Independent 8361/Jambazi

by

This was tough. Without use of the ‘Reveal letter’ button and yes, I must admit, on one or two occasions the ‘Reveal’ button itself, I doubt whether I’d have finished. Even the straightforward anagrams didn’t fall at an initial reading. No complaints though, because it was all clued well and fairly and the only failure was mine. Some really good clues.

There is still one (5ac) that I don’t really understand although the theme of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, which appears in many clues, didn’t help. I had no antipathy to it, simply ignorance: our paths never crossed in childhood and only over the years have I picked up one or two things about it. I knew the basic story and one or two of the characters, such as the ones needed for 21dn, but forgot that Toto was a dog.

Across
1 STUPID — s{carecrow} (1 put)rev. d
5 SNACKING — not sure about this: It seems to be Sn [= tin] {h}acking, with the definition ‘filling a hole’, which is fancifully what one does when snacking, but quite where ‘hacking’ comes in I can’t see [Tin Man without heart to face filling a hole] — thanks to Muffyword: it’s Sn king around {f}ac{e}
9 HACIENDA — (had a nice)*, the anagram indicator ‘Blur’
10 {s}TRA{y} {p}UMA
11 OTHERWORLDLY — (Well, Dorothy)* round [= over] r{ainbow}
13 THe YEllow BRick ROad — secondary sequence = second letters
14 NOSE CONE — no second with the d of second becoming something else
17 OUTSTRIP — out = away, strip = kit
18 TUSH — (Th{e} US)*, &lit.
20 FLAME-THROWER — (farmer who let)*
23 SCON(C{alories})E — ‘minding’ the inclusion indicator
24 NARRATOR — (t{reasure} Arran)rev. or — Jim Hawkins is the narrator in ‘Treasure Island’
25 IN THE AIR — in [= home] the(A)ir
26 SPLI{t} FF — joint as in marihuana
 
Down
2 THAW — 2 defs, one of them referring to John Thaw, who played Morse
3 PO(IS)O NOUS — French ‘we’ is ‘nous’
4 DING(H)Y — ‘H marks the spot’ is apparently a standard phrase, although ‘X marks the spot’ seems more familiar — I think helicopters land on an H
5 SPARRING PARTNER — (raps)rev. ring [= band] part [= separate] n [= number] ER [= Queen], def ‘hits rehearsed with me’, hits as in boxing — good clue, all there, but hard to get at first
6 ART HOUSE — (Hates our)*
7 KRAAL — (Lark)rev. around a — a kraal is a South African word meaning ‘to pen’, much in evidence in books like ‘My Early Life’ by Winston Churchill and ‘Jock of the Bushveld’ by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick
8 NIMBLENESS — (in)rev. ness after m b le{g}
12 RE PUBLICAN
15 C(ATE {badge}R W A)UL{l}
16 ERYTHEMA — (three may)* — redness of the skin
19 DWARFS — d with (fr)rev. inside [= piercing] was
21 MUNCH{kin}
22 Wizard Of Oz For — ‘left set’ indicating first letters

28 comments on “Independent 8361/Jambazi”

  3. Thanks, John. Brilliant but very tough.

    I had it as SN A(le)C (man without heart) KING (face as in face card). Wasn’t 100% convinced though…

  4. NeilW@3 – That’s the way I tried to parse it first, using face as in a pack of cards, but I couldn’t think of a suitable man so I came up with the version @1. I’m not sure which was intended, possibly yours, as “man” isn’t exactly a king.

  8. Thanks John.

    I really enjoyed this. Hard to know which were intentional – but as well as the obvious ones in the clues there’s POISONOUS, DWARFS, THAW, FLAMETHROWER, SCONCE, and IN THE AIR, which feel thematic, strongly or weakly. I can only dimly remember unconnected scenes. I got stuck on SNACKING, trying SNACK-POT, SNACK-BAG and all sorts of combinations. Good fun.

  9. Thanks John for the blog and thanks to those that have commented.

    Tin Man without heart to face… = {SN + KING} around (f)AC(e), as others have stated above. MAN = KING in chess but perhaps that is too difficult. In the film, the Tin Man doesn’t have a heart and wishes to fill the gap, as it were. The Scarecrow doesn’t have a brain, which is what 1 across is alluding to.

    I wrote this puzzle in June 2013 after getting inspiration from reading a Wizard of Oz Ladybird book to our two daughters. They’ve subequently started watching bits of the DVD and I must say it looks surprisingly good for a film made in 1939. Anyway, I don’t normally set out to write hard/easy puzzles, I just do the best I can with each clue and see what I end up with. For this one though, I was conscious that my last Guardian puzzle was deemed too easy by many, with a few giveaway definitions — like “Rivers, perhaps” for STAND-UP COMEDIAN — so I tried a bit harder with this one to be less obvious.

    For 20 across I was trying to allude to Tony Martin, the farmer who shot the burglar.

