Guardian 26,421 by Qaos

60 comments on “Guardian 26,421 by Qaos”

1. Thanks, manehi. I really enjoyed this. I agree with your COD being TREE RINGS. 🙂

   Tiny omission: you’ve forgotten I[nternational] in ANXIETIES – my “second favourite” clue, I think.

2. As an occasional solver, when I feel like a challenge I have the luxury of being able to take my pick of the recent Guardian crosswords. And if there is, say, a Paul or an Arachne on offer I’ll choose it ahead of the others. But the Guardian website makes picking and choosing more difficult than it might be, by not revealing the setter’s name until each crossword is opened. The list page gives the number of each crossword twice, which is endearingly dotty, but not the setters’ names.

   This is the most trivial inconvenience, but it’s irritating because it’s so unnecessary. Endeavouring to go through the proper channels I emailed the paper several years ago, to no avail. But I’m sure the Guardian would heed a request from a fifteen squared blogger. So – Eileen, Gaufrid, PeterO, manehi, Andrew, scchua, flashling – could one of you please have a quiet word with the editor?

3. Phil @ 2, if you’re talking about http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/cryptic , then I completely agree. It does seem a very wastefully designed page. There is ample room there to put the setter’s name, the day of the week it was published and much more besides. Or better still, scrap the boxes and just have a list.

   Enjoyed this crossword. Maybe one small notch down from that classic Qaos we had recently?, but masses to enjoy, and some lovely anagrinds and misdirection throughout (although I should imagine hedgehoggy will drop in later to question the cryptic grammar in 13d!).

   Looked like a Pangram was emerging at one point, but I think we’re a few letters short.

4. Phil @2. While I agree that they could easily add the setter’s name, there is a “Cryptics by setter” option.

5. Beer

6. Thanks Qaos and manehi

   I found this a real struggle, particularly in the SW, largely due to the clever misdirection, though once it was done I wondered why it had given such trouble. I didn’t parse OWLERIES or DAYS. Favourite was the simple SOWS.

   It is possible to regard 29a as “racist”, though apparently when the rugby player Billy Twelvetrees was at Leicester, Geordan Murphy, the club captain, always referred to him as “tirty-six”.

   I was going to comment on “bitter” not being the same as “sharp”, but it’s in Chambers, so that ends any possible discussion, I suppose.

7. Unusually for me, I spotted the beer theme early on, but it didn’t particularly help if completing the puzzle, especially when I was trying to convince myself that 8d was MILD. Thanks to Qaos and manehi.

8. After seeing the mention of a theme on the Guardian site, muffyword’s gnomic comment @5 now makes sense. How many are there? I can see nine, I think.

9. We crossed, Andrew. I wonder why Qaos didn’t include MILD for 8d?

10. Ten if “abbey” counts – several Belgian beers are made in abbeys. Does Belgian count too?

11. …………and Vienna, apparently.

12. At least some folks mentioned the lovely beer theme. I so wanted 8d to be mild but alas it didnt parse.
    Great puzzle.

13. Thnaks both. Only noticed the beer theme after completion, and then because I was looking for a colour theme (BROWN, YELLOWS, PALE). Surprising for somebody of my liking for a drop.

    Great work, Qaos.

14. There are Abbey Ales brewed in Bath.

15. Thanks, Manehi.

    I didn’t spot the theme, being a wine drinker myself – but you got your MILD with Puck’s ‘warm beer’ yesterday.

    An enjoyable puzzle with an unusually large number of anagrams, i thought. Lots of the usual wit and cunning in the clues.

    I don’t see why 29 should be considered racist, any more than the quite common crossword ‘The Northern’ for ‘t’. It reminded me of the joke about the two Irishmen looking for work. On seeing the sign, ‘Tree fellers wanted’, one said to the other, ‘What a pity there’s only the two of us’.

    Phil @2

    I’m amused that you should think that any of us have the ear of the Crossword Editor. Despite there being a link to this site on the crossword page, there’s no evidence at all that he ever looks in here. [If I did have any influence at all, there are several other issues I would sooner take up. 🙂 ] As well as using the ‘Cryptics by setter’ option that Blaise mentions, you can see the setters of all the puzzles on this page by letting your mouse hover over the days on the calendar.

    Many thanks to Qaos for the fun.

16. Thanks Eileen for the reminder about MILD in yesterday’s excellent Puck.

17. Thanks for sorting out 5d and 27d (where there were three dress sizes to pick the required two from, and I got hopelessly confused).

    Beer- I make it 11 now that I know about VIENNA.

18. Thanks Qaos and manehi

    I think manehi was making fools of you with 8d, Time to mock up original design!

    Enjoyed this, especially NEUTRINO. My garden sits atop the Large Hadron Collider etc.

