Comments on: Independent 7620 by Nimrod – Saturday Prize Puzzle 19 March 2011

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 09:47:13 +0000

Collins has among its defs for OUNCE (not OZ, which – obviously – is the shortened form) ‘a small portion or amount’, which explains it pretty well. THO’ & THO are given as variant spellings, so that bit seems okay too.

I’m sure we’d love to have got the b*s&a$d on that one, but not really possible.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:01:37 +0000

Thanks Duncan for your clear and informative blog.
I really liked this puzzle,though it was very tough,as you would expect from Nimrod.
I managed to complete but couldn’t parse 1 across,which I only got from a word search.Tried many ways including THO(usand) for small number or Z for zero but none would quite work.Your reading does work but I don’t think it is a great way of cluing an uncommon (Greek)word.
ABBATTOIR,I thought was fine.Like you say ‘having taken off’ denotes being in the air,so really just an insertion indicator.

By: flashling

flashling — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:28:49 +0000

Well I was well beat by this, perhaps it’s just a general fear of seeing Nimrod and giving up. I just don’t get his mindset it appears. Thanks Duncan. /Flash

By: scchua

scchua — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:52:54 +0000

Thanks Duncan for your usual complete blog, and Nimrod for the puzzle.

Some really devious clueing here, and could only complete up to last two: 1A ANTHOZOA: no way this non-biologist, despite knowing it’s a biological class could come up with it (would have been different if it was “arthropod”), let alone fathom the parsing, and 18D SEWING: completely misdirected into which end of the clue was the definition, though I must say I found SE=”London” or even SE WING=”London side” a bit unsatisfactory. The only parsing I couldn’t get from the answers was ABATTOIR, so thanks.

Favourites were 21A NERVE CELL, 4D OVER THE COUNTER and 7D TEETOTAL.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:58:49 +0000

This was very hard, and there were some particularly good clues, I thought, eg STOPWATCH, BOOST (agree it’s BOOS Team-talk, with an &lit type definition ie the whole clue), HABIT-FORMING, OVERWRITTEN, OVER-THE-COUNTER, TEETOTAL, DYESTUFF, SEWING and PLANET. Thanks Nimrod and Duncan.

By: ele

ele — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:20:48 +0000

Found this really difficult to get finished and picked at it all week – last answer 1ac only went in at midnight last night in desperation, as although I happened to be familiar with the word couldn’t at all see how it worked out. So many thanks Duncan for working that one out. I think oz is a little unfair for ‘a small number’ but otherwise the clues seemed very fair – once you’d got them. Thanks to Nimrod.

By: jmac

jmac — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:13:33 +0000

Thanks for the great blog Duncan. As you say, the difficulty with this puzzle was in the parsing rather than the solving – the long answers filled the grid and there were several easy clues around the perimeter. I think that in BOOST the “primary” just refers to the letter T rather than the definition. Loved WHOOPEE CUSHION, TEETOTAL, and OVER THE COUNTER. Thought the parsing of 14 ac. was maybe a bit too clever by half but the only clue that I have any real issue with is 1 across where the answer (for me) was quite obscure and the parsing is quite opaque. Thanks Nimrod for a super puzzle.