Guardian 26,198 / Qaos

58 comments on “Guardian 26,198 / Qaos”

1. Thanks, Eileen.

   AVIFAUNA: Area V I (5 1) FAU (homophone [allegedly] of for) + North America.

2. Here’s something I prepared earlier, being up rather earlier than you: 😉

   Irrelevant to solving the puzzle but it’s a great theme from Coppola’s VIETNAM WAR film, APOCALYPSE NOW, based on Conrad’s HEART of DARKNESS, for which it’s true that, although receiving nominations across the board, there were only Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Sound!

   The main theme song of the movie (if you ignore the famous “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter scene) was “The End” by the DOORS.

   Lt Col Kilgore uses a SURFBOARD in another iconic scene.

   This quotation from Captain Benjamin WILLARD, early on when he’s travelling upriver (sadly not in a junk) shows most of the other theme solutions (at least that I can see):

   ‘The machinist, the one they called CHEF, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam, probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. LANCE on the forward 50’s was a famous surfer from the beaches south of L.A. You look at him and you wouldn’t believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life. CLEAN, Mr. Clean, was from some South Bronx sh*thole. The light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. Then there was Phillips, the CHIEF. It might have been my mission, but it sure as sh*t was the Chief’s boat.”

   There are a few other vague allusions in the clues and, of course, the film it’s most associated with is “The DEER Hunter”!

3. Thanks Eileen
   21dn is A (area) V (5) I (I) FAU (homophone (alegedly) of ‘for’) NA (North America)

   Like you, I was not familiar with the film but, with the help of Wikipedia, the thematic material can be extended. Other characters in the film included 12ac, Mr 26ac, 31ac and 26dn. Also, the film had a scene featuring a 27ac and The 16dn played some of the music on the soundtrack.

4. Thanks Qaos and Eileen
   I have really enjoyed Qaos’s puzzles in the past, so I was disappointed with this one. I thought that the links could have been “signposted” a bit more – I might then have got WILLARD, which I gave up on.
   Didn’t we have a clue very similar to 25ac very recently?
   Is S for sun (in 22a) standard>
   17 is from a very old joke “What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can’t wash your face in a buffalo”.
   I liked SURFBOARD most.
   I haven’t parsed 21 fully, but I think the “51” is given as “5 1” – i.e. VI

5. Thanks NeilW for the explanation – bit of a drawback not having seen the film, then.

   I forgot to add – DARKNESS took much Googling.

6. I did look up “Heart of darkness”. Wikipedia says it’s about ivory carriers on the Congo. What is the link to Apocalypse now?

7. I see Qaos just tweeted: “I love the smell of #crosswords in the morning”

   muffin, I don’t see that you need to have seen the film except to confirm WILLARD but I solved that before spotting the theme, having completed forgotten his name and, like Eileen, only twigged what was going on by googling to see who was Capt B WILLARD.

   I spent longer trying to find who was the mysterious band from the “90s” since Google said they formed in 2000, as Eileen mentions…

8. Thanks, Eileen.

   I did spot the theme, but the majority of the references went over my head. No matter; with a ghost theme like this you don’t have to be familiar with the film in question.

   I thought BISON was brilliant, was disappointed to see the N-word in 5dn, and the inclusion of COOK and BELL didn’t fill me with pride at our cricketers’ recent performances. But my personal prejudices aside, a fine puzzle – thank you to Qaos.

   [Eileen, you have a little typo in 16dn: you need to include ‘say’ in the wordplay to make it plural.]

9. I remember very early on in my crosswording days reading a guide to cryptic crosswords in which 8d was given as an example of a double definition, so it was like seeing a very old friend again!

   @muffin (6): Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now both feature a perilous journey up a river (the Congo/the Nung) and an encounter with a (neo)colonial figure (called Kurtz in both) who’s been corrupted by his position. Much more about this in the Wikipedia entry for the film!

