Guardian 27,402 / Qaos

68 comments on “Guardian 27,402 / Qaos”

1. Graf is with one F. Easy puzzle for me today, but enjoyable

2. I think you have an extra F in 11ac, Eileen.   The tennis player was Steffi Graf.

   Thanks  for the blog and thanks to Qaos for an enjoyable puzzle.

    

3. Thanks, both – fixed now.

4. Mostly enjoyable but spoiled by a few stretches – ST for to hush, PALM for bribe, the alternative spelling of DOGGREL for example.  All gettable but the parsing isn’t as elegant as we’re used to from Qaos.  Otherwise good fun.

5. This was a great theme though it took me a while to see it – despite 1a TRAGEDY being my FOI!!!

   I especially liked 3D and 22d combining to form GRAVEDIGGER…although the interment plot/heavy emotion, and the accent, are pronounced differently, so 3d is only an eye rhyme and not a homophone…

   However I did have question marks beside three clues. I though ST for “Hush!” in 5a was stretching it a bit. SH would have made more sense and I did toy with JOSHERS momentarily, although that didn’t work with JEERS for “heckles”. I also thought the definition “Girl” for 13a GERTRUDE would have been too obscure in any other puzzle (though we have had this discussion about boys’ names and girls’ names before). However if this had not been a puzzle with the play “Hamlet” as the theme, I would have thought those clues were a bit iffy. As well, I had not heard of that spelling of DOGGREL at 3d, having only ever seen it as “doggerel”.

   I thought 29a PRINCES was a bit of a weak clue, as was 20d ADHERER (isn’t a supporter an adherent?).

   I also found the use of “condemned” as an anagrind in 15d COMMUNISM somewhat contrived.

   Still ultimately an enjoyable exercise for someone who has taught the play about the vacillating and gloomy 29a PRINCE (S) from 28a DENMARK to thousands of secondary school students, so thank you to Qaos and Eileen.

6. Sorry Gareth@4, my verbal diarrhoea meant that we crossed, and subsequently we made a couple of similar remarks.

7. The theme was well done.  I disagree with mynollo @1; this wasn’t particularly easy for me. Of course, Britishisms got in the way a bit; I’ve never heard of CARGO TROUSERS [they’re invariably cargo pants here, since the word “trousers” is rare in American English; my last in as a result] and DVLA is of course unknown here.  For the latter, though, the clue was written in such a way that it was obvious what I had to do, so it went in without difficulty.

   1-across is the clue of the week so far.

8. Hamlet – my favourite play!  And I entirely missed the theme (again).  Enough said (the rest is silence).

    

   Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

9. cholecyst @8  🙂

10. I suppose ADHERER, as Julie in Oz says, is one of those ER words where the other form is preferable. ENDEAR as a synonym of please is not perfect, in that the former needs TO (an indirect object, Eileen?).

    But still very enjoyable. I missed the theme of course. Thanks all the same to Qaos and Eileen.

11. BAGGY TROUSERS (in the sense of trousers containing “poacher’s pockets”) also fits for 9d.

12. Martin @10 re  ENDEAR: quite right – I nearly made the same comment myself

13. Tough and excellent puzzle. Don’t understand PR as abbreviation for “present”.

14. Neil H @11 – I had BAGGY TROUSERS too. Isn’t the expression normally cargo pants, anyway?

    Thanks Eileen for pointing out the theme. However did I miss that?

    ST in JESTERS was obviously correct, but rather strange. Had to check DOGGREL in the dictionary. Doesn’t look right, does it?

    That said I did enjoy the puzzle. Another good start to the day.

    Thanks to QAOS and Eileen.

15. Gareth @4 and Julie @5 have pretty much said it all for me, both conveying the idea of ‘stretching it’ that came to my mind while solving.  I agree with most of their detail points too and could add that DVLA doesn’t mean ‘taxing people’ in 10a and GRAFFITIST doesn’t mean ‘can draw’ in 11a.  Like ‘girl’ meaning GERTRUDE, we had ‘man’ meaning TIMOTHY recently, but I don’t mind this when, like today, the wordplay is unambiguous.

