Independent 10,694 / Tees

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Tees has provided our cruciverbal entertainment this Thursday.

I found this to be a medium-difficulty puzzle that I made steady progress through. I solved all but the intersecting entries at 8 and 10 at my first attempt, but they too fell into place a few hours later when I sat down to blog the puzzle. I needed to check 15 and 23 in Chambers, since both were new to me.

In this inauguration week, it is hard to imagine that the clues at 16 and 27 found their way into the crossword by chance.

My favourite clues today were 13, for the definition part; 7 and 17, both for smoothness of surface; and 21/22D, for making me smile. I would appreciate other solvers’ take on the parsing at 28, where I am struggling to see why “monk” is in plural.

*(…) indicates an anagram; definitions are italicised; // separates definitions in multiple-definition clues

Across    
     
09 PARI PASSU Old man in French capital needs us back together

[PA (=old man) in PARIS (=French capital) + SU (US; “back” indicates reversal); pari passu means with equal pace, side by side, together
     
10 LLAMA Student teacher finds one chewing cud

L (=student, i.e. learner) + LAMA (=teacher, in Buddhism)
     
11 ANTIC Opponent behind Conservative prank

ANTI (=opponent) + C (=Conservative)
     
12 HIGH POINT Drunk having beer stays over memorable time!

HIGH (=drunk) + [O (=over, in cricket) in PINT (=beer)]
     
13 E-TAILER Net income one generates in refurbished atelier

*(ATELIER); “refurbished” is anagram indicator; the “net” of the definition refers to the “internet”, since e-tailers are online retailers
     
14 ECHELON Helen & Co changed formation

*(HELEN + CO); “changed” is anagram indicator
     
16 TRUMP Not completely genuine politician to win surprising victory?

TRU<e> (=genuine; “not completely” means last letter is dropped) + MP (=politician); the clue appears to be a cryptic definition to now former US President Donald Trump
     
18 HIP Really cool hospital given smallest cash amount?

H (=hospital) + 1P (=smallest cash amount, i.e. one penny)
     
19 RONDO Piece of paper on document

Hidden (“of”) in “papeR ON DOcument”; a rondo is a piece of music
     
21/22D JIGGERY-POKERY Gag from pen of Spooner? Line causing mischief

JIGGERY POKE (=spoonerism of piggery (=pen, sty) + joke (=gag, funny) + RY (=line, i.e. railway)
     
22 PREFECT Ideal to send back right person in authority

PERFECT (=ideal); “to send back right (=R)” means the letter “r” moves back towards the front of the word
     
24 RAINCHECK Artist controlled ticket for use in future

RA (=artist, i.e. Royal Academician) + IN CHECK (=controlled, reined in)
     
26 AMIGO Friend takes a minute with old soldier making retreat

A + M (=minute) + IGO (O=old + GI=soldier; “making retreat” indicates reversal)
     
27 IGLOO Current despondency endless in White House

I (=current, in electricity) + GLOO<m> (=despondency; “endless” means last letter is dropped); cryptically, an igloo could be described as a “white house”, i.e. one made of snow
     
28 EGREGIOUS Say 51 expelled by monks? Shockingly bad!

E.G. (=say, for example) + RE<li>GIOUS (=monks?; “51 (=LI) expelled” means letters “li” are dropped)
     
Down    
     
01 APPARENT Easy to understand dad backing mum?

AP (PA=dad; “backing” indicates reversal) + PARENT (=mum)
     
02 PROTEA Decay seen in small green vegetable and shrub

ROT (=decay) in PEA (=small green vegetable); protea is a genus of South African flowering plants, known as sugarbushes
     
03 APOCALYPSE Short ballad penned by a writer in World’s End

CALYPS<o> (=ballad; “short” means last letter is dropped) in [A + POE (=writer, i.e. Edgar Allan Poe)]
     
04 ESTHER Biblical beauty in Paris is that woman?

EST (=in Paris is, i.e. the French word for is) + HER (=that woman); in the OT, Esther was chosen for her beauty by a Persian king to be his queen
     
05 DUNGHEAP What animal, entering flat, turning up in squalid place?

[EH (=what?) + GNU (=animal)] in PAD (=flat, as in bachelor pad); “turning up” indicates vertical reversal
     
06 FLIP Alcoholic drink makes you go mad

Double definition: an e.g. egg flip is an alcoholic drink AND to flip is to go mad, go berserk
     
