For the second time in succession Serpent is stuck with me, but from my point of view that’s fine. There were some very good clues here. It was none too easy, but once one knows the answers it all fits in well (with the exception in my case of 4dn, which I still don’t really get — but I do now, thanks James and WordPlodder, good clue).
Definitions underlined, in maroon, and anagram indicators in italics.
In the unches along the top and the bottom one can read ALDOUS HUXLEY, the author of 15ac. My knowledge of Aldous Huxley is rather slight: I did read Brave New World and Crome Yellow in my youth, but I can remember nothing of them now, and don’t know if there are other Huxley allusions in this crossword.
| Across | ||
| 7 | SCOOPING | Tweet about profit-sharing enterprise bailing out? (8) |
| s(co-op)ing | ||
| 9 | FINGER | Redhead takes a step back at first touch (6) |
| The redhead is a ginger, and if it takes a step back in the alphabet at first then the first letter becomes F | ||
| 10 | BRUSH ASIDE | Dismiss sweeper for each team (5,5) |
| If there is a brush a side then each team has a brush | ||
| 11 | TASK | Job centre in Stockport was located on turning (4) |
| ({Stoc}k{port} sat)rev. | ||
| 12 | HEIFER | Successor accepting reduced charge is a little lower (6) |
| hei(fe{e})r — lower in the sense of something that lows | ||
| 13 | ON DEMAND | Blonde man dyes locks whenever required (2,6) |
| Hidden (indicated by ‘locks’) in BlONDE MAN Dyes | ||
| 15 | BRAVE NEW WORLD | Fantastic war novel we borrowed on vacation about resistance work (5,3,5) |
| (war novel we b{orrowe}d)* round R | ||
| 17 | CADENCES | Openings of English country dances transposed chord changes (8) |
| (E{nglish} c{ountry} dances)* | ||
| 19 | SNAPPY | Short break at empty property (6) |
| snap p{ropert}y | ||
| 21 | TWIG | Cotton on sticky part of plant? (4) |
| A twig is a part of a plant (in this case a tree) which when broken off will be a stick | ||
| 23 | NAUSEATING | Offensive article about University Chairs (10) |
| (an)rev. U seating | ||
| 24 | STARVE | Fast introduction to rondo separates part of score (6) |
| sta(r{ondo})ve | ||
| 25 | SCULLERY | One has a row by rear of utility room next to kitchen (8) |
| sculler {utilit}y — a sculler is a rower | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ACCRUE | Superb surroundings for vineyard arise because of natural growth (6) |
| ac(cru)e | ||
| 2 | LOSS OF FACE | This humiliation makes Jill (not Jack) ill (4,2,4) |
| If you take the first letter off Jill (ie cause it to lose face) you get ill, whereas if you do the same with Jack you only get ack | ||
| 3 | DISAGREE | Pervert said lust reduced conflict (8) |
| (said)* gree{d} — conflict as a verb | ||
| 4 | OFFEND | Having turned corner, lose front end and cause injury (6) |
| This seems to be off {b}end. Perhaps ‘off bend’ is a term used in motor racing or something like that, but I don’t know it. Google doesn’t help. Thanks James and WordPlodder: it’s off [= having turned] {b}end; good clue and my apologies to Serpent for my initial doubts] | ||
| 5 | UNIT | One making a contribution to community (4) |
| Hidden in commUNITy | ||
| 6 | SEASONED | Mature children embracing adult with child (8) |
| se(A son)ed | ||
| 8 | GAIN ONES SPURS | Achieve recognition with wins over United and Premier League club (4,4,5) |
| gain(one)s Spurs — wins = gains, and Serpent is using ‘over’ to mean ’round’, something one seldom sees in the Independent | ||
| 14 | MERCANTILE | Recent mail shot in connection with trade (10) |
| (Recent mail)* | ||
| 15 | BEAR WITH | Make allowances for beast like Rupert Murdoch finally being the butt of humour (4,4) |
| bear [= beast like Rupert] wit {Murdoc}h — h is the butt of wit in that it comes at the end of it | ||
| 16 | WASTEFUL | Saw flute ad-lib, blowing too many notes? (8) |
| (Saw flute)* — the notes in the definition are monetary ones | ||
| 18 | CONVEX | Rounded channel turning axis through 90 degrees (6) |
| convey with the y becoming an x — the x- and y-axes are typically at right angles to each other | ||
| 20 | PANTRY | Criticise railway about entrance to terminal where one obtains fare (6) |
| pan (t{erminal}) ry | ||
| 22 | GURU | Spiritual guide misinterpreted augury’s contents (4) |
| (ugur)*, the ugur being {a}ugur{y} | ||
*anagram
Thanks Serpent and John
I found this difficult, and didn’t parse FINGER, OFFEND, BEAR WITH and CONVEX.
