Independent 11,259 by Tees

by

The last Saturday Indy I blogged was by Tees, and the setter and blogger rotas are coinciding so here he is again.
I’m not sorry.  There’s often something a little quirky in a Tess puzzle, such as promotion of his Prog Rock favourites.

This one has something odd about the clues.  There is not a single straight anagram in the whole puzzle!
Or any hiddens for that matter.  Did Tees set himself some sort of challenge to avoid those clue types?

Solving started with a dearth of answers.  I could get nothing reading the across clues in order down to the long  double-light 22/25 where the answer seemed blindingly obvious.  It went better having got some letters to latch onto and by the end of first pass a least half was solved.  The less common letters, Z and V etc., popped up and I wondered if it might be a pangram and help me get the last few, but that wasn’t to be.  The last few clues slotted in without too much fuss once I had corrected an early error – I wrote in STYE at 24d: I must’ve had a brain-fade, I knew what the answer was but that’s not what my pencil wrote.   Suitably, 16d, a clue about leaving and exit was my last one in.

I have no idea how to explain 18d CASTAWAY  but that’s clearly neither anagram or hidden either.
Please let us know how that clue works if you know

No theme that I could discern, and I was looking, but I often miss ’em.

Across
8 LEMONADE Metal container for my French energy drink? (8)
MON (my, French) inside LEAD (metal), E[nergy]
9 PARLEY Conference centre shunned by Herb (6)
PAR[s]LEY
10 MORE He opposed the Reformation to a greater degree (4)
Double Def. One Ref. Thomas More
11 BRAVERMAN Code-breaker admittedly one talking wildly in British isle (9)
The ministerial code is the one being broken, time and time again it seems by many, many members of this and the previous 3 or 4 governments.   No need to explain who this particularly nasty one is.  Setters are probably keen to include names from the current crop so that they can search out new synonyms for unalloyed ambition,  venality and ignorance.  Tempered by the fact that by the time the crossword is published they might have resigned for the Nth time.
RAVER (one talking wildly) inside B[ritish] MAN (isle)
12 PALACE Really good friend’s introduced Buckingham say (6)
PAL (friend) after (introduced) ACE (really good) Def. by example indicated by “say”.
(Most others here have a “?” and I haven’t pointed out that they are “Def. by ex”)
14 IDENTITY Distinct character, island god pens holy work (8)
I[sland], DEITY (god) around (pens) NT (holy work, New Testament)
15 TEXTILE Material from Grobschnitt ultimately old hat (7)
[grobschnit]T EX (old) TILE (hat).  My guess is that Tees is trying to educate us to the joys of 1970s German Prog Rock
(I prefer Henry Cow myself)
17 RAT RACE Sketch by artist showing struggle to survive (3,4)
RA (artist, Royal Academician) TRACE (Sketch)
20 IMMOLATE Sacrifice one companion crossing second lake (8)
I, MATE (one, companion) around (crossing) MO, L (second, L[ake])
22/25 CHEESEPARING Being less than generous with the Stilton? (12)
Is this a semi &Lit? The Def. is extended to hint at the cheesy nature of the answer.
Whatever it is, it was the first answer I was sure of writing in after reading all those previous 9.
23 DISFIGURE Spoil lost princess’s appearance? (9)
DI’S (lost princess’s) FIGURE (appearance). Too soon?
24 SCAB Revolutionary payment method for strike-breaker (4)
BACS< (payment method, revolutionary (reversed))
I feel I’ve seen this device more than once before
26 EVENTUAL Final race, say, under arc lights for starters (8)
EVENT (race, say) U[nder] A[rc] L[ights]
Down
1 DETONATE See walls in posh school explode (8)
DATE (see, as in boy/girlfriend) around (walls in) ETON (posh school)
2 ZONE Unknown individual in London band? (4)
Z (Unknown) ONE (individual) Def. ref. London Transport’s fare bands
3 RABBLE Margaret, Lady Holroyd, losing daughter in crowd (6)
[d]RABBLE ref. Margaret Drabble now elevated to the peerage as Lady Holroyd
Edit: She took the honorific when her husband, Michael Holroyd, was knighted
4 REGALIA Excellent beer served up in Crown & Sceptre? (7)
A1 (excellent) LAGER (beer) all reversed (served up)
5 EPHEMERA FM broadcast with time for transitory things (8)
EPHEM sounds like “F” “M”, Homophone Indicator: broadcast, then ERA (time)
6 DRAMATURGE Drink and drive to accommodate a tense playwright (10)
DRAM (drink) URGE (drive) around (to accommodate) A T[ense].
My goodness that’s an ugly word – anyone else?
7 PEANUT An obsessed person after exercise finds protein source (6)
A NUT (an obsessed person) after PE (exercise)
13 AUTHORSHIP Writing from hammer-wielder carried in gold vessel (10)
THOR (hammer-wielder) inside AU (gold) SHIP (vessel)
16 LEAVINGS Refuse to provide exits (8)
Double Def. What I would call left-overs (though rarely sighted around here), plus ways to leave.
Anyway, we shouldn’t create any refuse now, the watchword is “Reclaim, Re-use and Recycle”, even if it is just feeding the compost heap or the local wildlife.
18 CASTAWAY Note possible routes for traveller abandoned (8)
Baffled – apart from the reasonably clear definition and answer fitting the crossing letters.
Fill in your own ideas here
Edit: C(note) A ST[reet] and A WAY (possible routes) and the def. includes traveller
19 REFUGEE Exile concerned with stale atmosphere vacated enclosure (7)
RE (concerned with) FUG (stale atmosphere) E[nclosur]E
21 MADCAP Potty at Balmoral perhaps causes rash (6)
MAD (potty) CAP (Balmoral. perhaps) I can’t say I knew there was such a cap, but it seemed likely.
(Wasn’t all that tartan tosh dreamt up by Walter Scott or someone?)
22 CLEVER Capable Conservative means to apply pressure (6)
C[onservative ] LEVER (means to apply pressure)
24 SITE Place is an eyesore reportedly (4)
Homophone “Sight” with HInd: reportedly.

