Friday, May 8, 2009 (DT 25818)

Originally published Tuesday, January 6, 2009 in the Daily Telegraph

Introduction

Many thanks to xwd_fiend for your comments on yesterday's post. Your observation that "many" is a reference to roman numerals was especially enlightening for me.

Based on your other comment, I obviously owe an apology to the author of Crossword Ends in Violence (5) for my gentle criticism of his solution to 1d. He obviously saw the same solution that you suggested, which - I must admit - I find a bit more elegant than the one that I postulated.

Thankfully, I was not too outspoken in my remarks (at least, I hope not). I think have learned to temper my opinions as it can be rather embarrassing to strongly espouse a particular view only to later be proven wrong in a public forum. I have also found that some people do not take kindly to criticism (real or perceived) no matter how gentle or well-deserved. I think this rather amusing exchange that took place on AnswerBank a while ago may serve to demonstrate that point (note Beatrice's response to Catron's comment).

Today's Links

Crossword Ends in Violence (5) [DT 25818] - between the post itself and the comments, CEIV provides a fairly complete solution to today's puzzle

Cryptics.co.uk [DT 25818] - it seems the author was sick and didn't post

AnswerBank [DT 25818] - nothing of any real interest here today

Comments on Today's Puzzle

Depending on how rigourous one is in scoring, I think I pretty much completed the puzzle today (how's that for equivocation). There were two clues that I found troublesome:

28ac Settlement: unknown figure (6)

COLONY seemed to be the only word that fit and I knew that Y represents an unknown in algebra, but for the life of me I could not account for COLON. Yes, I totally overlooked the ":" staring me right in the face.

21d Artist losing knight in game (6)

I recognized that HOCKEY would fit (how could I not after spending all afternoon watching Canada defeat Sweden at the World Hockey Championships). Aside from a mistaken belief that cricket and football (soccer to those of us on this side of the pond) were the only games allowed to appear in these puzzles, I got hung up thinking that the abbreviation for knight is "KT". Apparently, that is only so "in older literature". (Now, doesn't that make me feel really good!!!). I always seem to have trouble with these type of clues where one has to subtract letters to get the solution.

If I am not mistaken, the following clues were not discussed in CEIV (possibly because the solutions were considered too trivial to bother with):

16ac {Composed of women} [HEN] /,\ {topless (with the first letter deleted)} {at that time [tHEN]} (3)

23ac Load [CAR|GO] /\ vehicle [CAR] {on (in front of)} drive [GO] (5)

That wraps up today's post.