Independent 8391 / Tees

11 comments on “Independent 8391 / Tees”

1. 

   Kathryn's Dad

   #1 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 07:02

   
   

   Thanks, Duncan. Early to rise this morning, and Tees’ offering certainly got my brain in gear.

   With the slightly odd grid, I thought there might be something going on, and when HASTINGS and ARCHER appeared next to each other, I was on the lookout; but I can’t see anything further (which doesn’t mean there is nothing there, of course).

   I really liked this – not as tough as some Thursday Indy puzzles, but tough enough. The NW corner was the last to go in, with the interconnected PIPER, PARROT and SOUP proving tricky. I had RA reversed as my soldiers in 11ac, which didn’t help.

   For SOUP, I was thinking of primordial soup as the ‘developer’ but I’m sure your way is right. COPE I got through COPING STONE – isn’t that the stone that is the highest one and ‘joins’ the building together? And I parsed REINDEER slightly differently to you: my second R came from ‘right’ rather than a duplication of ‘run’.

   Fine puzzle; thank you to S&B.

2. 

   michelle

   #2 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 09:09

   
   

   I solved some clues by guesswork. I could not parse the 24a, 22a, 23d, 8d, 17a so I suppose I was not really on the setter’s wavelength as I could not even parse 2 anagrams!

   New for me was PIPER = oil field, UNCO = ‘strange’.

   I liked 1d, 1a, 19d, 25a, 3d, 20d and my favourite was 12a REINDEER.

   Like K’sDad, I was thinking of primordial SOUP for 9a.

   Thanks Tees and Duncan.

3. 

   flashling

   #3 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 10:24

   
   

   My thoughts were the same as K’sD for Soup and Cope, when I used to look after the LOndon Ambulance service’s computers I frequently had to deal with their COBRA kit.

   Not Tees at his most obscure but “see man” was a bit sneaky, I think age is mellowing him 🙂

   Thanks Teeser and Duncan.

4. 

   Andy B

   #4 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 10:58

   
   

   I found this one tough enough, and I needed aids at the end for “CHARMED I’M SURE” and MIDDLESEX. I should really have got the former, but I thought whack=middle in the latter a little obscure to say the least.

5. 

   gwep

   #5 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 11:05

   
   

   Excellent workout and blog. Never heard of Starkfield, but had heard of ETHAN FROME from somewhere, I finally realised.

   Wanted to put CHARLES in 8D, penny finally dropped when I had almost every other letter in.

   Duncan, there is a superfluous “s” in the clue/wordplay for 21A HASTINGS.

   Thanks to Tees and duncanshiell.

6. 

   Robi

   #6 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 12:58

   
   

   Excellent puzzle that needed a bit of help from my computer.

   Thanks duncanshiell; I thought the PIPER/COBRA, CHARMED I’M SURE was very good. I also particularly liked the PARROT.

   I’m sure in 17 that Tees could not possibly have thought of whack it=MIDDLE SEX. Looks like a rival to Paul/Punk here. 😉

7. 

   Dormouse

   #7 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 16:13

   
   

   I’m sitting in the airport departure lounge waiting for my flight back to the UK (and thanks to whoever it was who pointed me at Crossword Solver last week for downloading Indie puzzles).

   I was a keen amateur photographer back in the sixties, doing my own processing, and I never heard “soup” being used for developer.

   I’d never heard of Starkfield, so I googled it to find out where it is, which immediately gave me the answer. Don’t think I’d have got it otherwise.

   Don’t know why, but even with all the crossing letters and realising it was an anagram, I still couldn’t see 21ac. Even typing in the letters that it had to be to get a pronounceable word, I still didn’t see it, thinking it was a plural noun derived from “to haste” before the penny dropped. I blame the boredom of airports.

8. 

   bootikins

   #8 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 18:54

   
   

   Yep, as most agree this was a good one, Tees lost gracefully, and I fared pretty well in the solving clock stakes at 15 minutes. But there was a lot of joy in unravelling the stuff, the clues were in ‘nice bits’ for me to piece back together. I surely enjoyed the snake charmer’s joke, and the idea of the SAS actually losing!

   Thanks setter, duncan.s, and commenters all.

9. 

   PeeDee

   #9 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 19:52

   
   

   Thanks Duncan. FT and Guardian were both soft touches today so the Indy came to the rescue with a sterner challenge.

10. 

    Tees

    #10 - Thu 5th Sep 13, 22:53

    
    

    Thanks Duncan again for the beautifully-crafted bloggington. And thanks indeed to all those commenting, it’s always much appreciated.

    You’ve nailed the lot, so splendid work: all I can add is that CHAR ME DIM SURE used to be CHAR ME DIMS URE, but it was awful that way so I changed it. These little things you know.

    Many thanks to the lot of you.

    Tees.

11. 

    Bertandjoyce

    #11 - Fri 6th Sep 13, 06:37

    
    

    One of us couldn’t keep their eyes open last night and woke up early today so we ended up solving this one almost independently for a change!

    This was easier than expected but there were still lots to ponder over and Joyce, who solved it on the ipad used the check button on a number of occassions. Thankfully we were able to solve the last few with two heads rather than one.

    We had trouble parsing a number of them and were not sure about whack = middle or soup = developer but Joyce would forgive Tees for anything for 7d!

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