Independent 10,893 by Phi

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A Phiday challenge from our regular setter.

There were a couple of iffy definitions and one very clumsy surface today – noted below. But on the positive side I liked the anagrams and surfaces in 13a and 8d, along with 4d (another good surface), 18a (clever misdirection in the definition) and 19d (obvious toilet humour, but it made me laugh).

There’s often a theme in Phi puzzles, though sometimes it’s a very obscure one. I can’t see anything obvious here. Thanks Phi as always.

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

ACROSS
6 CHERISH
Love following the example of US singer/actor? (7)
Following the example of the US singer/actor Cher = CHER-ISH? If you must.
8 BALDRIC
Sash worn, mostly decorated (7)
BALD (worn, as in an old car tyre or perhaps a well-loved teddy-bear) + RIC[h] (decorated?), without the last letter (mostly).

A belt worn diagonally across the shoulder like a sash, typically as part of military uniform.
10 ALBUM
Recording almost entirely worthless (5)
AL[l] (entirely), without the last letter (almost), then BUM (worthless).

A musical recording.
11 TRAUMATIC
Starts to turn ravaging, without intervention dropping to upsetting (9)
Starting letters of T[urn] R[avaging], then AU[to]MATIC (without intervention) dropping TO. If you have any idea what the surface is supposed to mean, feel free to tell me, because I haven’t.
12 LOWLY
Subordinate not quickly losing head (5)
[s]LOWLY (not quickly), losing the first letter (head).
13 ORGAN PIPE
Orange pip blown about in St Paul’s Tube? (5,4)
Anagram (blown about) of ORANGE PIP.

Cryptic definition: St Paul’s Cathedral in London has a rather large pipe organ, whose pipes could be called tubes (though I’m not sure whether anyone would). The surface of course suggests the nearby Underground (Tube) station.
15 COOK ONE’S GOOSE
Seal fate: explorer soon goes travelling east (4,4,5)
COOK (Captain James Cook = explorer) + anagram (travelling) of SOON GOES + E (east).

To say someone’s “goose is cooked” means that their fate is sealed = they can’t escape whatever is coming to them. I think I’ve only ever seen this phrase in the passive form.
18 ROMANY RYE
Borrow book? French novel you once observed to be about railway (6,3)
ROMAN (French word for “novel” = a book), then YE (old form of “you” = “you once”) around (about) RY (abbreviation for railway). The “observed to be” makes the surface work but doesn’t add anything to the wordplay.

The Romany Rye = a novel by George Borrow.
19 POLKA
Old man restraining people heading off for a dance (5)
PA (old man = colloquial terms for father), containing (restraining) [f]OLK (people) without its first letter (heading off).
21 PUBLISHER
Bar quiet during story by Republican newsman (9)
PUB (bar = drinking establishment), then SH (as a command, sh! = quiet!) inserted into (during) LIE (story), then R (Republican).

The owner of a newspaper.
24 ROBOT
Ostensibly the Mechanical Turk’s Rook also retracted, pinning Bishop (5)
R (abbreviation for rook in chess notation), then TOO (also) reversed (retracted), containing (pinning) B (abbreviation for Bishop).

The chess-playing surface is entirely appropriate here. The Mechanical Turk was a late 18th-century device that purported to be a chess-playing automaton (robot), but was in fact operated by a person hidden inside it.
25 ROCKS UP
Appears, needing drink after shock (5,2)
SUP (drink) after ROCK (shock, as a verb = give an unpleasant surprise to).

Appears in the sense of “arrives”.
26 FLANEUR
Tart on side of Parisian street recalled French idler (7)
FLAN (tart), by the side of RUE (street in French) reversed (recalled).

Flaneur = French word, assimilated into English, for someone who strolls around in public at leisure.
DOWN
1 SCRAWL
Quickly write section on swimming stroke (6)
S (abbreviation for section) before (on = above, in a down clue) CRAWL (swimming stroke, usually called freestyle by those who do it as a competitive sport).
2 DISMAY
Time to suppress belief and sadness (6)
DAY (time, as in “in my day . . .”) containing (to suppress) ISM (suffix indicating belief in something).

Dismay, as a noun = sadness resulting from disappointment or anxiety.
3 WHET
Encourage moderate Tory about heroin (4)
WET (Thatcher-era term for moderate Conservative politicians who didn’t like their party’s hard-line policies), around H (slang abbreviation for heroin).

As in “whet one’s appetite”.
4 FLAMENCO
Email rude comments on sergeant’s dancing (8)
FLAME (as a verb = slang term for making abusive comments in an email, or these days more usually on social media or in response to a blog post) + NCO (non-commissioned officer, who may be a sergeant).

Spanish dancing.
5 FRET
Search disposing of Queen’s concern (4)
F[er]RET (as a verb = search determinedly), disposing of ER (the Queen).

Fret, as a verb = concern = cause [someone] to be worried.
7 ELBOW-ROOM
More black wool tangled in space (5-4)
Anagram (tangled) of MORE B WOOL, where B is short for black.
8 BEAU GESTE
Adventure novel unexpectedly about geese, nothing less (4,5)
Anagram (unexpectedly) of AB[o]UT GEESE without the O (zero = nothing).

