Guardian Cryptic 27,379 by Boatman

93 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,379 by Boatman”

1. Thanks Boatman and manehi

   I expect that Boatman found this more fun to set than I did to solve; I find these puzzles that keep repeating the same word clever but boring (I know that others don’t agree with this point of view). I did like LEONIDS, CUT A DASH and CORK, and SKIERS was a genuine &lit.

   AU a homophone for OR (8a)? I don’t think so! I didn’t like “one” in 14a either – “the” would have been fairer. OWN-BRANDED (with the “ED”) is an expression I’ve never heard, and “sent down” would be better than “sent back”. I didn’t see where the ED at the end came from either.

   I didn’t fully parse GOBSTOPPER, DREAR (actually, this was definition and crossers only!), SCOT FREE (I didn’t see why the D went fromthe anagram?), or the PAIGNER part of 6d.

2. Yes, quite hard going in parts. Favourites were AUTOMATE, CAMPAIGNER and LAVATORY. Couldn’t parse GOBSTOPPER (thanks manehi); and many thanks to Boatman.

3. Actually, now I’ve seen the parsing, I’ll add CAMPAIGNER to my favourites.

4. Against the odds and oddities this went in quite quickly. Couldn’t parse Campaigner or Gobstopper but they had to be the answers.
   Some pretty rocky clues too. piano tuner eg, and own branded which doesn’t sound quite like a word that’s used. Dit in morse also odd.
   Remove d was clever.

5. Sorry, I still don’t see what the “giant” is doing in 11a.

6. …in that a gobstopper isn’t a “giant piece of rock”. It fits in the mouth, which a stick of traditional Blackpool rock wouldn’t do.

7. muffin – I remember gobstoppers being much larger than average hard sugary sweets (rock candy) that filled your mouth, hence giant pieces of rock.

8. PeeDee @7
   Haven’t you seen a stick of Blackpool rock? It is (was? – inflation and all that!) about a foot long…

9. we crossed there muffin – a gobstopper might be a giant aniseed ball for example, not a giant stick of rock of the sort sold at the seaside

10. I mostly agree with muffin @ 1.

    Is AU even a word in English, so how can it be a homophone for OR?

    Thanks Boatman and manehi

11. Crossed again, PeeDee – so you’re saying that, compared with a stick of rock, it isn’t “giant”, then?
    Anyway, enough on this, I think 🙂

12. muffin, I think the intention might be that gobstoppers’ defining attribute is their size [relative to most sweets, if not to a stick of rock]. So they might be called ‘giant’ and also ‘pieces of rock’, if not ‘giant among pieces of rock’

    [crossed with both of you, slightly edited]

13. muffin – no need to compare it to a stick of rock at all. A gobstopper is a giant candy ball, as a child I bought one of these to last the day, rather than a bag of its smaller cousins. Seaside rock is something else entirely.

14. I enjoyed this but like others was grateful for Manehi’s explanation for the parsing of campaigner and gobstopper. 8a works fine for me: I must be someone who pronounces the word ‘or’ and phoneme ‘au’ the same. Thanks to Boatman and Manehi.

15. LAVATORY – such an elegant clue even if the solution lacks elegance. SKIERS is another classic, and I liked ‘stone perhaps’ as an indicator for age.

    I didn’t see why ‘eccentric’ formed part of the clue to 6d until I read Manehi’s explanation. Thanks for a very informative blog – there were a number I couldn’t parse on my own – and thanks Boatman for an entertaining Crossword.

16. Thanks Boatman, and well done to Manehi for getting to the bottom of it all.
    I couldn’t see r/l in gravel, didn’t know the record company’s AR, though surprised myself by knowing DRE, decided rock/CRACK were equivalent sporting wobbles, and nowhere near getting EDspoiled.
    I didn’t like ‘about genitals must be cut’ but apart from that, very much par for the regatta, and lots to like, favourites being PEEBLES, GOBSTOPPER, PIANO TUNER, DISCREET.

17. Tempted to one last comment (sorry!)
    The clue doesn’t read “giant sweet”, it reads “giant piece of rock” – which it isn’t. I think the clue would have worked better (though not read as well) without the “giant” altogether; mind you, the “g-giant” means it doesn’t read very well anyway.

