Independent 11,477 by Atrica

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Atrica provides us with today’s challenge.

Tuesday is theme day in the Indy, but we couldn’t see anything happening here until we were well into solving the puzzle – when 25ac and 30ac rang bells. With some electronic help and a little personal knowledge, we eventually found seven cocktails in the grid. We think we have found them all, but given the strange names some new cocktails are given we may have missed one or two.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
7. You must have passed this and they say you’ll be accepted (5)
URINE

A homophone (‘they say’) of YOU’RE IN (you’ll be accepted)

8. Made as if he’d no alternative (9)
FASHIONED

An anagram (‘alternative’) of AS IF HE’D NO

11. Recruits register to fill spaces (7)
ENLISTS

LIST (register) in or ‘filling’ ENS (spaces – in printing)

12. Plant found in hedgerow by bishop leading hike (7)
BRAMBLE

B (bishop) RAMBLE (hike)

13. Patterned fabric starts to be attractive trend in Kazakhstan (5)
BATIK

First letters or ‘starts’ of Be Attractive Trend In Kazakhstan

15. Gathers flowers for minor suppliers (4,5)
TUCK SHOPS

TUCKS (gathers – in sewing) HOPS (flowers)

17. Grey-haired dolt wasting time cycling (3)
OLD

DOLt missing or ‘wasting’ the ‘t’ (time) with the ‘d’ ‘cycled’ from the front to the back

19. Wretched prime time, lacking content and comparatively worthless (7)
EMPTIER

An anagram (‘wretched’) of PRIME TimE missing the middle letters or ‘lacking content’

20. Place to cleanse oneself of endless tinned food (3)
SPA

SPAm (‘tinned food’) missing the last letter or ‘endless’

22. Sponsors possibly shed tears seeing the style of Michael Foot’s hair (9)
BACKSWEPT

BACKS (sponsors possibly) WEPT (shed tears)

23. Knot perhaps for fly fisherman? (5)
WADER

Double definition

25. One-wheeled vehicle in first section of race disqualified after flipping over (7)
SIDECAR

Hidden and reversed (‘after flipping’) in the first part of RACE DISqualified

27. Following a scam is going in for a harsh form of government (7)
FASCISM

F (following) + an anagram (‘going’) of A SCAM IS + A SCaM with IS replacing or ‘going in for’ the ‘a’ . Thanks to Hovis @12 for spotting the error in our parsing – ‘going’ is pretty poor anagrid!

30. Banking centre different than an ATM (9)
MANHATTAN

An anagram (‘different’) of THAN AN ATM

31. Neutering partly removed these organs (5)
UTERI

neUTERIng missing the outer letters (‘partly removed’)

DOWN
1. Married, following which regularly surlier and cross (4)
MULE

M (married) + alternate or ‘regular’ letters of sUrLiEr

2. Soldier left inside joined drill (6)
GIMLET

GI (soldier) + L (left) in MET (joined)

3/14. Best parts of the queen’s anatomy? (4,5)
BEES KNEES

We’re not sure that queen BEES have KNEES as part of their anatomy, but the imagery is amusing

4. Eliminates aristocrats with guillotine treatment (4)
OFFS

tOFFS (aristocrats) missing the first letter or being ‘beheaded’ (guillotine treatment)

5. Right to proceed with regard to eliminating duplication (4)
VISA

VIS-A-vis (with regard to) missing the second ‘vis’ or ‘eliminating duplication’

6. King upset with nib – many problems with faulty pen? (8)
INKBLOTS

An anagram (‘upset’) of K (king) and NIB + LOTS (many) – a crafty reference to our new king’s well-publicised frustration with a faulty pen

9. Written down like the two in water, symbolically (9)
SUBSCRIPT

A clue-as-definition: the ‘2’ in H2O (‘water, symbolically’) is written as a SUBSCRIPT – unfortunately, we can’t persuade the software to ‘subscript’ the 2 in the blog!!

