Independent 11,555 by Laccaria

by

An enjoyable Tuesday challenge from Laccaria.

Lots of good clues here and it’s hard to pick favourites – but I liked “by itself” in 18a, the definition in 9d, and the long anagram and appropriate surface in 24/20. 23d was an unfamiliar name (with too many variant spellings) but the wordplay was clear.

Laccaria’s previous puzzles have mostly been themed, and it’s Tuesday, so we should expect to find something here. It’s the scientist SCHRODINGER and his famous thought experiment involving a CAT, which may be DEAD OR ALIVE depending on the state of a RADIOISOTOPE; he was trying to demonstrate why thinking of sub-atomic particle states as a WAVE FUNCTION doesn’t quite work. More details in this Wikipedia article. But of course it’s a hypothetical example and no actual cats were harmed in the course of the argument. Thanks Laccaria for the fun.

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

ACROSS
6 EM DASH
Mark is badly shamed (2,4)
Anagram (badly) of SHAMED.

Punctuation mark: a long dash, with width equal to the height of an uppercase letter.
8 TUTORIAL
Show disapproval at exam covering one lesson (8)
TUT (make a sound to express disapproval) + ORAL (a spoken examination), containing (covering) I (one in Roman numerals).
10 OIL RIG
Female icon occasionally backed fossil fuel producer (3,3)
GIRL (female) + alternate letters (occasionally) of I[c]O[n], all reversed (backed).
11 FUNCTION
Sin party? (8)
Double definition: Abbreviation for sine, a mathematical function; or as in “function room” = a space where parties take place.
12 SCHRODINGER
Horse-racing daughter dumping a mad scientist (11)
Anagram (mad) of HORSE-R[a]CING + D (abbreviation for daughter), without the A.

Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian-born scientist.
18 SQUARED
Settled by itself (7)
Double definition. Resolved, as in “they didn’t like it but I’ve squared it with them”; or multiplied by itself, as in 3 by 3 = 3 squared.
20
See 24 Down
21 DEAD OR ALIVE
12’s 29 maybe wanted thus? (4,2,5)
Double definition. In Schrodinger’s thought experiment, it’s not possible to determine whether the cat is dead or alive; or as in posters in Wild West films which advertise that a criminal is “wanted dead or alive”.
26 ACAPULCO
A relative of Juliet gets company for movie in seaside resort (8)
A CAPUL[et] (someone from Juliet’s family in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), with CO (abbreviation for company) replacing ET (movie = the Spielberg film).

Port city and seaside resort in Mexico.
28 GOTCHA
Bash Companion in Reserves, resulting in controversial headline (6)
GO (as in “have a go” = “have a bash” = make an attempt), then CH (abbreviation for Companion of Honour) in TA (abbreviation for Territorial Army = former name of the British Army Reserve).

Headline used by The Sun newspaper in the UK after the sinking of an Argentinian warship during the Falklands conflict in 1982. (In fact it appeared only in the earliest editions of the paper, and was then replaced by something less smug, but it became notorious.)
30 ICE STORM
Dreadful crimes to chill event (3,5)
Anagram (dreadful) of CRIMES TO.

A weather event involving rain that freezes when it hits a surface.
31 BRUTAL
Savage endless dance includes mating display (6)
BAL[l] (a formal dance) without its last letter (endless), including RUT (a mating display by animals, especially deer).
DOWN
1 REPOSSESS
Take back band found inside topless gown (9)
POSSE (band = a group of people formed to undertake a specific task) inside [d]RESS (gown) without its first letter (topless).
2 ESKIMO
Mike’s confused over love for indigenous North American? (6)
Anagram (confused) of MIKE’S, before (above, in a down clue = over) O (zero = love in tennis scoring).
3 GURU
Carpet lifted by university teacher (4)
RUG (carpet) reversed (lifted = upwards in a down clue), then U (abbreviation for university).

A spiritual teacher.
4 CONCERTO
No sure winner accepted after hollow Calypso performance (8)
NO with CERT (as in “dead cert” = sure winner) contained in it (accepted), after C[alyps]O (hollow = inner letters removed).

