Guardian 26,359 by Chifonie

71 comments on “Guardian 26,359 by Chifonie”

1. Thanks Chifonie and flashling – glad the move went well. 😉

   I think 3dn is SO [in consequence] in ABLUTION [washing].

2. Thanks Eileen, brain a bit scrambled still 🙂 I blame the painkillers I took last night.

3. flashling – I think you’re parsed 15 across correctly. E is the symbol for electromotive force.

4. A bit of a shock to the system compared to Rufus, but worked out ok in the end. Shame to use ‘try’ twice for the same ‘y’! Enjoyed the blog; hope you will be fully recovered soon!

5. 24d desTROYed perhaps Parky@4
   Thanks to Chifonie and flashling

6. Thanks Chifonie and flashling
   Peter Owen @3 – sorry, the symbol for “electromotive force” is V; E is still incorrect.

   I liked the definition for REDSTARTS (I was trying to work “strata” in somehow), but I thought the S was awkward.

   I was also unhappy about “charter” for “nmapmaker”. The correct name, of course, is “cartographer”; Chambers allows “chartist”, but has no mention of “charts” under “charter”.

   “Star” = “hero”?

7. E is the symbol for electromagnetic force (if I remember rightly from 50 years back)

8. We are being too complicated. E seems to be a general term for energy, and the Oxford Concise gives energy = force

9. Energy=Force? my dear old physics teacher would be having a fit!

10. Thanks Chifonie & flashling.

    I thought of ‘fair’ for ‘shy company.’ 😉

    I liked the REDSTARTS layers. 🙂

11. I wonder what Chambers says! Collins Compact gives energy = force

12. THanks all
    I did have to checkmore than once to verify that the setter was not Rufus. I do not see any point in changing compiler if the puzzle is just as dull.
    Last in was cyclone,no idea why, it just took longest to get round to, I guess.

13. ‘Charter’ meaning one who charts? Hmm….Also never really like ” ‘s ” for has, if that explains the middle ‘s’ in redstarts. Otherwise entertaining and doable. Thanks flashling and Chifonie.

14. Thanks to Chifonie and flashling. As I approach my 81st birthday – and something like 56th or 57th year of doing Guardian cryptics – slightly unnerved by “aged” = “deteriorated”. And think of single malts… And another thing: what’s the rationale for “easier” crosswords on a Monday? Are we all meant to be hung over from the weekend? Or distracted by the shock of going back to work?

15. Sorry, I should have written that one definition of E in Chambers is symbol for electromotive force. I agree with Muffin that the symbol for emf is V and that E is electric field strength. As we all know dictionaries cannot be relied on for accurate scientific definitions.

16. I think that if you are using E, a recognised physical symbol, it can only be valid if used correctly. The physical symbol for force is F.

    I think some posters have been confused by the abbreviation for electromotive force, which is emf, but even in this the “force” is shown by the “f”.

17. Peter Owen @ 15
    Sorry – we crossed.

18. Nice change for a Monday as many have already said. My first in was 6a, guessing CIDER, but I was not able to fully parse it. CID would seem to be “detectives”, but ER = “endlessly slip up”? I didn’t get it and then I was seriously distressed to see flashling’s explanation which I do not understand at all. Can someone help?

19. Bob@18, I think flashling’s comment of ‘criminals in disguise’ is just tongue-in-cheek. The parsing is CID + ER(r) as he says in the blog.

20. Bob Clary @ 18
    I think flashling had his tongue firmly in his cheek with “criminals in disguise”. It’s CID (Criminal Investigation Department) + first two letters (“endlessly”) of ERR.

21. muffin et al – Chambers gives one meaning of E as ‘electromotive force’, so surely it is OK in a cryptic to clue as just ‘force’.

    Assuming that Chambers has done more research on the usage of the word than we have, one can only assume that it is in use somewhere with that meaning. OK, it may not be your favourite meaning, the most common meaning, or even a correct meaning in a technical context, but that is no reason why Chifone should not use it.

    Thanks flashling, hope you are enjoying your new home!

