Comments on: Independent 6706 by Tees

By: Tees

Tees — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:37:42 +0000

Hello Dunce - it’s abundantly clear you’re not one, and thanks for your question.

‘The opposite’ is a variant of the long-standing ‘on the contrary’ ploy compilers use to switch round elements in a clue to accommodate surface opportunities.

In this example, ‘the opposite’ of ‘poet’s bloody language’ is ‘bloody language’s poet’: that word order doesn’t make particularly good sense per se, but does indicate the hidden word.

(We had the debate about whether or not the possessive - that apostrophised S - is sufficient to indicate hiddens recently. As a child of Guardian rather than Times indication, I’ve always been okay with it.)

Cheers.

By: DUNCE

DUNCE — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:39:50 +0000

Sorry to be a pain Tees; I get the Richard “Sent into this world scarce half made up…” stuff, and how “Torture” can sound like “Taught you” (I come from Yorkshire), but I just cant get the “Bloody Language” part of the Dylan clue. Please…?

By: Tees

Tees — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:04:44 +0000

Ta very much.

Comments clear up the misapprehensions in the blog, so I needn’t go there except to say that the anagrind in the ’sickness’ &lit is nounal. The preceeding IN is part of the fodder, and designed to be missed.

I confirm the ‘Anglo-German couple’ is ANN and ULI (short for Ullrich), plus: Voltaire’s (or anyone French’s) the = LE, ‘first letter’ = A.

By: jill & tamzin

jill & tamzin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:31:09 +0000

Very good. Our favourite is the radiation sickness, with the other nuke clues.

By: Iain M

Iain M — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:53:02 +0000

I enjoyed this puzzle immensely, especially the exemplary &lit for ‘radiation sickness’. Ray, I agree your parsing.

The ‘hunch’ I think refers to Richard III, who is thought to have suffered from a physical deformity in literature only, hence the Shakespeare reference?

By: Mick H

Mick H — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:29:13 +0000

I enjoyed this, esp good phrasing in 11A, 24A.
12A is a slightly outrageous homophone for ‘taught you’ - as in “‘e tortcher everyfing you know”. It works for me anyway.
23D: I think that “the opposite” tells us that it’s ‘bloody language’s poet’, i.e. Dylan concealed. But is this Dylan Thomas clued by his first name, or Bob Dylan?

By: rayfolwell

rayfolwell — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:02:29 +0000

I think 27A is “Risk associated +[ura]n[ium] + in”*

12A I thought might be a homophone of “taught your”, but this doesn’t quiet work either.