Independent 10,993 by Rodriguez

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An unusual grid for today’s puzzle . . .

. . . with eight 15-letter and two 14-letter entries. Rodriguez has managed to fill four of them with one-word answers, and three with full-length anagrams, which is quite impressive. So not as many clues as usual, but some very good ones.

Apart from the long entries, I thought 12a was neat, and I liked the apparent contradictions in 15a and 14d, the surface of 17a, and the quirky definition for 16a. Thanks Rodriguez for the challenge.

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

ACROSS
1 ALCOVE
Bay, or lake in a bay (6)
L (abbreviation for lake) in A COVE (a bay).
4 STEAMERS
Cutting Republican Party decorations shows some craft (8)
ST[r]EAMERS (party decorations), cutting out the R (abbreviation for Republican).

Craft (which can be either singular or plural) = ships or boats, in this case steam-powered ones.
10 CROSS REFERENCES
Vexed about soldiers breaking barriers for citations (5,10)
CROSS (vexed) + RE (about), then another RE (Royal Engineers = soldiers) breaking into FENCES (barriers).
11 CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
Throwing hammer, feel Czech gets hint about motivation (8,2,5)
Anagram (throwing) of HAMMER FEEL CZECH.

French for “look for the lady”, used in English as a proverbial suggestion that a man’s actions may be motivated by his relationship to a woman.
12 INANER
Sillier, injured Americans may end up here (6)
Injured Americans may end up IN AN ER (Emergency Room = equivalent of Accident and Emergency department in the UK).
13 BRIQUET
Resident of the UK stores what Spanish fuel? (7)
BRIT (short for a British person) containing (stores) QUE (Spanish for “what?”).

Also spelled briquette: a compressed block of coal dust, charcoal, or other substance used as fuel for burning.
15 IDA
Princess in opera, but not a princess in opera (3)
[a]IDA (princess, title character of an opera by Verdi) without the A.

As in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Princess Ida.
16 CROUTON
Reason against admitting defeat for one in the soup (7)
CON (as in “pros and cons” = a reason against a specific course of action), containing (admitting) ROUT (defeat).
17 CYCLIC
A bit of racy clickbait is going around (6)
Hidden answer (a bit of . . .) in [ra]CY CLIC[kbait].
19 DENNIS THE MENACE
Did wrong backing main idea by new, wicked scamp (6,3,6)
SINNED (did wrong) reversed (backing), then THEME (main idea) + N (new) + ACE (wicked = slang for “very good”).

British comic strip character, a badly-behaved schoolboy, first appearing in the 1950s. (There’s also a US comic strip character with the same name, appearing about the same time, but his troublemaking seems to be accidental rather than deliberate.)
20 ELECTROPOSITIVE
Criminal perceives loot – it gets kind of charge (15)
Anagram (criminal) of PERCEIVES LOOT IT.

Descriptive of a particle or substance that has a positive electrical charge, or tends to become positively charged rather than negatively charged.
21 DISTRESS
Chagrin of one gaining stone squeezing into clothing (8)
I (one in Roman numerals) + ST (abbreviation for stone, as a measure of weight), all inserted into DRESS (clothing).
22 KNIGHT
One may be black or white in dark time, we hear (6)
Homophone (we hear) of NIGHT (dark time).

The chess piece (black or white) typically in the form of a horse’s head.
DOWN
1 ALCOCK
A security device plugged by Conservative flier (6)
A + LOCK (security device), containing C (abbreviation for Conservative).

John Alcock, pilot who (with navigator Arthur Brown) made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919.
2 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
Finish in French bars, in which aliens may appear (5,10)
CLOSE (as a verb = finish) + EN (French for “in”) + COUNTERS (bars = surfaces where food and/or drink is served).

Term for observations of an unidentified flying object, as in the sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
3 VASOCONSTRICTOR
See a crook punching really scrupulous men? This gets one’s blood pressure up (15)
V (abbreviation for Latin vide = see, used in cross-references) + A, then CON (short for convict = crook) inserted into (punching) SO (very) + STRICT (scrupulous) + OR (other ranks = ordinary soldiers as opposed to officers = men).

A medication that causes narrowing of blood vessels in order to increase blood pressure.
5 THE OLD BACHELOR
Informed about male composer turning up part in comedy of manners (3,3,8)
TOLD (informed) around HE (male), then BACH (composer), then ROLE (part in a play) reversed (turning up = upwards in a down clue).

17th-century comic play by William Congreve. Not one I know, but not too hard to guess from the wordplay and crossers.
6 AGE OF DISCRETION
Spreading foreign aid etc., so time to take responsibility (3,2,10)
Anagram (spreading) of FOREIGN AID ETC SO.

