Comments on: Guardian 24,635 (Sat 28 Feb)/Enigmatist – Elbow grease

By: Ralph G

Ralph G — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:55:10 +0000

2d OLLA would be known to people who ‘eat local’ on the Costas, from the charmingly named ‘olla-podrida’. Seemingly not otherwise.
10d ODEA- nice homophone. Why ‘Roman’ I wondered. My impression is that in _Roman_ sites the odeum is usually a small auditorium et sim, whereas the Greek odeon/odeion can be more theatrical in scale.
21d I don’t like ‘erstwhile old-time’ for ‘remove ‘ot’.
At 21d, I think it reads OK as ‘In the money’ [definition]/ he’s one wanting > ‘yearner’/to deposit Yen [drop Y).
Overall, inclined to agree with Paul (11 above). Perimeter message a saving grace possibly.

By: Paul (not Paul)

Paul (not Paul) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:20:47 +0000

The clues may be “fair” but I didn’t get much fun. This was just hard work. Too many obscure references to abbreviations and shorthands that are only learnt through and used in crosswords. I find enigmatist’s style too convaluted to be really enjoyable.

By: rightback

rightback — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:14:28 +0000

Duggie, re 24dn: Documents on female sponger (4) = BUMF

There’s an implied comma here after ‘female’, i.e. the cryptic part is ‘on female, sponger’ leading to ‘on F, BUM’, analogous to ‘on the table, a teapot’. Quite devious but probably fair.

By: rightback

rightback — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:11:38 +0000

4dn: No, just an omission on my behalf – sorry, I should have explained this one. The clue is:

Region for Asian prince to hold gymkhana – televised? Contrariwise (7)

Here KHANATE (‘Region for Asian prince’) is hidden in ‘gymkhana – televised’, but the clue (prior to the question mark) suggests that it should be the other way round (because ‘X to hold Y’ would usually indicate that the answer is a word for Y and is hidden in the letters of X). Hence ‘Contrariwise’, to show that the hidden indicator actually works the other way round in this clue.

This device is used occasionally when the surface reading of the clue (i.e. what it would mean if it were not a cryptic crossword clue) lends itself to using a ‘hidden’ indicator but with the definition part (in this case ‘Region for Asian prince’) doing the holding, whereas for the cryptic reading it needs to be the other part (here ‘gymkhana – televised’).

By: Duggie

Duggie — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:05:12 +0000

Barbara: re Khanate clue. I think it’s telling you that the hidden letters are not ‘held’ by the Asian prince. I wondered about the sequence of words in 24D.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:53:55 +0000

Re Khanate: 4dn
You didn’t mention that this was a hidden word, or was that too obvious?
Also, what was the function of “Contrariwise” ?

By: Roger Murray

Roger Murray — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:36:28 +0000

Thank God everyone found this hard, got about three quarters of it done at the weekend and meant to bash on with it during the week but never got round to it. Enigmatist is still my nemesis. Good week other than that, only missed one clue all week(in Rufus of all setters!) Thanks to all on this site for the help.

By: rightback

rightback — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:19:13 +0000

Thanks eimi – I’m afraid I haven’t been keeping up with the recent exchanges. I saw Elbow as an undergrad but haven’t really kept up with them either; probably time to do something about that.

Mr Beaver – I’ll raise my hand for OLLA, but I’ve only ever seen it in barred puzzles like the Listener (usually in a clue for OLLAV, which is a learned ancient Irish man). It’s pretty obscure for a blocked puzzle, but I suppose this was a prize crossword so a bit of dictionary usage is to be expected.

By: eimi

eimi — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:29:30 +0000

Hi Rightback. I started a brief discussion on the new Chat forum here recently after listening to the very same song. Shortly afterwards I went to see Elbow and they were unspeakably wonderful and finished their encores with Scattered Black and Whites.

(This may be off-message for the crossword, but it does relate to the blog.)

By: Qaos

Qaos — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:19:03 +0000

Well, I thought this was the hardest Saturday crossword for a long time. And due in part to writing in SANDERS for 17ac. Since SANDERS was hidden in the clue (“They remove evidence of one-age exchange for ‘is and ‘ers”) and made so much sense for the solution that I never convinced myself it could be wrong!

After that, it was all downhill.

I do admire Enigmatist, but at the same time whenever I see his name on a Saturday, my first thought is that it’s time to take a week off .