Solving Time: 19 minutes

When you are under the weather, the last thing you need is a nasty ferocious puzzle to make you feel worse.  Phi’s puzzle breezed in and contained lots of nice make-you-smile clues, which left me relaxed in my sickbed.  When I first saw the grid, I hoped to find a nice messsage round the perimeter, but sadly this was not to be.  However this has left me feeling comfortable and relaxed for the weekend, until I find out what the Listener looks like later, and a relapse will set in.

 ACROSS:
5   OVAL  -  Nothing - O Against - V (versus), A large  - AL

6  HEATHROW  -  Argument (ROW) linked to open country (HEATH)

8  SEARCHER  -  Hunter = definition.  In position = SE(T) - cut down.  Bowman =  ARCHER

10  INGEST  -  TINGES with the first letter shifted  “front to back”

11 SCANDAL SHEET  -  an image to make you smile from the clue -  Anag of DEAN & THE CLASS.

15   AGENCY -   AC -  Account with GEN - information inside  and followed by and unknown - Y from your maths days at school.

16  BROADCASTING -  General - BROAD  Provision  of acting work =  CASTING

21  ARSONIST -  Lad  is - SON IS  inside  ART - skill.  My only tiny grumble with the puzzle  is the definition “one’s fired” OK for ARSONIST?

22  PLAYROOM - Double defintion, though one is probably more likely to be in the Uxbridge English Dictionary, hence the question-mark!

23  FUSS  -  Joins without hint of extravagant -  FUSES minus E

DOWN

1  MATRON  - I liked this a lot too!  Married a lot  M A TON with seventh of partners =  R inside.

2  DES RES  -  DESIRES minus I  =  One

3  STAINED GLASS  -  Nice anagram

7 WISH  -  NOWISH  minus  NO

9  HEART TO HEART   -  The suit ref is of course -  HEARTS

12  HYPNOSIS  -  Anag of phony  +  SIS =  gir l.  Hmmm. 

14  TABLE MAT -  The last one I solved  -  ABLE + M inside TAT

17  DEACON   -  another nice clue     CO  inside DEAN

18  TONGUE   -  Say = EG  plus NOT  all reversed with U inside.

19    WHIP  -   W -  Women  +  HIP = trendy.

 Thank you Phi!

An appropriately knotty puzzle that left me defeated by two clues, offers welcome. A good range of treatments, with several homophonic puns, a nice spoonerism and a punctutation mark as well as the normal anagrams, container and contents etc.Two clues, 8 down and 23 across, both confront subsidiary indications that contradict ther definition.

ACROSS

9. ARTEMISIA. TIMES* in ARIA. Doubly misleading. At first I assumed it’d be a production (film?) by 14, then when that turned out to be ABSINTH, I looked for a nounally-indicated anagram of it. In fact, the structure is simple, it’s the answer that’s obscure - artimisia, aka wormwood, is an ingredient in absinth.

10. TOXIN. OX in TIN = canned beef. Nice clue, even nicer with a ? I think.

12. CTESIPHON. HOP INSECT*.

13. MICROBE. ROB in MICE. Def, I think, works as = “being (that is) too small to notice”.

14. ABSINTH. BAN THIS*.

17. COMMA(nd). Refers to the punctuation mark ’seen in this clue’ - look just after ‘order’!

20. LEEKS, sounds like ‘leaks’. But ‘called for’ seems to be doing double duty here, as homophone indicator and part of definition.

21. ALGIERS. LAGER IS*. There may be some small underground micro-brewery in Algiers, but I suspect this is a ‘+not lit’, and ‘where’ is the sole definition. Shame ‘lager is’ isn’t an anagram of ‘pilsen’.

22. CARRION sounds like CARRYON. A bit. If you stress the wrong syllable.

24. ABOUT TIME. C. Age. Here the question mark does suggest you look for monkey business in the clue.

26. DOG MA. Boom boom. My karma ran over my dogma, as they used to say in the 60s.

28. IXION. I + O in NIX<. I guessed ILION first, but IXION was a king of Thessaly who was punished for parricide and trying to rape Hera by being bound to a perpetually revolving wheel in Hades. More wheeled than wheeler, arguably.

