Independent 10,576 by Phi

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It’s Phi-day again!

We worked our way through this puzzle fairly steadily, although we were held up briefly by entering DREAD for 18ac before realising, when we couldn’t figure out 14d, that we’d missed the rather obvious correct anagram solution. 10ac was our last one in.
As it is a Phi, we then started to search for a theme, as nothing leapt out at us during the solve. We were craftily misdirected by ‘Verdi’ at 26ac – not being into classical music, we wondered about a theme around his music, but electronic searches drew a blank.
Joyce then tried a search for WINTER JOURNEY (1ac / 4ac) and found that Franz Schubert wrote a song cycle based on 24 poems by Wilhelm Muller. Lo and behold, six entries feature in the titles of the poems in the cycle, as highlighted below. We learn something every day!

image of grid

ACROSS
1. Time of year to secure time in office? Not quite (6)
WINTER

WIN (secure) TERm (time in office) without the last letter or ‘not quite’

4. Trip negotiated corners, avoiding borders, in great pleasure (7)
JOURNEY

tURNEd (negotiated corners) without the first and last letters or ‘borders’ in JOY (great pleasure)

9. Row about good contender taking things seriously? (5)
TIGER

TIER (row) round G (good)

10. Lusty librarian getting laid possibly, keeping at home (9)
LIBIDINAL

LIB (librarian) + an anagram of LAID (anagrind is ‘possibly’) round or ‘keeping’ IN (at home)

11. Instrument picked up on the radio – unknown chap hogging most odd bits of radio (5-5)
HURDY-GURDY

A homophone (‘on the radio’) of HEARD (picked up) + Y (unknown) + GUY (man) round or ‘hogging’ RaDio (first two or ‘most’ odd letters of radio)

12. Talkative bird belonging to the writer recalled article (4)
MYNA

MY (belonging to the writer) + AN (article) reversed or ‘recalled’

13. Not trendy? Trendy? Just tell me! (3,4,2)
OUT WITH IT

OUT (not trendy) WITH IT (trendy)

16. Line in meals, perhaps, offering excessive supply (5)
FLOOD

L (line) in FOOD (meals perhaps)

18. Challenged about blocking father (5)
DARED

RE (about) in or ‘blocking’ DAD (father)

19. Face heading off frantic debate? (9)
DIALECTIC

DIAL (face) hECTIC (frantic) without the first letter or ‘heading off’

20. Staff comment on website? (4)
POST

Double definition

21. What China offers last boat after end of week at work (10)
FRIENDSHIP

END (last) SHIP (boat) after FRI (Friday – end of the week at work)

25. Daughter close to tears initially after sentimental stuff in farewell (9)
GOODNIGHT

D (daughter) NIGH (close) T (first or ‘initial’ letter of tears) after GOO (sentimental stuff)

26. Composer contributing to squalid revue after reflection (5)
VERDI

Hidden (contributing to) and reversed (after reflection) in squalID REVue

27. Engineers a little taken aback about company soldier, as before (7)
REDCOAT

RE (Royal Engineers) + TAD (a little) reversed or ‘taken aback’ round CO (company)

28. Disney film sees Australian following river into morass (6)
FROZEN

OZ (Australian) after R (river) in FEN (morass)

DOWN
1. Promise to support development of what will enshrine Conservative slogan (9)
WATCHWORD

WORD (promise) after or ‘supporting’ (in a down clue) an anagram of WHAT (anagrind is ‘development of’) round or ‘enshrining’ C (Conservative)

2. Germany supporting uprising in African country (5)
NIGER

GER (Germany) after or ‘supporting’ (again!) IN reversed or ‘uprising’

3. One’s first in library, possibly securing edition? On the contrary (5,4)
EARLY BIRD

An anagram of LIBRARY (anagrind is ‘possibly’) in or ‘secured by’ ED (edition) – not the other way round, or ‘on the contrary’

4. I will need place to rest after Judge scoffed (5)
JIBED

I + BED (place to rest) after J (judge)

5. Characters participating in round of Open (4)
UNDO

Hidden (‘characters participating’) in roUND Of

6. Child-minder to attack farm animal (5,4)
NANNY GOAT

NANNY (child-minder) GO AT (attack)

