Guardian Cryptic 27,498 by Qaos

67 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,498 by Qaos”

1. Failed on 29a and 23d, ut enjoyed the rest.

2. Thanks Qaos and manehi

   Entirely my fault, but I didn’t enjoy this much. After getting IODINE and EUROPIUM – my favourite clue, along with SPONSOR – I just wrote in the other elements with only a token effort at parsing the clues.

   I think Qaos overdoes the numerical clues (such as 9, 28 and 21d).

3. [Two points on the elements: SULFUR has been the accepted spelling for some time now; ERBIUM is one of seven elements discovered in ore from a mine in Ytterby, Sweden (the others being Ytterbium, Ytrrium, Terbium, Gadolinium, Holmium and Thulium).]

4. [Yttrium – typed an R instead of a T]

5. Yes this went in quickly after my first one in (CADMIUM) sent me looking for other elements. They were obvious once you were looking for them, but brilliantly (impossibly?) disguised if you hadn’t seen the theme.
   I’m not a scientist but have always had a fascination with the periodic table – a thing of beauty and elegance as well as a scientific tour-de-force.
   I didn’t parse QUEUE and my favourite (and loi) was COLUMNIST although there were plenty more I liked.
   One quibble I’d have is equating IMPORTANT with URGENT. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years helping people see the difference between them and so choose where to focus their energy. Despite being 30+ years old Stephen Covey’s Urgent/Important 2×2 matrix is as valid today as it was when it was first published.
   Thanks Qaos and manehi.

6. Na y ba d

   But i’ve only heard of about half these chemical symbols and so having to check a lot didn’t make this my cu p o f t e a

7. Did anyone watch the Only Connect final on Monday?  One of the connections was a series of phrases as below (this is from memory so not exact)

   In low temperature alloys

   As a poison

   Be in emerald

   He is light

   I wonder if ther eis a coincidence?

   Anyway – fun to do, and as people have said once the theme was spotted it was easy to find the elements/defintiios and then reverse parse

    

   Thanks Qaos and manehi

8. Thanks Qaos and manehi.

   Perhaps an indication of the theme would have helped those among us of a non-scientific bent, eg. “Periodic table element (9)” (or 8 letters for US solvers.)

   And if anyone wants a humorous chemistry lesson, search for Tom Lehrer’s song “The Elements”, preferably the live recording from 1959 (sorry, can’t work out how to insert the link.) The whole concert is well worth a listen.

9. The “out” in 1d feels like an actual error to me, rather than just not needed.

10. Thanks, manehi – yes, lots of fun and very clever. Once again, I agree with your favourites.

    ARSENIC was my way into the theme, as I’ve finally got used, over the years, to seeing ‘as’ used that way in clues. The rest wasn’t quite so much of a write-in as for some people but I do know a lot more chemical elements than I used to, thanks to watching ‘Pointless’. 😉 [And yes, minty, I saw the Only Connect final.]

    Many thanks, Qaos – I really enjoyed it.

     

11. Greenswrad @8

    This is a live version from 1967

12. I would take issue – but only slightly – with the definition in 5d. In my experience it’s having to do the urgent things which prevents you doing the important things!

13. Enjoyable, but not entirely happy with the splitting up of 16,14 down. Does IRS appearing in the solved grid have a meaning on its own, which I always supposed had to be the convention…

14. Thanks both.
    I revealed a couple due to impatience, though I flatter myself I’d have got them if I’d persevered (7a, 29a).
    While the answer was obvious, I thought 16d,14d was clumsy. Single-word answers split into two are fine when each part is a word in itself, but this barely qualifies. CHA is rarely seen outside crosswords, and IRS seems to exist only as an abbreviation for a foreign tax-collecting organisation, though admittedly it’s well-known in the UK.

15. ronald – you got in first!

16. ronald @13

    I agree in principle, but IRS is too well known to our American friends – it’s the Internal Revenue Service (or “taxmen”). Would it have been given as (1,1,1) though, if clued by itself?

17. Thanks muffin @11. Love the Aristotle version!

18. Not bad for an American puzzle. But cadmium is Cd.

    Bugger it, I’ll burn my 1966 degree!And put new tires on my car and fly to Helsinki in Scandinavia.Arrggh.

    But I will never play scrabble to a dictionary that does not include ALUMINIUM

     

19. copmus @18

    Europium is Eu, for that matter. I didn’t bother me.

