Comments on: Guardian 25,098 / Puck

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:58:08 +0000

Sylvia @ 63, no, but nice idea for a mistake. Of course, Penny Lane isn’t an LP – and I think it’s in Liverpool, not London.

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:54:53 +0000

Lots of fun, so much so that even with a few missing (that I never would have worked out) I came to find out the clues I didn’t fully understand. So thanks for the explanation of WHITE (which had to go in once I nailed ALBUM) and SOUL (ditto after RUBBER), and probably two or three others.

I was lucky in having GET EVEN penciled in before really getting that the theme was strong not weak, I probably would have spent hours trying to make GET BACK fit the rest of the clue.

brr @ 31, nice find re: MEET. I doubt it was intentional, but still…

Early on I had LET IT BE and that along with the clue at 21d made me think “hmmm, maybe a mini theme or something”, then as time went by I noticed I had Officer Spice in the NE corner and then finally 24a clicked.

I never got closer than METAL BOMB (??) for 21a, but it simply didn’t fit the clue properly – a metal bomb (one) simply can’t “go into shock”.

Last comment: the puzzle as a whole is a title as well, albeit only an EP in the UK: Magical Mystery Tour.

Thanks for the explanations, Eileen and others, to Puck for a fiendish but fair romp.

By: easy peasy not

easy peasy not — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:09:04 +0000

Val – mea maxima culpa for getting the date way out of kilter. But thanks for getting the reference from Hansard out. For any sad souls still on this thread, the first para of the Hansard quote is of course Hague quoting Clegg and the next para Hague.

And Eileen there is no problem in your jumping in with more detail. I was inconvenienced today with the bane of my life, namely work.

By: Tuck

Tuck — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:38:58 +0000

And given that Nick Clegg has a Spanish wife and speaks fluent Spanish, he can hardly claim not to know the translated “vulgar” meaning!

By: Val

Val — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:40:08 +0000

So not “a few months ago” then! No wonder I didn’t find it. Thanks, Eileen.

Here, for those who are still following this, is the Hansard report:-

“(Nick Clegg) said:

‘Nothing will do more damage to the pro-European movement than giving room to the suspicion that we have something to hide, that we do not have the ‘cojones’ to carry our argument to the people.’

“An explanation of why the Liberal Democrat leadership’s protests in the debates have become ever more shrill is that, at some point in recent months, they have become separated from their cojones. Those unfortunate objects are now to be found impaled on a distant fence.”

So, yes, Hansard does use the word as is and no one got thrown out for unparliamentary language. And that was way back when they weren’t all in government together.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:11:23 +0000

Hi Val

In case easy peasy does not see your comment at this late stage [and apologies to easy peasy for jumping in, if you do] if you google ‘Hague, cojones’, you’ll find various references. I expect this is one of the more amusing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/06/eu.foreignpolicy

By: Val

Val — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:51:10 +0000

Anyone else have to look up tenesmus?

easy peasy not @62, I can find no record of Hague having used “cojones” (the word, not commenting on his courage or otherwise) in debate this parliamentary session. You wouldn’t know the date? Or the context?

By: Martin H

Martin H — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:52:00 +0000

I see now, as others must already have, that my parsing of 8a (at 20) is incomplete, not accounting for the lost R of revenge. Here goes, then: just as ‘ultimately extract’ works as both part of the definition and an indicator for T, so ‘executes cruelly’ must play a double role in beheading ‘revenge’ and indicating the anagram. Very neat. Do I like it? Not sure.

By: Dynamic

Dynamic — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:39:43 +0000

D’oh, too late!

By: Dynamic

Dynamic — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:38:43 +0000

As Eileen hasn’t responded, Alan…

“Surface” is the shorthand for “surface reading” often used here and in other crosswrod blogs (like bigdave’s Telegraph blog).

It refers to the way a clue appears to be when read as a normal English sentence.

If it sounds like natural English, especially taking the reader in a completely different direction to the solution, and the cryptic elements and definition all work, it’s said to have a “lovely surface reading”, or for brevity a “lovely surface”.