Guardian 26,109 / Puck

48 comments on “Guardian 26,109 / Puck”

1. Thanks Eileen and Puck
   I wasn’t all that happy with some parts of this one. I thought 14ac was a bit unfair (as proved by the fact that I chose Cracker as the TV programme), and I failed on 8dn (first failure for ages, though I did get one wrong in the Prize that was blogged a couple of days ago). In what sense is NAVE = HUB? It is the main “aisle” of a church, so-called because of its similarity to an upturned ship. If there is a “hub” in a churcg, it is the “crossing”.

2. ….and “basset” isn’t really a “dog”. It is an adjective meaning “fairly low”, so a “basset hound” is a dog that runs fairly low to the ground.
   (btw “church”, not “churcg” in my first post!)

3. Sorry – withdraw comment about NAVE – there’s a second meaning in Chambers (dervied from “navel”)

4. 7d clues in the two ninas: Superman in the top row and (Mr.) Mxyzptlk in the bottom. Mxyzptlk was one of adversaries of Superman (Clark Kent) an impish trickster (rather like 16a) who could only be sent back to his home in the fifth dimension (see clue 8) by being inveigled into saying or spelling his name backwards (looking in the mirror?). For once, I don’t regret my misspent youth, although I was keener on Marvel comics than the DC ones in which the nina characters featured.

5. Many thanks, blaise – I know very little about Superman and the bottom nina meant absolutely nothing to me!

   Hi muffin

   Re 14ac – of course you’re right about Cracker! There’s nothing unfair about the clue – just me being dim. [And I didn’t know that second meaning of NAVE, either, until today.]

   [I’m getting my coat now!]

6. Hi Eileen
   I believe that the BBC are planning a series about the day-to-day problems of onland oil engineers. It’s to be called “Fracker”………

7. Good morning all.

   Blaise @4 – brilliant, well sorted out, thank you. Having wasted my own youth on other things than Marvel comics, I still don’t quite see how to say Mr Mxyzptlk backwards (or forwards for that matter.)

   Traditionally impish fare from this clever setter, but I do tend to agree with Muffin re BASSET.

   Loved EIRE and have often wondered why we don’t see more maths in crozzies – there’s a strong link after all.

   Loved the smooth & naughty clueing of BURLESQUE.

8. Pleased to have this one all correct without aids. I thoroughly enjoyed the clue for ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, having seen the answer first then worked back to parsing the clue. I pondered over ‘red fox’, as I was not sure of ‘rex’ for the cat and didn’t want to resort to assistance. ‘Nave’ in the sense of a hub was also dragged from the back of my memory. I also parsed 14a by reference to ‘Cracker’ and see nothing wrong with that; in fact, with deference to Eileen, I suspect it’s the most likely intention.

9. Sorry, I seem to have crossed with half the blog community.

10. It’s likely that Mxyzptlk was inspired by Rumpelstiltskin, the way to defeat both being to do with their funny names.
    Puck himself was/is also an impish trickster.

11. Thanks Eileen. Fast start with 2d which gave the long 16a. Held up by the short 4d and 8d and then finally bogged down in the SW corner, not getting the ‘Rex’ in 20d. But there were lots of good things in this puzzle including KISS CURL. Thanks Puck.

12. Must start looking for ninas, PAROLE (my last in) would have come much more quickly if I had!

    At 24a I had ALOFT, which I claim as an alternative solution. ‘Loft’ is a measure, eg of down in a sleeping bag or duvet. And up = aloft of course.

13. Thanks, Eileen

    I found this a tricky one from the púca. Unlike Trailman, I did spot the top Nina, which helped me to get PAROLE (great clue), EIRE and NAVE. The bottom line meant nothing to me, I’m afraid, though it did mislead me into looking for a pangram!

    I first entered RUMPLESTILTSKIN, having guessed the answer from a couple of crossers, and having seen KIN and what I thought was (LISTS)*, but I couldn’t work out the parsing. That made 17d rather impenetrable, until I realised my spelling mistake and discovered that the word did parse after all. Hence ETERNITY was my LOI. I also thought that 22a must be C—–R. until I found how to insert QUART in 14d.

    Very clever puzzle, with a nice mixture of clue types and devices. Favourites (apart from 3d) were BURLESQUE and AFOOT.

14. Thanks Eileen and Puck: most enjoyable.

    Is someone going to post a drawing of a polyhedron with three faces?

15. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I found this very tricky indeed and didn’t manage to solve 4dn, my first failure in ages. If I’d seen the nina….but I didn’t!