The age at which someone is considered to have sufficient mental capacity to be responsible for their own actions.
7 EXCOMMUNICATING
Cutting off partner no longer sending emails, say (15)
EX (short for phrases such as “ex-husband” = partner no longer) + COMMUNICATING (for example by sending emails).
8 SUSPECTS
Imagines schools must keep distinguishing feature (8)
SECTS (schools, as in schools of thought = groups of people who subscribe to a particular set of beliefs) containing (must keep) USP (short for unique selling point / unique selling proposition: marketing term for a distinguishing feature that makes one product better or more attractive than another).

Imagine = suspect = form an opinion about something without conclusive evidence.
9 PEREGRINATIONS
Travels with Parisian relatives around mostly awful country (14)
PERES (French for fathers = Parisian relatives) around GRI[m] (awful; mostly = all but the last letter) + NATION (country).
14 ACIDHEAD
A top copper or an offender? (8)
A top officer in the police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) might be called A CID HEAD, perhaps.

Acidhead = a user of the psychedelic drug LSD = an offender (becase it’s a Class A controlled drug).
18 DECENT
Proper recession grips financial district (6)
DENT (recession?) containing (grips) EC (the East Central postcode area in London, containing a lot of banks and financial businesses). I think “dent” and “recession” can both mean “depression”, but with different meanings; I’m struggling to find a sense in which they’re interchangeable.

30 comments on “Independent 10,993 by Rodriguez”

  1. I found this less tough that Rodriguez’s usual offerings but I thought it was very enjoyable.

    I was going to comment that the A in 3d is surplus to requirements as I had taken “see” to be Vatican = VA, but I see from the review there is an alternative explanation which needs the A.

    There were too many good clues to decide on a few as favourites.

    Many thanks to Rodriguez and to Quirister.

  4. I found the number of long answers intimidating at first too, though everything eventually fell into place. Among others, I liked the ‘flier’ at 1d and working out the complicated parsing of VASOCONSTRICTOR. Favourites though were PEREGRINATIONS, just because I find it rather a quaint word, and INANER for ‘where injured Americans may end up’.

    Rats @3: One way to get a pdf version is to click on ‘Print’ at the top right of the puzzle window, choose you format options etc in the next screen, click on ‘Print’, then choose ‘Microsoft Print to PDF’ as the ‘Printer’ in the next dialogue box to save the pdf to your hard drive. You can do this on the PC (and ? there is an equivalent option on a Mac) but not on iOS as far as I know – happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.

    Thanks to Quirister and Rodriguez

  5. Some fell into place nicely and some were very hard won, I’m looking at you STEAMERS and DECENT. THE OLD BACHELOR and PEREGRINATIONS were not in our repertoire but we parsed the hell out of them! DNF due to ACIDHEAD which was frustrating after getting all the loooong 15 words.

    Thanks to Quirister and Rodriguez.

  6. An unusual grid, certainly, and most ingeniously filled, to produce a very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

    I particularly enjoyed CROSS REFERENCES, THE OLD BACHELOR, AGE OF DISCRETION, PEREGRINATIONS (yes, a lovely word) and INANER – surely there isn’t such a word but it made me laugh.

    The second appearance in a week for CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.

    Many thanks to Rodriguez and Quirister.

  7. [Thanks Wordplodder@4 for info on getting a pdf – it worked, but didn’t solve my problem which is that however I try to print the Independent crossword it comes out with the right hand 4 squares of the grid and corresponding right hand side of the clues in the right-hand column missing because the printed image is too big for an A4 page. I’ve tried checking all the print settings and I’ve tried asking it to ‘scale to fit’, but I can’t make it print the whole crossword. Can anyone help, please!?]

  8. Most of the 15-letter entries fairly leapt off the page, except of course for VASOCONSTRICTOR at 3D, which I would never have got in a month of Sundays without looking at a wordlist, in which of course there was just one possibility, so I might just as well have done a reveal. Also I couldn’t parse 8D SUSPECTS, getting hooked on S = school at either end of ‘uspect’, which doesn’t work! Thanks Rodriguez and Quirister.

  9. [Sourdough @7: On a Windows PC I find scaling the “right hand” version to 80% makes it fit on an A4 sheet.]

  10. Decided partway through that one can have too much of a good thing, in this case 14&15 letter entries, but I guess it was something of an experiment by our setter.
    Having said that, I do rather like the word PEREGRINATIONS and the surface read of DISTRESS made me laugh.

