Guardian 26,691 / Arachne

57 comments on “Guardian 26,691 / Arachne”

1. Very elegant Spiderwoman puzzle as usual. I was also stumped as regards UN in UNFASTEN. Great clues include OUTDO, NEVER SAY DIE, UNDULATION and hundred. Many thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

2. Thanks Eileen. PS in 14A, it’s the starts to Implode Suddenly.
   I couldn’t parse 16 either…

3. In 16D, “UNFAST” means “likely to run” as in clothing colours when washed.

4. A spotters badge to Jason for cracking 16. It’s been driving me nuts

5. Phew! – many thanks, Jason. I’m not sure I’d ever have got there: still can’t quite see the ‘bowels’ bit.

   Thanks, blaise – corrected now.

6. Perhaps “bowels voided” is the clue to Englishman losing his insides?

7. Thanks, Eileen. The bowels are the insides!

8. Thanks, Shirl and NeilW – I’ve stared at it too long! [But ‘voided’ means emptied, so ‘bowels’ isn’t really necessary, is it? – except for the surface, of course. 😉 ]

9. 16: how about “(r)un(s)”? “loose” doing double duty.

10. Thanks Eileen. No trouble with any of this until the loose bowels, and like you I spent more on this than the rest. I worked out the fast/ colour run point but the un- still wasn ‘t satisfying. Nor the ‘about’ in 1A. Otherwise, as ever, this setter seemed to be enjoying herself and passed that on: excellent stuff.

11. Hi molonglo @10

    This is going to sound like sour grapes*, because I didn’t see the parsing, but I’m not keen on the ‘un’ in 16dn, either – colours are more usually described as ‘non fast’, I think – and this is my probably my least favourite clue.

    *To try to refute the suggestion, it’s more often the case that the clues I don’t immediately see turn out to be among my top favourites: a case in point today is UNDULATION, which was a real pdm.

    I don’t see anything wrong with ‘about’ indicating a hidden answer.

12. A most enjoyable puzzle by Arachne and the usual spiffing blog by Eileen, thank you both.

    Thanks also to Jason. I spent ages trying to parse UNFASTEN, but can someone give a sentence where it can be replaced by ‘Loose’?

    GO BALLISTIC, NUDE EEL, TONIGHT, HOBNAILED, BRAIN CELL and so many others were fun.

13. Fantastic puzzle as to be expected- thanks Eileen for parsing of thine and Jason for unfasten

14. me @12, “the door was loose”, “the door was unfast”? or perhaps of a ‘painter’ tying up a boat?

    Probably I was being thick, captcha 1 – ? = 0.

15. Oh dear, still being stupid, the word is UNFASTEN. Help please someone.

16. cookie@15: possibly “loose the guard dogs” ?

17. Cookie @15 – think more old-fashioned language:

    Loose/unfasten the mainbrace!

18. Thank you peterM and Will.

19. (For it is he!)

    Thanks, Eileen – the long straw for once.

    Great puzzle from the Spider Woman, with her characteristically ingenious constructions and great surfaces.

    I loved the ‘Worms dog’ and the clever 14, 18, 26 and 15.

    Like many others, I was stumped by the parsing of 16d (my LOI).

    (Sorry to have been absent for so long. I was away a lot, for various reasons, and fell out of the habit).

20. Thank you, Eileen, for blogging.

    I did enjoy this but found it hard to finish and needed to come here for the parsing of several. Good fun puzzle in the usual Arachne style. NEVER SAY DIE was a great clue.

    I’ll just add two things. The clue for SCATTER is cleverer than has been made out so far, since the thought experiment that involves ‘Schroedinger’s cat’ does involve the SCATTERING of particles. Does the cat live or die? Who knows? But it certainly would have been terrified.

    And in slightly less intellectual mode, I will have a final attempt to parse UNFASTEN at 16dn. It is, as suggested, UNFAST plus EN, and UNFASTEN is slang for ‘loose bowels’, or defecate. The other option Arachne could have used is POT THE BROWN. I could be wrong, of course.

    Whatevs, good to have the spiderwoman back on the oche, and thanks to her for an enjoyable crossword.

