Independent 11,957 by Atrica

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Atrica fills the Tuesday spot this week.

Tuesday is usually theme day in the Indy and Atrica usually sets themed puzzles.

We rattled through the puzzle fairly quickly, and then spent some time searching for a theme – to no avail! We can’t help thinking that there must be one – hopefully someone out there (or maybe Atrica!) will enlighten us.

Thanks Atrica for the challenge – we enjoyed the solve, but have to admit defeat on the theme (assuming there is one!)

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1. Light heavy metal when amplifier’s first unplugged (1,1,1)
L E D

LEaD (heavy metal) with the ‘a’ (first letter of amplifier) missing or ‘unplugged’

3. Point of extraordinary gravity: remarkable computers and the end of humanity (11)
SINGULARITY

SINGULAR (remarkable) IT (information technology – ‘computers’) Y (last letter or ‘end’ of humanity)

9. First sign of armed force facing offence (7)
AFFRONT

A (first letter or ‘sign’ of armed) F (force) FRONT (facing)

10. Wine knocked back in Aegean is terrible (7)
RETSINA

Hidden (‘in’) and reversed (‘knocked back’) in AegeAN IS TERrible

11. Caretaker understood accommodating a mother of kids, perhaps (5-4)
NANNY-GOAT

NANNY (‘caretaker’) GOT (understood) round or ‘accommodating’ A

12. Exemplary pupil added to sequence of notes (5)
MODEL

L (learner – ‘pupil’) after or ‘added to’ MODE (sequence of notes) – we had to check this

13. Poke holes in egg with a pointed implement (7)
NITPICK

NIT (egg) PICK (pointed instrument)

15. Set of values a little bit regressive (4)
DATA

A reversal (‘regressive’) of A TAD (a little bit)

18. Decrepit odd couples going down a long way (4)
DEEP

Alternate (‘odd’) pairs (couples) of letters in DEcrEPit

20. Lighting unit city placed behind walls of castle (7)
CANDELA

LA (Los Angeles – ‘city’) ‘placed behind’ C AND E (first and last letters or ‘walls’ of castle)

22. Mathematician‘s irrational measuring tool initially rejected (5)
EULER

E (irrational number) rULER (measuring tool) missing the first letter or ‘initially rejected’

24. Entering fashionable activity with club on green (9)
INPUTTING

IN (fashionable) PUTTING (‘activity with (golf) club on green’)

26. Unusual to have sunk teeth into cheese dish (7)
RAREBIT

RARE (unusual) BIT (‘sunk teeth into’)

27. Fussily obsessive about flatulence, sent back Italian food (7)
LASAGNA

A reversal (‘sent back’) of ANAL (fussily obsessive) round GAS (flatulence)

28. Means to pick up pork pie and cook it with electrode (3,8)
LIE DETECTOR

An anagram (‘cook’) of IT and ELECTRODE

29. Regret cavorting but disobedient at heart (3)
RUE

Middle letters or ‘hearts’ of cavoRting bUt disobEdient

DOWN
1. Inclination to suppress arithmetic? What’s the point of going to school? (8)
LEARNING

LEANING (inclination) round or ‘suppressing’ R (arithmetic – one of ‘the three Rs’)

2. Without a doubt constrained after my boss returned (8)
DEFINITE

FINITE (constrained) after a reversal (‘returned’) of ED (editor – Atrica’s ‘boss’)

3. Plot succeeded with right-wing following (5)
STORY

S (succeeded) followed by TORY (right-wing)

4. Socialise to gain employment (7)
NETWORK

NET (gain) WORK (employment)

5. Ill natured, not placed in class (7)
UNRATED

An anagram (‘ill’) of NATURED

6. Aunt doesn’t finish eating salad ingredient, being motionless unless wound up? (9)
AUTOMATON

AUNt missing the last letter or ‘not finishing’ round or ‘eating’ TOMATO (salad ingredient)

7. Upcoming artist torn apart by ego? It’s an old story (5)
ILIAD

A reversal (‘upcoming’) of DALI (artist) round or ‘torn apart by’ I (ego)

8. Regularly peer inside yesterday’s envelope (6)
YEARLY

EARL (peer) in Y Y (first and last letters or ‘envelope’ of yesterday)

14. Blair, never disheartened, somehow incapable of making a mistake (9)
INERRABLE

An anagram (‘somehow’) of BLAIR and NEvER missing the middle letter or ‘disheartened’

16. One who invests in beer is upset, for example (8)
BESIEGER

A reversal (‘upset’) of IS and EG (for example) in BEER – another one we had to check

17. Italian perhaps blasting a leg with a gun (8)
LANGUAGE

An anagram (‘blasting’) of A LEG and A GUN

19. Potion put through screen picked up (7)
PHILTRE

A homophone (‘picked up’) of FILTER (put through screen)

20. Assistant aviator: nincompoop bored by work mid-air (7)
COPILOT

CLOT (nincompoop) round or ‘bored by’ OP (work) I (middle letter of air)

21. Objective, less tense, dealing with nerves (6)
NEURAL

NEUtRAL (objective) missing the ‘t’ (tense)

23. Hefty shove dispatching bishop below cathedral’s east facade (5)
LARGE

bARGE (shove) with the ‘b’ (bishop) ‘dispatched’ and replaced by L (last letter or ‘east facade’ of cathedral)

25. Shocker – educator covering every individual with arsenic (5)
TASER

TeachER (educator) with ‘each’ (every individual) replaced or ‘covered’ by AS (arsenic)

23 comments on “Independent 11,957 by Atrica”

  1. AI: a large neural network model, often referred to as a Large Language Model (LLM) when inputting text data.

  4. Inerrable, really? Hey ho, just follow the instructions. But yes a half-hour, for an old cogitator, means it wasn’t hard. To be fair, I’m sure there must be high-end retsina, but the stuff we knocked back in Athens in the ’60s was indeed pretty terrible. Nice puzzle, ta Atrica and BnJ.