22. As I learnt it at school/university, the symbol for electromotive force is a curly E (something like a cross between epsilon (?) and xi (?)). Still, “E” for force seems pretty clearly incorrect.

    I also have to quibble a bit about 26a – RETIRE without “R” is ETIE, not RETIE. “with less resistance” is surely more accurate.

    Still, it was a fun, challenging puzzle. With LET IT GO and LAPLAND placed so centrally in symmetric positions, I wonder if Chifonie been exposed to Disney’s festive behemoth recently…

23. PeeDee @21
    I’m sorry, Chambers is just plain wrong on this. It would cause chaos if a physicist actually used E to stand for voltage (=”electromotive force”) in a calculation. (btw I note that Chambers doesn’t recognise V as standing for voltage, only “volt”, so presumably their “research” didn’t get as far as Ohm’s Law, V = IR).

24. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_physics_notations

    E is used for both energy and electric field strength; not for electromotive force (or voltage), which is V.

25. This link shows the “curly E” that Schroduck referred to
    http://www.cmat.uni-halle.de/~hsl/PoM-files/Symbols.pdf

26. An electric field is what deflects electrons horizontally and vertically in a cathode ray tube, and the symbol for that field is E, acting in an analogous manner on electrons as gravity acting upon a mass.

    An electric field E is also produced when a wire is moved across a magnetic field B, thus causing the electrons to move: the basic concept of motor and generator theory.

    And so on ..

    So Chifonie has it right in my (Electrical Engineering) book

27. Maybe the career physicists have some other explanation, but: ‘Electric field strength, E, is defined as the force per unit charge acting at a point in the field. So an equation for it is: E=F/q.’
    

28. Re 15ac: Could Dutch force = DE = Dutch Elite (Army Gaming Community)? Myself,I’d always thought D = Germany .

29. Hi muffin,

    To say Chambers is wrong either misunderstands or misrepresents what dictionaries do.

    Dictionaries record usages of words, they do not define their meanings. If the letter E is in use somewhere to mean ‘electromotive force’ then the dictionary is correct to list that usage. It is neither the ‘correct’ nor ‘incorrect’ definition. It is not a definition at all, it is a record of use.

    Chambers is not wrong: the usage exists in the language, whether it is correct or not, whether you like it or not.

    Perhaps E is still used for electromotive force in old fashioned engineering workshops. Who knows?

    There is an interesting interview with Michael Rundell editor in chief of Macmillan Dictionaries. He could hardly be more explicit on the subject.

30. 28a RED could be from the fairy tale “Rose Red and Snow White”

31. I found this quite straightforward and completed all bar two on the tube. Usually when I do this the blogger deflates me by saying “this was an easy romp” so I was delighted to read your introductory comment flashling. Thank you.

    I set crosswords for our local church fairs – my most recent version had exactly the same clue for Tiepolo, so I was pleased about that too. No doubt someone will now tell me that this clue has appeared hundreds of times over the years …

32. 8D: indeed that has come up before. The last time, I pointed out that RE after a person’s name identified that person as a soldier, singular. There seemed to be some objection to this on the part of some, but no explanation was offered as to what.

33. 28A was the poorest IMHO. I don’t like Rose = Red as I have beautiful yellow ones in the garden at the moment and equally I don’t like Rose has = Red’s.

34. PeeDee@29
    I agree that’s what dictionaries do (except for the Academie Francaise!), but I do wish that they would record that the usage is incorrect in some way. The closest that Chambers gets, I think, is to indicate “informal”.

35. This was mostly quite easy but,for some reason I got stuck on 23down and 26across. Not as satisfying as RUFUS I feel bound to say. His puzzles are always enjoyable even if they are no more difficult than this.

36. What a lot of discussion over a single letter E! There also seems to be a degree of misinformation posted so let’s set down the facts.

    Whilst I agree that, in Physics, force and energy are not the same by any means, Chambers, Collins and Oxford on-line all define force as “strength, energy” in the sense of ‘the building was knocked down by the force/strength/energy of the explosion’.

    Chambers, Collins and Oxford on-line all correctly give E as the symbol for electromotive force, as does the relevant Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromotive_force). The statements above that the symbol for emf is V are erroneous, V is the symbol for voltage.

