It gets worse. It’s very likely no fault of Azed’s, more The Observer being incompetent, but there are lots of mistakes here. There is a general cock-up (which is of no real concern to the solver) which is a repeat in reverse of last week: last week they printed the ‘three prizes’ version of the preamble and said nothing about any asterisked clue or where to send it; this week they printed what they should have printed last week when it isn’t a competition clue-setting week.
But more serious is the large number of little mistakes, so many that in some places one can’t be quite sure what is going on. 26ac is given as 24ac. Is 32ac of five letters or six? 18dn doesn’t have the number 18 in the right place in the grid (it is, meaninglessly, in the square above where it should be). 28dn seems to be of five letters although it is given as (4). There should be a line between the D of PARDAL and the N of AVANTI.
I downloaded the crossword from the website on Sunday morning and one would have hoped that by now things would have been corrected. I looked again just now (late on Sunday) but nothing has been done. I didn’t see the paper copy and wonder if that one contained the same mistakes. My bet is that it does and I base this on the obvious disdain of the staff at The Observer for a crossword that continues a tradition of many years. Time they started to treat its crossword with a bit of respect.
Still, I got there, more or less, and it was the usual enjoyable experience. Is it me or are the words becoming more and more obscure? At least the clues are structurally pretty straightforward.
| Across | ||
| 3 | GASTROSOPH | He’ll demand hog roast’s properly cooked, a little pink inside? (10) |
| A nice &lit.: p{ink} in (hog roast’s)* | ||
| 10 | POURPOINT | Act as mother with needle producing old doublet (9) |
| pour [= act as mother] point | ||
| 12 | I-WAY | Deviation one reversed in telecom systems (4) |
| (yaw I)rev. | ||
| 13 | FOUTRE | Old fig? Fruit gone off makes this gin (6) |
| Comp. anag. with [fruit gone] … [foutre gin] | ||
| 14 | STILET | It’s for engraving stone at edges of quarry, say (6) |
| s(tile)t. | ||
| 15 | ADORN | Trouble with sailors on deck (5) |
| ado RN | ||
| 16 | THANE | Former king’s companion Henry introduced to function beside earl (5) |
| t(H)an E | ||
| 17 | ILEITIS | Internal disorder, a product of bile it isn’t (7) |
| Hidden in bILE IT ISn’t | ||
| 19 | HUCKSTER | Jagger that girl’s about stuck on (8) |
| h(stuck)*er, ‘on’ the anagram indicator | ||
| 22 | TAPADERO | Saddle guard to parade when galloping (8) |
| (to parade)* | ||
| 24 | SUMATRA | Short storm at sea? A tar tidied up after culmination (7) |
| sum (a tar)* | ||
| 27 | VIREN | Ex Olympic champion runs in challenge once? A large number trailing (5) |
| vi(r)e n — ref Lasse Viren, the Finnish runner | ||
| 29 | OLD MAN | Gary, the skipper? (6, 2 words) |
| Oldman — ref Gary Oldman | ||
| 31 | RAMEAL | Limb may be such, spread alongside artist (6) |
| RA meal | ||
| 32 | MARONI | Virgil’s name (Roman possibly) for ‘crustacean’ (5) |
| I’m pretty lost here: Chambers says that Maronian is relating to Virgil, but there is no entry that I can find for maroni, and what the crustacean is doing goodness knows. I Googled this and was told that Marron is a name given to two closely related species of crayfish. but … Actually I can’t be sure that this is the correct answer, because although it seems to be a mistake and should say (6) not (5) perhaps there is a slight deviation from symmetry here? | ||
| 33 | LOGE | Box made of a lump of wood, ebony (not thin) (4) |
| log e{bony} — bony = thin | ||
| 34 | SECATEURS | They cut what’s dry, by Auster withered (9) |
| sec (Auster)* | ||
| 35 | FEDERALIST | E.g. Yankee leader messily tucked into pud (10) |
| f(leader)*ist | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | OPISTHOSOMA | A moth’s poo is chomped up in spider’s abdomen (11) |
| (A moth’s poo is)* | ||
| 2 | FOWTH | Lots of Scots following couple climbing height (5) |
| f (two)rev. h | ||
| 3 | GUAIACUM | Medicinal resin, sticky stuff, nursemaid with copper brought in (8) |
| gu(aia Cu)m | ||
| 4 | SPREES | Chap from e.g. Somerset, we hear, goes on a bender (6) |
| Another that defeats me. What on earth has Somerset to do with it (and I know that somerset = somersault)? | ||
| 5 | TOMTIT | Regular visitor to feeder? Cat finally caught it (6) |
| tom {caugh}t it | ||
| 6 | RIFFLE | Part of fossicker’s equipment, his first included in loot (6) |
| rif(f{ossicker})le | ||
| 7 | STUDIO | Film company making whoopee after Alpha Male? (6) |
| stud [= Alpha Male?] io! | ||
| 8 | ONTO | Aware of regular parts of cognition (4) |
| {c}o{g}n{i}t{i}o{n} | ||
| 9 | PERRIER | Old catapult one sees go off course, breaking support (7) |
| p(err)ier | ||
| 11 | PENSIONLESS | Dreadful loss with pennies, and with nothing to retire on (11) |
| (loss pennies)* | ||
| 18 | THEREOUT | The disorderly throng includes English alfresco in the highlands (8) |
| the r(E)out | ||
| 20 | ULULATE | Pop star performing flip scoffed – hoot (7) |
| (Lulu)rev. ate | ||
| 21 | VAMOSE | Leave tick in urn (6) |
| va(mo)se | ||
| 23 | ARNICA | What can ease a sprain? Swirling air can (6) |
| (air can)* | ||
| 24 | PARDAL | Poet’s cat, ’orny with partner around (6) |
| p(‘ard)al | ||
| 25 | AVANTI | Treviso forward Vatican punished (not Catholic) (6) |
| (Vatican -c)* — Treviso I think simply to indicate Italy | ||
| 28 | EAGRE | Bore offering thin fare marks falling off (4) |
| {m}eagre | ||
| 30 | DRAD | Stretch of tundra developed, no longer awe-inspiring (4) |
| Hidden in tunDRA Developed | ||
*anagram
32 across is MARON, the length, like OLD MAN is wrong for the symmetry, but it’s a sort of crayfish in Oz. So it’s Maro (Virgil as he is sometimes referred to in English Renaissance literature) N.
