Phi’s back to Phiday this week!
At first sight, we couldn’t find a theme or nina, but then Joyce noticed that Phi’s challenge in this puzzle was to mirror the last three letters of the across entries on the left hand side of the grid in the first three letters in the entry on the right hand side.
Happy New Year to you all!
It’s the first time we have actually got the wrong grid answer in one of our blogs so many thanks to Hovis for sorting things out quickly. We weren’t that happy with our original entry and now we know why! Apologies to Phi.
| Across | ||
| 1 | Food costing a lot, though not a soup (7) | |
| CHOWDER | CHOW (food) DE |
|
| 5 | Have another try, but after rebuilding fortress (7) | |
| REDOUBT | REDO (have another try) + anagram of BUT –anagrind is ‘after rebuilding’ | |
| 9 | A lot of concern about temperature in part of church (5) | |
| ALTAR | ALAR |
|
| 10 | A lot of tax one applied to beer has some justification (9) | |
| RATIONALE | RAT |
|
| 11 | Producer of counterfeit cash, say, ready to go in Gloucestershire village (9) | |
| BADMINTON | A BAD MINT might produce counterfeit cash + ON (ready to go) | |
| 13 | Rejected working with hooligan of repute (5) | |
| NOTED | ON (working) reversed or ‘rejected’ TED (Teddy Boy – a 1950s hooligan) | |
| 14 | Errand-boy who’s done with escaping? (6) | |
| RUNNER | An alternative phrase for ‘escaped’ is ‘done a RUNNER’ | |
| 15 | Brought about stop before entering road (8) | |
| RENDERED | END (stop) ERE (before) in or ‘entering’ RD (road) | |
| 18 | Row with Government is followed by crazy characters (8) | |
| DINGBATS | DIN (row) G (government) BATS (crazy) | |
| 20 | Out of practice, having to carry book to be sure (6) | |
| STABLE | STALE (out of practice) round or ‘carrying’ B (book) | |
| 23 | Work to keep new reservists ready for deployment (2,3) | |
| ON TAP | OP (work) round or ‘keeping’ N (new) TA (Territorial Army – ‘reservists’) | |
| 24 | Way information is suppressed by large-scale promoters of disease (9) | |
| PATHOGENS | PATH (way) + GEN (information) in or ‘suppressed by’ OS (out-size – ‘large scale’) | |
| 25 | Lab too big for change? It has to come through (9) | |
| OBBLIGATO | An anagram of LAB TOO BIG – anagrind is ‘for change’ | |
| 26 | Name encountered in circles in part of New Zealand (5) | |
| OTAGO | TAG (name) ‘encountered’ in O O (circles) | |
| 28 | Players avoiding weather around the old holes (7) | |
| EYELETS | ELE |
|
| 29 | Expensive romance, though without one church feature (7) | |
| STEEPLE | STEEP (expensive) L |
|
| Down | ||
| 1 | Quiet person, brought up to repress merest hint of enthusiasm, rose with difficulty (9) | |
| CLAMBERED | CLAM (quiet person) BRED (brought up) round E (first letter or ‘merest hint’ of ‘enthusiasm’ | |
| 2 | Vessel offloading second-rate grain (3) | |
| OAT | ||
| 3 | Rodents, millions, coming in to attack grain (7) | |
| DORMICE | M (millions) in DO (attack) RICE (grain) | |
| 4 | Some illumination around endless religious service? It’s not often seen (6) | |
| RARITY | RAY (some illumination) round RIT |
|
| 5 | Armed force keeps on ignoring hoax trains (8) | |
| RETINUES | RE (Royal Engineers – ‘armed force’) |
|
| 6 | “Suffocated, in a way” medic admitted (7) | |
| DROWNED | DR (doctor) OWNED (admitted) | |
| 7 | Swirling nebula later having fixed form (11) | |
| UNALTERABLE | An anagram of NEBULA LATER – anagrind is ‘swirling’ | |
| 8 | Affected depth in river (5) | |
| TWEED | TWEE (affected) D (depth) | |
| 12 | Board, diligent, working with an opening for business (6,5) | |
| DINING TABLE | An anagram of DILIGENT, AN and B (first letter or ‘opening’ of ‘business’) – anagrind is ‘working’ | |
| 16 | What determines whether a habit is good or bad? (5,4) | |
| DRESS CODE | Cryptic definition – ‘habit’ referring to DRESS | |
| 17 | Locums: doctors, including one chasing rising amounts of money (8) | |
| STOPGAPS | GPS (doctors) round or ‘including’ A (one) after or ‘chasing’ POTS (amounts of money) reversed or ‘rising’ | |
| 19 | Name hellish pit reprobate’s seen around (7) | |
| BAPTISE | An anagram of PIT (anagrind is ‘hellish’) with BASE (reprobate) ‘seen around’ | |
| 21 | Couple taking up work on farm, appearing in book (7) | |
| TWOSOME | SOW (‘work on farm’) reversed or ‘taking up’ ‘appearing’ in TOME (book) | |
| 22 | Special equipment to make furniture (6) | |
| STOOLS | S (special) TOOLS (equipment) | |
| 23 | Australia has a specific beach attraction (supposedly) (5) | |
| OZONE | OZ (Australia) ONE (a specific) | |
| 27 | A description of fairly quiet music – not what you’d get from this! (3) | |
| A + |
||
I think 27d should be AMP, with MP for mezzo piano. Spotted part of NINA but didn’t spot it stretched to 3 letters. When I spotted this (for just 1 letter), I thought it applied to the downs as well (had 5d, 22d with S and 8d, 16d with D at this stage). Parsed the rest as you did but didn’t like RUNNER. The A in DONE A RUNNER is not clued. Perhaps somebody has a better parsing. Thanks to S&B.