    There’s an Isaac Asimove story in which the dining club is asked by an English chemistry student who has been challenged by his US professor (whose daughter he wishes to marry) to come up with the “most unique” element.

    Clue: the prof didn’t like “aluminium”…

20. I was pleased to be able to finish this, as chemistry isn’t my forte. Got the theme fairly early on, but sill quite hard work. Favourites were PROXY, MINT JULEP and SULFUR. Many thanks to Q & m.

21. [me @ 19: It didn’t bother me (nor I either!). Asimov (though I vaguely remember a story which featured a robot called “I Click As I Move”)]

22. My favourites ( by far) were nothing to do with the theme: 8 and 30.

    My way in was 28 which was a lovely DOH moment, the rest was simply, hunt the chemical symbol clues.

    Sadly I also thought 9 was very messy.

23. 1d is awful.

24. Agree with others that 1D is just an error which is annoying when the parsing throughout was quite hard. I thought 25A was particularly clunky. Not a fun theme for me. Each to his own I suppose.

25. Thanks to Qaos and manehi. Chemical symbols not my forte, but struggled through this having quickly spotted the theme. That said a lot of dictionary checking and needed to come here to clarify some parsing. Last one aspread and unsurprisingly my favourites not the symbols, but mint julep, columnist and proxy. Thanks again to Qaos and manehi.

26. Thanks Qaos; pretty nifty setting to get in 13 elements.

    Thanks manehi; I started very slowly but once I had got IODINE the rest were write ins except I had to, er, think twice about ERBIUM. I think the false capitalisations in CD and EU are fine. It’s going the other way i.e. cd and eu that would be a no-no for me. SULFUR always looks a bit strange as in the old days that was the American version of sulphur, but as muffin @3 points out it is now the accepted spelling.

    I didn’t much like the clue for KILOLITRE, but I suppose the setter wanted to make it easy for a slightly unusual unit.

     

27. Lovely puzzle: thanks to Qaos & Manehi. 1d could have done with an edit (‘eat out’ or just ‘dine’) but there were lots of lovely clues; too many to list. I must confess to being a scientist, so the penny dropped early (and I agree that 23d is fine in the UK and has been so since 1992).

28. I agree with Jason@9 that 1dn is wrong – seems to say that DINE is an anagram of ‘dine’. I am also with CynicCure@12 on 8dn that ‘important’ is by no means a definition of ‘urgent’, and admit that after seeing a couple of elements, I then went through the clues looking for and writing the others, only parsing the clues afterwards.  (By the way, No and At are a couple of the ‘many others’ mentioned by Tom Lehrer.)

    I do like that the atomic number is a measurable property – and think it a pity that the opportunity to honour Harry Moseley, who found this, by naming an element for him has not yet been taken – I hope that there may yet still be possible to create one in the island of stability.

29. It is always rereshing to have a scientific theme for a change. (Vid. C.P. Snow!) Having a ticket in chemistry, I could simply write in all  the elements, which certainly reduced the challenge, but I’m not complaining. Some of the wordplay was convoluted, but that’s just Qaos’s style. Thanks to him and manehi both.

30. A lot of fun. Qaos is one of my favourite setters, I think.

31. Thank you peterM @28. I had entirely forgotten about Moseley’s law. (It’s been a long time!)

32. Thanks Qaos, manehi

    I like chemical clues – there’s nearly always a nice lightbulb moment when you realise you’ve been had.  Plenty of variety in these, O’Grady, Co-pilot, S-setter, all doing their best, but it seems a bit like putting nine fielders between long leg and deep square leg and tempting the hook.

    No ball.

33. I agree with those unhappy with the CHA IRS split. I spotted the theme after getting HELIUM and INDIUM, though I’m not sure the penny would have dropped so quickly if I hadn’t been watching Only Connect on Monday!

34. An entertaining puzzle, but pretty easy for those of us who know our elements.

    Thanks to Qaos and manehi

35. I’m in the habit of running through the clues in order, across then down.  As IODINE was my first themer, there were quite a few gaps in the grid on my first pass!

    I quite liked most of this, but with the same reservations already mentioned (theme-assisted collapse, EU & CD, “out” in 1).  Enjoyed NOBELIUM, QUEUE and COBALT.  Not so keen on KILOLITRE – it was a bit too Lego-ish.  Possibly a missed trick at 5 – ARGENT would fit as a pseudo themer.

