Independent 9,797 by Tees

by

There was a time when Tees always presented a stiff challenge, with various bits of arcane knowledge required. In recent crosswords I have found him much easier. That this is the result of improvement by me I somewhat doubt; it is more likely that Tees has decided to become a bit kinder.

But there has been no diminution of quality. Easy enough his crosswords may be nowadays, but they are still excellent: still tightly-produced clues and the occasional classical reference.

Definitions underlined in maroon. Anagram indicators in italics.

It never really occurred to me to hunt for a Nina, but my impression is that Tees doesn’t do them, so my cursory check through the unches unsurprisingly reveals nothing. Which isn’t to say …

Across
1 DOODAH Daughter had rings put back in ornament (6)
d (had O O)rev.
5 RECOUPED Made good or brilliant move in grass (8)
re(coup)ed
9 SWITCHED-ON Observant lumps about to collar enchantress (8-2)
s(witch)edon, the sedon being (nodes)rev.
10 DAHL Writer‘s Bloom dropping empty idea (4)
dahl{i{de}a} — and there I was, trying to remember the Ulysses Bloom’s name. Molly I could remember but Leopold I had to check.
11 STREAM Burn recusant’s nose in scalding vapour (6)
st(r{ecusant})eam
12 ISOPRENE Hydrocarbon pioneers modified (8)
(pioneers)*
13 THAI Language teacher has again impressed beginners (4)
t{eacher} h{as} a{gain} i{mpressed}
14   See 7 Down
16 MARGUERITE Flower‘s one in row small child presses (10)
m(arguer)ite
19 RUBY Fortieth curry for Cockneys (4)
Ruby wedding, and Ruby Murray = curry, CRS
21 ADVANCES Strange case in which initially damaged vehicle proceeds (8)
a(d{amaged} van)ces, the aces being (case)*
23 SEA DOG Old sailor wants dosage adjusted (3,3)
(dosage)*
24 GOOF Work of genius this is not (4)
go of
25 ANDROMACHE Hectored wife and mother shoved into rotten chore (10)
and ro(Ma)che, the roche being (chore)* — I was prepared to accept that Andromache was a hectored wife in Greek mythology, but wasn’t really sure: however, this confirmed that it was the right answer although my thinking was out: she was Hector’s wife
26 IDOLATER Great admirer shows marriage promise subsequently (8)
“I do” later
27 ESTATE Possessions in French art gallery (6)
es (French for art as in ‘thou art’) Tate
Down
2 ON WATCH Tyler perhaps in Old Norse church keeping lookout (2,5)
ON (Wat) ch — ref Wat Tyler, a leader of The Peasants’ Revolt
3 DITHERING Indecisive woman introduces operatic epic (9)
Di The Ring — although it seems that many of those who do the Indy crossword have other tastes in music, I can’t believe that this needs elucidation
4 HO-HUM Mediocre little house with bad smell (2-3)
ho. hum
5 RED LINE Crooked lender accepting current political limit (3,4)
redl(I)ne, the redlne being (lender)* — I didn’t think that a red line was a specifically political limit, more a general one, and this is supported by Collins and Chambers, so I can’t quite see what ‘political’ is doing
6 CANTONESE Stock phrases individuals associated with eastern tongue (9)
cant [= stock phrases] ones E
7/14A UNDER THE WEATHER Subject to climatic conditions — suffering from cold? (5,3,7)
If you are ‘under’ the weather, you are being told what to do by the weather, or subject to the weather
8 ENHANCE Guys risk losing their heads to improve (7)
{m}en {c}hance — nice clue
14 TRENCHANT Vigorous number to sing about Romeo (9)
t(R)en chant
15 TERMAGANT Spitfire has course, range and theatre (9)
term [= course] Aga [= range] NT [= theatre]
17   See 20
18 INSIDER Clique’s member imprisoned at Dartmoor finally (7)
inside {Dartmoo}r
20/17 BLOW HOT AND COLD Winds may veer (4,3,3,4)
sort of 2 defs, one of them not really a def, more a CD
22 AWFUL Ugly and allowed to go topless (5)
{l}awful
23 SCONE Argument against dividing southeast Scots settlement (5)
S(con)E

*anagram

16 comments on “Independent 9,797 by Tees”

  1. Thanks Tees and John

    Straightfoward but entertaining – the biggest problem was entering THE WEATHER in 14a (some sort of software glitch).

