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88 comments on “General Discussion”
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Gaufrid,
I don’t see any indication of a deadline for Guardian Prize 27,699 (or of what the prize is), but I notice you have said it is due by 3 Jan. Am I missing what’s under my nose?
Tony
There is no indication in any of the online versions so I asked Eileen to check what was given in the printed version because I suspected that the normal first post Friday might be extended due to the recent festivities. If you click on ‘Prize’ in the Crosswords menu bar towards the top of the screen you will see submission details for the prize puzzle as well as the prize on offer.
Gaufrid, perhaps because there is now another Prize Puzzle (27,704, Paul), the Guardian’s Prize page currently says:
“Competition entries for the latest Prize crossword must be received by the first post on the Friday after the puzzle appears”, with the usual prize.
I used the print version rather than wait for the pdf and there were no details on the page, just the puzzle.
Gaufrid, Do you realise that the online puzzle’s “reveal-all” button now shows all the answers for the Maskarade puzzle?
Crossbar @4
I cannot be held responsible if the Guardian reveals the answers before the closing date for entries. The time for the reinstate of ‘reveal all’ is probably built into the software and nobody thought to change it when the closing date was extended. We will continue to post blogs of prize puzzles after the closing date for entries.
Tony @4
What is your point? You have quoted the standard text that is always there on that page.
Gaufrid, I wasn’t suggesting you are responsible. I just thought you might be interested.
Gaufrid, my point is that you wrote: “If you click on ‘Prize’ in the Crosswords menu bar towards the top of the screen you will see submission details for the prize puzzle as well as the prize on offer” in answer to my query about where the exceptional deadline and prize for the Maskerade could be found, but I could not be sure that had been the case at the relevant time because by then the standard form of words had become appropriate to the more recently published Paul Prize Puzzle. Is it in fact the case that those words were replaced for one week with a correct indication of the required details? Obviously that is now water under the bridge and if you are right about the extended deadline, it was screwed up anyway by revealing the solution in accordance with standard instructions.
Happy new year, btw!
Tony
When I checked before the subsequent prize puzzle had been published, there was no change to the standard submission details. As I said above, it would seem that the extended entry deadlines for Maskarade and Azed were given in the print editions, with no indication online.
An interesting point of ‘cluology’arises from 32a in
Eimi’s New Year’s Eve Indy puzzle:
Statement showing company’s not in the red – quite the opposite (5)
The answer is CREDO — the opposite of CO in RED. However, the clue literally tells you to put “the red” — not just “red” — in “company”.
Although we are used to reading in missing grammatical articles and occasionally ignoring them (especially for definitions in the latter case), it is quite unusual to be asked to ignore an article in a cryptic operation such as this, isn’t it? The alternative might have been to write “company’s in red”, inviting the solver to mentally insert the missing “the”. However, with an idiomatic phrase such as “in the red”, it’s hard to carry the surface meaning without the article.
I once scrapped a clue I’d written for CHAOTIC which used “in mess” as definition. Again, the idiom is ‘in A mess”, but the surface referred to an officers’ mess so using the ‘a’ would have spoilt it.
What do solvers think about this question? Should Eimi have found an alternative for what was otherwise a very neat clue?
Gaufrid,
Oh, I see. I no longer buy the paper on Saturday, so I missed what, it seems, was the only source. A bit of a cockup all round. I wonder if any prize will be awarded?
Hello
I think this might be the wrong place for me to ask this but I’d be so grateful if someone could answer or point me in the right direction. I’m looking for the fifteensquared explained answers to the Observer Giant Cryptic on 23.12.18.
Normally I find the answers really easily on fifteensquared using the unique number assigned to each crossword but I can’t find it for this one. Obviously the answers are at the back of the paper but there’s a couple I can’t parse and I’d love to see the fifteensquared answers to help me learn what I’ve missed as I’m still a beginner (and suspect I always will be!)
Hopeful that someone covered this one as usually this site is really comprehensive. I suspect I’m just searching for the wrong thing! Thanks in advance. Sara
Hi Sara @11
I’m sorry to have to say that there isn’t a blog of this one-off giant cryptic because I didn’t know that it existed until I read your comment. I don’t remember seeing it indexed on the Guardian crossword home page on 23/12 otherwise I would probably have solved and blogged it myself.
Hi Gaufrid
Thanks for your quick reply. Yes I guess they just put it in print rather than indexing it properly online – it doesn’t even list a setter! But it was a decent enough crossword, a little more challenging than a quiptic, with an added festive touch.
I have a couple of friends who are much better at cryptics than me so I will pick their brains for bits and bobs of parsing wisdom next time I see them 🙂
Is anyone going to blog my FT puzzle today?
