Guardian 26,631 / Paul

49 comments on “Guardian 26,631 / Paul”

1. Thanks to Paul for an entertaining puzzle and to Eileen.

   I couldn’t get 22across, since I had convinced myself that the answer to 22 down was ‘ticket’. Mrs Ticket is a housekeeper in Little Dorrit (thanks Wikipedia) and sort of means ‘appropriate’ as in the phrase ‘just the ticket’!

2. I also feared that there would be many obscure Dickens characters in this puzzle but luckily I knew all of them and as mentioned by Eileen the clueing was very helpful.

   I failed to solve 24d TWIG, and needed help to parse CHEESE in 11a. New word for me was CLERIHEW.

   My favourites were MAGWITCH, CHALICE, STRETCHIER, PIRRIP.

3. Thank you Paul and Eileen!

4. Thanks for the blog Eileen – I agree that the Dickens characters were less troublesome that they might have been. I’d forgotten POCKET, even though I’ve read Great Expectations – I see he was played by Alec Guinness in the 1946 film, with John Mills as Pip (which I have also seen).

5. Highly enjoyable, with quality clueing throughout. SINECURE and CLERIHEW were good (as well as being lovely words), and TWIG (which was probably today’s gesture towards smut!).

   As all have said, the Dickens was all ‘O Level’ (or BBC adaptation), so not as daunting as at first feared.

   Congratulations to Paul, and many thanks Eileen.

6. Two JHs in one day! i was within my depth more on this.Very enjoyable whereas IO was more of an assault course.

7. As others have said, a hugely enjoyable puzzle, impeccably and precisely clued. No obscure words. Paul makes it look so effortless.

8. Thanks Eileen for a good blog and Paul for a General Knowledge test.

   I knew most of them but some, like POCKET, needed Mrs Google. I’m not very keen on these sort of puzzles where if you don’t know the character it’s pretty difficult to get the answer.

9. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

   A fun crossword, especially TWIG, finally got after struggling.

   Interesting how everything is male in this, and many other, crosswords – this is not a GRUDGE.

10. Robi @8
    I had forgotten POCKET, but the other half of the clue and the first two crossers led me to the answer, which then rang a bell in the farthest reaches of my mind. I then used Google just to cross-check, which led me to HP and Great Expectations. Unlike you I AM quite keen on this sort of puzzle when it is as fairly clued and constructed as this one. My LOI was in fact CLERIHEW, which raised another smile when the penny finally dropped.
    Thanks, as ever, to Paul, and to Eileen.

11. A smut-free Paul but a very enjoyable puzzle nonetheless, IMHO. Knowledge of Dickens definitely made it a faster solve than it otherwise might have been. I got POCKET from the “appropriate” part of the clue once I had PIRRIP, although the Dickens character of that name did ring a vague bell.

12. I don’t often dream about the actor Daniel Evans (now an excellent director too – running the Sheffield Crucible) but for some reason I did last night, which helped me with Herbert Pocket. He played him very winningly on film, as did Alec Guinness years ago. The character is also immortalised as “Harry Biscuit”, the parallel best-friend role, in Radio 4’s Bleak Expectations. A classic Dickensian name – just ridiculous enough.

13. Excellent puzzle from my favourite setter. No obscenities although I’d forgotten PIRRIP and couldn’t remember which novel POCKET was in. Too many favourites to list. LOI was CLERIHEW.
    Thanks Paul.

14. I paused on PIRRIP (I had forgotten Pip’s real name) and like others took a while getting TWIG (my last in) but much enjoyed the process. Re Cookie @9, given the various Great Expectations figures, I was anticipating the presence of Estella and Havisham. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

15. Lovely puzzle Paul: memories of great reads.

16. Limeni@5

    I could have added that in the past month I have seen BBC’s recent adaptations (year 2000s) of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist (as well as The Mystery of Edwin Drood) – so that was a great help in solving the Dickens clues in this puzzle.

    I happen to be one of those people who has never read a Dickens novel….. as far as I can remember anyway! I never had to study any of his novels in secondary school or at university (in Australia) and I never got round to reading any.

17. Thanks Paul and Eileen. As a lover of Dickens I found this a fairly straightforward solve. Loved Clerihew. Spent some time trying to work in “Doh” in 5dn. Is Homer now always Homer Simpson, rather than classical Homer, in crosswordland? And similarly, does anyone use “cha” for “tea” in the real world?