10. If I remember correctly, the film also required some 30 25…

11. Many thanks, NeilW and Gaufrid. I knew I could rely on you. [Neil, I’ve often wondered if you’ve considered blogging? 😉 ]

    So, once again, the puzzle, as I suspected, turns out to be even better than I’d thought. I’m sorry, Qaos. 🙁

    Thanks, K’s D – corrected now.

12. Thanks Brian-with-an-eye
    I came at the link from the wrong direction, obviously.

    [My mother claimed to have taught a girl who had been christened “Anne Withaney”]

    [Eileen – you mean 1d, not 1a in your explanation for 14d]

13. Thanks, muffin – sorted. [I’m going to lie down now.]

14. Thanks for a quirky crossword Qaos and Eileen for the blog.

    Taking 30a at face value, ’10d’ could be 10 + down = X – PENSIVE, using pensive in the sense of melancholy…

    or then again, it could just be a typo.

15. Thanks Eileen. Great stuff. I know the film well and caught on quite early but didn’t realise quite how much themed stuff there is in here. Many thanks to NeilW et al for highlighting it all.

    Avifauna defeated me too.

16. Thanks Qaos & Eileen & NeilW for pointing out the theme! I didn’t notice it while solving and just thought that Price and Willard were random actors I hadn’t heard of. Managed to finish the puzzle though, and enjoy it, which to me seems a mark of an excellent thematic crossword – good without knowing much about the topic, even better if you do!

17. Eileen, if you’re back from your lie down 😉 I think you did admirably well picking up the theme and the references that you did. (You had all the important ones.) Today happened to be a quiet day for me and, given the time difference, allowed me to play at (trying) to spot all the references. (Bravo, Qaos!)

    As you may have noticed, I had a patch of business last year that meant I seldom contributed; since that will no doubt return, I would hate to have the fearful responsibility of all you brave bloggers.

18. Thanks Qaos, I saw some of the connections but not all.

    Thanks Eileen; I think it is the glam rock that is 90’s. Wiki lists them as a glam metal revival band! Yep, the 99=IC keeps cropping up but he didn’t reckon on you doing the blog. It’s a pretty bleak film but a masterpiece nevertheless. Some really nice surfaces e.g. for SURFBOARD. Didn’t go much for the surface of ‘Beast an Aussie can wash his face in, reportedly’ but then again muffin@4 says it’s from an old joke.

19. Bit of non sequiturs going on above – the ‘it’s’ refers of course to Apocalypse Now.

20. Not a stellar performance from me today. Missed the theme (despite being familiar with Heart of Darkness), failed to parse ‘ Ninety-Nine’ and invented a new word ‘alifauna’ on the basis that there should be such a word based on ‘alar’ – this despite the fact that I had met the word ‘avifauna’ before.
    Never having seen ‘Apocalypse Now’ meant that ‘Willard’ w as wasted on me, but I enjoyed the puzzle very much nonetheless.

21. Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

    Great film, great crossword. I’ll even keep quiet about IC for once.

22. Thank you Eileen et al for the explanations of 5d and 14d (where I understood the definitions but not the wordplay) and of 15a and 2d (where I understood the wordplay but not the definitions).

23. I missed the theme, despite having found the Apocalypse clue clever for the right reasons. I chalk this up to having started my solve at 9:00 p.m. (puzzles typically go live at 6 or thereabouts here in North American central time), then falling asleep midway through, then finishing this morning.

    Two cricketers in one puzzle is unfair to those in baseball country, though the clues were gettable.

    How is 99 ice cream? I’m guessing it’s a brand?

24. Also: I first had “clear” for “clean” (totally as in, “clear across town”; fair as in clear skin or sky). But the crosser fortunately killed that.

25. Sorry about the triple post–just wanted to point out that the Doors clue is a true &lit.–the definition is “Openings to dressers, offices, or rooms, say.”

26. The trouble with hiding crosswords under work and peeking at them from time to time is that you can’t check whether the couple of words I spotted as I went along were linked to a ghost theme. Didn’t need to know the theme to enjoy the crossword though with lots of lovely surface readings, so thank you to Qaos and Eileen.

