Independent 8217/Eimi

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There I was when I found a word repeated in the answers thinking that Eimi had been a bit repetitive, and quite failing to realise that today has a special meaning (although, to be an old curmudgeon, it has only recently become what it is today, an attempt by traders to sell more of their wares).

As is appropriate for Valentine’s Day Eimi has cleverly incorporated the word ‘love’ into many answers, even 8ac, which is a general statement of what is happening. He is clearly rather good at this, for he often takes the responsibility of producing a crossword for a special occasion and he hasn’t failed here. There are some lovely clues.

Across
8 ALL OVER THE PLACE — 2 defs
9 AV IE MORE — Alternative Vote — Sir Thomas More
10 LOVERS — 2 defs
11 CRUISE — “crews”
12 LOVERBOY — love, Bo in ry — Bo Derek
13 DI(SOW)N
15 CROOKS — I’m not absolutely sure here, but I think it’s C [Category C] rooks, and also an &lit. because crooks are jail birds, or a category of jail birds
18 ROLLO VER{y}
20 SETTLE — 2 defs
22 C LOVE N
23 FOX G LOVE — a contemporary of Frank Chacksfield was Geoff Love, both of whom conducted orchestras which played a similar type of music
24 FALL OVER ONESELF — (all novels free of)*, the anagram indicated by ‘spelling mistakes’ — extremely nice clue, not an obvious anagram
 
Down
1 P LOVER
2 LOVELIES — if they have a great attachment to pork pies they love lies
3 BECOME — 2 defs
4 OTHELLO — (to)rev. Hello!
5 KEE{n} LOVER
6 CL OVER — CL is the abbreviation for Sri Lanka (once Ceylon)
7 ACARPOUS — (a crop)* in (USA)*
13 DROP LEAF — (Plead for)*
14 WAVY NAVY — the Wavy Navy was old slang for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, so called because of the undulating gold braid on the officers’ sleeves — The labourer is a navvy and if you move the heart of that word (v) into ‘way’ above it, way navvy becomes wavy navy
16 OUTCLASS — 2 defs — an ‘out class’, fancifully, is a class of pupils on a field trip
17 ART FORM — ‘those’ refers to the previous clue and is the class or form — Art is Art Tatum — good clue because it misleads one into thinking of Tatum O’Neal
19 LOVELY — (vol)rev. Ely
20 S(A X)ONY
21 LO(VE)LL — referring to Bernard Lovell and to VE Day

8 comments on “Independent 8217/Eimi”

  1. Thanks for explaining the Tatum bit John, went over my head on the train this morning, lovely stuff Eimi even if the device did make it generally a lot easier.

  3. I’d never come across ACARPOUS, nor heard of the Wavy Navy, nor Rollo, nor even Frank Chacksfield, and I also fell into the trap of thinking of Tatum as Ryan’s little girl rather than the musician (how easy it is for the brain to lock onto the misdirection – acting, in this case – and ignore other possibilities). However, I completed the puzzle as my “unknowns” could all be derived from the excellent clues, so many thanks to Eimi for the puzzle. Big thanks also to John; I needed the blog to explain some, and the Duh! moment when I realised Tatum was Art. I’m still not 100% happy with CROOKS though.

  4. Thanks, John. Yes, a bit of light-hearted fun for V-day with a cleverly constructed puzzle, acceptable even to a curmudgeon like me who has to share his birthday with all the lovie-dovies. I was another one who couldn’t see the Tatum bit, but I managed ACARPOUS and guessed WAVY NAVY.

    Nice puzzle from eimi – thank you to him.

    [Moderately interesting V-day fact that I heard on the radio today. In olden times, young people used to pick a name from a bowl to choose their Valentine, and used to pin the piece of paper with the name on to their sleeve for the day. Which is why we still say ‘he wears his heart on his sleeve’.]

  6. My offerings for Tatum were O’Neal and Channing Tatum – Art never entered my head until I guessed the answer. Lack of knowledge did hamper me in the SW corner – I was stuck for ages until I eventually guessed wavy navy, which I’d vaguely heard of. 19 down completely stumped me for a long time because with ??v?l?, I just could not get out of my head the idea that the vol was appearing in the middle of the word, even though it was impossible to read the clue that way. It was very annoying when the answer turned out to be so ridiculously simple. An enjoyable and challenging puzzle, I thought.

  7. Firstly, Happy Birthday to K’sD!

    Enjoyable puzzle with lots of love…….. to Eimi, John and everyone else.

  8. Thanks John and all the kind commenters. A whole lotta love to you.

    I was going to put a definition to 15A then thought it worked as an &lit, as crooks are only type of jail bird, along with rapists, murderers, etc.

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