Guardian 26,314 – Boatman

56 comments on “Guardian 26,314 – Boatman”

1. Thanks Andrew. Since you didn’t go much for SWIFT, I’m not sure you’ll like this: IGLOO: GLO(w) “has IO (ten) around”! Can’t add anything for DATE, though.

2. Thanks, Andrew, especially for 31ac. – definitely a step too far, even for me, I’m afraid.

   I agree with all your reservations – a very mixed bag.

   29dn: D[ecember] + mArch + ocTober + decEmber – I don’t like the exclamation mark.

3. 20a is another lift-and-separate. ‘hasten’ must be read as ‘has ten’.

4. Can’t parse 20 but 29 are letters in those months which spell DATE. D from December, A from March etc.

   Found this difficult this morning. But managed in the end. Never heard of 21 d

5. Sorry – the E comes from novEmber, of course.

6. 29d – these are not days but letter positions e.g. 01/12 = D(ecember) etc.

   Some hard clues but all fair. 21d my favourite.

   Thanks.

7. NeilW, Sorry. We crossed. Well, annoyed really.

8. Thanks Boatman and Andrew

   I found this very difficult, and didn’t enjoy it much. I failed on EAST (too many stages!) and had OH-OH (with an unparsed first O) for 1d (HOH does indicate how the atoms are connected in water).

   I was also delayed by writing LENTO in for 16d, with an intention of deciding where the O came from later.

   DEFAULTS is only “runs away from” in the sense of “not turning up for a court appearance” – again a stage too far, I think?

   I did like PEDESTRIAN.

9. Twenty across is “glo” (shortened glow) has ten (IO as the number would be written) round

10. Thanks everyone for the rapid enlightenment on “has ten” and the DATEs.

11. I’m with you, muffin @8 in my lack of real enjoyment – and in trying to justify LENTO, which seemed to have a lot going for it!

    I also liked PEDESTRIAN, for its surface, but some others were excessively clunky, notably 8dn – I don’t know what Araucaria would have made of that.

    I’m afraid the whole puzzle, for me, had a slight air of ‘Aren’t I clever?’, as in the exclamation mark that I objected to in 29dn. Not one of Boatman’s better offerings – but thanks, anyway.

12. I’m with you all the way Muffin @8. Spent ages with lento as 16d, trying to fit finnslo(!) in 25a.

    Thanks for the excellent blog Andrew

13. Well, the speed theme, in nearly half the clues, is pretty comprehensive. (This can lead, as it does here, to some not so pretty surfaces.)

    You could say that the “liberties” are thematic, in that Boatman is playing fast and loose with convention. And 16d is a fine clue in its own right.

14. I’d never use an exclamation mark just to show that I was being clever! Or would I?! No, enough of that … The point is that I was concerned that some of you might feel that “1/12” = “first of December” = “first of ‘December'” = “D” was too indirect to pass without some indication of mild outrage. In the event, it seems that you were so bruised by the lift-and-separates that you saw nothing amiss. Useful information for me for next time …

15. My colleague has obvious talent but the thought that he is giving masterclasses that would encourage ‘hasten’ to mean ‘has ten’ grieves me somewhat. I accept that The Guardian has a diversity of styles but the idea that this virus should spread irks me. I can detect an underground Ximenean rotation even while I mention this!

16. Thanks Andrew. I’m glad not to be the only one to say this was not enough fun, though I finished it readily. Too often I stared at the right answer, and was not happy with it. Plural throwbacks for singular lob was just one of these. The only one I really liked was UH-OH, but it wasn’t hard.

17. … and (as our last posts arrived at the same time) thanks, Rhotician – that’s about the size of it. PEDESTRIAN and LOOSE were my favourites too – the former an isolated clue that I’d had in mind for years and which led to the rest of the theme, and the latter a late realisation from the thesaurus-trawling stage, one of those astonishing collisions that you wonder at never having spotted before.

18. Thanks for dropping by, Boatman. The LOOSE pair of synonyms is indeed nice. Apparently the various meanings of FAST are etymologically related, with the “fixed” one being older: see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=fast

    I also like the fact that LENT can mean both fast (the period before Easter, as in 24) and slow (in French).

