Guardian 26,357 / Paul

35 comments on “Guardian 26,357 / Paul”

1. Thanks, Gaufrid.

   4ac works if you think of it as IT breaking heart.

2. Thanks Gaufrid.

   I enjoyed this, so doable, without aids, after the last couple of stiff crosswords (stiffies, no doubt Paul would call them).

   I was helped by having the theme quite early: as soon as I realised what the fodder was for the first part of 6d, with THE most likely, the remaining letters shouted WINDOW, and the rest followed.

   I took 4a to be “the heart breaking it”, by rearranging punctuation, but not especially convincing.

3. Many thanks Gaufrid & Paul

   This was VERY ENJOYABLE and I am delighted to declare it ‘The Crossword of the Year’.

   George Formby was my childhood favourite. I saw all his films and had several records – all vinyl of course.

   My mother even took me to see him at the Oldham Empire.

   However, it must have been tough for the younger folk.

4. Hi Eileen @1
   I agree that it breaking [a word meaning] heart (and then reversed) gives the required solution but that is not the way the clue is worded. I would however be quite happy with ‘Heartbroken by it’s flipping exciting’.

5. Bit puzzled by description of Antioch as a capital. Was it ever?

6. Thanks Gaufrid. I’d heard of him, and knew the LAMPPOST song – but otherwise needed to rely on crossing letters and native wit. They sufficed: it wasn’t too hard. ANTIPASTO was tasty.

7. Hi Nigel B. @5
   “Bit puzzled by description of Antioch as a capital. Was it ever?”

   An extract from the relevant Wikipedia page: “Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid empire under Antiochus I, …”.

8. Thanks Gaufrid. Nice one from Paul, I though – I made a slow start, but once I got GEORGE FORMBY and then the songs the rest slotted in quite easily.

   I’ve just caught the end of an interview with John Halpern (Paul) and Margaret Irvine (Nutmeg) on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. I expect it’ll be available on iPlayer later if anyone would like to hear it.

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g1dkm

9. The hyphen is key to 4ac. ‘heart-breaking’ describes what IT’s doing to CORE, as distinct from heart breaking it.
   Some object to clues where it is necessary to ignore punctuation. In this case it is necessary not to.

10. Many thanks, rhotician @9- that’s what I meant but you’ve said it better!

11. Thanks, Gaufrid.

    I found this a bit slow at first, until the man with the ukulele appeared, then it all fell out neatly (although 7,19,2 was unfamiliar to me it was obvious from the crossers). As is often the case with these multiple-light long charades I couldn’t be bothered to work out the parsings for some of them.

    I concur with the parsing of 4a given by rhotician @9: the grammar does work if the clue is read in the right way. ‘Key’ = ALT has become rather common, but I invariably fail to spot it until I find the answer and try to parse it.

    11a and 12a are ingenious, and the ribaldry of 21a is cleverly contrived.

12. Thanks Gaufrid and Paul

    As others have said, a very enjoyable puzzle. Several amusing clues including 20d.

    I knew 6,1 as ‘When I’m cleaning windows’ – it seems both titles are acceptable.

    I intitially saw 9a as ‘Be a U’ but then remembers the ‘audience’ and realised that parsing would have to be clued as ‘visually’.

13. Thanks Paul; nice setting to fit in all the theme words.

    Thanks Gaufrid – of course most people will probably know of GEORGE FORMBY via the LAMPPOST song but I couldn’t remember CHINESE LAUNDRY BLUES. BEAU is a bit confusing in that ‘bend over’=bow, rhyming with now. Bow=bend, rhyming with flow doesn’t need the ‘over.’

    Paul’s attempt at EROTIC was a bit of a COCK-UP, although I take rhotician @9’s comment. Mind you, DOG-LEG was more of a COCK-UP. 😉

14. Bow can be pronounced either way – think of bow and arrow.

    I enjoyed this as well but usually do enjoy Paul’s puzzles.

15. Sorry Robi, should have read your comment more closely. You’re probably right that the ‘over’ didn’t quite fit.

16. You either know the theme or you don’t, I guess. As soon as I worked out that I was supposed to have heard of an entertainer named George _o_m_ _, I knew I was in deep doo-doo. Gave up, basically.

    This was probably before the mind-meld that made Anglo-American pop culture at least mutually intelligible. (Blame John Lennon and John Cleese for that, so yeah, before).

17. I found this less satisfying than Imogen and Picaroon. Some clever clues, but some overly-contrived ones – eg 4a and the song titles.

    And doesn’t “ofttimes” mean “frequently” rather than “regularly”?

18. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid

    Enjoyable Paul as per usual … I didn’t know GEORGE FORMBY and needed help finding his songs … but it was more than half finished by then. I actually like trying to unravel Paul’s longer ones, especially when there’s a bit of the interlinking of clues going on.

    Thought his ‘rude’ ones quite funny today 🙂 with one of them, EROTIC, the last in.

19. EROTIC — “heart-breaking ‘it'” works if you parse it like “man-eating tiger.”

20. Found this enjoyable and fairly straightforward. I could only remember one George Formby song, and once I’d worked out what that one’s title had to be, and got most of the crossers, CHINESE LAUNDRY BLUES became quite a straightforward anagram, so I didn’t need to resort to looking up Formby songs on-line. Last in was OFTTIMES. Liked DOG-LEG and ANTIPASTO.

    I’m still not entirely convinced by the BEAU-BOW “homophone” since I think reading it as a homophone (i.e. the weapon, the knot or the river bend) makes “over” superfluous, but I could be missing some other context in which it works better.

21. Beery hiker, think of “bow” as a verb. Webster’s gives, as a definition for the verb sense of long-O bow, “to bend into a curve.” As in, “His back was bowed.” In that sense, “bend over” is a fair definition of “bow.”

22. mrpenney @21 – thanks for that – I suppose it just about works

23. From Gene Vincent to George Formby via Jacqueline Dupre! What a cultural feast the crossword is becoming. An enjoyable puzzle as PAUL’s usually are. I still think he’s getting easier though.

24. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid – it took me a while to get GEORGE FORMBY, but I eventually got THE WINDOW CLEANER – then it was clear. Two complete puzzles in a row for me – I think my all time record is 3 in a row, so hoping for an easy prize puzzle tomorrow…

25. Thanks Paul and Gaufrid
    I failed on 12a as it was my LOI and I carelessly wrote “outlines” without fully checking the parsing.

    I discovered that in fact I DID know the Formby songs referred to, just not by their correct titles!

    Loved COCK-UP and DOG-LEG.

26. Thanks all
    If I had spelled ‘tinsle’ correctly I would not have wasted so much time looking for an ?o?-egg
    of which there seems to be a great shortage!
    I liked 11 & 17 ac but doubted the homophone in 9ac.

27. Oh, the time I wasted trying to make BEAU something to do with a U-bend…

28. I found this straightforward and very enjoyable. All the potential quibbles have been addressed above so no need to repeat them. I finished back in the NW corner with COBALT/BEAU/UNESCO after the crossing GF BLUES song.

29. Hurray! The first one I’ve managed to complete for ages:-) I like the precision of Paul’s clues. Thanks

30. Did not know George Fromby but chinese l?u?d?? helped get the theme with google. Re 4ac other than the construction of clue…I felt erotic is exciting but exciting need not necessarily be erotic! That was my LOI. On the cheerful side, I completed it by 2 am UK time and was hoping to see Andrew’s blog here! Thanks Paul and Gaufrid.

31. Thanks Andrew @8 for your link.
    I have listened to it but it wasn’t really about the difference between men and women in Crosswordland, was it?

    Quite unusually, my PinC and I didn’t tackle this Paul puzzle after work but the Times crossword, a gentle one.
    So, that was Nutmeg then while we thought there were traces of Paul.

    As to today’s puzzle, I got George Formby early on and thought “why on earth …”.
    OK puzzle from a cryptic point of view but I’m afraid I didn’t like it theme-wise.
    So stuffy.

    However, it gave me some ideas what to do at the weekend, cleaning windows for example – really needs to be done! 🙂

32. The cryptic clue parsing mind would see heart-breaking as heart doing the breaking, but taken literally, heart-breaking means the heart is the thing being broken, so I chalked it up to a lame attempt at misdirection.

    Also, for speakers and listeners of French, as I attempt to be on occasions, ‘heart-breaking, it’s … ‘ is a standard sentence construction that sounds quite normal.

33. Took me a while to see that it was Formby, but was delighted when I did. I commend to you all Half Man Half Biscuit’s George Formby tribute, performed in the manner of Brighton resident Nick Cave, Mr Cave’s a Window Cleaner Now.

34. Took me forever to find the entertainer as I was convinced ‘energy invested in stuff’ was cream! Also s-bend and u-bend head-scratching. But eventually all became clear. Thanks to Paul and Gaufrid for an enjoyable visit.

35. Freddy @32

    “The cryptic clue parsing mind”? Are you attempting to disparage other solvers? In which case the phrase should be hyphenated.
    And “lame” is an unjustified disparagement of Paul’s clueing.

    That don’t impress me much.

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