Guardian 27,579 / Enigmatist

55 comments on “Guardian 27,579 / Enigmatist”

1. Thanks to Enigmatist and mhl (and congratulations to the latter on reaching a milestone). I actually gave up on this puzzle owing to my previous difficulties with this setter and my lack of progress (I had only 4 items entered in the grid). At the end of the week I decided on a different approach, so I concentrated on the du Maurier elements and once those opened up (esp. the first line of Rebecca whch I dredged up somehow). Several non-theme-related items came very slowly (CO-CODAMOL, LUSARDI, RAMEAU, and BUSHIE) and my LOI was IMITATED which I could not parse. I’m glad I stayed the course.

2. Yes, great stuff even if most of the du Maurier references passed me by. I knew enough to eventually get the 12,20,…. long anagram (fantastic clue) and the forbidding Mrs. DANVERS. I can only imagine what she would have made of her crossword neighbour Linda LUSARDI by the way!

   I’m still not sure I’ve quite understood 7d – ?’done copy’ = ‘done a copy’, but maybe I’m just over-analysing it. I was also put off by the variant spelling of AFICIANADO, and like you I wondered about the def. for 25,9,19 and VERS for ‘barely mighty’. By the way I parsed 25,9,19 as SECOND = “No 2” + M[ancheste]R = “gutted Manchester” + S[i]DE = “team to sack one”  contained by (“during”) THE WINTER = “next season”, in which case ‘during’ does have a purpose. Still doesn’t help with the def. though.

   Goodness knows how long I spent on this but well worth it.

   Thanks to Enigmatist and mhl and congrats on your 250th blog.

3. Great puzzle.  I didn’t know the first line of the novel and had to look it up, but it wasn’t hard to know where to look given the theme.  I was pleased to get the other long answer by working it out, remembering ‘de Winter’ from somewhere.

   Excellent clues throughout.  I worked out the VERS of DANVERS to be EVER SO (= ‘mighty’) minus its clothing.

   Many thanks to Enigmatist and mhl (congratulations on your 250th).

4. Thanks mhl, and congratulations.

   I have another take on 25,9,19: I agree with WordPlodder that ‘during’ is required to indicate an envelope, but I think ‘next’ indicates THE SECOND, leaving ‘No 2’ as the definition.

5. Thanks mhl and congrats on your 250th.  I put this down and failed to pick it up with just the 5A/5Ds to go.  The theme came with REBECCA but I had to look up the opening sentence and rapid progress was made thereafter.  Tossed a coin for pitch/PATCH.  Despite RAMEAU and LUSARDI (hein? to both ) this was a satisfying test.

6. Well done, mhl!!! Thank you for your dedicated and wonderful contributions to our solving pleasure.

   This was a puzzle I enjoyed as I am familiar with the author’s works (I nearly said “oeuvre” and then thought that sounded a bit pretentious – and I didn’t know if it should be singular or plural – so much for trying to sound like an interlectual!!!).

   I got the memorable opening lines clue 12a ff from the enumeration alone on my first pass, although the fodder for 5a had already tipped me off. So all those crossers helped. I couldn’t parse DANVERS at 27a, so well done to Alan B@3 for spotting the VERS part. I was held up in the northwest by putting in MAX instead of MRS for 9a (how stupid, as I had THE SECOND part in 25a). [Yes, interestingly the second Mrs de Winter is never named in the novel, and calls herself Mrs M. de Winter, using her husband’s initial.] So BUSHIE 2d was my LOI. This was an unfamiliar usage and held me up for ages, as I was thinking of the boy Prince, George Michael, Elizabeth George etc etc…and then I remembered the Presidents!!! [In Australia we associate the term “bushie” with someone who hails from the bush and is a bit of a country bumpkin-type.] 28a LUSARDI and 1d RAMEAU were also unfamiliar to me, Molonglo@5, though gettable from the word-play, but I had to google them to confirm.

