Comments on: Independent 8007/Dac

By: Graham Pellen

Graham Pellen — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 03:37:37 +0000

26A John has left out the S (Socialist leader) after Rearmed*.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 06:46:53 +0000

We agree with the level of difficulty. Too tired last night when we finished to comment!

Max@8 – MANATEE is ATE(worried) in MANE (shock, as in a shock of hair). The ‘being in’ indicates that it wraps around. Hope this helps.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:09:32 +0000

I agree about the difficulty, many thanks for the blog! Still struggling to see how MANATEE is formed from ‘Large swimmer worried, being in shock’ though…what am I missing?

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:52:26 +0000

Certainly very hard. For a long time, all I had was the top right corner, but after coming back to it for something like the third time I got a few more with some e-help, but still couldn’t complete it.

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:43:41 +0000

Good grief what’s going on? Dac seems to be getting harder each week and this was a tough nut to crack, perhaps Dac is aiming for a promotion to the Thursday slot.

After doing the blog for the FT prize tomorrow (which was rather easy I admit), this came as a shock as to the brain effort required, felt at times like it was a Bannsider/Dac collaboration.

Still was all fair, cheers Dac and John – not quite the easy ride you were expecting methinks.

By: NealH

NealH — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 20:00:01 +0000

For about 5 minutes I stared at this without being able to get a single answer. Eventually, I got a couple and it fell into place fairly steadily but the SE corner resisted for quite a long time, although putting comprehending instead of comprehension did slow things up a fair bit.

I thought some of the clues like 27 and 16 were very difficult to get without some letters in them. I’d never heard of Scaffold the group: I think technically they were called The Scaffold, so maybe that’s why the clue needs a question mark.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:22:24 +0000

It’s in Collins as an abbrev for an internet domain name.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:57:28 +0000

Many thanks, John, and Dac. I thought this was a fine puzzle with a lot of misleading trickery tho not particularly hard in the end.
I particularly liked FUNKING (I was looking for a comedian’s name for a long time), DIVERSIONARY, NONE THE WISER and EXPLOITER. I agree with K’s D that com probably comes from the internet abbrev for a commercial company.

By: crypticsue

crypticsue — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:50:53 +0000

I thought it was a harder than usual Dac today but very enjoyable. Thanks to setter and blogger

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 08:16:49 +0000

Thank you, John. Having been roughed up by Arachne in Another Place earlier, I feel even more battered and bruised after attempting this Dac. Perhaps my brain isn’t in gear today, but I found this hard. Clues like those for WARRANTER, FUNKING, and AMIENS are not like Dac as rule: they’re all fair, but normally he’ll lead you more clearly to the answer on a Wednesday.

I think COMPREHENSION is fine: a reversal of HER, as you say in COM for ‘company’ and PENSION. We need to think dot.com for the ‘company’ bit, I fancy.

And thanks to the setter for me having Lily the Pink going round in my head for the rest of the day …