Guardian 26,624 / Qaos

58 comments on “Guardian 26,624 / Qaos”

1. Good fun…Though Spoonerisms should work on the ear not the page? This one would be binger jeer, as it were.

2. Thanks Eileen and Qaos, most enjoyable, and I thought easier than usual.

   The theme didn’t hit me till I searched at the finish; I suppose it was hinted at in the clue for 7d: “Cryptic clue for 10’s grid?” Not just “plenty” – the numbers ONE to TEN are hidden away in the answers in the grid.

3. Sorry, “lots” not “plenty”

4. Like Eileen I also enjoyed this and thought it was a lot of fun. Hadn’t heard of CONFETTI MONEY either.

   westadale@1 – I reckon the Spoonerism does work on the ear, as binger rhymes with ginger.

   Favourites were WEIGHTY, CLONED, CHALET and HIGH FIVE. Many thanks to Qaos and Eileen.

5. Thank you, Eileen, I enjoyed this too but found it was over rather too quickly.

   Nice range of clueing from the almost give-aways such as WIDEST, CANINE, ROAST BEEF to the superb CLONED.

   Enjoyed REEK and had to look up BROWN EARTH.

   I can see ONE, TWO, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE & TEN but have missed three somewhere.

   Anyone?

6. Row 7, William.

7. I think for THREE you have to link 13A and 15A.

8. Drofle @4 – I see Westdale’s point. Nothing wrong with the ginger/binger rhyme but the Spoonerism produces ‘jeer’ not ‘gear’.

9. Eileen @6 – Ah, clever girl. Thanks.

10. Wow, what a fabulous puzzle. I loved the innovative clueing, and I especially love the fact that I could parse all of my answers.

    I found it very impressive that Qaos could get all the numbers 1-10 into the solutions or clues: clONEd, neTWOrk, thREE Km (partially needs the clue for 15a), FOURier, high FIVE, SIXth form, SEVEN ages of man, wEIGHTy, caNINE, TENdril. This was really brilliant brilliant work on the part of the setter.

    My favourites were REEK, BROWN EARTH, NETWORK, TURN INTO, FOURIER, HIGH FIVE, RESIST, DPHIL (LOI).

    New words for me were CONFETTI MONEY & ICE RUN

    Thank you Qaos and Eileen

11. Sorry to have been repetitive – I had not read all the comments above before I posted my comment @ 10 – and now I can see THREE in Row 7.

12. Thank you Eileen for your typically clear blog, and Qaos for a fun puzzle. I liked the slight misdirection in ‘The Strand building’ in 18d, and enjoyed ‘high five’ in 9,16 (although not entirely congruent with my lasting image of a tiny Michael Jackson).

13. michelle @10 – somewhat repetitive is what many of our posts often are, and you have spotted another ‘three’! Nice day.

14. Thanks Eileen and Qaos. Lovely puzzle.

    Took me ages to get 2dn, even though I have one. I think 1,4 would have made it too easy though.

15. None-too-difficult a puzzle. I solved the lower half first before I moved up.
    2d: With just “initially D” and “degree” and probably any crossing I may have had, I filled in the answer D Phil. Only later I saw it is an acrostic clue. I think the enu should be (1,4), not (5). The fact that (1,4) will be a giveaway doesn’t mean a misleading enu should be given.

16. This was a good one. thanks Qaos and Eileen. We missed the theme until we came here to check the D Phil The only one we felt peeved about was D Phil – definitely 1,4.
    But we always enjoy the challenge of Qaos.

17. Thanks Eileen for pointing out the theme- I should have looked more closely, it being Qaos. 2d would have been too easy if it was 1 4.

18. Clue 17a evoked nostalgic memories in me. In my school days the last year in high school was indeed SIXTH FORM. At the end we took SSLC – Secondary School Leaving Certificate – exam.
    ‘Form’ was a vestige from the Raj period, I think.
    Later it was dropped for ‘Class’ or ‘Grade’.
    None of my children or grandchildren would know the use of ‘form’ for class.

19. Thanks Qaos and Eileen

    Great fun as ever, and as usual I completely missed the theme.

    William @ 5: ten is as far as it gets, I think, but there are two ONEs, so would that count as eleven?

20. Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

    This was most enjoyable, but I needed help with parsing TURN INTO and RESIST.

    CONFETTI MONEY was new to me, but the SEVEN AGES OF MAN are remembered from about the age of two, my dad would quote it many mornings while shaving, a lengthy process with strop and cut-throat razor.

    CLONED was a great clue, and CHALET, HIGH FIVE and FOURIER were very good.

