Independent 8,581 by Dac

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I used to blog quite often after midnight, when the crossword for the following day appeared on the website, but stopped doing so because I would become rather sleepy and tended to make silly mistakes. On Tuesday evening I had a long and ultimately fruitless game of chess, so was wide awake at midnight and decided to revert to old habits. There may be silly mistakes in the blog: certainly there were several answers where the parsing was not clear to me until I spent quite some time on them, and perhaps in the morning I would not have felt that this was on the tricky side for Dac.

All the usual remarks about Dac go without saying.

Definitions in italics.

Across

1 A feature of portable technology? (6)
TABLET
I’m not quite sure here: is this a CD or is it a DD? A tablet is certainly something that is part of modern technology and is portable, but ‘feature’?

4 Garment fellow had produced with trendy lining, made in factory? (8)
MACHINED
(Mac he’d) around in — ‘in’ comes from ‘trendy’, not the ‘in’ that is already there

9 Potato dish: it is served to men in retirement (5)
ROSTI
(it’s OR)rev.

10 Large cafés fit for makeover given these? (9)
FACELIFTS
(l cafes fit)*, sort of &lit.

11 Dad sounds more remote (7)
FARTHER
“father”

12 Charge for leaving boat a short time or much longer? (7)
MOORAGE
mo or age

13 Cooked starter of fish – I had noodles with it? Wrong (3-9)
OLD-FASHIONED
(f{ish} I had noodles)*

17 Old film star’s cool when accepting a religious role (12)
CHAPLAINSHIP
(Chaplin’s hip) around a

20 See me welcoming golden boy (7)
MAURICE
m(auric)e — pity about the ‘See’, which is necessary grammatically

21 Anger, I note, heralds unpleasant scene (7)
INCENSE
I n (scene)* — anger as a verb

23 We beg to differ with European named principally as peace-keeper? (2-7)
GO-BETWEEN
(we beg to)* E n{amed}

24 Items of crockery left out for cold meat concoctions (5)
PATES
p{l}ates

25 Wisdom shown by commander invading southern capital? (8)
SAGACITY
aga in (s city) — not all cities are capitals, hence the question mark

26 Painter captures current West Indian festival (6)
DIWALI
D(i w)ali — not a West Indian festival at all

Down

1 Speed of computer cut after crashing initially (8)
TERAFLOP
(after)* lop

2 Sit on top of elephant, say, needing a lift (8)
BESTRIDE
The elephant, say, is a beast, so it’s “beast” ride

3 Parisian says he’s upset about that woman (5)
EDITH
Parisian says is dit: dit in (he)rev. — ‘that’ refers to ‘dit’

5 What can be done about piece of furniture being short? Put on a board (13)
ACCOMMODATION
ac(commod{e} a)tion

6 Female briefly permitted to join in autumn celebration (9)
HALLOWEEN
h(allowe{d})en

7 Certainly not/ what intrepid person has (2,4)
NO FEAR
2 defs

8 Daughter wants a hut destroyed (6)
DASHED
d a shed

10 Thanks —, as polite recipient of gift might say now (3,3,7)
FOR THE PRESENT
The polite recipient of the gift will say “thanks for the present”

14 Articles – two written about holy man caught doubting God’s existence (9)
ATHEISTIC
a the I(st)I c — two refers to II not to the two articles a and the

15 Leaves half a portion of toast, having consumed one (5,3)
CHINA TEA
chin{-chin} ate a

16 A crowd joins most of family for night-time fun in Klosters? (5-3)
APRES-SKI
a press ki{n}

18 Friends absorbed by origami? Gosh (6)
AMIGOS
Hidden in origAMI GOsh

19 Sweet/ rhubarb (6)
HUMBUG
2 defs

22 Holiday destination cold just after end of March? (5)
CAPRI
c Apr 1 — April 1st is just after the end of March

*anagram

12 comments on “Independent 8,581 by Dac”

  2. Thank you for blogging, John. Some tricky ones to parse here: I too couldn’t see TABLET (and I hadn’t been playing chess) or CHINA TEA. With BESTRIDE, I was thinking we had to take the A out of BE[A]ST, but your parsing is clearly correct.

    I carelessly put in DIVALI, which didn’t help matters in getting the completion message. That’s how I’d normally spell it, but there are two or three other variants, including Dac’s. POPPADOM is the other one you can choose how to spell.

    Another fine, if slightly trickier than normal puzzle from Dac. Thank you to him.

  3. I saw the hidden tablet straight off and thought it a rather good clue, but other than accidentally writing in “APRESKII” in the grid, this was certainly for me at least in DAC’s earier range.

    Thanks John, was a little surprised to see you post so early!

  5. The usual enjoyable Dac puzzle. I had the most trouble in the NW quadrant where it took me way too long to see OLD-FASHIONED. Once I finally got it I was able to get TERAFLOP, followed by the well-hidden TABLET, and then EDITH, my LOI.

  6. I also parsed 2 down like K’s D. I.e. ‘Elephant needing a’ = be[a]st and ‘lift’ = ‘ride’ (as in ‘he gave me a lift/ride to the shops’). Works both ways I think.

  7. Got it all, but couldn’t parse 22dn – I had it as C APRI[l] and couldn’t see how the clue led to dropping that last letter. And I wasn’t doing it late at night after playing chess.

    Thanks, Dac and john

  9. Got about half of this done by lunchtime at which point I seemed to hit a wall. Came back to it several hours later and it all seemed to fall into place. I saw the hidden TABLET almost straight away – I think it was my first one in – whereas it seemed to take me ages to see 24ac, even though I had worked out how the clue works immediately. Trying to take the ‘l’ out of “plates”, my brain then proceeded to scramble the characters left, getting a nonsense word. 5dn, couldn’t see where the second ‘a’ came from. Obvious now, of course.

  10. My goodness me how obvious 1ac (TABLET) was. And what a good clue. And I still don’t know what Dac intended with 2dn (BESTRIDE).

  11. Ample time in between a full list of jobs left for yours truly! I just went with China Tea, but couldn’t parse. Toast?!

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