Comments on: Independent on Sunday 1,092 by Quixote

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:38:45 +0000

Thanks Simon.
Another very good puzzle from Quixote.Particularly liked the anagram at 15 across,which BTW needs an O(love).Also thought the clue for LINGAM was very clever.
1 across is o.k.as,like you say,a potential homphone.I don’t like that pronunciation but it is often used and is given in dictionaries.
I think rodders comment was surely ironic.

By: flashling

flashling — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:21:40 +0000

@rodders #9 perhaps you should see some of Paul’s in the Grauniad. Sensitive souls should look away now!

By: rodders

rodders — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:11:50 +0000

Not that happy with 24a – Pee’s reversed is a bit coarse for this newspaper !

By: flashling

flashling — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:08:52 +0000

Thanks Quixote – I only started doing cryptics in 1990 which might explain why I don’t remember you. I do remember Duck in the magazine with an impossible puzzle ot two though.

By: NealH

NealH — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:42:41 +0000

I did mean to say Lingam = “the Hindu phallic image of the god Siva” there, of course.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:58:40 +0000

LINGAM I got it eventually from the wordplay which was tricky. It was my last answer. Had not heard the word before so it was pleasing to verify it and find I was correct.

By: NealH

NealH — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:54:20 +0000

Glam = “the Hindu phallic image of the god Siva” i.e. a Hindu symbol. The other bit is just that glam is gam with the letter l in it i.e. l in gam. A nice clue, but I must admit to having to do a word search to get it because I didn’t know the word.

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:31:46 +0000

Thanks Simon and Quixote.

As you say, a pleasant puzzle. The only one I couldn’t parse, and still don’t get, is ‘lingam’. I assume you’re right in suggesting that this is a sort of ‘backward’ clue, but Wiki gives ‘gam’ as slang for ‘leg’, which I can quite see, while a ‘lingam’ supposedly represents a phallus, so there’s perhaps some little thing missing for it to be a brilliant clue?

By: Noddy

Noddy — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:20:50 +0000

A pleasant Sunday puzzle.

By: Quixote

Quixote — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 11:49:22 +0000

Thanks for the blog and appreciative comments. In answer to last week’s query about my history on the daily: I have set 127 daily cryptics for The Independent, the first being No 129 on 9 March 1987 and the latest being No 1021 on 20 January 1990. I have set all 1093 of the Independent on Sunday puzzles so far, beginning on 28 January 1990, and have counted them. The number attached to my puzzles is correct, unlike the issue number at the front of the paper which lags two behind (a fact pointed out to the paper but alas ignored).