Independent 11,590 by Bluth

by

Bluth gets us going, hope it’s going to be easy as I’ve got the Guardian to do as well today.

Was it heck as like, that took a lot of working out, very few simple clues and quite a few with rather complex wordplay to put it mildly, this seemed to take an age to write up. Thanks, I think Bluth.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
1 REMARKS
Comments as Seinfeld character recalled debut in sitcom (7)
(cosmo) KRAMER reversed & debut of S(itcom). Cosmo Kramer is a character in Seinfeld I never watched Seinfeld so had to look him up.
5 BLESSED
Happy to run around ship (7)
BLEED to run in say dyes in cloth with SS – ship inserted
9 NINNY
Mug from New York hotel is breaking (5)
Mug as in a fool or ninny. INN – hotel – inside NY – New York
10 GO IT ALONE
Act unaided and aim to drink vermouth before lunchtime? (2,2,5)
IT – vermouth as they are ITalian generally inside GOAL – aim & ONE – lunchtime say
11 OUTPLAYED
Published work by journalist performed better (9)
OUT – published, this latest blog is now out & PLAY a work say & ED(itor) the well known crossword journalist
12 OCCAM
Philosopher backing computer company (5)
MAC – a computer & CO(mpany) all reversed
13 BALLYHOO
Commotion as friend gets house during bingo on vacation (8)
ALLY – friend & HO(use) all in a vacated B(ing)O
15 FELON
Almost stumbled on crook (5)
Most of FEL(L) – stumbled & ON
17 APPLE
Write copy about extremely philosophical computer company (5)
APE – copy around the extremes of P(hilosophhica)L. MAC and now APPLE, is Bluth getting a bung to advertise? šŸ™‚
19 LADY-LOVE
Intermittently clear day with nothing on, sweetheart (4-4)
Alternate letters of cLeAr DaY & LOVE – nothing, zero
22 IDYLL
Ultimately celery has plastic Lidl wrapping that depicts simple rural scene (5)
End of (celer)Y inside – wrapped by – a plastic LIDL*
24 RELIEF MAP
Help for the poor old woman with parking – an outstanding plan (6,3)
RELIEF – help for the poor & MA – old woman & P(arking)
26 BEHAVIOUR
Conduct review of unrestricted river harbour after docking (9)
A reviewed [unrestricted (r)IVE(r) & docked HARBOU(r)]*
27 ODOUR
Remote university holding party – get tip for beer pong (5)
OU the Open University where you study remotely with DO – party inserted & and of (bee)R
28 ENDLESS
Some attend lessons non-stop (7)
Some of attEND LESSons
29 ADDRESS
Speak to 10 Downing Street for example (7)
Blimey a simple double definition, not been many of these today.
DOWN
1/16 RANDOM VARIABLE
Way to describe all possible outcomes of Braverman and tabloid both wanting leadership to change (6,8)
Took a moment or too to see the workings here. You need to change without the leading letters – leadership – [(b}RAVERMAN (t)ABLOID]*
2 MINUTIA
Tiny detail – from motorway, head on to A1 northbound (7)
MI or rather M1 a motorway & NUT – head & AI or A1 reversed, heading north
3 ROYAL BLUE
Prince maybe offensive to describe colour (5,4)
ROYAL a prince say & BLUE – offensive to some
4 SOGGY
Regretful after making case of rubber goods wet (5)
SORRY – regretful with RR – the case of R(ubbe)R replaced by GG – 2xG(ood)
5 BLINDFOLD
Public essentially find cycling over the hill without being able to see … (9)
Middle letters of – essentially – (pu)BL(ic) & a cycling FIND or INDF & OLD – over the hill
6 ERATO
… a source of inspiration – regularly see reaction (5)
Alternate letters of sEeReAcTiOn
7 STOICAL
Patient in cast massaged with oil (7)
A massaged [CAST OIL]*
8/21 DREAMING SPIRES
Feature of Oxford University Press Iā€™m reading for revision (8,6)
A revised [PRESS IM READING]* Liked this one
14 HILARIOUS
Really funny greeting – different opening is ten times bigger (9)
HI – greeting & (v/L)ARIOUS. Various – different with the V – five replaced by L – fifty – ten times larger
15 FALSEHOOD
Diet including brewed ales and hot pork pie (9)
FOOD – diet containing a brewed ALES* and H(ot)
16
See 1
18 PSYCHED
School year’s separating in games – daughter’s excited (7)
Y(ear) separating SCH(ool) inside PE – games & D(aughter)
20 VAMOOSE
Desert – perhaps at speed it sounds like dessert after volume’s adjusted initially (7)
Initial letters of V(olume) A(djusted) & MOOSE – sounds like MOUSSE – a dessert
21
See 8
23 LEVEE
Dictatorā€™s tax enlarged Bank of America? (5)
Bank as in river – it sounds like LEVY – tax
25 LARVA
Burglar vanishes, hiding grub (5)
Hidden in burgLAR VAnished