A musical performance for a solo instrument (or a small group of soloists) with orchestra.
5 PLANK
Board aircraft, your Majesty, but don’t carry drug! (5)
PLAN[e] (short for aeroplane = aircraft) + K (abbreviation for King = Your Majesty), without the E (abbreviation for the drug ecstasy).
7 DEL
Key indicator rising (3)
LED (abbreviation for light-emitting diode: originally used as a small coloured indicator light, but now with much wider application) reversed (rising = upwards in a down clue).

The Delete key on a computer keyboard.
9 IRIS
One upset teacher means to cut pupil down to size! (4)
I (one in Roman numerals), then SIR (traditional address to a male teacher) reversed (upset = upwards in a down clue).

The coloured part of the eye, with muscles to control the size of the pupil at its centre.
11 FEN
Female elephant’s heading north for watery place (3)
F (abbreviation for female) + first letter (heading) of E[lephant] + N (abbreviation for north).

Wetland area = watery place.
13 HAUL
Drag prince wearing uniform? On the contrary (4)
HAL (nickname for the young Prince Henry before he became King Henry V) containing U (Uniform, in the radio alphabet). “On the contrary” tells us that it’s U surrounded by (wearing) HAL, and not the other way round as the clue initially suggests.
14 INDIA
State excerpt from Lenin diaries (5)
Hidden answer (excerpt from . . .) in [len]IN DIA[ries].
15 GUIDO
Gunpowder plotter to show the way: nothing substitutes for explosives at first (5)
GUID[e] (to show the way), with O (zero = nothing) substituted for the E which is the first letter of E[xplosives].

The gunpowder plotter Guy Fawkes, whose first name became Guido while he was fighting for Spain against the Dutch.
16 FOCI
Meeting places for Oxford college intake – beginners (4)
First letters (beginners) of F[or] O[xford] C[ollege] I[ntake].

Plural of focus = a meeting place.
17 GENERALLY
As a rule, Yankee supports Confederate expelling English more than once (9)
Y (Yankee in the radio alphabet) after (below, in a down clue = supporting) GENERAL L[ee] (Robert E. Lee, Confederate general in the American Civil War), with E (abbreviation for English) removed twice (more than once).
19 REDOUBTS
I dropped out of bus ride to ruined sections of fort (8)
Anagram (ruined) of BUS R[i]DE TO, with the letter I dropped out.

Defensive structures (such as gun emplacements) to protect a fort.
22 DUO
You dingbat – covering up a ‘pair’! (3)
Hidden answer (. . . covering), reversed (up = upwards in a down clue), in [y]OU D[ingbat].
23 AMON-RA
God, calm down Brian, ignore the odds! (4-2)
[c]A[l]M [d]O[w]N [b]R[i]A[n], ignoring all the odd-numbered letters.

Egyptian deity, known by several variant names including Amun and Ammon, and identified with the Sun god Ra.
24/20 RADIOISOTOPE
Tritium, for instance: does it pair with two Oxygens, somehow? (12)
Anagram (somehow) of DOES IT PAIR + O O (O = chemical symbol for an oxygen atom).

A radioactive variant of an element, for instance tritium which is a radioactive form of hydrogen.
25 WAVE
Snake – not Early European – could be Mexican? (4)
W[e]AVE (snake, as a verb = move in a winding path), without the first (early) E (abbreviation for European).

As in “Mexican wave” = a sequential movement by fans in a sports stadium, popularised during the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.
27 CORN
Crop my name! (4)
COR (cor! = my! = an expression of surprise) + N (abbreviation for name).

Crop = plant grown in large quantities for food.
29 CAT
Scourge of outdated hospital equipment (3)
Double definition. Short for cat o’ nine tails = a whip = scourge; or CAT scanner = an outdated name for the medical image device now known as a CT (computed tomography) scanner.

