Umpire appears in the Independent for the third month in a row. The original puzzle is at https://puzzles.independent.co.uk/games/cryptic-crossword-independent/?puzzleDate=20260825.
We have a few slightly stretched definitions today, along with a few words that probably owe their survival to cryptic crosswords. 2d had me stumped for a while until I remembered the appropriate meaning of “file”, and I thought 24d was neat. Thanks Umpire for a fun challenge.
Tuesday puzzles in the Independent normally include some sort of theme or hidden message, but I can’t see anything today – even after a lot of 1d and searching on several likely 8ds. Any ideas? UPDATE: yes, there is a theme, as noted by Charlie in comment 2 below.
Definitions are underlined; BOLD UPPERCASE indicates letters used in the wordplay; square brackets [ ] indicate omitted letters.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | MARCO POLO |
Merchant‘s parent company quietly invested in chocolate (5,4)
|
| MA (colloquial name for mother = parent), then CO (abbreviation for company) + P (p = abbreviation for Italian piano = quietly, in musical notation) inserted into ROLO (brand name for a caramel-filled chocolate).
13th-century Venetian explorer and merchant. |
||
| 6 | DALEK |
Chipmunk back to irk exterminator? (5)
|
| DALE (as in Chip ‘n’ Dale = chipmunks in Disney animations) + last letter (back) of [ir]K.
Perhaps Dr Who‘s best known enemy, with its shout of “Exterminate!”. |
||
| 9 | SLIME |
Gooey substance produced by small tree (5)
|
| S (abbreviation for small) + LIME (a variety of tree). | ||
| 10 | THIRSTILY |
New hairstylist cutting as intensely (9)
|
| Anagram (new) of H[a]IR[s]TYLIST without the letters AS. | ||
| 11 | NANKEEN |
Buff relative given piercing (7)
|
| NAN (colloquial name for grandmother = relative) + KEEN (piercing = descriptive of a loud high-pitched cry).
Buff = nankeen = the light yellowish-brown colour of unbleached cotton cloth. |
||
| 13 | ORSINO |
Play duke wrong wearing gold ring (6)
|
| SIN (wrong), surrounded by OR (heraldic term for the colour gold) + O (a ring shape).
Duke of Illyria in the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night. |
||
| 15 | SLEEP WITH |
Make love to wife on vacation – it helps to exercise (5,4)
|
| Anagram (to exercise) of W[if]E (on vacation = after emptying = inner letters removed) + IT HELPS. | ||
| 17 | CHILD |
Youngster disheartened having lost clothing in luggage (5)
|
| CHIL[le]D (as a verb, chill = to dampen someone’s enthusiasm = to dishearten), removing the outer letters (clothing) of L[uggag]E. | ||
| 18 | AZTEC |
Detective follows street maps of Mexican empire (5)
|
| TEC (slang shortening of detective) after A-Z (UK street-map publishing brand). | ||
| 19 | LETTING ON |
Revealing Latvian spirit stocked by pub (7,2)
|
| LETT (archaic name for a Latvian), then GO (as a noun = slang for energy and enthusiasm = spirit) contained in INN (pub = drinking establishment).
Revealing a secret, as in “They know who did it but they aren’t letting on”. |
||
| 21 | TERROR |
Fear agent’s latest blunder (6)
|
| Last (latest) letter of [agen]T + ERROR (blunder). | ||
| 22 | SENSORS |
Some detecting edits on the radio (7)
|
| Sound-alike (on the radio = spoken) of CENSORS (as a verb = edits to remove inappropriate information).
Devices that detect (sense) something. |
||
| 25 | SAN MARINO |
Country concerned with Iran kidnapping leader of military while undergoing revolution (3,6)
|
| ON (on the subject of = concerned with), then IRAN containing the leading letter of M[ilitary], then AS (while), all reversed (undergoing revolution).
A very small country, completely contained within the borders of Italy. |
||
| 26 | PRANG |
Crash parking Duster around November (5)
|
| P (abbreviation for parking, in maps and road signs) + RAG (duster = cloth used for cleaning), around N (November in the radio alphabet). For the surface, Duster is a car model made by Dacia.
Prang = slang for a vehicle accident and/or the damage it causes. |
||
| 27 | SEDGE |
Perennial hosed gently drinks (5)
|
| Hidden answer (. . . drinks, as a verb = takes in = contains) in [ho]SED GE[ntly].
A perennial flowering plant. |
||
| 28 | UNEARTHLY |
Alien hunter lay camouflaged (9)
|
| Anagram (camouflaged) of HUNTER LAY. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | MUSINGS |
Greek character vocalises thoughts (7)
|
| MU (the Greek letter M) + SINGS (vocalises). | ||
| 2 | REIGN |
Command doctor to check king’s file before operation’s conclusion (5)
|
| RIG (doctor, as a verb = slang for illicitly modify or interfere with, as in “doctoring the evidence”), containing (checking) E (king’s file, in chess), then the last letter (conclusion) of [operatio]N. For those not familiar with chess notation: the squares on the board are notated in ranks (rows) 1-8 and files (columns) a-h, and the king’s starting position is in file e.
Command = reign = rule. |
||
| 3 | OWE |
Palaeontologist dismissing Newton must pay (3)
|
| OWE[n] (Richard Owen, 19th-century palaeontologist: among other things he first proposed the word “dinosaur”), without the N (abbreviation for newton = scientific unit of force).
