Comments on: Guardian 24,587 (Sat 3 Jan)/Araucaria – Dammit, I’m mad!

By: Ralph G

Ralph G — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:28:55 +0000

Super puzzle, great blog, thankyou for the enlightenment.
If you’re all done at #9 with the clues, perhaps I can throw in a double cognate, namely FISH (25a) and PISCATORIAL. ‘Fish’ comes from the Teutonic line, with umpteen cognates in the Teutonic languages, from a pre-Teutonic *piskos. [For the p/f shift cf Latin/Gk ‘pater’ and Ger/Eng ‘Vater, father’]. In Latin we have ‘piscis’ (noun} and ‘piscare’ (vb) with ‘piscatorial’ a straight derivative. More interestingly in French we have not only ‘pêcher’, but also the less obvious ‘poisson’ (!) for which the earlier forms of ‘pescion’ and ‘peisson’ are persuasive.
The Irish and Gaelic ‘iasc’ is an example of the loss of initail ‘p’ in Celtic from a theoretical *peiskos.
Welsh ‘pysgod’ (pl.) has the ‘p’. I reckon this is cognate with the Latin rather than a derivative although it is listed in “Yr Elfen Ladin yn yr Iaith Gymraeg” (Henry Lewis 1943 o.o.p.). [whereas ‘elfen’ _is_ a derivative of ‘elementum’.]

By: muck

muck — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:34:33 +0000

PS re 6dn: AIR INTAKE. Oxygen is a gaseous element, but was originally described by Priestley as ‘dephlogisticated air’.

By: muck

muck — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:15:28 +0000

6dn: AIR INTAKE. Strictly speaking a fish’s GILL is an organ to extract dissolved oxygen from the water. I suppose, for a non scientist, oxygen is a type of ‘air’, ie gas.

By: Ali

Ali — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:28:48 +0000

A nice puzzle. And a nice Demetri Martin reference in the title of the blog!

By: Geoff

Geoff — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:44:47 +0000

Well done , Rightback. Very entertaining puzzle. I wasn’t familiar with Carlos Quieres’s palindromic poem, but I worked out the long palindrome from the pieces and then Googled it.

Quite a lot of charade clues in recent Araucaria crosswords have involved parts of words of unspecified length. 17ac took me a while because not only were the letters of part words not clearly defined, but they had to be anagrammed for the solution. However, although a clue like this is certainly vaguer than usual, it is not actually misleading, so I can’t get too exercised about it. One of the joys of Araucaria’s puzzles is the variety and imagination of his cluing.

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:39:15 +0000

As Eileen says, tough but good fun. 10a was our first solution – definitely a laugh out loud moment !

Originally had TOWARD for 4a (matched ‘progress’ better) but eventually settled on INWARD to make the palindrome work – don’t know why we didn’t think of the correct answer as it makes a lot more sense !

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:27:24 +0000

A brilliant puzzle. Much muttering around the table with d-EFE-ctive in the first two Ws of www, but got the answer before we solved the SI anyway.

21 and 22 together are ARE/WE/N(OT) NEW/ERA which is worth a ponder for backward readers. So to speak.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:58:10 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Rightback. I found this quite tough going [but very enjoyable, as always], although I did get the palindrome early on. My last to go in were 1ac and 1dn: I didn’t know the plant or that jack was a fish and I didn’t get 25ac until the third last, so the reference to that didn’t help.

I agree that the wordplay of 23dn is outrageous – but redeemed by the definition, as supplied by Andrew.

I’ve no problem with 14dn: OED: ‘reversion to an earlier ancestral type or character’.

I didn’t think a sleazebag was necessarily a crook but it’s a very clever clue, as you say.

By: TwoPies

TwoPies — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:51:58 +0000

Ah, that explains end of the line. Thanks both. I found this one a bit “crewel” in parts.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 09:38:55 +0000

I agree with your parsing of the wordplay in 23dn, but the definition is a reference to Henry V’s Agincourt speech:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;