|
A charade of RED (‘sign of danger’) plus START (‘get going’). |
| 26 |
TAVERN |
The fellow caught leaving Liverpool club for a watering hole (6) |
|
A subtraction: T[he c]AVERN (‘Liverpool club’) minus HE (‘fellow’) and C (‘caught’). |
| Down |
| 1 |
DEFIANCE |
Challenging attitude of French fellow who’s given a ring? (8) |
|
A charade of DE (‘of French’) plus FIANCÉ (‘fellow who’s given a ring’). |
| 2 |
RACHITIS |
Artist is protecting child from children’s disease (8) |
|
An envelope (‘protecting’) of CHIT (‘child’) in RA (‘artist’) plus ‘is’. More commonly known as rickets. |
| 3 |
LASER |
Plant that generates intense beam (5) |
|
Double definition. |
| 5 |
SHEPHERDESSES |
Mary was one of them — she repeatedly pressed for change (13) |
|
An anagram (‘for change’) of ‘she’ ‘she’ (‘repeatedly’) ‘presses’. The Madonna is sometimes represented as a shepherdess. |
| 6 |
REFERENDA |
Polls about to close with awful fear around (9) |
|
A charade of RE (‘about’) plus FERENDA, an envelope (around’) of END (close’) in FERA, an anagram (‘awful’) of ‘fear’). |
| 7 |
CLIMBS |
Cold legs? They could pose problems for mountaineers (6) |
|
A charade of C (‘cold’) plus LIMBS (‘legs’). |
| 8 |
DODDER |
Start to dance with stranger and totter (6) |
|
A charade of D (‘start to Dance’) plus ODDER (‘stranger’). |
| 10 |
SENSE OF HUMOUR |
Serious home, fun out of order? One must be lacking (5,2,6) |
|
An anagram (‘out of order’) of ‘serious home fun’, minus I (‘one must be lacking’). A definite &lit. |
| 14 |
DESERT RAT |
Soldier, wounded finally, retreats in disarray (6,3) |
|
A charade of D (‘woundeD finally’) plus ESERTRAT, an anagram (‘in disarray’) of ‘retreats’. |
| 15 |
ANDESITE |
A night informally includes some Parisian rock (8) |
|
An envelope (‘includes’) of DES (‘some Parisian’) in ‘a’ plus NITE (‘night informally’). |
| 16 |
STASIMON |
Zealous apostle penning a choral song (8) |
|
An envelope (‘penning’) of ‘a’ in ST. SIMON. Not Simon Peter, but another apostle Simon the Zealot, mentioned in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13. Stasimon is a choral song in Greek drama. |
| 18 |
LANDER |
Parachutist maybe in battle region, not the first or last (6) |
|
A subtraction [f]LANDER[s] (‘battle region’, First World War) without its outer letters (‘not the first or last’). |
| 19 |
BAWLED |
Shouted, sounding like one with hair torn out completely (6) |
|
One of the better homophones (‘sounding’) of BALD (‘like one with hair torn out completely’). |
| 22 |
TAPPA |
Bark coming from whippet, apparently (5) |
|
A hidden answer (‘coming from’) in ‘whippeT APPArently’. I had come across this in the alternate spelling tapa, as a Polynesian fabric made from paper mulberry bark. |
Re 9: FOC = father of chapel.
Re 5: rather less obscurely, the Mary who had a little lamb.
I’m sure Flavia is right and it’s the nursery rhyme character who is meant in 5D. Having said that, I don’t think that merely keeping a pet lamb makes a schoolgirl into a shepherdess, so I feel that strictly speaking the club isn’t accurate.
I was able to pull OSTRACOD and ADAIR out of some dusty dregs of memory, but confess to never having met ADI GRANTH, RACHITIS, TAPPA, STASIMON, or a LASER plant. What a workout. I admire Pasquales’ vocabulary.
Mary had a little lamb, and then some green beans and new potatoes.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
Well I finished it (with considerable help from the Internet), but it felt more like work than pleasure. Several unparsed despite the help!
What is a “laser plant”?
……….here’s my answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
Pasquale back to his old self.
Bawled – doesn’t shout homophone for me.
Thanks PeterO,
I have just checked the obscure words (for me) in Crossword Solver, which comes up with no alternative words that would fit (or at least just as obscure):
OSTRACOD, ADIGRANTH, RACHITIS, TAPPA, STASIMON
Flavia@1 spot on but @2 googling Mary shepherdess provides interesting info.
