Independent on Sunday 1,746 by Brunel

by

The puzzle is available here.

 

Good mooning all.  An out of this world puzzle from a regular but infrequent setter for the Indy.  Perhaps the frequency is increasing as for the first time Brunel has treated us to a third puzzle in a year.

There is plenty here for those interested in what is up there and what may (or may not) be out there (4d), plus some alcohol to give us a “high time” while keeping our feet firmly on planet Earth.  I found it on the stiffer side, especially for a Sunday, but enjoyed it.  I very much liked all the different moons, and plenty more besides.  Thanks Brunel!

 

Definitions are underlined in the clues below.  In the explanations, quoted indicators are in italics, specified [deletions] are in square brackets, and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER.  For clarity, I omit most link words and some juxtaposition indicators.

 

Across

1a    Arrive, meeting heads of free trade zone then returning recent visitor (5,1,1,1)
COMET ZTF
COME (arrive) + the first letters (heads) of Free Trade Zone Then backwards (returning).
I had to trust the wordplay for this one … I must admit to exclaiming this to myself, but replacing Z with W!  I’m happy to discover a new comet nonetheless, though sorry I was out when it called

5a    I moon and girl turns round (6)
IODINE
IO (moon – of Jupiter) + ENID (girl) reverses (turns round)

8a    Display cut flower (3)
AIR
Without the last letter (cut) AIRe (flower – river)

9a    Penny’s sheer fun, cavorting in showers, perhaps (8,2)
FRESHENS UP
An anagram of (… cavorting) P’S (penny’s) and SHEER FUN

10a   Spooner’s 24-hour low period in Exchange (5-3)
TRADE-OFF
A Spoonerism of DAY TROUGH (24-hour low period)

11a   Route from a finally snuffed-out Planet Earth (6)
AVENUE
A + VENUs (planet) removing the last letter (finally snuffed out …) + E (Earth)

12a   Rock star Moon obviously round the twist and not all there (4)
BONO
MoON Obviously, reverse hidden (round the twist and not all there)

14a   High time to appear here? (5,5)
CLOCK TOWER
A cryptic definition: we need to ignore the idiom and think a bit literally and a bit laterally

17a   Tried so desperately to get in my boss’s position (10)
EDITORSHIP
TRIED SO anagrammed (desperately) + HIP (in)

20a   Pale moon obscured intermittently for long time (4)
AEON
pAlE mOoN without intermittent letters (obscured intermittently)

23a   Bear right, getting around a 180° turn first (6)
RUPERT
RT (right) getting around PER (a) preceded by (with … first) U (180 turn)

24a   Follower of Wigan or Oldham, but not Bolton? (8)
ATHLETIC
There is a Wigan Athletic and an Oldham Athletic but no Bolton Athletic

25a   Dread tale about fallen leader drowning in loch (6,4)
MORTAL FEAR
TALE around (about) the first letter (leader) of Fallen, all inside (drowning in) MORAR (loch)

26a   Low waning moon (3)
MOO
MOOn without the last letter (waning …)

27a   Boldly attempt, without Yankee involvement, to reach moon (6)
TRITON
TR[y] IT ON (boldly attempt) without … involvement of Y (Yankee).  A moon of Neptune

28a   Artists dropping by initially for long time devotees (8)
CULTISTS
CU[b]ISTS (artists) dropping By initially for L (long – as seen on clothing labels) and T (time)

 

Down

1d    Check with a knight on board – like something out of Chess? (9)
CHANTABLE
CH (check) + A + N (knight) + TABLE (board).  The definition refers to the musical Chess

2d    Gloom finally obliterated by downpour – it’s a plague (7)
MURRAIN
MURk (gloom) without the last letter (finally obliterated) + RAIN (downpour).
Another for which I had to trust the wordplay

3d    Sweet soy curd: meal never finished (6)
TOFFEE
TOFu (soy curd) and FEEd (meal) each missing the final letter (never finished)

