Independent 9,829 by Klingsor

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Ah, Klingsor. It’s been a while.

I made fairly steady progress through this one. There were very few write-ins, though: each one required—and indeed rewarded—a bit of a think, which is always an enjoyable way to go about these things.

The two longer across entries helped a great deal, being not too hard, and supplying plenty of checking letters.

The last ones in were a couple, such as 7 down, where some vocabulary was new to me, and 8 down which beat me completely and remains a little puzzling. I’m sure that’s simply a gap in my own knowledge rather than a gripe with the clueing.

All in all, good stuff, so many thanks to Klingsor.

Across
1 SUBVERSIVE Poetry on loan includes one volume that’s seditious (10)
(SUB + VERSE) includes (I + V).
6 DAFT Back with little daughter’s potty (4)
D + AFT.
9 NATURALIST One barely seen around Australia, having left Darwin? (10)
(A + L) in NATURIST.
10 FORM Create possibilities for sex? (4)
F OR M.
12 MICROECONOMICS Study of domestic finances or cosmic income shifts (14)
Anagram of (OR COSMIC INCOME).
14 RUGGED Wearing a hairpiece? That’s rough (6)
Two definitions, the former nicely whimsical. It’s “rug” as in an informal term for a wig.
15 ENGINEER Mastermind born in turbulent reign (8)
NEE in REIGN*.
17 IMPOSTER Fake claim by online commenter? (8)
A commenter online might claim I‘M POSTER.
19 LARVAE Bog area oddly contains river grubs (6)
R in (LAV + A[e]E[a]).
22 CHANGE ONES TUNE How to get nun to see and adopt a different opinion? (6,4,4)
Reverse anagram: if you CHANGE the letters of (ONES TUNE) you get NUN TO SEE.
24 IOTA Return nine letters – one from Thessaly (4)
(A TO I)<.
25 TARANTELLA Steps aren’t at all rickety (10)
Anagram of (AREN‘T AT ALL). “Steps” as in a type of dance.
26 DEEP Extending far underground, weed comes back (4)
PEED<.
27 IRRELEVANT Not apt to decamp, putting Irish corps first (10)
IR + RE+ LEVANT. Nice to see an alternative to “soldiers” for RE. “Levant” as a verb was completely new to me, so I’ve learned something there.
Down
1 SANE All there ignore nasty sandwiches served up (4)
Hidden and reversed in [ignor]E NAS[ty].
2 BATTING In Times, one cracking report (7)
(T + T + I) in BANG.
3 ERROR MESSAGE Buggy program not starting – see screen regularly displaying this? (5,7)
Nice complex anagram of ([p]ROGRAM + SEE + S[c]R[e]E[n]). I’ve seen/caused a few of these in my time.
4 SPLEEN Case for pedal stops considered for organ (6)
P[eda]L in SEEN.
5 VISCOUNT Title is the best part of thick books! (8)
VISCOU[b] + NT.
7 ACONITE Criminal, one inside swallowed poison (7)
(CON + I) in ATE.
8 TIMESERVER Vicar of Bray perhaps in issue over divorce? About right (10)
EMIT< + (SEVER round R). Someone will have to explain the definition to me though: it’s a song about a historical bloke. Google turns up very few pages referring to both the definition and the entry (with the latter never as a single, unhyphenated word), none of which provide an explanation.
11 COSI FAN TUTTE Opera buff supporting first of ideas to cut price, say? Not quite (4,3,5)
(I[deas] + FAN) in (COST + UTTE[r]). I think Klingsor is known for inserting musical references into puzzles.
13 BRAINCHILD I’ll break arm getting lid off? That’s an original thought (10)
(I in BRANCH) + LID*.
16 DEBONAIR Refined young society woman broadcasting (8)
DEB + ON AIR. The local radio station when I was very young indeed was called “Devon Air”, which seems pretty clever now I think about it. Which I didn’t at the time.
18 PRATTLE Gas is primarily poor conductor (7)
P[oor] + Simon RATTLE.
20 VANILLA Wagon with difficulty goes over a plain (7)
VAN + ILL + A.
21 DEFACE Fed up with one blemish (6)
FED< + ACE.
23 PACT The speaker’s filled a convention (4)
Homophone of “pact”.

 

* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations; BOLD = letters forming part of entries.

 

5 comments on “Independent 9,829 by Klingsor”

  1. 8d – Google tells me The Timeserver is an alternative title for an 18c song called The Vicar of Bray. I had no idea either…. I took too long over Imposter because I wouldn’t spell it with an ‘e’, otherwise not too hard for a Saturday, even if at 1:30 a.m it’s still really Friday night. Thanks Simon and Klingsor.

  2. A very enjoyable struggle. I also had to resort to a word fit for 8d. My Collins has TIMESERVER as one word meaning “a person who compromises and changes his opinions, way of life, etc, to suit the current fashions”. Didn’t know the alternative title mentioned by Paul@1.

    There are a couple of typos in the blog. In 19a, [e] should be [r] and in 5d [b] should be [s].

    Thanks to S&B.

  3. We enjoyed the challenge and completed it with a little help from a thesaurus for RUGGED, PRATTLE and PACT (D’oh moments for each of them).  Couldn’t parse 22ac, though – we were fixated on how to change ‘nun’ into ‘see’.  But we got TIMESERVER from the wordplay and V of B reference without knowing it was actually an alternative title to the song.  No real CoD but a few honourable mentions including VISCOUNT.

    Now to see if we can do anything with Klingsor’s offering as Alberich in Thursday’s FT.

    Thanks, Klingsor and Simon.

  4. Pretty tough and even though I knew of Vicar of Bray, had to cheat on 8D as I did not know “timeserver” as a single/unhyphenated word; made harder because I couldn’t see 10A for some reason.

    Some really good stuff, really liked BRAINCHILD, IRRELEVANT, BATTING among others.

    22A One changes “nuns to see”.

    Thanks to Klingsor and Simon Harding.

  5. Klingsor puzzles are always a treat, and this was no exception to that rule.  A steady solve and an enjoyable one.

    Surprise surprise, my last in – from wordplay only – was TIMESERVER.  Had to then google the character and find the answer in the dictionary, but that made things clear.

    Thanks to Klingsor and Simon.

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