Guardian Cryptic 26718 by Orlando

62 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26718 by Orlando”

1. Thanks Orlando and flashling
   I got off to an unfortunate start by confidently writing in RABBIT for 1a. The obvious anagram at 3d showed my error.
   I didn’t parse SHERRY, but the rest was pleasant enough.

2. Thanks, flashling.

   I was momentarily led astray by RABBIT, too, but didn’t actually write it in.

   I found 1dn particularly satisfying, because it reminded me of the mnemonic [SUNWACD] we made up at school for the tributaries of the Yorkshire Ouse:
   Swale
   Ure
   Nidd
   WHARFE
   AIRE
   Calder
   Don

   Welcome back to this slot, Orlando – and many thanks for an enjoyable solve.

3. muffin @ 1 – me too (RABBIT) !! Perhaps we are first in a long line. Couldn’t parse WARFARE, but otherwise very enjoyable. Re RABBIT: as the phrase is ‘rabbit on’, I suppose that technically ‘rabbit’ alone wouldn’t be correct. Many thanks to Orlando and flashling.

4. Yes 1d was my favourite too, particularly as the stream that flows through our village is a tributary of the Aire.

5. I can’t understand CALL as synonymous with TERM…. Otherwise a gentle start to the week.

6. LIONHEART was good, having neatly summarised the reign of Richard I. I missed the RHEA at 12a and assumed there must be a bird that sounds like ‘hear’.

   Good bit of thinking required, eg with SHERRY, so by no means a write-in though well suited to a Monday. Only let down by the iffy def for LOUDEST – question mark not really sufficient, though it’s so obviously an anagram that solving the clue isn’t really an issue.

7. brian @ 5: CALL something = term something, i.e. give it a name.

8. I like Eileen’s mnemonic.

9. I liked the definition for LOUDEST. Cue musician’s mini-rant: contrary to popular misunderstanding, crescendo (Italian ‘increasing’) is the process of getting louder, not the climax itself. One makes or begins a crescendo, so what follows it is the loudest point.
   I thought there were some lovely clues today, especially BACTERIA. Many thanks to Orlando and flashling.

10. 12ac, Roger @9 – I nearly made that comment myself. How many times do we hear ‘…rising to a crescendo’?

11. Now here’s a (possibly) interesting thing. I didn’t look at the setter before starting this one, and assumed that it was Rufus. I then found myself struggling, and left it. Upon my return, I noticed that it was, in fact, Orlando. Thereafter everything went in pretty smoothly with a few smiles on the way.
    It seems, then, that my approach to solving a Guardian crossword is quite heavily conditioned by my knowledge of the setter.

    No disrespect intended at all to Rufus, but thanks to Orlando.

    And thanks, Roger, for your comments on CRESCENDO – a frequent bugbear of mine and a frequent presence in Guardian corrections and clarifications.

12. drofle @ 7. Thanks for that!

13. Eileen@2

    I remember that same mnemonic from my schooldays in the 1960s. (Isn’t it amazing how mnemonics seem easier to recall than most other memorised data.)

    Little did we or the teacher realise it at the time, but we were being given the tools to solve Guardian crosswords 50 years hence!

14. Thanks Orlando and flashling

    A little bit harder than normal for a Monday and a different sort of enjoyment. This setter always presents crisp and entertaining clues and always has a few that make one really have to think.

    Today, for me, they were WARFARE as had not heard of the River Wharfe and didn’t really know that the River Aire was in Yorkshire either. The parsing of SHERRY took some working out until eventually seeing the ‘just shy of” meaning. Ended up not parsing ADVANTAGE at all, but that was more forgetting to go back to it and check.

    Had written in GARB originally at 25 and went looking for a meaning of ‘barb’ to mean blue – unsuccessfully.

    Liked BACTERIA, LIONHEART and LEVIATHAN. Finished in the NW corner with MAGPIE, WARFARE and FRAU the last few in.

15. Like muffin I first thought of RABBIT for 1ac but wasn’t sure so looked at the down clues and 1dn soon put me right. Couldn’t parse SHERRY, either. Several other parsings were only obvious after thinking about for a bit. BACTERIA was my CoD.

    Thanks, Orlando and flashling

16. As one might expect, WARFARE was a BIFD for me, as the rivers of Yorkshire aren’t part of my body of knowledge. And I think the colloquial meaning of WAFFLE might be different over here: to waffle is to change one’s mind or opinion back and forth on a whim. It’s a common thing to accuse politicians of. I’ve never heard it mean “go on and on.” So the 1’s were my last two in.

