Guardian 26,601 / Crucible

60 comments on “Guardian 26,601 / Crucible”

1. Yes, very enjoyable (although I didn’t get RASTA). I’m not an expert on battles etc, but it all emerged fairly easily. Favourites were WATERLOO and WARMONGERS. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

2. A very pleasant workout, though like drofie@1, I failed with rasta (though looking at it again, it now seems obvious!). Thanks for your informative blog Eileen (as usual), and to Crucible for a really good puzzle.

3. Thank you, Eileen, had to wait for you for the parsing of SURRENDERED (I was trying to make SURRE(y) work and getting in a tangle) and DRAMA as I missed the diorama bit. I now learn that the diorama was invented by Louis Daguerre – considered a father of modern photography. (Aren’t crosswords wonderful?)

   LOI was RASTA which was tricky to spot through being lured towards Boney for the Emperor.

   Excellent anniversary puzzle from this fine setter.

   Nice week, all.

4. A lovely and clever puzzle. For once, even I spotted the theme. I did see RASTA quickly, but parsing ENVELOPES was my Waterloo. I was fooled by seeing “surround” as a construction indicator, even though I recognised its similarity with ENVELOP(E)S. I have too many favourites to list them.

   Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

5. Wonderful puzzle and blog both. Kicking myself that I couldn’t parse drama. And I failed to complete 5 ac, even short as it is. And now, ashamed at how little I know about Waterloo, will do some reading up. Many thanks Crucible and Eileen.

6. I thoroughly enjoyed this anniversary puzzle. The fact that some of the themed references were in the clues rather than the answers made it a much more interesting solve, IMHO. If I’d ever come across DEPREDATED before I’d forgotten it, and it was my LOI from the wordplay after SET ABOUT.

7. Appropriately accompanied by a picture of a dinosaur in the paper – a prehistoric crossword from the time before cryptic elements evolved to become so abstruse that they were no longer useful for solving the puzzle. Gave a sense of achievement rather than frustration.

8. A fantastic puzzle by Crucible and blog by Eileen, thank you both.

   Being thick again today, I don’t get what HERO has to do with ‘person with bottle’; ‘jam’ could have several meanings at the Battle of Waterloo… there is a ‘Blucher Bottle Trap’…

   Having lived in Jamaica, RASTA was no problem, but I was beaten by DioRAMA, did not know who ERNEST was and had to check Ney.

   So many favourites, WATERLOO, GO NAP, BONAPARTE, UPROAR, TENDERNESS…

9. Thanks Eileen and Crucible
   A typically enjoyable offering from Crucible. I particularly liked 3d, 13d, 14d and 23,22. Special thanks to Eileen for the informative footnotes to 26a and 4d.

10. I contribute occasionally to an American magazine, The Napoleonic Historical Society newsletter. This is completely fraudulent of me, as I know sod all about history, Napoleonic or otherwise. My brother-in-law is the editor and occasionally when short of (i.e. desperate for) copy he’ll ask me to contribute a book review or a general interest article. You’d have thought that I might have picked up a bit by osmosis, but alas not. Today’s puzzle, however, was perfectly pitched, in my opinion: everything in it that refers to Waterloo falls under (or should fall under, in my opinion) the heading of general knowledge. A very well put together crossword, with a suitably elegant blog accompanying it.

11. Really excellent puzzle. The order of parts in DEPREDATED doesn’t seem quite right (the Duke should either be part of the fodder, or come before the peer), but it’s still a fair, gettable clue.

    The “splendid meal abandoned by prince” is probably the Duchess of Richmond’s ill-fated ball (made famous by Vanity Fair) on the eve of war. According to Wikipedia, there were plenty of princes there – Prince William of Orange, commander of the Anglo-Allied I Corps and friend of Wellington, would be the most likely reference.

12. Thanks Crucible for a well crafted, satisfying and timely puzzle commemorating the Battle of Waterloo. Nice touch including the Prussians and their commander Blücher (albeit in a clue), who played a major part.

    Thanks Eileen for the blog. It’s been a months since I parsed every clue – last to fall was SURRENDERED – the clue signal ‘almost’ has referred dropping one letter for so long lately that it took me a while to realize that it meant 2 letters in this case.

