Independent 11,307 by Quince (Saturday Puzzle 7 January 2023)

by

After almost exactly 12 years and 128 Saturday Independent blogs, I have decided it is time to ‘pass on the baguette‘, as Matt Lucas recently put it…and this was a pleasant solve to finish on, although I needed some matriarchal assistance…

I solved this over the Christmas period (spoiler alert, we lucky Indy bloggers get advance copies, unlike the brave and intrepid daily Grauniad bloggers, who have to be up with the lark to get their posts out on time) whilst suffering a nasty bout of Covid, which I am still only just about getting over.

I made good progress early on, with lots of eyebrow raises, quiet smirks and appreciative ticks on my working copy.

Too many to mention all, but – SUPERVOLCANO as a ‘heavy smoker’; the ASHTRAYS full of smutty ‘flicked butts’; the Cyclops-ean ‘last couples’ in a ‘drunken summer orgy’ for ENERGY; a ‘cry in the bath’ for EUREKA!; the ‘fake news’ of LIBERACE’s DEAFness for BAREFACED LIE… All good fun, with some lovely surface reads, devious wordplay and anagram fodder/indicators.

I ground to a halt a bit in the bottom right corner – and was running out of energy myself – pencilling in ‘well, well’ for 16D, which made 22A L?T, which didn’t make a LOT of sense! Luckily at this point I showed the puzzle to my mother, 79 years young and suffering herself with a Christmas chest infection, and quick as a flash she gave me VERY WELL and YET (neither of which describes either of our states of health, even now, but they helped me finish the puzzle!).

 

 

I couldn’t see any particular theme or Nina, but happy to be enlightened below. Also, I wasn’t completely happy with my parsing of TOUCHÉ at 9A – does touch = fight? Again, all may be explained below.

My thanks to Quince for an enjoyable valedictory solve/blog, and to all the Indy Saturday puzzle setters and commenters over the last 12 years, from Klingsor’s Indy 7566 to Quince today.

I am handing over the reins to leedsclimber, who made his 15×15 debut on Thursday with the Guardian Xmas special – a baptism of fire if ever there was one! I’m sure you will all make him feel welcome, and I will be lurking – and commenting occasionally!…

‘So long, and thanks for all the fish…!‘

 

Across
Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1A SEESAW Now and then, notice attraction going up and down (6)

SEE (notice, now) + SAW (noticed, then!)
4A OBSTACLE Right away, Bolt races around hurdle (8)

subtractive anagram, i.e. around, of BOLT (R)ACES, losing R (right, away!)
9A TOUCHE I’ve been hit in fight with epée, ultimately (6)

TOUCH (fight?) + E (ultimate letter of epeE)

&lit – T_E (ultimate letters of fighT and epeE) around OUCH (I’ve been hit!), with the whole clue surface painting a picture of a fencer taking a hit
10A TRUE LOVE Regret nothing, following heart at last for this (4,4)

T (last letter of hearT) + RUE (regret) + LOVE (zero, nothing, e.g. in sports score)
12A ASS Is Isaac oddly withdrawn about mount which Abraham was up on? (3)

reversed odd, or alternate, letters in ‘iS iSaAc’
13A GUT FEELING Basic Instinct’s visceral nude scene finally wrapped by cast (3,7)

GUT (visceral) + F_LING (cast, throw) around (wrapping) EE (final letters of nudE scenE)
15A KNOW THE SCORE Once Shrek Two is out, get it (4,3,5)

anag, i.e. is out, of ONCE SHREK TWO
18A GRAVEDIGGERS Finally quitting Taskmaster, Greg Davies played parts in Hamlet (12)

GR (final letters of quittinG and taskmasteR) + AVEDIGGERS (anag, i.e. played, of GREG DAVIES)
21A BRAKE FLUID Clue for ‘baker’ slowing down solution? (5,5)

a cryptic clue for ‘baker’ could be ‘BRAKE, FLUID’!
22A YET On both sides of the Pyrenees, joiners are all the same (3)

Y (and, in Spanish) and ET (and, in French) are two joining words from either side of the Pyrennes!
24A MYTHICAL This writer’s just topped Absolutely Fabulous (8)

MY (this writer’s) + (E)THICAL (just, fair, ‘topped’, by removing first letter)
25A EUREKA Cry in the bath about cake Prue initially discarded (6)

subtractive anag, i.e. about, of (C)AKE (P)RUE (discarding initial letters of each)

reversal, i.e. about, of (C)AKE (P)RUE (discarding initial letters of each)
26A SMIDGEON A little lad traps fly (8)

