Independent 10,673 by Vernon

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This is Vernon’s first appearance in the Independent, I believe. It’s not an easy puzzle, but there’s plenty to enjoy.

There are some obscure words (especially 15a and 23a), and some slightly complicated constructions. I really enjoyed the surfaces – especially 11a, 25a, 13d. Vernon also misleads us with two clues that seem to be about football but aren’t, and then two genuine cricket references.

I think my New Year’s Resolution for 2021 needs to be “always look for themes and Ninas while doing the puzzle, not afterwards”, because if I’d done that it might have made things easier. The children’s author Beatrix Potter appears along the top and right edges, and a few of her characters are hiding in the grid: Samuel WHISKERS, Pigling BLAND, Two Bad MICE, the TAILOR of Gloucester, SQUIRREL Nutkin, and Jemima Puddle-DUCK. (I’ve looked long and hard for Peter Rabbit but I can’t find him. No doubt someone will comment if I’ve missed any others.)

Thanks very much to Vernon – and (if I’m right) congratulations on your first Indy puzzle.

Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

image of grid
ACROSS
8 BRITON UK citizen leaving centre of South Coast town (6)
BRI[gh]TON (town on the south coast of England), leaving out the central two letters.
9 OCEANIA Once a strange island by American continent (7)
Anagram (strange) of ONCE A, then I (island) + A (American).
The definition of a continent varies, but if you’re thinking of regions of the world rather than just land-masses, the one that includes Australia can be called Oceania.
10 SARI It’s State Dress? (4)
SA (abbreviation for sex appeal = “it”) + RI (abbreviation for the US state of Rhode Island).
11 INTERNSHIP Bury extremes of naughtiness in learning situation (10)
INTER (bury) + the end letters (extremes) of N[aughtines]S + HIP (in = fashionable).
A period of work experience within an organisation.
12 WHISKERS Very small amounts of facial hair (8)
Double definition: the first as in “missed the target by a whisker”.
15 IGNARO Sign by a road’s contents: illiterate, perhaps (6)
We’re expected to put SIGN next to (by) A ROAD, and then take a hidden answer (contents) from it: [s]IGN A RO[ad]. The superfluous “by”, presumably there for the surface, makes this harder than it might otherwise be.
To make matters worse, the definition is an unfamiliar word (archaic, according to Chambers). It means “an ignorant person” – who might also be illiterate, though the two aren’t necessarily equivalent, hence “perhaps”?
16 ARES Barest essentials needed for superhuman being (4)
Essentials (the middle of the word, omitting the outer letters) from [b]ARES[t].
The Greek god of war, corresponding to the Roman god Mars.
18 BLAND Belgium win – boring (5)
B (abbreviation for Belgium, in vehicle registration codes) + LAND (as a verb = win, for example “they landed a lucrative deal”).
19 EYOT Eastern play about small island (4)
E (Eastern), then TOY (as a verb = play) reversed (about).
A small island in a river, also spelled “ait”.
21 MATURE In essence first character goes back to the previous season (6)
NATURE (essence), with the first character going one place back in the alphabet from N to M.
Season (as a verb) = mature = improve with age, as in “seasoned timber”.
23 POWER SET Poster we knocked up to illustrate mathematical concept (5,3)
Anagram (knocked up) of POSTER WE.
Not a familiar phrase (I last studied maths more years ago than I’m going to admit), and I had to ask Wikipedia what it meant. But easy enough to guess from the wordplay and a couple of crossers.
25 BEAR GARDEN Rowdy gathering – accept danger’s involved (4,6)
BEAR (accept, as in to bear one’s punishment) + anagram (involved = complicated) of DANGER.
Once a venue for the “sport” of bear-baiting; now a metaphor for a disorderly assembly.
28 MICE Mechanisms inputting computer electronics, primarily (4)
First letters (primarily) of M[echanisms] I[nputting] C[omputer] E[lectronics].