I Iiked this
I liked this too, thank you Pascale & PeterO. The obscure words were indeed a challenge, but as it’s a public holiday (in the UK at least) that seems fair enough to me.
Dave@7: you’ve opened a can of worms! I (from Tyneside) agree with setter and blogger, whereas my husband (a Midlander who moved to Norfolk) says that someone with no hair is “bolled”, to rhyme with “lolled” – as usual with homophone clues, I’m sure there’ll be plenty more said on the subject!
How is it that some crosswords can be an absolute delight while others are just a struggle that yields little satisfaction? Philistine on Wednesday was an example of the former, Pasquale today the latter.
I get what Pasquale does, often setting obscure words that will have us checking dictionaries or, these days, Wikipaedia. I don’t mind it, know what to expect, and have sometimes had a good experience in so doing. And I recall that in response to a previous puzzle, he came here to remind us, quite properly, that obscurity of reference doesn’t matter if the clueing is precise. Well, hidden (a reasonable response to ‘generates’?) in ‘intense beam’ at 3d is a plant, SEBEA. Didn’t help my NW corner one little bit. ADI GRANTH very much later put an end to that. Gave up entirely with DIRELY however despite it being a proper English word!
All in all a puzzle that reminds me I have some way to go to reach the highest rank of solver. Fair enough. But it did yield the above-mentioned little satisfaction, principally DEFIANCE.
Advice to newbies is often to start in the bottom right corner. TAPPA, ANDERSITE, STRASIMON.. not today I think.
Clever puzzle though. Thanks for it and the blog.
Thanks, PeterO.
I’m largely with Trailman on this. I get what Pasquale does, too, and it’s fair enough, as he has explained.
My niggles today, though, were not with the obscure words [for me, the same as Dave Ellison’s @ 8], but with the unusual ‘ordinary’-sounding ones – LANDERS? UPSETTERS? [especially with UP in the clue – Rufus was slated for anyway = IN ANY CASE on Monday] and I can’t think how DIRELY could be used in a sentence – it isn’t in any of my dictionaries, but Chambers does have ‘direfully’.
I admired the wordplay of SHEPHERDESSES but baulked at the definition and the clue for SENSE OF HUMOUR. 😉 And I liked DEFIANCE, too!
DIRELY is in http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/dire (and others http://www.onelook.com/?w=DIRELY&ls=a ) Scroll down to the entry and select ‘Example sentences’.
Thanks, sidey.
Flavia @1
Thank you – and it is even in Chambers. I suppose that ‘print’ is there to suggest the initials.
Mary had a little lamb,
The doctor was surprised.
Even in the original version, like Jason @3, I wondered if that made Mary a shepherdess. It is probably what Pasquale intended, but I thought the Madonna reference was on safer ground.
muffin @5
Thanks for the link. I knew that there was another picture that I wanted to insert somewhere, but by that time, I was too tired (and perhaps shell-shocked) to ferret it out. In any case, I would have gone for the modern Silphium plant genus, which seems to be beside the point.
Found this one very challenging, and failed on much of the general knowledge. ADI GRANTH, STASIMON and TAPPA were unfamiliar, and I had to check ANDESITE and RACHITIS. Fine for a holiday challenge but I wouldn’t have wanted to tackle it on a working day. DIRELY was last in. Liked SENSE OF HUMOUR.
Thanks to PeterO and Pasquale
Eileen @13
I was surprised to hear that DIRELY is not in Chambers (it is in the OED and Collins online, for example); I had not even questioned its validity. I would tend to use it as an overstatement (“he was direly in need of a haircut”).
I’ve never seen so many words I’ve never heard of. Some I could assemble — ANDESITE, OSTRACOD. Others — as mentioned. And I’m with Eileen on the semi-words; in Chambers or not, I can’t imagine saying landers, upsetters or direly. There are combinations that someone might create to fit a particular situation, and to be mildly funny — “He told them how upset he was with them, but the upsetters didn’t care” — but they don’t go on to become real words.
There have been a fair few landers on extraterrestrial bodies.
The Upsetters? Lee Scratch Perry’s backing band. If Pasquale expects us to know about ostracods and that a laser is a plant,I think we should expect him to know all about reggae.
