Independent 11,134 by Filbert

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This was certainly the toughest Monday puzzle I've done in a long time. Had I not been blogging, I might well have given up half way through and in the end it took me three longish sessions to finish it.

There were a lot of rather innocuous looking clues that seem easy once you've worked them out but are actually quite difficult. 20 and 21 were good examples. In terms of favourite clues, I'd have to go for 1 across for the sheer cunning of the definition and the magnificent 10 across, which has to be one of the best ever &lits.

With regard to theme, there is obviously quite a lot of Beach Boys. Most of the members and many of the songs are named in the puzzle. However, I’m not a great expert on the band, so I’ll let someone else find all the references.

ACROSS
1 CROSSWORD
This guy on Friends has crowd going wild outside (9)

Ross (Geller, character in Friends played by David Schwimmer) in crowd*
6 ABOUT
Some depression to get around (5)

I'm dubious on this one but the only suggestion I can make is that it's a DD (about=around and "a bout of depression"). If that's the case, it seems a little weak compared to most of the other clues, although there is a Beach Boys connection with I Get Around and some of the mental health problems suffered by the band members.
9/28 THE ONE
Love ‘Til I Die, perhaps definitive single (3,3)

DD
10 LIFE OF BRIAN
Alternative INRI fable with ordinary fellow in it (4,2,5)

&lit – (INRI fable)* around o{rdinary} f{elllow}. Not being religious, I'm not familiar with INRI but apparently it means “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). Knowing that, the whole does work brilliantly as an &lit.
11 WILSON
Orchestra parts are successful in 60’s UK number one (6)

LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) in win(=are successful, as in "they win"). Not sure on the def here – it might be a song, although I can't think of anything, or maybe it's the UK Prime Minister (premier = number one) Harold Wilson, whose first spell of office was 1964 to 1970. There is obviously another Beach Boys link here with the Wilson Brothers.
12 CLAMBAKE
Cooking on the beach, boy’s first to follow American into cold sea? (8)

(B[oy] after Am{erican}) in (c{old} lake). Calling a lake a sea may seem wrong but of course there are many bodies of water which are called seas which are actually lakes e.g. Aral Sea, Caspian Sea.
15 YAP
Chatter always around piano (3)

Ay<(=archaic version of always) + p{iano}(=music abbrev meaning softly)
16 FRIAR
Brother of Carl’s content, at the end of the day (5)

[C]ar[l] after Fri{day}
17 NELLY
Silly trumpeter who trundled off during song caught on mic (5)

I think this is a hom of Nellie, as in Nellie the Elephant, who was leaving the circus. I'm not totally sure on the def – I think I've heard nelly as a noun meaning a stupid person (e.g. "he's a right nelly") but not an adjective and I haven't been able to verify it in any dictionaries.
18 BLIMP
Fat American‘s remarkable LP and BMI (5)

(LP BMI)*
20 MEETS
In audio, variety of animal parts is satisfying (5)

Hom of meats
22 MEW
Band on the radio holds note at the end of Little Bird (3)

I think this is MW (=Medium Wave, a band on the dial of an analogue radio) around [littl]e. The note is probably to improve to the surface reading and works because E is also a musical note as well as just a letter. A mew is a type of small gull.
24 ANGELENO
Doctor Gene Landy ignoring bounds of duty over LA resident (8)

(Gene Lan[dy])* + o{ver}
25 TERROR
Go astray during peak in awful mental state (6)

Err in tor (a rocky mountain top)
27 SCORESHEETS
Playing records, 20/20 rehashed these (11)

Scores(=20 + 20, I think) + these*
29 COL
Firm line taken for depression (3)

Co{mpany} + l{ine}
30 EVENS
Of bands never making a comeback, a proportion quits (5)

Hidden, rev in "bands never"
31 PET SOUNDS
Record 15 and 22? (3,6)

DD. Pet Sounds was an album by The Beach Boys and the other def is obviously just sounds made by pets.
DOWN
1 CUTAWAY
Engineer’s drawing share of profits on tour? (7)

