Comments on: Independent on Sunday 1118: Crosophile

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:19:08 +0000

Many thanks for the puzzle, Crosophile, which had some excellent clues. Thanks for the blog, Jetdoc, and good to see that the anniversary (best wishes to you both once again!) coincided with some pretty special cricket which I know is a big interest of yours and indeed something I follow also. Thanks, too, Crosophile, for explaining the theme to us, tho it was not necessary to see this to solve the puzzle.

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:18:47 +0000

Thanks for explaining the nina, Crosophile!

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:36:29 +0000

Thanks, Crosophile. Happy birthday for last Saturday.

By: Crosophile

Crosophile — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:34:49 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Jetdoc (glad you enjoyed the cricket) and congrats on the anniversary (coincidentally my 60th birthday!) and thanks for the comments. And sorry everyone for the mystifying nina.
I took Sasha (or Sacha, I see) from the appendix to Chambers as a Russian diminutive of Alexandra (rather than the alternative Alexander).
As for my ‘assumption’ that assumption was the same as ascension, my apologies for getting this wrong. I hadn’t realised the distinction and have probably now blown my last slim chance of making it to heaven!
As for the nina, I hadn’t really expected this to be noticed, not anticipating the astuteness of such as Wanderer. I’d recently discovered that a contemporary of mine from schooldays was in a band called LIVES (24d) OF ANGELS and that they had an album called ELEVATOR TO EDEN with tracks that included IMPERIAL MOTORS and ASCENSION and I thought it would be fun to work a puzzle around all this. My apologies for any bafflement caused! The stairway to heaven link is ingenious and not deliberate on my part though I now wish I’d thought of it.

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:46:40 +0000

Thanks, Eileen. It has been a tiring, but fun, few days.

Crosophile definitely needs to enlighten us.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:41:45 +0000

Thanks for the blog, jetdoc – and Happy Anniversary to you and John!

I was looking forward to the blog, to see what you made of Mary’s ‘Ascension’, which mystified me, too, as. on the face of it, it’s wrong. But the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ just makes it, as you say, curiouser and curiouser. [It almost goes without saying that I missed the nina. ]

As Wanderer says, help, please, Crosophile!

21dn was definitely my favourite clue!

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:29:59 +0000

Thanks for replying, jetdoc, and I am glad you had a great day at Lord’s. I am jealous!

I have my doubts about elevator=stairway; but still, in the row starting at 25a (BRIOCHE NOVELLA) we have the elements which make up both HEAVEN and HELL. Which may or may not be relevant.

Back to SASHA — I am aware, of course, that it is a girl’s name in many places. In fact one B. Obama of Washington DC has a daughter by that name. But it is the designation of “Russian girl” that makes me suspect a blip.

Crosophile please come to the rescue!

By: jetdoc

jetdoc — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:58:36 +0000

In my haste, I didn’t spot the nina. I can’t find any other components in the unches. I have just googled ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and I see it was released on 8 November 1971, so that doesn’t shed any light on it. Curiouser and curiouser…

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:04:20 +0000

Thanks jetdoc for the blog, and to crosophile for the puzzle.

There are still things going on here which I don’t understand. Hidden in the across rows of the completed grid is a nina which reads “Elevator… to Eden… of Angels”. I scratched my head wondering what this might mean, and came up with “Stairway to Heaven”. But then nothing else came. Stair is there in 1a, and I wondered if the Mary/Ascension clue might have something to do with it. Would be v grateful if someone can put me out of my misery!

One comment on 6a, SASHA: I was lucky enough to live and work in Moscow and other parts of the former Soviet Union for many years in the 1990s and 2000s. I had a lot of friends, colleagues, acquaintances etc called Sasha — it is a very common name — and they were all male! Sasha is the diminutive form of Alexander and is a boy’s name.