    Voltage, or potential difference, can be subdivided into several types, one of them being emf. To quote Wikipedia “A voltage may represent either a source of energy (electromotive force), or lost, used, or stored energy (potential drop)”.

    So, you can go down the path of force=energy and the symbol for energy is E or that ‘force’ is inferring emf which has the symbol E (when, as with this site, the font used will not reproduce the more correct curved version). I have no idea which option Chifonie intended.

37. Muffin – I agree it would be nice for dictionaries to record if a usage is incorrect. The problem is that they then become the arbiters of what is correct. This is what they are trying to avoid.

    Over the years attempts at producing dictionaries that give the ‘official’ or ‘correct’ definition of words have failed.

38. PS I also meant to mention in comment #36 that, for a voltage source, E = V + Ir where E is emf, V is voltage, I is current flow and r is the internal resistance of the voltage source. So, in all practical applications, emf cannot equal voltage.

39. Energy = force and other scientific and mathematical mis-uses are a constant niggle for those of us who rely use them in a technical sense, but all’s fair in crosswords and dictionaries, I think.
    I assumed ‘charter’ for mapmaker was cryptic – one who charts – in much the same way that a flower is not actually the correct word for a river, but we’d accept it for something that flows.
    Why have easier crosswords on a Monday: so us less able solvers have one day of the week when we can get our teeth into it, perhaps?

40. Thanks flashling and Chifonie

    re 15a

    1. Collins (and Chambers I think) give E for electromotive force for what that is worth.

    2. ‘Indirect routes’ seems to suggest that D + *routes may also be a significant part of the clue.

41. I agree with PeeDee @29 about dictionaries.

    However, Chambers treatment of symbols and abbreviations is a shambles and like others I don’t think ‘force’ for E is right.
    I can’t see how D might be used for Dutch. Chambers itself uses Du.
    They’re right about RE being plural, though. RE after a name indicates a regiment of soldiers. The singularity is implicit in the title and name.

    I agree that ‘rose’ for RED is not good enough. ‘Mapmaker’ for CHARTER would be OK as a cryptic definition, so requires a ? or something, somewhere.

    14 is awful. LET IT GO is just something you might say and has no place in a crossword, any more than IT IS AWFUL would. And ‘Free’ means LET GO. Which would be OK. It looks like he was determined to keep TIEPOLO. He could have done TREMORS for 4 and LITOTES for 14.

42. Well, if Chambers looks at this site they will definitely have to include E as force!

    PeeDee @ 29 “If the letter E is in use somewhere to mean ‘electromotive force’ then the dictionary is correct to list that usage”. If I say I now define E as “confusion” are they obliged to include that?

    Thanks for the blog, flashling.

43. PS When I did A-levels Newton’s second Law was P=ma, no idea why. Wiki gives the more sensible F=ma. And as for E, that was mc squared.

44. PPS Muffin @34. Words such as force/ power/energy existed long before the physicists needed to give names to precise scientific concepts. Their choice of names did not render the earlier meanings “incorrect”.

45. rhotician @41, see LET IT GO in the Oxford dictionary.

46. rho @41 – I think you are being unfair describing Chambers as ‘a shambles’ re abbreviations. It gives both D and Du as being abbreviations for Dutch. Seems fair for Chifonie to choose whichever he/she likes.

47. P.S. Rose is given as a synonym for red in both Chambers and Oxford thesauruses.

48. Robi @45 – I’ll give you that as far as its eligibility for a crossword solution. It would be tricky to define. Free won’t do.
    Robi @47 – Thesauruses do not give only, or even mostly, synonyms. They give words related to a variety of concepts, for the assistance of authors.
    PeeDee @46 – A bit OTT I admit but there are too many abbreviations in Chambers whose use I cannot imagine. D for Dutch is one. c for college is another, used twice here recently. And there are others that they don’t have like w/d/l.

49. Dave Ellison @42 – if only you use it then no, obviously not. But if enough people start using E to mean confusion over a long enough period then yes, they would include it in a future edition.