    Overall, easier than the usual Qaos but fun.  Thanks to him and to manehi for the blog.

36. Afternoon all. Many thanks for the comments and to manehi for the excellent blog.

    What would Sherlock make of today’s puzzle? Marmite! It was intended to be the companion piece to my previous chemistry-themed puzzles, but I appreciate solvers would either love it or hate it with the amount of science involved.

    Admin: I have a rule whereby I only post once per crossword to avoid trolls or get involved in arguments (I’m always happy to discuss things in person at crossword events). Sadly, the same rule also stopped me replying to your comment last time. Anything in the public domain is expected to get comments both positive and negative. I don’t overly dwell on either, as everyone’s background and solving experience is different. My main aim is to deliver fun! Since I’m only in the Guardian every month or two, I still won’t be posting here again any time soon. However, that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the excellent service that 15^2 provides.

    Best wishes,

    Qaos.

37. Sulfur will never be acceptable to me.

38. I was expecting some discussion about DOS from the ageing I.T community who remember the evolution from BOS to DOS to OS.

39. Got COBALT and IODINE as two of my first three answers, remembered Qaos always has a theme and then went at speed thereafter. Despite Qaos’s comment above I don’t recall previous chemical themes, which is a bit of a shame as I did chemistry for A level and have retained an interest ever since. I couldn’t get to KILOLITRE – a bit too contrived for me – but completed the puzzle apart from that. Not happy with SULFUR instead of SULPHUR, but it’s valid so more fool me.

40. I thought this was good fun, even when the theme (more a regular theme than a ghost theme this time, I think) became obvious after only the first few entries into the grid.  I always expect a fun solve when I see that Qaos is the setter of the day, and today’s offering did not disappoint.  I had a momentary brain lapse with 9ac, as I initially wrote “MILOLITRE” into the grid and wondered if that could possibly some variant (and disfavored) spelling of MILLI-.  I stared at this entry in the superficially completed puzzle for a good long while before the forehead-slapping moment arrived and I saw my error.  I guess you could say that the letter K was my LOI.

    Many thanks to Qaos (for the puzzle, and also for stopping by @36) and manehi and the other commenters.

41. I have some to kill before I settle down in my comfy chair at the local everyman to see Maxine Peake do her stuff, so I’ll venture my bugbear once again.
    I think the guardian crossword has become consistently harder in recent years. Perhaps I have a rosie view of the days of Lavegro , Nimrod, Altair, Hendra and the mighty monkey puzzler but two or three years I was struggling to finish more than 1 or 2 a week. Then I found this site which has explained many of the ‘new’ conventions and i’n back to finishing more than I don’t and even the DNFs usually only by one or two lights.
    I still worry but am usually shot down in flames, that the site itself or rather its devotees goad the setters ( who plainly come here) to challenge us. But most of you are extremely erudite and proficient and don’t seem to be able to see how obscure and convoluted much clueing has become thus stopping potential new solvers from getting started.
    However I have also considered that being a dinosaur I still use pen and paper whereas the majority now work online and the various answer checking functions mean the setters have had to get trickier.

42. Right up my street and great fun, except that it was all over sooner than I expected or wanted!
    The theme was neatly exploited. The only jolt I experienced was ‘important’ for URGENT, a point made first (on this page) by WhiteKing. Perhaps dictionaries now include this meaning in their range of definitions for ‘important’ (I haven’t checked), but the distinction is important (!), I feel.
    I too am familiar with that ‘thing of beauty’, the periodic table, which was a potent tool in the teaching and learning of chemistry at school.
    I’m grateful to WhiteKing for giving me the name (Covey, which I had long forgotten) of the originator of the 2 x 2 Important/Urgent matrix, which was also a potent tool on occasions in my own field of project management.
    Many thanks to Qaos for the puzzle and comments, and to Manehi for the blog.

43. As a non-scientist, I was pleased to spot the theme but,as I’m not particularly knowledgeable about elements,I ended up looking a number of these up. SULFUR was LOI because I thought this was just the American spelling.
    Not the most enjoyable puzzle I’ve ever done but Ok.
    Thanks Qaos.

44. [Answer to the question at 19 – PRASEODYMIUM, the only six-syllable name.]

45. I think 16 14 is definitely unfair.  Each element should have a separate definition, not just be separately understandable.  I got the answer by parsing, but rejected it  because I saw nothing in the  clues about (for example) tea or tax collecting.

