Comments on: Independent 6288/Phi – ???

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Independent 6327/Phi - Three times a lady « Fifteensquared — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:10:37 +0000

[...] half-hour struggle with Scorpion yesterday: I much preferred this to the last Phi puzzle I blogged (6288). The antipodean flavour to the top left (OTAGO and HAKA) was rather less welcome, given [...]

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nmsindy — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:47:40 +0000

It was only when MORBID “had to” be the answer that I realised that “migrate” was being used as an anagram indicator. Don’t recall seeing it used in that way before.

I do not remember too many themed puzzles by Phi in the Indy cryptic series so I wouldn’t normally look out for them there.

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rightback — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:18:16 +0000

True, but it isn’t ‘bird’ that’s migrating, it’s part of ‘bird’ – actually just the ‘r’ in this case (BIRD -> RBID). So something like ‘bird with migrating rook’ might be ok to indicate this, but I still can’t see how ‘migrating bird’ can be interpreted in this way.

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neildubya — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:05:50 +0000

Re migrate as an anagram indicator: I think this is ok it’s possible to look at solving an anagram as moving letters from one place in a word to another.

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nmsindy — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:53:30 +0000

About average in difficulty for me for Phi: 18 mins. Also found GLUM from the definition but could not quite fit it in from dictionary entries – only accepted it when no alternatives fitted and on looking in Bradford’s. Size is there under the entry for GUM.

Favourite clue of the year so far for me is 7 dn in this puzzle. Re 12 dn, I’m old enough to remember when tenders were universal (mainly to carry coal) i.e before diesel locomotives – maybe that helped.