10. After a change of heart, refuse to put on clothes (5)
DRESS

DRoSS (refuse) with the central letter or ‘heart’ changed to E

13. Life of Brian’s debut coming up, pay attention! (3)
BIO

B (first letter or ‘debut’ of Brian) + a reversal (‘coming up’) of OI (pay attention)

14. See 3
15. Not to be discussed out of respect to management (3-6)
TOP-SECRET

An anagram (‘management’) of RESPECT TO

16. Cheat, having succeeded, gloated (5)
SCREW

S (succeeded) CREW (gloated, as in the past tense of ‘crow’)

18. Hedonistic nightspot gutted after the seventies? (8)
DECADENT

NightspoT without the middle letters or ‘gutted’ after DECADE (‘the seventies?’)

21/29. A way of communicating I’m a liar, unfortunately (3,4)
AIR MAIL

An anagram (‘unfortunately’) of I’M A LIAR

22. Shackleton’s heading to visit pole or bust! (5)
BOSOM

S (first letter or ‘heading’ of Shackleton) in or ‘visiting’ BOOM (pole – on a yacht))

24. Test perhaps after daughter becomes road user (6)
DRIVER

RIVER (the Test is an example of a river) after D (daughter)

26. Twitter and tweeter (4)
CHAT

Double definition – first as gossip, second as a bird

27. Elephant sometimes seen in basin in church (4)
FONT

Double definition – the first being a typeface (of which we had previously never heard)

28. In broadcast satirise aggressive winger (4)
SKUA

We think that this is intended to be a homophone (‘broadcast’) of SKEWER (satirise – although we cannot find this in Chambers) – however, we were informed by a British naturalist in South America that ‘skua’ should be pronounced ‘skoo-a’ although we had never heard it pronounced that way in the UK

29. See 21

35 comments on “Independent 11,477 by Atrica”

  2. WADER
    fly fisherman (an angler employing the fly-fishing technique). Looks like a nice whimsical def (With a WADER fishing on the fly-literally).
    Adding WADER to the list above.

  3. B&J
    TOP-SECRET
    Will ‘not to be discussed out‘ make better sense as the def? Or should we consider ‘out’ as a link word (‘of’ is there, of course).

  4. Quite a gentle Tuesday challenge today and it was nice to spot the cocktails – just remembering to look for a theme is difficult enough and, even then, it often doesn’t click. I failed on SKUA, though, (would never have thought of satirise/skewer in a month of Sundays) and needed B&J to help me understand FONT. Who on earth names a typeface ‘elephant’?

    Particular likes today include FASHIONED, TUCK SHOP, SIDECAR, INKBLOTS, DECADENT and BOSOM.

    Thanks Atrica and B&J

  7. AIR MAIL and MULE are also cocktails. I spotted the theme pretty quickly for once. Not that this is a reflection in my lifestyle or anything…

    Thanks, Atrica and Bertandjoyce

  9. KVa@3
    I agree with B&J’s parse of TOP-SECRET – ‘not to be discussed‘ is the def – ‘out of’ is telling us what to use as the anagram fodder.

  10. FrankieG@9
    Thanks. I was split between both options.
    ‘not to be discussed out’ is bad English probably.

  11. Atrica is also telling us that other liquids are available, apart from cocktails and URINE:
    INK in INKBLOTS – holy water in a FONT – “taking the waters” at a SPA – amniotic fluid in UTERI – the H2O in SUBSCRIPT…

  13. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skewer#Verb
    ‘1 To impale on a skewer.
    2 (chess) To attack a piece which has a less valuable piece behind it.
    3 (figuratively) To severely mock or discredit.
    2022 January 13, Mark Landler, “U.K. Monarchy and Government Plunge Into Simultaneous Crises”, in The New York Times?:
    “A journalist outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday displaying one of the many tabloid covers skewering Mr. Johnson.”‘
    Thanks A & B&J
    GeneratePress – when did that change from WordPress? – won’t let me do H2O properly, either. 🙂

  17. KVa@10 – speaking of “bad English”:
    30a MANHATTAN “Banking centre different than an ATM (9)” – the “different than” really jarred for me. “Other than” would have been better.
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/different#Usage_notes
    ‘Depending on dialect, time period, and register, the adjective different (“not the same”) may be construed with one of the prepositions from, to, and than, or with the subordinating conjunction than.
    “Pleasure is different from/than/to happiness.” “It’s different than (or from what) I expected.”
    Of these, from is more common in formal registers than in informal ones; than is more common in the US than elsewhere; and to is more common in the UK, in Australia, and in New Zealand than in the US.
    Style guides often advocate different from, by analogy with differ from rather than *differ than or *differ to, and proscribe different than and different to.’
    https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-d
    ‘different from is traditionally the correct form; different to is widely accepted nowadays, but note the difference between:
    She looked very different to those who came before (to the people who came before, she looked very different).
    She looked very different from those who came before (she did not look like the people who came before).
    Different than is frowned on, at least in British English; and it’s always differs from, not differs to’