They owe = they must pay. |
||
| 4 | OSTENSIBLE |
Pretended back in Tokyo Biles managed to claim perfect scores (10)
|
| Last letter (back) of [toky]O + anagram (managed) of BILES, containing (claiming) TENS (perfect scores of 10 out of 10). The surface suggests the US gymnast Simone Biles, who took part in the Tokyo Olympics.
Ostensible = pretended = in appearance or claimed, but not necessarily true. |
||
| 5 | OMIT |
Pass with third in Geography at Cambridge University (4)
|
| Third letter of [ge]O[graphy] + MIT (an old favourite in crosswords: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a university based in Cambridge, MA, United States).
Pass = omit = to decline to do something: “I’ll pass on that, thank you”. |
||
| 6 | DESTRUCTION |
Death that is going without international uproar (11)
|
| [i]D EST (Latin phrase meaning “that is”, usually abbreviated to i.e.) without the I (abbreviation for international), then RUCTION (perhaps more common in the plural form ructions = uproar or violent disagreement). | ||
| 7 | LAICISING |
Removing church influence from new Sicilian government (9)
|
| Anagram (new) of SICILIAN + G (abbreviation for government). | ||
| 8 | KEYWORD |
Descriptor of island population left abandoned (7)
|
| KEY (also spelled cay = a small island) + WOR[l]D (population?) without the L (abbreviation for left).
I’m not quite convinced by this: a rather loose definition for the solution and another in the wordplay. |
||
| 12 | EXPECTORATE |
Anticipate talk to get something off your chest? (11)
|
| EXPECT (the word “anticipate” originally meant to take action in advance of a future event, but it’s come to mean just “expect”) + ORATE (to give a speech = talk).
To cough something up and spit it out. |
||
| 14 | WHAT IS MORE |
Saw her cavorting with 5 in addition (4,2,4)
|
| Anagram (cavorting = dancing around) of SAW HER + OMIT (5d). | ||
| 16 | ENTHRONED |
English theatre production’s ending with Herod falsely made king (9)
|
| E (abbreviation for English) + NT (abbreviation for National Theatre), then an anagram (falsely) of the end letter of [productio]N + HEROD. | ||
| 18 | ATTESTS |
Bears witness to cycling examination taken (7)
|
| TEST SAT (an examination taken), with the letters “cycling” round to put AT at the start. | ||
| 20 | NOSEGAY |
No vehicle leaving with flowers (7)
|
| NO (from clue text) + SEG[w]AY (one-person electric vehicle with two wheels), leaving out the W (abbreviation for with).
Archaic word for a small bunch of flowers. |
||
| 23 | OMAGH |
Irish town house outside school erected (5)
|
| HO (abbreviation for house, perhaps on maps) outside GAM (school = a group of whales), all reversed (erected = upwards in a down clue).
In County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. |
||
| 24 | LIEU |
Place similar to Britain without any Kings? (4)
|
| LI[k]E U[k] (similar to Britain), without the two K (abbreviation for king).
French-derived word for place, as in “in lieu of”. |
||
| 26 | PAR |
Expected shots where young footballers might play kilometres away (3)
|
| PAR[k] (where children or young amateur players might play football) without the K (abbreviation for kilometres).
In golf, the expected number of shots required to complete a specific hole or course. |
DALEK made me smile. I was unsure of the parsing of LOI, DESTRUCTION, and also needed some convincing that ‘population’ = WORLD. Oh, and I learned the name of a palaeontologist. Which means, with Mary Anning and Ross Geller, I am now up to 3!
The presence of that awkward word, LAICISING, makes me wonder if it was forced on the setter by a theme but I can’t see anything. Then again, I am notoriously theme blind and it could be staring me in the face.
Thanks both
The theme is Doctor Who season 1 (1963-64)
An UNEARTHLY CHILD
The DALEKs
The EDGE of DESTRUCTION
MARCO POLO
The KEYs of MARINus
The AZTECs
The SENSORites
The REIGN of TERROR
Well played, Umpire! Favourite clues DALEK, ORSINO and NOSEGAY.
Charlie @2: thanks, I knew I could trust our regular readers to come up with it! I’ve updated the blog.
I must say I didn’t particularly enjoy the clueing; probably just a different wavelength than the setter’s. Eg why would one want to use five words to describe PARK; to make a short clue look daunting? It proved ultimately doable though, with some unparsed and/or guessed. OMAGH a jorum. Thanks Umpire and Quirister
I didn’t spot today’s theme but then again I’m not a Whovian, although I did enjoy watching the reboot series with Christopher Eccleston and then further series with David Tennant and Matt Smith, but then I stopped watching when Peter Capaldi became the Doctor (nothing to do with him, I just naturally stopped watching)
I didn’t get NANKEEN as I’d never heard of it – I didn’t think of the colour for ‘buff’, only the muscular and polishing senses. Also NHO of ORSINO as I’ve not studied much Shakespeare
One minor quibble – the word ‘new’ was used in both 10A and 7D to mean ‘anagram’. I would’ve preferred it if they’d used a different anagrind in one of them
Thanks Umpire and Q
Thanks both. Felt this was made tough by the number of obscurities, e.g. intersecting nhos ORSINO and LAICISING and including the theme – I had looked for other references once I twigged DALEK (hampered by inadequate cartoon chipmunk knowledge) but I never reached the ‘I’ll get my anorak’ stage.