Wire made his Indy debut in autumn 2018, and I was convinced that I had blogged one of his puzzles since, but I was mistaken. I thought this was a delight, with lots of inventive cluing and a wide variety of subject matter, which is always a plus point for me. Well done, that man.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Piece of tin object in the distance
FARTHING
A charade of FAR and THING. You need to consider ‘tin’ in its ‘money’ sense. A quarter of an old penny: its name derives from the OE word f?orða, a ‘fourth’ and it ceased to be legal tender on January 1st 1961. Those of us old enough will remember that the reverse had an image of Jenny Wren on it.
5 Fish-eater laying egg by small quarry
OSPREY
Talking of birds, here’s one and the chance for the obligatory Pierre bird link, which shows you that Wire’s description of it is certainly accurate. In the UK, their main stronghold is still in Scotland, and nationwide there are upwards of 200 breeding pairs. A charade of O for ‘egg’ (crossword convention #87), S and PREY.
9 Died by backing into landowner’s Beetle
LADYBIRD
An insertion of D and BY reversed in LAIRD. The reversal indicator is ‘backing’ and the insertion indicator is ‘into’.
10 Bring over shrimp or tuna sandwiches
IMPORT
Hidden in shrIMP OR Tuna.
12 Before flight pester poorly flier
TREE SPARROW
A charade of (PESTER)* and ARROW. The anagrind is ‘poorly’. My cup runneth over. The Tree Sparrow is shyer and rarer than the House Sparrow and suffered an astonishing 93 per cent decline between 1970 and 2008. Its numbers have recovered slightly since. The obligatory Pierre bird link shows its chestnut head and nape, which distinguishes it from its domestic cousin. Not to be confused with the Hedge Sparrow, which confusingly is not really a sparrow at all.
15 Cable carrier left bitten by heartless snake
PYLON
Wire is – in a slightly roundabout but perfectly rational way – asking you to replace the TH in PYTHON with L for ‘left’.
17 Parent circles pub, beginning to enter drunk state …
MINNESOTA
An insertion of INN, E for the first letter of ‘enter’ and SOT in MA. The insertion indicator is ‘circles’.
18 … we slither nervously past
ERSTWHILE
(WE SLITHER)* with ‘nervously’ as the anagrind. The ellipses between the clues can be ignored; they are just there to make sense of the surface reading across the two clues.
19 All sent one quiz, essentially it’s boredom
ENNUI
A charade of the middle letters (‘essentially’) of all the first three words: sENt oNe qUIz.
20 Smooth Conservative reclines in front of harbour
CLEAN-SHAVEN
A charade of C, LEANS and HAVEN.
24 Stockings worn by old Sugar
HEXOSE
An insertion of EX in HOSE, with ‘worn by’ as the insertion indicator. HOSE is an archaic word for ‘stockings’ (OE Hosa, related to Modern German die Hose for ‘trousers’ and retained in AmEng as ‘panty-hose’). A HEXOSE is a simple sugar with – as the name suggests – six carbon atoms. Glucose is a hexose.
25 Deplorable failing in aim to access credit line
CRIMINAL
An insertion of (IN AIM)* in CR and L. The anagrind is ‘failing’ and the insertion indicator is ‘to access’.
26 Rug from East Estonia is most dull
TAMEST
A charade of MAT reversed (‘from East’) and EST.
27 Around noon, yawners slipped home for a bevy
SWANNERY
An insertion of N in (YAWNERS)* The insertion indicator is ‘around’ and the anagrind is ‘slipped’. A ‘bevy’ is one of the possible collective nouns for swans. You know I can’t, because the bird is not the answer.
Down
1 Writer handled upset resident of 27
FELT-TIP PEN
A charade of FELT, TIP and PEN, who would be a female resident of a SWANNERY.
2 Wandering heifer ultimately not for the dairy?
RUDDERLESS
A charade of R for the last letter of ‘heifer’ and UDDERLESS, with a kind of extended definition.
3 The homeless lout really making a turnaround
HOBOS
A charade of HOB (definition 2 in my Chambers) and SO reversed.
4 Author‘s poster of a French region
NORMAN MAILER
Wire is whimsically suggesting that someone posting a letter in Normandy would be a NORMAN MAILER. The American author is perhaps best known for The Executioner’s Song as well as for having six wives, the second of whom he stabbed with a penknife and nearly killed.
6 Mark stops wee horse running to another place
SOMEWHERE
An insertion of M (for Mark, the old currency) in (WEE HORSE)* The insertion indicator is ‘stops’ and the anagrind is ‘running’.