I so wanted it to be ASTROCOD. Oh well…
euston @ 22: surely astrocod is a starfish 😉
PS thanks Pasquale and PeterO
I loved this one, and wonder if 10D is a comment on the naysayers?
Loved the Simon S pun. Excellent! I toyed with Atrocod for a minute or two. I also wanted it to be right.
Sorry, Astrocod. How to ruin a great joke!
Kack
Mary had a little lamb;
She also had a bear.
I often have seen Mary’s lamb,
but I’ve never seen her….
I’m another who didn’t relish some of the ‘strange words’. I highlighted the same three as Eileen and Valentine (UPSETTERS, LANDERS and DIRELY).
Finding six words that I’ve never heard of plus one whose meaning I didn’t know (LASER, a plant) was not the greatest pleasure for me today even though I generally like to learn as well as solve. This is just a matter of taste, though, and I wouldn’t decry anybody else’s enjoyment of new or obscure words. I like to spend most of my solving time away from references.
I enjoyed this puzzle on the whole because I found it quite challenging. Some clues I thought were very good: 10A (SIEGFRIED), 1D (DEFIANCE), 6D (REFERENDA), 10D (SENSE OF HUMOUR), 14D (DESERT RAT).
Thanks to Pasquale and to PeterO for the blog.
I had a vague memory that ANDESITE was in fact one of the commonest rocks in the Earth’s crust. While checking here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andesite
I was intrigued to find that it has also been found in meteorites, and also on Mars!
So Flavia @1 correctly divined the source of FOC? Father of chapel = print union leader? or is print an imperative and union refers to a church? Someone help, please!
In newspaper printing (at least) the “Father of the Chapel” was essentially the shop steward for the union. This was traditionally all-powerful, so he had rather more power than a typical shop steward. However new technology and the move out of Fleet Street for many papers sapped some of the union’s power.
Crosswords like this are why I moved from the Guardian to the Telegraph. Because the Guardian is free online (for some unexplainable reason) I can still read Nils Pratley and Larry Elliot. The Telegraph has crosswords for normally intelligent people. No wonder the Guardian is losing money. I bet most of the audience for this type of crossword don’t even buy the paper. I did buy the Guardian today (Telegraph sold out) but this crossword doesn’t encourage me to move back. Dump Pasquale.
I did think that some of these words would have been appropriate for a Mephisto rather than a weekday Guardian (btw someone said earlier that today was a public holiday in England – I don’t think it has been).
Hugh Stephenson (the possibly mythical crossword editor) has announced on the Guardian site that the Bank Holiday Maskarade will be published tomorrow.
(I can’t remember whether Mephisto or Azed is in the “Sunday Guardian” – otherwise known as “The Observer” – I virtually never buy a Sunday paper.)
Yup, a toughy.
Re 25, one would hope that nobody would get going when faced with a sign of danger! Railway folk would call it a SPAD if it happened, Signal Passed At Danger. Maybe someone can use that in a clue sometime?
Trailman, it’s American so Wikipedia, sadly.
Steve @32
You managed to pack a lot of observations, some of them related to each other, into a fairly short comment. You revealed something about your taste in crosswords, and clearly today’s Guardian crossword was not to your taste. I liked it, but having followed this page so far I know that you and others did not.
I take it “Dump Pasquale” is intended as a suggestion. As such it is better addressed to the Guardian Crossword Editor.
As several have mentioned, weekday crosswords should mostly be well known words or phrases with hard.as.you.like clues. The use of obscure words seems like laziness from the setter.
Mary had a little lamb
She also had a duck
She put them on the mantelpiece
To see if they would fall off
I thought ADI GRANTH was just too, too obscure
Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO. I has the same problems with the unusual words already cited, did not know the Liverpool Cavern, and needed help parsing CHILDBEARING. To add to the Mary/Lamb poesy:
Mary had a little lamb, some ice cream and some pie,
Sour pickles and chopped herring, and then a ham on rye.
It made the naughty waiter grin to see her order so,
And when they carried Mary out her face was white as snow.
