Guardian 25,570 – Gordius

31 comments on “Guardian 25,570 – Gordius”

1. 3Down: also a dd? Love = nothing

2. Thanks UY and Gordius

   I got started at once with 1ac and then stalled briefly. I began to feel the puzzle was going to be a drag but it was, in fact, rather more enjoyable than I had feared. Some nicely structured clues. I ticked 10a, 17a, 24a, 14d and 19d along the way.

   I agree with Dr G re 3d.

3. Thanks Uncle Y and Gordius.

   Very easy – comfortably finished on a 15 minute train journey – but good fun. Agree with UY: the definition for ‘noonday’ was a clear highlight. Also liked ‘authoritarian’ which was last in (on purpose). ‘Fingertip’ made me smile as well, despite it being a familiar device.

   Not sure what you mean regarding 16a, Uncle: “Strange that Gordius used CANT”. Surely it’s a straightforward synonym: ‘platitudes’ = ‘cant’, sounds like ‘Kant’.

4. Thanks, UY.

   A rather interesting puzzle from Gorgeous, with a lot of clues requiring one or two letters to be moved, changed or removed: 9a, 10a, 21a, 26a, 27a, 5d 8d, 20d, 23d. Favourites were TOUCHSTONE, AUTHORITARIAN, NOONDAY.

   I had never come across STEEP as a noun, which I thought was the reason for the question mark in 4a, but good old Chambers lists it as ‘a precipitous place’. So what is the question mark for?

5. Thanks for the blog – I always like to have access to the clues if possible. Great fun and not too hard today.

   Mitz @3 – Yes, it’s a (slightly strained – hence the “?”) homophone clue, not a DD. I’m not entirely sure how UY was parsing it, or what the strange thing about CANT was meant to be. Perhaps he thinks it’s a (certainly strange) alternative spelling of Kant, which would make a DD possible, just about. But if such a spelling existed, it wouldn’t be strange to use it, would it…

6. TY UY.

   Gervase@4 – not all steep slopes necessarily have sheer drops. He could equally well have clued ‘perhaps’ instead of a question mark, IMO.

7. Relatively straightforward and enjoyable crossword.

   Thanks UY, for the clues as well; it would have been very strange to use ‘Kant’ as that would have given an impossible 16d word. I had to look up TOUCHSTONE as the jester, although the parsing was precise. As well as NOONDAY, I particularly liked GAMESTER, which took a moment to unravel.

8. Thanks UY.

   Am I the only one totally failing to make any sense of 12ac?

9. Eileen @8: 12a is a sort of reverse clue, with the first ellipsis representing the answer: HIT HER TO make her submit? ‘So far’ is the definition. Clue doesn’t need the second ellipsis, and is not the best in the puzzle, IMHO, although the conceit is ingenious.

10. 12ac… presumably the solution is what is meant to go in the ellipsis, rather than the meaning of the words in the clue.

11. Thank you, Gervase @9.

    [I shall make no further comment, as promised a few weeks ago. 😉 ]

12. Thanks all
    Rather too obvious.
    I cannot really imagine that UY would think this way but he could be suggesting that a compiler confronted with C-N- might have chosen a different word to ‘cant’.Especially if he were more familiar with physicists than philosophers.

13. Ha ha, RCW; that is probably the way UY was thinking.

14. Quite so RCW – ‘cone’, ‘cane’, ‘cent’, ‘cony’… The list is almost endless!

15. Thanks, Gordius for a fun puzzle and Uncle Yap for his thorough parsing.

    I particularly enjoyed 10a, Touchstone – guessing the jester before parsing the clue! 8d, Authoritarian was good, too and I thought 23d, Route had an extra layer of meaning, as I have heard it pronounced Rout in some parts of the country.

    Giovanna x

16. Thanks to UY for the blog.

    I particularly liked 19d – once I had shuffled the letters around to give NOONDAY.

17. Thanks
    G ordius
    U ncle
    Y ap
    Pash and sticky end were new to me. Appreciate the education.

    Cheers…

18. Thank you Gordius. It’s a long time since I have had so many chuckles in one puzzle.

19. Mitz, the Chamber’s word wizzard only gives 20! (I really meant that spelling, empathising as I do with Rincewind)

    Didn’t understand all of it despite finishing so ta for the blog.

20. Technical question: does anyone know a way of making the clues display for longer than 5 seconds when the cursor is held over a number? Is it a setting at “my” end or “yours”?

21. Your end.

22. Monkeypuzzler @20; I have the same 5 sec display. I don’t know how to change it!

23. No problems here, although a few clues I wasn’t particularly keen on. The one I did fail to get (and didn’t bother spending too much time trying to work out) was HITHERTO. Once I saw the answer and realised what was going on in the clue, I’m quite glad that I didn’t manage to get it (that my mind doesn’t make those sorts of connections).

24. Hi otter

    I don’t expect you to see this but thanks for that: it’s good to hear, after all, that I wasn’t the only one to have such a reaction to that clue. I felt pretty lonely [and surprised] yesterday!

25. Hi Eileen (and otter) – no, you weren’t alone. I was late starting yesterday’s crossword and have only just caught up with the blog. ‘Tongue in cheek’ references to domestic violence are clearly out of place in the Guardian, and I am surprised that the clue was not pulled by the crossword editor.

26. Funny that the word po-faced seldom appears in crosswords.
    It’s actually a boxing reference.

27. Funny that ‘leaden-footed sarcasm’ seldom appears in crosswords, despite its popularity with certain 15squared commenters.

28. Sorry, Wolfie, I should have realised that you were anti women’s boxing. Mustn’t let them get above themselves, must we?

29. Afraid you’ve lost me there RCW

30. PS – ‘po-faced’ has nothing to do with boxing, according the OED.

31. Nor does the clue or solution have anything to do with domestic violence – that is entirely your invention.

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