Guardian 27,672 / Arachne

56 comments on “Guardian 27,672 / Arachne”

1. They dont come much better than this.

   Nice blog too.

2. Thanks to Eileen and Arachne

   Faultless and fun

3. There isn’t a day that cannot be improved with a puzzle by Arachne.

4. Loved it! Entertaining clues with none-too-difficult answers. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

5. Yes, a splendiferous puzzle indeed. I particularly liked CAPRICCIO, PREVIEWS and THANK YOU. Many thanks to Eileen and Arachne.

6. Many thanks from me too to setter and blogger. Very entertaining after a brief absence.

7. Over all too quick, but with a few quibblets. Always thought up to snuff/scratch was re performance in general, rather than health; can’t quite substitute gorge and glut; wondered about ‘l’, rather than ‘lb’, as weight (thanks Eileen, happy now), and about odor/ant rather than /ous as adjective.

   Dnk Suede the group, but not a problem, and I always spare a thought for Eve the apple-picker (wouldn’t be surprised if it was really Him, and the scribes changed the story).

   All good fun, ta Arachne and Eileen.

8. You don’t realise how much you miss Arachne until she comes back – I agree with everyone who has commented so far – especially George @3.

   Thank you to Arachne for the wonderful crossword – including as it does one of my favourite words at 9d and also  to Lucky Eileen

9. Thanks Eileen. Good on Arachne for putting fun first. Loved the fruit picker, a welcome change from the standard ‘first lady.’

10. A lovely puzzle. Some brilliant surfaces conjuring up great images, especially 5a, 11a and 7d.

    I liked 23d just because ISTHMI is such a nice word. I’ve always thought there should be a Christmas song with “isthmus” in because it’s the only word that rhymes with it (well, roughly).

11. Excellent! My favourite surface was 1ac, even Mrs d laughed and she hates cryptics.

12. Hi grantinfreo @7

    I also found this link for UP TO SNUFF [scroll down a bit]

    I wondered about your other queries too and found

    Chambers – ‘odorant, odorate or odiferous: emitting a [usually strong] smell’;

    ‘glut: to gorge; to feed beyond capacity’

     

13. Thanks Arachne and Eileen.

     

    I thought I had finished but now see that it was not EVERYMAN for 14a, which I couldn’t really justify. Embarrassed to say I did toy with YD for yard (incidentally, Eileen, you are missing the D in your explanation) and the AY but still couldn’t see the answer!

    Always great to see another Arachne, one  of my favourite compilers; can we hope for more of them, and a Brendan, too?

    [Muffin, in case you are still having trouble starting yesterday’s Suguru, I have put a comment in the General Discussion]

14. Thanks David Ellison – amended now.

    grantinfreo – I meant to add, re Eve, that my son, at about nine years old, had to read the first of the Nine Lessons and made it all God’s fault, with ‘And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’

15. Lovely stuff, many thanks Eileen.  For once managed to evade the Spider Lady web of intrigue.

    Couldn’t find g = great but it didn’t really matter and dnk Suede.  Favourite was the “contractor of bottom” which made me chuckle and also the famous (or perhaps infamous) apple-plucker, Eve.

    Found this relating to the snuff clue which is mildly interesting.

    Nice week, all.

16. As a relative latecomer to this site, maybe two years ago, I used not, in the past, to take much notice of different setters – just got on with solving. Araucaria of course was special, and Paul was always distinctive, likewise Rufus, and Enigmatist always meant a hard struggle; otherwise I was too lazy or too busy to do much discriminating. But this site fosters discrimination, and a real appreciation of the craft, of which I now, thanks to all the blogs by Eileen and others, see Arachne as a true champion. Today being a wonderful instance – thank you to both, and to all those who have built up the site and supported it.

17. Your son was on the right track Eileen, given God’s ‘gender’, but I still suspect the bloke-scribes!

18. Am I being very stupid, Eileen? – that is the correct quote …

19. Brilliant fun throughout. Thanks to Arachne and to Eileen fur helping with a couple of parkings.

20. gordon mcdougall  @18 – no, you’re not being stupid: my son emphasised ‘thou gavest’.

    Hi Geoff Soul @19 – I don’t drive, so I’m afraid I’d be no help with your parking problems. 😉

21. I could have ticked every one. What delightful surfaces! No matter that I had not heard of 19a UP TO SNUFF. It was just one example of wordplay that worked.

    I have been known to rail against the “four separate quadrants” grid (there is probably a technical term for it), but here, it did not detract from a challenging and successful solve. I didn’t have to look anything up! But I did have to stretch my brain. That is the most satisfactory solve of all, as far as I am concerned.

    I had a puzzle here in which I got no across clues on the first pass, and only started to solve at 6d SKELETAL. Then others fell into place. Wordplay impeccable. Surfaces made sense. No need for reference sources. I could not be happier.

    Hugh thanks to Arachne and Eileen. Could we have a better setter or blogger in Crosswordland these days? I doubt it.

22. [HUGE, not Hugh. Grateful to the Editor for your resilience nevertheless.]

23. A lovely surprise this morning, thank you Arachne, and thank you Eileen for the helpful blog.

24. Fantabulous blogging Eileeen! A puzzle utterly worthy of your delight. Once, I would glance at the name Arachne and briefly (hopefully) mistake it for Araucaria. Not any more. Much as I miss the monkey puzzler the spider is right up there for wit and ingenuity. Thanks both.