If the setter were truly lazy, he could easily recycle most of his clues for familiar words and phrases from his stock of 80000 clues on his database from one paper to the next. Since the Guardian purports to appeal to a well-informed readership (unlike some other papers) it seems a bit rich to complain about the Adi Granth being obscure, especially in a country where we are trying to encourage understanding between communities and where many GCSE Religious Studies students are (quite rightly) being taught about Sikhism, for which the (Adi) Granth is the main scripture. I could defend other words too, but get used to moans about obscurity. I am, however, glad that at least a few solvers join me in relishing the linguistic diversity that an amazing world (of geology, religion, music, chemistry, sport, politics, and so much more) offers us. If you only want the tired and familiar, you may indeed be better to avoid Pasquale, but I say to the (maybe) minority who like their awareness stretched, please desist in asking for him to be dumped — and from time to time you will surprise yourself by finding that you had a wider variety of vocabulary and more ability working out clues rather than looking at definitions than you imagined possible. But thanks anyway for all the usual Marmite responses. Enjoy your Easter!
This puzzle surely represents the nadir of the Guardian Cryptic’s existence.
Badly clued, pretentious , full of ridiculous words and just annoying.
If ever a puzzle needed an editor this was it.
It’s not often I finish a puzzle and think that that was time wasted.I did with this abomination!
Please, please Guardian , get us a functioning editor soon.
Thanks to PeterO
P.S. I didn’t really like this 😉
Pasquale @ 39: thumbs up all the way …but did you mean the (maybe) minority who *don’t* like their like their awareness stretched?
Brendan @ 40: Occasionally I agree with what you say, generally I don’t. But you clearly have intelligence. Today’s comment I just think shows narrowmindedness. And I’m not going to get into an argument that just drifts into tendentiousness (as in Rufus this week), so won’t comment further on this puzzle.
Pasquale @39
It’s always good to hear from the setter, so thank you for having your say. As you may have noted, I do like to learn as I solve, but today you put in a lorry load, and for somebody who likes to solve most of a crossword away from references (sometimes I complete it this way) it was a bit taxing. I criticised just 3 clues – or rather the answers to those clues.
What I could have said (so I’ll say it now) is that I really did like the fact that I could get the ‘obscure’ words by solving the clues and not relying on pure guesswork.
Thank you for a good Easter puzzle.
1ac typical of too many clues with meaningless surfaces and tortured parsing. Sorry.
One of the worst crosswords I’ve ever done. I came close to abandoning it but my natural bloody mindedness made me continue. I feel no satisfaction in having completed it and will probably avoid this setter in future. I thought Pasquale’s defence of this puzzle revealed that he knows this wasn’t up to much as he seems to accuse his critics of being at fault for their criticisms. Can it be coincidence that so many of us disliked this?
Enough!
Crikey that was hard. I did enjoy it though in spite of almost giving up at one point. I certainly couldn’t have done it without electronic aids and a dictionary.
I missed the hidden CHILD in “comiC HILDa” and I couldn’t parse TAVERN at all, which was disgraceful for someone devoted to The Beatles in the 60s.
In addition to the semi-words and obscurities (although I think some of the words mentioned above are not really very obscure), I felt sorry for younger solvers as some of the clues seemed aimed more at my age group. Is Red Adair still at all well-known? I wouldn’t expect anyone much under 40 to have heard of him. I know the term “Father of the Chapel” mainly from the print strikes of the mid-80s, so 30 years ago, but I don’t remember coming across it much since then.
I do like to learn from crosswords, but I like ice cream too, and yet too much of it at one time would be indigestible. Overall, the clue to 21a seems very apposite today, but nevertheless …
Thanks, Pasquale and PeterO.
Pasquale @ 39 Adi Granth is a lovely entry for a crossword, great to include it both for those who know it and for those who don’t. Surely isn’t it also extremely amenable to being a hidden?
Brendan @40 and Peter @44, evidently you found a lot wrong with this puzzle.
I thought there was little wrong with it, but it is clear that the views of all commenters on the quality of today’s puzzle are more polarised than usual. I can remember one other instance of such extremes of view in the last two weeks, but I haven’t gone to the trouble to check that or to see if there were more than that.
In his comment Pasquale referred to the Marmite responses. For your interest (or not), [up to post 45] I counted 6 of us who positively liked the puzzle (plus 1 who indicated it was ok), 4 who disliked it, and 5 who ‘half-liked’ it (my word for those who appeared to like it apart from a small number of iffy clues or answers).
