Comments on: Financial Times 13666 Neo

By: scchua

scchua — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:32:27 +0000

Thanks Neo, for dropping by. Points noted. Hope to blog another of yours soon.

By: Neo

Neo — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:42:11 +0000

Thanks to Scchua for his excellent bloggery, and to contributors for their extremely kind remarks.

To exercise some pickery, MAGUS is ‘Mother Goose at first’ for the MA/ G, ‘seen by’ the US: the HAGRIDDEN 2d is (a) ‘As a broomstick may be’ (cos broomsticks are said to be used as air transport by witches) and (b) ‘misused by women’ which (homophone unintended) is the (facetious) second meaning cited in Collins. Or is the whole thing a cd&d? I give up.

Cheers!

By: Lenny

Lenny — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:59:57 +0000

I whizzed through this. I enjoyed Elfland, Hagridden and Vikram but I thought other clues were a bit iffy. However, on reading Scchua’s blog, I realise that the fault was all mine. Berg, Affixing and Balderdash were all quite brilliant, I just had not bothered to parse them properly. Thanks Scchua and apologies to Neo.

By: bamberger

bamberger — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:52:56 +0000

Got all except the SW out though needed a solver for 6d -even with yah?e? I couldn’t get it and I’ve never come across it before.
17a I guessed was a composer but the only 4 letter composer I could think of was bach and that didn’t fit. Doesn’t appear that Berg was particulary famous .
Defeated by 18d -good clue, 21d I kept thinking of swami , sahib but never hit on the right answer and 22a where the word play was too tough for me.

Thanks for the blog

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:08:52 +0000

Many thanks Scchua this was very enjoyable.

I am now looking forward to another Neo, please!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:54:31 +0000

A sunny puzzle to start this sunny day with!
Surprisingly ‘undemanding’ (in my perception, that is, I haste to say), but very well written.

My highlights were the use of ‘Mother Goose’ in 3d, a technique very often used by Alberich and right up my street (nowadays), and the inventive 17ac (BERG), where I knew it had to be that composer but kept on asking myself why.

Thanks scchua for a great blog that, in this form, is useful for Quiptic fans too.

By: shuchi

shuchi — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:26:05 +0000

Thanks scchua. I fell into the verb trap at 20d and enjoyed it when the penny dropped. 21d was a pleasant surprise – I have never seen that Indian name in a crossword before. There was lots more to like – the creative wordplay of 11a, the modern technology reference of 23a, the reminder of Blake’s poem in 4d, to mention some high points. Really good puzzle, thanks Neo.

By: walruss

walruss — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:14:07 +0000

Very thorough blog scchua, very well put together. You hasve typo with EURIPEDES, which must be old Greek worms I guess? Perhaps not a theme here, but some tantalising effects created by Neo. Maybe the ‘vehicle powered by green source’ is synonymos with A GAS CAR? Many thanks.