I know I’m not the only one to be sorely missing Saturday ‘Araubeticals’ [© Muck] and it was a real joy to find this one from Puck, one of my favourite setters.
It turned out to be a reasonably gentle one as far as placing the answers [once you’d got them] went – a friendly grid, with several long answers with few options as to their placing, and the two S answers giving a number of initial letters – but, as always with Puck, there were some really cracking clues and witty surfaces – and a few challenges in the parsing department – which made this worthy of the Prize slot in any case.
We’ve had a number of new commenters recently, who may not have much experience of ‘jigsaw’ crosswords. I remembered this excellent guide, written by PeeDee in his blog of an ‘Araubetical’. I don’t believe in trying to reinvent the wheel and so I’ve given the link with his permission and my gratitude. You may have thought, as I did, that Araucaria was not quite so generous with his alphabetical grids but, in fact, this puzzle uses the same one and – by a rather remarkable coincidence – the S answers are in exactly the same position!
Huge thanks to Puck for stepping so elegantly and entertainingly into the beloved Rev’s shoes. If this is to be a regular occurrence – I do hope so – Muck [or someone] will need to think of another name for these delights.
I have never blogged a jigsaw puzzle before and my IT skills are not up to reproducing the grid and so I am totally indebted to Gaufrid for doing that part for me. Many thanks to him.
A He’s a sporting champion (4)
ASHE
Anagram [sporting] of HE’S A – sadly, this is not quite &lit, as it ought to be, as the tennis star, Arthur Ashe, died tragically young, so the tense would be wrong
B Fast runner, athlete taking a run out of Salisbury now (4,4)
BLUE HARE
BLUE [athlete] + HAR[ar]E – capital of Zimbabwe, called Salisbury until 1982 – minus a r [a run]: [I spent time pondering taking a r out of Sarum, muttering, ‘That was Salisbury then, not now’. I should have known better.]
C For which referee’s essential element in family row? (5,5)
CLEAN FIGHT
E [‘essential element’ of refEree] in CLAN FIGHT [family row]
D Very bad medic in East End — he had flu “cured” (8)
DREADFUL
DR [medic] + ‘E ‘AD [‘he had’ in East End] + an anagram [cured] of FLU
E Bender stupid teen’s entertained, being very hungry (8)
ESURIENT
URI [Geller – bender of spoons, allegedly] in an anagram [stupid] of TEEN’S
F Sally to take in top football competition? That’s just the start of it! (8)
FOREPLAY
FORAY [sally] round EPL [English Premier League – top football competition] – ‘it’ as in ‘at it’, of course 🙂
G Sort of bacteria making one man get ill in serious case (4-8)
GRAM-NEGATIVE
Anagram [ill] of I [one] MAN GET in GRAVE [serious]
H Support Paris’s main form of transport (8)
HANDRAIL
HAND [‘main’ in French] + RAIL [form of transport]
I Two bits of gingivitis, first and foremost not greatly attractive (8)
INVITING
I think this is IN + VITI [two bits of gINgiVITIs] + N[ot] G[reatly] [first and foremost letters]
J Endless task, getting drink for punchbowl? (5)
JORUM
JO[b] [task] + RUM [drink] – isn’t it satisfying to construct an unlikely-sounding word from the wordplay and then look it up and find out that it does exist? [Collins: ‘prob. after Jorum, who brought vessels of silver, gold and brass to King David [II Samuel 8:10]’
K Difficult as A, not E, in Liverpool (6)
KNOTTY
+ ASH[e], the answer to A, gives KNOTTY ASH, the area of Liverpool that for years, thanks to Ken Dodd, I thought was fictitious
L One who sweeps up after boiler explodes (6)
LIBERO
Anagram [explodes] of BOILER – another new word for me but, given the crossers, it couldn’t be anything else: it turns out to be the football kind of sweeper, so I’m not ashamed of not knowing it
M Doctor for each one that’s depressed? (5)
MOPER
MO [Medical Officer – doctor] + PER [for each one]
N G having dropped g, line up for present season (4)
NOEL
We need to take g [gram] from the answer to the G clue to leave NEGATIVE [NO] and add EL, the fairly familiar crossword elevated railway [‘line up’]
O Bits of gossip from Salmond, it seems (2-4)
ON-DITS
Hidden in salmOND IT Seems
P Feeling of foreboding here, gripping N and Timothy (12)
PRESENTIMENT
PRESENT [here] round N + TIM – is what I hastily thought when solving and then realised, when writing up the blog, that I had an extra E, which I think must mean that we need EN [the name of the letter N] [which I think is rather devious!]
