i Cryptic Crossword 3686 by Klingsor

Difficulty rating (out of 5): ⌛⌛⌛⌛

I’m not sure that I can give an accurate difficulty rating to this. I can usually get onto Klingsor’s wavelength, but maybe because my brain was still reeling from yesterday’s Radian (see my comment there) all I could get on a first read through was 24ac. Then I realised 12ac was an anagram and enlisted the help of an angram solver. Still pretty baffled, I at least managed to locate the 15^2 blog from 12ac and rapidly scroll through to see the last three down answers from which I slowly got the rest, with help from a wordfinder – although several times the answer was obvious in retrospect. Others may have found this less daunting, though, so rather than go for the full 5⌛ rating I’ll just add a single ⌛ to the average for Klingsor.

So much for my difficulties; what of the puzzle? There was nothing really unusual in any of the answers, although some of the parsings escaped me – such as the reverse anagram in 22ac. Knowing that Klingsor frequently included musical references was a good indication that the definition in 11dn was simply ‘opera’ although attention to spelling was called for. According to the 15^2 blog, 8dn seems to have caused some puzzlement back in 2018; I saw the answer as simply a description of the eponymous clergyman in the song – he changed his stance from high to low church to suit the prevailing régime – but apparently it is also an alternative title for the song.

I had a few ticks for clues that I particularly liked. The whimsical definition in 14ac and the crafty cricket reference in 2dn, together with a neat misdirection in 18dn appealed to me; I also liked 5dn. For CoD, though, I’ll go for 13dn, where the surface perhaps reflects my reaction to advancing age weakening one’s wrist: “I’ll break arm getting lid off? That’s an original thought (10)”.

For all the answers and explanations http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/04/14/independent-9829-by-klingsor/ is the place to go today.

i Cryptic Crossword 3685 by Radian

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

Our theme this Tuesday is apparently Elizabeth I’s speech to the troops at Tilbury. I say apparently, because it’s one that I failed miserably to spot, though some bits in retrospect are familiar. It’s also a puzzle that I struggled badly with, as if often the case with Radian, but that could be due to the freezing conditions and your mileage may vary. A brief post today, sorry, as I’m rather short of time.

COD? I’ll go with 10ac – “Outcome of a sharp turn in Northern ocean? (6)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from a no-doubt equally cold December in 2018:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/12/11/independent-10035-radian/

Inquisitor 1778 Crisis Management by Kruger

The week having ended with the washing machine going kaput, and ensuing trips to the laundry taking an inordinate amount of energy, Saturday would find me rather more tired and emotional than per, not helped by the heavy frost that would accompany the first trip at 7AM Saturday morning, the usual mountain of washing having piled up in an infeasibly short period of time.

Thankfully this week what Kruger was asking of us seemed to be pretty clear, with a very strong hint that some entries were too big or small for the space available. Covering all the bases this week, we had both, in addition to misprints in several others.

To the accompaniment of Wales getting hammered by, of all teams, Georgia, a moderate amble through the clues ensued, the gentle pace rendered somewhat bumpy in places thanks to the modified entries.

An early punt based on the title and COP27 being everywhere this week said we were looking for things Climate Emergency related, and, bingo, the things we had to add to the clues turned out to be alleviations of the same – the planting of a few trees, and TIDE, SUN, WIND, ATOM, all being forms of renewable energy. The things removed from answers before entry? The evil OIL, COAL and GAS. And, lo, the final aid courtesy of misprints was CARBON CAPTURE, the great white hope.

All of which was good fun, and fell together as nicely as you would like. Not all convincingly parsed, I grant you. For that I’d usually refer you to Fifteensquared, but take this week’s blog with a very big pinch of salt. I’m not convinced the guy knows what he’s doing.

Top marks to Kruger, though, for reminding me of the Pixies’ TROMPE le Monde. Here’s Head On from the same album.

i Cryptic Crossword 3684 Silvanus

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

We start the new working week with an interesting and enjoyable crossword from Sylvanus. Most of this I found to be straightforward – and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way at all. But there were some chewier corners which required a bit more work, which added to the enjoyment, for example JEST. It’s just the sort of entry I panic over*, and even once I’d guessed it, the word-play took a bit of thinking about, as it involved a sort of crossword version of a double-negative.

I made one error, lazily entering a mis-spelt LIPPIZANER instead of the correct LIPIZZANER (the word-play should have put me right). This made the crossing 20ac more challenging than it needed to be, forcing me to accept I must have made a mistake – which doesn’t come naturally to me, I am informed 🙂. The lesson for me here is to check spellings of odd words like that. I’m not sure how well-known the horses in question are, although they do fall into the once-heard-never-forgotten category, I think. You also need to know, or at least find out about, some parliamentary convention, and a bit of technical church-speak. One I couldn’t parse was APPALACHIANS. I guessed the entry early from the definition and enumeration, but failed to realise it was a homohone rather than a charade involving a non-existent state. Another lesson for me.

