Independent 11,228 by Methuselah

by

Not Phiday but Methuselah-day today – though Friday’s usual setter gets a nod in the wordplay of one clue.

Lots to enjoy here: I liked 13a for its surface suggesting an overpaid sports “personality” in designer casualwear, 25a for being a bit naughty but very neat, 26a/7d for the double anagram, 18d for the ingenious musical reference, and 23a for the complete misdirection of the surface. Thanks Methuselah for the challenge.

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

ACROSS
1 BRIARS
British truth-twisters abandoning left for certain Bushes (6)
BR (short for British) + [l]IARS (truth-twisters) without the L (left).

Briar = a wild rose or other thorny plant.
4 PAWPAW
Old man and wife doubled up for something seedy (6)
PA (old man = father) + W (wife), repeated (doubled up).

Another name for papaya, or a couple of other more or less related fruit – all of which contain seeds.
9 ROAM
Stray from the city all roads lead back to (they say) (4)
Homophone (they say) of ROME, as in “all roads lead to Rome”.
10 BEER GARDEN
Cosy area behind pub that keeps a lot of green around (4,6)
DEN (private space = cosy area) after (behind) BAR (pub), containing (that keeps) GREE[n] (a lot of = all but the last letter) reversed (around).

Clue-as-definition (&lit): a private garden attached to a pub for the use of its customers.
11 SHRIEK
Scream when ogre traps recurring character in his wicked lair (6)
SHREK (ogre in a series of animated films of the same name), containing (traps) I which is a recurring character in [h]I[s w]I[cked la]I[r].
12 EYE RHYME
Like youth with mouth, it must be seen and not heard (3,5)
Cryptic definition. An eye rhyme is one where the words have similar spellings so they appear to rhyme in written form, but are pronounced differently – such as “youth” and “mouth”.
13 GRAND SLAM
Sports star may get this £1000 bit of activewear in three sizes (5,4)
GRAND (slang for £1000), then the first letter (a bit) of A[ctivewear] in S L M (small, large, medium = three clothes sizes).

Term for winning all the major titles in a particular sport – for example Wimbledon and the US, Australian and French Open tennis tournaments.
15 BERN
Swiss capital invested in cybernetics (4)
Hidden answer (invested in . . .) in [cy]BERN[etics].

German name for the capital of Switzerland (also called Berne by French speakers, which would fit the wordplay but not the grid).
16 BOWL
Throw about to get wicket? (4)
LOB (throw) reversed (about), containing (to get) W (wicket, in cricket scoring).

Clue-as-definition (&lit): bowl, as a verb, in cricket.
17 WINDSTORM
Sorcerer ultimately in two minds about tempest (9)
Last letter (ultimately) of [sorcere]R in an anagram (about) of TWO MINDS.
21 STEP DOWN
Leave domesticated animals to fly west with swallow (4,4)
PETS (domesticated animals), reversed (to fly west = going right to left), then DOWN (as a verb = swallow, especially to drink the full contents of a glass in one go).

Step down = resign from a position = leave.
22 FREEST
On easy street, being as liberated as possible (6)
FREE (easy) + ST (abbreviation for street). Not a totally convincing clue because “easy” and “liberated” are essentially the same meaning for “free”.
24 CASPIAN SEA
Travelling space, NASA orbits source of ice water (7,3)
Anagram (travelling) of SPACE + NASA, around the first letter (source) of I[ce].

Water as in “a body of water”: a very large salt lake between Europe and Asia.
25 ORBS
Spheres or a load of balls (4)
OR + BS (short for bullsh*t = a load of balls = nonsense).
26/7 SARINA WIEGMAN
Perhaps I win as manager (or was I a German in tears?) (6,7)
Anagram (perhaps) of I WIN AS MANAGER, or anagram (tears, as a verb = comes apart) of WAS I A GERMAN IN.

Extended definition: the manager of the England women’s football team, who won the UEFA Women’s Euro title this year, beating Germany in the final. (It’s perhaps just as well that she’s not German but Dutch.)
27 TECHIE
One nerdy follower of Phi cracks themes on a regular basis (6)
CHI (the letter that follows Phi in the Greek alphabet), inserted into (cracks) alternate letters (on a regular basis) of T[h]E[m]E[s].

Techie = short for technician, or more generally slang for anyone in a “technical” job (possibly considered nerdy by someone who doesn’t have their skills). It was a standard term for software developers when I worked alongside them.
DOWN
1 BROTHER
Monk possibly gets leader of rebels in trouble (7)
First letter (leader) of R[ebels] in BOTHER (trouble).
2 IAMBI
Bits of Shakespeare sonnets, or their subtext? (5)
Shakespeare seems to have written sonnets addressed to both men and women, leading some to suggest that his subtext is I AM BI (bisexual).

Plural of iamb, a metrical unit in poetry, and specifically in the metre used in Shakespeare’s sonnets (iambic pentameter).
3 REBUKES
Criticises puzzles, getting wrong end of stick (7)
REBU[s]ES (rebus = a puzzle using pictures to represent words or parts of words), with the S replaced by K (the other end of the word S[tic]K).
5 ANGLER
Film director’s short with Romeo who should know his lines (6)
ANG LE[e] (award-winning film director) without the last letter (short), then R (Romeo in the radio alphabet).

