Comments on: Independent 6,990 by Morph

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:50:14 +0000

No time for a load of bull (sorry!) but I liked the clue for FRETTED. There’s a poem by Garcia Lorca which describes the guitar as weeping.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:02:41 +0000

“Node” was the only one I couldn’t get here, and I’m grateful for the explanation. This was a pretty good puzzle.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:11:34 +0000

I should have set out the SK more fully in the CALFSKIN explanation at 1, that’s what I had in mind – seek ends = first and last letters.

Thanks for NODE, that was very good.

By: Ali

Ali — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:11:15 +0000

Ah yes, lovely stuff!

By: Richard Heald

Richard Heald — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:57:00 +0000

22 Dn took me a while to figure out: ‘modest’ with NO DE = ‘most’. Great stuff!

By: Ali

Ali — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:33:22 +0000

Enjoyable as ever from Morph, but I struggled with a few here, largely as I stupidly entered BULIMIA at 16D. Loved the Beatles clue, but still don’t understand NODE?

By: Richard Heald

Richard Heald — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:18:19 +0000

‘Br.’ as an abbreviation for ‘bridge’ is in Chambers. And S & K are the two ends of ‘SeeK’.

I thought the theme here was very neat (someone had to say it!), and while I have one or two beefs (ditto) about the cluing, I thought much of it was inspired, particularly the Beatles-themed double def. for FRETTING. And it was good to see the namecheck for Cow and Chicken, easily the best show ever aired on the Cartoon Network!

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:01:55 +0000

I did not quite understand the anno for CALFSKIN from what is stated above. So I wrote down the clue and then the answer on a piece of paper and worked it out. I am now satisfied:

Hide and seek ends in discovery almost after stifled shout (8) CAL,F([S(ee)K]IN(d)

Hide – def
and – (connector)
seek ends – that is, ends or edges of ‘seek’ – SK
in – c/c ind.
discovery almost – FIN(d)
after – position ind.
stifled shout – CAL(l)

By: Simon Harris

Simon Harris — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:49:24 +0000

Good point, that does seem plausible in fact.

I’m still struggling a bit with CALFSKIN, but Niall’s explanation does seem to work, especially CAL[-l] and FIN[-d]. SK for “seek” would also be new to me, but I can believe it.

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:34:45 +0000

As for BR for “contract bridge”.
Suppose we take ‘contract’ as a verb meaning ‘shorten’, if we ‘contraact bridge’ we might get BR!