    By the way, does PEDESTRIAN really mean “pathetically slow”? The only metaphorical definitions in Chambers are “Not mounted on Pegasus, hence prosaic, uninspired” – is that one of C’s famous humorous definitions? – and “Flat or commonplace”.

19. Don – Don’t grieve too much! Of course the rotating one would never have accepted such a split in a word – he was quite clear that it must be possible to read a clue as a coherent description, in good English, of what must be done in order to arrive at the solution. However much our tolerance of alternative approaches may have changed since, and however different our understanding of the primacy of good grammar (as opposed to treating language as a sequence of logical codes, after the manner of a computer programmer) I strongly agree that the central Ximenean edict is still the best starting point for good setting.

    One of the first things I tell students at my (excellent-value, another-one-in-November) masterclasses – and, yes, you must stop by as my guest one day – is that they should start by learning to set Ximenean clues, and only start breaking rules when they are confident in their skills and can be sure that any departures from the rules are justfied by the delight to be obtained from the resulting journey. By the same logic, I would steer a young musician away from free jazz until (s)he had learned the basics of classical harmony.

    That’s a discussion we can continue over an alcoholic beverage at some time – for the particular case of IGLOO, I couldn’t stop myself chuckling at the idea of “hasten” meaning “has 10”. You may or may not see that as a sign of mental degeneration on my part – I won’t argue – but I did try hard to make sure that, once you can accept the split in the word, the clue can be read as a precise cryptic indication.

20. Andrew – That’s very interesting … Along those lines, I wondered about including LENTO, but felt that I couldn’t use the same sense of “Lent” twice. Mildly amusing that LENT comes before EASTER, which is very nearly FASTER.

    Sadly, most of the trains I catch are pathetically slow in your latter sense, though I admit that I did rather simple-mindedly mean no more than “disappointingly”.

21. Well I, for one, thought that hasten for has ten was very clever! I didn’t get it but I really can’t see why it is more unacceptable than some of the other imaginative tricks setters can get up to with our very flexible language. Thank you Boatman, and Andrew of course for the excellent blog.

22. Boatman, slightly off message (sorry) but with regard to your point about free jazz and ‘classical’ harmony.

    As someone who wrote ‘the’ book on jazz harmony, and spent years playing free jazz, perhaps, if and when we meet, there is a discussion to be had over a libation?

23. Even for such a non-Ximenean puzzle, “deadly” as an anagram indicator seems inexplicable – I can’t see why “deadly” means “rearrange the letters”. “daring” and “pathetically”, I can just about accept. Mostly, I enjoyed the breaks from convention.

    I have to say though, “empty” meaning “with O inside” seems a far bigger outrage than “hasten” meaning “has ten”, and I know for a fact that setters have been using that trick before this puzzle.

24. “A strange mixture” defines this crossword well, I feel. By no means a bad crossword, though.

    I personally don’t lift-and-spearate clues, though I feel such a separation should be between the definition and wordplay, and not within one element as per “hasten”. However, I do wonder if we’d consider egghead=e or midnight=g as the same thing.

    I also had LENTO; I’m sure I’ve seen that word clued similarly. Thus FINAGLE and IGLOO eluded me, as did LIGHT AIR.

25. CC – A libation and a piano, ideally … Equally off-message, is anyone still shipping your opus?

26. Excellent puzzle – easy to break into – tough to finish. And a great mix of cluing devices to delight us, all of which Barnard would have been happy with.

    The so-called “rules” of Ximenes are an irrelevance and serve only to define a subset of available devices compared with the wider range defined three years beforehand (and even then not claiming to be complete) by Barnard in his seminal 1963 book “The Anatomy of the Crossword” – a properly indexed and wide-ranging book, unlike the few intemperate unindexed chapters by Ximenes where he calls the work of his fellow setters “sloppy” and “lazy” if they have the temerity to disagree with him.

    In Paul’s Centenary book he records (p117) that Araucaria advised him never to read the Ximenes book.

    I’m not sure that I would go that far – elsewhere (in a Guardian article) Araucaria said that Ximenes (ie presumably referring to the better clues in his puzzles rather than his book) was a major influence – but the limitations he defines, which may be appropriate to specialty puzzles with extended vocabulary, have no place in modern blocked puzzles.

    Even in the basics of cryptic grammar he was beaten by Barnard, whose chapter on Cryptic Licence, three years earlier established (for the first time in a published book) the principles there.