    We’re off on holiday tomorrow and no doubt I’ll have to sit through Wizard of Oz a few times.

    Thanks again.

    Neil

  10. I agree with John that that this was a tough puzzle. I failed to solve 2d, and I could not parse 25a, 24a & 4d [I discovered that H is an abbreviation for ‘harbour’ so I was happy enough with H = “harbour/landing spot” in DINGY. Never heard of “H marks the spot”.]

    I liked 5d, 8d & 26a and my favourite was 3d POISONOUS.

    New words for me were ERYTHEMA, KRAAL, NOSE CONE.

    Thanks for the blog, John. I also parsed 5a the same way as Muffyword.

  11. Thanks, John

    Very clever and enjoyable puzzle. This setter’s crosswords are never a walkover and this one was one of his toughest, thanks to some very intricate clues.

    Many highlights, but I thought the ingenuity of the clues for the four-letter words was particularly impressive.

  13. Jambazi@12
    thanks – I had never heard of this before. I was pleased to finish your puzzle without using the “cheat/reveal button” but it was a real challenge!

  14. Thanks Jambazi for a tough, but ultimately very satisfying, challenge, and John for the blog. Without wishing to inflame debates that have taken place elsewhere on this site, can I just say that I thought the information in the first paragraph of the preamble was exactly the right sort of thing to appear on the site’s front page?

  16. That was a superb puzzle – every clue a beauty. My LOI was 2D but that’s only because I was being 1A! Loved OTHERWORLDLY – what a glorious anagram.

  17. Finished it, though without managing to parse everything. But some great clues; my favourites were HACIENDA, NOSE CONE and ERYTHEMA.

    Thanks, Jambazi and John

  18. Fabulous puzzle, in a week when the Indie has already had some belters, this was perhaps the best so far for my money. The extent to which 5d was clued in musical terms before defining something else was CoD in my view.

    Thanks, Jambazi, and to John for the blog.

  19. Definitely a struggle to get going on this one, but was quietly surprised at how easily I finished it with TUSH being my last tentative entry. Nice stuff Neil/Jambazi and thanks John, don’t blame you in the least using the reveal button to get the blog out sometime today.

  20. Very good puzzle with some great clues – HACIENDA, OTHERWORLDLY, NOSE CONE, SPLIFF, WOOF especially.

    Thanks to Jambazi and John.

  21. Unusually late to the party today [I’ve been out since before the blog appeared] so it’s all been said, really, but I had to put in my two penn’orth, since I’ve never not commented on a Jambazi / Tramp puzzle – and can’t imagine that ever happening [while I’m still able].

    Thanks for a great blog, John. Like you – and others – I found this tough going – more so than usual, I thought – and then later couldn’t really see why.

    I’m with Gervase in his admiration of the four-letter word clues [special thanks for mention of one of my favourite actors / programmes in 2dn] and with PJ re the clever cluing of 5dn.

    Huge thanks, as ever, to Jambazi – have a lovely holiday with all your girls! 🙂

  22. I loved this puzzle. Took me all day to complete (with some work thrown in) but when finished I had no question marks next to any of the clues. 9ac was a particularly good spot by the setter I thought. Thank you.

  23. Because my time was limited earlier today I decided to do the Guardian’s Chifonie puzzle this morning and save this one till the evening.

    I’m pleased I decided to solve it without having to worry about time pressure because, as you have all said, this was a belter. I managed to finish it without recourse to aids but with one, TUSH, not fully understood. I didn’t think of the clue being an &lit and I was wondering where the inclusion/containment indicator was. THAW was my LOI and I could have kicked myself when I finally saw it. There are too many excellent clues to nominate a COD, and I’d be more than happy if all the Thursday puzzles were of this quality.

  24. Thanks to everyone for showing such interest — I always feel the Indy must put up a good showing against a certain other crossword that gets more readers (and therefore posters) but is in my opinion often less good.

    My only comment is to Jambazi — ‘surprisingly good for a film made in 1939’. There were an awful lot of good films made around that time and this isn’t the only one. Top Hat. Gone With The Wind. Winchester 73. I could go on.

  25. Up late in Adelaide watching the cricket – and trying to finish this exceptionally good puzzle. Had to cheat a couple of times. Thought 5A and 15D particularly good in their ingenuous construction.

    Great puzzle, thanks to Jambazi and John.

  27. Thanks to everyone for your comments.

    John: I didn’t word that very well. I was trying to say that the quality of the picture looked surprisingly good — I know it’s been restored but it still looked good to me. I didn’t mean to suggest that it couldn’t be a good film because it was old.

    Neil

  28. We should have started this earlier yesterday but as normal we left it until late. With only a few entries we had to leave the puzzle until this morning. The NE and the NW looked somewhat desolate!

    Thanks Jambazi, there was some great clueing here and we liked the challenge. We have to admit that we needed an electronic search on a couple of the anagrams to get an inroad.

    Thanks John for the blog!

Comments are closed.