Independent 10,945 by Eccles

by

We are back on duty this Wednesday and pleased to be blogging an Eccles puzzle again.

Smooth surfaces and several smiles along the way – just what we like about Eccles’ puzzles. As usual, plenty of great clues today, but 12ac was our favourite. The only clue we weren’t too happy about was 9ac – which we thought was well below Eccles’ normal standard which did not have a good surface in our opinion.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. European city? Very European city (6)
VENICE

V (very) E (European) NICE (French city)

4. Cheered as rude tales partly rejected (6)
ELATED

Hidden and reversed (‘partly rejected’) in ruDE TALEs

9. Mould stum? (4)
MUST

We first thought that this was a (rather poor) double definition, mainly because we hadn’t come across ‘stum’ before and the surface reading doesn’t work. However, after a bit of thought, we decided that Eccles probably intended it to be a ‘clue-as-definition’, with MUST as an anagram of STUM, and ‘mould’ as the anagrind. The surface reading is still not very good though – sorry Eccles.

10. Look in idiot husband’s items of underwear (10)
LOINCLOTHS

LO (look) IN CLOT (idiot) H’S (husband’s)

11. Dog and pig’s clothing ripped off (6)
SHADOW

SOW (pig) around or ‘clothing’ HAD (ripped off)

12. Faltering mother’s residence ultimately here? (4-4)
REST-HOME

An anagram (‘faltering’) of MOTHER’S + E (last or ‘ultimate’ letter of residence)

13. Business‘s period of relative impoverishment (9)
BROKERAGE

BROKER (more broke or ‘relatively more impoverished’) AGE (period)

15. Introduction of full beam leads to quarrel (4)
FRAY

F (first letter or ‘introduction’ to full) RAY (beam)

16. Bishop, when touring Italy, shows this tendency (4)
BIAS

B (bishop) AS (when) around or ‘touring’ I (Italy)

17. Leaves female after alfresco frolicking (6,3)
CLEARS OFF

F (female) after an anagram (‘frolicking’) of ALFRESCO

21. Dismissed after bar collapse (5,3)
FLAKE OUT

OUT (dismissed) after FLAKE (bar as in the chocolate bar)

22. Fish not doing very much (6)
IDLING

ID LING (two fish)

24. Very special carcass not decomposing (10)
SACROSANCT

An anagram (‘decomposing’) of CARCASS NOT

25. Excuse me! I see Australian runner removing uniform (4)
AHEM

AH (I see) EMu (Australian runner) without U (uniform in the phonetic alphabet)

26. It’s easy to swindle Oscar for one (6)
DODDLE

DiDDLE (to swindle) with O (Oscar) replacing ‘i’ (one)

27. Nick‘s spin is working (6)
PRISON

PR (spin) IS ON (working)

DOWN
1. It hurts to block extremely short pass (7)
VOUCHER

OUCH (it hurts) inside or ‘blocking’ VERy (extremely) missing last letter or ‘short’

2. Set off, not worried about being famous (5)
NOTED

DETONate (set off) missing ‘ate’ (worried) reversed or ‘about’

3. Elderly women in vehicle creating decades of tension (4,3)
COLD WAR

OLD (elderly) W (women) in CAR (vehicle)

5. Place and time for insect (6)
LOCUST

LOCUS (place) T (time)

6. More than half of lyrics inspiring surprising hit by tenor (3-6)
TWO-THIRDS

WORDS (lyrics) round an anagram (‘surprising’) of HIT after or ‘by’ T (tenor)

7. Perhaps Doris is nursing in former African kingdom (7)
DAHOMEY

DAY (as in Doris Day) around or ‘nursing’ HOME (in). When Joyce was writing up the blog, she asked Bert if he knew this African Kingdom – he had heard of it and thought it may have come from his early stamp collecting days, disproving the old saying that ‘philately will get you nowhere’.

8. In general, Tito abused explosive material (13)
NITROGELATINE

An anagram (‘abused’) of IN GENERAL TITO. We had trouble with this one as we would normally spell it without the final E. It was almost our last one in and we tried a word search but no words were found. We ended up googling it with an E at the end and found the alternative spelling.

