Comments on: Guardian Cryptic N° 25,631 by Bonxie

By: brucew_aus

brucew_aus — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:25:08 +0000

Thanks Bonxie and PeterO.

This was certainly at the challenging end for me and took a few sessions to get it out. Recognized the pangram early on (after INTERJECT closely followed on from BEZIQUE) which helped knowing that there were X, W and V to be found eventually.

A nice combination of unusual words (DYBBUK and VIBURNUM) with some like TAR PIT which took a while to settle with (kept fighting the TAR OIL monster). I also had written in MONA originally as a reversal of AN with MO(instant) which made getting the tea clue that bit harder.

Throw in some clever clues and surfaces and an enjoyable hour or two filled in.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:24:31 +0000

RCW, I do agree with you that PITT could also be seen as P,I,T,T (four characters) – which could mean “what are we talking about?”.
Personally, I do not have a problem with that at all (like I do not have a problem with this particular Bonxie clue too, eventually), but there are quite a few rules in Crosswordland (especially outside The Guardian Empire).
While at times my heart lies elsewhere, I do see where people/setters like Paul B come from.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:03:14 +0000

If one were to consider ‘Pitt’ not as a word or name (this is just for all those surface lovers) but as a selection of four letters. If asked to remove (discharge) these four letters from the eleven letters ‘outpatients’ why would it occur to anyone to bother about order.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:44:29 +0000

RCW, good to see you back on terms with Paul B.
The solution ‘soutane’ was not really the problem for us (even though it could have been ‘tousane’ – but then, it is a ‘cross’word).
The Pitt discussion is probably not a major point for some, but I totally agree with Paul B on this when he says that it’s wrong to remove letters before the anagram takes place.
And, indeed, it looks like Bonxie does this.
But does he?
What if we read the clue as: Pitt discharged from “Outpatients wearing”?
Perhaps, this is nitpicking in the eyes of the solver, but for a compiler it should be something quite essential (IMO).

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:52:34 +0000

Of course Paul, the degree of reconditeness (?) is very much in the eye of the reader.
I am not RC but for some reason ‘soutane’ was very familiar.
Does it feature in some detective novels? Perhaps someone else might know, but it is certainly very unrecondite(?) to me.
I agree with Davy, re PITT.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:17:00 +0000

Thanks B&J, now corrected.

By: Bertandjoyce

Bertandjoyce — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:31:11 +0000

We are not sure whether anyone else has noticed but the title seems to have incorporated a typical Grauniad typo!

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:16:44 +0000

It’s an unfairness conversation, Davy.

If you instruct solvers to remove letters from anagram fodder prior to anagram indication, then the letters (by convention) have to come out in the same order as they appear in said fodder. So, you’d need to start with something like ‘Pitt, after wounding, leaves Outpatients’. After that, there ought to be another anag-ind to complete the solving operations, so the clue might be something like ‘Pitt, after wounding, leaves Outpatients, looking shaky in robe’. (Even though it’s actually a cassock.)

But even then, I’d argue that it’s utterly unfair to clue any recondite word by anagram: how will solvers know where to put the letters, even if they can see through someone’s complex clueing schemes? In a daily puzzle, in all but the most special circumstances, clues should be solvable on their own (i.e. without the aid of crossing letters) and without the use of a dictionary. And if an entry must be arcane, the setter should give it away. In a Prize puzzle it’s different, in a themed puzzle, sometimes it HAS to be different, but the best setters, in my opinion at least, always seem to find a workaround.

By: Davy

Davy — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:21:52 +0000

Regarding 11a, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I thought the structure of the clue was fairly obvious
although the answer wasn’t. I cannot understand what difference it makes (Paul B) whether PTIT or PITT is removed
from outpatients, the same letters remain ie OUTAENS. The problem lies in solving the anagram as there are four vowels,
three consonants and loads of possibilities. However, with crossing letters, it became more guessable. So, dictionary
check and bingo.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 10 May 2012 01:04:10 +0000

Well, the ‘Pitt discharged from Outpatients wearing robe’ has quite a lot wrong with it, in terms of fairness. First, you would expect to have the letters p, i, t & t ‘discharged from’ (meaning removed from) o, u, t, p, a, t, i, e, n, t, s as described, i.e. as a linear sequence, but instead the solver is expected to remove p, t, i, t through divination. And as ‘from’ is not enough (it doesn’t mean ‘taken from’) as a subtraction indicator, we must assume that ‘discharged’ (which would have been weak by any standard measure) is not an anag-ind to help us with the problem.

Thereafter, though vexed, we must anagram the remaining elements (presumably o, u, t, a, e, n, s) using the indicator ‘wearing’, which seems to me a very weak instruction. Add to that the fact that the required word is hopelessly recondite, and you have a disaster of a clue, quite frankly, written entirely to satisfy a surface rather than any decent cryptic construction, and one for the Cryptic Hall of Shame (even in The Guardian section).