Guardian 27,373 / Arachne

44 comments on “Guardian 27,373 / Arachne”

1. 25ac is F1(Formula One) re-brand, hence ‘radical change to sport’s corporate image’.

   The usual quality fare from Arachne. Thanks to her and Eileen.

2. Many thanks, greyfox. I would never have got it – but I feel less shame than I perhaps ought to. 😉

3. Well done Eileen – I couldn’t properly parse CODICIL, ORPHANAGE or CATER (re pillar – silly me). As usual with Arachne, almost all the clues were ticked, but I particularly liked LITTLE GEM, TORCH SONG, VOILA and SNAFFLE.

4. Thanks Eileen – I needed help with parsing COCICIL and PARTRIDGE, and like you I didn’t get the FIRE part of 25 so thanks also to greyfox. ORPHANAGE is a gem of a clue and I had lots of other ticks, but for me it didn’t quite hit an Arachne high with the definitions in clues like INDIA, ANGEL and HAVOC a bit ordinary for her. That said she has set the bar very high in the past so perhaps I’m being unfair. Thank you Arachne.

5. Many thanks to Arachne, Eileen and greyfox .Should have had Mozart as background instead of PSG-Bayern.

6. Definitely Arachne on top form but I will admit to staring at the grid for a while before the pennies dropped. I’m also really pleased with myself that I saw ‘mercury’ and knew I needed the chemical symbol.

   Thanks to Arachne for the splendid trickery and to Lucky Eileen for the explanations

7. Thank you, Eileen, for blogging.

   It took me time to see it all and solve it, but fair enough to have a toughish puzzle to contrast with the more tractable ones. Couldn’t parse CODICIL or FIREBRAND, so thanks to greyfox and our blogger for those. I liked the misleading use of ‘pap’ in the clue for TELEPHOTO.

   Brava, Arachne, for another fine puzzle. Only thing missing was a poke at the establishment. Perhaps Spider Towers this morning sees our setter working on a Haz’n’Megs special for next May.

8. Phew! Trapped in the spider-lady’s web for ages but got out eventually. Took a long while to parse 18a 23a 25a and 16d post hoc. 15a brilliant.

   Thanks to Arachne for the challenge and Eileen for the illumination.

9. Thank you Arachne for a lovely puzzle and Eileen for a super blog.

   Also thanks to greyfox, @1, I would never have parsed the answer to 25a.

   ESTOP was new to me, what an interesting word, the COED says it is from the Latin stuppa for ‘tow, oakum’ – the clue fooled me, I thought it was some term related to estaminet!

10. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen. Tough going (I had great trouble getting started) but delightful. I did not know LITTLE GEM as lettuce or half-inch as steal-SNAFFLE and like others, could not parse the fire in FIREBRAND. I got both ACTOR and TOADY but took a while before seeing the parsing.

11. Many thanks Arachne for a lovely puzzle. I liked ORPHANAGE, TELEPHOTO, LITTLE GEM and many more

    I missed FIREBRAND, and didn’t understand why SNAFFLE might be right, so thank you Eileen and Greyfox

12. Sorry, but (18ac) kindles cannot mean fans. I could fan my fire all morning but it would not light. Kindling it requires putting a match to it, surely?

13. I figured out the anagram in 4d but I’m damned if I can see where “in need of pap” fits in. I’m possibly missing something wincingly obvious but if someone can offer an explanation, please…

14. Crossbencher @12, this keeps coming up, here is an entry in the COED for kindle, “kindle the embers to a glow”, the only way I can think of doing that is providing them with oxygen, which would mean using the bellows, i.e. fanning them.

15. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

    Oh but I enjoyed this; too many favourites to list but for some reason GORED rang my particular bell and I got a chuckle from the ageing yodeller image.

    If I may, and with much cap-crumpling, I think PARTRIDGE is even cleverer than the blog suggests: the standard is PAR and substandard is below PAR, giving the desired outcome in a down clue?

    I missed F1 as a sport as well – I can’t watch it since Ayrton Senna’s unfortunate demise.

