Guardian 26,216 by Orlando

54 comments on “Guardian 26,216 by Orlando”

1. Thanks Orlando and Flashling.
   Re 14: or indeed, three drinks – two NOGs and a GIN.

2. Thanks Orlando and flashling
   I spotted GATE as I was printing off the crossword (I do buy the paper, but other members of the family read it too, so it causes less conflict to do the crossword on a printout), so OLIVER POSTGATE came almost immediately. This made the rest of the puzzle very easy, as our daughter is exactly the right age to have been a fan of his programmes (except Noggin the Nog, which she is a bit young for – we liked that one, though!).
   In all, a very quick finish, but enjoyable for all that.

3. Lovely puzzle, but one wrong again for me. Serves me right for failing to work through an anagram once more (10a). Think I’d better stick to watching the 1a DVD, which is great.

4. Brilliant theme – I do love a crossword that leaves you smiling – thanks to Orlando and Flashling. Shame Peter Firmin couldn’t have been fitted in there somewhere too.

5. Indeed Roger at #1 either way works for me.

6. Not difficult, but enjoyable for those of a certain age. I looked in vain for Nogbad the Bad…

7. With only the shadiest memories of British children’s TV and not having heard the name Oliver Postgate I still managed to complete this. I’m rapidly becoming a huge fan of Orlando’s fair and lucid cluing style. Many thanks flashling for your equally lucid and in my case much-needed explanations.

8. Thanks flashling and Orlando

   A typically elegant Orlando puzzle.

   I had to dredge my memory and make full use of crossing letters to get some of the Postgate references.

   I was misled for some time by 11a which I thought must somehow be ‘dry martini’.

   I got ‘scot-free’ easily enough but had to check that Old Tolbooth was a reference to a prison in the so-called erstwhile main muncipal buildings of many Scottish cities.

9. Poor forgotten Pingwings!

10. I put in G Len YS for 2d. I find it a little irksome when there is more than one valid answer for a particular clue. I never approach the crossword with an “how quick can I finish it” attitude, but it irritates me a bit when I get held up through clueing that is a tad careless.

11. Thanks Orlando and flashling. I hadn’t heard of Oliver Postgate, being a bit too young for these programmes – seen the odd bit of bagpuss and the clangers and perhaps heard my mum mention noggin the nog and ivor the engine. Managed to finish it (slowly!), LOI being oliver. I liked scot-free and penicillin particularly.

12. Thanks Flashling & Orlando

    I’d never heard of OLIVER P nor of any of his creations – I’m much too old! – but, fortunately, the Internet soon sorted them out.

    However, I do prefer to do the puzzles unaided whilst I’m having my breakfast.

13. Thanks for the blog, flashling.

    I’ve never seen any of these programmes but I did have the advantage of knowing about Oliver Postgate, because he was the cousin of a great friend of mine (who is much younger). This gave me an extra reason to smile while I was solving the puzzle.

14. Thanks Orlando and flashling. All rather enjoyable – I also got SCOT-FREE but didn’t know the reference to tax.

15. Thanks Orlando; strange bedfellows, OP & Shakespeare.

    Thanks flashling, I was another having three drinks.

16. My blind spot is not the wonderful 19 24 21 but rather Othello, where I can’t get beyond the Moor, Iago and Desdemona. Got there via Verdi not the Bard.

    tupu @8, I had DRY MARTINI for a time too.

    Will probably now watch a bit of my 5as DVD, the subject of a whopping great Christmas hint.

17. Thanks,Orlando for a lovely smiley puzzle on a wet morning! Thanks also to flashling for the blog.

    I was delighted to see NOGGIN THE NOG and like Ian @6, I was hoping for Nogbad the Bad!

    Always pleased to see the Shakespearean references, too.

    I thought the answers were all getable from the clues.

    Giovanna xx

18. To #10, Glenys does not fit with 9ac so I think it is fine. The whole point is it’s a crossword grid you have to solve, not a set of clues in isolation. In fact this sort of thing is the mark of a good puzzle in my view as it can lead you to a blind alley.

19. Thanks, flashling, for the blog, and Orlando for a delightful puzzle, which brought back happy memories and cheered up what was a wet morning here, too.

    I didn’t get 1ac immediately, as I didn’t know PUSS = face but 5ac went straight in and then I was well away.

    Pogles’ Wood was the one I was looking for! 😉

20. Thanks, flashling.

    OP went in immediately, so the rest was fairly straightforward for me, being of a suitable age.

