Witty entertainment from Tees. A few obscure words and names, but clearly clued.
1d has a rather tricky wordplay, and a couple of definitions are a bit loose, but otherwise the clues are well constructed. I particularly liked 22a for the appropriate surface and 14d for the misleading one, and laughed at 4d. Thanks to Tees.
Definitions are underlined; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| Across | ||
| 9 | OSTROGOTH | Old German forced to go short (9) |
| Anagram (forced) of TO GO SHORT. | ||
| 10 | EQUIP | Supply ecstasy and crack (5) |
| E (slang for the drug Ecstasy) + QUIP (crack = a joke). | ||
| 11 | NETIZEN | Spot round by north-east with space for dedicated surfer (7) |
| N[orth]-E[ast] + ZIT (spot = pimple) reversed (round) + EN (printing term for a specific width of space). Netizen = a portmanteau of “internet citizen” = someone actively involved in the Internet, though “surfing” is only one aspect of Internet activity in general. | ||
| 12 | WOE IS ME | Possibly wise move to drop very sorrowful expression (3,2,2) |
| Anagram (possibly) of WISE MO[v]E, dropping V (very). | ||
| 13 | INNER | Wife abandoning film director becomes intimate (5) |
| Michael WINNER without the W (wife). Intimate as in “inner circle”. | ||
| 14 | ETHIOPIAN | African one impressed by The Piano after editing (9) |
| Anagram (after editing) of THE PIANO, with I (one) inserted. | ||
| 16 | CHARGE D’AFFAIRES | Revised chief grade as far as diplomat (6,9) |
| Anagram (revised) of CHIEF GRADE AS FAR. | ||
| 19 | ESTAMINET | Shabby bar, unfinished property in which bomb found (9) |
| ESTAT[e] (unfinished property) containing MINE (bomb). A small bar in France, originally a place for workers to socialize; casual perhaps, but “shabby” seems a bit unnecessary. | ||
| 21 | BEBOP | Live dance music from Monk or Bird (5) |
| BE (live, as a verb) + BOP (dance). Jazz style, played by Thelonious Monk and Charlie “Bird” Parker among others. | ||
| 22 | OSBORNE | Dramatist carried on like this, looking back (7) |
| BORNE (carried) after (on) SO (like this) reversed (looking back). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Osborne, who (as the clue neatly suggests) wrote Look Back In Anger. | ||
| 23 | TRAILER | Advertisement that’s likely to be pulled? (7) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 24 | FREYA | French vote for returning divine female (5) |
| FR (French) + AYE (a yes vote) reversed (returning). Norse goddess. | ||
| 25 | EPITOMISE | Abstract poem, about to be dropped, is put in book (9) |
| EPI[c] (poem) with C (circa = about) dropped, then IS inserted into TOME (book). Epitome = a summary; epitomise = abstract, as a verb = to write a summary. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | CORN CIRCLE | Companies nursing sailors get round depression in field (4,6) |
| CO (company in the commercial sense) + CIRCLE (company in the sense of a group of people), around (nursing) RN (Royal Navy = sailors). Corn circle = crop circle. A bit tricky because “companies” = two different uses of “company”, and “round” is part of the definition rather than an insertion or reversal indicator. | ||
| 2 | STOTINKA | Decline to accept drink having answer ready for Bulgarian (8) |
| SINK (decline) containing TOT (drink) + A (answer, as in Q&A). Ready = slang for money; it’s 1/100 of a Bulgarian lev. | ||
| 3 | BOOZER | Escape when entering Old Railway Inn (6) |
| OOZE (escape) inserted into BR (British Rail, as it was known before being split into multiple private companies). Slang for a public house. | ||
| 4 | MOON | Heavenly body exemplified in Titania? Show Bottom! (4) |
| Double definition: Titania is the largest moon of Uranus, and “moon” = to expose one’s rear in public. Nice misdirection involving two characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who have nothing to do with the plot here. | ||
| 5 | CHEW THE FAT | Argue incessantly as Mistress Sprat liked to? (4,3,3) |
| Double definition: to talk at length, or from the nursery rhyme “Jack Sprat could eat no fat / His wife could eat no lean”. | ||
| 6 | DENEBOLA | Study deadly virus in a bright young dwarf (8) |
| DEN (study = private room) + EBOLA (deadly virus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denebola, a bright young dwarf star. | ||
| 7 | MUESLI | Use milk mostly in mixing cereal (6) |
| Anagram (mixing) of USE MIL[k] (mostly = last letter dropped). | ||
| 8 | APSE | Evil termination from sin in place in church (4) |
| LAPSE (sin), removing L (terminating letter of eviL). The semi-circular end of a church building. | ||
| 14 | ENDANGERED | Threatened goal with cross (10) |
| END (goal = target) + ANGERED (cross = angry). Nice misdirection in the surface. | ||
| 15 | NOSY PARKER | Interested party prone to tangle with Krays (4,6) |
| Anagram (tangle) of PRONE with KRAYS. Slang for a person who’s interested in something that’s none of their business. | ||
| 17 | GOMORRAH | Tailless school cat turned up in wicked place (8) |
| HARRO[w] (the boarding school, without its last letter) + MOG (slang for cat), all reversed (turned up, in a down clue). As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah. | ||
| 18 | RABELAIS | Writer upset one drink at pub, then second (8) |
| I (one) + ALE (drink) + BAR (pub), all reversed (upset = up in a down clue), then S (second). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais. | ||
| 20 | TABLET | Stone slab in battle ground (6) |
| Anagram (ground) of BATTLE. | ||
| 21 | BEACON | Guiding light to join Tories? (6) |
| BE A CON = be part of the Tory (Conservative) Party. | ||
| 22 | ORFF | Composer not wanting to secure run (4) |
| OFF (not wanting, as in “off one’s food”) containing R (run, in cricket abbreviations). | ||
| 23 | TWIG | Cotton on branch from tree (4) |
| Double definition: twig = cotton on = begin to understand something. | ||
It’s nice that, unlike elsewhere, the Independent has provided a challenging start to the week.
