Guardian 26,547 by Paul

48 comments on “Guardian 26,547 by Paul”

1. Thanks manehi. Held up only in the bottom left, unaware of the fast food thing and thinking ‘shah’ for a starter. Last in was ANTISOCIAL. I guess Collins, exceptionally, has the 16A hat in two words. Otherwise all good, thanks Paul.

2. Thanks Paul and manehi
   Quite a rapid solve despite some terms I wasn’t familiar with (TOTAL FOOTBALL and THICKSHAKE). I too was puzzled by the apparent two inclusion indicators in 1a – I don’t think it works.
   REPETITION and SNOWBOARDING were my favourites too.
   “Wookey Hole” will give foreign solvers some difficulty, I would think.

3. Morning all, and thanks manehi.

   SALINITY couldn’t just be an error, surely? Must be missing something.

   ANSWER, PORKPIE HAT, SNOWBOARDING, LOOKALIKE, REPETITION & WHISKY AND SODA all brilliant.

   Bit of a shame to involve a reverse of POOR in 5a & 11a, one above the other.

   Missed the Brummie accented “Loin” – (funny now) and didn’t really understand TOTAL FOOTBALL but see it now.

   Top fun from Paul this morning, many thanks.

4. I groaned at 2d but my son’s (birmingham) girlfriend assures me that true Brummies are not so broad (and they get offended). The ‘loin’ for ‘line’ sound, they say, comes from those they call the ‘yamyams’ from further west into the black country, e.g. wolverhampton.

5. Johann Cruyff’s 1970s’ Holland were the most famous purveyors of total football. That said, I didn’t think ,much of the clue! I thought the SALINITY clue much better – it passes the key test of whether the solver can (relatively) easily obtain the answer – the ‘main’ sees to that.

   For William @3, to add to what manehi has already written, it’s just a play on words, Paul taking advantage of the fact that ‘in [the word] sanity’ and ‘insanity’ take the same form. But perhaps your query was elsewhere.

   I cannot leave without saying how much, as a Brummie born, I enjoyed my last in.

6. 1A: Surely sanity, same as insanity, is a measure on the sanity-madness spectrum.
   Maybe it depends which end you’re looking at it from
   (E.g. the Marxist viewpoint: “There ain’t no Sanity Clause”)

7. Loved 2d. Made my morning.

8. Seemed to be an odd mixture of the sublime and the ‘meh’.

   But the good clues (such as LOOKALIKE, ANSWER and SNOWBOARDING) were lovely.

9. Thanks Paul and manehi.

   Of course I entered SURFBOARDING at 21a, then realised it would not parse. LOIN stumped me.
   I liked Hogwart’s SPELLING TEST and the TOTAL FOOTBALL and WOOKEY HOLE.

   8d, REPETITION, will be familiar to RCWhiting…

10. ulaca @5 Thank you – should have read the blog more carefully.

11. If you medically treat ‘madness’ with lithium you get ‘sanity’, but still not sure how the clue works.

12. Much fun here, LOIN stands out amongst many. I saw 12ac as a double definition Hogwarts Exam & English Exam.

13. Thanks, manehi.

    I’m always pleased to see a Paul puzzle, for the amusement it brings, being firmly of the pro-smut tendency (only ANAL and ‘bottom’ here, but we must be thankful for small mercies).

    Some ingenious clues here, and one or two that don’t quite work for me. I like the idea of 1a, but it does seem to duplicate the container indication, and I’m not convinced that ‘whisper sweet nothings through the door’ = WOO KEYHOLE, despite the neat construction.

    However I really enjoyed most of the crossword, especially SNOWBOARDING, LOOKALIKE, LOIN and WHISKY AND SODA.

    I’m rather pleased to say that I have never consumed a THICKSHAKE and I entered the word with a lot of trepidation.

14. Thanks manehi and Paul. Didn’t get either HARRUMPH, UNFAIR or WOOKEY HOLE, having not heard of the latter.

15. Gervase @13, you could try the Urban Dictionary for your second paragraph entry

16. I really struggled with this one. I needed some guesses confirmed (or not) by the check button and a few uses of a word finder, and I still couldn’t parse all of them before reading the blog. Last in were HARRUMPH and YEAH. I enjoyed it though, so thanks to Paul and to manehi!

    My favourite clue is REPETITION, with SNOWBOARDING, LOOKALIKE (once I saw manehi’s parsing), HARRUMPH and ANTISOCIAL as runners-up.

