Independent 10085 / Phi

13 comments on “Independent 10085 / Phi”

1. This was good fun and it was clever to have incorporated so many themed answers.   15a & 27a were rather obscure but fairly easy to drive from the wordplay.

   Many thanks to Phi and to Duncan.

2. Failed to remember DIRNDL, which I have seen before. (On a side note, I found myself wondering what the plural might be – DIRNDLS looks a bit weird.) Also failed to get LIEDER. No real excuse for that.

   Thanks to Phi and Duncan.

3. I did remember DIRNDL, which was one of my first ones. Good setting to get all the compositions in the grid.

   Yes, TUDORBETHAN sounds like a bit of a mouthful. I, too, didn’t realise that DROITWICH was a spa town.

   Entertaining crossword; thanks Phi and Duncan.

4. No problems with this one once I’d solved 8d and realised what 10a was. I knew tudorbethan and thought of it as a portmanteau word meaning mock Tudor/Elizabethan. For some reason I struggled at the end with the straightforward 26a and 24d. Thanks Phi and Duncan.

5. Lovely puzzle. Failed in exactly the same way as Hovis and like him I am not pleased to have not thought of Lieder. As for he skirt, I thought of DID, knew N and L had to be in there but not knowing the garment I failed to add R and put everything together.

6. All solved without help although we were on the point of using a wordfinder for 16dn when we suddenly realised the answer; and LIEDER took us ages to see, inexplicably.

   We agree with rosella about TUDORBETHAN being a portmanteau word.  And we did know DROITWICH as a spa town – its railway station is even called Droitwich Spa.

   No real CoD, but we liked the themed answers.  Thanks, Phi and Duncan.

7. No problem here with DIRNDL – first item we had to make in our sewing classes at grammar school.   Dreadful thing when it was completed.

   Not overly keen on 15a but found the rest of the puzzle very enjoyable.   Tops for me were COME ABOUT and the very thought of a SUPERB OWL!

   Thanks to Phi and to Duncan for the blog.

8. No real problems.  In fact, I solved it in the time it took me to listen to Schoenberg’s 3rd String 19dn.

   I’d heard 27ac some while back and it had amused me and stuck in my memory.

   13ac was my first one in.  Never actually been there, but back when I was working for the National Grid, I was involved with a computer system that used the BBC Radio 4 Long Wave transmitters to send signals that controlled domestic heating systems, and one of the transmitters is at Droitwich.  (The other two are at Burghead and Westerglan in Scotland.)

9. Thanks to duncanshiell and Phi

   I always enjoy a Phi and this was no exception. I do have a couple of queries though – I believe EPs are still available so I think HISTORIC might be a little unfair, no dictionary that I have access to has COM as an abbreviation for COMMUNIST (perhaps it’s in Chambers and that’s why no-one has objected), and EPISODES aren’t OTHER PASSAGES, they are just PASSAGES. All tickety-boo otherwise.

   BTW I much prefer TUDORBETHAN to our current WINDSORLIZZIE style

10. Thanks to Phi and Duncan – a pleasant way to end the week. We also didn’t know that Droitwich was a spa town – it was our LOI.

    Dansar@9 – Our Chambers does list Com. as Communist!

11. Busy day yesterday so did this late. Thought at first that 11 was HIT.

12. Just for the record and to answer Hovis’s musing @ 2, I believe that in German the plural of dirndl would be dirndl (cf sheep in English). It’s the diminutive form of Dirne, an Austrian dialect word for girl, so really dirndl means little girl, and by inference a dress worn by little girls.

13. Dirne has a rather more negative meaning too. I wouldn’t suggest using to describe a young lass it in a German speaking country!

Comments are closed.