    Maybe we could start a campaign for a new meaning of E, it could go viral…

50. Gaufrid @38
    That formula only applies to cells (batteries) and is allowing for so-called “lost volts”, caused by the internal resistance of the cell.

    EMF, potential difference and voltage are equivalent to each other, and all have the symbol V.

51. Rho – not being able to imagine an example of a usage just means that you have not spent any time in the environment in which it is so used, not that the abbreviation doesn’t exist.

    BTW – what is w/d/l? If it is w=width d=depth and l=length than surely these are in there too?

52. The E is just Energy, as in E=MC2, Energy=Mass x Speed of light squared.

53. I have to agree with sitywit – why does ‘deteriorated’ = ‘aged’? At 64 I go out singing and playing guitar more in the last couple of years than I have for many years, and those bottles of Rioja seem to get better the longer they’re left.

54. rhotician @41
    “RE after a name indicates a regiment of soldiers”? So Joe Blow RE means that he is a regiment?

55. DETOURS was my LOI and I just assumed the E was something I didn’t know. After reading everything on the subject above I’m none the wiser.

56. Thanks Chifonie and flashling

    A typical puzzle from this setter which fell out with only one question mark for me – ABSOLUTION, which Eileen kindly explained.

    Had not seen the word ‘pollarded’ – on discovering that it meant ‘cut the top branches of a tree’, I thought made 20a my cod.

    A lot of discussion on 15a and 28a. I wonder how many it stopped from actually deriving the answer in the end. A stretch for sure, but know more than some of Paul’s homophones / Spoonerisms, etc.

57. PeeDee

    @ 49 I agree – E wasn’t an abbreviation for Ecstasy until the 1990, when it gained wide usage

    @51 W D L also = Won Drawn Lost in sports league tables

58. PS. Thesauruses are more to do with shades (geddit?) of meaning. Is there another word that better expresses what I want to say? The emphasis is often on difference rather than similarity. For me the test of synonyms is can the words be interchanged without significant change of meaning. Red and rose can’t.

59. I just wonder how many school kids looking up V=IR or similar end up hitting this blog. Can’t believe that I’m now in a hotel in the town I just moved from.
    Looking at the comments did everyone enter detours and think ok the blogger will explain that?

60. I can’t cope with all this. I’ve never seen Joe Blow RE and I doubt if it’s ever appeared in any letters column. Why can’t he just have used ‘soldiers’?
    Can anyone supply examples of D being used for Dutch or c for college? Examples such as given above for w/d/l. I need a little lie down now.

61. PS The bottom line is that I didn’t like this.

62. Well, what a lot of fuss this puzzle seems to have generated! Yet some of the past “awful” Rufus offerings we have had seem to get off scot free.

    If we must have “Easy Monday” then give me something like this every week. Much more enjoyable and at least representative of the cryptics we see for the rest of the week, Much better for a beginner IMHO.

    My only quibble was with “LET IT GO” which has been discussed. Of course “E” and “CHARTER” are totally acceptable.

    24D is a very nice clue. I would have preferred something else rather than “destroyed” but I suppose it’s OK to spuriously insert the answer in the clue on “Easy Monday” 😉

    Thanks to flashling and Chifonie.

63. rhotiian @60

    You ask for examples: you should have come across this usage of RE (which I would suspect is the primary one). I repeat the link from last time, to Wikipedia (only this time I have directed you to a subheading so that you do not even have to scroll down to the picture of the Albert Hall). Why should Chifonie use ‘soldiers’ when the singular fits the bill better?

64. I can see Captain Francis Fowke RE and Lt-Col John By RE, but no-one without rank. By is also referred to, explicitly, as “of the Royal Engineers”. The good Captain was not of the Royal Navy so not RN, which could be clued as ‘sailors’ but not ‘sailor’.
    How does ‘soldier’ fit the bill better than ‘soldiers’?

65. When I saw the preamble and read “Well, that was a struggle, very hard work and thought for a while it was going to beat me”, I thought Phil you must be ill.
    Yes, there were one or two debatable clues, hence an incredible 64 comments so far.

