Independent 8289/Tees

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A rather difficult but enjoyable and so far as I can see utterly sound crossword from Tees (except perhaps for 1dn, about which I shall no doubt be corrected). He has achieved a rather odd feat, which I shall mention in a moment; the other feat which he almost achieved (if indeed he was even trying to achieve it) was to have no anagrams in the crossword. This failed and he had to use them in two clues, but only two I think.

It is almost a pangram. But it isn’t. There is no e, which is clever considering that it is the most common letter (although not so clever as Ernest Vincent Wright in Gadsby).

Across
9 DISSONANT — Dis St. round Onan — at least I think that’s what it is
10 MuseUM BRAndhorst
11 A(CRI{me})D — the writer is ‘me’
12 BOARDROOM — board = meals, room = allowance
13 SU(MA)TRA
14 IN(H UMA)N
17 F AT WA{r}
19 {physicis}T {h}UG{e}
20 ROLLS — 2 defs
21 R(OMANI)A
22 PAINFUL — pa in (flu)*
24 JORDANIAN — J (on air and)* — these two are I think the only clues in the whole crossword that have any anagram involved
26 B.(A.M.)B. 1 — B.B. King is the King with guitar and it seems that A.M. is an assembly member for the National Assembly of Wales
28 C(IS C)O — this seemed obvious but I’d never heard of a cisco, only the Cisco Kid — a cisco is an American fish
29 AUSTR({Vill}A {Villarea}L)IA
 
Down
1 MDMA — methylene-dioxymethamphetamine, or more simply Ecstasy — the doctors are I think MD and MA, although I should have thought that an MA, a Master of Arts, isn’t quite a doctor; I have an MA but am far from being a doctor
2 AS (H) RAM
3 GOODS TRAIN — good [= strong] strain [= push], def ‘supplier on track’
4 ZAMBIA — z (A1 BMA)rev.
5 STR(AY)ING — continually = always = ay
6 QUID — 3 defs, ‘What from Nero’, ‘£1’, ‘tobacco’
7 AB NORMA L
8 WAR {Actiu}M — warm as a noun
13 SOFA R
15 HARRISBURG — Harris [Bomber Harris] (grub)rev.
16 NASAL — n (Lhasa – h)rev.
18 TA (MA) RISK — Ta = appreciated, as Tiger Woods always says at the end of an interview
19 T(SARIN)A S
22 PUNISH — h after (sin up)rev.
23 FA(M)IL {da}Y
24 JACK — 2 defs (of the many available)
25 {S}AXON
27 (d}IVAN — Ivan the terrible

12 comments on “Independent 8289/Tees”

  1. I enjoyed this puzzle by Tees. My favourites were 6d, 13a, 11a, 17a & 29a.

    New word for me today was AXON, CISCO and ‘ay’ = ‘continually, still’.

    I could not parse 16d and 9a. And I agree with your comment about MA being one of the doctors in 1d.

    I also noted that it is almost a pangram. Although there is no ‘e’ there is the answer to 1d = MDMA = ecstasy = E so in a sense, there is “E” in this puzzle!

    Thanks for the blog, John.

  2. Yes real ly excellent stuff! Very clever with the pangram/ not pangram joke, and hard to set woitout any Es I would hguess. MA can be medical assistant, but not really a doc, as far as I can see. Not sure.

    Many good clues,
    Cheers
    Rowlt

  3. Not E-asy from Tees, like the idea of MDMA for E making the puzzle complete. Seem to remember a non-E Monk puzzle not so long ago based on the musician Eno.

    Originally I tried OTIS for “man in elevator” which rather slowed things down.

    Thanks John and Tees.

  4. Busy day here so had to keep coming back to it and it took me a while to make progress. Really enjoyed it; sadly defeated by 5d; couldn’t get “stealing” out of my mind and in the med came here to be put out of my misery by the splendid blog.

    Another small quibble here about MA being neither a medical qualification nor a doctorate, but given Tees’ quality it’s quite probable this works on some level that I’ve missed and, if it doesn’t, the business with the E / no E is so elegant that one would readily forgive it. The answer is apparent, I think.

    Good fun, so thanks Tees.

  5. I must have been in the zone today, because this went in pretty easily until the last three or four – mainly the four-letter ones.

    I was another attracted by STEALING, however. I didn’t, needless to say, see the lack of the letter E (well done for spotting that, John). I just wonder whether setters get frustrated that all the work they’ve done to produce a puzzle like this goes over the head of solvers like me. I liked it, though.

    Thanks to both.

  6. In the zone K’s D ?? bloody hell I didn’t feel in the same city let alone ball park for ages, I found this tough as old boots.

  7. Thanks John and all who commented, especially for noticing the ‘is it an e-lipogram or a pangram?’ trope. Thanks also for being very forgiving about the goof concerning doctors’ qualifications: Allah himself must’ve put the error in, as he does in those mosaics at Umayyad, to stymie us perfectionists.

    Re anagrams (another good spot by John/ Wil by the way), the finished article actually had none at all. I hadn’t realised until going through the CC clue boxes to check the solutions were annotated correctly, and felt guilty, so I put a couple in. I guess a puzzle should have some really, as they’re always a good way to get some on the board, especially where the clues generally are a bit tough.

    Tees.

  8. This was quite a struggle and the NW quarter was blank for a long time, but then I noticed that the remainder of the grid was a pangram but for E, and suspected that there was no E anywhere in the grid, which somehow helped me fill in the blanks. Thanks, Tees and John – and michelle for pointing out the E/no E joke.

  9. I think this setter has been learning from Monk, the master, with the no ‘E’ gimmick (see Independent No 8237).
    Just delighted he resisted the urge to call himself Ts.

  10. It’s strange, flashling – sometimes when others comment that an Indy puzzle is on the easy side I am thinking that it’s really hard. Different strokes and all that.

  11. Haha ‘Ts’ dicky bl adder! Very witity. Perhaps your blasdder is in a knot, or a ‘wind-up’??!

    KsD, often some finds the Rufs stuff veryhard, most don’t but you are not alone by any stretch.

    Cheers]
    Rowly

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