18. Thanks both. Quite a slow row against the current to solve this one.
    I agree with Trish @ 14 about 8a – in my (estuary) English AUTOMATE is pronounced “awe ter mate” making the homophone work perfectly

19. I don’t understand the “g-g…” business in 11, quite apart from whether a stick/piece of seaside rock is a gobstopper. Could someone please explain?

    Many thanks to Boatman and manehi.

20. Anyone else put COST FREE for 6d?

21. Martin, it’s to the make the first ‘g’ seem less isolated in the surface, by suggesting that someone is stumbling over the word ‘giant’.

22. Shirl @18
    I pronounce the AU of “automate” “awe” too, but I pronounce “or” as “ore”. How do you pronounce it?

23. Chipped away at this and eventually all went in bit by bit. Not all parsed though, never having heard of the rapper for DREAR. LEONIDS was also new. Took a while to figure out how OWN BRANDED worked and AUTOMATE was sneaky with the ‘Boatman’s’ misdirection.

    PIANO TUNER was my pick with “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, rather than a West Ham win, presumably being the end result.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

24. Completed fairly quickly but with an embarrassing number of failed parsings. Definitions transparent, parsings opaque.

25. Thanks Boatman and manehi.

    I didn’t see the ‘remove d’ although I did spot the anagram without the ‘d,’ doh.

    In 26, surely the ‘must be cut’ could have been left out as ‘about’ could be the anagrind?

    I thought the clue for SKIERS was superb (even if the purists would say that it should have been ‘the ultimate in incline.’)

26. I’d like to support Muffin @4. Is g the definition in the clue. If so, why is it in the middle?
    Sorry haven’t read later posts.
    Otherwise a great puzzle with a great theme. And I discovered it for a change. Although I must admit Geology was my least favorite subject at school and university.

27. Muffin @ 22 – I pronounce “awe” and “ore” in exactly the same way! (as if there were no “r” in “awe”)
    Sorry!

28. A gobstopper has never in my experience referred to a piece of rock, but perhaps there’s more than one type.

    As regards the or/au question: this is yet another example of the rhoticity issue in pronounciation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English). The fact is that some of us think that ‘saw’ and ‘sore’ are homophones, and others (including myself) find this bizarre and intensely irritating when it appears in a crossword. The Esteemed Editor had a recent blog post on the subject (https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2017/nov/26/a-memorial-to-araucaria) and asked for opinions. Interested parties might wish to contact him. My own view is that this type of homophone should be excluded, though I have no problem with others (such as pain/paigne in todays puzzle).

29. I pronounce or, ore and awe the same way and am struggling to work out how they could be pronounced differently. Anyway, these type of clues would never work if they had to satisfy everyone in the UK. Surely the point is to imagine a way in which they can be pronounced the same, even if that isn’t one’s own way. I thought this was great even though I couldn’t finish unaided and had to come here for various parsings. If I have a tiny criticism, and it’s more of a suggestion, wouldn’t 26ac have worked even better without ‘must be cut’. I’m not sure what those words add apart from a disturbing image.

30. Thanks Boatman and manehi

    kevin @ 26: the definition is “Clue for g”, an example of which would be “gob’s topper [initial letter]”.

31. Shirl @27
    But there isn’t an R in AWE! Did you mean that you put one in, or you don’t pronounce OR “AW-RR”?
    Same question for Xjpotter! Do all or none of them have an R in your pronunciation?

32. Muffin @ 31 – I meant no “r” in “ore”. I am struggling to see how these (awe and ore) are pronounced differently to each other, so I thought that you might pronounce “ore” as “awe..rr”.

33. Muffin @ 31 part 2- yes, I don’t put a “rr” at the end of “ore”. So it’s just like “awe”

34. @29 They’re pronounced differently by those people who pronounce r wherever it is written – that’s the Scots, the Irish, the Canadians, most Americans, many people in the West of England, Bajans…. These are what we call rhotic accents.

35. Thanks Shirl @32 – that clears that up 🙂
    I think most people north of Watford Gap would put the R in OR and ORE (which are identical for me).

36. Muffin – to appreciate (if that is the right word) my accent (and that of most of the great unwashed around the Great Wen) listen to as much as you can stand of an episode of “EastEnders” and “posh” it up a bit. Many consonants go missing in action.