    I assume everyone knows the plot of Great Expectations – otherwise your entry for 20 across is a bit of a giveaway Eileen …

18. ACD @14,

    The setter Paul
    Tries to enthral,
    But all his characters are men
    So where is love then?

19. Hi Marienkaefer @17

    I always take ‘Homeric moment’ as a reference to Homer nodding, rather than ‘Doh’. 🙁

    Re your last sentence: you’re right – my apologies. I’ll delete it – rather late, I know, but I’ve been out.

20. Eileen – it wasn’t meant to be a criticism! It reminds me of a time when I met the only person in the world who didn’t know the ending of Pride and Prejudice, which he was reading at the time. “Oh so she does marry him?” was his flat response when I spoiled it for him.

21. Thanks all
    Although I think I have not read a single Dickins novel most of these are well bedded into our culture so only pirrip and pocket caused me to consult wiki.
    I am not too sure that stretchier is correctly defined!

22. I must admit that my knowledge of Dickens is mostly from film, TV and radio adaptations, but fortunately that was enough for most of these. The top and right went in pretty quickly, the rest was trickier – TWIG was last in. Liked BLUE CHEESE and CHALICE, also liked the positioning of PIRRIP so that all three letters were crossed.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

23. Marienkaefer asks: Does anyone use “cha” for “tea” in the real world?

    Of course, “cha” is in everyday use in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and some other countries. These countries are very much part of the real world, I think.

    Maybe those who returned to their countries from the Raj days no longer use it.

    Rishi

    in Chennai that was Madras, India

24. To add to Rishi’s response to Marienkafer – and in Japan, China and much of the rest of Asia. So that makes half the world that uses “cha” for “tea”.

    Colin

    In Hong Kong, China that used to be Hong Kong, UK.

25. rishi @23 – sorry I meant the real Anglophone world which is very narrow of me. I thought it was chai in India though (and ocha in Japan).

26. Even narrower of me given how widely English is spoken in India etc! I’ll get me coat …

27. The ‘o’ in front of ‘cha’ is an honorific, as in obento, onigiri etc. There are many varieties of tea such as kocha, mugicha.

28. HKColin @27 – thanks: my daughter lives in Japan so I have encountered many of these teas. My main point though was that in the UK certainly “cha” or “char” is pretty archaic for tea.

29. Thoroughly enjoyed this, thank you very much, Paul. Too many good ones to list!

    Thanks too to Eileen for the blog, I needed help with the parsing of “blue cheese”.

30. 22 across / down, with just the crossers, could also be the Dickensian characters BARKIS / BUCKET (David Copperfield / Bleak House). Make no sense with the clues I know but led me up a blind alley I can tell you.

31. I confess that I did have PICKUP at 22 – probably not a Dickens character but it is at least a rare surname…

32. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Although I didn’t have any difficulty with the Dickens references (aided by having done “Great Expectations” for O level many years ago), I didn’t like their clues much – rather allusive, in that there wasn’t much chance of solving them if you didn’t know the character.

    The rest was much more enjoyable. Particular favourites were SINECURE, CLERIHEW and BAR CHART

33. {To pick up on a theme mentioned a couple of times above, I believe that, for some reason – prescience or inspiration perhaps? – the BBC decided to release the DVDs of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle “Pride and prejudice” before the last episode had been aired. These were bought in their thousands by people who couldn’t wait to find out what happened.]

34. Terrific crossword – thanks Paul, and Eileen for the blog. How neat that 24 down was the final clue, or so I thought when I twigged at last!

35. Hi plotinus

    Yes, delicious, and also the fact that, for most of the commenters here, like me, it seems it was the last one in. Were others held up at all by thinking that the T came from ‘finally geT?

36. I was, Eileen.

37. Excellent crossword, yes.

    But the couple at 22 defeated us, as it did some others above.
    If you are not a Dickensian (and I am not, call it a deficiency in my education) 22ac is impossible.
    It was clearly a palindrome but ?IRRI? is not enough to find the solution.
    This is eventually a general knowledge thing.
    And if you don’t get 22ac (and if you aren’t a Dickensian), you can forget about 22d unless you are very clever.
    I am happy to lose the game, but only for cryptic reasons.

    Despite this unfortunate couple I liked the crossword very much.
    Slightly harder than many of Paul’s offerings in the last few years – fine!
    9ac was nice but I was surprised to see Paul using ‘for a’.
    Ultimately, ‘a’ is superfluous and ‘for’ debatable.
    I remember the usage of ‘for’ meaning ‘given to’ only from Araucaria puzzles.
    Not a bad influence.