21 reminded me of the old joke:
What’s brown and sticky?
A stick!
Thanks John, Serpent
Just tricky enough. Liked WASTEFUL, SCOOPING in particular.
Can’t help with the Huxley, but having turned is off (rotten)
Nina to the rescue. I was stuck on 18d and up in the NE until I saw that the top and bottom unches must refer to 15a, so could then finish off quickly. I think 4d is ‘Having turned’ = OFF + ‘corner, lose front end’ = {B}END. Thanks for the parsing of FINGER and LOSS OF FACE.
Interesting that SEASONED also appeared (as ‘mature’) in today’s Times.
Thanks to Serpent and John.
Don’t remember ever enjoying finishing a crossword with no aids as I did this one. I parsed OFFEND as WordPlodder@3. Glad I didn’t look for a Nina until I had finished as I was so pleased to get CONVEX which the X would have given away. This and then 23a were my last ones in. SEASONED, FINGER and OFFEND were also tricky I thought.
Excellent stuff from Serpent today. Favourite of the year so far, although it is still early. Thanks also to John.
Hello Hovis@4. Thanks, but credit where credit’s due – James@2 just beat me to it!
Unlike Hovis, I needed the Nina for CONVEX; I don’t think I’d have managed it without. Great puzzle, although I think it’s a shame for 4d that END is in the wp and solution, and in the hidden clue for ON DEMAND a man can’t be blonde…he’s blond.
Thanks Serpent and John
Thanks for blogging, John.
On the tough side, but hey, it’s Thursday. Satisfying to finish, with some good clues along the way: I particularly liked BEAR WITH and LOSS OF FACE. I couldn’t parse GINGER or OFFEND either.
Pity about the blond/blonde error, but that’s what it is. As far as I know, ‘blond’ is the only fully-paid up adjective in English that – like French – adds ‘e’ for the feminine form.
But that’s a little technical niggle in a very well-constructed and pleasing puzzle. Well done, Scorpion.
baerchen @6, K’s D @7
In fairness to Serpent, Collins does have:
blonde
adjective
1. (of women’s hair) of a light colour; fair
2. (of a person, people or a race) having fair hair, a light complexion, and, typically, blue or grey eyes
3. (of soft furnishings, wood, etc) light in colour
I found this the most difficult of the four cryptics I’ve tackled so far today. Probably if only I’d noticed the Nina ( 🙁 ) I’d have got on better.
Thanks to Serpent for the brain stretching and John for the explanations
Thank you, Gaufrid. I am trying to package this in a non-confrontational way, but I can’t. Collins is wrong. You cannot describe a man as blonde.
K’s D @10
In which case the ODE is also wrong, quote:
USAGE: The alternative spellings blonde and blond correspond to the feminine and masculine forms in French, but in English the distinction is not always made, as English does not have such distinctions of grammatical gender. Thus, blond woman or blonde woman, blond man or blonde man are all used. The word is more commonly used of women, though, and in the noun the spelling is typically blonde. In American usage the usual spelling is blond for both adjective and noun.
(Re blonde-if its good enough for James Joyce……
Collins, like margarine and instant coffee does not exist chez moi
Lovely puzzle from Serpent.And the nina helped me in choosing CONVEX.
Thanks,John for parsing of FINGER and thanks Serpent
@Gaufrid
This is interesting, and raises an obvious question: just because something is in the/a dictionary, does that automatically make it “right”? We do crosswords because we love words and their etymology. The way I see it, a man cannot be “blonde” any more than “latte” can be “coffee” and there is no way that I could ever use either of them.
I found this puzzle a bit tricky and having “solved” all but 1d, was becalmed with _P_R_E as I had interpreted 7a as SPOOLING, with POOL as the joint effort. I then gave up and revealed 7a to check and was given the C which allowed me to get ACCRUE. As usual I missed the nina and failed to parse CONVEX. FOI was HEIFER. Liked GAIN ONES SPURS. Thanks Serpent and John.
baerchen @13
I am not qualified to judge what is right or wrong. My approach is that if something can be justified in at least one of the usual references then it is fine for a setter to use it, and rather unfair for him/her to be criticised for doing so.
