Independent 6984 by Nimrod

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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

13 comments on “Independent 6984 by Nimrod”

  1. 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.

  2. 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!

  3. 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!

  4. All that is nonsense.

    If a person has a regular arm, motion is unrestricted.

    If small, …

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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?

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

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