Comments on: Guardian 25,013 – Gordius

By: crosser

crosser — Wed, 19 May 2010 06:24:46 +0000

I was born and brought up in Lancashire, where we wore pumps for PE. When I went to teach in Bristol, a boy in my form informed me one day that he had lost his daps. I was at a loss and didn’t like to ask too many questions. I have lived abroad for several decades and this blog has brought back that memory!
I agree with Ian that H Mantel is particularly well known since Wolf Hall, but would add that she has been a very respected writer for many years. I love her books and was shocked to hear her referred to as “painfully obscure”!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:00:27 +0000

Thanks, tupu and scarpia.
Right or wrong, I think I opt for tupu’s version.
[w+inkle seemed to me nonsense anyway]

By: scarpia

scarpia — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:14:33 +0000

Sil

I think the phrase that best fits is ‘to winkle out the truth’.

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:13:16 +0000

Hi again Sil
Have just checked wikipedia ‘winklepickers’ which supports that idea.

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:04:22 +0000

Hi sil
As mentioned above, I feel it must be winkle out (rather than w+inkle). I have some vague memory that the term draws on the difficulty of prising the edible winkle shell-fish out of its shell. The term winkle-picker for long narrow shoes must, I think, be from a tool for that purpose.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:59:56 +0000

Ho Hum….denied a second pinta at lunchtime by finishing it (with guesses) two-thirds of the way through the first (and last).

By: muck

muck — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:10:45 +0000

Thanks for the blog Uncle Yap.
I enjoyed the puzzle but only just now got round to checking out 15sqd.
As always it’s a pleasure to have other solvers’ thoughts.

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:01:59 +0000

Re the the suggestion that DAP may be regional, it never made it to Yorkshire when I was of an age to go to such places as gyms. As suggested, pumps or plimsolls were the words.

Trunk call? School boy joke? Not sure how that comment was meant. There were certainly school boy jokes, but the term itself was not.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:20:45 +0000

Believe it or not, 4d was for us the last one to go, um, in.
I don’t want an explanation for the second part of the clue [ ], but the posts above and Uncle Yap’s splendid blog didn’t fully unravel the first part of it. Is it ‘winkle out’ or ‘w+inkle out’? I know what ‘winkle out’ means [and 'inkle' (a noun, not a verb?)], but why ‘with difficulty unmask’?

Another one we didn’t understand was OMEN (23d), but thanks to Colin (#13) we know it now. Agree, very clever.
And only after reading the blog we saw that E (in 1d) stood for ‘East’, rather nice.

Less convinced we were by 20d (MONTE).
No problem finding the answer, and getting the construction.
But my PinC had mixed feelings with ‘swaps ends’ for swapping the last two letters.
For her ‘ends’ represents the first and the last letter, and I must say, de facto [obscure, isn't it?] I think she’s right.

We agree with Colin (again!, #13) re the definition in 22d:
‘for dishing out the hard stuff’ describing a noun, well, so-so.

Sometimes I think, setters shouldn’t try cryptic definitions, unless they are really good at it (like Rufus). INDIAN INK (6d), MARCHING ORDERS (8ac) and TRUNK CALL (18ac) were just very poor.
We decided to call them from now on Craptic Definitions.

But to be fair to Gordius, there were nice things as well.
We thought the ’1 down’ in 25ac was great [it misled my PinC!], as was 11,17ac (MANTEL PIECE). Didn’t know this spelling of ‘Mantel’, but it’s OK, of course.
[I got this clue very quickly, thinking of that great Clifford T Ward album (with the same name, but LE) from the seventies - just recently released on cd for the first time].

However, all in all, we found it a bit laborous.
In his previous crosswords Gordius was on the way up again, but this one lacked sparkle – that is, for us.

Whatever’s next, surely nót the Crossword of the Week.

By: Bill Taylor

Bill Taylor — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:16:59 +0000

It ain’t necessarily so. Googling “Indian ink” produces 429,000 responses. “India ink” gives 673,000. Anyway, they’re both misnomers. The stuff originated in China.