Independent 11,089 by Rodriguez

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Our Thursday challenge comes from Rodriguez with a wide range of subject matter.

A few unfamiliar words, but the wordplays are clear enough to make them guessable. I liked the political even-handedness of 13a followed by 15a (it sounds as though our setter doesn’t think much of either side), and the misdirection of the surfaces in 1d and 14d. I also enjoyed the fact that both “sadly” and “excitedly” can be anagram indicators, in the delightfully ambiguous world of crosswords. Thanks Rodriguez for the fun.

Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.

ACROSS
9 FISH FARMING
Raffish rogue, cool entering car, shows breeding (4,7)
Anagram (rogue) of RAFFISH, then IN (cool = fashionable) inserted into MG (car marque).
10 RIM
Jollies around India’s border (3)
RM (jollies = slang for the Royal Marines) around I (abbreviation for India).
11 EXPECTANT
Surviving without sports clubs, or in the club (9)
EXTANT (surviving) around PE (physical education = sports) + C (abbreviation for clubs in card games).

In the club = slang for pregnant.
12 ADELE
Pop diva has drink, drinking case of Drambuie (5)
ALE (a drink), containing (drinking) the outer letters (case) of D[rambui]E.

The singer Adele.
13 DEMIT
Democrat given punishment, about to resign (5)
D (abbreviation for Democrat), then TIME (a prison sentence = punishment) reversed (about).

Not a familiar word for me; the dictionaries suggest it’s more a Scottish or American usage.
15 WEARISOME
Woe is me, sadly: hosting a Republican’s tedious (9)
Anagram (sadly) of WOE IS ME, containing (hosting) A + R (abbreviation for Republican).
16 RESTART
Singing flier forgetting day for launch again (7)
RE[d]START (a songbird = singing flier) without the D (day).
18 LINEAR B
Piece of dialogue, bar changes, in script (6,1)
LINE (a piece of dialogue in a play) + anagram (changes) of BAR.

Ancient form of writing, used in Greece in the late Bronze Age.
20 JOCULARLY
Not seriously concerned with viewer getting covered in jelly, oddly (9)
OCULAR (relating to the eye = concerned with viewer), contained (covered) in the odd-numbered letters of J[e]L[l]Y.
21 POLKA
President Arthur’s beginning to take steps (5)
POLK (James Knox Polk, 11th president of the US) + beginning letter of A[rthur].

As a verb, to dance the steps of a polka.
22 BALTI
Hot food is very cold, but not cold (5)
BALTI[c] (from a rather cold region of Northern Europe, though I’m not sure I’d use the term by itself to mean “very cold”) without the C (cold).

A type of curry: hot and spicy.
23 YELLOWISH
Maybe Amber is to cry with love and longing (9)
YELL (cry out) + O (zero = love, in tennis scoring) + WISH (longing).
26 ERG
Some work thus finishes early (3)
ERG[o] (Latin word for thus, or therefore, used in scientific proofs) without its last letter (finishing early).

A unit of energy or work, in the centimetre-gramme-second system of scientific units.
27 HIPPOCAMPUS
A bit of brains in joint work around university (11)
HIP (a joint) + OP (short for Latin opus = a work of music or literature) reversed (around) + CAMPUS (a university site).

Part of the brain involved in memory.
DOWN
1 OFFENDER
One has a record or disc with loud guitar (8)
O (circle = disc) + F (f = Italian forte = musical term for loud) + FENDER (a brand of guitars).

Offender = one with a criminal record.
2 ASAP
Single person who may be duped immediately (4)
A (one = single) + SAP (a gullible person who may be duped).

Abbreviation for “as soon as possible”, generally written as one word without punctuation.
3 OFFCUT
Old fellows ignored remnant of material (6)
O (old) + FF (F = abbreviation for fellow, as in a member of an academic institution) + CUT (refused to recognise = ignored).
4 UREA
Government department uncovered waste product (4)
[b]UREA[u] (a Government department, as in the FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigations) with its outer letters removed (uncovered).

A waste product of the human metabolism, found in urine.
5 RIFT VALLEY
Spat with Victor on street in Great Depression (4,6)
RIFT (spat = disagreement) + V (Victor in the radio alphabet) + ALLEY (a narrow street with buildings or walls on both sides).

A narrow strip of low-lying land (depression) between mountains, resulting from a geological rift.
6 AGRARIAN
One wears silver kind of skirt on number of fields (8)
I (one in Roman numerals), inserted into (wearing) AG (Ag = chemical symbol for silver, from Latin argentum) + RA-RA (a short flounced skirt, based on those worn by cheerleaders) + N (number).

Relating to farmland or agriculture = of fields.
7 FREE-FOR-ALL
Then is no one getting charged in affray? (4-3-3)
Double definition, the first cryptic. Free for all = nobody gets charged a fee; or a disorganised fight among a large group of people.
8 AMPERE
Current unit in van wanting leader on base (6)
[c]AMPER (also campervan = motorised caravan) without its first letter (wanting leader), then E (e = mathematical base used in natural logarithms).

