Kairos is an occasional setter for the Indy, and often to be seen on a Sunday. But here he is in the Monday slot with a puzzle that yielded steadily but provided me at least with one or two areas of niggle. I’m interested to see what others thought.
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 Where Phil Mitchell might have looked for trouble?
MARRIAGE BUREAU
Even I, who have never watched an episode of EastEnders in my life, know that Phil Mitchell is the baddie in the show, so we need to know that ‘trouble and strife’ is cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife’. And that’s it, I think.
9 Soldier joins man touring American country
PARAGUAY
A charade of PARA and an insertion of A in GUY. The insertion indicator is ‘touring’.
10 Overrun three American states
INVADE
A charade of IN, VA and DE, the two-letter abbreviations for Indiana, Virginia and Delaware.
11 Monstrous creature periodically incenses Indo-European
NESSIE
The even letters of iNcEnSeS followed by IE, an abbreviation of Indo-European, a term mainly used as a descriptor in linguistics for a large range of languages native to western and southern Eurasia. It includes English.
12 Note about tower holding retired American’s gold?
TREASURE
A double insertion: of SU for US reversed in REAR, and all that in TE, the seventh ‘note’ of the tonic sol-fa. The two insertion indicators are ‘about’ and ‘holding’; the reversal indicator is ‘retired’; and the REAR/tower correspondence is seen in a sentence like ‘the monument reared/towered over the square’.
13 Santa’s beef about celebrations
BEANFEASTS
(SANTAS BEEF)*
15 Report of plant garden in London area
SOHO
A homophone (‘report’) of SOW and HOE.
16 Right-wing British left treaty partners taken aback
BLUE
A charade of B, L and EU reversed. ‘Treaty partners’ is a pretty broad description of the EU, although I suppose they have signed various treaties over the years. Lisbon, Maastricht, and originally (before it was the EU), Rome.
17 Shabby corporation milked old opponents
TUMBLEDOWN
A charade of TUM, BLED, O and WN for ‘opponents’ in bridge.
18 Nonsense in bank’s vacuous email
DOGGEREL
A charade of DOGGER and EL for the outside letters of ’email’. DOGGER BANK is a fishing area in the North Sea, named after the dogger, a medieval Dutch fishing boat.
21 Pope rashly hosts shows
OPERAS
Hidden in pOPE RAshly.
22 The first offence in arena of conflict?
CRIMEA
Whimsically, CRIME A could be the ‘first offence’. Chillingly, CRIMEA is an arena of conflict right now.
23 Working to block protest against end of city state
MONARCHY
An insertion of ON for ‘working’ in MARCH, followed by Y for the final letter of ‘city’. The insertion indicator is ‘to block’. ‘State’ as a definition of MONARCHY is a bit loose, I fancy.
24 Organised protests arise about new political detainees?
STATE PRISONERS
An insertion of N in (PROTESTS ARISE)* The anagrind is ‘organised’ and the insertion indicator is ‘about’. A slightly odd phrase: I wouldn’t say I was familiar with it, and searching for it brings up only US state prisoners, who could hardly be called ‘political detainees’.
Down
2 Last arrow female shot in tale of wartime romance
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
(LAST ARROW FEMALE)* gives you Hemingway’s novel.
3 Went on the radio with opinion representing driver’s need
ROAD SENSE
I think this is a homophone (‘on the radio’) of ROWED, or perhaps RODE, followed by SENSE for ‘opinion’. ROWED/RODE is a very broad interpretation of ‘went’ and I’m not sure of the correspondence of the second element. ‘What’s your sense/opinion of the situation?’ perhaps.
4 Leisure centre has accepted poetry pieces on Jack Cade
AMUSEMENT ARCADE
A charade of A, MUSE, MEN, TAR and CADE. A for ‘accepted’? I can’t find it in Collins or Chambers. Surely a MUSE inspires poetry and is not poetry itself.
5 Country servant plugs film
EGYPT
An insertion of GYP in ET, the ‘film’ beloved of setters. GYP is a term for college ‘servant’, typically at Cambridge, although they don’t exist any more (the person who cleans your room is called a ‘bedder’.) College kitchens at Fen Polytechnic are still called GYPS, though.
6 Film company couples – they’re all-round swingers
UNIVERSAL JOINTS
A charade of UNIVERSAL [Studios] and JOINTS.
7 Drops top off projectors
EAVES
[L]EAVES. Again, ‘projectors’ is a very loose definition of EAVES.
8 Rough clothes concealing articles in different places
UNDER THE WEATHER
My favourite clue this morning. THE inserted twice in UNDERWEAR.
14 Whole problem
SUM
A dd.
15 Genders we reassigned for flyer
SEDGE WREN
(GENDERS WE)* and, dear reader, this was a new bird on me. However, I enjoyed reading about it, and here is the obligatory Pierre bird link. The reason I hadn’t heard of this particular troglodyte is that it’s confined to North America.
19 Letter from school graduate
GAMMA
A charade of GAM (think dolphins or whales) and MA.
20 Tours the wall with native of Madagascar
LEMUR
In the French city of Tours, ‘the wall’ would be LE MUR.
Many thanks to Kairos for this Monday’s puzzle.
This was an enjoyable challenge as always from this setter, although I share Pierre’s reservations about 24a, 3d & 4d. The bird in 15d was new to me but easily derivable from the wordplay and checkers.
Pierre, can a monument “rear”? The example I used to convince myself was “the bear reared/towered over its prey”.
My top clues were MARRIAGE BUREAU, INVADE, SOHO, CRIMEA, GAMMA and LEMUR.
Many thanks to Kairos and to Pierre.