I loved the whimsical clue for KING-SIZE, but my Clue of the Day is 25d. We have a delightfully plausible surface reading with a neat use of word-play: “Second grade airline defends regularly vacant seats (4)”.

Is it a pangram? I thought it was. But then I checked.

A note on timing: I completed this in under my typical time, and on that basis would have rated it as⏳⏳. Some over on Fifteensquared thought it tougher, so following our protocol I have given it ⏳⏳⏳.

* Four letters. Initial letter not crossing. Crossing letters being fairly common ones, leaving a wide variety of possibilities. My Crosswordland nemesis.

Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/04/11/independent-9826-by-silvanus/

i App Cryptic Crossword S0051 by Poins

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

It’s interesting to consider why Poins’ puzzles might take as long as they do when they’re not particularly deceptive, nor do they have very hard vocabulary. In short they don’t seem to be hard at all. So I thought I’d take a little time to analyse why that might be. I think it’s because he’s a Libertarian setter. By that I mean he doesn’t worry too much about details like the directionality of connecting works, and extra words that belong to neither wordplay nor definition are sometimes used. A quick scan of the clues today reveals by a in 12a, when in 14a, discovering in 21a, in in 25a, for in 26a, to have in 1d, of a in 2d, of in 17d, by in 19d, on in 21s, and possibly even the a in 22d.

You get there in the end, but it takes a bit of pondering to sort out the words in the clue you don’t actually need, and because you can’t trust that the directionality of the link words will point you from wordplay to answer. It’s not wrong, it’s not bad, but it is different to what we’re used to in the i.  Some setters – Klingsor, Monk, and Serpent being prime examples – are at the other extreme which is sometimes called Ximinean setting (although probably wrongly; they’re really just trying to follow Afrit’s injunction to ‘say what you mean’).

Anyhow; lecture over.

My favourite clues today were 8a SPECIFY and, despite its arguably vague and Libertarian use of ‘a couple of’, I liked the misdirection in this one:

9a A couple of statues in Parisian museum that should not be missed (4-3)

Here’s the link to 2017 and the IoS: www.fifteensquared.net/2017/11/05/independent-on-sunday-1445poins

i Cryptic Crossword 3 683 by Phi

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳ to ⏳⏳⏳? depending

Did you spot the Nina? If not, do go back to the puzzle and have a quick scan before reading on…

This was created by Phi to celebrate the Indy’s 10 000th cryptic crossword puzzle, so we had 10 K’s shared by the top and bottom rows, and 10 M’s provided by the left and right columns. Not only that, but as Grant spotted in the comments on the other side (I missed it) there’s TENTH.O + U.SANDS split between top left and bottom right corners. Brilliant.

For those of us who have been solving his puzzles for as long as I have, this marked a welcome return to Phi at the top of his game – not just with the spectacular grid filling, but with some very polished and satisfying clues as well. I liked 12a DOWNSTREAM, 16a HEROISM, 3d KOWTOW, 15d TEA BREAK, 20d TOBRUK, but my personal pick for CoD (though there wasn’t much in it) is this one:

6d Flower opening one spring evening, at first (3,4)

I really wasn’t sure how to rate this for difficulty though. I spotted the Nina very early indeed, with just 2 K’s and 1 M in place (even if I did spend most of the solve assuming it must be celebrating some marriage between Ken and Martha!) so that helped make this one of my quickest solves ever, but what if I hadn’t? My suspicion is that most solvers will have got it, but at different points – hence the range of difficulty. Let us know how you got on in the comments below.

And here’s the link to the blog of puzzle 10 000 in the Independent, four years ago:

www.fifteensquared.net/2018/10/31/independent-10000-phi

i Cryptic Crossword 3682 Anglio

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

A glance at any map of Crosswordland will confirm that the main port of that much visited country is Rio. However, it has a rich and diverse geography, including several other ports, including one remarkably similar to a very pretty old one in Sussex.

Having got the R from APRICOT, I’m afraid I rather rashly entered “Rio” at 9ac, aware that I couldn’t parse it, but thinking I would return to it later. Only when I came to 2d, which had to be ELECTRONICS, did I discover my mistake. Sometimes just guessing an entry (“it’s a three-letter word for port beginning with R, so it’s got to be…) just won’t work.

