Guardian 26,309 / Puck

47 comments on “Guardian 26,309 / Puck”

1. Thanks Puck and Eileen
   Nice to have some scientific references for a change. I hadn’t heard of a slouch hat, or seen ALGONKIN spelled like that, but all was fair, (though I had an unparsed CHOMPERS instead of CHOPPERS!)

   I think CONFECTIONERIES is OK – it’s rather like FISH (a fish), FISHES (a few fish), FISH (lots of fish).

2. Thanks Eileen
   9ac is NALGO (not a lot going on, see: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NALGO) with the N moved to the end (nose to tail) + KIN.

3. Thanks for the blog. Re 9, NALGO is an acronym for ‘not a lot going on’ (according to the Information Super-Highway)

4. Thanks, chaps – I didn’t know that, so I’d never have got it. [I only knew the more boring National Association of Local Government Officers.]

5. I was so sure 8d was ‘duplicated’ with a cat in it, that I tied myself into knots for 5 and 11 across…..my dault! Fun puzzle….thanks to Puck and Eileen.

6. and 14 ac as well 🙁

7. I seem to remember vaguely that NALGO (in the sense of the National and Local Government Officers Association, the now defunct trade union) was sometimes known in unsympathetic circles as “not a lot going on” during times of industrial relations strain and I thought of yesterday’s strike when solving this clue.
   Thanks to Puck and to Eileen – nice weekend everyone

8. Thanks Puck and Eileen

   I thought an additional nice touch was the crenellations in the H-blocks dividing the grid.

9. Oh, goodness, yes! – now that really is the sort of thing I don’t usually spot. Thanks, Simon. 😉

10. Did this one after midnight and didn’t find too much difficulty. 15d is a new one for me – what a clever clue! Got it because it had to be. LOI was 14ac. I wasn’t familiar with him as I did Henry V and Hamlet but again it had to be that from the clue.

    Enjoyed it! Thanks all.

11. Will gird up my loins to tackle Phi later!

12. Thanks, Puck and Eileen. Excellent puzzle – witty clues and just the right level of difficulty for me this morning. As someone who occasionally moans here about arts bias, I particularly enjoyed NEODYMIUM – very clever.

13. Delightful puzzle with a mix of Arts & Science.

    Thanks Eileen – a confectionery according to Oxford is also a confectioner’s shop, so I think the plural in that case is legitimate. CRENELLATION in Collins is: ‘the act or fact of providing a building with battlements,’ so isn’t the definition making a 2 in the 22? I missed the ATM in BATMAN and also the CRENELLATIONs, thanks Simon S [I assume it must have been intentional.]

    Great cluing generally and I particularly liked the nude mum and the CRENELLATION.

14. Fun puzzle indeed. Lots of wit and clever clueing. Very Puckish.

    Thanks both.

15. Pretty much as good as yesterday, with TOM SNOUT a standout. The fizzy o ran it close, not least as they’re my favourite sort of therapists at the moment.

    And anything that requires a knowledge of not only MND but also the outer reaches of the periodic table has to be pretty damn fine.

16. Hi Robi @13

    I hoped I’d made it plain that I wasn’t complaining – or even quibbling – about CONFECTIONERIES. It’s a lovely clue, anyway – I forgot to comment on the surface.

    Re CRENELLATION: my SOED has ‘the action of crenellating or condition of being crenellated; a battlement; a notch or indentation’. We need the ‘making’ to supply CREATION – do you mean it’s doing double duty?

17. Hi Eileen @16, yes, brain fade – making is needed for CREATION as it says in the blog! I don’t suppose Puck would want a double-duty. A CRENELLATION can also be a battlement, so I don’t think we need the Collins definition particularly.

18. It didn’t help that quite early on I solved 8d as “copycatted” and thought, yes, clever clue. Later, when I hit the brick wall, I saw the error of my ways, but still think my incorrect answer more satisfying than the correct one, whose parsing I don’t get. C’est la vie…

19. Thank you Eileen.

    Sadly, my Eng Lit O-Level came at a price. “Doing” Julius Caesar put me off Shakespeare for life, so the AMND theme went over my head, and while I guessed that 14a was a name I did not fill it in because it meant nothing to me. 🙁

20. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. I was totally baffled by TOM SNOUT until I came here. I remembered that in MND one of the clowns plays a WALL but I had utterly forgotten his name. 🙁

21. David @ 19.

    I’m glad to say my school refused to have anything to do with the Eng Lit O-level, because of exactly the effect you describe. So you are not alone!