If at some point you see that the puzzle is so bad, you don’t have to continue. Several months ago, I decided that I would stop trying to complete a puzzle when I stopped enjoying it. Perhaps that’s the best policy. I even did that on a recent Arachne puzzle that I really enjoyed doing. In a situation where I was left with three 4-letter words to solve, the clues to which were tricky and two of them, -O– and -E–, crossed on their last letter, I happily abandoned it and came here to read all about it. Unlike the blogger who recently said
“provided I can obtain a completed grid from the information supplied, then for me it is a satisfactory puzzle”
I get my enjoyment from solving rather than completing a puzzle. But I must add that that is largely because I can read about any missing bits here if I want to, and of course discuss them.
It seems that 21 across is some kind of a warning. All I would say is that if the words are really difficult, or really very obscure, then not even the easiest clue will reveal the answer, and that is the experience I had here today. Pasquale I feel does not really need an editor (the ‘absent friend’ of Guardian puzzles) for his clues, but for his mind-set it is a different matter. This one should for me have been strangled at birth.
I wish all a very happy Easter, or Ishtar as it used to be called, if that is not too obscure!
Muffin33 it was Good Friday
The minority! Nonsense. What about all the readers who never attempt a Guardian crossword because of setters like this. Just what advantage do crosswords like this give to a struggling newspaper. How many of those in favour or against even buy the Guardian? Dump Pasquale and the crossword editor.
Sorry a bit late and probably tail end Charlie. I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I found this very, very hard with by my count 7 new words and a couple of others which I couldn’t parse. Kept going and ended up missing only ANDESITE.
I’m but a humble solver. As far as I’m concerned the setter has every right to make the puzzle as difficult as he or she likes, even though I agree ‘…They engender vexation’ by doing so and I’m not sure I’d feel quite as magnanimous if hours of toil resulted in only a few correct answers.
Anyway thank you Pasquale and PeterO.
Steve @51
One point on which I agree with you is that the Guardian for its own good must put out a decent daily crossword in order to retain whatever following it has, let alone compete with other papers. If the crossword editor is doing his job properly he should monitor how well the puzzles are received as well as manage his team of compilers and review puzzles before publication (the last of these in particular being a subject aired many times on this site). I’ve said before that the crossword editor should visit this site, but I don’t know if he does.
I buy the Guardian most days, by the way, and it’s a lucky chance more than anything else that I prefer its crosswords to those in the Telegraph and the Times.
David @50
Most of the shops in our little town were open when we walked through at lunchtime, and earlier a carpet-fitter had come to measure us for a new carpet. Doesn’t look like a public holiday to me!
Yep. Way too hard for me. Unfamiliar words/phrases and obscure cluing. I hate clues where you first have to think of a synonym for a word then use that synonym as part of an anagram. If you then have to work backwards from a supposed answer and that answer is an unfamiliar word, well, you’re stuffed. Im so grateful to bloggers who solve these things by midnight plus 2 minutes and post the answers on 15squared.
Those calling for Pasquale and the editor to be dumped seem to be from the growing number of people who think “I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t exist”. Well, tough. One of the pleasures of this world is its variety – to react to the unknown with such negativity is limiting and, in other (dare I say it, more important) contexts, a dangerous mindset.
I found this puzzle very tough and came to the blog with many blanks in the grid, but enjoyed the challenge despite my failure.
My usual morning-after response: nine lights uncompleted. I think that’s a record for me since I was a teenager (50 years ago). Just a plain struggle with little of the enjoyment you get when a solution “clicks” into place.
Solved (eventually) with my son (who’s cleverer than me, but at least I’d heard of Red Adair) and the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which we definitely needed! We enjoyed it very much – thanks Pasquale. Faves: 10d 21ac 6d 13ac
Let me be clear, I didn’t enjoy this puzzle but this doesn’t mean I want either the setter or the editor to be purged. It seems to me that if puzzles are not liked then setters (and editors) need to know about it and that was the point of my comment. I shall certainly continue to subscribe to the Guardian; the only U.K. newspaper that doesn’t have a whiff of the jackpot!
Happy Easter everybody.
Whoops. I meant JACKBOOT!
Mary had a little lamb
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes that lamb to school
Between two hunks of bread
Old Fakir @55, you said : I hate clues where you first have to think of a synonym for a word then use that synonym as part of an anagram. Pasquale didn’t do that, did he? he’s often written hoe such an indirect anagram is a cardinal sin – which clue did you mean?
I was lucky. My internet went down before I wasted too much time on this.
Plenty of entertainment reading the comments today and I agree mostly with the negative ones (sorry Pasquale).
