Independent 11,924 by Phi

11 comments on “Independent 11,924 by Phi”

1. Don’t know if it means anything other than itself, but that is a brilliant nina. Same 2 dnks as our blogger, thanks Q and Phi.

2. Spotted the nicely apt nina. Never heard of BASSETERRE but geography was never a strength of mine. Annoyed to cheat on SKELETON – just couldn’t come up with any word that fit. Ah well, can’t win ‘em all.

3. At 22A I too wondered what purpose ‘the coop’ was serving, I suppose it just reads better. Kicking myself for not seeing the diagonal nina as I usually look for this. Microsoft’s Copilot brought up “Ken Engle is the Chief Operating Officer for the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate (ISED) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).” In case it is that one, but no doubt Phi will tell us it’s someone else – if anyone. Thanks Phi and Quirister.

4. I wonder whether we will get a poster who has actually heard of BASSETERRE? That one beat me: I wrongly assumed it was the dog that was being curtailed and the crossers were not that helpful. SKELETON went in as the only plausible fit that tied with the def and the parse occurred only after I’d stared at it for a bit and suddenly ‘got’ LET ON. I rationalised the def of THREEFOLD on the basis that each ‘again’ signals one repetition and so we have the original plus two more giving us our three. AQUANAUT, GENIALLY and TEABAG are my podium today.

   Thanks Phi and Quirister for all your hard work during the year.

5. I couldn’t parse SKELETON and had a strange hole in my memory where BASSET should have been. Somehow I had an idea that it was the dog in the old cartoon, but I couldn’t think of the name. Thanks for another great blog and for a puzzle that I thought was going to be gentle till it wasn’t.

6. Thanks both. I can be at least one poster who had heard of BASSETERRE partly aided as I have a friend whose family originate from the island. As a football fan I am always mildly ruffled to see it described as ‘soccer’ and would add that in CORNER the restart is strictly from the corner arc, notwithstanding it is in its obvious location and commentaries regularly refer to the corner as at least a general area of the pitch.

7. PostMark@4, it depends on your definition of heard of. Once I’d eliminated beagle and opted for basset I knew the name of the place but had no idea where on Earth it is. Now I need to get back to learning the seventh largest town in Paraguay and the twelfth smallest village in Hungary so I have a shot at the Indy Saturday Jumbo GK crossword….

   I found this pretty tough to get started but eventually got a toe hold in the SW. No chance of spotting the diagonal message. Just fond memories of browsing in bookshops. Geography section, obviously.

   Thanks Phi and Quirister.

8. There appear to be at least 40 people called Ken Engle on LinkedIn alone, none of whom were in my mind when I was putting the grid together. Pure serendipity. Just goes to show that there are people out there with names full of useful letters for ending words.

9. PostMark@4 Not just heard of of it but been there too; Test Match Cricket takes you places (though England haven’t played any there, just 2 T20 games)

10. [TFO @6, football being referred to as soccer is familiar to me living in Australia (not sure about NZ) as when people say football they usually are referring to Rugby League or Australian Rules. I’m fighting a losing battle trying to re-educate people here.]

11. I was well beaten by this and had to reveal most of the NW corner, as well as missing the nina when it was finished. Well done to anyone who finished it and could parse the whole thing. I couldn’t make sense of skeleton either, having guessed at it.

Comments are closed.