14. Tired before plugging art director (9)
KNACKERED

ERE (before) inside or ‘plugging’ KNACK (art) D (director)

16. Post made of timber found around Loch Lomond, primarily (7)
BOLLARD

BOARD (timber) around LL (first or ‘primary’ letters of Loch Lomond)

18. Pilot beginning to ascend using hill (7)
AVIATOR

A (first letter or ‘beginning’ of ascend) VIA (using) TOR (hill)

19. One who danced well, with yen to travel (7)
FONTEYN

FONT (well) and an anagram (‘to travel’) of YEN

20. Poles stopping work making organ (6)
TONSIL

N S (poles as in North and South) inside or ‘stopping’ TOIL (work)

23. A lot of young men filled with love (5)
LOADS

LADS (young men) around or ‘being filled by’ O (love)

 

18 comments on “Independent 10,945 by Eccles”

  1. Thanks, E and E&J!

    9A: Mouldy/moldy and musty are synonymous (more or less?). Mold/mould is a fungus. Could not confirm if ‘must’ meant the same or a similar fungus.
    Do you think Eccles is hinting at this connection?

  2. Thanks, Eccles and Bertandjoyce!

    Moldy/mouldy (related to or smelling like mold/mould, a type of fungus) and ‘musty’ seem to have almost the same meaning.
    Is that fungus known as ‘must’ too or is ‘musty’ an independent word not arising out of ‘must’?

  3. Another fine crossword from Mr Every Other Wednesday, although I do agree with B&J about 9a, even though the plethora of splendid clues elsewhere did make it up for it a little.

    Thanks to Eccles for the continuing entertainment and to B&J for the equally entertaining blog

  5. I didn’t know it at the time, but ‘stum’ is an “auto-anagram” (I’ve just made up the term), in that it means unfermented grape juice as does MUST, and MUST = ‘Mould’. The clue could therefore be read as a double def, as well as a cryptic def – I think! – as you’ve said.

    Missed the DIDDLE in the wordplay for DODDLE which I therefore couldn’t parse. I learnt that the famous cruciverbal piscatorial creature at 22a can be spent even more economically without the E and liked the idea of Doris Day ‘nursing in former African kingdom’.

    Thanks to B&J and Eccles

  6. ‘Stum’ was new to me, so thanks for that Eccles, and I thought it was a very clever clue, sorry B&J! I couldn’t parse NOTED, so thanks for the explanation. Very much enjoyed, as always, so thanks Eccles and B&J.

  8. Unlike Bert, my youthful stamp collecting didn’t venture into DAHOMEY so I had to investigate that one and I also needed to verify the spelling of 8d.
    Thought LOCUST was neatly done and both CLEARS OFF and AHEM made me smile.

    Thanks to Eccles – goodness knows how you find time to fit in the day job – and to B&J for the review.

  9. Enjoyed this puzzle with MUST going in first and a few laughs along the way. Liked KNACKERED and REST HOME. The SE took a while to sort out, with AVIATOR LOI after FONTEYN and PRISON. Thanks Eccles and B&J.

  10. There has been a discussion on fifteen squared about anagrammatic synonyms, which helped with MUST, which I, too, quite liked. FLAKE OUT ,on the other hand, was a bit of a stretch for me. I suppose it must be an expression, but not one I would use and a flake seems too crumbly to be a bar. I enjoyed the rest, though.

  11. A steady solve for us with no real problems apart from unscrambling the anagram for NITROGLYCERINE. Incidentally, we think that, as with glycerine the final E is the ‘everyday’ spelling whereas spelled without the E is the normal chemical name.
    Favourites were SACROSANCT and BOLLARD.
    Thanks, Eccles and B&J

  12. I loved this as usual for an Eccles puzzle, albeit one which I found at the harder end of his difficulty spectrum.

    Many thanks to him and to B&J.

  13. Took me a long while to finish this, sort of. I had BLACK OUT for 21ac which messed up 14dn, even though I thought that might be KNACKERED.

    Curiously, just a few days ago, I heard a bit on Radio 3 about a 1903 Broadway musical called In Dahomey.

  14. Very clever anagram at 24. I was OK with MUST, and thought BIAS a cunning construction. I tried to enter BLACK instead of FLAKE, as a verb meaning to block or bar something.
    Thank you Eccles!

  15. Thank you for the blog – and I don’t think it should be you apologising to me for you not liking a clue! At least it got mixed reactions. I don’t remember whether I thought ‘Mould stum’ could be a thing, or I just liked the “auto-anagram”.

  16. Doubt anyone will be reading this now, but I’m still not quite clear on the parsing of 6. I guessed it once I’d got all the other letters, and worked out the anagram of hit must be in “t words”, but why does inspiring mean put “thi” in “t words”?

    Thanks!

    FWIW 9 was about the first I got, seemed obvious to me 🙂

  17. Hi DiBosco – apologies as we normally indicate how individual words are relevant to the parsing. Inspiring can mean ‘taking in’ so it is acting as an inclusion indicator in this clue. Hope that helps.

Comments are closed.