Independent 6255/Monk – Pangrammatism
Posted by Colin Blackburn on November 3rd, 2006
Solving time : ? done in dribs and drabs through the day
As I started to solve this puzzle I quickly realised it might be pangrammatic as I’d got a Z, X and Q. I then noticed several Xs and Ks. In the end it turned out to be a double pangrammatic grid with an extra X and few extra Ks. Maybe there’s more to the distribution but as this isn’t the Listener I won’t be spending hours staring fruitlessly at the completed grid.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCHE — anag of H(ard) Azed clue has boy, nice to see Azed namechecked. |
| 15 | KNESSET — Kt covering several points of the compass, just keep adding them till it makes sense! |
| 25 | AI(NT)RE+E — oddly I’d started to write in ENTREE without thinking it was too short. |
| Down | |
| 1 | JADE — J’adore dropping OR (gold) |
| 8 | SEX+TUP+L+E — SEX here is defined by (a bit of) ‘the other’. |
| 19 | LIEBNITZ — anag of BLINTZ+IE – an answer belying Monk’s mathematical background. |
| 20 | S+PACE — and where “…small step…” was heard from? |
| 22 | Y(OU+B)ET — is ‘correspondence course’ a good enough definition for OU, a university? |
| 27 | RIVE(r) — I initially penned in (t)RENT even though I was unsure about using ‘most of’ to remove the first letter. |
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:50 pm
The last 10 clues of this took me six times as long as the rest of the puzzle, and five times as long as the whole of the Times! Plus one mistake, couldn’t remember YARMULKE or think of RAY so picked arbitrarily between GAR, SAR and DAB for the fish. And spotted the double pangram at the EXACT point where it was no further help. A tough cookie.
November 6th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Picky correction at 19: LEIBNITZ rather than LIEBNITZ.
November 6th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Not picky at all Peter. For someone who has only half completed the puzzle me giving them the wrong checking letter could be a disaster! I welcome all spelling (an analysis) corrections.
November 10th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Trouble is that ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCHE was incorrectly spelt — there’s no final E in the town’s name. Such an error detracts from a puzzle. Hasn’t anyone else commented on this?.
November 10th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
We clearly have no readers from Ashby! I have to admit that I wouldn’t have known how the town’s name was spelt if I had been asked to write it down without anagram material or enumeration.
It turns out that the family who added the ZOUCH had the surname ZOUCHE, though I guess the odd E was neither here nor there in the 13th century.