   Thanks a million to Enigmatist and mhl. This puzzle helped me overcome my fear factor when I see Enigmatist’s name on the top of a puzzle, as it was not as fiendish as some!

7. Enigmatist is usually a tough test and this was no exception. I parsed 25,9,19 the same as PeterO above but I’m still waiting for someone to explain how VERS = high and mighty in 27. I’m also not clear about 2; how does HIE = press on?

8. Lovely crossword and blog.  brownphel@7 I read ‘vers’ as ‘barely mighty’ = ‘ever so’ (mighty – as in ‘she was ever so clever’ = ‘she was mighty clever’) without clothing ‘vers’.

9. Alan B@3 – sorry – didn’t see your ever so since the query came after.

10. Concerning 26a, I’ve seen T for tense before, but the convention for such replacements is that there must be some real-world context where they are used (otherwise any word could be replaced by its initial letter). I’ve never figured out what such context is here.

11. Several times I thought I wasn’t going to finish this, right up to the very end when I thought I’d be left with just 2d unsolved (I spent a while looking for a ‘Bessie’ to go with a ‘George’ in some du Maurier book) but finally made the connection between ‘press on’ and ‘hie’ – Oh, it’s that George! (brownphel@7: Chambers gives ‘urge on’ and ‘hasten’ as meanings for ‘hie’, but it’s not a word I ever remember using.) Having started with no knowledge of Dame Daphne other than being able to remember that she wrote Rebecca, I had hoped this might be one of those themes where the references all turn out to be just neat ways of supplying single letters (like for INDY, which was the first I got), but it wasn’t.

    It’s satisfying to solve a puzzle just using your own knowledge, but I actually like puzzles like this where I’m forced to do some research; I learn things that way, and I now know a lot more about Daphne du Maurier that I used to. I hadn’t realised she wrote the original stories for the Birds and the excellent Don’t Look Now, for example. And I can fill in one more reference: ‘Q’ will refer to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who left Castle Dor as an unfinished novel which du Maurier completed.

    So tough, but enlightening, and all very cleverly clued (with a quibble about ‘done copy’ perhaps?). So thanks for all that, Enigmatist, and congratulations on your 250th, mhl.

12. Thanks Enigmatist and mhl

    Sorry to disagree. Although this was extremely clever, I thought it was an unsatisfactory solve, particularly as a Prize. As soon as the theme became clear the long ones were write-ins, immediately filling about a third of the grid. I particularly dislike very long answers, as I invariably solve them from definition and letter count (and crossers, though these weren’t needed in this case) as JinA did. Yes, it’s a very clever anagram, but I would be amazed if anyone solved it from that!

    DANVERS was another unparsed entry from theme alone.

13. The annotated solution supports Alan B’s parsing of DANVERS

    27 Danvers DAN (judo or karate) + (e)VER S(o) [Mrs Danvers]

14. muffin @13

    That annotated solution looks wrong to me: ‘high and’ can only mean an anagram of AND, surely.

    I don’t mean you misquoted it!  Perhaps the published explanation supports an earlier, unpublished, version of the clue.

15. Yes Alan. I remember now that I did get the “DAN” bit from anagram “and”; it was the VERS that was unparsed.

16. So many echoes of my own solving experience in the comments above – especially the ‘fear factor’ expressed by JinA. 😉

    My first reaction on seeing the name was, ‘Thank goodness it’s not my blog’ but the overt theme caught my eye and I was soon absorbed. Getting the long 12,20 etc answer [like Julie, from the enumeration] was a good start and didn’t spoil the enjoyment one bit: I loved it all.

    If it had been my blog, I’d have had to admit defeat with the fearful Mrs Danvers, too, so many thanks to Alan B for sorting that one.

    I was puzzled by ‘next season’ seemingly cluing WINTER in 25 etc and, like others, couldn’t see a definition but, after a long tussle, finally parsed it as PeterO did, if I read him correctly: M[ancheste]R S[i]DE in THE SECOND [next] WINTER [season].

