Cyclops 702 – Gigantic Hiccup

18 comments on “Cyclops 702 – Gigantic Hiccup”

1. Delighted to get one all right after a few attempts with errors. Took awhile, but I got there. Only 5D doesn’t mean anything to me: Noodle as an Old Duffer, anyone?

2. Thanks mc_rapper67 and Cyclops. Congratulations Shaun! I also wondered about 5d NOODLE. I think noodle is a bit of an antiquated term and I vaguely recalled it from seeing old films (stiff upper lip type ones – pre-war/war time) on TV. Therefore my guess is the wording is pointing to NOODLE is an old term for DUFFER rather than NOODLE = OLD DUFFER.

3. I found this a tough puzzle for some reason. I slotted in UNCOVER for 9d and this hampered me for yonks. Poor parsing on my part, but I saw ‘balls’ =OVER and then made the mistake of wondering why NC = Hunter. I googled NC Hunter and first result was an English author N.C.Hunter (never heard of him) and then assumed this was a cast iron certainty.
   My fave was 21a.

4. I loved 4A which made me laugh out loud when I got it! This was a difficult puzzle, an excellent one.

5. Thanks for the various comments – Shaun and Franko sharing my uncertainty on NOODLE/duffer.

   Shaun at #1 – I would temper your delight until you see the official answers (published in the next Eye, out tomorrow) – so far you have just agreed with my solutions! We have had a couple of curved balls recently, but I am hoping my entry was correct, and my name is actually in the prize hat this fortnight…along with yours.

   Morgan le Fay – nice to see a new name here – glad you enjoyed it, especially 4A.

   Franko at #3 – the joys of Go-ogle confiming a mis-parsed solution…if I had a penny for every time…

6. Sorry mc!!!! But if you have ever managed to give a sample instead of blowing both barrels, you’re a better man than me, Gungha Din. I enjoyed SAMPLE though and ASHEN for some reason. I liked ANOTHEAR for the time it tool me…but using ‘the other’ for anagram fodder was always going to be a problem. I also worked a very long time for ARGENTINA …..using Reagan with has doesn’t help and I got out of that trap only when I got a crossing ‘i’.

7. Winsor at #6 – you make a good point – maybe worth a re-watch of this… (trigger warning – may contain nuts, and some political incorrectness…)

8. Thanks for the clip, mc. “You took an oath to fertilize an ovum or die trying!”. I think ‘SAMPLE’ is the correct word, both because that’s what the medical profession call it and because (as the clip verifies), even when you’ve “given it the full both barrels”, there’s always more where that came from. But will it lead to “one more bastard on earth”, lol?

   Btw, I think it’s curve balls you’ve been thrown, rather than “curved balls”. Probably.

9. Hi – came across this to save my head circling on 9D and 14A and spotted confusion about NOODLE. It took us some time, but I believe it to be:

   Old Duffer = OD
   (NOEL)* without = NO__LE
   Defn is “make up”, i.e. to noodle around on a piano

10. Well done MrsR! ‘Noodling around on a piano’ is new to me, but at least it’s in the dictionary 😉 Bit of a loose connection to ‘make-up’, but still …

11. Just googled noodle and Merriam/Webster has it as ‘a stupid person’.
    As for Woody…..and taking the theme further,….I doubt whether masturbation will cause him to hit the ceiling!!!!!

12. Latest issue (1548) arrived today,. Letters page has Cyclops addressing the wrinkly vs crinkly debate, which resulted in a lot of comments here last time around.
    He concedes either is acceptable, but I’m assuming the chosen winner entered ‘crinkly’.

13. I think Franko @2 makes good sense re. DUFFER.
    Incidentally, there are no curve(d) balls in the official answers published in the latest Eye.

14. I should really have said re. NOODLE.

15. Thanks mc_rapper67, I lost track of time and did not download the puzzle last week so was very annoyed when the issue finally dropped through the letterbox on Monday, too late for me to redress the injustices (aka my failures) of the last two issues, but solved it anyway and very enjoyable it was too. I had the same query about NOODLE but I think some combination of Franko@2 and MrsR@9 has certainly justified it, leaning towards the former unless someone can find D= Duffer in Chambers etc. My favourite was SUBWAY but MAKESHIFT was a great topical surface and ALL IS WELL classic Cyclops.

16. MrsR@9, you don’t explain how “old noodle” becomes OD; you can’t just have any word indicating its first letter. O = old is a valid abbreviation, but not D = duffer, I don’t think. Also, NOODLE (“to improvise aimlessly on a musical instrument”, Collins) is intransitive, while ‘make up’ (“to devise, construct, or compose”, Collins) is transitive (and has no hyphen).

    I don’t really go for Franko’s theory @2, either, since you’d normally only use ‘old’ like that for a word the dictionaries class as obsolete or archaic. I think it’s just a matter of ‘old duffer’ and ‘noodle’ being alternative ways of referring to a stupid or incompetent person of a certain age.

17. Oops, I meant “old duffer” in the first sentence of the above.

18. Thanks for all the comments re. NOODLEs and duffers – although I’m not sure I can go for MrsR’s creative parsing of 5D at #9. My quibble was just with NOODLE meaning ‘simpleton’ and ‘duffer’ meaning ‘worthless’, and the ‘political correctness’ of conflating the two. But then again, there are no end of setters still using terms like ‘crackers’, ‘bats’, ‘nuts’ etc. in clues, with equally non-PC mental health connotations…
    Anyway, I think it is ‘correspondence closed’ on this one – time to get cracking on puzzle 703…

    Also, talking of correspondence, a good spot by pajodr at #12 – a very amusing letter, and an apologetic response from Cyclops, as you say.

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