27. mrpenney @23:

    99 is not to much a brand as a style. It’s soft ice cream in a cone with a chocolate Flake (a brand name) stuck in it.

    See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5223328.stm

28. Thanks for the blog, Eileen and to Qaos for a superb puzzle.

    SURFBOARD was a fantastic clue!

    I didn’t quite finish, in that I needed electronic help to ‘get’ Avifauna, a word I didn’t know and a clue I couldn’t parse!

    But I did see the theme early on and towards the end I googled the film, which is when I discovered that CLEAN, LANCE, CHIEF and CHEF could be added to the list of theme words I’d already spotted.

    I saw the film when it first came out. This was soon after the publishers I’d been working for went bankrupt, throwing us all out of work. Added an extra feeling of doom to the experience!

29. Enjoyed this, but failed to finish due to not knowing AVIFAUNA. Spotted most of the theme but I obviously don’t remember the film as well as NeilW and Qaos. I liked the BISON, SURFBOARD and OVERPRICE. I’d almost forgotten the DARKNESS but I liked that too.

    Thanks to Eileen and Qaos

30. Brilliant crossword. Like many people, I tripped up on 21. I also misparsed 14, taking 50% of 1 ICE to get the IC, so needing ice to do double duty.
    A lot of fun to uncover the theme references which I missed while solving. One that I haven’t seen mentioned is BELL, the manufacturer of the iconic Bell UH-1 helicopter used in Vietnam and seen in the film, I believe.
    I can’t get the Doors “The End” out of my head now!

    Great stuff! Thanks, Qaos and Eileen.

31. Hi all,

    Many thanks for the comments and to Eileen for the blog.

    It’s funny how themes suggest themselves. Not every ghost theme I do is necessarily something I’m interested in, but this one came about after re-watching the aforementioned film and spotting that COPPOLA was (almost) a partial anagram of APOCALYPSE. After seeing so many characters could be clued as something else … well, let’s just say the theme suggested itself with extreme prejudice.

    Also, whilst I couldn’t get the sacrificial BUFFALO into the grid, I thought referencing it via the old buffalo/bison joke could count as 1/2 a thematic entry, for those that are counting :-).

    Best wishes,

    Qaos.

32. Hi Qaos. Thanks for dropping in! I thought to mention the BISON but then decided it didn’t really work as it was a caribou in the film.

    I remember the film as much as anything because I lived in the Philippines in the early nineties when the filming was still much talked about – and of course the BELL helicopters (doh! thanks, phitonelly) were still very much in use (probably still are) by the PAF, from whom they were borrowed. I even visited the location of the night-time river set.

33. I don’t understand how ‘See’ come from Newcastle in 5d. Can someone help me please?

34. Thanks to Qaos for dropping by and amplifying on the fine puzzle. Have seen the movie many times but overlooked the theme. Learned a new word today: chuntering – thanks Eileen!

    Cheers…

35. Yes – many thanks Qaos: it’s always appreciated when setters drop in and give their insights.

    Hi JJ

    ‘See’ = diocese and is used misleadingly here to make you think of Newcastle football club going up and down in the tables. As I mentioned, it’s usually used in crosswords to clue ELY, which is a common group of letters.

    You’re welcome, grandpuzzler! It’s one of my favourite words – almost onomatopoeic, I think. I do a fair bit of it. 😉

36. Thanks very much, Eileen.

37. Thanks Qaos and Eileen

    I thought this was fantastically constructed, didn’t spot half the theme links until about the third attempt aat findin them.

    If anyone’s tempted to get hold of the movie following this, beware the Redux version – it has 40-odd somewhat extraneous minutes grafted in.

38. Although I’ve heard of the film, it’s not the sort of thing I like at all, so the theme didn’t occur to me, so thanks Neil for the explanation.
    I could only complete the puzzle by repeated use of the check button after making a plausible guess based on the wordplay

39. Not being into films the subtleties were lost on me, but they were not needed to finish which is good.

    Isn’t there a difference between common usage and correct(???) usage as typified by the argument over when we should have celebrated the millenium? So according to some, a decade starts with year 1 (allegedly because we start with the Roman era and they didn’t have zero). Hence the year 2000 is in the 90s, being the tenth year having started from 1.

