Guardian 26,422 / Chifonie

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[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here

The most common epithet used in preambles of Chifonie puzzles appears to be ‘straightforward’ And so it was with this one – the usual blend of nicely-clued charades, insertions and anagrams, with a couple of double definitions thrown in for good measure – apart from one pesky piece of parsing which took longer than the rest of the puzzle put together!

Across

1 Soldier’s plot to be a freeloader (8)
PARASITE
PARA [soldier] + SITE [plot]

5 Tory leader taking part in hunt is virtuous (6)
CHASTE
T[ory] in CHASE [hunt]

9 Offered and was inclined to embrace soldier (8)
TENDERED
TENDED [was inclined] round RE [soldier – which might cause discussion again]

10 Block major road going through eyesore? (6)
STYMIE
M1 [major road] in STYE [eyesore – as ever in crosswords!]

12 Use up change aboard ship (5)
SPEND
P [penny – change] in [aboard] SEND [ship]
It was a real ‘doh’ moment when this finally occurred, just as I was dropping off to sleep after staying up to solve the puzzle after midnight. Looking at the clue again this morning, I can’t think why it took so long: ‘change’ means the same as it does in the surface reading – but then we’re not used to that! And, of course, seeing the familiar ‘aboard ship’ led me initially to enter S???S. Nicely done, Chifonie! 😉

13 Heave when swallowing fish supplement (9)
SURCHARGE
SURGE [heave] round [swallowing] CHAR [fish]

14 Be pessimistic about weather — frost is widespread (4,3,5)
FEAR THE WORST
Anagram [about – or widespread] of WEATHER FROST

18 Athletes wrongly appear to be the outstanding performers (5,3,4)
STEAL THE SHOW
Anagram [wrongly] of ATHLETES + SHOW [appear]

21 No writer got into a row for a utensil (3-6)
TIN-OPENER
NO PEN [writer] in TIER [row]

23 Band of Greek publishers (5)
GROUP
GR [Greek] + Oxford University Press [publishers]

24 Limit relationship with knight (6)
RATION
RATIO [relationship] + N [knight – chess notation]

25 Taro cooked — hunger for drug (8)
ATROPINE
Anagram [cooked] of TARO + PINE [hunger]

26 Vessel for a service in church (6)
CARAFE
A RAF [a service] in CE [Church of England]

27 Master villain to suspend a meeting (8)
PROROGUE
PRO [master] + ROGUE [villain]

Down

1 Pawn books when hospital supplies chemical compound (6)
POTASH
P [pawn – chess notation again] + OT [books] + AS [when] + H [hospital]

2 Warden initially registered indignation (6)
RANGER
R[egistered] + ANGER [indignation]

3 Despatch spring flower (9)
SPEEDWELL
SPEED [despatch – both as nouns] + WELL [spring]

4 Confident Barbarian enters the fun of the game (8,4)
TREASURE HUNT
SURE HUN [confident Barbarian – capitalised to suggest the rugby team] + TREAT [fun]

6 Drawback for couple (5)
HITCH
Double definition

7 Rob’s more awkward in a hat (8)
SOMBRERO
Anagram [awkward] of ROB’S MORE

8 Fundamental principles of weather (8)
ELEMENTS
Double definition

11 Speaker keeps royal box for the organiser (12)
ORCHESTRATOR
ORATOR [speaker] round R [royal] CHEST [box]

15 Miscreant forced Roger down (9)
WRONGDOER
Anagram [forced] of ROGER DOWN

16 Store ice produced in secret (8)
ESOTERIC
Another anagram – of STORE ICE

17 Smirk when taking in this month in Ireland (8)
LEINSTER
LEER [smirk? – I’m struggling a bit with this] round INST [this month]

19 Walk round Oxfordshire town is transfixing (6)
GORING
GO [walk] + RING [round] to give a double definition of an Oxfordshire town [which Wikipedia defines as a large village and I found it in a gazeteer of Oxfordshire villages: I hadn’t heard of this [Goring-on-Thames] but I knew Goring-by-Sea, so it was a plausible place name] and transfixing