37. A DNF for me, as I came to a standstill in the NW. A pity as I quite liked all the variations on “fragments of rock”. In terms of what I did solve, I did like the (eventually) blindingly obvious anagram at 24a, CORK, home of my Irish forebears, which has been already mentioned by muffin@1 as an appealing clue.

    Again found the pronunciations discussion interesting among the commentators’ posts, just as I found the responses regarding homophones interesting in the Rufus blog on Monday. Thanks to all contributors for al this food for thought.

    And, as ever, I really appreciated being able to come to the blog for the explanations of the clues I didn’t get or didn’t parse. So thanks to manehi, and well done, Boatman, for a puzzle that was just too clever for me on the day.

38. People have been saying this crossword has a theme, but it’s not the challenging kind of theme, right? Yes, a number of clues mention rock, but noticing that doesn’t help much. The kind of themed puzzle where identification is key is where instead the answers are connected (and the clues may be somewhat deficient, intentionally) – Araucaria set many of these. Do others make this distinction?

39. Poc @28 et al – The OR/AWE question will run and run! I agree that Hugh’s blog post was a useful contribution to the debate (he was talking more about north/south variations, but his points are equally relevant to rhoticity) and I’d encourage anyone who feels strongly about the subject to have their voice heard. This is what I wrote at the time (thinking along the same lines as Xjpotter @29):

    You could in theory allow any pronunciation variant on the basis that such a clue says what it means, once the penny has dropped as to which variant is intended – but the intended pronunciation has to be at least known to all solvers, even if it’s not the one they use in everyday speech. A clue would be unfair if it relied on a pronunciation that was so unfamiliar to some people that they simply couldn’t be expected to think of it.

    If you put it like that, pronunciation variants are no more right or wrong than variations in meaning or spelling. Still, I can see that it would be irritating if crosswords ALWAYS assumed pronunciation different from yours, especially if it seemed to imply that puzzle were written for the enjoyment of southerners and not for you …

    Robi @25 – Yes, you could say “the ultimate in incline”, but you could also read the clue as “the ultimate in ‘cline'”. Heh heh …

40. I enjoyed the play on different rock fragments, although I was surprised there were no rock music allusions. As for the homophone debate I’m with Xjpotter – it’s about how they could be pronounced, not how I pronounce them.
    There were several I didn’t parse, including the controversial 11a which I’m happy with now I’ve read the blog. 5d is now my cotd; 6d I was barking up the wrong tree having taken CAMP out for drag queen; and 13d I didn’t get BROWN = drab or the ED bit which I now see is the same device as remove d – must watch out for this in future. As an ex-retailer I can vouch for OWN-BRANDED being in common use in that world.
    Many thanks to manehi for sorting out the parsing and to Boatman for the puzzle.

41. And thanks to JinA for her usual generous and affirming contribution and to Boatman for his thoughts which appeared whilst I was writing my post.

42. But surely the debate should not be about how to pronounce “or”, “ore”, “awe”, , “automate” (blank intentional – didn’t want to stick my or in there), but about the pronunciation of “or” versus “au”.

    My contention is that “au” is neither a phoneme, nor a word in English, so it could be pronounced many ways, such as in the French word, or the German “floodplain”, or the name of the band etc.

43. A curious mixture of the obvious and the obscure. A few of these went in at least partly unparsed, and in retrospect I am glad I didn’t spend too long trying to justify them.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi

44. Dr W @38 – Ah yes, there are so many types of theme … Do you have to guess the connection between the solutions before you can be sure that you’ve solved the clues correctly? Do you even know which clues are given special treatment? Are you given some help, along the lines of “G means the same thing throughout”? Or are the connections just there to add interest and to give the puzzle meaning as a whole?

    As a solver, I like puzzles in which there’s a secret to be uncovered, but I rarely set them that way, because it makes a puzzle disproportionately unsatisfying for anyone who doesn’t guess the secret. The same goes for themes that include a long quotation as a solution over several lights – the risk is that you either get the long solution too quickly (in which case the puzzle is half finished before you start) or you never see it (and make little headway with the rest, because of the lack of crossers). Araucaria was always careful to give a tough (but fair) clue to a key solution that would indicate the theme, and his clues for the theme words were fun in themselves, so that it wouldn’t be an anticlimax to solve them after guessing the theme – that seems to me to be a good approach to that type of puzzle. But I’m usually playing a different game, and if the theme matters at all in the process of solving one of my puzzles, it’s usually only to the extent that it may help you to ask yourself: if I’ve used “rock” with this meaning in this clue, then in what other ways might I have used it elsewhere?

