Independent 9,129 by Knut

by

A 24 today, very much a Marmite puzzle I suspect which will be loved or hated.

Personally I didn’t have a great love of David Bowie, but an astonishingly quick to appear 24 from KNUT, there’s so much thematic stuff in clues and answers, but it’s also frankly one of those puzzles that if you don’t know David Bowie’s back catalogue, you’ll never get/guess them.

I did get a certain feeling that the definitions lacked a certain something you’d expect; there are many that are just “single” or “album”

I suspect there’s a lot more material that I’ve not highlighted and there’ll be K’sD like grumpiness and heaped praise for this one .

Thanks setter & Editor, I bet you were busy finishing this one on time for production.

completed grid

Across

1/9 Let’s Dance, David’s non-US no.1 single (5,3,6)
SOUND AND VISION
A dancing [DAVID’S NON US NO 1]*. A Bowie single

4 Move those 27, with the wave of a magic wand! (3,6)
HEY PRESTO
[THOSE PYRE(27)]* moving

9 See 1

10 Leafy green Somerset town (5)
CHARD
Double def

11 Boast about clothes (4)
GARB
BRAG reversed

12 Pallid, like the lean nobleman of the artist’s imagination? (5)
WHITE
Alter ego the THIN WHITE DUKE

13 Despatched with Absolute Beginners missing (4)
SENT
(AB)SENT with beginners of AB(solute) missing

16/14 Single American Airlines hostess he’s corrupted (5,2,5)
ASHES TO ASHES
Another Bowie single [AA (American Airlines) HOSTESS HES]* corrupted

17 As seen by Major Tom, a cabaret singer (6)
EARTHA
EARTHA (kitt) EARTH is seen by Major Tom in the song & A

20 Kate’s run round with her kit off! (6)
STREAK
[KATE’S R(un)]* around

22 Accountant provides support at the beginning of the month (7)
CALENDS
C(hartered) A(ccountant) & LENDS (provides support)

24 In Cincinnati, Bowie returned for tribute (4)
OBIT
Hidden reversed in cincinaTI BOwie, as is this puzzle

26 Some relief in albums like Blackstar (5)
FINAL
Bowie’s final album, hidden in “relieF IN ALbums”

27 A heap of material from old record company with radical content (4)
PYRE
R(adical) in PYE (a defunct record company)

30/32 Single stock from a mom and pop store? (5,9)
YOUNG AMERICANS
Cryptic def – Mom & Pop stores allude to the USA and stock to children. Another bowie single

31 Refugees embrace Sharon, returning after university (9)
HUGUENOTS
HUG (embrace) & U(niversity) & (sharon) STONE reversed

32 See 30

33 Ma’s playthings? (2-3)
YO-YOS
Double def – the cellist YOYO MA, I assume there’s a Bowie connection but can’t really find one.

Down

1 Press 5’s mouth here? (8)
SHANGHAI
Press-gang/Shanghai Yangtze delta

2 Make the rounds with jutting jaw (9)
UNDERSHOT
[THE ROUNDS]* made, adjective meaning with a jutting jaw

3 As a tear appears at first, David – rest in peace (4)
DRIP
As in tear-drop. First letters of David Rest In Peace.

4 Oh well; I gather dry grass with this tool (5-2)
HEIGH-HO
Sounds like (I gather) HAY HOE

5 A net Ziggy regularly cast here (together with China Girl)? (7)
YANGTZE
[A NET ZiGgY]* cast. Allusion to Bowie single

6/15 Genre leading to suicide, according to Bowie (4,1,4)
ROCK N ROLL
A Bowie single – ROCK N ROLL SUICIDE

7/8 Single actor welcomes unusual sex (5,6)
SPACE ODDITY
Bowie single ODD (unusual) IT (sex) both in (kevin) SPACEY

14 See 16 Across

15 See 6

18 From America, fine album (5,4)
HUNKY DORY
Bowie Album, double def of sorts

19 Carries out tests on female donkeys? (8)
ASSESSES
Whimsically female donkeys could be ASS-ESSES

21 Dagger gutted Helen, a deity (7)
KRISHNA
KRIS (indonesian dagger) & a gutten H(ele)N & A

22 Remixes album track (7)
CHANGES
A sort of DD or possibly triple def as it’s a track and an album

23 South Africa supporting railway company, at first cold (6)
CORYZA
It’s a head cold. CO(mpany) & R(ailwa)Y & ZA (South Africa)

25 Fashionable American-English prevailing (2,3)
IN USE
IN (fashionable) & US & E(nglish)

28 Citrus fruit imported by Italian region, according to natives (4)
UGLI

it’s hidden in PUGLIA (the heel of Italy)

29 Disown bits of Golden Years (4)
DENY
Hidden in golDEN Years

31 comments on “Independent 9,129 by Knut”

  1. Excellent crossword. Right up my street. Rattled through it. And a degree of personal payback for every opera reference that’s ever appeared in a crossword :-).

