Comments on: Independent 7,534/Dac

By: flashling

flashling — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:00:09 +0000

Thank you Eimi for that, I’m sure many indy solvers will be very grateful without realising that. I certainly will.

By: eimi

eimi — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:44:10 +0000

The commuter-friendly position will stay, I’m pleased to say, from Tuesday to Friday at least. There are now two fonts, an emboldened sanserif font for the numbers and a serif font for the clues, which makes my job a lot more fiddly, but improves the legibility, I think.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:28:11 +0000

Pennes @ #6
Re 11dn, I’m open to correction, but I believe it’s fairly common in NE England to refer to a river as a water, hence Tyne Water, Tees Water, etc. Probably influenced by Scots. But I don’t think everyone can be expected to know that. As it happened I got EMPTY NESTER from the definition and crossing letters, so didn’t look very closely at the wordplay.

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:41:29 +0000

The crossword was in the commuter friendly position today, but how much control Eimi has on that is dubious, but long may it continue. Despite my ex-wife being a typographer I didn’t notice the font change though.

Bah, job ends at christmas so if anyone out there needs an SCCM expert please let me know.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:19:31 +0000

I sometimes do the paper version and noticed today that the font of the text (but I don’t think the numbers) in the clues has changed, something like Times New Roman when it used to be perhaps Arial. Is this an improvement?

By: pennes

pennes — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:59:29 +0000

I thought this rather hard compared to some of Dac’s puzzles: from water to Tyne seemed a long jump and fret did not leap to my mind: not implying that any of the cluing is dodgy though and some first class surface readings.

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:56:04 +0000

Cor, it’s a bit of a tumbleweed moment in here. Come on, give Ali something to think it’s worthwhile!

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:58:16 +0000

Re 1d I went for STATE rather than stage, found this tricky is SE corner and gave up looking for the reason why CORSAIR so thanks Ali.

Re 1a I’m actually in Sandwich right now.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:33:03 +0000

Super puzzle even by Dac’s standards. COITION, GALLEON, NOTABLE … and keep going if you like. Don’t get me started about surfaces otherwise I’ll come across as a big fan (which of course I am).

Always thought CORSAIR was the pirate but I now find it can also be the boat; WHINCHAT I got from a couple of crossing letters because I like birds, and then was reminded of Ernie Wise and ‘the plays what I wrote’. SMOGGY wasn’t half bad either. If I have a quibble, it’s that there are lots of top linguists, not all of them translators, but no doubt this will be me missing something.

Thank you Ali and Dac.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:27:50 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Ali. Even by Dac’s exalted standards, there were some really great clues here eg SANDWICH BOARD, CARTOONIST, COME UPON, SMOGGY, TRANSLATOR, COITION, ADJOURN. Seemed quite easy to start with, but then got much trickier with some very well-cloaked definitions.