    I was another one who spelled Rumpelstiltskin wrong on the first pass, which held me up at 17dn.

    Some great clues here — and very misleading surfaces. PAROLE was one of my favourites.

    Thanks Puck.

16. dunsscotus @14: Anyone who succeeds in drawing a plane-faced TRIHEDRON will be rewarded by the sound of one hand clapping.

17. Google trihedron for images.

18. Gervase (16) Can it be infinitely long?

19. Puck is not correct in using ‘E’ in 4 down as the solution for ‘base’ in the context that he has done. The symbol for the natural log is a lower case ‘e’ whereas country names start with capitals. OK, maybe nit-picky but mathematical symbols are precise and this should be taking account of in the clueing.

20. Thanks Eileen and Puck

    A very nice puzzle. I missed the ‘ninas’ and also ‘red fox which I entered as the unparsable red dog.

    Some excellent cluing as one has come to expect of puck e.g. 16a, 21a, 23a, 1d, 3d.

21. Didn’t Superman have a Kiss Curl (18d)?

22. Steve @21 -yes he did. I have looked for other references, but there’s fortunately no kryptonite around and no telephone booth. UNDERWEAR, which of course Superman is famous for wearing on top of his tights, appeared on Friday I do believe.

    Otherwise I’m not sure what to say as most of the parsing, the ninas and so on passed me by completely today, until I came here. I have lots of admiration for Puck and Eileen for setting and blogging this puzzle. Thanks!

23. Nick? Who says answers must be in upper case? Surely one does as one pleases? And the setter doesn’t know what pleases one.

    Struggled a bit with this one, but that’s just me. Setters waste their clever messages on me, I never see them.

24. Derek @23
    I agree with Nick on this one – both E for the base of natural logarithms and eire would be incorrect. Perhaps Puck might have used E for Energy somehow?

25. Derek @23: Nick’s argument wasn’t that answers must be in upper case but that the initial E in Eire must be capitalised because it’s a country. I think he was serious…

26. Shame that 23 down could also be correctly filled in as ‘chop’ (as I did!), cut=chop, and karate chop!!

    Mx

27. Mark @26

    I had CHOP for 23d too and then realised that it must be CHIP because 25ac began TRI-; an experience more typical of solving the Quick Crossword. If I ever attempt that I am always wary of filling anything in until I have several confirming crossers and even then I frequently end up making a mess!

28. Nick and muffin – are you saying that, when the definition leads to a proper name, that the wordplay must somehow indicate a capital for the first letter? Would this apply to, for instance, anagram fodder?

29. Hi rhotician
    Not exactly – I don’t know about Nick, but I’m saying that the letter shouldn’t incontrovertibly be lower case (as in this case – sorry!). Mostly the case is ambiguous, but “e” as the base for logs MUST be lower case.

30. I don’t believe I have ever written the word ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ in my life before. So I was surprised I could spell it automatically (and, as it transpired, correctly).

    Bit of a tricky one from Puck.

31. I found this on the tricky side, missed the ninas, couldn’t parse EIRE although it was the obvious answer from the definition, and like Trailman@12 I had an incorrect “aloft” at 24ac. When the “Check all” button showed me 24ac was wrong I saw “AFOOT” almost immediately ……….. Ho hum.

32. Thanks Eileen and Puck. Almost a pangram too. I wonder why it isn’t. Only G and J missing. I guessed that it was a pangram, and that actually helped me to a couple of solutions, and then slowed me up at the end determined as I then was to find a home for a j.

33. Hi All

    Thanks again to blaise for clearing up the ninas, etc. I’m comforted by the thought that I would never have got there if I’d looked at it all day, so it was nothing to do with haste, but it was nice to have it cleared up before I left. The bottom row, complete gobbledygook to me, left me, like Gervase, looking for a pangram, although, as you know, I’m not usually interested in such things, and the other allusions completely passed me by. So that’s another one to chalk up to Puck [I’ve lost count on the score] but at least I enjoyed it, as always, anyway! Thanks, again, Puck!

    I didn’t think twice about BASSET, so didn’t look it up but I have now.The first entry in each dictionary is:
    SOED: a short-legged dog …
    Collins: a smooth-haired breed of hound with short legs …
    Chambers: a low-set, smooth-coated hound …
    The derivation is, of course, ‘bassetto’ – a diminutive of 21ac – which I find rather charming.

