Comments on: Independent and FT Crosswords for new solvers

By: kurwamac

kurwamac — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:49:11 +0000

I’m a bit late to this party, but I’d be interested in finding out if anyone knows who introduced this sense of ‘Nina’. I started a thread at an etymology board, and received precisely no comments.

I suspect that most of the posters weren’t familiar with the use of the word to refer to the Hirschfeld drawings. I don’t know how widely the term is known on either side of the Atlantic; I’m familiar with it because I grew up in a household that took the NYT and my father was an artist who pointed it out to me. But that’s not typical.

Input from other posters here wouldn’t represent a typical cross-section either, but might be interesting.

As for the link: http://www.alhirschfeld.com/artwork/originals.html

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:52:40 +0000

For ages I too thought Nina was an acronym.
The origin is from Al Hirschfeld who was an American cartoonist / caricaturist who hid his daughter’s name, Nina, in many of his cartoons:
I would put the wikipedia URL link to Al Hirschfeld here but the system is now putting any of my comments with URLs into the spam bucket. (You must have special blog-owner powers Neil.)

By: neildubya

neildubya — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:24:18 +0000

It’s a word, or a number of words, or a phrase, hidden in the completed grid of a puzzle. For example, in a recent Indy puzzle the phrase DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO appeared in the unchecked letters of the 1st and 15th columns of the grid. “Nina” isn’t an acronym though - I can’t remember the exact story but I think the word comes from a compiler of US-style crosswords who included his daughter’s name (Nina) in the grid of one his puzzles.

You can find some examples of recent Ninas in Indy and Guardian puzzles using this link:

http://fifteensquared.net/?s=nina

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:50:45 +0000

Could someone please explain what a nina is? I’ve got a vague idea, and presume ‘nina’ is an acronym for something, but it would be nice to know what.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:41:36 +0000

There is a pattern to the FT you haven’t noticed. Wednesday is usually themed, often a “special”. Most commonly but not always by Cinephile. Sometimes this goes beyond just a theme in answers, with something like the rubric “B has the same designation wherever it appears” with B appearing in many clues. It might be Beasts and every answer is an animal, or something similar.

Also worth knowing that Saturday and Mondays are prize. Miserly prize but there you are.

By: petebiddlecombe

petebiddlecombe — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:17:28 +0000

The ‘recent blogs’ page would be nice, but in the meantime, you could save links to ‘category views’ in your favourites. Example: http://fifteensquared.net/category/guardian/.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:37:18 +0000

Regarding the lack of a print option on the Independent cryptic, a bit of deft use of the Print Scrn button, and a paste into Paint will allow you to print from there. It’s a bit fiddly - especially as you’ll have to do so more than once after scrolling to get all the clues - but better than nothing if you’re desperate to do this off-line…

By: Michod

Michod — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:33:26 +0000

Maybe it would be a good idea in any case to have a front page that just has titles of the last half dozen blogs, rather than the latest one in full? I sometimes log in to check the Guardian blog without having done the Indy crossword yet, or vice versa. That would get round the problem Pete mentions for those tackling yesterday’s Indy online.