16. Canuck 13 – the definition is ‘need of pap’, abbreviation of ‘paparazzo’, who would need a TELEPHOTO lens.

    Alphalpha @15: ‘the standard is PAR and substandard is below PAR, giving the desired outcome in a down clue?’ – that’s what I was trying to say in the blog and why I separated sub from standard and put it in inverted commas. Sorry if it wasn’t clear. 😉

17. Eileen@16

    It depends on whether or not you’re a golfer I suppose. While “under par” and “below par” are equivalently negative in terms of general standards of health, performance etc, “under par” is good in golf. So the lack of clarity is entirely on my side of the equation, due to my suffering from the golf bug.

18. Oh dear. I put viola without understanding how it worked. Plainly. And then could only fit anthology without any reason except it fitted.
    Could do better!
    Otherwise very enjoyable

19. By the way am I the only one never to have heard lof Torc spelt like that

20. Thanks, Eileen @16! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard “pap” as an abbreviation for paparazzo but it makes sense.

21. Very enjoyable as always from Arachne, and quite challenging in places. PARTRIDGE was last in and took longest to parse. Plenty of wit and ingenuity.

    Thanks to Eileen and Arachne

22. @20 Canuck

    It’s new to me too.

23. Thanks Arachne, great puzzle.

    Thanks Eileen for an excellent blog. I didn’t know TORC or TORCH SONG, and even managed to miss mercury = HG, doh!

    Many clever clues – I didn’t parse FIREBRAND. I especially liked the Guinness works.

24. Can someone explain how IO = moon and AD = puff? (As in26 and 23d)

25. Thanks Arachne and Eileen.

    Despite CODICIL, FIREBRAND and PARTRIDGE going in from (mainly) definition only, I really enjoyed this (as is almost always the case with Arachne). Lots to like, but particular favourites were TORCH SONG, ENCRYPT, CATER and REGNANT.

26. Phil @24
    IO is one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter. AD and “puff” can both refer to an advertisement.

27. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen for a delightful solve. I thought it was at the easier end of the spiderwoman spectrum, but no less enjoyable for that.

    10ac and 5dn were truly brilliant clues.

    As a former archaeologist “torc” was well known to me.

    I remember your last Arachne blog Eileen – I was travelling to Tokyo with both of you for company.

28. I’m afraid I got nowhere with this so resorted to reveal several times to educate myself. Really impressed with Arachne’s brilliance. Will just have to keep trying. Many thanks to both.

29. I loved this, though couldn’t quite finish it without help. My favourite was CATER, but there were plenty of others to enjoy too.
    Thanks to Arachne and to Eileen.

30. Good puzzle as usual with Arachne but I had trouble with the SE corner. I couldn’t parse TORCH SONG and now it’s been explained I can see why.Some lovely clues there though-REGNANT,VOILA and ENCRYPT. LOI was ACTOR, which I couldn’t see despite the answer staring me in the face! Oh well!
    Thanks Arachne.

31. Didn’t know the song and haven’t come across that spelling of torque before so 23a took some time to unravel and then I made life difficult for myself by putting in the heroine’s name at 26a – silly girl!

    All sorted eventually (with help from greyfox over the parsing of 25a)and I very much enjoyed the solve as I invariably do when Spider Woman is the setter.

    Many thanks to Arachne and to Eileen for the blog.

32. A DNF for me today 🙁 – the two 23s. A pity that they intersected. For 23a, I parsed everything except the ‘band’. I suppose the word TORC is well enough known by detectorists, treasure-hunters, and the like – but I’m not one of those. However, now having seen the word, I do recall it – must have seen it written up on a museum display.

    And TOADY totally evaded me – I was guessing at that meaning of ‘creep’ but the right word simply didn’t come. ‘Puff’ = AD isn’t a simile I’d have thought of.

    A pity, because the rest of the puzzle was a delight to work through. I really liked CODICIL – definition was easy but took a long time to twig the wordplay! Likewise PARTRIDGE (some solvers don’t like lift-and-separates, but they’re fine by me). This is Arachne all over, and at her very best.