4d    Hard Lefties upset by being included in time-honoured series (3,1-5)
THE X-FILES
An anagram of (… upset) H (hard) and LEFTIES with X (by) being included

5d    Reserve forwards having treatment to reduce swelling (3,4)
ICE PACK
ICE (reserve) + PACK (forwards)

6d    Tricksy Medea’s daughter takes on tragic heroine (9)
DESDEMONA
An anagram of (tricksy) MEDEA‘S and D (daughter) contains (takes) ON

7d    Record melody underpinning New World – 27’s (7)
NEPTUNE
EP (record) and TUNE (melody) underneath (underpinning) N new.  27a = NEPTUNE
Here they both are, photographed by Voyager 2:

13d   Without a break paid for by revolutionary? (2,3,4)
ON THE TROT
Is this my treat?  No, it’s not on me, it’s ON THE TROT (revolutionary)

15d   Drink fizzy tonic with, say, caviare reportedly (9)
COINTREAU
An anagram of (fizzy) TONIC + REAU, which here sounds like (… reportedly) ROE (say, caviare)

16d   Manage each bad-tempered encounter (3,6)
RUN ACROSS
RUN (manage) + A (each) + CROSS (bad tempered)

18d   Moon possibly more strange after onset of darkness (7)
DRUMMER
RUMMER (more strange) after the first letter (onset) of Darkness

(bonus picture)

19d   Engineers riding express coach again (7)
RETRAIN
RE (engineers) on (riding) TRAIN (express)

21d   Buries cat beneath space by empty bins (7)
ENTOMBS
TOM (cat) beneath EN (space) all next to (by) BinS without the middle letters (empty …)

22d   Wine store missing the Spanish and French red (6)
CLARET
C[el]LAR (wine store) missing EL (the, Spanish) + ET (and, French)

 

20 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,746 by Brunel”

  1. A marvellous crossword with lots of well thought out surfaces. The many moons were an added delight. Had to look up MURRAIN & MORAR.

  2. I liked NEPTUNE and DRUMMER, though it was helpful to be reminded of Keith in the wordplay for BONO. (I confess to googling to see if TIEK was a kind of rock) Thanks, both.

  3. Liked the nod to Keith in DRUMMER. Roger Daltrey yesterday in Bluth. Lots of very good clues i.e. CLOCK TOWER, RUPERT, COINTREAU, CLARET. Took me a while. Needed help with the parsing of MURRAIN. Thanks both.

  4. Thanks Brunel and Kitty.

    Nice to have something a bit stiffer on a Sunday.

    18D was particularly apposite, as, synchronisitically, yesterday evening I watched The Who at the Isle Of Wight in 1970. Great stuff!

  5. Hovis@1 – I didn’t know MURRAIN or Loch MORAR either.

    Your “many moons” comment made me wish I’d used “many moons ago” in my intro … and now I notice that the phrase “long time” appears in two clues!

  7. Also quite timely to have this appearing in the midst of the annual visit from the Perseids. Yes, a lovely working of the them – though my heart sank momentarily on solving 1a: one of the oddest letter combos I have ever entered in a crossword so I did wonder where we were going to be taken. Fortunately, not as far out as I feared (though ZTF does come from the Oort Cloud which is a fair old step). Like others, it was nice to see the inimitable Keith Moon – a friend from school once visited our local barber bearing a very small lapel badge of KM saying ‘I want my hair done like that’. It was not enough of a guide for the scissorman, I’m afraid. (Also rather nice to see Loch Morar popping up though I wonder how many will recognise the name. It’s the deepest lake in the UK.)

    I loved CLARET (I love claret), BONO, MORTAL FEAR, DRUMMER and ENTOMBS. Sympathy to the setter for having to use CHANTABLE – not the nicest word to use or define.