I think 32ac was MARON which Chambers tells me is an Australian variant of Camaron, a fresh-water crustacean. It’s also an anagram of Roman and Virgil’s name was apparently Maro, so that could be MARO-N.
4dn is a homophone for “spreeze”, a SW dialect term for to chap, so Chambers also tells me.
Sidey @1:
Took me too long to type my reply. 🙂
Ah but you included the spreeze bit 😉
Sorry, meant to say the bit about Virgil is a quote from Wiki.
I suspect the bar in the wrong place affecting old man and maron was a slip of Azed’s pencil, which for once got “corrected” by the newspaper.
I am in Aus (though not a native) and have never seen marron spelled with a single r.
Surely 32ac is one of these ‘doulbe word play’ type clues – MARO+N then/plus an anagram – ‘ROMAN possibly’.
John, I agree totally about treating this puzzle with respect. I can understand that a hand-written puzzle takes more effort to put into the paper than one submitted in electronic form, and the Observer may no longer have the resources to do this. Having said that I think the Observer should make up its mind where it stands on Azed. Either give Azed the respect it deserves or find the puzzle a new home. Just throwing out part-finished efforts week after week is not the answer.
PeeDee at #7, I think “find the puzzle a new home” might be easier said than done. Not familiar obviously with how the puzzle is submitted but it should be possible to avoid errors such as this with more rigorous proof-reading/checking though I suppose errors can always occur.
Thankfully, by the time I started to solve all the errors had been flagged up on this site and elsewhere, so I didn’t have too many problems. It must have been terribly disconcerting otherwise. A good, fairly straightforward puzzle once all the errors had been ironed out.
nmsindy – quite so: rigorous typesetting and proof-reading is what it it requires, what it used to get and what it does not get any more.
In Journalism the responsibility for setting the content has shifted over the years. Once upon a time journalists submitted paper copies and the editorial and print room physically typeset the actual deliverable. Proof-reading, checking and rechecking was an integral part of the process.
Nowadays most of the content now comes in electronic form and is copied over into the journal. Much of the “proof-reading” activity now lies with the content producers. The old typesetting staff are gone and newsrooms run with a greatly reduced staff.
I think Azed’s method of creating puzzles on paper no longer fits the modern delivery mechanisms. The Observer needs to spend the time it requires to get the puzzle into print (as it used to). It will be very time consuming as unless someone solves the finished puzzle it is hard to know whether a transcription mistake has been made. Is a word/clue number/grid line there intentionally or a mistake? I suspect some of the staff involved in the process may not even do cryptic crosswords at all.
Possibly I am out of date here and Azed now submits content ready-to-go in electronic form. If this is so them please ignore all the above.
Thanks for those comments at #10, PeeDee. Leaving Azed to one side for moment, I’m pretty sure most crosswords, certainly the daily cryptics, are submitted by setters in electronic form. The difference, I guess, is that in those cases there is also a crossword editor. In the case of Azed (unusual in that it is the same setter every time) I think it is essentially self-edited. While again, I’m not privy to how the puzzles are submitted, it did occur to me in the past that Azed might ask one (or a few in rotation) of his many fans to look at his puzzles before submission so that any errors, which anyone can make, might be picked up. Though of course I’ve no idea where the errors in these instances occurred.
A similar idea occurred to me but I think it is the Observer newspaper that needs to ask for volunteers rather than Azed himself. Azed may submit a well prepared puzzle but it will still be reformatted by someone at the Observer into a PDF document and whatever application the printed newspaper uses. Errors will inevitably be introduced again.
Fifteensquared might be an obvious candidate to help proof-read the PDF document as someone is going to go though the puzzle with a fine tooth comb when they write up the blog. They may as well kill two birds with one stone. The only drawback I see is that the proof-reader/bloggers would not be able to submit their entries for a prize as they would get an unfair early sighting of the puzzle.
Yes, that is a point, and that is why I mentioned possible rotation so the testers might miss just the occasional competition. There might however be some people who generally don’t enter the monthly competition who might be still happy to assist.
I hadn´t realised that the frequent problems are probably due to x-words being submitted in electronic form, but now I see that perhaps that´s why there´s no online access to the latest one. I assume I´m missing out on one with a particularly interesting format. Irritating – but they are free. Perhaps if we had to pay to access Gdn and Obs x-words online the problems would disappear??