Comments on: Guardian Cryptic 25410 Bonxie

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:27:23 +0000

Many thanks SCCHUA.

I get the Guardian Weekly and started this many weeks ago. I got stuck in the NW corner like everyone else, and could not get it done. I put it aside and forgot about it until yesterday. The main problem was I had GOODBYE in for 2D. I parsed it as Sound = Good [as in condition], at = by, and end of voice = e. The whole clue being an ‘and lit’ for GOODBYE. I eventually persuaded myself that this could not be right and got EPIGRAM for 1A which led to PHONEME and GENTLE GIANT.

Very frustrating it is when you are convinced of a correct answer that then screws up everything else.

By the way my favourite and simplest tongue-twister is RED LORRY, YELLOW LORRY. Almost impossible to say.

Best wishes
Gordon

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:54:44 +0000

Well Bodgel,I am not with you. See my comment @13 on Friday.
All the definitions you quote are suitably vague so as to make the cryptic part essential.

By: Bodgel

Bodgel — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Well, I carried on pondering this one till today but abandoned it in the end – most clues were good, but I failed to get a critical mass of crossing letters. And some of that was due (again) to imprecise definitions.

1a A saw is a commonplace – “a stitch in time saves nine”, not an epigram, which is a witty remark that an individual makes and others can only quote. (A good quota from scchua by the way.)
29a Grey-haired = elderly? I know people who went grey in their 20s and others who have bright blue hair in their 80s … “grey-beard” might work since Shakespeare used the phrase apparently with that meaning.
6d Rheumy does not mean cold and damp – it might mean having a cold.
9d Is it fair to give an example as a definition without any indication that the answer is the general class?
21d Best (adj.) = optimal. “The best” (n.) as clued = optimum.
25d Acute means sharp, or as applied to illness, rapidly coming to a crisis. The common cold is an acute illness. Grave means serious, in the case of an illness suggesting a risk of death. Confusing the two is a solecism.

But I think I might be on my own here.

By: Alex M

Alex M — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:18:02 +0000

Thanks very much for the blog – very helpful. Didn’t have a lot of time for the puzzle today – 21d was driving me mad. It was clearly “optimal” but I had no way in to it at all. So thanks for that.

By: scchua

scchua — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:04:05 +0000

And also billdabanda6@6 for completing the tongue-twister.

By: scchua

scchua — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:55:46 +0000

Thanks to all for commenting, especially:

Geoff@7 – Will amend blog.

molonglo@4 – Hansard gives Harold Wilson as the originator of “all the little gnomes in Zurich” while he was Shadow Chancellor in 1956, though the phrase became prominent during the 1964 sterling crisis under Wilson’s government.

mhl@12 – Got the names right, but not quite the connection.

grandpuzzler@15 – the title goes to you; you sure know your movies. Just to add that Mel Brooks did also act in Men in Tights – as Rabbi Tuckman, counterpart to Friar Tuck.

Should you want to, and if you haven’t seen them, there are more “hidden connections” in FT 13779 Gurney, FT 13773 Armonie, FT 13767 Phssthpok, and Quiptic 611 Beale.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:57:33 +0000

I though that pig was a bit insulting for pious German, how did that get through the PC checker I wonder.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:03:44 +0000

Thanks all
I mustn’t (nor can I) claim any credit for my occasional complaint about too easy puzzles but this is the second (consecutive) day we have had a really good challenge. Well done Enigmatist and Bonxie.
The lower two thirds fell out quite quickly but boy, was I held up by the top third, especially the NW.
‘Gentle’ was hidden because I had ‘phon(at)(e)’.
I liked ‘optimal’ and I also fell for the ‘bull’ distraction at 13ac.
It took me a while to convince myself that 5ac was ‘profile’ because I hesitated that prop was a column.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:28:13 +0000

Dave Ellison @ 10: My first thought was that the answer was an anagram of ‘Ambridge’ (which I did eventually find), but having failed to get it at first I started to wonder whether the solution might be a term from archery….

By: grandpuzzler

grandpuzzler — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:21:19 +0000

Thanks to Bonxie for the puzzle and scchua for the picturesque blog. Ambridge did take a while to anagram correctly. I did like OPTIMAL – have we seen something similar recently? Maybe I am misremembering as usual. The pictures at 18,7: Fairbanks, Flynn and Costner played Robin Hood while Mel Brooks (picture from Blazing Saddles) directed Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Cheers…