Comments on: Guardian 24,631 / Paul

By: Garry

Garry — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:04:50 +0000

That’s true Rishi – I probably should have expanded. “British informal” according to COED.

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:00:09 +0000

I think pi is short for ‘pious’.

By: Garry

Garry — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:43:21 +0000

Harley26. No-one else has answered you and it’s yesterday’s blog so just to let you know in case you look again that good is a very common crossword indicator for the use/inclusion of pi.

By: Harley26

Harley26 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:44:01 +0000

Didn’t mind this one too much, though agree that the long song titles were a bit weak as clues.
Does anyone else share my problem with good = PI in 4 dn? It seems such a random abbreviation

By: C.G. Rishikesh

C.G. Rishikesh — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:19:11 +0000

Petero: Your query on googly proves to be a yorker for me as I know very little Hindi (I speak Kannada and Tamil and possess a smattering of Telugu and Malayalam). Will have to find out from people whose mother tongue is Hindi.

By: ACP

ACP — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:11:15 +0000

Not Paul’s best effort in my opinion.
2dn and 1ac were borderline inadequate. If you’re not familiar with the history behind these clue, then you’d be excused for saying they weren’t very cryptic.

They weren’t very cryptic.

By: liz

liz — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:12:23 +0000

I found 24d perfectly ok, because of the question mark. but I did think ‘keeping’ should have been ‘kept’ in 14d. When I see an ‘ing’ in the def, in go those three letters at the end, which on this occasion prevented me from getting 27ac and 20ac. I knew it must be something to do with mummies, but didn’t listen to my inner nag! Guessed ‘goolies’ from the checking letters, but held back until I worked out why, even knowing Paul’s fondness for a little off-colour humour.

thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog and best wishes for recovery. Also to Eileen for explaining the Shakespeare ref in 1ac.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:50:52 +0000

Very unusually for one of Paul’s I got 1ac and 6ac instantly – and the rest wasn’t too much of a struggle. The very long long clue is one of those where most of us don’t even bother to work out the wordplay, but 22,11 is much better, with the ‘squeakless apiarist’ being LOL. 13dn is a good cd for the song.

I wasn’t happy with the grammar for 14 dn, but I suppose it just about works, and I agree with Stiofain about STAY.

Like Eileen, I knew the Shakespearean origin of SALAD DAYS, but the quote shows that it is really only barely cryptic – green in judgement = raw inexperience, with no semantic stretch at all.

Quite a few amusing short clues, as always – ‘Fish left in hat’ is typical Paulian fun.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:03:26 +0000

This 24d thing? The ? says, I’m doing something tricky here (where tricky can mean several possibilities), therefore the clue is unlikely to meet normal expectations. Then if you want it to have two halves, a rope can be used as a stay, and stay is a concept which can be applied to an execution. Then you can have it a 3rd way, substitute stay for rope and you get an overall literal phrase corresponding to the the snint of the second part. Given that many ways of looking at it, what’s the problem, remembering my opening statement, that infernal ? takes the brakes off what is allowed.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:03:45 +0000

Thanks, Ian: I don’t feel quite so bad now!

Buon viaggio!