    One thing I only noticed recently. In the book Barnard credits McNutt (aka Ximenes) and some others (not Araucaria – in 1963 he wasn’t well known) as “distinguished compilers” early in his book but towards the end credits L S Dawe as being “the doyen of British compilers”. I wonder if that rubbed Ximenes up the wrong way. Brnard goes on to quote Dawe as saying:

    ‘The only really competent teacher of this subject is experience.’

    which (pace Boatman) must surely be largely true.

27. Thanks Boatman, fun puzzle once you got into it.

    Thanks Andrew; I see you’ve got a Grauniad title at the top. 😉

    I must say that I quite like quirky things, like ‘has ten,’ even though I didn’t see it – variety is the spice of life! I can’t find much support for PEDESTRIAN=slow, more like dull or boring, although it’s the sort of thing I might say.

    I did like PITFALL after Andrew explained the PI – I was thinking this must be some old French coinage. 🙁

    I thought LEAD PAINT was going to be a reverse clue, but somehow the letters of ‘gasp’ failed to fit in.

28. Boatman @ 25.

    Amazon used to be the best source but these days they are asking silly money (nearly £300).

    The current publishers are http://sendmemusic.com/ (run by the guy who used to run Jazzwise). Just search for lego. I think they are currently reprinting.

29. Thanks, CC – I saw that too. I’m sure you’re wishing you’d had £300 for each of the original print run …

30. I had “Oh-no” for 1d, the ‘n’ coming from “neutron”, another “little radioactive matter”, being littler than Uranium too!

31. I will always be talked or shouted down, I know, by the usual suspects, here and down under — but I shall stick to my guns! Just sad that there aren’t a few more like-minded souls who will come out in support! For now I shall say no more. Back to the setting and the cricket. Carry on, please!

32. Couldn’t finish this on paper – had to resort to a bit of guess and check online to get the last few, since there were a few that I couldn’t parse and wasn’t sure of. Not sure I’d ever heard of a HOOKED RUG or sharp sand, and I didn’t get the significance of the dates either, so this was a bit difficult for me…

    Thanks to Boatman for the challenge and Andrew for what must have been a tricky blog.

33. @Pasquale #31

    “I accept that The Guardian has a diversity of styles” [comment #15]

    But you don’t. You attack the ones that are different from your own.
    They don’t do that to you.

34. @Pasquale

    I really don’t understand why you can’t allow for different tastes and styles in crosswords. I enjoyed your puzzle on Tuesday, and I enjoyed (for very different reasons) Boatman’s offering today, poles apart as your respective approaches are. You would never use a device like “hasten = has 10” in one of your puzzles – fair enough. That kind of thing is not to your taste and no-one can tell you otherwise. But to say that no-one should seems to me to follow a philosophy that will stifle imagination and prevent innovation.

35. Good old Don, mounting his ageing charger and trotting off to fight battles lost long ago.

    Bravo Boatman for such a polite and restrained response.

36. A fun but rather difficult puzzle for a Thursday. Loved DATE, which I spotted, but not so keen, at the time, on IGLOO, which I didn’t. Hmmm, there’s a pattern here, methinks.
    That meaning of ENVOY has eluded me up until now, as has the second definition of SHARP, which I wrongly guessed as SWAMP.
    I like Boatman’s envelope-pushing and thoroughly agree with Mitz: arbitrary rules simply stifle innovation.

    Thanks for the blog, Andrew, and for the entertainment, Boatman.

    Re: H2O. This follows the customary practice of writing molecular formulae by listing the elements and indicating numbers present by subscripts. It’s not intended to convey structural meaning. It makes little difference here (HOH vs H2O), but a structural depiction of, for example, glucose (C6H12O6) would be a pain to write out.

    PS minor point about the blog, Andrew: BARBARY APE needs PRAY ARAB BE as fodder.

37. To be clear, I do not want to be part of any war and certainly not of one between setters.
    However, I have an opinion on the ongoing discussion above.

