Independent 8387 (Sat 31-Aug-2013) Tyrus

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I know many Tyrus puzzles that I’ve tackled were heavily themed or contained a Nina.   Sometimes the theme was football which I did not fully appreciate and missed half the references.   This grid design is ideal for a perimeter message, so I was on guard for it from the outset …

… I found nothing.
Does that mean I have completely missed something? I wouldn’t be surprised and I’m sure someone will tell me soon enough.

But that’s OK as this was a pleasant solve from the surprisingly swift start at 8A (What!) through to the tricky final 16A (Towards)

Indy_8387

 

Across
8 WHAT I didn’t hear inventor speaking (4)
Homophone Watt (inventor)
First read and answered.
9 CHAT-UP LINE Old film star’s taking you abroad to Spain – hopefully it might lead to intimacy (4-2,4)
TU (you abroad) inside CHAPLIN (old film star) E (Spain)
10 IN CASE Packed as a precaution (2,4)
DD  (bit easy)
11 DETESTED Gripping audition TV judge hated (8)
TEST (audition) inside DEED
Ref. to Judge Deed – played by that bloke who used to run around with guns a lot: Martin Shaw (IMDb)
12 IT’S YOUR FUNERAL Another failure with Tyrus? No, not my responsibility! (3,4,7)
(FAILURE TYRUS NO)* AInd: failure
Another failure gives us more than one to work with so we have one spare as the anagram indicator
14 BERNICE Live right by lovely woman (7)
BE (Live) R[ight] NICE (lovely)
16 TOWARDS Negotiated two road blocks when approaching (7)
TWO* AInd: negotiated, then RD (road) inside (blocks) AS (when)
Tricky last answer. I couldn’t spot the definition, and didn’t notice that “when” could be so important in the wordplay, and this was compounded by the paucity of cross letters – in the end they were the only way I solved it.
19 THE GREAT ESCAPE PE teacher gets disciplined over a picture (3,5,6)
(PE TEACHER GETS A)* AInd: disciplined
22 INFRA DIG Dress daring if unbecoming (5,3)
(DARING IF)* AInd: dress
23 HOLILY Hunter on screen captures one divinely (6)
I (one) inside HOLLY
Ref. Holly Hunter most recently seen being GJ up The Top of the Lake
24 EASTBOURNE Angers beats Rouen for a popular retirement venue (10)
(BEATS ROUEN)* AInd: Angers
25 DONS Assumes a bit of work’s wanted in majority of clues (4)
DO[w]NS
Definition “Assumes” as in wears.
The “majority of clues” are Downs beating the acrosses 14-12

Down
1 THANET Most of novel set in which isle? (6)
NE[w] (most of novel) inside THAT (which)
The Island of Thanet (wiki) is at the very eastern tip of Kent
2 STEADY ON Easy … don’t panic! Keep calm! (6,2)
Triple Def (I think)
Bit of a guess when I first put that in – sprang to mind as it were
3 OCHE Rochester’s missile launching site (4)
Hidden rOCHEster
The missile in question being about 4 inches long and weighing about 1 oz.
4 CARDIFF City club perhaps dodgy (closing early) (7)
CARD (club perhaps) IFF[y]
5 BUTTONHOLE Forcibly speak with driver over scrape (10)
[Jenson] Button (driver) HOLE (scrape)
A scrape is a hole that isn’t deep enough to qualify as a proper hole.
6 CLOSER Constant failure, one concludes (6)
C (constant) LOSER (failure)
7 ANNEALED Girl singer Jones made tougher (8)
ANNE (girl) ALED Jones (singer – and Songs of Praise presenter wiki)
13 UNCARED-FOR Run-down crappy cafe – round side for admittance (7-3)
(CAFE ROUND [fo]R)* AInd: crappy
15 ESTONIAN National support at the outset – what Cameron was without (8)
S[upport] inside ETONIAN
Cameron D. was at Eton along with a lot of his cabinet
17 ACCOLADE ‘Brilliant company’ – boy received praise (8)
ACE (brilliant) around (received) CO[mpany] LAD (boy)
18 HAGGARD Rider starts to holler at Gran, ‘Pull over!’ (7)
H[oller] A[t] G[ran] DRAG<
Ref. to  H Rider Haggard (wiki) a crossword favourite
20 ERRATA Boobs on Page Three (Ariana’s) regularly touched up (6)
Anagram of alternate letters from ThReE aRiAnA
Anag indicator seems to be “touched up” to allow the surface reading of the clue to be risqué but not overly graphic.  
21 POLONY Meat product horse? Look into it (6)
LO (look) inside PONY (horse)
Topical surface
23 HEEL Turner leaves with instruction to follow (4)
[w]HEEL

13 comments on “Independent 8387 (Sat 31-Aug-2013) Tyrus”

  2. I found this to be a challenge due to there being quite a few words that were unfamiliar to me. New for me were EASTBOURNE as a “retirement venue”, writer H. Rider HAGGARD, INFRA DIG, POLONY, the TV show “Judge John Deed”, OCHE, and THANET island.

