Guardian Cryptic 27,367 by Brendan

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27367.

An enjoyable crossword which reads as a primer in Double Definitions and Envelopes; there is also some play on EASY/HARD.

Across
9 ANDROMEDA Princess attached to rock stars in group (9)
Double definition. In Greek mythology, Andromeda, daughter of Ethiopian King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, was tied to a rock as a sacrifice, but was rescued by Perseus.
10 AROMA Subtle charm of a city for the natives (5)
A charade of ‘a’ plus ROMA (‘city for the natives’ – Rome for the Romans).
11 DROOP Don’t hold up surgeon, say, over one’s work (5)
A charade of DR (‘surgeon, say’) plus O (‘over’) plus OP (‘work’).
12 SNOWDRIFT Winter driving problem, a mixture of wind and frost (9)
An anagram (‘a mixture of’) of ‘wind’ plus ‘frost’, with a bit of an extended definition.
13 CASHIER Person who handles notes son kept in notebook (7)
An envelope (‘kept in’) of S (‘son’) in CAHIER (‘notebook’ borrowed from the French, but it is in Chambers).
14 DECANAL Trade outside preserve of church dignitary (7)
An envelope (‘outside’) of CAN (‘preserve’) in DEAL (‘trade’).
17 AT SEA Confused, as the Queen’s Navee leader never was (2,3)
Double definition, the second being a reference to The Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., First Lord of the Admiralty in H.M.S. Pinafore:

Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership,
And that junior partnership I ween
Was the only ship that I ever had seen
But that kind of ship so suited me,
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!
19 PIE Alternative to piece of cake as epitome of ease (3)
Double definition.
20 INCAN Like some old Americans captured on film? (5)
IN CAN (‘captured on film’).
21 RUMMEST Dreadful summer with minimal temperature – most odd (7)
A charade of RUMMES, an anagram (‘dreadful’) of ‘summer’ plus T (‘minimal Temperature’).
22 DEDUCES Works out what’s 500 in twos (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of D (the second one, Roman numeral ‘500’) in DEUCES (‘twos’).
24 COLLECTED Composed arrangement for cello etc, then died (9)
A charade of COLLECTE, an anagram (‘arrangement’) of ‘cello etc’ plus D (‘died’).
26 PRIME Prepare to fire two or three, for instance (5)
Double definition.
28 SOFAS Some features of a sitting room (5)
A hidden answer (‘some’) in ‘featureS OF A Sitting room’, with an extended  definition.
29 OIL PAINTS They produce pictures, as in pilot broadcast (3,6)
An anagram (‘broadcast’) of ‘as in pilot’.
Down
1, 16 HARD LINES  Player’s challenge? I sympathise (4,5)
Double definition, the first alluding to an actor.
2 ODIOUS Awful swindle turned up evidence of debts (6)
A charade of OD, a reversal (‘turned up’ in a down light) of DO (‘swindle’) plus IOUS (‘evidence of debts’).
3 COMPLICATE Transform from 27 to 1 as unusually polemic act (10)
An anagram (‘unusually’) of ‘polemic act’.
4 TEASER No difficulty in this riddle, initially? Au contraire! (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of EASE (‘no difficulty’) in TR (‘This Riddle, initially’), with an extended definition. Is the French a nod to Poirot?
5 CANOODLE Be amorous, giving ring with love in romantic light? (8)
An envelope (‘in’) of O (‘ring’) plus O (‘love’) in CANDLE (‘romantic light’).
6 CARD Club, maybe, that footballer tries to avoid (4)
Double definition.
7 NO PICNIC Something tough, mostly appropriate, repeated about work (2,6)
An envelope (‘about’) of OP (‘work’) in NIC[k] NIC[k] (‘mostly appropriate, repeated’ – or it could be NIC[e] NIC[e]).
8 CART Vehicle trapped by one tramcar after another (4)
An implied hidden definition (‘trapped by’) in tramCAR Tramcar (‘one tramcar after another’).
13   See 27
15 CHILD’S PLAY Awfully silly chap hiding bad mark in trivial task (6,4)
An envelope (‘hiding’) of D (‘bad mark’) in CHILSPLAY, an anagram (‘awfully’) of ‘silly chap’.
16   See 1
18 SIMPLIFY Transform from 1 to 27 – second hint provided inside (8)
An envelope (‘inside’) of IF (‘provided’) in S (‘second’) plus IMPLY (‘hint’).
19 PETITION Request lowly worker to hold it up twice (8)
An envelope (‘to hold’) of TI TI (‘it up twice’) in PEON (‘lowly worker’).
22 DODDLE State payment split by daughters for basic job (6)
An envelope (‘split by’) of D D (‘daughters’) on DOLE (‘state payment’).
23 CAIRNS Grave indications for dogs (6)
Double definition.
24 CAST Discarded queen, perhaps, retaining spades (4)
An envelope (‘retaining’) of S (‘spades’) in CAT (‘queen, perhaps’).
25 EAST Point ace secured in superlative finish (4)
An envelope (‘secured in’) of A (‘ace’) in -EST (‘superlative finish’ – see 21A, for example).
27, 13 EASY CHAIR  Academic sinecure? It supports one comfortably (4,5)
Double definition.
completed grid

