Guardian 26,494 by Qaos

71 comments on “Guardian 26,494 by Qaos”

1. No comment. Just wanted to be first to post. Fourth broken night with flu.

   Night night.

2. …should have said I only posted after finishing the puzzle. I’m not that cheap.

3. Failure! I’m not enough of an Anglophile to be able to get ‘Benn’, apparently, although somehow I managed to come up with ‘Eton Wall Game’. Non-UK solvers are going to find this tough. ‘Howard’ vaguely rang a bell, but I had to rely on the cryptic for ‘Dennis Skinner’.

   I was also wrong in interpreting 1 across as referring to Albert Herring, but right answers still count!

4. Failed only on the Eton game: irritating, as I ‘d heard of it. The other local ones fell in, with the clueing. Thanks Qaos.

5. Could get all but BENN – I had never heard of the boxer, and there was no wordplay to help out. Not being British, I needed help for the Labour MP’s last name (the first one was quite clear from the wordplay and the crosses). Had no clue what ETON WALL GAME was, but WALL GAME fell into place clearly enough from the wordplay, and the crosses then left very few options for first word.

   Overall, a great time – thank you, Qaos and manehi!

6. It’s cetainly true that Albert Herring is described as a comic hero:

   http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/may/08/albert-herring-britten-comic-opera

   And although I have only just looked that up, I’m with vinyl1 when it came to entering the answer.

   Herring is of course very English – he comes from the great Britten – and Wedgie Benn was arguably a great Briton. One of Michael Howard’s colleagues when he was a bit younger would have been Leon Brittan.

   While I would defend British references in a British crossword and would suggest overseas solvers have to expect this and take it on the chin (how British!), I struggle a little with the cross-reference to Nigel Benn (especially at the wrong weight!) and most particularly with Robbie Savage, in respect of how they are clued. There was no real wordplay alternative for the solutions.

   Just not cricket!

7. Had “do yen” for 4dn, but corrected when I solved 23dn and realised 4dn must be something to do with veg.

   Gave up on last clue, 22ac. Thought the answer probably started with chev.

   Otherwise very enjoyable. COD,5ac, fellows.

8. Thanks Qaos and manehi

   At this risk of sounding “hedgehoggy”, I thought that there were several very dubious clues here. 9a I dislike the x% trick, and why does “white” = “clean”? 22a why is “chase” = “drive away”; “chase away”, yes, but just “chase”? 5d “bums” might be intended as doing double duty, but surely the anagrind would be “bum”, as it is an adjective? 6d we had to find “punch” = “sock” (not obvious), then behead it. 8d “me” = “I”? 19d and 24d reference pretty obscure sportsmen (especially to overseas solvers).

   I too took 1a to refer to Albert Herring.

9. Didn’t manage to complete this, probably just not in the right frame of mind for some reason. RIGHT ANGLE was first in; I didn’t parse it properly and assumed that we were dealing with a cock-up and that “glaring heat” was the anagram fodder (which would also leave us with no anagrind). So apologies to Qaos and Hugh for assuming such slovenliness.

   Not a bad puzzle at all; a lot of clever stuff there.

10. Thank you manehi; needed your help with much of the parsing, especially of 24d. I’m more “au fait” with British politicians than boxers (whatever their weight!) and the “left” was the only help for me in the wordplay.

    I can appreciate that this puzzle may have posed extra problems for non-UK solvers. Having said that, Chevy Chase is probably better known in the US than over here – fortunately the wordplay made it easier, for me at least.

    Have found most of this week’s puzzles more difficult than usual – thank you Qaos for not bucking the trend!

11. Thanks, manehi.

    Unusually for a QAOS, I did not find this fun, more of a struggle to get to the end.

    I thought some of the surfaces were hard to discern or clunky (9a), if not impossible as in 3d for example.

    Thanks, QAOS; I look forward to a return to form in your next one.