Otherwise, all else went in fairly steadily. That’s not to say quickly, as I did have to work hard unravelling some clues, but throughout the cluing was clear, if at times nicely misdirecting. There were a couple of odd definitions that I had to check, that for TOOL, and the euphemism for an overhanging belly (why was that clue changed from the first publication, I wonder?). I did struggle to parse THOUGHT for a while, before realising that a grand is a thousand.

What we do have is splendid surface readings across the board. Each clue being more than a series of linked ciphers, but rather forming plausible English sentences which often misdirect the solver. The blogger and commenters at Fifteensquared noted the same.

My Clue of the Day is the aforementioned 9ac, which is an example of a splendidly misleading surface reading, ostensibly about football, and nicely precise cluing: “Port Vale’s openener goes in very scrapping (3)”.

Here’s the link to Fifteensquared for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/10/29/independent-9998-anglio/

i Cryptic Crossword 3681 by Dalibor

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳

Quite a challenging offering from Dalibor this Thursday. The longer answers across the top and bottom of the grid were a gift as far as checking letters go, but some of the shorter answers (in particular the elder statesman at 15ac) would prove to be less forthcoming.

I note complaints in the comments on the other side regarding the GK required for 1d and 25ac, but the latter is surely quite an old joke most solvers will have been familiar with, and if you don’t know who the Velvet Underground and Nico are, then you should, and I can highly recommend the album they did together.

More problematic was OBVIATION rather than OBVIATING at 6d, and INNOCENCE rather than INNOCENT from “[b]eing simple minded” at 12ac, both of which stopped me in my tracks.

Was I the only solver to confidently jot in MANN for 8ac?

Positive overall though, with much to enjoy, my CoD nomination going to 4d – “Company without ownership is something extraordinary (7,8)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from November 2018:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/11/03/independent-10003-by-dalibor-sat-nov-3rd/

i Cryptic Crossword 3680 by Tees

Difficulty rating (out of 5): ⌛⌛

This puzzle takes us back to a Wednesday in November 2018, shortly after the sad death of Dac had been announced, and Tees, in a comment on fifteensquared, said what an honour it was to be in what had been Dac’s regular Wednesday slot, adding that he had been a massive fan of Dac’s, and always took time out to solve his witty and concise clues.

In this puzzle I found Tees a worthy successor to Dac – there were witty and concise clues aplenty and the whole was an enjoyable solve. Certainly not a write-in, though, and there was at least one trap for the unwary, such as in 24ac where it’s advisable to look at the anagram fodder carefully. A smattering of geography would be helpful in 10, 11 and 21 across, as well as of Irish political institutions in the first of that trio. One slightly obscure word at 8dn might send solvers to a dictionary for confirmation, although it was clued clearly enough. On the other hand 25ac might be a bit of a chestnut but none the worse for that; it brought a smile, remembering the alleged (I never saw it for myself) Guardian typo in a concert announcement.

As I went along I noted down possible candidates for CoD, but the list got so long I gave up – it was all good, from the catspaw at 1ac to the airy spirit at 23dn. See for yourself at http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/11/07/independent-10006-tees/

Inquisitor 1777 A Local Calling by Skylark

From Inquisitor-lite last week to something a little beefier. Not quite every gimmick ever, though that was my first thought on picking apart the preamble. Not content with misprints in the across clues, Skylark offered up extra letters in the downs, and a strong hint that some answers were going to be either too long or too short for the space available. As it turns out, this would mean clashes, and you all know how much I love clashes.

That would come later though, the logical leap required to compare answer lengths given to the number of spaces available being apparently beyond me.

But this is the way it goes many Saturdays (with, in addition this week the demands on the free taxi service I operate for the benefit of the kids’ social lives). It must be noted that this being one of those grid fills for which the word demanding could have been invented, I may be forgiven for floundering. I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in doing a lot of backwards engineering, from the messages revealed, the booze forthcoming from the clashes, and likely looking definitions, SPORTIER being a case in point which also happens to be my LOI. 

My messages it won’t surprise you to hear are therefore somewhat garbled. There were enough though to work out that the misprints pointed towards drinks you might order in a bar, extra letters to fictional characters at a bar.

At which point commenced the now de rigueur routine of staring at the grid blankly with accompanying internet searches of varying degrees of futility. RUMPOLE would of course leap out, but Skylark had teased us too with Frasier CRANE, denizen of a very different bar, immediately to the right. How many characters from Cheers can you name?

It appears though that we were looking for fictional members of the legal bar, some of which needed less Googling than others. A final bit of confusion (and growing unease verging on distress) occasioned by deciding that we were looking to highlight 29 rather than the required 26 cells having been resolved, the whole was finished in time to start work again Monday morning.

And such was the weekend spent, sadly in the absence of most of the clashes referenced.