S_ON (lad) around (trapping) MIDGE (fly)
27A OODLES Piles can put off kisses and cuddles (6)

(CAN)OODLES, kisses and cuddles, putting off CAN!
Down
Clue No Solution Clue (definition underlined)

Logic/parsing
1D SETBACKS Obstructions from pack and the rest of the rugby team (8)

SET (pack, e.g. of cards) + BACKS (the rest of a rugby union team., i.e. not the pack!)
2D EMULSION Paint two animals, taking seconds (8)

EMU (an animal) + L_ION (another) around (taking in) S (seconds)
3D ACHE Yen or pound? (4)

double defn. – a yen can be a yearning, or an ACHE; and an ACHE can be a persistent dull pain, or pounding?
5D BAREFACED LIE Item of fake news involved ‘Liberace Deaf’ (9,3)

anag, i.e. involved, of LIBERACE DEAF
6D THE PEERAGE Elite leak spreads in Vogue (3,7)

THE RAGE (in vogue, trendy) around (spread by) PEE (leak!)
7D COOKIE Data filed online: 100, 0, 0, 1000, 5? (6)

C (100, Roman numeral) + OO (0, zero, twice) + K (1000, kilo-) + IE (5D, (L)IE, barefaced, or losing first letter?!)
8D ENERGY Last couples from drunken summer orgy get up and go (6)

final pairs of letters from ‘drunkEN summER orGY’!
11D SUPERVOLCANO Heavy smoker cooked Provençal soup, beginning to puff away (12)

subtractive anag, i.e. cooked, of PROVENCAL SOU(P), losing P (beginning to Puff, away)
14D STARVELING Colleague of Quince hiding, after dropping Independent to support The Sun? (10)

STAR (the sun) + VE(I)LING (hiding, dropping I, independent)

[Colleague of Quince in MSND, not our setter!]
16D VERY WELL Sure fit (4,4)

double defn. – VERY WELL can mean OK, sure; and if you are fit, you are probably VERY WELL!
17D ASHTRAYS Discs for smutty flicks that contain a lot of butts (8)

CD – an ASHTRAY is (usually) disc-shaped, and can contain a lot of smutty butts, that might have been flicked at it!
19D H-BOMBS American network with broadband speed charges that are devastating (1-5)

H_BO (Home Box Office, American TV network) + MBS (megabits per second, broadband speed rating)
20D MAI TAI Bond reported, after his boss discovered raid for cocktail (3,3)

M (James Bond’s boss) + AI (rAId, dis-covered, or removing outer letters) + TAI (homophone, i.e. reported, TAI can sound like TIE, or bond)
23D JUDO Perhaps Trump curtailed old defence system (4)

JUD(D) (Judd Trump, snooker player, example of someone called Trump, just not the usual one!, curtailed) + O (old)

19 comments on “Independent 11,307 by Quince (Saturday Puzzle 7 January 2023)”

  1. TOUCHE: used to acknowledge a hit in fencing.
    In that sense, this is an &lit clue.

    I took the wordplay as follows:
    TE-‘fighT & epeE finally’
    OUCH-I’ve been hit
    OUCH in TE

  2. I was beaten by the SE corner. I thought of ASHTRAYS but couldn’t see how it worked so didn’t write it in. And snooker players are an alien species to me! Then I ran out of time. But thanks anyway Quince and McRapper.

  3. My faves today:
    SEESAW, TOUCHE, YET, COOKIE and ASHTRAYS.

    Thanks, Q and m!

    PS: Is MBS a standard abbreviation (I come across mbps all the time)? No complaints with that clue as such.

  4. What a delightful Saturday treat; Quince on top form and fizzing with imagination. Like our esteemed and soon-to-be much missed blogger, the SE proved surprisingly impenetrable: Judd Trump is nho, I don’t speak Spanish and the cd for ASHTRAYS is very good and straight out beat me. Without the crossers, I struggled to get VERY WELL. So a 85-90% solve which I will happily take for today.

    Favourites amongst many include SEESAW, TOUCHE, GRAVEDIGGERS, BRAKE FLUID, EUREKA, SETBACKS, BAREFACED LIE, COOKIE, STARVELING – and, to show I’m a generous loser, two I failed to get – YET and ASHTRAYS, both of which are super. A long list!

    Thanks Quince for today and mc for your sterling work

  5. I parsed TOUCHÉ as KVa @1. My poor geography let me down in parsing YET. I thought 18a was a brilliant anagram spot.

    Thanks for all your work mc over the years. I commiserate with your covid woes. I had to isolate over Christmas and New Year, missing out on visiting friends and relatives. Negative now but still with a bit of a tickly cough.