40. Thanks, Eileen

    Busy day, so very late to the party.

    I enjoyed the puzzle a lot, despite the theme going right over my head (but then I can rarely see the wood for the trees in these contexts). Consequently, WILLARD was my LOI.

    Lots of splendid clues, particularly NINETY-NINE, SURFBOARD and the great surface for NOW.

    Bravo, Qaos.

41. PS I put CLEAR in for 26a at first pass, but NINETY-NINE disabused me.

42. I spotted the theme but not all of the references. What a superb puzzle. AVIFAUNA was my LOI when I realised that 5 and 1 needed to be separated.

43. Great puzzle – Qaos is definitely one of the top tier setters in the old Graun these days. I thought DOORS was particularly splendid.

    Many thanks.

44. For some reason I got WILLARD early by the totally wrong method. I thought perhaps WILLARD might be the surname of the Goldie Hawn Benjamin. (I know, wrong rank) So when I looked up CAPTAIN WILLARD I found Apocalypse now and as I already had APOCALYPSE I knew I had the clue and the theme.

    Didn’t help as I haven’t seen the film and never will.

    For a while I tried to make ALITALIA fit in 21d but LANCE just couldn’t be wrong. So I was looking for ALI***NA until the penny dropped.

    An OK puzzle but possibly marred by the fact that the “theme” was almost unknown to me.

    Thanks to Eileen and Qaos

    P.S. According to my first CAPTCHA 9 – six DOESN’T equal 3 ???

45. Just re-reading Eileen’s blog and the subsequent comments, I realise that I forgot my manners earlier and should have thanked NeilW for his insight into what exactly was going on. Well done to him, to the setter and the blogger. Crosswords and discussions thereof should be fun and educational; and today was all that.

46. Out of 45 comments so far, it’s difficult to find a less than positive comment, even / especially from those who, like me, failed to appreciate the theme to the full. That’s a tremendous tribute to the setter and an endorsement of the ‘ghost’ type theme. I’m sure you’ll all realise that the possibilty of missing such a theme is a blogger’s worst nightmare [apart from missing an overt theme!]

    I’m glad that I spotted the bare bones of this one and so did not entirely disgrace myself and that it left the field open for others to fill in the gaps – notably NeilW, who did such sterling work and illustrated again the brilliance of this site: people half way across the world are beavering away at the puzzle long before I’ve even got up to pick up my newspaper!

    Renewed thanks to all.

47. Thank you Eileen for a fine blog of your first ever Qaos.
    As others said, a very nice crossword with (of course, once more) a ghost theme, a theme that passed us by until just before our LOI (AVIFAUNA) we saw the light.
    Putting in so many theme words is truly a tour de force.

    While I thought this was a very enjoyable puzzle, I also found it a crossword of extremes.
    I mean, there were a lot of clues that were very easy.
    I couldn’t believe that 9ac was HEART, and there were quite a few anagram-based clues (eg 24d) that helped to fill the grid really quickly.
    However, there were also some real stinkers like 4d (NOBLEMAN) and 21d (AVIFAUNA).
    Of the anagram-based clues I thought 13ac (VIETNAM) was very good, as was SURFBOARD (27ac).

    I share your (minor) quibbles with the use of ‘orders’ in 12ac, Eileen. And I would like to add ‘tans’ in 22ac for the same reason.
    I didn’t like 28d (BELL) at all, for several reasons.
    (a) I am not familiar with this cricketer, (b) I wasn’t very happy with ‘be’, (c) ’50 again’ for LL feels a bit impure.
    All compensated by the great 6d.

    All in all, no doubt about that, a cracking puzzle with the right feel.
    Product of a thoughtful setter.