    If the tougher type of challenge is your cup of tea, you should look at my occasional contributions to the Genius slot – or try this: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/lookup?crossword_type=prize&id=26077 which was a prize puzzle with a secret running through the Across clues.

    And yes, WK @40, I did have a few possibilities for references to that type of rock, but none of them happened to fit the grids that I looked at. PUNK very nearly made it, but not quite …

45. Ah well, battled through to the end. AUTOMATE was last in, rather in the manner of Sherlock Holmes: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable [ie starting with AU], must be the truth.

    Boatman uses English a bit differently to me, with GOBSTOPPER not a piece of rock, DIT not dot (vide supra for both) and, as yet unremarked, TAG LINES that are punch lines, rather than advertising slogans. No doubt there are reference works that justify each usage.

    Off to the West Ham match tonight, and I may well return in a temper, so 23 drew a weary grin.

46. Thanks to Boatman and manehi. I could not parse SCOT FREE, GOBSTOPPER (the US term is jawbreaker), the AR in DREAR, and what follows CAM in CAMPAIGNER, and CUT A DASH and PEEBLES were new to me.

47. Quite testing, but sometimes the surfaces were overly tailored or just not quite accurate. For example, TAG LINES doesn’t need the “must be cut” and CORK might be better as “Rock fragments found in Ireland” as “Fragments of rock” doesn’t really indicate the anagram, IMHO.
    Re: the endless rhotic vs non-rhotic accent debate: can’t we just accept that not all accents are the same and that a little latitude is necessary in homophone clues.

    Thanks, Boatman and manehi, particularly for the parsings of CAMPAIGNER, DISCREET and CHIP.

48. Many thanks to Manehi and Boatman. Especial thanks to Boatman for explaining the absence of any use of”rock” in the context of rock music – very pleased to see it wasn’t just the tradition of not alluding to anything which happened after 1950, lol!!

    This one went in quite quickly with a little help from my usual aids, despite the absolutely dreadful grid – a Guardian specialty, or just more frequent than in other newspapers ? I particularly liked LEONIDS. Slightly embarrassed by the number I couldn’t completely parse, but that’s what I come here for – there were several “D’oh” moments when I read Manehi’s blog !

49. Apologies to all, that should have read “the cruciverbalist tradition of rarely alluding to” ! Note to self: post from a device with a keyboard, not from a phone !

50. This was mostly tosh in my view.

    I really dislike so-called themes that simply repeat a word over and over again, as I don’t find it at all clever. In addition, this puzzle produced 17 occasions that caused me to raise my hackles as to unfairness, and/or sheer bad setting.

    I’d really prefer to see less of this particular setter, who seems to think he is the herald of some new age or other, but for me there’s not even a basic understanding of how clues work — it’s all surface fur coat and no cryptic knickers!

51. Another example of a “theme” getting in the way of clear cluing and credible surfaces.
    “Despoiled” is one the most laboured anagrinds I have ever seen.
    As for “wooden feature” words fail me.

52. Surely the homophone question boils down, not to how you say a word, but how you hear it?
    In “Do you prefer whisky or absinthe?” the final R sound naturally stands out.
    In “Do you come to bury Caesar or to praise him?” it’s likely to slip by unnoticed, assuming there’s no special emphasis on the “or”.
    Since it parses to “or to” I think the clue’s fair enough.

53. At least the cryptic grammar is almost all right in that clue 🙂 Apart from the definition.

    I’m another who’s not impressed I’m afraid, and I do agree with the idea that under all the fancy stuff there’s not an awful lot of substance.

54. Well, this puzzle set the cat amongst the pigeons and no mistake!
    For the record, I thought GOBSTOPPER was awful until I saw the blog and now I don’t, and I’m going nowhere near the homophone debate. Mostly I liked this although I found the W side much more approachable than the E. LEONIDS was LOI.
    Thanks Boatman.

55. Those dreaded fragments! My wife is currently writing an essay on the relationship between the fragments and the whole in T S Eliot’s The Waste Land…

56. Well – a rocky ride but I had to slog on – couldn’t countenance another DNF especially seeing as it’s Boatman! And happy to say, it was all there before I came to 225!