    I liked 10a, 12a, 15d, 23a and my favourites were 9a CHAT-UP LINE & 4d CARDIFF.

    I could not parse 23d.

    I parsed 2a as an anagram of EASY DON’T with anagram indicator being “panic”. I like it as a triple def as well.

    I parsed 13a as anagram of CAFE ROUND with insertion of R (“round side = R for admittance”).

    Thanks Tyrus and beermagnet.

  4. Thank you Neil @1, in particular for providing a clue rather than explaining the whole thing.

    I can’t deny it took a bit of googling but it has brought back a lot of memories.

    The bottom rows unches show NARDLEY
    This must refer to Neil Ardley, Manager of A.F.C. Wimbledon (wiki)

    “The Great Escape” is the how AFC Wimbledon’s result in League Two during the 2012-13 season is known:
    In a dreadful start to the season the team plunged to the bottom of the league and were well adrift before Neil took over as manager. Results improved including a remarkable unbeaten run during the spring. Nevertheless by the last match of the season Wimbledon were still on course for relegation unless they won. That win led Wimbledon to safety.

    Among the other answers I can see
    DONS Nickname of AFC Wimbledon (also The Wombles, of course)
    CARDIFF One of the teams Neil Ardley played for was Cardiff City

    Are there other thematic answers?

    Although I am not a football fan (at least, not since being assaulted by a mob of Bristol City toerags late one evening in 1973 on Putney Bridge after a mid-week match against Fulham), for me this has a lot of resonance.
    My home team is Walton & Hersham who felt the fickle hand of brief lower league success in late 60s and early 70s with Allen Batsford as manager before he left to take charge at Wimbledon, taking with him some of the best players including Mike Bassett.
    Now, as it happened, I went to school in Wimbledon, so was right behind them when they forged ahead. You can be sure they was a “Dons 4 Div 4” sticker strip in the window of the car in 1978, and happy at their subsequent greater success.
    So I was appalled when the club “sold up” and moved to Milton Keynes.
    The backlash of course happily gave rise to AFC Wimbledon and their rise through the leagues does seem like history repeating itself.

  5. I thought this was towards the easier end of Tyrus’s spectrum, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t tricky, and I was happy to finish it without recourse to aids. DONS was my LOI, but I had the most trouble in the NE where it took me a while to see OCHE and then the CHAT-UP LINE and BUTTONHOLE crossers.

    Unsurprisingly I didn’t see the theme.

  6. Missed the theme/nina but what does it matter – everything was solvable without.

    In 20dn (great surface, btw) the def is ‘boobs on page’ rather than just ‘boobs’. A case of ‘lift and separate’, somewhat appropriately? 😉

    I wasn’t too happy with 1dn. One of those clues where you have to substitute one word or phrase for another before working on it. In this case, though, it was fairly easily solved from crossing letters.

    Thanks, Tyrus and beermagnet.

  8. This was the second of our three Saturday puzzles, and we found it tough but fair, no real controversies. Not my bag totally, but sig. other likes Tyrus and some of the rest of the REALLY hard Indy mobsters.

    On theme, absolutely no hope, but as has been said, who cares? I didn’t matter. Glad to see AFC winning away two-nil yesterday though. Perhaps their striker can go to Ukraine on Tuesday as well?

  10. Well I finished this in one go so tyrus has managed to ease up.from my perspective. Pretty sure he did one about the new club entering the league. The n ardley nina was lost on me although I suspected there was one. Ta BM and Tyrus.

  11. Many thanks for the excellent blog and comments. Beermagnet@4 has mentioned the only thematic references though Neal does appear in the answer to 7 down. I realise some solvers, inexplicably, are quite indifferent to the fate of AFC Wimbledon so I tried not to be too self-indulgent.

    Thanks also for providing the extra footy information, beermagnet. Don’t think we were ever totally adrift but things were looking pretty hairy right through from the first game to the last. TBH I’m still trying to block it out. Much more hopeful this season.

    Do remember Dons 4 Div 4, Allen Batsford and the Walton & Hersham connection. It was Dave aka Harry Bassett he brought with him. Harry went on to become a very successful manager, more so than his namesake Mike, though the latter (as Ricky Tomlinson) did manage England.

    On more mundane matters, ‘another’ was intended as the anag indicator for 12a though beermagnet’s interpretation is very ingenious. And Michelle’s parsing of 13d is quite correct.

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