Independent 11,309 by Serpent

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It’s a Serpent today. Great news!

We found this a bit tougher than usual for a Serpent puzzle, but no less enjoyable. There are some great clues and only one word that we hadn’t come across before (15d). We particularly liked 25d.

It’s Serpent on a Tuesday, so there has to be a theme, but we didn’t spot it until we had nearly completed the puzzle.

We spotted ‘Patti Smith’ as a nina in the north and east unches, and ‘Easter’ and ‘Horses’ in the west and south. Although we are of the right era for Patti Smith, we were never big fans – ‘Because the Night’ being the one track of hers that we would instantly recognise. So we had to google ‘Easter’ and ‘Horses’ to find that they are Patti Smith albums from 1978 and 1975, and we then discovered that she had also made a 1976 album titled 3/21.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. Cutting lover’s head in half causes terrible pain (8)
DISTRESS

mISTRESS (lover) with the ‘m’ (first letter or ‘head’ = 1000 in Roman numerals) replaced by D (500 in Roman numerals) – ‘cut in half’

5. Spot male priest taking mass outside (6)
PIMPLE

M (male) P (priest) with PILE (mass) outside

9. Wound king in wicked action (9)
MEANDERED

R (king) in MEAN (wicked) DEED (action)

11. Electron beams reportedly destroy recording on tape (5)
ERASE

E (electron) + a homophone (‘reportedly’) of RAYS (beams)

12. Box office’s opening interrupts funny sketch (7)
CARTOON

CARTON (box) round or ‘interrupted by’ O (first letter or ‘opening’ of office)

13. Unpleasant gang of criminals briefly returned to infiltrate racket (7)
NOISOME

A reversal (‘returned’) of MOb (gang of criminals) without the last letter or ‘briefly’ in (‘infiltrating’) NOISE (racket)

14. Location of dam and entrance to animal pen? (5)
ASWAN

A (first letter or ‘entrance’ to animal) SWAN (pen – a female swan)

16. Part of play that’s still contributing to respectable audience (7)
TABLEAU

Hidden (‘contributing to’) in respecTABLE AUdience

19. Small fish? One hopes it’s not smelt (6)
STENCH

S (small) TENCH (fish)

21. Sort of opiate inspiring welcome state (8)
ETHIOPIA

An anagram (‘sort of’) of OPIATE round or ‘inspiring’ HI (welcome)

24. Enduring impression finally captured by a French painter (9)
PERMANENT

N (last or ‘final’ letter of impression) in (‘captured by’) PER (a – for each) MANET (French painter)

26. Runs into drunk American rather carelessly (5)
SORTA

R (runs) in SOT (drunk) A (American)

27. Vault yields missing case in public records (7)
ARCHIVE

ARCH (vault) gIVEs (yields) without the first and last letters or ‘case’

28. Drain clogged with hair repelled unpopular people (7)
PARIAHS

SAP (drain) round or ‘clogged with’ HAIR, all reversed or ‘repelled’

29. Polish husband’s dated clothing (5)
SHEEN

H (husband) in or ‘clothed by’ SEEN (dated, as in ‘went on a date’)

30. Object of desire developed finer body (9)
BOYFRIEND

An anagram (‘developed’) of FINER BODY

DOWN
1. Protest singers led by Conservative politicians (9)
DEMOCRATS

DEMO (protest) + RATS (‘singers’ – informers) after or ‘led by’ C (Conservative)

2. Tweeter talks informally about dispute (7)
SPARROW

A reversal (‘about’) of RAPS (talks informally) + ROW (dispute)

3. Broadcaster spoke out, initially ignoring America (5)
RADIO

RADIus (spoke) O (first or ‘initial’ letter of out) omitting or ‘ignoring’ US (America)

4. Characteristic of service force (8)
STRENGTH

Double definition

6. Series going into quite miserable detail (7)
ITEMISE

Hidden (‘series going into’) in quITE MISErable

7. Quietly slaughtered five centrally involved in espionage (5)
PIANO

An anagram (”slaughtered’) of esPIONAge (the ‘central five’ letters)

8. This Roman cardinal appears in letter to the Corinthians (6)
ELEVEN

ELEVEN is XI in Roman numerals – xi is a Greek letter, as used by Corinthians

10. Foolish person‘s puzzling use of words (7)
DINGBAT

Double definition

15. International court blocks country in the blink of an eye (9)
NICTATION

I (international) CT (court) in or ‘blocking’ NATION (country) – a new word for us

17. Successful period for every state capital (9)
UPPERCASE

UP (successful period) PER (for every) CASE (state)

18. Firm retains most beneficial item under pressure (8)
HARASSED

HARD (firm) round or ‘retaining’ ASSEt (beneficial item) missing the last letter or ‘most’

20. What Car? regularly takes up issue with those that listen (7)
EARACHE

A reversal (‘up’) of EH (what) CAR and alternate or ‘regular’ letters of tAkEs

22. Provider of cover belonging to person taking action to preserve right (7)
INSURER

IN (belonging to) SUER (person taking action) round or ‘preserving’ R (right)