    BTW, when the great Monk wrote his 99th puzzle for the Independent he included three times IC in the middle row.
    IC for 99 was indeed not right as he made clear with the grid entries ROMAN NUMERALS and MISCONCEPTION. Very clever (and initially misunderstood by me). See http://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/05/25/independent-8297-by-monk-sat-18-05-2013/ and comment no 16 in particular.

48. An excellent bedtime puzzle last night, and coming here, I love the smell of positivity in the morning…

    My only difficulty connected with the film was the number of people who became “experts” in it, and the consequent competitive conversations which arose all too often, but that was down to my choice of company and no reflection on the work.

    I like going to the pictures now and then, and on holiday too, but wouldn’t claim to be that interested in “film and travel”.

    Many thanks Qaos, Eileen and all.

49. Just popping by after the napalm has settled to say I managed to do this over two days (the second less ‘flu-ridden than the first) and to solve it while completely misusing the theme. I thought this was worthy of mention as I have both seen the film (twice probably) and read the book which kind of inspired it. Also, and more importantly, it goes to show what a fine specimen of the thematic puzzle this was.

50. A sprawling tour de force, probably the best film of the second half of the 20th century. I have probably watched it 30-40 times since the cinema in December 1979.

    It’s not a film about war, it’s about the human condition and the extremes we can find ourselves becoming in extreme situations.

    Great puzzle and blog, too 😉 Thanks Qaos, Eileen, and the very succinct comment by NeilW.

    Avifauna was a very fair clue but new to me and I had to “cheat” to finish the puzzle.

51. Absolutely with you Huw Powell. I have enjoyed the film every time (twice, in fact!) and greatly admired it. The second time I saw the Redux version, at a film festival here in Istanbul, with one of the producers present to answer questions. I don’t agree with the earlier comments about the Redux version being too long and irrelevant – it adds even more to a great film. I also had to “cheat” on avifauna.

52. P.S. Forget to say that I also managed not to see the wood from the trees – i.e. didn’t notice the theme. Which just adds to the total brilliance of Qaos. Thank you Eileen too.

53. Rather late to this. Why is NN “news”?

54. Hi Edward

    It’s never too late: the blogger always gets an email of a comment on his / her blog.

    It’s a bit quirky: ‘n’ is an accepted abbreviation of ‘new’ and setters from time to time stretch this to ‘nn = news’.

55. Eileen – thanks. A fun construction I’ve not seen before.

56. Thanks Qaos and Eileen

    A record late … even by my standards !!!

    This tattered beast was waiting for the right parsing for ALIQUONT at 26d … (I had written in SURFBOARD at 27a for some unfathomable reason, which had caused all of the grief). Some 470 days later, after picking it up from time to time to try and justify the ALIQUOT answer, I went through the crossers one by one and finally saw the error with SURFBOARD. Funnily enough, I found the parsing of AVIFAUNA an absolute breeze after that !! 🙂

    Having said that, I was beaten all ends up with the parsing for NOBLEMAN – had headed down a path of Oscar Pistorius (noting that his trial for the murder of his girlfriend started on the day before this puzzle) and was working with NO BL(AD)EMAN (although his real nickname was BLADE RUNNER). I hadn’t seen this take on NN = 2 x N (new).

    Missed the real theme … thinking that it had something to do with bands and the Vietnam War in general. The fact that there was so many clues pointing to APOCALYPSE NOW, is just a brilliant achievement by Qaos – and thanks to the various folk, including the setter, who filled out the details of it.

    Finally able to put this one to rest now – and happily, it was successfully completed !!

57. Hi brucew@aus

    I stand back in amazement and admiration for your tenacity!

58. Hey Eileen … it’s a pretty amazing feeling when you finally work them out after a long period like that – and it generally does turn out to be an error with one of the answers that you think is absolutely right that causes the grief. Just find that it is a good exercise in logic to undo the bad work and get it right and I must admit it spent a lot of time in a bedside table drawer not getting looked at for long periods of time …

    … now for that old Boatman clue about the French chef … ^^

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