12. Well 8 clues are all right, unfortunately there are 20 others.

    1a doesn’t define; 5a the answer is DON, not FELLOWS; 9a poor grammar; 10a wrong tense def; 11a wrong tense ind; 12a wrong tense 2nd def, even if you like the rest of that bit; 14a wrong tense ind; 18a R must have an e.g. or it’s dbe; 26 def is archaic at best; 1d HOW does not mean ‘question’; 3d is ‘over’ the ind?; 7d what’s BY doing?; 8d I does not equal ‘me’; 15d ‘played with’ would be better than ‘played’ surely; 16d not sure about ‘mutant’ even tho it’s an adj; 17d can’t find O for ‘order’; 20/ 27d K should really be ‘thousand(s)’ because grand is G; 24d why have ‘a’?.

    Sorry, yes I know, very ‘down’, but according to the hedgehoggy mind-set, this is truly dreadful 🙁

13. The common test for whether a clue is an &lit is if every word can be used as both part of the wordplay *and* the definition. For this reason, I would say 5 down is definitely &lit. (Along with my view that Qaos is generally too clever and careful to have any words do double-duty.)

14. Thanks Qaos and manehi.

    Someone elsewhere has already said this morning that Qaos’ style is unique, and I agree. I reckon I could pick out one of his puzzles in a blind tasting any day. The danger of being so distinctive, of course, is that you won’t be to everyone’s taste, but the sheer cleverness of his grid constructions (along with some beautiful clues such as 1a) is what I admire most.

    Initially this looked like it was mostly a political commentary (and why not, less than three months from a general direction) but on closer scrutiny you can also find (Richard) HERRING, (Graham) FELLOWS, (Martin) WHITE, (Jack) DEE, (Frank) SKINNER, (Russell) HOWARD, (Mitch) BENN, (Jeff) GREEN, (Jonny) VEGAS, (Sean) LOCK, (Lily) SAVAGE and (Les) DENNIS – all British stand-up comedians.

    Bravo, Qaos, bravo.

15. Oh, and (Stewart) LEE (possibly the best of the lot), er, stands up in FREELOADS…

16. I still think you are missing the point, hedge, me old China. It’s a cryptic puzzle, not an exercise in perfect English. For all your criticism, I solved this in 40 minutes and have no complaints about any of the solutions. Isn’t that the point?

    You need to wait for the “criticising other peoples’ attempts at English essays and prose” blog site.

17. Sean LOCK…

18. Strike that. Already spotted. Sorry.

19. 24d I had LEON (think Trotsky and Spinks)

20. Thanks Qaos and manehi.

    Well done Mitz! You weren’t fooled by the red herring and chased up the identities.

    I enjoyed this, but found it hard and am still struggling with IDENTITIES …

    Tim Phillips, do hope you’re feeling a bit better today.

21. Well maybe, Tim Phillips, but to me grammar is grammar whether it’s in a book or in a crossword clue. An idea is not made more boring by being written well in my view, though some people just can’t write, also it seems to me.

    Some people shouldn’t be allowed on the road in a car either, same thing 😀

22. HH@21: That’s your opinion of course, but as a poet, I’m quite happy for people to bend the rules of grammar for the sake of their art. I extend the same privilege to cruciverbalists.

    And indeed to, say, F1 drivers, who might be on a road but hardly follow the highway code. But their road is their paper, their canvas, their stave. And It’s one made especially for them, and not for the more pedestrian (in any sense) road users. Just as a cruciverbalist’s section of the paper is not a mere page on which people might expect a more formal writing style 🙂

23. I thought at first that there was some sort of double cluing in 5a (not only are Pasquale and Quixote both dons, they’re both literally fellows in the sense of being fellow crossword compilers) until I remembered that Pasquale and Quixote are one and the same!

    A very nice puzzle, although I don’t much like clues like BENN and (to a slightly lesser extent) SAVAGE. Without wordplay (or even decent crossers – S_V_G_ would have been much easier than _A_A_E) it just becomes a matter of general knowledge. Either you know the boxer/MP/pundit, or you don’t.

    Given the surprising coincidence of SINNER + SINNED in Dennis Skinner’s name, I’m surprised Qaos didn’t make a bit more of it. A “Did wrong? And who did it?” sort of thing, perhaps.

