Independent 10,696 by Bluth

24 comments on “Independent 10,696 by Bluth”

1. A curate’s egg for me with a mixture of good and frustrating clues.

   Judging by the number of comments, scribbles and question marks I have on my page after solving Bluth’s puzzles, I fear I must conclude they are not my cup of tea. Although many of the surfaces are fine, once again there are some which don’t gel with me – they make a sort of contrived sense, but they don’t flow, e.g.: 12a, 31a/25d. 2d, 4d, 18d.

   In contrast, the surface of 14a made me laugh out loud, and I particularly liked 26a & 13d.

   I can’t see how “elbow” defines 23d, and it was a pity about the typo in 7d.

   Thanks to Bluth and to Kitty.

2. Very enjoyable and good fun. Nice to have some intelligent clue writing that isn’t pretentious and gives you some thought.

   No problem with 23d meaning to remove out of the way. Surface readings seem no worse than some I could name round these parts. Must be on a different planet to the previous commenter.

   Thanks to Bluth for a good workout and the blogger.

3. This was a struggle for me, and I needed to consult a wordlist for a few in order to complete. Even then, I couldn’t parse 27D as Mark Francois means nothing to me. I suppose I could have searched online but was running out of time. I still don’t see how class = ‘period’. But I thought the anagram for 31/25 was brilliant. So like Rabbit Dave @1 a curate’s egg for me, but thanks anyway to Bluth and Kitty.

4. Hi Tatrasman. I thought I should probably include a link for ERG but couldn’t quite bear to.

   Classes, or more precisely, the time slots for them, were always called periods when I went to school. With surprisingly few jokes about alternative meanings of the word.

5. Rabbit Dave @1 – the ELBOW being the REMOVAL of someone/something feels close enough for crosswordland, but I’m struggling to back it up with anything stronger than an arm-waving reference to giving someone the elbow.

   I didn’t spot the typo in 7d at all until it hit the spellchecker in my draft blog. Then I promptly forgot it again.

6. I think RD’s curate’s egg probably is the best description today. Some clumsy surfaces, imo, but some beauties too. I was impressed at how many solutions were a single word definition. I loved both the Natalie and the Merman for their misdirections. With regard to the first, there are 15 letters in “Actress Natalie (toured with) a” so I began looking for a long anagram and then inspiration struck. Kind of Bluth to clue Merman capitalised or I’d never have made the link. I liked the devices in OPTIMAL and DAPPLE (what a lovely word for spot!), OCTET was clever, IMPROMPTU is, indeed, a brilliant surface and construct, YAK BUTTER was sublime and gets my COTD. Wonderful.

   Thanks Bluth and Kitty

7. Hi PostMark. Yes, Merman had to be capitalised (and since it’s not at the start of a sentence, I’m now kicking myself for not noticing that earlier).

   A while ago I wondered whether there might be justification for allowing lower case names in clues. Responses from the solvers on the Times blog were mixed. I was interested to see what Indy solvers thought, but it didn’t elicit much comment when I mentioned it here before.

8. I rather like Bluth. He seems to bowl just slightly wide of off stump (as in stretchy def’s) but once you get used to them it becomes quite a chewy number
   Nice start to the day.
   Favourites Portmanteau Word and Mikados

   Thanks Bluth and Kitty
   (I have a Bluthner piano)

9. Enjoyed today – although I’d happily go a day without a Trump reference at the moment but I suspect the setters don’t see each other’s work before they are published – but found it tough, sometimes you are just not in the zone! Got the two long ones fairly quickly which I felt would set me up for a good day but sadly not! Ethel Merman and Mark Francois (ironic surname) were unknown to me! COTD probably Mikados for me.

   Thanks Bluth and Kitty (and all the bloggers who help me get slightly better day on day)

   quick question to all – does anyone else who does this online find that some puzzles like today’s (I think it’s where a single answer runs over multiple lines like 31a and 25) make their browser hang and they have to reload the page- not the end of the world but a bit frustrating?

10. Another cracker from my favourite setter Bluth. Faves were 1ac and 26ac which was quite freaky as the book I’m reading has mentioned YAK BUTTER (tea) a few times.
    Thanks to Kitty and Bluth

11. Tombsy@9. Yes. Frustratingly had to reload 3 or 4 times to complete it. As you say, not the end of the world but when you’re on a roll it gets annoying.

12. Out and about as I post so will revisit Kitty’s discussion later but, having admired Bluth’s misdirectional definition of YAK BUTTER, it just struck me there’s another very simple definition – another yak!

13. Thanks Bluth. We really enjoyed this. We completed it without too much difficulty, helped by getting 1ac straight away when Portman came to mind for “actress Natalie”. But we did need every possible crossing letter to get 31ac/25dn.

    We didn’t find the surfaces to be any more contrived than in any other crossword, so the criticism here seems completely unfair.

    Thanks also to Kitty for blogging. We hadn’t heard of the Short Seamew, so the Wikipedia link was interesting, and led to the interesting fact that two other aircraft manufacturers had built planes called Seamews. We hadn’t heard of “sea mew” = gull either.

14. took a while to get started… and then even longer to proceed… penny-droppers all over the place.. some setters enjoy misdirection using verbs to point to nouns n vice versa eg elbow does not equal removal… to elbow = remove, elbowing= removal, if talking about direct substitution for definitions.. not actually complaining! i love anagrams but my head was well done in with 31 & 25 when considering that the M was a common letter to both words.. had to write that one down..
    ps elbow IS actually a rock band!
    thanks to Bluth n Kitty

15. I found this harder in places than many Bluth puzzles, but reading Kitty’s parsings I had many “of course!” moments. I found the surfaces reasonable, even if I misparsed quite a few, but I did get the Murman reference in 18D, my favourite today.

