Comments on: Independent 7973/Phi

By: ernie

ernie — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:56:25 +0000

Enjoyed the xword: thanks to phi and John.

Re ‘pitted’: I get annoyed with ‘westerly’ (e.g.) which can apparently mean ‘towards the west’ as well as ‘from the west’. See also ‘northerly’ ‘easterly’ ‘southerly’.

By: Miche

Miche — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:52:20 +0000

Thanks, John.

Anyone else spot VERDI lurking in DROVER/DISPOSAL and expect him to turn up as a solution?

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:11:05 +0000

Another good Friday puzzle from Phi, where the split words across two clues were in fact in some cases a good help. Thought ARIMATHEA was clever. ATTEST works for me too.

Thanks to John for the blog.

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:57:03 +0000

Inserted MAYHEM without thinking… Only half of the cryptic accounted for! Meant I was stuck on 17dn far longer than was necessary. Really liked the interlinking grid of this one. Unfortunately it means it’s far harder to set than to solve I guess. COD 6dn.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:53:30 +0000

1ac was nearly the last for me, too, but once I saw it, it seemed the PITTED could mean having stones. What was my last was 17d/21ac, because I’d entered MAYHEM for 21ac, although I couldn’t quite see why it was. When a word search revealed no possible answer for 17d I had to reconsider.

Re 18ac, hide can be a noun as in a hiding place used by bird watchers.

By: aztobesed

aztobesed — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:33:28 +0000

It’s one of them, isn’t it? “How would you like your peach?” ” Pitted, please, I’m going to try and grow a tree from the seed.” “Oh, you seem to have removed the pit”. Intuitively ‘pitted’ means both with and without. Chambers is simply looking away, hoping nobody brings it up.

By: dialrib

dialrib — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:52:26 +0000

Thomas99 @3 says pitted = ‘with stones’ is ok as it is analogous to horned = ‘with horns’. But my Chambers has an entry for ‘horned’ – ‘having a horn or horns’. Under ‘pit vt (pitted, pitting)’ it has only ‘to remove the stone from’.

By: NealH

NealH — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:14:50 +0000

The hidden answers where certainly helpful in finishing the puzzle more quickly – had things like lotto and dover long before I got the words which concealed them. After a slightly slow start, I motored through it quite quickly apart from 1 across, where I couldn’t think of anything and had to go through all the possible letter combinations to find the answer.

By: crypticsue

crypticsue — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:12:10 +0000

Great stuff indeed – perfect for a rainy day off. Thanks to Phil and John too.

By: Thomas99

Thomas99 — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:20:25 +0000

Great stuff. Thanks John. Re 1a “Pitted” does normally mean with the stones removed, and it took me a while to see that it could also mean the opposite, by analogy with – hang on, can’t think of one – horned, perhaps?

Arimathea comes very soon after Canaanites (one of the cryptics yesterday, I think), also clued with “articles” (an, a, an in “cites” in that case). Perhaps someone (Boatman?) could construct a whole bible/article themed puzzle?