21. I am thinking that “about” is no way to indicate a hidden clue. The only “about” bit in the cryptic part of 1a is “schrodingerrified”. The bowels are just the deepest part of the insides, not the whole lot, so “bowels voided Englishman” in 16a would give something more like “Englin”.
    Plus, as I was facing south when completing the crossword, the w in 21a had to be moved to the west, not the east. As a pedantic geographer, do I need to rearrange my furniture to increase my future chances of crossword success?
    Pre-empting Brendan (Not That One), where, o where, was the Crossword Editor?

22. I didn’t think of HUND in HUNDRED as the German for “dog”, though I knew it was. I parsed it as HOUND with the O missing, with worming as expelling something from inside. That doesn’t look very convincing now, so thanks for a better parsing, Eileen.

    With UNFASTEN, I was stuck trying to get UN from “bowels”, not having linked it into “bowels voided, Englishman” or recognised UNFAST as “likely to run”. That’s particularly galling as I spin, weave, sew and dye so colourfastness is often an important issue for me, but like others I think of it as “non-fast” or “non-colourfast” rather than “unfast”. Thanks to Jason for that one.

    Favourites are DISSIMILAR, SERB, GO BALLISTIC, UNDULATION, TARDINESS, TWO FINGERS and UPSET.

    Thanks to Arachne and Eileen.

23. I really enjoyed 27ac. I spent a while thinking about bear/bare which felt as if it should be relevant but felt like a clever misdirection when it clicked.

24. Thanks Arachne & Eileen.

    Great puzzle, as ever. I liked the Worms dog, which I failed to see, and SIRING.

25. Yes, yes, Spiderwoman is very good, and I enjoyed many clues especially SCATTER, SERB, and GO BALLISTIC. But she’s just one step ahead of me with devices like is = be and the whole UNFASTEN issue. I felt a bit like a non-pianist (which I am, alas) trying to understand the subtleties in a Mozart sonata. You know it’s good, but you miss out on the full experience.

26. Another top drawer puzzle, as so often with Arachne. Last in was INGEST, which needed the crosser from UNDULATION, which was a favourite along with SCATTER, TARDINESS, NEW DEAL and DIED BACK.

    Thanks to Arachne and Eileen

27. 24 down
    Isn’t it ‘foot in length’ with 8 ie two thirds of the letters missing?

28. Thanks to Arachne and Eileen. I did catch the “unfast” in UNFASTEN but had trouble with DIED BACK even though I saw the anagram (the link to “withered” eluded me) and needed help parsing TONIGHT (subtracting the K for “knit” was new to me). Much fun.

29. Thanks all
    Really enjoyable
    Please my dear loose your stays.
    Shall I unfasten them, sire?
    Best of a great bunch: 5,9,22,26,28 across and 23 down.hub

30. Like others, I did enjoy this. Like many others, I entered UNFASTEN without it properly parsed, but otherwise, I got this done in time. The perfect puzzle: hard but gettable, with lots to admire. Thanks go to both blogger and setter.

    ACD @ 28: I had singular trouble with “died back” too, I think because I was expecting “clever chap” to be another anagram (of chap), and I spend forever trying to come up with an arrangement of CHAPABED that got a two-word phrase meaning “withered.”

    Part of the problem, too, is that “dick” to mean “clever chap” is not U.S. vocabulary. Here, unless his name is Richard, one does not call a person a dick and expect it to be taken well.

31. All good stuff ta all.

    As we learn more, certain concepts are dropped, no matter how illustrious the literary or scientific precedents. Try saying the sun goes round the earth and be prepared to be laughed out of court. As science progresses even more recent usages join the list of things we now know to be wrong. Hence APE = MONKEY is total rubbish, no matter that that knowledge is fairly recent.