46. muffin @44-

    Haha, by that reasoning, couldn’t there be many other “most unique” elements?  IO believe that TIN, for example, is the only element that (in English anyway) has only three letters in its name.

47. Me @46

    IO = I

48. As a dinosaur and a solver of middling competence, I agree wholeheartedly with Tc that clues have become almost impossibly tortuous and convoluted.  This not only makes the puzzles harder, but also less satisfying even when solved, because it deprives the solver of the pleasure of admiring linguistically plausible surfaces.  The great exception (correct me if there are others) is Arachne.

49. I got the theme very quickly, and all the elements went straight in, other than the slightly delayed O. As I was rushing to finish on my way to a funeral, this was no bad thing, but three clues were left before the service started. My mind wandered during the service (I hope this is not callous – we cannot be said to have been close) to COLUMNIST and QUEUE but it was only now, back home, that WEIGH yielded – hardly the hardest in the set, but that’s how it can be sometimes.

50. Like many here, I got the theme quickly so the grid filled rapidly. But I struggled with some parsing so it was not very fulfilling for me. DNF overall, but pleased to have got as far as I did. Aside from the elements, there were a couple of very good clues (as called out above by several of you).

51. Why are those looking to burnish their credentials for using outmoded language claiming only to refer to the element as “sulphur”, when “brimstone” would surely be worth double points?

52. Thanks to Qaos and manehi. As one with a weak science background I got lucky here when I got IODINE early on, then ARSENIC so that what followed was (as already described) a lot of reverse parsing. I was not sure that ASPREAD was actually a valid term (my spell-checker agrees) and I look a long time getting QUEUE, my LOI.

53. Loved this. I think the more obvious theme was needed to counteract the unhelpful grid. I’d never have finished the top right without getting “Oxygen” from the “O”.

    I don’t see that the theme is any more obscure than a lot of the Shakespearean or Dickens characters we are expected to know on other days. Just depends on your background. I have learned everything I know about Wagner’s Ring Cycle from struggling with crosswords here.

    Thank you Qaos and Manehi. Great blog.

54. I’m a bit disappointed here, that the theme made it just too easy (I did my Periodic Table at school and I still remember all that stuff).  I look forward to Qaos’s usually much more obscure themes and this was a bit of a comedown.  But a fine crossword all the same – like others I’m doubtful about IRS (although I don’t have a problem with DOS – and the double wordplay was pretty cool!).  But if US-speakers say IRS is OK, let it be.

    ASTATINE lends itself perfectly to this type of clueing: after all there are relatively few elements whose chemical symbols are such obvious two-letter words.  But amongst the elements it’s certainly a weirdo: according to Wiki it’s the least abundant naturally occurring element.  There’s estimated to be less than 1 gram in the entire Earth’s crust at any one time.  And with a half-life of just over 8 hours for the most stable isotope, you won’t find a bottle of the stuff lying around any school chem. lab!

    Thanks to QAOS and manehi.

55. I had trouble with this, mostly because in my school days the periodic table was shorter:  earth, air, fire, water.

56. Having studied science back when Brimstone was still Sulphur in these isles, I found most of this one to be elementary (bahdumtissh!) – being delayed only by my futile efforts to make ‘picolitre’ parse as a solution for 9a.

    Objectively, this puzzle as a whole reminded me of the bingo-themed one about which I cried ‘foul!’ a few weeks back – because if one has a lot of knowledge of its theme it is easy, but if one has little or no knowledge of its theme, it is potentially very frustrating & joy-crushing.

    Subjectively, I am another one who is glad to see a puzzle that requires its solvers to have good *scientific* knowledge.
    There is, in my opinion, too little emphasis on the promotion of basic scientific knowledge in the UK, and too much expectation that people ‘should’ have a wide knowledge of ‘the arts’.
    [People *should*, of course, have a broad knowledge of *both* domains.]

    It seems to me that there is too much disapproval directed at those who display a non-thorough knowledge of e.g. characters in fictions by Shakespeare or Austen or Dickens, and not enough shame attached to/too much acceptance given to not being aware of things that are basic scientific knowledge.

    I think that having a (basic) understanding of e.g. what stars are & how they work, & the undirected nature of the mechanism that drives evolution in biology, ought to be thought essential for anyone who considers themself to have a decent amount of general knowledge. These, after all, are the mechanisms that underpin our universe.

