Comments on: Independent 7915/Eimi

By: pennes

pennes — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:54:03 +0000

Chris thanks for pimp my ride as explanation tho’ I never realised pimp my ride meant doing something to my car.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:30:04 +0000

Eimi @18: Thanks for popping in. I see what you are getting at in 2dn, but it still does not really work for me. You would not say “John Paul George sing”: you would have to say “John, Paul and George sing”. I cannot see how you can justify the plural verb without the “and”, but am ready to be persuaded otherwise.

By: eimi

eimi — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:17:24 +0000

Thanks to Pierre for the very detailed blog and to all for the comments – I needed a bit of a lift after yesterday’s horror show.

For 2 Down to work, ‘in the long’ must be treated as three words and therefore a plural.

I wasn’t expecting all the thematic material to be picked up, so well done to scchua for picking up GLORY and AGNES.

I was a bit relieved when I woke up to find I hadn’t missed the big winners. They weren’t great surprises, but who expected The Hurt Locker to edge out Avatar last year?

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:06:59 +0000

Some really good clues here — The Iron Lady in particular — but the usual tradeoff between the appalling grid and the theme. Unfortunately I’m no expert on films and had only heard of two of them, so the difficulty with the low checking wasn’t compensated for and I found this quite hard.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:51:41 +0000

Think “Pimp my Ride”

By: pennes

pennes — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:36:54 +0000

As well as liking “the Iron lady” I think my two favoured were 25 ac Brad, and 21 dn amide was really ingenious.
I could only think of “haSh UPS” which has sups for drinks in it; don’t think I’ve heard of lash ups.
Re 18ac bridesmaids though, I can’t get “ride” to equate to “car”

By: flashling

flashling — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:07:17 +0000

Despite spotting the theme, still found this tricky in places, still, Eimi really should be a betting man, he’d have made a fortune. Cheers Ed. and Pierre.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:47:52 +0000

Can’t say I’m a movie buff, but having heard extensive coverage of the Oscars on the news this morning one couldn’t help but guess the theme, which helped quite a lot of entries to go in without fully understanding the clue.

Some pretty astute guesswork on eimi’s part, no doubt, forecasting which films would do well at the Oscars.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:12:45 +0000

Apart from the topicality of 12ac I did not spot the theme at all (not even 8ac), but then films are not an interest of mine. I managed to solve the puzzle correctly and unaided, but it took longer than I like to spend in my lunch break on a working day – that raises the question of who is the intended audience for these puzzles.

I take Pierre’s point about a trade off between ease of cluing and extent of cross-checking. My preference is for fuller cross-checking even at the cost of tougher clues. As usual, I have no quarrel with those whose opinions and tastes differ from mine.

Re 2dn I can accept Pierre’s suggestion for “run” as an intransitive verb, but the form given only fits as third person plural and I am not happy with “in the long” as the subject of a plural verb. As usual, I have no quarrel …

By: Paul B

Paul B — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:53:47 +0000

Pelham makes what seems a reasonable point about the grid I think, but there are extenuating circumstances in that this is a themed puzzle: sooner or later, and probably sooner in this case, solvers are going to know what sort of answers they are looking for.

Plus the themed solutions are spread across the various ‘sectors’ in the grid, with The Artist and Midnight (if you believe it is a ref to same in Paris) in the upper left, Hugo and Shame in the upper right, Brad and Oldman in the lower left, Warhorse in the lower right, and The Iron Lady and Bridesmaids transecting the upper left and lower right quadrants.

That’s probably why no-one (perhaps even including the argus-eyed Pelham) has been having a problem. MELATONIN and AMIDE (brilliantly clued) were perhaps slightly out there in terms of difficulty, but again, it’s a themed puzzle with the vast majority of entries being fairly straightforward.

Excellent stuff I think, and true to The Indy’s knack of themed punctuality.