Comments on: Independent 7896 by Nimrod (Saturday Prize Puzzle 4 February 2012)

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:33:44 +0000

Didn’t start this one until last night due to holidays. So glad this wasn’t down to us to blog. 17d had us beat. It didn’t come up on our search in Chambers and we’d got stuck with the idea that the definition was a Spanish pancake. We were also rather tired with befuddled brains after a hectic weekend! Not a good time to tackle a fiendish Nimrod…..very challenging!
Thanks mc_rapper67 and Nimrod.

By: MikeC

MikeC — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:26:47 +0000

Thanks mc_rapper67 and Nimrod. Challenging but enjoyable. I missed the Abaddon reference but otherwise more or less “got there”.

Btw, is Nimrod another alias for Satan – this puzzle was fiendish in more ways than one?!

By: Lenny

Lenny — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:02:30 +0000

I got all the way through to Beelzebub before I could find one that I could solve. Fortunately, as with many thematics, once I got this most of the rest dropped out. There was a long pause at the end while I derived Zero Point and Uttapams from the wordplay. It is probably inevitable, with such a clever theme that the grid is going to be completed with one or two rarities. Still, it was all good clean fun. Thanks to Nimrod and to mcrapper.

By: crypticsue

crypticsue — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:14:22 +0000

You won’t believe the time it took for the penny to drop at this one, and I was at a Cruciverbalists Convention the week before at which young Nimrod said, more than once, my next Indy is going to be fiendish/devilish. I spent on and off all last weekend muttering variations of devilry to myself before I got to the end. Thanks to Nimrod and well done to the blogger – I wouldn’t have wanted to have sorted out that one.

By: Querulous

Querulous — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:29:33 +0000

Thanks for the blog, mc_rapper67. Re 21a, I parsed it more like a double definition – completely (e.g. “shot to hell”), and bound down (as in your interpretation).

By: mc_rapper67

mc_rapper67 — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:14:10 +0000

Thanks for all the feedback – equally plausible parsings of 1D from Pandean and dialrib @ #1 and #2, and Phi’s homophone of Abaddon for ‘a bad ‘un’ @ #3.

I will update accordingly.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:51:40 +0000

Thanks, mc_rapper67, for the blog, and Pandean and dialrib for the explanations of 1d. That was the only one I didn’t get. All I could think of was “zero round”, not that I’d ever heard the expression. If you scored zero in a round of a game/copetition it might precipitate a catcall, and O2 = 00 = zero and a circle(round). But of course that didn’t explain the rest of the clue.

By: Phi

Phi — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:29:58 +0000

I took 12d to be referencing Abaddon, which can mean either the Devil or Hell. (‘Juan in Hell?’ – i.e. A BAD DON – is a clue I remember from somewhere.)

By: dialrib

dialrib — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:08:11 +0000

Thanks mc_rapper67.

1d (boo)ZER followed by PINT, with the top of pint (P) in OO (O2) – ZER + O + P + O + INT.

12d I wondered if this ([a] bud ‘un) might be a homophone of some obscure snake but couldn’t find one.

By: Pandean

Pandean — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:46:39 +0000

Thanks for the blog, mc_rapper67.

For 1dn, after many wrong turns I eventually parsed ZERO POINT as [boo]zer + (top in O)*. I reckon ‘origin’ is the definition, ‘catcall’=boo, and ‘used’ is the anagrind (with the ’2′ at the end of the clue referring to 2dn).

I couldn’t work out the relevance of ‘so I’ve heard’ at 12dn. though.