25. Well JinA @21 has said it all, apart from the grid where 9D does give some connection to top and bottom.

    A superb puzzle, best I’ve done in a long time with a great blog; thanks Eileen for the good links.

    Many good clues; I ticked especially TOUPEE, CONCOCT, POOCHES and the splendiferous GLUTE.

26. Well, I think your son was right, Eileen (20).  It’s always a male thing to say it wasn’t me to blame – look at the US President …

     

27. Thanks, Gordon @ 26 – I’d rather not. 😉

28. Many thanks Arachne – superbly done. Like others, I enjoyed the fruit picker, the image of Snoopy biting a loud individual, one short of a team, contractor in bottom, statement from seller, and more. Made my day.

    Thanks Eileen as always

29. I can only second what’s been said. Many thanks Arachne and a special thank you to Eileen; I have a sentence to teach the importance of word stress in which every word can be stressed, but it’s rather dull.

    Your son’s THOU GAVEST  is priceless and I’ll be using it in future, without fail!

30. Hear hear!!!

31. That was a sheer joy. It’s all been said above.

    Many thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

32. Well, wasn’t that a treat! I didn’t actually find it so very challenging (not intending to brag – but it did go in pretty quickly) yet still completely satisfying. Such wit and variety… It’s all been said already.
    Thanks to A&E.

33. A lovely puzzle, which seemed a lot harder than it looks in retrospect. UP TO SNUFF was the only unfamiliar solution.

    Thanks to Arachne and Eileen

34. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen. Nothing to add to the positive responses, other than to note that Arachne as Rosa Klebb seems to appear more often in the FT than the Guardian, often with a Saturday prize puzzle.

35. Thanks both,

    Pretty much everything has been said. Ten across was so groanworthy that it was easily my CotD.

36. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen. I agree with everything said and not the most taxing of Arachnes puzzles, but nonetheless still very enjoyable. However, a DNF for me, because I looked at 21a for half an hour after completing the rest of the puzzle, but I just could not see it. Hey ho there is always tomorrow and I did like concoct, Newgate and toupee. Thanks again to Arachne and Eileen.

37. William @ 15

    Couldn’t find g = great: what about GB = Great Britain? It’s one of those not-in-the-dctionary-so-is-it-legit-? ones to me, but, liek youmit would appear, I’m pretty tolerant of them. Trouble is, the door then opens to all sorts of ‘unusual’ abbreviations.

38. Not my best experience, but I bow to the unanimous views expressed here about the quality of the crossword. I got more than half the answers by guessing and then working back, and I stalled on GLUTE and SIMPER. I got GLUT+E for GLUTE, but I didn’t know that word. I also didn’t know L could be a weight.
    Thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

39. May I rephrase that please ? “liek youmit” was intended to read “like you, it…”. Sorry!

40. Brilliant puzzle and blog – thanks to both.

41. I enjoyed most of this but I really didn’t like GLUTE. I’ve never heard of it but it is in the OED so I suppose—. I couldn’t justify it so I cheated! I didn’t parse CARIES but I can’t fault the blog, so again—. Not the best Arachne but the Spiderwoman is still one of my favourites.
    Thanks Arachne.

42. I enjoyed this too, and I’m a fan of Arachne generally.  But – I am a little surprised by the deafening chorus of praise here: I expected that regular solvers would have found this so easy as to be beneath contempt.  Not me – I’m always chuffed to be able to finish a crossword the same day, unlike the wretched Vlad one from last week that took us about 3 days to (almost) finish.  But it’s usually those gristly ones that seem to garner most appreciation here….

    Anyway, it’s great that everyone can agree for once 🙂

43. Mr Beaver@42: I agree that it was on the easy side, but Arachne’s surfaces are so amusing that she always gets a bundle of bouquets.

     

44. Late to the party today – tied up with DIY tasks so frivolous things like this delightful Arachne and Eileen’s clever parsing had to wait until dinner was on! Too many ticks to enumerate so I’ll just leave my thanks to both setter and blogger.

45. GLUTE is actually a triple definition…contractor; bottom and gorge in the geographical sense! Apologies if this has been mentioned before but I am too busy now to read all the comments…

46. Yes plenty of mirth in this one, both intentional and otherwise. Thanks to Eileen and of course to Arachne. I have to say I’m not a great fan of clues like 13ac – “think of a word and then trim it” – but that apart, a good workout.

47. A humdinger of a puzzle by Arachne, was really tickled by the surface of 20d, my COD. Only error SLATE for GLUTE.

48. And ‘contractor in bottom…’ he he he.

49. I assumed the L for weight came from the Latin “libra”, the basic Roman unit of weight.

50. So grateful that crypticsue made mention of this in another place – I’d hate to miss out on Spiderwoman.

    Not picking a favourite as there are too many to choose from – it was all 9d.

    Many thanks to Arachne and to Eileen for the excellent blog.

51. Get a life you lot. Ok puzzle but come on?

52. Re Thou Gavest:
      
    Did the original King James version come with bold/italic/underline ?

    It could have solved a lot of subsequent discussion.

53. Here in Sardegna, while the wretched bars are shut, I’ll be listening to the King’s  chorister’s every nuanced word on Christmas Eve in that first lesson.

54. Such was that happy garden-state,

    While man there walk’d without a ……..

    Does anyone else remember that magnificent, chess-themed Listener crossword that won a gong (and saved me from the depths of depression).

55. Sorry, not magnificent but Marvellous

56. A bit of relief to read the later comments (41 onwards). We thought as Tim dares to say.

    Nevertheless Arachne and Paul remain my favourite setters.

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