20 Spanish leaders present in province (6)
SPHERE
SP [Spanish leaders] + HERE [present]

22 Penny’s covering evidence (5)
PROOF
P [penny] + ROOF [covering]

57 comments on “Guardian 26,422 / Chifonie”

  1. I sometimes think c.+d.d.s like 19d are a bit harsh. “Walk round an Oxfordshire town” is surely adequate (or “Walk round a large Oxfordshire village”!) where it’s a simple answer. I was trying to get GO to go round the outside of a four-letter Oxon town, of which there are of course none since it’s a village.

    I don’t usually criticise clues nor least setters, and I have a life, but this one just irked me a bit having got the crossers and still unable to be sure of the answer.

  4. Yup, straighforward barring the SE corner (not just because of 19, also because PROROGUE was new to me). 19 might be a bit more fair if the place name was a little less obscure to those of us not too familiar wit Oxfordshire.

  5. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I don’t think I had quite as much trouble with SPEND as you did, but it was certainly one of my LOIs.

    PROROGUE is perhaps most familiar as being what happens the to UK Parliament in the period between the end of a session and the next Queen’s Speech, or an election. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used in any other sense.

    The village of Goring is mentioned in Three Men in a Boat, in the section that describes how they came across the body of a woman who had drowned herself in the Thames – a passage that I think is the more shocking and touching for occurring in the middle of a comic novel: see here.

  6. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

    Just the right level for me, I really enjoyed solving this puzzle.
    Favourites were STYMIE and POTASH , PROROGUE rang a very faint bell.

    21a TIN-OPENER, there is an N missing, should it be NO?

  7. Hi Andrew

    Thanks for the interesting link – not one of the books I’ve read. [My daughter and son-in-law used to live in a little house in Reading and their garden ran down to the river. I don’t remember it as being particularly dirty and dismal. 😉 ]

    Re PROROGUE: it is the term used for suspending Parliament between sessions, as you say, but, before an election, Parliament is dissolved.

    Thanks, cookie – corrected now.

  8. Many thanks Chifonie & Eileen

    This was quite easy except for GORING which completely floored me and it has left me with tears streaming down my face.

    Your commiserations would be welcomed.

  10. Thanks to Chifonie and Eileen. Fairly straightforward for me, although I also couldn’t parse SPEND and thought GORING was rather OTT but must be right. Particularly liked TIN-OPENER and TREASURE HUNT.

  11. Hi again, Andrew

    Sorry to have appeared nit-picking but, when teaching A Level 17th History, I had to make sure that students understood the distinction. 😉

  12. The obscurity of Goring-on-Thames is a little over-rated I feel (though it’s no town). It’s where the ancient Ridgeway crossed the Thames, from its hill-top route along the Chilterns and Berkshire Downs, so it’s been a place of some significance since ancient times – I even remember hearing about the Goring Gap in geography lessons, and that’s a very long time ago. Great Western trains still speed through. But if you’ve not heard of it, it’s obscure, I guess.

    Well put-together puzzle from Chifonie today. Straightforward enough, but enough about it that I had to break off a couple of times to let the brain reconfigure.

  14. I thought SPEND was very good; unlike GORING which – fittingly, I suppose – was a horror!

    15d got me wondering how many Roger Downs there are in the world, and whether they know their name is an anagram of wrongdoers! 🙂

    Thanks Chifonie and Eileen.

  15. Not much to add.SPEND was my loi and I didn’t think much of GORING even though I’d heard of the place. Having found yesterday’s puzzle a tad difficult, this was rather soothing.
    Thanks Chifonie.

  16. Thanks, Eileen.

    Pleasant puzzle, which didn’t hold me up for long.

    I particularly liked 14a and 26a: well constructed and with great surfaces. GORING was also my LOI; though I am familiar with the place, I was misled by the unnecessary ‘three chances’ nature of the clue.

