Comments on: Independent 7,653/Crosophile

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:15:38 +0000

Nobody I think has mentioned ANNUAL (23dn) whose definition seems to be ‘for a year’, or possibly ‘a year’. I thought ‘annual’ meant ‘every year’.

By: Crosophile

Crosophile — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:04:39 +0000

My (belated) thanks to Ali for the blog and for all the other generous comments.
And, yes, Galileo and yardarm were intended as semi-&lits and caretman@8 has got the intended parsing of off-peak exactly.

By: eimi

eimi — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:12:32 +0000

I’m afraid that Dac has asked for a bit of time off for good behaviour – he wishes to reduce his crossword commitments just a little, but he’ll still be here three weeks out of four and I think it’s rather serendipitous that Crosophile should have joined the team recently as he makes an excellent substitute for Mr Wednesday.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:38:37 +0000

I had the same thought as flashling about a Wednesday without Dac. Phi may sometimes get bumped from Friday but Dac from Wednesday? Or has Dac got a topical one for Friday maybe?

But to the crossword….

As with bamberger I had to cheat for 12a and then realised I had come across that usage before.

Not too happy with 24a, FOLD. One certainly hears a church congregation referred to as a flock, but a fold? Mind you, there is a biblical reference (John 10:16, AV) to ‘other sheep … not of this fold’, so I suppose it’s OK.

Some great cluing throughout, though. Difficult to pick favourites, but NAVIGATOR, JETSAM, UNDERSCORE and NOTIONS appealed to me.

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:44:25 +0000

Twas nice to get an easy one for this week, fell a bit foul on 18d going for OUT-?E?K for a few seconds but well under ten mins to solve including reading the footie reports. Odd I know the setter has done the sat mag crosswords but this seemed easy. Thanks Crosophile and Ali. Wot no DAC has the earth shifted on its axis?

By: caretman

caretman — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:54:56 +0000

Hi scchua @5. That’s a good point. I guess one could read the whole expression, “Not Home on the Range” as equivalent to “Off peak”, rather than splitting it into not home = off and the range = peak. That seems legitimate to me, so I withdraw my objection.

By: bamberger

bamberger — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:22:25 +0000

Close but no cigar. Solved all bar 12a . Listed every possibility I could think of for ?o?a but best I could come up with was iota on the fairly weak grounds and if you are tete a tete you are an iota apart. A welcome relief after the two previous days.

By: lenny

lenny — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:58:18 +0000

This was a pleasant and largely straightforward solve, with just a few seconds needed at the end to work out that a tete-a-tete must be a sofa. I particularly liked the clues to Hotspot and Underscore. Naturally, I wasted time trying to link the latter to 19D.
I was not very happy with the overlapping definitions and wordplay for Yardarm and Kestrel, what some commenter’s have rather charitably referred to as semi-&lits. I thought there was more overlapping in Navigator until I saw Ali’s parsing since I parsed it as Nav I Gator. I’m also not too keen on “capital to remain” to clue the letter R.

I agree with caretman’s point about a peak not being a range. I did consider the explanation given by scchua that Peak is clued by on the range but it doesn’t work for me.

Pedants’ corner: I think IR is usually clued these days as something like “former taxman” since the Inland Revenue no longer exists.

By: scchua

scchua — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:50:04 +0000

Hi caretman@3 and K’sD@4. I think 18D’s reading is okay. A “peak” is a subset of “range”, so “home on a/the peak” may still be construed as “home on the range”, if you see what I mean.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:22:04 +0000

You are probably right, caretman, about RANGE and PEAK, unless someone else can justify it. I think in such a good puzzle it can be forgiven, and living myself on the edge of the beautiful Peak District in Derbyshire I didn’t even give it a second thought.

I have just posted a comment on yesterday’s Anax blog about a spooky co-incidence.