Clue-as-definition, though grammatically a bit suspect: a mouse is a mechanism for inputting data to computer electronics.
Anyone who solves the Everyman puzzles regularly will be very familiar with this clue construction.
29 ELEGIAC Legacies largely corrupt – sad (7)
Anagram (corrupt) of LEGACIE[s] (largely = all but the last letter).
Elegiac = having the nature of an elegy (lament for the dead), so loosely “sad”.
30 TAILOR Follow or adapt (6)
TAIL (as a verb = follow) + OR.
Tailor = adapt = change something to meet specific requirements.
DOWN
1 BREATHER Almost destroy the right lung (8)
BREA[k] (destroy; almost = all but the last letter) + THE + R (right).
As in “a thing that breathes”, though I can’t imagine the word being used to mean “lung”.
2 ETHICS Raise second quote about hard philosophical investigations (6)
S (abbreviation for second) + CITE (quote), containing (about) H (hard, as in 2H pencils); all reversed (raise = upwards, in a down clue).
3 ANTI Opposition recruit Napoli’s centre back (4)
Hidden answer, reversed (centre, back) in [recru]IT NA[poli].
Opposition and the prefix anti- have related meanings, but I can’t think of an example where one could be substituted for the other.
4 TO A T Ideally miss the middle parts of Top Hat (2,1,1)
TO[p h]AT, missing the middle two letters. The surface refers to the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers film.
“To a T” = perfectly or exactly, as in “That hat suits you to a T”.
5 REAR WINDOW I wonder about including violent war film (4,6)
Anagram (about = scattered) of I WONDER, including another anagram (violent) of WAR.
Not a war film, but the Hitchcock thriller.
6 IN A SENSE At home, a sight? Possibly (2,1,5)
IN (at home) + A + SENSE (such as sight; the ? indicates a definition by example).
“In a sense” = in some ways, but not exactly. “Possibly” = perhaps, or perhaps not. Are they equivalent? In a sense? Possibly.
7 XAVIER A number in Germany supporting Mark, rejecting St Francis (6)
A + VIER (German for the number four = “number in Germany”), after (supporting = holding up = below, in a down clue) X (mark, rejecting = a mark to indicate rejection; that’s clever).
St Francis Xavier, saint from Navarre, northern Spain – as distinct from a number of other saints called Francis.
13 EMBLEMATIC Even most boffins at first rubbished climate representative (10)
Initial letters (at first) of E[ven] M[ost] B[offins], then an anagram (rubbished) of CLIMATE.
Emblematic = characteristic (adjective) = representative.
14 SHARP Accidental piercing (5)
Double definition: the first is the musical term for a sign that changes the pitch of a note, either upwards (sharp) or downwards (flat).
17 SQUIRREL Parisian who wanders about gathers large hoard (8)
ERRS (wanders), reversed (about), containing (gathers) QUI (French for “who”, so “Parisian who”), then L (large). That took some working out.
Squirrel, as a verb = hide something away = hoard.
20 OVERCOOK Balls bowled by doctor do too much (8)
OVER (in cricket, a series of balls bowled by a single bowler) by COOK (as a verb = doctor = falsify, as in “cooking the books” = false accounting).
22 A LEVEL A grade from this? (1,5)
A + LEVEL (grade).
Clue-as-definition: “A Level” = Advanced Level (final examinations in school), with results graded A – E: an “A grade” used to be the best, though they’ve now introduced A* to indicate something even better.
24 REMAIN Stay on – most important (6)
RE (on = on the subject of) + MAIN (most important).
26 DUCK Avoid utter failure at the crease (4)
Double definition: to get out of the way of something, or cricket slang (at the crease = batting) for being given out without scoring any runs.
27 NOTE At first extreme weight held up fame (4)
First letter of E[xtreme] + TON (weight), all reversed (held up = upwards in a down clue).
As in “a performer of note” = a famous performer.

 

25 comments on “Independent 10,673 by Vernon”

  1. Spotted the Nina and the theme right at the end as an afterthought. I got but failed to parse SQUIRREL though I had all the elements but didn’t manage to get my head around the instructions in the clue.

