Comments on: Independent 6,942/Scorpion

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:01:24 +0000

Allan, re 4D it is “piste” that is both a skiing and fencing term.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:19:02 +0000

11a ‘Rly’ was a common abbreviation for ‘railway’ particularly in the names of the old railway companies. Chambers gives both ‘rly’ and ‘ry’
18a – Didn’t get this. But ‘bones’ being a slang expression for ‘dice’ I put ‘dice’ which gave me the correct first letter for 19d but left me baffled by the rest of the clue for 18a.
In 4d, not having any interest in skiing, I had to guess that epee is a skiing term as well as a fencing weapon. Chambers (1998) only gives the latter.
Quite a challenging puzzle but except for 18a I got there in the end with a little help from a spell-checker/word finder.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:30:12 +0000

PS I meant COED (the Concise)

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:52:00 +0000

I don’t think it’s given in SOED or Collins but Chambers gives it as ‘a central spot’.

By: Testy

Testy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:54:52 +0000

Ahh! I was thinking it was some sort of homophone indicator or some medical abbreviation. But does “eye” generally mean the centre of something? I know that hurricanes and storms have eyes, but aren’t they called that because the calm bit makes it look like an eye rather than it meaning the actual centre of the storm. I don’t think I would call the middle of anything else an eye.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:41:29 +0000

21 D I think it’s the middle letter of patient.

By: Testy

Testy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:23:52 +0000

PS I think it’s more likely to be Menachem Begin that 21D refers to.

By: Testy

Testy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:22:47 +0000

I think 10a must be R in ARAN reversed (otherwise the “runs” is superfluous) but apparently the sweaters can be either ARRAN or ARAN (according to Wikipedia).
11A RLY for railway/line/lines is new on me. I’ve seen RY and L often enough but never RLY.
13A I agree about “piece”=GAL. Not something that would occur to me and I’m not sure that the sort of people that would use the word GAL are the same as those that might use the word “piece”. To me they seem to be from different ends of the social spectrum.
24A thanks for explaining this one. I got the answer but couldn’t understand the wordplay.
27A Big Bren would be BRENDA and if she was ENDLESS she would be just BR(end)A
21D I would have preferred “Begin, for example” and I still don’t get why it’s “patient’s eye” for I.