Guardian 26,868 – Nutmeg

51 comments on “Guardian 26,868 – Nutmeg”

1. Hard work, but a great puzzle. It took me some time to get BOARD GAME and there were some tricky clues. Favourites were SOB STORY, UNAVOWED, SLUICE and ARMHOLE. Many thanks to Nutmeg, and to Andrew for parsing EVENTS and for APACHE, which I couldn’t get.

2. I found this very difficult and was amazed that I could finish it, even though I could not parse 15d, 5d, 5a, 22d.

   New words for me were JERRY/PO = chamber pot and DOGGO as well as board game GO – never heard of that one.

   Thanks Andrew and Nutmeg.

3. Too hard for me I’m afraid, so thanks Andrew for the blog explaining the answers. I ended up appreciating the BOARDGAMES theme, and perhaps would have fared better had I got the key clue at 15d. I should have spotted Leicester Square and Fenchurch Street Station from playing Monopoly, but sadly did not have enough crossers to see these. I think Ely and Ulster put me off with the thought that there were lots of UK references I wouldn’t pick up. Not really the case in the end. Still not sure about why 5a is LEADS OFF; maybe someone else who posts here can assist? A clever puzzle; thanks Nutmeg; I just have to file it in the “learning experience” category and try again tomorrow.

4. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

   Very disappointing. I usually like Nutmeg puzzles, but, for me at least, this was almost entirely “guess the answer, then try to parse”. The crucial 15d clue was a good example of this – I guessed it from MATE, but there was no way I was going to construct from the bottom up.

   First pass only yielded INFIDEL, then I saw (mostly from the enumeration) FENCHURCH STREET STATION (my favourite clue), and so had a foothold. It still took ages to finish, though.

   SOB STORY is an odd clue; “not quite an &lit”, as you say, Andrew, but in that case the “request for help” is doing double duty.

5. Julie @3
   Two different pronunciations of LEADS. A common pastime for crooks in this country is to steal the lead flashing from church roofs.

6. We really enjoyed the last Nutmeg so were dismayed to find we couldn’t get a foothold on this. Ended up cheating or guessing our way through and even then struggling to parse.

   Thanks Andrew for managing to do that.

7. Very tough going for me, before the lightbulb moment (after a few hours!) for the gateway clue and I eventually managed to finish. Missed the parsing for EVENTS, didn’t know about PO for ‘jerry’ and wasn’t convinced about LEADS OFF which however I parsed as you did. Easy to say once solved, but I particularly liked LEAD PIPING, UNAVOWED, ASPEN, ARMHOLE and even BOARD GAME.

   Many thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

8. Muffin @ 4 – same for me, too many “guess the answer then try to parse” to make it a satisfying solve.

   Thanks all.

9. Thank you Nutmeg and Andrew.

   I got off to a good start with SLUICE and INFIDEL, then slowed down and needed help with parsing.

   LADDERS and ASPEN were fun, but FENCHURCH STREET STATION was my favourite clue.

10. Thanks Nutmeg & Andrew.

    Like Cookie @9 I started well in the NW corner but then got stuck. Resorted to word searches to fill in the blanks and then tried to parse the answers. Not knowing PO=jerry or Ulster as a coat didn’t help.

    I think this would have been better as a Prize Puzzle but maybe the experts like this sort of thing during the week as well.

11. Robi@10

    your comment reminds me that I had the same thought as you – this puzzle would have been ideal as a Prize Puzzle!

12. Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew. Count me as another who had great difficulty here. I too did not know PO = Jerry or chamber pot, but the major problem was that, for a US solver, even after getting BOARD GAME some of the terms in the UK game versions were different: US Lead Pipe instead of LEAD PIPING (in Clue as opposed to Cluedo), and no LEICESTER SQUARE or especially FENCHURCH STREET STATION (the “station” was easy but …). Last in was TAKING with the crossers not much help. For me, definitely a prize level puzzle.

13. Fantastic puzzle!

14. Reading muffin@4, pex@6 and Aoxomoxoa@8, whose irritation with ‘guess, then parse’ answers I quite often share, I found myself wondering whether in fact they might not be a good thing after all. Sure, most clues have a verbal logic which, however convoluted, will deliver the answer. But with the ‘guess then parse’ ones, the guess has to come from somewhere by an other than logical process, i.e. from something in the clue triggering an association lying dormant in the unconscious mind, as when (for me) the sight of bluebells reminds me of happy days with my long-dead mother. So when we guess right and confirm it in hindsight, it just goes to show that our unconscious in on its toes – which has to be good, doesn’t it?
    Thanks, Nutmeg and Andrew.

15. oops – ‘our unconscious IS on its toes’.

