Independent crossword 9608 by Serpent

22 comments on “Independent crossword 9608 by Serpent”

1. F is the first letter of 1d and completes the pangram round the border if I’m not mistaken, Twence.

   Absolutely first-class puzzle I thought: inventive, really good and precise clues (and pretty concise), really good surfaces, some nice defs, a smile here and there, some misdirection, solvable and solver friendly plus a pangram that actually helped to boot. Quality stuff if you ask me (which, sensibly, no-one did, of course).

   Thanks to the Snake for a top-notch puzzle and to The Ted for the blog.

2. Just a short (first) comment.
   There is an F, twencelas: 1d.

   Moreover the 26 letters of the alphabet are all there around the perimeter!
   Quite nice but where did I see that too not so very long ago?
   Probably coincidence.

   Excellent crossword (to which I will come back in a later post).

3. Hoskins @1: snap 🙂

4. Double snap Sil @3 and @2 for I think The Snake has snapped hiself as, IIRC, his debut contained a border pangram, though that was a year a month and twenty days ago (give or take) so not so recent as not so very long ago. 🙂

5. Thanks Hoskins for pointing out the error of my eyesight – have updated the blog

6. Pleasure, T @5. Good blog as always and I know the pain of both long weeks and errors of eyesight so I feel yours too.

7. 4d is missing the parsing. It is starts to Commission Orders to give CO which expands to company (following expansion). Fantastic workout. My favourite was UNDERTOW. Got stuck in top left and used a thesaurus for ridicule and the answer then revealed itself. Held up for a bit by entering BUST for 22a, I.e. B+(r)ust as in a police sting. I thought that was the obvious answer – shows what I know.

8. Another corker from Serpent. I was floundering midway,then remembered that there is usually something going on wit his puzzles.And he’s done a pangram perimeter before as I recall. This helped tremendously, narrowing down choices.2d was last in.Super-thanks twenceslas and indeed thanks to Serpent.

9. another great puzzle from Serpent and thanks to twencelas for the bloggery.
   I don’t recall the last perimeter pangram from S but IIRC Picaroon did one recently in the Graun (although this was explicitly clued I think).
   Nice weekend to all

10. As I said (half an hour after midnight, only just back from a day at the Cambridge Folk Festival) this was an excellent crossword.
    When I seem to remember the ‘border pangram’ I was indeed – just like baerchen – thinking of a recent Picaroon.
    There’s nearly always something extra going on in a Serpent puzzle.
    As I couldn’t find anything else, I went for ‘pangram’ only to discover later that it was one around the perimeter.
    It surely helped me to finish the crossword, in particular in finding MINX (24d).

    This puzzle has all the ingredients that I like in crosswords.
    Good surfaces, some adventure (notably in 26ac), some easy ones to get you going (like 9ac or 15ac), misdirection (eg the use of ‘cops’ in 3d) and – above all – meticulous precision [seems like a pleonasm to me 🙂 ].

    For some solvers, too much precision can make a puzzle boring.
    Not for me, though.
    I would like to single out a couple of clues to exemplify what I mean.
    Recently, I saw two setters (at other places) use “X terminus” for “the last letter of X”.
    I didn’t like that though it’s probably justifiable.
    In 21d (ROUTER) Serpent goes for “X’s terminal” which is much more precise in my Book of Crosswords.
    Some solvers might object to “two-thirds of 21 [roughly]” as it doesn’t specify which four letters of ROUTER one has to take.
    Serpent must have seen that too because he added ‘roughly’ which, I think, does the trick.
    However, it is still open whether it is “2/3 of (ROUTER)*” or “(2/3 of roUTER)*” – probably the latter.

    Anyway, really enjoyable stuff.

    Thanks twenceslas for the blog.

11. Lead isn’t much good at this leading is a pretty poor definition, if the element is meant. After all, it’s not much good at floating or making windows too and if it wasn’t a reasonable conductor it wouldn’t be used to solder electronics. I suspect the setter is making a sly dig at the leader of an orchestra, I could be completely wrong.

12. sidey, I think the clue at 13ac should be split in two, making it a double definition:
    “Lead isn’t much good at this” & “leading business”.
    I won’t start a discussion about the element Pb, I simply don’t know enough of it – so, you might be right about its conductivity.
    And, true, using the word ‘business’ in the second part is perhaps stretching it a bit (but probably just about OK).
    Even so, I think the ‘cryptic construction’ of this clue is quite neat, in my opinion.
    But I am happy to disagree.

13. Apologies Sil for adding to the Lead debate but my physics background is spilling out.

    Just a bit of clarity on Lead in 13ac. Lead is a poor conductor in comparison to other metals e.g. it has 7% the conductivity of copper https://www.bluesea.com/resources/108/Electrical_Conductivity_of_Materials. It’s use in solder is when it is as an alloy where it will display different condutivity.
    Personally I stand by it being a double definition (albeit the first part “Lead isn’t much good at this” being a little cryptic. As to be honest is the second part “Leading business”. CONDUCTING applies to both.

14. Very impressed with the perimeter pangram (which gave me JARGON and allowed me to correct MINX) and the clueing overall. I found this quite hard, but fair.

    Many thanks serpent, and thanks twencelas

15. A lot of lateral thinking required today but we got there in the end with a little help from a thesaurus. Particularly liked IRIDESCENT for its ambiguity (both ‘shot’ and ‘suspect’ could have been either definition or anagrind and it took a while and some crossing letters for us to decide which was which) and PERNICIOUS (crossing letters suggested the answer long before we saw the parsing). ANCESTRY and QUORUM were good, too.

    We might have finished a bit quicker had we spotted the perimeter pangram. (Btw Serpent’s debut was indeed a perimeter pangram – the blog for it can be found here.)

    Thanks, Serpent and Twencelas

16. An impressive grid.

    We would agree that there is much to enjoy and some inventive clueing but Joyce didn’t like ‘raising and lifting’ in 19 and 24d. Maybe it’s the fact that she is not feeling well and has had to have quite a few parsings explained to her during the solve!

    Anyway, thanks to S&B.

17. Many thanks to twencelas for the excellent blog and to everyone who has taken the time to solve and comment. By the way, KISS was intended to be a triple definition: band / have a touching relationship with / smack.

    The first puzzle I remember seeing with a perimeter pangram was by Otterden in the Guardian, perhaps two years ago. At the time I thought it was a shame that there were 28 letters in the perimeter, so I decided to set a puzzle with each letter of the alphabet occurring exactly once in the perimeter, and this became my debut puzzle in the Independent.

    Cheers

    Jason

18. Hoskins@1 speaks for me. Top notch? I’ll say. A masterly grid-fill.
    I always fail with Serpents, really cheerily. He’s a great teacher.
    So, many thanks @twenceslas – & @ each blogger where this guy’s concerned.
    Wish we saw him Graun-side.

    27a: how’s the D deletion (from ENd) indicated? Canna see it.

19. dirkybee, in 27ac the D (from END) should be replaced by ABLE (accomplished).

20. @Dirkybee “objective whose conclusion should be accomplished”
    “End” is the objective and the conclusion of it becomes accomplished (able) instead of the “d”

21. Thank you, Sil & twence. A `month of Sundays` parse, for me.

22. Thanks for the blog – we got everything but the parsing defeated us in several cases.
    Surely 10 across its “to” and n for number, not ton as a number (which would be an annoyingly vague definition even for a cricket fan)

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