I’m not sure if this has been raised before but I have been having problems with the online version of the Guardian puzzles using Microsoft Edge and Windows 10. There is about a one second delay after typing the letters before they appear. I have now switched to Chrome where everything works well. The import bookmarks from Edge to Chrome did not work at first so I had to use the option of importing the .html bookmark file. Anyone else had these sort of problems with Edge?
Imogen @ 27720
There was some discussion about how many times LIEBIG had been defined as “chemist” recently. Given my age and lack of scientific knowledge I might have defined him as “cubist”. I remember the days when the name appeared as the manufacturer on packets of Oxo cubes. Wiki confirms that it is the same chap.
cf Nutmeg 27726 re the SOED changing its description of OCTUPI from the 1993 edition (uncommented) to the 2007 edition (described as incorrect).
Despite the OED offering an email address (inaccurately listed) claiming to invite comment, my query was met with an automated response which canst be read/ rendered as, essentially, “molluscan not bears edifying”.
In pursuing an etymology for POURSCUTTLE (an archaic synonym for OCTOPUS), Google led me straight back to this site where such matters were discussed after a Boatman puzzle (Guardian 27607).
I you enjoy such an exchange (as I do), I recommend it.
If it had taken place in a pub towards closing time I fancy the riot squad may have been called.
Anyway, in conclusion, and absent of any input from the O.E.D. I offer my own observations:
1. The O.E.D. changed their listing so that they could hold their heads high at the Annual Classicist Pedant Society meetings.
2. Simply by including OCTOPI (however described), they acknowledge it as a word.
My wife and I have just started doing the New Statesman crosswords, with our new subscription. Seems good so far, though we were surprised at the unannounced rule-variation in last week’s clueing : all of the across answers (and a couple of the down answers) were shrubs/trees, without any definition in the clue.
Is this sort of thing the NS style?
The paper (in India) to which I contribute crosswords has now asked me and other setters to assign total rights to it. I have told the paper that I cannot do so.
I would like to know what the scene is in the UK or the US.
If we assign the rights, payment made for use in print edition may go up, but that may be meagre.
My stand is that if the paper wants to use it in audio, audio-visual, electronic, digital, mobile phone and/or any combination thereof [the legalese!], it must pay a separate amount while the intellectual property rights are still held by the setter.
How does it work in the UK or the US?
When The Times (or any other paper) brings out books or crossword collections, are the setters paid separately? Or is that right alone acquired by the paper with the payment for publication in the paper?
Would anyone give advice?
Hello all.
So having compilec my own cryptic crossword, I’m now wanting to unleash it on the world (wahahahaha).
Do you know of anywhere I can do this online?
@Gonzo
http://crypticcrosswords.net/puzzles/rookie-corner/
https://www.1across.co.uk/forums/forum/your-puzzles/
Thanks Tony.
Having trouble with the Contact form on Big Daves’s site but will try again later.
@Gonzo,
Just email it to him at bigdave@bigdave44.com
with subject ‘Rookie’. If you have a .ccw file, (output from Crossword Complier), send that.
Good luck
I am curious to know whether anyone has tried using the Guardian’s archive at newspapers.com – I found a few free clippings of crosswords (mostly Araucaria holiday specials), so it must be possible to extract them, but I am not sure I would have the time to do justice to a subscription. It would be fun to extend the lists, and also to answer a few post-1999 questions – there are still 10 totally missing puzzles, and a few more that have lost their setter names!
If I may be forgiven for self-promotion,
http://www.1across.co.uk/forums/topic/thank-you-and-goodnight-by-gonzo/
Admin you may want to obfuscate Big Dave’s email above.
To make bus & train trips pass more quickly, I carry printouts of old Guardian cryptics from the archive. The trouble is, they pre-date fifteensquared. Can anyone explain this from a Crispa puzzle (22,066)
A source of amusement to those in love (9) L_C_S_ I_H
LOCKSMITH fits but…
What was Ruth getting at? Can anyone help?
All I can think of is chastity belts (they can’t touch you for it, you know).
Yes, I can only see that nebulous “how to get into a bedroom” or as you say, chastity belt.
A bit thin, though.
Hi folks, I’m interested in transitioning to proper cryptics after having moderate success with quiptics and everymans. Where do you think I am best starting, Monday’s Guardian? How do FT and Independent compare in terms of difficulty to The Guardians?
copland smith@26
The reference is to the phrase “Love laughs at locksmiths”.
Pino@30. Thanks for that wonderful explanation. The phrase suggests that if a man and a woman are struck by Love, there is o stopping them. They would cross any obstacle. Love laughs at locksmiths because they just cannot produce a lock that Love cannot open. Not sure if the clue cited is quite apt for the answer LOCKSMITH..
What a dreadful phrase that is! Presumably coined by someone who also thinks that the stars are God’s daisy chain, or that every time a fairy sneezes a baby is born.
