Comments on: Independent 7,928 / Radian

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:28:05 +0000

Thanks all started new job today, the life of an IT contractor I guess, looked at this late after nine tonight, was somewhat daunted by the multiple referrals in the clues after a bit of work the waiting for godot theme hit me and it quickly fell apart, certainly less hard to do than last Tuesdays even though I’ve not seen WFG. Couldn’t fully justify LETS GO or RE-GROUP for many thanks RR for them

By: RatkojaRiku

RatkojaRiku — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:34:41 +0000

Thanks, Gaufrid, for the clarification on “duke” – you clearly have a larger collection of dictionaries than I have!

I agree with everybody about the fairness of the theme, which could clearly be termed general knowledge in this case.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:14:34 +0000

Thanks, Radian, for a puzzle that was not too difficult and thanks RatkojaRiku for the blog. Re ERIN, I think it is unlikely Beckett would have said he was from Éire, unless he was speaking in the Irish language. However, the point in the blog is valid as the original derivation of ERIN, which goes way back, is from that word which is simply the Irish (Gaelic) term for Ireland and would have predated the English language.

By: pennes

pennes — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:18:24 +0000

A great puzzle and 1 ac joins my list of favourite clues. The theme I would say is fair, as few people wouldn’t have heard of Beckett and the play’s title and the related answers could be got without detail knowledge of the play.
I did some research on Beckett as a prospective subject for a dissertation for a French degree; the play was written in French and one of the characters is called Estragon , which is French for tarragon

By: NealH

NealH — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:47:17 +0000

My only criticism would be that “Lord of the Rings” suffers from the extraneous words syndrome, the “Lord of” having no part in hiding the answer (unless, of course, Beckett wrote a play called Lord, in which case it would be brilliant, but I don’t think he did). Other than that, I found this very enjoyable and a vast improvement on last Tuesday’s effort, despite not being an enormous Beckett fan.

By: Lenny

Lenny — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:53:46 +0000

Thanks to Radian for providing a crossword with a theme that I had actually heard of. I needed RR’s help to explain the wordplay to Lets Go and Regroup. I also missed the Nothing Happens Twice quotation, which was a nice touch.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:14:05 +0000

A good work-out today so thanks to Radian for the puzzle.
We’ve seen the play but can’t say it’s our scene – I think we only stayed for the first half of Endgame as well. All too nihilistic, especially when you are sitting in the sun as we are today!
However, all the themed clues were clear from the cryptic part which is just as they should be in a themed crossword.
We got ‘two of a kind’ first and looked around for Morecambe and Wise before we remembered we were looking for a writer!

Thanks RR for the blog.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:09:26 +0000

This was indeed a good crossword, one of those ones where you see all the themed clues and think ‘how is this going to work?’ but then follow Corporal Jones’s advice and don’t panic. I’m not sure if Radian did it deliberately, but the four across clues giving you the crossing letters for BECKETT were all pretty straightforward, and that gave me for one the entry to the author.

I sometimes get put off themed puzzles if the subject matter isn’t something I’m mad keen on, but I don’t think you can say that WAITING FOR GODOT is entirely unknown … and the clues based on the theme like DITHERED, AIMLESS and RESIGNED are pretty guessable even if you’re not that familiar with the work.

So thank you to RatkojaRiku for a helpful blog and to Radian for the puzzle. If I’m being super-hyper-mega-extra picky, I would point out that the French for ‘let’s go’ is actually ‘allons-y’ rather than ‘allons’, and in fact ‘Allons-y’ is the last word in both Act 1 and Act 2 of the play in the original French version. But ‘Allons’ can mean ‘let’s go’ in something like ‘Allons au cinéma’, so I’ll go and get me coat now …

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:26:19 +0000

Nice one, Radian, and thanks, RatkojaRiku, for the blog – I needed it for the parsing of 1a where I had ‘g’ for ‘gallons’ and read ‘starting off’ as indicating ‘o’ but was mystified as to how ‘lets’ was clued.
Otherwise it all went fairly smoothly mainly because I suddenly had a hunch that 5d was WAITING FOR GODOT and then all the other themed clues fell into place.

Just wondering if there was any significance in the theme today; I googled Beckett and Waiting for Godot but couldn’t see any significant anniversaries for either author or play.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:13:23 +0000

What a great puzzle. By the way, 1a, which took me just as long to parse properly, is of course a (very) recurrent line in th play (“Let’s go” “We can’t” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Godot”…), as presumably is “Allons” in the original French.

Many thanks for the blog. Can’t help with Du I’m afraid. Of course “Du” is also the left side of Duke, so he could have done it differently, but there isn’t another departure indicator. Beckett was good at chess, by the way, put a whole game into Murphy (which made the section incomprehensible to me).

Would SB have said Eire, I wonder? I know when he was mistaken for an Englishman in France he would say “Au contraire”, so maybe.

Many thanks for the blog. Lucky you getting such a good one.