Guardian Cryptic 26725 by Philistine

114 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26725 by Philistine”

1. Thanks Philistine and flashling
   I took MANIC as MASONIC (lodge) without the SO

2. MANIC is parsed as MASONIC (“lodge may be”) without SO.

   Thanks Philistine and flashling!

3. Thanks, flashling. Really enjoyed this.

   MA(so)NIC.

4. 13a Lodge may be masonic (-so) = manic I think

5. Some sneaky clues, as you say. I didn’t parse AMATI or the “hammer” part of EMCEE. NEW POTATO was my favourite. I’m not sure if I like clues like GENTS or not, but I was quite pleased to see it.

6. Thanks, flashling.

   Real devilry from Philistine today – and I loved it. As so often, too many favourites to mention – and such a variety of clue types.

   I really love the way Philistine plays around with language and wordplay. I was ready for 2dn, having been completely bamboozled by a similar clue involving [s]PORT / [S]HAVEN in a puzzle of his [I think] that I was blogging but I have to say that, like muffin, I have some misgivings about 8ac, which, although it did make me laugh, might be going a step too far, in that there is no clear definition.

   In a puzzle as good as this, though, a lot can be forgiven. We had such a good week last week that I didn’t think it could carry on – and it’s only Tuesday!

   Huge thanks, as ever, to Philistine – it was great fun!

7. Thanks Philistine and flashling.

   Perhaps the four highlighted answers were undefined as one is not meant to say the name of ‘monsieur‘.

   Great fun, but I could not parse AMATI, a devilishly clever clue! M C Hammer was unknown to me and I had to check PIZZAZZ in the dictionary.

8. A really fantastic puzzle, although I also couldn’t parse AMATI. I found the theme fairly early on, which helpED. Favourites were PRINCE OF DARKNESS, NEW YORKER, TAPERED and GENTS. Many thanks to Philistine and flashling.

9. One of the worst puzzles I have seen.

   Devil clues: 1a very difficult for the ‘his top’ element; 9 25a I don’t think ‘night tariff’ really hits the mark; 11a ‘something filthy’ could be anything, and the twisted tail element just compounds the problem; 16d the ‘central’ indication is an error really.

   8a a cheap and extremely confusing Guardianism; 13a ‘lodge may be’ does not define the element; 15a when a clue is done properly, it is too obvious as here which says something; 17a a total mess grammatically and positionally; 20 and 21a ‘back’ used twice in succession; 21a not ‘into’, that is incorrect; 23a zz or zzz or zzzz how many?; 27a yes, ‘designed’ is right, not ‘design’ and the def is a noun, not what’s here; 2d totally unfair rubbish Guardianism; 3d senseless; 4d is the definition really right?; 6d unsolvable rubbish and also DBE; 7d ‘uncovered’ does not indicate ‘take off first letters’ 10d anag not properly indicated; 14d should have ‘maybe’ not ‘may be’, and which partners? Which alliance?

   Dreadful stuff.

10. As you so obviously dislike the Guardian so much hh @9 why on earth do you bother with it? Stick to the Times if it gets your gander up so much.

    Great puzzle Philistine. Thanks.

11. Thanks Philistine & flashling.

    Some nice clues, despite HH’s rant (by the way, ‘uncovered’ means… ‘uncovered,’ not ‘take off first letters’) I failed to parse AMATI. I’m not a big fan of undefined clues. I suppose it saves the setter thinking of four ways to define devil.

    I especially liked TAPERED & the uncovered ESOTERICA.

12. I thought it was hibernation time… perhaps hoggy has been holidaying in the Balkans, hedgehogs are regarded as agents of the devil there…

13. Ah, but this board would be so much less entertaining without the occasional 13ac rant from HH.

14. I found this difficult but fun .. thanks to Philistine and flashling.

    Only commenting as I’m baffled by HH. Just to pick on a couple: surely “partners” are often EW or NS and NATO an obvious alliance? Isn’t sound sleep conventionally zz?

15. Responding to HH . . .

    “1a very difficult for the ‘his top’ element”. Yes, somewhat tricky but it was pretty clear once a few crossers were there.

    “9 25a I don’t think ‘night tariff’ really hits the mark”. Hits it perfectly!

    “11a ‘something filthy’ could be anything, and the twisted tail element just compounds the problem”. Everyone knows the phrase ‘filty lucre’. Just some rather good misdirection.

