Independent 11,353 by Lark

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A relatively new setter today: this is Lark’s third puzzle for the Independent as far as I can see.

I had a few niggles about loose definitions and vague indicators (noted below), but overall I found this an enjoyable challenge – drawing on a variety of sources, from ancient Greek theatre to 20th-century rock music by way of Shelley’s poetry. It’s hard to pick a favourite among 12a (very neat), 13a (great surface), 19a (lovely clue-as-definition, though I struggled with the spelling for a while), 29a (laugh-out-loud definition), 6d (for the “initial downsizing” trick), and 8d (obvious when you see it). Thanks to our appropriately-named setter for a fun puzzle.

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

ACROSS
1 DATUM
Piece of information obtained from US lawyer by corporation (5)
DA (District Attorney = US lawyer) next to TUM (corporation = slang for a large belly).

Singular form of “data”.
4 BROWSERS
Computer programs tanks to surround castle (8)
BOWSERS (mobile tanks for water or fuel) surrounding R (rook, in chess notation: commonly called a castle, but not by chess purists).
9 ALMANAC
Local man acquires sports calendar (7)
Hidden answer (sports, as a verb = wears?) in [loc]AL MAN AC[quires]. I’m not sure this really works as a hidden-answer indicator, because “sports” in this sense (as in someone sporting the latest fashions) suggests clothes on the outside rather than something on the inside.
10 ENLARGE
Expand integral needing brackets put back (7)
Hidden answer (. . . brackets, as a verb = encloses), reversed (put back), in [int]EGRAL NE[eding].
11 OZYMANDIAS
Once-great king of magical city rumoured to be returning after many struggles (10)
OZ (magical city in The Wizard of Oz), then SAID (rumoured) reversed (returning) after an anagram (. . . struggles) of MANY.

Probably best known from the sonnet by Shelley, which describes a statue proclaiming the greatness of King Ozymandias – except that it lies in ruins in the middle of a desert, hence “once-great”.
12 ACES
Pros and cons explained succinctly at first (4)
Initial letters (at first) of A[nd] C[ons] E[xplained] S[ufficiently].

Pro = ace = slang for an expert.
13 NIGHT OWL
One who prefers late hours with long parties (5,3)
Anagram (. . . parties = dances) of WITH LONG.

Term for someone who stays awake late in the evening – as opposed to a “lark” who wakes early. Perhaps today’s setter tends towards the latter?
15 CANARY
Singer is allowed to alter opening lines (6)
CAN (is allowed to) + first letter (opening) of A[lter] + RY (abbreviation for railway = lines).
18 CRANNY
Smart to corner right niche (6)
CANNY (smart = clever), holding (cornering) R (right).

As in “every nook and cranny” = a narrow opening.
19 BORSCHTS
Exotic broths featuring toppings of sour cream (8)
Anagram (exotic) of BROTHS with the first letters (toppings) of S[our] C[ream].

Clue-as-definition (&lit). Borscht is a soup from Eastern Europe, which might be considered “exotic” if you don’t live there. The version best known in the UK originates from Ukraine and is made with beetroot and topped with soured cream, but there are variants with different vegetables and/or toppings – which justifies the plural form for “different types of borscht”.
22 OPEN
Public duck enclosure (4)
O (zero = duck, in cicket scoring) + PEN (as in a sheep pen = enclosure).
23 GREENHOUSE
Some work around opera company securing hotel before function for conservatory (10)
ERG (scientific unit of work) reversed (around), then ENO (English National Opera = opera company) containing (securing) H (hotel), then USE (as a noun = function).

Conservatory = originally a glasshouse for growing tropical plants, though now it also means a glass-walled room as an extension on the sunny side of a house.
26 SWAHILI
Language inverting rules about greeting with personal pronoun (7)
LAWS (rules) reversed (inverting . . .), around HI (an informal greeting), then I (first person singular personal pronoun).
27 ILLICIT
Forbidden to provoke in speech (7)
Homophone (in speech) of ELICIT (as in “to elicit a response” = provoke). Some may argue that they don’t pronounce the unstressed initial I and E in exactly the same way, but it works for me.
28 WATCHMEN
Revolutionary peasant can have military leaders’ opponents as guards (8)
WAT (revolutionary peasant: Wat Tyler, leader of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt) + initial letters (leaders) of C[an] H[ave] M[ilitary], then E + N (East and North = opponents when playing card games).
29 SCREE
Southern Canadian rock group on downward trajectory (5)
S (Southern) + CREE (a member of a group of indigenous people in Canada).

