Comments on: Guardian 23,957 / Araucaria – a Midwinter Day’s Puzzle

By:

petebiddlecombe — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:30:44 +0000

52A: You can’t be cheating enough – if you’re happy to resort to books, you can get EGEUS from the Dramatis Personae list as he’s the only character left. If not (I managed without and checked Philostrate afterwards), choose between kicking yourself as it’s a hidden word (collEGE USed), or moaning a bit about the redundant word “drugs” in the “hiding place”.

My time: I do have a reputation to maintain – see “Contributors”.

By:

Janet Wood — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:03:26 +0000

Just found this really useful blog – thank you. Missed yesterday’s Guardian so was able to fill in clues I’d missed – impressed with your time. Can’t find 52 across???

By:

petebiddlecombe — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 16:18:41 +0000

I should have mentioned “dickey”. Chambers extends this meaning to include carriages as well as cars. Of all the “dickey” meanings in Collins, I only knew the bird, the male false shirt front, as in “dickey and cuffs”, and the bow tie one.

By:

ilancaron — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 09:24:03 +0000

Collins in http://www.collins.co.uk/wordexchange/Sections/DicSrchRsult.aspx?word=dickey has “a folding outside seat at the rear of some early cars US and Canadian name: rumble seat” which I admit is obscure.

So presumably early cars had two front seats and if you had a “dickey” you had a third seat. To be honest, when I solved this I was happy with THREE-SEATER being a kind of car and didn’t do the extra leg work.

By:

Mark — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 08:20:35 +0000

Not being a regular Araucaria solver, I normally struggle to fuly appreciate all the cluing. The one that really baffled me was 49ac Three-seater. OK with wordplay – Astronomer in US playhouse = Rees in theater, but “has car with dickey”??? I’m probably missing the obvious but can someone explain this definition.
Cheers, Mark

By:

linxit — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:36:49 +0000

I managed to complete this without the preamble, although I quickly suspected it should have one, especially as I didn’t look at it until Sunday and was kind of getting used to that! Once I’d cottoned on to the theme it was quite easy to spot the MND characters, and look out for where the others would fit.