Comments on: Independent 7541 by Anax

By: flashling

flashling — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:27:59 +0000

Not much to add but a warm welcome to Abby & Fyveashe, nice to see new faces as it were, keep commenting – it makes us bloggers at least feel it’s worthwhile and I’m sure the setters too. I’ll head back to my sick bed now, the flu’s winning

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:01:41 +0000

Sen is a unit of money several places (used to be a fraction of a yen in Japan too, which is what I tried first). You don’t need to go to a “flower” to make it work,

By: Fyveashe

Fyveashe — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:08:44 +0000

The currency in 12 down is surely the Sen river in Cambodia! This was quite a tough puzzle and it took my 90 year old crossword genius mother to spot the currency reference so I can’t take the credit!

By: Abby

Abby — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:14:18 +0000

Considering that “jazz” is slang for ejaculation (think “jism”), “scat” doesn’t seem that odd. I also thought it was directly related to the phrase “talking shit”, though I’m not sure which came first.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:10:00 +0000

This was a tough one, but some very neat clueing. Didn’t get 18dn and even now can’t quite get it. OK, “rile” = “annoy” = “wind up”, but “wind up” to me suggests a deliberate act (as in “it’s a wind-up”) whereas “rile” is much more general. And “lines” as the definition of “profile” – well, I suppose it could be.

By: anax

anax — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:22:18 +0000

Hi folks

A late reply from me – band rehearsal tonight, only just got back. Many thanks for your kind comments and to Flashling for a super blog. Although the inclusion of SCAT wasn’t supposed to bolster any sort of theme, I do find it quite odd that the jazz world chose to adopt such a snigger-worthy word to describe one of its major vocal techniques; you sense they didn’t really think it through. As for me, -C-T wasn’t great to work with; I’d just used SCOT elsewhere and T-CUT would probably be too obscure for most. A couple of other notes:

Mick H – re 18d. Yes, my test solver couldn’t see that one for a very long time. Funny really; the wordplay is remarkably straightforward – the wordplay components just seem to bury themselves in the surface.

Scarpia – re 6a. I absolutely agree. It took ages to find a form of words that got the message across without being too abstruse, and after much head-scratching I was prepared to accept something that was somewhere in the middle ground.

By: scarpia

scarpia — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:04:10 +0000

Thanks flashling.
I agree this was easier than some Anax puzzles but still a very enjoyable solve.I liked the cd at1/8 but thought 16 across was a bit vague.
Thought 5 across was brilliant – concise and witty(using the good old English word,rather than that horrible Americanism “ass”).

By: Abby

Abby — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:47:30 +0000

Hey, I know this one. “Sen” is the foreign money, right? With ILL in it and GR+ACE after.

By: Mick H

Mick H — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:10:23 +0000

Yes, very good stuff, and I echo the praise for 5, which made me laugh. I found this easier than Anax can be, with several long CDs which opened things up if you got them quickly. Having said that, the wordplay at 18 down had me beat.

By: Gnomethang

Gnomethang — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:22:11 +0000

Thanks flashling and anax. I laughed my socks at 1/8 , put in 12d and 18d without much comprehension. Thought the whole thing was “excrement”!.