i Cryptic Crossword 3842 by Poins

Difficulty rating (out of 5): ⌛⌛⌛
I’m not sure that I can give this an accurate rating as, being a bit pushed for time this morning, I resorted to wordfinder and anagram solver to speed things up. So I’ll just add one egg-timer to Poins’ average rating in the idothei list, and leave it to others to amend as they see fit. Poins was normally to be found in the IoS, so his appearance in a weekday Indy may account for my finding the puzzle a little trickier than usual for this setter.

There were some very fine clues, including a few nice anagrams such as 1, 14 and 21 across, and 9 down; in the last-named it took a little thought to sort out the anagrind from the anagram fodder. A couple of relative obscurities were ‘bunce’ and ‘homie’ in the clues for 1dn and 7dn. It also took a while to remember that 5ac referred to a conquistador rather than the protagonist of the Rocky film series, and that a flute (in 11ac) can be something other than a musical instrument.

The appearance of commercial products and brand names in crosswords is a bit controversial – some papers don’t allow it, although the Indy (and hence the i) has a relaxed attitude to it. In this case we had UPS (in 10ac) which prompted comment from John on 15^2, and Aga (in 6dn) which didn’t.

The rest was all pretty straightforward and enjoyable. Nothing really stands out for CoD but I’ll go for 16dn: ‘What about horses seen on moorland without a hint of foreboding or protective covering? (8)’.

For the original blog and a mere handful of comments see http://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/06/05/independent-10185-by-poins/

Inquisitor 1804 Get Into One’s Stride by Skylark

And then, unexpectedly, the sun came out. A morning walking over a nearby mountain without coat, but with a most-definitely needed sun-hat (there’s not much left on top, you see), and chips on the way back.

All was well with the world, or at least this part of it.

An afternoon solve in the garden, remembering again why it’s nice to sit in the shade, marvelling at how fast things grow, and wondering what has happened to all the nesting birds.

And Skylark with an Inquisitor that stood in stark contrast to previous travails, revealing itself through a just-on-the-right-side-of-challenging grid fill through to a theme and endgame that could be discerned via just a modicum of Googling.

Of course, you knew YOUR FEET’S TOO BIG, but not that FATS WALLER made it famous, the quote from the down clues, or the play AIN’T MISBEHAVING and the songs it features, which would include BLACK AND BLUE and HONEYSUCKLE ROSE.

But that doesn’t matter, because you now have something else to queue on Spotify while enjoying the sunshine, a book, and perhaps a sneaky beer later.

All of which is to say, thanks to Skylark for the perfect puzzle to accompany the perfect day.

i Cryptic Crossword 3841 by Wiglaf

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳

A pretty tough offering from Wiglaf this Tuesday where I found myself getting stuck more than once, notably in the SW corner where a crossing ballerina and specialised bit of musicology were a stumbling block. Talking of which, the theme is things musical in general, and not in particular, some more obscure than others (the bit of Pink Floyd being mercifully obscure I hope for most).

Lots to like, with the use of Carmen to indicate AA and RAC tickling me unduly, and my CoD going to 9ac – “A dwarf’s back passage (4)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from May 2019:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/05/28/independent-10178-wiglaf/

i Cryptic Crossword 3840 Tees

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳

A good, challenging crossword to get one’s teeth into comes to us this Bank Holiday Monday courtesy of Tees. This was chewy in places, but satisfyingly so. A pleasure to solve.

Quite a view visits to both the reference books and the internet took place. I had to see whether the putative dwarf star I constructed from the likely word-play actually existed – and it did. I couldn’t remember for the life of me what the currency used in Bulgaria was – one of those “once heard, soon forgotten” words. After that was in, I guessed the crossing internet user, but needed to see whether it was actually a word – and again, it was.

Also in the NE corner, 1d caused my brow to furrow, in respect of both entry and word-play. A crop circle I do know about; a corn one I don’t, and it still doesn’t seem quite authentic. I needed to niggle away at the word-play here, although it actually does work precisely, and the misdirection and surface reading work nicely together, making for a tightly written, good clue.

I liked the &littish quality of the clue for the playwright, referencing as it does his most famous word. My Clue of the Day, though is 9ac. It is concise and simply constructed, with a hood surface reading, and the word-play was hidden in plain sight – it just didn’t look like an anagram at all on my first two or three readings: ” Old German forced to go short (9)”.

Here’s the link for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/05/20/independent-10171-by-tees/

i App Cryptic Crossword S0077 by Serpent

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳⏳

Another superb crossword from Serpent. How difficult you found it will have depended in good measure on how quickly you spotted the peripheral Nina: NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, which was also the theme and which linked to the clue of the day:

9a They appeared on boundary-defining album (3,7)

Now that is clever.

Fortunately I twigged that about half a dozen clues into the solve which helped enormously thereafter, so the solve was slightly quicker than my personal average for the i – but the rating above reflects the likely experience for anyone who didn’t spot the Nina, based partly on the comments on Fifteensquared.

As usual with Serpent there were almost no obscurities – surely everyone’s heard of ‘NEEPs & tatties’?, and what makes the clues accessible for me is the complete absence of verbiage, absence of obscure abbreviations, and reliably tight construction. People say he’s hard, but if you trust him then I don’t think there’s anything particularly fiendish here – well, maybe the middle bit of the wordplay for EARN, but it had to be that based on the rest of the clue,; then RINDERPEST did take a bit of dragging up from the recesses I suppose.

It turns out that as well as Anarchy, Rotten and Vicious, which I did notice, there are also references to 7 or 8 of the tracks. So ‘Holidays in the Sun’, my favourite Pistols song, must be on a different album. I should really have twigged the EMI thing at least.

