Independent 7221 by Eimi

by

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def, sp=spoonerism

Eimi indicated that this puzzle would be a little easier than last Monday’s Radian and so it proved. However, if I’d looked at the completed grid and seen some of the words in it (rooinek, centrum, rosella) I’d have expected it to be very tough, but the generally straightforward clueing meant I was able to complete it fairly quickly. Very enjoyable, even if I did have to spend a fair bit of time looking things up. There were a couple that were a little too obscure for me to follow entirely.
 

Across
1 Horsehead nebula: Horse (= heroin) + head + (unable)*.
9 Proxima Centauri: (Puerto Rican IMAX)*.
10 Of No Use: (One UFO’s)*.
11 Spatula: (Al taps)* around u (you in text language).
12 Rekindled: Kin in red (=owing money) + led.
15 Tilth: Tilt + h.
16 Tabac: (TA cab)<.
18 Imperious: Imper[v]ious.
20 Centrum: Cent rum.
21 Rosella: Rose + all<.
23 Alligator lizard: (gorilla at)* + Lizard.
24 Herman Van Rompuy: Recently elected President of the European Council – (unproven may harm)*.
Down
1 Hippocratic oath: CD – I suppose in the sense of taking the oath to relieve others’ pain.
2 Rooinek: Roo + I + Ken<.
3 Elihu: Hidden in “Deli Hut”. Elihu was an advisor to Job.
4 Erase: Hidden, reversed in Casearean.
5 Dressed up: Didn’t quite follow this – “Embellished things Milton’s said in party”. I imagine party is DUP, so the ressed part must be a homphone of something.
6 Extractor: Extra + actor sharing the “a”.
7 Unusual: I assume this is Unus + u(=united) + al (= Albania), where Unus refers to Burmese PM, but not sure exactly who or what that is.
8 Animal Husbandry: (Bushland Iran may)*.
13 Nicaragua: Car in iguana*.
14 Leitmotiv: (Toilet Vim)*.
17 Bungler: Bugler around n (Beethoven’s ninth letter).
19 Oil lamp: O i MP around all<.
21 Reran: Hidden in “Claire Rankin”.
22 Sligo: S[ai]l + I go.

13 comments on “Independent 7221 by Eimi”

  1. 7Dn: according to Wikipedia, U Nu was the Burmese prime minister on three separate occasions between 1948 and 1962. Who knew? (Had to get that one in first!)

    5Dn: Chambers gives ‘sed’ as a Miltonic spelling of ‘said’, but I can’t see where the ‘res’ comes from.

  2. I was wrong footed by confidently putting snakehead nebula (equally valid it seems to me) instead of horsehead as my first entry.

  4. Thanks Eileen,
    I didn’t get that….
    And thanks eimi; an impressively filled grid, with good clues, especially, I thought, 14d.

  5. Yes, agree with Ian – a cleverly constructed puzzle with some unusual answers, but fairly clued. 6d was my favourite. Thanks to Neal for the blog – your bedtime is clearly later than mine!

  6. The early morning posting was caused by insomnia induced by the nearby Siemens’ Train Maintenance depot. For some reason, all the trains entering the depot last night decided to blast their horns really loudly three or four times. It’s probably a health and safety measure, but doesn’t do much for the health of people trying to sleep nearby.

  8. Eileen – Chambers does skirt around RES, giving the ablative singular re, and the nominative in the legalese ‘res ipsa loquitur’ (the thing speaks for itself). They also seem to miss out on resistentialism, Paul Jennings’ theory of the Implacable hostility of Things

  9. Petero

    So it does – but you’d be hard put to it to find it if you didn’t know the answer already, especially since the second example is in the quotations section. There is no indication that the plural is also ‘res’ and I can’t think of any instance of having heard it used, although, as I said, it’s in Collins.

    [This is not a complaint – merely an observation – but the clue was perhaps rather obscure, since it also required knowledge of the Miltonic spelling. Very clever, though.]

  10. 5dn: isn’t it ‘ressed’ in the middle of DUP? In which case you’d think it was a homophone of ‘rest’, but what this has to do with Milton I don’t know.

  11. From 1 above “5Dn: Chambers gives ’sed’ as a Miltonic spelling of ’said’, but I can’t see where the ‘res’ comes from.”

    From 3 above “‘RES’ is Latin for ‘things’ [in Collins but not Chambers.]”

    So it’s ‘res’ (things) + ‘sed’ (Miltonic said) in DUP (party) = dressed up, embellished.

  12. Thanks to Neal for the blog and others for comments. No Ninas or themes in this, but Mike Laws posted a message on the Crossword Centre Message Board two weeks ago remarking that Herman Van Rompuy was 15 letters long, and speculating as to whether the Guardian or Independent would use him first – and I couldn’t resist the challenge.

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