    When Boatman started setting crosswords for the Guardian, I once posted a comment in which I analysed what (in my opinion) made Boatman’s style so special.
    There was the consistent mentioning of at least one Boatman and the repetition of certain words within clues. I liked the fact that Boatman used these words in various ways. In one clue it was the fodder, in another the definition, in a third the anagram indicator etc.
    I concluded that it must be a lot of fun for a setter the build a crossword like that. Those were the days that I tried to do some setting myself which perhaps helped to understand what was going on.
    I remember that Boatman was pleased with that comment and repeated it the only time I met him (at a sad occasion at the beginning of this year). When I told him that I still did some setting myself he replied that I should attend one of his masterclasses.

    Now I must admit that, on that occasion, a feeling came over me best described by Pasquale @15, although I am happy with Boatman’s reply @19.

    In the last six years or so, I have learned a lot. By reading, by listening, by trying. I didn’t read Ximenes’ book and I am afraid I won’t either, at least not with the aim to change my view on crosswords. In everything I do (even in my profession as a teacher) I am driven by intuition and by making choices based on that.

    In recent years, Boatman clearly drifted away into the, let’s say, more adventurous end of Crosswordland (often at the expense of precision), widening the gap between him and me.

    As Boatman said himself, he doesn’t need an exclamation mark to emphasise he’s clever – he is indeed (in my opinion).
    The main thing is, however, that nowadays Boatman’s puzzles are regularly characterised by extremities that have nothing to do with what I initially liked about them. There were no “has/ten”s and “quick/s/and”s in those early years.
    I am afraid – while I still enjoy his crosswords – this enjoyment has become less.
    It’s just Boatman’s style, this is what he is, but not fully up my street (anymore).

    For me, there are perhaps three criterions:
    Are these constructions acceptable? Do I like them? Would I do it myself?
    I think, acceptable, yes. If I can understand how a clue works, it is fine by me. Do I like them? That’s another matter. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It also depends on how often a setter uses unconventional devices and on how it fits into a surface. For example, I did like 29d (even if ‘days’ was also a possible answer). But please, no innovation for the sake of innovation. Would I do it myself? Only every now and then (and I did) but I think Boatman goes much further than I would.

    There are other ways to make crosswords exciting or adventurous. Clever themes, great (perhaps, topical) surface readings and not too many sexual references will do the trick for me.
    Picaroon, Monk, Tramp, Anax, Imogen, Nutmeg, Dac are some names that spring to mind.

    Boatman is not in that class.
    He is (in) a class of his own, nowadays.
    That’s surely a great achievement but whether I would like to be taught by him is a different matter. Which brings me back to Pasquale’s post @15.

38. Well, Sil, I always enjoy your comments, and I still think you should come along to one of my classes – not because you need me to teach you, but because the things you write about are exactly the sort of things that I encourage my students to consider as they develop beyond basic competence. That basic competence comes first, though (as it does in all forms of creative endeavour) and I definitely don’t suggest that anyone should try to achieve it by copying my style! Of course, I do talk about the way I go about setting, but the most interesting part of the classes is seeing how each student responds and relates those ideas to his/her own work … But you teach, so you know how much fun that is.

    I think you may have given me another quote for my website, too …

39. Sil @37
    I’m surprised that Arachne wasn’t one of the compilers’ names that sprang to mind for your approval (since the loss of Araucaria, my favourite compiler).

40. Well, muffin, yes.
    Arachne! (how can I forget her)
    And Qaos, and eXternal, and Donk, and Rorschach, and Alberich.
    It was just a representative sample (though certainly not an exhaustive one).

    BTW, unlike Pasquale I would not suggest that Boatman is someone spreading a virus around – just to make that sure.
    My own ‘style’ (if I have one, it’s perhaps more of an amalgam) is somewhere in the middle, still closer to Pasquale’s but every now and then (but only every now and then) Boatman’s comes in sight.

    Thanks, Boatman, for your reply (and I think I know what you going to use for your website 🙂 )

41. Boatman doesn’t produce puzzles regularly enough for me to get used to his style. I struggled with this one, a few answers went in unparsed (PITFALL, DATE and IGLOO) and my LOI, 13dn, was an incorrect “swamp”. When the check button told me I was wrong I saw the correct SHARP, but I didn’t know “sharp sand”. This puzzle, although very clever, wasn’t a lot of fun IMHO.

42. Like Sil @37, I’ve no wish to enter a war – especially between setters.

    Knowing my passion for solving cryptic crosswords, several of my friends have asked if I would be interested in compiling, to be met with an emphatic ‘No!’. To me, they are entirely different activities, although I have several friends [mostly contributors to this site] who happily combine both.