    Last one in, 2dn, seemed to take as long as the rest of the puzzle put together – again, glad to see I’m in good company. And to see that most people seemed to enjoy the puzzle as much as I did.

    Congratulations mhl [and Jenny 😉 ]  on your milestone and a great blog here. It was fascinating to look back on your first blog – we’ve come a long way, haven’t we? When bloggers first started including the clues, I couldn’t really see the need – but I can now! I’m so glad you stuck with it – but sorry we haven’t seen you at an S and B for a long time.

    Huge thanks to Enigmatist for an absorbing puzzle.

     

17. Loved this with all the links in the clues as well as the answers. I got hie from thinking that ‘hie thee to a nunnery’ was Hamlet; on checking before posting I find that he said ‘get thee’. Apparently Authur told Guinevere to ‘hie’. Good to learn something that I had always thought, was in fact wrong.
    Thanks to Enigmatist for an entertaining Saturday evening with three of us solving together and to Mhl and others above for sorting out the question marks. I like the idea of verbs being bare ever so.

18. Vers not verbs

19. Excellent puzzle. I needed help parsing the second part of DANVERS.
    For me AFICIONADO was a particularly fine clue. I hadn’t come across AS as the plural of A’s before.
    Very enjoyable, it passed a couple of evenings in a rather grom student flat in Cardiff.
    Thanks and congrats to Enigmatist and mhl.

20. Mrs W was in her element here but even with the long one in it took plenty of revisiting before we finished it so I felt it was a worthy prize puzzle with plenty of stuff to learn like KeithS says. I also take muffin’s point about long solutions but in this case it didn’t unlock as much as it might – CITYSCAPES still took ages even with the I and Y. Thanks to AlanB for coming up with the parsing for DANVERS. I notice we didn’t fill in 2d as although we had BUSHIE and BESTIE written down we couldn’t make sense of either of them. Being a lifelong ornithologist I’m surprised I didn’t parse the ORNIS but of CORNISH! Many thanks to Enigmatist for a different angle on the prize puzzle and to mhl for the blog – with congratulations and extra thanks as well.

21. Thanks to everyone for the comments and explanations – I knew you’d have my questions sorted out in no time 🙂 – and thanks for your kind congratulations.

    Eileen: I was thinking the same looking back at that first blog! It’s so much nicer having the clue right there in the post. And how odd the policy was to omit some explanations from every puzzle. I forget why that was – a copyright concern? Not wanting to completely spoil the puzzle?

    I hope one or both of us will make it to another S&B in the near future!

22. Dr. Whatson: I think “t” as an abbreviation for “tense” is used in dictionaries sometimes – for example, it’s used in the OED: https://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/abbreviations/

23. mhl @21 – I think it was because the Guardian at that time had a premium phone line to give the answers if you were stuck. 😉

24. Thank you Enigmatist for an interesting puzzle and mhl for a helpful blog, and congratulations for your 250th!

    At first I thought this would be beyond me, but having read some of the books helped, and Rebecca is one of my favourites.

    It took me a while to get BUSHIE, I thought George was a reference to Dame Daphne’s grandfather, the Punch cartoonist and author of Trilby, the Q for Quiller-Couch encouraging me to stick to this idea.

    As for parsing DANVERS I could only think of eVERSe, but it means to subvert or overthrow, and I have only ever used it as ‘eversion’ for ‘turn out’ in a medical sense (opposite of ‘inversion’) – thanks to those who came up with eVER So.

25. Solved in a miraculous time for a Mr Henderson cryptic crossword, possibly greatly helped by the friendly theme. Apart, that is, from the perishing former model in 28a which I couldn’t see at all until I walked into our local shop to buy my Monday paper and found Linda making the headlines in a couple of the red tops.   D’Oh

    Thanks to Enigmatist for the crossword and thanks and congratulations on the milestone to mhl

26. I forgot to mention that Dame Daphne’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke, was the mistress of Frederick, the Duke of York, novel Mary Anne, and that Fowey is renamed Troy in Castle Dor – probably just coincidences?