    Tombsy @9 I find my browser hangs for several seconds quite often on Independent puzzles, hadn’t specifically noticed it happening on answers spread over multiple lines.

16. Thanks to Kitty for the blog and everyone for the comments.

    Tombsy @9 – I’ll be happy when DJT isn’t relevant enough to merit a clue. Maybe this was my last throw of the dice in that regard. You’re right that the setters don’t know what else is being published in the days leading up to a puzzle… for what it’s worth, this crossword was largely written in May and updated to set the Trump clues as post-presidency… and from my point of view, it would have been a shame to not have used them at all!

    Rabbit @1 – I can see your point when it comes to 12 & 31. Of course, I *do* think they make sense but I can see that they’re not for everyone. But I really struggle to believe that someone who does as many crosswords as you thinks, ‘Go to start of policy for flexible cover or ‘Miss disrupted polite introduction to Norman tapestry’ are clunky. They seem to me to be quite ordinary, everyday sentences. Heigh ho. Each to their own.

    I expected a few people to query Removal = Elbow… but the best source I can point to for it is the Chambers Crossword Dictionary. Also Chambers thesaurus. It works for me.

    Slightly more surprised by Tatrasman querying class = period @3 – but then, it was the language of my schooldays (“I’ve got geography first period”) so it felt completely natural to me. But Chambers has “Period, def 6 = A division of the school day, the time of one lesson” which feels quite straightforward.

    Of course, what feels like fair general knowledge is always hard to call, but Mark Francois seems to have been all over the news here in the UK for a few years now, and I dare say more people outside of crosswordland know who he is than know that, for example, AB = sailor.

    I do always enjoy the range of comments here and don’t want it to feel like I’m only engaging with the quibbles – but of course, they are the easiest things to engage with because that’s where there is *something* to say. But all the loveliness is much appreciated – ScottieJan – I’m v flattered and Copmus, I enjoy the description of ‘bowling just wide of off stump’ even though cricket is a huge blind spot for me! Cheers!

17. fairly tricky I thought, and i made it harder for myself by misspelling the old soldier (who was new to me). Thought it clever to get the short Elon Musk and Tesla into an anagram. Yak butter was unexpected, smiled at that. I liked the concise COUNTERSINK. Many thanks Bluth and Kitty

18. I thought this was harder than previous Bluth puzzles, but no less enjoyable. Particularly liked the yak butter (that’s not something I ever expected to write).
    At school we had double periods as well as the common or garden single variety.
    Thanks all

19. I found this fun, but with quite a range of difficulty. The top half I found rather easy, especially as 1A, given the actress, was a write-in, but the bottom half was much harder IMHO. Didn’t understand “snubbed” until I found the missing letter by backwards parsing of the anagram. Also not helped by unfamiliarity with Mark Francois: googled but then wished I hadn’t.
    Thanks to Bluth for the entertainment and to and Kitty for the blog.

20. Kitty: I promised to return with a response re capitalisation/not and, whilst I suspect it would lead to enormous debate if it substantially affected a solution over on the Guardian page, you are right in that it doesn’t seem to have excited much comment from either Times or Indy solvers/posters. I know you don’t post much (if ever) on the Guardian but there are some folk there who would probably weigh in with opinions.

    For my own part, speaking as one who uses capitals (and punctuation !) in texts, I think I’d prefer to keep capitals where they belong for the time being. I don’t do any social media apart from LinkedIn for business (where I would always use capitals correctly as I’m aware you’re always presenting an image that should be professional) but I’m aware of the decapitalization (and de-punctuation) that characterises it. At some point, setters will have to catch up with the zeitgeist. For now, I do believe they have enough tools at their disposal to beguile us if they choose without adding yet another layer of potential complication. And, as with Merman today, sometimes the capitalization is the clue which would be lost if conventions were abandoned.

    So, not nailing my colours to the mast for all time, but a vote in favour of the status quo for now.

    BTW, when I reinvented my pseudonym after confusion and overlap with other Marks (all of whom seem to have disappeared since I renamed!), I initially reentered the lists as Postmark. I only completed the full (and planned) transition to PostMark once a few folk had rumbled what was happening and then I was delighted to be congratulated by one commenter on my “medial majusculation”. I had to look it up: using capitals in the middle of something! Which, of course, came to mind when I read your various comments.

    Thanks, as ever, for your contribution.

21. Oh… it’s probably too late to make mentioning this worthwhile as I’m sure the conversation will have moved on elsewhere… but if it’s of interest to folks, I will be joining the mighty Paul for a zoom event in February, setting a crossword together on the theme of Madness (the band) and raising money for Great Ormond Street in the process. Free to join if you fancy it – although, obviously, we’d encourage a donation if you can afford to make one.

    More information here -> https://johnhalpern.co.uk/dave-gorman

22. Postmark @20 – I broadly agree with you. I don’t feel a particular desire to see decapitalisation allowed, but do think there’s a reasonable justification for it (and arguably a better one than for some commonplace devices). In the wild, it is of course important how solvable the clue is in practice, not just whether it fits together when you already have the answer. But that’s the case for all devices.

    In my university days I adopted a consistent lower case style when instant messaging friends. Then autocorrect / automatic capitalisation came along and messed it all up – grr!

    Love medial majusculation! 🙂

23. @Kitty, re not capitalising: did you ever come across ‘archy and mehitabel‘ , a delightful piece by don marquis?

24. @Victor, yes – a couple of bloggers on a different site teamed up as “archy and mehitabel”. I’ve just followed your link and read and enjoyed the free sample, so thank you. (I may well go back and get the full version, but I’m trying my hardest to break my current habit of buying books faster than I can read them.)

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