    The Duke of Wellington was my the name of my local growing up

13. Great fun. I got RASTA and ERNEST (without knowing Ernest Crofts), took a while with UPROAR before spotting “metal” to be subtracted, and got DRAMA without seeing the “diorama” connection. Last in was GO NAP (as usual, card games are my weak suit). Thanks to Crucible and to Eileen for both the helpful parsing and a blog that was a delightful historical adventure.

14. Thanks Crucible & Eileen.

    Small point but despite Chambers’ explanation I can’t see a ‘let’ at tennis as an obstruction. As Chambers says, to obstruct is to hinder from passing or progressing. That would surely be a ‘net’ rather than a ‘let’ service. 🙂

    Good historical workout. Perhaps the Henry in 5 is a reference to Field Marshal Henry Paget; from Wiki: ‘ According to anecdote, he was close to Wellington when his leg was hit, and exclaimed, “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!” — to which Wellington replied, “By God, sir, so you have!” According to his aide-de-camp, Thomas Wildman, during the amputation Paget smiled and said, “I have had a pretty long run. I have been a beau these 47 years and it would not be fair to cut the young men out any longer.” While Paget had an articulated artificial limb fitted, his amputated leg meanwhile had a somewhat macabre after-life as a tourist attraction in the village of Waterloo in Belgium, to which it had been removed and where it was later interred.

    So, now you know!

15. Shroduck @11 – Nothing wrong with 14 dn. It’s PEER* + D (for duke) both inside DATED As Eileen has parsed it.

16. Robi @14. LET as an obstruction is related more to squash than to tennis, when one player gets in the way of the other.

17. jeceris @16; thanks, yes, that seems to work.

18. 5a, there are lets in tennis, OCED gives it, but I understood the clue from the saying ‘without let or hindrance’.

19. apropos, Anthony Powell in ‘A question of Upbringing’, describing a hard tennis court where the metal lines of demarcation protruded, “If the ball hit one of these projecting strips of metal, it might become wedged beneath, or fly off at an unexpected angle; accordingly counting as a ‘let'”.

20. Cookie @ 8

    “Bottle” is slang for courage, an heroic attribute, as in “he’s got the bottle for it” or conversely, “he bottled out”

21. Thanks for the blog as ever. I rarely post but I do love reading them.

    Kicking myself for not getting 13d which now, as often after I visit the blog, seems so easy.

    I had one question though. Why is lethal == fell? I get the parsing (now) but I discounted lethal when I guessed at hal because I couldn’t see how lethal meant fell.

22. Jovis @20, thank you! Just as an aside, Blücher did in fact have an aide assigned to keep his brandy bottle filled.

23. Enjoyed this – fortunately my superficial knowledge was sufficient, though I did have a few problems in the SE corner. Last in (and biffed) was DRAMA, so thanks for the parsing. Liked LETHAL, BONAPARTE, RASTA and IRON DUKE

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen

24. huggie @21, think of ‘in one fell swoop’, in a single (originally deadly) action.

25. Another quite ‘bitty’ Guardian puzzle, probably due to the necessity of shoe-horning the cryptic to make Waterloo references, it felt to me rather forced.

    10a the uneven ‘stripping’ I didn’t like; 19a ONE prince surely; 20a very confusing since SURRE is there but we only need SURR, which indication I really don’t like anyway, and also the grammar is suspect I think, in that ‘carried on’ is supposed to mean ‘on (is) carried’: not my fave clue; 24d I think is incorrectly written, as it implies METAL comes out BEFORE the anagram is made, and of course the material is not sequential, but actually appears backwards! Not for me a good clue; 7d ‘tackles’ I don’t like; 8d ‘steals’ I don’t like, maybe ‘grabs’?.

    HH

26. huggie @21

    “Fell” can mean deadly, threatening, evil and so on – Oxford Dictionaries.

27. Cookie @24: my favorite Shakespeare spoonerism is “one swell foop.”

28. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. How do you manage to get so much information into the blog, and still get it out in good time?

    I was aware of the anniversary, and spotted 1A WATERLOO straight off, which was a help.

    Robi @14

    As Cookie @18 says, you are better off thinking of “without let or hindrance” for 5A LETHAL – although Chambers does list the tennis term under let (hinder) rather than let (allow).

