Comments on: Inquisitor 1269: Work in Progress by Gila

By: John H

John H — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:33:36 +0000

WOODCHUCK – THE FULL STORY…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/crossword-blog/2013/feb/28/crossword-blog-story-of-woodchuck-puzzle

By: HolyGhost

HolyGhost — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:03:14 +0000

An engaging workout, not too tough – as Duncan says, the unique 7 letter entry and solving a couple of the 10/11 letter entries made the jigsaw element that bit easier.

John Lowe’s parsing (at #2) of LECTIONARY concurs with mine (and “not one” = zero = 0 just about passes).

Echoing Hihoba (at #1), McCartney on a (recently repeated) Parkinson fragment was quite adamant that the song was his & his alone.

And regarding Chesley (at #3), Paradise by Kruger (Inquisitor 1243 from last August – voted favourite puzzle of 2012) recently used the device of a jigsaw where the extra letters generated by the clues in conventional order yielded a message/instruction.

Thanks Duncan; thanks Gila.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:21:07 +0000

We enjoyed this puzzle although we had to resort to google at the end to work out the significance of the phrase formed by the superfluous letters.

Joyce had no problem with ROSEOLA as she suffers from a form of it (Duncan – you have an extra ‘a’ by the way in the aerosol) although it did seem strange to add ‘O’ and then ignore it.

Thanks Duncan for the blog and Gila for a good challenge!

By: Chesley

Chesley — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:01:28 +0000

Re Hihoba @1. Using correct order of clues isn’t new – it has been used many times before but is always an extra twist to the PDM and always welcome.

By: John Lowe

John Lowe — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:21:44 +0000

For the word play of LECTIONARY (24 across) I think that “in two parts” should be (B)INARY, however I then don’t much like “not one” to clue “zero” and therefore the letter O.

Am I being too picky?

Thanks for the blog, Duncan, and thanks, too, of course, to Gila for the entertainment.

By: Hihoba

Hihoba — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:09:29 +0000

I think it’s worth pointing out that John Lennon had nothing at all to do with “Yesterday” – either in its composition or its playing or singing. It is the song that McCartney wanted referred to as “McCartney Lennon” but Yoko Ono would not even concede this much.

The tune came to Paul at night and he invented the Scrambled Eggs line to make sure that he remembered it when he woke up. There is an excellent Wikipedia article on it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday.html

I filled in the grid and found the diagonal and the article before going on with the checking of the “Eggs. . . ” phrase.

Good crossword. I like alphabetical jigsaws anyway and having to use the “correct” order of the clues was a new twist.

It is a always a pity when you can (as you could here) have sent in the answer without having completed the last phase, but think what you would have missed!