24. Defeated by 24d. Couldn’t parse 18a or 19d. I wouldn’t go as far as hedghoggy but I’m certainly with muffin @8. Qaos can do brilliant things, such as 1a. Perhaps some of the others are the result of trying too hard?

25. Thanks Qaos and manehi.

    I enjoyed this, though it took me longer than I usually like to spend.

    Can’t find O as Order? Try OBE or OM. QED!

26. Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Baby Dodds, Django Reinhardt…broke every ‘rule’ in the (music) book.

    Produced some of the greatest music ever (which would have sounded dreadful if they had stuck to the rules). Armstrong in particular possibly the greatest ever composer and player of trumpet in jazz.

    No, ‘edge, you cannot conflate crossword quiz clues as part of a pleasurable (sic) pastime with prose.

27. Schroduck @23: I agree about the _A_A_E and despite being an avid football fan failed to get it; in fact, having all the crossers and noting the political theme, I thought it might be FARAGE, ith FA being the football reference somehow.

28. JA @ 27

    Great idea, but unfortunately Farage isn’t a comic. Oh, hang on a minute…

29. Thanks to manehi for the blog.

    Why should ‘vitamin’ in the clue indicate E when lots of other letters are possible e.g. A, B, C etc?

30. Thanks Qaos and to Mitz @14 for revealing the theme.

    Thanks also to manehi for a good blog. A bit too much GK needed for my taste. Nice setting though to get all those stand-ups in.

31. I would say that the best poetry is very grammatical. And it’s certainly not boring! The grammar is often used differently, but always very carefully, for that is the art of the poet. It is to have a super-command of language and usage.

    Crossword clues are little sets of instructions which need to be set out clearly and precisely so that they can be understood. They are not poems. They can look like poetry sometimes, but even then they must be clear.

    That’s my view.

32. Afternoon all!

    Thanks for all the comments – positive and negative. Thanks to the Guardian’s generosity, it’s a public crossword and so open to everyone’s view. Life would be very boring if everyone liked the same thing! Thanks also to manehi for the blog – always appreciated.

    I’m very impressed you got today’s ghost theme (even with the hint Tweet), as it was extra hidden behind all the political references. For that, I have Dennis Skinner to thank. After seeing him on this BBC clip, I thought “How funny – Hugh DENNIS and Frank SKINNER … what are the chances of that. I feel a theme coming on …”.

    As ever, the ghost theme is supposed to be a nice extra. Enjoyable fun clues are the main thing.

    Best wishes,

    Qaos.

33. CHAS @29, because it is esoteric? Captcha four – ? = 0

34. That was quite challenging, especially the NE corner – FELLOWS took me ages and I needed that to see FREELOADS, my last in. Plenty of entertainment – liked WHITE, ACHIEVING, SHRIEKED and particularly DENNIS SKINNER

    Thanks to Qaos and manehi

35. Count me among the fans of this puzzle, even though it took me an age and I even managed to mess up ‘identities’, inventing some word I’ve now forgotten. ‘Herring’ was very good.

    The Times had a very Dean Mayeresque puzzle today of a similar quality and slightly easier standard, if anyone has the time, inclination or money.

36. @Poc – Yeah, ‘Leon’ was my guess. I thought Spinks was too obscure, but you never know.

    I did like the rest of the puzzle, and did not find the clues or the wordplay unfair….just a bit quaotic.

37. Incidentally, the ghost theme might also explain why Chevy Chase is clued as “U.S. comedian,” since all the other comedians are British–and for that matter, Chevy Chase is more a comic actor than a comedian.

    The Washington suburb doesn’t figure in, as it might in a U.S. version of the clue.

    As might be expected, I couldn’t get Benn, never having heard of either Benn. Dennis Skinner came easily enough–and the clever clue (using both “sinner” and “sinned”) more than made up for any difficulty. “Eton Wall Game” happened for me only because the wordplay made it such that it couldn’t possibly be anything else. And I’d heard of Howard for some reason.

