Independent 9,969 by Hob

13 comments on “Independent 9,969 by Hob”

1. Thanks for the explanation of ANIMAL – I wasn’t aware of the Muppet reference.  My reading of DOC was that it was just a short form of DOCTOR, but I didn’t find it particularly convincing.  I reached the same conclusion as you about PAISLEY, but wasn’t convinced about that either, as “managed” does not seem to be an appropriate description of what he did.  Clever crossword, but too many short answers in the grid for my liking.

2. 37 across! I bet poor Hob didn’t get paid extra, either.

   DOC is “short chap” (Doc was one of the 7 dwarfs) + doc(k).

   Thanks Hob & Sil

3. I’m pretty sure the manager being referred to in 36a is Bob PAISLEY who managed Liverpool FC for many years in the late 20th century.

   I think baerchen @2 has hit the nail on the head for DOC. Also missed ‘Carmen’ (v. good) and the ANIMAL ‘drummer’.  Couldn’t see a ‘green’, hidden or otherwise, anywhere in the answers or grid (only in the clue for 18d) which was a bit of a surprise.

   Like you, I was a fan of the ‘original’ devices in 1a and 3d and also liked GRUYERE.

   Thanks to Hob and Sil

4. Aha!  Thanks, baerchen and WordPlodder for enlightenment on Doc and Paisley – I’m sure you must be right.  This crossword is certainly putting obscure knowledge to the test.

5. Many thanks for a great blog, Sil, [especially for the full parsing of ANIMAL] and Hob for a most interesting and enjoyable puzzle.

   I had no hesitation  re PAISLEY: when I was teaching O Level English in the 80s, students had to give a five-minute presentation on a subject of their choice. I gained an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the hitherto unknown [to me] Liverpool manager, who was, quite clearly, God.

   Thanks to baerchen for DOC. I’d initially entered BOB [it parses] for 23dn but 22ac made that impossible, so I was slightly irritated at having to exchange it for a less satisfying answer – I should have known better. 😉

    

6. The “fussy” grid and the interlinked clues were a bit daunting at first sight but once we got going we rattled this off about as fast as Sil’s train must have rattled along. All very enjoyable and very difficult to pick a CoD, but we liked PRIMARY and COR BLIMEY.

   Thanks, Hob and Sil.

7. Took me a bit longer that half an hour, and I couldn’t see 7dn without a word search.  The idea of true primary colours slightly confused me.  When I was doing the properties of light at school back in the sixties, we were taught that red, green and blue were the primary colours, and magenta, cyan and yellow were secondary colours.  For instance, added red and green light you get yellow.

8. Dormouse, I admit I didn’t think too deeply about it all.

   After doing some Googling, I found this “somewhere”:

   Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are the only “TRUE” colours.

   All colours are made up of them. This is proven with maths.

   CMY Combined block all light, So. CMY = Black.

   Subtract any one of the three combination “Subtractive” Colours and you will ony have the “Additive” Colours left (RGB) Red, Green and Blue.

   M+Y=R, C+Y=G and C+M=B

   Meanwhile, don’t shoot me,  I’m only the piano player.

9. But, from a physiological point of view, the three types of cones in the eye are sensitive  to red. blue and green.  That’s where the three additive primary colours come from.  Speaking as someone with a physics degree, that’s why red, green and blue are the true primary colours.

10. Dormouse, I am not going argue about this.

    You’re an expert, I’m only only a googler.

    But I liked the crossword.

11. For what it’s worth at this late stage, Hob is correct about the true primary colours as related to pigments as opposed to light. This seems to have caused some confusion here.

12. It’s “true” primary colours that I’ve never heard of.  I’ve heard additive and subtractive primary colours and primary colours of light and of pigments, but never true primary colours.  In fact, from the point of view of wavelengths of light, cyan and magenta are mixtures of wavelength and don’t correspond to colours in the rainbow.  (Yellow is an interesting case.  A mixture of red and green light appears yellow to the eye, but you can get light of a single wavelength that corresponds to yellow.  Yellow light excites the red and green cones equally, therefore red and green light fools the eye into appearing yellow.)

13. I’ve seen “true” used but can’t see the point. Maybe just for emphasis? It is interesting how light colours add additively, with the three primaries (red, green, blue) making white. Whereas, pigments combine subtractively, since we see the light that is reflected and so not absorbed, and the three primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow) make black.

Comments are closed.