Comments on: Guardian 25,260 / Boatman

By: Goods at auction

Goods at auction — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:58:01 +0000

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By: rfb

rfb — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:41:02 +0000

I am in the minority here, but I really didn’t like this very much. Someone made a remark about hacking through a thicket – I agree. There *were* some good clues, but for my taste too many dubious ones. And the final straw was SPAB. Sorry, it isn’t a word (at least in any dictionary I’ve consulted). So what is it doing in a crossWORD? Is any organisation with a pronounceable initialism and a membership (in 2007) of 8700 or more to be allowed?

Please please PLEASE let’s not include this kind of clue ever ever AGAIN!

By: maarvarq

maarvarq — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:49:38 +0000

I thought 5dn was a feeble homophone, and what was with 24 dn? Is any initial letter abbreviation (it isn't an acronym unless the result is, you know, a word) acceptable as a pretend word now, or do you call this organisation "spab"?

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:19:32 +0000

Thanks for the blog, Eileen, and to Boatman for not just the puzzle but for graciously joining in the comments so often.

I banged my way through most of this (still have the bruises), finally completing the NW corner today after breezing (sadly) through yesterday’s alphabetical.

Some random comments… I missed the S/OF/F bit in 1A, and while films like Eraserhead aren’t “really” SF, the “category”, especially when applied to movies, can get very broad to the average punter. Nitpicking NINTH CHORD seems silly to me – the first thing I thought when I saw the first three words of the clue was “1-3-5-7-9″ and it just took me three more hours to go “oh!” and follow that by parsing the wordplay. I loved 26a FINAL for the opacity and hypnotic nature of the clue.

And SPAB? Since I forgot SP from the last time I saw it, and as a long-time ex-pat, would never have guessed it (I did read all about the National Trust on WP though, in vague hopes). However, before the crosses ruled it out, I was hoping for BAMN – the “odds” in “Boatman”, and apparently a bit of a radical group defending affirmative action rights (if I recall correctly). Now poor Boatman will have to wait ages before using that one, so we all have time to forget it.

I had ENTRAINMENT penciled in due it being the only word possible with the checks in place, and it still took another half hour to notice it was simply hidden in the clue words!

So, all in all, a lot of fun, and as mentioned above, it is nice to encounter setters with “unique” cluing styles, since it squeezes the old grey matter into new shapes.

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:38:36 +0000

Thanks Eileen, late getting round to this one. I needed your help to understand some of them, so thanks. I had guessed the missing answers, but in my book that doesn’t count as actually finishing.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:21:42 +0000

Perhaps my post was too long to read, but I did say something about 5ac: “Someone asked what “in our heart” was doing here, but even though this country is not in my heart (yet) [at least not thát way], it enhanced the surface considerably”.

Yes, I think it’s only there for the surface.
As one might know, I am a nitpicker when it comes to superfluous words, but in this case my intuition doesn’t agree with me.
Boatman reflects some kind of poetic feeling here.
Vaughan Williams, Delius and Elgar spring to mind.

From a cryptic point of view, ‘in our heart’ is completely superfluous, I agree.
But at least for me, it does feel right here.
Said the non-Brit …..

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:31:15 +0000

I’m sorry, Mark, and Martin H – I don’t know: that’s why I ignored it!

I hoped Boatman might clarify it, when he dropped back.

By: mark

mark — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:46:47 +0000

No-one seems to have answered Martin H’s (I think it was him)point about 5A. What is “in our heart” doing there?

Awful puzzle

By: crosser

crosser — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:45:39 +0000

Everybody has probably gone on to the next puzzle by now, but I just wanted to add something to what Scarpia said @47 re the pronunciation of “wrath” as RAWTH by “older well-educated people”. I would say “older well-educated people from an upper class background”. I imagine Lady Bracknell would have pronounced it that way. When I was a student, one of our lecturers was the famous Monica Jones, and she used to talk about “Love’s Labours Lawst”.

By: Brian Harris

Brian Harris — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:53:56 +0000

Enjoyably tough. I thought ENTRAINMENT and VENTRAL FIN were particularly good. This had us scratching our head for a good 45 minutes. I like the occasional harder puzzle. But a Boatman standard of difficulty every day would definitely be too much!