Comments on: Independent on Sunday 1190/Poins

By: allan_c

allan_c — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:59:02 +0000

Re 14dn, to take someone’s part is to side with them. It almost looks as if ‘takes’ is meant to do double duty except that ‘takes’ is the 3rd person singular of the verb whereas ‘side’ is anything except 3rd pers sing. I’d agree with DaveB about some of the cluing being a bit loose. But nevertheless some of it was quite ingenious, e.g. BRIOCHE.

By: Raich

Raich — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:46:33 +0000

Fairly well-known character tho, I’d say, with a Premier League club named after him…

By: Pierre

Pierre — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:14:51 +0000

Thanks, Raich – a Shakespearian step too far for this blogger.

By: Raich

Raich — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:24:41 +0000

I think HOTHEAD refers to the gallant fiery character of Henry Percy in Shakespeare’s plays eg King Henry IV, Part 1 in which Poins is also a character…

By: Pierre

Pierre — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:04:40 +0000

Thanks, Wanderer – I mistranscribed the clue for 23dn, but it doesn’t really affect the way I looked at the parsing. Yours is much better than mine, although mine kind of works. I’ll leave the error there so people know what we’re talking about.

I understand the hot=sexy and head=leader bit of HOTHEAD, but I’m still struggling to fully understand what’s going on. Is it something to do with a HEAD being, geographically, a SPUR of land?

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:26:50 +0000

Thanks to Poins for a tricky but satisfying puzzle, and to Pierre — especially for pointing out the Settle theme, which passed me by. Agree that this was tougher than most.

I also thought of Hotspur at 5d, and even tried to justify it as the solution for a while.

23d: the online clue is ‘The first woman’s holding one of them’. I parsed this as ‘woman’s’ = HER. So the whole clue is T (The first, or ‘first letter of The’) + HE(I)R which allows us to forget about the Queen.

By: DaveB

DaveB — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 11:47:46 +0000

5D:
I think this is a reference to Harry “Hotspur” Percy. “Hot” = sexy, “head” = leader.

I agree on the toughness of this one – the first IoS crossword I’ve failed to finish for a very long time. Several of the clues were a bit loose; too many instances where I had to work back from the correct answer to find the logic behind it.