Independent 8,145 by Dac

by

My apologies for being late.  I am standing in for Bert and Joyce who are on holiday this week and I have accidentally managed to get two blogs for the same morning, neither of which turned out to be very easy.

This is my first blog for Dac, I thought there were some very elegant anagrams in here, especially 1 across.  Thank you Dac.

Hold the mouse pointer over any clue number to read the clue.

Across
1 HELICOPTERS (HERTS POLICE)* – a superb anagram clue!
7 SAIGA I (one, Roman numeral) in SAGA – an asian antelope
8 OVERSIGHT (GIVE SHORT)* – another good anagram
10 POTTERS BAR cryptic definition
11 MOAB A (area) in MOB (angry crowd) – a mountainous area of Jordan
13 LYRIST LIST (inclination( containing YR (younger) – someone who playes the lyre
14 CASEMATE definition and cryptic definition
16 MILLIGAN fLyInG (regularly=every other letter) in MILAN (Italian city)
18 SINGLE L (fifty, roman numeral) G (gallons) reversed in SINE (function, maths) – a pop record
21 NIGH sounds like “Nye” (Aneurin) Bevan, labour politician
22 WAGON TRAIN anagram of NOW AGAIN and sTaR (intermittently), anagram=broadcast – 1960s TV series
24 SAN MARINO SAN (sanitorium, hospital) before (at first) MAR (a few weeks) IN O (old) – a small European state
25 NOTES SET ON (determined) reversed
26 SPRINGFIELD Dusty Springield pop singer and Ned Flanders resident of Springfield (The Simpsons)
Down
1 HEISTER HE (male) sISTER (nurse) missing head
2 LEADERSHIP L (leading letter of Labour) and (HE PRAISED)* anagram=lavishly
3 CHOOSE sounds like “chews” (sweets)
4 PRENATAL PARENTAL* worries=anagram – another smooth anagram
5 EASY help (grapsed) by idEAS You
6 SIGNORA IGNORe (snub, briefly) in SA (Soth Africa)
7 SUPPLEMENTS SUPPLE (fit) MEN (blokes) waNT (last two of)
9 TABLE TENNIS TABLET (pill) before Jessica ENNIS
12 RESISTANCE IS contained in (impressed by, pressed into) RE STANCE (Royal Engineer’s stand) – I would say the the RE are British rather than English, the word English seems unnecessary in the clue anyway.
15 VACATION V (Vatican, holy see, better is v=vide, latin) A (about) in (packing) ACTION (case, law)
17 LEGENDS EG (say) reversed (held up) with N (name) all in LEDS (lights)
19 GRANTED GR (Greece) ANTE (payment, deposit) D (Deutschland, Germany)
20 GOT OFF TOFF (gent) following (after) GO (to journey)
23 HAIR double definition

*anagram

14 comments on “Independent 8,145 by Dac”

  1. Thanks for a generally clear and enjoyable puzzle and blog. I don’t quite see the parsing of 15d, though. I took “see” to indicate “v” as in vide, but I can’t get “acation” from “about packing case.”

    “Vacation” is in fact an anagram of “Vatican + O” so if I could get “O” from “packing case” that would work, but I can’t.

  2. After staring at it for a long time, I could only think of 15d as v + a in action, but I wasn’t very convinced of it since I’ve never heard of a as an abbreviation for about.

  4. Dead tree has lecturer not leader in 2d, so clue reads “Authority of Labour lecturer he praised lavishly” I suspect this is an editing faux pas as leader in the clue and answer would be clumsy and Labour got accidentally left in the clue.

    Still I enjoyed it thanks DAC and well done for the double duty PD.

  5. I agree with you on that Flashling. Pity to get that sort of thing in another one of Dac’s ‘smooth specials’.

    Ta
    Rowly.

  6. I normally regard Dac’s puzzles as being within my grasp, but I couldn’t parse 15d, and I still don’t understand it! I don’t seem to be alone, so I won’t get too discouraged.

    Saiga and casemate were new to me but not a problem to derive from the clues, and I’m not au fait with The Simpsons so I didn’t see the Springfield connection; however I am of an age to remember Dusty, so one out of two was all it took.

    Thanks for the blog, and a nice crossword from Dac.

  7. Hi PeeDee, thanks for standing in for us. It’s late evening for us but we solved the puzzle earlier today but were then without internet access. We guessed it may be Dac – all went quite smoothly and easily until the last one in CASEMATE. We needed some electronic assistance but as soon as we did it leapt out from the list of possibilities.

    Cumbrian – We’ll have another go explaining 15d. V (Latin for Vide (see)) + ACTION (as in a court case) around or ‘packing’ A (about) = holiday. We’ve never been happy about A for about but as PeeDee says, it is in Chambers – so it must be true!!

    Thanks Dac.

  8. Ah – thanks BertandJoyce! V=vide as in qv – okay. A=about – hmm, but as PeeDee says fair enough (but grudgingly 😕 ) I put vacation in fairly early on, then took it out, then put the crossing letters back in – finally it couldn’t be anything but! Some lovely stuff elsewhere of course – onwards and upwards then.

  9. Shazbot! Apologies for cockup at 2 Down. Nimrod alerted me to the use of leader in the clue, so I sought to change ‘Labour leader’ to ‘lecturer’ and informed the Independent of this change. Of course, the online version didn’t get changed at all, which is slightly preferable to the change in the dead tree edition which makes no sense at all now.

  10. Thanks, PeeDee, for standing in. The top half went in quickly, then slowed down a bit by the rest. I too couldn’t really understand VACATION, which was my last one in. MILLIGAN was a good clue, and I also liked SPRINGFIELD, which I got from both the hints – an advantage of being old but having teenage children, I guess.

    For 12dn, we need RE’S plus STANCE with the inclusion of IS, I fancy. And yes, English is superfluous, but makes for the surface, I suppose.

    Good puzzle as always from Dac.

  13. Thanks Dac for a really enjoyable crossword, PeeDee for the blog, and eimi for explaining the mix-up over different versions of 2dn. My favourite clue was 10ac.

    2dn: I am all for imaginative anagram leads, but am not completely convinced that “lavishly” really carries an appropriate meaning. The nearest I can get from Chambers is “lavish unrestrained”, which still seems a bit of a stretch to me.

    15dn: I too failed to parse this, although the answer was obvious enough. As PeeDee says, if A = about is in Chambers then Dac is entitled to use it. I have always taken V = see through the Latin vide, but going through Vatican City works just as well.

  14. I agree with all those who suggest vide is better than Vatican. I have been trying to alter the blog for hours, but first the fifteensquared server kept failing to respond and my later attemps were from a smartphone which kept changing ‘vide’ to ‘code’ when I tried to type it on the tiny on-screen keyboard.

    Pelaham – I didn’t give thought about lavishly, I just accepted it as an anagrind unthinkingly. I believe you are right, it doesn’t really mean mixed-up/reordered in any sense at all.

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