Comments on: Independent 8012/Tees

By: Bazza

Bazza — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:24:43 +0000

It’s tough doing the Indy here in Adelaide. The local paper doesn’t include the name of the setter, so 15dn was very much a guess on my part. Plus, it wasn’t printed until July 10th, so McCartney’s 70th was all but forgotten. One totally failed to see the Sides two.

By: flashling

flashling — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:18:35 +0000

I got Sgt Peppers etc remarkably quickly, just one of those things, although last time I saw that answer clued I didn’t and was sitting somewhat shell shocked at my first S&B sitting between Eimi and the late lamented Mike Laws (who’d set it and was surprised that I didn’t know “that old chestnut”)
(Good lord was he apopoleptic when he saw I’d done a suduko) Saw the Neo in the grid and assumed it was deliberate, but no.

Gosh tho’ this was hard to finish, some of the 4 letter words being the worst, least of all the ones in my head.

Cheers John FTB/PB got there in the end. Even if start and finish was several hours apart due to sleep in the middle.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:13:57 +0000

Good fun from Tees this evening. It took a while to work out the long anagram although actually we never did write all the letters down. We missed the relevance of te Beatles until we worked out 19d and the rest followed.

Thanks for explaining 11ac and 5d, John. We really would have had a hard day’s night without your Help!

Thanks also to Tees obviously – for please, pleasing us!

We’ll let it be for now and get some sleep.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:40:32 +0000

Almost total defeat for me. Got just a handful of answers (and the long anagram wasn’t one of them).

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:20:06 +0000

Thanks, John, for the blog – and Tees for a tough and enjoyable puzzle. [It goes without saying that I didn't see the Ninas.]

jp@9 – surely there was a typo at 2dn? I read it as John did: ‘supporter *of* Bristol – makes far more sense, both for surface and wordplay?

By: jp

jp — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:44:08 +0000

Very clever and mostly too clever for me. I quibble with a bra being a ‘supporter AT Bristol’ – it’s surely a supporter of which would work as well. I don’t see ‘develop’ and ‘result’as similes.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:13:12 +0000

Yes, I too found this extremely hard indeed and very much worth persisting with. The first breakthrough was to get C?U? B?N?. This led me to the long entry of which I’d very few other letters. Then I saw the possibility of SIDE ONE and SIDE TWO. Like others, I thought the THESAURI clue was brilliant. I think I read over the weekend that Paul McCartney is 70 sometime this week. Many thanks, Tees, and John, in particular for explaining SEA EAGLE where I did not see how the wordplay worked.

By: crypticsue

crypticsue — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:54:58 +0000

A tough one today. Not helped because it took me ages to spot the long anagram and I kept trying to find three letter words with a G in the middle! Thanks to Tees for making me stretch myself and to John for the blog.

By: Tees

Tees — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:53:46 +0000

… should also say that the ‘Canterbury Songs’ thing is a prog ref: bands like National Health, Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Soft Machine etc were all of that ilk. Not connected to SPLHCB, though many feel this was, inter alia, the world’s first prog album. Also pretty fed up with anagrams such as ‘try Beatles chaps’ LP – super song blend’ or ‘Crap LP by the LSD-prone Beatles’ for obvious reasons.

By: Tees

Tees — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:48:36 +0000

Not deliberately, K’s D, I can assure you! Though I might have seen and ignored it. The intentional ones are as explained by John in his excellent blog, and any o/s issues are covered in the first comments. ‘At most’ for ONLY is adverbial, according to the Tees Thesaurus, as yet, and shamefully, unpublished.

Many thanks to WR and to commenters.