Guardian 26,168 / Gordius

55 comments on “Guardian 26,168 / Gordius”

1. I had 5A as _What may be given to those departed_ from (anagrind) THE WARS*. That work?

2. Thanks Eileen and Gordius
   A bit odd, with some parsings I didn’t get (thanks Eileen for ENTER, NEWFANGLED and the SO in NOT SO).
   SIGMA is a rather technical term – you would need to have done some higher maths to have come across it, I think.
   I thought the clue for PERPETUAL MOTION was long-winded and weak.
   The foot-pound-second is a SYSTEM of units rather than a single unit (METRE-KILOGRAM-SECOND is more commonly used) – see
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot%E2%80%93pound%E2%80%93second_system

3. Oh…and why is EFF an “offensive term”. I suppose it is a euphemism for one, but that doesn’t make it offensive itself, does it?

4. Thanks Gordius and Eileen. I agree with the emerging consensus that there are weaknesses here.

   However, I would say to Muffin @ 3: isn’t the compiler using a euphemism to successfully refer to the offending term?

5. Morning all, and thanks to Gordius and Eileen. Unlike Eileen’s, my day was helped to a good start by what I thought was an elegant and challenging puzzle, which looked fiendish to start with but steadily yielded. But the sun is out where I am, which helps.
   Like Tom@1 I parsed 5A with just ‘from’ being the anagrind.
   Re 2D: in the FPS system, a foot-pound is the unit of work (I think), and ‘second’ is a short time. But in which case, where is the definition?
   I think from time to time it’s OK to have a few ‘specialist knowledge’ items, science in this case; after all, we don’t too much mind references to cricket, or literature, or mythology.

6. Re 5dn: many thanks to Tom and Roger.

   I don’t know what I was thinking of there. That is the way I parsed it when solving, then I got carried away with my underlining when posting the blog! I’ll amend it now.

7. Oh – I entered RAPS for 11ac on my first pass, of course.

   dunsscotus@4
   I see what you mean, but EFF isn’t actually the offending term, is it? Anyway, never mind – there were worse things in this crossword.

8. FPS took me right back to my pre-Metric Physics lessons. We were told then that it was a system. Later, we learnt MKS, metre-kilogramme-second. FPS is not a unit so there’s no definition.

   And two six-letter clues with only a couple of checkers? Hum.

   SIGMA for sum is probably GCSE statistics these days, certainly A level; as Roger @5 says, have a character from an obscure Shakespearean play and it’s fair game, anything a bit off-line on the science side and it’s less so.

9. Didn’t like this at all, though I completed successfully.
   I couldn’t think of any better parsing of 2d than Eileen has suggested, and agree wholeheartedly about clues such as 11a where the solver does not know what answer to enter until crossing letters have been established: in fact I entered ‘raps’ initially, but corrected when I reluctantly inserted ‘foot-pound-second’.
   When. An we have another Arachne please?

10. Re 26

    Surely “Hankers after” is the definition. A pedant might argue that in that case the solution should be “YEARNS FOR”, but worse things happen in puzzles.

11. Thanks Gordius and Eileen. As others have noted, a rather pedestrian offering. On SIGMA: you don’t have to know much about maths to be familiar with it because it appears as the shorthand for the SUM function in most spreadsheet applications.

12. Sorry, should read ‘When can’ – victim of iPad auto’correction’ again.

13. For the record, as one whose familiarity with SIGMA comes from the Classical end, I certainly wasn’t complaining about the clue being mathematical, for a change – I just didn’t think it was very cryptic.

    Similarly, with 2dn, I couldn’t get my head round the wordplay. I don’t mind how obscure a word is – quite the opposite: I like to learn something new – so long as the wordplay leads me to it.

    Hi Mac Ruaraidh Ghais @10

    Yes, my first thought was to underline ‘after’ but, as regular readers know, I’m a bit of a pedant, I’m afraid. 😉

14. Technically all fine and a few nifty wordplays but the usual Gordius humour didn’t seem to be there to a great enough extent.

    Maybe 8d would get a laugh in clerical circles but it didn’t really work for me and it also made it harder to solve.