    I’m used to Boatman’s ‘submerged reefs’ by now, so I was on the alert. SCOT FREE indeed! OWN-BRANDED indeed! These surely take the art of ‘lift’n’separate’ to new heights (or new depths, depending on your point of view)! I doubt if any other setter would get off SCOT FREE with those! But all the same – once you’ve got it, you’ve got it!

    I won’t add anything to the AUTOMATE debate. Speaking of homophones, CAMPAIGNER was brilliant.

    Went wrong at first with CORK – I put in BURR which also fits, possibly. But CHIP set me right!

    Thanks Boatman and Manehi.

57. Boatman @39: thanks for replying. Note that I don’t try to argue about the “correct” pronunciation of or/au/awe. That way madness lies. However your point that “it would be irritating if crosswords ALWAYS assumed pronunciation different from yours …” is more or less my complaint. I can’t recall a single instance in which it has gone the other way. Of course that may simply be my noticing it, but I’d be glad to be contradicted.

58. I was genuinely amazed (gobstopped? – no, that doesn’t seem right) that people pronounce “or” without sounding the R, hence my earlier interrogation of Shirl and Xjpotter. Not ever having watched the soap that Shirl suggested, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it.

    It does seem a bit unfair to use a pronunciation that less than half of the UK would recognise, let alone the rest of the Anglophone world!

59. FirmlyDirac, I doubt if any other setter would get off SCOT FREE with those!
    What about Philistine, he more or less co-invented these Libertarian ‘devices’?
    But all the same – once you’ve got it, you’ve got it!
    Yep, and because the setter’s name is Boatman you should be prepared!
    Personally, I shrug my shoulders nowadays.
    If you love it, fine by me, if you loathe it, thanks for letting me know.
    Just like Robi I overlooked ‘remove/d’ and clueing ED with ‘de/spoiled’, mmm.

    Other things bothered me more, such as the superfluous words in 14ac (‘one’) and 26ac (probably ‘must be cut’ (unless that is meant to be the anagram indicator [not one in my book]).
    I can’t say that I found the construction of 16d (LAVATORY) very elegant but it’s (to me, just about) all right.

    There are a couple of issues that I questioned before (in general, not with respect to Boatman).
    L for ‘long’ (17ac) and, in 6d, this particular use of ‘for’.
    No further discussion needed as on previous occasions I’ve read and taken in any justifications.

    I did enjoy the puzzle as a whole.
    Even if, at times, I find Boatman’s repetitive theme words a bit off-putting, today it was OK.
    Also because there were enough doable (even straightforward) clues to open up the grid.

    Many thanks to B&S (or, S&B, whatever).

60. Sil@59

    Yep, and because the setter’s name is Boatman you should be prepared!

    I was!

    If you love it, fine by me, if you loathe it, thanks for letting me know.

    I don’t think I said either, but no matter. “Chutzpah” was the word I think I was looking for….

61. muffin there is no excuse for your never having heard ‘or’ pronounced without the rr. I, from and living in the south would still recognise buuk as said by a Scot or Maam as said by a Geordie, because the television brings all accents to us. Similarly when you talk to a call center about your bank account or airline ticket you are probably talking to someone from Newcastle. If you tell me you have lived in the same Yorkshire village, without TV or the internet I will withdraw my objection. But, I know that is not the case.

62. S.Panza @61
    I suppose I’m hearing what I’m expecting to hear!

    It does seem lazy not to pronounce the letters in a word. I hate the habit of dropping the hard consonants off the ends of words, and as for the glo’al stop!

63. Re the OR AU discussion:

    1) If you think of them as puns not homophones, most of the purported difficulties disappear.

    2) Is there a difference between the pronunciation of the starts of (say) Joe ORTON and AUTONOMOUS? Or, somewhat closer in spelling, ORTHOGRAPH and AUTOGRAPH? Doesn’t seem so to me.

64. Simon S @63
    There’s the rub – they are quite different for me

65. FirmlyDirac, If you love it, fine by me, if you loathe it, thanks for letting me know.
    That was meant to be a general statement, not one applying to you in particular.
    BTW, how do you pronounce ‘homophone’? 🙂

66. Now muffin there is a big difference between recognising a potential homophone in a crossword and going around saying bu’er and be’er. I can’t imagine an accent of English where I would be truly befuddled in this day and age by what is being said. Like you I might not LIKE it but I think I’d get the drift. I do remember being amazed to hear my University roommate from Hull, (pronounced ‘ull incidentally) telling me he was going out while 5 o’Clock. But then that was oh 50 years ago!