27 comments on “Independent 11,590 by Bluth”

  1. Very enjoyable indeed despite a couple of slightly whacky surface reads from the inimitable Bluth, who seems to have a penchant for supermarkets.
    I liked lots including BALLYHOO, RANDOM VARIABLE, DREAMING SPIRES, SOGGY and LEVEE.
    Many thanks to the setter and the hard-working flashling for a top puzzle and review.

  2. Not a great start for me when I needed to look up Seinfeld, which I’ve never seen or even heard of, to find it is yet another (presumably unfunny) American sitcom of yore and we needed to know an obscure character from it to work out the answer.

    Thankfully I ignored my prejudices and persisted. The rest of the puzzle was really enjoyable with many of the usual parsing challenges to unravel.

    I had a plethora of ticks: GO IT ALONE, BALLYHOO, RELIEF MAP, RANDOM VARIABLE, MINUTIA, BLINDFOLD, DREAMING SPIRES and FALSEHOOD.

    Many thanks to Bluth and to flashing.

  3. This all slipped in very quickly. I’m with Rabbit Dave on Seinfeld, though when it became obvious the answer was ‘remarks’ I just assumed that Kramer must be the character concerned. I couldn’t work out 14D but it had to be ‘hilarious’. Thanks Bluth and Flashling.

  4. RD@2,

    Tastes differ of course, but by most measures Seinfeld was quite funny and dominated the US sitcom scene for a decade between Cheers and Friends.

  5. Very enjoyable as one expects from Bluth. The first few clues I solved did lead me to wonder whether he was trying to get double letters in every solution but he wasn’t

    Thanks very much to Bluth and Flashling

  6. RANDOM VARIABLE and DREAMING SPIRES were my favourites, but there were a lot of great clues. I still can’t quite see the definition of BLINDFOLD. Thanks, both.

  7. Maybe it’s just my old brain working more efficiently after a rare good night’s sleep, but I found this easier than the usual Bluth/Fed offering, although no less enjoyable. The last two across answers and 25D were all open goals. I can only admire the effort and thought that must have gone into producing a topical clue like 1,16!

  8. I came to do this after I’d read the Guardian blog because I like Bluth. I found this about the same difficulty as the Vulcan, because I find these clues which are built up easier to deal with than cryptic definitions, and very enjoyable.

    Didn’t parse REMARKS as someone else who’s never seen Seinfeld either, and that north west corner was my last bit in.

    Thank you to Bluth and flashling.

  10. 2d – MINUTIA – “Tiny detail” – nothing wrong with the clue, but lately it’s being used incorrectly as if it were the plural minutiae.
    https://grammarist.com/usage/minutia-minutiae/ shows Time, the Los Angeles Times, and the Toronto Sun getting it wrong…
    …but the Washington Post, the Guardian (using the singular correctly), and the New Zealand Herald getting it right.
    Liked DREAMING SPIRES for the lift-and-separate of the OUP, and RANDOM VARIABLE for Sue Ellen and the Daily Mail being separated from their heads.
    Thanks B&f

  11. Don’t usually get the chance to do a crossword his early in the day, but being in a Teams meeting for over an hour with nothing to say I was able to finish it off with relative ease for me.

    I’ve only seen five minutes of Seinfeld, enough to tell me it wasn’t for me, but once I worked out remarks, I did remember Kramer was a name I’d heard of.