    Many thanks, Eileen.

    An unfinished Paul, hmmm.
    Still better than what I made of Nestor (in the Independent) and the other John H [IO (in the FT)].

38. Late to this, thanks to weird work schedule today.

    So that means that likely no one will see this.

    On the subject of female characters: Dickens is famous, in lit-crit circles, for being ass-awful at writing women. His women (for the most part) have been described as “legless angels”–think of Little Dorrit or Esther Summerson–or else total caricatures or villains. The handful of exceptions merely prove the rule. Lady Deadlock, the best example, is a wonderful character–but in part because we’re deliberately kept distant from her for most of the novel, which succeeds in shrouding her in mystery. As soon as we get to know her a little, Dickens is forced to make her a paragon of virtue who just sort of went astray, too late to save.

    Even so, would’ve been nice to see DEADLOCK (all kinds of great clues available for that one!), DEFARGE, NELL, or even (little) DORRIT. (Big Dorrit is a man, of course.)

    –M. (has an English M.A., so has read about eight of these things at some point or another. Book Club moment: Bleak House is my favorite, though Our Mutual Friend is also magnificent.)

39. I came to this very late and rather inebriated.

    However I did enjoy it and managed to remember all the Dickens characters. (I have read all the books in question though)

    Some nice cluing as ever from Paul.

    Thanks to Eileen and Paul

    Marienkafer @28

    “char” maybe archaic for tea in some parts of the UK but it’s certainly still used in Lancashire.

40. Very late getting round to this one, and what a pleasure it was: great settering from Paul, and a theme I really enjoyed. I am not as well-read as I ought to be, but I did spend a couple of years commuting from Brighton to London in a former life, and decided I would make good use of all that time I was trapped on a train, by reading as many Dickens novels as possible (once the crossword was done).

    It is a bit obvious to recommend such well known classics, but they are truly great reading. Sometimes the dense prose and old language was a bit hard going for the first few pages, but generally by about page 300 I was completely hooked! Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House are my favourites, but they are all great. So if this crossword inspires anyone to read a Dickens book, I hope they enjoy it as much as I did.

    Anyway, after a bit of a gimme for the first one in (you read “job that’s cushy”, eight letters, and you have to be looking for SINECURE don’t you?), the rest proceeded at a reasonable pace, encountering lots of nifty clues along the way: MUESLI, BIMETALLIC, CHALICE and BLUE CHEESE to name a few of many.

    Thanks Paul, and also Eileen for the blog.

41. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    A bit late to this one after a busy finish to the week at work. One always knows that a Paul puzzle will be accessible, mostly fun with well constructed clues – and so it was here again.

    There were a few of the Dickens characters that I didn’t know – CRATCHIT, POCKET, and BUMBLE. As has been said, the cluing of them invariably led to the name anyway.

    My last in was also TWIG after finding CLERIHEW (a new word for me). Thought that the double definition with TIDY and the ‘devout prayer’ were the standouts amongst a very goodly lot.

    Did have one minor query in that I didn’t think that tin was BIMETALLIC – thought that it was a metallic element in it’s own right.

42. I agree with @37. And I would say it was a poor crossword because of 22a and thus 22d.

43. Brucew@41, not only is tin not BIMETALLIC neither is steel! (Carbon is a non-metallic element).
    Bronze and brass are bimetallic alloys, tin and steel are not.

44. tin and steel are two metals, perhaps? They don’t need to be bimetallic for the clue to work, especially given the “perhaps?”

45. brucew@aus @41 and richardo @43 – if you’re still there

    I read the clue as beery hiker @44 did, which is why I underlined
    ‘with steel and tin, perhaps?’ as the definition.

46. beery hiker and Eileen, yes I agree. Although tin is a metal but steel is an
    alloy, so the “bimetallic” definition would have more metallurgically accurate to
    have been “with iron and tin, perhaps?”.

47. Forgive the Amerixan ignorance, but in 20a, in what sense does “witch” = “dragon”? I suspected very early on that Magwitch was the answer, and “mag” for “issue” sealed the deal, but I would still like to know how the rest of clue works. Thank you!

48. Chris Baum @47

    ‘Witch’ and ‘dragon’ are not, of course, synonymous but both words can be used to denote a fearsome woman.

49. Aha, that does make sense. Thanks Eileen!

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