Independent on Sunday 1,738 by Mev

24 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,738 by Mev”

1. It is a double pangram.

2. Much easier going than yesterday, and enjoyable. I was held up for a while in the north east, having never heard of OK for jake, and with boffin taking ages to finally understand. I had spotted the pangram before then, but unfortunately all the letters were already in, so it didn’t provide any extra help.

   In the end I was defeated by 22a. Never having heard of twiggy, MID-FIFTIES was the solution I entered, and unfortunately all the crossing letters match. This kind of mixup is why I don’t usually like “solution as wordplay type” clues, and I don’t think this one was entirely fair.

   Favourite clue was maharaja, which gave a major pdm when I finally understood how it worked.

   Thanks Mev and Kitty

3. Thanks Kitty for explaining STAN. I remember the eminem song but didn’t know that it had led to this slang meaning. Used a word fit to get TEXTBOOK and vaguely remember seeing this use of JAKE before. The rest went in ok (jake) but with the occasional struggle. Thanks to Mev for the challenge.

4. Thanks, Mev and Kitty! Another Kittylicious neat blog!
   Liked AZERI, FUGU, MID-SIXTIES, MAGAZINE and STAND-UP COMEDIAN.

   AZERI
   I agree with your view on the requirement of a homophone indicator. Said that, I have seen this trick before. As you say, it’s a reported speech. Cockney is used as a two-in-one device.

   STAND-UP COMEDIAN
   Didn’t know that ‘obsessive’ could be used as a noun to mean ‘an obsessive person’. Learnt it today.

5. Thanks, Kitty (again!) and Mev. Good fun puzzle, lovely blog.

   Guessed quite early that it was going to be a double pangram when some of my early solutions had Qs, Js, Xs etc. It was the Hs that held out longest – MAHARAJA and NOUGHT were two of my last in.

   Nho jake meaning ok, but yes, it had to be that.

   I was happy with Cockney acting as a homophone indicator – dropping an H is a feature of speech rather than writing.

6. On the AZERI indicator, for what it’s worth, this point arose with my final submission to Rookie Corner. I used an additional homophone indicator alongside the Cockney one to transform ‘hoarder’ to ‘order’, my rationale being that one dropped the H and the other changed the spelling of what was left. And then I posted a query to solvers asking their views. There were supporters for both approaches but the ruling from Prolixic favoured omission of the homophone indicator: As Cockney indicators rely on the verbal pronunciation, not how something is written, I think that you could omit the additional homophone indicator.

7. Despite seeing an H was needed for the double pangram, I still missed NOUGHT and never would have solved FUGU. Didn’t know OK for ‘Jake’ or STAN for ‘Obsessive’ either but the rest of the wordplay and definitions made both answers fairly clear.

   Enjoyable, but as we’ve now come to expect from Mev, quite a tough challenge.

   Thanks to Mev and Kitty

8. Virginia Wayne

   Hi all,

   Thanks Kitty for the perfectly-parsed blog, and everyone who’s had a go and/or commented so far.

   I started this grid with no theme or nina in mind, just thinking “let’s have a couple of long ones to start off”. When “stand up…” was a software suggestion for the long vertical, I wondered if there might be something comparable for the long horizontal… “…crossing”? That’ll do. Then Magazine was suggested for the 1D slot, and the Z made me think to try for a pangram. Next I noticed MxxSxx in the top row, so a little nina went in as a nod to Derbyshire stalwart run-machine Wayne Madsen. Later, I thought of the actress Virginia, so hence the title. (…which, upon searching, turns out to be the name of another actress, with a single uncredited 1929 film appearance. Hello, Ms Wayne – the future remembers you! ) I think it was when Azeri came along as a suggestion that the possibility of a double pangram occurred. The SE corner held out longest against one. Nisan was the most obscure entry to me, but won’t be for some. Perhaps Fugu and Iwo Jima were a little out there, especially if you haven’t seen that Simpsons episode, or heard of the sandy film, but I didn’t think anything was too far out.

   Accidental ninas along the way:
   Evaldas KUGYS is a Lithuanian footballer.
   NIPUN is a Hindi word meaning ‘one who is skilled’, and an NGO
   W-NOTE is a Japanese handicraft supplier (as far as I can make out)

   Shortly after submitting this one, I began to wonder if the cowboy nickname might be a bit mean. (I eventually decided not – It’s certainly kinder than, say, “boy” or “girl” for a name.) So I went looking for examples. I’d vaguely heard of the singing actor Tex Ritter. Looking at his wiki page, he seemed to have specialised in playing characters called… Tex! I hadn’t heard of the giant cowboy statue call Tex Randall, but the name rang a bell… Oh, hang on, that was the name of one of Ritter’s characters. Perhaps the one was named after the other, I don’t know. Then I found another giant – a real-life cowboy-turned-actor who went by “Tex” despite being from Nebraska. And whose surname came as quite a surprise to me. Everything’s connected (as we seem to keep saying on the podcast)!

   Arossignol@2: While MID-FIFTIES does fit the crossers and the cryptic definition, true, it doesn’t fit the straight definition, so it might be tricky, but I don’t think it’s unfair. I say to newbie solvers that if you come across something you’re unfamiliar with in a clue, it’s fine to look it up. It’s not cheating, because no-one can be expected to know everything!

   Cheers one and all!