22. Thanks, Eileen, lovely puzzle. But could you/somebody please explain 8d?

23. Thanks to Puck and Eileen. Had the same query as crosser@22. Is there something more
    going on there?

    Cheers…

24. Re. 8d

    As Eileen says, not quite a double definition, unless it am missing something. I think the misdirection is merely the placing of the comma, so you have:

    Def. 1 – Had kittens possibly (because any baby animals’ name could be used)

    Def. 2 – Reproduced

    That’s all I can think of.

25. Hi crosser and grandpuzzler

    I’m as puzzled as you, I’m afraid. I hoped someone would come up with a good idea. Both ‘had kittens’ and ‘cloned’ mean REPRODUCED but they’re quite closely linked, hence my vagueness in the blog. It may be a jokey reference to ‘had kittens’ meaning ‘panicked’. with a clever [mis]use of the comma.

26. Sorry, Tim, we crossed.

27. Thanks Eileen and Puck.

    An enjoyable puzzle. I had to check the element and Tom Snout’s role.

    I thought 8d was pretty straightforward. To have kittens perhaps (i.e. or other offspring) is to reproduce biologically. Also, to reproduce is to produce a reproduction or replica of something e.g. a clone in a biological or broader sense.

28. Many thanks to Tim and tupu for your explanations. And thank you, Eileen, for implying that I’m not as dim as I thought 😉

29. Thanks Puck and Eileen.

    I loved it. There was something for everybody. TOM SNOUT was my way in to AMND theme.
    CRENELLATION and BATMAN were amusing, too.

    ALGONKIN was a surprise, as I am used to ALGONQUIN – however, Chambers lists both.

    Giovanna x

30. Thanks to Puck and Eileen – delighted to see you were doing the blog as this was right up your street.

    I regret that 11a defeated me – I wasted time on looking for equivalents for pretty and witty, which did not contribute to the solution – unnecessary wording or clever misleading, depending on your point of view.

    Baerchen @ 7 – NALGO (the trade union) is not defunct – it is alive and well and calling itself UNISON.

31. Can someone wise in the ways of crossword lore help? In my, very limited, experience it seems that 15 down breaks a Rule that all the various rules include. That is that the ‘definition’ itself must be at the start, or at the end, of the clue. So ‘element’ just is not allowed where tis.

    Please reply! If this ‘rule’ is not a ‘rule’ then I am even more lost when puzzling. But Puck would know what he is doing?

32. Thanks for the blog Eileen – and thanks to Puck for a fun puzzle. AMDN is my favorite of old Bill’s plays. A twist on 6d, I read ex-moll as the defn of “old flame” as a moll is a gangster’s girlfriend or “flame”. And an “old flame” could be “almost faded away” as the fire burns to ash.

    I admit I had to use a crossword solver to get crenellation.

    Celia@31: The “element … at 60” is the clue as neodynium is element number 60.

33. Failed on ‘neodymium’ and ‘algonkin’, so a DNF for me today.
    If anyone complains that the puzzle was too easy, I’ll consider taking up knitting.

34. I don’t think Dewey really answers Celia’s question. This is an odd clue, like a train with the loco in the middle (or a train of thought with the conclusion in the middle). It’s extremely clever, like Only Connect. I have said before that there are no rules, and that’s right. But this was harsh for most and the proportion of mere mortals who could have worked it out in its own right without recourse to assistance will be tiny.

    On the other hand, it’s a quiz and the answer can be worked out if you get the crossers. Further, the answer will appear 24 hours later even if you don’t indulge in this website. It’s not a contest, it’s a bit like solitaire. Enjoy it for what it is, I say. I found the answer to this clue, and it’s explanation, fun for the sense of discovery.

    And the mere fact that there is a forum on which I can spout this drivel is a joy in itself.

35. Hello Celia @31 – apologies for the rather tardy response.

    I’ll put my hands up on this one. Initially, I chickened out on highlighting a definition until Gaufrid emailed me to point out my omission, commenting that it was most unusual for the definition to appear in the middle, rather than at the beginning or the end. I had considered highlighting it as Dewey suggests – but ‘appearing nude regularly’ is part of the wonderful wordplay, not the definition – or even just underlining ‘element’ and ‘at 60’ but that would have involved some discussion and I was anxious to post the blog as soon as possible.