  6. An enjoyable challenge, thanks, Quince. Favourites for me were GRAVEDIGGERS for the delightful surface reading (Greg Davies would make a very “interesting” Hamlet), and SEESAW for the ingenious use of “now and then” – don’t think I’ve seen that trick before.

    And thanks, mc, for this and for all the blogs over the years. Sterling work.

    I also parsed TOUCHÉ the same way as KVa. Couldn’t make sense of YET though – not due to a lack of vocabulary, I was simply foxed by “joiners”. Seems obvious now though.

    I might cavil slightly over “discs” – which suggests a flat shape to me, not one with raised edges such as an ashtray needs – but I thought that was an amusing cryptic def none the less so can forgive it.

  7. Thanks for the comments and feedback so far – much appreciated as usual.

    KVa at #1 – yes, that makes much more sense…duly updated. I’ve been slaving away on four concurrent blogs – two down, two to go – and have developed a bit of clue-blindness! And you are right, Mbps is the more common usage in broadband terms, but I guess you could think of it as Mb/s and drop the /.

    A couple of thumbs down for the sporting general knowledge in JUDO – I am a snooker fan, but initially thought it was referring to one of Ronald T Dump’s many offspring. However, the closest I can find is his son-in-law Jared (Kushner?)

    Hovis – Covid commiserations to you too. My special family Xmas – 14 of us all together for first time in 6 years – was rather spoiled for me (;+<). As a mid-50s asthmatic, it hit me quite hard – I dread to think how bad it might have been without all those jabs and boosters…

    I did think GRAVEDIGGERS was very clever, but I am only vaguely aware of Taskmaster and Greg Davies' involvement in it, so didn't feel qualified to big it up too much!

    PostMark at #4 – excuse my ignorance, but what is 'nho'? I see it on here quite a lot, but can't quite unpick it!

  9. MC @7 and Hovis @8: isn’t it a delightful irony for your last day in the job to discover that you’ve never heard of ‘nho’? 😀

  10. A few fails on the parsing front for me today but equally much that I enjoyed. Top three were BRAKE FLUID, GUT FEELING & BAREFACED LIE.

    Thanks to Quince and to mc for all the reviews he’s brought us.

  11. I read “about” in 25a as a reversal rather than anagram indicator, not that it makes a lot of difference.

    Many thanks mcrapper for all the blogs – a nice one to go out on.

  12. Thanks both. Too clever in parts for me today, and needed to check the Shakespeare elements. Small observations would be that ‘visceral’ in itself can potentially mean GUT FEELING, and that ASHTRAYS from my vague recollection of our 70s household were not so commonly disc shaped, which for me slightly let down a great clue

  13. The next best thing to finding a word that you nho from the wordplay is deducing a piece of knowledge in the same way, so I was pleased to guess that STARVELING was a character in A MSND. SEESAW, BAREFACED LIE and GRAVEDIGGERS were my favourites.

  14. Thanks for all the great blogs over the 12 years and hope you’re both back to full health before too long

  15. An enjoyable solve with no real problems, although we thought ‘discs’ was a bit odd as a definition of ASHTRAYS. We liked the misdirection in 12ac suggesting a mountain rather than a mount (see Genesis, chapter 22). ‘Colleague of Quince’ in 10 letters immediately suggested STARVELING rather than a fellow-setter (which we would have considered unfair). Others we liked included COOKIE and YET.
    Thanks, Quince; and thanks and best wishes to mc_rapper67 on your ‘retirement’

  16. Hovis and PostMark at #8 and #9 – thanks for teaching me a new TLA (you can never have too many of those…)

    DuncT at 11 – yes, reversal makes much more sense as the letters are all there in reverse order after the removal of the initials…good spot, and I will update that parsing

    nmsindy at #14 – nice to e-hear from you! – haven’t e-seen you around much lately, but I do remember that you gave me lot of constructive feedback and moral support in my early days of blogging, both Indys and EVs (as Raich?) – which was all much appreciated.

    And thanks for all the other kind comments above – I’m not giving up completely – I still have four other regular slots on the EV, Grauniad, Cyclops and Genius…just wanted to clear a bit of bandwidth…

  17. Not sure whether nho is a TLA or an ‘initialism’. I see that Chambers says that acronym can mean initialism in N American English. Of course, TLA isn’t an acronym in UK English, which kinda spoils the joke.

  18. Thanks for this and all your blogs mc_rapper67, wishing you a speedy recovery from the ever-present COVID, and may you enjoy the cleared bandwidth!

  19. Yes, mc_r at #16, Raich the pseudonym for Indy and EV, though have not appeared in the latter for some time.

Comments are closed.