9. I’ve never spotted a single pangram, let alone a double one, but it’s impressive that the grid isn’t full of odd words.
   I have, though, spotted various strange italics and capitals in the clues, maybe hinting at other music apart from Prince(23a), Eminem(4d) and the QUO(14d);
   12a “Particle Man” – maybe this by They Might Be Giants?
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_Man
   15a “Pavement” – maybe this band? – I don’t know about “Walker”
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavement_(band)
   23a “Open” – golf?
   1d “Queen” – no need for wikipedia’s help.
   14d “Saint” Etienne?
   The bad grammar in 13a UNQUIET? – is that because “whom” would normally be “que”?
   Thanks M&K
   Happy Father’s/Fathers’ Day!

10. FrankieG@9
    Is ‘whom’ considered essential in today’s English? Has ‘who’ not taken over the role of ‘whom’?
    Correct me.

11. FrankieG @9:
    -12a Yes, the TMBG reference was deliberate.
    -15a Yes, that band. It might not be likely that Stephen Malkmus’ band would be working on new versions of Wannabe etc in a studio built/used by Scott Walker, but it’s possible. 🙂
    -23a Yes, with “amateur” and “Open”, I was going for a sporting event surface. Possibly tennis.
    -1d No allusion to the band intended.
    -14d I’ve never actually heard anything by the Christian rock band Saint, but I strongly suspect I’d rather listen to Sarah, Bob and Pete any day. Though I wasn’t thinking of them at the time.
    -13a Yeah, fair enough. But also, what KVa said. 🙂

12. Good fun, though I stumbled on a few. I agree that Cockney is inherently to do with the sound. “Cockney Prince, last of line for country”wouldn’t work as a clue for Eire.

13. Thanks both. A more even struggle than yesterday, but a struggle nonetheless. FUGU was unknown and unlikely-looking, and TEXTBOOK beyond my weekend eyes, and I still have no idea how ‘Jake’ becomes ‘OK’ I did parse Stan as intended in STAND UP COMEDIAN but would need a grown-up to explain how ‘impressed by’ puts ‘con’ outside rather than inside ‘media’

14. Hi Mev@11
    -15a Darn it – I should have guessed Scott Walker – I’m a fan.
    -1d Shame on you for not alluding to Queen – I’m a fan.
    -14d I had found this link, but I thought: No – nobody would allude to an “American Christian metal band” with themes of “hell, evil, and…the End times”.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_(band)
    KVa@10 (& Mev) You can pry the word “whom” from my cold dead hands. Never has my flabber been so gasted! – (C) FrankieH
    SPICE GIRLS CANON was a nice anagram, but I’d give their work the more pretentious epithet “oeuvre”.
    Why does the mushroom get invited to all the parties? ‘Cause he’s a FU[N] GU[Y] to be with.

15. Missed out in the NE corner; we didn’t know of FUGU as the puffer fish (now had it been Fogo, a volcano in the Cape Verde Islands …) and all we could think of for 6dn was ‘honest’ (= ‘square’) which at least gave us an H for the double pangram. In fact we don’t really understand NOUGHT as square cardinal unless it’s just that 0 is a cardinal number and a square.
    Otherwise challenging but enjoyable. Thanks, Mev and Kitty

16. Saw MADSEN and thought of Virginia, but also her arguably more famous brother Michael, a Tarantino regular since playing Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madsen
    The giant cowboy Tex is quite a spooky coincidence.
    I knew STAN would be in Wiktionary. Surprised it’s in Merriam-Webster too.
    It’s also a verb: my son overheard younger people in a queue at a concert asking each other which member of the band they were stanning for.
    He’s sure they’d never have heard of the Eminem song. Happy Father’s/Fathers’ day.

17. Well, I use “whom” when it is grammatically correct, (Mind you, I once heard a joke of the form of someone answering the phone. “To whom do you wish to speak?” “I must have a wrong number, No-one I know uses the word whom.”)

    Certainly easier than yesterday in that I nearly finished it. But I’m getting tired and I had to guess many answers.

18. TFO @13 – Jake as a slang term meaning ok is in the dictionaries, marked as chiefly N American, Australian and NZ, origin unknown.

    I was hoping a grown-up would reply to you re 4d. I’m afraid I can’t think of a good answer.

    FrankieG @16 – Stan is also in Oxford (both ODE and OED), as both noun and verb. He’s not been granted entry into Chambers or Collins yet.

19. Hi, Kitty – I forgot to say that you’ve parsed everything perfectly again, just as you did yesterday.
    re 4d – impress can mean “seize or confiscate (property) by force” as in “The liner was impressed as a troop carrier”.

20. My Chambers and Concise OED both say NEW in big letters on the cover. Lies – The former is a 29-year-old, the latter is 17 – almost a grown-up.
    Neither has a clue about Stan who is already fast approaching 23! 🙂

21. TFO @13/Kitty @18 – I can’t claim to be a grown-up but I’ve seen impressed used this way before and the justification is that there’s a somewhat old-fashioned meaning of impress that’s something like forcibly press into service. It feels a bit of a stretch to me but it’s ok if you accept that it’s roughly equivalent to “seize”.

22. Thanks Widdersbel, FrankieG – perfect explanations both. I thought it was something like that, but I left it too long to think about TFO’s question – trusting that somebody else would! – then it got late and my brain gave up.

23. Very enjoyable. Still don’t get 6d: ‘square cardinal’ as a definition for NOUGHT. Anyone help?

24. Hi rengland, and sorry for not replying earlier. (It hit my inbox during a workday so went to my “later” list … which is rather an expandable entity!)

    Just in case you revisit to see if there were any replies, the square is a square number and the cardinal is a cardinal number. Nought or zero satisfies this (as would four, nine, sixteen etc).

    People generally know about square numbers. The layperson’s definition of a cardinal number is one which describes quantity (basically what most people would just call a number) rather than order (cf ordinal number). If you want to look up mathematics definitions for cardinal/ordinal numbers, be warned that they are not for the mathsphobic!

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