Comments on: Private Eye/Cyclops 430 – Central skulduggery

By: sidey

sidey — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 03:27:56 +0000

It’s a bit of a recurring theme beer, as Harry works through the case he keeps altering his answers in puzzles (or possibly the same puzzle) in line with his findings. It always amused me as newsprint at the time resembled blotting paper making fountain pens almost unusable and even pencil difficult. I’m not sure it’s worth reading the book, your comments just brought back what is almost the only thing I remember from it.

By: John King

John King — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:54:54 +0000

Yes, a toughie this time. 7A, 10A and 16D were my sticking points.

As for CRACKLE and HISS I figured they were refering to the noises you get when playing vinyl records. Surely Beermagnet and Mr Beaver have been around long enough to remember?

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:31:23 +0000

Sidey, no I haven’t. Do tell all.
Or give us a page number to look up!

By: sidey

sidey — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:15:07 +0000

beermagnet, have you read Harry Palmer’s struggles with the Times crossword in The Ipcress File?

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:31:29 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Beermagnet. And the joke, very groan-worthy. But “should of got it earlier” ? Tut, very tut!
I had to give up on 7a and 3d, but didn’t find most of the rest too bad. ALGEBRA was my first – it leapt out at me, having a maths background.
CRACKLE was one of my last – I just couldn’t reconcile it with ‘hiss’, I still don’t like it.
I thought the topical 12a was rather neat, and for 5,22,18 I am ashamed to admit that I had to look up ‘frottage’ – though the answer was fairly clear once I had…