Independent 11,832 by Eccles

by

Bert and Joyce are still away so I’m standing in to do my first Eccles blog in a while

I found some of the parsing difficult to unravel and worse to write up, a bit of sauciness too. thanks Eccles

 

 

 

ACROSS
1. Drunk, on return, gets dry? (6)
STEWED

If you DE – WET something you could be drying it, so DE-WETS reversed, somewhat unusual construction

4. Plenty of opium lies oddly discarded, after being split up (8)
OPULENCE

Well this took a bit of decoding, remove the odd letters of oPiUm LiEs and let it split up – insert into ONCE – after

9. Omit old Tory leader concealing fungal growth (6)
EXCEPT

EX – old & CEP – type of mushroom or fungus & T(ory)

10. The moment fool gets Irishwoman bit of shamrock (2,4,2)
AS SOON AS

ASS – fool & OONA – an Irish woman’s name & a bit of S(hamrock)

11. “To the best of my knowledge, Caesarean’s largely safe,” I snarled (2,3,2,1,3,3)
AS FAR AS I CAN SEE

A snarled up [CAESAREANS I SAF(e) – largely]*

13. Yen is accepted by Netherlands, informally, in periodically cut-off community (4,6)
HOLY ISLAND

Y(en) & IS inside HOLLAND as the Netherlands is often wrongly described

14. Sticky substance found in 50% of raw vegetables (4)
CRUD

Half of CRUD(ites)

16. Four Roman cardinals get together for a beer (4)
MILD

M, I , L & D are all Roman numerals or cardinals

18. May 5th: Time for male rector instead of female to arrive at estuary (5,2,3)
FIRTH OF TAY

May 5th is FIFTH OF MAY. Replace the M in May with T(ime), R(ector) for the second F(emale) in FIFTH. Blimey Eccles is making the blogging tricky today

21. Bringing up inspiring boy and little sister (like I’m doing here) (14)
PARENTHESISING

HE – boy & SIS(ter) in PARENTING

23. Joke about European ship (3-5)
ONE-LINER

ON – about & E(uropean) & SHIP – liner

24. Deprive staff, including head of recruitment (6)
STARVE

R(ecruitment) in STAVE – staff

25. Facility functions in rough sea (8)
EASINESS

SINES – mathematic functions in a rough SEA*

26. The French soon intimidate (4,2)
LEAN ON

LE – French for “the” & ANON – soon

DOWN
1. Small gardens can be asymmetrical (4)
SKEW

S(mall) & KEW gardens [see link]

2. Freeing former partner, gangster suppresses short oath (7)
EXCUSAL

EX – former & a short CUS(s) & AL(capone)

3. Forceful chap I met at sea (8)
EMPHATIC

[CHAP I MET]* at sea

5. Review of chest enhancement (A to G) provides reminders (4-2,5)
POST-IT NOTES

The chest enhancement could be a TITS OP(eration) reversed – reviewed & the music NOTES A through G

6. Peccadillo of a hotelier is cuddling cleaner (6)
LOOFAH

Hidden in peccadilLO OF A Hotelier

7. Reformed addict possibly damaged neurons (3-4)
NON-USER

NEURONS* damaged

8. Beatles song, with no introduction, about a time of celebration (6,3)
EASTER DAY

A inside (y)ESTER DAY

12. Telling rash lies about extended study periods? (3-8)
ALL-NIGHTERS

[TELLING RASH]* lying about

13. Cleaner entering houses with extremely brusque bigot (9)
HOMOPHOBE

MOP = cleaner in 2 x HO(use) & extremes of B(rusqu)E

15. Treat from Filbert, mostly the best compiler (8)
NOISETTE

They can be Hazelnut chocolates and Filberts are Hazelnuts so NO 1 – number 1 – the best & most of SETTE(r)

17. What generoSity shows, reportedly? (7)
LARGESS

We have a “LARGE S”

19. Shoot nurse working to protect king (7)
TENDRON

TEND – to nurse & R – Rex, king & ON – working

20. Campaigning is never about displaying flag (6)
ENSIGN

Hidden reversed in campaigniNG IS NEver

22. Design tight pants – Amen! (4)
MEAN

Two defs & a pants AMEN*

 

15 comments on “Independent 11,832 by Eccles”

  1. Eccles continues to entertain us with another splendid crossword combining inventive clueing with smooth surfaces.

    With plenty of smiles, my top picks were MILD, FIRTH OF TAY, ONE-LINER, POST-IT NOTES and HOMOPHOBE.

