Comments on: Independent 7786/Anax

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 11:35:06 +0000

Started and finished this crossword only this morning during my wake-up procedure.
Oh, those were the days. It seems already such a long time ago when we had this rivalry (was it?) between two bands, not seen since the Beatles & the Stones. Never really liked Oasis (mainly due to their extremely dull vocals) and had a preference for the band of Damon Albarn who on Blur’s 1995 album “The Great Escape” was in a cryptic mood as one of the tracks was an anagram of his name (“Dan Abnormal”). This album also contained the track “Country House” which was cleverly used in 14d (BELORUSSIA).

And so we come to the real strength of this crossword. The variety in which Anax uses the names of both bands. I thought that was brilliant.

Belated thanks, John, for your blog.
I was part of apparently a minority that was perfectly happy with LOU (16ac). Never thought of ‘Lew’ anyway, but isn’t a crossword called a crossword because cross-checking is part of the solving process? But yes, I know, some have other opinions on that ['every clue should be (uniquely) solvable as a stand-alone clue'].
And the other short one EVE (21ac) ‘on the edge of acceptibility’? Reading it as: “She” (definition) that the word “Never” stops ["She" is stopped by "Never"], I can’t see a problem here either.

Great stuff!

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:11:49 +0000

Very slow going, but got there in the end with lots of help and without understanding some of the clues (17d in particular). It finally fell into place when I spotted the nina to give me some ‘missing’ letters.
Favourites? VOUCH FOR and ESCAPEMENT.

By: Quixote

Quixote — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:24:49 +0000

Clever stuff, which I enjoyed, and about time we had another pop theme. It’s been a couple of days.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:25:46 +0000

Thanks Anax @14. I should add that you did most of the hard work in constructing the clue and Gaufrid and others the rest of the hard work in solving it. I just did the easy bit of spotting that things were not quite right in the way Gaufrid had put it together.

By: anax

anax — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:18:24 +0000

Yes, Pelham, your interpretation is the one that was intended – ‘complete upheaval’ as the def. It took a few attempts to make the OASIS wordplay fair!

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:11:23 +0000

I am poking my nose in here not having solved the puzzle, but I have to raise a slight question about Gaufrid's explanation (@1) of 17dn. I could accept "complete upheaval" as a definition for ALL CHANGE or pretty feeble wordplay, and I can accept "Oasis split" as perfectly sound wordplay, but I can not accept it as a definition. In other words, I am perfectly happy with the clue, but suggest that you (Gaufrid) have the definition and wordplay the wrong way round in your explanation. Anax, if you are still reading this, could you enlighten us as to your intention in this clue?

By: scchua

scchua — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:09:12 +0000

Thanks for responding anax. I had forgotten to mention the other sense of “continue” = “(still) operative” = “it works!”

By: anax

anax — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:59:54 +0000

Hi Scchua
I suppose I might have risked it that way, but I’d be expecting Eimi to ask for a change. For “I go on at 8pm” the direct substitution (in my mind anyway) would be “start work” not just “work”. I’m not saying your example is wrong, only that I’d expect to be told it was too loose to be really fair/gettable.

By: scchua

scchua — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:45:26 +0000

Hi anax – how about “i go on at 8 pm at the plant”?

By: anax

anax — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:28:26 +0000

Hi all
Many thanks to John for the blog and for your kind responses.
Re 16a, have to confess LEW hadn’t occurred to me, although Eileen’s suggested pronunciation is fairly close to mine (not based on how I’ve heard, more on how I imagine it to be pronounced properly). Thankfully there was a cross-checked available to confirm the right one.
I wouldn’t have defined GO ON as ‘work’; for me it means to continue. Whatever.
Hope you all had fun!