    Much elegant clueing, as we expect from Orlando. Favourites for me were 11a, 1d, 13d.

    I did wonder why Orlando went for ‘Alsace’ = VIN. Although I suppose it is common enough to use the name of a region for the wine produced therein, this seems an unusual choice – would you talk about having a glass of Alsace? ‘Burgundy’ would work better for me.

    I was expecting to find ‘The Herbs’ in here somewhere but, on checking, I discover that this series was not made by Postgate, although it used his characteristic stop-frame animation.

21. At first glance I thought this looked challenging, but OLIVER was first in after which POSTGATE soon followed, and the rest (NOGGIN THE NOG, THE CLANGERS, BAGPUSS and IVOR THE ENGINE) pretty well covered the first half of my childhood (and they were all on BBC – ITV was banned in our house at the time). So all good fun, but it did take a while to pick off the last few – GUILELESS and CORPOREAL were my last two in. I think my favourite was GRIEVING. And why has nobody mentioned the soup dragon yet…

    Thanks to Orlando and flashling

22. Thanks to flashling for the blog. You explained a couple where I had the answer but not the parsing.

    I’m like Bryan @12: I had never heard of OP though I had heard of some TV programmes which I now know to be his creations. This made things harder for me unlike some other people here who were able to race through it. I expect that on another day the theme will be one I spot quickly and know well.

23. I’ve just read the Wikipedia article, and it was clearly the colour remake of Ivor the Engine that I remember (and Idris the dragon could have provided another link – were there any dragons in Noggin the Nog?)

24. I enjoyed this one too despite being far too old to know the animated characters first hand. Oliver and post led to gate and I was away, so to speak. The puss for face reference didn’t bother me as it’s fairly common with say the American sourpuss or, a bit more obscurely, the Irish ‘puck in the puss’ or smack in the face.
    Thanks Orlando and flashling.

25. I don’t normally leap at an Orlando crossword, but enjoyed this immensely once the penny dropped (rather than the clanger…) at 5a. I am too old for Bagpuss, but the wonderful Noggin the Nog had to follow – and there is a DVD of that too.

    I always thought it unfair on poor old Nogbad the Bad. He couldn’t really be anything other than bad could he?

26. Theme was unknown to me, so the theme entries could not be completed. I got Oliver, Post, and Gate, thanks to good clues, but I hadn’t the vaguest idea who Oliver Postgate was until I came here. I guess this is one of those things where you have to be British.

    Classic example of a theme puzzle where if you don’t know the theme, you’re left up a creek without a paddle.

27. For once I started in the top left corner, so quickly had “B _ G _ U _ S”. That couldn’t be Bagpuss, could it? And in it all went…very pleasantly.

    I was a big fan of the man himself, although there always seemed to be something faintly disturbing about all of his creations – a bit like the sort of dreams you have after eating cheese!

28. Delightful puzzle with lots of happy memories, although I remember finding Noggin the Nog a bit scary.

    Always a light touch from this setter, with clear and inventive clueing. No particular favourites today; I enjoyed it all.

    Am going to annoy my children for the rest of the day by practising my Clanger whistling impression.

    Thanks to S&B.

29. In 2D, Y and S are the even letters (whence “oddly ignored”). Pedantic, moi?

30. @Ian C #29 well spotted, fixed thanks

31. Great puzzle. It was terribly nice to be reminded of these great shows, especially Noggin the Nog, which had all but slipped my mind. Ah, the memories!

    Thanks Flashling and Orlando.

32. Shoosh-ti-koof (as Ivor might say!)

33. @muffin 32

    Psccchhhhht- i -cum, shurely?

34. baerchen @ 33
    He was very vocal, and had quite a wide vocabulary!

35. @mrpenney:

    Classic example of a theme puzzle where if you don’t know the theme, you’re left up a creek without a paddle

    If one is doing it online, not such a big problem once theme is clear, and it did become clear very soon in this case. If one is doing it in the paper, I can quite see how annoying it could be!

36. Following my comment @8, it appears that I must have have been alone in my ignorance of the significance of ‘Old Tolhouse’ as Scottish prison, and that other solvers have simply taken this meaning for granted and unworthy of note. In which case please forgive and ignore the following attempt at further analysis.

    Flashling is of course correct that ‘scot’ is an old word for a tax and indeed the ‘scot’ in ‘scot-free’ does, it seems, originally derive from that, but this does not appear in itself to explain the answer. The common modern usage simply mirrors the clue’s definition ‘without penalty’ (rather than tax) and at the same time a Scot leaving the Old Tolhouse jail was of course a Scot free.

