Comments on: Guardian 25,792 – Paul

By: brucew_aus

brucew_aus — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:44:29 +0000

Thanks Paul and UY
Found this quite enjoyable – had two starts in a busy day to get it out. Interestingly got FATAL ATTRACTION quite early but it took many crossing clues for the other two long ones to fall out.

At her smutty best with LAPWING and a clever construction of the answer to boot. Missed the parse on the German children – having KIN and DER.

Last in was PETARD – always for some reason think of it as dagger-like instead of bomb like.

By: Brendan (not that one)

Brendan (not that one) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:22:08 +0000

One of those inspired days for me. (All too seldom lately)

First pass through the across clues gave me about 6 answers but I then “wrote in” the first 4 downs. After this the puzzle succumbed fairly rapidly.

Last in was PETARD about 20 minutes later.

Surely the mini theme was deadly looks rather than ladies?

Typical Paul surface in 11A

Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Paul and UY.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:00:29 +0000

It’s okay if you are either posh (not that one, silly) or Lloyd Grossman.

By: Robi

Robi — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:05:47 +0000

RCW@20; try the British pronunciation at: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dole. Sounds OK to me.

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:24:06 +0000

Thanks all
A pleasant struggle for me.
last in was 10 ac which was also my favourite.
Like others I entered ‘roll out’ at 25ac which is a perfectly good solution but did make 17d rather tricky(!).
It is stretching homophones too far to equate ‘dough-L out’ with ‘dole out’.

By: tupu

tupu — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:58:21 +0000

Thanks UY and Paul

I finished this thinking that the entertainingt mini-theme was blood and death rather than UY’s suggestion, so leaning more more towards the ‘eschatological’ than the more predictable ‘scatological’ perhaps (except for 11a which I had to check re wig/syrup). [ Yes I know the semantic contrast is not really right but since we are back on near 'homophones' I thought it worth a try].

A clever puzzle as one expects from Paul and more difficult than some of his recent offerings, I think.

Some good surfaces and misleading definitions.

I’m pretty tolerant with homophones (we impose this label rather than the setter and we should perhaps expect little more than ‘sounds a bit like’) though we’ve been through all that before as UY implies. 25a works a bit less well for me, perhaps because I’ve had the mixed fortune of trying to learn Finnish and have become more conscious of divisions between syllables.
But I did find it an amusing idea.

By: William

William — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:30:34 +0000

Blaise @15 Ha-ha! Many thanks.

By: Paul S

Paul S — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:13:21 +0000

Thanks to Paul (and to UY for the explnantion of wig which completely escaped me) for a very enjoyable puzzle. It was slow going to start with but there seemed to come a point where it all began to click into place. I liked Petard and Moniker, and The chance meeting in 19ac flowed so naturally that it was a while before I read the clue the ‘right way’ to solve it.

By: Robi

Robi — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:03:56 +0000

Thanks Paul, nice puzzle. Once FATAL ATTRACTION was put in on the RH side, it was bound to lead to the three answers ending in ‘a.’

Thanks also to UY; you may get into trouble for putting ‘mini-theme of pretty ladies’ in your preamble paragraph. I thought the GARROTTE was a ‘contracted killer’ until I parsed it properly. Last in was HERETO, where I failed to spot the anagram. LAPWING was typically Paulian with a clue not to read over breakfast. DOLE OUT and dough-lout are homonyms to me at least. My Cockney rhyming slang did not stretch to syrup=wig.

By: blaise

blaise — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:32:50 +0000

@William (#14)
For me, it’s an idiotic parental memory that gets triggered… Our kids grew up in France, and I suppose they were about 9 and 5 the first time we took them to a public swimming pool in England. They were extremely amused by a sign that read “No smoking. No running. No petting.”
Really enjoyed the crossword and blog, btw.