Independent 8,863 by Donk

by

What has Donk inflicted on us? This was probably the most difficult crossword I’ve ever done, although many of the clues were very neat.  It was completely filled in eventually but I got four answers wrong, and the fact that four of the clues begin “One left” and five of them begin “One right” didn’t help the solving.


Even now I can’t see what it’s all about, although the ones starting “One left” are all clowns, but what the five others have in common I cannot see: I’ve Googled them in many different combinations, but all I get mainly is a whole lot of stuff about LinkedIn and Facebook, and some historical records. The ”One left” answers are on the left of the grid, and the others are on the right… Perhaps the connection is something I would never have got anyway.

It wasn’t helped by the grid, which, once you’ve solved the middle clues, becomes four separate crosswords: there is not the usual cross-referencing help.

Sorry to be so unhelpful: no doubt people will say what a brilliant crossword this is, and knowing Donk and his previous performance, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do and it is. There are simply several things that are beyond me.

Most of the definitions are underlined, although I haven’t tried with the thematic answers.

Across
1 BRACKISH
Salty and black ribs served by westbound train line (8)

b rack [= ribs] (Hsi or HS1)rev. — this either refers to the Ping Hsi train line in Taipei, or, which is rather more likely, the HS1, the British high-speed train that governments repeatedly seem to advocate
5 AMOS
One right in the middle of samosa (4)

Well this had to be amos because it was {s}amos{a}, but …
8 CUTPURSE
Old criminal saw how to kiss? (8)

cut [= saw] purse [= how to kiss? — pursing of the lips]
9 GRATIS
Framework, briefly, is on the house (6)

grat{e} is
12 ATTIRE
Wear and tear, it reviewed (6)

(tear it)*
13 HENRY
One right by driver on the path finally reversed (5)

Goodness knows what’s happening here
16 COCO
One left care of pair (4)

c/o repeated
17 PEEPING TOM
Cat mimicking bird? He looks for excitement (7,3)

If a tomcat is making a ‘peep-peep’ sound, the cat is mimicking a bird
20 OFFSHORING
Labour go for NHS if reducing costs elsewhere (10)

(go for NHS if)*, the anagram indicated by ‘Labour’
21 ENOL
Back by yourself in compound (4)

(lone)rev. — I thought this was fairly likely before confirming it on Google, although I’d never heard of the word, which is presumably related to ‘phenol’
23 AZOIC
Lifeless braggadocio zapped, some constituents recalled (5)

Hidden reversed in braggadoCIO ZApped — again, not a word that I knew
24 PAYEES
Cheques are theirs – secretary agreed with e-investment (6)

PA ye(e)s
28 DODDLE
Grant admitting daughters walk in the park (6)

do(d d)le
29 MANGROVE
Having come a cropper, move gran’s greenery (8)

(move gran)*
30 DOSH
Funds party (don’t tell anyone!) (4)

do sh!
31 UNBROKEN
Recycling poor sister’s not separated (8)

broke nun with the last two letters cycled round to the front
Down
1 BUCK
Does lover in NY pay with it? (4)

Not “duz” but “doze”: a lover of does, and a buck is a dollar in America
2 ANTE
Better put this in worker’s head for ever (4)

A better is someone who bets — ant e{ver}
3 KRUSTY
One left king needing a loosener (6)

I didn’t get this, thinking it was khurta, a loose-fitting garment so rather doubtfully a loosener, but it’s K rusty [needing a loosener], although what the rest of it is about I don’t know
4 SUSHI
Almost get welcome food (5)

sus{s} hi
6 MERCHANT
One right out of Frenchman’s sea shanty? (8)

mer [= Frenchman’s sea] chant [= shanty] is the limit of what I can see
7 SET IN STONE
When wobbly, is net weight impossible to shift? (3,2,5)

(is net weight)*
10 SOYA MILK
Vegan option is vegetable (very kind about it) (4,4)

so (yam) ilk
11 DEEPEN
Scoop out flower on top of drawer (6)

Dee [= flower, a river] pen [something that draws] — I didn’t have this, being pretty well lost, and guessing bedpan in that it is very tenuously a sort of scoop and a pan is possibly a drawer — deepen = scoop out didn’t seem a likely equivalence, although it occurred to me
14 MCDONALD
One left shivering, it’s damn cold (8)