16. Did far better than I had expected at first glance. First one in was 1d which led me to 15d and 8d.

    But 8d wrongfooted me initially – i thought it was an anagram of ‘way to fill Ely cathedral post’ at first!

    Can anyone explain how FEN fits into the 8d clue?

    Didn’t quite manage to complete, and many that I did were a case of ‘that fits & feels right, but not quite sure how it works’!

17. A slow start for me too – after 10 minutes or so all I had was INFIDEL, but the next to crack was BOARD GAME which helped a lot. Still a few more tricky ones to crack after that, with UNAVOWED last in. A cracking puzzle that would have made a fine prize. Favourites were SLUICE, INFIDEL, LADDERS and FENCHURCH STREET STATION

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew

18. bobloblaw @16 – Ely is a cathedral city in the Fens, hence Ely cathedral is a Fen Church.

19. I suppose how you perceive a puzzle depends in good part on how well you get on with it. As it happens, I started this at a gallop, though there was quite a lot of head scratching before I managed to finish, with UNAVOWED, REROUTE and CRUSADER (I’d guessed the last, but took a long time to understand the parsing). So I’m with copmus@13. Thoroughly enjoyed the varietyof cluing and thought the theme was very nicely woven in.
    Thanks to setter and blogger both.

20. Andrew: Re 11,10 ac: I was puzzled by the apparently superfluous ‘original’ in the clue – “defeat secured by best’ is clearly the cryptic element.
    It turns out that the means to an end was originally called ‘lead piping’ (in the UK only) but has since been changed to ‘lead pipe’ as in the US. So ‘original’ is part of the definition element, I think.

    Thanks, Andrew, in particular for your help with 7dn and 22dn, which I had bunged in but failed to parse.

    And thanks to Nutmeg for a great crossword.

21. Yep. Far too hard for me. Got infidel and beanpole and then 40 minutes later gave up. Well done Andrew. You are amazing. Difficult grid and then loads of my least favourite clues: think of a synonym and then anagram it eg 9, 10, 11 and too many others to mention. Put it down to experience and try again on Thursday.

22. A hard conditional cryptic. If you don’t twig the 15 then there is no alternative but the wpb.

23. Pedantry corner. 23a – it is very, very rare that chess actually ends in mate!

24. Wagonman @ 22 – but it’s possible (is it?) to do it partly in reverse. I got 13 ac from having —L-S, ‘small’ giving me S as the first letter, plus the definition. I then thought ‘Scrabble’ which gave me an additional clue to 15dn.

    Or is that considered to be ‘cheating’? Genuine question.

25. Roger @ 14: Sometimes its good, yes, but the definition part should be gettable in that case. For example Crusader for ‘Champion’ and Beanpole for ‘spare person’ don’t wash with me.

26. I was indeed puzzled by most of this but found some almost archaic concepts in it, one being ‘van’ in the meaning ‘vanguard'(at the front) which I think makes ‘leads off’ – with ‘leads’ as a verb – the correct solution. Not to mention a setter more devious that he/she first appears.

    .

27. Very enjoyable. Got S-tiles before the main clue so spent a lot of time on things like clay..especially with China in the mix. Normally I don’t finish a Nutmeg,so this was pleasing:-)

28. I thought this excellent. I’m not saying it wasn’t challenging or that it was a quick solve but it was one of the most enjoyable puzzles we’ve had for ages. I got SLUICE and LEICESTER SQUARE straight away but it took quite a long time to get BOARD GAME. I did toy with BLIND DATE -DIVERSION= BLIND; outcome might be to MATE- but once I got BOARD GAME the rest came quite quickly. LOI LEAD PIPING probably because I couldn’t remember this being a weapon in Cluedo. Mind you I haven’t played that game for about 60 years!
    Loved LADDERS,APACHE and BEANPOLE.
    I haven’t always got on with puzzles by this setter but this hit the spot!
    Thanks Nutmeg.

29. Old fakir @21 – There a no, absolutely no, indirect anagrams in this puzzle and certainly not in any of the clues you list! Indirect anagrams in general are frowned upon and I have only ever seen one once (from Araucaria as it happens). What Nutmeg has done in 9a is use a synonym and then reverse it (as Andrew clearly states in his blog – you did read it, didn’t you?). Such a device is perfectly legitimate. You are free to dislike that it but it is a fair device and to be found in crosswords in all papers. I am totally bemused at your objection to 11/10 as it is a simple envelope clue. Not even a hint of an anagram. Reversed, indirect, upside-down, inside-out or any which way.

    Thanks to Andrew for a very fine blog, I needed your help on Jerry/chamber pot/PO, and to Nutmeg for an absolutely cracking puzzle. SLUICE went in straight away which helped with others in the NW but I became very stuck. Once I had STILES, LEICESTER SQUARE and (the very fine) FENCHURCH STREET STATION 15d became clear and it helped a little. Last one in, with a thud, was LADDERS. My favourite was spare person for BEANPOLE, very funny.

