Comments on: Independent 8140 / Morph

By: Graham Pellen

Graham Pellen — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:52:52 +0000

Very minor point re 8A – it’s “and not” rather than just “not” that yields the ‘the first three letter – “nor” – of the answer; otherwise the “and” is redundant.

By: ginoinaus

ginoinaus — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:36:46 +0000

Ta b and J….altho you all seem to know the setters..(and therefore their foibles) yet here its just a blank crossword with a number attached… I shall keep an eye on this blog.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 05:12:34 +0000

Welcome to the barmy world of crosswords ginoinaus! Even some of us poms had to look up Dunmow Flitch and maybe most of us have now forgotten what it was!

Keep up the good work – it really is very enjoyable and welcome to the blog.

By: ginoinaus

ginoinaus — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:56:23 +0000

You’re all bonkers you know…How is an Aussie supposed to know Dunmow Flitch …lol… (We get the Inde crossword in the Adelaide paper roughly 2 weeks behind u poms) …in 6 months I’ve solved 2. Its fun tho…working out how barmy you all are

By: lionberg

lionberg — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 22:04:05 +0000

‘Jaguar won’t run without this …’ (etc).

By: allan_c

allan_c — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:09:03 +0000

Wil @10: Re the Jaguar – well spotted (no pun intended)! I missed the non-capitalisation. It was certainly established as policy by the Grauniad – long before the Indy appeared – that proper names etc in clues should always be capitalised. Not quite sure how one would re-phrase this particular clue, though, to put ‘Jaguar’ at the beginning of a sentence.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:42:29 +0000

Hear, hear, Rorschach – I love Morph’s puzzles!

I agree with K’s D’s favourite clues in this one and would add ABACUS.

Hi crypticsue @4 – I bet, like me, you’ve entered TROLL three times in less than a week. ;-} [And I wouldn't like to have to choose the best clue.]

Thanks to B and J for the blog – enjoy your holiday!

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:58:41 +0000

And of course Bertandjoyce

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:58:10 +0000

Long live Morph!

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:24:05 +0000

Morph excels himself here. Some really good clues, with a nice element of pithiness (not always evident with this setter). Some of them took me a very long time to parse.

One little quibble: it’s a Jaguar not a jaguar. I know that there are people around who regard this sort of thing as trivial and what the hell if it makes me smile then it’s OK, but could he have avoided this problem by having Jaguar as the first word in the clue?