    Blimey! Do I ever NOT write Jeremiads? ;-(
    I’ll leave my Rant there, and wish you all a good evening.

    Slàinte,
    Gem.

57. Gem @56:  Easy there.  We all know what stars are and how they work.

    Stars are the beautiful people who live in Hollywood and make lots of money in movies and TV.

58. Did this over lunchtime. Once the penny dropped the clues were write-ins. And I agree about the numeric ones – may be a gimmick, but a little annoying. Other than that, a good 30 minutes.

     

    Thanks to Qaos and Manehi.

59. I loved this. Always good to have a bit more science in crosswords. Whilst having it as a theme certainly made it a little easier it didn’t make it any less fun for me – I still enjoyed parsing the clues once I’d found the symbols. I wonder if Qaos should have dropped in some red herrings to throw a spanner in the works for anyone writing them in without parsing…

60. For my fellow nerds who like this sort of thing, I’d like to recommend the Elements podcasts on BBC World Service.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01rcrn6/episodes/downloads

    They talk about the properties and uses of different elements, both historically and in modern industries.

61. Thanks qaos, enjoyed this

    Thanks manehi for explaining my first = Q.

    Very clever to get so many elements in the grid, though it was easy to spot the theme and that helped a lot in the rest of the solve.

    8a is the standout clue for me.

    Wasn’t keen on ‘for’ in 30a and ‘by’ in 17a, but others don’t seem to mind.

    I agree with Robi@26 that the false capitalisation in CD and EU is fine – especially as part of a theme.

62. Well, I don’t care if I <i>am</i> outmoded, I still think the correct spelling is “sulphur” . . . even though, as a resident for nearly two decades now in the US, I have to habitually spell it “sulfur.”

    Harrumph.

    And pshaw.

    Dammit. Are there no <i>standards</i> left?

63. Yes, a fun puzzle. As both manehi and Qaos – from their different points of view – said.

    An easy theme, not a ghost theme this time, well worked out.

    Pity of the mistake [that’s how I see it] in 1d, the second one this week (after another two last week).

    I am with dutch about the use of ‘for’ in 30ac [although he never complains when Knut does it] and ‘by’ in 17d.

    I agree that the false capitalisation (CD and EU) is OK, even if this time I felt uncomfortable with it. Not sure though about ‘Nobel’ = ‘prize’ (decapitalised), probably OK but again a feeling of being uncomfortable.

    Raising my eyebrows in 16,14 (locks = hairs, plural?), 20d (2nd cup = U?) and 28ac (‘without odd tummy’ = UM?) were more than compensated by clues like 29ac (QUEUE) and 24d (ERBIUM).

    We couldn’t fully explain OXYGEN (6d) and 26d (LAUDED) but they’re fine.

    [[BTW, great of Qaos to turn up here after the mini-row last time]]

     

64. G.D. and bother!  Set back 1-0, in the glue (10)

65. I enjoyed this. After having only three on first pass it was looking impenetrable. Then COLUMNIST clicked which led quickly to 3d and 1d and with the theme I was well on my way

    I did most of the crossword on the tube home and then coincidentally watched the above mentioned Only Connect final on iplayer – my wife was very impressed when I immediately spotted the similarly themed connection there! After a little thought I decided to own up…

66. Came to this too tired and too late after a busy day to get far – I did get a few of the non-themed clues and a couple of the everyday elements like 12a HELIUM, 1d IODINE and 6d OXYGEN before switching off at midnight here. I did wonder where some of the definitions were and thought that one of the clues I hadn’t completed would hint at the chemistry theme, just as we had NOVELISTS in a puzzle recently which tied the theme words together.
    None so blind as (s)he who cannot see!!!!
    Had to come here this morning (Oz time) to see how clever almost everyone else had been in spotting those infernal chemical symbols! Senior Chemistry seems all too long ago and I only just passed. (I remember asking my Chen teacher what relevance it would ever have to my life and getting an inadequate response! Nearly fifty years later I wished I had tried harder as I might have avoided this embarrassment.)
    Not complaining – quite the opposite – I really admire Qaos’ ingenuity in setting such a puzzle! All praise to Qaos, thank you to manehi and well done to those who found it all so obvious.

67. Me @64

    (Tip o’ the hat to Qaos, and also because I was slotting in at comment #64, one of my tippy-top most favorite numbers in all of numberdom.)

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