Cut(=share of profits) + away(=on tour, possibly).
2 OVERLAPPING
Lying a little on top of drinking too much? (11)

DD (lap up = drink up)
3 SELL OFF
Tacky band releasing tape initially finish fifty to flog (4,3)

Sello[tape] + f[inish] f[ifty]
4 ORFF
Composer Carl runs into elsewhere (4)

R{uns} into off. German composer most famous for Carmina Burana.
5 DROLLERIES
Peter out catching wave on top of surfboard laughs (10)

Dies around roller
6 ALBUMEN
White guys 2 31, say (7)

Pet Sounds (2 31) is an album sharing the m with men (overlapping). The def refers to the white of an egg.

7 OBI
Band in Japan starts off ordering burgers in (3)

O[rdering] b[urgers] i[n]
8 TANNERY
Humming works in hit nearly written without Al (7)

Seems to be tan(=hit) + ne[a]r[l]y*. It didn't help with this one that I misread the AL as AI (as in Artificial Intelligence), so my interpretation of the anagram was all wrong for a long time. Again, I'm not completely sure on "humming" – it could be it's some technical term relating to the process of leather making but my guess is it's just being used in the sense of "smelly" because tanneries can be notoriously smelly places.
13 ALL AMERICAN
Touring Maine, Carl and Al typically like apple-pie (3-8)

(Maine Carl Al)*
14 AIRMANSHIP
Puff guy’s groovy ability up (10)

Air(=puff) + man's hip. The "up" I suppose refers to the fact that the ability lies in moving above the ground.
18 BEATS ME
God Only Knows blows Filbert away (5,2)

DD
19 PALLETS
Rustic beds mate with ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to …’ (7)

Pal(=mate) + let's
21 SEEMS TO
Look? Mike Love crossing street apparently does (5,2)

See(=look) + (M{ike} (phonetic alphabet) 0) around st{reet}
23 WARBLES
Picking up oddly smelly Scotsman’s good vibrations (7)

Rev of odd letters of smelly + braw (=Scottish good, as in the famous "It's a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht").
26 BELT
Hit band (4)

DD
28
See 9 Across

22 comments on “Independent 11,134 by Filbert”

  1. Excellent fun, as always from Filbert. Agree with your parsings, Neal, although I would add that SILLY can be a noun meaning ‘a silly person’.

  2. Yes, very tough going. I wasn’t sure how to parse ABOUT either and didn’t know what was going on with NELLIE. I think it’s Harold WILSON at 11a, as you suggest and agree about ‘Humming works’ at 8d referring to a TANNERY being a smelly place.

    I came a cropper on ANGELENO for which I didn’t read the anagram fodder carefully enough and put in “Angelino”.

    I won’t have identified all the references, but I liked the “Beach Boys” theme. If you look at the grid CROSSWORD ABOUT THE LIFE OF BRIAN WILSON is seen across the top few rows.

    Thanks to Filbert and NealH

  6. ABOUT: Looks like we are missing something. Someone should parse it better.
    NELLY: I agree with Neal’s parsing (read along with the clarification on silly being a noun (Hovis@1).
    WILSON: Must be Harold Wilson, I agree.
    TANNERY: Didn’t think of humming in the sense of ‘smelly’. Fits here. Thanks.

  7. I loved the theme of this but failed to notice CROSSWORD ABOUT THE LIFE OF BRIAN WILSON, so a round of applause for WordPlodder @2 but also d’oh!

    Some fabulously tricky clues. I enjoyed the workout.

    Thanks to Filbert and NealH

  8. Thanks crypticsue @5-saves me looking that up
    Amazing that Brian is the surviving brother.
    lets not forget Wilson Picket in the 60s
    Thanks Filbert and Neil

  9. Really, really hard because very poorly written, in my book. I had harumphs with more than twenty of the clues, so no point in trawling through them all. As others, I liked the Python clue, but even there one must allow for fellow=f, which isn’t in any list used by a paper that uses a list, as far as I can see. No doubt the endless list that is Chambers will back Filbert up! But to say this puzzle is victim of its theme would be an understatement for me. Trying much too hard.