    It’s an interesting language quirk that most British rivers have short names that make nice ingredients for crossword setters’ stews (the Dee and the Exe are staples, for example, and the Ouse is a frequently-used seasoning). American rivers (with a few exceptions like the Red or the East) have long names that you’d never see except as an answer to a clue. Of course, this is because British river names are ancient words that have been worn down by the mists of time, while American ones are still recent. They’re almost all either nakedly descriptive (Snake, Red, Rio Grande), named after someone (Hudson, Columbia), or inherited from the natives (Shenandoah, Susquehanna, etc.)

    Even so, I offer you:

    Nebraska flower right in a dish (7)

17. Thank you, both, fine crossword and blog.

    Eileen @2 I spent some time in a London school and we were taught the following mnemonic which sounds wonderfully Red Indian when spoken:

    ToLoSoBlaWa
    WeLaVaChAl
    BaWaPuHaChiKe
    TwiRiKiHa

    About 15 years ago, I had to add Da to the beginning of the first line.

    A mnemonic for what?

18. Roger@9 re crescendo: absolutely! Rog@11, me too! Discombobulated for 15 mins whilst reorientating my expectations. Enjoyably entertained thereafter, particularly by the anagram @ 8d

19. [One problem with that clue I just gave you is that it’s etymologically suspect. Platte, which is what the French called the river, refers to its flatness (it was said by the 19th-century American settlers that the river was “a mile wide and an inch deep,” with only slight exaggeration). This is the same root that gives us the word PLATTER. Incidentally, the Native Americans of the area also called it “the wide flat river.” In the local language, the word for that is…Nebraska.]

20. Thank you Orlando for a pleasant start to a horribly grey November morning. Thought 13ac was rather good, as was 17d which made me laugh. Thanks for the blog, flashling.

    Solved 1d very quickly as I live near to both of those rivers. Your clue took a bit longer, mrpenney @16 – nicely misleading & I had to resort to my atlas!

21. A very pleasant change from the usual Monday fare – shame we see Orlando so rarely these days. Found this a but tricky with SHERRY and APPEAR last in. Liked UNIMPROVED, ADVANTAGE, BACTERIA, WARFARE and HIGHLAND GAMES

    Thanks to Orlando and flashling

22. MrPenny@19 plat is dutch for flat.

    I enjoyed this, especially FRUMP (foi, so wasn’t temped by any rabbit) BACTERIA ALTARPIECE HIGHLAND GAMES. Thank you flashling for the parsing of SHERRY, and I missed the anagram at the end of LIONHEART, havingL + ION(A) for island having abandoned a and wondering why throne=heart.

    pity about the 2 ups in 23d and I also thought the QM was well-needed in 3d.

    many thanks Orlando and flashling

23. Thanks to Orlando and flashling. Like others I had trouble parsing SHERRY and WARFARE and took a while seeing MAGPIE (though WAFFLE came quickly), but enjoyed the process.

24. Don’t understand the ‘crescendo’ quibble – it’s LOUDEST at the end of a crescendo in my musical world.

25. …in other words, in English there is a noun, ‘crescendo’. We say, “make a crescendo,” for example.

    The fact that crescendos (or crescendi if you prefer) are an unwanted and unstylish feature of far too many performances of classical music, is another matter.

26. Everyone’s already said what I wanted to say, but I’ll just drop in to thank Orlando for the puzzle. We don’t see enough of you in the Guardian.

27. Thanks to Orlando and flashling.

    What K’s D said!

    Cheers…

28. Tony Pay @24 and 25.
    As someone who endorsed Roger’s original comment, I don’t quite understand what you are saying. Yes: the end of a crescendo (noun) is its loudest point. But, as Roger has said, the crescendo (noun) is not the loudest point itself, but the increase in volume leading to it. So, as Eileen has said, the frequent use of ‘rising to a crescendo’ (not least in the Guardian) is wrong. You would make a crescendo in order to rise to a climax.

    I hadn’t noticed that crescendi are particularly frequently misused in performances of classical music. But you may be right (I’m no musicologist) – and if you are Tony Pay the clarinettist I will certainly concede the point to your proven expertise!

29. From the Guardian and Observer Style Guide:
    crescendo
    a gradual increase in loudness or intensity; musically or figuratively, it is the buildup to a climax, not the climax itself (we frequently get this wrong)

30. I can’t say I found this easy although, looking at it again, it was. Everything was quite straightforward and mostly well clued but I made very heavy weather of it. Often looking for difficulties where there weren’t any. Perhaps last week’s run of difficult puzzles has made me wary – or it could be that I’m having a bad day!
    No matter,I got there in the end.
    Thanks Orlando.

