Independent on Sunday 1,228 – Crosophile

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I’ve not blogged a themed Sunday puzzle for a while, so this was a nice surprise. Despite solving 1A immediately though, it took me a while to cotton on to the references to it in other clues. It was only when I got 21D that I spotted the literary link, one or two of which I needed to Google to confirm the full names. And we’re just a Z short of a pangram too I think.

All that aside, this was a very enjoyable solve. Pretty tough I thought, but all soundly clued. I particularly liked the ‘no hard feelings’ definition in 12A

Across
1 HARDY PERRENNIAL – (Oliver) HARDY + PERRENNIAL (evergreen)
9 SQUEAKING – QU(een) in SEA KING
10 WHOLE SHEBANG – WHO + L(eft) + SHE + B.A in ENG.
11 ETHEL – THE in EL
12 ANALGESIA – (AS SINGLE)* in A.A
13 SHARE INDEX – Cryptic def.
15 BRAG – R(ook) in BAG
18 BATH – BAT[-c(old)]D
19 TRESPASSER – TRESS (lock) +
22 TRIBUNALS – BUN in TRIALS
25 DWARF WAR between D (Germany) and F(rance)
26 AISLE – “I’LL”
27 IN ARREARS – ARR. in I(taly) NEARS
28 THE ANGEL GABRIEL – TH (Thomas Hard’s initials) + ANGEL (Clare) + GABRIEL (Oak)
Down
1 HOSTESS – TESS (of the d’Urbervilles) in HOS
2 ROUGHCAST – (SHUT CAR GO)*
3 YEARLIES – Y(es) + EARLIES
4 EVITA – [-n]ATIVE rev.
5 ENGRAVERS – ENG. RAVERS
6 NEWAGE – N[-atur]E + WAGE
7 ATOMS – A to M + S[-ignature]
14 NARRATIVE – R(iver) RAT in NAIVE
16 RAS TAFARI – I think this is AFAR in 1 TSAR rev. but not sure
17 LAND CRAB – CLAN DRAB with C(onstant) coming down
18 BIT PART – BIT + P (quiet) + ART
20 REFUSAL – REFUS[-e] + AL[-l]
21 JUDEAN – JUDE (The Obscure) + A N(ationalist)
23 ISSUE – Hidden reversal in in thE US SIt
24 SLANG – N[-it] in SLAG

6 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,228 – Crosophile”

  1. Thanks Crosophile and Ali. It took me a while to realise the theme of Thomas Hardy (I was focussing too much on plants!). I particularly liked 4d, 18d, 12a, 18a, 13a, 26a and my favourites were 7d ATOMS, 20d REFUSAL, 25a DWARF & 21 JUDEAN.

    I couldn’t parse 3d, 24d, 14d, 17d.

    New words for me were SEA KING = helicopter, ROUGHCAST.

    I parsed 13a as an anagram of EX HINDERS A(dult).

    I think there is a typo re 18a which is BATCH – C(old). And for 19a I parsed it as an anagram of TRESS SPARE but did not understand the “keys finally cut”.

    For 28a I parsed it as TH + E(arth) + ANGEL + GABRIEL.

    I parsed 16d as TSAR reversed + AFAR + I(taly)=land, with definition “one opposed to Babylon”.

  2. I thought this was fairly tricky for a Sunday but I got there in the end. Although I saw the Hardy theme 1ac was my LOI because I took what seemed like an age to think of PERENNIAL.

    Ali’s parsing of the the D and F in DWARF is probably what the setter intended because it fits together well with the clue, but I saw it as European=E, and D and F are the neighbours of E in the alphabet.

  3. I think 18A is BAT[C(old)]H and 19A TRES[s]+ [KEY]S in SPARES*. 16D I parsed as <TSAR + AFAR + I (one). Second appearance of RAS TAFARI in a week, I believe.

    In 28A can't see where the E comes from in THE.

    Thanks to Ali and Crosophile. I've only done a few Sunday Indy cryptics – I thought this was the most difficult of them.

  5. Thanks Ali, don’t know enough of Hardy’s works to say I filled this in with conviction although the answers were obvious enough. I guess this was Crosophile’s usual mid week fill in for Dac before Rorshach’s Martin Luther King tribute bumped it. Think 6d could do with a space…

    @CP hard but enjoyable thanks

  6. Thanks all, especially Ali.
    Flashling@5, your detective work is spot on.
    There were other Hardy bits in there too, including BATH+(whole) SHEBA(ng [Boldwood], (is)SUE [Bridehead] and Return of the (n)ATIVE [=evita], but it felt a bit forced when it came to clueing (except the clueing of 4d).

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