I very much enjoyed solving and blogging this Sunday’s Independent puzzle by Stamp. Lots of great surface readings, all clearly clued and with one or two nice twists. I can get on with my day now with a smile on my face and hand over to you to share the pleasure of the puzzle and the extra hour in bed, for those that like that kind of thing.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
9 Cafe’s penultimate potato dish; one’s left in reserve
FROST
A charade of F for the second to last letter of ‘cafe’ and ROST[I].
10 Cabinetmakers, perhaps, or carpenters smartened up?
TRADESMEN
(SMARTENED)* with ‘up’ as the anagrind.
11 Article penned by sour character not being broadcast
OFF-THE-AIR
An insertion of THE for the definite ‘article’ in OFF and AIR.
12 All-rounder oddly only making single
ALONE
The odd letters of AlL rOuNdEr.
13 Son snubbed fish, going back for other seafood
SCALLOP
A charade of S and POLLAC[K] reversed.
15 Nicked, distinguished companion is put inside
NOTCHED
An insertion of CH for Companion of Honour in NOTED. The insertion indicator is ‘is put inside’.
17 A choosy eater, teenage visitor returned sandwiches
VEGAN
Hidden reversed in teeNAGE Visitor. A carefully chosen adjective describing ‘eater’.
18 Shorten short dwarf
DOC
DOC[K] gives you Snow White’s mate.
20 Man perhaps in offer to host Games
BIPED
An insertion of PE in BID. Man could be argued to be the most successful BIPED; but the ostrich is the fastest.
22 Waterproofing marine network will take time
SEALANT
A charade of SEA, LAN and T.
25 Worried by debts one’s taken on in advance
ANXIOUS
A charade of AN, X for ‘by’ (as in 2×4 expressed as two-by-four) and IOUS.
26 Lucifer‘s rival
MATCH
A dd.
27 Carpets are being ruined by parties
EARBASHES
A charade of (ARE)* and BASHES. The anagrind is ‘being ruined’.
30 Back boiler put in new position
REARRANGE
A charade of REAR and RANGE.
31 Fashionable English learner driver’s one after Golf?
HOTEL
A charade of HOT, E and L. HOTEL comes after Golf in the phonetic alphabet.
Down
1 Crop brassica from frames
AFRO
Hidden in brassicA FROm. The haircut.
2 ‘Womaniser with band!’ It’s what they called Mozart
WOLFGANG
A charade of WOLF and GANG.
3 Pine tar soap finally running out
ITCH
[P]ITCH. It’s the P as the final letter of ‘soap’ that needs to be removed.
4 Bound to be penny amongst swept up leaves
STRAPPED
An insertion of P in DEPARTS reversed.
5 Fighting in Metro regularly upset underground network
WARREN
A charade of WAR and REN, the even letters of iN mEtRo reversed.
6 Foreign expat nobly yielding section of field
PENALTY BOX
(EXPAT NOBLY)* with ‘foreign’ as the anagrind. Far too much footie in the Indy. I’ve always said so.
7 Drunk husband drinking more getting half-cut in plane
SMOOTH
Great surface, slightly complicated parsing. Stamp is asking you to insert MO[RE] in SOT and H.
8 Princess forbidden to go out of bounds
ANNE
[B]ANNE[D]
13 Goals for goalies but not for strikers?
SAVES
This is just a dd cum cd, I think. The ‘goal’ of a goalkeeper would be to make SAVES; but that would prevent a striker scoring. Far too much footie in the Indy.
14 Cheese from a can spread with relish
LANCASHIRE
(A CAN RELISH)* with ‘spread’ as the anagrind.
16 Act after act succeeded … they’re all dead now
DODOS
A charade of DO, DO and S. I know they’re extinct, but I’m claiming this as a trigger for the obligatory Pierre bird link. An odd-looking creature, it has to be said. Extinct by 1700, essentially because of human colonisation of its habitat in Mauritius and predation from the domestic animals we brought with us.
19 Top performers at most AGMs – the Chippendales?
CHAIRMEN
A dd. The second element is referring to the manufacturers of furniture, not to the male strippers.
21 State benefits: who can say what the future holds?
PROPHETS
Aural wordplay (‘state’) of PROFITS.
23 Sinatra cryptically leading line of stars!
ASTRAL
If you read ‘Sinatra’ as S in ATRA, you end up with ASTRA; add L to that and you’ve got your solution.
24 Kicking GTI, one’s in a rage
TOEING
(GTI ONE)* with ‘[is] in a rage’ as the anagrind.
26 Married woman captures the heart of karaoke bar
MARS
An insertion of A for the central letter of ‘karaoke’ in MRS. A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play. Really?
28 Angel wanting massage? It’s beyond a desire
ACHE
A charade of A and CHE[RUB].