7. Conference venue at place that’s elevated (5)
YALTA

AT LAY (place) reversed or ‘elevated’

8. Nothing in promotional material he had turned up (8)
PLOUGHED

O (nothing) in PLUG (promotional material) + HE’D (he had)

14. Beat no longer, reaching edge of consciousness (9)
THRESHOLD

THRESH (beat) OLD (no longer)

15. Attempt to grab a waistcoat in America? It’s a farce (8)
TRAVESTY

TRY (attempt) round or ‘grabbing’ VEST (waistcoat in America)

16. Daring swimmer, note, circling water plant (4-5)
FREE-DIVER

FIVER (note) round or ‘circling’ REED (water plant)

17. Trick Duke: Queen not attending formal function (9)
DECEPTION

D (duke) rECEPTION (formal function) with the ‘r’ (queen) omitted or ‘not attending’

20. Prince about to get on alert system? (5)
PAGER

PR (prince) round AGE (get on)

22. Just clever to abandon Britain (5)
RIGHT

bRIGHT (clever) without or ‘abandoning’ B (Britain)

23. A measure of the frequency injuries featured on the radio (5)
HERTZ

A homophone (‘on the radio’) of HURTS (injuries)

24. Almost due to get data (4)
INFO

IN FOr (due) without the last letter or ‘almost’

 

15 comments on “Independent 10,576 by Phi”

  1. Phi at his easiest today. Not surprisingly, the theme was lost on me. The only solution I needed to check was YALTA.

    I thought the clue for EARLY BIRD was superb. Thanks to Phi and Bertandjoyce.

  2. Well done B&J on spotting that theme. I am into classical music but not Schubert’s song cycles. The top half went in like greased lightning, the bottom half like a tortoise on sedatives, for which I had to consult a word list to get restarted.  Thanks Phi and B&J.

  3. Well blogged, and well done to your alter egos Sherlock and Watson for tracking down the nina.  Phi is keen on his classical music, so why not?

    Pleasing puzzle as ever.  ‘When in doubt, follow the instructions’ ineluctably gets you there in the end with this setter.  YALTA always reminds me of the famous photograph of Winnie, Roosevelt and Uncle Joe sitting on the three chairs, so that one went in straight away.

    Thanks to Phi and good weekend to all.

  5. Well done to B&J for getting the theme – no hope for me. The clues themselves weren’t too difficult, though I didn’t associate THRESHOLD with ‘edge of consciousness’ and the parsing of HURDY-GURDY (good word) took some working out. Apart from this, my favourite was the initial impression conveyed by the surface for NANNY GOAT.

    Thanks to Phi and B&J

  6. Like Tatrasman I’m deeply into classical music, but not song cycles, so my heart sank on getting Winter Journey. But no worries – excellent cluing meant it didn’t matter that I didn’t recognise a single one of the song titles. Out with it! Made me smile. Thanks to all for xword and blog.

  10. This was one theme which we got (after finishing).  We saw WINTER JOURNEY and HURDY-GURDY and knew we’d got it – although we did have to check a couple of titles from the booklet with our record.

    But of course no knowledge of the theme was required to solve the puzzle, which we found a bit tricky in places.  We couldn’t parse JOURNEY, and took a long while to see some other parsings.  Very enjoyable, all the same.  We liked OUT WITH IT and HERTZ.

    Thanks, Phi and B&J

  12. I was listening to the new recording by Ian Bostridge and Thomas Ades and realised that the song titles, especially the one-word ones, could provide grid fodder.

    Not greatly into song cycles myself, but Winterreise is the one that always reminds me how ridiculous a stance that is.

  15. Wow, that was a struggle for me.

     

    I didn’t parse:

    Across – 1, 4, 21

    Down – 1 (mind numbed at this point), 7

    New words:

    19a, 7d

     

    Felt the same as WordPlodder @5 with regard to THRESHOLD. I obviously need to invest in a chambers dictionary and thesaurus.

     

    FOI I think was NANNYGOAT (not completely parsed initially)

    LOI – YALTA (one of my new words)

    CotD was HURDYGURDY which for me brought to mind Nigel Planer. (Probably revealing my age).

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