Comments on: Guardian 24,433 – Araucaria

By: Nick Barnes

Nick Barnes — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:44:28 +0000

Didn’t like QUANTITY, although I knew the definition – once very important in poetry; Tennyson claimed to know the quantity of every word in English except “scissors”. Didn’t spot “T-O-P”; took the orientation from TUBIFORM and ZYMURGY.
And HARDCASTLE isn’t especially a lover in the play “She Stoops to Conquer”. I’m left imagining that there must be some other play.

By: Colin Blackburn

Colin Blackburn — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:02:59 +0000

Being out of the country I missed this one when it was published but, like others here, I love this Araucaria invention. As Uncle Yap says, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and to that effect my Listener puzzle of 1989 (was it really that long ago?) was Jigsaw Alphabetical by Imbricata.

By: AlanR

AlanR — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:25:33 +0000

I love these alphabet puzzles – but although I saw TOP I couldn’t think for the life of me what the other ‘indicators’ were – kept hoping that ‘LEFT’ or ‘SIDE’ or something would appear in the grid! Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

By: Eoin Sharkey

Eoin Sharkey — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:13:03 +0000

In the end I ‘guessed’ Quantity (I actually left ‘t or f ‘ square blank til just before posting). Still not completely sure what the answer will actually be when published on Mon !

I did not agree that Cherry is a real indicator – I thought Onyx was (and agree about Tubiform and Zymurgy) and had not actually spotted the T – O – P : very clever.

The x-word for me was kick-started by finding Zymurgy in the Word Pool right beside the x-word – spookily synchronous ?

By: John Dean

John Dean — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:55:18 +0000

‘quantity’ is a technical term used in classical verse where syllables were held to be either long or short. So I found in OED when I was racking my brains whether it was ‘quantity’ or ‘quantify’ and I was desperate for any clue as to which.

By: C G Rishikesh

C G Rishikesh — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:59:00 +0000

I must confess that I didn’t complete this but I placed most of the clues I solved correctly in the grid (as I have found from the blog above). The first to be placed were solutions starting with X,Z,G and T, besides the four four-letter words.

However, I did complete the first similar puzzle that I ever came across. That was several years ago when I was new to computers and the Internet. It was an alphanumeric puzzle by David Stickley, the Australian composer.

Ah, Hardcastle! Wasn’t he who assured his guests, “This is Liberty Hall, gentlemen!”?

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:01:28 +0000

I completely missed the across and down hints in the above mentioned clues (tubiform, cherry and zymurgy), so when I entered tubiform at 8ac, I was able to fill in the entire grid and succeeded in reaching the alternate solution, which wasn’t the correct one. My hat’s off to Uncle Yap and everyone else who understood the hints.

By: Pat

Pat — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:44:55 +0000

Hugely enjoyable, and an excellent blog. Like Beermagnet, I thought the word row in the CHERRY clue was a key indicator of across, but I didn’t spot TOP at all. But I did think the acoustic definition of QUANTITY was what was being sought.

HARDCASTLE was indeed in She Stoops To Conquer, but the main reference here, I think, was in “old lover” (from memory, as I don’t have the original clue to hand).

His line was “I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and I believe, Dorothy, you’ll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.”

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:27:36 +0000

Solving Z in the paper was made somewhat easier by the juxtaposition of the Z clue about as close as possible to Chris Maslanka’s Wordpool puzzle where ZYMURGY shines out in a large bold fonttype.

Put me down as someone who couldn’t decide between QUANTITY or QUANTIFY and finally opted (incorrectly it appears) for the latter on the grounds that the clue seemed to be a kind of double definition for an imperative instruction, so a verb is required rather than a noun, i.e. “Quantify!”. Frankly, I’m still unclear about this and wonder if Araucaria is really alluding to that surprising “acoustic” definition in Chambers.

I loved it when T O P appeared. I spotted the indications in the T and Z clues, but it was the “in row” in the CHERRY C clue that I suggest shows it to be an across answer and allowed it and then the 10-letter answers to go in place. I couldn’t see any other clue-based orientation pointers and was thinking it was a bit cheeky to describe 3 indications as “several” when the “TOP” appeared.