Comments on: Independent 8,139 / Dac

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:12:35 +0000

I’d never heard of a puli. The Chambers Crossword Dictionary didn’t mention it, but it did mention kuri, so I stuck it in without understanding, expecting rather feebly that a kurihmmm was some sort of a prize.

As always lovely. Particularly the Yoko Ono one.

By: allan_c

allan_c — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:18:22 +0000

To expand on PASTEBOARD, Chambers defines it as ‘a stiff card made by pasting sheets of paper together’. The original railway tickets (remember those little things? – they were 1 7/32″ by 2 1/4″) were made of pasteboard – hence the slang for ‘ticket’.

PULI only came by trial and error. I might have heard of it before but if so I’d forgotten.

Thanks, Dac and RR.

By: flashling

flashling — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:02:38 +0000

Beaten by PULI, never came to mind at all, still thanks RR and DAC for something a little easier than the Nimrodding yesterday.

By: Kathryn's Dad

Kathryn's Dad — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 08:44:56 +0000

Thanks for blogging, RatkojaRiku.

This was a delight as always, but there were a few clues where Dac put his foot on the cryptic gas, I thought. BLEATER was clever, but tricky; and well done for parsing PARISIENNE, because I couldn’t. I got PULI with the crossing letters – knew the prize but guessed at the dog.

PASTEBOARD was new to me, but I reckon ‘punch’ is okay: ‘he took a good pasting’. It’s Dac, so it won’t be wrong.

And SOHO is just a classic illustration of the chaos that is English spelling. But said chaos is very good for cryptic puzzle solvers: how else would setters do that clue with violinists using a BOW but taking a BOW afterwards?

Super crossword; thank you to Dac.