    Many thanks to Eccles and to flashling.

  2. Rather a tricky Eccles with 1a and 1d resisting right at the end. I could not, for the life of me, think of the three letter synonym for gardens – KEW never crossed my mind, to my eternal shame, and the trick in STEWED utterly defeated me. ALL NIGHTER also beat me – a cunningly hidden anagrind which I did not spot meaning I was always trying to solve a different construction. A sparkling puzzle, a pleasure to solve (the bits that I did) and I’d agree with RD’s picks – though I would add ENSIGN with its delightful surface.

    Thanks Eccles and flashling

  6. Lovely stuff. I had to put my phone down for a minute to get STEWED – my first thought was STEWER, but that didn’t seem to fit. FIRTH OF TAY also my pick, with its very smooth double replacement.

    Thanks both.

  7. Blimey (to quote Flashling) Eccles was testing me today, no fewer than seven answers requiring explanation or confirmation of my parsing when usually there are none. Thanks both.

  8. Almost filled the whole grid, but noisette and tendron were new to me, and I couldn’t parse 22 down fully; I was wondering why “design tight” would be “mean”.

    17 across (largess) is cute.

    Thanks Eccles for the treat and flashling for the blog!

  9. Reading some of the responses here has cheered me up a bit. I certainly wasn’t quick (just over an hour), but I winkled out all the correct answers and needed flashlings help only for the parsing of OPULENCE. Whch having seen the explanation I’m not surprised I couldn’t do the word trickery.

    Really liked NOISETTE for the link between hazelnutty naughtiness and top compilers. Very clever. (I did have to look up what a filbert was though!)

    Thanks to flashling for filling in that final bit of info, and to Eccles for the fun and not inconsiderable head scratching.

  10. Sheer brilliance as we have come to expect from this setter, but far from being easy to decode. A flash of unaccustomed inspiration landed the estuary along with the written reminders but the same cannot be said for the field of poppies or the gathering of Roman cardinals which were the last to fall.
    Hard as ever to play favourites but think I’ll go for MILD, FIRTH OF TAY & POST-IT-NOTES.

    Many thanks to Eccles for the brain strain and to flashling for an excellent job in the hot seat.

  11. Well, that was a surprise! I was sure it was a Filbert… which I felt was confirmed by a) the clueing style n b) NOISETTE, only to be informed it was Eccles! Fully enjoyed the challenge, but couldn’t work out MILD, which in retrospect might be 1 of the more straightforward. All the rest settled in after a slowish start, but helped along with the 4 longish ac clues n the Postits, n Yesterday.. was slightly worried by LARGESS(E) not requiring a final E, but still ranked in my Top Ten… mostly mentioned by others, but out of them probably TITSOP n DEWETS, get my “back-to-front” and “out-of-the-box” vote.. NOISETTE(R) definitely applied here, as to Filbert (anybody ever seen them in the same room?)
    Thanks Eccles n flashling

  12. Can’t see who the setter is online, so like Undrel i thought 15d might begin with moi, Filbert referring to himself, had no idea it was a hazelnut. Hey ho, always learning.

  13. [grantinfreo@12, when you have the crossword in front of you, if you hit the Menu icon at the top and go to Puzzle Info, you will be shown the crossword number and the setter. Something which I’ve got in the habit of doing at the start of each puzzle, given how often a setter’s name appears somewhere in the clueing!]

  14. Thanks for standing in for us flashling. We are still 5 hours behind, hence the late comment. We found this as tricky as you did. There were a number of clues which needed to be parsed AFTER solving.
    Thanks Eccles – you kept us on our toes today – they are extremely weary after 2 days of walking around Washington DC. At least we had 90mins with our feet up last night watching Harris and Trump.

  15. Bertandjoyce@14 – I’m tempted to ask, what did you think? But perhaps better not. Loved this puzzle, especially the Filbert clue. He is obvs very good, but so too is Eccles – that was a pretty clever spot. Thanks to flashling too!

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