    All good fun, though – especially the theme, which is one of only two of Shakespeare’s plays that I know well from helping my son at school.

    I was conscious while solving that the British DVLA and TROUSERS might not come readily to the Americans and Australians among us, but that’s only two clues, and the crossword is British after all.  Funnily enough, like Neil H @11, I thought of BAGGY before CARGO in 9d but decided that CARGO fitted the clue better.

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen.

16. Btw, another outing for CRIME/CRIMEA!

17. I take issue with the enumeration of 10ac. DVLA is an abbreviation not a four letter word so (1.1.1.1) or (1,1,1,1) at a push would be more acceptable. I biffed 23ac and I’m not totally convinced by the explanation of the word play. Where does ‘steal’ come into it. Other than that some ingenious clues that required two sittings.

18. Alan B @15. I think the definition for 10a should be “is taxing people” rather than “taxing people”.

19. I enjoyed this a lot even though I failed to solve 27a and 25d and failed to see that there was a theme. I am always very weak with the football clues – my mind goes blank! I also needed help to fully parse 14a, 5a  (never heard of ST meaning “hush”), and 15d.

    I still do not fully understand 14a. Why is COLA a “drink endlessly”?

    New for me was DVLA (got help from dictionary to work that one out), CARGO TROUSERS and spelling of DOGGREL.

    My favourites were CLAUDIUS, GHOST, RESIDES.

    Thank you Qaos and Eileen.

20. Thanks, Eileen, for the superb (as always) analysis. I enjoyed this puzzle,and always love a Shakespearean ghost on the battlements, but agree with the comment that some of the clues were not as elegant as usual (coincidentally the 3 I couldn’t parse). Thank you, Qaos.

21. Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

    I found this quite difficult as I missed the theme, doh!

    Nice clue for TRAGEDY, although strictly shouldn’t this be ‘work great’ or ‘great worked’ to indicate the anagram  (I might be wrong)?

    I don’t understand the objection to ‘taxing people’ – isn’t this what these people do? I think ‘girl’ as the definition for GERTRUDE is OK as it is a theme word. I was another who toyed with baggy TROUSERS. I see Chambers has both cargo pants and trousers, although the ODE has only the former, which seems to accord with modern usage.

22. For 11a, I thought G for German  + Raf for Nadal, but I prefer the official explanation. Thanks Eileen and Qaos.

23. [Has an explanation or apology arisen for Pan’s ??? yet?]

24. Definitely not easy for us, and we had the same challenges with the stretches as others. That said I liked DVLA because of the Vlad reference and ENDEAR because it took me a long time to see please as the definition. I also liked PRINCES and failed to see the obvious theme!
    Nice to see xi and nu getting an outing instead of pi.
    Thanks to Qaos for the challenge and to Eileen for the comprehensive blog.

25. Thanks to Qaos for what I thought was a tough but enjoyable puzzle, and Eileen for clarifying some of the parsing. A DNF for me courtesy of doggrel which even my spell check wants to change to doggerel. Another who fell for baggy trousers and missed the theme. That said hey ho enjoyed what I did and nearly got there.

26. Could we add JESTER[S] to the theme for Yorick?

27. They are usually called cargo pants in the UK too. Lots of that kind of thing today – using the obscure variant because it fits (ST and ADHERER spring to mind). A stretch, as others have said.

28. Thank you Eileen and Qaos (lovely theme, elegantly done).

    One gripe: UNIX or perhaps UMIP (operating systems bring me out in a rash).

    After a forty minute talk from a new head of campus that contained so many CCPs, CPPs, TRSs, XYZs etc that I understood only about ten percent, I felt I had to point out, without further explanation, that the college needed to spend more time on the AAP.
    AAP ?

29. All very entertaining and a pretty obvious ghost theme this time, except that I gave up and cheated ROYAL PALM – don’t think I’d come across that before. The spelling of DOGGREL was new to me too but easy enough to check.