27. I’m with Muffin. This is the sort of puzzle that I think must be more satisfactory to set rather than to solve.
    Thanks to Enigmatist and mhl.

28. Although I’ve never read any DDM I found this a fun but very challenging solve (which I only managed with some googling and the help of a friend who remembered Rebecca’s opening line) and was filled with admiration for Enigmatist. CORNISH was a fantastic clue, how impressive to work the theme into the cluing and the answer. IMITATED was a fantastic clue to parse piece by piece – I particularly like that use of “done”. The many uses of DDM titles were fantastic; I think taking a title like The Breaking Point and treating it as a bit of crypticcrossword-ese is a great way for a setter to create a satisfying themed clue, as you don’t need to be an AFICIONADO of the theme to appreciate the setter’s ingenuity.

    Thanks and congratulations to mhl, and thanks to Enigmatist also

29. I’d like to add my appreciation of a very fine puzzle. The long anagram is a tour de force and the fact that it was a write-in did not in fact mean that the puzzle as a whole was easy – far from it. Incidentally the line, deliberately or otherwise, is a perfect iambic pentameter (try saying it out loud).

    Like Eileen, I was glad it wasn’t my turn to blog this week, and also like her, BUSHIE was my LOI. I can also add that 24 down is a reference to Dawn French, who lives in Fowey.

30. Thanks Enigmatist and mhl

    I really enjoy Enigmatist’s puzzles, and this was no exception, despite my having extremely limited knowledge of DdM. You know you’re in for a struggle, but everything is normally solvable ultimately through extreme scrutiny of the clue and a lot of lateral thinking.

    From the limited research I did after solving, I think there’s another DdM link: unlike the film version, her version of The Birds was set in Cornwall, so the definition could be “Like DdM’s The Birds” with Birds doing double duty.

31. Another enthusiastic hurrah here. The amount of theme material that Enigmatist fitted into this was staggering, and yet the clues didn’t show the slightest sign of contrivance. It’s a long time since I’ve read du Maurier so the long answers were not write-ins for me, and it didn’t help that I put in MANDALAY and didn’t realise my mistake for quite a while.

    I find it very helpful that clues are included with answers in these blogs. Long may it continue!

32. I expect Enigmatist to be difficult even though the last couple have been quite straightforward. This was one of his easiest but that doesn’t mean it was easy if you see what I mean. DDM is one of those writers that I feel as though I’ve read but,with the exception of The Birds which is a short story,I haven’t. Films and radio dramatization have pretty much covered her output so this was quite easy once I’d sussed the theme -by reading 5ac!
    I used to live in Par in Cornwall and spent a lot of time walking on the coast including to Fowey and Menabilly were DDM lived.
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Enigmatist.

33. Really enjoyed this puzzle. One of my favourite authors. The long one Last night…got me going and the rest was a slow albeit the most enjoyable solve. Thanks Enigmatist and mhl.

34. BUSHIE was also my last in, despite my being an American. (The term was usually heard in the plural, and usually from people denigrating the Bushies.)

    I had not read a word of Daphne du Maurier, so my solving experience involved a lot of Wikipedia, I’m afraid—enough that it crossed the line into what I’d count as cheating.

    Bridgesong: iambic hexameter, surely?

35. A fantastic puzzle.  This wasn’t a write-in at all for me, having not read the books.  I got in a mess early on by putting in REAGENT at 1a (I was convinced a “spy working in cyberspace” must be an E AGENT and therefore assumed 19 must start with R (19 No 1) and that the definition would appear in 9!).  My error was compounded, so to speak, by the compound anagram in 1d giving RAMEAU.  Getting the long one (I didn’t know the line, muffin, so was forced to use the fodder to unravel it) helped a lot.  It’s a hugely impressive &lit.

