Independent 7057/Phi

by

I made a rather slow start on this typically pleasant Phi crossword, but when I saw that it was all As in the top unches and Zs at the bottom things became easier. Quite an achievement by Phi to fit all those Zs in, but was he doing more than this? I can’t see anything in the side unches, although it looks as if there was initially an attempt to have Ys on the right.

Across
7 E-C(ON)OMIC — the question mark is referring to the rather fanciful idea of a web humorist being an e-comic
9 G RUMPY
10 DENT — tend with ends reversed
11 TRAJECTORY — (raj (etc)*) in Tory
12 STUMP Y — I think it’s that as verbs both beat and stump mean to baffle, not, as I at first thought, something about a politician at the stump and being on the beat…
13 DEMOCRAT — (tar come {crow}d)rev.
15 BUSH TELEGRAPH — (the pub’s lager h{ops)*, although I can’t quite understand ‘according to’ — if it’s a link it seems a bit heavy-handed
17 P AND AC AR{restees}
19 LA(ST {Cyri}L)Y
21 ARTHURIANA — (an air)rev. following a (hurt)*
23 W(1)RY
24 STERNE — Ernest recycled (i.e. the last two letters moved to the front) although the Oscar Wilde play is “The Importance of being Earnest”, so either something is happening here which I can’t see or Phi has made a little slip (on edit: no of course he hasn’t:  the actual character is Ernest); and even if it is OK, the ‘by’ seems only there for the surface, since it is meant as an equivalent for ‘to give’, but ‘by’ doesn’t have this sense so far as I can see
25 N(1 COT)INE
 
Down
1 ACC{I’d}ENT
2 ANATOMISED — a (dominates)*
3 AMETHYST — (may the)* st
4 AG(LEA)M
5 {t}AUNT — a beautiful &lit.
6 A PP ROACH — in my innocence I never knew that a roach was a US slang term for the butt of a cannabis cigarette
8 CLAUDE LORRAIN — (no rule radical)*
14 CLAUSE WI({i}T)Z{ard} — Carl von Clausewitz
15 B(1)AR RITZ
16 GOLLANCZ — go (all)rev. n CZ — Victor Gollancz
18 CORTEZ — c (zero)rev, round {fores}t
20 LORE NZ — ref. Konrad Lorenz
22 HA(R{ange})Z{e}

5 comments on “Independent 7057/Phi”

  2. Pleasing puzzle, got much easier when I saw the Zs and As. I must say I thought STERNE was quite OK ERNEST recycled by this author = STERNE – you go thro the cycles and you reach it. ‘This author’ giving the definition. The Azed idea occurred to me too.

  3. Hmm, maybe. It’s not a significant Azed number but maybe it’s a significant birthday?

    Like John I spotted the Ys on the right and did wonder about a wider theme.

  4. I think it’s more likely to be a response to the Ninamania that seems to have become de rigeur. What shall I do this time? Ah, I’ll put As along the top, and Zs along the bottom, start from the bottom, then fill in the rest. Phi’s crossword are always superbly, and rarely controversially clued, as are Dac’s, among others. Why should they feel bound to include a “wrinkle” (as I called it when I started to do it occasionally in the Guardian and the Times in the nineties) on every occasion? What’s wrong with a well-gridded, well-filled and well-clued plain cryptic?

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