    Congratulations to Vernon on a first outing which produced a mixture of some I really liked – INTERNSHIP, BRITON, REMAIN (I felt those two were linked), TAILOR and BEAR GARDEN – and some that left me cold – I’m not sure I equate ETHICS with philosophical investigations in 2d or BREAK with destroy in 1d. I couldn’t make sense of the rejecting in XAVIER until I came here and I didn’t like the device leading to IGNARO. So a bit of a curate’s egg for me.

    Thanks Vernon and Quirister

  2. Certainly tricky in places. Fortunately, I’m a retired mathematician and so POWER SET was easy peasy for me. IGNARO needed dictionary help and I needed google to confirm XAVIER (the nina certainly helped there).

    I found out a while ago, from watching Countdown, that the plural of “mouse” in the computer sense can also be “mouses”. Haven’t checked which dictionaries have this but, presumably, the OED does.

    Wasn’t mad keen on the definition for “breather”. Interesting to note that it can mean “break” in a different sense to that used.

    Thought the clue for A-LEVEL was a bit weak. MATURE took me ages and was my loi. Had to take a break/breather and come back to get that one.

    Thanks to Vernon and Quirister.

  3. Found this one difficult and ended up here to explain a few I’d got from the single clueword alone (Sari – it(‘s)=Sex Appeal=SA I’d have never ever worked out). Xavier I didn’t get (but from reading this I now know about Nina’s!) Also Mature and Ignaro beat me – I got Elegiac by brute force! Enjoyed it looking back but maybe not at the time! Thanks for your help and thanks to Vernon

  4. I’m in the curate’s egg camp. I couldn’t parse IGNARO and, now I’ve seen the explanation, I think it’s a poor clue leading to a very obscure answer. For me, A LEVEL, MICE and BREATHER were iffy.

    On the positive side, I really liked TAILOR, BEAR GARDEN (I nearly put BEER GARDEN using the checking letters!), XAVIER (as an aside, why do we use a cross to make the candidate we want to vote for on a ballot paper?) and REMAIN.

    Unusually for me I spotted the Nina and the theme.

    Thanks to Vernon and Quirister.

  5. A regular Guardian solver, I only rarely dip in to the Independent, but today I was glad I did: a really satisfying combination of Nina, theme words, and elegant cluing all through. And evidently it’s a first puzzle on the site by Vernon, who I hope has a long career ahead of him (or her? – names can be misleading, as with Imogen, male setter for the Guardian). Many thanks, also to Quirister.

  6. RD @4: have just returned from a snowy dog walk, a chunk of it spent pondering the very point you make that an X in voting terms is a mark of choice or approval rather than rejection. It’s not a complaint, though; an X is fairly described as a ‘mark rejecting’ which it certainly can be.

  7. thanks for a much needed New Years resolution Quirister! too late for today sadly… found top R corner tough.. was disappointed to find that IGNARO has been in usage since Spenserian times and derived from an italian n latin word that i actually know..
    thanks Vernon n Quirister

  8. Thinking about 22d, has any setter used the play “All About Eve” to clue this? Seems an obvious clue (albeit pretty simple) but I’ve never seen it or the play.

  11. Hovis, I’ve seen this clue within the last 6 weeks:
    Film A-level? (3,5,3)
    I think it was a Rookie Corner puzzle at Big Dave’s, but can’t find which

  12. James @11. I misremembered that it was in the Telegraph. It was indeed the Rookie Corner puzzle a week ago composed by Acnestis.

  13. Quite a debut from Vernon. Too good for me, failing on XAVIER and IGNARO and with plenty of others unparsed. Not spotting the theme and Nina didn’t help.

    Look forward to more.