Concatenation, you might be best asking your question in the comments to a specific puzzle (Monday’s Guardian maybe when it comes around) as I don’t think this thread gets many views.
Self-promotion warning:)
http://www.1across.co.uk/forums/topic/wheels-within-wheels/
I’m sure I read a blogpost, maybe a few months ago, about a puzzle containing MORNY STANNIT, a reference to a Morecombe and Wise sketch. I can’t find it using the Search facility. Anyone know how to find it? Was it Serpent in the Indy, perhaps?
I think this might have been it, Tony.
Ah, yes, that’s the one. Thanks, @cruciverbophile.
I thought MORNY STANNIT was an answer, but it was a central nina in an asymmetric fill — distinguished also by being pangrammatic and having less than five words per clue on average. Hats off to Monk.
Hovis pointed out the nina first comment, so perhaps the 15² search doesn’t extend to comments?
I know that this is strictly off-topic, and I will probably be shouted at, but there’s nowhere else to put it: Can anyone explain to me why, whenever I do the Evening Standard cryptic (not the toughest in the world), I’m the only person on the Leaderboard?
Concatenation@29: Surprised no-one has responded to you earlier, but there’s no simple answer. Guardian, FT and Indy puzzles can all vary enormously in difficulty from day to day and even the same setter’s puzzles can vary in difficulty. I can only suggest that you look on fifteensquared at the introduction to the blogs, which may sometimes say something like “a tough workout today from …” or alternatively “a gentle offering from … ” and then decide which to download. As far as the Indy is concerned, Monday and Wednesdayare usually quite accessible but Thursday is often a tough one. Other days can vary. And perceptions of difficulty can vary depending on wether or not you’re on the same wavelength as the setter. Hope that’s helpful.
Re the query at #29, while puzzles vary from day to day, I’d say, on average, I’d rate the difficulty level of the main five series, starting with the easiest, as Daily Telegraph, FT, Indy, Times and Guardian.
Can someone please tell me what FF stands for when used to describe a puzzle eg FF:8, DD:9? I know DD = Double Definitions, but I have never been able to figure out FF!
Logoch
The blogger turbolegs uses these to provide his assessment of the Fun Factor and Degree of Difficulty for the puzzle he is blogging.
Don Manley, (aka Pasquale etc), posting as Lizard on the Guardian crossword blog, raises a question about grid statistics in the Guardian. Anyone here, not embarrassed to be thought of as a “sad soul” by ‘the Don’, prepared to dedicate time to this question?
Thanks Gaufrid. You’ve solved a mystery for me!
Hiya
Will anyone be doing answers for the recent Times Jumbo 1380 crossword? There’s just a couple of clues we wanted parsing (can’t even remember which ones now but I’d love to read back through the answers for this one).
Thanks for all the work the answers team do on fifteen squared x
Sara Judith @43
Puzzles that appear in The Times are blogged on a different website – Times for the Times.
Oh awesome – thanks for the quick reply 🙂
In the I Cryptic 2564 by Phi, there was a clue (4d Indian waterway that’s filled in all areas(5) )
The answer was Nalla.
I can see that that is contained/hidden in the clue, backwards, but I +am not find any definition of Nalla as an Indian waterway.
Am I missing something? j
John @46
Nalla is given in Chambers as a watercourse with the derivation from Hindi. It’s hidden, but not a reversal.
Does anybody else find it strange that phrases like “the French” and “the Spanish” are universally accepted as clues to “le” and “el”? There have been grumblings on here recently about “leading [word]” and “second [word]” being used for the first and second letters of words on the grounds that they don’t really grammatically express what they need to, and I similarly can’t see how “the French” necessarily means “le”, unless we’re to read it as “the (French)”. Surely “French the” is the right adjective-noun order for expressing “French version of the” – although that’d be hard to get into a natural sentence. It’s odd that nobody insists on formulations like “Nancy’s the” for LE or “one for French” for UN.
Obviously these particles are too useful for setters or solvers alike for any of us to do without them, and I don’t really object to them in any serious way, but does nobody find it odd that these phraselets are okay’d when other less than grammatically cogent constructions like “leading [word]” are considered unforgivably unXimenean?
Or is there an obvious justification for them that I’m missing? Maybe the clues are temporarily deferring to French-style noun-adjective order in moments like these. 🙂
Charlie, if you accept that you may need to punctuate differently to understand the cryptic meaning of a clue, “the, French” is perfectly understandable as meaning “the French word for ‘the'”. You often get ‘poetic’ word order in the cryptic understanding of clues too. An example:
Times 27, 372, 14a Animal’s pelt I put on (5)
The natural word order for the cryptic reading would be “I, put on pelt (coat)”: the letter I is put on (attached to) COAT.