83 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,367 by Brendan”

  1. A very enjoyable but fairly easy fun puzzle from Brendan. for which many thanks. Also thanks PeterO for a very helpful blog. I think there is something else going on with the four letter answers that all morph from one to the next with just a change of one letter, rather like the children’s quiz game. So from the top HARD CARD CART CAST EAST and EASY. Is Brendan satirising our discussions here on 225 about EASY and HARD crosswords? Favourites CANOODLE and AT SEA

  2. I found this easier to solve than to parse. I could not fully parse 25d, 17a, 4d and I still do not understand why HARD LINES = ‘I sympathise’.

    Thanks Peter and Brendan

  3. An enjoyable solve so many thanks to Brendan for lots of cleverness and some pleasing patterns in this puzzle. I also found the blog interesting and informative; I am grateful to PeterO for parsing some that eluded me, and for extra titbits like the HMS Pinafore verse.

    The “rock stars” misdirection in 1a ANDROMEDA raised a smile. I also appreciated 7d NO PICNIC (another play on the hard/easy idea), and 27,13d EASY CHAIR.

    I have been “off” the forum since last week as I was terribly disappointed with some unfriendly, smug and rude posts that appeared last Tuesday, but have decided that I am prepared to give it another go having pondered on the fact that, for the most part, civility, intelligent remarks and helpfulness are characteristic of the overall tone of fifteensquared.

  4. PS
    s.panza@1, yes you may be right that Brendan is reflecting the ongoing debate on the forum regarding people’s experiences of the relative difficulty of cryptics: that being said I suspect he set this well before yesterday’s discussion about the Monday Rufus…

    michelle@2, I had heard of 1,16d HARD LINES before though not sure where; I think it is something of a slang variant on phrases like “Hard luck!” which imply a sympathetic response.

  5. Did anyone else not get “RAFT” for 8d? It IS a vehicle (of sorts) and it is a run of letters (not implied, literally)

  6. Like s.panza @ 1, I spotted the transformations early on, which helped solve some of the other four letter clues. I think there is more going on here: 3d says transform from 27 to 1, which indicates change from hard to easy; and, similarly 18d, in reverse. And 4d in both clue and answer hint at this transformation, too.

    Thanks Brendan and PeterO

  7. Julie @ 4. I don’t think it is slang. It is a fairly common phrase, or used to be – I recall my grandfather used it quite frequently.

  10. Nice puzzle (but couldn’t get AROMA). Favourites were CANOODLE and SNOWDRIFT, and I liked the theme. Many thanks to Brendan and PeterO.

  11. Julie @ 3
    Good to see you here again.
    I also stopped posting for some time due to one troll who could not accept an honest opinion with which he disagreed, but decided that withdrawing completely simply gave victory to the rude. Therefore, I’m back from time to time and will continue to appreciate your contributions.

  13. Thanks for a great blog, PeterO.

    This brilliant puzzle just keeps on giving: as well as HARD/EASY, we have NO PICNIC/CHID’S PLAY, SIMPLIFY/COMPLICATE, TEASER/DODDLE – and there may be more. And the ‘second hint provided inside’ 18dn!

    Wonderful! – huge thanks, Brendan, for putting a smile on my face for the rest of the day. 😉

  15. Thanks PeterO, ANDROMEDA went in easily enough but my mythology let me down on the parsing.

    Like martino @5 I went for the hidden RAFT instead of CART.

    Well-spotted s.panza @1 – It would appear that this is one setter who follows this blog!

    This took a while to get on the right wavelength but then bloomed nicely.

    Many thanks, Brendan, nicely between 1 & 27.

    Nice week, all.