    “16d the ‘central’ indication is an error really.” It isn’t, as central Highlands is ‘l’.

    “8a a cheap and extremely confusing Guardianism.” Nope – a very clever clue!

    “13a ‘lodge may be’ does not define the element.” Yes it does!

    “15a when a clue is done properly, it is too obvious as here which says something.” Oh dear – you don’t like the easy ones.

    “17a a total mess grammatically and positionally.” Seems fine to me.

    “20 and 21a ‘back’ used twice in succession.” Never mind.

    “21a not ‘into’, that is incorrect.” ‘Into’ is perfectly logical.

    “23a zz or zzz or zzzz how many?” Pray tell how many English words you know that end in zzz or zzzz?

    “27a yes, ‘designed’ is right, not ‘design’ and the def is a noun, not what’s here.” ‘Design’ is used retrospectively – I don’t see the problem.

    “2d totally unfair rubbish Guardianism.” No – just rather clever.

    “3d senseless.” Makes sense to me.

    “4d is the definition really right?” Very clever clue, I reckon.

    “6d unsolvable rubbish and also DBE.” Again, a clever clue.

    “7d ‘uncovered’ does not indicate ‘take off first letters’.” Take off first and last letters. Seems fine to me.

    “10d anag not properly indicated.” ‘Probleme’ seems a good enough anagram indicator to me.

    “14d should have ‘maybe’ not ‘may be’, and which partners? Which alliance?” ‘May be’ is OK: A Young King Edward may be a new potato.

    HH, you really are a fusspot. Why not enjoy the fun, or give it up if you find the Guardian puzzles too annoying for words? I think you probably enjoy getting people’s reactions.

16. I really liked this and don’t mind a few undefined clues as long as there aren’t too many. Plenty of highlights including the ‘… her bottom? Au contraire!’ bit of 1a, LUCIFER, TAPERED and NEW POTATO. Missed the reference to ‘Hammer squared’ and couldn’t work out AMATI which brought a smile when it was explained.

    Thanks flashling and Philistine.

17. A suitably fiendish crossword to mark Philistine’s 50th Guardian crossword, full of wit and ingenuity. Was briefly thinking new Labour as PRINCE OF DARKNESS was the first of the themed ones I got. Several went in unparsed and the clever AMATI was last in. Not sure whether I should say I liked 8a since even for me that was a bit too libertarian

    Thanks to Philistine and flashling

18. Thank you flashling and Philistine.

    This was a devilish crossword indeed with much to enjoy and some not to. Loved NOBLESSE OBLIGE & ESOTERICA but not overly keen on the 8a device but all’s fair…etc.

    Drofle @15 excellent response and to your great credit but it really is pointless. This poor fellow’s only fun is to elicit outrage from true crossword lovers. He appears to have learned virtually nothing from bloggers’ attempts such as yours so perhaps avoidance may be the better cure.

    Thank you, Philistine, top fun if a little wicked.

19. Good to see drofle @15 coming back at HH; sometimes I see glimmers of sense in what the grumpy one says, but not today – simply, I was having too much fun to carp. OK, we all had a bit of difficulty with the odd parsing (mine were AMATI and MANIC), but when a theme isn’t flogged to death, and there is consistently top-notch clueing such as NOBLESSE OBLIGE, EMCEE and ESOTERICA, well why not sit back and enjoy the ride?

20. Many thanks flashling (already thanked Phil on the “other place”)
    24d was the one that had me stymied for the parsing. Now I see what how it works, my admiration grows even greater!
    @beery hiker – Hello mate! How are the spreadsheets going?

21. Well I enjoyed the devilry thank you Philistine (congrats on the 50th) and Flashling too.

22. 8a I’m not sure I like this word-splittery either. My impression over the years is that puzzles respect word boundaries except in the case of hidden answers, where they almost never apply. Certainly anagram fodder doesn’t start or end in the middle of a word. Are there other cases where clues split words?

23. Valentine @22
    2d for one! “form” meaning “for m”.

24. Re William your angry response is not called for, whilst drofle’s reply is valid in that it is supportive of the Guardian’s often ‘beyond-libertarian’ stance. It’s not drofle’s fault if he doesn’t see or agree with the reasons why things should be done differently, and I’m sure he can’t stop the editor doing what he does!!!

    Last week we had a good run of technically-proficient puzzles, but I guess we were lucky: the Guardian’s inconsistency continues, and I think I am perfectly entitled to point that out.