    If I did have such aspirations – and even though I don’t – I’d be more prepared [sorry, Boatman] to pay good money to listen to a variety of compilers at a crossword ‘Symposium’ [Collins: ‘a collection of scholarly contributions on a given subject’; or, better still, perhaps,’ [in Classical Greece] a drinking party with intellectual conversation, music, etc’ – which sounds pretty much like a more formalised version of our Midlands / Northern S and Bs, does it not? We haven’t had the pleasure of the company of either Boatman or Pasquale at any of those, so it might be interesting?

    [I thought my early comments on today’s puzzle might have been rather harsh but I’m heartened by the fact that I seem to be in agreement with others whose comments I usually admire / concur with.]

    Thanks, Boatman, for your continued willingness to contribute to the discussion – and it would be really good to meet you some time. 😉

43. A strange mixture of trivial and dodgy clues.

    Never heard of LIGHT AIR so failed on that as the wordplay was not sufficient to get me there without “reverse engineering”!

    Thanks to Andrew and Boatman

44. What a stimulating forum of opinions today; insightful; well argued, politely expressed.
    Much better than any haranguing or points-scoring which occasionally mars this fine site (only occasionally, mind)
    Personally, I like diversity.
    Thanks to Boatman, Andrew and all contributors

45. Thank you Boatman for an enjoyable puzzle and Andrew and others for help with the parsing. I’m with nametab; I also like diversity. The other-day Paul clued Looking (5) which for my money is the best clue of the year so far. But IGLOO runs it a close second. So why the outrage at Boatman and the happy acceptance of Paul. I also agree with nametab about the excellent level of todays discussion.

46. Sorry that should have been Looking (4) – slip of the finger!!!

47. Re Hooked Rug, my Georgie friend’s family used to make Hooky Mats ( in a Georgie accent) as a cheap way to cover the floor. Oddments of wool seen through sacking. There were also “clippy mats” made with hessian and strips of old material which were then clipped to a regular length.

48. Sorry “sewn”

49. Too tough for me in the South East corner, and when I came here to discover the parsings I understood why I would never have worked them out for myself. The rest of the puzzle was enjoyable enough for me, but the clues that defeated me spoilt the pleasure.

50. Looking? (4), to be precise, as Paul always is.

51. Well, Boatman is several fathoms too deep for me. Thanks for the parsings. Glad some of the clues I had problems with were considered iffy by the pros.

52. What a fascinating discussion. I was pleased to get just five answers in (including very enjoyable “pedestrian”) before having to cheat thanks to this fine site. As usual there are clues/parsings I still don’t understand and answers I wouldn’t get in a million years (hooked rug?!?) but the range of styles is great fun. DATE is wonderful – tho I didn’t get that, either.
    Yours sincerely,
    Harrumph(ing beginner)

53. I should add, I meant the wide range of styles among all the different Grauniad setters, not just within this one Boatman offering.

54. What a wonderfully edifying conversation. I have to say I’m with Boatman all the way (for example, I adored “igloo”…) Indeed, innovations like this are a joy (amongst other less liberal artifices) that nurtures my addiction.
    Setters – I love ’em all! (Sil – I hope your exclusion hasn’t made for a forlorn Phi?!)
    If I had to admit (in a whisper, mind) a current favourite, her name might be Arachne…. though the appearance of a Boatman also triggers a smile of anticipation!
    Greatly enjoyed Jolly Swagman’s piece.
    ….and my appreciation for Andrew’s blog, of course.

55. Ooops – apologies, Sil. No oversight. Not sure why I mentioned Phi; perhaps because it’s Friday or maybe the heat induced an ‘independent’ thought….

56. Thanks Boatman and Andrew

    What a ripper puzzle that has produced one of the best discussions that I’ve seen on this site. This took me a couple of elapsed days to fill the grid and another one to validate the parsing, which thankfully picked up my initial error of SWAMP and found SHARP.

    I thought that DATE was brilliant and required a lateral jump to the right thinking after travelling down some other fruitless paths. Even though was able to lift and separate both ‘quicksands’, I was not clever enough to do the same with ‘has ten’ – plugging for OI to be reversed around it

    Tough but very enjoyable for mine.

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