Independent 10,967/Quince

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A new Indy setter in Quince, I think, so welcome to him or her. A pleasing and well-constructed puzzle, but rather chewy for a typical Monday, I would aver. More importantly, especially with a debut puzzle, what did the world out there think?

I’ll just mention one thing before we get started: it’s a double pangram.

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 CO2’s core parts enucleated for lower emissions
COWPATS
Well, if you’re going to set the tone for a puzzle’s difficulty level, you might as well do it with 1 across. A charade of C, O, W for the ‘core’ of tWo and PA[R]TS. ‘Enucleated’ is one of the more esoteric middle letter removal indicators I’ve come across. And of course, as well as splatting massive runny turds over England’s green and pleasant land, cows also low. Perhaps at the same time.

5 Queries wrong title
ESQUIRE
(QUERIES)*

10 Dieter’s sure about a drop of valium in coffee
JAVA
Not the person who’s restricting their calories, but the German man, who might say JA for ‘sure’. Insert A and the first letter of ‘valium’ into that and you’ve got your coffee bean.

11 Telly broadcast featuring old queen losing energy in persuasive speech
ELOQUENTLY
An insertion of O and QU[E]EN in (TELLY)* The anagrind is ‘broadcast’; the insertion indicator is ‘featuring’; the removal indicator is ‘losing energy’.

12 Losing first halves on return, Sweden and Norway displayed fatigue
YAWNED
A charade of YAW and NED, which are the latter halves of the two countries reversed (‘on return’).

14 Scuppered the endless conflict before the gutless deserted
THWARTED
A charade of TH[E], WAR, T[H]E and D. The last particle comes from the abbreviation used in army records.

15 Attacks deputy receiving a text
PAROXYSMS
A charade of A inserted into PROXY and SMS. The acronym is for Short Message Service, commonly called a text. It was invented in the 1980s, which is so last century.

17 See Posh’s partner in audience, a bearded beast
IBEX
A homophone of EYE BECKS. Referencing the sleb couple Posh’n’Becks.

19 Many countries like backing Artificial Intelligence
ASIA
A charade of AS and IA reversed.

21 Perhaps stoner googles it when high
GEOLOGIST
(GOOGLES IT)* with ‘high’ as the anagrind.

24 Plucking instrument, sentimental Zeus lost glimpse of Ulysses crossing river
TWEEZERS
Not of the stringed type. A charade of TWEE and ZE[U]S with an R for ‘river’ substituting for the missing U.

25 Bad tune not being played on the radio
OFF AIR
A charade of OFF and AIR.

27 Softening murmur returned in a chant
HUMANISING
I can’t quite get this to work. It seems to be a charade of HUM and IN reversed in A SING. But then that would require ‘in’ to be both the insertion indicator and the insertion material. Some kind soul will help me out here, I’m sure.

Edit: as mw7000 points out, it’s simply HUM, IN A reversed, and SING.

29 Still independent, being of elusive nature
YETI
A charade of YET and I.

30 Barred from gym, stripped after naked run
STREAKY
A charade of STREAK and [G]Y[M]

31 Pot for sale (not suitable for children) beside prison
TOBY JUG
A charade of TO B[U]Y and JUG. U as ‘suitable for children’ comes from the film classification system and stands for ‘Universal’.

Down

2 Country’s air has rising carbon monoxide, with articles describing dead
O CANADA
A charade of OC for the formula for carbon monoxide reversed (‘rising’, because it’s a down clue) and D inserted into AN, A and A, three ‘articles’. O Canada! is the national anthem of Canada, but was only officially adopted as such in 1980.

3 Power making BP a potential victim of oil-spill
PRAWN
Quince is inviting you to replace the first letter of BRAWN for ‘power’ with P.

4 Sweetheart holds up item that helps swingers raise their game
TEE
Hidden reversed in swEETheart. Golf club swingers, obviously.

6 Harsh call from Conservative about going for week on vacation
SQUAWK
A charade of SQUA[RE] and W[EE]K.

7 Arsenal player cycling to collect French wine – that’s worrying
UNNERVING
An insertion of VIN in UNNERG, which is derived from GUNNER – an Arsenal player – with the first letter ‘cycling’ to the end. Far too much footie in the Indy crosswords. You could almost believe the editor was a Spurs fan. The insertion indicator is ‘to collect’.

8 Soothe Republican First Lady hosting priest from Israel
RELIEVE
An insertion of ELI in R and EVE, who, biblically speaking, was the ‘first lady’.

9 End of interminably boring pi?
BOTTOMLESS PIT
If pit became ‘bottomless’, it would turn into ‘pi’. Nicely suggestive surface, since pi is an irrational number and in theory can go on forever after the decimal point.

13 Occasionally, diary close to Pepys illustrates parts of the week
DAYS
A charade of DAY for the odd letters of ‘diary’ and S for the last letter of ‘Pepys’.

16 Working adult cutting a fringe normally
ON AVERAGE
A charade of ON and A inserted into A VERGE. The insertion indicator is ‘cutting’.

18 Singer replacing tenor with soprano too
ALSO
The setter is inviting you to replace the T in ALTO with S.

20 Picked out clean, cutting-edge product
SAWDUST
A charade of SAW and DUST, with a whimsical and well-disguised definition.

22 One man’s best friend shattered his headlight’s edges on no-frills Suzuki
SHIH TZU
A charade of (HIS)*, HT for the outside letters of ‘headlight’ and ZU, which is [SU]ZU[KI].