29. I was rather expecting this theme, given the day, so much of this was quite easy which is not to say that it wasn’t well crafted. I wasn’t familiar with Ernest Crofts but ERNEST was easy to get as was DEPREDATED, which I hadn’t come across before. As for RASTA I knew my reggae period would come in handy someday.
    Really enjoyable.
    Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

30. I’ve never posted before, although I read the site daily, but am moved today to ask out loud (as it were), as I have often thought before: ‘What is Hedgehoggy’s problem’?

    Loved this puzzle, and HH’s comments seem all to be about what s/he ‘likes’ – s/he’s entitled to his/her opinion, but it doesn’t really bring anything to the party (or indeed the website), IMHO.

    Difficult to single our favourite clue, but it’s probably 4dn

31. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    I enjoyed this puzzle even though I failed to solve LETHAL and needed help to parse 1d. (!)

    My favourite was 21d.

32. Hollowaymiss @31 – not enough Primrose Oil?

33. Hollowaymiss @30, I think many of hedgehoggy’s points today may be valid. Perhaps later Sil van den Hoek might comment on them, so check back.

34. I agree with HH about 24 in that I think ‘metal’ should have an anagrind or reversal indicator attached. Something like ‘hammered metal’ would suffice. Having said that, I didn’t have any problem in taking the letters of ‘metal’ out of ‘plate armour.’

35. I agree with that Robi, ie you can solve even ‘suspect’ clues, but that does not make ’em good! These things, all that I say usually on any day, could be sorted out easily in an edit.

36. For once, a puzzle with a theme so obvious that even I managed to spot it. And in record time too, on solving 1 across and putting two and two together. It certainly eased the difficulty level; I’d had problems with some recent Crucibles, but not so today, just as well given a late start.

37. Cookie @33, since you’d asked, ok, I will make a visit here today.
    Even though I put the puzzle already in the bin [nothing to do with the quality of the puzzle!], just didn’t have much to add.

    Most of HH’s points today are in the category “I don’t like it” with which you can either agree or disagree.
    They are less a matter of right or wrong.

    But yes, the subtraction device in 24ac is strictly speaking not quite right.
    HH correctly points out that the clue tells us to remove ‘metal’ first and then take the anagram.
    If that is the order of things, a second anagram indicator is needed. See also Robi’s post @34.

    I am a great admirer of this setter and I know subtraction anagrams belong to his trademarks.
    Normally, he is very precise and indicates them meticulously – so, let’s forgive him this one! 🙂
    BTW, we recently had a similar discussion in the blog of a Philistine puzzle.
    [in which Philistine was right and the criticasters, including me, were wrong]

    The other thing in which HH perhaps has a point is 20ac’s “carried on”.
    If it were “carries on” no-one would complain (but it wouldn’t match the tense used in the clue).
    So, Crucible changed it into the past tense.
    Some cruciverbalists think that this is not right.
    Personally, I would try to avoid it but sometimes one’s tempted to enter crosswordland’s grey area.
    As did Crucible here.

    On the whole I liked this crossword very much.
    While the theme was clear right from the very start, there were still a lot of references that passed me by.
    We’ve seen harder Crucibles but, as I said yesterday in the Qaos blog, I like setters that offer just that little bit extra.
    And for me, he is one of those (also as Radian and as Redshank).

    Many thanks to Crucible & Eileen.

    ps, Cookie (and Hollowaymiss), was this what you wanted?

38. Thanks Sil @ 37 – I’m still a novice, both as a cruciverbalist and contributor, so I appreciate all comments on my comments, and perhaps understand HH’s gripes a little better.

    Should also have said in first post, thanks to Crucible for a great puzzle and Eileen for her (as ever) elegant, informative and helpful blog

39. Thanks Sil, I just wanted Hollowaymiss, and others, to see that Hoggy’s comments were sometimes valid.

40. Hi Hollowaymiss
    Welcome to the site. I seldom comment on specific clues unless I’m blogging the puzzle but I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about 24 across. I’m sorry but I have to disagree with hedgehoggy, Robi and Sil because an anagram or reversal indicator would serve no useful purpose since the letters to be removed are not consecutive, there is an ‘ar’ in the way.

    What Crucible is asking you to do is not remove the word ‘metal’ from ‘plate armour’ but simply the individual letters m, e, t, a, & l which form a word that is suitable for the surface. I therefore see nothing whatsoever wrong with this clue – as instructed, remove the surplus letters from the fodder and then generate an anagram from the remainder.

