it all

    GRASS, AMIGO our favourites, personal snigger at the STIFFENER clue/answer. But as a couple of Star Wars geeks we were delighted by EWOKS

    thanks a lot Hoskins and Pierre

19. Excellent to hear it, Tombsy, and all the sweeter for the wait and the fact that one kind post is from two solvers.

    I agree about the bottom half being harder, but glad all of it went in the end …

    Star Wars, eh? Now there is a theme ripe to be written by someone. I am thematically contracted until Hoskins 181, but I have penciled some SW action in for (unless some other upstart gets there before me, natch) Hoskins 184 … it might take a while to get there, but get there I will! 🙂

20. That is the crossword we are looking for…

21. I feel I have been Jedi’d!

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