Independent 8322 by Quixote

15 comments on “Independent 8322 by Quixote”

1. Thanks, flashling. I think you’ll find Quixote is two weeks out of three in the Indy Monday slot, so his appearance today is not unexpected.

   Usual good stuff, which is why there’s often little else to add to the blogs for these puzzles. PENTOSE I had heard of, but since sugars nearly always end in -OSE (FRUCTOSE, SUCROSE, GLUCOSE …) it couldn’t be described as obscure.

   I’m just struggling to equate the definition and the answer in 16dn. I take the definition to be ‘a bit under the weather’ but how ROPINESS is equivalent to that, I can’t see. FEELING ROPY, certainly, but ROPINESS?

   Anyway, thank you to Quixote.

2. I found this a little harder than some Quixote puzzles, but that may be because it took me a while to see the long answer. I hadn’t heard of PENTOSE but assumed it had to be the right answer from the anagram fodder for the reason Kathryn’s Dad gave. ROPINESS was my LOI and I got it from the wordplay rather than the definition.

3. Surely the definition in 16D is ‘being a bit under the weather’, ie the state thereof (that’s how my old Latin teacher explained gerundives).

   I got Humpty Dumpty straight away, which probably helped considerably with everything else.

4. Thanks Quixote for an enjoyable puzzle and flashling for the blog. My favourite clue was 17ac for the good use of the question mark.

   I am not completely happy with the cryptic grammar in 3dn, but as always I have no quarrel with those whose views on this sort of thing are more relaxed than mine.

   Since people have raised the question of how often Quixote appears on a Monday, I thought I would explore this from the index pages found from the “Categories” list in the top left-hand corner of this page. Until last week, Quixote seems to have appeared on alternate Mondays back to at least the start of this calendar year, which was as far as I could be bothered looking. I regard this matter as being at an extreme of importance – you will note that I have not said which extreme.

5. I enjoyed this puzzle by Quixote with its generous offering of anagrams. My favourite clues were 22a, 9a, 5d, 20d, 4d, 6d, 15a, 2d & 8a (last in).

   New words for me were ROPINESS & PENTOSE.

   Thanks for the blog, flashling.

6. Top right-hand corner held me up at the end. Not sure I knew that Thame was pronounced “tame”. Curiously, I had seen “pentose” when looking up another word whilst doing the Beelzebub yesterday.

7. Another gentle introduction to the week from Quixote – about 20 mins solving time. I was inclined to quibble with the enumeration of 17ac and 6dn. Chambers has DEAD WOOD or DEAD-WOOD and TEA KETTLE, but I find that Collins has both as single words. 1/11/24 was a d’oh moment for me, too; I thought it might be egg-related but was trying to think of a rhyme about taking the top off a boiled egg.

   Anyway, thanks, Quixote and Flashling.

8. Help. Just finished Saturday’s Inquisitor, cut it out threw address away. (It’s this kind of intelligence that sets us advanced Xword solvers apart from the common herd…)
   Anybody know it?

9. Further to 4:

   On reflection, I can see that the cryptic grammar in 3dn can be read with “lets us” as a vocative and “get liberated” as an imperative. That is good enough for me.

10. Why out of sequence? Because I dated two for successive weeks accidentally — and the nice editor allowed me a bonus! Thanks for feedback, as ever.

11. Not much to add to what has already been said. The first clue was a very rapid write in – don’t understand sometimes what makes a clue like that click but we were glad it did tonight as we started even later than usual thanks to KT Tunstall concert in Leeds!

    No complaints about the crossword or the blog so thanks to both Quixote and flashling.

    If Grant@8 is still reading the blog and still wants the address we will sort it out when we are home tomorrow.

12. Well, there’s no grammar in the LETSUS bit, that’s just ‘a bunch of letters’, or ‘some letters’ depending on how you want to structure it. At the risk of annoying colleagues, I might venture to say that I don’t know how you might ‘struggle’ them. Having said that, one of the things I discover I know vanishingly little about is cryptic grammar – very slippery.

    Another really good puzzle from The Don, which I enjoyed immensely.

13. Indeed, another really good puzzle by Quixote.
    On the easy side (perhaps, as Flashling said, too many anagram based clues) but immaculately clued – which is quite a feat in today’s world of crosswords.

    The Humpty Dumpty thing was almost last one in but it wasn’t in the way at all.
    Tahiti vs Nigeria, however, was. 🙂

    Bert/Joyce, hope you liked KT.
    I saw her twice before and decided not to buy tickets for her imminent concert here in Cambridge.
    She was great at Jools recently but sounded also a bit ‘hurt’ after her, apparently very emotional, break-up.

    Anyway – sorry Gaufrid, to be off-topic.
    That said, TEA KETTLE (6d) comes quite close to an anagram of KT Tunstall ….. 🙂

    As many people know I do not have an antenna for cryptic definitions but 14d (SHARPENER) was as good as any.

14. Paul B @12: “Struggle”, being the definition, is not part of the cryptic grammar. I think your approach of allowing the anagram fodder to be either “a bunch of letters” or “some letters” gives the freedom to use a singular or plural verb and dissolves the problem I was having.

15. Well, you’re right of course. Let me just nod off next time without offending anyone. ‘Some letters’ ‘get liberated’ (i.e. are given freedom) which works for me, I now realise.

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