Didn’t know DENEBOLA but it was clued so that this was the obvious guess.
Can’t believe I have never seen 14d before. Such a wonderful clue.
Thanks to Tees and Quirister.
As Hovis says, a nice challenging start to the week – although I’ve definitely seen similar clues to 14d before
Thanks to Tees for waking up the cryptic grey matter and to Quirister for the blog
Unsurprisingly, I’m entirely with crypticsue again.
I was rather puzzled by ‘shabby’ in 19ac, too.]
Hovis @1 Yes I quite agree but I also know to expect a much better challenge from Tees who rarely disappoints. (I thought Vulcan’s offering last week was much better than this week’s).
I loved the clever and very simple 20d.
Thanks all.
Good challenge with lots of nice clues.
I particularly liked NETIZEN, OSBORNE, BOOZER, ENDANGERED and TABLET (had me looking for battle grounds for a while!)
Thanks Tees and Quirister.
Eileen @3 and Quirister; Collins for ESTAMINET: a small café, bar, or bistro, esp a shabby one
Thanks Robi. Maybe I’ll have to get a copy of Collins to go alongside my trusted Chambers. (Online dictionaries are OK but I prefer the paper version.)
Thanks, Robi – it isn’t in my old paper Collins and Chambers just has ‘a small bar or café’. [I remember seeing ESTAMINET painted on the roof of a bar in France, which is what made me query ‘shabby’.]
I only knew ESTAMINET because of some anti-Semitic lines by T S Eliot, which I shall not repeat here, but which do imply shabbiness.
We needed Chambers to confirm DENEBOLA and Google to discover STOTINKA but otherwise all was plain sailing.
Thanks, Tees and Quirister.
During my (regular) Norfolk rambling weekends – this time also including a wonderful gig from the UK’s foremost singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore – I started this Tees crossword but didn’t give myself enough time to finish it.
Because today’s Guardian offering was ridiculously easy and over before we finished our late afternoon coffees, we (my solving partner & I) had a go at what was left of PB’s puzzle.
A lot more satisfying (as Indy puzzles generally are, dare I say?).
I started with MOON (4d) and we ended with DENEBOLA (6d).
The parsing of CORN CIRCLES (1d) took more time than expected, and BOOZER (3d) and especially TABLET (20d) were two of the very best.
The only one I (yes, I) felt slightly uncomfortable with was BEBOP (21ac). Bebop can also be “dance (the bebop)” making “be” superfluous.
Ah well, perhaps I will see our beloved setter tomorrow at the Times event in London – a golden opportunity for him to tell me off! 🙂
Many thanks to Quirister & Tees.
As far as I know you can’t ‘dance the bebop’ because it isn’t a dance. And you can’t ‘bebop’ because it isn’t a verb. But you can dance TO bebop because it’s a noun (for a certain style of jazz).
Guinness please Sil. Thanks.
Thanks to Quirister and Tees
Very good but I’m confused about a couple of things:
14a How does “one impressed by (thepiano)* put the one inside?
3d Escape when entering Old Railway Inn
I don’t know what WHEN is doing. At it’s simplest the clue would read ESCAPE INTO OLD RAILWAY INN
ESCAPE WHEN ENTERING OLD RAILWAY INN does what?
Sil van den Hoek @11
Isn’t she just. I should be at the Union Chapel this evening but I couldn’t make it.
Dansar: for “impressed” in 14a, think of a press gang, forcing people into military service: “impressed” in this sense means captured. I hadn’t really thought about it, though, so thanks for prompting me to clarify it.
I agree the “when” in 3d isn’t strictly necessary, but I think it just about works. With some punctuation: “Escape, when entering Old Railway = Inn”. That translates into “OOZE, when entering BR, gives BOOZER”. It also provides a bit of deliberate misdirection by initially making the reader think of “escape” as a noun, when the solution (and your simpler version) requires it to be a verb.
Thank you for that. I didn’t know that IMPRESS and PRESS shared that meaning. I did look up IMPRESSED in my Collins before commenting but it only lists it as an adjective. I didn’t think to look up IMPRESS, but I now see that it gives it in the sense you say.
I do see what you are saying about ESCAPE etc, but for me it doesn’t work. It didn’t hold me up but it felt…… flabby
‘When’ used as discussed is pretty standard FYI. Or at least IMO.
Link words and formulae seem to vex folk to quite an extent, as well as provide setters with opportunities to enhance surfaces, but I’d defend ‘A when entering B = C’ from a cryptic-grammatical POV any day of the week.
Weep in Barbara’s bar
Azed says he’s sending you the tie.
Azed’s caught ripping off tin in beggar’s box – he’d probably only spend it on drink
One utterly disdains involving Azed as a sort of trope