Hello. My name’s Chris Lancaster, and I’m incompetent at transcribing Magpie puzzle solutions into the submission grid.
Irrespective of my spelling of PUNGENT as PUNGNNT in VDUs, I thought this an excellent issue. Superb stuff by Mr Magoo to fit so many butterflies into his grid; a great puzzle from Emkay that makes me wish this setter was more prolific; and a typically difficult Pieman puzzle, the theme for which astonished me. Who would have thought that you could make a genuine sentence from eight identical words?
Thanks to all for a great month’s entertainment. I was only baffled by the seemingly arbritary marriage of semaphore and Congo in Tory’s Turn; is there some link between the two that I am missing?
Huh. Pretty unimpressed by the MynoT (obviously, because I got it wrong). Having not been as bothered by the one that got everyone cross in The Listener (because I got it right), I’m with Chris that this leap from semaphore flags to the Republic of Congo seems a rather massive one, only signalled by the weak pun. I had taken Tory’s Turn as Blue Bend (a bend being a heraldic diagonal stripe), and I don’t see that that’s a whole lot less obvious than the answer. I would have thought that fairness would demand an additional link to get us there. Obviously not. Bah humbug.
My new mini Times Atlas proved its worth on Tory’s Turn: the gazetteer section convinced me that only the Republic of Congo has a flag in which the two opposite sides of a diagonal stripe go right into the corners to make the stripe a parallelogram: other diagonal stripes tend to meet the edges at points other than the corner, so the stripes are hexagons. Only after that did I realised what the title was about - I always seem to be a bit rubbish with titles.
Was I in a major trough of form or were Pieman’s clues as difficult as clues get? I solved a Listener in the same as I took for my first three clues of his. If the denouement hadn’t been easy to Google Oi’d have given it an E.
It seemed a stiffer issue than average though as entertaining as usual especially as this time I negotiated my ‘dreaded setter’, MynoT. (If anyone’s in the mood for a thread, are there other DSs out there?).
Looking back at my earlier comment, I think I’ve probably been a bit ungracious, especially to the issue as a whole, which I thought was terrific - the editors’ contributions especially. I can’t quite believe I ever managed to solve Parsing Problem, but what a lovely puzzle.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 am
Regarding (9,4) by Mr Magoo, is a WHITE line through ADMIRAL acceptable and if not, why not?
Chambers has:
white admiral n any of a genus of butterflies of the same family as the red admiral (genus Vanessa), having white bands on the wings.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:12 am
I agree. I had both a red line and a white. The red was easier to draw.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Don’t worry. A white line through ADMIRAL is fine. Most people chose red, for practical reasons, but many spotted the two alternatives.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Hello. My name’s Chris Lancaster, and I’m incompetent at transcribing Magpie puzzle solutions into the submission grid.
Irrespective of my spelling of PUNGENT as PUNGNNT in VDUs, I thought this an excellent issue. Superb stuff by Mr Magoo to fit so many butterflies into his grid; a great puzzle from Emkay that makes me wish this setter was more prolific; and a typically difficult Pieman puzzle, the theme for which astonished me. Who would have thought that you could make a genuine sentence from eight identical words?
Thanks to all for a great month’s entertainment. I was only baffled by the seemingly arbritary marriage of semaphore and Congo in Tory’s Turn; is there some link between the two that I am missing?
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Think flag.
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Huh. Pretty unimpressed by the MynoT (obviously, because I got it wrong). Having not been as bothered by the one that got everyone cross in The Listener (because I got it right), I’m with Chris that this leap from semaphore flags to the Republic of Congo seems a rather massive one, only signalled by the weak pun. I had taken Tory’s Turn as Blue Bend (a bend being a heraldic diagonal stripe), and I don’t see that that’s a whole lot less obvious than the answer. I would have thought that fairness would demand an additional link to get us there. Obviously not. Bah humbug.
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
My new mini Times Atlas proved its worth on Tory’s Turn: the gazetteer section convinced me that only the Republic of Congo has a flag in which the two opposite sides of a diagonal stripe go right into the corners to make the stripe a parallelogram: other diagonal stripes tend to meet the edges at points other than the corner, so the stripes are hexagons. Only after that did I realised what the title was about - I always seem to be a bit rubbish with titles.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Was I in a major trough of form or were Pieman’s clues as difficult as clues get? I solved a Listener in the same as I took for my first three clues of his. If the denouement hadn’t been easy to Google Oi’d have given it an E.
It seemed a stiffer issue than average though as entertaining as usual especially as this time I negotiated my ‘dreaded setter’, MynoT. (If anyone’s in the mood for a thread, are there other DSs out there?).
April 4th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Looking back at my earlier comment, I think I’ve probably been a bit ungracious, especially to the issue as a whole, which I thought was terrific - the editors’ contributions especially. I can’t quite believe I ever managed to solve Parsing Problem, but what a lovely puzzle.