Comments on: Guardian 24,294, Taupi: Poetic licence

By: radchenko

radchenko — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:54:25 +0000

Dave, Geoff, I sympathise, I had a lot of trouble with this, got about a dozen before i was in front of the computer looking for leverage into the rest of it. One thing about Taupi puzzles is that he seems to have a special knack of getting the surface to mislead, examples being WEAPON, TANGIBLE and COSTA RICAN. Fluffed the bottom left corner on account of spelling licence with an s. Duh. But also the Guardian sometimes seem to leave the week’s hardest crozzie for the Friday, when your brain’s completely fried (or am I muddling cause and affect?)

By: Geoff

Geoff — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:42:28 +0000

Like Dave Elliison, I found this one really tough, although I did eventually complete it. Excellent crossword though. Taupi’s clues have particularly well polished surfaces, using a lot of words with multiple meanings in highly imaginative ways, which results in my often having great difficulty in parsing them. Araucaria and Paul are a cinch by comparison!

By: Dave Ellison

Dave Ellison — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:18:44 +0000

I don’t know about this being easier than it looks – I only managed nine clues and that after a struggle. Just couldn’t get going with it.

By: rightback

rightback — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:11:14 +0000

One of the best Guardian puzzles I’ve done for a while – WEAPON, EXTANT, POETIC LICENCE, COSTA RICAN all top clues.

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:46:12 +0000

23A ACNE : I was happy with “999 recurring?” as the definition. Given that the answer to 9 is SPOT – that’s a lot of spots!
For the wordplay – “1′s about point” – surely it is “1′s about” meaning “ACE is around” N for “point”, so point isn’t part of the def.

I slapped in REPRINT for 1D and had real trouble with 13A before realising the mistake.

Agree 15D PEA SOUP should surely be (3,4). As a result it was almost the last I put in.

Nevertheless, that was a really enjoyable puzzle.