    You are absolutely right to question this: I think it’s true to say that we are used to expecting a definition to be at the beginning or end of a clue but most people seem to think, as I do, that this is a great clue, which, as Gaufrid phrased it, ‘goes against convention’ – a so much gentler word than ‘rule’.

    And, of course, Puck, of all people, does know what he’s doing! 😉

    [Dewey – I did consider calling 6dn ‘&littish’. 😉 ]

36. Oh dear, Tim, we’ve crossed again! Well said!

37. I found this a little trickier than some of Puck’s puzzles because I didn’t know some of the references in a couple of the clues. The “pretty, witty mistress, famously” in 11ac went right over my head and without the L checker from 6dn (my next to last in) I just couldn’t see the answer so I resorted to aids to get it. Once I’d got it I saw OLD FLAME and then TOM SNOUT was my LOI from the wordplay, although I had to check it post-solve to see his relevance to “wall”. I worked out NEODYMIUM from the anagram fodder and the definition, which I was sure was an element with the symbol Nd at atomic number 60 in the periodic table, so from that perspective I agree with Dewey@32 even if it is an unconventional way of presenting a definition.

38. Did most of this on the train without any aids but it took some time – NEODYMIUM and TOM SNOUT were half guesses and I failed on ALGONKIN – that spelling was new to me too. Enjoyed it a lot.

    Thanks to Puck and Eileen

39. I enjoyed this but I did find it towards the easier end of Puck’s spectrum.

    Re 15d. I feel that the only break in convention is that Puck added a little more wordplay in the definition part of the clue. So definition was “element appearing nd at 60”. “nd” became “nude regularly”. It worked for me anyway.

    I also don’t think the comma in 8D is misplaced.

    “Had kittens” is definitely “reprodeuced”

    and

    “perhaps cloned” is also “reproduced” although in the modern meanings of the word it can actually mean something slightly different, as in cloning a phone. Hence the perhaps. A straightforward DD.

    Thanks to Eileen and Puck

40. Thanks Puck and Eileen

    Another enjoyable challenge from Puck where I found many answers that took a long time to work out the ‘why’ after determining the ‘what’ of the answer.

    The first in was WALL, followed up with LE MUR – so from that point of view, life was a little easier.

    TOM SNOUT was also my penultimate and had to look up who he was after unscrambling the anagram – is he the only reference to AMND or am I missing something else? OLD FLAME was last in … and took an age to work out why – I thought that ex-moll was the definition initially.

41. Thanks for the explanations.

    Did reasonably well for my level. I know only a few bits and pieces of Shakespeare so a lot of it went over my head. The lynch pins hole and wall were clued at my simple level,otherwise I would have gone mad and given up.

    Good one.

42. THANKYOU for all those who thoughtfully replied to ‘it’s in the middle’. Eileen @35, I didn’t mean to jump on your hard labour, thankyou for your ‘exactingness’.

    Tim @34, here is a coincidence/connection, I have just read Howards End and so ‘only connect’ takes on new dimensions. Surely the Schlegel sisters did crosswords (they would just be emerging from over the Atlantic yes?). Or Mr Wilcox.

43. Woah, steady Celia! I may watch Only Connect but I’m a ‘learnt behaviour’ solver. I get obscure clues because I’ve done a lot of crosswords. Never finished any of my O-level texts and never read a classic since – or anything else for that matter. Does ‘Bus and Coach Preservation Magazine’ count?

44. A bit late to this but if you don’t mind a double-duty maybe it could have been something like: ‘DIY mum, one surprisingly appearing nude periodically at 60,’ where ‘periodically at 60’ is the definition as well as ‘periodically’ giving the NuDe. I quite like an occasional double-duty although I know it is frowned on by some of the cognoscenti.

45. Spot on Robi!
    That’s exactly how I saw it. In any case, “periodically” must be on double-duty however one parses. Our analysis, therefore, adds no inelegance and removes Celia’s concern.

46. Yes Robi, elegant and all. Thankyou.

47. I think “Algonkin” (funny spelling) is the first letters of “not a lot going on” (nalgo) with the first moved to last place (nose to tail).

    Valentine

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