    Why do you suppose fewer comedians cross the Pond than serious actors? I haven’t heard of ANY of the comics referred to in the ghost theme. Contrary to popular belief, Americans do understand British sarcasm….or at least some of us do, anyway.

38. Chas @29 – it’s common for ‘key’ to mean anything from A to G (music) and ‘player’ or ‘direction’ (or similar) to mean any of N, S, E or W (bridge, compass) without further specification. Similarly ‘quarter’ could be NE, SE, NW or SW.

39. For no other reason than that it’s an amusing piece of trivia, this is where Chevy Chase got his name from:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Chevy_Chase

40. Thanks, manehi.

    Enjoyed this; missed the ghost theme, of course.

    Some slightly unorthodox clues, but nothing which jarred particularly with me. For example, 11a reads well, although ‘heat’ is not perfect as an anagrind. 1a does work for me, although it took a while to see. ‘Possibly red’ is the allusive definition and ‘hero?’ the subsidiary part (Qaos has sensibly included both the ‘possibly’ and the ‘?’).

    I wasn’t sure about the best parsing of FREELOADS, but it does work as an &lit. ‘Without’ is a wonderfully weaselly word: ‘missing’ or ‘outside’. How many children misinterpret the first lines of Mrs Alexander’s famous Easter hymn?:

    There is a green hill far away
    Without a city wall….

41. Not my favourite ever Qaos. Couldn’t finish it, and some clues seemed wilfully obscure for a daily cryptic. WHITE has a hidden anagram indicator; perhaps I’m not clever enough to spot that. SAVAGE you’d only know if you were into footie. And I could go on. But hey, I enjoyed the bits I could get and I’m not going to cry myself to sleep tonight because I couldn’t do it. It’s a crossword.

    Hedgehoggy, after several months of reading your comments on Fifteensquared, you are really getting on my tits. Twenty clues are not acceptable for you, and it’s a ‘truly dreadful’ puzzle. Most people who have commented, or will comment on this puzzle, will accept that they had a go at it and liked it, or didn’t like it. Your MO seems to be to slag it off.

    But carry on commenting. I like it. And there are plenty of sites where you can submit your own puzzles for scrutiny if you ever decide that you’d like comments on the grammatiical accuracy of your clues.

    Thanks to the setter and blogger.

42. @ beery hiker – Chevy Chase (spelled ‘chace’ from memory) features in Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy, the first half of which is set in Northumberland.

    For anyone contemplating a little Scott, this and The Antiquary are the pick of the half dozen I’ve read. Not too much Scots dialogue in the former, especially – though I’ve rather come to enjoy the challenge of battling through it.

43. I enjoyed this a lot although it took me a while to get started. Once started answers went in fairly quickly LOI was HERRING which I thought brilliant and there were many more to enjoy. SAVAGE I took on trust- as I’ve said before I know nothing of football. Similarly boxing; although I’ve vaguely heard of Nigel BENN.
    But very enjoyable. More like this!
    Thanks Qaos.

44. To anyone who hasn’t heard of Chevy Chase, watch the movie Caddyshack, or Three Amigos. He has also hosted the Oscar ceremony twice

45. ulaca @42 – the ballad predates Walter Scott by several hundred years if Wikipedia is right that it dates from the 1430s…

46. Who is hedgehoggy I wonder? I was going through some of Jane Tether’s (Jetdoc) photos of Sloggers and Betters get togethers, and there was a very respectable lady wearing a blouse covered in hedgehogs!

47. I don’t mind the local names, which, as an American, I could only guess at (OTOH, I got Chevy Chase in a second). But I do not care for a string of letters clued individually (e.g., the last three of 10A). I also think that “Vitamin” and “Note” are a cop out since they cover so many possibilities (five vitamins, seven notes — more if you include solfège, do, di, re, ri . . .). Why not just use “letter” and raise it to 26?
    I have never seen R used as an abbreviation or symbol for “writing” or “recipe.”
    Personally, I do not care for clues where a subsidiary word is clued, but then it’s not the whole word but a version with a letter or two missing or replaced — 6D especially.