Old fakir @55: I agree – having to find an obscure synonym and then mess around with that word should not be allowed especially if the answer too is an obscure word.
Having said that, it has been through guardian crosswords that my knowledge and vocabulary have developed over 40 years so I do welcome new words as long as the clueing is reasonable.
Cornick @62: I thought O.f was refering to 23a but after re-reading PeterO’s parsing of this, I see its a reversal rather than an anagram of RILED which I guess is OK. (and indeed the answer to this is not obscure as I may have implied @63).
I don’t have a problem with obscurities – I suspect that 90 per cent of the outer reaches of my vocabulary has been learnt from crosswords over the years. I do think, however, that the setter could soften the blow by providing a relatively full definition to the obscure word. “Rock”, “scriptures”, and “bark” seem a little cursory in the context of their respective answers. Or maybe the wordplay could be on the easier side. Devious word play, with a cursory definition, to an obscure word is an unfair triple whammy in a daily puzzle. And, perhaps, there were one or two too many obscurities in this particular puzzle ?
As a crossword beginner I really didn’t enjoy this crossword. Difficult procedures and obscure words stump me. But that’s all part of learning, right?
Upon writing this post I recall that Pasquale is a hard setter; however, how are we learners meant to know how tough each setter will be? I sometimes wish that crosswords had a soduko-like Easy/Medium/Hard/Fiendish categorisation. Buy maybe that’s just too literal and not in the spirit of a crossword.
Should crosswords like this be written? Absolutely. Should the Guardian publish them? Absolutely. Should a warning of their challenging nature be provided? Quite possibly.
I only buy a paper (nearly always the Guardian) for the crossword. Today, Saturday, I shall not be buying a copy of the Guardian, solely because of this experience at the hands of Pasquale. To one of the Guardian’s competitors I shall turn… I fear that others may do the same. Are many non-Guardian readers going to do the opposite? I doubt it.
I regard crosswords as test of my solving ability and, to a lesser extent, my general knowledge, not of my ability to look things up in dictionaries or online. Pasquale is entitled to disagree with me and it won’t stop me attempting his puzzles.
I once came across in an English magazine one of those puzzles where all the spaces are filled and breaks indicated by thick black lines. I only solved one clue but didn’t enter it because the answer was ETRE which I didn’t recognise as having a meaning in English and Chambers didn’t either. When I checked the completed grid it was still the only word I recognised. Pasquale has a long way to go but I hope he doesn’t try as a Guardian cryptic setter.
Charlie @66
I hope you don’t let this experience deter you from trying future Guardian crosswords. If you want to find out whether particular setters are tough, you can put their names into the Site Search box at the top of each page here. Reading the preview of the blogger’s comments shown on the results page may give you an idea of the typical difficulty level and those snippets shouldn’t contain spoilers. For instance, Chifonie’s results make it clear that his puzzles are usually regarded as relatively straightforward, although individual solvers’ responses to a particular setting style can vary. For more information, jump down to the comments and read the first few – many posters start with a reference to how difficult they usually find that setter.
Having said that, for Bank Holiday weekends it is traditional to have a larger crossword, usually extra tough or complicated, presumably on the (rather dubious) assumption that solvers have more time to spend on them. If you look at today’s Prize, you’ll see what I mean. I think it would be sensible to avoid that one, but you could consider choosing one from the Guardian online archive. If you prefer to solve on paper, you could possibly print the PDF version.
muffin54 – Good Friday is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar. I’m not sure whether you deplore the fact that Good Friday is not respected or whether you welcome it. I deplore it.
Charlie @66
It’s late for this blog and you may not see this, but I would just like to echo what jennyk said @68.
There was an unusually high number of words in this puzzle that very few people knew (there were six that I had never heard of), and it would be a shame if that put you off coming back.
You get a good variety of crosswords with the Guardian. Some of that variety is in the level of difficulty, but setters also tend to have different styles, and that makes Guardian crosswords more interesting, in my opinion, than, say, Times crosswords, which are probably more consistent in style and difficulty level. (And by the way, the Guardian allows themes in its crosswords, whereas the Times does not.)
On Monday, if the setter is Rufus, as it often is on that day of the week, I’m confident you will find his crossword more straightforward than Pasquale’s. As jennyk said, if you come across a crossword by Chifonie, that is also likely to be more approachable.