    Suborder Haplorhini: tarsiers, monkeys and apes
    -Infraorder Tarsiiformes
    –Family Tarsiidae: tarsiers (11 species)
    -Infraorder Simiiformes (or Anthropoidea)
    –Parvorder Platyrrhini: New World monkeys
    —Family Callitrichidae: marmosets and tamarins (42 species)
    —Family Cebidae: capuchins and squirrel monkeys (14 species)
    —Family Aotidae: night or owl monkeys (douroucoulis) (11 species)
    —Family Pitheciidae: titis, sakis and uakaris (43 species)
    —Family Atelidae: howler, spider, woolly spider and woolly monkeys (29 species)
    –Parvorder Catarrhini
    —Superfamily Cercopithecoidea
    —-Family Cercopithecidae: Old World monkeys (138 species)
    —Superfamily Hominoidea
    —-Family Hylobatidae: gibbons or “lesser apes” (17 species)
    —-Family Hominidae: great apes, including humans (7 species)

32. Yes, liked this even though I got stuck in the SE corner-SIRING was my LOI- and gave up on the parsing of UNFASTEN. Some nice cluing especially INGEST, SCATTER and HUNDRED.
    THANKS SPIDERWOMAN.

33. Derek L @31: Indeed so (although the unscientific usage is sadly fairly common and listed in dictionaries). However, as a transitive verb, to ‘monkey’ is to ‘ape’, in the sense of ‘mimic’ (no, I didn’t know that either!)

34. mrpenney @30 – dick doesn’t really mean clever chap here either but “clever dick” is a common and slightly pejorative playground term for one – not one to Google from the office!

35. Pauline 27 I read it as I (Roman one) plus F (for foot) in the first third of the word length (length cut by two thirds)

36. Gervase, true enough, but the usage in the clue was not as verb.

    We could have fun with the idea though. To lemur, to gibbon etc should also have that verb equivalence!

37. Thanks, everyone – I’ve been out since late morning.

    Welcome back, Gervase!

    Hi mrpenny @

    Sorry- perhaps I should have explained 8dn in more detail for our non-UK friends: the whole expression is ‘Clever Dick’, which is rather less rude than ‘dick’ [I’m not sure the two are connected] – practically synonymous with ‘Smart Alec’, if you know that one.

    David @35

    That’s the way I parsed it [or thought I did] in the blog – my question mark concerned the abbreviation F for foot, which I couldn’t find.

38. I just hope Arachne doesn’t meet The Librarian, whose views on “the M-word” can lead to serious consequences for the unwary user of “the M-word”!

39. Sorry to buck the trend – but I found this an enormous anticlimax. An early finish to my day, sun shining and a favourite setter’s name on the (Thursday!) Guardian crossword; what could be better? A cosy sunchair in a corner out of the wind to be pleasured by Arachne – and oh! what sublime surfaces. But, even before my tea had cooled for a first sip, it was over!! Misery…..
    (And I’m not showing off; earlier this year I enjoyed a fair chunk of the Arachne archive. Some were very quick to solve, as this, but others offered up a nice, challenging wrestle.)

    For me……. work of cruciverbal art this was. But a Thursday-worthy puzzle…… no.
    (Unless I’ve been wrong all along – I thought the crossword editor sought to offer a tougher challenge on Thursdays.)

    Notwithstanding, thanks to A and E.

40. Thanks Arachne and Eileen
    I enjoyed this, but not as much as some from my favourite compiler, probably because I missed some of the clever bits. For example, I was with jennyk on trying to “worm” hound for 5a. I didn’t see k for knit in 28a, nor parse UNFASTEN either.

    Does AWRY really mean “by unesxpected route”? For me, it means “disordered”.

    Favourites were SCATTER for the reference to the famous cat, the “nude eel”, and BRAIN CELL.

    [Derek Lazenby – do you think that you might need to explain your reference to “The Librarian”? – not for me, though – in fact I’ve just started reading his final (sob) book.]

41. muffin @40, the first meaning given on the net by the Oxford Dictionaries is “away from the usual or expected course”, while it is the second meaning on the Merriam-Webster site “off the correct or expected course”. I had the same doubts as you, so checked.

42. Cookie @41
    Thanks.

    Chambers gives:
    adj. twisted to one side, distorted, crooked, wrong, amiss
    adv. askew, unevenly, perversely, erroneously

    Seems like a different word!

43. muffin @40 et al
    I had doubts about AWRY and still do. Yes, some dictionaries give variants of “off course”, but they seem to be referring to an expected course of events, not to a route.

