Comments on: Independent 7,914 by Phi (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 25/02/12)

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:08:59 +0000

Long answers aren’t a particular problem for me but I don’t really like them when they are anagrams as it’s too much like hard work to unscramble them. But usually crossing letters give an idea of at least part of a long answer, as happened here for me. Having got that, googling the phrase gave me the rest of the answer, which was just as well because I didn’t know the quotation, certainly not the name Inigo Montoya.

btw, according to one reference the name should be Iñigo Montoya – not that that’s of any importance in crosswordland where accents and diacritics are conventionally ignored.

By: Jan

Jan — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:51:02 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Simon.

I was not familiar with ‘The Sims’ but it could be no other writer. And I didn’t see that parsing for 8d. I convinced myself that ‘Nasty’ was serving a dual purpose as a noun, villain, as well as the adjectival definition.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:41:40 +0000

Emma Orczy was better know as Baroness Orczy – that was how her name appeared on her books (and still does, according to Amazon). I sauppose people still have heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel without knowing who created him.

I was pleased Phi used the term “SF writer” in 6ac. The term “sci-fi” is disliked by many SF fans.