29 Special key needed for compound
SALT
A charade of S and ALT for the computer ‘key’. SALT is here as a ‘compound’ in its chemical sense: the product of a reaction between an acid and a base. HCl and NaOH would give you NaCl, sodium chloride (which is table salt); but nitrates, sulfates and carbonates are also ‘salts’.
Many thanks to Stamp for the Sunday morning entertainment.
Agree with all that Pierre says… not that it was a quickie. I had to let the cherub mull awhile till I saw it, and needed the blog to see how ol’ blues eyes worked even tho the solution was fairly obvious.
Definitely a smiley start to the winter season…
Thanks Stamp n Pierre
My faves: FROST, TRADESMEN, VEGAN, SMOOTH, SAVES, ASTRAL and ACHE.
Agree with Pierre’s introductory lines.
TRADESMEN
Referring to ‘trade cabinet’ in ‘cabinetmakers’?
ALONE
Are ‘only’ and ‘single’ two separate defs?
Thanks Stamp and Pierre.
TRADESMEN is a great find. ASTRAL is very good too. Thanks both.
Especially liked 23a ASTRAL – a double Playtex of S IN ATRA, aka the “CHAIRMAN of the Board”
It gave me this earworm: Fly Me To The Moon ‘” | Let me play among the stars | Let me see what spring is like | On a-Jupiter and MARS”
[Written in 1954 (a 70th (Platinum) Jubilee). Recorded by FrankieS in 1964 (a 60th (Diamond) anniversary).It’s got bilingual “karAoke” lyrics, too]
Thanks S&P
Very smoothly done by Stamp. I thought there were some particularly good finds in here: the cryptic instruction in ASTRAL, the reverse alternation in ALONE, the reversal in SCALLOP and the anagrams in TRADESMEN and LANCASHIRE. EARBASHES my other favourite. Thanks S&P.
This was a lot of fun, and I had to chew a good few of the clues over for a while.
TRADESMEN was a food spot. VEGAN made me chuckle. It took me ages to disconnect golf from either the golf club or player (driver) and instead spot the Nato alphabet connection. I did get the SINATRA trick, though only as a back-parse.
I don’t understand FROST reserve though; what am I missing?
Thanks both
Great intro, Pierre – I entirely agree.
Some really super clues, some requiring a little more thought re the definition, so rewarding when the penny drops. I guessed IN THE AIR from the enumeration: it took a minute or two to see OFF = sour and AIR = character but both absolutely watertight. Speaking of which, SEALANT took a second or two, because I always forget the network, which I learned from crosswords. Re 20ac, BIPED, only the other day, I saw ‘Man perhaps…’ at the beginning of a clue and thought, ‘Oh yes, ISLE, of course – but it wouldn’t fit today. FROST perplexed me, too, briefly, until I thought further about ‘reserve’ in the sense of aloofness – perhaps I’m more used to frostiness but this works fine – so ticks all round for the above.
Great anagrams, too (TRADESMEN, PENALTY BOX and LANCASHIRE) and lovely surfaces throughout: ticks for 17ac VEGAN, 2dn WOLFGANG, 16dn DODOS, 23dn ASTRAL, 26dn MARS and 28dn ACHE.
Many thanks to Stamp and to Pierre.
Setter, having just got back from York, dropping in to thank Pierre for a delightful blog (how nice to have prompted a bird link, if somewhat belatedly). Thanks also to posters for their comments.
KVa@2: not quite sure I understand your first question – the surface was intended to contrast the highfalutin cabinetmaker with the humble carpenter, no more. And, in so doing, hopefully misdirect the odd solver away from the actual anagram fodder. Wrt the second question, no I did not have a double def in mind: I had flirted with ‘…not even …’ but it strictly needed to be ‘not evenly’ or maybe ‘not evens’. ‘…oddly only…’ is just a slight extension to ‘oddly’ which would have worked equally well: only take the odd letters.
Thanks again
Stamp
Eileen@8, thanks – that usage of frost didn’t occur to me, as I too would have said frostiness; and I spent a few moments thinking of words for island, for the same reason as you 😉
Thanks Stamp for a crossword without a single ‘bad’ clue. This took a bit of time and I couldn’t parse FROST or ASTRAL but I managed all else. My top picks were SCALLOP, BIPED, EARBASHES, SMOOTH, ANNE, PROPHETS (liked ‘state benefits’), and ACHE. Thanks Pierre for the blog.
Enjoyed this offering very much – more footie, I say. More!
The spelling of POLLOCK was new to me, and referring to a vegan as being ‘choosy’ is a very bold choice in itself…
Thanks Stamp, and thanks also to Pierre for the blog’n’bird.
Late to the party we are afraid as we have only just found time to finish the puzzle.
Some devious clues as expected – TRADESMEN took a while to parse this morning. Maybe we haven’t woken up sufficiently.
We needed the blog for our LOI – ACHE. We thought about RUB but not CHERUB. Perhaps we needed to spend longer thinking.
Thanks to Pierre and Stamp.