Comments on: Independent 7907 / Phi

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:52:49 +0000

Re 18 … says old Snidey.

By: Phi

Phi — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:32:17 +0000

Let’s try and clear up a few things.

Somewhere in one of his slips Azed comments that verbal definitions of nouns are acceptable while adjectival ones are not and offers “Barks and is man’s best friend” vs “Furry and domesticated” for DOG as an example. This is just an echo of that comment.

Some time ago I put the very few words that contain NINA in a puzzle; this was to demonstrate how many more ANINs there are. In Wordsearch terms they’re still hidden NINAs.

HANDMAID/LIVELONG: the last time I did this I was taken to task for the top left one (which I think was SIDELINE) being Across then Down while the bottom right one was Down then Across, or vice versa. Nothing about cross-checking, from which I deduce that the clues were harder this time.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:07:37 +0000

…or an anniversary of Anais Nin?

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:05:25 +0000

So I’m still confused. What is Phi trying to tell us? That it’s a reverse NINA?

By: sidey

sidey — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:41:34 +0000

…says the Grand Master of Sweeping Statements.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:29:42 +0000

Sorry, SWEEOING is the old Greek spelling: I meant SWEEPING.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:28:36 +0000

Meic, are you saying that all CDs are incomplete and thus unfair? That seems a bit sweeoing, in terms of statements!

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:24:34 +0000

Thanks for the blog and to Phi for a challenging but just manageable puzzle. My last in was Handmaid, largely because I was guilty of thinking only of male servants (couldn’t get “page” out of my mind) and also tried to justify “backpack” for a while.

I agree that 12a is intended as an &lit – “Muses on chasing manx cat?” is hardly a conventional definition, of course, but the image brought to mind was so attractive and amusing I leapt to it pretty fast once I had the a couple of crossers. In my somewhat cartoonish imagination there’s only one thing that could be doing that. The only doubt I had was about that “on chasing” construction (cryptically it would be simpler with one or the other). It can just about be made to work but it’s obviously mainly there for the surface/&lit. It perhaps benefits from the question mark, as does the roundabout &lit definition, as does “muses” (only one ninesome out of several), so I suppose we have punctuation doing double, triple duty there…? But I for one still liked the clue.

By: Meic

Meic — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:56:56 +0000

I agree with most of these comments. I was beaten by CANINE and HANDMAID, and guessed LIVELONG without any confidence. Phi would consider a diagram where only 2 letters of an 8 letter word were cross-checked unfair to solvers if it was entered straight. The fact that two of the unchecked letters must be identical doesn’t make up for it. In my view, a non-thematic clue without a definition is as bad as a cryptic definition without any other wordplay – simply not a complete clue, and CANINE fails at this.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:49:31 +0000

One more from me re 6dn: When solving I had no problem with the parsing, though on reflection and having read the comments, I think “around” would have been better than “round”. My minor grumble with this clue was that I would have preferred “may carry” to “carries” (or at least a question mark on the end).