    Very heavy on the ‘container’ clues – I counted 12.

  17. Thanks all
    Very straightforward. Last in was surcharge although not because it was difficult, just because it was the last I got round to!
    Favourite perhaps , 4down.

  18. This was not the easiest Chifonie we’ve seen recently, so I suppose we should be grateful for that, but it still felt a bit lacklustre after Puck and Qaos. SPEND was my last in too, so I can understand why it took a while to parse (I gave up and decided it had to be right). I also needed all of the crossers to remember Goring, mainly because I thought of it as a village too (and it didn’t take long to eliminate all of the proper towns).

    Thanks to Eileen and Chifonie.

  20. I actually liked ‘walk round’ for GO/ RING, but it ran into trouble after that I’ll agree.

    Nice to see at 21 the correct usage, in the ‘cryptic reading’, for GOT. Americans don’t bother with it, do they? Just using ‘do you have’ rather than ‘have you got’ et cetera. My wife is half-English (don’t know which half hahaha), educated abroad, and never uses ‘got’.

    This was too easy for me, but I quite liked it.

  21. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. You explained why I had the right answer for 4d.

    On 2d I started with ‘warden initially’ and tried to make a suitable word starting with W and got nowhere. 🙁 Eventually I got things the right way round.

    On 19d I saw, eventually, a triple definition. GO RING / Oxfordshire town / transfixing. This sort of thing is not common but I think it is acceptable.

  22. The other thing I meant to mention: on 3d the words despatch and speed could both be read as verbs. This is how I saw it.

  23. Thanks Eileen and Chifonie

    My only hold-up was right at the start, when I tried to fit “pop” for “pawn” in 1d, fooled by “pawn books” into thinking I was looking for the verb.

    The Goring Gap is quite well-known to anyone who has studied any British physical geography; it’s an apparently impressive feature where the Thames cuts through the chalk of the Chilterns and Berkshire Downs. What should be more impressive is the amount of deposit that has been removed to leave the lower land surfaces upstream of the chalk!

  25. Hi Derek
    Chambers: “the relation of one thing to another of which the quotient is the measure”
    Oxford: “the quantitative relation between two amounts showing the number of times one value contains or is contained within the other”
    Macmillan: “a relationship between the sizes of two numbers or amounts”
    Merriam-Webster: “the relationship that exists between the size, number, or amount of two things and that is often represented by two numbers”
    Collins gives ratio and relationship as synonyms.

    Are they all wrong?

  26. OCED, the quantitative relation between two similar magnitudes determined by the number of times one contains the other integrally or fractionally

  27. For 19d, I thought Wing might be an Oxfordshire town and had the answer as Wowing. Was confused why W would be walk, I must admit.

  29. Well, Gaufrid, I would say so, or at best they are vacuous.

    We have of course been here several times before and I tend to agree with Derek.

    Chambers: “the relation of one thing to another of which the quotient is the measure”

    I have trouble reading any meaning into this. Does the “of which” refer to “relation” or “another”? Presumably to “relation”, in which case what is the quotient of a relation? If a “relation” is synonymous with “ratio” this means the quotient of a ratio? What’s that?

    Oxford: “the quantitative relation between two amounts showing the number of times one value contains or is contained within the other”

    “quantative” is redundant, since they are talking about “amounts”. If the two amounts are 2 and 4, does anyone really say 2 contains 4 one half times? (“4 times 1/2 is 2” is fine)

    Macmillan: “a relationship between the sizes of two numbers or amounts”

    This doesn’t imply taking a quotient; if, for the moment I accept their interpretation of a relation, the sum or difference would satisfy their definition.

    Ditto the Merriam-Webster one.

  31. Nice one – particularly liked GORING with its double layer of complexity but am surprised people found it so obscure.

  34. Hi Dave @29
    One of the problems I find with modern dictionaries is that definitions are often cut down so that more words can be included in a single volume without the text size being reduced so far that it becomes barely legible.

