Comments on: Guardian 25,756 – Arachne

By: Huw Powell

Huw Powell — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 23:03:12 +0000

What a lovely puzzle. Not a quibble over a single letter anywhere. I love it when after ages I finally solve a clue and it all makes perfect (Ximenian!) sense. LASSO was easy to pencil in, and lovely to convert to ink!

The ones I didn’t quite “get” on my own were equally pleasing – the parsing of TUBBY is excellent; MISSUS I had thought of in brucew @ 35′s sense, sort of, didn’t know the slang and Miss US wouldn’t have occurred to me; and at 20 I tried every vowel, I thought, in the second light… only to overlook “E”!

Had to look up DUOMI, HISPID, and PICOT, but not until they were at various levels of “convincing”.

Again, cheers for LASSO, TUBBY and several others, at 23 it’s nice to know not all Scotsmen are named Ian…

Though I was off to an easy “Tuesday” puzzle this morning when SATED popped right in, but for me it was much as Bruce described.

Thanks for the blog, Uncle Yap and the rest of you lot, and for the excellent puzzle and for dropping in, Arachne!

By: brucew_aus

brucew_aus — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:01:01 +0000

Thanks Arachne and UY

Typical Arachne for me … starts off with a few very easy clues … and once you are in the web … out come the doozies! Was stuck with the Dutch missus for a couple of days until I starting looking up each word individually – still did not twig the clever Miss US beauty queen until coming here – had assumed that the wife was everyone’s own beauty queen!!

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:02:32 +0000

Hi tupu
Sorry for going off topic, I will have to put myself under moderation, but thanks for your greeting. After a total of eleven weeks in hospital, and three operations, I am still very weak but improving. I hope all has gone (reasonably) well at 15² during my enforced absence. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:53:17 +0000

Hi Gaufrid @30

Great to see you back!!!!

By: Tramp

Tramp — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:57:33 +0000

ingenius

By: Tramp

Tramp — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:55:38 +0000

Marvellous puzzle. Too many clues to mention but I thought BATTEN, CUPID, SMITTEN, MISSUS and LASSO were genius.

By: Gaufrid

Gaufrid — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:08:44 +0000

Hi Jandc @28
Definition #2 under ‘technical’ in Chambers (12th Ed) is ‘industrial’.

By: Gervase

Gervase — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:48:13 +0000

Slight correction to Uncle Yap’s comments: Although ‘Dutch’, meaning ‘wife’, is often suggested to be from a rhyming slang expression ‘Duchess of Fife’, this is not the case. The usage predates the creation of the dukedom of Fife in 1889, before which there was obviously no duchess with this title. Unusually for a characteristically Cockney term, it is probably just a contraction of ‘duchess’, with no rhyming component.

HISPID is a lovely word, used most often in biology. Although ‘hairy’ is a reasonable definition for crossword purposes, ‘hispid’ strictly means ‘covered with stiff hairs’. ‘Bristly’ would be a more accurate synonym.

By: J and C ( Bartlett)

J and C ( Bartlett) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:18:51 +0000

(Please use ‘Jandc’ instead of full names)

Just one quibble in a very enjoyable puzzle: Are ‘technical’ and ‘industrial’ interchangeable? The blog does not help on this.

By: Dave Ellison

Dave Ellison — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:02:12 +0000

That would have made an excellent clue, otter@25, and would have made me chortle!