Comments on: Prize Crossword No 25,442 by Araucaria

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:09:12 +0000

Ref: Hugh Orde
It is a difficult case to make about how famous someone is.
For seven years he was chief of the Northern Ireland police and hence in the news frequently.He is now head of ACPO and again frequently interviewed.
How does this compare to (say) poets, artists etc from 100 or even 1000 years ago.
What happens to people’s fame in the future is something we cannot know.

By: FlutterBy

FlutterBy — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:46:51 +0000

An excellent and enjoyable Araucaria, unfortunately marred in my opinion at 6D (HORDE).

Several people have commented that they hadn’t heard of or didn’t remember Hugh Orde, and I am another such. This is such an ephemeral reference. It wasn’t even big news at the time.

Please, please, please, dear Araucaria, do not include references to ‘topical’ news items and personalities who will be forgotten within months (or even a year or two). Your crosswords are so wonderful – such works of art – that I want to think of someone enjoying solving them for the first time ten or twenty years from now. (I am still working through the back catalogue on the guardian website, finding ones I’ve missed and getting a lot of pleasure from them.)

Here ends heart-felt plea from a loyal fan.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:05:54 +0000

As announced in my post @1, I would like to say a bit more about this puzzle or, actually, about a specific thing that happened in one of the clues.
In 3d Araucaria clued ‘two poles’ for POLE+POLE, which was then used as part of an anagram.
Has anyone else noticed that Araucaria has done a thing like this quite a few times in recent weeks?
On Aug 19th we had A/CLAN+A/CLAN, clued by ‘a clan repeated’.
Sep 17th gave us POT+POT [simply described by 'pots'].
The use of ‘fools’ for ASS+ASS on Sep 2nd was slightly different as there wasn’t an anagram involved [it was part of ASSASSIN).
And I am quite sure there was another example of it (although I couldn't find it), because I remember us (my PinC and me) discussing this unusual 'device'.
I wouldn't be surprised if Araucaria did all this deliberately to let us become familiar to a new setter's tool [that is, it feels like new, but one can't be sure in Crosswordland].
If that was/is his intention, then he succeeded because yesterday we had another one: ‘two acts’ for ACT+ACT as part of the anagram for ‘antarctic’, but this time we were alert!

By: Gervase

Gervase — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:48:42 +0000

Thanks, bridgesong.

Rather a good Araucaria, with some nicely misleading clues.

I recognised the Henri-Quatre quotation, but the ‘Lycidas’ one I couldn’t recall exactly; however, ‘pastures new’ leapt out with a few crossing letters and the rest wasn’t too difficult to piece together.

I took the parsing of 10d as John Dean @4. I confess I didn’t bother to work out the parsing for 14d, except that it contained a couple of TENs, and I had forgotten about Sir Hugh, so I couldn’t work out why 6d was HORDE – I was convinced ‘Met man’ had to be either a meterorologist or an opera singer. Duh!

By: r_c_a_d

r_c_a_d — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:58:01 +0000

Thanks. I liked DETENTION too, which also has DEN (Maggie’s den, number ten) and TON (ten times ten) to confuse: very clever to use half the clue’s complexity on the first letter.

Otherwise quite doable, although my resident musician told me Sordino was a musical term and had not heard Sordo.

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:45:38 +0000

Thanks bridgesong and Araucaria

An enjoyable enough puzzle.

I read 1d as John Dean @4

I naturally entered amass in 2d but failed to get the reference. I came to the conclusion that it might be connected with the fact that the official unit of ‘mass’ – the reference kilogram – is housed in Sevres, Paris! The ability of the mind to make ingeniously wrong connections never ceases to surprise me.

By: chas

chas — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:28:47 +0000

Thanks to bridgesong for the blog. You explained why I had the correct answer for 6d. I was also unable to explain 10d even though I had deduced its answer from the crossing letters.

I loved 14d with all its different uses of 10

By: scchua

scchua — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:47:56 +0000

Thanks bridgesong and Araucaria for an enjoyable prize puzzle.

Couldn’t figure out the parsing for EPSTEIN (might have been fairer if some indication had been given of the German involvement), AMASS and HORDE. SORDO was guesswork which I couldn’t confirm, but which now I see is the (Italian) root word (meaning deaf) for sordina, sordine or sordino, the musical terms. But still, a joy to solve.

Re 25A MIGRAINE, I think that “a very small quantity” = 1(one) GRAIN = IGRAIN, which gets over your objection for I = 1 = A.

By: bridgesong

bridgesong — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:05:20 +0000

Thanks all for explaining 10 down; I saw all the pieces but couldn’t put them together. And my explanation of 14 down is probably too cryptic, so thanks Sil for the additional explanation.

By: Biggles A

Biggles A — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 01:06:56 +0000

Thanks bridgesong. This fell into place quite readily for me too. I didn’t find the quote for 2 but whiled away some time quite pleasantly in revisiting the Judgement of Paris.

14 needs two anagrams of TEN and I suppose ‘otherwise’ could extend that far.