Comments on: Independent 7960 / Tees

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:19:31 +0000

Great puzzle. Needed help with COENOBITE and CLEFT STICK (both holding the other back).

Tramp is right. Good surfaces.

By: Tees

Tees — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:05:12 +0000

Massive thanks to commenters, and to Duncan for his customarily fantastic blogging – this time with bingo calls as appropriate – which is a faultless dissection of the clueing.

Sorry I didn’t get on yesterday – I’d forgotten I was in!

Cheers.

By: Allan_C

Allan_C — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:03:48 +0000

Thanks, Hi of h, for the reference to 1066 & all that (all the history you can remember). I was looking for my copy but couldn’t find it.
I actually found this Tees easier than Wednesday’s Dac – once I had “teesed” out the theme!

By: Tramp

Tramp — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:43:08 +0000

Excellent puzzle — precise clueing with super surfaces. I couldn’t get COENOBITE or MORTON’S FORK but I should have.

By: Hi of hihoba

Hi of hihoba — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:19:48 +0000

Morton’s Fork appears in “1066 and all that” – my main historical reference! Morton was a tax collector who pushed his fork into the nobles and when they paid up he cried “FORK OUT”!

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:26:22 +0000

I had two clues left – 13 and 16 – when I went out this evening. Got back and still couldn’t get them and went to get a cup of coffee before coming here to see what the answers were. Then DOUBLE BIND came to me as I was filling the coffee maker. When I returned to the puzzle I realised I’d put NIGHTSPOT for 2d (obviously fixating on the theme) and when I corrected it, 13 came to me as well.

I had to do a word search to get MORTON’S FORK which I only vaguely knew. I also vaguely knew COENOBITE because someone once told me about the film Hellraiser which has demons in it called Cenobities, which Chambers tells me is an alternative spelling.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:02:44 +0000

Very enjoyable, and not too easy. Many thanks, Tees.

By: NealH

NealH — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:39:09 +0000

I for one object to 2012 being seen as synonymous with that irritating event that exists purely to promote London at the expense of the rest of the country and I’m not sure even Coe would describe himself as the “Olympics leader”. That aside, this was a mostly fairly enjoyable puzzle, although I needed some help with coenobite. Although the word did flash through my mind, a conviction that it was spelt cenobite prevented me from pursuing the idea.

By: flashling

flashling — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:19:03 +0000

Wow tumbleweed blowing here today, Catch22 was superb PB, Duncan’s blogs seem to get better and better, Coenobite was a bit harsh for a week day methinks.

At least I managed to SPOT all the links today. Never played bingo, but the phrases were well known to me, except for “up to tricks”. Thanks Duncan and Tees.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:15:35 +0000

Thanks Duncan for the blog. We actualy deduced some of the theme words before we solved 23a. We had to resort to checking a few of the references. We’d never heard of clowder as a collective noun before so needed to check that one along with COENOBITE although I am sure we’ve met it in a crossword before.
When I logged on first of all I couldn’t work out where the clue numbers were – DOH! Excellent idea!
We really liked 22/15d and also 8d.
A good puzzle, suprised there aren’t more comments but perhaps people are still in a bit of a 23a with it!
Thanks Tees for keeping the grey matter active for another day.