In terms of difficulty, this was somewhat akin to beating Australia at cricket – occasional bits of resistance but mostly a pushover. Having said that, there were some nicely written clues – I quite liked 9 and, although easy, 12 had a good surface reading.
| Across | |||
| 1. | Approach public river (8) | ||
| Overture | Overt + Ure | ||
| 5. | Twist artist in turn (6) | ||
| Sprain | Ra in spin | ||
| 9. | Spice grinders losing heart making stimulants (3,5) | ||
| Pep pills | Pep[per m]ills | ||
| 10. | Intervene as Tiddles and Rover return home (4,2) | ||
| Step in | Pets< + in(=home) | ||
| 12. | A Latino accent complicated a link between Europe and America (8,5) | ||
| Atlantic Ocean | (A latino accent)* | ||
| 15. | One will repeat for one who can’t read (10) | ||
| Illiterate | I’ll + iterate | ||
| 18. | Cleaner goes off senior citizen after sarcastic introduction (6,4) | ||
| Saddle soap | Addles + OAP after s[arcastic] | ||
| 19/14. | Lose lives working in religious buildings(8) | ||
| Missions | Miss + is(=lives) around on(=working) | ||
| 21. | My trial ad misrepresented chief London landmark (9,4) | ||
| Admiralty arch | (My trial ad)* + arch(=chief) | ||
| 24. | Keep back information: I ate dog parts (6) | ||
| Detain | Hidden, rev in “informatioN I ATE Dog” | ||
| 25. | Larger untruth separating left and right (8) | ||
| Portlier | Lie in Port(=left) + r(ight). | ||
| 26. | Description of discharge sounds spacious (6) | ||
| Rheumy | Hom of roomy. | ||
| 27. | Guile Poe worked into concluding passage(8) | ||
| Epilogue | (Guile Poe)* | ||
| Down | |||
| 1. | Returned film reel with last part broken off – my mistake!(4) | ||
| Oops | Spoo[l]< | ||
| 2. | Clarified experiment with refutation from the ground up (9) | ||
| Explained | Exp(eriment) + denial< | ||
| 3. | Time to ransack pudding (6) | ||
| Trifle | T + rifle | ||
| 4. | Brooking no resistance, bank internally reduced its debt exposure(12) | ||
| Relentlessly | Rely around lent less | ||
| 6. | Central Europeans hide books on Hungary in caves (8) | ||
| Potholes | Poles around OT + H. | ||
| 7. | Illustration not old enough(5) | ||
| Ample | [Ex]ample | ||
| 8. | Note concealed in feature in itself straightforward (2-8) | ||
| No nonsense | N in nose in another n in nose. | ||
| 11. | Change of government makes Virgin company cheerful about one getting drunk (8,4) | ||
| Military coup | Mary around (i + lit) + co + up | ||
| 13. | Emergency helper more sedate under the tree (5-5) | ||
| First Aider | Fir + staider | ||
| 16. | Getting off home after burning key (9) | ||
| Alighting | In(=home) + g(=key) after alight(=burning) | ||
| 17. | Selflessness of awful empty clich?(8) | ||
| Altruism | A[wfu]l + truism | ||
| 20. | Dry comedian Murray cruelly savage (6) | ||
| Brutal | Brut(=term for dry used in wines) + Al (Murray), comedian best know for his Pub Landlord persona. | ||
| 22. | Rhythm is nothing more than keeping time (5) | ||
| Metre | Mere around t(ime) | ||
| 23. | Roundhead in charge for nothing (4) | ||
| Free | R (head of round) in fee | ||
Thanks for the blog, NealH.
As well as the clues which you mention, I also particularly enjoyed NO NONSENSE (I haven’t seen “in itself” used like this before) and ALTRUISM.
I like the way the first answer is OVERTURE and the last (numerically) is EPILOGUE. I can’t see a theme otherwise, but Alchemi is good at hiding them.
Thanks Alchemi – this was fun!
Aaah, yes, the cricket … always a pleasure to grind the Aussies into the dust. Five-nil to the Ingerland, I fancy.
Anyway, back on-topic, I thought this was a straightforward but enjoyable puzzle from Alchemi. Some good surfaces here, particularly for STEP IN and OOPS. I had a vague go at parsing NO NONSENSE but then got lazy and came here.
Thanks to Neal for the blog and Alchemi for a good start to the week.
I agree that straightforward but enjoyable sums up this puzzle.
The NE corner was the last to be completed, with POTHOLES my LOI. Even though I saw the answer almost immediately I liked the clue for PEP PILLS.
