Comments on: Guardian 25,026 / Arachne

By: beermagnet

beermagnet — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:15:03 +0000

18A GRILLINGS: I took the final GS derived from “school examinations” to be G[eneral] S[tudies]
Everyone seemed to have to do this at A Level in my day

By: Eileen

Eileen — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:58:35 +0000

Hi Annac

Of course she does! – many thanks for that. So it’s a great & lit and I missed it,

By: Annac

Annac — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:02:51 +0000

14. Tracey Emin famously charts her own life – and career – through her art.

By: Gerry

Gerry — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:28:09 +0000

I nearly tripped on ‘gustiest’ rather than ‘gassiest’ too. Glad to finish, but not really an enjoyable one.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:35:21 +0000

Thanks Eileen.
I agree with your reading of 10 across even though,like tupu(at first), I thought it was just a non cryptic definition.
Like most others I thought there was a lot of good stuff here with some very clever misdirections and some lovely surfaces – 27 across in particular.Favourite clue was 1 across.
Again,as others have said a number of these were ‘solve first – parse later’,but I enjoy that,even though I failed with ‘mussel’!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:06:21 +0000

In #24: J and L= .

By: nmsindy

nmsindy — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:01:25 +0000

Know very little about bivalves but dicts suggest a mussel is one. I then read it (the answer) as a homophone of ‘muscle’ which means ‘might’, with the ‘articulated’, ie in speaking, indicating that.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:01:01 +0000

Yes, Eileen [TYVM] & Others, TRICOLOUR was weak.
Yes, we thought the obvious FOUR-SQUARE was not that good (because of “4” being there).
Yes, and 11d (CIVIL SERVICE) wasn’t either.
And yes, this was a relatively easy solve [surely compared to Arachne-two-puzzles-ago].

But, but, but.
There was more than enough compensation for that.
Great anagrams (12ac, 20ac), brilliant surfaces (18ac, 27ac [although, to be honest, I think I saw the Webster/bestrewn connection before], 8d) and a fantastically concealed homophone in 10ac (MUSSEL).

Some people said that there weren’t enough smiles.
Well, how important’s that? Want one more ‘bottom’?

How many of you go through the clues again, let’s say, one or two hours after solving it?
Well, I do [the alien in me J].
To find out, this is mostly very clever, well-written stuff [‘He perhaps’ in 1ac meaning ‘Gas’ – that’s just it! (btw, we didn’t find anything else than ‘gustiest’ L].

Some crosswords just do feel right, while others do not.
Arachne’s did.

By: mike04

mike04 — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:56:56 +0000

Yes, tupu, that was the case. Collins gives Aeolic, Arcadic, Doric and Ionic (including Attic) as the chief dialects of Ancient Greek.
And we have some Doric speakers here in Scotland!

By: tupu

tupu — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:55:23 +0000

Eileen thanks. I accept your point about articulated = rendered in speech. I suppose the weakness for me is that disc and Nile are very easy and once you have them it must be mussel anyway and that can be an articulated bivalve. But yes, OK.

Mike04. That makes a lot of sense. As my own comment suggests, there were local Doric (Dorian) populations (who were one assumes Doric speakers).