Comments on: Guardian 25,568 / Paul

By: mhl

mhl — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:28:10 +0000

Sorry for not replying and updating earlier – I was away over the weekend. Thanks for all the comments. I’ve corrected 22a now.

I didn’t know TRIGGER or ARKLE were horses, but both were familiar to my partner, fortunately. The trio of SHERGAR, RED RUM and DESERT ORCHID are the names that the equine-illiterate (such as myself) randomly answer in quizzes whenever the answer is expected to be a horse, which seems to be fairly successful :)

By: Gervase

Gervase — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 21:57:36 +0000

Thanks, mhl.

Nice solve. Quite early I spotted that 24a could be ARKLE and checking with 26a, for which HORSE obviously fitted, I was up and over the first fence. TRIGGER and SILVER were last in – not because the equines were unfamiliar, but because of the exiguity of the clues.

I had to check ELEMI in the dictionary, but the wordplay clearly led in that direction.

By: molonglo

molonglo — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 21:17:20 +0000

tupu #6: Credit to Paul for not making it easy, by linking 10 & 29 at either end. Sewell, author, is solely famous for Black Beauty.

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:34:40 +0000

Hi RCW
Yes but I’ve heard it isn’t what it used to be

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 14:59:32 +0000

I have remembered why ‘Arkell’ was my first in: it is the name of the local brewery where I first started visiting pubs as a teenager.
tupu, isn’t nostalgia great?

By: r_c_a_d

r_c_a_d — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:23:58 +0000

Thanks for the blog mhl. I enjoyed this despite being very slow to get the theme. After plenty of crossing letters the penny finally dropped and I feared for the worse, not being a horse person (although born in that Chinese year

In the end DESERT ORCHID was my favourite, by a short head from AUTHOR.

By: rrc

rrc — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 11:05:57 +0000

i managed ecommerce and temporise and then came to a halt – when I later discovered the theme was horses I gave up completely. Far too many clues interlinked which made this difficult.

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:42:47 +0000

Re Saturday morning cinema, one of my favourites was Buck Jones. My vague recollection is that he too had a horse called Silver and this seems to be correct (it’s bound to happen some time! ).
http://filesofjerryblake.netfirms.com/html/buck_jones.html

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:10:24 +0000

thanks robi. I did not know that. It is no doubt the correct parsing though it diminishes the interest of the clue.

By: Robi

Robi — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:00:23 +0000

tupu @6; very inventive parsing of 4a, but I can’t see anything wrong with mhl’s parsing. STAGGERs is a problem [disease] for horses, isn’t that so?