Independent 7298 by Eimi

by

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism

It’s probably a first for me to be blogging the same compiler two Mondays running. This one seems to be timed to coincide with the Oscars ceremony. Quite a few of the named people (Peterson, De La Hoya, Pistorius, Wilde) have the first name Oscar. Oscar Madison was a character from The Odd Couple. I’m not sure if Jean Paul Sartre and Françoise Sagan have any link to the Oscars or not, but perhaps there is some subtle connection there as well.
 

Across
1 Peterson: Peters on. Reference to Oscar Peterson.
5 Chalet: Cha + let.
10 Logorrhea: Logo + r (radical) + rhea. LOGO is a programming language developed for teaching children.
11 Raise: Rai + s[pecial] e[xhibition]. Rai was new to me, but is a type of Algerian music based on traditional music but influenced by Western pop.
12 Monarch: No< in march.
13 Madison: MAD (acronym of Mutually Assured Destruction) + “is on”. Madison.
15 Strong language: CD.
19 Leave of absence: (F[r]eelances above)*.
21 Homeric: &lit. Ichor* around me.
22 Tramcar: (RAC + mart)<.
25 Wilde: Hom of wiled.
27 Pistorius: “is to r” in pi US. Oscar Pistorius is the double-amputee paralympic runner who controversially qualified to compete against able-bodied athletes.
28 Sartre: Arrest*.
29 De La Hoya: (A [w]hole day)*.
Down
1 Polemist: Pole + mist.
2 Tigon: (Not around GI)<. A tigon is a tiger-lion cross.
3 Rarer: A and E in RRR (3 Rs).
4 Ophthalmoscope: (Camel + photoshop)*.
6 Hard drugs: Hard + d[igs] + rugs.
7 Lei: Hidden in double indemnity.
8 Tie-ins: IE in tins.
9 Carmen Fantasie: (antics earn fame)*.
14 Sagan: Aga in S & N (phonetic alphabet).
16 Rheum: He in rum.
17 Never fear: Raven< around free*. One of Poe's most famous works is the poem The Raven.
18 Nebraska: Breaks* in NA.
20 Shawms: (George Bernard) Shaw + ms.
23 Agora: DD. This was the only one I had to look up, the agora being a denomination of the Israeli currency and also a Greek term for a place of assembly.
24 Cairo: Co around air.
26 Lor: Lor[e].

13 comments on “Independent 7298 by Eimi”

  1. Hi Neal
    A couple of errors have crept into your post.
    In 11ac I am sure you intended to write S[pecial] E[xhibition] instead of s[imple] l[anguage] and in 19ac the ‘R’ should not be included in the anagram fodder.

  3. Well done Neal, I thought there must be a theme here but failed to spot the link. Now, who else should be in there – Oscar the Grouch off Sesame Street, perhaps?
    Good puzzle, I thought 6 down was especially clever, with deceptively simple wordplay but a well concealed definition in “H and C”.

  4. Thanks, Neal, and Eimi for a very entertaining puzzle – just about the right level of challenge for me (although I entered two incorrect answers in the end). I was thinking as I solved it that there were a couple of slightly odd, almost general knowledge type answers (esp 29 across, which is one of the ones I got wrong) but of course it’s to do with the Oscars theme, which went way over my head.

    Like you, Neal, I knew the phrase as mutualLY assured destruction, but it didn’t detract from the clue. We had AGORA recently either here or in the Grauniad, where I learned that it’s the root of agoraphobia and is a meeting place; but on checking in Collins it’s also the meeting itself, so a fair clue with an excellent surface.

    I learned two new words – Ichor and Rai – and since Double Indemnity really is a film, 7dn is my favourite today.

    Sorry, seem to have gone on a bit there … but a very good start to the week, thank you.

  5. As a cycling fan I loved 13ac which summed up the crazy event that is the Madison. Like Mick H I appreciated the concealed definition in 6dn.

  6. Very enjoyable and challenging puzzle, which I found extremely hard in places esp NW and SE corners. Quite a few of the answers were new to me and I did not see the Oscar connection. HARD DRUGS was my favourite too. AGORA was my last answer, dicts show it’s a meeting as well as a meeting-place which I did not know before.

  7. Thanks, chaps.

    I thought I’d try a different take on the Oscars – there is actually a sixth Oscar in the acrosses and, no, I hadn’t heard of him either, unlike the other five. I was surprised how few Oscars there were – I suppose people don’t want to name their sprogs after a statuette these days – and they weren’t all particularly clue-friendly.

    Re: 13, I thought it was mutually assured destruction too, but my dictionaries begged to differ. If anyone hasn’t seen the Madison, I can heartily recommend it. It is completely insane.

  8. Another elegant, topical puzzle from Eimi. I didn’t know quite a few of the references but they were all available from the wordplay. 6 down was my favourite.

  10. I noticed a literary theme (Homer, Shaw, Poe, Logorrhea, Poet’s tears, Sartre, Strong Language, Novelist (I didn’t get Sagen or Wilde) but not the Oscars, as I did not get all of them. Shaw won an Oscar for Pymalian, Judy Garland won a special juvenile Oscar, and Dorian Gray was nominated (are we stretching it too far now?).

    Liked 15A.

  11. Enjoyed this. Lots of good clues. But I had two minor quibbles: In 6dn shouldn’t ‘H and C’ have been something like ‘H and C perhaps’? There are other hard drugs apart from heroin and cocaine. I think. Yes, I saw a television programme about crystal meth: now that’s a hard drug, isn’t it?

    And 3dn was very nice, but shouldn’t we have been told somehow that the A and the E appeared separately in RRR? I know that logically we don’t need to be told, but I thought it was conventional to do so.

  12. Enjoyed this one tremendously. Thank you Neal for a good blog (I did not see the Oscar connection until I came here) of an excellent puzzle by Eimi (if only he can arrange to have a printable version on-line so I can solve it on the same day)

    My favourite must be 27A. When I saw the picture in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius I let off a loud guffaw … blade runner indeed! Bravo, Eimi!

  13. Didn’t twig the theme, but just about got there. All I could think of for 27a was “Pastorius” (Jaco, jazz musician – and googled a reference to ‘Blade Runner’ in an article about him, strangely enough) though of course I couldn’t see how ‘as to’ equated to ‘will’.

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