Comments on: Independent 8,191 / Donk

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:17:18 +0000

It must be the fresh air up here in the Lake District as we had to leave the puzzle and finish it the next morning for the second day running!

Joyce’s heart fell when she started to read the clues but as others have said she need not have feared. She couldn’t remember Alf but thankfully Bert has not suffered the same memory loss as her.

Thanks Donk – a lovely puzzle. We have to admit that we missed the nina. We thought about it last night, given the grid shape but then as we filled in the final clues this morning we completely forgot until we checked here. Perhaps we were just too keen to get up and enjoy the snowy walks up here.

Thanks RR – we needed you to help parse PIRATE.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:07:22 +0000

My heart sank a bit when I saw that it was an orgy of football, but Donk has been very clever here, because hardly any of the clues require any special knowledge and the whole thing can be done straightforwardly. And he has managed some sort of a football reference in every clue without straining.

Some really good clues and nothing I couldn’t understand eventually, although I was defeated by GLOBAL/LOIN, and never saw the two goals and halfway.

By: rabet

rabet — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:00:07 +0000

Many thanks, nmsindy.

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:31:04 +0000

rabet at #12, this is explained in the FAQ section of this site.

By: rabet

rabet — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:54:14 +0000

I too enjoyed this puzzle immensely. But please tell me; what is a “nina”?

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:12:51 +0000

Hi Donk [and Raich @6]

I thought the answer to that was implicit in my second paragraph!

Many thanks again.

By: Donk

Donk — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:54:43 +0000

Many thanks to RR for the excellent blog and to everyone who’s left such great comments so far! I certainly am a footie fan, but tried to keep knowledge of the theme to a minimum so the puzzle was accessible for all solvers – apologies if I scared anyone off!

Hopefully, when Eileen says ‘I enjoyed it so much more than I expected’, she’s referring to footie puzzles rather than Donk ones!

Again, many thanks to all!
Donk (not a Gooner)

By: Jim T

Jim T — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:24:44 +0000

Super puzzle – some great clues and the pitch markings were excellent.

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:14:27 +0000

What a total belter of a crossword. Brilliant fun, ingenious nina, some fabulous clues (will a better clue than the Mido one be written this year?) – I’m with Sil – a crossword of the month already!

Thanks old bean and good call RatkojaRiku on the parsing of a tricky little bugger!

By: andy

andy — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:49:31 +0000

Great stuff from Donk, and as Sil #3 says you don’t need a knowledge of the game to solve. Cheers