Independent 10,711 by Eccles

19 comments on “Independent 10,711 by Eccles”

1. Typical Eccles – brief and accurate clues (perhaps apart from 9d, for which I went through a similar process to Quirister), great surfaces, lots of laughs. In short, great fun.

   I’ve got loads of ticks on my page and will just mention a few: PERT, MANDOLIN, TROCHEE, BROTHEL, UNDERTAKER and HUE.

   Many thanks to Eccles and to Quirister.

2. I found this harder than usual for Eccles, but no less enjoyable for that. I couldn’t parse 12A, 6D or 26D as I didn’t spot the less obvious meanings. Cations was a new word for me. The overlapping double definition at 13D was sneaky. Thanks Eccles and Quirister.

3. Lovely setting. An enjoyable puzzle.Thanks Eccles and Q

4. I do like Eccles Wednesdays – this one was mostly straightforward although the NE did take a while to sort out

   Thanks to Eccles and Quirister

5. parsing issues all over the place eg RUTH n 9dn… but still managed with some guesswork… liked BROTHEL n ALCATRAZ
   thanks Eccles n Quirister

6. Like crypticsue, I do like Eccles Wednesdays.

   My ticks were for INFALLIBLE, MOMENT OF TRUTH, TROCHEE, POSTMASTER, NOTION, ALCATRAZ, UNDERTAKER and HUE. I remembered ‘cast’ from Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech:
   ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
   And thus the native hue of resolution
   Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,’

   I can’t add any thoughts on TENNIS BALL and I failed to parse LET (thanks, Quirister). I had the same thoughts about BROTHEL but it made me laugh, too.

   It had never occurred to me that PERT was short for impertinent. I’d always assumed impertinent came from pertinere (to be relevant, appropriate} and all my dictionaries agree. Collins and my SOED both give apertus (open) as the derivation of pert. Interesting, though!

   Many thanks to Eccles for another super puzzle and to Quirister for an equally super blog.

7. Eileen @6: yes, I think you’re right about PERT and I’d remembered it wrongly. Chambers gives “impertinent” as a synonym, but says “pert” is derived from “apert” = an old word for “open”.
   Your quotation for “cast” seems to back up what I thought: it suggests a colour that shouldn’t be there.

8. Quirister, I was quite prepared to believe that PERT was an abbreviation, which led me to look it up – so that’s my something learned today. Thanks for that.

   I mentioned the Hamlet quotation because it contained both ‘hue’ and ‘cast’, illustrating the slight shade (!) of difference that you pointed out. I’m constantly shocked at how readily my A Level English Literature comes back to me, compared with how easily I forget what someone told me last week – or even yesterday. 😉 )

9. Good challenge from Eccles. I couldn’t really see how TENNIS BALL worked, hadn’t heard of the term “undertaking” and missed the parsing of the not so simple LET, so took a bit of working out. The reference to ‘social distancing’ in the wordplay for BROTHEL was my favourite for today.

   Thanks to Eccles for the now expected high standard Wednesday puzzle and to Quirister

10. Thanks Eccles and Quirister

    I saw 9 as a straightforward cryptic definition, with the ball having to be ‘hit [served] again’ following a fault or a let, hence ‘server issues’.

11. Good fun, as ever with Eccles. A couple I couldn’t parse and a new word (cations) so thanks to E and Quirister. So glad to have this blog.

12. Needless to say, I didn’t know 11a, but the checkers were very helpful and I didn’t manage to completely parse 6d – should have known a loo would be involved!
    The ones I liked the most were ALCATRAZ, NOTION, BROTHEL & SNAPDRAGON and I parsed 9d in the same way as Simon S @10.

    Thanks to Eccles and to quirister for the review.

13. Simon S @10: thanks, that makes more sense. “Server issues” was such an obvious misdirection (to me at least, from my background in the software industry) that I was trying to think of a different meaning for “issues” . . . trying too hard.

14. One of us being a chemist (retired) we had a hunch that 11ac was CATIONS but couldn’t parse it properly – we saw ‘ions‘ as half of ‘bastions‘ and ‘cat‘ as half the letters of ‘castle’ but didn’t think Eccles would try a trick like that without somehow indicating that the letters to be removed weren’t consecutive. So we were glad to see the correct parsing. And we failed to parse LET.
    Otherwise it was all straightforward and enjoyable. We liked MANDOLIN, SNAPDRAGON and, because we’ve not encountered it in a crossword before, MATTOCK.
    Thanks, Eccles and Quirister.

15. @14 for ‘castle’ read ‘castle’

16. still not overly convinced with 9dn… where does the hard fit in? after issues with the first serve often the second serve is less hard… ? must be more to it?..or maybe less.. ?
    “One’s [again] hit [hard following server issues] during court proceedings ” would be a lot easier…

17. This took me a while but I enjoyed it. I’m another one for whom cations was a new word. 23A and 5D were particular favourites, but at first reading I rejected UNDERTAKER for 13D as too obvious a surface!
    Re whether a period can be a short time, I think (after double checking because it’s a long time since my physics O levle) the answer is in physics it can be – “A period T is the time required for one complete cycle of vibration to pass a given point.” so a radio wave might have a very short period.

18. Thanks to Quirister and all commenters. 9dn wasn’t my favourite either, but I figured a tennis ball was still hit reasonably hard on a second serve – there was nothing more to it than that.

19. I always like the spark that goes with Eccles puzzles.
    Also liked Aardvark but couldnt find space in the blog to say so,

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