 

14 comments on “Independent 11,259 by Tees”

  1. Failed to get the crossing 11a and 3d, never heard of Margaret Drabble.

    I took 22,25 as a cryptic definition. For 18d, I had C (a note) + A ST(reet) + A WAY (routes for a traveller).

  2. Yup, Hovis has the parse for CASTAWAY. I did look up Lady Holroyd, I’m afraid. Pure GK so it felt like the best way to go about it as I couldn’t see another route in. BRAVERMAN was tricky as I felt I had the B …MAN from the get-go but was thinking more Bletchley Park. It was, as beermagnet suggests, a tricky one but it did all eventually fall. So much to like but if I pick just a few to highlight, they’d be PARLEY, TEXTILE, EVENTUAL, ZONE, MADCAP and CLEVER … rather like the whole puzzle.

    Thanks Tees and beermagnet

  4. Simon. Yes, I had that but forgot when I wrote @1 (currently without the numeration, at least on my iPad – hope this gets sorted out).

  5. Ticks also for EPHEMERA, REGALIA and BRAVERMAN. I was pleased to be able to deduce that Margaret Drabble was now Lady Holroyd from the clue.

  8. Thank you Andrew at #7 for putting me straight about Margaret Drabble. I really thought she had been made a member of the HoL in the same manner as Ruth Rendell.

    Thanks to Hovis at #1 and others for the parsing of CASTAWAY. One of those that seem obvious when you’re shown how it works (as usual)

  9. Thanks both. This was nearly a give-up-and-go-to-the-pub experience, but as so often is the case, looking back suggests it should not have been, perhaps best explained by there being a few unknowns and vaguenesses, most of which already mentioned here. The main positive became the EVENTUAL inclusion of Ms BRAVERMAN which I have tried to fit to any clues of the right enumeration for at least a fortnight

  10. Braverman, even more vile IMO than Priti Vacant, admitted breaking the ministerial code, so the def for that one is presumably ‘code-breaker admittedly’.

    Good work-out though! Phew!

  12. That was tough, but entertaining. All the harder when I looked up Grobschnitt on YouTube. Put paid to any coherent thought for a while.
    Thanks to all

  13. Thanks Tees, that went in more quickly than I expected. I couldn’t parse everything due to a lack of GK but I could still come up with correct answers based on definitions, crossings, and partial wordplay. I really liked the surfaces of RAT RACE, REGALIA, and MADCAP as well as the homophone in EPHEMERA. Thanks beermagnet for explaining it all.

  14. Thanks for comments, thanks beer-m for the nice blog.

    I can’t remember whether I did or did not intend the absence of anagrams in this puzzle. Normally I’d try to bung in six or seven. I bet that’s what made it seem harder though, as an anagram can usually get you started.

    Anyway, down with the neoliberal hypocrites including Cruella (for gawd’s sake she is named for Sue-Ellen in Dallas) and toodle-oo.

Comments are closed.