31. Well, I suppose “rising to a crescendo” could describe the the actions of an appreciative audience to the increased volume of the music!

    On rivers, I recall years ago the way to identify the rivers crossed after leaving Sleaford by road for Norwich, was “the Nene is in between ” (i.e. between the Welland and the Great Ouse).

    Thanks to Orlando and flashling.

32. cholecyst @31 – ha yes, very ingenious! Though I’m guessing that Tony Pay would be unlikely to do so!

33. I’m sorry to question all you erudite people regarding ‘crescendo’, but are all the usual references wrong?

    Oxford – “the loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound”: example “the port engine revs rose to a crescendo”
    Collins – “a peak of noise or intensity”: example “the cheers reached a crescendo”
    Chambers – “a high point, a climax (figurative)”

    They of course also give the alternative meaning, namely: “gradually increasing in loudness”, “an increase of loudness” and “a passage of increasing loudness” (Chambers).

34. Gaufrid @33
    Yet another example of incorrect common usage being sanctioned by dictionaries (viz. “epicentre”!)

35. Thanks for pointing that out, Gaufrid. I’m astonished to discover not only that the OED lists it as a colloquial meaning, originating in the US, but that it was used in this sense as early as 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald (‘The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home’ – though I suppose he could have meant that they had reached a point in their scores where a crescendo was marked!) and in 1939 by P.G. Wodehouse (‘The babble at the bar had risen to a sudden crescendo’). Not nearly as early as the arrival of the incorrect usage of ‘decimate,’ but it has a more impressive pedigree than I had imagined.

    It will continue to jar with me, however – but there again I still shudder at the now invariable use of ‘decimate’.

36. Hi Gaufrid @33

    The *first* definitions in each case in my dictionaries are:

    SOED: Musical direction: to be gradually increased in volume of sound;
    Collins: a gradual increase in loudness or the musical direction or symbol indicating this’
    Chambers: gradually increasing in loudness.

    I’m off out soon for choir practice and I know which interpretation our choirmaster will be expecting!

    [It’s worth remembering that this discussion arose because Orlando used the term ‘correctly’ and so is no reflection on the clue.]

    Rog @35 – I was gratified that the TV Quiz show of that name uses ‘decimate’ correctly. 😉

37. Eileen: good heavens! I had never heard of the show, but having looked it up, I see that you are right. How very refreshing! Steve Finan of the Sunday Post was equally gratified, I see. http://www.sundaypost.com/that-s-life/funday-post/a-word-on-the-words-2.1515/rejoice-rejoice-a-saviour-has-come-among-us-decimate-presenter-shane-richie-1.866765

38. Rog – I first learned the word in Latin lessons and have deplored its misuse ever since. Thanks for the link.

39. Re decimate and crescendo, I agree with the idea that the original meanings are best but our language changes so much, should only Anglo Saxon, Norman, chaucerean, Shakespearean or American be the only true meaning? 🙂

40. You are quite right, flashling, but I can’t now seem to retrain my hackles (conditioned at an early age by Latin and music lessons respectively) to stay down!

41. Thanks Orlando and flashling.

    My comment is as Peter Asplnwall @30. I had no problem with ‘the end of crescendo’ = LOUDEST, the clue is fine.

    COED 1 Mus. a a gradual increase in loudness. [Similar to Eileen’s SOED @36.]

    2a progress toward a climax (a crescendo of emotions).
    2b disputed a climax (the storm reached a crescendo then died away). NOTE THAT THIS IS DISPUTED.

42. There’s a common misconception about what purpose dictionaries serve. They are meant to be descriptive—when they say what words mean, they are telling you how people commonly use them. They are not saying what, in their opinion or anyone else’s, the words SHOULD mean. So when a dictionary says that “crescendo” can mean “the loud spot” rather than “the spot where it’s gradually getting louder,” it’s simply saying that the word is used in that way.

    And hey—words change meaning over time, and not always in a bad way. For example, I’m gay even when I’m grumpy, a sentiment that would not have made the slightest sense to most people 75 years ago. Why CAN’T “decimate” be a synonym for “devastate?” Just because Cicero and Caesar said so? What do they know about modern English?

    That having been said, I will resist with every fiber of my being the recent trend to make “nonplussed” mean approximately the opposite of what it really means. Also the trend in which “literally” means “figuratively.”

