Comments on: Guardian 25282 Araucaria – Unofficial like Chang & Eng

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:45:32 +0000

For us this puzzle started off with a bunch of easy ones (20d, 18ac, 15d, 15ac, 10ac), giving us the false idea of a walkover today.

As ‘Unofficial’ was quite controversial, I waited to see other solvers’ comments before posting one myself.

Most of you seemed to like it.
Yes, I can see the fun of it – the setter keen to use it in one way or another.
But as Geoff @12 makes clear, is completely against the rules.
Having ‘U’ capitalised and ‘n’ in lower case, makes it even worse.
I am not a strict Ximenean (far from that), but the rules in situations like this are reasonable – no excuse for Araucaria to go beyond the borders of Crosswordland other than ‘following his own nose’.
Araucaria did – I would nót have done that, and I guess that is what Paul B #3 tried to make clear, too [but I might be wrong].

Apart from this, I didn’t like Araucaria using ‘couple’ twice to clue TWO (in 1d and 17d), not a major drawback though.

My PinC wasn’t keen on SAHEL (6d), where the clue reads ‘off the leash’ – I agree with her, ‘the’ stands in the way.
And just like Angstony @33, I wasn’t completely happy with “Free range item”, but perhaps that’s what makes the Libertarian.
Just like ‘drinking water’ for TT.

I tend to agree with Ian Payn @11 about 14d (TRYGVE LIE).
For me/us LIE isn’t ‘false’ (not even with the ‘?’ as an excuse), so most certainly it is ‘give lie’ = ‘prove false’. Also given the fact that Chambers doesn’t mention a give/prove connection.

For us, three clues stood out.
The very well hidden KESTREL in 5ac.
The nice (but destructive) dd in 2d (BREAKING RECORDS).
And above all, the splendid CASPIAN (23ac), despite me not being a great fan of words doing double duty.

Good crossword? Probably.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:31:51 +0000

I remember around 1960 that just before the demise of 78s and the arrival of 45 singles, Pye-Nixa produced a few vinyl 78s.
I think the one I purchased was a Lonnie Donegan single.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:04:08 +0000

What is a “Charade”?
( Please do not send any communication in any form to the above email address that is not connected with this.)

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:10:25 +0000

2d. Further to the discussion on materials used for 78s – if you’re ever near Williton (12 miles from Taunton), then I’d recommend a visit to the Bakelite Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite_Museum), where you’ll find any number of items made from Bakelite, including coffins and dentist’s equipment.

By: Davy

Davy — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:22:37 +0000

Thanks UY and Arry for yet another enjoyable puzzle. Favourite clue was KOFI ANNAN. For the first word I had K_F_ and the only word that I could find to fit was KOFF which is a two-masted Dutch vessel. I knew this couldn’t be correct and suddenly thought of the famous KOFI. I honestly thought that there would be more complaints about “unofficial”.

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:07:05 +0000

Hi Angstony
at least I didn’t say ‘silly b…ers’. Also I wouldn’t want to call you a ‘poster’. I’m old enough to be puzzled by all this terminology I’m afraid. But the main point is that the setters don’t commit themselves to homophonic correctness (I’m glad I spelled that right!).

By: Angstony

Angstony — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:09:39 +0000

Hi tupu
Who’re you calling a blogger? I’ll have you know I’m just a common-or-garden ‘poster’ of comments.

I think I probably just need to remember to try and think in a southern accent and then most homophones will make sense.

By: Stella Heath

Stella Heath — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:48:26 +0000

Well pointed out, tupu. Though I studied in Leeds for two years, I don’t know how Yorkshire accents differ, but as I say above, the ‘official’ IPA transcription would be with an /i/ (or similar – I don’t know how to get phonetic symbols on my keyboard )

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:36:01 +0000

Hi Angstony
The ‘homophone’ debate drags on – though good-humouredly enough!

I think it is only us ‘bloggers’ who use the word though. The setters don’t seem to, and this allows them a bit of room for manoeuvre. They also probably like to wind us up a little.

By: Angstony

Angstony — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:58:09 +0000

Martin H@30 — hi — well you’re saying one of them wrong then!

Seriously though, I think it depends on how the word ‘did’ is enunciated. If you say it in isolation the ‘i’ is usually clearly audible — at east, that is true of just about every Yorkshire person I know from across the county — but in conversation, if you say it quickly enough, I think the ‘i’ can become quite shortened, which does indeed make it sound a bit like the “ded” in words ending that way. Oh well, I guess it’s hard to please everyone with homophones when English has such an abundance of weird and wonderful accents.

PS. Chambers has “free range” as one of liberty’s definitions, although that still leaves “item” as an apparent filler word.