48. mmm… perhaps it was hedgehoggy’s mum, she put in a short appearance a little while back.

49. @Quilty

    May well be an idiosyncratic British thing, but “writing” is one of the three “R”s of education, along with reading and [a]rithmetic. I know.

    I had never come across R = recipe until Araucaria used it in a puzzle some years ago – it is in all the main dictionaries.

50. Mitz @49, the original three “R”s of education had reckoning, not arithmetic.

51. I always learned it as ‘rithmetic, thanks to that song. (And yes, I’m an American.) As for R for “recipe”–Quilty, y’know that Rx thing you see on prescriptions (or on the wall near the pharmacy department at your drugstore)? That’s what the R stands for (it’s not “recipe” as in “directions for cooking,” but as in Latin for “take.”)

52. Quilty @47, during the 17th century, curriculum in the common schools of the New England colonies was summed up as the four “R”s, Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmetic and Religion.
    Later this was reduced to the three “R” system, Relating, Representing and Reasoning.

53. I know Martin White by the way and he is certain that his appearing amid such illustrious company in today’s crossword must be an accident of his fairly common surname. I told him not to hide his light under a bushel!

    Lovely puzzle by the way – I *didn’t* spot the ghost theme until I was told about it here, and as such was defeated by the tricksy 1A (I was looking for a hero of the left, of Keir Hardie’s ilk perhaps). Argh!

54. Quilty @ 47

    I don’t really understand your objection to “note” for A-G. It narrows it down to 7 (well, 8 when you include N) possibilities. Which is a great deal fewer than when a setter uses “set”. Surely there ought to be some ambiguity in a clue – that’s what the whole form trades on, isn’t it? I admit that it’s at least sometimes a cop-out, but I think most of us try and make it a natural part of a decent surface most of the time.

55. Finally got there with IDENTITIES, was reading 1,500 as 1.500 (in France a comma is used in decimals!)

56. No, still not there, it is 1,500 (MD) but … Captcha three – ? = 0

57. I enjoyed this puzzle. Many thanks to the setter and the blogger.
    Re the discussion on poetry and grammar, I think poetry often bends the rules, as do crossword compilers. That is what we expect. Who wrote the following:

    After my death,–dear love, forget me quite,
    For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
    Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
    To do more for me than mine own desert,
    And hang more praise upon deceased I
    Than niggard truth would willingly impart:

    Are we to say it is bad poetry because ‘deceased I’ is ungrammatical?

58. Is it in fact 1, 500 giving ID, the space being omitted ? I must be getting closer Captcha 9 – ? = 2

59. Albert Herring was my solution but I like it even more now it works another way. Fellows was brilliant. Liked the politician theme but didn’t twig the ghost theme till reading the blog. Very entertaining blog today so thanks everyone.

60. Yes, Cookie, it’s 1, 500, with the space omitted. Then an anagram of “ten,” with the question mark as the anagrind, I guess. Then “One,” spelled out this time, to again represent roman-numeral I; then “draws” for “ties” as in sports or games.

61. mrpenney @60, thank you, so it is a sort of ‘lift and separate’ operation, but with a ‘compound’ number instead of a ‘compound’ word. First time I have noticed that. I understood the clue apart from the 1,500.

62. Thanks for the blog, manehi.

    Very late to the party today – I’ve been visiting my Sheffield University student grandson, so solved this puzzle on the train this morning – apart from two or three in the top right hand corner: if I’d been going on to Scotland I doubt if I’d have finished, as I’d entered DONNISH at 5ac [sorry, Qaos – wrong grammar, which I know you wouldn’t do!] and it stopped me seeing the reversal in 7dn.

    I, too, went for Albert Herring at 1ac.

    24dn was sheer serendipity – we were just going through Chesterfield and the answer leapt out at me: seeing that twisted spire always makes me think of Tony – and I thought I remembered hearing of a boxer called BENN.

    Thanks, Qaos, for the comment and the clip. [Isn’t Reckless a wonderful name for an MP?] I’m a great fan of Hugh Dennis but still the theme passed me by – nothing new there, although I knew to look for one. And, of course, huge thanks for the very enjoyable puzzle.