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen

30. Thank you Qaos for a fun puzzle, and Eileen for a helpful blog.

    DOGGREL might also fit the theme, Hamlet often speaks in such verse.

31. BlogginTheBlog @18, Robi @21

    Regarding 10a DVLA, I made the point that the answer doesn’t mean ‘taxing people’.  The setter seems to break the usual setters’ rule that the indication or definition given must agree with the answer.  Qaos normally follows this rule, but he chose to break it again with 11a GRAFFITIST (in which the answer doesn’t agree with ‘can draw’).

    Of these two clues, GRAFFITIST would have been the easier to ‘correct’, by inserting ‘he’ or ‘she’:

    “German tennis player qualified first, but she can draw (10)”

    Perhaps the setter is using artistic licence in these cases.  The DVLA clue might be explained in this way if you treat the wordplay as a whimsical definition.  On this basis (whimsically), ‘Vlad puzzle is taxing people’, because if you substitute DVLA for ‘Vlad puzzle’, according to that wordplay, you get ‘DVLA is taxing people’.  It’s not what I would do, but Qaos’s name is on the puzzle and mine is not!

    I meant to highlight earlier, by the way, that 1a TRAGEDY was a great clue – my favourite today.

32. The only tennis player with a short name I could think of was Arthur Ashe, so GRAFFITIST took a lot of crossers to get.

    For 12a I thought it would be gear for clothing, which also works.

    Thanks, Eileen, for reminding me that a pascal is a unit of something — I then looked it up to find out what.

    15a I didn’t think to apply “half” to “my” instead of “cousin”.  Ended up biffing it in.

    I haven’t seen “xi” before — I thought that letter’s name in the Roman alphabet was spelled “chi.”

    Excellent puzzle, Qaos, and excellent blog, Eileen! Thank you both.

     

33. [note to Gaufrid – @30 I wanted to give an example of Hamlet’s doggerel, but with poetry it is not possible to go down to the next line without having an empty line between…

    Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

    Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,

    O, that that earth which kept the world in awe

    Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw! ]

     

     

34. Thanks to Qaos and Eileen. For once the theme jumped out at me (though I still needed help parsing CLAUDIUS) and I own a pair of cargo pants. I knew Mourinho for MOURN but not ROYAL PALM, PR = present, PA = Pascal, ST = hush, and DVLA, so the non-Hamlet clues were a struggle.

35. Enjoyed this a lot. Can’t believe I missed the theme, but I did. I took a g off gear rather than a w off wear. Have never heard anyone refer to cargo trousers.

36. Thanks to Qaos and to Eileen, upon whom I humbly bestow the Gunga Din award.

    Might have done better with some but there were too many beyond my reach for this to be in any way endearing: some strange cluing elaborated by other commenters and ENDEAR, RESIDES and MOURN are examples of clues which I find impenetrable unless aided by crossers – in essence they require the solution of a solution and are unlikely to be unravelled “cold”, unlike REVENGE which I did enjoy.

    But it is a crossword and crossers are what it’s about so must try harder.

    Dave Ellison@23 –  no official offering as of late last night for the infectious “???”

37. Alan B@31,

    Not sure about your issues with DVLA.  I see it as “taxing people” = people who tax.  In this sense, the indication and definition agree.

    Michelle@19,

    I was confused by “two drinks endlessly” too.  It can be rationalised by careful ordering of the events, such that the two drinks are combined first into a single entity and then the end is removed.

    TRAGEDY was very good.  The theme must have been pretty transparent because even I spotted it!  Qaos’ style takes a bit of tuning into, I find.  Lots of imperatives:  e.g. CLAUDIUS – [take] idea, steal car, go east + S.

    Thanks, Qaos and Eileen.

38. I’ve been out for lunch, so rather slow in responding.

    Dave Ellison @22 – I wondered why Steffi Graf had to be indicated by German but your explanation didn’t occur to me.