19. Yes, I know you are thinking “so that explains her comments”.

20. 18@ that should have been Qaos, not manehi, of course. Another mess up by me.

21. There’s Nadir India Black Ale made by the Rockbottom Brewery in the USA (beeradvocate site)

22. Many nice clues, but a few just don’t work, do they? 1d especially is a mess. ‘Create, X’ is a terrible anagrind for X, D=god is tenuous in the extreme, and then what’s the def? If the whole clue is the def, is ‘How long it took God’ = D? I can’t take to ‘original design’ for D in 8d either.

    Liked the Blair dig in 17a. There is a similar if less vigorous sentiment in this week’s Cyclops.

23. I don’t agree that 29a is racist. Being Irish myself I found it very amusing. Definitely the best clue today. Dubliners even joke about this, which is why the group Thin Lizzy spelt their name that way and I suspect derived much amusement from those not in the know mispronouncing it.

    I do have a problem with 19a though. ‘Later’ meaning OLD isn’t in Chambers and I can’t think of an example of such usage.

24. Poc @ 23 et al
    I said “It is possible………..”, though I thought my Twelvetrees story showed that it shouldn’t be regarded as such.

    Thanks for the “Thin Lizzy” comment – I’ll make sure that I pronounce them correctly in future, to be “in the know”. (It wasn’t a wind-up, was it?)

25. Thanks Qaos & manehi.

    As Eileen @15 says, there is nothing racist about regional pronunciations and many Irish do say “tree” for three.

    As usual I missed the beer theme. I suspect Qaos did have ‘mild’ originally, but as Eileen said it may have been changed due to yesterday’s appearance.

    I liked the NEUTRINO as well as the TREE RINGS.

26. Mr A @22 – we agreed about 1d. We guessed the answer but couldn’t parse it. When did “D” = God? But it is perfect in 8d “original design” inplies first letter of design. Not brilliant but pretty good. We loved 17a – and thoroughly enjoyed the whole crossword.

27. applegranny @ 26
    I’ve only come across “D for God” in “D.V.”, short for “Deo volente” or “God willing”.

28. 1d, surely Deus and days are not taken to be near homophones? but why the “says”

29. Cookie @28
    “Create, say” – create is an anagram indicator for “say”, following “D for God”.

    I still thought this was the weakest clue, though.

30. muffin @27, there is also DG, Dei gratia, so there are probably several more similar abbreviations.

31. Thanks Qaos and manehi.

    I enjoyed this for the most part, although I wasn’t too keen on ‘clambers’ doing double duty in 24a.

    Phil @2: Select the current month from the drop-down list in the archive search section and click on the ‘Search’ button: the subsequent listings will include the setters’ names. Although, like you say, it would be so much better if they just did that on their standard listings. I can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t.

32. muffin @29, yes, but I just thought it might be doing double duty as a homophone indicator too, but that never seems to be the case in crosswords, does it?

33. In fact I’ve just found that clicking the lower ‘Search’ button with nothing entered in the ‘Serial number’ box lists all the puzzles with setters’ names.

34. Angstony @31 gives an example of double duty I see, and disapproves, so it is not unknown. I still have trouble with 24a, that is probably partly why; I keep trying to bring RAMBLER into the parsing.

35. Phil @2; as others have said, if you start at this page:

    http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/cryptic

    The ‘Cryptics by setter’ is on the extreme left, so you can pick your favourite setter and see all the crosswords compiled by him/her.

36. Thanks Qaos for the challenge, and thanks manehi for explaining 1d and 13d. Like others I am not taken with the former.

    Regarding 4d, I enjoyed “B sharp” but I wondered if this could have been expressed as “C”. Would that have been a good “lift and separate” or a step too far?

37. Could 24a in fact be to do with IT (information technology) and SCRAMBLER ? No, it must just mean the motorbike.

38. Thanks, manehi.

    I did like this puzzle, with its misdirections and (largely) excellent surfaces. BROWN, NEUTRINO, SOWS and MOSS stood out for me. Alas, I missed the beers, though it would not have helped much at all if I had spotted the theme, as so many of the themed words are short and have a lot of other unrelated meanings.

    However, my enjoyment was slightly marred by several clues whose cryptic grammar doesn’t quite work, some of which have been noted already by other posters. 1d, 16d and 19d all have the anagrind in the form of a finite verb, when the grammar really requires a participle, and 13d seems to be a sentence with two verbs (‘Top Cat tp pinch…’ would work better).

39. Make that ‘Top Cat to pinch…’!

40. Cookie@18-21
    Same here, or just a kilometre away. We glow in the dark

41. I enjoyed this a lot but missed the theme as usual (can’t see the wood for the threes). Favourites were NEUTRINO and ABBEY. Thanks to Qaos and manehi.

