Comments on: Guardian 23968/Audreus – queenly

By:

petebiddlecombe — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:37:18 +0000

Longest serving setter: The Azed A-Z book says Araucaria has been setting Guardian xwds since 1958. It doesn’t give a start date for Audreus but the details for her imply that she started Guardian setting after 1959. Don’t know about Janus – there’s no entry for him/her.

By:

Tilsit — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 16:20:58 +0000

I think you’ll find that, apart from being the mother of the Guardian compiler Shed, Audreus isalmost the lnogest serving compiler on the Guardian panel after Janus.

Fine dependabkle puzzles that have a nice touch of humour in them!

By:

ilanc — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 13:33:25 +0000

4D: I’ve always associated the adjective “reedy” for instance with being somewhat weak and faltering, thus obviating the need for “broken”.

By:

petebiddlecombe — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 13:09:02 +0000

Roger = R = “received” comes from a predecessor of the Alpha Bravo Charlie alphabet.
See http://www.collins.co.uk/wordexchange/Sections/DicSrchRsult.aspx?word=roger

As with the current “phonetic alphabet”, you usually can’t look up R and find Roger because its the other way round – Roger stands for R, just as November stands for N.

I don’t usually like things that rely on knowledge of word origins, but it’s well-known that “Roger” represents recieved, so you might manage to work out that it does so via R.

By:

BenIngton — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:35:15 +0000

Some further quibbles/queries:

4d – I would not take the word ‘REED’ per se to mean something weak and ‘broken’ should have been included.

12d – Should this have been ‘for examples’ as two different examples were given (Leo for sign and novelist for writer)?

23d – Last clue I got as I finally decided ‘Roger’ = R. Looked up Acronym Finder and it isn’t there; the phonetic alphabet I know has Romeo for R but I have heard ‘R for Roger’ and wonder if this is what is meant.