Comments on: Independent 8208 by Quixote

By: Graham Pellen

Graham Pellen — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 03:56:05 +0000

Surely in 21A the homonym correspondence is “similarity for the listeners”, since if two things have correspondence they are similar.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:59:36 +0000

Yes Pelham of course you’re quite right — silly to miss this. For some reason, and it often happens, I linked ‘Course’ and ‘officials’ and couldn’t get ‘Course officials’ out of my mind as the definition.

By: Pelham Barton

Pelham Barton — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:30:04 +0000

Thanks Quixote for an enjoyable puzzle and NealH for the blog.

My reading of 13ac is a double definition.

1st definition “Course” in the food sense – it is a bit of a stretch from singular to plural, but not much of one. The first course of a communal meal can easily be called starters.

2nd definition “officials at Aintree, say” in the racing sense – a clearly marked definition by example.

I think this is what others have been trying to say. Maybe the above will help.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:04:04 +0000

[13ac: Course officials at Aintree, say]

You can have starters in the food sense anywhere, at Aintree as much as anywhere else. Is this it? Surely not. Is it a homophone, where ‘Aintree’ is to be read as some twisted form of ‘entree’, and the homophone is indicated by ‘say’? If so, then it’s a pretty dodgy homophone, isn’t it? Sorry Sil, but I’m not convinced.

By: Quixote

Quixote — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 07:40:25 +0000

Thanks for the feedback. Ever since I returned to the Indy from the IOS I have made it a policy to use the same conventions for grids as are used for The Obsever Everyman. This means that checking will always make for a relatively easy puzzle, which is my intention — so that Indy readers get a balance. It is inevitable that some will like this and others be bored — you can’t please all the people all the time! In other papers my puzzles often lie at a harder part of the spectrum. This means that overall I can achieve some diversity in my own output and (hopefully) protract my setting career without undue repetition.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:07:23 +0000

Wil, STARTERS are ‘officials at Aintree, say’. They can also be seen as a ‘course’ – think food. That said, one may perhaps not like the solution being a plural.

Apart from this, indeed an easy crossword, but well-clued.
I enjoyed it.

By: Wil Ransome

Wil Ransome — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:33:18 +0000

Being very dim: what is happening at 13ac? It seems like a quite remarkably weak CD, which I’m sure it isn’t, but you say, Neal, that it’s a DD. OK starters are ‘course officials at Aintree, say’, but where is this cryptic?

In 11dn I think the definition is ‘Useless bit’, and ‘of’ is a link-word. Drudgery = fag and complete = end. Otherwise ‘fag-end’ would have to be an adjective like ‘useless’, and in its normal sense it’s a noun.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 22:50:44 +0000

Given that we only started this about 15 minutes ago plus we need an early night, we were glad that this was an easy solve!

No complaints…….

We hadn’t heard of CHASE THE DRAGON either!

Thanks NealH and the Don.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:04:27 +0000

Just about the right level of difficulty the day after staying up to four a.m. to watch the Superbowl. Certainly took me a lot longer than 25 minutes!

By: Paul B

Paul B — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:06:41 +0000

You could try Steely Dan’s ‘Time Out Of Mind’. Silver turning to gold, water to cherry wine, it’s all there.