    HH

25. I have no problems with this fine crossword. I couldn’t parse AMATI, so thanks for the explanation – what a brilliant clue!

26. William @ 18 – Yes, I realise that rebutting HH is fruitless, but I still like doing it now and again! It’s enjoyable to go through the clues and see how good most of them are.

    If there were ‘Like’ and ‘Dislike’ buttons for the comments (not impossible, but would need some new coding on the site), we would soon get a good sense of where people’s sympathies truly lie!

27. Thanks Philistine and flashling. I enjoyed myself overall, despite not being a fan of separations like 8a and clues without definitions.

    One minor complaint, since I’m in a complaining sort of mood. Can anyone make sense of the surface reading for 6d? It jarred horribly for me, and I don’t see any cleverness in cramming subisidiary indications into a nonsense sentence.

    I couldn’t parse 24d either, though it is the sort of cleverness I like. I would have gone with “Fiddle in!!” to make life a little easier for solvers. That might even give a sporting chance for solving it without checkers.

28. [POOOM @20 – I’ve tried to confine discussion of spreadsheets and stats to the other place, and I think I’ve done too much of that recently]

29. drofle @26 Love the buttons idea, I wonder if it could be done.

30. drofle, William – I’m not convinced it would help – the more belligerent commenters rarely worry about popularity, and the Guardian site (which does have a recommend button) demonstrates this – too many likes also tend to create conspiracy theories and accusations of groupthink.

31. This was a surrender for me. I was out of time to solve before I had even half the grid filled in. Why was this a Tuesday? It was at least as hard as some of the recent Prize puzzles. I do wish they’d run it on a Saturday.

    Well, I suppose tomorrow is a holiday, so maybe that was the thinking.

32. HH at various above. I used to find your postings quite amusing. Now, I just find them tiresome and, as someone has pointed out before, reading them sucks all the joy out of doing the crosswords. It’s like a dark cloud blocking the sun. It’s one thing constantly criticising the efforts of others but you never seem to give a corresponding amount of praise to the very few which meet with your approval (“technically proficient” is about the best we get). Aren’t there ever any that make your heart soar?

    I pretty much agree with all drofle’s comments @ 15 above.

    Thanks for the crossword and the blog

33. HH at 24. Yes it was called for. Some of your comments are genuinely a matter of opinion, on which others are entitled to differ. If you don’t want your views challenged, don’t post them. Furthermore, much of your criticism is simply factually incorrect, but you appear unable to acknowledge that or to learn from it. Quite ironic given how much of stickler you are on accuracy from the setters. You are either not nearly as competent as you think or an out and out hypocrite. Like Aoxomoxoa@32, I do find your contributions tiresome and joy-sapping.

34. We loved this! A great crossy & one which also helps you to learn more about parsing answers…always welcome where we are! We managed to complete it & I was even able to parse AMATI! Thanks to Philistine, Flashling & indeed to Drofle…who could be grumpy about such a great puzzle?!!

35. Finger hovering over Dislike button – will it be for hedgehoggy’s prickly but easily avoidable critiques or for the posts containing tedious rebuttals and personal abuse? hh clearly loves crosswords, just not the same ones that other contributors to this site love. S/he likes precision cluing; others like to be entertained by clever wordplay.
    Case in point – 23a “sound sleeping produces”. hh @9 says “why two zs?” – it’s always at least three in cartoons. drofle @15 says it has to be two because that’s how many are in “pizzazz”. Both views legitimate, depending on your ethos.

36. Thanks to Philistine and flashling. Like mrpenney@31 I had great trouble getting started and almost gave up, but after a few solutions did appear (e.g., PLINTH, BRAWN) I managed to get through, though without parsing a lot of the answers, not just GENTS and AMATI, but also YOKEL (I did not know the yoke-shirt connection), TAPERED, and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. I did get BEELZEBUB once the two final Bs appeared and that led to recognizing the other three devils. For me a tough solve but enjoyable.

37. I thoroughly enjoyed this, though I couldn’t parse AMATI.

    But what’s DBE?

38. re 8a – what is a “loon” doing in the Guardian crossword? Perhaps “person with mental health issues” didn’t work in context.

39. definition by example

40. if there’s one thing duller than hh, it is the kneejerk PC brigade…

41. Van Winkle @38, I assume it was one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon
    The question is, what was it doing inside in the first place?

42. @Van Winkle 38

    a “loon” is a diving bird, so I thought of some sort of avian escape to freedom in the 8a surface.