15. Grateful for the blog, Eileen but share your misgivings.

    One of my moans is about 3d – ‘inflammation it is not’ gives no clue to ‘enter’ since it is the ‘itis’ part of ‘enteritis’ which indicates inflammation – it could equally well clue ‘colon’ from ‘colonitis’ or ‘sinus’ from ‘sinusitis’. But I’m a pedant too!

16. I’ve been lurking on this blog for some time, learned a lot and enjoyed it very much so thank you all for your wisdom, especially Eileen and Brendan today.

    In regard to 2 down, the definition of work is distance times force divided by time so the unit of work would be Foot-Pound PER Second. Foot-pound-second may be a system of units (which I’ve never used) but it is not a unit of work.

    3 down has me baffled. “itis” is the medical suffix meaning inflammation – hence enteritis, also phlebitis, conjunctivitis, dermatitis, gastritis, appendicitis etc. What indicates that enteritis is the root word?

    But 8d did amuse me.

17. ChrisS at 15. Crossed in the traffic re 3d.

18. Hi Semi-literate Physicist

    Welcome to the site! And many thanks for your input.

    Re 3dn: I didn’t list all my gripes! That one comes under the general comments in the preamble. I could go on …

    [If I were Brendan, I might sue. 😉 ]

19. My comment at 16 re foot-pound-second is incorrect. Foot-pound is a unit of work, foot-pound-second is a system of units. So Unit(foot-pound-second)of work (foot-pound) on short time (second) now seems almost to scan.

    Apologies for the previous, incorrect statement.

20. The sigma we are discussing is upper case. It’s often very conspicuous in mathematical text on account of large size (perhaps 36 point). I’m sure most people on this blog have come across examples.

21. Thanks Gordius and Eileen

    I’m going against the tide here – and thought that this was an enjoyable solve – quirky for sure, but not as loose as it is being criticised here.

    For example, FOOT-POUND is clearly defined as a unit of work, SECOND is a short time and they both are components of the FOOT-POUND-SECOND system (as indicated by the ?)

    Other ‘loose’ clues provided unambiguous answers – that is, no other plausible alternatives – unlike at least one other setter. There were smatterings of humour with 25a and 8d with my favourite being NEWFANGLED after the penny dropped with the three-quarters.

    The RAPS-SPAR clue can be verified with crossers – it only irks me when the either-or cannot be checked off.

    I reckon that the panning isn’t justified today.

22. Thanks Eileen and Gordius

    I too enjoyed part of this at least, which is pretty normal for my experience of Gordius, though he has had a recent run of rather better puzzles.

    I liked a number of clues especially 8d (though a less clerical person would be hard to picture), and 20a, but was a little bit puzzled by others e.g. 2d where I was so glad to see the answer eventually that I shelved the detailed parsing. The NW corner held me up for some time.

    I also liked 3d, I’m afraid. The definition is ‘record’ (as Eileen notes of course) and it doesn’t matter to me that there are lots of other itises in the dictionary.

23. @15 & 16 -What’s the problem with 3d? Enteritis is an ‘inflammation’. Further information is not required. Compare ‘snake’ in 9a and ‘Greek letter’ in 14a. Isn’t this what crosswords are about?

24. Hi Eileen. I thought this was better than I’ve come, like you, to expect from Gordius.

    In 4d use of the solution to 13, “suited” , rather than the definition from 13, “fitted” , is better because it alludes to the card suit.

    In 2d, as has been noted above, FPS is a system so the definition is not good. I think ‘units’ would be OK.

25. Thanks Gordius for a largely enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks also to Eileen – next time perhaps you should not look at the setter’s name. 😉 I think you have been a little unfair in parts, particularly with 26. I agree with Mac Ruaraidh Ghais @10 that ‘hankers after’ is the definition, which is given as a synonym for yearn(s) in my Oxford Thesaurus and that is pedantic enough for me. 🙂

    2 was perhaps a little loose but at least there is a QM there. I was also a ‘raps’ person at first but, like tupu, it did not offend(I?)

    Yes, there are plenty of ‘itises,’ but it is a crossword and had he put ‘gastric inflammation’ there probably would have been complaints that it was then too easy.

26. Apropos of 2d – I was at first unhappy with this – but if the definition is taken to be just “Unit” – then FOOTxPOUNDxSECOND is indeed a unit – that of “Action” (energy x time). Planck’s constant is in units of “action”.

