Guardian 26,814 / Arachne

49 comments on “Guardian 26,814 / Arachne”

1. Thanks Arachne and Gaufrid

   Not too difficult, but delightful. I finished in the SE after all the rest had gone in reasonably quickly. So many wonderful surfaces – IRONER, FEMINISM, ANIMAL, BERGMAN and STUMBLING stood out amongst many others. Nice to see an alternative to “Spooner” in BEDREST.

   I didn’t know you could make tea from HIBISCUS, but “biscuit” was the first thing that sprang to mind for “Garibaldi”.

   I still don’t see why the P disappears from P&O liner – could someone elucidate, please.

   I’m not sure that “one’s” gives “I’m” – in what construction?

   13 was the only question mark – very difficult if you hadn’t heard of the specific fraudster (I had, in fact).

2. I also found this a bit easier than usual for Arachne, but as entertaining as ever and with the usual wonderful surfaces. Favourites were JEREMIAHS, MANDOLINE, SKEIN and HIBISCUS. Many thanks to Arachne and Gaufrid (yes, I also tried [IT]ALIAN).

3. Muffin @ 1: Re P&O, as Gaufrid indicated you just ignore the first and last letters.
   Re ‘one’s’, how about “If one’s going to the pub” = “If I’m going . . .”

4. muffin
   “I still don’t see why the P disappears from P&O liner – could someone elucidate, please.”

   Both the initial P and the final R ‘disappear’ because the “all on board” indicates the middle section of “P&O liner”.

5. Thanks, Gaufrid – you are fortunate indeed.

   I totally echo the thoughts in the second paragraph of your preamble and once again beg folk to go back and savour the surfaces – gems like 19 [top favourite] 21 and 24ac and 3, 6, 8, 17 and 18dn – among others.

   I liked the internet bride, the damn dogs and Notorious actress and the characteristic gender-swapping in EREMITE and IRONER!

   I’m afraid I lazily assumed that B = bye must be from cricket.

   Brilliant start to the day – huge thanks, as ever, to Arachne.

6. Thanks for both, drofle – clearer now!

7. Also to Gaufrid
   I too read BB as Bye Bye in cricket I think it’s OK – when TV shows what has happened in an over, it can use b for bye (lb for leg-bye) as it uses “wk” for wicket (not specifying the mode of dismissal).

8. Thanks for blog-excellent puzzle as always from Arachne. I wondered if ISP qualified as a gremlin(it does sometimes).
   BEDREST -it was a nice change to not have a Spooner in there.

9. muffin @7
   Thanks. Having just looked at a cricket scorecard on the BBC’s website it appears that my initial instinct of b=bye was correct as they use b for both bowled and bye.

10. Brilliant puzzle – Still laughing about 5 Across !

11. Must be just me – I’d never even vaguely come across POETASTER before and a MANDOLINE was something I’d only just heard of. EREMITE was also a guess from the wordplay. I presume describing Ingrid BERGMAN as ‘notorious’ was meant to throw us off the scent. I know that there was a real scandal when she went off and had that ‘love child’, definitely something which wasn’t done at the time, but there are plenty of positive adjectives that I would use to describe her now. I agree that 24a was an excellent clue and I particularly liked 22d as well. SKEIN also turned up in Another Place today.

    Thank you to Gaufrid and Arachne.

12. @wordplodder notorious refers to the film of that name

13. WordPlodder@11

    Notorious is a 1946 Hitchcock film starring, amongst, others Ingrid Bergman!

    My blind spot is not being able to see why ‘OR’ equals ‘men’ in 7d!

14. Great puzzle by the wonderful Arachne.

    ChrisS @ 13. OR is Other Ranks.

15. Thanks Thesauvianscrabbler @12 and ChrisS @13. Jumping in without thinking as per usual.

16. This was a most enjoyable solve. I had never heard of a kitchen cutter being called a “MANDOLINE”, and it is in none of my dictionaries (Larousse only gives the musical instrument) – admittedly they now all date from the last century. MADOFF is easy to remember since he “made off” with the money.