Too many cracking good clues to list here – I’ve got to get on!

www.fifteensquared.net/2018/01/23/independent-9759-by-serpent

i Cryptic Crossword 3839 by Phi

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳ or ⏳⏳⏳

This one took a bit less time than my mean average for cryptics in the i, so that might make it a ⏳⏳, but then again it did have a few odd words like ENCOMIASTS, HEDONICS, or VIEWPHONE, so perhaps ⏳⏳⏳ is a better reflection of the puzzle, if we’re trying to be objective.

We’ve had A THEN S recently from Eccles (brilliantly done with a reference to their positions to the right of ‘caps lock’ on a keyboard) so that one went in straight away, and the solve proceeded – moving counter-clockwise round the grid as is my wont – with plenty of bits of fun and cleverness along the way. I found the NE trickiest – TOE-NAILS and its ‘shift in character’ was cheeky, and the PRO VINE gag took a while for the penny to drop. My CoD, for it’s neatly disguised anagram fodder, is this one:

20a One million having run in disrupted capital city? That shows unworkable situation (14)

At the end I did suspect a ghost theme – Phi normally avoids 3-letter words and obscurities unless he has one – and wondered if Tom STOPPARD had set a play in ATHENS and the IONIAN SEA perhaps, but no, it’s a quote from ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ that goes “[a]THE[ns]/ TOENAILS/ ON THE OTHER HAND/ NEVER [over]GROW[n]/ AT ALL”. I know a few Stoppard plays, but of course that is not a ghost theme anyone could reasonably be expected to get.

Here’s the answers: www.fifteensquared.net/2018/01/26/independent-9762-phi

i Cryptic Crossword 3838 Eccles

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳

Not so long ago, I expected my Friday blogging duties to involve a challenging crossword solve (and my Monday slot to on a relatively easier puzzle). But no longer, it would seem. This one from Eccles was fun and very pleasing to solve, and certainly towards the accessible end of the range.

Contributing to the accessibility of the crossword, I think, is the high proportion of full or partial anagrams among the clues. Seven, by my count, very nearly a quarter of the total.

That’s not to say it was plain sailing all the way. We had to know that after the dissolution of the memorably acronymed USSR, the rather more forgettable Commonwealth of Independent States was formed. There was a fairly recondite bit of Latin, and a word new to me for the focus of infection.

And then there was 11ac. This brilliant clue – my Clue of the Day – seemed to come from a completely different crossword, with an obscure entry, with an odd definition and some unusual – but corruscating – word-play: “Sample of “Float like a butterfly, sting like a be”? (7)”.

Here’s the link to Fifteensquared for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/05/15/independent-10167-eccles/

i Cryptic Crossword 3837 by Wire

Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳

This is not the IoS reprint you were expecting. Well, I wasn’t expecting one at all, unaware that this is what it was, but that’s beside the point. Why? Because basically this was more than a notch above the average (I see words like excellent and brilliant getting bandied about on the other side, and they’re not wrong), and as well as being reasonably testing, there was lots of good stuff on offer in the way of wordplay. Let’s list 5ac, 10ac, 11ac and 24d just for starters. I suspect you could do a lot worse today.

But my CoD? Just for the wince followed by the wry smile, 17d – “Unwelcome camera close, having zero range (9)”.

All the answers and parsing of the clues can be found in Fifteensquared’s blog from May 2019:

https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/05/05/independent-on-sunday-1523-wire/

i Cryptic Crossword 3836 by Alchemi

Difficulty rating (out of 5): ⌛⌛(⌛)

This was described on the other side as ‘a gentle Sunday solve’ but I found it quite tricky and had to resort to help in order to solve and blog within the limited time I had available. The left hand side went in fairly easily but on the right hand side I got stuck particularly on the crossing 11ac and 6dn.

That being said, I would agree with the 15^2 blogger that there was some inventive clueing, particularly 1dn and the reference to it in 23dn. The anagram in 1ac was rather neat although, to quote 15^2 again, there isn’t really a Cook’s Law (but I did find on Google a reference to a Cook–Levin theorem, also known as Cook’s theorem).

By one of those coincidences that occur in Crosswordland we had COBBLERS in yesterday’s puzzle and today we had the singular COBBLER; singular, perhaps in another way since it’s defined as a dessert but can also be a savoury dish.

One doesn’t often encounter the plural form DAISES (9dn), which held me up momentarily; the clue itself was one of those which sometimes elicits criticism for not specifying which of two occurrencxes of the same letter needs to be removed from one word to make another – although it’s usually fairly obvious, as in this case.

As for my CoD I’ll go for the previously mentioned 23dn: “Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick was boring (6)”.

For all the answers, comments and discussion see http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/01/28/independent-on-sunday-1457-alchemi/

Inquisitor 1803 Intersection by Vismut

So, nul points.

No, not this year’s UK Eurovision entry, which garnered slightly more votes than that, but the result of my extended grapple with Vismut’s latest offering.

At first the prospect of a successful solve looked so promising, with a friendly grid spanning answer in the second clue to kick things off, but from then on things would go swiftly downhill.

Did it help that I decided to sit outside in the sunshine and kept falling asleep? Did it help that a certain song contest curtailed my solving time?

Probably not, but at some point you have to admit that you’re getting nowhere fast, and that you’ve reached the point where you’re not really enjoying the solve at this point either, never mind getting to grips with the rest of what was an extensive preamble.

Towel thrown in, for the first time in a while, with a philosophical shrug and muttered – “you can’t win them all”. I wonder how Kenmac got on over on the other side?