    My thanks to Philistine for a typical envelope-edge-shover with an impressive gridfill, and to flashling for the merciful release of the parsing for 24d which I’d never have seen. In a million years.

43. I was quite pleased with myself for finishing this, even parsed AMATI and GENTS and MANIC but I didn’t see the lift in PANIC. I’ve heard it argued that you shouldn’t ever need to lift-and-separate definition from wordplay, but I did think GENTS was quite satisfying when you finally see it. GENTS and PANIC were my last ones in.

    Quite an enjoyable solve thanks Philistine and flashling

44. Perhaps beery could produce a new ranking system based on how often HH says rubbish or dreadful. Not being panned by him must be a badge of shame for the guardian setters. 🙂

45. now there’s an idea 🙂

46. … plus a loo is a toilet – “the gents” is “the loos”. So 8a doesn’t work that way either. All sorts of things “wrong” with it, but it is getting many pats on the back. Conclusion – we have a nice broad range of different opinions on this site. All crossword lovers; none deserving of abuse.

    beery hiker @40 – the Guardian crossword is officially a “PC” crossword. I know that a loon can be a bird, but I hope it would be the newspaper’s policy not to allow any ambiguity if that is the intended usage.

47. I haven’t seen a Guardian crossword for years, but really enjoyed this one, particularly PANIC, GENTS and AMATI, which expanded my solving repertoire. Otherwise fairly undemanding once BEELZEBUB became inevitable.

48. VW @46 – I think Cyborg and baerchen have already explained this more than adequately – the surface is surely only offensive to those who want to be offended. And where does it stop – are we allowed to use words like inane?

49. I generally enjoy drinking and eating (and solving crosswords) in pubs. Not all pubs mind you. I don’t, however, return repeatedly to the ones I don’t like, and loudly criticise various aspects of the beer, food, service and décor, proclaiming them inferior to my preferred drinking establishment up the road (and often rushing to judgement quite wrongly because I was so eager to find fault). If I did, and some, but not all, of the regulars suggested I was putting a severe dampener on the atmosphere, I might modify my behaviour, or just choose not to return. If I did neither, I might reasonably expect the objections to become more vehement over time, and people to question my motives for behaving the way I did.

50. A loon is what they call a lad in NE Scotland (what do they call lassies?). Please no like/dislike buttons.

    I agree with most here – this was tough. Thought AMATI was very clever.

    Has there ever been a puzzle with as many Zs?

    Thanks flashling and Phil.

51. DtD @ 49 – Good comment! I think you nicely summarised the main point.

52. So we can’t say LOON now? Sometimes I wonder how some people get through a normal day if they are offended so easily. For the record I thought the clue referred to a bird but even if it didn’t -so what!
    Good puzzle. I stumbled upon BEELZEBUB early in the proceedings as PIZZAZZ was my FOI. The other devils were quite easy after that.
    Loved MEGALOMANIAC and RIPOSTE.
    I now skip HH and his critics and I intend to do the same with the PC brigade. Life’s too short!
    Thanks Philistine

53. beery hiker @48 – the Guardian policy is fairly clear – avoiding nouns pejoratively representing a person by their mental illness. Can’t see anything wrong with “inane”. Suspect some of you may be about to find a creative use for it – will shut up now.

54. Van Winkle @53 – please don’t feel shouted down. Your post @35 did give me pause for thought, and reading my post @33 again, the last two sentences were unnecessary, and I should have reflected a little longer before hitting . On 8a, the image that came to my mind was of an asylum break-out, and I too had consequent misgivings for a moment about the use of ‘loon’… but, where another meaning for the word or phrase exists, can I suggest the possibility that this is legitimate mis-direction that requires the solver to be complicit in conjuring up the potentially offensive alternative. I think the example that the Readers’ Editor recently commented on was a more explicit reference to mental health and that is where the policy applies.

55. HH-
    More power to you. It seems everyone enjoys the puzzles in their own way. I enjoy scrolling down to your entries to see if I agree with your strict but (usually) fair evaluations. Sorry you seem to have the power to offend so many folks, but that’s totally their problem, not yours or mine. Keep it up!

56. Nice one, Philistine, thank you very much for a most enjoyable challenge. Too many good clues to list individually, but my favourite has to be 9, 25 ac. I even liked 8ac – like baerchen @42, I thought of a bird rather than a person.

