Independent 7004 by Tyrus (Prize Puzzle 28 Mar)

by

Standing in for the normal blogger and would be delighted to receive explanations on what I’ve missed. It was a very challenging and enjoyable puzzle, with some cracking, devious, clues.

Very tough indeed and, though I’ve the grid full not sure I’m right. Time spent at it 2 hours, 20 mins, most of which was during a 4-hour spell in an airport. The theme of the puzzle comes from the central entry – itself with a very hard clue – GET THE PICTURE. I thought, till very near the end, that this might refer to films, but it’s paintings, I think.

In four cases, two answers are combined, ph0netically or as homophones to give the names of paintings – I think I have two HAY WAIN (HAYE WAYNE) and GUERNICA (GUR NICKER) but do not know the others – any help gratefully received. These which could be in either order, I think, look as if they are (VINE? JENNER and TIGHT ALNWICK)

I’ve concentrated on what I thought were the harder clues – if anyone’s a query on the others, please ask.

* = anagram < = reversed

ACROSS

7 DRAMATISE (star made I)*

9 HANOI Brilliant hidden reversal

10 FRE(DDI)E (Flintoff) Fiendishly difficult, I thought (did)* with cricket surface, Broad is a cricketer.

11 A L (NW) ICK

12 SEPIA (praise)* less r Brilliant surface hinting at the PM, I guess

14 AGAIN Niaga(RA) falls all reversed!

17 GET THE PICTURE Gett(y) (price he ut)* must occasionally = alternate letters

19 GUR rug< I think

20 EATEN “Eton” Brilliant def = knocked back

21 WAY (o)NE

22 O PALIN E Surface all refers to Sarah

24 BURGE(r) ON r = king This was my favourite clue

26 TIGHT (th git)< e = point

DOWN

1 H(AY)E

2 SANDCASTLE Brilliant cryptic definition

3 VI(N)E ? My biggestdoubt “Word of approval from Nancy from number entering contest”

5 UNSISTERL Y (in ruthless)* less h “why”

6 NIC(K)ER

7 DEFUSE ? “Letter saves a lot of bother – cool” cool, maybe definition, wordplay not understood.

18 JE (NN) ER

19 G HOSTS by Ibsen Liked this a lot too

24 BOOK (of the Bible)

25 E XES (sex)<

13 comments on “Independent 7004 by Tyrus (Prize Puzzle 28 Mar)”

  1. Think 3d is VI(V)E as in “Vive la France” to give JENNER VIVE or the film Genevieve

    26a and 11a give TIGHT ALNWICK (pronounced annick) to give the film Titanic

  4. Cheers for the blog Niall. Despite having got 17A fairly early on, I couldn’t get my head around the other references to it, nor could I solve more than about half of the other clues! All very clever, fiendish stuff, but most of it sailing way above my head unfortunately!

    Do we now have a new leader in the ‘Hardest Indy Setter’ category? I think we might have!

  5. Eileen, thanks.

    I did consider DE[FUS(s)]E but try as I might I could not interpret ‘fus’ as ‘a lot of bother’. All the time I was taking ‘a lot of bother’ to mean ‘fuss’ and looking in vain for a deletion signal.

  6. Got there in the end. Worked out the answer to 17 long before I understood the wordplay. 3 had me puzzled for a while, thinking it ought to be ‘bien’ (= good, a word of approval).
    Nmsindy, you’re right about ‘gur’. Chambers defines it as an unrefined sweet cane sugar.
    But the way the names of pictures were constructed really made me groan. Almost as bad as some of the distortions in the ‘get the picture’ feature in the Indy magazine. Maybe Tyrus compiles that too?

  7. Alnwick was probably a tough one for anyone not familiar with the pronunciation of the place, a silent ell and a silent double-you. Its neighbour by the coast, Alnmouth, has the ell sounded, just for confusion.

  8. Gur is a Hindi word. Jaggery, another word for the coarse, dark sugar made from palm-sap, is from a Hindi word. The latter too is in C.

  9. Well blogged, sir. Such a tough puzzle, and I really struggled with this one, which was frustrating as it was clearly excellent. I also went down the “films” route.

    I don’t recall seeing Tyrus before – is this a debut or am I just showing my greenness?

  11. Thanks for the blog and comments.

    Re 19 ac, though GUR can be sugar,’tent’ was the definition here. The ‘syrup’ referred to a wig (rug) reversed.

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