Independent on Sunday 1,517/Flitwick

Always interesting to get first blogging dibs on a new setter. Until now Flitwick was just a station that I occasionally whizzed through on my way to St Pancras from the East Midlands, but now it is also our latest IoS setter. Good debut puzzle, I thought, with some nicely constructed surface readings.

 

 

 

The other thing of note is that it’s a pangram: in other words, it contains all the 26 letters of the alphabet at least once. This is just for fun; setters get bored sometimes, I guess.

Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed

definitions are underlined

 

Across

1 A frequent flyer gets caught when returning to African capital
KWACHA
If a blogger is going to have a bitch about a puzzle, you might as well get it out of the way with the first across.

kwacha n: the standard monetary unit of Zambia and Malawi (Collins)

Interestingly (or not, depending on your passion for African currencies), it’s divided into 100 ngwee in Zambia and 100 tambala in Malawi, just in case either of those comes up in future crosswords. The parsing is as follows: an insertion (‘gets’) of C for ‘caught’ in A HAWK reversed (‘when returning’). Why am I bitching about this? Because it’s arcane general knowledge and HAWK for ‘frequent flyer’ is not a great definition: it’s a bird, but why a hawk? With a few exceptions, all birds are frequent flyers, and there are a lot of them. I suspect that the reason Flitwick clued this is that next to naff all else fits ?W?C?A. I know this, because I had to use a word wizard to get the answer.

5 A hut in the setter’s tree
MAHOGANY

hogan n: a wooden dwelling covered with earth, typical of the Navaho Indians of N America (Collins)

At least the answer’s guessable from the crossers with this one: it’s the aforementioned ‘hut’ in MY.

9 Lobster has cry if boiled
CRAYFISH
(HAS CRY IF)*

10 City to fight with the Athenians, primarily
SPARTA
A charade of SPAR, then T and A for the first letters of ‘the’ and ‘Athenians’.

11 Aussies seen regularly in quiet tourist attraction
MUSEUM
An insertion (‘in’) of USE for the even letters of ‘aussies’ in MUM.

12 Bully needs some balls to face wild animal
OVERBEAR
A charade of a cricketing OVER and BEAR.

14 Makes new deal to negate Tories’ manoeuvring
RENEGOTIATES
(NEGATE TORIES)* What our great leader has been trying to do for what seems like forever.

17 Change in philosophy embraced at talk
CONVERSATION
An insertion (’embraced’) of AT in CONVERSION.

20 Gangster gets artwork out of the house
ALFRESCO
A charade of the setters’ fave ‘gangster’, AL (Capone) and FRESCO.

22 Spot head of company in informal dress?
NOTICE
An insertion of C for the first letter of ‘company’ in NO TIE.

23 Friend disembowelled duck
QUAKER
My last one in, and one that required the old trick of going and doing something else for a bit and then coming back to it. I was convinced that the answer was MUCKER, for ‘friend’. But in fact it’s the Friend of the QUAKER variety, and is QUA[C]KER. I had mentally bookmarked that the crossword was going to be a pangram, so muppetry on my part not to notice that the Q was missing.

25 Leaders of Soviet Union left Marx’s birthplace with even more passion
SULTRIER
A charade of the first letters of the third, fourth and fifth words of the clue, and TRIER, which is indeed where the author of Das Kapital was born.

26 Inhabitants of caves adopting one branch of Buddhism
DENIZENS
An insertion of I ZEN in DENS.

27 Girl takes ship to cross part of southern England
SUSSEX
An insertion (‘takes’) of SS in SUE, followed by X for the ‘cross’.

Down

2 Athlete’s preparation for heat
WARM-UP
A dd, although the second definition is not hyphenated.

3 Mournful song about flower from occupied land, say?
CRY ME A RIVER
A homophone (‘say’) of CRIMEA RIVER; the ‘occupied land’ is referencing the fact that Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation from Ukraine in early 2014. ‘Flower’ is here crosswordspeak for a river (because it flows).

4 Romania is not exactly part of Turkey!
ASIA MINOR
(ROMANIA IS)*

5 Game Jonah played in car
MAH-JONG
An insertion (‘in’) of (JONAH)* in MG, the car marque.

6 She’s moved by English poet
HESSE
A charade of (SHES)* and E gives you the German poet and novelist Herman HESSE.

7 Place to collect cash: a holiday destination in Asia
GOA
A charade of GO and A. Pass Go and collect £200 is a move in the board game Monopoly.

8 Nurses act unfairly, holding back fruitcakes
NUTCASES
Hidden reversed in nurSES ACT UNfairly.

13 Generates lots of ideas in rush to put on ladies’ underwear
BRAINSTORMS
An insertion of IN and STORM in BRAS. The insertion indicator is ‘to put on’ in its sense of ‘to wear’.

15 A sterling arrangement for percussion
TRIANGLES
(A STERLING)*

16 Lout stumbles upon river in French city
TOULOUSE
A charade of (LOUT)* and OUSE, the river (of which there are several).

18 Stimulates bouts of heavy drinking, losing head
AROUSES
[C]AROUSES. ‘Carouse’ as a noun is fine. I looked it up, because I wasn’t sure.

19 Yield to wild decadence without end
ACCEDE
(DECA[D][E][N]CE)* The anagrind is ‘wild’ and the removal indicator is ‘without’.

21 Discreetly conceals rocks
SCREE
Hidden in diSCREEtly.

24 Caught shy sort of fish
KOI
A charade of COY. The homophone indicator is ‘caught’, as in ‘I didn’t catch what you said’.

Many thanks to Flitwick for a fine debut. I could handle some more of these.