    Thanks too to flashling for the blog, and, especially, for the parsing of 24d – so pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get it without your help!

57. MACBETH: The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
    Where got’st thou that goose look?
    (Macbeth, Act V Scene 3)

    According to Urban Dictionary, “cream” is a bowdlerisation of something much ruder.

58. Strictly speaking a ‘ young King Edward ‘ is not a New Potato. It is perhaps a baby potato. That title is reserved for Early types of potato which may in fact be full grown, for example Charlotte or Nicola. And I clearly need to get out more.

59. VW @46
    You may say that you are going to “the loos”, but I have always referred to going to “the loo”. After all, I only use one cubicle, even if there are more there. I’ve never heard anyone pluralise it, but perhaps it is a regional difference. The use of the plural in “the gents” is because it refers to the conventional labelling of the category of people allowed to use the facilities – gentlemen or ladies (even if they are not gentlemanly or ladylike).

60. I found this very tough, with MEPHISTOPHELES and AMATI entered unparsed. I think AMATI is a step too far for my brain. I doubt that I could ever have parsed it, though it makes sense now I’ve seen the blog.

    Thanks to Philistine and flashling.

61. Is The Guardian’s puzzle PC? I can think back to a good few entries that were not, relating to serious physical or mental illness, and some fairly questionable clues referencing sexuality and gender. So perhaps it would be fairer to say that The Guardian’s puzzle aspires to lofty sentiments rather than (necessarily) attaining them (notwithstanding any political standards the paper used to have … sorry, an opinion, obviously). I do not recall having seen all that often such crassness in other papers among the so-called qualities, but then perhaps I’m suffering from some stupid old fogey idiot bloody poofy girly effete dementia problem that I’ve only got my habitually drunken leering stinking child-molesting self to thank for begob.

    I suppose it must tempt setters when they see an easy opportunity for a jibe, given the possibly uphill slog that crossword compiling can be for some people, but I would humbly (ha ha ha ha) offer the opinion that elite writers avoid this at all costs. That, by the way, still leaves the door open to the wit and wisdom that we may still see here and there, even in The Guardian.

    Today’s puzzle I see as an example of where crossword compiling could go.

62. Nicely put PaulB but that may explain why you didn’t get a guardian gig 🙂

63. As a novice I thought it was hard but fair and the clues I didn’t get made sense once explained although a couple did put me in mind of Ted Rogers & Dusty Bin on 321. If you don’t like it don’t do it

64. Rumbled 🙁

65. Hold off, unhand me, grey beard loon!
    Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

    From the Ancient Mariner.

    Perhaps we should censor Coleridge as well.

66. Lovely stuff Philistine, I’m quite a fan of setters who push the boundaries.

    @ bärchen – If you thought including punctuation as part of the wordplay was tricky, we had a setter recently in the Independent who used the clue number as part of the definition.

67. I’m not a big fan of word-splitting clues in general, but once you realize they’re in play for this puzzle, clues like 8a and 2d work wonderfully. Fave 24d; clever, innovative, and absolutely marvelous. Thanks, Philistine.

68. @morphiamonet

    *innocent face* (copyright Sally Bercow)

    It’ll be a less sticky wicket on Thursday 😉

69. Coleridge refers ‘lord and loon’ though of course you’re being facetious. Maybe.

70. As my first entry here, I’m happy to offer the NE Scotland female equivalent of “loon”: it’s quine, or quene. Loon (and probably quine) dates back to at least the 1450s, as “loun” meaning “a worthless person”. Both are commonly used in our Doric dialect.

    The fact that Shakespeare used “loon” in Macbeth is presumably accidental; unsurprisingly, S. is not a reliable source on mediaeval Scottish history! For an alternative, try Dorothy Dunnett’s novel “King Hereafter” (1983). At almost 900pp, it’s a bit of a slog, but the geopolitics of Norway, Denmark, Normandy and Ireland (oh yes, and England) form an interesting context for a nascent coherent “Alba” (Scotland).

71. Well, what a lot of fuss! I thoroughly enjoyed this.

    The first pass was looking grim until I came to the “downs”. Very soon after this, as HWMessenger says @47 BEELZEBUB became inevitable and the undefined clues were going to be names for the devil or names for crosswords.

    A couple of clues solved later and PRINCE OF DARKNESS also became inevitable. The whole thing then just gave up easily. As Philistine has recently swung very much to the “left” I was prepared for the likes of 8A and 13A. (left = “libertarian”, right = “Ximenean”). The only disappointment was that the whole thing was done and dusted so quickly!