Nicely blogged Neal, spent a few mins trying to make “pep talks” fit but soon realised why I couldn’t. The Overture/Epilogue combo was neat but was certainly on the easier end of an Indy crossword.
Thanks Alchemi.
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot because there was a lot of humour. I particularly liked 5a, 8d, 19/14a, 25a and my favourites were 13d FIRST AIDER, 18a SADDLE SOAP, 4d RELENTLESSLY, 1d OOPS & 11 MILITARY COUP (last in).
I enjoyed discovering Al Murray on youtube – he is absolutely hilarious and I am eternally in debt to Alchemi now!
I couldn’t parse 9a.
Thanks for the blog, NealH. As an Australian I can only say, oh dear we have been terrible so far. What a disgrace!
Greetings UK from Adelaide, South Australia. I have been doing the Independent crossword in our daily paper, The Advertiser, Monday to Saturday. The puzzles page in that paper has now been “refreshed”, ie filled with braindead trash for the lowest common denominator and The Independent crossword is gone as from today. The Advertiser always printed the crossword exactly three weeks behind the Independent. Thus, I just managed to complete Saturday’s 8333, published on 20 July 2013 and today (22 July 2013) would have featured 8334. I am not a lurker, as I have submitted comments before; for my own edification really, since the comments were, of course, always three weeks out of date.
I shall now be able to make pithy and witty comments on the actual day. In order to comply with protocol I should like to thank Alchemi and NealH for today’s crossword and blog. Seeing that it was Alchemi, I was a bit surprised at how straightforward it was, but I guess this conforms to the usual practice for a Monday.
I would be most grateful (not being tech-savvy), if someone were able to tell me how I can make a blog submission using something other than my real name (which seems to be almost de rigueur here), though I may not choose anything radically different.
Nice to be with you in real time, as it were (don’t mention the cricket).
So hello Michelle from Australia. We crossed, as I believe the expression is, as I was interrupted midway through my submission @6.
Graham, I’m not quite sure what your problem with the submission name is. WordPress prompts you for a name when you submit the comment, so you can put anything you like in there.
hi graham@6 & 7
yes, let’s not mention the ashes (at least not now while Australia is doing so badly!)
you can use whatever name you like in the “sign-up box”
NealH@8. OK, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what WordPress means. Did warn about lack of knowledge in this area. Let’s see if this works.
It did.
“straightforward but enjoyable” is what a Monday puzzle is supposed to be, so it appears this one hits the spot. If it disappointed NealH, I’m sorry, but them’s the breaks.
NO-NONSENSE was the clue I liked the best.
Thanks to those kind enough to comment.
My comments were more about goading Australian cricket fans than a serious criticism of the puzzle. As a blogger, I’m all for easy Monday puzzles.
@NealH
That’s all right then. Having been sat there at Lord’s for the last few days, I was able to savour the delights of grinding them into the dust at first hand. And great fun it was too.
Shame they won’t let most of us watch it live [\rant]
The setter I believe does cricket crosswords but the lack of cricket not on sky is more than a tad annoying after my youth. Mumble grumble was better in my day etc.
All very nice, easy but good I thought.
One pedantic point, though: people often use the word ‘refute’ when they mean ‘deny’. To refute something is to prove that it is false; to deny something is merely to say that it is false. Not the same thing, so strictly speaking 2dn was wrong, since a denial is not a refutation. But if this is the worst thing about this crossword then it must be generally pretty sound.
@Wil Ransome
I suggest you direct your pedantry at the Editor of Chambers Dictionary, because that volume’s entry for “refute” is: “to disprove, deny”.
Fair enough Alchemi at 18. Chambers is only reporting how people use words and if that’s how people use the words refute and deny then there we are. But in my opinion, and I suspect in that of many other pedants, it’s a pity that this distinction is being lost.
Wil, your post reminds me of discussions that my (English) PinC and I (one from trolland :)) frequently have.
As a foreigner, I look mainly at clues from a constructional/technical point of view. I cannot be bothered too much when definitions are more in line with Mrs Chambers than with the Real World.
But she (my PinC) often says ‘um, that is not how we use it’ or the like.
A setter is someone positioned somewhere in the middle, I presume.
As to this crossword, it was very easy (even for me).
But I must also say that a lot of the clues were really inventive/impressive.
Very well written but perhaps there was too big a gap between level of difficulty and quality of cluing.
Well, for me it felt a bit like that.
We’ve seen a lot of Alchemi recently and of the new setters Donk has been prominent too.
But where’s Rorschach?
My fellow citizen is, in my opinion, too good to be put on a sidetrack (as seems to be the case).
Thanks NealH for your blog.