Independent 9545 / Dutch

20 comments on “Independent 9545 / Dutch”

1. Very enjoyable. Tough in places, but very satisfying to tease some of the answers out, especially KEEP STILL. The varied use of Dutch in the wordplay is a neat idea and I also liked DON for its simplicity and the good anagram in BRIDE-TO-BE.

   Many thanks to S&B

2. Great day for crosswords. FT and Guardian are both tough but manageable. Some lovely clues here to make you think and lots of well-crafted surfaces.

3. You really are rather good at this setting lark, Dutch! Many thanks for another most enjoyable (but tricky in parts) puzzle.
   My only issue was with the 1a ‘homophone’ – it simply isn’t one to my ears.
   Definite favourite for me is 17d although several others were well in contention.

   Thanks also to Kitty for letting me know that Dutch no.2 was to be unveiled today.

4. Goed gedaan, Dutch. Lovely puzzle, with as Duncan says, a nice range of subject material and some delightful surfaces. I could handle some more of this setter. I thought PLOUGHMEN was a clever clue.

   Thanks to Duncan for blogging.

5. This is a lovely puzzle with some excellent surfaces – thanks Dutch (and thanks to Duncan for the review). It’s hard to pick a favourite from so many good clues but I’ll go for the very topical 33a.

6. Great puzzle Dutch, many thanks. Just rolled out of a gruelling Mosel wine -tasting session, mostly Riesling ; greetings from that German city where one endeavours to be just in court bla blah (5)

7. Good to meet you yesterday, Dutch! A really enjoyable crossword with a couple of references to your homeland and one to my favourite sport. Plenty there that made me smile. Many thanks!

8. I had the pleasure of test solving this so didn’t do the published puzzle, but knew it was a good one at the time with plenty of nice clues and laughs as I’d expect from Dutch. Cheers to DS for the write-up.

9. A good Wednesday crossword – plenty of relatively easy clues to get started plus some that required a bit more thought. 25dn was obviously POKER from the reference in 8dn but it took me ages to see the parsing. My other favourites were PLOUGHMEN and RIOJA. (The latter being one of my favourite wines, too.)

   Thanks, Dutch and Duncan.

10. Many thanks all for kind words and many thanks duncanshiell for a perfect review.

    Yes, no theme, but I did steal the grid from a previous themed puzzle, which in retrospect was a mistake. I thought it was the easiest way to re-use some clues I’d displaced in that puzzle in favour of themed entries.

    Jane, maybe I’ll just give up on homophones. It is a mystery to me how you pronounce these differently (my ignorance). You’ll have to explain to me sometime.

    I was worried I was getting carried away and it was becoming difficult, so I tried to simplify some clues including APNOEA. That was meant to have a princess and the pea fable surface, not sure if that worked. I have sleep apnoea, so I can see it is a common word for me but maybe not for others. I do try to avoid anything overly obscure.

    I am pleased people have different favourites – a good thing I think.

    Thanks everyone for Your support, more to come

11. Hi Dutch,
    When learning shorthand, the short vowel sounds are (or used to be!) illustrated by the sentence ‘that pen is not much good’. For the lady of the cloth, I would use the ‘much’ sound and for ‘not a soul’ I would used the ‘not’ sound. Perhaps it’s a regional thing as I think we’ve had the same question raised in a DT puzzle before now.

12. Lovely puzzle. Especially liked the bride-to-be, the freezing instructions and the PM’s pet project.

    The homophone at 1ac seemed fine to me.

13. Re homophones…
    I’m not Scottish but have a Scottish wife and am by trade a rhymster who plays a lot in Scotland where I occasionally meet with criticism of the purity of my rhymes,
    For example, in crosswords and in my prosody, ‘what’ and ‘Watt’ would be considered homophones. In Scotland they are not. There’s an ‘H’ in there. Contrariwise, in Scotland ‘dawn’ and ‘don’ are homophones whereas in England there’s a subtle difference. Consider likewise ‘daw’, the bird and ‘door’, the opening.
    I’m thus always a bit iffy about crossword homophones, that iffiness intensified by the fact that my first name is or should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘ant’ but never is south of, say, Northampton.
    Just saying.

14. Lovely crossword. I actually did this a while ago (real life keeps intervening to interfere with my commentage) and though I remember many smiles I can’t remember where the biggest ones were.

    I do remember that I very nearly gave up on 33a – just couldn’t see it at all. Glad I persevered.

    Thanks to Dutch for the entertainment – I’m looking forward to number 3 – and thanks to Duncan for the blog.

15. Well done, Dutch!

    I told you already that I found this puzzle a lot easier than your debut but others don’t seem to think so.
    And who am I to disagree [Eurythmics!].
    I am only a slightly above average solver but did almost all of it in a Nottingham hotel room within 20 minutes or so.
    Perfectly all right for sitting in for Dac.

    Like Kitty I couldn’t see 33ac for ages – she got it, I didn’t.
    Brilliant surface (and so right as the UK will soon find out).

    As one from the Netherlands [but I know you lived there too], I am not so sure about ‘very well’ = JA (in 28d).
    In that context, I think the Dutch would rather use – just like Brits – ‘OK’.

    Thanks Duncan for your comprehensive blog.

16. Welcome back Dutch, good to see you in Nottingham.
    We enjoyed the puzzle – great grid structure with no isolated corners which seem to be appearing quite frequently just lately.
    Good surfaces throughout – too many to decide on a favourite.
    Looking forward to the next one.
    Thanks again to Duncan and also to Dutch.

17. Really enjoyed this.
    Thanks Dutch

18. Hi Dutch. Very nice to meet you in London the other day and as promised I had a go at your second puzzle and was mightily impressed. Beautiful surfaces (as many have said above) and really good, tight cluing. Unfortunately, the Indie site is just not usable on my old donkey of a laptop (does there have to be a different ad every time you touch a key as it seemed to me? They take minutes, not millisecs to load on my machine), so I only did about 10 answers. I haven’t looked at the solution, only the comments, so I’ll try and get a printout sometime to enjoy the rest.

    Btw, “nun” and “NONE” (1a, my FOI) are perfect homophones in my (SE English) accent, but I have known people (from the regions) who pronounce like Jane @3. APNOEA is in my vocab too, but not one of the clues I got to.

19. Aha! Discovered the mobile version is more responsive, so spent an hour (nearly) finishing it. Didn’t get KORMA (screwed up entering POKER, so I was looking for O_R__), BAR CHART (stupidly wrote in MAP and got stuck on it) or BABY (just didn’t). Thanks for an excellent puzzle, Dutch, and Duncanshiell for a well laid out elucidation.

20. Lovely puzzle, Dutch! I thoroughly enjoyed it (as I did your first). 17d was my fave, but I really liked all your clues. I thought the hidden ones very well camouflaged.
    I didn’t have any problems with the homophone at 1a. I did have a bit of trouble parsing 33a — not because this isn’t a very good clue. I had the answer, understood the first two letters, but not the last two. Many thanks to Duncanshiell for the explanation and for a very good review. And, of course, big thanks to Dutch for an excellent and most entertaining puzzle.

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