Comments on: Independent 6959/Dac

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:21:24 +0000

Yes, harder than usual for Dac but a satisfying puzzle nevertheless.
I struggled with 25a till I realised about the “dipangram”.
I agree with John about 14d; I thought it was a bit unfair (pardon the pun!)
3d was good; references to US states usually mean their abbreviations so wordplay with a(n almost) complete name was a neat piece of misdirection.

By: Mike Laws

Mike Laws — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:16:08 +0000

Please forgive my blowing my own trumpet, but I wrote several “dipangrammatic” crosswords for The Times about ten years ago. The first elicited a comment on the letters page, and some, maybe all, have appeared in Times collections.

John Green teased me for tucking awkward letters away in unchecked positions, so I did one where at least one of the pair for each letter was in a checked position, thereby making the list of answers “tripangrammatic”.

Dac isn’t the first to do the same thing – one setter noticed one of these beasts in a Times book and contacted me about it when he did his own.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:44:20 +0000

Like John, I found it harder than usual for Dac, though, as always, excellent. Richard’s comment above may explain why! I’d not noticed it – not sure if I’ve ever seen a double pangram before.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:33:22 +0000

A most ingenious puzzle – every letter in the alphabet appears at least twice in the grid.