@Gaufrid
I think I’m being neither unfair nor critical, just openly airing my view in a polite and non-confrontational way. I’ll waste no more of anyone’s time on it
We found this tricky and the OFFEND/FINGER crossers were our last ones in because from the definitions they couldn’t be anything else but we couldn’t parse them. But interestingly we got CONVEX having suspected the ‘axis’ device meant changing Y to X or vice-versa (although we did briefly wonder if it meant changing a pair of Z’s to N’s in the middle of the word) which gave us the nina enabling us to finish the NE corner. Although BRAVE NEW WORLD had taken us longer to get than it should as we struggled to decide exactly what the anagram fodder was.
We were also fooled for a while by ‘arise’ in 1dn – thought it was a reversal indicator – but we did 21ac the meaning of ‘lower’ in 12ac.
All good stuff – thanks, Serpent and John.
baerchen@ maybe we could have LATTE and BLONDE in the same clue-not sure where this is leading but I’m off to bed.
I thought I’d try and come up with an equivalent case, where we have in English two alternatives equivalent to French masculine and feminine forms. I’ve struggled to find any. There’s debutant/debutante, as nouns, for which Chambers makes the distinction between a male and female making their first performance. But I think blonde as an adjective is different. Once English has imported a word, there’s no mechanism to restrict it to a particular gender. In my French dictionary, blond, blonde is translated as ‘adj. blonde (GB), blond (US)’. I wonder if those who use blond to describe men are using faux-French, mistakenly thinking it’s a grammatical necessity, when what they are actually doing is using a familiar American word which probably is just a purging of the foreign element, as in eg. epaulet/epaulette, rather than a specifically masculine form.
@baerchen
you promised to stop going on about latte
@copmus
Dizzy blonde forgetting name got mixed up with latte as an alternative to draught beer (7,3)
@James
I lied
Great stuff from Serpent as usual. Some great clues and a real challenge. The Nina was a big help.
Surprised Eimi allowed an allusion to Spurs as a losing team though!
Thanks to S & B
Nooo, I think we should continue going on about latte, because we can argue about whether you pronounce it in English with a short or long ‘a’. And then since it’s a slow work afternoon (here at least) we could move on to whether you should ask for two paninis to go with the latte, since panini is already plural. And outside the coffee shop there’ll be graffiti on the wall – or should that be graffito? Immigrant words? Send them back home.
Gaufrid, the ODE is also wrong. In my opinion, of course. On issues like this, dictionaries are, as we have discussed many times before, descriptive and not prescriptive. I would never write blonde in that context; others can if they want. I don’t think anyone’s criticising Scorpion for using it, just pointing out that some (most) people wouldn’t.
Please don’t encourage baerchen to write any more clues to order. He’ll be giving us a themed puzzle on golf next.
Oi Trigger, it’s Serpent not Scorpion
Aren’t we rather sraying from the agenda? Or should that be agendum?
… or should that be ‘straying’?
[Kathryn’s Dad @23
A golf-themed puzzle? Sounds more fun than most other themes!]
muffin@27: That’s you off KD’s Christmas card list!
I think you’re needed back over on the Guardian thread, muffin.
To damn me forever in your eyes, Kathryn’s Dad, the reason I had time to do the Independent this morning was that my golf game was cancelled…
@muffin
Indy 9639 Sept. 4 2017.
blame Hoskins
mmm – I seem to recall that you and Knut are very close, baerchen?
yes; baerchen, Knut(Indy) Julius(FT) aka Rob
A classy puzzle, really tough in places.
I needed the nina’s help to get CONVEX – super clue.
While I was pondering the last two, conversation around me turned to Bishops Finger (the ale). That may or may not have helped me get FINGER! My final entry was a guess at OFFEND but I didn’t manage to parse it.
I also liked DISAGREE, which seems appropriate given the fun and games above.
Thanks Serpent and John.
Finished using a print-out (hence no reveals) and all correct, without having spotted the nina!
On the “blond/blonde” thing, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man described as “blond” (or “blonde” for that matter) – “fair” is my only experience (and I’m one).
Many thanks to John for the blog and to everyone who took the time to solve and comment.
I must confess I thought there was only one spelling of BLONDE in English (perhaps because, as Muffin points out, it’s almost always applied to women and I’ve not seen the masculine version) and I didn’t check the dictionary. I do agree with baerchen @6 about the inelegance of ‘end’ appearing in both the wordplay and the answer.
Jason
confidante – woman, confidant – man. We do keep that difference in English, don’t we? Similar to debutante/debutant mentioned above.