Guardian 26,019 / Picaroon

42 comments on “Guardian 26,019 / Picaroon”

1. Thanks Eileen, I managed to complete the puzzle but completely missed the healthy foods in the across clues and solutions. I had to drag ‘peplum’ kicking and screaming from the back of my crossword memory. While the occasional ‘saucy’ clue is a bit of fun, I hope that they do not become the norm.

2. I had almost finished this puzzle when I saw the FRUIT theme.

   I particularly liked 17a, 19d, 13a, 4d, 11a & 8d and my favourites were 2d MISSUS, 9a APPLES AND PEARS, 23a VIRGIN & 20d SOVIET (last in).

   As an aside, it seems that the murderer Anders Behring Breivik is known as the “Norway nutter” which adds even more depth to 24a.

   Thanks for the blog, Eileen.

3. Hi michelle

   Thanks for the extra bit – it certainly turns a good clue into yet another excellent one.

4. Welcome to this slot, Eileen! I was hoping you’d be here when I saw yesterday had a new blogger.

5. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

   First pass of the across clues supplied only FIGS, so I was pleased that the downs went better. Very clever crossword. I particularly liked ALL BLACK, MISSUS, and TART UP, and one can only admire VIRGIN (appropriately, perhaps, my last in).

   Just to clarify something Eileen, I am sure, knew but didn’t include – ORBITS = SOCKETS in the sense of “eye sockets”.

6. Thanks, Eileen. Nothing much to add to your impeccable blog of a highly enjoyable puzzle.

   George @1, sorry to disagree. Why would you not want to see more of clues like 23ac which, in my opinion, was the best of a very high quality set?

7. Thanks, muffin @5: yes, that is what I meant – added now.

8. Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed all this, including your risqué observation about the naughtiness of Picaroon (and Paul) in 23A. The clue before that with its image of a flyweight rugby player also made me laugh. Good work all,round.

9. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. On 8d I had RATE* and deduced WATER CLOCKS but I needed your blog to explain the parsing 🙁

   On 23a I initially applied ‘disheartened’ to very giving me VY which I could not use and held me up for quite a time.

   I liked ALL BLACK.

   I failed to see the fruit theme!

10. Entertaining crossword with lots of good surfaces.

    Thanks Eileen for the SUPER-b [blog]. Ooh, it’s so naughty to use the word VIRGIN; poor old Richard Branson is going to have to change his business names. 😉

    I really liked SEXISM, TART UP and MISSUS.

11. Thanks, Eileen

    Good fun from the Pirate. I spotted a lot of fruit on a first read-through of the clues but then forgot all about them, so this didn’t help me at all.

    Some good constructions and surfaces here. Favourites were 9,10, 22a, 23a, 2d.

    (I’m one of those who enjoy a good dash of ribaldry. If you want po-faced Ximenean fundamentalism, there’s always the Times…)

12. If you want po-faced Ximenean fundamentalism

    What on earth is that supposed to mean? There’s not a non-Ximenean clue in this puzzle. And the Times has never been Ximenean.

    Apart from that, a Tuesday blog worth reading. Thank you Eileen and Gaufrid.

13. Easier than Picaroon often is, or was I just on form this morning? Not a disparagement: although I missed the fruit link, I thoroughly enjoyed working from the intricate surfaces to the apposite solutions.

    VIRGIN amongst the best of the clues here for me, but then I’m one who can cope with a whole grid’s-worth of double entendres, pace Cyclops in the Private Eye. If I’ve got a problem then it’s with NUTTER (and not just because I couldn’t parse it till I read Eileen). Certainly I hope that an allusion to Breivik wasn’t intended (sorry, Michelle @2); no nutter, just an evil man bent on destroying the flower of Norway’s youth.

14. Robi @ 10. Given that there is a Pendolino called ‘Virgin Invader,’ I rather think that ‘poor old Richard Branson’ is in on the joke! http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonanamary/6171824477/

15. Thanks Eileen and Picaroon

    A very entertaining and cleverly constructed puzzle. Excellent cluing which e.g. enabled me to construct ‘peplum’ from scratch.

    Pinyin was my last in after failing to parse ‘pundit’ as P(ower) + UN + ??

    I missed the theme I’m afraid (despite correctly parsing the individual clues and being conscious of the central role of fruits in 23a and 25a) and will try to remember to look out for one in future from this setter.

    I ticked several clues – 9,10, 23a, 2d, 7d, 15d and 17d.

16. Thank you picaroon. I see no objection to fruitiness, in moderation! (In my Queen of the Fairies voice.) Thank you Eileen for the blog.

