Independent 10,745 by Shabbo

19 comments on “Independent 10,745 by Shabbo”

1. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed this. Always nice to complete a puzzle without cheats or references and parse everything satisfactorily. Perhaps a little tougher than usual for a Monday. Not sure I would have parsed 3d had I not seen it before.

   My favourite of the day was LATVIA which I felt was beautifully constructed.

2. 14a seemed a bit weak to me as a good double definition needs to have two very distinct meanings. But, that aside, this was an excellent puzzle – a lot of fun with great surfaces and lovely brief cluing.

   My podium choices are: UP IN ARMS, LATVIA and INCAN.

   Many thanks to Shabbo and to Quirister.

3. I wondered whether ‘THE GRAIN’ might stand for whisky as a whole, rather than specifically grain whisky. As in the phrase “don’t mix the grape and the grain”. Whilst the latter applies to beer as well, I’m sure I’ve heard whisky described thus. Unfortunately it’s difficult to research as the existence of grain whisky means any search of the two words in combination is swamped by references to it. All that said, I did enjoy the clue! Almost as much as I enjoy the grain. 😀

   Other ticks for CREDITOR, PARTY POLITICS, SWEAR and MAYBE. RHINO is COTD – I enjoyed the charging definition and remembered it could mean money – though I’ve never heard it used.

   Thanks Shabbo and Quirister

4. Strong deja vu having immediately beforehand competed the Times cryptic – identical answers in near identical location. Odd.

5. PostMark @3: yes, I think you’re right about “grain” as a general term for whisky. I’ll update the blog – thanks.

6. Morning all and thank you for your kind comments to date.
   mw7000 – I have just looked at today’s Times and you are absolutely correct. I can assure you that it is purely coincidental!

7. I’d only vaguely heard of PICOT, probably in past crosswords and even if it was meant as a general term for ‘whisky’, I still didn’t know the difference between GRAIN and malt whisky until your comment encouraged me to do a bit of digging – OK, a Google search anyway.

   Overall not too difficult, but ticks for many clues such as INCAN (I liked the parsing and it was good to see a ‘Native American’ from South America), the first part of the RHINO double def, the ‘Perhaps?’ def for MAYBE and the suggestion of a MINI as a ‘Fast car’ in LINIMENT.

   Thanks to Shabbo and Quirister

8. Enjoyed this, I appeared to being in the zone this morning as I amazed myself with some of them coming quite easily which was helped by the aforementioned straightforward clueing

   I recognised “saw” for what it was thanks to Proverb last week but didn’t know RHINO was a slang for money but lovely clue (after 10 mins of trying to get ALI in!) PICOT also news to me and thanks for the explanation of detailed..

   HOI POLLOI my favourite

   Thanks a lot to Shabbo and Quirister

9. Another most enjoyable puzzle from this setter, my personal favourites being INCONVENIENCE, INCAN, RHINO & MAYBE.
   Hope there are plenty more to come in the future, meantime thanks to Shabbo and to Quirister for the review.

10. A pretty straightforward solve which we completred without too much trouble. LOIRE took a while to parse, but in MAYBE we soon saw West = Mae and we liked the use of ‘perhaps’ as definition rather than its usual use in wordplay.
    Raised eyebrows, though, for no less than six answers with double unches, two of which had less than 50% checking.
    Thanks, Shabbo and Quirister

11. Hovis@1, my thoughts exactly. Especially after Tees puzzle yesterday. I got there basically unassisted and under an hour.
    Thank you Pierre, Jayjay, Tombsy et al for recently welcoming this novice and providing encouragement.
    Being In Australia, I’ve always bought the Sydney Morning Herald and often have a go at that newspaper’s puzzle, sometimes even shocking myself by completing it. You get to know each setter’s individual style and with the SMH they also start the week easy and build up. David Astle’s puzzle on a Friday is always a toughie.
    I remember regularly doing Cryptic Crosswords when I lived in the UK almost twenty years ago- some workmates and I would enjoy the Evening Standard puzzle over a few after work pints although I suspect that puzzle is not exactly considered ‘serious’ or even challenging. Bill the painter would solve most of it with just having the clues read aloud to him.
    My six years in Blighty gave me a wonderful insight into such useful things as London postcodes, Cockney rhyming slang, UK towns and counties, and so much more- and so it is nice to see these British flavours again. It’s a bit like watching the Chase, we have an Aussie version but the Brit version is better. Same applies to Mastermind for those of you who don’t get ITV!
    PS we’ve had old Dishy Rishy twice in the space of a week- what is it about this guy?

    Thank you Shabbo and Quirister.

12. Daren J @11: welcome from me too – it’s always good to see new solvers showing up here. And thanks too to Shabbo for dropping in.

13. Thank you Shabbo, I though this was excellent! my favourite is Rishi

    Thanks also Quipster

14. argh, that was autocorrect – Quirister of course!

15. I suppose the APRON of a golf green is a sort or border to the green. INCAN was my favourite.

16. Nice Monday… no real issues.. just enjoyable… thought the wine region might be Rhine until I read the clue properly.. I do like a Vouvray.. or a Muscadet come to that.. I liked Rhino!.. any one of the 3 separate description might have been enough.. sadly the actual definition was new to me..
    Thanks Shabbo n Quirister..
    Ps.. good to see u weren’t put off Daren J@11

17. Same thought about the somewhat same double definitions but have seen much worse offenders before. Not the hardest Indy but this really isn’t a bad thing. You really don’t want to discourage solvers all the time 🙂 . Thanks Shabbo and Q.

18. This was a great pleasure as I pecked away at it on the QT during a tedious (remote!) work meeting. Don’t let on though.

    I needed help with the parsing of MAYBE and LATVIA (I was tramlined into using “box” to surround a word, not as in TV), so especial thanks to Quirister. Also I had mistakenly and not wholly-confidently put ARRAN for APRON. An arran jumper does offer protection, but border… nah.

    It felt like a nice broad range of subject areas today, somehow – not sure why. Double dose of Rishi and saw = proverb recently.
    Big smile for LINIMENT.

    Thanks Shabbo and Quirister!

19. Shabbo’s fourth crossword for the Indy, and just as good (and enjoyable) as its predecessors.
    I needed the blog to understand what was happening in INCAN (no problem to get the answer, though).
    Today was the second time in a short while I came across the Suffolk town of Eye.
    I live more or less in the area, do/did a lot of walking in the countryside but I’d never heard of it (until recently)!
    I echo allan_c’s objections to a handful of clues that have ‘double unches’ (@10).
    Yesterday I made a similar comment at the Tees blog.
    The point is that ‘double unches’ plus ‘less than 50% checked’ is a kind of no-no in Crossworland.
    There were four of them today (not two, as allan says), although 1ac and 30ac are sort of OK-ish because of their length.
    However, 16dn and 8dn are odd, starting respectively ending with two unchecked lights.
    Funny to see this happen two days in a row.
    But apart from this, a very good crossword for which thanks to Shabbo.
    Many thanks to Quirister for blogging.

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