Guardian 26,188 by Crucible

53 comments on “Guardian 26,188 by Crucible”

1. Thanks manehi and Crucible. I enjoyed this enormously. Much more to my taste than yesterday’s Enigmatist, which I know will not be the general response. And I don’t mean it as any criticism to Enigmatist; I just haven’t got on his wavelength yet (or he’s just too hard for me 🙂 ).

2. Thanks, manehi. I agree that you had to cotton on to the theme before everything fell into place. All very fairly clued, I thought, although I found yesterday’s puzzle more fun – as xjp says, it’s all a matter of taste.

   I don’t think you need to add [was] to your parsing of THE TOWER – she did the penning.

3. Thanks. Lots of fancy footwork here and nice to compare and contrast with yesterday’s.

   Re 5ac. A baffle is a sort of a class of restraint so ’10 left baffling’ is PORT containing TEN.

4. Thanks manehi. This was all good. The theme jumped out (just about) at once with 11a: and 10a came next. I liked 26a “down” and GLOB, last in.

5. Cracker crucible ! Loved the literary references. More please !

6. Thanks for a great blog, Manehi.

   My experience was the opposite of yours, as I had the whole of the top half filled in before any of the bottom, apart from KING LEAR, my second one in, after HERO, which gave me the theme, which was right up my street.

   Lots of lovely clues: my favourites were 1, 10, 11, 26 and 28ac and 23dn – and, most of all, 7dn. I also liked the ‘fake curtains’.

   As has been said, quite different from yesterday’s, but, for me, it’s ‘apples and oranges’: I enjoyed them both equally, in quite different ways. As I said yesterday, the good week continues [double helping of Redshank / Crucible] – and there’s Klingsor in the Indy!

   Huge thanks, as ever, to Crucible – I loved it!

7. Hugely enjoyable puzzle, even though I got one wrong by impetuously entering ‘Elizabeth R’ rather than ‘Elizabeth 1’. No real excuse, though I dislike regnal numbers clued as letters. Just me.

8. I have posted a link to a spreadsheet containing the complete Guardian Crossword Archive data since 1999 in General Discussions.

   Try it if you like.

   No comment on this puzzle yet as I do them in the evenings.

9. Thanks for explaining, manehi. Despite getting the theme, I gave up on this with about a third of the clues unsolved. Some of the wordplay was tough, MNEMONICS, for example. Also, my lack of literary knowledge got in the way (TAMBURLAINE – who he?). I’m in danger of getting on my hobby-horse about arts bias, so I’ll shut up now.

10. Thanks Crucible and manehi
    I couldn’t parse RIVALS (I tried to fit AR in something, instead of removing it); very enjoyable otherwise.

    Favourites (for their misdirection) were STAGE and HEBE. The latter I decided early on that the clue indicated a hidden word, but I tried lots of different “non-words” before hitting on the right one!

11. Thanks, manehi.

    Clever puzzle, though I made rather heavy weather of it – I’m one of those who found yesterday’s Enigmatist much more straightforward.

    Once I had the theme I made somewhat faster progress, but the bottom half was still a challenge, not helped by my first entering CORSETED for 17d. I also started with RE-DIET (‘make more trimmings’ – geddit?) for 2d. Heigh-ho.

    Some nice definitions and directions here: I liked ‘fake curtains’ and the use of ‘baffling’ and ‘bracing’ as container indicators.

    Favourites were HERO (an &lit, I think) and the elegant little PUT ON.

12. Hi Gervase

    “I also started with RE-DIET (‘make more trimmings’ – geddit?)”

    Me too! 😉

13. Thanks Crucible, but not my cup of tea.

    Thanks manehi; I’m not sure why I need to know an old spelling of Shakespeare – maybe I would have felt less grumpy if a different grid had been used with the real word, or perhaps I’m missing the point. 🙁

    There were some nice clues though and I did particularly enjoy MNEMONICS (more up my street! 🙂 )

14. A bit of a struggle, but very enjoyable. Many thanks to Crucible and manehi.

15. Thanks manehi and Crucible

    An enjoyable puzzle at just the right level of difficulty for me.

    Lots of fine clues – I particularly liked 28a, 8d, 13d, 15d, 19d and 20d at the time of solving but could easily add others.

16. Thanks for the blog manehi. I needed your help for some of the parsing! Found this trickier than yesterday, but enjoyable, as Eileen says, in a different way.

    Got straight into the theme with 11ac — I wonder why 🙂 But struggled a bit towards the end. RIVALS was my last one in and I didn’t see the wordplay until I read the blog.

    ‘Fake curtains’ made me smile! And I thought 15dn was very clever.