Unit of electrical current, often shortened to amp.
14 MUSICOLOGY
Heading for match, cool guy is excitedly studying the scores (10)
First letter (heading) of M[atch] + anagram (excitedly) of COOL GUY IS.

The study and analysis of music, which may include scores (sheet music).
15 WATER NYMPH
Mythical female means to catch bird with speed (5,5)
WAY (means, as in “a means to an end”) containing (to catch) TERN (a seabird), then MPH (miles per hour = speed).
17 ALL RIGHT
Nothing left is fine (3,5)
Double definition, the first cryptic. If nothing is on the left, everything must be on the right; or “all right” = fine = satisfactory.
19 BRASHEST
Most flamboyant cream clothing foolhardy? (8)
BEST (cream, as in “the cream of the crop”) around (clothing) RASH (foolhardy).
20 JABBER
Rabbit punch lands on British head of state (6)
JAB (punch, as in boxing) + B (British) + ER (the Queen, head of state).

Rabbit = jabber = slang for “talk a lot”.
21 PROZAC
What may beat the blues for Baron Goldsmith (6)
PRO (for = in favour of) + ZAC (Zac Goldsmith, otherwise Baron Goldsmith of Richmond Park, a Government minister).

Brand name for the antidepressant drug fluoxetine.
24 LOOT
John Travolta’s first to get sack (4)
LOO (john = slang for toilet) + first letter of T[ravolta].

Sack = loot = to steal valuables from a site, usually involving damage or destruction.
25 I SPY
Slender and delicate wife leaves game (1,3)
[w]ISPY (slender and delicate), without the W (wife).

Children’s guessing game.

9 comments on “Independent 11,089 by Rodriguez”

  2. BALTIC is used colloquially to mean “extremely cold”, yet another word picked up from crossword land. Yes, “It’s in …” I was surprised to find the last time it appeared. At least the HIPPOCAMPUS is doing its job, sometimes anyway.

    Very enjoyable and not too difficult though I had some trouble disentangling FISH FARMING and the sort of related AGRARIAN. I never was able to parse PROZAC so had to look up the said ‘Baron’ afterwards. A YELLOW(ISH)and POLKA but no “dot bikini”; you can’t have it all I suppose.

    Thanks to Rodriguez and Quirister

  4. The last four or five held out for a long time but eventually crossed the line with a few brain cells left intact. Top two here were OFFENDER & PROZAC.

    Thanks to Rodriguez and to Quirister for the review.

  5. I seem to remember a discussion about BALTIC meaning very cold before somewhere. LINEAR B was my favourite among a number of fine clues. Thanks, both.

  6. I was chuffed to get right through this but the clueing was spectacularly clear, even for some of the tricky words that Rodriguez chose for his grid: FISH FARMING, JOCULARLY, YELLOWISH, HIPPOCAMPUS, MUSICOLOGY, RIFT VALLEY are all hard enough to simply define in a clue, let alone create the wordplay. And yet nothing seemed forced. It would be a churlish commenter who complained about fish appearing in both ‘raffish’ and the solution! I’m certainly not going to.

    I’d agree with jane’s nominated top two – OFFENDER and PROZAC with an honourable mention, despite the chestnut, for LOOT which was so simply done.

    Thanks Rodriguez and Quirister

  7. It may seem churlish to say so but the main problem with FISH FARMING was the (no pun etc) watery definition – ‘breeding’ – especially since we are expected to conjure an MG (d 1967) from the ether. That spoiled for me what was otherwise an enjoyable joust. Some palpable hits when I opted for Shade over the (insert adjective) ADELE – I misread ‘drink’ as ‘drunk’; and that hot food had to be ‘chili’ – Doh! WATER NYMPH gets the Best in Show from me.

    Thanks to both.

  8. Quite a challenge – we got stuck a few times but a little thought got us going again without recourse to help. We got it all but couldn’t parse UREA as we didn’t think of ‘bureau’. But we thought of MG (the marque is still around, albeit under Chinese ownership) in 9ac as soon as AGRARIAN gave us G for the final letter.
    The bottom half of the grid took us a while to sort out as we initially had ‘all clear’ for 17dn (if everything was cleared away there’d be nothing left) which prevented us getting BALTI and HIPPOCAMPUS until we realised it was ‘left’ as the opposite of ‘right’ which was meant.
    Plenty to enjoy. LINEAR B, JOCULARLY, HIPPOCAMPUS, AGRARIAN and JABBER were our favourites.
    Thanks, Rodriguez and Quirister.

  9. Thanks Rodriquez for the enjoyment. Much of this went in with just minimal use of the “check button” but I had more than a few where the parsing eluded me. I thought POLKA was deviously good and I liked YELLOWISH, HIPPOCAMPUS, ALL RIGHT (brilliant in its simplicity), and JABBER. DEMIT was new to me as was Baron Goldsmith. Thanks Quirister for the explanations.

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