Adventure novel by P. C. Wren about three brothers who join the French Foreigh Legion.
9 CACHET
Distinctive stamp long observed in court (6)
ACHE (long, as a verb = yearn) in CT (abbreviation for court).

Cachet = an identifying stamp or seal.
13 OWNERSHIP
Possession? Last of men in his power at sea (9)
Last letter of [me]N in an anagram (at sea) of HIS POWER.
14 INSOLUBLE
What this is until it isn’t? (9)
Cryptic definition, but not a very convincing one. An “insoluble” crossword clue suggests one that is impossible to solve, for example because there’s a mistake in it. A clue that I haven’t solved yet is “unsolved”, but that doesn’t make it insoluble.
16 KINKIEST
Flying kites filled with writing material – most abnormal (8)
Anagram (flying) of KITES, filled with INK (writing material).
17 PROPER
Bishop half-throttled by his superior? That’s right (6)
RR (Right Reverend = title for a bishop), with the first R (half of it) contained in (throttled by) POPE (the bishop’s superior, if he’s a Catholic bishop).
19 PORTAL
Opening place to go for pop festivals? Loves to get away (6)
PORTAL[oo] (a temporary toilet = “place to go”, a standard feature of outdoor music festivals), with OO (zero = love in tennis scoring, so OO = loves) removed.
20 ARTERY
Queen avoiding area linked to unknown highway (6)
[qu]ARTER (area, especially an area within a town or city), without the QU (short for queen), then Y (mathematical symbol for an unknown quantity).

Artery (or arterial road) = a major road that connects to a motorway = highway.
22 BECK
Attractive gesture current in the North (4)
Double definition. A gesture to attract someone’s attention (as in “at someone’s beck and call” = ready for their command); or Northern English dialect for a stream.
23 RIFE
Ransack, tossing lire all over the place (4)
RIF[l]E (ransack), without the L (lire = currency unit in Turkey and elsewhere, and formerly in Italy).

11 comments on “Independent 10,893 by Phi”

  1. Didn’t have any issue with the surface for 11a. Someone who is thinking of ravaging then, without anyone intervening, simmers down to thoughts of just upsetting.

    14d doesn’t work for me either.

    Never heard of ‘rocks up’ and entered the, to me more plausible answer, “turns up”, so failed to get 17d or 22d.

    Never been too convinced with the legitimacy of dropping definite or indefinite articles from a book’s title, as in 18a. What do others think?

  2. Thanks Phi and Quirister,

    I have to agree about about the surface to TRAUMATIC, although I did find the wordplay satisfying. I rather liked CHERISH it was particularly groan-worthy. On INSOLUBLE my first thought was also unsolved, but it had to be similar to that so was easily gettable with a few crossers.

    I can’t detect a theme today but that’s nothing new.

    On a different but related point. The indy’s library people came up trumps and furnished me with a copy of Phi’s Terry Pratchett themed crossword from many years ago. (Thanks to Postmark for the info) I can now claim I once got all the themed answers in a Phi! Probably never happen again.

  3. Thanks both. Some really clever stuff here; my reservations are similar to those of the others, adding in the ‘roman’ element of 18, where I am never too sure how obscure a word we should allow when diving into a foreign language

  4. Good offering from Phi today with few easy ones and some tricky parsing. I liked the wordplay for CHERISH and the two means of committing regicide at 5d and 20d. Had no idea about ROMANY RYE which went in from wordplay alone. I finally saw how PROPER worked, after initially wondering where the final R came from. Incidentally, I parsed it as the first of the two R’s which is ‘…throttled by’ POPE.

    Needed a good sleep to finish off the NE corner, BALDRIC being one of those words I had seen before but had long forgotten and F(ER)RET for ‘search’ was only thought of after solving from the def.

    Thanks to Phi and Quirister

  5. When I discovered there are ORGAN PIPES called ROMANY, and a Bishop BALDRIC who seems to pop up as a lover of the instrument, I wondered if I’d found an elusive Phi theme but it wasn’t to be.

    WordPlodder @4: PROPER was one my bigger ticks today – clever device

    Hovis @1: if you search Google Books for the phrase ‘rocks up’ there are loads of entries – possibly a bit of a US slant to the usage. (Apart, that is, from the entries along the lines of “the ship sailed on towards the rocks up ahead” …)

    Blah @2: delighted you found that puzzle and congrats on romping to a conclusion!

  6. Another TURNS UP here. I was so pleased to get the George Borrow, I forgot about the definite article. Lavengro helped inspire my love of languages.

  8. Hovis @1 & petert @6 – I was also slowed up by the TURN in 25a and had to eat humble pie when my CROPS UP failed too. Yes I know a crop isn’t exactly a shock but it is at least hair.

  10. We were nearly floored by 25ac, but realised we must be wrong when although ‘burn’ fitted one definition of 22dn it didn’t fit the other – and that cleared the way for us to get 17dn as well. And we cou;ldn’t parse FRET till we came here.
    Trickier than some of Phi’s puzzles, we thought, but none the worse for that. Favourite was FLAMENCO.
    Thanks, Phi and Quirister.

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