Angler = someone fishing with rod and line.
6 PARCHMENT
As part of quiet time, cheeky chappies hide from nanny, maybe (9)
P (p = piano = musical term for quiet) + T (time), containing (as part of . . .) ARCH (cheeky = mischievous) + MEN (chappies).

Writing material originally made from the skin of sheep or goats, so perhaps the hide of a nanny-goat.
7
See 26 Across
 
8 VEGETARIANISM
Clever saint and I agree to feed five thousand – there’ll be no fish in it, though (13)
Anagram (clever) of SAINT + I AGREE, inserted into (to feed) V + M (Roman numerals for 5 and 1000).
14 NEWSPAPER
Needing content for feature, paps went back daily? (9)
Hidden answer (content for . . .), reversed (back), in [featu]RE PAPS WEN[t].

Short for a “daily newspaper”, as opposed to a weekly or monthly one; the question-mark indicates a definition by example.
16 BETRAYS
Shops expect increase in salary to be announced (7)
BET (expect? – perhaps as in “I bet it’ll rain this afternoon” = I expect it will), then a homophone (to be announced) of RAISE (as a noun = increase in salary).

Shop, as a verb = betray = to inform on someone.
18 DEFLATE
A run of notes getting higher or lower (7)
D, E FLAT, E is a sequence of three musical notes getting higher by semitones.
19 RISIBLE
Comic librettist weirdly wants the Three Tenors (7)
Anagram (weirdly) of LIBRE[tt]IS[t] without (wanting) the three Ts (abbreviation for tenor).
20 DOMAIN
Party leaders to mess around in field (6)
DO (party) + leading letters of M[ess] A[round] + IN.

Domain = field = someone’s area of responsibility or expertise.
23 ENOCH
Pop to Methuselah‘s place, finally, and see if he’s in for callers? (5)
Last letter (finally) of [plac]E, then a homophone (for callers) of KNOCK (on a door, to check whether the occupant of the building is in).

In the book of Genesis, Enoch is the father (pop) of Methuselah.

11 comments on “Independent 11,228 by Methuselah”

  1. DNF for me as I failed at 27A/23D. My excuse is that I forgot that it wasn’t the usual Phi today, and that the Greek alphabet chart I looked at seemed to imply that Mu followed Phi. DEFLATE was brilliant. Thanks Methuselah and Quirister.

  3. By the way, the Indie cryptic was failing to load yesterday so I contacted Arkadium who quickly fixed it – full marks to them.

  4. If this Friday this must be… About the degree of difficulty expected from Methuselah, ie pretty hard. Couldn’t parse ANGLER or DEFLATE and I didn’t know the England women’s football team manager (good double anagram as pointed out) or ‘Pop to Methuselah’, both of which needed crossers and wordplay.

    We’ve now had it a few times, but I liked EYE RHYME as well as the BEER GARDEN &lit.

    Thanks to Quirister and Methuselah

  5. Sarina Wiegman was very clever. I had CAST for BOWL, ca – about st for stumped, which held me up for a while.

  6. Knowing nothing at all about sports, I was very thrown by the double anagram, thinking it was a self-describing clue. Both ANAGRAM and ANSWER could be anagrammed out, and each fit one of the clue spaces, but I had no idea what the rest of the letters would do, and they both conflicted with the cross letters I had. What a diabolical name.

  7. Another great crossword from Methuselah – although I didn’t get the football manager

    I particularly liked 23d, not least because for some strange reason I actually knew he was the father of Methuselah

    Many thanks to both setter and blogger

  8. I got beaten by this on quite a few, some through lack of background gk (the manager, ENOCH) and others through not trying hard enough (PARCHMENT, EYE RHYME). It had to be FREEST which led to DEFLATE and I needed your help Quirister to parse the latter – but how good a clue is that! Wow – my clue of the year. ORBS gets a special mention also now that I see the parsing.

    Very enjoyable in defeat. Thanks both.

  9. Thanks both. I really struggled and at least needed less help in the end than I had begun to imagine. As others have said, the WIEGMAN double anagram is very clever, but so few will have committed the name to memory – I guessed the surname as it looks German though she is Dutch. BRIARS was an unknown for me, like most things in a garden, and I was thrown by the capitalisation and the perhaps superfluous ‘certain’ (I may have missed something)

  10. Thanks Quirister and Methuselah.
    Another DNF with NE practically empty – besotted with I WIN AS MANAGER WAS I A GERMAN IN TEARS – double anagram, didn’t know the manager.
    I had the same misgivings about FREEST.
    But, GRAND SLAM, TECHIE, BOWL and ENOCH were superb clues, I thought

  11. Failed (just) to finish but fantastic puzzle. Loved BOWL, ORBS , REBUKES, DEFLATE and ENOCH.
    Thanks to the clever setter and blogger, great stuff

Comments are closed.