Comments on: Guardian 25,195 / Crucible

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 08:08:55 +0000

Hi Carrots. It’s not my syntax – just my typing.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:21:48 +0000

Tupu: “What you thinks(?)…..I think”??? Now I wouldn`t know a split infinitive from a Jersey Cow (10 out of 10 if you can name which Western this came from) but there is decidedly something odd about your syntax.

Also, get an outboard for your bath-tub: I once took my little Shetland from fen-land to Derby and it only took me five days. You have no excuse for missing K`s Dad`s “bit of a do”.

By: tupu

tupu — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:04:46 +0000

Hi Stella
Part of my point was as yours, the clue’s order indicators.
Yet Crucible’s positive response to Sil reveals that there genuinely can be more to cluing than we may sometimes think.

By: tupu

tupu — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:02:21 +0000

Hi Sil
My point was not to criticise but simply to point out that the meanings of the words also matter.

Also I wonder what you thinks about ‘charade’ clues which may easily take a comparable form, I think.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:21:53 +0000

Hear Hear! Stella. Tupu & Sil are always odds-on favourites in the Semantic Stakes, with both preferring hard going. I`m just happy if I can finish!

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:56:27 +0000

It’s a bit late to answer, but I don’t see the problem with 6d. – the answer is TATI with KEP – T outside, exactly as the clue indicates.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:48:11 +0000

Tupu, the only thing I can say about this is that, when you are a crossword setter, you don’t want a thing like this (8d).
When Crucible says “A case of taking my eye off the ball”, I know exactly what he’s talking about.

Nobody else can’t be bothered? Fine by me.
I am sure Crucible knows what I mean.
On hindsight, he probably would want to adjust that clue – alas.

But but but, don’t get me wrong, GREAT puzzle.

By: tupu

tupu — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:50:44 +0000

Sil’s point re 6d and Crucible’s positive response to it are instructive and reveal a remarkable aesthetic fastidiousness, while at the same time pin-pointing what probably makes the clue a fairly easy one.

At the same time, ‘remain’ and ‘keep’ are not simply synonyms, as mhl’s original query clearly shows (with Eileen providing the relatively small overlap between them). ‘Remained at it’ is much less purposive and much less like ‘persevered’ than ‘kept at it’, since ‘keep’ even as an intransitive verb retains a kind of transitive or perhaps more accurately reflexive quality – ‘keep oneself at it’ – which ‘remain’ lacks.

I myself did not worry. I simply ‘obeyed orders’ and saw the ‘t’ in ‘kept’ as instructed (i.e. after Tati), and Sil’s point did not strike me (or most of us as far as I can guess). Through this blog, I am learning more from him and others about the aesthtics of clue surface structure, but I still tend to be that little bit more interested in semantics.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:09:08 +0000

Hello Crucible: Thanks for stopping by….I wish more setters would. Your puzzles don`t get easier, they just get better. This one I have no qualms about. It provided me with almost an hour of brain-stretching and pinta-downing and I only got one wrong (“GAMME” instead of “GIMMIE”). But good fun, so thanks to you and to mhl for a neat blog.

Going to K`s Dads “do” in Derby on the 29th January? Twill be fun!

By: Gerry

Gerry — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:05:11 +0000

‘Gimme’ was no gimme for me-though I holed it.