    LOIN must be baffling for many non-UK solvers, but once the penny dropped it made me smile (I’m not a Brummie, though). I hadn’t come across THICKSHAKE or TOTAL FOOTBALL before, so the first part of each went in as guesses based on the crossers, and I didn’t know Coventry City’s nickname. If the clue for INSANITY involves two inclusion indicators (as it seems to do), I don’t like that. I would have counted PORKPIE HAT as three words but some references do suggest that counting it as two is acceptable.

    Gervase @13, I’d parse WOOKEY HOLE as WOO (“whisper sweet nothings”) + KEYHOLE (something which goes “through the door”).

17. Really good fun although I was struggling to read the clues as my printer was misfiring. Favourites were LOIN, HARRUMPH, LOOKALIKE and REPETITION. Many thanks to Paul and manehi.

18. Thanks Paul – a cracking amusing crossword.

    Thanks manehi, SALINITY seemed OK to me, as you say, lithium in-sanity.

    My LOI(n), caused a smiley groan, if there is such a thing. I liked LOOKALIKE and THICKSHAKE, although the latter doesn’t seem to be in any dictionaries, and seems to be two words at McDonalds although Wiki does give it as one word.

    I also liked SNOWBOARDING, although I tried kiteboarding at first (you know, a plane is a kite 😉 )

19. I would say the SALINITY clue is an error. To have ‘insanity’ used even in the awful ‘Guardianism’ style would not work here, as ‘to include’ is very clearly the container ‘ind’. Also SANITY does not equal ‘madness’, it is its opposite. Also bipolar disorder is not ‘insanity’ in any real way, and that is what lithium usually treats.

    I enjoyed the puzzle very much otherwise. It is a pity about mistakes creeping in, as they did for Redshank yesterday.

20. jennyk @1,6 I don’t think two inclusion indicators are necessary, see comment 11,

    INSANITY + LI gives INSA LI NITY which is cured to become SALINITY, but manehi’s parsing is better.

21. Thanks Paul and Manehi: I also had a fast start to about half of the puzzle: couldn’t parse ALTO and was defeated by 23d

    1a works for me:
    Madness = INSANITY
    Include Lithium INSANITY = include LI in SANITY
    The verb include needs the extra preposition ‘in’ when the item being included is the subject of the verb.

    And when did milkshake become a thickshake?

22. Freddy @21, that is much clearer.

23. Never heard of THICKSHAKE and getting this took almost as long as the rest of the puzzle. I’d never heard of TOTAL FOOTBALL either but this one was easy to guess. Otherwise I liked this. Some lovely clues LOOKALIKE, LOIN,SPELLING TEST,HARRUMPH and many more. Don’t understand the problem with SALINITY either. I agree with FREDDY @30.
    Thanks Paul.

24. It’s madness to include lithium

    …is the cryptic part of this clue. You can paraphrase it, ‘it is (not has) INSANITY to include LI. This of course leads to INSALINITY which is the incorrect answer. ‘To include’ is not very good for the inclusion either, unless you infer HAS instead of IS, which is not possible.

    Your way needs to get in-sanity (which does not work anyway for a proper grammar) from a synonym, which is not possible. When they put in the Guardian INDEED meaning ‘in deed’ at least you get the letters you are required to work with! Even if the device is PER SE unfair and difficult.

    This clue is definitely an error.

25. Thanks to Paul for the blog.

    On 1a I decided it was a Graun misprint, omitting ‘not’.
    This gives ‘Its not madness to include lithium’. SANITY with LI included gives the answer.

26. To be clear Freddy wants:

    IN SANITY INCLUDE LI.

    Not possible in the given grammar.

27. Thanks, manehi and Paul.

    First one in was SPELLING TEST. I failed on the clue in yesterday’s Quick Xword: Hogwarts’ graduate — Super! (6), so, when I checked the answer to that, SPELLING TEST was immediate.

28. For a moment, I thought Freddie’s explanation @21 had resolved it for me, but …

    I can see that “to include LI madness” would work, where “madness” clues “in SANITY”, giving “include [LI] in” as the indicator. However, that’s not what the clue says. “It’s madness to include lithium” = it’s in SANITY to include LI. That makes sense as a sentence with “insanity” as just a single word (obviously, as it is just a synonym of “madness”), but to me it doesn’t work when you split it to use it as an indicator. I would not write “it’s in A to include B” when meaning “A is to be included in B.”

29. chas @25

    Yes, the addition of “not” would resolve it for me, so perhaps it is a misprint or clumsy editing.

30. Word order madness has pervaded the blog this morning.

    A straight reading of the clue would have us believe that madness is the subject of include. And we would be misdirected if we did so (cue setter chuckling).

    My reading is: It’s madness. To include Lithium would be insanity.