    I prefer the definition of ‘ratio’ from a century ago in Webster’s (1913). This aligns more closely with that which I was taught many years ago:

    “(Math.) The relation which one quantity or magnitude has to another of the same kind. It is expressed by the quotient of the division of the first by the second; thus, the ratio of 3 to 6 is expressed by a to b by a/b; or (less commonly) the second is made the dividend; as, a:b = b/a. Some writers consider ratio as the quotient itself, making ratio equivalent to a number. The term ratio is also sometimes applied to the difference of two quantities as well as to their quotient, in which case the former is called arithmetical ratio, the latter, geometrical ratio.”

  35. When I typed ‘RATIO [relationship]’ this morning I knew it was a case of ‘Light blue touchpaper …’, which is why I made no further comment.

    Derek, I knew I could rely on you. 😉

  36. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

    This did feel a little more difficult than usual from this setter – probably caused more by time constraints – having three different sessions. As it turns out, I either didn’t parse or got the parsing wrong on 12a, 13a and the first bit of 19d.

    Regardless of level of difficulty, I find his crosswords are always entertaining.

  37. Had no problems with 19d – and worked through the clue from right to left:
    – a word for transfixing ( -O-I-N- ) – GORING fits …
    – is there a place in Oxfordshire called GORING – yes, Goring-on-Thames
    – hmm … how does that fit into ‘walk round’? I plumped for GOING (the path – as in heavy going) around R for round … which wasn’t quite right.

  38. hedgehoggy @ 20, I am American and use “have you got” and “do you have” interchangeably. I’m also quite familiar with the usage “got into,” as in the clue, where I took it to indicate enclosure (of NO PEN in TIER), the same as how, when one gets into a car, one is thereby inside it.

  39. Straightforward as stated.

    LOI was GORING which was OK once one saw the “tripleness” of it. 🙂

    I also sighed when I saw the old ratio/relationship chestnut as I could already see the comments on here from the usual suspects. As a mathematician to degree level I have no problem with someone describing a ratio as a relationship. But I am a pure mathematician after all 😉

    Thanks to Eileen and Chifonie

  40. Wow! I never would have thought the word ‘ratio’ could stir up such controversy.

    Speaking as a layperson I feel most dictionary definitions add seemingly unnecessary complications to their descriptions of the word. It’s as though they’ve been derived from fulsome textbook descriptions but rendered almost meaningless by lexicographers trying to condense the original text rather than properly understanding the concept and explaining it simply. For that I think the opening sentence of the Simple English Wikipedia article does the best job with: A ratio between two or more quantities is a way of measuring their sizes compared to each other.

    That said, I think the idea of a ratio being a relationship is well enough known to make it a fair clue in a crossword. I mean, I doubt many – if any – of us here had any trouble understanding what was meant.

  41. Neil @ 27,

    Snap! I made the same incorrect assumption about Wing. I thought W for walk could be from baseball, but walks are more commonly abbreviated BB (base on balls), so that was a stretch as well. I completely forgot about Goring, which is a shame because I once walked some of the Ridgeway starting from there.
    I also assumed the Speedwell was a river, but no; a bona fide flower for once!

    Nicely done, Chifonie, and thanks to Eileen.

  43. Gaufrid @ 34. Yes, that is a clearer definition – I wonder if the age is significant. I have never come across the difference definition (despite, also, being a mathematician), so that is interesting. I would have cited a maths dictionary P348 where it is “A quotient of two numbers”, which seems fine to me – until you start investigating quotient.

    Thanks to Chifonie and Eileen.

  45. Hi y’all, sorry been out at a blues gig. Um, why wouldn’t dictionary references be wrong when they are based on common usage, which is frequently unreliable. If you want technical correctness it is utter folly to look anywhere but a technical reference. Looking in dictionaries is pointless.