  18. WADER
    fly fishermen (using the fly-fishing technique) may not be as fly as the wading birds!!!
    Waders catch fish by diving from the water surface on which they are wading. Not
    diving while in flight as I assumed. I stand corrected.

  22. I do wish our setters weren’t so obsessed with URINE in its various guises but it seems to be extremely useful for their compiling!
    Didn’t spot the theme until I came to SCREWDRIVER but think I found all those mentioned by our bloggers although can’t say that I’ve tried any of them.
    Top clues for me were BRAMBLE, TUCK SHOPS, WADER & INKBLOTS.

    Thanks to Atrica and to B&J for the review – particularly the full parsing of the elephant!

  23. Thanks to all for the comments and to B&J for the blog. When I was compiling this I looked up each entry to see whether there were any unintentional cocktails included. “Top secret” turns out to be a cocktail. I was somewhat taken aback when I googled 7 across with “cocktail”, which shows what I sheltered life I’ve led.
    Re. FrankieG@17 and “different than”, I grew up in Britain but have lived nearly two-thirds of my life in the USA, where “than” is used a lot after “different”, especially in informal speech. I’m sure I do it all the time. However, I must admit that I had a twinge of uneasiness when writing that clue, remembering English lessons from my youth, and tried for a moment to find a comparative to use (weirder? worse?) before the necessary “than” before deciding that they didn’t make much sense. There is no doubt that “other than” is better! I do find it interesting that in some contexts “different”, “other” and “not the same” can mean the same thing but do not use the same prepositions.

  24. Thanks to Hovis @12 for spotting the error in our parsing of 27ac – blog corrected!
    And thanks to Atrica for dropping in. Joyce realised that Bert had not shaded in AIR MAIL as a cocktail that she had found online after completing the puzzle.
    With 1d as another possible thematic entry, congrats to Atrica for filling the grid with so many thematic entries.

  25. Thanks for the educational explanation Atrica, now I understand. As it happens when a UK reader comes across an unexpected usage it helps – ‘must be part of an anagram perhaps’.

    Thanks A, B and J

  26. Failed on 5D, just couldn’t see it. Also completely missed the theme. Despite which much enjoyed, to thanks Atrica and B&J.

  27. Thanks, Atrica for your response to the ‘Why different than?’ question.
    After all, we are talking about MANHATTAN. Adding some American flavour
    ( I mean, flavor) seems cool.

  28. Thanks both. I was going to make some wisecrack about alternative cocktail names including 7 until our setter revealed the accidental inclusions within the theme. That Attica is US based perhaps further explains MANHATTAN defined as a centre for banking – which was my career 38 years long yet I don’t greatly see it as such over and above any other country’s financial hub. Also didn’t know if cocktail DRESS was deliberate or otherwise

  31. Thanks Atrica and Bertandjoyce.
    Terrific puzzle! So much to like. Spotted the theme, too.
    URINE, BACKSWEPT, SIDECAR, SUBSCRIPT, VISA, MULE and TOP-SECRET make my list.
    ‘Different than’ didn’t bother me, as I live in the US and is used to it. Also, MANHATTAN is in the US – just saying 🙂

  32. CannyCanuck@30 – that is what we have in the parsing but because the ‘o’ has a line through it, it tends to look like an ‘e’.

  33. Thanks Atrica for the fun. I liked FASHIONED, INK BLOTS, and DECADENT, the latter for its surface. I missed URINE and SKUA but homophone clues often stump me. I didn’t look for a theme but it’s certainly an easy one to spot. Thanks B&J for the blog.

  34. Thanks Atrica@23 & B&J
    I refrained from posting photos of birds this time – WADER, CHAT, SKUA, BRAMBL[e]ING

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