Comments on: Independent 7650 / Nimrod – Saturday Prize Puzzle 23 April 2011

By: scchua

scchua — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:40:35 +0000

Thanks Duncan for the blog and Nimrod for an enjoyable puzzle. Quite a rare animal, a Nimrod I could complete in one sitting, though by no means a pushover. Cracking the theme came with 12D BRIDGET JONES.

Favourites were 17D MONEYPENNY, last one in, had the answer but took a few minutes to see M-One, 16A I-BEAM and 19A SKIER, 2 examples that they need not be long to be entertaining.

Btw There was a series of books and short stories called The Moneypenny Diaries, as a spin-off from the James Bond books, and I think that’s what the clue to 17D was referring to.

By: jmac

jmac — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:14:13 +0000

Thanks for the blog Duncan. So many clues fell on the first parse that I had to double check that this really was a Nimrod. Good to know he can do medium/easy as well as tough. What hadn’t changed was the accuracy and inventiveness of the cluing. A very enjoyable solve.

By: flashling

flashling — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 11:47:21 +0000

I normally struggle quite badly with Nimrod, but not with this one which fell in less than a pint.

Thanks Duncan for the blog and Nimrod for a quite pleasant solve.

By: Polly

Polly — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:31:44 +0000

This was a joy to do: it completely restored my faith in Nimrod after some recent struggles. I had filled in a number of the answers and realized that 9 down belonged to the genus writer before the lightbulb moment gave me the species diarist. I was intrigued to learn along the way that Star Trek’s Kirk was named in homage to our own Captain Cook, one of whose journal entries contained the statement ‘ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me’ – rather more elegant, if less memorable, than ‘to boldly go’.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:06:35 +0000

Thanks, Nimrod and Duncanshiell.
One of those puzzles where the theme ‘emerges’ and you can’t think afterwards where the ‘eureka moment’ came. May have been BRIDGET JONES in this case – ‘suspiciously’ was a great anagrind.
RAT PACK was my first to go in, from the Hamelin reference, but I had to google it to check the ol’ blue eyes reference – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Pack
Despite being familiar with the NATO alphabet (widely used in more spheres than simply radio communication) it still doesn’t always register when it turns up in crossword clues until I’ve got the answer and think ‘of course’, as here in 29a.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:26:28 +0000

I thought it may be EF (letter # = number 6) ie 6th in the alphabet on RANK (line) after A NN. Easier than some Nimrod puzzles, but maybe I was lucky to get DIARIST straight away. Fairly easy clues for the unfamiliar (to me in some cases) names made them easy to work out and verify after. Thanks, Nimrod and Duncan.

By: caretman

caretman — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:00:05 +0000

Thanks, Duncanshiell, and to Nimrod for a challenging puzzle. It took me the longest time to get the theme word which didn’t fall until I got 12 dn. Most of the diarists were unfamiliar to me, but as you say they were solvable from the clues and I spent some quality time reading up on them as I worked them out. I was similarly stumped by the E in 28 ac and couldn’t find any better solution than the one you came up with. But if that was what was intended, what’s to stop a future setter from writing a clue “Reading letters (8)”? But other than that, it was a very enjoyable puzzle. I really liked 8 ac and the wordplay in 17 dn.