Comments on: Independent 7422/Raich

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:08:00 +0000

John.
I am in total agreement with you.
I was a big soccer fan as a lad,hence my spotting of the theme in this puzzle,but,for the reasons you give,I have become totally disillusioned with it.
Too much money,too many prima donnas.

By: John

John — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:41:10 +0000

Yes I agree about the ‘ugly head’. Pity, because it’s basically a very good game (which is why children play it and love it so much) but it’s ruined, at the top level anyway, by all the cheating that goes on, all the diving and shirt-tugging etc. Yet whenever this is pointed out you get people who say oh yes but this is the game of the masses and to criticise it from your lofty height is just being elitist. Rubbish. Golf and snooker don’t suffer in this way, and it’s no defence to say that there’s a lot of money involved, for there are big prizes in these two sports. I can’t see why there can’t be some sort of retrospective punishment for any cheat who is ever caught in a photograph. The newspapers are full of people tugging each other’s shirts. Why can’t they be punished for doing so?

No, Myrvin @2, I’m not a soccerite. I simply remember the game from my childhood.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:28:00 +0000

Thanks John.
I thought it was all over …but soccer rears it’s ugly head again!
A pretty good puzzle for which knowledge of soccer wasn’t necessary.Surprisingly,given my antipathy to the “sport”,I spotted the link quite early on.
HUNTBALL fitted in nicely and I particularly liked PUSSYFOOT and NASHVILLE.
Re.25 down COHEN – I think Raich missed a trick here,a better wording(IMHO) would have been “Canadian singer,he’s caught in a scam” as Leonard Cohen has recently had to come out of his retreat in a Zen centre and undertake a gruelling World tour,at the age of 75,to try to recoup some of the $5 million that he was (alledgedly) defrauded of by his manager.

By: flashling

flashling — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:55:41 +0000

Clever Raich, finished without spotting the 1966 link which makes it a fair one for the non footie folks. Suprised there wasn’t an extra ramsey nina but I realise how tricky these can be. (I have a house in Ipswich…)

By: Raich

Raich — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:58:14 +0000

Many thanks, John, for the blog and to everyone for their comments. It was indeed a very difficult grid to construct but the names lending themselves to the creation of clues without any reference to the occasion was a bonus, with Harold Wilson being PM at the time helping too. Raich remembers it all, having been (just) old enough to bet on an English World Cup win at 7/2 at the semifinal stage when four European teams were left. Good too, that 44 years on, 9 of the 11 are still with us (Bobby Moore and Alan Ball having passed on).

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:33:12 +0000

I was only nine at the time, and my parents’ wedding anniversary was 30th July, so the football took a back seat. Anyway, we’ve just won the world championship here in Spain, and I was getting used to a few weeks without football, basking in other people’s glory while avoiding the sun.

The point is, I totally missed the theme,so thanks, John, for pointing it out. It makes for a very much cleverer puzzle than I’d realised.

By: Bannsider

Bannsider — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:56:12 +0000

An American artist called Al Hirschfeld used to hide the name of his daughter Nina in his drawings. It comes, rather fittingly, from that.

By: Twiddlepin

Twiddlepin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:36:04 +0000

Thank you Kathryn’s Dad.
So why is it called a ‘nina’?

By: Simon Harris

Simon Harris — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:35:50 +0000

I thought this was jolly good – and not just because I know the setter will be reading! Spotted a general football theme but didn’t quite twig the 1966 connection, let alone the relevance of the date. It didn’t matter, as this was a very pleasing lunch hour solve.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:29:45 +0000

Testy at no 7: Eimi’s puzzle on the eve of this year’s competition which had a world cup theme did in fact have this completion message, if I remember well! And sadly for England, it was all over – very soon …