44. muffin @40 and 42 and cookie @41 – to me (and I presume to say, to most people), awry is synonymous with “agley” and signifies “wrong” or “not according to plan”. You might stretch “not according to plan” to mean “by an unexpected course” but it’s a long stretch. I should not use it in this way and I cannot recall seeing any writer do so.

45. muffin, yeah you’re right, I was presuming such a literate readership must know, which is clearly wrong because we don’t all read the same books.

    So, for them wot don’t know, we are talking about the works of Sir Terry Pratchett, specifically the Discworld series. In the Discworld city of Ankh Morpork, in the Unseen University (where wizards are taught), “The Librarian” is a wizard of the UU who, in a magical accident, became turned into an urangutan. He decidied he didn’t want to turn back again for reasons which included being better able to climb the highest shelves in the library. Being an orangutan, an ape, he was very sensitive about being called a monkey. This usually led to dire consequences for perpetrator, given that The Librarian was still also a wizard. Those in the know therefore found it was safer to refer to “The M-word” than actually say “Monkey” whilst in his presence.

    So now ya all know! Ook.

46. When I click on ‘course’ in the M-W definition it gives “the path or direction that something or someone moves along”. I wonder if it is a new, or American, usage. All very strange and, as David says, I have never seen a writer using it.

47. I suppose the wife is going ‘off course’, not following the expected routine, since she is taking an ‘unexpected route’, so hubby is suspicious. Perhaps this ties in with the comment of jennyk @43?

48. An above average from Arachne thiugh not quite as astonishingly good as some of her puzzles.

    Lots of nice surfaces and some great clues.

    f for foot in 24d seems to be unsubstantiated! Of course our illustrious ed will have found a source!

    16d is fine. unfast does appear in the SOED whereas “non fast” doesn’t. (Surely unfast is more correct anyway?) Void can mean clear, empty or destroy in this sense so the “bowels” in “bowels voided” is defining rather than superfluous.

    Thanks to Eileen and Arachne

49. Chambers gives f as foot, and ft as feet or foot.

    Nice puzzle. Is it just me or has this site been very slow the last couple of days?

50. Thanks, VeraJ @49

    I obviously didn’t look carefully enough yesterday. I thought I had but it’s clearly there today!

    It’s not just you – but it could be just you and me.

51. Hi VeraJ & Eileen
    “Is it just me or has this site been very slow the last couple of days?”

    No, it’s not just you. There is a problem with server overload at the moment and the hosting company’s technicians are striving to rectify this as I write, so I have been informed.

52. Thanks Gaufrid, nice to know it’s not my computer playing up again!

53. Ditto! 😉

54. At least I can now access the site to thank Eileen and arachne, great fun thanks spidery one 🙂

55. I found an entertaining (though admittedly far-fetched and Paul-esque) explanation for “UN = loose bowels” in 16d. According to one obscure acronym-listing website, the Turkish phrase for the United Nations (initials UN) is Birlesmis Milletler (initials BM). I hesitate to elaborate further, but if even remotely plausible this would eliminate (sorry!) the problems with parsing both the word “unfast” and the relationship of “bowels” to “voided Englishman.” Cheers, all. 🙂

56. Thanks Eileen and Arachne.

    An entertaining puzzle with some clever constructions. I liked ‘do’ as an anagrind in 18ac, and 22, 26, and 28 were all excellent.

    My only qualm is the SW corner. I still don’t think that we have a definitive parsing for UNFASTEN, OVERDRAW seems weak by Arachne’s standards, and AWRY looks a bit – um – awry.

    But thanks to setter, blogger, and contributors.

57. Thanks Arachne and Eileen

    Good to get to an old Arachne puzzle which was her typical crafty and well-crafted crossword. Did struggle with the few that were discussed here – the parsing of UNFASTEN (clever once it was explained), TONIGHT (don’t know why found it so hard to work out with hind vision) and THINE (which probably didn’t have enough time spent on it to unravel fully). Was also an extraction of an O from HOUND at 5a – much better with the German angle to it though.

    Finished down the bottom with the tricky LIFE, the well disguised UPSET and UNDULATION which took an age to finally see.

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