Guardian one-off cryptic / Boatman and crew

22 comments on “Guardian one-off cryptic / Boatman and crew”

1. Actually, the answer to 24d is supposed to be POLL…

2. The first part of 24d is a homophone (‘dictator’) of ‘pole,’ I believe.

3. Thanks Gaufrid, Boatman and crew,

   I thought this was brilliant.

   (and I agree with Robi about POLL).

   The 7 and 8 downs were my favourites, and I spent too much time trying to justify nineties for the europhile version of the latter (to cross with something like communion as an alternate 10ac).

4. Absolutely splendid!

5. My mind was made up by preferring women in nighties- but it was already made up.

   Nice use of strikethrough,sir!And good work from all the crew

   Quel dommage!

6. The ‘crew’, if you’re interested, is Claret, Skipjack, Soup, Vigo and Windsurfer, the team from the Custom Cryptic Crosswords site, along with some helpful comments from Brigster. Under Boatman’s watchful eye, we put together many of the non-double-answer clues…

7. Glad you all enjoyed the distraction.

   Thanks to Gaufrid for courageously leaping in to blog the puzzle with no prior warning and to all the Crew for taking what started out as an obscure technical experiment and turning it into a fully rounded entertainment.

   Interesting that Alan Connor, in today’s blog posting at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2016/jun/24/crossword-blog-boatmans-referendum-puzzle likened the puzzle to the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox – actually, not a bad analogy, and one that I may even use the next time someone asks me to explain what Schrödinger’s Cat is all about. If only the implications for the country were as clear as the outcome of either the paradox or the puzzle …

8. I’m not sure that Schrödinger’s cat is quite right here. In the experiment, the cat in the closed box is simultaneously alive and dead – in a superposition of both states – until the box is opened and the cat is observed. To carry that over to the puzzle, it’d be like the grid being filled in with a superposition of both solutions whilst it’s in a sealed envelope, but when that envelope is opened and the result determined… It’s not that the grid when blank could contain either solution. Or am I barking up the wrong dog?

9. Hamish – Try looking at it this way: both answers to each of the double clues were simultaneously valid (equivalent to two possible quantum states) while setting the puzzle, knowing that only one set of answers could simultaneously occupy the grid (like one eigenvector) and that only one of these sets of answers would represent the true solution (equivalent to forcing the cat into one eigenstate – alive or dead – when the cat-isotope-killing-mechanism interacts with the outside world) so the unsolved puzzle is like the cat in the box and solving it is equivalent to opening the box. Makes sense?

10. I need to think about this some more. I’ve not studied quantum for a good few years…

11. It’s so poorly written.

    Re Schrodinger, I don’t buy it. The two states are possible only until an observation is made, and in a crossword puzzle, to solve at all, or to begin to solve in a process, obviously requires observation.

12. Enjoyed this, despite, like everyone else, being sickened by the general topic. I especially liked ‘butter’ for ‘mountain goat’.

13. Farage – It’s definitely arguable, and depends on how you interpret quantum theory. The way I’ve always looked at it, a particle exists simply as a wave equation (imagine it as a fuzzily painted blob in space) until you force it to take one of the possible solutions of the equation, which for all practical purposes means by interacting with it: send a stream of protons towards a pair of slits in a metal panel, and each one behaves exactly like a wave (you see interference patterns) but put cans behind the slits and the protons drop into one or the other, exactly like particles – until then, you could say that they exist in more than one state simultaneously, but to me the wave equation is something else, something that we don’t experience directly in normal life: think of it as a recipe for the possible states that a particle might take if required. In that sense, a crossword is like a wave equation: it gives a recipe for the possible solutions, but they (if there are more than one of them) all remain as possible solutions until you interact with the puzzle by writing in the grid – solving a puzzle is like solving a wave equation, in other words, and the result is one of the possible solutions of the puzzle, in the same way that the result of the proton experiment is one of the possible arrangements of canned protons. Not perfect, but really not a bad analogy.

14. Thanks to all the crew. I confess to having observed one of the crew members wrestling with the compiling and it was a real labour of love, but fascinating as a challenge to both setters and solvers..

15. I recently heard of Schrodinger’s immigrant, who simultaneously takes our jobs and receives benefits.

    btw I always thought that the cat would be capable of collapsing the wave function.

16. Muffin – I understand that the Schrodinger’s immigrant is something of a rarity, but I can see why the image might appeal in the circumstances. I do agree with you, though, that the original paradox isn’t actually much of one if you allow the cat to do the interacting – it always struck me as curiously anthropocentric to see the wave equation as resolving only when a human scientist observes it. I’m much more comfortable with the idea that any interaction with the world outside the quantum object can cause its wave equation to crystallise into one state or another – after all, isn’t it the protons interacting with the collection cans that causes them to resolve from waves-creating-interference-patterns protons into discrete-particles-in-a-box protons, rather than the scientist looking at the counter on the box? The idea of the original thought experiment, as I understand it, is that you could (in theory) analyse the combination of isotope, cat and mechanism as one quantum system, in which case the whole thing could be described by one hugely complex wave equation that involves many possible states of live and dead cats, which only resolve into one state when the box is opened – but that seems to be an example of people imposing one model of the world on their experience rather than using their experience to inform their model of the world. If you want to think of the cat in the box like that, then why stop there? Why not see the whole of the universe as one wave equation which only resolves when it interacts with … well, with what? Take that way of reasoning to its limits, and our experience of reality is an illusion. But then again, perhaps it is …

    Bayleaf – That’s very funny. I’m glad you weren’t driven to distraction by the experience of watching a Crew member at work.

17. Thanks for responding, Boatman

    Yes indeed, the entire Universe could be simultaneously in two different states until the cat decides!

18. Anyone else put KNIT for 6d? Makes sense with the clue but ruins 5a/5d – I was trying to solve with WAKES UP at 5a.

19. I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, thanks to the Crew and their Captain, and to Gaufrid for the blog.

    I was doing pretty well, except for, well, some confusion in the NE… when the penny dropped and I realized there had to be two answer sets (it helped that I was ambiguous about my chosen answer for 5d, having written in TAMPERING, but then realizing that SIMMERING also worked).

    As far as the cat in the box, I think the metaphor to the puzzle works. Just as Erwin arbitrarily chose his point of wave function collapse, in this case both sets of solutions existed at the same time, equally valid, until the results came in.

20. Thanks, Hamish, Boatman and crew. This was a real treat. I’m afraid I’m sticking with the unofficial alternative version because I prefer my cat alive.

    For 24d I saw it slightly differently – homophone (‘gather’) of Pol (‘dictator’) or pole (‘staff’), definition ‘opinions’.

21. Apologies, Gaufrid! I, of course, meant thanks to you for the blog.

22. Thanks Boatman & Crew and Gaufrid

    A very clever construction which doing it 3 months on meant that the top row was BRITAIN TO LEAVE. It was only coming here that the brilliance with the duality of clues to give the BRITAIN STAYS IN gave me full appreciation of what had been done !!!

    Found the rest of the puzzle on the easier side of what Boatman usually presents in solo form – although parsing for a few of them was quite intricate – e.g. 11a, 14a, 18a and the 1a-5a.

    Good fun on a sobering decision !

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