  17. Hear hear William@16. This being Brendan I was looking for a theme and whilst I had a vague notion of one I didn’t get the full extent of it until coming here – thanks to the contributors who have brought it out and to Brendan for the cleverness of it. Has the transformation device been seen before?
    Lots to like with the nice AROMA being my loi. I needed help with parsing 1a as I didn’t know about her being strapped to a rock, nor did I figure out 17a so thanks to PeterO for those and the rest of the blog.

  18. Thanks Brendan and PeterO

    WK @ 17: yes the device has been seen before, also by Brendan, who in 8 steps went from BLACK to WHITE (or vice versa).

  20. Smooth as silk. Thank you Brendan & PO.
    Unlike yesterday’s (to me) obscurity 14a was eminently gettable from the slick wordplay.
    “Hard lines’ is quaint but still in use – see the TV interviews with losing RU captains at the weekend (sorry Julie)

  21. As well as the easy/hard word chain we have other relevant words for degrees of difficulty in DODDLE, CHILDS PLAY and NO PICNIC. Lots of fun ideas going on here – thanks Brendan and PeterO.

  24. H iNNI @22 – Thanks for that link: I’ve just looked it up in the archive and find that I actually blogged that puzzle – and I’d completely forgotten about it! Oh dear. [But, thank goodness, I did see the theme. 😉 ]

  25. William@16:
    Hear hear!

    I like to make the odd contribution to this blog and would always do my best to avoid saying anything unpleasant to or about anyone else here.

    Thank you for the smooth puzzle, Brendan, and the explanations, PeterO.

  26. Absolutely gorgeous puzzle, solved with a smile on the face almost all the way through. Got COMPLICATE before either of the HARD / EASY clues but it made them easier to solve – though alas I missed the transformational theme (but so did our blogger, which makes me feel better).

    Anyone else think that 9a was going to be Princess DI + some sort of rock = a constellation I’d never heard of? Thankfully, not for too long. Loads of nice devices, like two tramcars coming along at once.

  27. A typical Brendan puzzle: absolutely fair through rather easy clues, hiding an almost miraculously skilful exercise in construction.

  28. Brilliant puzzle. I spotted the hard/easy overall theme but missed the word chain connection of the 4 letter lights. Very clever.
    I had difficulty in the NE because I had WOOD at 6 initially (thinking of “the woodwork” in football). I saw the construction in 8 quickly so avoided the RAFT pitfall luckily. SNOWDRIFT was a gem.

    Bravo, Brendan! Thanks to PeterO for the blog.

    @ Julie in Australia – Glad to to see you back! I always enjoy your posts (I think it was you who recommended the book Stasiland, which I really enjoyed, after the superb Berlin Wall puzzle – belated thanks for that!)

  29. Thanks Brendan and PeterO.

    An amazing achievement to have the word ladder and so many themed answers. Well spotted s.panza.

    It has been said before but how does Brendan consistently produce crosswords of such high quality?

  30. Thanks Simon and NNI – I’ll download it and have a head start.
    And yes Trailman – I persisted down the Di + rock route until HARD put paid to it. I’d even shared my knowledge of the Di device with Mrs W to make sure she was on the wrong track as well. ?.

  31. Thanks both,

    I was going to post that this was a one cup of coffee rather than a two pipe problem, but now see I’d missed the subtleties underneath, which add a whole new layer of enjoyment.

  32. Trailman @26 ‘Austin’ was the first word that popped into my head when I initially read the clue, fortunately it quickly gave way to more reasoned thought!

    A very enjoyable solve, 14 was new to me, happy to see you back Julie and appreciate you expressing your thoughts – a timely reminder that we should all choose kind.

    Thanks to Brendan and PeterO.

  33. Many thanks to Brendan and Peter O.
    William@16: Hear hear from me too.
    martino@5 and William@16: I also went for RAFT.

  34. Thank you Brendan and PeterO.

    Yet another fun puzzle! Well spotted s.panza @1. As regards the theme, there may also be opposites, such as AT SEA and COLLECTED.

  36. Humph. Raft fits 8d just as well as cart, other than the transformations mentioned above which strictly speaking are not part of the crossword. And wood is a perfectly good answer to 6d apart from the first crosser. I always feel a good clue should be solvable unambiguously without the crossers.

  37. For some reason I found this slower going than Brendan normally is, but only DECANAL was unfamiliar, and that had to be right once the crossers were in place. CAIRNS was last in – it took me ages to think of the right kind of grave. All very inventive and as always a clever theme.

