Comments on: Guardian Cryptic N° 25,741 by Gordius

By: g larsen

g larsen — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 09:28:53 +0000

Interesting idea, Mr DNA @22, but I think it only works if your bracketed ‘in’ is included, which it wasn’t. Even then it’s not a fair definition. I’m with PeterO on this.

By: Mr DNA

Mr DNA — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:17:23 +0000

It could be argued that the definition of 1D isn’t necessarily the whole clue, as PeterO has it, but is just ‘around [in] 2061?’. So ‘around’ in the sense of ‘present, in evidence’ rather than ‘approximately’.

By: g larsen

g larsen — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:43:13 +0000

I quibbled at 1d -’around 2061′. Presumably we, or at least the astronomers among us, know that Halley’s Comet will appear in that year, not around it.

By: tony

tony — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:39:33 +0000

Got off to a very bad start when I Googled 2061 and opted to put Odyssey Three in for 1d. Fortunately, I didn’t come up with any suitable answers for a 1,8, 10, 12, 17, and 19a to aggravate the situation before I returned to Wikipedia and found there was a better answer for 1d.

By: duncan

duncan — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:13:31 +0000

cross-dressed here too. chafing. don’t know how the ladies deal with all these straps & bits of elastic…

By: muffin

muffin — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:13:49 +0000

MMLXI is written in my working space too!

By: chas

chas — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:53:44 +0000

Thanks to PeterO for the blog.

I also had CROSS-DRESSED. The number of us taking that view says to me that the clue needed better writing.

On 1d: when I see a date-like number in a clue I always check what it would look like in Roman numerals. On this occasion I got MMLXI which looked extremely unpromising!

By: rowland

rowland — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:09:50 +0000

Yes, not too keen on that, which seemed a bit of a mess. ‘Was’ is not used except for the ‘surface’ meaning, and ‘in’ has to be a verb, I guess, to ‘in’ the ‘break of jail’. Wow, not my favourite clue!

Thanks KenJ
Rowly.

By: kenj

kenj — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 13:42:34 +0000

re 19ac
I think ‘involved’ and ‘….break’ are anagrinds for an anagram of he and jail.
Definition is ‘he was …. in biblical times’.
Nothing to do with jailbreaks.

By: rowland

rowland — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:31:24 +0000

I too had CROSS-DRESSED! So with a good few of us thwarted there, it must be a bad one. That CHASUBLE one I didn’t really like ‘adjusts’, maybe adjusted would have been better. And it’s a bit chestnutty, I think I’ve seen that version, kind of, quite few times. Rest okay, not too terrible.

Thanks for a nice blog, and to setter,

Cheers,
Rowly.