    NeilW @ 2 Elizabeth was put in The Tower by her half-sister Mary, admittedly before she was queen.

    Thanks Crucible.

17. I also began with re-diet. It was very first, and confident, entry!

18. Agree with Median @9.

    A puzzle of two halves, with the second half being more of a pub quiz for the literati, who would no doubt moan if there were as many obscure chemical ‘elements’ as literary references.

19. Median @ 9 – as a schoolboy I sat through 4.5 hours of Tamburlaine the Great, marvelling at Albert Finney’s nicotine-stained voice and waking up periodically when another massacre took place. It thought school trips couldn’t get any worse until we were taken to see Richardson and Gielgud hamming it up in Pinter’s No Man’s Land. I seem to remember spending much of the evening trying to spot Lady Antonia Fraser, who was at the centre of quite the cause célèbre at the time.

    Puzzle-wise, I’m a yesterday’s man.

20. George Clements, the regal “number” of Elizabeth I is a Roman numeral and so is a bobs fife letter.

21. Thanks to setter and blogger. I had thought of leading ladies being PRE-EVE with the first letter removed, which I did find quite odd – glad to see there is a better justification!

22. Many thanks manehi and Crucible.

    It appears that 1 across is both a Guardian crossword fan and a Tweeter

23. [[Sorry – off topic – ulaca @ 19 – I saw Richardson and Gielgud in “No man’s land” too. I enjoyed the acting more than the play, I remember]]

24. Indeed – they were colossi.

25. don @18: One of the barriers is that it is far easier to clue KING LEAR than PRASEODYMIUM! Sometimes chemical elements do pop up, but the simplest to clue are ones whose chemical symbol is a word in its own right, e.g. He, I, As.

    I’m a chemist myself, but I regularly find solutions like TAMBURLAINE easier to conjure up than chemical names. I often kick myself over this, but it is probably because the words are unexpected in a crossword context.

    I would like to see more science in the Guardian crosswords, but I have no objection to puzzles based on ‘culture’, whether ‘high’ or ‘popular’. It’s probably the case that people who enjoy word puzzles are more likely to be of a literary than a scientific bent, but it also true that names from the arts offer far more scope for ingenuity in their definitions.

26. I was a tad worried, after getting KING LEAR, that this would be yet another Shakespearian theme, but congratulations to Crucible for finding yet another angle.

    PLAY POSSUM the favourite. Alas I dashed in ELIZABETH R without checking so strictly speaking a fail for me.

27. Gervase @ 25
    “Mum’s ropy idea – strange element?”

    In one of Asimov’s “Black Widowers” tales, praseodymium is identified as “the most unique element”. Can anyone spot why?

28. Thanks, Crucible and manehi! I am still not clear as to the reference to “26” in 23D, even though I got the clue otherwise.

29. Ahhh.. I see it now. The reference is to 26AC. Silly me, I was looking for a 26D…which is, of course, not there. The double use of up is clever.

30. muffin @27; don’t know the answer to your riddle but even as a dumb scientist I know that one is not supposed to say “most unique” (or is that the point?)

31. Robi @ 30
    That was the way that the riddle was posed! An American chemistry professor set it to an English researcher (who wanted to marry the professor’s daughter) as a test.

    The nationalities are relevant – there is an irritating car hire advert on from time to time that almost (but not quite) plays on this.

32. For me this was harder than either of the previous two, but I wouldn’t consider any of the three to be unfairly difficult. I came close to giving up on the SE corner before PLAY POSSUM suddenly came to mind. That was despite ELIZABETH I (from the enumeration) and SHAKSPERE (by association) being the first two in so the theme was clear early on. Maybe my brain was just on the wrong wavelength today since nothing in the theme was at all obscure. Thanks for the parsing of MARLOWE and TAMBURLAINE – BUR = drill was new to me. Last in was MNEMONICS which in retrospect was clever.

    So we’ve now had the first Enigmatist of the year followed by the first Crucible – but still no Boatman and Bonxie (in addition to Araucaria the “last seen in 2013” list also includes Logodaedalus, Audreus, Biggles and Maskarade, but none of those have appeared regularly recently).

    Thanks to manehi and Crucible.

33. muffin @27 – is it something to do with using all 6 vowels?

34. The last M spoils it – without that all the letters would be unique. I’m another who winces/cringes at most unique, fairly unique and anything else that uses unique to mean unusual…

35. Beery hiker@32; this month’s Genius is by Boatman (and a good one!)

36. Robi @35 – I was just talking about the ones that are printed in the paper, but I suppose that lets Boatman off the hook – thanks for that…

37. beery hiker
    It is more to do with pronunciation.

