Comments on: Guardian 25,787 – Philistine

By: don

don — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:38:20 +0000

If peope are questioning the structure of the colon [7d] and whether “Two in three” is a ratio [8], how about the fact that white light is not colourless [16a], but contains “all the clours of the rainbow”.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:25:08 +0000

Neither, Sil: I was just curious, and amused really, to see the one tested and not the other.

By: NeilW

NeilW — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 02:12:24 +0000

Hi rhotician. For what it’s worth, I only discovered the Guardian’s online crossword site and started solving again, after a thirty year hiatus, in early 2009. Thus my limited personal memory bank of clues! (Long term expat so no access to regular printed editions.)

By: rhotician

rhotician — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:12:07 +0000

NeilW @2 “I seem to remember Paul did this first with a question mark”

Paul does use this “trick” in 24826 from Oct 2009, so your memory is very good. (Unless of course he reused it more recently.)

It would be very difficult to establish who “did this first” but Puck did it with ? in 24448 (Jul 2008). He also used a similar device for ‘exclamations’. In addition he clued ‘invertedcommas’ and ‘quotationmarks’ conventionally, arranging the four round the edges of the puzzle.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 23:39:59 +0000

Sil, I do not see why you feel it necessary to criticise Dave Price (Philistine); after all he is 103 years old and often has a pint of beer at my local.

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:14:52 +0000

Well, PB, my name’s not Rowland.
Why should this puzzle be grilled?
OK, there’s the omnipresent “…. leader” again (9ac), but I’m not completely with you re this anyway.
I would have avoided to use “may be” as an anagram indicator twice (21ac, 6d), and 3d is not really good for several reasons (some already mentioned the (de)capitalisation, but I also disliked the double duty of “part” and if it wasn’t meant to be like that, “in Florida” for Orlando).
Also not sure whether the definition of COLOURLESS should be ‘Black and white’ – and?

But there was a lot to admire in this crossword.
Philistine is a thoughtful setter (which is something I appreciate) and 11ac, 1d and 7d were quite good.
Not a big fan of 19ac (ROSE) and I think we have seen 22d’s trick before (and better).
Yet, the reversed homophone is 17d was clever, perhaps even novel.

So why grill Philistine?
Or PB, did you mean: why grilling yesterday’s Indy?
In that case I am with you, but not 100%.
Still, I am on Alchemi’s side as the overall feeling was right.

And here’s one to annoy you (and perhaps others, including me, for more than one reason): “American leader trapped in soapbox put upside down (5)”

By: Morpheus

Morpheus — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:59:06 +0000

thank you philistine and andrew.

however, i’m very disappointed with the vigour of the discussion here about the clueing of ratio. I’m sure we’ve had much better ding dongs between the mathematical pedants and the others in the past!

By: Trebor

Trebor — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:05:46 +0000

I was my own worst enemy here by confidently deciding, with just the C in place, that 21a would be _ _ _ _ / CHORD (i.e. 7ths and 5ths being examples of chords). Thus it took a while but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:49:23 +0000

I’m curious as to why this one’s been spared the grilling yesterday’s Indy was given. Would anyone like to comment, Rowland?

By: Brendan (not that one)

Brendan (not that one) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:16:08 +0000

A nice difficult solve. Never heard of 8D but had enough letters to work it out. Obviously it was some Latin referring to a court judgement so a little Google did the trick.

Last in was 24A as I had a mental block. Thanks to Andrew and Philistine