  10. Certainly a toughie but we kept chipping away at it and eventually got it all, although the theme passed us by as we were never really into the Beach Boys. 10ac was our FOI; we realised it was an anagram and it soon resolved itself; then a few easy ones seeded the grid and helped us with the rest. LOI was 31ac; even though 6dn pointed us to the name of an album it took us a long time to work out the relevance of 15 and 22, and a real penny-drop moment when we saw it (and confirmed the answer by googling).
    We liked, inter alia, 22ac for ‘on the radio’ not being a homophone indicator, 27ac for the 20/20 device and 6dn for its reference to 2dn.
    Thanks, Filbert and NealH.

  11. I couldn’t agree less with the last plantagenet. I actually rather dislike the Beach Boys, so I’ve no doubt missed a couple of Carl Wilson jokes hidden there somewhere.

    Yes, it was very tough. And part of the reason for that is that some of the clues have weird constructions to bend them into the theme. As I know only too well, there’s the constant danger of getting self-indulgent in pursuit of thematic perfection, but I didn’t get that feeling. I kept thinking “Wow, that’s a clever way to do that.”

    It’s rare that I comment on a fellow setter’s puzzles. I’d originally popped in just to say that I thought it the best puzzle I’ve solved in a very long time, but tlp@9’s comment needed a little pushback.

  12. Thanks both. Slow progress for me, which for once I enjoyed. THE ONE went in half unparsed, and the first element as explained here still leaves me a little cold. Didn’t think of the referenced lakes which can be called sea (CLAMBAKE) but feel ‘cold water’ in the clue might have been seen as fairer

  13. Really hard imho, but great to have a twentieth century theme, and one I understood. I’ve counted 18 clues and answers as thematically linked.
    This includes the reference to the man whose most famous patient was Brian Wilson. (Assuming of course he was a doctor in the first place.)
    Thanks to setter and blogger for their efforts. Btw I don’t understand 9/28 at all, but it’s a good song.

  14. My interpretation of 9/28 was “Love til I die” = “the one” (i.e. the person I’m going to love till I die/the one person for me) and “definitive single” as the one, where the “the” indicates something definitive.

  15. Thanks to NealH and everyone for comments and perservering. Happy Birthday to everyone whose birthday it is today. I think, if I have counted correctly, Filbert is 50 today.
    There’s quite an entertaining biopic of Brian Wilson called Love and Mercy available on BBC iplayer at the moment, as it was on telly a few days ago. Pretty good soundtrack, obvs, Paul Dano/John Cusack as Wilson, and Paul Giamatti doing a great odious turn as the villainous Eugene Landy. Weirdly, I had a hospital appointment today and the room I was waiting outside had ‘Dr Landy’ on its board, but thankfully he was not for me.

  16. Nice one, Filbert – as others have said, very tough but plenty to raise a smile. LIFE OF BRIAN is simply brilliant (my catholic upbringing means INRI is very familiar to me).

    Well done, NealH, for fighting your way through it for our sake.

  17. A big defeat for me. Wouldn’t have known enough about the Beach Boys to identify the theme, even if I’d got any of the theme answers. (I do know something about Carl Orff. Even have recordings of his music that isn’t Carmina Burana.)

  18. Needless to say I missed a few but I wanted to say what a great crossword this was. The Beach Boys were the 1st band I saw as a kid but I didn’t know it was Brian Wilson’s birthday. Thanks Filbert for the tribute and the LIFE OF BRIAN clue. Thanks NealH for the blog.

  19. I found this ludicrously difficult, and I must say I completely missed the theme. Once here (at 225) I was relieved to see (a) what all this was about, and (b) that others were as baffled as me at one point or another, but even so, at the coal face it was a real stinker for me!

  20. DNF on TANNERY, because I’d put AVOID in at 6a. However, I thought this was an excellent puzzle. Tough in places, yes, but lots of fun nonetheless. I’m not over-familiar with the theme, but I did spot it, and it helped in places. Thanks Neal, and kudos Filbert!

  21. Mev @20 I love to hear of ‘right’ wrong answers. In this case your one parses much better than the required entry!

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