Independent 9,208 by Hieroglyph

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This was kind. As Richard Osman says on Pointless, it fell into my lap and I had no difficulty with any of the across clues, and I much enjoyed this gentle but pleasant puzzle from Hieroglyph.  When I saw that they all referred to 1D it was clear that solving that clue was going to be important. Fortunately it was easily solvable and everything went in easily thereafter, far more so than it did yesterday in what then seemed to me a rather tricky offering. And there I was, thinking that Tuesdays were more difficult than Mondays.

My apologies for the lack of links: if I’d been really keen I’d have linked to something by each of the 1Ds, but I have recently moved to Firefox and haven’t yet become comfortable with the moving between tabs — previous sites I’ve visited are sometimes up there at the top, sometimes not, and I’m terrified that if I move away I’ll never get back. Actually there is an apology from Firefox up there in a tab at the top telling me that they are having trouble recovering my windows and tabs.

All the definitions in the down clues are underlined. There wouldn’t have been much point in giving the definitions for the acrosses because they are all 1Ds.

If they’d all been footballers or pop singers then it would have taken far longer, but in my opinion this was a nice antidote to so much of the stuff we find in the Indy crossword. 20D was COMPOSER and all the clues that refer to 1D are composers: some of them, like Chopin, Strauss and Mahler quite well-known surely to almost everyone, others perhaps less well-known, but as someone once quite rightly admonished me when I said that yes well all you had to do was get a list of the thematic items and get the answers from there, what ever happened to getting the answer from the wordplay?

Across
5 COATES Combined operations consumed singular 1D (6)
CO ate s
8 GRAINGER Greek fury about independent 1D (8)
Gr. a(I)nger
9 PURCELL Public Library hosting dreadfully cruel 1D (7)
P (cruel)* L
10 CHOPIN Cut popular 1D (6)
chop in
11 SALIERI Disgruntled Israeli 1D (7)
(Israeli)*
12 RAMEAU Butter and water for the French 1D (6)
ram eau [French for water]
14 BRITTEN Wader having moved right back for 1D (7)
bittern with the r moved back
17 STRAUSS Stars gathered around American 1D (7)
(Stars)* round US
21 WILBYE Wisconsin liberal at the side of European 1D (6)
WI L by E — perhaps not one who comes to mind all that quickly, but an Elizabethan madrigalist, and there is one ravishing song that he wrote whose name I forget, something about sweet night I think — was it ‘Draw on, sweet night’? (Just checked on my phone and it was — I daren’t check here for fear of losing all this.)
24 ALLEGRI Fitzgerald backed good Rhode Island 1D (7)
(Ella)rev. g RI — Ella Fitzgerald
26 KODALY Stunner bamboozled lady 1D (6)
KO (lady)*
27 PUCCINI Picnic arrangement including university 1D (7)
(Picnic)* round u
28 TELEMANN Man on the box beginning to needle 1D (8)
“telly” man n{eedle}
29 MAHLER In the 8D main a husband left 1D (6)
8D is GALLIC, so the Gallic main is la mer, and it’s m(a h l)er
Down
1 COMPOSER Writer of notes scribbled poems in company car in the end (8)
(poems)* in (co {ca}r)
2 BACCARAT Two vehicles, one in reverse, at game (8)
(cab)rev. car at
3 INFORM Inspire schoolchildren at home? (6)
Fancifully, an in-form is a form at home
4 RETINA Light-sensitive tissue fellow removed from fine art display (6)
({f}ine art)*
6 TARTLET Diminutive pastry later recreated in Trinidad and Tobago (7)
T (later)* T
7 SWEDE Radical Scandinavian (5)
2 defs, where radical = to do with roots, a reference to the fact that a swede is a root vegetable
8 GALLIC French General Assembly liberals in charge (6)
GA L L i/c
13 EMU Australian runner‘s absorbed in reggae music (3)
Hidden in reggaE MUsic
15 ILL One empty local’s run-down (3)
1 l{oca}l
16 EVERYDAY Flat, unfinished lines ruined drama therapy – ultimately run of the mill? (8)
eve{n} ry {ruine}d {dram}a {therap}y
18 ANGUISH Agony after learner’s left flag (7)
{l}anguish
19 SPIRITED After hydrogen’s dissipated, experimental Petri dish is full of life (8)
(Petri dis{h})* — ‘spirited’ was the cricket commentator Peter West’s favourite word — if anyone scored over 20 their innings was ‘spirited’. Many years ago.
20 DAMPEN Wet Australian politician occupying study (6)
d(AMP)en
22 IRONED Decreased infrared radiation ultimately in old English department (6)
The definition really de-creased — IR ({radiatio}n in O E D)
23 BRAKED Hedonist in Bangladesh slowed down (6)
B(rake)d
25 LOCUM Substitute left over copper money (5)
l o Cu m

*anagram

7 comments on “Independent 9,208 by Hieroglyph”

  1. I s’pose we’re due a jolly ramp from time to time, but still…
    Unusually for this type of puzzle, the key clue was a write-in, as were all the acrosses (tho’ I had to check the sp. of WILBYE).
    And, oh, those crossword cliches…
    “Decrease’ for ‘iron’. Hydrogen and copper in trace quantities. Abbreviations for countries? Check, twice. For US states? Ditto, and in contiguous clues. Pupils in their form and an MP in his den? Put those in the ‘Ayes’ lobby.. A French sea? Voila! There’s even a bloomin’ emu. Only the absence of 4-lighters spared us a helping of Dutch cheese made the wrong way, one feels.
    Still, thanks to John, and to Hieroglyph for said romp.

  3. Thanks, John, and Hieroglyph.

    When I opened this one up, my heart sank a bit, because I generally don’t enjoy puzzles like this. But the gateway clue was simple enough; and then it’s a question of how many composers you know. I did in fact know all but a couple, and I have the sense that the setter was being kind with us in the down clues to make the acrossess accessible.

    So not my favourite, but that’s just me.

    [John, I’ve been using Firefox for many years now, and it’s been stable and reliable for me. Just like anything techie, I suppose – just takes a bit of getting used to.]

  4. Great stuff! Right up my street. Only one niggle – ‘decrease(d)’ for IRON(ED) seems to have been rather overworked of late; but to counter that I liked the ‘lift and separate’ Greek fury in 8ac.

    Thanks, Hieroglyph and John.

  5. That was the quickest solve for a very long time! As I often listen to music whilst solving, I was hoping Rued Langgaard might turn up as one of the across answers, but no luck. For the record (no pun intended) this took me the length of time of the first movement of his 2nd symphony to complete.

  6. Thanks both.

    A very clever composition with all the across clues being composers and no obscure words in the down clues.

    A tour-de-force indeed.

  7. Yes, putting in all those composers was quite clever.
    That said, the grid is very friendly for such a thing.

    COMPOSER (1d) was my first one in and as I am very familiar with (the names of) classical composers many were really a write-in.
    However, one can still enjoy a well-written crossword.

    Did I?
    To be honest (and apologies to Hieroglyph) I was quite annoyed by the overuse of one and two letter abbreviations.
    I counted 18 (!!) clues in which this was the case.
    In both IRONED and LOCUM we had four of them!
    GALLIC was also fully based on abbreviations.
    WILBYE (with one more Liberal) had three of them.

    I am not syaing that this is bad clueing but it spoiled for me what could have been a good crossword.

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