37. Thanks Tupu I was hoping someone else would spot that to corroborate or otherwise, the clue went over my head with a whoosh! 🙂

38. Thanks all
    As the man said, a sweet crossword.

39. Rather disappointing for me.

    1 & 5 A forced me to look at 19, 24 & 21. As these were so simple this led to the mini theme. This in turn made a lot of clues write ins.

    The down clues were unbelievably easy so the crossword was almost complete after the first pass. Held up for about 30 seconds by RODERIGO.

    A pleasant but very brief interlude. 🙁

    Thanks to flashling and Orlando

40. I thought this was an excellent puzzle. As soon as I saw the clue for 1ac I went down the page and completed the Oliver Postgate clues, and the related answers were then relatively simple as I remember all the shows, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. I liked the Shakespearean diversion too.

    GLADYS was my LOI after DRY BATTERY.

41. In common with the great majority of posters I thought this was an excellent puzzle, well set, and enjoyed it a lot, even though I’d only heard of the theme rather than enjoyed it.

    Many thanks to Orlando and flashling – let’s have many more of this standard

42. Enjoyed this hugely, but my first one in was HARVEY for 19d which caused a bit of mayhem until it get fixed.
    Thank you Orlando and flashling.

43. @Gervase 20 I quite liked “crossing Alsace” it sort of fitted the image of a lugubrious Germanic composer that the clue brought to mind…

    Anyway, why not make the clue a bit more offbeat? A glass of Alsace is perfectly OK for vin=Alsace.

44. I grew up thinking that “Grieg” was an archetypal Norwegian name – but apparently he inherited it from a Scottish grandfather called “Greig”.

45. Thanks Orlando and flashling

    Good puzzle that would’ve brought back nostalgic memories for many – none from down here though. Similarly like jvector@42, I outsmarted myself by using the Shakespearean references in 27a and 8d to write in ANGELO (goldsmith in A Comedy of Errors) !

    I was another who originally wrote in a DRY MARTINI without really working through the parsing – the correct DRY BATTERY was my last in after CLEARANCE crossed.

    Thought that both 28a and 13d were the best of a very good lot!

46. Well, between all here, me, and the gatepost, it seems I’m too old to have the little theme knowledge, but my kids are too young to have helped either.

    Still, thanks Wiki, even for making it a bit of a quick solve.

    Thanks also setter, and all on the thread.

47. Funny, I’m 51 and grew up with them, and indeed the regrettably missing Pogle’s Wood, that Eileen would have been a great addition, watch with mother and all that.
    Obviously our overseas friends were at a slight disadvantage. Thanks all for corrections and comments

48. Thanks flashling @37. I see I should have written ‘Tolbooth’ rather than Tolhouse.

49. Shouldn’t the four references to ’19 24 21′ be ’19 2421′?

50. Seriously, but. Anyone discommoded by lack of familiarity with the theme might find a visit to YouTube consoling.

51. Lovely – (wistful voice) but I was hoping for a Soup Dragon.

52. john @51 – so was I (I mentioned it in @21).

    Incidentally the answer to my own question (@23) about dragons in Noggin the Nog is yes – the Wikipedia list of characters includes “Groliffe – A friendly ice dragon who Noggin befriends, and who helps Noggin and his friends in a later episode”. Sadly, I’m fairly sure there were no dragons in Bagpuss, and like flashling, I’m too young (at 47) to remember Pogles’ Wood.

    It’s nice to see such a positive set of comments – I suspect anything on more recent childrens’ TV wouldn’t be so well received…

53. A bit of a curate’s egg, this, for me. I could tell there was a theme based on some creative person. Perhaps even an Oliver Postgate, though I still find the OLIVER clue impenetrable, even after checking Chambers and Collins.

    I had a good guess at BAGPUSS, which of course left me even more at a loss, since that would mean I might be dealing with other nonsense words.

    End the end after a hard slog I got all the non-themed answers except CLEARANCE before I went to Wikipedia and scribbled in the themed answers.

    Not a lot of fun for me, but that’s because I moved away from the BBC in 1969 and this particular gent’s work never made it to the States. For me it was just an issue of “how much can I solve before I look up (the probable) Oliver Postgate?”

    Thanks for the puzzle, Orlando, I can see how wonderfully light-hearted it was for the locals, and for the blog, flashling and the rest of you lot.

54. It was a waste of my time, but glad others enjoyed it.

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