21. Regarding the clue for CLONED.

    Does anybody else agree that there is a comma missing?

    100,501,500 from 100,50[,]1,500

    Or maybe I’m missing something??

22. As with DPhil, I think putting the commas in the correct places in 27a would make the clue a little too easy/less challenging to solve.

23. 100501500 would work for me, too.

24. Bruce Manley @21, we had a similar clue to CLONED a while back, there was quite a lot of discussion but, if I remember rightly, the final consensus was that numbers like 501 could be split into 50 and 1.

25. @Bruce Manley at#21 has a point.

    @MikeP at #22: If a comma after 50 would make it ‘a little too easy’, even the other commas could have been dispensed with to make the clue hard.
    I am not sure if tinkering with enu or punctuation is really a good thing. We would expect consistency in clue-writing.

26. I felt very hedgehoggy about this.

27. “Numerous” pleasures here although I was not clever enough to get a DPHIL (an ingenious and fair clue in hindsight, despite misdirections like “prosecutor” “holds” and “invalid”).

    Lepidoptera feels plural to me, but having looked it up, I believe it may also be singular.

    Even though several clues were digital/mathematical, I failed to spot the numbers in the solutions (clever of Qaos to hide so many). At my school, some of us loved maths and some of us hated it. There was a lot of division. I’m here all week.

    @21 Brcuce Manley: I thought 27a had just the right number of commas. In a cryptic clue, punctuation can be irrelevant and nothing has to be what it seems. Placing commas every three digits makes them look like authentic big numbers which is exactly what they aren’t.

    Lots of pleasing clues: WEIGHTY, CHALET, CLONED, TENDRIL et al.

    Thanks to Qaos for a great puzzle, and Eileen for the usual excellent guide.

28. DPhil, written like this, is the Oxford University term for a PhD, written like this, on the official Oxford University site, so I guess one word for crossword purposes is OK.

29. I assumed a misprinted ‘lepidopteran’ at 13, as the intended clue was clear enough, but wasn’t happy about the enumeration of 2dn

30. Checking further on the web, PhD seems to be the official abbreviation now, as does DPhil, perhaps it is only those of us who are ‘old’ who question the enu.

31. Technically pretty good for a Qaos, which is normally full of errors, but I still don’t like it much. It has many anagrams too, about 11.

    10a Guardianism. What’s wrong with ‘broken heart’ anyway; 13a as blogged, no definition really; 15a indirect hidden so unfair; 21a no need for second anagram indicator; 24a ‘more’ is needed? Not a correct Spoonerism as others observe; 26a are IS terrorists? That is a matter of opinion I suggest; 27a very elaborate, and why can it not lead to CLONE?; 1d does ‘why’ equal ‘question’? Also ‘as’ seems like filler; 5d surely BITER is better for this; 7d seems rather weak, I’m not convinced; 8d ‘cheap’ doesn’t really mean ‘devalued’; 14 23d not really enough to it for me. I had to get it from the enumeration and the hint that it is a WS quote; 18 ‘rebuilding’ would be okay, but that spoils the surface a bit!; 19d second definition I’m confused on.

    HH

32. Thanks to Eileen for the blog.
    I am another unhappy with the numeration of 2d.

    In 27a the “numbers” have to be exactly the same as each other in order to be clones. They could each have three commas or no commas.

33. UNESCO in its International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) uses the abbreviations PhD and DPhil.

34. A bit of a mixture for me, many clues I found quite straightforward, others (like WEIGHTY) that I managed to struggle on. Had I seen the theme, or even remembered to look for it, no doubt I would have had less trouble.

    FOURIER rang a bell from many, many years ago, or more particularly the series associated with his name. No idea what it was now though.

35. Enjoyable and not the most difficult we’ve seen from Qaos. Last in was CHALET after DPHIL, which is surely not one word, nor is in a peoper acronym, but would be a write-in if enumerated as (1,4) so I suppose it’s OK (I thought it was D.Phil. not DPhil). Agree with westdale @1 on the Spoonerism – is it valid to change the sound of a switched consonant? Did like CLONED (once the penny dropped) and MATE

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen

36. mus tlearn to tpye peoperly

37. I have just taken a look at my 1983 D. Phil. thesis. It is exactly that – D. Phil. embossed on the spine. And my wife’s is Ph.D.

    Having said that, it would spoil it to have 1,4 because it would have been an immediate write in.

38. @37 – so I wasn’t imagining what the one in my Dad’s study says!

39. Beery hiker @35, DPhil is now the official abbreviation; yes Marienkaefer @37, so is mine Ph. D., but with a space, 40 years ago, but times change and now all the universities are following the UNESCO directive.