Monuments can rear, RD, but not as well as bears, I grant you …
I’ve never watched an episode of EastEnders either but unlike Pierre had never heard of ‘Phil Mitchell’ so 1a was a guess from the crossers. Thanks for clearing up a few uncertainties such as REAR for ‘tower’ and GYP for ‘servant’. I couldn’t parse the ‘accepted poetry’ bit of 4d either.
I liked PARAGUAY (first time I can remember seeing it in a crossword) and LE MUR.
Thanks to Kairos and Pierre
Re 4d, Chambers has Muse to mean Poetry or Art. I cannot find A for “accepted” either but I feel I’ve seen it in cryptics before.
Seems a real shame that the Independent website no longer seems to credit the setter (and the grid seems to no longer be fully visible, you need to scroll up and down even if I zoom out, unless I’m missing something…).
[When solving online, the grid has now doubled in size so that I have to scroll down to see the bottom half. When I enter anything in the bottom half, it automatically scrolls back up after each letter is typed, so I have to scroll down again to check what I’ve just entered! Does anyone know a way of fixing this, please?]
Spotting the setter is an Indy eye test!
I was not familiar with that particular wren but it was easily gettable from the clue
Nice start to the day.
Merci K et Pierre
Quizzy_Bob – it only seems to be broken in Chrome. The double-sized grid was driving me insane so I tried it in Firefox and it displays fine. Chrome seems to default to the Mobile View for some reason.
Aha – I’ve just posted about the website on GD and emailed Arkadium. I wouldn’t normallyu come here until I’ve finished the puzzle. I do hope someone from the Indy sees all these comments. I was half way through, paused, returned and now have a website I’m just not prepared to use. If this is what the phone users have been complaining about, I can see why. No way am I going to try to solve something where I can only see a quarter of a grid, half a solution, no clues other than the one I’m working on… I know Eimi pops in here occasionally: there’s a perfectly good and functioning crossword site for the G and for the Telegraph. And there was for the Independent. Why are the developers being allowed to mess it up.
Sorry Kairos and Pierre – I’m sure you both did a good job but up with this I will not put.
Andy_B – It’s also a problem in Edge
Update: Arkadium have responded. There is a check box I missed under settings – fairly obvious now i see it – for “Display clues as a list” – which returns to the normal settings. Though I don’t know why the various switches there seem to toggle on their own. I certainly didn’t toggle it. The ‘skipping existing letters’ function regularly toggles and I only discover it when I find I’m entering gobbledegook. (Mind, you, I can do that perfectly well on my own!)
Thank you, PostMark – I’d missed that, too!
Thanks Andy_B and others. Yes, it seems OK in Firefox.
Now I’ve managed to get the site back, I was able to complete the puzzle – only having noticed MARRIAGE BUREAU from my previous visit so that was the only spoiled clue. Glad to have been able to finish. I was held up in the NW having confidently entered EDGES instead of EAVES (Drops top off projectors – DEF: EDGES = drops. Top off LEDGES = projectors (in that they project out). Seemed fair enough at the time!) So dnf in failing to get INVADES for which I needed the V.)
I really liked UNDER THE WEATHER with the two articles, Tours the wall, the anagram for A FAREWELL TO ARMS and the surface for doggerel.
I commented on yesterday’s Indy blog how peculiar is the phenomenon of coincidence. Saturday’s Guardian prize (no spoiler) was full of clues linkable to Ukraine, there were in incidences in Quince’s Saturday Indy, Hoskins’ Sunday Indy and can you believe we have INVADE and CRIMEA today? Hoskins popped in yesterday to comment that his was written last year and I believe the general lead times mean that none of this is intended – as if the setters would be so insensitive, which they wouldn’t.
Thanks (again) to Kairos and Pierre.
PM et al: I can see no “settings” – help?
Alphalpha: three horizontal black lines top left. To left of timer. There are several ‘toggleable’ buttons inc Display clues as list. (You may also want to ensure Skip over filled squares is off as, otherwise, when you type in an answer it leapfrogs existing crossers. Appreciate that’s what we do with pen and pencil but it’s a pain on a device, I think.)
I normally enjoy this setter’s puzzles but felt he’d perhaps gone out on too many limbs with some of this one.
Of the clues I enjoyed, it was TUMBLEDOWN, DOGGEREL & UNIVERSAL JOINTS that had the edge for me.
Thanks to Kairos and to Pierre – you weren’t alone in being unfamiliar with this week’s bird!
A for accepted is in Chambers:
4.Accepted
Fortunately I saw PM’s post on General Discussion, so I was able to restore the view to normal. I agree with the niggles and favourites already identified. For AMUSEMENT ARCADE I had AMEN=accepted as in AMEN to that, round MUSE = poetry pieces. As happens too often in amusement arcades, the penny didn’t drop.
Thanks both. Some looseness here I agree, but maybe that’s half the point of crosswords? For instance, I could only think of MARRIAGE AGENCY which fits until you realise it doesn’t. Perhaps I was hampered by the new web format on Safari – I’ll try the settings tomorrow …. today it awarded me a score of 50% unaided which thankfully is nowhere close to being accurate
TFO I try not to notice the scores, but the algorithm seems to have changed. It used to give me 100 per cent, even if I checked a word.
PM@16: TVM! You are indeed entitled to a bikkie from the barrel.
As to the puzzle I enjoyed UNDER THE WEATHER, learning a new meaning for ‘gyp’ (a recent bell rings…?) and that Jack Cade was an historical figure (I was working on it being some current celebrity) so applause from me fwiw.
Thanks to PM’s intervention I can now identify Kairos as the object of my gratitude (along with loonapick of course).
OOps – Pierre!! I meant Pierre….