    It seems that Dutch is not Cockney rhyming slang at all, but an abbreviation for duchess. See here for more. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-old-dutch.html

17. ..poor old Richard Branson… He might be old but he certainly is not poor!

18. Val @4 and sidey @12, please don’t dance on Uncle Yap’s grave. (To be quite clear, I happen to live in almost the same time zone as he but there is no other association: he just asked my opinion from time to time.) He gave his all to this site, crashed in a malt whisky fit of silliness and, finally, burned on cultural differences. I love Eileen’s delight in detail, respect Gaufrid’s precision when he has to jump in but hope to a variety of characters doing the blogging.

    If my request is unreasonable, I guess you can all say, as someone did to UY last week, “Hash off!” 🙁

19. I think this is by and large very good, where the setter ‘Picaroon ‘ uses the rules of crosswording fairly, and makes real efforts to cover the ‘def’ where possibel. care has been taken here, so is it almaost ‘Ximenean’? I hope to see more from this perso n.

    APPLES AND PEARS I like best today, but many nioce ones.

20. Great puzzle from Picaroon and an excellent blog from Eileen. Thank you.

    NeilW @ 18
    If Uncle Yap has indeed been ‘disappeared’ then it is a great shame that he leaves this site without so much as a thank you for all his service, which I understand to have extended over a number of years.

    I can’t help feeling that he has been shabbily treated. I for one am grateful to him and I wish him well.

21. Hi NeilW @18
    “… but hope to a variety of characters doing the blogging.”

    I assume you meant to say “… hope to have …”. Apart from the first few months of the site’s existence, we have always had a ‘variety of characters’ and this will not change. There are currently 35 people in the blogging team, 9 of whom cover the Guardian Cryptic.

22. Hard work at the class dummy level (and presumably below). Not convinced the average man on a bus with no gadget access would get 5a or 25a unless he had special interests.

23. Wow, thanks for the correction, Gaufrid. The whole meaning of my comment was lost otherwise.

24. Eileen, I too find it worth revisiting the clues because sometimes enhancement of a surface can lead to what some might describe as “clueing errors”. With setters of the calibre of Arachne and Picaroon looking for such can only ever amount to nit-picking, of which I know you often rightly disapprove.

    So in 25 ‘Sport’ for PE is justified by the elegant link with ‘attire’. As dunsscotus remarked last week good enough is good.

    In 6 ‘sour grapes’ for PIQUE is justified by thematic as well as surface considerations and this slight inaccuracy also crops up in “real life”.

    When a defeated football coach says “We wuz robbed. The ref was diabolical.” the victor may retort “Rubbish. That’s just sour grapes.”, when it’s really, possibly justified, pique. When a team has unexpectedly lost a cup-tie and the coach affects to be glad to be able to concentrate on the league, that’s sour grapes.

    Thanks to both of you for another blog worthy of another excellent puzzle.

25. My team is glad to have the MONEY from the cup-tie, and to be anble to concentrate of the league, but your second example might not be right?

26. Eileen@3 – thanks.

    Trailman @ 13 – I agree with you that Breivik is “an evil man bent on destroying the flower of Norway’s youth”. I was just pointing out that when I did a google search on “Norway nutter” that’s what I found. I didn’t say I agree with it.

    Sadly, I failed to immediately parse 24a as N (Norway) + UTTER (say) – that’s why I was doing a google search on the words “Norway nutter”. In fact the parsing was very simple but it was over my head!

27. Fair enough Michelle, no problem.

28. Very enjoyable puzzle from Picaroon today and an excellent blog from Eileen as always. Thank you both.

    I must say though, that if Uncle Yap has indeed been permanently banished then I think it is a great shame. Yes, he was a rebel and a rascal as befits a hasher, but he was dedicated to his blogging duty and felt strongly about his inclusion in the 225 community. Who could forget the story of his pilgrimage to one of the early S&B events, all the way from equatorial KL, which ended with him stranded on a platform in the midst of a blizzard, and having to return to his hotel alone.

    I shall miss his contributions to this site.

29. Solved at the sunny seaside apart from 5a for which the help of Eileen is gratefully received. Really must get one of those modern new-fangled telephonic devices which can access the interweb. Great fun thank you Picaroon – a lovely start to a lovely day with three generations of family. Thanks to Eileen for her helpful explanations too.

30. Great blog Eileen and another super Picaroon puzzle.

31. We’ll I’m lost as to who’s when in the Guardian rotation and I’ve seen the rota. Great blog Eileen. not too bad apart from 5a and 25 which were too obscure for this man on the commute home. Actually I found this easier than rufus yesterday who was setting clues that looked like cds but were not, made harder as you expected them to be cd because it was Rufus.
    This was quite paul like who has done a few like 9/10 let alone 23.

