Comments on: Independent 7934 / Scorpion

By: MikeC

MikeC — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:58:27 +0000

If it’s any comfort, I’m with pennes@16 and others: missed easyjet and had herring instead of TERRINE. Not a bad puzzle, nevertheless.

By: pennes

pennes — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:01:09 +0000

I liked this and no real grumbles ; what matters more to me is being able to solve the clues on the basis of general, and not specialised knowledge, so I am happier with Easyjet than football referees.
Easyjet did hold me up but I got there, but ended up with herring for 3 dn as I coldn’t get anthing else to fit, and it does have “err” and “in” in it. Others seem to have got held up by these clues so maybe, as clues with less than 50% checking letters they should have been more straightforward solves

By: 4across

4across — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:37:32 +0000

I think ‘i before e …’ is perfectly acceptable, and a very doable clue, though I don’t think is.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:30:35 +0000

Dormouse@13 – that seems the most appropriate spelling rule given all the comments! Really brought a smile to our faces. Thanks.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:25:54 +0000

Solved this fairly quickly (for me). Getting 13d as one o my first answers helped. Once I knew I needed a six-word phrase, final word “c”, the theme was obvious. Never heard any of these extensions involving the ee sound. The only variant I’ve heard is “I before E, except where it isn’t”.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:19:34 +0000

Thanks, B&J, for the blog. I guessed the gateway clue from the enumeration almost immediately, before I’d even thought about identifying the anagram fodder. But like K’s D I was expecting some of the answers that referenced 7/24/27 to have ‘ei’ without a preceding ‘c’. Otherwise nothing too difficult even if I was a bit slow to see some simple ones such as MENU, ANEW and QUIZ.
Thanks too to Scorpion for an amusing puzzle.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:50:16 +0000

To further muddy the waters, there are in fact seven letter combinations that produce the long ‘e’ sound, as in the following (nonsense) sentence:

Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas?

e/ie/ae/ee/eo/ei/ea

If anyone can write spelling ‘rules’ for that lot, I’ll buy them a pint. English spelling is a ‘mare …

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:24:41 +0000

Hi KD – didn’t perceive it as a comment on our preamble, we just hadn’t noticed ‘our’ error in not noticing the ‘error’ in the clue – if you see what we mean!

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:54:12 +0000

Hi B&J – my remark was a comment on the clue, which does indeed have the definition ‘grammatical rule’, and not on your pre-amble!

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:53:04 +0000

Saw the I before E light straight away although I remember a recent edition of QI which debunked it claiming more words broke the rule than followed it.

Having recently flown on EasyJet I got that quite quickly, but can see the S in the anagram wouldn’t help with plural definition. Terrine was last for me as well, and I thought the same as NMS about the RAC.

Thanks B&J and Scorpion for the diversion.