43. I certainly didn’t find this gentle, though I did enjoy it. I couldn’t see RHEA, so I couldn’t account for the apparent doubling of (A in HER), and I couldn’t parse SHERRY at all.

    My favourites are LIONHEART, ALTARPIECE and LEVIATHAN.

    Thanks to Orlando and flashling.

44. muffin @34 et al
    The role of dictionaries is to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Although I too deplore the use of “crescendo” for the destination rather than the process, it is so widely used in that way (at least by non-musicians) that I think dictionaries have to reflect that. They should indicate the primacy of the ‘true’ meaning, though.

45. I see MrPenney made my point first, and better. I’m a slow typist. 🙂

46. mrpenney and jennyk
    Yes, dictionaries are descriptive. However they could more often describe usages as “vernacular” or even “incorrect”!

47. [Perhaps we wought to transfer to the General discussion thread? – I was going to add that blurring of meaning lessens the ability of language to make nice distinctions. For example, for many people, “aggravate” and “irritate” are now synonyms.]

48. Well, I have always said that the Académie Française fossilizes the French language, a word, or its usage, can not find its way into a French dictionary without their approval. Now, if I had to choose, I would support their system.

    Crescendo is from the Italian, part. of crescere ‘grow’.

    One of my greatest enjoyments in life has been, and still is, is to try and work out where words come from. At the rate things are going this will soon be no longer for English words.

49. sorry, that should read ‘no longer possible with English words’.

50. [From the Oxford Dictionaries web site:
    “Aggravate in the sense ‘annoy or exasperate’ dates back to the 17th century and has been so used by respected writers ever since. This use is still regarded as incorrect by some traditionalists on the grounds that it is too radical a departure from the etymological meaning of ‘make heavy’. It is, however, comparable to meaning changes in hundreds of other words which have long been accepted without comment.”]

51. jennyk @50
    not sure if you’re supporting or contradicting me:)

52. I am losing the will to live. A dictionary tells us how a word is used. Do we need 32 posts to discuss that?
    The pedants will now go and count the posts.

    Can I discuss the crossword? I still don’t understand 27a.

53. John @52:

    Missing article, let us suppose, entertaining Turkey

    The word A is an article. The word SAY can mean “let us suppose.” The ISO code and Internet suffix for Turkey is TR. So it’s A + SAY entertaining (i.e., hosting) TR, to get the word ASTRAY, which can (loosely) mean missing, as in, “My car keys seem to have gone astray—have you seen them?”

    –M.

54. Quite the curate’s egg – much wider range of difficulty than the usual Monday.

55. JohnM @52 – I think what flashling has explained it, but to spell it out
    A = article + SAY = let us suppose, (entertaining = containing) (standard abbreviation of) Turkey = TR

56. Instead of looking at what a dictionary says about “crescendo”, better to look at a dictionary of musical terms.
    (Dip.Mus.Ed.)

57. This was a welcome relief from the usual Rufus fare. However I think the general relief has meant that the puzzle has been treated rather kindly by posters!

    I thought this was OK but found 20D and 26A a little weak!

    muffin @34 Surely you’ve got this the wrong way round. Dictionaries don’t “sanction” anything, they merely document common usage. That’s how language works. New words are coined by usage, which is often based on a misapprehension. However if this usage becomes common enough then it becomes a legitmate word. (No matter what the pedants may say!)

    This is not unique to English. In German the word used for a snooker cue is “queue” (das or der) but just try telling a German snooker player that they’re spelling it wrong. 😉

    Rog @11

    I think that this phenomenom only applies to Rufus. The experienced among us all know that Rufus has a quirky style (i.e. quite often not quite as rigorous as other setters 😉 ) and so we treat the clues accordingly. The bizarre thing is that some people like this “style”

    Thanks to Orlando and flashling

58. Thanks, all, for puzzle, blog and the crescendo over crescendo. Some splendid misdirections: what turned out to be Highland Games was surely going to be a Gaelic term for the Scottish Parliament!

59. Thanks to mrpenney and beeryhiker. I didn’t know that tr was the code for turkey and couldn’t understand where urke had gone.

    I note that Brendan had to take the opportunity to have a dig at Rufus, who’s style I like.

60. So, what was William@17’s mnemonic ?

61. I’m sorry for misreading Roger @9: somehow I thought he was questioning the clue.

    Clearly far too late at night – apologies to all.

62. Thanks flashling and Orlando.

    Pleasant change for a Monday.

    Took a while to get started but then it all fell at a good pace.

    I failed on the parsing of SHERRY but otherwise successfully completed.

    Favourite was WARFARE.

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