Broken rock fragments around the base of a cliff: they’ve fallen from higher up, and they tend to slide downwards when you try to walk on them.
DOWN
1 DRAGOON
Take too long to capture old soldier (7)
DRAG ON (take too long) containing O (old).
2 TOMMY
Drum along with mildly vacuous rock opera (5)
TOM (otherwise called tom-tom = a drum) + M[ildl]Y (vacuous = empty = inner letters removed).

Rock opera album (and later film and stage show) by The Who.
3 MANHATTAN
NY district man finds hot area – time to catch some rays! (9)
MAN + H (hot) + A (area) + T (time) + TAN (as a verb = catch some rays = sunbathe, though there tend to be health warnings against that sort of thing now).
4 BACK DOWN
Supported leaving Europe, won unexpectedly – step away from the brink (4,4)
BACK[e]D (supported) without the E (Europe), then an anagram (unexpectedly) of WON.

Back down = withdraw to avoid an argument or fight.
5 OMEGAS
Characters from 16 learned way of working backwards (6)
SAGE (as an adjective = learned = wise) + MO (from Latin modus operandi = way of working), all reversed (backwards).

Plural of the Greek letter Omega (O), used for example in the works of Aeschylus (16 down).
6 SILK
Material to exploit after initial downsizing (4)
[m]ILK (to exploit = take advantage of someone or something), with the initial M (medium) downsized to S (small).
7 RORSCHACH
Psychiatrist‘s artist companion describing limits of outdoor school (9)
RA (Royal Academician = artist) + CH (Companion of Honour), around (describing) the outer letters (limits) of O[utdoo]R + SCH (abbreviation for school).

Psychiatrist who developed a test (named after him) to find out about patients’ thought processes from their responses to images of ink blots.
8 MERSEY
Two bands taken up river (6)
YES (English rock band) + REM (US rock band), all reversed (taken up = upwards in a down clue).

River running through Liverpool in north-west England; the centre of its own well-established music scene, though that doesn’t include either of these two bands.
14 GUATEMALA
State university team performing in swimming contest (9)
U (abbreviation for university) + anagram (performing) of TEAM, in GALA (swimming contest).
16 AESCHYLUS
I shunned such easily translated ancient Greek (9)
Anagram (translated) of SUCH EAS[i]LY, with the letter I ignored (shunned).

Ancient Greek playwright.
17 COMEDIAN
Entertainer to visit princess briefly (8)
COME (to visit, as in “can you come here tomorrow?” + DIAN[a] (former Princess of Wales) without the last letter (briefly).
18 CHOOSE
Opt for designer snakeskin (6)
We need to read “snake skin” as two words here: CHOO (Jimmy Choo, designer of expensive shoes) + outer letters (skin) of S[nak]E.
20 SPECTRE
It’s scary to behave like Ofsted, dropping in on Bible study (7)
[in]SPECT (to behave like Ofsted, the UK Office for Standards in Education which inspects schools) without the IN, then RE (Religious Education = Bible study).

A ghost, or the fictional crime organisation in the James Bond franchise – either of which could be considered scary.
21 TRUISM
Game is protected by trademark law (6)
RU (Rugby Union = game) + IS, contained in (protected by) TM (symbol for a trademark).

A statement that is so obviously true it’s hardly worth mentioning: perhaps something like a “law of nature”, though I’m not sure the two are really equivalent.
24 ULCER
Complaint about displacing holy man from Northern Ireland (5)
UL[st]ER (one of the traditional four provinces of Ireland before partition; the term is often used to refer to Northern Ireland, but that’s only part of Ulster and many of the people living there object to this usage), with ST (abbreviation for saint = holy man) replaced by C (abbreviation for about, from Latin circa).

Complaint = illness; a damaged area in a bodily membrane, for example in the mouth or stomach.
25 DISC
Record no end of dance music (4)
DISC[o] (dance music), without the end letter. Not a very satisfactory clue because the definition and wordplay are too closely linked: disco is short for discotheque (nightclub), a place where discs (musical records) are played.

17 comments on “Independent 11,353 by Lark”

  1. Enjoyable. Got stuck in the NE. Googled famous castles and then schools Solved but some parsing beat me. WATCHMEN (heard of Wat but didn’t twig), CHOOSE (oh, snakeskin) and the CH in the ink blot – so thanks for the blog. I liked Lark’s anagrams and SWAHILI, GREENHOUSE and OZYMANDIAS. Thanks.