    So many great clues, ESPOUSE, ALIGHT ON, SKEIN, FEMINISM, ANIMAL, STUMBLING, HIBISCUS, DEBASE and many others.

    Thanks to Arachne and Gaufrid.

17. (Cookie @16
    A mandoline is a useful gadget for rapid slicing, though it does need a good safety guard! I use it for aubergines for moussaka, parmigiana etc. and potatoes for Dauphinoise. In English the musical instrument is spelled without the E.]

18. Thanks Arachne & Gaufrid.

    Great crossword, an enjoyable solve. I loved the TUM BLING – brilliant! The vegetable slicer, MANDOLINE is in Collins & Chambers. Cookie @16, time to buy a new Chambers? (You can also get it as an app on a smart phone.) I started with ‘redress’ for 30, but then not surprisingly couldn’t parse it.

19. Thanks to Gaufrid and especially Arachne for a delightful puzzle, with 19A the jewel among so many good clues.

    Cookie @16

    You should have gone to Larousse Gastronomique!

20. [muffin @17, thanks, I knew the musical instrument was “mandolin” in English, in French it is MANDOLINE. I have just asked my granddaughter, she knows the kitchen instrument and the word, and we have come to the conclusion that people must have heard of it on these television cookery programmes that are all the rage. Wikipedia tells me that it was invented in the 1950s by a chef in Thonon-les-Bains, to be seen across the Lac Léman from my kitchen window!]

21. PeterO @19, yes, I might have heard the word before since I see MANDOLINE is sometimes used in France for an ordinary grater, une râpe.

22. Robi @18, I have finally come to the conclusion that dictionaries in dead wood versions are now useless, except for their historical interest, better to use their online versions.

23. Another fine crossword from the always reliable Arachne. MANDOLINE was last in – couldn’t quite see how that parsed, though having been asked to find a mandoline slicer as a Christmas present a few years ago, the definition was obvious enough. Liked POETASTER, JEREMIAHS, BERGMAN, STUMBLING and SMETANA

    Thanks to Arachne and Gaufrid

24. Cookie – mandoline = kitchen cutter is in my dead wood 2003 BRB.

    Excellent puzzle! Thanks to un-birthday girl Arachne and to Gaufrid.

25. I’d dabbled with REDRESS and ISP too for a while but that’s what misdirection is all about, and Arachne’s very good at it. I must file away for the future the ‘all on board’ trick and that use of gender (eg ‘She prays’, ‘He presses’) is deliberately fluid.

    I’m with Eileen @5 re the surfaces – Arachne always slots in a political goody or two, cf 19a and 24a here – and Robi @18 has picked out the ‘tum bling’ – lovely.

26. [Cholecyst @24, is BRB a Bradford dictionary?]

27. What a delight! Seems invidious to pick favourites with so many beautifully formed clues.
    Robi@18: I too plumped for REDRESS, but decided that my inability to,parse it was just that. I should know to think more carefully. Thanks to Spider and Blogger.

28. Cookie @26

    BRB usually means Big Red Book i.e. the old Chambers

29. Thanks to Arachne for the usual joy, and Gaufrid for the blog.

    Mandolin(e)s in the kitchen are extremely good at slicing the tops of your fingers off, which is why I got rid of mine a few years ago.

30. Yes, very good once explained! Can’t say I’m the greatest fan of the “switching letters and plucking them out of the air” method! I thought ESPOUSE was great, though.

    Thanks to arachne & Gaufrid

31. beery hiker @28, thanks. Just realised that my Wiki reference @20 was a French one, here is a MANDOLINE history in English.

32. Well, you lot have said it all! (I don’t usually start solving until the afternoon or evening.)

    This was a great puzzle that made me think, think again and appreciate all the imaginative and varied uses of cryptic devices at the setter’s disposal.

    I thought 13A (MADOFF) was going to be a word I hadn’t heard of, but I remembered this fraudster after going back to the clue for a rethink. 12A (IMP) was my first in. 27A (EBB) was easy enough, although I didn’t realise ‘b’ could mean both bowled and bye. Like others, I fell for ‘Italian’ first before ‘biscuit’ in 18D (HIBISCUS). A lot of clues are favourites, for their surfaces as well as their wordplay.

