Comments on: Guardian 25,380 / Araucaria

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:06:48 +0000

Isn’t it strange how our perceptions of difficulty vary? I found this to be one of Araucaria’s easier crosswords and completed without aids or checks. But I struggled with Philistine’s offering and even the explanations. It takes all sorts …

By: Carrots

Carrots — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:06:33 +0000

AWMIGAWD…Ive joined the pitknickers!

By: Martin H

Martin H — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:18:02 +0000

I’m interested in this controversy about ‘broad’. I’d always thought it derogatory, but Carrots and Liz have made me look into it. There seems to be a sense in which it is just another word for a woman, but there is a consistent parallel sense of ‘prostitute, loose woman’ etc. For some of the more graphic derivations google ‘Urban Dictionary’.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:16:27 +0000

Well said Liz,totally agree with you.
I think Wolfie@46 must be the most easily offended of all Fifteen Squared posters.
It’s a good job (s)he doesn’t know the slang meaning of ‘ormer’as used here in Guernsey!

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:12:48 +0000

That’s fair enough then …

By: liz

liz — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:50:31 +0000

Carrots @52 As an American of *a certain age* (as my Yorkshire father-in-law used to put it) I don’t find ‘broad’ particularly offensive. As far as I can remember, it was always a term of affection and admiration, as you say. It seemed to imply feistiness and perhaps a down-to-earth quality. Perhaps the female form of ‘salt of the earth’.

If I’m not offended, don’t see why any one else should be…

By: Carrots

Carrots — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:26:33 +0000

Hi There Auntie E…..and thanks for the Delia link. Eton Mess seems scrumptuous and I will seek out some English Srawberries and ultra-fresh eggs (the secret of “never fail” Pavlova) on the market tomorrow.

Delia too, can do no wrong…but, unlike Araucaria, would be welcome to share my cocoa any night.

Not as many bleats over BROAD as I anticipated. I would have defended it by citing Raymond Chandler`s Philip Marlowe, who used the term to describe any woman worthy of admiration and respect.

By: Scarpia

Scarpia — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:22:08 +0000

RC Whiting @49 – “My Name and mail boxes sometimes retain their contents from day to day, other times I have to re-submit them. Is this the general situation or can I make them permanent?”

It depends on how your browser is set up,or if you use a program like ccleaner.For your personal information to be retained you have to enable/retain the cookie from Fifteen Squared.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:01:47 +0000

Perhaps some found this quite straightforward, but for us this was certainly not an Araucaria Lite. It took us a bit longer than Carrots’ delicious lunch (I presume).
It was also a solve in two halves. About 25% of the solutions were found in the first half, the remaining 75% fell a lot quicker in place after the break.
During that break we had a tea, and in ‘our’ Cambridge cafe they played Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night”. What a coincidence after this week’s Punk (aka Paul) in the Indy who had the late singer as one of the solutions – to most commenters a complete unknown, something that came as a real surprise to me.
Anyway, back to this puzzle.

After finding ABROAD (20d), halfway the first half, we were quite sure that there would be many objections tonight, but there weren’t. Although it is an original clue from a cryptic point of view, I am on Wolfie’s side in saying that Araucaria went a bit over the edge here. I will not use the word ‘sexist’ but ‘a broad’ is surely an offensive qualification. That said, I don’t think Araucaria is an offensive person.

As other said, the use of ‘abroad’ in the puzzle was surely dubious in AFRICA (3d). We only found the answer in combination with 19d’s FRIEND.

DODGEMS (26ac) for ‘a fair vehicle’ was, in our opinion, not right – but that’s no news either.

We did the puzzle without any form of aides and, I would say, therefore got stuck in 10ac (CYRENAICA). We thought, if there’s a Tanganyika then there’s probably a Ceranyica somewhere in Africa. There wasn’t. On hindsight, I think, the answer is not completely unfair as this region was indeed in the news recently (it is the part of Libya linked with the Anti-Khadaffi resistance forces).

In 16d (ICEBOUND) I cannot fully see why Araucaria wanted to have two constructional parts (other than the link ice/diamonds). For us ‘Jump in diamonds’ didn’t fully work because of that little word ‘in’.

A funny thing happened in 4d.
While the grid was hardly filled, my PinC said: I got 4d.
Three minutes later, it was me: EUCLID!
She was more or less surprised by that, thinking of FERMAT.
‘Fer’ being the reverse of ‘Ref’ (well, not really a prompter, but not a bad thought either) plus MAT (cover).

A lot has already been said about TNT and its full name in 7d.
As the answer was not that hard to find, one is probably inclined to accept ‘riots’ for ‘riot+riot’ too easily.
I am completely with caretman @29.
We had the solution, then worked backwards to see where the anagram exactly came from and discovered that it had to be ‘riot+riot’. That indeed raised a smile. Afterwards!
But that’s not really fair.
I wonder how many people thought before getting the answer that ‘riots’ was ‘riot+riot’. Not many, I guess.
As caretman says, this is surely an indirect anagram, even a very indirect anagram.
I have no problem with obvious partial indirect anagrams (using N=new, YE=the old or R=river) but, in my opinion, this one here is outrageous.
On the one hand I like setters who follow their intuition to break some rules at times, on the other hand I think this is going too far.

All in all, an exciting crossword, though.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:26:01 +0000

Thanks all
I enjoyed this and found it fairly straightforward.
I did need to consult my very tatty copy of The Penguin Book of Places (no longer available I am told, does anyone know differently) to check ‘Cyrenaica’.
I understand the objections to ‘dodgems’ but it is possibly just acceptable if the term is taken to refer to the apparatus rather than the individual cars.

PS My Name and mail boxes sometimes retain their contents from day to day, other times I have to re-submit them. Is this the general situation or can I make them permanent?