Comments on: Guardian 24,655 – Araucaria

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:36:03 +0000

Eileen (and Neo): Thank you for the further discussion. I now have something new to look out for when solving.

Judith: I like your interpretation!

By: Judith

Judith — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:14:41 +0000

I’ve never felt I had anything to add before, but I think 11ac “clauses, say” is a reference to more than one Claus or Klaus.

By: Neo

Neo — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:38:18 +0000

Nope. Probably nope, anyway.

In across clues X ON Y gives YX (certainly in The Times, though I learn today there is quite some variance in opinion on this) and in down clues XY (on top of, as you observe).

By: Eileen

Eileen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:12:17 +0000

Dagnabit; ‘on’ used as ‘after’ is quite common in across clues, in the sense of ‘added on’. I suppose it would mean the same in down clues, too, except that here it usually means ‘before’, in the sense of ‘on top of’! It’s rather like the way in which ‘without’ can mean either ‘outside’ or ‘minus’, so that ‘without e’ can mean either ‘with an e inside’ or ‘without any e at all’!!

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:05:37 +0000

Oops, how sexist of me to have written “…upon a man” just now. My apologies to all female lieutenants.

By: dagnabit

dagnabit — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:02:29 +0000

Thank you, Uncle Yap, especially for the explanations at 21ac, 6d, and 16d. And your comments at 19ac were lovely.

Eileen, I’d never come across “on” used as “after” before. But it makes more sense than a clue about a horse upon a man…

If Lydia is a country, is “woman” at 23/15 just for the surface meaning (i.e., as a referent for “she”)? Or is “old country”/”woman” a fused dd?

By: PBE

PBE — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:55:55 +0000

I patted myself on the back for finishing it, but then I thought that there would be lots of comments from you gurus along the lines of “Ludicrously easy”, and “Polished it off between Clapham Junction and Waterloo”; so it’s a relief to find that it earned your respect.

Perhaps you could conspiratorially take it in turn to post at least one cry of despair and frustration as a response to each puzzle, pour encourager nous autres?

By: Paul (not Paul)

Paul (not Paul) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:49:59 +0000

I thought this was largely fair. We know what we’re going to get with Araucaria and he didn’t disappoint today. Some easy, some not so. Some playing by the rules, some less so. I too guessed a fair number and the worked out (or didn’t) the wordplay retrospectively.

Lydia is an old country. Mr Google provides this site, for example.
http://www.livius.org/lu-lz/lydia/lydia.html

By: muck

muck — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:39:36 +0000

25ac again: the saying is definitely ‘Make hay while the sun shines’. Some indication of the past tense would have helped: eg ‘Cut long grass when the sun shone’?

By: muck

muck — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:11:56 +0000

I agree JamieC that IE in HARDY doesn’t quite work for HAIR DYE
Couldn’t get LYDIA LOPOKOVA from the word play – I had the general idea, but had MAkE HAY for 25ac as other comments above.