23. Raised note beginning to reinforce echo effect (6)
REVERB

A reversal (‘raised’) of BREVE (note) R (first letter or ‘beginning’ of reinforce)

24. Implores Francophone country to suppress resistance (5)
PRAYS

PAYS (French for country) round or ‘suppressing’ R (resistance)

25. Ends year on a bit of a high? (5)
TIPSY

TIPS (ends) Y (year)

 

16 comments on “Independent 11,309 by Serpent”

  1. B&He’s second paragraph sums up my thoughts on this treat from Serpent. I spotted the Nina too late for it to be much help

    Thanks to Serpent and B&J

  3. Gosh, hard, had more trouble than I should have with ELEVEN, DISTRESS, CARTOON, SPARROW (went through swallow, jackdaw, ***CROW, just couldn’t think of sparrow, are they rarer these days?)
    I liked TIPSY, SORTA and STENCH.

    I don’t understand ‘characteristic of service’ for STRENGTH, could someone elaborate?
    It’s one of those alternatively symmetrical grids, top right to bottom left.

    Thanks B&J, Serpent

  4. Even harder than usual for Serpent though well worth the effort. I didn’t know what it was referring to, but spotting the Nina did help me in the SE corner with SORTA, which I doubt I would have solved otherwise and I could then go on to get HARASSED, my last in. I remember learning about the “nictitating membrane”, or third eyelid of birds and some animals, which was useful for 15d.

    Sorry, just me being thick, but how does ‘puzzling use of words’ = DINGBAT? Is it something to do with a word game app I just saw on the App Store or am I missing something more obvious?

    Thanks to Serpent and to B&J

  5. Agree with all the previous commenters – a very tough but hugely enjoyable puzzle. One of those where you look at the solutions afterwards and wonder why you found it so hard. TIPSY is an absolute beauty. Completely forgot to look for a theme/Nina. Thanks, Serpent.

    And thanks for the blog, B&J. I needed your explanation for RADIO.

    Yes, Wordplodder, exactly that – it’s a kind of visual word puzzle (like some of Paul’s clues can be, such as “breban gerad” in his Guardian prize puzzle last Saturday – hope that’s not a spoiler!)

  6. 4D I agree this is a DD, but I think the definitions are “characteristic” and “service force”, and that “with” is acting as a link word. The definition of STRENGTH in the online Chambers includes the meanings “a beneficial characteristic” and “a military force”.

  8. We spent too long deliberating on the double definition. We agreed in the end that a service in tennis could be described by its strength as Petert@7 has suggested. We didn’t think of phone coverage.

  9. Thanks. I’m inclined to go with Rudolf’s explanation, though since both ‘characteristic’ and ‘force’ are definitions in themselves and ‘of service’ doesn’t seem to add anything to either puzzlement remains. Is ‘service’ by itself meant as an extra definition? Service is ‘a military force’, which is given under strength in Chambers separately to ‘force’, but the meanings are all a bit too close for comfort.

  10. Thanks both. My brain is still in some discomfort, even following attempts here to explain STRENGTH which still feels unsatisfactory. I am probably behind others too in understanding how ‘dated’ is ‘seen’ in SHEEN (‘saw’ would be my version) and in seeing an example of ‘case’ in LOWERCASE being ‘state’ unless along the lines of basket case

  11. TFO@10 – We had some of the same concerns. CASE = STATE or condition in Chambers- definition 2 (noun). We could not come up with a sentence though where you could interchange them. As far as SEEN = DATED, Chambers has it down as a dialect or non-standard form which is OK as far as we were concerned.

  12. Thanks Serpent for the crossword of the year thusfar in my opinion. It took me several sessions to complete and I didn’t understand the parsing of DISTRESS, RADIO, and DINGBAT so thanks B & J for the help. I was a fan of Patti Smith in the 70’s (I still own Horses on vinyl) so I spotted the nina but I still missed RADIO ETHIOPIA. My favourite clues were MEANDERED, PERMANENT, SORTA, ARCHIVE, PIANO, HARASSED, and TIPSY.
    [ I saw SEEN = DATED in a romantic way e.g. they had seen each other before, they had dated each other before.]

  13. Many thanks to Bertandjoyce for the excellent blog and to everyone who has been kind enough to comment (especially Tony @12!).

    The clue for STRENGTH is intended to be a double definition: “Characteristic of service” is supposed to translate as “something that is beneficial/advantageous/of use”. I agree with B&J @11 that it’s not easy to think of a sentence in which CASE and STATE are interchangeable. I was just going by the dictionary on this occasion.

  14. Thanks, Serpent. Challenging but fun. I did better than usual with this setter: finished reasonably quickly and spotted the Nina, though too late to be of significant assistance.

  15. This was certainly a challenge but we thought there must be something going on with the unusual grid (symmetrical about the SW-NE diagonal). We eventually finished after a wordfinder suggested ELEVEN among the possibilities for 8dn and we saw the parsing; but we missed the other Roman numeral trick so failed to parse DISTRESS. There were a handful of others that we couldn’t fully parse. We spotted the nina but had to google for enlightenment about it. Favourites were MEANDERED, CARTOON and DEMOCRATS.
    Thanks, Serpent and B&J.

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