67. Sil @ 65: good point I say homophone (short o) but hohmosexual. Don’t ask me why!!

68. I know Boatman is keen on these new ideas about what some here have termed ‘lift-and-separate’ devices (usually, this refers to running definitions on into SI — or vice-versa — as far as I know), and we have seen many of them: but I simply don’t care for them. Do they advance the setter’s art? I really don’t think so. It seems so clumsy and ‘for-the-sake-of-it’ to me.

69. As a novice I enjoyed this, even though I only solved 14 clues, but I learned a lot from the explanations. I actually got 5d and the removed -> remove d, but missed the despoiled -> ed of 13d. Even empty -> EN of 20a was a new concept for me.

70. Rewolf @4 and Trailman @45 commented on the use of DIT. Those learning Morse are taught to think of the symbols as dit and dah, partly because they have the right relative lengths (1:3).

71. S.Panza @66
    Fairly recently the signs at Yorkshire railway level crossings that said “Don’t cross while lights are flashing” had to be changed, after some unfortunate misunderstandings!

    A couple of years ago I was in a holiday party with a woman whose pronunciation of this sort was extreme – she pronounced “flowers” as “flahs” and “wires” as “wahs”. She was a positive character, though, so I don’t think I ever heard her say “or”!

72. muffin you first para would be hilarious if it did not have the potential to be disastrous. I am currently living in my Wife’s island of Grenada. Here in the windies generally the ‘th’ is just pronounced as a t. This drives my wife mad when her RC Priest talks about the debt of Christ on the cross. And, when St. Peter denies Christ for the third time it gets really nasty!!

73. Muffin @71 – yes I heard that story about the level crossings a long time ago. I’m inclined to be a bit of a sceptic: that story may be as apocryphal as the hoary old one about “Wash.biol.surv.” that did the rounds many years ago. However, snopes.com appears to be silent on the ‘Level Crossings’ one.
    Incidentally, that’s more to do with dialect than pronunciation.

74. Late to solve, as usual, therefore late to comment – but that’s life!

    The Guardian allows great scope to setters compared to other papers, and this setter probably tests the boundaries more than most. By now, I think I recognise Boatman’s style, and this one didn’t disappoint.

    Like a few others here, I thought the constant references to rocks was more an indulgence by the setter than a contribution to my enjoyment as a solver, but I still enjoyed this a lot. There was a lot of cleverness in the clues, albeit peppered with some deviousness and some liberties that I don’t think I would have taken as an amateur setter, and it was fun figuring out how to complete this puzzle.

    I thought SKIERS was an excellent &lit, OWN-BRANDED may not be a word, and SCOT FREE could have been COST FREE but for the first crosser.

    Thanks Boatman and manehi, and all other contributors for their comments.

75. Boatman never fails to disappoint. Glad I didn’t waste too much time on this but thanks anyway to manehi for managing to make at least some sense of it.

76. gofirstmate @75
    Boatman is a cruciverbal innovator, and some of his innovations are challenging and worthwhile, and will probably become established in future crosswords. Unfortunately, not all of them…

77. Thank you, Boatman, for the response. I actually did like the puzzle, despite the theme being on the clue side. I also appreciate the prize puzzle pointer: I started working on it but put it aside to enjoy it more at the weekend.

78. Failed to solve EARLIEST, PEEBLES, AUTOMATE
    Could not parse 25a, 13d, 6d, 11a
    New word – LEONIDS,

    Thanks b&s

79. I thought this puzzle rocked, but it does seem to have stirred a few posters up, including a couple who expressed some cross words in my view, some verging on the rude in their brusqueness.

    I was inwardly nodding at one post though, which seemed to sum up my own view that we crossworders should be prepared to accept a variety of topics and accents, even when they don’t match our own, when I realised it was was from Boatman himself: much appreciated B; keep up the good work.

    For what it’s worth, I’m not American or Scottish, so I don’t pronounce the silent r in oar, but if I can recognise that others do, then they can recognise that others don’t.