    I thought I had parsed 24D but apparently I hadn’t. It was my LOI and was obviously AMATI. My take was “fiddle” = “viol” plus “in” gives “violin” which with the “!” is AMATI. (It was Philistine after all!)

    Thanks to and flashling Philistine

    P.S. Of course you are entitled to post your rants HH but it does seem odd that you choose to preach the Ximenean gospel so persistently in such a foreign libertarian climate. Were your ancestors missionaries 🙂

72. Could someone help me by telling me what is supposed to indicate that we’re to split up one of the clue words in 2D and 8A? Surely to be fair, something ought to point us that way.

73. Great fun. I didn’t manage Amati to my eternal shame (retired music teacher).
    I bunged in Atari and hoped for the best. I was thinking fiddle as in fiddle about (Tommy rock opera – the Who) but that didn’t work either. Re HH – once I’ve come to this site to check the parsing, the first thing my wife says is, “Any response from HH?” Still trying to finish (get started really) Saturday’s prize crossword. Then again, it’s only Tuesday.

74. Alastair. I assume it’s loon- n gets out to give us loo. Gets out plus n, therefore gents.
    Then again I’m probably wrong. I usually am.

    ps … the simple sum doesn’t always work on my Android. I have to try it a few times before the comment is accepted.

75. Acari – not Atari. I was thinking about fiddler crabs! I got sidetracked when I put on the CD of Tommy.

76. For those who said they are not great fans of undefined solutions, I feel this has a good excuse given that the undefined solutions refer to He Who Shall Not Be Named.

    I’m quite the beginner and so rarely get close to finishing, but Philistine and I must be on the same wavelength today. I particularly love 24. Only a few blanks in my grid (e.g. 12 & 14) and a few that I filled in but couldn’t wrangle the parsing without the help here.

    Thank you for a very fun puzzle, Philistine!

77. Thanks Dave (#74), I completely understand the word play, but I can’t see what there is in the clue to point to it. Without that, we’re reduced just to using random letters from the clue to make just about any answer we want.

78. Late to the party.
    We found this very difficult to get in to for a Philistine.
    But once we saw Mephistopheles as the second Devil in Disguise, the ball kept rolling and rolling.

    Our AMATI went in unparsed, same experience for us as for others.
    Now the parsing’s clear, it is actually a great clue (in my Book of Crosswords).
    I am less taken by what happens in 8ac and 2d but it’s Philistine and one knows that he does these things.
    Perhaps, Paul B is right when he says ‘Today’s puzzle I see as an example of where crossword compiling could go’.
    It is a great compliment addressed by a fellow setter whose style is far away from Philistine’s.

    I remember me saying, after about half an hour, that I didn’t enjoy it.
    An hour later I had a different opinion.
    This was very enjoyable and Araucarian in places.

    That said, I/we thought 17ac (NEW YORKER) is not quite right.
    Where is the indicator that tells us that NEER is going around W(Y)ORK?

    Thanks, Flash.

79. For those who

80. said they do not like undefined solutions, I think in this case it works well because the undefined solutions are for He Who Should Not Be Named.

81. Brilliant crossword imho and as a plodder I was very pleased to get all the answers even if I didn’t manage to parse manic or (correctly) Amati.
    For Amati, my best guess was “(I) am at I” = (sort of) “(I ) am chez moi” = “(I am) in” ??!

82. Alistair @72 & 74

    I’d say that the case for the defence is that the general rule in solving cryptics is to ignore punctuation, spaces are a form of punctuation, so we should ignore the presence or absence of spaces when evaluating a clue. In that case, there is no need for an indicator.

    The case for the prosecution, as made by Valentine @22, is that we are not usually expected to ignore the presence or absence of spaces except in the case of ‘hidden’ words. We don’t split words in other types of clue (particularly anagrams), without some sort of indicator (half, beginning or whatever) so if Philistine wants us to do that here, it should be indicated in a similar way.

    I think I’m tending towards the latter view now, even though I do admire those particular clues.

83. Hi Sil @77 – also late back to the party after being out at a pub quiz

    “Where is the indicator that tells us that NEER is going around W(Y)ORK?”

    Magazine never lost heart to Corbyn’s penultimate position in Labour (3,6)

    I read this as NE[v]ER losing its heart to / being replaced by Y in WORK.