Q Leave fairly shortly (4)
QUIT
QUIT[e] [fairly]
R Paper dying journalist edited again (9)
REAMENDED
REAM [paper] + END [dying] + ED [journalist]
S Those people in function at church are drunk? Party time always, apparently (5,3,4,3)
SINCE THE YEAR DOT
THEY [those people] in SIN[e] [function] + CE [church] + an anagram [drunk] of ARE + DO [party] + T [time]
In the back of my mind there was a notion that there was a date for ‘the year dot’ but I’ve discovered that I was confusing it with ‘time immemorial’, which, in English law, is “before ‘legal memory’, i.e. before the reign of Richard I [1189-99], because the Statute of Westminster of 1275 fixed his reign as the time limit for bringing certain types of action” [Brewer] – all totally irrelevant, of course, but I do indulge myself a bit when blogging Prize puzzles
Swimmer? She’s first to sleep with weightlifter (8)
SKIPJACK
S[he’s] + KIP [sleep] + JACK [weightlifter]
T Call trumpeter, not social worker, when in the mood (9)
TELEPHONE
ELEPH[ant] [‘trumpeter’ minus ‘social worker’] in TONE [mood]
U More work for everyone? Time to work before sloth returns (6)
UTOPIA
U [for everyone – film classification] + T [time – again] + OP [work] + a reversal [returns] of AI [the three-toed sloth] – we had this play on Sir Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ just the other day and I said then how it always tickles me
V The old rascal gets travel-sick (6)
VARLET
Anagram [sick] of TRAVEL
W Protestant ordered New York’s premier ales (8)
WESLEYAN
Anagram [ordered] of NEW Y[ork’s] ALES
X One who philosophised on sex, lost without trace sadly (10)
XENOCRATES
Anagram [lost] of ON SEX round [without] an anagram [sadly] of TRACE – a clever construction and surface
Y Agreed about lad losing head before love has its ups and downs (2-4)
YO-YOES
YES [agreed] round [b]OY [lad] + O [love]
Z Zip found in trousers, not dresses (4)
ZERO
The parsing of this one held out longer than it should have: I think it’s that there’s an O [zero/zip – which I know only from crosswords] in ‘trousers’ but not ‘dresses’!
Thanks to Eileen for the blog. I had all the answers but missed a couple of parsings.
Your comment about JORUM “isn’t it satisfying…” points to a well-constructed clue. I also had never heard of this word. In my memory that happened quite often with Araucaria which is one reason I liked his work so much.
I also found this grid made the job easier especially after I’d solved the S clues.
Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed it but also found it rather more difficult than some Araubeticals. I could only identify a few answers before tackling the jigsaw. It added to my education though and I had to seek electronic help to confirm GRAM NEGATIVE, JORUM, KNOTTY ASH and LIBERO. Like you, I wasted some time in trying to fit Sum into the B answer and I agree with your analysis of INVITING.
ASHE would not have been &lit in any case, since the definition ‘champion’ lurks therein.
I feel the compiler struggles here, perhaps revealing just how well Araucaria understood what he was up to in his own Araubeticals. Some tasteless stuff too, that we’ve been forced to accept (it seems) under a certain person’s administration. An excellent format inexpertly handled.
I liked this a lot. Is it the first time that an alphabetical has contained a single unambiguous key answer (the central spine, 5d) onto which most of the others can be linked? The other S clue, SKIPJACK, fooled me for a long time, since where I live (Baltimore MD), the skipjack is a traditional fishing boat used on the Chesapeake; not what I would call a swimmer exactly.
PS. The online version had the NOEL clue twice and omitted ZERO. So I did not have to bother with that clue, though the light was obvious. It would not have been so hard, though, since zero/zip is common usage in the US.