    Thanks to Knut and Flashling.

  2. An affectionate achievement Knut. And no, flashling, I didn’t hate it. But with many of the answers being specific to Bowie, (of whom I confess total ignorance) I had no way of being sure whether I had got them right.

  3. My heart sank at this one – I’d much rather have the opera references, as I don’t know anything about Bowie. But to my surprise, I was able to guess the answers correctly (last one in 30/32, which was just a BIFF), and finish in less than 10 mins.

  6. Thats two great puzzles celebrating a great artist (although the first by Mitz was compiled for his birthday as only half a doz people in the world had any idea what was to happen). I had You Tube selections on to accompany this. Bravo, Knut!!

    (The only marmite thing is if anyone’s not a fan- and that would be a tiny minority, surely) But if someone doesnt dig the puzzle, thats their affair.

  7. Thanks to Knut for a very ingenious puzzle and Flashling for putting me out of my misery over the parsing of 28.

    Themed puzzles will always divide opinion. I am not a Bowie fan but I think that all of the references would be reasonably accessible to anyone who had any interest in modern music.

  8. Thanks Knut – been looking forward to this.

    Have to take slight issue with flashling’s review on this occasion – Bowie fan or not his back catalogue is extremely famous, and even if any of the songs and albums referenced here are unfamiliar, as Jason has testified the clueing is so clear that there should not be a problem.

    A fine tribute.

    Thanks to copmus for mentioning my own humble effort. I’m sure Knut won’t mind me posting this link to Mitz 053 for those that are interested.

  9. By the way, a point of pedantry: “Changes” is not the name of an album. The compilation of singles released in 1990 is called Changesbowie.

  11. Famous or not isn’t really the point Mitz that I was trying to get across, perhaps, the puzzle suffers in that for many the solution will be obvious and indeed the solver guessing and looking to see where it fits the enumeration making it too easy to complete, for others they will be lost or just looking up a list on the internet.

    Re #9 fair enough, I wasn’t fully awake when I wrote that bit up 🙂

  12. Hi flashling.

    That wasn’t really the point I was making either! As a huge Bowie fan, I don’t think the puzzle suffered at all from the curse of seeing the enumeration and just writing in, as the clues were fun to decode anyway (as they always are with Knut). And Jason, as someone who wasn’t familiar with Bowie’s oeuvre, has confirmed that far from being “lost” he found the puzzle quick to yield.

    IMHO, as Knut elected to put song titles into the solutions, using the device “single”, far from making the puzzle lack a certain something, let him avoid over-egging the pudding.

  13. We thought that the puzzle was an amazing achievement. The answers in our opinion were definitely not write-ins. The number of references throughout was astounding.

    1ac was excellent – a brilliant construction.

    Thanks Knut and flashling.

  14. I didn’t know a lot about David Bowie, but I know quite a bit more now having done this puzzle. That’s one of the joys of cryptics – you often learn things you didn’t know before. OK, I had to google for a list of his songs (there’s one here btw) and some I only got from checking letters and enumeration, but it was quite an enjoyable exercise and there was a sense of satisfaction when I completed it.

    My CoD, though, was one of the non-thematic ones: CALENDS

    Thanks, Knut and flashling.

  15. Another advantage to this puzzle- as a huge Bowie fan (the man and his output) I was unaware of “Sound and Vision” as a track although I should have “Low” in my archives somewhere. So I followed the instructions in the clue like anyone else who was not from Mars.

  16. Mitz says:
    January 18th, 2016 at 10:40 am
    By the way, a point of pedantry: “Changes” is not the name of an album. The compilation of singles released in 1990 is called Changesbowie.

    Changes is the name of an album track though as the clue says. 🙂

  18. Thanks, flashling and Knut. Not grumpy; just couldn’t do it and ran out of time/patience. Never was a big fan, so the references were beyond my solving ability. But fair play, he was a talented and respected musician, so well done to the Indy for a prompt tribute puzzle.