84. Being now 90 minutes older than when I wrote post 77, where is The One who can tell me where Philistine indicates that NE[v]ER goes around W(Y)ORK in 17ac?

85. It’s Eileen – of course!
    You are right, that’s it.

86. Hi Sil

    Did we cross? 😉

87. Yes we did – twice! x

88. It’s a clue that shows where crosswords could go.

89. Excellent puzzle.

    Guardianisms in the Guardian (8a et al) – whatever next?
    According to Barnard they’re fine – so they must equally be Telegraphisms.

90. Thanks, jennyk @82. I very much tend to the latter of your points. If the words in the clue don’t mean anything then I don’t know where you’re supposed to start. How do you recognise any anagram clue, or a hidden clue, or a reversal if the words don’t mean anything? If there had been something to indicate rearranging the spaces, I’d have said it was fine, as it is, it’s just lazy cluing.

91. That New Yorker clue is one of the worst I saw yesterday.

    Who has ever heard of this Barnard except Jolly Swagman?

92. Not wishing to be rude, but it is someone who has not ever featured in any discussions about crosswords that I know of.

93. Most of the misinformed criticisms which appear on this thread and (similar ones) is based on the false notion that there should be one unique and universally accepted approach to cryptic cluing. This is not true now and never has been.

    Anyone who was around in the heyday of cryptic crosswords would know that proposition is nonsense. There were the ximeneans – there were tight non-ximenean setter (like Araucaria and Bunthorne in the Guardian, Douglas Barnard in the Telegraph) – others more liberal- typified until recently maybe best by Gordius in the Guardian, who relied occasionally on a concept known as “cryptic licence” – and a vast range in between and beyond – particularly if one goes beyond UK quality (sic) dailies.

    Sadly the ximeneans (some of them at least) decided to lie and pretend that their approach was the “orthodox” one – a manifest falsehood; how can that possibly have been the case when the setters already mentioned reigned supreme at The Guardian and the Telegraph whilst the ximeneans were very much the also-rans who padded out those papers on other days.

94. HH FYI

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/06/15/independent-8315-by-monk-saturday-prize-puzzle-8-june-2013/

95. But being Ximenean is just as hard to quantify – you strike out at it as if it were a list of rules, these I have never seen and wonder if you could supply them to us here.

96. And as you point out even Libertarians know what grammar is. Some Guardian compilers don’t understand the basic building-blocks. It’s not a problem because their puzzles could easily be corrected as we always see, but no-one is there at the paper to do that job it seems. Even the puzzle above could have been saved just abotu.

97. Thanks Philistine and flashling

    Did most of this over lunch and enjoyed it a lot – only had what turned out to be GENTS to get, which fell mid afternoon. Like many I failed to parse AMATI and MANIC, but unlike many also missed on parsing PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

    Started off with BRAWN my first in and BEELZEBUB quickly followed and was on to the theme. It was still quite a few answers later that MEPHISTOPHELES was the second of the four devils. Finished up with YOKEL, ACOLYTE and GENTS as the last few in.

    Am a fan of the dinky wordplay clues such as GENTS and AMATI (even though I missed it this time) and hope that they will be an occasional highlight in puzzles.

98. I believe there was a book written on Ximenean construction?

    Also, where is it written that the rules of grammar (themselves open to debate and continually evolving) must be applied strictly to all cryptic crosswords in all newspapers. I suspect this also may be a Ximinean approach?

99. References to two books on this page:

    http://www.alberichcrosswords.com/pages/id51.html

100. What is strict about good grammar? It is just NORMAL! But I don’t think some compilers get grammar when it applies to the cryptic bit of clues. That’s where they fall down.

     The Ximenes book talks about stuff at length but there aren’t any rules in it, or I am going dotty.

101. I think most would agree it is important to get grammar right – though many grammatical rules are disputed to some extent. But in fact most of hedgehoggy’s objections, especially to this puzzle, have nothing to do with grammar. It seems a pity to treat such subjective responses as if they are somehow pedantic and fastidious.

     17a is an exception, although even there HH didn’t actually identify the grammatical problem, which I would say is that Philistine uses “lost” instead of “losing”. As it stands I think it (the cryptic reading) is parsable grammatically, but only as a highly eccentric construction, or alternatively in the past tense, which does not seem justifiable to me.

     Otherwise this puzzle is mainly extremely good – innovative but fair and very entertaining. As we know, Araucaria commended and encouraged Philistine and there are definite similarities in their approaches.