41. Re 24 my initial thought was remove an unspecified metal from these letters, now that probably would be unfair but the clue as-is is fine and ultimately a trivial anagram.
    Thanks Eileen great blog, dunno how you put so much work into it and get it out on time.

42. Well, Gaufrid, that is one way to look at these kind of clues.
    And a reasonable way it is – I toyed with it too.
    However, there are other people out there who think that (in either case – looking at it as a word or as a sequence of individual letters) the letters should be removed in a particular order, ie the given order.
    And, by the way, that is how Crucible it does 9 out of 10 times.

    So, there we are, plenty to think about for Hollowaymiss.
    No doubt, Paul B will jump on this train at some point to give his opinion as a professional setter.
    And I can’t wait for Jolly Swagman who will surely be on your side, given his contributions to the topic on previous occasions.

43. Thanks, Gaufrid. [I’ve been out since shortly after posting the blog until not long ago.]

    I really did intend, when solving, to write ‘letters of metal’.

    To answer PeterO @28 and flashling @41, on this occasion, because I needed to be out this morning, I stayed up till the puzzle came out online and solved it, had a lovely time doing the research in the early hours and did a draft blog, to be prettied up and posted in the morning. I think that’s how ‘the letters’ of’ came to get lost. [I don’t make a habit of this staying up!]

    Re 19ac: thanks for that, Schroduck @11. Another suggestion [since the Prince Regent appears in the puzzle] from
    ‘The News from Waterloo: The Race to Tell Britain of Wellington’s Victory’, by Brian Cathcart:

    https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gAG4BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT170&lpg=PT170&dq=Mrs+Boehm%27s+party&source=bl&ots=YwJn6kHMWG&sig=gMWdEQSTVrQcDDJ48ktQNJDZ_VA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hfaCVf2mB8SasgGZ84HgBQ&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Mrs%20Boehm%27s%20party&f=false

44. So, on I jump. Is it one of those driverless ones, Sil? Perhaps the excellent Crucible is at the helm. If trains have helms. Someone is asking to see my ticket, however, so we’re moving along at a clip.

    Short of metal, plate armour warped in turmoil.

    There’s no doubt that one possible anagram is ‘metaluproar’, so it depends upon whether or not you think the clue fairly indicates the subtraction, and the argument would be in relation to the order of operations, I guess. As I ponder this, I see:

    Minus metal metaluproar equals uproar

    and faced with that, I find it very difficult to argue against.

    Hey, it’s my stop: Pedantsville!

    See ya later.

45. (Btw, I wouldn’t letters being in the way (Gaufrid’s AR for example) if in some case we did require a sequential subtraction.)

46. Re. the reference to Daguerre by William. Fox-Talbot invented the negative/positive process enabling multiple prints to be made from a single negative. In contrast the Daguerrotype was a one-off positive image which could not be used to make prints.Nothing to do with the puzzle.I rarely finish any. If I do, much rejoicing. If I don’t,well there is always one tomorrow.

47. Gaufrid @40; thanks for the clarification. I’m sure I’ve been told previously that if the letters are in the right order, even with other intervening ones, there is no need for an additional anagrind. However, in this case the letters don’t appear in the order m/e/t/a/l. Anyway, I didn’t have any particular problem in solving it, so maybe it’s OK.

    Any other setters out there with an opinion? Paul B seems to think it’s kosher.

48. Thanks Crucible and Eileen
    I didn’t really have anything to add when I looked in earlier, but since then there has been a lot of discussion of UPROAR. As far as I was concerned. it was pretty obvious that the letters of “metal” needed to be removed from the anagram. One of my early ones in, in fact.

49. Isn’t the point of the clues and the job of the setter to make it so it can be implied one way or another.

    So it could be a type of metal or the letters m-e-t-a-l. Both seem fair and if there was only one rule in crosswordland we would all be getting very bored with following the same old conventions.

50. OK, I surrender but only because it is possible to see 24ac as a clue in which the anagram comes first.
    This is clearly Paul’s starting point in comment #44.
    And if that is acceptable (and, looking back at it, it probably is here) the clue is fine.

    Still, my intuition (for what it’s worth) tells me that we have to subtract first before taking the anagram.
    For me, that would make a difference unlike for Gaufrid if I read his last two lines @40 well.

