Independent on Sunday 1,647 by Tees

21 comments on “Independent on Sunday 1,647 by Tees”

1. Nothing backwards about 9.

2. Very good copmus @1, you’ve been in fine form lately; ? Dylan Thomas thought of that too.

   Defeated by that clue and RAPINOE, neither of which I ever would have got, as well as by ABUNDANT which I definitely should have seen.

   A disappointing DNF but some good defs for CALVE and ATLAS and surface for PREVENT. Also good to learn the name of a new beastie, particularly one in such an exalted alphabetical position.

   Thanks to Tees and PeeDee

3. 15d. The DASH is the mark –
   Arguably the word ‘bit’ is superfluous.

4. I found this quite tough and chewy, but some very nice definitions and surfaces even if the word play was tricky at times.

   Any time I see or hear Dylan Thomas or llareggub mentioned, It always reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s nod to it with his place name Llamedos.

   Thanks Tees and Peedee

5. Another enjoyable crossword from Tees, even though I didn’t get RAPINOE

   Thanks to him and PeeDee

6. And, of course, there is Erewhon, where you need to take WH as one character. Parsed 15d as Dicho @3.

7. Very enjoyable indeed – a real uplift from Tees which tested but ultimately fell into place. I was very chuffed to work out AARDWOLF and then discover it exists and the Welsh village needed a check. Copmus @1: I spotted the backwards reading for the very first time when solving this morning so smiled when I came to this site and saw your comment. Funny that I’ve never noticed it before – or heard the device mentioned. I’ve heard the play on several occasions – but, of course, spelling is irrelevant in a radio drama!

   I was misled by entering Rose instead of STAR OF BETHLEHEM until PLACARDS put me straight. Very nice to encounter one of my favourite words in BEHEMOTH which I cannot see without thinking beermoth which is simply a lovely concept. BALDERDASH was clever and, like WordPlodder @2, I admired the definitions for both CALVE and ATLAS.

   Thanks Tees and PeeDee

8. RAPINOE was outrageously unfair. The wordplay is obvious (and clever) in retrospect, but with the answer being a foreign player in whatever the USWNT was (soccer as it turned out — ugh) and not a common name, it was too hard to spot, certainly for a Sunday.

9. Not convinced that exasperation is synonymous with ire which seems to be a much stronger term and I did have to delve into the unknown with USWNT which I hadn’t heard of previously.
   Top two for me were CALVE & SEVERN BORE.

   Thanks to Tees and to PeeDee for the review.

10. Hi PeeDee hi all, many thanks for the interesting comments.

    I hadn’t thought of the DASH = em or en for that clue, but maybe I’ll do that when I accidentally repeat it in another publication. Thus DASH was supposed by me to equal the BIT bit.

    As to the bugger all, I knew one of those thingies is spelled weirdly, so thanks for reminding me that the guilty party is Butler with his EREWHON.

11. As a less experienced solver, its very interesting to see the contrast in the thoughts between 9a and 13a in terms of what’s considered general knowledge.

    For me, RAPINOE was a write-in, referring to probably the most famous female footballer in the world right now who has had plenty of media coverage off the pitch as well, particularly with regard to equal pay and run-ins with the former president.

    On the other hand, I thought there was a bug in the software when I hit the reveal answer button on 9a and was greeted with a random assortment of letters (I didn’t have the final two crossers so it was looking like a normal word at that time).

12. Interesting to read Fudgeller’s comment at 11 as we must be just about the exact opposite. 9ac wasn’t a write-in for us but once we had sufficient crossers we knew it at once (and how to pronounce it). And Rachel Rapinoe may be “probably the most famous female footballer in the world” but we’d never heard of her and only got the answer by googling for USWNT.
    Apart from that, and nearly coming unstuck with 17dn (aardvark was our first thought but we couldn’t parse it and it mucked up 23 and 26 across) we found this accessible but a bit tougher than some IoS offerings.
    Thanks, Tees and PeeDee.

13. I think that Megan would be upset with allan_c!

14. Someone on the the Guardian blog once quoted me “the only obscure words are the ones you don’t know”. That has been my maxim for a long time now. I think the same thing applies to “obscure” facts.

    My take on this is that there is no such thing as an “average” person. Many solvers might know 90% of the words/facts in the puzzle, but it is not the same 90% for each individual person. Several solvers might agree that the puzzle contains an obscure (unfair) word, but they can’t agree on which one it is.

    If you have a puzzle that contains no obscure words/facts at all, ie a puzzle where everybody knows all the words/facts, then it has to be very dumbed-down indeed. Everyone might know a lot, but the intersection of what everyone knows is actually quite small. Removing obscurity will lead to bland puzzles.

15. I think RAPINOE was fair enough, given her high profile outside the sport. One of the joys of crosswords for me is the linking of disparate worlds like Old English poetry and women’s football.

16. Enginnerb @13 – there was an interview in the i recently with a female footballer about commentators getting her name wrong.

17. Interesting discussion on GK. I’m reminded of two quotes that I think support PeeDee’s take on obscure words. The first is Chris Tarrant on Who wants to be a millionaire? “They’re only easy if you know the answer.” (I’m probably paraphrasing but it’s similar to that). The second is from guardian setter Soup who said “If I don’t know it it doesn’t go in” full quote here

    Clearly Tees has knowledge of Dylan Thomas, international soccer and Anglo saxon poetry. I think we should be glad that our setters have such varied interests.

18. Although I will admit the ubiquitous cricket references leave me cold 🙂

19. If you subscribe to the The Independent crossword then it comes with a free fact sheet where you can read about people like Megan (and Rachel) Rapinoe.

20. I commented on the Brendan prize from last week that I’ve of the things I liked about it was the diversity of the cultural references. Same applies here. Good work, Tees. Also I think “drop a little lower” is the most wonderful cryptic definition I’ve seen in some time.

    And thanks for the blog, PeeDee – definitely needed help parsing a couple of these.

21. Basically I’ll do anything to get a clue written, even if it means looking like I know something.

    Apparently Megan is ‘rupee-know’. I shall now return to my copy of Ivanhoy.

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