Independent 11,084 by Phi

10 comments on “Independent 11,084 by Phi”

1. Thank you so much, Quirister, for correctly parsing DIPLOMATIC. I had taken the wordplay Qualification Oxford, say, mostly backed, to mean DIPLOMA plus CIT(e) = say ‘mostly backed’ = curtailed and reversed. I was wondering why the diploma was being linked to Oxford.

   I was delighted to finish this, having been beaten in the Other Place earlier, though that doesn’t mean it was easy and I clearly slipped on parsing at least one (at least!) Favourites included QUAKE, EXTROVERT, IN VITRO, QUARTER TO, HOIST, CROUPIER and KITTENISH but top billing goes to STRING for the delightful deletion highlighted by our blogger in the preamble.

   Thanks Phi and Quirister.

2. No complaints here!

3. Very good puzzle with a few unusual words, eg PUNCTILIO and difficult parsing, eg TINTORETTO. I made exactly the same mistake in parsing DIPLOMATIC as PM @1, but everything else made sense.

   Now off to look up exactly what an ARMILLARY SPHERE looks like…

   Thanks to Phi and Quirister

   Thanks to Phi and Quirister

4. Enjoyable as (almost) always from Phi, with a bit of thought required. DIPLOMATIC was our LOI despite having guessed at the start that it would end in –TIC; we were fixated on ‘qualification’ being the definition with ‘following’ indicating that –TIC followed something meaning protocols. And we couldn’t parse KITTENISH which we got from crossers and definition. We did parse TORPEDO correctly but thought of business being a to-do in the sense that after an unnecessarily complicated or long drawn out business one might comment ‘What a to-do!’
   CROUPIER was a bit of a curiosity in that having dropped P from ‘croup’ it immediately surfaced in ‘pier’. Not an unusual device but a deleted letter more often reappears later in the answer.
   METROLAND was our favourite – if we remember correctly the name was actually coined by the Metropolitan Railway.
   Thanks, Phi and Quirister.

5. Allan is right – here‘s the poster to prove it.

   Just to point readers also to John Betjeman’s take on Metroland. He made a TV documentary of that name in 1973 which is available in cyberspace still, and one of my favourite poems of his starts with:

   Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
   Runs the red electric train,
   With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
   Daintily alights Elaine;
   Hurries down the concrete station
   With a frown of concentration,
   Out into the outskirt’s edges
   Where a few surviving hedges
   Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.

   Delightful puzzle from Phi as always, and equally entertaining blog from Quirister. Good weekend to all.

6. I am ashamed to say I put SKID in for 1 ac. I liked METROLAND too, which I associate with the Julian Barnes book. Nice poem KD @ 5. Thanks, both.

7. I liked this a lot. My wife was born and grew up in METROLAND, and for that reason I’ve always had a soft spot for the ode.

   Top puzzle as always from Mr Phi, and ta to Quirister

8. Not a Nina anyone was going to spot, but I started the grid with a few of Chambers’ rarer entries split up and symmetrically arrayed: SLIP-STRING, LEECHCRAFT, HEARTQUAKE and TANGLEFOOT. The last I recollect as the name of a rather pleasant beer; while we get a few British brews imported here, Tanglefoot isn’t among them.

9. A nice Goldilocks puzzle. Not too hard, not too easy.

10. I thought there might be a mini theme going on with the answers ending in ‘o’. A bit of o(d)ism maybe?

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