    Personally, I wouldn’t criticise Chifonie for RE being singular. I have seen this many times before.

    28ac must surely be RED’S START which is not what I call ‘elegant’. In a definition (in the clue itself) “apostrophe s” sometimes means “has” but Chifonie makes it part of the solution which is unusual, unsatisfying too.

    A lot has already been said about E = force.
    It’s not only whether this is right or wrong but also about why Chifonie chose to do this.
    He must have known that E is not really ‘force’.
    He could have simply written: “Indirect routes for Dutch force ultimately leading to French city” or the like.
    Now, that is not Chifonie.
    Chifonie doesn’t do “ultimately”, “initially”, “at last”, “finally” and the like.
    The clue becomes also too wordy in the eyes of this setter, I guess.

    I think this was a very easy crossword, perhaps easier than most Chifonies, but one that attracted so many comments only because of a few dubious things, things that one normally doesn’t associate with Chifonie.

    Thanks, flashling, and I hope the smiley in your preamble is tongue-in-cheek.

66. Sil @65

    “Thanks, flashling, and I hope the smiley in your preamble is tongue-in-cheek.”

    I really don’t understand why this matters to you!

    Why is it important that Rufus isn’t criticised for his “unusual” puzzles?

67. After all this, no on pointed out that a charter is also a constitution.

    I can imagine the setter sitting there trying to make a clue work with “constitution” standing for both charter and character, giving up, and settling on a mapmaker instead.

68. Brendan, I know Flashling well enough to understand what he means when he says “Seems odd to not be typing cryptic def and double def for every clue 🙂 “.
    It is tongue-in-cheek, as was my reply to that.
    But perhaps, I forgot to add my smiley.

    “I really don’t understand why this matters to you!
    Why is it important that Rufus isn’t criticised for his “unusual” puzzles?”

    My answer is simple: Why should one criticise Rufus for his “unusual” puzzles?
    Unusual? What’s unusual about them? Unique is a better word.
    Either love or hate them, I don’t care.
    It doesn’t matter much to me, actually.
    But Brendan, where I am closer to “love” (but not that close), you’re far more closer to “hate” (Rufus/Dante).
    And that’s what I don’t like about your post @66.
    It’s the undertone.

    However, I liked The Undertones!

69. rhotician @64
    I find your remarks becoming even more impenetrable. I cannot see what point you are trying to make in the first two sentences. The good Captain was indeed not in the Royal Navy, but you thrown in “RN …. could be clued as ‘sailors’ but not ‘sailor’, as if that were a generally held truth, rather than your opinion, for whatever reason. Why do I think ‘soldier’ fits better than ‘soldiers’? You seem to be hot on examples, so how many can you come up with in which the abbreviation RE refers to the regiment rather than an individual soldier? In all likelihood they exist, but I had no difficulty finding counter examples.

70. This was a straightforward and satisfying solve, so I came here not expecting much by way of controversy. How wrong I was! What an unpredictable lot you are.

    Just wanted to say that I agree with Brendan(NTO) @62 that this is, for me at least, a better form of ‘easy’ Monday crossword than the Rufuses (?Rufi) we usually get. This is not to criticise Rufus, who is a skilled and elegant setter, but the CDs are too often not on my wavelength.

71. Sil @68

    To continue your Love/Hate line analogy. On a line with Love at one end and Hate at the other I would imagine that you are some distance from the centre in the direction of Love whereas I am probably just off centre in the direction of Hate.

    It’s true that this puts me nearer Hate than you but to associate my feelings for Rufus puzzles with Hate is inflammatory and just wrong (Were you a politician once? 🙂 )

    As I have often said I am sure Rufus is a jolly nice chap but his puzzles are often overloaded with questionable CDs and DDs as well as outright non-cryptic clues. I fail to see how these puzzles are meant to help beginners solve the puzzles offered from Tue to Sat!

    I didn’t particular like your suggestion of “undertone” as I think I was quite clear in my original statement. I didn’t particularly like the “Undertones” either. (One hit wonders and free riders on the “Punk/New Wave” in my opinion. (I should have worked for the NME! )

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