    A tough puzzle and a very rewarding solve.

30. Steve @23

    Absolutely! Checkmate is the ultimate objective, but at both club and professional levels reaching that outcome is, as you say, very, very rare.

    As for the puzzle as a whole, I thought muffin @4 summed it up really well. I find that Nutmeg nearly always comes up with puzzles that are both challenging and enjoyable. This one was challenging but not really enjoyable except for some really good clues unconnected with the theme.

    Board games as a topic is not my cup of tea. I know chess and go, also snakes and ladders, backgammon and Scrabble, and I can remember bits of the British and Dutch versions of Monopoly, but not Cluedo or any others that might have crept into this puzzle.

    I had doubts about some of the clues. For example, I can see how ‘another’ is supposed to work in 6D – it means ‘another of the other’, not ‘another element’ – but this is very clumsy. Also, I don’t mind having to come here for help with parsing, but the use of ‘cycling’ in 27A (EVENTS) is dodgy in my opinion.

    In 7D (SOPHIST) ‘po’ and ‘jerry’ are both new to me – nothing wrong with that, though, because I’ve learned something. Likewise, thieving the leads off a church roof was a new concept for me.

    There were several excellent clues that encouraged me to persevere. Even though I was put off by the theme, my favourite clue was 5D (LADDERS).

    Thanks to Nutmeg and Andrew.

31. I found this quite entertaining and scrupulously fair. I sometimes find interconnected clues a bit boring because once one has worked out the key the challenge has gone, but there were some good clues here. I particularly liked both 5s. Alan @30 it’s not leads that are stolen from a church roof but the lead flashing. Pex@25 you must have been lucky enough not to have worked in a jargon-ridden business where champions in the sense of crusaders are all too commonplace.

32. Just to clarify my original point, I agree that all the clues were perfectly fair. The problem I had was that very few of them were solvable (by me, at least) “bottom up”; nearly all were “top down” or, as I said, “guess, then parse”.

    As I recall, only INFIDEL (my FOI) I solved bottom up.

33. David @31
    Thanks for the correction re lead flashing. I was deleting some waffle concerning a different clue and got the two clues mixed up – hence the nonsense that appeared.

34. The leads is the correct term for a roof made of the metal. The individual sheets used to cover a roof are also called leads. So a roof stripped by miscreants really would be LEADS OFF.

35. I found this a challenge but an entertaining one, even though I’m not keen on so many cross-referenced clues. David @31 made a similar comment based on the challenge disappearing once the link is found, but for me the issue is the frustration trying to solve clues with a major part ‘missing’. In this case, I didn’t get 15d until I already had around half the answers, including LEICESTER SQUARE and something STREET STATION.

    Favourites were SLUICE and EVENTS.

    Thanks, Nutmeg and Andrew.

36. Thanks sidey (@34). I took the term ‘lead flashing’ from muffin’s comment @5, later echoed by David. When I referred to ‘leads’ I really did mix up some of my draft text. If what I originally posted actually made sense I was lucky. I know that lead is widely used for roofing and know why it is used – I’m just ignorant of the actual terms used.

37. Thanks Andrew and Nutmeg.

    I have expressed my reservations about Nutmeg puzzles before but I am going to be explicit this time.

    Nothing wrong with her cluing etc. I feel that having been a Quiptic setter, she tries too hard to be a Cryptic setter! So much so, her puzzles are often too hard like this one.

    After moving to Cryptic she delivered a few pangrams. This is her first themed puzzle? (I’m not sure but I think I’m right).

    Even getting the theme early on does not help. Monopoly is an American game but she chooses the British version to include Leicester Square and Fenchurch Street Station. Yeah yeah I get it..they were correctly clued but it is not fun solving….yes “game” is “up for it” but “up for it” is not “game” only..it can be ready, willing etc.

    Both muffin and Alan Browne above express this sentiment.

    The crossword puzzle has to be fun to both the setter and the solver. This is not a competition between the two!

    It’s more fun when it is: “you spoke and I understood!”

    Somehow Nutmeg puzzles generate unnecessary complexity. Please relax, have some fun setting and let us have some in solving!

38. ilippu @37

    This is a bit late, but let me say that you have not taken my name in vain – indeed, you have expressed my own reservations about this puzzle in a well-rounded way.

    One thing I didn’t say explicitly in my original post is that I thought this puzzle depended too much on the theme. jennyk (@35) said she is “not keen on so many cross-referenced clues”, the issue being “the frustration of trying to solve clues with a major part ‘missing’”. I agree with her.