27. I agree with all the critical comments on the clues above, though I’d only expect 2D (if it had been accurately clued)to be outside a reasonably educated person’s general knowledge (I’m old enough to remember physics lessons in the first half of the 1960s, but for me the biggest flaw is the grid pattern: not a single across answer with more than half its letters checked,and for me the triple unches at 13 and 19A making only a third of the letters cross-checked render the grid unusable. If 7D and its opposite had been 9 letter words I could live with it.

28. Hi rhotician @24

    “In 4d use of the solution to 13, “suited” , rather than the definition from 13, “fitted” , is better because it alludes to the card suit.”

    You’re quite right, of course. 🙁 Apologies to Gordius.

    I’m sorry, Robi, but you couldn’t sustitute ‘yearns’ for ‘hankers after’ in a sentence without adding ‘for’: they’re both intransitive verbs.

29. Did not complete this one because I very confidently entered “desert” in 13 across parsing it as a double definition. Just deserts I suppose.

30. Nothing very obscure here though foot-pound-second was already obsolete when I was at school 30 years ago. I did maths and use Excel so I had no problem with sigma, which to my mind was not obscure at all. Last in was DIAMONDED. I agree with Robi @25 that Gordius gets more criticism than he deserves.

31. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. You explained a couple where I had the answer without the parsing e.g. 5d I had not seen the anagram.

32. Like GSOL l put in Desert for 13 which made the top right corner rather challenging. I came here hoping that someone would shed some light on the relevance of the female bishops to 8d but l am still in the dark. Thanks Gordius & Eileen.

33. Paul8hours@32
    Because the “motion” keeps coming up at the synod? (I thought it was a poor clue.)

34. I’m glad to see it’s ‘technically all fine’.

35. Thanks Muffin. I’m sure Paul could have defined it more amusingly !
    I meant top left corner of course ….

36. I knew I was on to a loser discussing grammar with Eileen. As she no doubt knows, yearn can also be a transitive verb (at least in Shakespeare’s time: “She laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it.”) However, I don’t think you could substitute with ‘hankers after.’ 😉

    Not that it makes much difference but could it be argued that 8 is a dd with ‘never ending’ and ‘Synod agenda item on women bishops?’

    I have a feeling that PaulB @34 is not very enamoured with the grid – as Meic Goodyear @27 said the triple ‘unches’ are unsatisfactory in a Guardian puzzle.

37. I forgot to ask earlier – what’s the “winds” doing in 9ac? Simply “that’s on the river” would work, wouldn’t it?

38. Hi again Robi @36

    I had resolved not to get further embroiled but now you’re being mischievous, I think! The Shakespearean use, which I was aware of, is impersonal. As you know, ‘It yearns me’ is not analogous with ‘I yearn it’: for ‘it’, substitute any object of desire.

    Re 8dn: I certainly don’t want to get embroiled in discussion of this – I know too many people who are frustrated / hurt over the issue to find it amusing [and I know it’s ‘only a crossword’, which is why I didn’t mention it] – but the point is that it doesn’t really work as a dd [which I had pondered] because of the ‘motion’. [I have to say that the only smile I had from this crossword was the thought of how Paul might have clued this answer. 😉 ]

    Hi muffin

    I agree – I can only suggest that the the ‘snake’ connection adds to the ‘surface’.

39. I needed to check F-P-S, my LOI, before I entered it, and I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle. I agree with the many quibbles listed above. There have been times I have disagreed with the Gordius knockers, but this isn’t one of them.

40. Hi Eileen @38; at the risk of being boring, I don’t understand your point about ‘motion.’ Surely, ‘perpetual motion’ is never ending, and the Synod agenda item is a perpetual motion. 🙂

41. THanks all
    I wrote in ‘not on’ very early and therefore failed to solve 25ac.

42. Hi again Robi

    At the risk of being [even more] boring: of course ‘perpetual motion’ is never-ending, but it’s a descriptive example – it’s only ‘perpetual’ that actually defines ‘never-ending’, so this does not work as a double definition. I’m with muffin in thinking it’s a poor clue – but I’m glad that others found it amusing.