    Thanks to Brendan and PeterO

  38. Good crossword. Hard lines is common where I’m from, meaning the same as ‘hard luck’, ‘tough break’ etc.

  39. I too thought about raft, but the definition ‘vehicle’ put me off and I thought again. Surely a vehicle is transport on land. I’m sure I’ll be bombarded with dictionary entries to the contrary but raft just did not feel correct.

  41. Thanks Brendan and PeterO

    I found this very quick to do and, for once, spotted most (not all!) of the connections between answers. Favourites were SNOWDRIFT (FOI – I do like an apposite anagram) and NO PICNIC.

    I didn’t know DECANAL but could guess it. I knew CAHIER from O level French, but am surprised that it’s in an English dictionary. CART is a “ghost hidden word”! Is this OK? I know “ghost anagrams” are frowned on.

    I don’t see the significance of au contraire in French – wouldn’t have “on the contrary” have been as good?

    CAIRNS to me are summit and way markers on mountains, not grave markers.

  42. Fairly easy from Brendan. I didn’t recognise the second def. of AT SEA but I guessed it was something G&S-ish!

    The theme is clearly all about levels of difficulty. Or am I wrong? I wouldn’t call this puzzle exactly 15d, but it certainly wasn’t 7d!

    Oh and I knew DECANAL – the only slight obscurity I reckon. That comes of having been an Oxford student I’m afraid: adjective from DEAN of a college – rather than of a church.

    Thanks Brendan and Peter

  43. Like phitonelly @28, we had put in wood at 6d with the same reasoning. Like Howard March @36, I like clues to have unambiguous solutions, but I guess it’s only when solvers reveal the plausible alternatives they have come up with that some ambiguities become apparent. But what a wonderful and elegant crossword overall – the best so far this week – and all the better for all the explanations on this site. Many thanks setter and bloggers.

  44. Muffin @41: I agree about the more usual meaning of CAIRN, but the following from Lord of the Rings comes to my mind:

    “We have not the time or the tools to bury our comrade [Boromir] fitly, or to raise a mound over him. A cairn we might build”

    So Tolkien, at least, considered it a grave marker.

  45. FD @44
    Yes, I suppose so, but intention could be taken into account? A cairn over a burial is surely more to prevent animals from digging up the corpse than it is to mark the site?

  47. Phitonelly @28 and others.

    Thinking about WOOD at 6d: I don’t see this as an ambiguous clue. The word ‘maybe’ clearly shows a ‘definition by example’: Club is an example of a CARD, but Club is not an example of a WOOD: rather, the other way around. Moreover, I have never heard a football commentator speak of “wood” – they always say “the woodwork”.

    Certainly I’m a lot happier with this than with the BAIL/LOCK dilemma we had yesterday.

  48. Thanks to Brendan and PeterO. For me a Goldilocks puzzle – not too hard, not too easy. HARD LINES was new to me (I first thought of Hard Cheese or Hard Luck) and for some reason PRIME eluded me until I had all the crossers, but I did get at least part of the the theme and came here to find out about the rest. Great fun.

  49. Thanks PeterO and Brendan.

    Re 17ac – It was the last verse I remembered because he “never was” AT SEA

    Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be
    If you want to rise to the top of the tree
    If your soul isn’t fettered to an office stool
    Be careful to be guided by this golden rule
    Be careful to be guided by this golden rule
    Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
    And you all may be Rulers of the Queen’s Navy

  50. FirmlyDirac @42

    Like you, I knew DECANAL from Dec and Can (St.John’s, by the way), and, to go back not quite as far, from that apotheosis of low humour, the opening Taliped Decanus section of John Barth’s Giles Goat Boy.

    Julia in Australia @3

    Welcome back. I think this blog makes a very pertinent point: a theme such as the word ladder here may be blindingly obvious if you see it, but, however well signposted, it can be all too easy to miss if you are looking elsewhere. (How about claiming that I deliberately refrained to mention the word ladder in order to make this point? Worth a try.)

  53. Like some others I also had RAFT instead of CART. I was about to post and harumph about the online version accepting RAFT, but went back and checked. I usually do the pen and paper version first, and then enter my answers into the online version for checking. Looking back, I entered RAFT in the paper version, but then, unthinkingly, entered CART online.
    I don’t know what this says about my subconscious, but I’m going to claim that it spotted any theme words my conscious mind missed, plus the word ladder, which I also didn’t spot.
    A lovely crossword with an amazing construction.