42. Which Irish accent? There are many, or should I just excuse your ignorance?

43. That’s a lot of comments for this time of day.

    I enjoyed this a lot, though the theme makes me feel quite thirsty. Last in was OLD – I couldn’t quite see why later worked… Liked STOUT, TORMENTED, ANTBEAR, BROWN and TREE RINGS. I see muffin has got in first with the Twelvetrees story, which I first heard several years before he played for England.

    Thanks to Qaos and manehi

44. PS I’m a bit surprised that nobdoy has commented on Azeri = Asian, since apparently there is some debate about this, at least according to Wikipedia, and they have won Eurovision…

45. Back after some time away and found this a good tussle. Shame I had MIND for 8d

46. Thanks manehi and Qaos

    Very enjoyable, even though I missed the beer theme.

    The puzzle also seemed to be a clever ‘study’ in the use of a wide variety of anagram and other letter-moving indicators, with some clues, e.g. 12a and 22a, offering more than one possibility. The answer to 12a might almost be seen as a statement of this constructional theme.

47. Hi tupu

    That’s interesting: I almost said at my comment 15, that, having missed the beer theme, I’d almost wondered whether anagrams constituted a theme.

48. I found this really difficult and I didn’t see the theme despite BITTER being my first in and being a beer drinker for more years than I’m prepared to share with you. Perhaps long exposure to said beverage has finally softened my brain. I can’t say I liked VIENNA and my assumption that the 6 in the clue referred to PALE lead me a merry dance looking for a PALE QUEEN.
    Not one of my better days!

49. Thanks to Limeni, Blaise, Eileen, Angstony and Robi for your comments on my “problem” @2, and especially to Angstony @33 for the simple workaround.

50. Cookie @34 & 37: I confess I never even considered the motorbike meaning alluded to by the surface reading, I was thinking only of the climbing/clambering meaning. That actually makes it a semi-&lit clue, so the double-duty usage is a tad more palatable.

51. Thanks to Puck and manehi. I had a similar reaction as Peter@48 when I learned that there was a
    beer theme. Been drinking said libation since the early 60’s; maybe it’s time to switch to gin?
    Needed help with several parsings. Moss is a fashion icon? I thought she just wore somebody’s
    clothes. ANTBEAR was my favorite.

    Cheers…

52. NormanLinFrance @40, Point 4 is just down the bridle path from us. My next door neighbour was on the Nestor Project, and I still get all the latest neutrino news.

53. Hi folks,

    Glad you enjoyed today’s brew. As some of you guessed, MILD was in an earlier version of the puzzle, but Puck got there first and you really can’t have the same answer appearing two days running.

    My original clue for MILD was “1049 + 500? Not too harsh” (the ghost theme not allowing any beer references, of course). Puck’s clue yesterday was much neater (“Warm beer”) and could almost have been a teaser for today’s puzzle :-).

    Cheers!

    Qaos

54. Thanks for popping in and explaining, Qaos.

    Just one question – why can’t you have the same word appearing in consecutive puzzles by different compilers? If anything, it adds to the misdirection!

55. I guess it’s just a Guardian rule, like the Times one for not referencing living people (except Her Majesty). It’s happened to me before with an earier (or later? ;-)) 007 themed puzzle, where SECRET had been used recently. But I’m not complaining – the foremost priority is fun, enjoyable clues. The ghost theme is just an added bonus.

56. After the first pass I had over fifty percent of the puzzle solved and thought this was going to be a quick solve.

    However the remainder of the clues proved much more of a challenge with plenty of “aha” moments.

    I enjoyed this except for my LOI which was DAYS. I wrote this in with absolutely no confidence having parsed it as manehi did. I came here expecting to see the obvious correct answer which I had stupidly missed! However as has been discussed already it appears to be just a weak clue. (Or perhaps we are still missing something)

    Naturally I never spotted the theme. (I never do)

    Did anybody else spend a minute or two trying to make BENGALI a European for 14A?

    Thanks to manehi and Qaos

57. Hands up for Bengali!

58. I went down the same track as Cookie @28.

    Younger solvers might not realise that Officer Dibble was a policeman in the cartoon series “Top Cat”. Maybe some of my generation have overlooked this as well. Hence the capitalised Cat in 13d. I’m surprised no one has mentioned this already.

59. Thanks Qaos and manihi

    Started this last week and then sat on it for a while before finishing it in the early hours of this morning.

    Like many of you, I found it a very interesting and enjoyable solve with the wide variety of misdirection the standout in it. Not clever enough to see the beer theme, although it beacons out now that one knows !

    Again like many, my last in was DAYS and didn’t have the issues that some did with it. The puzzle actually broke into two halves – getting the RHS done first and struggling a bit to work the LHS out. Eventually got there and was happy that I did.

60. bit late as usual but 18d could have been ‘oiltrees’ as well.

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