(damn cold)* — but as with all these thematic clues …
15 SCAFFOLDED
Added support as burnt cakes turned mouldy (10)

scalded [= burnt] round [= cakes] (off)rev.
18 EUROPE
Monsieur opens houses here? (6)

Hidden in MonsiEUR OPEns — ‘houses’ the indicator of this — &lit.
19 CHUCKLES
One left to stay in more relationships, however brief! (8)

Goodness knows
22 LEDGER
One right (in cinema) grabbing advantage with both hands (6)

L(edge)R — left and right hand — does this refer to Heath Ledger?
25 YEARN
Be desperate for contemporaries at school to take note (5)

year n
26 LOCK
One right to emerge from topless birds (4)

{f}lock — got this, but didn’t see why beyond the wordplay
27 MEAN
Suggest name for development (4)

(name)*
*anagram

 

25 comments on “Independent 8,863 by Donk”

  2. I concur about the difficulty level of the puzzle. Not one I’d have wanted to blog.

    The theme refers to a song ‘Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the right’ and vertical row 8 contains a relevant (line in the song-ish) Nina.

  3. Loved it – a tribute to an old Nimrod puzzle, surely? Or just great minds thinking alike? We have Clowns to the left, Jokers to the right and “HERE I AM” stuck in the middle (down the central column) with “U”! But it might have been a lot harder for me if I hadn’t seem the same theme years ago in that Nimrod.

  4. 13a is the last letters of ‘by driver on the path’ reversed to give HENRY, but like John I had no idea what left and right meant, so gave up on the train and finished it on-line with copious use of the ‘check’ button

    Deffo a hard one

  6. I’ve never heard of the song, nor of Sarah Leger so was stuck musing what Heath was doing in the mix, as well as taking Amos and Henry for Christian names. It was all gettable without cracking the theme, though it at least helped after KRUSTY, which could only be a clown, that there might be others involved. Never did twig that the others were comics, though.

    Thanks, Donk and John.

  7. I’m totally bamboozled by the theme of ‘one left’ and ‘one right’ so I will be checking everyone else’s feedback later.Thanks for the answers, blogger; I was struggling badly there also!

  8. There is a fine line between ‘brilliant’ and ‘too clever’. Of course one can enthuse after the fact! At least the compiler plays fair, mostly.

  9. I managed to finish correctly without recourse to aids or understanding what connection the “one right” clues had, so as far as I’m concerned that’s good cluing by Donk. KRUSTY was my LOI, which I’m a bit embarrassed about considering I’d got the clowns connection for the “one left” clues, and I only saw “needing a loosener” = “rusty” after the answer had gone in. This is definitely one to appreciate post-solve, especially the “here I am”, stuck in the middle with “u” nina. I don’t remember the Nimrod puzzle referred to above.

  10. extraordinary idea from Donk. FWIW, I assumed LEDGER was referring to The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger plays The Joker. The central NINA is fantastic, I’ll be singing this all day

  13. I still feel that I’m not entirely on Donk’s wavelength, so when I see the name I expect to have a hard time, and that usually turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Today I completed about three quarters of the puzzle before giving up, still baffled, at that time, by the ‘left’ and ‘right’ references.

    Thanks to John – I don’t envy you having to blog this one.

    All very clever, I’m sure, but I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. Sorry.

  14. Yes, this defeated me and it was somewhat reassuring to see I wasn’t the only one. I missed out on the significance of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ references but there were some other v. good clues to enjoy eg 10, 15, 20 and 28. I thought I was being very clever with 29 for which I had GANGRENE and this messed up the nina. Even so I would have never worked the whole thing out and I dips me lid to those of you who did.

    Thanks to Donk and John (who drew the short straw on this one).

  15. Very tricky but as I blogged the Nimrod one I was on the ball quite quickly. Still have nightmares about that nimrod blog.
    Well done John, my commiserations on getting one like this.

  16. Thanks Donk, absolutely brilliant setting, bravo!

    Thanks John, I didn’t understand the significance of the hands, so thanks to Eileen @1.

    No doubt the necessity for the NINA gave the slightly unfriendly grid.

  17. Not my cup of tea, this, I’m afraid. I gave up with about two thirds completed, frustrated by inability to get any sort of handle on what the theme might be.

