Independent 7,653/Crosophile

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My first time blogging a Crosophile puzzle, and a very nice one it was too.

There was nothing too tricky here, but plenty of excellent cryptic defs and elegant surfaces. I particularly liked 1D and 22D.

Across
1 PACIFIC – Cryptic/double def.
5/9/4/17 JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH – Cryptic def.
10 NAVIGATOR – VAN rev. + -[all]IGATOR
11 INDUSTRIAL – INDUS (river) + TRIAL (test)
12 SOFA – SO FA[-r]
14 GALILEO – LAG rev. + I + LEO (pope)
16 JETSAM – JETS + A.M
18 OSPREY – OS (very large) + PREY (quarry)
20 HARD ROE – Initial letters of Heavens Above + (ORDER)*
24 FOLD – Double def.
25 UNDERSCORE – Cryptic def. – 19 is below 20 (a score)
28 EXCHEQUER – EX (without) + CHEQUE + R[-emain]
29 OUTRE – Hidden in withOUT REason
30 KESTREL – [-hwa]K + (TREES)* + L(ake)
31 HOTSPOT – S (pole) in HOT POT (dish)
Down
1 PUTTING – PUT (place) + T(ee) + IN + G(olf)
2 CITADEL – (DIALECT)*
3 FRETS – Double def.
5 JOVIAL – JO + VIA + L[-ove]
6 URGE – [-s]URGE
7 NOTIONS – NOT IONS
8 YARDARM – TRAY rev. with T(ime) for D + A R(oyal) M(arine)
13 HEIR – HE + I(nland) R(evenue)
15 LEEK – “Leak”
18 OFF-PEAK – OFF (not home) on PEAK (the range)
19 PALACES – PAL ACES
21 ROOFTOP – OFT in POOR rev.
22 ELEMENT – ME in E[-tude’s] + LENT (fast period)
23 ANNUAL – ANN (girl) + U(nited) + AL (boy)
26 STOUT – S[-parrow] + TOUT (sell)
27 BEER – BEE (worker) + R(ight)

13 comments on “Independent 7,653/Crosophile”

  1. Thanks, Ali.

    Agree with you, a fine puzzle. I usually start and the top and work my way down, and the top half was falling steadily into place with me thinking ‘this is solid rather than spectacular’; but the bottom half produced some really clever clues which I much enjoyed. UNDERSCORE, KESTREL, ROOFTOP all top notch work; GALILEO too (a semi&lit?); and finally ELEMENT with its cleverly misleading use of ‘lead’.

    I could handle some more of this setter.

  2. Thanks Ali for the blog, and Crosophile for a relaxing solve.

    Started with 1A and worked by way to the opposite corner. Favourites were 11A INDUSTRIAL, a clue without any waste of words; 25A UNDERSCORE, just as concise; and 8D YARDARM, a semi-&lit I think.

  3. Thanks to Ali for writing up the solutions. It was a smooth puzzle from Crosophile so much thanks.

    Tete-a-tete (I’ll leave off the circumflexes and accent grave) as a definition for sofa was new to me but I knew the answer when I saw it. My last two in were 18dn and 24ac since I persisted for a long time to try to make the first word in the answer to 18dn be ‘OUT’. I particularly liked 24ac for its simplicity once I figured it out. I did have a quibble about 18dn; a range seems to me that it would be a group of mountains and so would require a plural answer. Perhaps ‘range’ needs to be read as a verb, where I might be able to convince myself it could be a synonym for peak as a verb.

  4. You are probably right, caretman, about RANGE and PEAK, unless someone else can justify it. I think in such a good puzzle it can be forgiven, and living myself on the edge of the beautiful Peak District in Derbyshire I didn’t even give it a second thought.

    I have just posted a comment on yesterday’s Anax blog about a spooky co-incidence.

  5. Hi caretman@3 and K’sD@4. I think 18D’s reading is okay. A “peak” is a subset of “range”, so “home on a/the peak” may still be construed as “home on the range”, if you see what I mean.

  6. This was a pleasant and largely straightforward solve, with just a few seconds needed at the end to work out that a tete-a-tete must be a sofa. I particularly liked the clues to Hotspot and Underscore. Naturally, I wasted time trying to link the latter to 19D.
    I was not very happy with the overlapping definitions and wordplay for Yardarm and Kestrel, what some commenter’s have rather charitably referred to as semi-&lits. I thought there was more overlapping in Navigator until I saw Ali’s parsing since I parsed it as Nav I Gator. I’m also not too keen on “capital to remain” to clue the letter R.

    I agree with caretman’s point about a peak not being a range. I did consider the explanation given by scchua that Peak is clued by on the range but it doesn’t work for me.

    Pedants’ corner: I think IR is usually clued these days as something like “former taxman” since the Inland Revenue no longer exists.

  7. Close but no cigar. Solved all bar 12a . Listed every possibility I could think of for ?o?a but best I could come up with was iota on the fairly weak grounds and if you are tete a tete you are an iota apart. A welcome relief after the two previous days.

  8. Hi scchua @5. That’s a good point. I guess one could read the whole expression, “Not Home on the Range” as equivalent to “Off peak”, rather than splitting it into not home = off and the range = peak. That seems legitimate to me, so I withdraw my objection.

  9. Twas nice to get an easy one for this week, fell a bit foul on 18d going for OUT-?E?K for a few seconds but well under ten mins to solve including reading the footie reports. Odd I know the setter has done the sat mag crosswords but this seemed easy. Thanks Crosophile and Ali. Wot no DAC has the earth shifted on its axis? 🙂

  10. I had the same thought as flashling about a Wednesday without Dac. Phi may sometimes get bumped from Friday but Dac from Wednesday? Or has Dac got a topical one for Friday maybe?

    But to the crossword….

    As with bamberger I had to cheat for 12a and then realised I had come across that usage before.

    Not too happy with 24a, FOLD. One certainly hears a church congregation referred to as a flock, but a fold? Mind you, there is a biblical reference (John 10:16, AV) to ‘other sheep … not of this fold’, so I suppose it’s OK.

    Some great cluing throughout, though. Difficult to pick favourites, but NAVIGATOR, JETSAM, UNDERSCORE and NOTIONS appealed to me.

  11. I’m afraid that Dac has asked for a bit of time off for good behaviour – he wishes to reduce his crossword commitments just a little, but he’ll still be here three weeks out of four and I think it’s rather serendipitous that Crosophile should have joined the team recently as he makes an excellent substitute for Mr Wednesday.

  12. My (belated) thanks to Ali for the blog and for all the other generous comments.
    And, yes, Galileo and yardarm were intended as semi-&lits and caretman@8 has got the intended parsing of off-peak exactly.

  13. Nobody I think has mentioned ANNUAL (23dn) whose definition seems to be ‘for a year’, or possibly ‘a year’. I thought ‘annual’ meant ‘every year’.

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