17 comments on “Independent 11,555 by Laccaria”

  1. I wondered whether either PLANK or SQUARED were somehow connected with the theme but this is way above my paygrade. The latter was also my favourite clue although the prize for cheekiness has to go to GENERALLY! At least it wasn’t clued as a homophone of the soldier in question.

    Thanks Laccaria and Quirister

  2. I think it would be a bit of a push to include Max Plan(c)k in the theme. Took me quite a while to get my last two, GENERALLY & WAVE, but got there in the end.

  4. Same as Hovis @2 my LOI was WAVE and had to come here to see the parsing. I thought it was going to be a word for snake with a synonym for early removed and an E added on the end.

    No chance I was going to come up with the theme, but it all went in nicely enough anyway.

    Thanks to Laccaria and Quirister.

  5. Thanks to Quirister, and to all for the generous feedback! Yes PLAN[c]K was intended to be thematic, as were DEL SQUARED (one of the symbols in SCHRODINGER’s EQUATION), along with WAVE FUNCTION (a solution to it). Sorry, that’s my long-forgotten physics undergrad studies breaking through.

    There was an old joke, apparently, about a Russian student who was asked to explain “E=hv” (the Greek ‘nu’) in quantum theory.
    Tutor: What is ‘h’?
    Student: Planck’s constant.
    Tutor: And what is ‘v’?
    Student: The length of the Plank.
    Curiously, this is translated direct from the Russian.

    Anway, apologies to non-physics buffs. Hope you enjoyed it all the same.
    L.

  6. Thanks Laccaria – I knew of Schrodinger’s Cat, and was vaguely aware that there was also an Equation but didn’t know the details. My Physics studies didn’t get as far as yours, and anyway it was more years ago than I care to think about . . .

  9. Frankie@8: I was thinking of a ‘pair’ in cricket. ‘Dingbat’ is what I think Aussies call a very poor batter.
    Hovis@7: I always said “Del” too; “Nabla” sounds to me like the name of a consort to AMON-RA.

  10. Thanks for the blog, have not done the puzzle but Hovis suggested that I come and take a look, impressive number of theme entries.
    Nabla is the name of the symbol , it looks like a Greek harp, Maxwell was the first to use the symbol widely but did not call it nabla or del. I think Gibbs promoted the term DEL for its simplicity especially with terms of higher powers.
    Planck’s constant h also in the Schrodinger equation but slightly hidden as h-bar which is h/2pi sometimes called Dirac’s constant.

  11. Thanks Laccaria and Quirister.
    Very interesting.
    I was determined to find more themesters, and saw Dirac (somewhat mutilated) in SW 🙂

  13. I do have a degree in physics – graduated 50 years ago this year, and spotted many of the themed answers. Surprisingly, I missed WAVE. And, annoyingly, I’m a US Civil War enthusiast and I failed to get GENERALLY.

  14. CannyCanuck@12 – yes I understand the concerns about ESKIMO and I’d probably avoid that word anywhere outside of Crosswordland. But it’s just about the only filler-word that will fit -S-I-O so I plead this excuse!
    Similarly I had some doubts about invoking General Robert E Lee in the puzzle. But, regarding him as merely a historical figure, I suppose it’s OK in the context. Reminds me of a visit I made to the Gettysburg battlefield some years ago. Most of the tourists were clustered around the Union memorials, understandably. But we went round the perimeter road and yes – there was the said General, on his horse, on the far side of the site. We took photos – for the record. I don’t know if anyone’s calling for the statue to be taken down – but I doubt it – after all the entire battlefield is in effect a museum. It’s illustrating history – not glorifying slavery.

  15. Interesting puzzle. I needed help with quite a lot of clues even after looking at the solution.
    Like Dormouse my 50th year after Physics graduation is next summer 2024.
    Nottingham University
    Thanks to both setter and blogger.

  17. Was defeated by wave, sadly.

    Might have been unusual in getting dead or alive, then Scrödinger, then cat!

    Gotcha I was unclear about having never read the Sun! Was unclear about function too, never occurred to me it was short for sine – neat.

    Thanks Laccaria & Quirster. Enjoyable puzzle

Comments are closed.