07 CARILLON Prisoner, holding a little flower, set to be hung in Tower

[A + RILL (= “flower”, stream)] in CON (=prisoner, i.e. convict); a carillon is a set of bells to be hung in a bell tower
     
08 BATTEN Go in with five by two strengthening strip

BAT (=GO IN, in cricket) + TEN (=five by two); a batten is a strip of metal or wood used to strength or fasten, as in to batten down the hatches
     
15 HORSELAUGH Hears ghoul moving around making raucous cackle

*(HEARS GHOUL); “moving around” is anagram indicator
     
17 UNGAINLY Awkward and lumbering in an ugly manoeuvre?

*(IN AN UGLY); “manoeuvre” is anagram indicator
     
18 HAY FEVER Complaint always loud in the Boleyn castle

[AY (=always) + F (=loud, i.e. forte, in music)] in HEVER (=Boleyn castle, i.e. the childhood home of Anne Boleyn)
     
20 OUTHOUSE Construction you once placed in river

THOU (=you once, i.e. an obsolete word for you) in OUSE (=river)
     
21 JERKIN American silly wearing sleeveless jacket

JERK (=American silly, i.e. a US term for an idiot) + IN (=wearing)
     
23 EPIGON Greek descendant’s animal discovered in vast geological age

PIG (=animal) in EON (=vast geological age); an Epigon is a descendant, especially of the Seven against Thebes
     
25 CHOP Grab when eating horse meat slice

H (=horse, i.e. heroin) in COP (=grab)
     
     

 

19 comments on “Independent 10,694 / Tees”

  2. I usually groan when Spooner comes up, but Jiggery-Pokery was brilliant. I didn’t like 13A because it seemed to me that ‘e-retail’ (which came up on a search) fitted better. Nor 28A because religious = monks didn’t work for me. But otherwise very enjoyable, so thanks Tees and RatkojaRiku.

  3. I agree with enjoyable – Tees always is – though there was a slight sense of deja vu about this one with a couple of bells ringing from the not so distant past. HIGH POINT in another puzzle yesterday, TRUMP from almost every other puzzle in the last four years, E-TAILER as a (very good) anagram of atelier, the regularly appearing AMIGO and the one – I’m sorry – for which our setter does deserve a small slap on the wrist – APOCALYPSE which he gave us in mid December with almost identical clueing (Short ballad a mysterious writer pens is revelation (10)). I wouldn’t have jumped straight to Calypso if I hadn’t recalled it.

    Otherwise, I’m in agreement with both our blogger and the comments to date re the delightful JIGGERY POKERY and the monk(s) though it didn’t stop me from getting the solution. Ticks for PARI PASSUS (a dnk but solvable from the instructions), HAY FEVER (I did allow myself to look up Anne Boleyn’s castle – a dnk), the clever RAINCHECK, the misdirectional definition in IGLOO, DUNGHEAP (I always welcome a GNU if an ELK is unavailable), the beautiful CARILLON and the surface/construction of JERKIN. LLAMA is delightfully defined – absolutely not the first cud chewer I thought of. I’m sure everyone has encountered the Ogden Nash verse but, just in case and given Tees has incorporated both versions of the word, here it is:

    “The one-l lama,
    He’s a priest.
    The two-l llama,
    He’s a beast.
    And I will bet
    A silk pajama
    There isn’t any
    Three-l lllama.”

    Thanks Tees and RR

  4. steady for me also… a few new words to me… of the knowns particular faves were 7dn n 20dn…
    re 28ac.. monks are religious as a group, but agree individuals are probably invested with similar behaviours…?
    thnaks Tees n RatkojaRiku

  5. The second crossword today where it know ‘words’. Another splendid Tees crossword, my favourite being 18d as I did once visit the castle while suffering from the complaint!

    Thanks to Tees and RR

  6. Hello, thanks Rat and all.

    Unfortunately for the English language, ‘religious’ can be a noun, i.e. a person bound by monastic vows. And the plural form is … religious! So ‘religious’ are ‘monks’: you just need to believe.

    Re APOCALYPSE at least you had a different definition. I am totes magnan.

    Tees.

  7. Jiggery-Pokery a really brilliant clue, thanks Tees.
    Thanks to Wiggly for the link. Never seen or heard of it before. Now I’ll have to watch all their clips.
    Thanks to Tees and RatkojaRiku.