    Thanks to Vernon and to Quirister

  14. I made this harder for myself by entering SHAVINGS at 12a, which fitted the clue and then matched two of the crossers. 2d eventually put me straight. Would not have got IGNARO without the nina.
    Thanks Vernon and Quirister

  15. Thanks Rabbit Dave and James. A much better clue going from A-LEVEL to ALL ABOUT EVE. It amazes me how many crosswords some solvers manage to fit in. I do the GiFT crosswords (except for some specials) and occasionally delve into a book of Times cryptics and find that more than enough.

  16. A very mixed bag for me and I failed on both XAVIER and IGNARO despite having registered the possibility of a Nina. I also fell down on the parsing of a few – SARI being one of them.
    I did like TAILOR and REMAIN but think overall that this one belongs on my mental list of ‘setters who try too hard’.
    Thanks and apologies to Vernon and many thanks to Quirister, particularly for help on the parsing front.

  17. After getting a few answers quickly I struggled with this one, but in many respects being my own worst enemy, forgetting SA = IT, that EYOT is a word I’ve seen before, taking ages to see DUCK and not thinking of WHISKERS as facial hair. I have a maths degree, but hadn’t heard of power sets though worked it out quickly.
    Re 16A Am I right in thinking there’s some controversy over whether “essential(s)/(ly)” can be used for more than the middle letter or two letters of a word? It did throw me that it was used for all but the first and last letters. (Not complaining, just asking for guidance)

  18. Sheepish @17: you’re right, “essentially” normally means the middle letter (or two letters of an even number). Personally I’ve never liked this construction: in what sense is RE a more “essential” part of BAREST than the other letters, particularly the initial letter? But it seems to be accepted as a crossword convention. I can’t remember other cases where it’s used for more than two letters, though, and I agree it’s pushing the boundaries a bit.

  19. Like others found this clever, but spoilt by ignaro as an extremely obscure word ungettable from the very weak clueing. Maybe if I’d seen the Nina but I never do!

  20. Welcome to the Indy setters Vernon.

    We found this tricky too. We spotted the nina which enabled us to solve XAVIER. Some clever clueing but a few maybe just a bot too clever – IGNARO for example – not the most common of words to solve with difficult parsing.

    Thanks Quirister and Vernon.

  21. Thanks to everyone who has commented and also to Quirister for the nice blog.

    It seems that the clue that by far the most were unhappy with was the IGNARO one, and the critics were justified. A difficult word, so make it an easy clue, I said. A hidden, perhaps. But I just couldn’t get ‘sign’ and ‘a road’ to be next to each other, hence the ‘by’, which seemed a very simple juxtaposition, but in retrospect only if you read it as such. You might say I could have had ‘Sign a road displays: illiterate, perhaps’, but I didn’t like this: it should be ‘Sign a road displays this: ill…’. Quite apart from the fact that it isn’t what is meant (the sign is doing the displaying, not the road) No doubt someone will come up with a perfectly good suggestion.

    The MICE clue was not entirely satisfactory: Q criticises it, saying that a mouse inputs data to computer electronics. Yes right, but that data is surely itself electronic.

    I’m not sure everyone appreciated the A-LEVEL clue fully. It can be read as a grade as the result of taking the exam or as an A grade as the result of taking the exam. That strikes me as OK.

    Yes the ARES clue was possibly stretching things a bit. As Q says@18, the convention is that ‘essential(ly/s)’ refers to the middle one or two letters, but why? And I agree.

  22. Vernon, thanks for dropping in. I should say again that I did enjoy this puzzle, even with the few rough edges mentioned. Looking forward to your next one.

  24. Congratulations to Vernon on a fine debut! I would not have finished this without the nina, which I only noticed after having given up on Xavier, ignaro and eyot. I was sure that ignaro had to start with IGN but couldn’t make the hidden work and did not know the word, despite obviously being one myself.

  25. Don’t see anything wrong with ARES. I take essentially to mean take such a number of letters as leaves the remaining letters, before and after the “essential” ones, both being of the same count.

    Therefore, I see no problem with the middle/”essential” letters being limited to any prescribed number.

    Very enjoyable crossword, thanks and congratulations to Vernon, thanks to Quirister for the blog.

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