32. Count me as another who completely failed to spot the fruit theme in the across clues. 5ac and 25ac were also my last two entries, PINYIN having been dragged from deep within the memory bank, and PEPLUM from the wordplay. I thought the clue for VIRGIN was excellent, but as I typed the answer in I wondered whether it would elicit at least one “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” comment.

33. Phew! Just finished and found this hard after several months of enforced abstinence (from crossword puzzles). I needed Wikipedia for the ancient Greek attire and your excellent blog Eileen to explain some of the solutions, which Mum and I had failed to parse. I particularly liked TART UP and we laughed at VIRGIN when we eventually realised it was nothing to do with kirsch!

34. As I said yesterday I’m a long time lurker on here and was thinking about coming out of the closet a bit. Not any more!

    Came today to check a couple of bits of parsing and was a bit intrigued by comment #18. Bit of ferreting and I’ve read the posts on UY’s last blog which I missed on the day. Appalling behaviour on all sides! That sort of argument should be sorted out by admin (Gaufrid?) in private and not aired in public – at least not with half a dozen others pitching in with their own two-pennyworth. Kathryn’s Dad’s “Hash Off” was about on the same level as UY’s C**T – totally OTT.

    Don’t really need to be part of all that sort of stuff so it’s back to lurking, when necessary.

35. The usual quality and an entertaining puzzle from Picaroon.

    I found this difficult but I got there in the end.

    Never heard of PINYIN or PEPLUM so it was difficult to derive these answers from the word play. Obviously it’s easier to parse the clue if you can guess/divine the answer first.

    Of course I never saw the “theme”. (Even though half way through I looked for one as it was Picaroon!)

    Another major hold up was 9/10A. I spotted the anagram about 3 minutes into the puzzle but for some bizarre reason decided I was wrong and convinced myself that the answer was POPLAR AND ?E??? (Stupid Boy!)

    Thanks to Eileen and Picaroon

36. guscat at #34. “That sort of argument should be sorted out by admin (Gaufrid?) in private and not aired in public.” Agreed re “not aired in public” but what you suggest could not be enforced unless every contribution to the site was moderated and needed clearance before it could be posted. That would be a big ask for ‘admin’.

37. I was determined this morning to keep my comments confined to the puzzle and have just about managed to do so throughout the day.

    nmsindy’s comment came in as I was about to shut down. I just want to endorse it fully.

38. Agree that checking all posts would be too much and that’s not what I meant. More that you long term posters, and some who are bloggers, should have had more sense than to get involved in something that is clearly the domain of the admin. All you guys did was add fuel to the fire and end up losing a blogger.

    Uncle Yap has been doing amusing and helpful blogs ever since I found this site and I send him my thanks. Maybe he can return one day?

    Anyway, that’s it from me – back to lurking for a while.

39. I always really enjoy an Eileen blog and loved this one. What’s happened to UY then?

40. Adding fuel to the fire: yes, that is not a good idea.

    As I said on the other thread you jumped, there’s no yap re Yap: it’s done.

41. Couldn’t finish, this was a bit of an up-and-down for me – many great clues, but also some weaker ones, IMHO. I think some of them suffered in order to force the theme, which was generally delightful. PEPLUM? PE is not a sport. BERLIN was also iffy, I have studied philosophy and never heard of him. I liked how SEXISM crossed VIRGIN.

    Some of the clues seem a little forced in order to keep the theme going. I would have been happy with 4-5 or so in each spot (clue/answer).

    Also I want to point out another aspect of the theme – in no clue was the fruit used as a fruit, and in no answer was the fruit clued as one.

    Lots of fun, just got stuck before the end. Thanks for the blog, Eileen, and for the amusing enterprise, Picaroon!

    Now time for the maths test…

42. Huw Powell @41

    Each to his own – but I must take issue with the grounds for one of your niggles.

    I don’t know to what level you studied philosophy but the fact that you have never heard of Sir Isaiah Berlin hardly makes the clue ‘iffy’. From the ‘Independent’ obituary:
    “Isaiah Berlin was one of the most remarkable men of his time, and one of the leading liberal thinkers of the century. Philosopher, political theorist, historian of ideas; Russian, Englishman, Jew; essayist, critic, teacher; he was a man of formidable intellectual power with a rare gift for understanding a wide range of human motives, hopes and fears, and a prodigiously energetic capacity for enjoyment – of life, of people in all their variety, of their ideas and idiosyncrasies, of literature, of music, of art.”

    You can read the entire entry [it’s very long!] here:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituray-sir-isaiah-berlin-1292530.html

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