  55. Much to enjoy here: some HARD, some EASY, all scrupulously fair. The four letter words thing passed me by (of course) but how ingenious!

    DECANAL was new to me but very gettable. My favourite was CAIRNS because I have a Cairn Terrier, name of Otis.

    I should be most upset if the normally friendly and supportive discourse on here turned unpleasant. There is more than enough horrible stuff out there in the webs. Not here please!

  57. FirmlyDirac@47

    Good point about the DBE. WOOD is an inferior answer, I agree. Had it been the intended answer, the clue would probably have better been written as “Club that footballer tries to avoid?” I wrote it in with no crossers at the time and thought it was quite clever. It was only when I failed to get 10 that I began to question it.

  58. Admin: I do the puzzles on a tablet and follow the blog discussions in the same way. I recently replied to Hangman but could not reference his post number because in the mobile mode (which applies to tablets) no number is assigned. Is there any way the post number could be applied to the mobile mode? Thanks in anticipation.

  59. S. Panza @58

    To anticipate Gaufrid: this has come up before. No, there is apparently no way to get comment numbers into the mobile version, but you should be able to request the desktop version on your tablet – either in the browser options or at the bottom of the fifteensquared page.

  61. I liked this a lot. DECANAL was unfamiliar but easy enough to get. I was pleased to get CASHIER and cahier is perhaps the only thing I remember from my unsuccessful attempt at French so many years ago. Surprised so many didn’t know HARD LINES. I suppose it might have fallen out of use amongst the under seventies!
    Thanks Brendan.

  62. Thanks Brendan; masterful setting of course, although I didn’t spot the transformations.

    Thanks PeterO for a good blog. I can’t see that a raft would normally be called a vehicle – see the dictionary definitions of the latter.

    I didn’t much like the clue for AT SEA because if you don’t know G&S it makes little sense, but maybe that could be said for any GK.

  63. martino @5: Yes, me for one. That was just about my speed—thanks Brendan (but I couldn’t parse ANDROMEDA)

  64. S.Panza @58
    PeterO has pre-empted some of what I was going to say but I will fill in a little more background.

    A couple of years ago I requested that the ‘Reply’ option in the mobile view not be used (see here). This was because a comment thus posted was inserted in the comment list immediately after the comment being replied to, thus changing the numbering of subsequent comments and messing up any references to a comment number that had been added before the ‘Reply’ had been inserted.

    For some reason this no longer happens, because a ‘Reply’ comment is now added to the end of the comment list instead of being inserted. However, the ‘Reply’ option does tend to mean that the person/comment being replied to isn’t referenced in the reply and so cannot be read in context, which can at times make comments seem somewhat odd (I can see that the ‘Reply’ option has been used but this indication isn’t there when viewing the comments normally). For this reason, very shortly the ‘Reply’ option will no longer be available and so people will have to indicate to whom or what they are referring, should this be relevant.

    I am in the process of updating some of the software that this site runs on and there are a number of features that I would like to add, comment numbering in the mobile view being one of them. As PeterO has indicated, it is not possible to do this at the moment but this will change, hopefully in the not too distant future.

    If you would like to discuss this further, or any other aspects regarding the site rather than a specific puzzle, please do so via the Site Feedback option.

  65. Many thanks Gaufrid for such a full and timely answer. I don’t think I need to discuss this further, but were I to, I will use the site feedback option as you indicate.

  66. Very proud of myself for getting this in without a single reveal (though I admit to heavy use of the Chambers crossword dictionary).

    May I say that I really enjoy the blogs and comments on this site – they are hugely helpful to a fairly novice solver, especially when parsing is elusive. Thanks to everyone.

  68. Hard lines v hard luck. Google ngramsgives the peak of hard lines as 1900, and hard luck in 1918.

    1800 1900 1918 1950 2000
    hard lines 16 214 165 76 56
    hard luck 16 182 368 185 66

    Arbitrary units for frequency of occurrence. So hard lines has declined a little since the time of my grandfather (1950), but hard luck has had a more serious decline.

    [Apologies if this doesn’t work out when I post it – can’t preview it]

  69. What a great delight it was to see Brendan’s name as today’s setter. I loved the puzzle, as I knew I would, but alas, I (a) fell for “RAFT” in 8d, and (b) as logically follows from the foregoing, failed to spot the “word ladder” game from HARD to EASY provided by Brendan. Coming here, I learned that the puzzle was even better than I thought! (Certainly not the first time that has happened, and probably not the last either.) Still, I enjoyed all of the easy/hard references. My CotD today was SIMPLIFY. Many thanks to Brendan and PeterO and the other commenters.