    Valentine @26 – many thanks. Alas, how could I have missed poor Yorick, the fellow of infinite jest?

    and @32: xi [corresponding to our x] is a different letter from chi [which, confusingly, looks like a large X and has a sound corresponding to the ch in the Scottish ‘loch’. That’s why Christmas is often abbreviated to –  and even made to sound like – Xmas [but not by me 😉 ].

39. How does palm come to mean bribe, either as verb or noun?

40. Rompiballe @39 – Chambers has it, as a verb – I presume because it’s a surreptitious move, like a magician palming coins, etc.

    phitonelly @37 – I missed your comment while I was typing mine. I interpreted ‘two drinks endlessly’ as you did.

41. “Alas poor Yorick!  Thou’rt not named i’the puzzle and ee’n thy calling passed over by Eileen!  A fellow of infinite JEST hence thou be’est a JESTER, methinks!”

    Excellent hidden theme (well not very hidden – GERTRUDE raised an eyebrow or three, seeing as it’s a rather uncommon name these days – although there was one in my class back in primary school).  This is the sort of thing I relish!  Not as hard as many Qaos’s though!

    OK to be pedantic – the DVLA does not collect car tax which no longer exists: instead it collects Vehicle Excise Duty, which is a different thing altogether (as non-motorised activists will lose no time reminding you).  But in a crossword some laxness is fine by me!

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen – and Yorick!

42. Qaos is one of my favorites, and this puzzle certainly did not disappoint.  I highlighted the same list of theme words mentioned by Eileen in her blog and by Valentine @26, but I missed DOGGREL as mentioned by Cookie @30.  I also had four other possible theme answers highlighted:  MOURN (something Hamlet does a great deal of), MALINGERER (again a reference to Hamlet himself, as he feigns madness — which may also be real), CRIME (the murder of King Hamlet that puts the play’s events in motion), and the “ROYAL” portion of ROYAL PALM.

    Maybe in one of the stage interpretations of the play, in which they change the time frame of the drama to the current day, they can have Hamlet dressed in CARGO TROUSERS.

    I echo the commendations from others for 1ac – what a fantastic clue!  An &lit at the top of the puzzle, which describes the ghost theme!

    Many thanks to Qaos and Eileen and the other commenters.

     

43. Just read through the answers, realised I missed CARGO TROUSERS – I tentatively put in BAGGY TROUSERS instead (well: BAGs are things you have to put in the hold luggage, don’t you?).  So technically a DNF after all – though I’m sure I’d have hit on CARGO if I’d thought a bit about it (isn’t the more common term CARGO PANTS as in the USA?).

44. Hi again Valentine @32 – I overlooked your comment re 12ac. I’m sure you [and Xjpotter @35] are right.

45. Eileen @44, I, like Valentine and Xjpotter, took  g off gear, but much preferred your parsing of 12a, shop departments used to be labelled Women’s Wear, Men’s Wear etc.

46. To Michelle@19
    I wonder if the parsing might have been intended to be (P)aper +col(A)+the(A).
    But the official SI symbol is indeed Pa.

    By the way, has anyone else noticed that Chambers’s list of derived SI units is not in alphabetical order?

47. Te(a) blame autocorrect!

48. Eileen@40

    A transitive verb, like bribe, and if so is the object the person getting the bribe, or the payoff?  I don’t have a Chambers, but it still seems unworkable to me.

49. phitonelly @37

    Your response to my post on DVLA is much appreciated.  I didn’t see it the way you did at first, but I now see nothing amiss with the clue.  I look for quality in clues, one of which is that they must parse ok, and I have to say now that this clue not only does that but has the qualities of brevity and wit to go with it.

    I can’t say the same for GRAFFITIST, but that’s another story.

50. I got CARGO TROUSERS straight away because the second word had to be TROUSERS. Don’t ask me why I assumed that but I did – didn’t get the theme though!. All my criticisms have been made-ST,indeed!- so I won’t repeat them.
    Quite good fun mostly.
    Thanks Qaos.

51. Not quite sure how I finished this given how many I had to come here to have explained, ta Eileen.  So probably not qualified to comment on the xword, but in 22d you missed the letters of ride from the explanation!