8 Beast in range they say is still on top of ice
YETI
A charade of YET and I for the initial letter of ‘ice’.
11 Copies princess reportedly penned for her brother
PRINCE ANDREW
A homophone of PRINTS ANNE DREW, referring to the fact that Anne is Andrew’s older (and wiser) sister.
13 Agreed plan working on new vaccine
CONNIVANCE
(ON N VACCINE)*
14 Time on island in March with good reason
RATIONALLY
An insertion of T and IONA in RALLY.
16 Bulletins broadcast caws filling roosts
NEWSCASTS
An insertion of (CAWS)* in NESTS. The anagrind is ‘broadcast’ and the insertion indicator is ‘filling’.
21 Kind of sound intermittently faint
HUMAN
A charade of HUM and AN for the even letters of ‘faint’. HUMAN and ‘kind’ are synonymous in the ‘good-natured’ sense, I guess.
22/7 Tom in Paris maybe set up secure online space
CHAT ROOM
A charade of CHAT for the French word for ‘cat’ (a ‘Tom’) and MOOR reversed. The reversal indicator is ‘set up’, since it’s a down clue.
23 King mislaid crown before midday inspection
EXAM
A charade of [R]EX and AM.
Many thanks to Wire for this Sunday’s offering.
Thanks Wire and Pierre!
My first thought on HOBOS: reversal of ‘sob’ + ‘oh’ … Silly me!
Bit of a mixed bag for me but the good far outweighed the not so good. I particularly liked the clues for SWANNERY & LADYBIRD.
Interestingly, I parsed HOBOS as S Krishna @1. I think it works with SOB (son of a bitch) equating to “lout” and OH = “really” as an exclamation. Not that the explanation in the blog works just as well.
My dislikes (perhaps too strong a term) were the “homophone” at 11d, the use of “broadcast” in a clue for “newscasts”, the surface reading for 19a and, I feel, “kind” better equates to “humane” than “human” but it sort of works in the humankind sense.
I had nigh identical comments to Hovis above but I feel a little more strongly that 11d lets an otherwise excellent puzzle down.
After yesterday’s “Quarrel-gate” I’ve had enough of arrows to enjoy TREE SPARROW no matter how clever it is 😉
Plenty of other cleverness in here , the aforementioned LADYBIRD, plus NORMAN MAILER , HEXOSE (although a disturbing image of Lord Alan Sugar in stockings upset my flow) and CLEAN SHAVEN.
I quite liked the homophone in 11d
Must admit I struggled with the SW corner and needed quite a bit of help
Great Sunday fun, thanks to Wire and the always informative Pierre
I have to say 11dn quite made my day. À chacun son goût, as they say.
This is the first puzzle by Wire I’ve done and I enjoyed it and concur with Pierre’s intro and the comments above. I had lots of ticks for concise clues with smooth surfaces. I parsed HOBOS as others here and had an incorrect HOXOSE which I parsed as O and X=by in HOSE but see that apart from not being a sugar it doesn’t quite parse. Thanks to Wire for the puzzle – I’ll look out for more – and Pierre for the bird lovers blog. [I spent a few minutes watching a yellow wagtail gathering insects on my walk this morning.]
In reference to 11d, let me just add that I think prints/prince works fine in the old “someday my prints will come” joke but, I feel, in cryptic clues “reportedly” suggests a homophone and it just isn’t. Clearly for some, the humour makes up for this and for some it doesn’t quite do it.
Please excuse my ignorance.
Is prints not a homophone of prince? Or can we only say that they sound almost the same?
S Krishna @8. According to Chambers, a homophone is a word that is pronounced the same but is different in spelling and meaning. A common issue is that words can sound the same in some accents and not others. I find it hard to believe (but am often wrong in this regard) that anyone would pronounce these two words the same.
Thanks Hovis.
Given that the Windsors are originally German (Battenburg), I’d say that Prinz and Prints are pretty close.
I’ll get mi coat.
Nice one, SimonS ?
Worked slowly and steadily through this and got there in the end, all except for hexose, chemistry clues leaving me as blank as Tombsy says poetry clues leave her/him. Thanks to Wire and to Pierre. Going to try to find a cool place to recover in.
Meant to be Nice one, SimonS!
I found quite a lot of this harder than I should have done when I finally got the parsings from Pierre’s write up. 11D was one of those, so it’s a comfort to find I wasn’t the only one thinking there was no homophone. Not a big complaint though, lots of good cluing.
11d reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Otto the vampire newspaper photographer who used dark light and his Prints of Darkness….
I had no difficulty with the “sounds like” in 12d, but I was unimpressed with it having princess in the clue and prince in the answer.
11d