Comments on: Independent 7717 by Quixote

By: caretman

caretman — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:56 +0000

Re: lenny @8, I can’t pull up yesterday’s puzzle, but my recollection was that when I parsed 10ac, I thought I needed to use the first two words as the definition, and with that could convince myself that it could clue an adjective. Does that work?

By: ele

ele — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 21:52:45 +0000

Nice start to the week so thanks Quixote and thanks to MSindy for the blog. Failed on Ixion (got hung up on Idi for a president) and 1d, where I got sidetracked into Pitchers as there is a sense of pitched up meaning ended up, although I knew it couldn’t be right.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:42:46 +0000

Good timing – Blether (20d) was familiar to me because featured in an anecdote in yesterday’s Observer:

[Karl] Miller phones the poet to report that he has found “a mistake” in his tribute to Hugh MacDiarmid, “An Invocation”, which was due to run in a forthcoming number of the London Review of Books. Apparently Heaney had referred to MacDiarmid’s “chattering genius”. The reproof to his old friend runs thus: “That’s wrong. I’m from Scotland myself, Seamus. I’m from Scotland. And I can tell you that Scottish sheep don’t chatter – they blether. Surely you mean MacDiarmid’s ‘blethering genius’?”

Apparently Seamus Heaney accepted the correction and altered the line! Karl Miller sounds like a tremendous character.

By: lenny

lenny — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:41:49 +0000

There were some hairy moments but it all clicked into place in the end. I had the Potshard/Postsherd dilemma at 1. I tried to squeeze Reagan into 2. Like Flashling and Simon, I considered Droten and Croton but went for Croton as the more likely plant. Slightly disagreeing with Simon, in my experience, obscure definition combined with ambiguous wordplay is a Quixotic trait.

If Victory’s is being used adjectivally, I think it is a bit feeble. While solving I guessed that Triumphal was being used as a noun in the Miltonian sense

By: Simon Harris

Simon Harris — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:14:18 +0000

Same here flashling – it could have been either (or indeed anything else, as SEN was hardly a gimme), and it’s rare to see such ambiguities in a Quixote puzzle, I think.

By: walruss

walruss — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:09:31 +0000

I agree on both counts! Some very unusual words, which was a pity, and some good clues, which was rather nice. MOMENT OF INERTIA I’d simpley never heard of, while the ARMED FORCES was good. A bit of half and half today, I think.

By: flashling

flashling — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:59:09 +0000

struggled with this for some reason – didn’t know if 27ac was croton or droten not heard of either. At least it wasn’t Anax today.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:10:54 +0000

After ending up punch-drunk from Anax’s puzzle last Monday, this was back into the more gentle arms of Quixote today. Good puzzle. I always enjoy getting a word I didn’t know from the wordplay and then checking afterwards to find it was correct: that happened today with IXIOM, COMPEER and CROTON.

MOMENT OF INERTIA was good too.

Thanks for blogging, nms.

By: Cumbrian

Cumbrian — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:53:30 +0000

Very enjoyable, with three words that were new to me but all available – compeer, Ixion (I had a mental block on former Presidents for a while!) and potsherd. Unfortunately I was familiar with potshard so confidently put that in, only to be somewhat stumped in fitting it to the clue. Thanks, then, for the blog that put me straight and to Quixote for an enjoyable puzzle; my favourite was “moment of inertia”, for no particular reason other than its groan rating.

By: NealH

NealH — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:52:39 +0000

Very easy apart from 1 down where I got a bit hung up on end up being tip reversed, which seemed to fit with it being something like pitcher.