Comments on: Guardian 25,633 – Araucaria

By: Ian Payn

Ian Payn — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:07:08 +0000

“She was handsome, she was pretty,
Played on the wing for Brechin City”

…or have I mis-remembered that one?

Good puzzle. Horeb and Redan when parsed backwards tickled the memory (ie I shoved them in pretty certain I’d heard of them). Despite regarding the Resident Drunk as being almost as tiresome as the Reverend Spooner, for some reason I rather liked “caddish”.

By: Bardell

Bardell — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Thanks to Andrew for the blog and to the Rev for an entertaining diversion.

I solved 23dn thinking about Geoff “Dusty” Miller, ex Derbyshire cricketer and current chairman of selectors. I believe our setter is a cricket fan, so is it just coincidence that Dusty will be “doing his duty” this weekend, choosing the team to play the West Indies in the first Test?

By: mhl

mhl — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:57 +0000

Thanks for the excellent post, Andrew. For once in a long while, I’m actually doing the crossword on the same day that it’s published :)

I found this a very enjoyable puzzle – I needed quite a bit of guesswork (e.g. the “burden” sense of INCUBUS was new to me, I wasn’t sure if THEOSOPHY was really a religion, ROSE BUG sounded plausible, but who knows, etc.) but nearly completed it unaided. In the end, though, I didn’t have the confidence to put in HOREB just based on the cryptic part and then failed on REDAN and CADDISH, never having heard of the first word or the Caddis fly… Oh well.

By: Coffee

Coffee — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:26:24 +0000

ALBUS was the first one in, with rolling of eyes- easy to forget that not everyone has a 10 year old in the house!

By: chas

chas — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:58:57 +0000

Thanks to Andrew for the blog. I had EMBARGO but could not explain why

On 17, once I had the initial R, I tried desperately to make something of ROTA without joy. When I then got the final R I could see that rota was no good – then got the right answer.

I also have never heard of GIFT DAY. I note that Araucaria is often introducing phrases I have never heard of, that do appear to be standard.

A while ago A had a crossword with the theme of Potter which included Dumbledore as one of the answers.

By: Gervase

Gervase — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:57:16 +0000

Robi @16: I’m with you on the spelling ‘burqa’. In fact, I checked BURRA in Chambers before realising I had the wrong sort of king.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:53:11 +0000

Thanks all
A slow start and a slow finish but in between the grid filled up quite smoothly.
The latter was due to my ignorance of ‘Albus’ and ‘Horeb’ (like tupu I was obsessed with horse).
Brechin was well known from childhood when my duty was to mark off my grandfather’s pools coupon (always a loser) but I was unsure of its status.
Also ‘rondino’ is under the headword ‘rondeau’ in my Chambers.
All in all a moderately successful puzzle.

By: molonglo

molonglo — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:48:47 +0000

Thanks Andrew. This was easier than most this week. The NW corner went straight in, but the SE was tougher. Checking the abstruse ones afterwards I discovered that the setter ‘s father was archbishop of 21d.

By: Robi

Robi — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:37:18 +0000

Entertaining puzzle, although I don’t suppose many people would know Mount Horeb.

Thanks Andrew for a good blog; I didn’t know ALBUS or REDAN either. As to the Britain/NI thing, Wiki says: ‘Usually, it [The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland] is shortened to United Kingdom or the UK, though Britain is also an officially recognised short form.’ See further at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_(terminology).

I would normally spell the word BURKA as BURQA, but then the latter is more useful in Scrabble. I liked the image of the ‘flying guinea-pig.’

By: Eileen

Eileen — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:36:24 +0000

Hi William @8

Have you come across Enigmatist’s classic clue: ‘I say nothing [3]‘, which Sandy Balfour used as the title of one of his books, which I’m always recommending to crossword lovers?

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