Independent 8729 by Eimi

This was generally at the easier end of the spectrum, but contained a few obscure uses of words that meant some of the parsings took a bit of research. It feels as if there ought to be some sort of theme or NINA, but I can’t see anything.

Across
8. Northern bird to draw without specific information (9)
Knowledge N owl in kedge
9. Sally in the Afternoon is a song (5)
Psalm Sal in PM
11. Having grown up to be immoral (5)
Wrong Grown*
12. Decapitated brent goose processed to extract a hormone (9)
Oestrogen ([B]rent goose)*
13. Something played by disc jockey only partly remembered … (6)
Djembe DJ + remEMBEred – it’s a type of African drum
15. but this may help Minnesota with income redistribution (8)
Mnemonic Mn (Minnesota state abbrev) + income* (def referencing previous clue)
18. Oscar possibly lied about dad wanting to keep mum? (7)
Oedipal O + lied* around pa – a nicely consistent clue
19. Titania initially rejected Bottom’s assertion, which is destructive (7)
Tsunami T[itania] + (I’m anus)<
22. Requirement to remain outside when deeply involved (4-4)
Knee-deep Keep around need
24. Terribly angry about line getting twisted (6)
Gnarly Angry* around l(ine)
26. Sounds like new Chelsea player is performing under pressure (9)
Pneumatic Hom of new + Matic (Nemanja Matic who, Wikipedia informs me, is a defensive midfield player)
28. Some scaremongering about international banker (5)
Gnome Hidden,reversed in scarEMONGering
30. Late reverend stripped part of church, … (5)
Aisle Don’t follow this – as various contributors have pointed out, it’s [P]aisle[y].
31. … DUP’s money wasted creating a sort of name (9)
Pseudonym (DUP’s money)*

Down
1. Biased towards small gardens (4)
Skew S(mall) + Kew
2. Visit old copper and get exhausted (2,2,4)
Go to seed Go to see D (which is the old abbrev for a penny)
3. Daniels’ last part, inmate in Scum (4)
Slag [Daniel]s + lag. The full name of Fletcher’s cellmate in Porridge is Leonard Arthur Godber, which gives initials of LAG. Probably an intentional joke.
4. Poem concerning concert hall (5)
Odeon Ode + on
5. To pass oneself off as a peer’s not out of order (9)
Personate (A peer’s not)* – a rarely used word now, impersonate being more common.
6. Busts some rhymes about a dispute (4)
Spar Raps<
7. Drama with American soldier and a ‘Miss’ finally served up – with this setting? (6)
Saigon (No + GI + a [mis]s)< – no is Japanese theatre and the whole is a neat reference to the musical Miss Saigon.
10. Very busy person in charge (5)
Manic Man + IC
13. Two’s company (3)
Duo DD. Not entirely sure on this, unless the intention is that a duo is a sort of company of two performers
14. Man, for example, making offer to include gym (5)
Biped Bid around PE
16. Keen to find a way of doing things at the ballot box (5)
Mourn MO (modus operandi) + urn. My battered Chambers dictionary (which is still more useful than many of the online dictionaries) confirms that urn can be used as a term for a ballot box.
17. Possibly felt opus by Saint-Saëns initially required organ parts (4,5)
Flue stops (Felt opus)* + S[aint-Saens], although it seems a little odd needing only one initial from the double-barrelled name. Could have used Salieri, although maybe he’s less suitable for the organ.
20. Tailed Red Baron flying around Italy, being this? (8)
Airborne [Red baro[n])* around I(taly)
21. Frigid and bitchy at intervals (3)
Icy Odd letters of bItChY
22. Letter from Greece international selector, say (5)
Kappa Hom of capper i.e. someone giving international caps.
23. Fifty-fifty ball, all the same (4,2)
Even so Evens + o
25. Prison guard’s earnings (5)
Screw DD – both slang terms
27. Shakespearean quits gathering (4)
Meet DD. Again my Chambers comes up trumps by confirming that meet is used to mean quits in Shakespeare, although I can’t give you any quotes.
28. Said to have encouraged a French writer (4)
Gide I think this must be a hom of geed (up).
29. Novel from Hammett sent up (4)
Emma Every crossword compiler’s favourite novel hidden, rev in hAMMEtt. Slightly different genre, I’d have to say.

24 comments on “Independent 8729 by Eimi”

  1. Thanks Neal

    30ac is [p]AISLE[y] (late reverend stripped).

    I think Eimi’s gimmick today is that all the across answers begin with either a double consonant or a double vowel.

  2. Bijou quibble-ette. The homophone at 28 down doesn’t work if I have been pronouncing M Gide’s name correctly all these years.

  3. Didn’t enjoy this one very much. I’m afraid. Too many obscure words and meanings, eg gnarly, Oedipal, djembe, busts some rhymes, Shakespearean quits. I could go on. Is Oedipal even a word? If it is it shouldn’t be.
    Agree with Conrad about Gide. 11ac doesn’t parse properly. Deep is in the clue for 22ac.
    Sorry!

    Thanks to blogger.

  4. I didn’t think this was at the easier end of the spectrum at all, but it was an enjoyable challenge. There might have been some obscurities but I thought they were all fairly clued once I’d cracked them. I finished off with two pairs of crossers; WRONG/SLAG and AISLE/MEET.

