Comments on: Independent 6300/Virgilius

By:

nmsindy — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 22:40:58 +0000

I think Russia is OK as it was part of the USSR – and we don’t want to give too much away in the clue, though I’ll admit I solved this one straightaway. Though this did not prove an omen for the puzzle as a whole…

By:

loubert — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 20:09:01 +0000

Strictly speaking, shouldn’t 1across have been “Tools flown across USSR”?

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nmsindy — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:50:07 +0000

Yes, for DELTOID I think you are right – “build up” is a link. “Modify” deals fully with the anagram. I guess the couple is MUM AND DAD but if it was a comp they might have had to accept MAM AND DAD or even MOM AND DAD.

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Wil Ransome — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 18:33:51 +0000

DELTOID

Isn’t it simply that “to build up” is another way of saying “to produce”?

By:

ilancaron — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 15:40:29 +0000

2D in American would have been MOM AND POP

By:

nmsindy — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 12:35:43 +0000

I found this harder than the normal Virgilius. 37 mins. I took the theme as the four perimeter words relating to each other i.e. the two downs and the two acrosses. There were two very clever hiddens, both of which I missed till near the end i.e. CLOVE HITCH and KENDO. But what really held me up was first pencilling in DEEP END, then DEEP SEA before getting DEAD SEA which is the lowest lake in the world, says Collins. DELTOID is a noun in one of my dicts so I took the build up as part of the anagram indicator.