Thanks Eileen, also for reminding me of the French for hand: the H clue made me fronce my sourcils. I liked the way this grudgingly but pleasingly revealed itself, even the unknowns like GRAM-NEGATIVE, JORUM AND LIBERO. Kicked myself at the very end for failing to see Harare/Salisbury, though Google-checking quickly fixed it. Nice work Puck
One week later it all seems a blur but I remember enjoying this greatly. Shame the prize angle stops us discussing these puzzles while they’re still fresh in the mind – they’re only giving away remaindered books after all – not booze or washing machines – so what’s the big deal?
To be honest I have mixed feelings about alphabeticals. You can get a swag of answers cold and still not know where to put them – unlike the secure feeling in a conventional puzzle where you pretty well know for sure when you’ve nailed one and it almost definitely helps with the remaining ones.
In this case I got off to a good start with the biggie down the middle (no doubting where that one went) and a few others – a couple of obscurities were easily guessable from the wordplay – so no complaints at all – and I think this is exactly what this slot seems to be aiming for. Not necessarily the toughest of the week but it has to have something special about it. This one certainly did.
Many thanks to both S&B .
Many thanks Eileen and Puck.
I enjoyed this immensely but even though I got the BLUE part I was still unable to solve HARE.
My mind was stuck on Salisbury in the UK and I never even thought of either Zimbabwe or Harare even though I have been there!
I agree with all of Eileen’s sentiments on Araubeticals back in the days before I did the crossword every day they were the ones I looked out for, so this was a lovely surprise. The level of difficulty was perfect for me, just within what can be completed on a train without devices or dictionary, but definitely trickier than the one Paul gave us earlier in the year. JORUM, GRAM NEGATIVE, ESURIENT and VARLET were all at best very dimly familiar, but they were all clearly clued. The jigsaw element was non-trivial – most of my first few solutions were the 6 letter ones.
Thanks to Puck and Eileen
I was delighted to see an alphabetical and I had fun working through this one. So thanks, Puck, for this and Eileen for providing the parsing detail that I didn’t get for some of the answers.
Having the first letter of each answer is such an advantage that inevitably some of answers come very easily. This was also the case for those by Araucaria. Fitting the answers in presents a different challenge from the traditional crossword which I enjoy.
What Bryan Clough said @8!
@3 That was a strong reaction and I couldn’t really see why you felt so strongly. I am genuinely curious.
I rather liked this. Ashe didn’t perhaps work, though I go it straightaway. And the z clue was a bit feeble (not least because I have a couple of pairs of jeans with button flies, and my wife has several dresses with zips). But the points in between A and Z were all rather nice.
Thanks Eileen and Puck. An excellent puzzle with many wellcrafted clues that provided an hour’s entertainment and delight. Tackling it with my friend Bridgesong was a big help; Libero and Jorum new ones to me. Agree with Jollyswagman @7 about memory fading but wouldn’t want to see any change to the weekly embargo for prize puzzles.
A really entertaining alphabetic jigsaw. The best we’ve had since those of Araucaria in my opinion.
Not too much was given away by the grid as is sometimes the case and the clues were of sufficient difficulty to make getting started in the grid a bit of a challenge.
More Puck alphabeticals please.
Thanks to Eileen and Puck
Count as another pair who enjoyed this offering from Puck – we also wonder why Paul B @3 had such a strong reaction against it. We agree with Andrew B @ 12 about A and Z.
We had the same parsing as you Eileen for INVITING but did wonder whether we were missing something.
Thanks to Eileen and Puck.
Andrew B @12 and B and J @15
Why does ASHE ‘not work’? Paul B is right, of course, that it isn’t / couldn’t be &lit but my comment was meant as an observation, not a criticism. It’s still a nicely succinct allusive clue.
Re the I clue: on reflection [and after a bit of input from Gaufrid!] I think a better reading might be ‘two bits of gingivitis first’ and then the foremost letters of letters of Not Greatly – but it makes little difference, really.
Thanks Puck and Eileen
Very pleasant to have an alphabetical now and then, though I wouldn’t want one every week. I thought that this one, although very enjoyable, was an relatively easy example of the type, though I didn’t parse NOEL – thanks for that, Eileen.
