Independent 8356/Phi

by

Phi goes on and on producing these very pleasant crosswords. At the moment there are some here I simply can’t understand, but let’s hope that by the time I’ve finished doing the blog they will become clear. [No]

And as to any sort of Nina, well as usual with Phi I can’t see anything, but perhaps that’s largely because I’m happy enough to have finished.

Across
9 LO W(L)IFE — the noun lowlife refers to a member of the criminal fraternity
10 ICE B(O)AT — an iceboat breaks through pack ice, and bat is a slang word for speed, which I had to look up — I suppose we get it in the expression ‘like a bat out of hell’
11 CONS ENSU{{uniqu}e}S
12 C LIMB{o}
13 PRO SPE{a}R — a = about, an abbreviation that’s in Chambers — it always surprises me that it isn’t used more often
15 LO(UN)GES — the theatre boxes are loges and ‘a Parisian’ is ‘un’
17 PIG — OK a pig is a quantity of metal. but the rest of it?? [Quantity of metal tubes with fastening removed]
18 OF F(B)EAT — B = Baron
20 WAR{m} — I think, although the equivalence of warm and angry seemed a bit doubtful until I saw that it was there in Chambers
21 R IS SOLE — r = recipe, the Latin term
23 TO(Y)SH OP
24 S WEAR — I can see that s = society and wear = bore, but where does the ‘more then enough’ come in? [Society bore, more than enough to make you curse!]
25 UNE A TABLE
27 CRISPIN — there is the Saint Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, but ‘last’? [The last saint to be cited in Shakespeare?]
28 HEAR SE{a}S — hearses are the last carriers in that they carry the body on its last journey
Down
1 FLOCK-PAPER — flock [= animals] (appear – a)*
2 SWAN SONG — wan in SS (no g)*
3 PIN E{xclusives}
4 SENSOR — (roses)rev. around {garde}n
5 DI’S SOLVE
6 FE(N(COUNT)R)Y
7 M {l}OVING
8 STAB — (bats [= cracked, crazy, mad])rev.
14 PHONOGRAPH — p (organ)* in hop h{all}
16 STRIPTEASE — (parties)* in (set)* — a very pleasing &lit.
19 FRE(QU{e}EN)T
20 WAHABISM — (Shia a BMW)*
22 SPEC I.E. — spec is an informal shortening of speculate
23 THE{n} THE{n} — an English music and multimedia group that have been active in various forms since 1979, m’lud
24 S{t}ACK
26 TRAM{p}

12 comments on “Independent 8356/Phi”

  1. 17A is, I think PIPING with the PIN removed. I didn’t realise this until long after completing the crossword, though! Jason J

  3. At 27ac St Crispin is one of the two patron saints of cobblers, hence the “last” reference. The other is St Crispinian. Thanks to J-Boh@1 for parsing 17ac because it was my LOI from the definition alone.

    I found the RHS easier than the LHS, although that may not have been the case if I hadn’t known WAHABISM which gave me some useful checkers.

  6. Richard3435 @5: A last is a tool used by a cobbler. Therefore the last saint is the patron saint of cobblers.

    While I am in, thanks to Phi for the usual enjoyable puzzle and John for the blog.

    12ac: While solving, I wondered if “final” can be a noun, as required for the cryptic reading, but there it is in Chambers: “the last of a series (eg of letters in a word …)”. I should have known that any doubts about the accuracy of a Phi clue would be misplaced.

  7. Many thanks John & Phi

    Very enjoyable but I entered THE WHO at 23d.

    At least, I have heard of them.

  8. Thanks, John and others, for several parsings I couldn’t get. And I’d never heard of THE THE – I initially put in The Who and only worked out the correct answer when the check button showed up the error.

    Btw ‘bat out of hell’ doesn’t appear to be related to BAT meaning ‘speed’; both Chambers and Collins put the speed meaning in the general sense of ‘bat’, i.e. cricket bat, etc, whereas ‘bat out of hell’ refers to the flying mammal – though I’m not sure why a bat should come out of hell faster than anything else. Not quite sure, either, why ‘bat’ should come to mean ‘speed’ unless possibly a good bat implies a high scoring rate.

    I couldn’t see any nina or theme today.

  9. Thanks John. We couldn’t parse SWEAR and CRISPIN but we came here before we looked elsewhere.

    Thanks Phi for another enjoyable Phi-day puzzle!

  10. I think today’s theme is the Gervase Fen detective stories of Edmund Crispin (The Moving Toyshop, Fen Country, Frequent Hearses …)

  11. Yes, Edmund Crispin it is. EC (aka Bruce Montgomery when writing film music) produced some of the oddest takes on the ‘golden age’ detective story, and is well worth a look. Fen isn’t above choosing to go left at a fork in a road because the book is being published by Gollancz, or noting that, however neat the current solution appears to be, it can’t be right because we’re only a third of the way through the book. I’m something of a sucker for breaking the fourth wall.

    The The were the favourite band of someone I knew at University. I was rather surprised, on checking, to find them still extant.

Comments are closed.