52. Thanks, Derek – how did I manage to get away with that for so long? 😉 I’ll fix it now.

    Rompiballe @48 – Chambers doesn’t give an explanation and that meaning is not in Collins, so your guess is as good as mine.

53. This was a Tragedy indeed, after a couple of days of partial success I did not get a long with this at all, thanks for the explanations Eileen that always leave me kicking myself and Qaos for bringing me back to earth.

54. I have the same misgivings as others and since I like crosswords to be watertight as far as definitions are concerned I did not enjoy this as much as I expected to. One which hadn’t been mentioned is “manufacturing” in 19 a. Like “steal” in 23 ac, what’s it for? There’s no manufacturing required.
    I also find 25 dn impossible to parse.Not to solve, to parse. Uncharacteristically clumsy.

55. Going through my head all day today, from the moment I read Neil H @11 (the first of many with the same comment):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJOLwy7un3U

56. Jeceris@54, in a spirit of helpfulness:

    Manufacturing=making: ROYAL and PALM making plant.

    I’m with you on MOURN; quite the Russian Doll.

57. Still nothing on “???”

58. Alphalpha @57

    Perhaps it is destined to remain a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

59. I cut and paste the clues from the online print version and I’m afraid I’ve only just noticed, when looking back at 19ac and 25dn in view of jeceris’s comment @54, that the dash in the clues came out as a question mark in the blog [corrected now]. I hope that didn’t cause confusion – I don’t expect to have to check the clues!

    I agree with Alphalpha’s explanation of 19ac [but I have to say that I thought this was the weakest clue in the puzzle] and I’m sorry if the parsing of 25dn wasn’t clear.

    I have no problem with ‘steal’ in 23ac: CLU[e] is around AUDI –  ‘stealing’ it, as I read it.

60. Yes – that “???” and AMANUENSIS were definitely straight out of the mind of Deep Thought.  An Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  But no question!

    Perhaps we’ll just have to wait 7½ million years for the clue….. 😮

     

61. Eileen@59: the parsing of was perfect and hence Gunga Din.  For myself I could be looking at it yet and would not have seen José, but I have a definite blind/lazy spot with these Russian Dolls / or as DaveMc@58 infers Churchillian Dolls???

62. Eileen@38  Thanks for xi.  Having even less Greek than my small Latin, my knowledge of the Greek alphabet comes mostly from mathematics and slightly from word derivations.  That explains the first name of someone I met once, which was pronounced “ksenia”.  I never did see it written, but it must have come from a Greek name beginning with xi.

63. Just a quick thought: I took the ‘can’ of GRAFFITIST to mean a can of spray paint…am I reading too much into it??!

64. That whooshing sound you hear is yet another theme passing right over my head: Hamlet, my favourite Shakespeare play, the one I saw in the West End but a few months ago with Andrew Scott (Moriarty from ‘Sherlock’) quite brilliant in the lead. Let’s face it, there were plenty of clues, so to speak, from 1ac onward.  For anyone else upset at missing it, Ophelia pain.

    Ingenious stuff from Qaos, though I have always thought of DOGG(e)REL as not very good poetry rather than nonsense.  I have composed a few such verses for comic effect: they rhyme and scan, but aren’t quite The Waste Land.

     

65. By jingers Lilsho, I think you have a point. Well spotted.

    As others have said, some ??? in this, eg ST, Trousers and PR which spoilt an exciting theme (which I’m gutted at not getting before coming here)

     

     

     

66. Lilsho and pex, I wonder if Qaos was thinking of this RSC production https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/mar/23/hamlet-review-paapa-essiedu-rsc-tragedy ?

67. I do not know why the link did not come up, trying again

    https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/mar/23/hamlet-review-paapa-essiedu-rsc-tragedy

    and her is another link

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/hamlet-at-the-rsc-a-new-star-is-born/

    in this production, Hamlet, in his madness, turns into a graffiti artist…

68. hmm, it seems the question mark struck again @66…

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