Comments on: Guardian 25,483 – Puck

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:43:55 +0000

Huw
50 years ago when I was studying science I think gm (lower case) was pretty much universal for gramme.
It is true that g is now more common, probably due to the introduction of the SI.

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:14:52 +0000

Hehe, Eileen @19, thanks for the link; ironically, today’s Prize turned out to be an Araubetical!

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 22:56:13 +0000

Not so much pleasure for me on this one… wouldn’t have ever got HUYTON, even if I’d seen how the “9″ was being used. Not being well enough versed in UK political history, the list of PMs at WP brute forced 2 and 8 stayed pencilled due to not making any sense to me. 12 stayed in pencil, too, though at least I appreciate now that the parsing is quite witty. 10 also unparsed. And many I did parse just left me a bit flat. And since when is “GM” an abbreviation for gram(me)?

Oh well, you can’t have everything you want every day!

Re the pangram thing, meh, I get no thrill from it. What I *do* like is anytime a setter manages to use a Q (like today), a V, an X or a Z in a checked square.

DOSIDO apparently can be punctuated pretty much any way one wants.

Thanks for the blog, Manehi, and the puzzle, Puck.

By: ernie

ernie — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 22:31:08 +0000

Not too difficult. Thanks to Puck, and to manehi for explanations.

By: stumped

stumped — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:25:29 +0000

g_larsen @ 49 – Thanks!

Now I feel even more silly

By: Tony Davis

Tony Davis — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:56:51 +0000

Stella @44 – the line you queried should be ‘A little bit jumbled and jivey’, where ‘jivey’ refers to jazz musicians’ slang. In checking for confirmation of this in case my memory was at fault, I found the following fascinating dissertation on mondegreens: http://www.reference.com/browse/Jivey.

By: g larsen

g larsen — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:28:11 +0000

Stumped @ 46 : the answer assumes that Huyton is pronounced in the same way as the answer to 9 – heighten. Whether this in fact true, I don’t know.

By: g larsen

g larsen — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:23:14 +0000

Thanks – I enjoyed this.

Keeping the Liverpool theme,I’m old enough to recall Denis Norden’s version of ‘Mairzy dotes and dozy dotes’ starting with the words ‘Mersey Docks and Harbour Board’, which fitted perfectly.

By: dunsscotus

dunsscotus — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:59:19 +0000

Thanks to manehi and Puck. The ‘back-to-back’ dance move is, in French ‘dos-a-dos’ as you’d expect (imagine the grave accent please), then gets a little roughed up crossing the channel. Chambers gives ‘dos-a-dos’ and the variants Puck needs. Very neat.

Not knowing Liverpool, I at least knew the answer had a ‘y’ in it! A most enjoyable puzzle.

By: stumped

stumped — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 06:18:05 +0000

13a Could someone please explain ’9, say’ = “heighten”?