    SNAFFLE – haven’t we had that fairly recently – but then it was part of a horse’s harness? Similar wordplay. I think I disputed whether FANS = ‘ignites’ but someone (probably an ex Boy Scout 😀 ) assured me they were similes.

    Thanks Arachne for a fine ‘web’ – and Eileen for untangling!

33. I managed to finish this one but failed to parse quite a lot of them. Upon reading the explanations here I see that the fault is mine, not Arachne’s. Some depended on knowledge I didn’t have (torc, pap for paparazzo, half-inch). And in other cases I was just failing to see things that I should have seen ([f]actor[y], partridge).

34. Incidentally (greyfox@1 et al), I did get the parsing of FIREBRAND – eventually! And that despite the fact that I’m no fan of motor sport – indeed I don’t regard it as ‘sport’. So there!

    Another ‘aside’ – I remember reading a few years ago about the car numberplate “F 1” being offered for sale at £10 million. I think this must have been a British record. No I’m not about to ask what I’d get for my (totally nondescript) car numberplate…..

35. It has been an extremely busy week at work so far. I’ve (barely) kept up on the Cryptics, but this is the first visit I have managed to make to 15^2 this week.
    A lovely puzzle from Arachne, as usual. Among the many other excellent clues, I particularly enjoyed the ageing yodeller and the (f)ACTOR(y). I refrained from coming here until I could first parse TORCH SONG (the TORC part) and CATER. Delightful PDMs, both, once they finally occurred (although for CATER I think my PDM was more like a slap-my-forehead-and-say-“Duh” moment).
    Many thanks to Arachne and Eileen and the other commenters.

36. 16d’s “obscene words” could also very cleverly reference the noted work by Eric Partridge on Slang and Unconventional English!

37. Thank you Arachne and Eileen. A class puzzle as ever from the spider women. However. I do think pap for paparazzi is a bit of stretch to say the least, and were it another less favoured setter there would be some pretty vituperative remarks from some posters. CATER, ORPHANAGE and VOILA were just brilliant.

38. There’s something funny about Arachne’s crosswords.
    As it was today.
    After not even 15 minutes we had about half of the answers as they wouldn’t be out of place in a Quiptic.
    And then it halted.
    Strangely enough, most of the ones with real finesse were in the bottom half.
    But we got there in the end.
    FIREBRAND (25ac) is a splendid example of how I would like to be challenged by a crossword clue.

    Many thanks Eileen for an exemplary blog.
    Arachne’s surfaces are amongst the best in the business and I know that this is something that really matters to her.
    Not sure though that they’re always much more ‘storytelling’ than, say, Picaroon’s, Tramp’s or – forgive me 🙂 – even Pasquale’s.
    22d?

39. Lovely puzzle, as usual from Arachne. I’m no expert but I suspect “torc” turns up in Asterix books. I know I’ve encountered it recently in historical fiction and probably from watching documentaries, but I’m pretty sure this goes way back for me. I could be wrong, but it’s made me think that Asterix books had some properly advanced language in them – and now I want to get hold of them for a re-read.

40. Yes a typically enjoyable Arachne. Loved especially orphanage. Thanks for explanation of firebrand. Like so many stared and stared with no illumination. Have to admit to being particularly dense over 19a which is only one I didn’t get. Could only see ‘Guinness works’ and came up with ‘maltery’ which probably doesnt even exist and hense ‘alter’, which left me with a ‘boh’ as they say here!(ie??)

41. Lovely stuff, and it is very rare that I can parse one which Eileen doesn’t (“it is very rare” as in “this was probably the first time”), but I did spot the F1 rebrand!

    TORCH SONG’s parsing on the other hand defeated me apart from SON for boy. I must brush up on the chemical symbols as Mercury isn’t exactly rare, and TORC is a new one for me.

    Top quality clues throughout; LITTLE GEM was a little gem.

    Thanks to both as always

42. S. Panza @ 37

    Pap as an abbreviation for paparazzo is in Chambers as both verb and noun.

43. Thanks Simon S, I withdraw my criticism!!

44. Interesting although difficult for a relatively inexperienced solver. I’ve enjoyed Eileen’s blogs many times but this was not up to par. Too many cases of giving the answer without proper explanation.

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