Comments on: Independent 7,449 by Radian

By: TokyoColin

TokyoColin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:11:19 +0000

Thank you Eileen @10. That would have made all the difference at solving time. Often I can deduce the theme in reverse late in the day, but I could not connect Sole, Forties, Trafalgar, Cromarty etc. without at least a smidgin of knowledge of British coastal waters. I will be better prepared next time. (And I realise now that the square is probably named after the battle which was presumably fought in those waters.)

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:45:38 +0000

Unusually for me, having got 1a, I guessed there was a theme and what it was straight away. A quick check on wiki for a list of ‘ones’ and I was well away. Not sure about the enumeration of 14a, though, I would have thought it should be (1,1,7).

Wil, Acre (or Akka) is in northern Israel – hence ‘Aleph’, 1st letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:15:01 +0000

Good crossword. Quite apart from the rather nice theme, I especially liked 11ac.

But I wasn’t comfortable with the would-be &lit. at 9dn: to say that an air-con is a source of cooling in a club seems very tenuous to me. And in 3dn ‘Acre’s foremost’ is A, not aleph, or am I missing something? OK Acre is in the Middle East but I suspect it might be called something else there, so its first letter might not be A.

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:52:03 +0000

i’m due to do the expected Dac tomorrow, a busy day at work likely so may well mean a late posting. It’ll be coming eventually I won’t have forgotten.

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:05:44 +0000

Struggled to get going, didn’t see 1a straight off but as others already said realised the watery theme. I don’t do the sea forecasts so I didn’t get the help there. Memories of circa ten years ago of a giant auricaria crossword, where he not only had the sea areas but also roughly in the right physical place in the grid if that makes sense or so my late sea-faring father-in-law said. An Dhow to keep the watery theme going!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:20:06 +0000

…. and Stella (#9), I forgot an R too!
What I meant to say about TRAFALGAR was:
TAR [sailor] around [has] (R [run] + (A FLAG)*)
[with 'up' the misdirecting anagrind]),
so still slightly different from your parsing.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:54:35 +0000

beermagnet, you’ve blogged too many Cyclopses, I think.

Stella, we’ve just won 3-1 but the game’s in the headlines for all the wrong reasons …

Tokyocolin, there’s a great deal I don’t understand about my own country too, so don’t feel excluded.

Forties, mid-life crisis, increasing, severe later … let’s not get started.

By: sidey

sidey — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:13:32 +0000

Enjoyed this, well constructed grid.

I’ve always wondered how many Radio 4 listeners could recite the areas without actually understanding what the bits in between were about.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:08:40 +0000

Hi Tokyocolin

This might help!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/shipping/

By: Stella

Stella — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:06:30 +0000

I realised what ‘one’ must refer to when I entered in ‘SE Iceland’, but, not receiving British shipping forecasts here in Spain, I resorted to Wiki, with the help of which I got half the crossword in no time

Thanks for the blog, Simon, but I think you have a typo in 7d, as you are short of an ‘r’

I read it as T(R)AR around *A FLAG

Hi K’S D. When you mention the Test Matches, could you add a little something to keep me posted on how they’re going?