Comments on: Independent 7,582 / Punk – Number-crunching

By: gnomethang

gnomethang — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:35:28 +0000

Late posting but did wish to say thanks to Punk for a thoroughly excellent puzzle. It looked completely intractable at first but turned out to be a well timed and very well balanced solve.
I will be checking the Indy crosswords more often after this one!.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 01:10:48 +0000

I had a friend called Nick Day. When he was in his heyday, we could do jokes.

By: scchua

scchua — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:11:26 +0000

Addendum: My #4 It should of course have been “heyday”.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:35:35 +0000

Thanks RatkojaRiku.
Brilliant puzzle,very cleverly clued.The long anagrams were very good,especially 11.A couple of unfamiliar words but quite solvable from the wordplay.
Unusual to see COGNOSCENTE in the singular.
Favourites for me 3 and 7 down.

By: dram

dram — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:29:10 +0000

I loved the unexpected definitions. A most enjoyable puzzle and many thanks Punk for the extra effort that the theme must have required.

Many thanks for the blog RatkojaRiku. I loved 3.

By: pennes

pennes — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:41:57 +0000

I went into a newsagent in London and asked for a biro, but the server did not understand what I wanted: maybe biro for ball point pen is disappearing, and it also seems to me that hoover for vacuum cleaner is also used less often.

By: flashling

flashling — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:30:27 +0000

Thanks both late replying tonight been busy. Loved it, as RatkojaRiku said I expected the numerals to be done like this, spotting was another manner. Got gadge without knowing the word from the subs. Now on to Phi…

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:37:11 +0000

Quite frankly, who can but weary of The Sun.

I thought this a jilly sooper puzzle, with an especially nice theme. Here Punk takes something that compilers do quite frequently (use numbers to represent parts of SI, answers to other clues etc) to a new and exciting limit.

This sort of behaviour has occurred at least once before, when he ‘commented’ (as Paul) on the bogglingly tedious war of dot dot dot clues that raged in The Anagruid. Excellent.

By: quodlibet

quodlibet — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:25:53 +0000

Enjoyed both puzzle and blog. AWEARY is not just archaic but specifically Shakespearean – when Macbeth hears that Birnam Wood has indeed come to Dunsinane, he says, among much else, that “I gin to be aweary of the sun.”

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:57:53 +0000

I too thought this was excellent with the varied treatments of the numbers especially and with very straightforward wordplay for the less familiar words. Whole idea executed very elegantly. My favourite clue was ENTERING. Great blog, RatkojaRiku, thanks.