    Take

    a/b = c/d

    We have a ratio which is related (by the = relational operator) to some other ratio. The / is an arithmetic operator, it is not a relational operator. The ratios in this case form part of a relational expresion (due to the =), but they are not the part of the expression which makes it relational, that would be like saying a leg is a human being just because it is part of a human being.

    a+b = c+d

    is also a relational expression. The binary operators + – x / are all the same, they are arithmetic operators, not relational operators. I take it none of you would ever say a+b is a relationship? But arithmetically, + and / are of equivalent significance, they signify the performance an arithmetic operation on one value by using a second value, but that is all they signify. So go on, if you insist a/b is a relationship why not a+b? No, I didn’t think so.

    So yes one of us does indeed have serious trouble thinking of ratio when somebody says relationship, it just isn’t.

  46. Very quickly done. No problem with 19d. Viewed from a narrow boat thirty-ish years ago, Goring was quite beautiful, with a wonderful riverside pub.

  47. DL @45

    So now you’ve resorted to “good ol” semantics! 😉

    However, despite your protestation, a ratio does express a relationship between 2 quantities. (I’m not really interested in what the relationship is as it’s not relevant to the clue.)

    Of course now you’ll come back to say the clue is too non-specific. Thought I’d save you the bother.

  48. Okay Derek, so when that well known ratio ‘pi’ is described as the ‘relationship’ between the diameter and circumference of circles, is that also wrong? As the size of one element in a ratio is changed, do not the other elements also change by the same multiplicative proportion? Does that not indicate that they are directly ‘related’ to one another?

  49. Language precedes the codifcation of grammar, its definition in dictionaries, and subsequent technical references.

    Language evolves through its use by people. If the others don’t they ossify and become obsolete.

  50. c/d is not a relationship it is a ratio to be evaluated. pi is not a relationship it is a number. c/d=pi is a relationship. It says if we divide c/d and compare it for equality to pi we get the logical answer true.

    I was trying to keep things simple for the natives, but strictly speaking a ratio is written as a::b. To evaluate it you have to transform that to a/b. What :: says is, this is a defered division, don’t do the division now because the two values are of interest in themselves and that information will be destroyed when the division is actually performed. So it is a delayed arithmetic operator, not a relational operator. It is saying don’t perform any evaluation just yet.

    However, a relationship requires an evaluation to take place in order to perform a comparison which yields a true or false answer. Every relational operator specifies a method of comparison which yields a true or false result. :: does not require you to do anything, let alone perform a comparison. So it can’t be a relationship.

  51. Most folk – and by that I mean non mathematicians – have little trouble evaluating quantities in a given ratio. For example, recipes calling for x parts of one ingredient to y parts of another. They understand that anything done to one element must also be done (by the same proportion) to the other in order to maintain the correct ratio. That, to them, constitutes a connection, a relationship.

    Moreover, I have just checked out the link Dave Ellison @43 provided to a mathematics dictionary and it is interesting to note the opening sentence for the entry (the second part of which he curiously omitted):

    RA’TIO, adj., n. The quotient of two numbers (or quantities); the relative sizes of two numbers (or quantities).

    So it seems to me there are at least two definitions for ratio and you are doggedly excluding one of them.

  52. I can’t believe how much pedantry an apparently throwaway clue can generate – Eileen was right about lighting the blue touchpaper

  53. There is a problem with that definition, you get a quotient from a division, a ratio is not a division, it is something which may be transformed into a division. A ratio does nothing bar set up the potential for a division. When you perform the division you get a quotient. You are using the same numbers but :: does nothing with them whereas / does something with them, produces a quotient. The whole point of a ratio is to not do the division, otherwise we would only need division, the two would be tautologous, which is the mistake inherent in common usage.

  55. What DL seems to be missing is that whether one does the division or not a ratio still expresses a relationship!

    As in “After the ballot the the ratio of the ‘yes’ to ‘no’ votes was 23:1”

  56. Nothing at all lack lustre about this puzzle. I found it a real treat. Thanks to blogger and the wizardry of chifonie.

  57. DerekLazenby@50

    Agree with your general point, but c/d=pi not a relationship as pi is irrational and can’t ever be equal to a quotient.

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