    Very clever use of the theme in the clues, something which Tramp does so well too.  Along with LAST NIGHT I DREAMT I WENT TO MANDERLEY AGAIN, my favourites were DANVERS, THE SECOND MRS DE WINTER (great surface given that Man Utd finished second last season) and ELEVATORS (thanks, Cookie, for pointing out the Troy reference – I’m sure it’s no coincidence).

    I thought LUSARDI was a bit retro.  Is she still famous?  I struggled also with CO-CODAMOL (never heard of it).  Last in was BUSHIE (oh, that George!) but it’s a good clue.

    Thanks, Enigmatist, for a truly challenging prize.  Congratulations, mhl, on your milestone!  A fine blog.  It never worries me if the blogger leaves a few for the “viewers” to parse.  Trying to fill in any gaps adds to the fun of commenting.

36. Rebecca is one of those books, rather like A Tale of Two Cities and Pride and Prejudice, that a lot of people who haven’t read it will still be able to tell you the first line (I could possibly add 1984 and The Hobbit to that list).

37. I really enjoyed this too. The opening line must surely be one of the best in English literature. I too noticed that it’s iambic hexameter (sic, bridgesong). I couldn’t remember it at first, but with a few crossers it came back to me. I also wrote MANDERLAY before checking the anagram more carefully.

    2d, BUSHIE was my LOI too, worked out from wordplay then confirmed. I started off thinking it could be connected to George du M, but abandoned the idea finally.

    Are CAPPUCCINI (22a) particularly a mid-morning drink?

    Thanks to AlanB for the parsing of VERS in 27a. Glad he decided to break with habit and do the Prize 🙂

    I wasn’t familiar with RAMEAU. Brilliant subtractive anagram though.

    Completely forgot about “in Cornwall” when parsing 7d, IMITATED, just taking “artistic setting” as the Tate in London.

    I did use Word Wizard to get 13d CITYSCAPES.

    Thanks to those who supplied the extra thematic links, not all of which I got, even after studying D du M’s wikipedia afterwards.

    Congratulations, Mhl, on your 250th.

38. Tony @37

    In Italy it is considered a solecism to drink cappucino any later than breakfast (which might just be a pastry and coffee in a bar).

39. cappuccino, sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the plural, but that’s probably because my wife always has caffe latte (sic: not “latte”!)

40. “The opening line must surely be one of the best in English literature”

    … but completely missed until way down in the comments in this list.

    Anagram nut Chris Miller produced a puzzle for BD’s Rookie Corner as Metatron which had an anagram of “It is a truth, universally acknowledged etc“.

    @muffin
    That probably explains it, though a lot of customers at my local Costa clearly don’t know that. An Italian girlfriend wouldn’t drink coffee after midday, because doing so made her “nervous” (nervosa), allegedly. Breakfast, however, when staying overnight with her was a large espresso.

41. Tony @37

    [You’re right – the Prize puzzles usually give way to other weekend (and weekly) activities, but I was prodded from two directions to try this one, and I’m really glad I did.  I forgot, by the way, to make special mention of the long &lit at 12a – I merely said I had to look it up.  it was excellent.]

42. Tony, that list you liked to was clearly written by an American male under the age of 40. (As I’m not yet 45, I recognize most of those sentences…and the ones I don’t recognize are all from books that are—well, very *male*. And mostly recent.

    I also ascribe to the 50-year rule: no book belongs on a “best ever” list unless it’s been around for at least 50 years. So Catcher in the Rye is in, but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is out.

    Lastly, “Call Me Ishmael” is only the first sentence of Moby Dick if you ignore all the front matter (of which there is so much that we can only conclude Melville didn’t expect you to ignore it). Great sentence anyway.

43. I really did know nothing about the theme but was determined to rise to the challenge of taking on this setter and not to cheat!

    By Monday evening I had nothing in the NW, but everything else except the two long themed ones and DANVERS. I’d guessed the first seven words of the really long one but even with crossers and remaining fodder I was never going to get ‘manderley’. I also had THE SECOND ???/?? WINTER (with a very tentative DAY OF pencilled in). DANVERS I thought was tough wordplay – I didn’t understand the VERS until coming here – so also pretty ungettable for me.

