Comments on: Guardian 25,224 by Rover

By: Gordon Roy

Gordon Roy — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:43:26 +0000

I meant to add that what makes this more bizarre is that the puzzle was in the Guardian Weekly that I received on Wednesday 19th January. That means it was posted in the Guardian Weekly the day before it appeared in the Guardian in the UK. Very odd indeed. I wish I had had time to complete it then [I did not do this before the weekend]on 19th and post a warning to everyone to not bother with the crossword the next day! I would have appeared very prescient indeed.

Best wishes

By: Gordon Roy

Gordon Roy — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:37:49 +0000

I agree with the comments at 28, 29 and 48. I have been doing the Guardian puzzles for over 40 years. This was quite simply the worst puzzle I have had the misfortune to ever do. It was absolutely dreadful. I now do the puzzles infrequently as I just live in the USA and do those from the Guardian Weekly. Believe it or not this was the one they chose for this last week. I cannot imagine that there were not better examples from last weeks puzzles. What a disappointment.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:57:18 +0000

PeterO, I admire your commitment regarding this puzzle.
But.
Rover’s puzzles have always been extremely controversial.
Personally, I do think that every setter wants to entertain us, but I have to admit that Rover is not really My Cup Of Tea.
Therefore I decided, nót to do his crosswords anymore.

Does this crossword deserve an unbelievably high amount of posts (47 so far)?
I don’t think so.

The EDINBURGH clue, which nobody can explain, shouldn’t have gone past the editor, IMO. But it did.
And , as Eileen says, ‘guy’ in lower case is not ‘according to the rules’.

I have to be careful with what I say, but this was a poor puzzle.

By: PeterO

PeterO — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:02:10 +0000

Carrots – on the offchance that you happen to pick this up: I agree about the lowercase guy. Thinking back, I wondered why, while preparing the blog, I had looked up reveal, but not Telegraph. Perhaps I was put off by the capital – and that is the more acceptable deviation from Truth in Capitalisation. Of course, one might argue that Mr. Burgess was a guy who happened to be named Guy. As for SUBJECT, the grammatical definition ‘the one who does’ may be a bit elliptical, but I think ‘French, say’ as a school subject is clear enough. I do not see your objection to AVID in 17A; Chambers gives greedy as the first definition.
I agree with tupu that Brian’s explanation of 15D is the most likely.

By: Maureen (Australia)

Maureen (Australia) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:33:04 +0000

Dickie Fingers is a safebreaker in an episode of the recent TV program “life on Mars”

By: mark

mark — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:23:44 +0000

Agree with much that was said.

One of those puzzles I kept by the bed thinking I was being stupid and tried again next day – what a waste of time!

I didn’t know Rover was no more……I won’t say anything else.

By: tupu

tupu — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:44:25 +0000

Hi Carrots
I did not like the clue. The problem was to see any sense in it. All I was saying was that Brian did that when I and others had failed. (Continued in discussion)

By: Carrots

Carrots — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:00:46 +0000

As usual, I`m far to late pitching in and have nothing much to add. I do think “guy” deserves a capital letter for the BURGESS clue to make sense and I thought SUBJECT deserves a better definition.

I also thought DAVID was sloppy….and stretched the definition of “greed”.

SCORECARDS went in, but I have no idea why.

Tupu… you will sometimes bleed to justify a clearly flawed clue: and what the hell is the Great Wen when its at home? (You must remember that some of us did`t have a classical education and went to Art School instead). I sometimes think that this was both the making and breaking of me….but give me Art School any day!!

By: tupu

tupu — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:07:12 +0000

I have returned from the Great Wen to find 15d still troubling my co-bloggers.

As I and others noted earlier, I cannot see anything much wrong with Brian’s suggestion. Edin is both an anagram of dine (indicator ‘out’) and a standard abbreviation of Edinburgh a la OED list. Edin ‘at length’ is Edinburgh (the city). Not very pretty but logical enough surely.

By: Jan

Jan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:57:57 +0000

I failed to get Burgess!!!

Jan Burgess