    Thanks to Rodriguez and to Quirister for the review.

  12. [Tom-I@9: that just reduces the size of the printed ‘image’ leaving me a blank margin down the right-hand side of the page and with the grid still missing 3 columns and the portions of the clues under the right-hand side of the grid also missing. BTW, I am on a Windows PC. Thanks anyway for replying.]

  14. Excellent grid fill and we enjoyed breaking the long entries down step by step – VASOCONSTRICTOR was a new word but eventually sorted it out from various crossing letters and the parsing.

    Many thanks to Quirister and Rodriguez.

  15. Sourdough, I am able to print the puzzle from my Windows laptop straight from the website. Fiddling around with the margins in settings, I find that:
    If I use the default margins, the whole image prints, with blank margins of approximately 10mm left and right;
    If I use zero margins, the image expands to the edge of the page, but I lose a few millimetres on both sides because my printer will not print right to the edge of the page;
    If I increase the margins (using custom margins), the image shrinks to accommodate the adjusted margins, but beyond a certain point it will not shrink, and then the image is cut on the right hand size as you describe.

  16. Thanks, James. I am printing direct from the website (as I always used to and never had problems until the website was recently altered). Since then I have had this problem. Where do you find the settings which allow you to alter the margins? The print dialogue box on the website has what looks like a menu in the top left-hand corner (three horizontal lines), but when I click on that I get nothing. The options in the printer dialogue box don’t seem to allow me to alter margins – it’s a Brother printer. I can’t find settings that give me options re margins.

  17. After clicking on PRINT above the puzzle, the box opens which allows you to choose left/right handed etc. Then after clicking on PRINT in that box, I get a large box with a print preview on the left, and options on the right, including destination, pages, copies, layout, colour, and more settings, of which margins is one. It’s not my usual print settings box.
    I’m afraid my help is limited to what is in front of me.

  18. Yes, of course, James and I’m grateful for it. When I click PRINT in the left/right-handed etc. box I just get my usual Brother print dialogue box which does not include an option re margins. Thanks so much for trying to help – I have contacted Arkadia to see if they have any suggestions. It’s a bugger because I really don’t like doing puzzles online – I really much prefer a paper version.
    Thanks again, James and also to Tom_I.

  19. I’m sure it was very clever but not at all my cup of tea.
    Long and obscure (to me) words with a lot of long clues that could have myriad interpretations.
    Oh and almost the only way to get crossers was to solve another long word…
    Chaque un, comm on dit.

  20. Thanks Rodriguez for an admirable construction. It took me awhile to get going but once I got a toehold the crossing letters and my lucky guessing helped immensely. In addition to 11a we just had CROUTON in a crossword — chance, collaboration, or similar software? My favourite was BRIQUET. Thanks Quirister for parsing.

  21. I found the long anagrams quite tricky, and the whole puzzle took me a fair bit longer than usual, not to mention the continual right and left shifting of the clues.
    Just 23 clues today, one less than Harpo in the Guardian on New Years Eve, which was a record according to @BeeryHiker.

  22. NNI@21, Imogen (27,069) has used only 20 clues, acknowledged by BeeryHiker as a low for the Guardian at the time. Paul has gone lower since then but I don’t know how to find it.

  23. I think what he meant about Harpo’s 24 was that no other Guardian setter had so few clues in the whole archive.

  24. Bit too much of a slog for me. Usually with long answers I wait till I have a good selection of crossing letters, which were difficult to get here. Did more or less finish. Ironically, it was three of the shorter clues that were last in.

  27. Thank you Quirister for equating Sects with Schools satisfactorily, which had been beyond me having spent an age unravelling the cryptic grammar of Steamers. Thanks also Eileen for confirming I am not going mad re Cherchez… I have only seen the feminine Briquette I think, relating to BBQ charcoal, so that is a new one in a very entertaining and well pitched puzzle, thanks Rodriguez

  28. PS Rats@3, have you tried taking a screenshot of the crossword ( shift plus windows key plus S for me, may vary by system I expect) then pasting to a blank word file as a picture, which can then be stretched and squeezed to whatever size works best for printing?

  29. [Just to clarify, Harpo only has a record low for an entire Guardian cryptic career, not for an individual puzzle, so the record will be lost when he sets another.]

    Enjoyed this one – very impressive to fill that grid without anything really obscure.

  30. [20 was a joint record at the time of that Imogen puzzle, but the record is now Enigmatist 27142 with 19. This included three multi-light clues – I don’t think any of the Guardian grids has fewer than 24 lights.]

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