63. Eileen @62: I had not heard of the twisted spire of Chesterfield. Found this picture:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crooked_Spire.jpg

    That’s rather alarming. I won’t even ask why it makes you think of Tony.

    Fun discoveries like this one are another reason I enjoy Fifteensquared. Thanks all.

64. He was the MP for Chesterfield, slipstream. (Though he had previously, and for far longer, been a Bristol MP.)

    Couldn’t get BENN, however; and since I met Tony a few times, and Nigel once lived a couple of streets away, that’s doubly annoying.

65. Thanks manehi and Qaos. Loved the crossword (1a and 3d in particular) but missed the theme despite half of the comedians coming to mind as I went along.

    And thanks Cookie for the reckoning – that finally makes sense!

66. “Hedgehoggy, after several months of reading your comments on Fifteensquared, you are really getting on my tits.” That pretty much sums it up for quite a few of us, although Kathryn’s Dad, in his typically polite fashion, does equivocate towards the end of his post.

    There are two points in favour of hedgehoggy. One is that he’s usually right about the fine details of cryptic grammar. The other is that he doesn’t try to ingratiate himself like some of the self-appointed critics do. He takes the Millwall approach (everyone hates us and we don’t care).

    It’s only a matter of time before someone – probably a setter who’s had his/her puzzle trashed, loses it and tells hedgehoggy to go forth and multiply in strong terms. I doubt it’ll make much difference but I’m looking forward to seeing it.

67. i found this hard going but got all but 24 down, although several were obscure to me as an Aussie and some others I considered a bit dodgy like 2 down. Rue = regret but does ruings = regrets? I have never encountered this usage. Even as I write the spellchecker does not like this word and it has that annoying red squiggly line under it.

    8 down I could not parse “me” into “I” and missed the Shrek reference.

    19 down was a lucky guess as I was toying with pundit = sage and guessed that AV was some weird UK reference to football which I have never heard of, like Eton ball game.

68. @Eileen – I wonder if those of us who plumped for Albert Herring are all Suffolk people?

    All three of our children went to Sheff (well, one to Hallam) and one still lives there so I know that train journey well – will look out for the twisted spire when I next go!

69. @gridman
    I’d be careful commending hedgehoggy’s grasp of “cryptic grammar”. He does get quite a lot wrong. “how does not mean question” is invalid as a criticism, as you have to misread the clue to think it means “how” does mean “question” (what it needs to be is an instance of a question). Claiming that K can’t mean grand (it’s an exact synonym) is also probably a grammatical error as hh seems to be making wrong assumptions about usage rules. He is not really reliable enough on grammar to present himself as its defender. Some of his objections are fine, others are errors.

70. Well it’s nice to be insulted again. Thanks Gridman.

    You can have your opinion about the HOW cue Herb, I don’t concur.

    Re K, it’s just that the expected abbrev for ‘grand’ is G, and you can see how that makes perfect sense. So I felt that K (normally referred to as ‘thousand’ or ‘thousands’ for clarity) to indicate it was at one remove, and therefore not quite fair.

    As to grammar I am sure that Cicero is quite secure with his rep 😀

71. Thanks Qaos and manihi

    Found this to be seriously tough – i didn’t start it until March 10 from the back pile and only finished it this morning when I found the two BENNs in a lookup. It was one of those crosswords that was heavily focused on lots of things British, including the ghost theme of British comedians.

    Found it a very interesting challenge and was very satisfied to eventually complete the grid successfully. Having said that, I couldn’t parse FELLOWS, WHITE or PRERQUISITE at all and had DOCK instead of SOCK for the strike in 6d.

    I thought that HERRING parsed perfectly well as it was with the ‘red herring’ being a definition by example. Assume that the person in question just belonged to the theme.

    Not quite sure of why folk would try to make it perfectly grammatically correct. With this set of clues, I was eventually able to reconstruct every word that the setter had originally entered into the grid despite the disadvantage of not being a local.

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