Independent 7708 by Quaiteaux

by

I had the pleasure of meeting Quaiteaux at the last London  S&B. Found this pretty difficult in places and some bits still evade me.

 

There seems to loads of Cryptic Double definitions in this one which makes it hard to get going.

Across

1 BYPASS Cryptic & Double Definition
4/18 DOUBLE DUTCH Having two wives / Gibberish DD
8 RADICAL (cad + liar)*
9 REFRAIN Double definition
11 See 2d  
13 SENSE Double Definition
14 UNIVERSE (r)UNI(c) + VERSE
16 BASS CLEF B(arenboim) + SCALES* + F  (loudly)
18 See 4  
20 ACCIACCATURA I + A in 2 * ACC + A(iming) T(o) U(ndermine) R(eceiver’s) A(ssessment)
23 TROOPER Hidden reversed in Are poor tariffs
24 NIGHTIE NIGH(near) TIE
25 PIRATE PI (const) + RATE
26 OKAPIS A+ K in PO reversed + IS
Down    
1 BRANDY SNAP BRAND  + PANSY reversed
2/11 POISSON DISTRIBUTION De Sade’s FISH and pain (bread) / Feeding of the 5000
3 STAIRWELL Hom STARE WELL
5 OVERT OVER T(axed)
6 BARCODE BAR around C(urve) + ODE
7 EDIT TIED*
10 ABOUT FACE The acronym for Every Good Boy deserves Football/Favour on a music score, the gaps spell F-A-C-E
12 ASTHMATICS (smash attic)*
15 INDIAN  INK Hidden reversed in ask Nina I’d nitpick. Who says there’s no NINA?
17 SUCCOUR Hom of SUCKER – one born every minute
19 TOUCH UP TOUCH (rival as in can’t touch this) + UP
21 INERT Hidden in brainer to
22 PROP PRO + P(olice)

 

25 comments on “Independent 7708 by Quaiteaux”

  1. Hi Flashling.

    20 across I read as ‘acc’ for account twice with ‘i’ between and the initial letters of ‘aiming to undermine receievsr’s assessment’

    2/11 was a laugh out loud moment.

  3. I regularly enjoy all the blogs – many thanks to all. Having been lurking for quite a while I thought I’d post for a change, particularly as I’m still struggling with some of the answers.

    I couldn’t make any sense of 1ac as a DD, and “minor predicament” jarred (after all, you bypass major predicaments as well) until I parsed it simply as “P”, when it become “By ass” to get round “P” hence Bypass. Groanworthy, but I like it now.
    I have 26ac as retiring type = OAP, IS keeping K hence OKAPIS.
    6d as ARC in BODE

    I can’t make sense of “encountering burden” in 9ac – help, I think I’m being thick…….!

  4. Welcome aboard Cumbrian.

    You’re not being thick. ‘Burden’ is one of the words for the chorus or refrain of a song (as opposed to its verse). Quaintly, Jerome Kern always spelt it ‘burthen’.

  5. Thank you, flashling.

    One or two trickier clues, but enough reasonably straightforward stuff to get you going. BASS CLEF I really liked, and POISSON DISTRIBUTION when I saw it – took me back about three decades though which is the last time I studied it. Good puzzle from Quaiteaux – we don’t see much of her in the Indy, but the ones she has set I’ve enjoyed.

    Welcome, Cumbrian. I would like to help you out with 9ac, but I’m struggling to understand it too!

  7. Cumbrian-
    I agree with your parsing of 6d. I don’t really see how bar can mean remained, and I had to check but bode does mean remained (bided is an alternative). Also come to think of it, in flashling’s parsing bar isn’t “without” the C, it’s in front of it. So you’re right.

    For 1a I just went with by- meaning minor, as in byway, bylaw etc. and pass as in “things have come to a pretty pass”, i.e. we’re in a dodgy predicament. Then the main definition is “Way to get round”. It seems to work, if a little “tichy”, as another blogger puts it (“tongue-in-cheek-y”).

    POISSON DISTRIBUTION was pretty stunning, wasn’t it?

