Comments on: Independent 7,894 / Nestor

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:22:38 +0000

K’s D, I’m with you to some extent about 12a – I’m not ashamed to say I have never watched the X-factor.

Bertandjoyce, your pun re 8d has not gone unnoticed. But maybe “the miserable witticism was very properly ignored” – that’s a quotation; can anyone identify author and work? No prizes, of course. (Hint: the author’s work came out of copyright last year.)

By: Quixote

Quixote — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:47:43 +0000

Difficult, enjoyable, and thoroughly Ximenean! Shows it can be done!

By: NealH

NealH — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:45:46 +0000

I think 3 down has to be a full &lit because otherwise there is no definition anywhere.

By: NealH

NealH — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:41:55 +0000

Having been robbed of my chance to have a go at this at lunch time, I didn’t quite manage to finish this evening. I got a bit too tired and resorted to wordsearches to get exoduses and derriere. The problem was that by then I’d got evolutes and retrieve in my head as possible answers and, once I’ve got a different word stuck in my head, it’s very difficult to get rid of it. There were a lot of nice clues, but I do think nuisance was stretching homophones too far – I thought it was meant to be “new sense”, which didn’t quite work. Giving it an “I” sound in the second part would never have occurred to me.

By: flashling

flashling — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:22:16 +0000

Actually B&J I had a nagging suspicion I’ve seen tinned used like this a few years ago but then there’s nothing new under the sun. Had to give myself a break from this and went and got an “i” and was rewarded with a solvable but very pleasant Dac before returning.

Feel a bit sorry for RR getting another very difficult Nestor so soon after the last. OK I missed the subs bit to PIT and thought AMMO was a good clever ‘un. Thanks RR and Nestor, the Thursday tricky lived up to the name excellently.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:34:49 +0000

KD you really must get a life! We failed to complete all of this on the train this morning. Completely fooled by derriere but obvious when you know it’s the answer. Thought of all the parts but then decided that it had to mean cash in one’s chips instead. If we’d had wi-fi we may have realised that we were a little bit behind in sorting it out.
Really liked Shaken – i have a feeling that there was something like it a while ago but Bert disagrees with me.
Surface reading was good and another great Thursday solve.
Thanks RR and Nestor.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:39:05 +0000

Thanks, RatkojaRiku, and Nestor. I agree that it was very difficult and very inventive, but I understood everything in the end, apart, I’ll have to admit, from PIT tho my guess was correct based on the clue. As I had never heard of PINGU, I was glad of the very easy clue.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:44:05 +0000

Many thanks, RatkojaRiku, for a welcome blog. Pleased to finish this one, because I usually find Nestor hard.

Enough gettable ones for me to get a start today, and I enjoyed getting it all out in the end. Reference to an X-Factor judge? The Indy will be getting a reputation for using contemporary references soon. SHAKEN is outrageous (but I liked it); NUISANCE is also outrageous (and I didn’t much like it, but let’s not have a homophone debate).

PINGU is awesome, by the way, mainly for the language he speaks, which I think is called Pinguese. His little sister PINGA is also seriously cute.

By: Miche Doherty

Miche Doherty — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:24:01 +0000

Thanks, RatkojaRiku.

26d puzzled me. I got the double definition of PIT as fruit-stone and quarry, but couldn’t see where Portland came in. I didn’t realise that the former sense was specific to US English. Chambers does flag it as “esp N American.”

All in all, a very enjoyable puzzle.