    It takes good judgement on the part of the setter to make a puzzle solvable and enjoyable even when the theme doesn’t yield quickly.

    If I remember right, I think another setter recently declared on this forum that he is now reluctant to incorporate his themes in the answers – instead he prefers to put them in his clues. I can see why.

    I have noticed that Nutmeg takes trouble over her clues, and this latest puzzle is no exception. In fact, after some frustrations I felt about clue after clue not coming out because of the theme, I felt like doing the Suguru and Cell Block puzzles on the same page instead, but because it was Nutmeg I persevered.

    Thanks for your comment.

39. Ow! ClaireS @29 take it easy. I disagree with your analysis. 10/11 says Defeat secured by best original means to an end in 15 (4,6)
    PIP (defeat, as in “pipped at the post”) in LEADING. Lead piping is one of the murder weapons in the game of Cluedo
    Ok, then. In this case you have to think of two synonyms: pip for defeat and leading for best. Then, having somehow come up with those, you wrap the second around the first – what you call an envelope. I see an envelope as only a variety of anagram.
    My point is that there are hundreds of synonyms for these words and, unless you’ve already got the answer to 15 – and even that wouldn’t necessarily lead you to Cluedo, especially if you are under 60 yrs old – you haven’t a chance with this clue. As ilippu@39 says very nicely – it’s more fun when we can all play.

40. Excellent puzzle – once you saw board game. Never heard of Doggone before, but worked from definition. Surprised at the negative comments above.

41. DOGGO BLOODY DOGGO, you stoopid spell check!!

42. Far too hard for me, which in itself of course is neither criticism nor admiration. But some comments do strike chords with me, namely that there seemed little pleasure in this, just so complex and convoluted at times that there was no joy of shared experience in trying to solve it – akin to listening to a friend suddenly speaking in tongues!

43. I sometimes wonder whether I have been doing the crossword – there are a lot of grouchy comments on what I found an excellent puzzle.

    Old fakir @39 – ClaireS is absolutely right – envelopes are not anagrams, nor are reversals or abbreviated words. If you choose to interpret “the rules” your way you will struggle to find any cryptics that comply with them.

    As for ilippu @37, I struggle to understand what is wrong with a British crossword in a British newspaper having a British theme – I suspect almost nobody in Britain would be familiar with the original American property names (we did have a copy of the German version, which used to be sold in Britain as a language teaching tool).

44. sorry – my first sentence should have read “I sometimes wonder whether I have been doing the SAME crossword…”

45. I would like to add that a chess game usually ends in staleMATE or checkMATE.

46. Cookie @45 – the point they were trying to make is that most chess games end in agreed draws or resignations, neither of which involve a mate.

47. Beery hiker @46, as far as I am concerned we are dealing with jeux de société here, not chess matches – agreed “chasing” each other around the board with a pawn apiece is not much fun and one usually calls it a day…

48. Great crossword. I had to sleep on the last half dozen but they went in quickly next morning. Loved APACHE and ARMHOLE.

49. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew.

    Surely not as bad as all that?

    I needed your help to explain EVENTS and TAKING didn’t quite do it for me, but generally pretty enjoyable.

    It may be a case that once the setter had – um – settled on the theme, there weren’t that many common Board Games that you could be sure the general solver could equate to. As I grew up, I found that the favourites from my youth were not big sellers (does anyone remember the treasure collection game Buccaneer? or a world travel game which was also called “Go”? – you had to change money to buy souvenirs and my boat always got diverted to Heard Island).

    Anyway. Yes, quite a challenge and I’m now nearly 2 weeks behind, but I quite liked it.

50. Also surprised at the negative comments about a really good crossword. The two of us got it out, although we appreciated help parsing EVENTS which we had thought might be something to do with prime time television!

51. Thanks Nutmeg and Andrew

    Found this one very tough and it spanned across three days – so did treat it as a weekend prize crossword, which it clearly deserved.

    As with many, was able to get a good start in the NW corner with the long LEICESTER SQUARE as the second in but found it no help to work out the enigmatic 15d. In fact, it sent me down a rabbit hole of finding places in London. Didn’t end up finding BOARD GAME until after two thirds of the grid had been filled.

    The only two that I couldn’t parse were EVENTS (gettable in hindsight) and the LEAD thieving from churches.

    Came down on the side of the ‘yay-sayers’ of the puzzle – hard but with very clever constructions and found it a mix of guess then parse and deduce an answer from the word play and find the definition. SOPHIST was an example of the latter.

    Finished in the NE corner with that SOPHIST, LEAD PIPING (chuffed to remember it from Cluedo) and LEADS OFF (which I thought was the answer for a long time but couldn’t justify … and still came here wondering!)

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