Comments on: Guardian 24,998 – Araucaria

By: sidey

sidey — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:19:40 +0000

Yes!

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:09:56 +0000

Sidey, were you lateral quercus? Oh, and I read the entire wikipedia article on almanacs, but most of the historic ones were buried in a wall of text, so I don’t even know if they mentioned it.

By: FumbleFingers

FumbleFingers — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:57:26 +0000

[dammit - I'll never get the final word here...]

I admit I was wrong – ‘houseroom’ is obviously acceptable to at least some anglophones to denote a place where ideas might actually be raised / stored, as opposed to the more common negation explicitly rejecting such a possibility.

Albeit grudgingly, my thanks to those who have contributed to my enlightenment. I promise to be more sceptical when consulting my inner grammarian in future.

By: sidey

sidey — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:19:31 +0000

Hello Huw, Old Moore’s Almanack has been going since the 17th century. Well known over here for its lack of predictive ability. Glad you’re developing interests outside RW. If you think laterally you might remember me

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:00:43 +0000

W00T I managed to finish another crossword! And an enjoyable one at that, there was a fun middle stage where each new word would give me a crosser that helped me tumble the next one, for seven or eight clues in a row.

Re: House(-)room, I never found “Moores”, but inked it in anyway after searching at wikipedia and noting the usages of the word. When one was something related to boarding schools (a master living in each house-room or some such) I was perfectly happy with the “receive ideas” part. While I got it very late, HOU or OUR was the first bit of the puzzle I got.

Women’s lib was most excellent, as was Torture, in my opinion.

I have a minor beef in that corn =/= wheat; but “temperature” is ok for heat, it’s not the “scientific” sense so much as “running a temperature”, the colloquial for a fever.

References used: Dictionary, Bible, Wikipedia. Could have substituted Atlas for Dictionary…

As far as it being a “doddle”, I’d opine that if I can completely finish one of these, it’s not the hardest puzzle out there.

Now to read posts 15 to 48…

Thanks for the blog Andrew!

By: scarpia

scarpia — Sat, 01 May 2010 22:59:32 +0000

Amen -now that is definately the last word!

By: mike04

mike04 — Sat, 01 May 2010 22:37:07 +0000

The word HOUSEROOM is used in some schools. It’s often a base where students may seek advice, help, encouragement (and ideas etc!) from their Housemaster or Housemistress.

By: Trench Adviser

Trench Adviser — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:43:25 +0000

Good puzzle, which I was happy to complete in a little over one hour.

I’m slightly surprised at the lack of comment about the use of ‘mulatto’, especially remembering other minor controversies in the past, eg about the word ‘coolie’.

By: Roger

Roger — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:02:20 +0000

cholecyst @ 29/30 ~ Hi

Rufus quotes the clue in the introduction to his volume in the Guardian Setters Series …

Giggling troll follows Clancy, Larry, Billy and Peggy who howl, wrongly disturbing a place in Wales (58)

… and it appeared in The Telford & Wrekin News in 1979 !

By: Tokyo Colin

Tokyo Colin — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:55:00 +0000

This is probably after last call , but I agree with Derek #37 – I associated the expression “wouldn’t give it houseroom” specifically with ideas, particularly as oddball proposals in a brainstorming session. Perhaps that usage is confined to software development which was my trade 20+ years ago.