    Thanks Brunel and Kitty

  8. [Completely tangentially, Loch Morar is where a lot of the flying sequences for 633 Squadron were filmed. I have a very grainy photo that my Dad took on holiday, from a boat on the loch, of a Mosquito flying very low over the water.]

  9. A friend said he had hoped to see the Perseids but cloud cover spoilt that. I remember long ago (many moons ago) a friend told me that your reflection in the back of a spoon looks like Keith Moon. I could see what he meant. (You’ll all have to check this now 🙂 .)

  10. Very enjoyable but tough challenge, requiring a good night’s sleep to crack my last in CLOCK TOWER. I had to trust to wordplay for COMET ZTF and missed the parsing of MORTAL FEAR; Loch Morar looks as though it would be worth a visit, particularly as I remember the great flying scenes of the Mosquitoes in 633 Squadron (thanks Simon S @8).

    Favourite was MURRAIN, mostly because it is one of the very few obscure crossword land words I was able to remember.

    Thanks to Brunel and to Kitty

  11. Thanks both. My son’s girlfriend’s surname is Moon, so I used this to try to achieve some interest in crosswords for her, without evident success. Initially I had ‘on the spin’ instead of ON THE TROT with its different type of revolutionary. I only know One Night in Bangkok from Chess and wonder whether there is anything in it which is specifically a chant, rather than just a song?

  12. I thought the ambiguity of the themes was brilliantly done. Also grateful to the blog for the parsing of CULTISTS, which eluded me and had to be entered with the hope of a bit of luck.

  13. Crikey – I nearly gave up after being confronted with 1a and that was actually my last one to slot in.
    Not overly convinced by CHANTABLE and there were several others that I needed Kitty to give me the rhyme and reason for, but I’m pleased that so many folk have enjoyed this puzzle which was rather outside of my comfort zone.
    Top three for me were CLOCK TOWER, TRITON & DRUMMER.

    Thanks to our setter with his head in the clouds and to Miss Kitty for gathering up all the moon dust.

  14. Thanks Brunel for the challenge. I nearly completed this but I relied too much on my guessing ability and not enough on my parsing ability. I enjoyed the “many moons” with DRUMMER being my favourite. Thanks Kitty for a sorely needed blog made even better by the wonderful illustrations.

  15. Sofamore@3, KVa@6, PJ@12, Jane@13, Tony Santucci@14 and others – I do my best in my blogs to be helpful, accurate, and perhaps a bit entertaining if I can manage it. So grateful thanks to all who have indicated I’ve hit the mark in any of the above. It really does make it worthwhile.

    Postmark@7; Hovis@9 – it’s cloudy here again tonight, so no Perseids 🙁 . A few years back I managed to see a rather good Perseids show, including a fireball which was truly astounding! Ever since then, it’s been a bit of a damp squib, but I live in hope, There’s always next year.

    TFO @11 – I hadn’t heard of the phrase “on the spin” so thanks in advance if it comes up in a crossword. Or even, you never know, in real life!

    I just took chant as meaning sing, rather than, er, chanting. It might seem that chant and sing aren’t quite the same, but there’s full dictionary support for sing=chant; besides I’ll take on board PostMark’s comment @7.

  16. The dictionaries give chantable as ‘able to be chanted or sung’, so it seemed fair enough to me – I must confess I’ve never heard anything from Chess though! Hadn’t noticed myself that ‘long time’ occurs twice, although it is used in different senses.

    I saw some Perseids (the timing of this puzzle to coincide with them is coincidental, by the way) c 7 years back, including one really bright flaming one.

  17. Nice but not particularly easy crossword – thanks to Brunel and to Kitty for the (as always) fun blog.

    Hovis @9, I tried it but it didn’t work. Which way are you supposed to hold the spoon?

  19. Hovis @18: Thank you! I repeated the experiment as you suggested. With some adjustment I can see a hint of the effect. At the wrong angle, not. Perhaps the problem is the grey hair…

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