    By the way, on Boatman’s website one can find an example of a subtraction anagram:

    DIE HARD: ‘Careless dispatch rider loses script for film’.
    According to the classical rules, I’m cheating here, because there should be a word in the clue to indicate that it’s the letters of SCRIPT, not in their normal order, that are subtracted. I reckon that my cavalier approach works, as long the result is clear.

    The I-person here is Boatman himself and what he says is more or less what I (and HH, and Robi) tried to express.

51. “I reckon that my cavalier approach works, as long the result is clear.”

    That quote from Boatman sums up my feelings on this too. As a non-setter and non-expert solver, I’m happy with a clue as long as once I’ve found the answer I’m left in no doubt that it is right because I can see how the construction works. In this puzzle, 24a fits that criterion well enough for me.

52. Sil, think for yourself, your intuition is right, the anagram does not come first in 24a, first you subtract the letters m, e, t, a and l, then you solve the anagram.

53. DIEHARDSCRIPT without SCRIPT: which ‘classical rules’ are thus infringed?
    What ‘cavalier approach’ is necessary here?

54. Paul B @53

    Does an anagram result like DIEHARD SCRIPT (or METAL UPROAR) fit the “classical rules”? They are not ‘normal’ anagrams for cryptic crosswords as they don’t make sense in that form. Most crossword anagrams are of single words, familiar phrases, titles of books or films and so on.

    Boatman seems (to me) to be assuming the letters will be removed before the anagram is solved. In that case, the assertion he is making (as are some contributors to this thread and to the discussion of Philistine’s recent puzzle) is that the word to be removed would ‘classically’ need an anagrind if the letters were not in the same order in the anagram fodder.

55. Gaufrid@40 – Hear, hear! (but for those who really care, “short of metal components,….” would have done the job)
    [Eileen – Thumbs up for your preamble’s final (bracketed) sentence. Made me smile, not unlike your, even wittier, “silly bugger whose departure is imminent” clue!]
    Great blog and many thanks to Crucible.

56. […ooops. I was, of course, referring to your blog’s final sentence; postamble rather than preamble?]

57. I now agree, after consideration of posts, that the UPROAR clue is okay. I do not agree with Gaufrid however: that method would be unfair. Still, I am persuaded by Sil, and ‘type of metal’ ie the MIXED letters in METAL, would be preferable. But there is something about the order that irritates me even in light of Paul B’s demonstration.

    I do not agree that any ‘classical rules’, by which I suppose Boatman means Ximenean norms, are abused in the DIE HARD clue, so I agree with the ‘one possible anagram’ demonstration. I find it incredible that Batman, a Guardian compiler, does not see this.

58. ‘Careless’ is not a good indicator however.

59. Hedgehoggy, for me ‘careless’ does work as an anagram indicator but, yes, Boatman’s example is unfortunately not a good one.
    That is something that I overlooked when I came across it, so both Paul @53 and you are right.
    Meanwhile, I’ll stick to my view that in these kind of clues the order of things (subtraction, anagram) makes a difference.
    If others cannot be bothered, fine. My criterion is usually ‘Would I do it myself (when using this device)?’.
    The answer to that question can be read between the lines in my earlier posts.

    I’m happy to leave it there as we are on the point of over-analysing just one clue.
    Crucible must be very amused.
    And to be very clear, I think this was an excellent crossword.

    ps, Cookie, thanks for inviting me to cause a stir …. 🙂

60. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    Very well-themed and appropriate crossword for the day, which I completed mostly on the day with a few to mop up down in the SW corner early the following day – only now got to check it off. The blog and the information in it, added greatly to the experience so thank you again for that Eileen (far from being damned 🙂 ) ! The additional depth of thought put into the characters in the surface, just added to the admiration of the setter – many of which passed me by – e.g. the painter at 26a

    Didn’t parse a couple properly – went down a SUR RENDERED path at 20a and couldn’t make it work. Don’t know why but carelessly didn’t see the ERNES(T)part in 2d, although I had the answer to that one before I had worked out 26a.

    Interesting discussion on the compound anagram – one of my favourite clue types and this setter is one of the better exponents of it. Don’t mind the ‘more cavalier’ approach and it seems as if everyone on both sides of the argument was able to arrive at the answer – to me that means that the setter has done his job well enough.

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