Hi Eileen
For INVITING – I had it simply as taking an anagram of [G]INGIVITI[S] with the ‘first and foremost, not’ being the indicator (i.e. not the first and foremost letters)
Aggghhh … wrong !!! Sorry … an I instead of an N there.
This was certainly a friendly alphabetical but very enjoyable indeed. My last one was BLUE HARE which took quite a while to get following FOREPLAY…in the crossword that is. I failed to parse NOEL (didn’t spot g for gram) and ZERO and parsed INVITING the same way as you Eileen. Sil definitely will not like that. Favourite clue was KNOTTY.
Keep the alphabeticals coming and many thanks to Eileen and Puck.
Count me as another who thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. I needed aids at the end to get the GRAM-NEGATIVE/BLUE HARE crossers, mostly because, like BC@8, I had forgotten the Harare/Salisbury connection.
Pangram, anyone?
What Bullhassocks said @11!
Eileen – Joyce didn’t like ‘sporting’ as the anagram indicator. However, as you asked the question, we looked in Chambers which defines it as ‘to trifle with’ so perhaps that comment ought to be withdrawn!
Sorry Puck.
Hi B and J
Fair enough – I’ve seen it several times before, so didn’t think twice about it, or look it up. I thought of it as ‘playing’, which is a pretty common indicator.
Thanks Puck for a fun jigsaw puzzle and Eileen for a super blog!
Like Eileen, I spent a while trying to work sarum into the answer for B, and in the end failed to fully parse BLUE HARE. I also needed help to parse several others.
I had XENOPHANES in the grid at first, but GRAM-NEGATIVE had to be the crosser since JORUM fitted nicely with PRESENTIMENT. The only unknown word was LIBERO.
Thanks Eileen and Puck. We were in Cambridge: a lovely dinner the night before, guest room over the river, beautiful sunshine, and an alphabetical. What more could one want?
Like Eileen I found this on the gentler side: especially with the only possible long S down clue. With the more fiendish Araucaria ones, I would sometimes fill almost all of the grid, until realising that the last three or four would not go in, and having to start all over again.
Eileen – your comment on Jorum reminded me of my late mother who loved clues where you put together a word you had never heard of, and then looked it up to find it does indeed exist. I shall think of them as “Jorums” from now on.
RogerBear @4 – the last alphabetical (Paul I think) had “Zebra Crossing” as the spine clue.
I thought perhaps the absence of a clue for ZERO was itself the clue, though as its the Grauniad, editorial oversight also seemed likely.
I seem to remember the Zip clue was put in on Sunday, it took me several days to finish the puzzle!
I was about to say something deploring the carelessness of publishing without checking, when I noticed an apostrophe inadvertently omitted (bucking the common trend) in my own post. Oh dear.
Thanks, by the way, to Puck and Eileen for excellent puzzle and blog.
ASHE was my LOI but I can’t say I have a problem with the clue. SINCE THE YEAR DOT took me ages and I think I had all the crossers before getting it.
Overall, though, I thought this rather good and it was a quickish solve for an alphabetical.
Thanks Puck.
I love alphabeticals, and this one is no exception, even though I had some parsing issues. I didn’t have time to look at it until late last night (we were/are moving house) and I was too tired to make much progress, but I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep so I tackled it again then with more success.
For B, I fell for the Sarum trap too, but I didn’t move on to Harare even though I’m of a generation which knew of it when it was still Salisbury. I did, however, Google and find references to the “Salisbury Hare” so I thought that must be the explanation, though a rather obscure one. For H, I know “main” is French for “hand” but I still didn’t see it. For N, I missed “El” for elevated railway, though of course I’ve seen it in previous crosswords. I was very late seeing SINCE THE YEAR DOT so it didn’t help me much with fitting in other answers.
Thanks to Puck and to Eileen.
Thanks Puck and Eileen
Will come back now that I have fully gone over the puzzle …
Am another who loves the jigsaw type puzzle and this was a worthy debut (I don’t think that I’ve seen any other Puck ones!) and hope that there are more by him to come. I was able to start fitting the answers into the grid after getting about half a dozen, including the two 5-letter ones. JORUM / SKIPJACK was then my way in.