    As I said in the preamble, I expected my views to be at odds with those of [perhaps most] other commenters. I think Gordius is pretty well regarded here. Today, there have been various reservations expressed but, on the whole, looking back at previous blogs, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Gordius gets more criticism than he deserves. I’ve always felt, wih one or two others, rather out on a limb in this respect, but I hope I have justified my reservations, in accordance with Site Policy.

43. Guardianistas are more forgiving on technique generally, with the exception of one or two virulent ultras for whom just about anything goes, just so long as it annoys ‘purists’ (who they, uh?). For me there’s a bar which it seems is being slowly raised at Guardian, with quite a few of the compilers (in addition to the old school Sons of Araucaria) getting some basic stuff down before attempting to write. Gordius isn’t among them, but as I say, that’s for me.

    The triple-unch thing, needless to say, is here easily avoided in an unthemed and un-Nina’d puzzle.

44. Thanks to Gordius and Eileen
    Mixed bag, I thought.
    2d should have had units in the plural to provide the definition. I was thrown because the applicable unit from the three words would be one of mechanical power, namely foot-pound per second (rate of doing work)

45. Listen, you lot… I finished it fair-and-square with minimal Googling to check unknowns so it’s alright by me! Plenty to amuse and, as is self-evident, to debate. What could be better as an exercise in mind-expansion, which is what it’s really all about, isn’t it?

    Such fun!

46. Tough going down the left hand side. Held up by raps/spar, and foot-pound-second although I had the first two components straightaway. Years ago my Wife bought a book of Gordius puzzles for a flight to the USA. Ahem . . . most of them still half finished. Not usually the case with her!

47. The good thing about the Guardian is that you get a mix of cluing styles. Sadly the crossword literature is dominated by proselytisers for the ximenean cause and whatever their fellow travellers want to call themselves.

    For example Crowther (in his book) equates Araucaria’s style with libertarian (a pejorative term in itself) and libertarian with “anything goes”. He’s obviously missing the point – but it must be confusing for relative newcomers who haven’t been around very long and have to read their way in through all this misleading stuff.

    So it’s no good pretending that a certain approach to cluing is orthodox or pure and that anything else is an attempt at that which has gone wrong. There’s more than one possibility.

    All that fuss about 2d – brucew@uas @#21 has it correct. The wordplay is the whole of the surface – the def is suggested but not precisely defined – which if course defies a silly slogan which we’ve all heard – but at the end of the day we all got the answer. OTOH I didn’t think that one was up to Gordius’s usual standard of humour and deviousness.

48. @Eileen #42

    But why the quote marks in your description of 22d – a CD which you clearly didn’t like?

    Perhaps if sigma was more familiar to you as a mathematical symbol (one which of course is used in most spreadsheet applications too nowadays) it would have worked better for you. For most solvers that’s it’s primary meaning – and the fact that it’s a Greek letter is secondary. I don’t say that makes it a great CD but it works well enough for me.

    Anyway – thanks for the blog – you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

49. Re 26a

    FWIW It suddenly struck me that the clue might be read as ‘You get ‘hankers’ after putting ‘n’ in ‘years’.

50. JS @48

    My apologies: I should have added ‘[Chambers]’, as I usually do.

51. I generally enjoy Gordius’ puzzles as I did this reasonably. I agree that it wasn’t quite up to my expectations of this setter, but I wouldn’t say I was unduly disappointed as some seem to have been.

    I wondered if 2d was a mis-edit: “units” would have made sense to anyone with the science, but to anyone who didn’t the syntax might have seemed odd.

    Thanks all.

52. Sorry if I missed it in the comments but can someone explain 8d for me. Synod agenda item on women bishops? Thanks!

53. Hi Anne

    It refers to the ongoing debate in the Church of England re the election of women bishops. It has been discussed several times at the General Synod and could thus be described as a PERPETUAL MOTION.

54. ‘Libertarian’ isn’t a ‘pejorative term’ in my dictionaries, Swaggers, but, you know, if you say so. I’m sure it’s all really terrible what these Ximogres put upon us all, whilst we but munch the cud.

55. JS @47: You complain about people saying that clues have gone “wrong” but presume to inform us that bruce @21 “has it correct”. I think that merely suggestive definitions are poor. Units in this case would be better. It seems to me that you’re the only poster here who keeps banging on about Ximenes. It’s very boring.

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