    So I caved in and ran a search for ‘last night I dreamt…’ etc which led me to the Wikipedia page on Rebecca. After that and with momentum gone I eventually stopped with just 1d & 2d missing (bar the BUS)

    Still, no sour grapes as it seemed spectacularly well crafted and feel I learnt a good deal on the way!

44. mrpenney and Tony; you’re right, I got my verse forms confused.

45. yet another incredibly clever puzzle from JH

46. Well, yes, this was clever grid filling and nothing wrong with the clueing either as I came quite far during the first pass.

    Yet, I have a bit of a double feeling about ‘the long one’.  First, there is the fact that it is such a long one.  I must admit that in general, for some reason, I do not like such clues very much (as JH actually knows). And secondly, I am here with nobby @43.   I know who DDM is and I’ve heard the ‘headlines’ but, apart from that, I am a literary zero.  I appreciate that the first line of Rebecca is exceptionally well-known to a lot of people.  That, however, would mean that the answer was or should be some kind of write-in, not giving enough reason to unravel the anagram.  But if you don’t know the phrase, then the anagram wasn’t much of use either.  So, while it was brilliantly incorporated in the crossword, it did border on GK (muffin, where are you?). In my case, I had to resort to resources, just like others today. Not that I really care but even so.

    I failed on BUSHIE and couldn’t fully explain DANVERS (which is, by the way, also a GK entry with its (partly) difficult wordplay).  I wondered whether Enigmatist had thought of D’ANVERS meaning ‘from Antwerp’ in French.

    Altogether, it was a good, clever and enjoyable crossword. One, however, that worked slightly against me.

    Many thanks mhl & Enigmatist.

47. Hi Sil

    I excused it as it was a bit of GK I had, and thought that most others would too – one of the three or four most well-known first lines, I would have thought. As I intimated earlier, I was a bit disappointed that some GK gave me about a third of the puzzle without having really to solve any clues.

    I can’t but admire the construction, but I really didn’t find it very satisfying.

48. Well, I’m one who did have to solve the long one using the anagram!  I was not very familiar with the theme, so the enumeration was no help, but I vaguely remembered the name “Manderley” and used the fodder and crossers for the rest.  Thank you to Enigmatist for an excellent challenge!

49. Can anyone explain the elipsis … at the end of 1D and start of 2D please?

50. Mick @49, perhaps because RAMEAU in French means a small branch and ‘BUSHIE’ sounds like ‘bushy’ which describes  shrubs since they have short branches, or perhaps because Daphne du Maurier’s grandfather George du Maurier was an author as well as being a cartoonist – just ideas …

51. @Sil, isn’t it most likely that the surname DANVERS is derived from d’Anvers? Not that that would stop it being used in wordplay, but I would guess that many wouldn’t know Anvers was the French name for Antwerp anyway.

    I do think that (e)VER S(o) is something you’d only work backwards to. In the context of the puzzle, “housekeeper” made it a write-in.

52. Great puzzle – thanks to Enignatist.

    Congratulations on the milestone Mhl – and for coming back after the great sheep and cow debate of your first blog. (Off-topic – is it possible that I could have attended lectures given by your father in the past?)

53. By sheer coincidence, I happened to arrive in Fowey for a fortnight’s holiday the day this crossword was published. Annoyingly I left my copy of Rebecca at home so couldn’t crosscheck the opening.

54. DuncT: Thanks! Yes, I think you’ve correctly associated me with my father 🙂

55. I really should have commented on this earlier – a top class puzzle even if the opening line suggested itself from the enumeration – with JH a headstart is always useful. I have never read Du Maurier or seen the film. The only bit of theme GK I failed on was the name DANVERS, but CO-CODAMOL was new to me and several others required a lot of thought.

    Thanks to mhl (and congratulations on the milestone) and Enigmatist.

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