Comments on: Independent 7955 / Phi

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 06:59:37 +0000

Started late and didn’t get very far, but my subconscious must have been working on it overnight ‘cos I finished it this morning with no recourse to e-help, just the occasional check in the (dead tree) dictionary. Yes, tougher than the usual phi.
I agree with Peter O’s parsing of 19d.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:59:29 +0000

Well, I dunno. It seems to me that in a daily puzzle, unthemed, there’s no need to include recondite answers. If themed then yay, but keep them to an incredibly strict minimum. There are some who might disagree, Don among them (as I recall), but in a daily puzzle we are trying to entertain rather than ‘educate’ (whatever that means in a bloomin’ crossword puzzle).

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:34:33 +0000

Indeed, very tough. I was out this evening and didn’t return to it until late. By midnight, having made little further progress I resorted to word searches, especially on the more obvious anagrams. Don’t think I’d have got many of the obscure ones otherwise, but with lots of e-help I was able to finish it.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:11:41 +0000

Phew! One of us has been working today so started this rather late. It was certainly more difficult than we expect from Phi. It was interesting to find out that he started with the obscure words – the very words we had difficulty with. We are obviously not alone!
However, all very fair and we managed to guess all the answers before using Chambers to check them.
Thanks Phi and Duncan.

By: PeterO

PeterO — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:07:59 +0000

Oops, pressed the wrong key. For what it’s worth, I think that 19D parses marginally better as

LIT (‘illuminated’) + AN (‘article’) + Y (‘unknown’).

By: PeterO

PeterO — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:05:01 +0000

14D would be known (to some anyway) from Molière's play Le Médecin malgré lui.

By: Phi

Phi — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:17:08 +0000

Well, the odd word drawer will supply 2 or 3 at most (SUPER…, MYRMIDON here) and constraints may force others (AMI DU COUR). The drawer has words still in use (even if rarely) and which I think deserve an airing; constraints may not be so obliging!

Not sure I agree entirely re anagrams and obscurities, though I’d acknowledge the awkward seesawing effect of not knowing which way the last pair of consonants or vowels fall in the unchecked letters. But with something like SUPER… with its affixes, an anagram is extremely effective once you have a few crosschecks.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:06:14 +0000

Evening Paul. That would be significantly more naughty than just very naughty, then, I guess? Actually, I’m not sure I really agree: if I know it’s an anagram, then once I’ve got my crossing letters I can look for letter patterns; certain combinations are more likely than others, and usually by a process of elimination you can get there. But I do agree with you that cryptics sometimes can be bloody annoying; but there is pleasure in overcoming annoyance sometimes, n’est-ce pas?

Thanks to Duncan for elucidating MALGRÉ LUI for me and to Phi for dropping in.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:27:22 +0000

Good puzzle, but I think it very, very, very naughty to clue recondite words or phrases with anagrams. Because: even where solvers identify the solving events correctly, and even where they have all the crossing letters, they may not be able to arrive at the required word(s). And that, as I’m sure some of us know, can be bloody annoying.

By: duncanshiell

duncanshiell — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:24:24 +0000

Phi @ 4

Thanks for commenting. The second ‘with’ in the clue at 16d was a typo on my part, but the version I was working from, downloaded on Crossword Solver nearly a week ago, did not have ‘nitrogen’ in the clue. I have a print of that version in front of me now.

I note however hat the versions available on Crossword Solver today and the version in the on-line Independent paper both have the word ‘nitrogen’ in the clue. I usually check that the version on Crossword Solver on the day of the puzzle is at least by the same compiler as the one I thought I was blogging, but I’ll have to look at every clue in future.