    I confess to not understanding the controversy about 4dn. I am no mathematician but this is crosswordland, where a letter becomes surely a single component, which a setter can use as s/he pleases.
    muffin:’ “e” as the base for logs MUST be lower case.’ I accept that but, in my world, the ‘E’ in English and European MUST be in upper case – but it doesn’t always appear so in wordplay!

34. Apparently there are other clues which refer to comic book characters, eg ASTRA, RED FOX. I don’t know enough about the genre to suggest more.

    I hope Puck will drop by to give us the full SP.

35. PS
    muffin @6

    I look forward to viewing ‘Fracker’. 😉

36. Really good crossword.
    Very enjoyable.

    The discussion about upper/lower case for “e” is not really important as it depends how you enter solutions into the grid. Upper case? Lower case?

    For me, more important though is the fact that “base” defining E is rather poor. In Enigmatist’s recent brilliant crossword it was my only ‘minus’, even if I didn’t want to make too much of a point of it.
    Yes, ‘e’ is the base of the natural logarithm but, that said, any positive number is a base of a logarithm (except perhaps 1).
    Hope you see my point. If “base” can define ‘e’, it can also define ‘two’ or ‘three’ and so on.
    I fear, it is once more a discrepancy between dictionary and reality.

    Fine crossword, though.
    Many thanks to Eileen & Puck.

37. @Sil #36 – but the difference with the constant e is that it virtually always appears as a base, with all the other stuff in the exponent – whereas 2, 3 etc are used all over the place.

38. I know what you mean, JS, but using ‘base’ as a definition for the number e can only be seen as crossword language (based on what’s in Chambers et al).
    It is something that I accept but, I fear, only reluctantly.

39. More on e.

    Muffin: “Country that is turning about(4)” Is that ‘incorrect’ for EIRE? The abbreviation for id est is incontrovertibly lower case. Or what about “about” to indicate the start of REBECCA.

    I’m droning on about this because there are sometimes complaints that one side of C.P.Snow’s two cultures is neglected in crosswordland. But when science does make an appearance it so often provokes microscopic nit-picking. Sometimes accompanied by claims that the dictionaries have got it wrong.

    Sil: In this case there is no discrepancy between Chambers, at least, and reality. It’s unfortunate that you say so because “base” to indicate E is indeed poor, for the reason you give.

40. Can someone explain 22dn and the connection with butter (and not batter)?

41. @rho #39 – re case. For many (possibly increasingly many) setters case is arbitrary. One could run the argument that since an answer is always a row of upper-case letter with no punctuation, accents etc the point at which one moves to that situation is arbitrary in the order of evaluation of the wordplay.

    @jovis #40 – think RAM = a male sheep and butter = one who butts

42. BTW – fantastic puzzle – right up my street – thanks to both setter and blogger.

43. Hi jovis @40

    Sorry about that – ‘ram’ and ‘goat’ both appear fairly regularly in crosswords as ‘butter’, so, in my haste, I didn’t elaborate on this occasion.

44. I have no problem with base for E for the many reasons already stated.

    Sil, I know you’ve already said it, but e is the “natural base”. In most “advanced” mathematical literature if log x is written it is assumed to mean log e x.

    e is a very important number.

    After all

    e**ix + 1 = 0

    (I don’t see 3,2,10 etc in there.)

    By the way I didn’t work that out myself 🙂

    Nice crossword by the way. Fiarly straightforward until the last 4 or 5! LOI NAVE.

    Thanks to Eileen anf Puck. (Didn’t have time to post last night)

45. Did this in bed last night but without completing.

    I was pleased to drop in EIRE, PAROLE and EYESORE this morning but 20d foxed me: I’d never have thought of cat meaning REX.

    Well done Puck, thanks all.

46. 24ac lends itself to ABOUT, too.

47. I know I’m late to the party, but I needed to express my enjoyment of this puzzle. Thanks, Puck & Eileen. Couldn’t parse 17d, having never heard of Etty. Sadly, my LOI wasn’t 19a; otherwise, it might have been a “happy ending.” (Apologies if the corners of your mouth turn down at such humour. If so, don’t read on…)

    [Puck’s clue inspired this one: In North America, thug gets massage with happy ending – how indecent! (7)]

48. We thought we had finished the puzzle but we were another one (or pair in our case) who had ALOFT for 24ac.

    We thought it may be a pangram and at one point contemplated looking up NAJE for 8d despite not being able to parse it. We saw the nina in the top row but the bottom meant nothing to us.

    Thanks Eileen for the blog – it’s now past our bedtime – see today’s Indy blog. Thanks also to Puck for an amusing solve!

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