Independent 11,171 by Dill

20 comments on “Independent 11,171 by Dill”

1. Thanks both. There are thousands of species of fish, but most here were known to me, and as the blog says, impressive to see all clued recognising their alternative uses. A small point would be that ‘old’ and ‘over’ are not both needed in GROPER, or perhaps we are avoiding or indeed embracing a contemporary interpretation of the answer?!

2. The theme was revealed right from the start. I didn’t understand 6D though. Very enjoyable so thanks Dill and Quirister.

3. T @1: I think we need “over” because the first three words give us GR + ER, and we need an indicator to put that outside O (old) + P. The ordering doesn’t quite work otherwise. And yes, I wondered about the contemporary resonance, but it’s all been settled out of court now . . .

4. T @1. I agree that you don’t need both ‘old’ and ‘over’ in 5a but you can parse as GR_ER for ‘Queen succeeds King’ then ‘over’ to mean this surrounds OP ‘old prince’. At least in this way, it isn’t a redundancy.

5. Beaten to the punch again. Seems to be my thing today.

6. Good to see the theme appearing in the answers without being referred to directly in the clues. I did manage to see the connection between ‘Roll-up’ and ROACH but didn’t know ‘lucky’ LUKE. Otherwise everything parsed and I remembered a few of the fish from crossword land, including ALEWIFE. Yes, I liked ‘toy boys’ too.

   Thanks to Quirister and to Dill for the bouillabaisse

7. Hovis@5!
   I know what you mean.

   Just to make you feel better, I typed my response to T@1 and was about to post it….. 🙂

8. Thanks Quirister and Hovis, noting I lost most of my title@1….the intention of over was not lost on me, I simply noted queen can succeed king over (cricket notation) but will re-emphasise I suspect this was considered and deliberate by the setter, where my mind had drifted otherwise to those in the public eye losing royal titles etc.

9. Light, fishy and fun!

   I didn’t know the specific meaning of roach in the context of cigarettes, and a slight hmm from me for 30d as “for” does not equal “per”.

   Thanks to Dill and to Quirister.

10. Very enjoyable Goldilocks offering for me so thanks both.

    I wondered what AGOUTIS was about – I had forgotten the two-lettered three-toed sloth. BASEST doesn’t quite work for me if I put on my pedantic glasses – the ‘E’ seems to be doing double duty both to provide the homophone and as a component of the Fench ‘est’.

    Favourite was CRISPNESS, a word that always makes me think ‘happy’. 🙂

11. Thanks Dill and Quirister

    I think there can be an equivalence between ‘per’ and ‘for’: “Per / for Smith, Johnson was a good PM”.

12. A fishy delight from our setter on one of her sadly infrequent visits to us. Perhaps she’s up to her eyes in more house renovations!
    Smiles aplenty with big ticks awarded to the toy boys, the tax benefits of the religious group and the society duchess.

    Many thanks to Dill and to Quirister for the review.

13. Very enjoyable. I had the same favourites as Jane. The fact that we can have two fish themed puzzles without repetition shows that there are plenty more fish in the sea.

14. A theme for once that we spotted almost as soon as we started. The captain in 1ac eluded us for a while but when CLAM, PERCH and CRAB emerged in one row we guessed what the theme was going to be. And we didn’t even need that common Crosswordland fish, the ide. Plenty of non-themed answers to like, too, such as AGOUTIS and FATIGUE. But we would say that UMBRIAN is a definition by example – all Umbrians are Italian but not all Italians are Umbrian.
    Thanks, Dill and Quirister.

15. Nice puzzle, inventively clued.

16. Liked DAHLIAS, ‘kens’ for toy boys, PERCH and CULTIVATE. I didn’t rate the clue for ROACH very highly. A roach, as you mention, is well past the rolling stage and the clue says nothing about it being a butt. Maybe I’m missing something. Perhaps Dill rolls his roaches. Thanks.

17. rookie @16. Chambers gives ‘roach’ as ‘(the butt of) a marijuana cigarette’. I take the brackets to signify that it can also mean the whole cigarette but I’m hardly the expert on such matters.

18. As an expert in such matters (well, don’t we all lie about this?) I can offer that the ROACH is no part of a smokeable: rather it is a device such as a tweezers which can be used to hold the tiniest remnant of a roll-up to the lips to ensure no wastage. No doubt the mandibles of a cockroach have been used for this purpose and there you have the origin of the usage.

19. Alphalpha@18 I think you are talking about a ‘roach clip’.

    Hovis@17 well, Chambers prevails I guess, in crosswordland, but if setters are going to use drug-related clues they should know what they’re talking about. A marijuana cigarette, or ‘roll-up’ which I’ve never heard of before in this context, can’t be a ‘roach’ in the real world, or unreal as it would be after the cigarette, until it has been smoked to the butt and thus resembles the insect in question.

    No drama. It remains an excellent crossword.

20. Now, where’s the papers …

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