Comments on: Guardian Prize 25214 by Paul

By: timon

timon — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 10:09:12 +0000

Never mind what the references say about screws and bolts, here’s the real difference.
Both are “threaded fasteners”, either may take a nut or fit a hole with the corresponding thread cut (tapped) into it. In the case of a machine screw (as distinct to, say, a wood screw) the thread goes all the way up to the head. A bolt only has roughly half of the shaft threaded, the section below the head is not. Useful, eg. if you are using it to close a link and something will be running over it where a thread would damage or be damaged.
Hope this helps.
I only wish I was as good at solving as understanding this arcane stuff (or my pal bridgesong).

By: Maxine

Maxine — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:54:30 +0000

I wondered why nobody seemed to be remarking about 2d. The 2d clue printed here in Australia reads ‘(Smoke overhead?)’ until I looked up the Guardian version of this crossword.

BTW the brackets in the clue were squared not rounded as I have typed.

Why would your clue ‘Land in North America squandered by parents’ be changed to ‘(Smoke Overhead?)’ for the Aussie version ???

Needless to say I couldn’t solve the clue.

Thanks for all the comments.

By: REGALIZE

REGALIZE — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:07:25 +0000

We sat in the pub
We drank it all up -the clues, the words and Araucaria
Then someone came in with the PAPER and then – it was all
gone awry when we saw it was Paul.
With strange bits into the aetheria.
What do we do? Oh, damn,just do the clue,
let someone else do the work of sorting it out.
Have we seen this before? Well of course,
But who would remember, twas weeks ago love
So enjoy what you get, whether paper or net,
It don’t really matter when push comes to shove

By: Coffee

Coffee — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:10:32 +0000

@paul8hours – thanks for the link, very entertaining.
@ Sil – did the right side of Mudd very quickly then ground to a halt- left side is blank! Will try again…

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:21:46 +0000

Well, tupu (#40), if you really want to know [despite the fact that I should go to bed by now], there is a word for ‘screw’ in Holland and it is called ‘schroef’. The confusing thing is, though, that many people consider a ‘schroef’ to be something what should be called a ’bout’ [= 'a bolt'].
So, in the end, well … I don’t know.

BTW, enjoyed this crossword?
Then take a look at yesterday’s FT Prize puzzle, where Mudd (Paul’s alter ego) has one of his better offerings as, yes, of course, Mudd.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 23:29:03 +0000

Tupu: thanks indeed for your chat-up line (I don`t think I`ve ever used one so subtle before): “Hello Dearie….have you got an interior surface of a cylindrical cavity going spare???” Can`t fail…I`ll let you know how I get on once they let me out of A & E.

By: mike

mike — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 22:47:10 +0000

I was so pleased to finish a prize crossword quite quickly, then I find it was not the real one which is an Araucaria number 25,220 and mine was a Paul numbered 25194 from last week and printed again in error. Oh well, the grauniad lives and breathes.

By: tupu

tupu — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:58:33 +0000

Hi Martin

I did register, after writing, that it was only one eyebrow! So I must confess to you and Sil that I seem to have got carried away and resorted to a hammer, if not quite to ‘crack a nut’, at least to serve as what we used to call (no doubt unjustly) an American screw-driver. Of course it’s all a matter of the unsystematically overlapping meanings of words (both single and in pairs) in natural language that we have noted before.

By: tupu

tupu — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:48:53 +0000

Hi Sil

Many thanks for the wikipedia ref. I’m afraid I think it is wrong (or at least incomplete). Though not all screws are bolts, not all bolts are threaded and as such screws – take the sort that slides into a rounded slot to hold a door shut. Also note that cyclinders do not of themselves have points.

OED lists the following for bolt under the general heading of ‘A stout pin for fastening’.
‘A stout metal pin with a head, used for holding things fast together. It may be permanently fixed, secured by riveting or by a nut, as the bolts of a ship; or movable, passing through a hole, as the bolts of a shutter’. As far as I can see none of the OED entries lists ‘threading’ as an intrinsic part of the idea.

Do you have any experience of Meccano or similar construction toys based on ‘nut and bolt’ fastening? There the threaded bolts are often spoken of simply as screws.

Incidentally, what is the Dutch word for a headed cylindrical threaded bolt? As I’m sure you know, German has Schraube (surely cognate with ‘screw’). [It also interestingly has the explicitly gendered form 'mutter' for a nut].

I naturally agree with you that it is not an issue for the excellent quality of the crossword.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:48:05 +0000

Well, Eileen, I wasn’t here during the Festive Season, and couldn’t access the Guardian site from where I was.
Therefore, luckily, it all passed me by completely.
But I will be in Derby, where – I hope – things won’t pass me by …..