  5. Very interesting puzzle & blog. Thanks to both. I’m similarly lost re 30a.
    I believe in blog to 8a you mean ‘ink edge’ (not in kedge).

  6. Heather, no, I do mean “in kedge”.

    Kedge: to warp or pull (a ship) along by hauling on the cable of an anchor carried out from the ship and dropped.

  7. Gave up on DJEMBE, never heard of it, and DUO, which doesn’t work for me.

    Emphatically agree with objections to supposed homophone, the “G” in Gide being pronounced as the the “j” in French “je”; think this is a matter of fact and nothing to do with anybody’s accent, regional or otherwise.

    Thanks to Eimi, I found this one tougher than usual, and NealH.

  8. If I’d noticed the silent letters much earlier than I did, I wouldn’t have had so much trouble with the top half of the puzzle. A nice Monday challenge, thank you Eimi and Neal.

  9. Not seen eimi for a good long while, so it was pleasing to see his name at the top of the puzzle this morning.

    I did like it; missed the gimmick of course; and wasn’t keen on the clue for DJEMBE, but I suppose the theme dictated something like that. And as always, my general knowledge is always greater when I finish an eimi puzzle than when I started it.

    Thanks to both.

  10. I must admit that I’ve done only a couple of eimi puzzles since discovering the Independent.
    I clearly remember an Araucaria tribute and a clue in which eimi used “Mother and Child Reunion” for the construction. Could have been the same puzzle though.
    I really like crosswords with musical references (particularly, in the clue) and this one had quite a few of them.

    No problems with the “unusual” words, however no eye for the Nina either (clever!).
    I won’t argue about the homophone at 28d but I must admit that I always pronounced his name as the homophone here more or less suggests. Never too old to learn.
    The use of Matic will not be appreciated by everyone but, for me, it brightens up the crossword.
    No lack of Bright Lights in this puzzle anyway.
    I liked it, with potential Brightest Lights: 30ac and 20d.

    Please, can we have no more Emmas (unless clued more intricate than here)?
    And, IMHO, the double use of “deep” (as mentioned by almw3) shouldn’t have gone past the editor …. 🙂

    A very enjoyable start to the week.
    As may be clear, I liked it very much.
    Thanks Neal.

  11. Thanks to Neal for the blog and to all for comments. I must admit that I used the internet to check the pronunciation of Gide (I’d thought it was a hard G, but the internet said otherwise). I failed O-level French so perhaps I should steer clear (à propos de bottes, I discovered today that the Italian title of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is Chi Ha Incastrato Roger Rabbit?, which sounds a lot more painful).

    I’ll have a deep discussion with the editor about him not spotting the faux pas in 22A.

  12. Well I found this great fun (though missed the initial silent letters – very nice)
    For those who missed the clever reference to Ian Paisley, Eimi offered a “…” connection with DUP in the clue following.
    22ac apart (Our inestimable editor clearly too modest to admit this was a deliberate slip really!), I thought this a puzzle of virtue sufficiently high to house one of our magnificent Chelsea squad!
    Nice one, Eimi, and thanks to Neal.

  13. Enjoyed this one a great deal. A good challenge and not a stuffy play-by-the-rules affair at all. Spotting the device (“gimmick” is quite a disparaging word, guys) did help.

    To be blunt, it’s quite hard to respect those griping about the minutiae here, unless the gripers have ever written a better puzzle themselves. In which case let’s see it.

  14. RE 8a: I was reading ‘to draw without’ to mean ink the edge, the way we put blue sea around th edge of maps.

  15. I must have amnesia setting in also can not spell alsymers, this crossword was mostly gobbdegook to me, again I must reiterate, this sort of crossword not suitable for the general readership of the i newspaper in 2019, I wish we had a crossword that could be half solved without the aid of chambers dictionary & the web. VM

  16. Oh dear Mr Tortoise, I have to disagree! Cryptic crosswords in national newspapers are surely aimed at enthusiastic solvers with a reasonable amount of experience who welcome a challenge. This puzzle, in my view was superb – I just wish I’d spotted the ‘silent’ dimension to the across clues earlier. And (admittedly through this blog) I learnt a new word:- ‘djembe’ – always a bonus; for me it was c.80 (plus) minutes well spent albeit lacking the personal expertise to solve 3ac, 13ac, 27dn.

  17. A fun i crossword, even for old turtles like me. I was interested to note that Matic had been transferred from Chelsea to Man U to keep 26A accurate.

    The demise of the Rev Ian Paisley no longer prompts the solution to 30A, however, though A_i_e could hardly be anything else!

    Amused that commenters get worked up about whether Gide and geed are homonyms, while letting Kappa and capper go unchallenged!

    Clever silent-letter nina, though I didn’t spot it. Not sure that the “t'” of “tsunami” is actually silent …

  18. Quite right Carpetowl, but TTVM has posted much the same comment about almost every Indy crossword that’s reappeared in the i recently. I’m not sure if he’s for real or one of those nasty fairytale characters that lives under a bridge, but just in case he is genuine and reads the responses to his “contributions”:

    TTVM, it’s obvious that broadsheet-level crosswords aren’t really your thing. Have you teied the puzzle in the Sun? It may be more to your taste.

    Your Mum should have told you that making yourself look like an ignorant fool on a public forum doesn’t do you any favours.

     

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