We have a puzzle from Nimrod today making one of his few forays into the world of Independent crosswords. He is, of course, a prolific setter in other publications under a variety of Elgar-themed pseudonyms and he is the editor of the Inquisitor series of barred crosswords.
I think this is a puzzle that will give commenters plenty of scope, as I struggled a bit with identifying the exact definitions in some clues, as well as puzzling over some of the wordplay. In the end, I think I have got most of it sussed, but not all.
Tuesday is theme day in the Independent and today we have many variants of the five letters ENOST, although that combination isn’t one of them. In rows 2 and 14 we have four real word anagrams of the letters – ONSET, STONE, TONES and STENO. In the unchecked letters in rows 1 and 15 we have OSNET and OTNES.
I think there are three other real words and phrases we could have had – ETONS, NOTES and SET ON. I am guessing that TOO and ETC, the three letter entries in rows 2 and 14, were put in the grid to cover the extra possibilities. I say TOO, for row 2, but I did look at TWO for a while, thinking it might have followed the letters ONE in ONSET but I couldn’t make it work. On the other hand I can’t see the wordplay for TOO either. I suppose THO is another possibility.
I’m a bit of a literary philistine, so I had to do a bit of research to fully understand the clues for ICHABOD and TOMB, which I explain in the detailed table below.
CLAYMORE was obviously the entry at 13 across, but it took longer than it should to realise that the Spoonerism was MAKE LAW.
NIELLOED is a word I have come across in Inquisitor puzzles, so I was reasonably comfortable with that clue. The M8 is a road I have driven quite often so EMANATE was almost a write-in.
The parsing of STIR-FRIED took me a while to identify in full.
For me. this puzzle was difficult, but I expect others found it less so.
| No | Detail |
| Across | |
| 6 | Start working with film crew, maybe … (5)
ONSET (beginning; start) ON SET (working with the crew ON a film SET) double definition ONSET |
| 8 | … unnecessarily, as Countdown is finally going (3)
TOO (to a greater extent than is required, desirable or suitable; unnecessarily) I can’t see the wordplay here. I think it might relate to the entry, ONSET, at 6 across, but if we take out the letters N and S (last letters of [finally] AS or IS and COUNTDOWN) we are left with OET, which I can’t link to TOO see comments 1 and 2 for the correct way to parse this |
| 9 | Could this be Jade Jagger? (5)
STONE (Jade is a hard ornamental STONE) STONE (Mick Jagger [born 1943] is a Rolling STONE [rock band]) double definition STONE |
| 11 | Potato cakes a local one scoffs (7)
TAUNTER (one who jibes, jeers or scoffs) TATER (informal word for potato) containing (cakes) UN (a dialect [local] term for ‘one’) TA (UN) TER |
| 12 | Horse I see, and a nearly dead man astride it? (7)
ICHABOD (archaic term meaning ‘ the glory has departed’, but I think the clue is a reference to the horse that is ridden by ICHABOD Crane [he is astride the horse] in the novel Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving [1783 – 1859]. In the book, Crane is put into a sate of stasis [nearly dead]) ([I + C {see is the pronunciation for the letter C}] + [A + BODY {corpse; dead man} excluding the final letter [nearly] Y) containing (astride it) H (heroin; horse) I C (H) A BOD |
| 13 | Spooner’s legitimate highland blade (8)
CLAYMORE (large sword formerly used by the Scottish Highlanders; highland blade) CLAYMORE (Reverend Spooner might pronounce this as MAKE LAW (make lawful; legitimate) CLAYMORE |
| 14 | Caught warning signal: good for driver if it’s adverse ahead (6)
CAMBER (an adverse CAMBER is a road design feature that involves the road surface sloping away from the inside of a bend, being higher on the inside of the bend than on the outside. Adverse CAMBER is the opposite to what a road user would expect) C (caught) + AMBER (colour of a warning signal, which will be useful to make a driver realise that there is a hazard such as an adverse CAMBER ahead) C AMBER |
| 17 | Sad Menuhin resigns after prelude to botched tune (5,2,8)
BRING ME SUNSHINE (name of a song written in 1966 and often sung by the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise) B (first letter of [prelude to] BOTCHED) + an anagram of (sad) MENUHIN RESIGNS B RING ME SUNSHINE* |
| 19 | It’s imported by "doppelganger" in German (6)
RINGER (reference ‘dead RINGER‘ [a person or thing almost identical to some other person or thing; the German word for such a person would be doppelganger) RINGER (hidden word in [it’s imported by] DOPPELGANGER IN GERMAN) RINGER |
| 20 | Behold engraver’s primary filling so intricately lined? (8)
NIELLOED (descriptive of metal ornamented by engraving, and filling up the lines with a black compound; lined) (LO [behold] + E [first letter of {primary} ENGRAVER]) contained in (filling) an anagram of (intricately) LINED NIEL (LO E) D* |