102. Do we know that? I did not. And it is debatable to say the least to ‘those of us who know’ Araucaria!

     17a is a real mess for sense and construction. Why is the past tense used for ‘lost’? That is not the past participle!

103. hh @102
     An article about Araucaria and Philistine.

104. Haven’t enjoyed a crossword this much in a while. Superb stuff from Philistine, very silly objections from hedgehoggy. Lots of fun.

105. HH @ 102

     “Why is the past tense used for ‘lost’? That is not the past participle!”

     Yes it is

106. In defence of hh (on that one), it’s not, actually.

107. Paul B @ 106

     Sorry, what is it then? If I’m wrong, I apologise.

108. Aoxomoxoa (phew!), it is simply the past tense as both HH and Paul B said.
     NEVER did lose (‘lost’) its heart (V) in favour of (‘to’) W(Y)ORK.

     There is indeed no reason to use the past tense here (I agree with Herb @101), Philistine could (perhaps, should) have used ‘losing’.

     Meanwhile, I still feel a bit unsettled by this clue.
     There is some discrepancy between the cryptic grammar and every day life grammar.

     In cryptic language ‘lost heart’ = ‘remove the letter in the middle’.
     Then the word ‘to’ follows, from a cryptic POV it doesn’t tell me to replace V with W(Y)ORK.
     That’s why I asked a question at post 78.
     In real English, it is a different matter: NEVER loses its heart to (be replaced by) W(Y)ORK – and, indeed, it does here.
     The surface reading takes over from the cryptic grammar.
     Alright? Dunno.

     Perhaps, this is becoming ‘too deep’ for most of you.
     Ultimately, I am fine with this clue (apart from Philistine using the past tense).

     I enjoyed this crossword as it puts you on the edge of your chair.
     As Araucaria did.

109. Blimey, all this over a crossword!

     Not wishing to labour it too much……..I’m probably wrong but, as well as being the past tense, I always thought that “lost” is the past participle of “to lose” and that “losing” is the present participle.

110. @Axomoxoa – you’re absolutely correct.

     When Sil writes “it is simply the past tense” he is defying Afrit’s injunction.

     “Lost” *can/may* be read as either.

     Reading it as the past participle resolves the cryptic reading perfectly. It can be read either adjectivally or as meaning “[we have] lost heart” – either way works.

     There are pedants who hold dear an arbitrary rule which says that cryptic readings can’t use the past tense to assemble their components. Their logic (sic) must be that somehow a clue which worked yesterday might not work today! Since they get more pleasure from finding fault with clues than from solving them they occasionally make the mistake of accusing any instance of past tense of solecism – false positives – or false negatives – depending on your point of view.

     In this instance there is no need to visit that territory. For me the clue works exactly as you have described.

     It wouldn’t have worried me if bit of licence had been used, but I don’t think it has.

111. JS @ 110

     Thank you , sir, I really thought that I was going mad (although your reply is no proof that I’m not). I thought that the clue had a perfectly acceptable grammatical construction and, actually, that this was a very enjoyable crossword.

112. Usual ‘there are pedants’ rant from Swagman, stuck in his rut. He’s a pedant himself, of course.

     Let’s get back to a reasonable discussion of cryptic grammar: we have

     Magazine never lost heart to Corbyn’s penultimate position in Labour (3,6)

     which features the past tense, pure and simple. ‘Never has’ etc for example, or ‘never loses’ would have taken us where we need to be grammatically (notwithstanding pre-existing problems of sense). ‘Has lost heart’ or ‘loses heart’ TO something OTOH I don’t mind: it works well as a way of articulating replacement and is unproblematic.

     Anyway, crossword clues are happening NOW, not yesterday, and are surely best written with that in mind. If you want to be clever, you can make it SEEM that you’re using the past tense when you’re not, but you can’t be totally ignorant of cryptic grammar and create such illusions convincingly.

113. well, well. hedgehoggy got prickly and van winkle let rip. or should that be ‘gets’ and ‘lets’

114. Thanks flashling and Philistine.

     Great puzzle. Needed you help parsing AMATI (cunning) and the ‘squared’ in the clue for EMCEE, but was pleased for spotting the similarly constructed PANIC and GENTS (very creative).

     I can’t claim to be too worried by the tense arguments above. Ultimately, the clues were all solvable as they stand with creative wit and misdirection.

     So thanks for the entertainment.

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