  18. Oh crumbs.

    Well, I can only apologise to those who didn’t enjoy it at all! A huge thank you to John for struggling through to the end. The intention really wasn’t to beat solvers into submission!

    If anyone hasn’t been able to understand the nina/theme I was aiming for, there were 4 clues defined by ‘One left’ located in the LHS of the grid (COCO, KRUSTY, MCDONALD and CHUCKLES) and 5 clues defined by ‘One right’ in the RHS (AMOS, HENRY, MERCHANT, LOCK and LEDGER). LEDGER had the extra bit of definition to nudge solvers towards jokers via Heath Ledger. Down the central column, the unchecked letters are HEREIAMU… so it’s ‘CLOWNS to the left of me, JOKERS to the right, HERE I AM stuck in the middle with U’.

    Anyway, thanks to everyone for the comments!
    Donk

    p.s. I’d never seen the Nimrod version of this idea – doubly-gutted now I’ve seen the concept wasn’t even original!

  19. Hi Donk

    Why would you need to feel even once-gutted? What herb said @3 about great minds, surely?

    I thought I hadn’t heard of the song but, when the right hand side was making no sense at all to me [very clever choice of ‘jokers’!], I was saying to myself, ‘clowns to the left…?’ and then googled just that – and there it was! I still didn’t remember it or the Nimrod puzzle but I see now that I actually commented on it, which is rather worrying.

    I didn’t even have time this morning to say thanks for a super puzzle – but, like other bloggers here, I’m rather glad it didn’t fall to me. 😉 Many thanks again to John.

  20. Another one defeated here, although I got all but about half a dozen answers, so not the worst defeat I’ve had. I guessed the comics connection after getting HENRY and AMOS but didn’t get any of the clowns, and have never heard of the song.

    You know a crossword is going to be hard when the first answer you get is AZOIC!

  21. @Donk

    I wonder whether it would have worked better if you’d made it “one to the left/right of me” instead of just “one left/right”? I know the bare versions meant nothing to me so I just put in what the wordplay said without having any real idea what was going on. I can easily see why that would have made the clues look like novels and was therefore less desirable, but after I finished, that’s what occurred to me as what would have given me a fighting chance of picking it up.

    The non-themed clues, by the way, were brilliant.

  22. Yes Alchemi, but that would still only work if you’re familiar with the song.
    Apparently, several people hadn’t heard of it.

    Sometimes I find these things amazing.
    ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ is a Stealers Wheel song that is more than 40 years old – 40 !!!
    Bloody Hell, where does the time go?
    I can still remember the day I bought their first LP in 1972 – I now have all three Stealers Wheel albums on cd (thanks to the incomparable Cherry Red Records).
    ‘Late Again’ – that was my favourite track from their debut album, not the IMHO overrated SITMWY.
    It’s only because of a Quentin Tarantino movie that the song became bigger and bigger and bigger.
    And how many people know that Gerry Rafferty once was half of a duo called The Humblebums, the other half being Billy Connolly?

    I had everything right in this crossword but had no clue what was going on.
    As I made clear, I am very familiar with Gerry Rafferty’s music but I am not sure whether what you suggest would have taken me any further.
    I tend to agree with hedgehoggy when saying “there’s a fine line between ‘brilliant’ and ‘too clever’ “.

    Many thanks to John & Donk.

    And Gerry Rafferty, RIP.

  24. Goodness me, you got tricky one there John! I solve nearly all the clues but had no idea what the left and rights were all about. Having seen the explanation I don’t think it would have helped much anyway as I didn’t know most of the clowns and the jokers anyway.

    Clever stuff for those in the know. Thanks Donk.

  25. We’re currently away in the USA for a family wedding which meant that we did not have time to complete this puzzle until this morning – it’s now 7:30.

    We ended up ‘revealing letters’ on Crossword Solver to finish the last few clues which were lefts and rights! Bert managed to sort out the clowns connection (takes one to know one!) and wondered at one point whether the ‘rights were CROWNS – changing L to R. Mind you King Amos and King Ledger would have been somewhat obscure if they were correct.

    Well done to all those who saw the connection and the nina – a real toughie to crack.

    We have no complaints though – we always look forward to a Donk (please – no innuendo intended).

    Thanks Donk and John who really had his work cut out sorting this one out. We really didn’t mind being beaten by this one but thank goodness for fifteensquared.

Comments are closed.