| 24 | Ham slices with dips in a source of magic for kids (1,1,5)
C S LEWIS (C S LEWIS [1898 – 1963] is the author of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, a book that is ‘a source of magic’ for many children) W (with) contained in (dips in) an anagram of (ham; clumsy actor) SLICES C S LE (W) IS* |
| 26 | Articulated parts of Glasgow-Edinburgh link give out (7)
EMANATE (emit; give out) EMANATE (sounds like [articulated] the constituent parts of M8 [EM {M} AN {and} ATE {eight}], the motorway from Edinburgh to Glasgow) EM AN ATE |
| 27 | Hats off to our new editor scrutinising styles (5)
TONES (styles) TONES (first letters of [hats] taken from [off] each of TO, OUR, NEW, EDITOR and SCRUTINISING) TONES |
| 28 | More of which you can guess we tick at prime locations (3)
ETC (something in addition you can guess because we are not telling you; more of) ETC (letters 2, 3 and 5 [the first three prime numbers] of WE TICK) ETC |
| 29 | Tips on shorthand typing I’ll return? (5)
STENO (stenographer; shorthand typist who can presumably give you tips about the subject) ST (first letters of [tips of] each of SHORTHAND and TYPING) + ONE (I) reversed (return) ST ENO< |
| Down | |
| 1 | It’s uncool when rowdy steals a kiss (10)
OSCULATION (kiss) Anagram of (when rowdy) IT’S UNCOOL containing (stealing) A OSCUL (A) TION* |
| 2 | Like fast food? Perhaps given porridge to eat at first riles one (4-5)
STIR-FRIED (descriptive of some fast food dishes) (STIR [prison – porridge is a slang term for serving a prison sentence] + FED [given something to eat] – so STIR FED can be defined as ‘given porridge’) containing (to eat) (R [initial letter of {at first} RILES] + I [Roman numeral for one]) STIR F (R I) ED |
| 3 | Fly out of bounds, doomed (2-3)
NO-WIN (descriptive of a situation in which one is bound to lose or fail whatever one does; a doomed situation) KNOWING (cunning; fly) excluding the outer letters [out of bounds] K and G) NO-WIN |
| 4 | Bolt, not wanting to do qualifiers, forfeits (8)
ESCHEATS (property that falls to the feudal lord or to the state for lack of an heir or by forfeiture; forfeits) ESCAPE (run away; bolt) excluding (not wanting) APE (mimic; do [an impression of]) + HEATS (qualifying rounds that Usain Bolt often had to undertake to reach a sprint final) ESC HEATS |
| 5 | Target of Harry F remains here (4)
TOMB (location of a corpse [human remains]) TOM B (Reference the bully Harry Flashman and his persecution of TOM Brown in the semi-autobiographical novel TOM Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes [1822 – 1896]) TOM B |
| 6 | Out of it you may get short of light (5)
OPTIC (an eye; without one you may be short of light) OPTIC (descriptive of light) double definition OPTIC see comment 3 for the correct way to parse this |
| 7 | Assembled a collection of old books about cult object (5)
TOTEM (an object, species of animal or plant, or natural phenomenon symbolizing a clan, family, etc, often having ritual associations; cult object) (MET [assembled, at a meeting] + OT [Old Testament; collection of old books]) all reversed (about) (TO TEM)< |
| 10 | Last at ‘Aydock OK? (7)
ENDORSE (validate; give an OK to) END (finish; last) + ‘ORSE (pronunciation of HORSE by someone who says Haydock Park racecourse as ‘Aydock) END ORSE |
| 15 | Rivers’ "Spanners" with abstracted depth for pop art (10)
BRICOLAGES ([works of] art) BRIDGES (‘spanners’ of rivers for instance) with the D [depth] removed [abstracted] and replaced by [for] COLA [fizzy drink; pop] to form BRICOLAGES BRI (COLA) GES |
| 16 | Inside of freshwater fish eggs glow (9)
LUMINESCE (glow) MINES (eggs can be defined as bombs or MINES) contained in (inside of) LUCE (freshwater fish) LU (MINES) CE |
| 17 | Soup initiatives for starving children put around pound bags (7)
BORSCHT (Russian and Polish beetroot soup) THROB (beat; pound) reversed (put around) and containing (bags) SC (first letters of [initiatives for] each of STARVING and CHILDREN) BOR (SC) HT< |
| 18 | Batting gets worse, and run out is a disaster (4,4)
GOES WEST (is destroyed; is a disaster) Anagram of (batting) GETS WORSE excluding (out) R GOES WEST* |
| 21 | Dictated northern city guides (5)
LEADS (guides) LEADS (sounds like [dictated] LEEDS [northern English city] – as a Southampton fan, having lived there for over 20 years, I was very happy with the result against LEEDS on Sunday) LEADS |
| 22 | One part of me subconsciously turns on another man (5)
DIEGO (man’s name) ID (one of the three parts of the [subconscious] personality) reversed (turns) + EGO (the I or self, that which is conscious and thinks) DI< EGO |
| 23 | Suggesting a chicken pasty (5)
ASHEN (pasty) AS (like; suggesting) + HEN (adult chicken) AS HEN |
| 25 |
Basic covering zips up (4) LINO (floor [base, basic] covering) (O [character representing zero; zip] + NIL [another representation of zero or zip], together giving zips) all reversed (up; down entry) (LIN O)< |
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