40. ButThatStillDoesntMakeItOneWordDoesIt?

41. Yes it does for crossword purposes, it is the same reasoning I guess that applies to no notice being taken of apostrophes.

42. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one – I didn’t mean to fan the flames… 🙂

43. Cookie @39 – bet I had to blow off more dust than you!

44. [Marienkaefer @43, bet you didn’t, mine is on a bookshelf next to a wall on the other side of which there is a leaky shower, and all the plaster is crumbling off onto my old books.]

45. So there’s me thinking that this is one of Qaos’s best yet because it’s not a slave to scientific allusions and a hidden theme – and it turns out that it is – and yet again I’ve missed it.

    Just the artist’s response to the tyranny of the blank canvas IMHO – didn’t detract in any way. Brilliantly clued. Slow start for me but gradual acceleration as the crossers became available. Real slow burner.

    To be honest early on I had to use the technique of tentative crossers from half-guessed answers to keep moving – but needs must – maybe I just wasn’t on good form myself.

    Thanks all round. Esp S&B.

46. I enjoyed this but I’m bound to say the theme seemed a little spurious to me but then I’ve only got an MPhil so what do I know?
    Thanks Qaos.

47. Yes all good clean fun.

    Pity then that 13 is ambiguous as a COMET is sometimes refered to as a wanderer and there is a COMET MOTH.

    Nothing special about this link, but if I don’t give at least one example somebody will moan. http://www.ianridpath.com/comets.pdf

48. I hope some of you watched ‘Only Connect’
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b062s9ks/only-connect-series-11-1-cluesmiths-v-operational-researchers

    on Monday evening, when some of our crossword chums were competing.

49. Were they posters on this site, Eileen?

50. Hi Limeni

    Pass: I can’t remember – this is why I’ve not commented until now!

    Mick [Morph] is one of my favourite setters in the Indy and Richard has commented here and I’ve met him at S and Bs.

51. Thanks Qaos and Eileen

    Another entertaining offering from Qaos. The key attraction from the time that this setter first started with the Guardian has been his fresh and original approach with his clues. Clues like DPHIL, CLONED and the layered hidden REEK are welcome techniques in my opinion – keeps freshness in this pastime

    UNCTION, CONFETTI MONEY (new to me and was hard to track down) and CLONED were the last few in.

52. Oh yes, we like Morph.

    bruce@aus – I couldn’t agree more with your central paragraph; in fact you have covered most of what I wanted to say! ‘Freshness’ is the word with the wonderful Qaos – I just wish we saw him more often. I was very pleased to be able to buy him a drink at S&B Cambridge. In fact, sitting in a pub between Qaos and Eileen is a deeply treasured memory of this summer. It’s all I ask of life really!

    I have to say I think the Spoonerism with the hard and soft ‘G’ may have been a cheekily and provocatively deliberate snook cocked good-naturedly in the rough direction of some of the crossword police who frequent these pages. :)

    Haha..I think he may have started a new convention with “terrorists = IS” – might be too useful to resist for setters. A new one to replace the retiring ED = Miliband/Balls!

    Thank you – lovely crossword and blog.

53. Unfortunately I have to say that it’s hardly new to Crossworld.

    And you can choose from IS, ISI, ISIS, ISIL and now, of course, though where it may become useful I’m not quite sure, DAESH. And DAESH of course stands for, well, ISIS (approximately, Islamic State in Iraq and as-Sh?m). And since as-Sh?m can stand for either ‘Greater Syria’ or ‘the Levant’, you can add ISIL to that as well. Again. Actually, it’s kinda hard to see how any of these are all that different from one another. OTOH I don’t suppose al-Baghdadi gives a shit.

    But Mr Cameron doesn’t like Auntie using ‘Islamic State’ because it confers a certain legitimacy, he thinks. Well, okay, so-called Dave: DAESH it is.

54. Eileen @48, thanks for the link, but it is only available to those in the UK.

55. @Paul B.     Ahh…I had a vague memory that I’d seen it used it before, but then I’ve a vague memory.

56. “dphil” as a 5 letter word is just cheating.

57. DPhil and PhD are now the official UNESCO abbreviations for these postgraduate degrees, no full stops or spaces, check the university sites, especially Oxford for DPhil.

    Qaos is to be congratulated for being up to date. I had to dig around for ages to get to the bottom of this quandary.

58. “10” makes an appearance several time in the cluing — once in network to be replaced by the letters of “ten” and once in “sixth form” by X.

    “Subatomic” is certainly an adjective, but can “subatom” be a noun?

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