Independent 8,555 by Quixote

18 comments on “Independent 8,555 by Quixote”

1. Never seen rigmarole with an extra a before.

2. Nor me, never heard of Dirac either, but luckily knew Draco.

3. I agree that this felt slightly trickier than some of the Don’s Monday puzzles, but it was an enjoyable solve. Count me as another who needed the wordplay for the alternate spelling of “rigmarole”, and DRACO was my LOI after I finally remembered having come across Paul Dirac in a previous puzzle somewhere, although the constellation was also vaguely familiar.

4. Count me in on 24A also. Never heard of 18A as a word before, but kind of makes sense. The real puzzler for me was 21A. Having never played the game I don’t understand the significance of kings and queens. Is there an implied colon after the ‘are’? Even so a bit obscure for a Monday for me.
   Thanks to setter and blogger.

5. +1 on 24A – surely there should have been some indication that it was an uncommon form

6. I eventually remembered that alternate spelling for “rigmarole”, probably from another crossword. I had the opposite experience with 22dn – very familiar with PAM Dirac but had to check Draco.

7. I had no problems with the rigamarole as I normally have problems as I always want to give it an extra ‘a’ – interestingly as I type this, the spell checker has underlined it as an ‘unknown’ spelling.

   I believe Mr Manley must have been given a book of ‘difficult words to include in cryptic crosswords’ for Christmas as all his ‘alter egos’ seem to be including more of them every time he appears. Thanks to him for the workout and Flashling for the explanations.

8. OK, so what does the famous oft-quoted dictionary say about the bastardisation RIGAMAROLE? It’s not a word is it? Surely it’s a misrepresentation pandering to those who mispronounce rigmarole, as those who put an extra syllable in “mischievous” and pronounce it MISCHEEVIOUS – especially here in Aust.

9. I was defeated by 24A. 19d was clear enough from wordplay and the (other) crossers. The others were fair if a little obscure. Good puzzle and blog so thanks, both.

10. RIGAMAROLE is neither in Chambers nor the 2nd edition OED. Must admit when I finally got it, I entered it from the word play and the crossing letters and didn’t stop to think if that was the correct spelling.

    22dn, saw “Famous physicist” in the clue, saw it started with ‘D’ and immediately entered DIRAC and managed to reverse engineer the clue to make it fit. But I couldn’t convince myself and finally got 26ac which sent me in the right direction.

11. Interesting, the only sighting of rigamarole on fifteen squared is this blog. I wrote this up without access to my dictionaries and having already done the other place that must not be mentioned was too knackered to notice, perhaps Q might comment.

12. Hi flashling
    From Collins: rigamarole – a variant of rigmarole. So there is some justification for it.

13. 24a and 5d make this pretty standard for the Don as he seems to delight in obscure words, which is why I usually avoid his puzzles like the plague. Usually when I solve I don’t have access to dictionaries etc – and no, I don’t have a smart phone (dinosaur that I am). Apart from those 2 it was OK. Couldn’t believe 5d was really a word until I looked it up.

    Thanks Quixote

14. I found 24 a struggle because all the crossing letters were vowels, which tend not to be very helpful in guessing a word. The “old woman” was also a bit ambiguous – wasn’t sure if I was looking for ma, nan or even hag. Oddly, the spelling didn’t cause me too many problems as I’d always thought rigamarole was the correct spelling. However, the definition (“garbled nonsense”) was of no help in working it out: I’d have thought of rigamarole as an extremely complicated and bureaucratic exercise, but not necessarily nonsensical.

15. Defeated by 24A. Don’t feel so bad now

16. Thanks Gaufrid for that find, don’t have Collins on my computer anymore perhaps I should shell out a few pennies for it.

    Apologies to Quixote, my introduction reads like this was dull, not my intention at all.

17. So OK then ‘rigamarole’ is in Collins, but it hardly seems to be very widespread. Quinapulus’s Word Matcher, which seems to know almost every word there is, hadn’t heard of it. And if such an obscure spelling of a word is going to be defined by something that surely isn’t its primary meaning, then I don’t feel so bad about not getting the answer.

18. Some of the posters above couldn’t find RIGAMAROLE.
    Having all the crossing letters, I thought it was quite obvious.
    It had to be that.
    A capital plus ROLE (part) around the famous ‘old woman’.
    That’s how I solve crosswords.
    Even if I’d never heard of a word (and I didn’t know this one – sounded like nonsense, though) I often find the right solution by just understanding the construction, as it was the case here.
    It overrules my knowledge of the English language, perhaps made easier by me not being a Brit.

    I liked this crossword but I thought it was indeed harder than the average Quixote.

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