Thanks Hovis for 27d – will anend the blog!
But of course the clever last three-first three pattern doesn’t work when you slap in ELEVENS for 28ac because you don’t understand the clue; putting in APP doesn’t help with a successful completion either. Muppetry on my part for the former; slightly ambiguous clue for the latter.
I’ve enjoyed all the Indy setters this year, but I always look forward to Phi on a Friday. I’ll forgive him APP/AMP because his clues are invariably precise, with good surfaces and a wide range of subject matter. I will try in 2018 to love Nina as much as he does, but I can’t promise.
Thanks to him, all the other Indy setters, the Ed and all the bloggers for the fun this year.
Nice puzzle, which I had thought was straightforward, because I missed the wizardry in the letter reflections. It isn’t surprising to find the thing was cleverer than I am. I parsed AMP as Hovis @1 did.
RUNNER was a bit odd, I agree. I satisfied myself that it is “what is done when escaping”, so the “a” didn’t need to be considered in the clue. That left me squirming with the use of “who’s” in the clue rather than “that’s” or “what’s” but there’s probably a more elegant way of looking at it which I haven’t seen.
I almost never do the Independent crossword now, having bought the paper for decades, and after doing this thing online I’m unlikely to do it again as the wait for typed letters to appear is excruciating. Is it just me? I was never stuck for something to write in but it took 45 minutes to type the answers into the grid. I’ve had to buy the i instead, which is not a very good newspaper.
Out of interest PJ – we use a free app (Crosswords -stand alone) and paid a very nominal amount which allows us to download the Independent crosswords.
Thanks, Bertandjoyce. I’ve just had a look on the App Store but can’t see it. Hundreds of apps offering crosswords, of course -which one do you have, might I ask, and who produced it? Might help me to find it amongst the imposters!
Hopefully you received the link.
Thanks to Phi and B&J.
The issue of the website and its shortcomings is clearly a problem. Mark Goodliffe vlogged his solve of Filbert’s recent puzzle (search “cracking the cryptic” if you haven’t seen it) and the frustrations he encountered led him to announce “I’m never doing the Indy again”, which is a terrific shame and not great news to hear from someone who is trying to broaden the appeal of cryptic crosswords in general.
I always solve the Indy puzzle on my old laptop using Firefox on Windows8. It works perfectly and has done for over a year now. I’m ashamed to say that the service is in no way disrupted by my a*bl*ck*r
Bertandjoyce @5 – it was the Crosswords app, and the availability of the Indy and of this fine blog, that led this American to evolve from the NY Times puzzles to the Indy Cryptics. The app is great, but one problem that crops up occasionally when there are clues that span more than one entry in the puzzle is that the puzzle is not properly coded, and the clues do not point to the correct entries in the grid. Seems to happen about one out of 25 puzzles or so. Would love to know how you handle that. Thanks!
I enjoyed this one, which I managed without having to resort to aids. Started with OAT and finished with OTAGO, which I had to construct from wordplay. Toyed with POP and RAP before settling on AMP for 27d when the penny dropped. I was fooled by ELEVEN for players at 28, but went for EYELETS from definition and crossers with a furrowed brow. Thanks Phi and B&J
Oren – we have an Indy subscription as well. Often we use two devices, read the clues on one and use the app to enter the answers. However, we have noticed that the app seems to have solved this problem just lately.
I thought APP for 27dn at first but I wasn’t happy with it and then I remembered pp means very quiet, not fairly quiet.
As I said the other day when WHALE turned up, I’m re-reading Moby Dick at the moment, and there’s a chapter I was reading last night called CHOWDER.
Of course, I liked 3dn.
We didn’t spot the three mirrored letters connections in the acrosses but we thought there might have been a modest ‘church’ theme with ALTAR, STEEPLE and BAPTISE, plus ‘religious service’ in the clue to 4dn.
Was there a deliberate element of double bluff, too, with ‘ready’ following the reference to cash in 11ac and ‘raised’ in the clue to 1 down?
Thanks, Phi and B&J
PS for PJ and others: We’ve given up doing the Indy online. I prepare a dead tree version by saving it as a pdf then reformat it to a more readable and visually satisfying format via my word processor before printing. Most days this takes well under 10 minutes – unless there are linked clues in which case the Indy’s rubbish software can make the process a time-consuming nightmare.