Comments on: Independent 7495 (Sat 23-Oct) Nestor

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:56:25 +0000

Thanks for the extra bits and corrections everybody.

Richard, I should’ve seen that NE swap inside YEARNED. What a good device.
You’re right about INNOCENT rather than INNOVATE though I correctly typed in ‘ingenuous’ from the puzzle I was thinking ‘ingenious’.
As for Turner & Hooch, I have obviously done the best thing (thanks jmac) and forgotten it.

Allan, I wondered about NINE-FOOT too. I don’t think it has any particular significance except as a length, and actually though it was a bit of a cop-out – that was before I saw the Nina so I suspect it was chosen to support that.

I didn’t see that Nina till much, much later when I spotted PARANOID on the bottom row. Only after googling PARANOID + DANSETTE did I spot the JUNIOR lurking in there.

UY: There was no preamble on the paper crossword to indicate a Nina and also we rarely get them from Nestor so that was a bit of a surprise. Probably see you at the Guardian event Nov 30th. I was quick fingered enough to get a ticket and I thought I saw you comment that you’d be there too.

By: Uncle Yap

Uncle Yap — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:06:56 +0000

I found this hard (more than an hour) and had to come here to see the Nina which, I fear, is lost to 99% of solvers unless they come here. Is there any legend in the original puzzle to indicate such a hidden gem? (I ask because I get this puzzle one week late on-line and there’s no indication)

Surely, after having spend so much time and effort to squeeze the Nina in, Nestor would love for his Nina to be discovered to the accompaniment of smiles and “What a clever dickie he is”

Beermagnet, good blog. Maybe we will get to share another pint during my imminent visit to Blighty

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:32:38 +0000

Thanks for the blog, beermagnet, and Nestor for the puzzle which was very inventive. Seeing the Nina (tho I too had no idea what it referred to) helped me finish.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:07:34 +0000

Thanks, jmac. I obviously am a bit thick this morning!

By: jmac

jmac — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 10:51:33 +0000

Allan, I think it stands for anagram indicator.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 10:47:41 +0000

For ‘gte rails’ read ‘the rails’ (typing fingers in a twist!)

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 10:46:15 +0000

Thanks for the blog, beermagnet. But I think I must be a bit thick this morning; could you explain what ‘AInd’ stands for? If I have seen it explained previously I’ve forgotten it.

Does anyone know if NINE-FOOT has any special meaning? In railway parlance one encounters ‘four-foot’ (the space between gte rails, actually 4’8½” in standard gauge), ‘six-foot’ (nominally the space between two adjacent tracks) and ‘ten-foot’ (a wider space between pairs of tracks).

By: jmac

jmac — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 09:03:28 +0000

Hi Beermagnet, thanks for the blog. I also found this quite a bit tougher than I had been expecting. I thought EHRLICH was a bit obscure although the crossing letters helped a lot; Also, ARUP is not normally on the tip of my tongue, and TURNER and Hooch is a film probably best forgotten. There were, however lots of great clues, with humour, to keep me going – TEA SERVICE, UNPREVENTED, and TONI (where the nina helped) were my favoutites.

By: Richard Heald

Richard Heald — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 05:47:11 +0000

10 Ac is YEARNED with the N and E switched.

In 18 Dn, I think the “semi-ingenuous” bit is INNO[cent].

20 Dn is a DD, the first two words referring to the film Turner & Hooch about a cop whose partner is a dog, made at a time in the late ’80s when “mismatched-buddy” movies were popular and Tom Hanks’s career trajectory was still running roughly parallel to Steve Guttenberg’s!