  6. Deep learning, neural network, Euler (diagram), data inputting.

    Deep learning to train a lie detector is also a thing, it seems.

  7. And with singularity, does indeed look like a Kurzweilish theme, well spotted FrankieG and Mw7000. And if the ‘being’ in 6d implies living, nicely philosophically controversial as well.

  9. Ai singularity explained by Google’s Ai: “… is a hypothetical future where artificial intelligence (Ai) becomes more intelligent than humans.
    This would cause a rapid increase in technological progress that humans would be unable to control.”

  10. …whereas 3a is using the meaning from Physics: “II.9.e. 1965– Astronomy. A region in space-time at which matter is infinitely dense.”
    [oed.com hasn’t got the Ai sense, yet.] Loved the puzzle, though it took as long to twig 19d PHILTRE as everything else put together. Thanks A & B&J.

  11. Aside from not twigging the theme (should have put the whole thing into DeepSeek and let it go to work!) I fail to see how 16d BESIEGER equates to “One who invests”. Maybe I’m missing something?

  13. All solved and parsed apart from TASER where I did not spot that a substitution was going on. I needed the blog for that. I didn’t twig the theme during or post the solve and I’m not really sure I’ve spotted all the elements, even with the comments above, As a topic, it’s somewhat above my pay grade. YEARLY, NETWORK, LEARNING, LIE DETECTOR, NITPICK and RETSINA my favourite clues.

    Thanks Atrica and B&J

  14. The grid fell quickly at first… and then I had problems with 26A, 21D, and 19D. It turned out to be a deadly trio.
    I was unfortunately forgetting what word meant “dealing with nerves”. I thought “Nervous system… axon… dendritic cell… What other nerve related words even are there?” I had heard of RAREBIT, but only once before. Hence even if I remembered it now, I still wouldn’t know what it meant. And I had no chance of getting PHILTRE.

    I like 24A INPUTTING (took me a while to realize that “activity … green” was a unit), 8D YEARLY (use of “peer” and the quite creative “envelope”) and 6D AUTOMATON (use of “being”). Honorable mention to 17D LANGUAGE because it was evil 😛 I went through the trouble of remembering Italian-related things and thought the answer had to sound/look Italian. I mean, surely there had to be a -GL- or -GN- in the middle or a -NA or -LA at the end, right? How wrong I was.

    Thanks Atrica for the entertainment and B&J for the blog!

  16. Thanks for all the comments. Like PostMark – this theme was definitely above our pay grade. Didn’t spoil the fun though.

  17. Didn’t know that meaning of invest, so couldn’t quite believe it even when I’d solved it (perfectly fair cluing, though). Liked the “odd couples” trick in 18a. Surface for 2a is indeed brilliant. Gathered the theme was ITish, but that it was AI specifically passed me by. As it would. Thanks to Atrica and BandJ

  18. Like others, I solved this relatively fast by my standards, and like most, didn’t spot the theme.

    Whenever one of them comes up, I’m obliged to point out the anagram machine that is the seven letters AEINRTS. Besides RETSINA, you can get RETINAS, NASTIER, ANTSIER, RETAINS, STAINER, RATINES (ratine, a type of cloth, plural) ANESTRI (anestrus, a period of low female fertility in some mammals, plural), and I think maybe one other one I’m missing. (Edit to add: stearin, a chemical in certain fats.) For a seven-letter set, it’s easily the record. So if you are a Scrabble player, and you’re wondering which letters to keep and which to play or discard, when in doubt retain the letters in RETAINS.

    On that note, GinF@4: Spills nastier wine (7)

  19. A steady and satisfying solve. We didn’t spot the theme although we were vaguely aware of something going on. Now it’s been pointed out it’s fairly obvious and we venture to suggest that EULER is theme-related.
    INERRABLE was new to us and seemed highly unlikely but it’s in Chambers. BESIEGER and PHILTRE were our last ones in, fortunately remembered in time to avoid seeking help.
    Thanks, Atrica and B&J.
    [Will we ever get a crossword compiled by AI, we wonder?]

  20. Thanks Atrica for a set of good clues with RETSINA, NANNY-GOAT, LASAGNA, RUE, DEFINITE, ILIAD, and COPILOT being favourites. I missed the clever DEEP as well as BESIEGER and PHILTRE. I noticed computer related words but couldn’t twig a coherent theme. Thanks B&J for the blog.

  21. Thanks all for the comments and to B&J for the blog. The latest version of ChatGPT can solve some cryptic clues (but interestingly it could not parse 3A – I tested it this morning). It can set clues but not particularly good ones yet IMHO. By next year it will probably have cracked that. I asked it to clue RETSINA and it provided: Greek wine from a strain scrambled (7), after informing me: “I’m working through creating a clever cryptic crossword clue for “RETSINA,” aiming to include both a definition and wordplay elements like anagrams or hidden clues.”

  22. Atrica @21: thanks for stopping by! And seeing as that AI-generated clue gives you RAT-SINA, I’m guessing ChatGPT is another one who’s not a fan of RETSINA.

  23. mrpenny@22 ;). Bot#1 to Bot#2: “what did you do in the last 5 microseconds?” “I set a puzzle to keep the humans occupied for the next 30 minutes”.

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