29. ESTHETICS. This is only cryptic in as far as we expect it not to read as a straightforward definition - but it does.

DOWN:

1. BARB(ie).

2. ETHNIC. C IN THE*.

3. AMELIORATE. OIL< in AMER(ICAN) + ATE.

4. PSYCHE. SPY* + CHE. Makes a change from ‘revolutionary’.

5. HATE MAIL. Mate, hail! Spoonerised.

6. ThE TUItion. A needlework case more used by setters than sewers, I suspect. But fees is redundant, and the hidden indicator’s a little awkward.

8. A N ON. + not lit, and indicated as such this time.

15. SEL FRIDGES. The old ones are the best.

16. Hmm… H_S_N, must be SON for heir, so H_SON, H_ is a heartless old king, but H(a)L would give HLSON. Any offers?

19. AUSPICES. SPICE in AUS.

23. IN GRID. I’ve seen a very similar clue recently, but I still like it.

24. (d)AVID.

25. TUNA? A can be ahead, though it’s an obscure abbreviation for a daily. But why is TUN bounce?

27. No idea. APSE? ALSO? ARSE? ASSE is apparently a small foxlike animal, which might run, although ‘ran’ suggests it should be extinct, and ‘no great advantage’ doesn’t say to me ‘advantage without its last letter.

Top half much harder than bottom half for me, especially because the long phrase in 11 across was new to me. 

Solving time, 25 mins

* = anagram

ACROSS
1  IN CUB A TOR   Tricky - only got it near the end
11 LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM   Eventually worked it out from the anagram (MY NERVOUS OLD AGE)*.     Not sure if it’s a well-known phrase - a quick Google search turned up one of Moore’s Melodies and an association with Shirley Temple.   Good surface.
13 LON(don) + ELY = see (a crossword staple - bishopric)
14 EX + CITED
19 BAN + AN + A   Favourite clue
23 CHAR + T(erm)
24 ALTER + CAT + E (energy)

DOWN
1  HILLSIDE  Excellent cryptic definition - last clue I solved.   From the line of the song “We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside”.
3 PRUNE + LLA (ALL reversed)
8 C(O(duck)+V(very small)ES i.e. SEC = dry (reversed).   Very tricky.
15  C + (Peter)HAIN + SAW    Note the Conservative and politician are separate, so it does not have to be a Con politician.
16 DRACHMAE (ARCH MADE)*   Greek currency now superseded by the euro.  Plural can end in -e or -s or even -i, the anagram letters tell us which.
18 SH + IF before TIER (a row).   Liked that.
20 B (second-rate) + OGOT A (A TOGO “on the up”)
22 D (diamonds - cards) + ICE (diamonds).

Just as we start a new year and begin to write about this puzzle every week, the Indie Weekend mag puzzle changes its name! It turns out that this is the second name change. Back in about 1989, we started off with the Independent Magazine Crossword - or at least, that’s what my old paperback collection calls it. Then, after 349 puzzles, the title changed to Weekend Crossword, restarting at puzzle number 1. So as those who completed Weekend Crossword #600 will already know, it was really number 949. The new name is a link to the Torquemada / Ximenes / Azed pseudonym tradition, with a nice echo of “Independent”. Apart from the change of name and losing the “always pink” grid shading, the series continues in the same fahion as before.

Just in case you thought I had all the facts above off pat, I must acknowledge some assistance from Mike Laws, the editor of the puzzle, who reminds me that the “real #1000″ will be on 15th December this year. If its theme is something “thousandy”, you read it here first.

This puzzle reminded me of a New Year Listener one by Kea in which some fiendish use of lines as an encoding system to represent letters resulted in a nicely drawn “2005″ appearing in the completed grid. This puzzle uses a simpler method to get a similar effect for 2007, with the minor twist that you had to work out what was being done from about 3/4 of the full set of shaded squares. You should have finished up with something like this:

Although the numbers are a bit squashed together (why not a 15×15 grid with gaps?), each number uses a 6×3 block, so there’s no doubt about where the shading needs to be.

The “disregarded letters in wordplay” idea is fairly common in advanced cryptic puzzles. In the notes below, the clue answer is shown, with lower case for letters not indicated in the wordplay. The way of reaching the grid entry is then indicated in the usual way.

Solving time: I forgot to keep track of this - probably about two hours, slowed down a bit by stupidly thinking the message came from the first letters of the answers rather than the clues. Read the rubric more carefully, Peter!