Independent 8,453 by Anax (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 16/11/13)

12 comments on “Independent 8,453 by Anax (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 16/11/13)”

1. Thanks, Simon – I’d not heard of DRUM = house but dicts give it as a slang usage. I wonder in FUSILLI if it’s ‘fill-in’ rather than ‘fillip’ that is being used.

2. Rhyming slang: Drum and bass = place

3. Many thanks, Simon, for blogging one of Anax’s mildest crosswords ever.
   But then, pasta isn’t particularly famous for being spicy.
   PASTA (2d) was actually my first one in.

   Although I made no mistakes, I needed your help for 28ac and 25d.

   Nice puzzle but a bit unusual to see Anax using ‘eh’ for ‘what’ twice (11ac, 1d).

4. 19A MO (eg “in a flash/mo”) has been omitted from the wordplay. 1D is EH in UP AS FREE*. 16D am only aware of AIRT as direction, quarter, seems a rather tenuous connection to “guide”.

   28A what is “illin'”?

   Thanks to Anax and Simon Harris.

5. Thanks Simon for the blog. There were a few I couldn’t parse and like gwep@4 I still don’t understand 28A.

   I think you omitted “O” for “over” in 26A and “UP” in the anagram for 1D.

   Thanks Anax, you have extended my range of pasta to try

6. Hi gwep & Howard L
   From the on-line Urban Dictionary under ‘illin’: “A word used to describe something that is both “sick” (amazing) and “chilling” (relaxed). Synonomous with “epic” and “legendary” although with a somewhat more relaxed connotaion.”

   See the following for an example of usage and other meanings of the word:

   http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=illin

7. Thanks Gaufrid, I wasn’t aware of the Urban Dictionary. Generally I haven’t a clue (pun intended)if a word isn’t in Chambers or Collins.

8. @6Gaufrid No doubt much favoured by people who finish their sentences with “innit”.

9. Thanks, everyone. I’ve now modified the post to take NMS’s correction into account.

10. I too was stumped by 23A but once the penny had dropped I remembered that I’d eaten one of these earlier this summer in Gubbio, Perugia.

    My description of it would be more of a toastie than pasta, which is probably why I was held up here, and the web page suggests bread dough as the major ingredient.

    Crescione/i seem to be related to piadine/a
    http://www.manusmenu.com/piadina-and-crescione-marcos-recipe
    calzone and panzerotti
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calzone
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzarotti
    although the generic root would appear to be from crescia
    http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescia
    which is a type of focaccia named after croissant from the crescent shape of the bread

    Another meaning of crescione in Italian is apparently, rather confusingly, cresson or watercress.

    Thanks to Anax for instigating this culinary miscellany, and
    if there are any Italian food specialists out there, maybe they can throw more light on crescioni and its complex collection of edible associates!

11. Many thanks for your comments everyone, and to Simon for the triff blog.

    CRESCIONI was a query before publication, which really puzzled me as Chambers has it listed under its ‘pasta types’. Not at all convinced they’d have found something comparatively obscure and wrongly listed it, I did some rummaging. Crescioni is mostly bread-based but, to my relief, it turns out there are several regional variations which use pasta instead.

12. Gaff or drum used to be more common in London than now. I’ve had numerous folks go “Eh?” when I’ve suggested we “head back to my drum”. Agree on Delphi – it looked obvious as the answer but could not say I’ve seen any code in over 30 years in IT :0)

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