    From this puzzle, I have learned something about piano tuning, and will watch out for ‘remove-d’ in future, as that one passed me by completely. I also missed the parsing of OWN BRANDED: gave up after failing to find an anagram among drab, two & and. I read ‘eccentric part’ as CAM(P); it seemed to fit with ‘drag queen’ as well. I stand corrected, and have learned something about the function of a cam as well.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

80. Brilliant! We did this a day late (as usual) and found it thoroughly enjoyable.

    Couldn’t understand parsing of Gobstopper though.

    26a being my favourite but would have preferred something other than ‘cut’. Twisted perhaps?

    Thank you boatman. Rock on

81. Muffin. Like you I’ve learnt something quite surprising about how I hear accents. You wonder if you aurally insert rs; I just don’t hear them, even though I have always thought myself very sensitive to such things, and even though I am half Scottish. Orwell and automate sound the same to me in their first syllables. Now they won’t!

82. muffin @71 But the sign would be understood, as surely “while” has the two meanings there of “until” and “during the period of”, and the context would resolve the meaning.

83. I thoroughly enjoyed this. I may have mentioned before, but I think Boatman’s getting more elegant; whereas I used to shudder a little when I saw his name, the frisson now is one of pleasure.
    I couldn’t disagree more with NHS’s unjustified criticisms which I believe contravene site rules; in the past this ‘contributor’ has been very rude – he attempted to offend me once, when I praised Tramp by mentioning how many ticks I’d given his clues, by stating that it was arrogant to award ticks. Tramp jumped in with a typically pleasant comment which softened the vileness of this NHS person. Also, I disagree with jeceris’ rude comment (“words fail me”); personally, I thought that “wooden feature” was a great definition for FOREST.
    FirmlyDirac – think you’ll find (as another has stated) that you’re a little muddled over ‘lift and separate” clues as the examples you cite are not such.
    Back to the puzzle – I really enjoyed PIANO TUNER and LAVATORY. And SCOT FREE was superb.
    Nice one, Boatman – great fun to solve.

84. oops – forgot to thank manehi for his continued kindness to us all at 225!

85. William F P
    I’m sure no-one will see this, but I just wanted to add, by way of completion as much as correction, that OWN-BRANDED and SCOT FREE are indeed examples of ‘lift-and-separate’ clues, as is evident from Manehi’s blog (where he used the ‘/’ symbol to indicate it).

86. Alan B –
    I’m a little surprised by the dogmatic nature of your post as you are usually so polite (more circumspect?) not least as, with respect, I think you’re wrong.
    It’s true that these clue types are increasingly being described this way but this is not the construction meant when the description was originally coined.
    I suggest you Google “examples of lift and separate clues” and follow the ‘crosswordunclued’ link where you will find an explanation and examples of true “lift and separate” clues.

87. William F P

    Sorry it’s taken so long for me to see your response.  (I did actually look out for one for a while in case I did not have the last word on this.  A friend told me you had commented further.)

    I chose my words carefully, and I think what I wrote was correct.  The original use of ‘lift and separate’ was indeed to describe clues that would now seldom be described as such because they are relatively common.  (They are just ‘normal’ clues, if you will, although I don’t think Boatman used the device in this way in this puzzle.)

    In the time that I have been solving Guardian cryptics (1914 to the present), ‘lift and separate’ has been used mainly on this forum to describe the device used in clues such as OWN-BRANDED (de/spoiled), which is what FirmlyDirac clearly recognised, as I did.

    I know you normally write polite comments, and I am sorry if mine was not.

     

88. A very late entry, but I think (though I may stand to be corrected) that the term “lift and separate” was coined by our very own and dear Eileen.

89. [The reference, of course, is to a brand of bra – Playtex?]

90. muffin old chap – I feel you are mistaken. The person’s name is given in the article I directed Alan to in ‘crossword unclued’ – a chap from Times for the Times?
    However I do indeed recall Eileen making her understanding of the matter very clear, and I believe I echo her view precisely.

91. Alan – I wouldn’t term lift and separate clues as ‘normal’. They can demonstrate joyful misdirection and the artistry of an accomplished setter as in the examples given at Clue Unclued. (The chap who is said to have coined the term is Mark Goodliffe, a Times championship winner).

92. [btw muffin – do you recall our chat about Only Connect a year or two back? Is it just me, or does it seem to be getting easier?]

93. Way late on this, but I’m an editor and I took AU as the common abbreviation in editing for “author”=Boatman.

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