    (Serious point – each element is “unique”, so how would you designate the one that is “most unique”? I do agree that “fairly unique” etc. is meaningless!)

38. muffin,

    Having had a look at the periodic table on Wikipedia, I think praseodymium is still the only element with 6 syllables, so that is unique, but as you say each element is unique in at least one sense by definition. I suppose the American might pronounce one fewer syllable. “Most unique” seems meaningless, but I suppose something that is unique in most different ways could be described that way. But then I haven’t read the book!

39. Well done, beery hiker – you have got it.

    The American professor objected to the Englishman saying aluminIum instead on aluminum, claiming it wasted time.This led the “Black widowers” to the solution the professor expected.

    Chemically there are probably better answers – hydrogen for example.

40. muffin – Nice clue for Pr @ 27, but it rather illustrates one of my points: the options for defining the less-familiar elements are very limited (you used the word ‘element’ itself). Systematic names for chemical compounds are often just as bad in this respect. COPPER, on the other hand, could be ‘policeman’, ‘small coin’, ‘water boiler’, ‘butterfly’ or even ‘thief’ (one who ‘cops’) in addition to metal or element.

41. Gervase @ 40
    How about
    “Mum’s ropy idea – idiotically put two more than Heinz on the table!”

    (Heinz 57 varieties)

    Anyway, I think I have sidetracked this thread enough (too much?) already.

42. Once again the indiscriminate use of initial letters spoils another good puzzle.
    I counted
    “f” for following
    “H” for Henry
    “m” for money
    “S” for Sunday
    “s” for school
    “r” for royal.
    Yes I know some can be justified, e.g. by being part of an acronym, but I still find it lazy cluing.

43. I approach Crucible puzzles the same way I approach Enigmatist puzzles, and I found this one tougher than yesterday’s, but no complaints and it was an enjoyable challenge.

    I confess that once I saw the theme I didn’t bother to parse TAMBURLAINE and RIVALS. Count me as another who got a laugh out of “fake curtains”. HEBE was my LOI once I became convinced there is no such shrub as a “teve”.

44. Thanks Crucible, Manehi & others
    Enjoyed it all

45. Well: I think it’s been a good run so far this week, I’ve enjoyed them all.

    I’m not of a literary bent, nor have much royal history, but I’d heard of the characters etc., and completed with a little searching.

    I agree there were perhaps a few too many initials: my observation was that the I couldn’t assemble components correctly from the order apparently suggested in a couple.

    But it was an engrossing and satisfying challenge.

    Many thanks all.

46. I now see that all the “instructions” make complete sense 🙂

47. Another very enjoyable crossword. We’re having a good week.

    Only held up slightly by the SE corner although I had PLAY POSSUM quite early. LOI was REVELS.

    Thanks to manehi and Crucible.

48. Re 24d, as a nurseryman’s son, I’d have said “hebes” since it was “shrubs”, but hebe, referring to a genus I suppose, didn’t give me the geebies.

49. As the one who – @9 – triggered the discussion about arts bias in Guardian crosswords, I’ve been interested to see how it went. The comments on science focused mainly on the difficulty of clueing chemical elements. I agree their potential is rather limited. However, there’s much more to science than chemical elements. What about the rest of chemistry? Then there’s physics, biology, mathematics, computing, astronomy… And clueing shouldn’t just be restricted to the names of things – concepts, theories, etc. offer rich possibilities. In addition, there are words which have a variety of meanings, some of which are scientific. That word ‘potential’, mentioned above, for instance.

    Setters and editors, more science, please!

50. We put in 1d as RABBET – take out as in remove some wood, BAR = beat (music) and Bet is the shortening for Elizabeth that my grandmother used. I now realise that 11 is definitely the queen, and bar isn’t quite a beat, so maybe it’s not as clever as I originally thought.

51. Thanks for the blog, manehi! If you are still following so long after the fact, could you please explain 23D to me? I can see that “26 down” is 26d or STAGEd, and I can see that “down” is not up, which reversed (“up”) becomes PUT ON, which means staged, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. Are the “down”s doing double duty? Or the “up”s? Or neither?

    Sorry to have reawakened this so late. I am trying to catch up a week of crosswords.

52. Val:

    “26” – and not “26 down”, as it’s actually 26ac – gives STAGED, the definition for PUT ON.

    This leaves “down” to do the single duty of indicating ‘NOT UP’, and “up” to indicate a reversal.

53. Thanks, manehi. My confusion was because 26a is STAGE, not STAGEd, so I’d thought the “down” was needed for the final D. I’ve now realised that PUT ON can mean STAGE as well as STAGED so all is clear.

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