Comments on: Guardian 25,688 / Paul

By: Giovanna

Giovanna — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:00:48 +0000

Thanks, Paul for the weekend laughter and mhl for the blog – something which must be hard to do!

I have just got round to the puzzle as I was toasting the bride in Prosecco last weekend.

Lots of lol moments and red herrings. Posh suggested Beckingham Palace!

17 down brought on a senior moment. I could see the ammonites that a lovely old man showed me in the flooring of a church in Venice recently but couldn’t remember its name!! Where’s that Prosecco?!

Giovanna x

By: brucew_aus

brucew_aus — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 14:51:17 +0000

Thanks Paul and mhl

Found this one quite tough – and did take both days of the weekend to get it out. A lot of help needed to sort through the local knowledge with Ed Balls, the nickname of Posh and oxter which I have never heard of before.

Good to get the correct parsing for a couple as well – for 18 I had taken the penultimate of Shakespeare in Love to be the V – and headed down the vanadium path which is used to make the alloy of ARMOUR PLATE – the blog being much more elegant of course. The correctly pointed out MOOS E was better than mine and the original blog.

Many excellent clues and thought that 12,16 and 11 were particularly clever. Last in was the 8d and learnt about both the Coward play and the song for the first time as well.

Thanks again Paul for helping the alternative education, even at my age !

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:56:30 +0000

Ndidn’ty = excellent: I’m sure it’s just as good as SCILENS, and by it I’m sure we’ll always be able to identify the hand of Molonglo (in e.g. works of another).

By: molonglo

molonglo — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 21:49:58 +0000

Sorry, for the ‘didn’t’ typo; DMB, too, I guess re the setter

By: molonglo

molonglo — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 21:49:09 +0000

Thanks mhl, and welcome to the site DMB. The Dark Knight reference is a bit sombre in view of the latest US shoot-out. I ndidn’ty know the ‘posh’ reference for P. United but fathomed it, and learned a splendid new word: oxter. Thanks Paul.

By: DMB

DMB — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:27:20 +0000

or Paul even

By: DMB

DMB — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:26:38 +0000

Thanks for the blog mhl, and to Pual for another amusing puzzle! I live in Spain, so Buenos Dias is familiar to me. However, where to draw the line? It is not as though this is a borrowed phrase like so many additions to our language. This is my first visit to site which I enjoy enormously. My COD was 4dn

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 18:35:49 +0000

Hi rhotician and Gervase

Yes. I agree – I ‘overparsed’ it, not that I worry much about homophones when it comes to it.

By: tupu

tupu — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 18:28:00 +0000

Hi mhl

I see you are right. I somehow read your text as daiquin!

By: Gervase

Gervase — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:40:49 +0000

Thanks, mhl.

Much more satisfying prize puzzle for experienced solvers than many in recent months.

Lots of amusing clues; my favourite was the dubious takeaway imagery and neat construction of 3dn, though I was pleased to see the oxter in 10a, 11a was ingenious and 23,5,2 gave me a ‘duh’ moment went I noticed that the middle word could be UNITED. I needed a bit of help with RHEA, being fixated on REED.

I agree with rhotician’s parsing of MOOSE: ‘sounds like’ in this instance means ‘makes a sound like’.

In 8dn, ‘song’ = FEVER is a tad vague, to say the least, but who cares?