    (Cookie, I am so envious of your views across Lac Léman and, if I remember right, tap water from the Jura. I have a view of a small part of the North Downs, and my tap water is laden with chalk!)

33. Thanks to Gaufrid for the blog (my first half was the bottom half, by the way, not the right-hand side – the top half needing most of the head-scratching.)

    Thanks and praise to Arachne.

34. Thanks to Arachne and Gaufrid. I was slow getting MANDOLINE and HIBISCUS, but the rest went smoothly (and very enjoyably). For a change MADOFF was easy for US solvers. POETASTER as a term turns up as the title of a play by Ben Jonson that includes such figures as Horace, Ovid, and Virgil and climaxes with the giving of an emetic to the false poet, Crispinus, who vomits forth phrases from Jonson’s contemporary, John Marston.

35. Thanks Arachne and Gaufrid

    marienkaefer @ 29: did you get rid of the mandoline or the tops of your fingers? 😉

36. [Alan Browne @32, our Jura tap water is also laden with calcium, so much so that we have to have a water softener or else the hot water heater will explode – the kitchen tap has untreated water for drinking. I went to school on the South Downs when a teenager and spent most of my holidays on the North Downs.]

37. Simon S @35 – both! Fortunately the tops of my fingers grew back …

38. [Cookie @36, snap! We also have a water softener to keep the boiler and pipes free from scale, and a drinking water tap in the kitchen. A common solution to a common problem.]

39. Another nice puzzle from Arachne. A little harder than her last I thought – although the S side went in painlessly enough! MANDOLINE held me up no end until I looked it up. I also fell in to the REDRESS trap and BEDREST was LOI.
    Too many favourites to list.
    Thanks Arachne.

40. Cookie @22; you will find that the online Chambers is missing a lot of words that are in the ‘dead wood’ version. The app is better though.

41. Re e-Chambers, I have it on my ipad, and at the time I bought it they were offering a bundle of dictionary and thesaurus for about £8. It’s more than repaid for itself, and the word search is pretty useful too for those recalcitrant stragglers.

42. I did toy with LEGREST for BEDREST!

43. marienkaefer @29

    I have just acquired a mandolin which totally prevents finger slicing. I recommend one.

    Muchas gracias to the queen of surfaces.

44. For me the Chambers app is indispensable and, sadly, I hardly ever look at the BRB now.The word search is almost uncanny in its ability to solve multi-word anagrams.

45. I used to have a mandoline (the kitchen cutter) on which you could play God Save the Queen.

46. Conrad Cork – the slicing attachment on a Magimix is much better and more fun – and safer.

47. Thanks Arachne and Gaufrid

    For some reason have really fallen off Arachne’s wavelength and have really struggled with the last few of her puzzles – I only recently managed to finish off her pre-Christmas Prize crossword. Made a real mess of the SW corner after entering unparsed TELEPATHS at 19 and CAMISOLE (a stretch I know) at 18d. Was eventually able to make good except for failing to go back over the not fully parsed REDRESS at 30a which drew the error!

    Still was able to enjoy the challenge that was set here and appreciated the finely crafted surfaces.

48. Great puzzle! I seem to be having a head-slapping moment every day these days… today’s was 30a, which I’d entered as ‘REDRESS’ without understanding why that would work (“ideal after change of leaders” = “RESS” ? ) D’oh!

49. Thanks Gaufrid and Arachne.

    Held myself up for a while by spelling SKEIN wrong (so much for “i before e except after c when the sounding is ee”) and then took an age to untangle the SW corner with EREMITE, BILLYCAN (good misdirection) and BEDREST last to fall.

    Really liked SMETANA and (once I corrected my spelling) SKEIN. Not quite sure that a Lady (with a capital L) would refer to herself as MS – maybe “contrarily” is doing double duty.

    Howls of derision expected but I’ll take it like a man!

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