    Now include is the infinitive.

    I always understood that adding new punctuation was the first step to cracking a surface, is it not?

31. jennyk @25

    Unfortunately, you’re right – 1a doesn’t quite work, however you slice it. And I say this with regret, because I liked the concept behind the clue; I’m not proprietorial about word boundaries and enjoy the ‘indeed’ device very much.

    And in answer to your comment at @16, replying to my quibble about the clue for WOOKEY HOLE, I am reminded of the exchange between Bottom and Flute, playing Pyramus and Thisbe in the play-within-a-play in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’:

    Pyramus: ‘O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall’
    Thisbe: ‘I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all’

32. Freddy @30

    Playing with punctuation is the essence of many cryptic clues, but juggling randomly with the word order is not.

    Gervase @31

    I like the concept of the clue too, and it hasn’t stopped most of us solving it, but it is still a little disappointing when clues don’t quite work. However, there are so many good clues in this puzzle that one slightly doubtful one does not spoil it.

    I love a relevant Shakespearean reference. 🙂

33. jennyk @32

    No word order juggling going on: all I did was to the divide the non-def part of the clue into two by inserting a full stop.

    I was suggesting (tacitly) that madness could become an antecedent to, rather than a subject of, include.

34. Thanks Paul and manehi

    I just read 1A as It’s or Salinity’s LI IN SANITY. Works for me.

35. @34 it clearly doesn’t for anyone else though, because sanity is not madness.

    Made life difficult for myself by writing RUGBY FOOTBALL in at 4 down. Well, it has a scrum half and a fly half.

36. Simon Harris @35
    Better answer, I think!

37. I do feel sorry for setters having every clue dissected by commenters. I think that in the grand scheme of things (or at least the grand scheme of crosswords), the enjoyment given by a setter like Paul far outweighs the niggles for most of us.

38. All these contortions to make 1a parse are laughable. It is plainly an error and none of the putative explanations stand scrutiny.

39. Thanks to Paul and manehi. I got most of the answers via educated guesses but needed the parsing to understand why (e.g., with LOIN). As muffin@2 suggests, WOOKEY HOLE was new to me, so that I eventually managed everything except the K (and needed Google for that). Also new to me was the “oiled” linked to CRICKET BAT, though here the clues were sufficient, and TOTAL FOOTBALL.

40. Cookie @9 you have obvioly notice my problem, perhaps you could suggest solution.
    I work on a hudlwhich frequently states “you have said that already” but nothing has appeared.
    I had found that the logjam can be broken my making a minimal alteration before resubmitting, with the risk of a double version!

41. Sorry for late post but am a huge football fan season ticket holder. etc.l got total football immediately bit slower on the rest but finished it. Yes Ulaca the Dutch were renowned for total football Ruud Gullit Marco Van Basten etc best team never to win World Cup.My favourite was lookalike but have never heard of thickshake.Many thanks to Manehi and Paul. How about a football themed crossword pretty please Paul.

42. Tougher than usual Paul solve for us. One quibble – surely ‘unsociable’is retiring? Antisocial is “I do not love the human race, I do not love its silly face”.

43. Oops! That should be “I wish I loved the human race . . .” etc. Memory – shut that door!

44. RCWhiting @40, now I understand, especially the minimal alteration! Sometimes I have to wait quite a while before my comment comes up, but your problem seems more complicated. I think if the message has been received, wait a while longer and see what, if anything, happens, then resubmit.

45. Brummies don’t say “loin” and neither do those from the Black Country, as I found to my great disappointment when my young nephew told me excitedly that he was now able to draw a “lion”.

46. Thanks Cookie for valiant attempt to offer constructive suggestion….I will see?

47. Thanks Paul and manehi

    An interesting puzzle that had a number of clues scattered around the grid that held out grimly to the end. Finally got there with HARRUMPH, YEAH, SALINITY and LOIN the last few in. Funny that within a couple of days of posting about generally having no problems with the homophones – up comes a Brummie pronunciation that remained totally unknown until coming here !

    Can’t quite put my finger on it, but there felt like there was a slightly different twist from normal in his logic with some of the clues in this and it did made it slightly harder than normal for a Paul to me.

48. Thanks manehi and (yet again) Paul.

    A terrific puzzle full of creative teasing and wit.

    My only failure was 13d where I put Chocoshake assuming that I’d find a reason why ‘Chico’ could be unwise when I got here. Clearly should have pondered further.

    For 1a, I resolved on the basis of something from the back of my mind – a quote along the lines of the whole world’s insane and only the truly mad are not – or something along those lines.

    Thoroughly enjoyable even though I made a mistake.

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