  73. Is “HARD LINES” a Yorkshire expression? Seem to recall hearing it quite often when I lived in Yorkshire.

    S.Panza: 😉

  74. One of my rare forays into the Guardian crossword, and late to the party as well. But I found this an enjoyable solve and liked the ‘hard’ vs ‘easy’ theme although I didn’t spot the word ladder (surprisingly, as I usually do the word ladders in another newspaper). Slipped up, though, on 23dn: all i could think of from the crossing letters was CHIENS – French for ‘dogs’ but obviously not fitting the rest of the clue, so a real facepalm moment when I saw the correct answer! No problem with DROOP, though; surgeons may be titled as ‘Mr’ but are doctors in the sense of medics, and I saw the question mark as recognising any ambiguity. In any case the reference to one’s work as OP needs ‘surgeon’ for the surface.

    The best thing to do about (the very rare) trolls on this site is simply to ignore them. Or possibly to politely correct a factual error and indicate that you don’t intend to enter into further discussion. What slipstream@14 said.

    William@15: “This took a while to get on the right wavelength but then bloomed nicely”. What a super example of a mixed metaphor – absolutely delightful!

    Thanks, Brendan and PeterO

  75. allan_c @74
    Your comment prompted me to go back and read “What slipstream@14 said”, which escaped my attention previously, when I read through the blog comments the first time. That mock-Latin aphorism, as Wikipedia calls it, is new to me, I believe. Very funny (except perhaps to Latin purists).

    Great puzzle, great blog, great posts from commenters today.

    Thanksgiving here in the US was last week, but if I didn’t say it then, I will say it now: I am thankful for 15^2, and for all whose contributions (whether as founder/webmaster/administrator, as blogger or as commenter) make it such an informative, fun and often funny place to visit, every day of the week.

    [Bonus: Got my favorite number to enter into the captcha!]

  76. As someone else said earlier, I’m surprised by the lack of familiarity with HARD LINES – a very common expression as far as I’m concerned.

  77. Thanks to Brendan and PeterO.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this and was not put off by the prospect of a theme when it is Brendan – he can usually be relied upon for fair play. SNOWDRIFT and SOFAS (although the latter is perhaps not very Ximenean?) were among many favourites.

    The RAFT/CART discussion suggests, once again, to me that themed crosswords tend to reveal setters’ “feet of clay”: the clueing can suffer in order to serve the theme, strange crossers ensue from shoe-horning and arcane/obscure words are the result – DECANAL may serve as a case in point today. I got CART immediately but then I didn’t spot RAFT, and perhaps neither did the estimable Brendan – more likely is that he did and offered it as a red herring, asking us to spot the overvaulting theme for guidance. With him there is, in fairness, always a theme.

    As a long-time lurker on 225, and recently an occasional piper-upper, I dislike that some genteel contributors (esp Julie@4 whose contributions I always enjoy) should be discouraged from offering as a result of what can seem like a lack of basic manners, even when this is a result of poor editing capacities.

  79. Puzzled at the applause for slipstream’s comment @14. It seems one of the more unpleasant to have featured recently – calling other contributors bastards. The fact that they did so in a dead language doesn’t seem particularly relevant to mollifying the circumstance, but perhaps makes it worse if it was done so because the people the comment was aimed at are presumed to be too thick to understand what it might mean.

  80. Van Winkle

    I believe you are overreacting somewhat. The pretend Latin is a general phrase to suggest that one shouldn’t let things or people get one down. It doesn’t even mean anything. And the posters it was referring to were way out of line.

    Anyway “bastard” is quite a jocular comment nowadays. It’s mainly a friendly interjection up here in the North.

    I also believe that CHIENS is a perfectly valid anser to 23D

    “Grave indications for dogs” . could easily indicate ” a way of saying ‘dogs’ in La Grange i.e. France = CHIENS

  82. Isn’t controversy what makes comments (and life) interesting?

    I for one would soon get bored with this site if it was all nicey picey agreement with each other all the time.

  83. Ooops! Me too “raft” and “chiens”! Relieved I’m in good company…

    Robert at 32 – I’m intrigued – why Austin? which clue?

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