  19. hello folks,

    thanks for the comments; for the record, I am no Bowie fan myself – I have never bought or stolen his music. I was 15 when the Ziggy Stardust album was released and I thought it was twaddle. However, it would be impossible for anyone interested in an kind of music not to acknowledge the lyrical and melodic brilliance of, say, Life on Mars.
    I must thank Eimi for running with this idea and for getting the puzzle in the paper so quickly.
    @flashling
    thanks for the blog. I was a bit surprised by your love/hate comment, but more so by your “if you don’t know Bowie you’ll never get these” comment – I went to a fair amount of trouble to populate the grid with helpful crossers from the non-thematic clues – illustrated, I think, by your excellent graphic – which I had hoped would make the non-fan stick at it.
    I see from your comment #11 that you blogged this half asleep; your parsing for HUNKY DORY refers to a “double definition of sorts”. “From America, fine album” is intended to refer to the band “America” who did indeed make fine albums (imo). HUNKY DORY is defined as an American expression for “fine, satisfactory”

    best wishes,
    Rob/Knut

  20. An enjoyable tribute – no problems with any of the themed stuff but I had to check CALENDS and CORYZA, and didn’t parse UGLI.

    Thanks to Knut and flashling

  21. I see the Baerites are out in force… and doesn’t he have a lot of baes.

    Fun puzzle for me even without specialist knowledge.

    CORYZA left me feeling a little cold mind.

  22. Well, I completed this, but I don’t think I enjoyed it. Didn’t know much about Bowie and I guessed several of the answers. In the end, I brought up a discography to get the final two, at which point I noticed a spelling mistake in one of my entries. The other one (without the spelling mistake) ws 7/8, which is ironic as it was about the only Bowie song I knew. To paraphrase Ulysses S. Grant, I only know two Bowie songs. One of them is Space Oddity and the other one isn’t.

    So when are we getting the Pierre Boulez commemorative crossword?

  25. On occasions when the papers think someone will perhaps die soon, they already write an obituary – just in case.
    No one. except some unhappy few, saw this coming and therefore Knut must have written this puzzle only days ago.
    And, yes Mitz, what a coincidence.

    I am not a hardcore Bowie fan but have a lot of his albums.
    I think Hunky Dory was brilliant (as was StationToStation, and perhaps, with hindsight, Ziggy too).

    When I first met Knut (only Saturday, a week ago) Bowie was still alive and probably terribly suffering from one of the nastiest forms of cancer.
    I do think he orchestrated his final days very well (whatever that means).
    And Knut paid a fine tribute to a phenomenon who has played an important part in the lives of many.

    This was a fine crossword.

    Only in 13ac (SENT) I was a bit thrown by ‘Absolute Beginners’.
    I often have a problem with the use of ‘beginners’ to define more than just the start of a word (which is only one letter – there’s only one ‘beginner’, IMO)
    But it’s alright.
    Moreover, the starters of Absolute Beginners are also AB.
    And ABS[olute] is also part of ‘absent’.
    Just nitpicking.
    In the splendid 1ac, I must say I only accept ‘Let’s Dance’ as anagram indicator because of the occasion.

    Many thanks to Knut, and Flashling: tomorrow’s another day (and you will be surprised what happens then).

    ps, I just started to write a crossword on Pierre Boulez.
    1ac: PLING, 1d: PLONG.
    🙂

  26. And I just heard that both Glenn Frey (The Eagles) and Dale Griffin (Mott The Hoople) left us – at 67, so young.

  27. Nice solve – I’m somewhere in the middle re Bowie – ie I knew mainly just the big hits – but surely the themesters were all buildable from the wordplay. Criticisms of themed piuzzles for being themed nearly always turn out to be an indication of the complainer’s ignorance of the theme in question. Boulez – what in irrelevance – like so many in “contemporary classical music” – and don’t get me started on Cage – who appears regularly in crosswords.

    Irrespective of one’s views Bowie was a major public figure, individual, thoughtful and creative. He is just as much worthy of a themed puzzle (especially on his sudden and unexpected passing) as the characters in an out-of-the-way classical drama or a list of obscure antelopes.

    SPOILER HERE

    I just recently solved (from a compilation book) an Araucaria puzzle themed on Marlbrough’s battles in the War of the Spanish Succession, the key to which (MALPLAQUET – one of the battles) was only given as PLAQUE in MALT.

    This was pretty tame stuff by comparison – but still enjoyable – so many thanks to S&B both.

  28. This was an excellent crossword and a fine tribute. I didn’t know much about Bowie but that didn’t really matter. I knew some, guessed some and had to look some answers up.

    I thought the intro was a little unfair. Like him or not, David Bowie was one of the the icons of 20th Century popular culture and it is fitting for the FT to publish a tribute puzzle such as this.

  30. re#25, just as an aside, I think newspapers have obits prepared for pretty much everyone of note – one sometimes finds the obit author passed on first.

  31. I guess re-reading my blurb it comes on a bit strong, I was just anticipating the reaction to similar puzzles in the past and giving what i felt was constructive criticism. Apologies esp to knut for a grand job well done.

Comments are closed.