  8. A clue where the answer is a similar word to one in the clue is usually thought of as rather weak, but with ‘lama’ not actually appearing in the clue 10ac is far from that – brilliant in fact; the best play on words between lama and llama we’ve come across. And we liked 21ac/22dn as well.
    The rest of the puzzle was pretty good, too .
    Thanks, Tees and RatkojaRiku

  9. Last Sunday, in the Everyman blog, ‘we’ had a discussion about the, for some, illogical use of ‘behind’.
    Today, there is something similar.
    How does “Opponent behind Conservative” lead to ANTI/C?
    Other than that, the usual excellence.
    Many thanks to RatkojaRiku and Tees (who got the better of me in 8dn).

  10. Sil @9: I’m glad you popped in with that. I knew there was one other query I had and couldn’t recall it when I posted earlier. A quick glance back over the solutions didn’t prompt. It doesn’t seem right. Unless there is some slightly tortuous implied punctuation/instructions. Opponent = ANTI. behind (that put) Conservative. could be it.

  11. I had the same question about “behind” (I have similar trouble with “on”). Personally, I think either indicator can be argued to lead to either word order. Is two behind three in counting order, or not? A very enjoyable puzzle, and I learned a new phrase at 9A.

  12. Alliacol, I thought of the same thing.
    When two people are walking from left to right, one after the other, then “A behind B” will mean AB.
    And if they walk the other way: BA.
    But then ‘behind’ doesn’t mean anything.
    In the aforementioned Everyman crossword we had “A B behind C” meaning ABC.
    Also, we’re entering a world in which the surface (imagery) takes over from the cryptic grammar.
    Take a random word, “Neo” – 🙂 – is N behind e …. ?

  13. E-tailer for me was excellent use of net income, also as per many above “jiggers-pokery” made me laugh when I got it. Personally – although it make it harder – I don’t have an issue with A behind B meaning either “A is behind B” or “A, and then following behind is B” in terms of English

    Thanks Tees (always allows me a way in) and RR for the ones I can’t parse

  15. Well, at first, I thought your idea might be it.
    However, I do not associate that kind of thing with Tees/Neo (as I know a bit about his views on setting).
    But then I remembered a similar thing from ‘a long long time ago’.
    In which our setter used something like “A chasing B” or the like (which, at the time, I didn’t grasp).
    Actually, I’m OK with either explanation but I don’t like the fact that ‘behind’ just seems to be a juxtaposition indicator and nothing more than that.

  16. Ah. You have insight beyond my ken, then. Since ‘discovering’ the Indy last year, Tees has been a consistent favourite but I can’t pretend familiarity with his views. (I do sometimes wonder – though it might be a bit stalkerish – if I should assemble a record of expressed views/history/preferences of setters and posters from Fifteensquared in order to have precisely such insight. Someone with the right computer skills could probably assemble it with ease)

  17. You have tempted me now.

    I’m using it (behindness) not because I am its originator (hardly ever the case with me) but because I’ve seen it somewhere else, and noted it down (rather than across). I think it must contradict ‘chasing’, but then if words go from left to right, in this one ANTI is in that particular respect ‘behind’ the C. That seems more logical, come to think of it, than C ‘chasing’ ANTI or whatever. Perhaps desperate compilers will do anything to create a surface meaning. The ‘on’ convention is just that, a convention, but so regularly used as to be indispensable, unless you are one of those real hip rogue types.

    Ts

  18. By logic, either end of the word can be at the front, because logic has nothing to do with it. By convention, either end of the word could be at the front, because a convention is artificial. Also, wordplay relies on treating words not as words but as objects, and an object doesn’t care which way it’s facing. But there is a convention (used by eg. dictionaries) that the letter at the left end of a word is the first letter in the word, which would naturally seem to make it the front. The fact that behind meaning ‘to the left of’ is puzzling suggests either that it is not the prevailing convention, or it is not a natural usage, or both. I think only the former, but isn’t a prevailing convention worth something?
    Sil, I think I used ‘chasing’, but I wouldn’t again.

  19. I know it’s far too late for anyone to be reading this (busy week, backlog of crosswords to get to), but I wanted to point out that as an American who uses and hears “jerk” frequently, I’ve never heard it used to mean “silly” or “idiot”– it means an obnoxious person, usually one who should know better.

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