  3. To expand me @2. It’s been a long time since I read the comics, though I did see the film since then. I remember: Doctor MANHATTAN, The COMEDIAN, OZYMANDIAS, RORSCHACH and NIGHT OWL (actually NITE OWL). I suspect there are more references.

  4. Hovis @2 Ooh, so it is, Manhattan, Comedian, Ozymandias, Rorschach, Night Owl (spelt Nite Owl) and Silk Spectre are characters. I didn’t know, I googled.

    Thank you to Lark and Quirister.

  7. Well done to Hovis; I had zero idea about the theme. Despite this, I enjoyed working out the (for me) difficult parsing of OZYMANDIAS, WATCHMEN, SILK (clever) and RORSCHACH and a few others. Favourite (clue if not the soup) was BORSCHTS.

    Thanks to Lark and Quirister

  9. Yet another unknown theme here and shared our blogger’s reservations about loose definitions and vague indicators. From a real mixed bag I picked out SILK, MERSEY & NIGHT OWL as being worthy of honourable mention.

    Thanks to Lark for the puzzle and to Quirister for the review.

  10. As usual missed the theme. So annoyed with myself. Big fan of Alan Moore. Bought and still have the comics. Can it really be nearly 40 years ago?
    Well done Hovis @2&3 for spotting it and Shanne@5 for helping. This from Wikipedia:
    “Laurie Juspeczyk / Silk Spectre II
    The daughter of Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre, with whom she has a strained relationship) and The Comedian. Of Polish heritage, she had been the lover of Doctor Manhattan for years. While Silk Spectre was originally supposed to be the Charlton superheroine Nightshade, Moore was not particularly interested in that character. Once the idea of using Charlton characters was abandoned, Moore drew more from heroines such as Black CANARY and Phantom Lady.”
    CANARY may be part of the theme, or just a coincidence. I certainly remember Black Canary from ’60s comics.

  11. Who can forget Black Canary and her fishnet leggings (Zatanna wore similar)? They got my pulse racing as a teenage lad (and later in life if I’m to be honest). The name Sally Jupiter does ring a bell – strange I should forget her alter ego.

  12. Thanks both. MANHATTAN went in early and I made the mistake of thinking it too easy given we were spoon-fed the first three letters….fast-forward some hours, with some assistance taken and a number not fully parsed. I dismissed ‘R’ for castle as I thought it inaccurate, which delayed me solving BROWSERS, and my lack of knowledge of the Greeks, Ukrainian food and the certainly-not-from-anywhere-near-home psychiatrist caused more pain than enjoyment, partially compensated for by NIGHT OWL which seemed barely cryptic, but which I now see as clever if you allow the anagrind at a stretch (I tend not to dance at parties)

  13. Unlike Quirister I liked ALMANAC: Cleverly hidden across 3 words, using sports in the sense of displays. Sports may be doing double duty, hinting at a sports almanack such as Wisden?

  14. Apart from a couple of (to me) obscurities I thought this was great, with plenty of witty surface reads and inventive clueing.
    Standing out in my book were the succinct ACES, the still topical BACK DOWN, the musical TOMMY and MERSEY, along with the clever SILK.
    Many thanks Lark and Quirister.

  15. Held up for ages in the NE corner till we eventually saw RORSCHACH and OMEGAS then finally BROWSERS and SILK. But plenty to enjoy, such as NIGHT OWL, OZYMANDIAS and AESCHYLUS. Didn’t even look for a theme.
    Thanks, Lark and Quirister.

  16. Liked as Quirister: ACES, NIGHT OWL, SILK (for the slick “downsizing” schtick), and MERSEY.
    But especially the BORSCHTS &lit. So very clever. Not surprised you “struggled with the spelling”:
    These are the “Alternative forms” given in the wiktionary:
    “borsch, borshch, borsht, borschtsch, bortsch (sometimes considered misspellings)”
    There’s a restaurant in Knightsbridge called “Borscht N Tears”. It’s been there since 1965.
    yet its website is “borshtchntears.com”! And that’s a different “Alternative form”
    Thanks Lark & Quirister.

  17. There used to be a Borscht and Cheers on the Kings Road as well as the Borscht and Tears on Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge. When I used to eat there they served Borscht, and Shashlik, Pirozhki, and other Russian foods and the best black bread and sour cream on the tables, plus live music. I only ate at the Borscht and Cheers once, the night I saw The Rocky Horror Show at the Kings Road Theatre (it was there from 1973 to 1979).

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