Comments on: Guardian 25234 Paul … Good things come in threes

By: Dynamic

Dynamic — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 02:00:49 +0000

For anyone still reading this blog, Paul (@crypticpaul) tweets that he declined to use another
distasteful Spoonerism:
“A further Spoonerism in today’s Guardian tempting, but ill-advised.”
though, assuming he means 13d, he still managed to refer to the fruit in question, but thankfully not the condition in which the dear Reverend found it!
Incidentally, Paul also tweeted a happy announcement, for which congratulations:
“I’d like to announce my engagement to the lovely Taline, and wish us both a fabulous life together! Jan 30

Does one announce one’s engagement on Twitter? Well, I’m getting married on July 31. I’d like to thank lovely Taline for saying ‘yes’. Feb 2

By: Dynamic

Dynamic — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:44:07 +0000

O.T – @35 – Carrots – I use Mozilla Firefox browser with a built-in pop-up blocker and haven’t yet noticed any attempts by First Direct to p!%$ me off.

By: Dynamic

Dynamic — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:37:09 +0000

Just wanted to say this was a blast! Some marvellous images, a funny Spoonerism and Santa’s little helper were excellent, 17d “funny one-liner” was nice too as were quite a few others, and on 18a I was off on bovine tangents (lower) and all sorts (but I have no ‘beef’ about that) before my PinC spotted the hidden answer. Just the sort of Paul for a Tuesday – loads of fun yet not all that taxing (little or no obscure vocabulary) and masterly use of every major type of cryptic device including the cd and dd types we don’t often think of as typically Paulian. Loved it!

By: Carrots

Carrots — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:46:04 +0000

Sil & Davy…..Many Thanks! Your combined might has out-flanked and out-gunned the evil gremlins of First Direct Bank and their irritating attempts to get their snouts into my coffers!

By: Davy

Davy — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:19:31 +0000

… also Carrots, try the ordinary Print option to the extreme left of PDF. This is quite acceptable and also does not show yesterday’s answers unlike the PDF option. I used to use the PDF option but I’m now a convert to the grey Print. It saves your black ink too which is perfect for skinflints.

As to your mental impairment, I don’t it’s just attributable to the gargle. We all have off days and days where thinking ability is enhanced. I finished this Paul after quite a struggle but failed to finish Rufus on Monday.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:20 +0000

Carrots, you’ll be more than welcome the next time!!

And, why not leave all this on-line-’rubbish’ [excusez-moi le mot] behind, and just print off the pdf version?

So much more pleasure, so much more the Real Thing!

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:32:06 +0000

Thanks Uncle Yap.
Super stuff from Paul.14/2 and 1/28 were real laugh out loud moments.

By: Carrots

Carrots — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:31:30 +0000

My only excuse for only scratching the surface of this (and what surfaces it has to scratch!)is that I`m still convalescing after K`s D thrash. I daren`t confess how few of these solutions I managed to put in: if I did I might not get invited to the next one.

Does anybody else suffer from “pop-ups” from First Direct Bank, obliterating the top two rows of the on-line print version of the Grauniad puzzle? Any ideas about how to get rid of them (short of storming the office of the El Supremo of First Direct with a Kalashnikov) would be very welcome.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:58:20 +0000

Good puzzle from last Saturday’s Great Absentee.
Great, indeed capitalised, but not in relation to Absentee.

As Dave Ellison said earlier, rather easy crossword, too.
Although there was a difference between the top and the bottom half.

Uncle Yap, thank you for the fine blog, but I think you should do something with tupu’s view on 13d (DISSIPATES) as it is right.
Yes, boys and girls, I’ve heard somewhere that tupu and I seem to have come closer recently …
BTW, when I saw the answer I immediately had visions of another (smutty) 4-letter word ‘coming up’, being perhaps a missed chance for Paul? Although, that would have been even beyond what is the Guardian’s definition of Crosswordland.

My PinC (another great absentee) wasn’t happy with BEAKED (20d), as ‘put in the oven’ doesn’t mean ‘baked’. The oven could be off, she said.

The difference between being British (and looking at the language in a natural way) and being from Somewhere Else (looking purely at the construction of the clue) became apparent in 23d (A-TEAM). Where my PinC didn’t see any problem as deleting an ‘h’ is deleting an ‘h’, I was questioning the fact that in the clue it was (v)erb+noun and in the answer verb+(n)oun.
Ah well, she will surely be right.

The top clues were IOO (= in our opinion) COALITION (10ac), GRAVITATE (25ac) and QUIT (6d). Not because they were hard to find, but because they were elegant.

So, good crossword.
And I hope Paul will join us all sooner or later at a KD-like do, otherwise I will call hím from now on ‘the other John H’ (instead of who I called so far ‘the other John H)

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:49:26 +0000

Hi Stiofain
Thanks. Yes that’s right. UY’s (no doubt hasty)reading gives ‘dsisipates’!
I have also tried again with another problem I had yesterday re ‘overcome’.
They are small things but the bloggers get personal copies of our comments and it would be nice if they responded, if only to show we are mistaken.