Charlie@66 – keep trying – we’ve all seen puzzles that seemed impossible at one time or another, but I’m sure there are easier ones on the way. Rating puzzles objectively would be very difficult – I have often been surprised coming here both ways – sometimes a difficult clue for which you have the knowledge or spot a connection can open up a large section of grid, and conversely there are occasions when a missing piece of knowledge seems to be known to everyone else.
As for the holiday question, I welcome difficult puzzles when I am not working regardless of what the religious regard as important. Incidentally the Easter holiday puzzle has been published on the Saturday for as long as I can remember, whereas the Christmas one used to be on Christmas Eve unless that was a Sunday – for me having a holiday puzzle 5 days before Christmas seems too early…
Long may Pasquale continue to set for The Guardian! When I see that name, I know not to bother, which gives me a little break from crossword obsession, and a chance to do something more useful. Seeing the completed grid and the comments here reinforces that position. Right, time to start disentangling Maskarade…
New words for me were OSTRACOD, RACHITIS, REDSTART, ADI GRANTH.
I needed help to parse 9a, 3d, 26a, 13a. I did not know that The Cavern = Liverpool Club or FOC = father of chapel – and still do not understand them but I do not have time now to read the whole blog to find out if it is answered here.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Mary had a little sheep
And with that sheep she used to sleep,
Then they found out ’twas a ram,
And Mary had a little lamb.
(I’ve got a lump of Andesite on my window sill – the Cheviots mostly consist of it (it’s lava, type source the Andes)..
Part of the joy of the Guardian Cryptic is the variety, surely. This was at the fight-to-the-death end of the spectrum for me. Much reference to the SOED when literal application of the cues turned up previously unknown words (Ostracod, Stasimon, Adi Granth!) but they all worked — legitimate in my view. The only one I took exception to was ‘Direly’ at 1 ac which I put in (last) unparsed. Having seen the explanation I feel it requires an unreasonably convoluted process. A quibble though.
Learned a lot doing this one — always a joy — so warm thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.
Thanks PeterO and Pasquale.
That was very hard and very tricky.
OSTRACOD, ADI GRANTH, STASIMON, and TAPPA were all new words for me and I haven’t come across this spelling of RUBLE before.
My last two were FOCUS and LASER, neither of which I entered with any real conviction. I still don’t get the plant bit.
I do not agree with the “dump Pasquale” tone of some of the comments. I do like to be stretched – but not necessarily in one go.
20 reminds me that I saw the said chap in a bar once and pointed him out to my companion (who had a speech impediment). He went over to said firefighter and said, “if you’re really ‘Red Adair, where’s Ginger Rogers?”
Even I don’t usually post this late but have only just read comments and feel compelled to stick up for Pasquale who, incidentally, is not at the toughest, or fight-to-the-death, end of the Guardian stable. (I usually take far longer solving an Enigmatist, for example). Please, Pasquale, take no notice of the vacuous moans (a few no doubt have some substance); I agree with your responses. For example, I knew not the word STASIMON (to my shame) but it was clear from the excellent wordplay. And so with the other “abstrusities”. Then there are odd tastes above. I thought SENSE OF HUMOUR was a good clue – nothing wrong with word play and I enjoyed definition and overall &littish surface. Please keep them coming, Don.
I love the variety at the G but I worry that these comments may be taken as a hint to dumb down still further some of the most entertaining daily cryptics available. What’s the point of a puzzle if it ain’t puzzling?!
A big thanks again to Pasquale.
And thanks to PeterO
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
Disappointing to see such a negative reaction to what I thought was a tough but fairly clued puzzle. We all know that the Don will serve up a dose of lesser known words from time to time. I personally look forward to them.
Actually started off with one of them at 22d – the hidden TAPPA (that needed to be checked of course). There were only three that gave any real trouble – ADA GRANTH which took a while to track down as an alternative name to the Sikh scriptures, FOC as an abbreviation of the trade union shop steward in the printing industry and ‘The Cavern’ as the Liverpool nightclub. Only got the latter couple when coming here. Had gone the nursery rhyme Mary at 5d instead of the Christian one (which is better).
Finished in the NW corner with RACHITIS, CHILD-BEARING (cleverly hidden) and DIRELY the last few in.
Enjoyed this and sincerely hope that both the setter and editor take little notice of the calls to change from above and continue with the great mix of setters that they present.