23 Correctional facility embarrassed and distressed kin
RED INK
A charade of RED and (INK)*

26 Knowing times for space mission
FLYBY
A charade of FLY and BY. Personally, I would always hyphenate this word, and Chambers agrees with me.

28 Seconds from igniting bonfire, logs become pulp
GOO
The second letters of iGniting, bOnfire and lOgs.

Many thanks to Quince for this morning’s puzzle. Some more like this wouldn’t go amiss.

28 comments on “Independent 10,967/Quince”

  4. Lovely debut. Very tightly clued with few extraneous words that I can spot. And no appearance of forcing to create the double pangram. BOTTOMLESS PIT is very witty, as is the clue for GEOLOGISTS and the definition for SAWDUST.

    Thanks Quince and Pierre

  5. I struggled to complete this, and only with some wordlist help, but on the whole very fairly and cleverly clued, and congratulations on the double pangram. So thanks Quince and Pierre.

  6. This was quite a debut puzzle. A double pangram, a mini theme and some excellent clues including a couple of good lift and separates. Everything eventually parsed except for BOTTOMLESS PIT which I sort of see, but couldn’t have explained it to others. Thanks for making it clearer.

    Look forward very much to the next one from our new setter.

    Thanks and welcome to Quince, and to Pierre

  7. Very impressive. Lots of content in the clues made me briefly wonder if it was Bluth moonlighting.
    Unintentional mathematical ninas? Apart from the pi in the middle, there’s a bit of trig bottom right, paths bottom left, and going from G3 down then wiggling about a bit when you get to M, Riemann!
    Thanks Quince, Pierre

  9. I thoroughly enjoyed this, especially the clue for BOTTOMLESS PIT. Thanks to Quince & Pierre, which is what I’ll be calling my plant-based organic fair trade grocer on Shoreditch High Street

  10. Quite chewy in places but leavened with a few write-ins. 1ac was our first in as we’d encountered ‘lower’ and related words in a bovine context a few times recently. We had to resort to a wordfinder for 9dn and 31ac, though, and could have kicked ourselves when we got them and saw the parsing. Favourite was PAROXYSMS.
    But as far as we can see it’s only a single pangram; there’s no second Z. It would be if 27ac was spelt with a Z but then the clue wouldn’t work.
    Thanks, Quince and Pierre

  13. What everyone else has said: great crossword, very impressive, smooth double pangram, but requiring rather more work than the average Monday Independent. Welcome and thanks to Quince and thanks as ever to Pierre for the explanations – I needed them!

  15. Thanks Pierre, I had to cheat to get HUMANISING from a list and couldn’t get past ON AVERAGE involving OVERAGE = Adult somehow, a real challenge but plenty of wit and enjoyed this a lot so will look out for more, thanks and congratulations Quince.

  16. That was hard work, but I think I enjoyed it on the whole. I couldn’t parse PRAWN and I thought the definition in 21a was rather dodgy, even allowing for the “perhaps”.

    The pedant in me was disappointed to see Greek and Roman classical references mixed in the surface of 24a.

    There was a lot of clever clueing on show with BOTTOMLESS PIT my favourite.

    Many thanks to Quince and to Pierre.

  17. I’ll add to all the praise – I enjoyed getting through about two thirds of the clues pretty smoothly before struggling with the last few and needing help, especially 27, 30 and 31 A and 7, 9, 20 and 26 D. However the cluing all made sense when I cracked them / got the final bits of parsing here.

    A good start Quince!

  20. This was very good indeed, with some amusing misleading definitions. Very hard, but sticking with it, all came out very nicely in the end. When finished, I suspected there might be a pangram, but when looking for it, then thought there just might be two, as indeed there were. Many thanks to Quince and to Pierre for the blog – HUMANISING was my last answer.

  21. Wasn’t sure what to make of this one and there were certainly places where I thought our setter was guilty of ‘trying too hard’ eg 1a & 22d, but perhaps that says more about my abilities as a solver than his ability as a compiler!
    Top clues for me were those for OFF AIR and SAWDUST.

    Thanks to Quince and to Pierre for the review.

  23. Our first thoughts were that some of the clues were a trifle long-winded and perhaps overall a bit chewy as others have said. However, a great double pangram debut from Quince. Looking forward to the next one.

    Thanks Pierre – we loved your comments for 15ac.

  24. Thanks Quince and Pierre. An enjoyable solve to wind down with at the end of a busy day, though a bit much for my tired brain, and I needed the blog for a few bits of parsing (didn’t pick up the BP trick, for example). PAROXYSMS was my favourite.

  25. Excellent debut! BOTTOMLESS PIT my favourite among many great clues, including TWEEZERS and COWPAT. Also enjoyed the DIETER trick. Couldn’t parse PRAWN, stuck on P= power. Spent about as long on this as on a typical Thursday!

  26. Late to the party.
    I found this really difficult (and not only because it’s Monday).
    Unfortunately, me seeing that is was a multiple pangram didn’t help to find 1ac or 3dn.
    So, a DNF for me (which is OK every now and then).
    Still don’t know what to think of 1ac (COWPATS).
    I am a paper solver and always makes notes when a setter does something that I do not like or, worse, does something that is wrong (in my book of crosswords).
    No such thing today on my A4 – empty!. That’s good news, isn’t it?
    That said, I need more of this setter to really get into his (or her) frame of mind to fully appreciate what he (or she) has in store.
    Many thanks to Pierre (for the blog) & Quince (for what was a real challenge).

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