    Political RED LINES have been in the news a lot recently with regard to Brexit, so it was what would spring to most minds.

  2. Thanks Tees, John

    Mostly straightforward, except for the same weird glitch, though I didn’t get MARGUERITE

    I liked GOOF particularly, otherwise TERMAGANT and ANDROMACHE favourites.

     

  5. We got it all but without being able to parse everything satisfactorily: in 3dn we saw the operatic epic simply as ‘ring’ which left us with ‘dithe’, possibly an indirect anagram (aarrgh!) of ‘Edith’ for ‘woman’; and we saw the letters of ‘range’ in 15dn and tried to figure out that TERMAGANT was an anagram of something.  We did wonder briefly, too, if 24ac might be ‘golf’ – but then the clue would have been a straight definition!

    We liked 10ac: we decided early on that the capitalisation of ‘Bloom’ was a misdirection but it took us a while to see DAHL – had we been looking for seven letters rather than four, though, we’d have seen ‘Forsyth’ immediately.

    Plenty more that we liked, including ISOPRENE and MARGUERITE.

    But we weren’t too happy with ‘vigorous’ as a definition for TRENCHANT, which really means ‘incisive’ or ‘cutting’ – it’s related to ‘trench’.  Chambers does give ‘forthright’ as one meaning, though, but even so we think ‘vigorous’ is stretching things a bit.

    Thanks, though, to Tees – and to John.

  7. I was too lazy to look it up, but I did wonder if ANDROMACHE was Hector’s wife. I was held up by this and MARGUERITE, both of which I found hard. I agree with allan_c @5 about TRENCHANT.

    The misdirection of ‘Writer’s Bloom’ in 10a and DOODAH for ‘ornament’ were my favourites today.

    Thank you to Tees and John.

  8. Well trenchant policies are ‘forthright’ or ‘vigorous’ even according to the paltry Chambers 21st, whilst proper Collins at 2 gives ‘vigorous and effective’, so I fear the setter is exonerated.

    I’m not sure I’d call this easy, but maybe Tees was more of a bastard a while back. That is to say even harder. Anyway, I liked this. Neat.

  9. An enjoyable puzzle with a bit of head scratching along the way. TERMAGANT opend the way to ANDROMANCHE who I assumed was a downtrodden Greek wife. I also struggled to enter THE WEATHER, and I have to admit to cursing at the screen! Another really annoying feature of the software is a tendency to switch unbidden to an advert while you’re selecting a square and then force you to sit through another advert while the puzzle is reloading. This happens far too frequently. Rant over. The snow came back today so I was in a bad mood to start with! HO HUM was my FOI and GOOF my last entry. Good stuff. Thanks Tees and John.

  10. Just to emphasise my point, when I switched back to my completed puzzle page, it had gone off to some other website pushing the benefits of some software or other. Grrhh!

  11. John D @9/10: Do you have an adblocker?  You may find that if you disable the adblocker while loading the puzzle initially, and then re-enable it that you can then do the puzzle without interference.  We don’t actually do it online – I print a copy but I find that the print function still works after re-enabling the adblocker.  My gripe about the software is that it can’t handle linked clues (e.g 7dn/14ac and 20/17 today) properly.

  12. Obviously no-one but me still watching Troy: Fall of a City on the beeb.  (And judging by the reviews, I might well be the only one still watching it.)  And I have read the Iliad so I knew who Andromache was.

    I needed to do word searches  for16ac and 22dn.  Apart from those, I found this to be a fairly quick solve.

  13. Have you seen Brad Pitt as Achilles? Well, anyway, Saffron Burrows was Andromache, that ‘Hectored’ wife, but, anyway. It’s quite a good film despite this, and the music is good.

    This was a very good puzzle, even despite not having a load of nonsensical ‘trendy’ cluing devices.

  15. No, not seen the Brad Pitt film  I’m more likely to see Andromache in Tippett’s King Priam.  In Berlioz’s Les Troyens, she becomes Andromaque.

  16. I too remember struggling more with Tees crosswords of old.  That’s not to say I didn’t have to think quite hard today.

    My last in was MARGUERITE.  But I then discovered that there was an error … which turned out to be that I’d put DOOF instead of GOOF (thought it seemed plausible, given doofus.  Should have checked that in the dictionary).

    OK, I am a goofus.  But I liked the clue.

    And the rest of it.  Thanks Tees and John.

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