Finished up in the NW corner with KNOTTY, WESLEYAN and the (missing) ZERO as the last few in.
There were quite a few, as it turns out, that I did not have the parsing right or have them parsed at all. These include INVITING (as shown above 🙁 ), KNOTTY (didn’t know or find Knotty Ash as a district of Liverpool), NOEL (just too good for me) and TELEPHONE (didn’t go close to putting trumpeter as an elephant into the logic).
Thanks to Puck and Eileen. Like several others my version of the puzzle had the same clue for N twice and no clue (zip-zilch-zero) for Z. However, the grid had 4 spots for 4-letter words and only 3 in my A-Y list, so that with E and O as crossers the answer to the mystery clue was clear (though I did enjoy Ian @28’s rationale). I needed Eileen’s parsing to fully understand some of the solutions but I much enjoyed the process.
Thanks to Puck and Eileen. Great to see the return of the alphabetical. And not a president in sight!
[DuncT @35
There was another today, though (I think I’m safe in saying that, as it was in the clue, rather than the solution.)]
Eileen @16 Perhaps wrongly I felt that champion was a somewaht weak definition for Ashe. At any rate, I immediately wrote Ashe with a question mark next to the clue because I thought it probably was Ashe, but didn’t quite feel sure.
Perhaps that’s more a case ome being unsatisfactory than the clue…
Thanks, Eileen! For the explanation of UTOPIA, I would add that “work for everyone” may be doing additional duty, in that it could be considered a characteristic of the perfect society. 🙂
Andrew B @37
How do you define ‘champion’? World No. 1 and three Grand Slam titles will do me.
But there’s much more – see here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060c7kc
Or perhaps you mean that ‘champion’ doesn’t do him justice?
Hi dagnabit @38
I used to think that double duty was OK but it seems to be frowned upon these days.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one. I echo all the positive comments above, including the Jorum tingle.
Couldn’t parse ZERO & needed help with GRAM NEGATIVE. I thought the INVITING clue rather clunky.
Many thanks to Puck & to Eileen for usual immaculate blog.
Thanks for the blog Eileen, and for the reminder that I coined the term Araubetical. Please, no one invent another name for these puzzles. There will never be another Araucaria, and I’m hoping that Araubetical will appear as a word in the OED one day
I took Andrew @37 to be saying that “champion” was a rather vague as a definition, not that Ashe didn’t fit it. As his name is so useful in wordplay, though, I usually think of Ashe whenever I see “champion” in a clue, and I’m usually right.
Thanks to Puck and Eileen. Enjoyed this araubetical and appreciate it being on the easier
end of the spectrum.
I initially parsed ZERO as Ian SW3 @28. No clue there so it must be zero.
Cheers…
Araucarian beauty, completion delayed … ended finally: great happiness, indeed joy! Keenly let me now offer praise: quality, reachable solutions till ultimate victory won. Ximenean yet zesty.
Thanks Puck and Eileen
Sorry for the late posting. I’ve just returned from a couple of weeks skiing in Perisher Valley (a pommy friend of mine said he loved that name).Pity I left before the 70cm dump.
I had a lot of trouble with this. But I think I’m starting to get the hang of this type of puzzle.
Like jennyk @32 my knowledge of French did not help.
After seeing the answer for K, I spent a lot of time trying to imagine how a Liverpudlian would pronounce “not E”.
For P I wondered where the extra E came from. Yes it is devious.
Thanks all
An alphabetic always welcome here.
I especially liked B.
I failed to parse telephone, did not see trumpeter= elephant!
Thanks all
An alphabetic always welcome here.
I especially liked B
I failed to parse telephone, did not see trumpeter= elephant!
Like other online solvers I was flummoxed by two N clues and no Z clue. By the time they shifted to PDF I already had half a gridful so carried on (should have read the PDF i guess), as I had assumed that the two identical N clues were deliberate, rather than a mistake. Finally, exasperated, I had LENO as the second answer.. he did “Present” a “Season” of his show, didn’t he? 😉
I spent a while trying to get NERO from the redundant N clue, but eventually, like IanSW3@28, decided that having no Z clue meant there was no solution – i.e. ZERO.