Comments on: Guardian 24,595 – Gordius

By: KG

KG — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:38:48 +0000

I haven’t yet had the chance to ask my chemist mate if she knows what litharge is. I’ll bet she doesn’t (she always complains when University Challenge ‘chemistry’ questions are posed in 19thC language, as they usually are). ‘Lethargy’ would have fitted nicely instead.

Until I figured it out, I also wished that Gordius had gone for ‘strata’ instead of Ithaca – but then what would we have talked about?

By: Shed

Shed — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:48:24 +0000

13eastie: Gordius can hardly have ripped off the current Cyclops, as he will have submitted his puzzle some time before the Cyclops appeared.

By: Harley26

Harley26 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:36:27 +0000

19 down i thought was a hidden clue as someone else suggested – I didn’t even bother to look up where Cayuga Lake was as i didn’t think it relevant. It’s a nice touch that it is in Ithaca too.

No problem with Fume but I have to agree that the raconteur clue would have been better if a more accurate hint rather than tedious had been used.

By: hofdark

hofdark — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:43:22 +0000

I would have preferred my first comment to be a positive one but I have to say I didn’t think much of this crossword. Several too easy clues but no stand out clever ones.

Not happy with raconteur, Ithaca or fume. Raffles was my favourite of the day.

By: Dieci

Dieci — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:49:57 +0000

I wasn’t that excited by 19d since I solved it simply by looking up towns in New York with a view of Cayuga Lake (cheating, I know)… I didn’t actually see in what way it was cryptic until reading this post. Is 3d not the more interesting &lit clue?

By: dave

dave — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:09:15 +0000

Derek,
Its a bit like that magic trick, where you are shown 100 pictures, and told you will remember all of them. Of course you can’t list them all (unless you are indeed quite warped) but with a little pointing in the right direction, the clues lead you to something you know you’ve seen or heard somewhere before. Maybe prolonged cryptic solving increases that degree of “warp”
Approaching 30 years of near daily solving, and I regularly perplex non-crossword types with absurdly obscure bits of information, mostly gleaned from this addiction!

By: Dave Ellison

Dave Ellison — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:56:38 +0000

Enjoyed this today.

26a I read this as being a very clever clue, the “a sort” indicating an anagram of itself; slightly unhappy about the “of”, but worth it for the overall effect.

By: 13eastie

13eastie — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:49:38 +0000

Re. potty humour, the clue for (number) 2 seems to be a blatant rip-off of the more elegant 12 in the current Cyclops, whose definition, while failing dismally to be as lavatorial as Gordius’, does call more explicitly for a plural solution to be administered.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:05:00 +0000

Chris’s suggestion for the parsing of the clue for 25ac is clever. To be really pedantic, ‘bush’ is not a very good definition for EUPHORBIA – possibly the largest genus of flowering plants, with over 2000 described species. Although there are shrubs and even trees in the group, well over half of the species are herbs (in the botanical sense of non-woody plants – most Euphorbia spp are poisonous and not recommended for flavouring food!), including all the native British ones. The poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrime) could just about be described as a bush, but not most of the other cultivated ones.

One way round this would be to interpret the clue as: ‘Bush perhaps’ (definition) began (= born, ie B) etc.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:14:11 +0000

It’s usually me who can’t remember, or who has never heard, so I was quite cheered up by the comment re Strike A Light.

There were a couple there that I only got because nothing else fitted, so thanks for the explanations.

Umm, do you lot know every town in every country? Not sure how you can say it’s easy unless you have a photgraphic gazetteer in your brains. I had to research Cayuga Lake. I couldn’t do that on a train.

I hate gardening so guess which one I also hadn’t heard of.

Hmm, I think I see where it is I’m getting bogged down in general. It’s the several levels of solving type of clues. Maybe I need more practice, but what is more likely is I’m not warped enough