    Relief map was my favourite, I also thought the anagram for random variable was brilliant. Can’t imagine how long it took Bluth to work that out. Also thought hilarious was a good clue.

    LOI was soggy as it took me far too long to realise it was go it alone, *not* do it alone! šŸ˜€

    Thanks Bluth and flashling

  13. Blimey, all these people whoā€™ve never seen the greatest sitcom ever madeā€¦ oh well, your loss.

    Like Shanne, I didnā€™t find this much more difficult than the Vulcan. 1a was a write-in for me, of course. Cultural references aside, itā€™s very much a wavelength thing – I always seem to get on quite well with Bluthā€™s clueing style. Horses for courses.

    DREAMING SPIRES and RELIEF MAP top faves for me today.

    Thanks, Bluth and flashling.

  16. Thanks both. One of my better performances today, perhaps as I do find Bluth puzzles always to be fair and approachable. US TV will never be my thing, so REMARKED went in because Kramer seemed very plausible – I might know him from his messy separation in the 80ā€™sā€¦.

  18. I’m relatively new to crosswords, having only started properly in the last couple of months.
    Bluth was actually my inspiration for doing so, and I have enjoyed tackling his puzzles especially.
    With a lot of help, I managed to stumble over the finish line for this one.
    Thanks to Bluth, and to flashling and friends for helping me improve my understanding. Every day is a school day.

  19. Iā€™m also one of those in the camp of thinking Seinfeld was a brilliant sitcom. Oddly, despite being an a-list stand-up comedian, I found Seinfeld the weakest of the main characters. Thatā€™s more a testament of the brilliance of his fellow cast members (including Kramer himself).

  20. Thanks Bluth. Except for VAMOOSE, I managed to solve this crossword but I didn’t understand RANDOM VARIABLE. My top picks were RELIEF MAP and FALSEHOOD. Seinfeld is burned into the American psyche — even those of us who weren’t fans seem to know all the characters. Oddly enough, a British sitcom I never heard of appeared elsewhere today in another puzzle. Thanks flashling for the blog.

  21. Thanks Bluth and flashling.
    Terrific stuff!

    GO IT ALONE
    BEHAVIOUR
    RANDOM VARIABLE
    MINUTIA
    SOGGY

    make my list.

  23. Thank you Bluth. I haven’t watched Seinfeld but didn’t need to know Kramer once the crossers were in. Like PeterT@6, I had me doots about BLINDFOLD (I was stuck on it being a thing) so thank you flashling for reminding me that you can do something blindfold as well. I loved HILARIOUS – I do like a nice bit of Roman numeral algebra – and RELIEF MAP was sweet too.

  25. Thanks Flashling and thanks all.

    I appreciate not everyoneā€™s heard of Seinfeld but Iā€™m not sure what youā€™ve looked up that makes you think Kramer is an obscure character in it, Rabbit Dave @2. There are 4 main characters in Seinfeld and heā€™s one of them. Thatā€™s like calling Rodney an obscure character from Only Fools & Horses.

    Iā€™ve said similar before, but it seems to me there is a strange corpus of knowledge that everyone assumes is required for crosswords and is therefore seen as fair game. I donā€™t know anyone outside of crosswordland who knows that AB is an able bodied sailor and outside of crosswordland, I bet Seinfeld and its characters are more widely known than, say that ā€˜itā€™ = ā€˜Italian vermouthā€™.

    At some point – presumably when learning to solve – we all learned those things and were happy to learn them. I feel a pang of sadness when anyone seems to decide that they now know all that is required and almost resent anything that sits outside their realm of knowledge.

    Quizzy Bob @7 there is often more luck than anything. That BRAVERMAN was evidently in there made it worth seeing what was left – and when what was left was ALOID itā€™s not too big a leap to see that borrowing the B from the first word would give me two connected words without initials. Events also conspired to make it become more topical than when it was written. (Similarly, 3d was written before all the recent Omid Scobie revelations.)

    Gus @18 blimey – thatā€™s warmed my cockles. How bloominā€™ delightful. Iā€™m thrilled to be a small part of what drew you in!

  26. There was only George, Jerry, Kramer or Elaine for explains somehow … loved seeing Seinfeld at 1a. Big fan.

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