Comments on: Guardian 24656 / Brendan

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:36:59 +0000

Pumpkin: It’s not about having an advantage. mhl gave a good (and as it turns out correct) explanation of the clue and wasn’t “making 8ac too difficult”. I appreciate that not being able to check DISH while on the tube might mean not fully understanding a clue at the time—I fail to fully understand clues when solving puzzles all the time. But your comment was suggesting mhl might somehow be wrong. I was just trying to explain that because this is Brendan a device using ‘extra’ to mean some outside letters of a word just wouldn’t be used.

By: mhl

mhl — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:49:36 +0000

Pumpkin: perhaps I’m just very tired, but the idea of staging a picture of oneself on the tube with the crossword, Chambers, Collins and a puzzled expression doesn’t seem like such a bad one

By: Pumpkin

Pumpkin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:11:43 +0000

Colin: took ‘extra’ to be a pointer to extraneous and therefore the outside letters of demolish which fitted fine for me since I was on the tube on the way home and therefore not toting an edition of Chambers with me so didn’t have your advantage.

By: Harley26

Harley26 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:00:19 +0000

struggled with this one but liked a lot of the clues when I found out what they were.
9ac is just wrong, however. I don’t have a problem with getting a famous writer like O Henry but there’s no way that it’s one word.

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:38:25 +0000

Should be: Reusing collectively or extra isn’t good enough…

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:35:34 +0000

Pumpkin: the interpretation by mhl of 8ac is spot on. There is no indicator for the outside letters. Also, the letters, one from the front and three from the back would have to be indicated quite specifically. Reusing collectively isn't good enough---this is Brendan not Araucaria. Finally, I don't see why your interpretation fits the theme any more than mhl's. For those who enjoy Brendan it is worth checking out the Tuesday puzzle of the Independent. Every couple of weeks it is by Virgilius aka Brendan and is of the same high quality and with a strong theme. The puzzle is always at: Independent Cryptic but there is no archive so you will need to look in on a Tuesday. Having said that the Independent puzzle is always of a high quality and worth looking at every day.

By: Pumpkin

Pumpkin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:17:42 +0000

mhl & monica

Think you might be making 8ac too difficult. The outside (i.e. extra) letters of demolish are ‘dish’. Bit of an overlap of the surface but not too obscure and fits with the secondary theme of chicken chennai and mumbai duck does it not?

By: Chatmeister

Chatmeister — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:14:39 +0000

Off-topic comments relating to the works of O. Henry have been moved to General Chat where any further discussion on these should take place.

By: ray

ray — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:59:05 +0000

Found this a struggle, but got most by plodding on. FAiled on 6d where I was convinced the ‘one leg’='pinion’ in the middle.

By: smutchin

smutchin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:43:16 +0000

Derek – your earlier complaint was about “esoteric literary stuff”. I’m not making that up or twisting your words – it’s a direct and accurate quote. You didn’t mention the enumeration error as being the cause of your difficulty until your later post, though others did mention it and I agreed with them that it was a valid complaint while still finding it a good clue otherwise.

To quote you again, this time from your later post: “that clue was NOT gettable.” I disagree. That’s all. Not a big deal.