  8. Cumbrian-
    I had your parsing for 26a too. Don’t follow flashling’s there – PO = “type”? And KA = “a thousand”?

  9. Ooops re 26a – I was writing random thoughts as to how it worked and didn’t spot that I’d left my scribble pad there, and missed the fact I hadn’t written the breakdown in. More haste less speed 🙂

  10. Thanks, flashling, and Quaiteaux. DOUBLE DUTCH was my favourite clue too, and POISSON DISTRIBUTION must go down as one of the most unusual clues of the year, and, when I got it, was the breakthrough to finishing the puzzle, which was, I thought, pretty hard. I also read 6 down as ARC in BODE and (eventually) BYPASS as by = minor, pass = predicament with ‘way to get round’ as the definition – so I agree with Thomas99 at #7.

    While it just had to be OKAPIS, I did not understand it till coming here, retiring type = OAP I missed but it’s totally fair (and very good).

  11. Poisson distribution: very witty. And very good to see Cato again.

    I have a question. And here it is: in crosswords a pangram is a puzzle in which all 26 letters of the alphabet are used at least once. But in a double pangram, must the letters physically appear at least twice, or is it enough that they be *used* twice (ie the X on the end of BOX (down) counts as one, while the same X on the end of COX (across) counts as two)?

  13. Thanks for the welcomes, and particular thanks to Conrad Cork for the explanation of “Burden”; a new one on me. There again so was acciaccatura, but could derive that okay from the clue. Loved Poisson Distribution even if I couldn’t explain it for ages, (easy when the franc dropped and I stopped thinking about Sade the songstress….), and Double Dutch.

  14. Just home from work, indeed welcome cumbrian to 15 squared and the other lurkers too – we don’t bite much. Thanks to those who corrected stuff I ran out of time to properly complete the blog and it wouldn’t have been up until now.

    @PaulB Nice try Tees!

  15. Good stuff here.

    Easy anagrams—the way (for me) in.

    Paul B, I cannot fault your comment. I concur. Nice one.

    Thanks setter.

  16. I can’t say this was my favourite puzzle of the week – too many clues where, instead of slapping the top of my head and saying “of course” when I got the answer, I was just left somewhat bewildered. I flew through about two thirds of the puzzle and then got completely stuck on the top left corner. Not being very religious didn’t help – I spotted the pain=bread but didn’t know anything about fish being involved in the miracle, so was a bit lost on the first word. 10 down completely lost me and I still find it a bit unsatisfactory – “a” doesn’t come between “g” and “b”, does it? It goes without saying that I’d never heard of acciaccatura, although I did eventually work it out from the wordplay.

  17. NealH: in the musical scale the octaves run A-G then start again at A, hence A being between G and the next B.

    Got everything but had to check acciaccatura which was completely new to me. Poisson Distribution was a definite laugh/groan moment.

  18. This post may be a bit late for anyone interested to see, but it occurred to me yesterday that more people (especially of Cumbrian’s generation perhaps) may know the word ‘burden’ than they think.

    The song The Miller of Dee begins thus:

    There was a jolly miller once
    Lived on the River Dee
    He danced and he sang from morn till night
    No lark so blithe as he.
    And this the burden of his song
    For ever used to be
    I care for nobody, no, not I,
    If nobody cares for me.

  19. Not the Millwall of Dee? You’re sure?

    We are Millwall
    We are Millwall
    Oo-oo-oh
    No-one likes us.
    We are Millwall
    We are Millwall
    Oo-oo-oh
    We don’t care.

  20. A fairly quick finish for me. Spotted DOUBLE DUTCH at once but POISSON DISTRIBUTION and some other acrosses eluded me for a while after I tentatively put in “scale down” for 10d – tentatively because EGBDF isn’t a scale – until UNIVERSE and BASS CLEF put me on the right track.

    Is there a nina (apart from the clue to 15d)? Looking at the right and left hand sides of the across rows of unches there are a lot of three-letter combinations which are either words or (according to Chambers) recognised abbreviations: ROT = Recognised Occupational Therapist, etc. Only PUA doesn’t seem to mean anything.

  21. After having had some time to think about it, my reading of 1ac is:

    (way to get round) = BY (to be given a ‘by into the next round’)
    (minor predicament) = PASS (a ‘pretty pass’)
    Whole clue = literal definition of BYPASS

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