Comments on: Guardian Genius 86 – Enigmatist: Me, me, me

By: Derek Lazenby

Derek Lazenby — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:50:37 +0000

Sorry to digress….

I didn’t do this xword, but I saw post 20 in the RSS Feed. OMG! I actually had the record “We are the Moles” by “The Moles” back in the dawn of history! The words were just that, “We are the moles and we live in our ho-o-oles”. I bought it just so that I could own the worst single ever released. Sadly I’ve no longer got it. The B-Side was the same thing replayed backwards, ye gods!

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:16:26 +0000

Surely it can’t be from ” I am a mole and I live in a hole”?!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:58:57 +0000

Help. Where does the phrase “a mole and I” orignate? Am annoyed because this was the only clue I didn’t complete but thought it must be that from the anagram.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:45:05 +0000

Spann, I understand your confusion but Enigmatist stated that … ‘a single letter in the wordplay … is superfluous to the solution’. The wordplay contained lieutenant = LT and the T was superfluous because EN VILLE doesn’t have a T.

But for needing an anomalous T, the sailor could have relieved the first lieutenant.

By: Spann

Spann — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:47:00 +0000

Andrew and Jan,

Thanks for the reponses.

I still don’t quite follow .

The extra T has to be clued and appear in the *final* wordplay somewhere, and yet it doesn’t appear to be. So purely as an example, I would expect the final wordplay to end up clueing ENVIABLTE or similar. And yet in this case there’s no T. I also don’t really understand how the AB replaces an LT which doesn’t occur in ENVILLE. Saying the extra ‘T’ is discarded before the replacement occurs is odd because the T isn’t clued in the first place!

Cheers.

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:49:38 +0000

Sorry, wrong song! It's this one

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:46:14 +0000

I think the ‘phrases’ are all songs. I THINK THEREFORE I AM (a rhubarb tart) is in the Monty Python philosopher’s song

By: Jan

Jan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:16:54 +0000

Andrew was there before me.

By: Jan

Jan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:15:33 +0000

Sorry, Spann, you meant 31a not 18d – D’oh!

I assumed it was from LT for lieutenant.

By: Jan

Jan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:09:31 +0000

Thank you for the blog, Andrew.

Like Judy I struggled with 4a having got empress stuck in my head and hence trying to justify lime press as the solution. I actually made a list … empress, duchess, marchioness, countess, … it was a long time before the all-encompassing peeress entered my head!

Spann, Hi, ‘Torygraph’ = Daily Telegraph = DT, with only the D being needed.