Clues which use entirely natural word order are undoubtedly better, though
There is no way of reading “leading politician” as P whatever you do with word order or punctuation though.
Hi, Tony. The “invisible comma” reading works for me. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Gaufrid,
A bit of extraneous nonsense has appeared at the end of yesterday’s Tramp blog by sschua……..
Leave it to you.
The downloadable pdf for today’s alphabet crossword by Paul has the J clue missing, and the lengths for S and T (both of which should be 6). Is the print version ok?
Copeland smith@ 52. The print version has the same “error” if such it be. Could someone clarify?
I have the version in the paper now. It’s incomplete in the same way.
If you click the page for the puzzle now, it has the following at the bottom of the page:
Additional notes:
The word count for both S and T clues is (6)
J Divine being in conversation in US city (6)
I just mailed them another suggestion:
US city mirrors State and Union (6)
To be fair we got it without the clue from the letters xx_x_x.
Edited by Admin to remove spoiler.
I was grateful for the link to “additional notes” because I only had the original print version
Hi all – just finished the “Cluedoku” from the Guardian website. Has anyone else had a go at it? What did people think of it? Fun or an abomination? There were a few clues that I can’t parse (despite having the answer!).
Sam@58, you can get the solution with parsed answers at the later post here:
https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2019/jul/15/crossword-blog-a-cluedoku-qa-with-chameleon
Cheers Tony!
Apologies if this has been covered before. Why does this site not offer solutions to the cryptic crosswords in The I?
eltio @61
The i cryptics are recycled Independent puzzles and so we blogged them when they originally appeared around four years ago. There is a site that blogs the i ( idothei ) and provides a link back to the relevant 15² post.
Thanks for letting me know
Thanks for letting me know
I hope it’s okay to post this here: is anybody out there interested in test-solving attempts at cryptic crosswords in Spanish? I’d be very pleased to hear from anybody interested via email at [the name I’ve used to comment here] [at] gmail dot com.
SPOILER ALERT
I’m 99% certain that 15d in today’s Guardian Prize puzzle by Vlad should begin ‘Be suspicious…’.
Try it and see.
Gonzo
Can’t see how that’s a spoiler, but it was my first thought on scanning the clues on Saturday
Guardian crosswords have bee uploaded erratically on the mobile app the last couple of days. I’m in the IS and I usually tackle them each evening, but as of 12:38 am Saturday (5:38 am UK time) the much anticipated prize crossie is frustratingly still not there. Anyone else have this problem?
Hoyoku. For some reason, today’s prize Guardian crossword appears under the cryptic header along with the usual Mon-Fri ones.
Hoyoku – yes, there have been some oddities with the mobile app recently (did you get a Pan puzzle on Thursday?). But this week’s Prize is a “special” with a format that doesn’t fit either the mobile app or the website. It’s only available as a PDF online.
Thanks Hovis and DuncT, Good to know it’s not just me.
Gonzo
I have removed your comment regarding Maskarade because this is a live prize puzzle. If you still wish to comment on it, please wait until the appropriate blog appears next Saturday.
Sorry Gaufrid, I didn’t think clarifying the instructions would spoil it – rather, allow others to enjoy it fully rather than giving up having been misled.
Guafrid, Gonzo—I’m desperate for a clarification of the instructions! I’ve solved a number of the undefined clues, but I can’t see how the results fit the instructions as I read them. We’re close to giving up…
wtmporter @74
I’m sorry but on this site we do not discuss prize puzzles until after the closing date for entries. That includes any explanation of the preamble.
wtmporter @74
I haven’t actually started this one yet and find the instructions difficult to understand at the moment, but since Gonzo has apparently unravelled it without further help, it is obviously not impossible.
Too late to comment on Arachne 27921 on the appropriate page but, as a general point, 22a which expects us Brits to know the capital of South Dakota or be prepared to look it up is pushing the limit, though the answer was clear enough given the wordplay and crossers. We are increasingly expected to know the 50 states to solve “statesman”. As it happens I do and use listing them is something to do when trying to get to sleep but I don’t know the capitals. We are not expected to do the same with UK counties, still less county towns. If we are shortly to become dependant on a US trade deal we might as well become the 51st state and I will have no reason to complain. Perhaps Mr Trump will buy us.
Too late also to comment on Pasquale 27922 on its page but again a general point. Before retirement I used to solve the daily cryptic on my commute or over lunch with no access to a dictionary and before Google and wikipedia had been invented. Not having been able to look at this one at home I again found myself trying to solve it unaided (as in fact I do normally) but no chance here. So many comments from those who worked out the answer from wordplay and crossers then checked online. What if the wordplay leaves more than one possibility and you haven’t got any crossers because they also depend on crossers as well as wordplay?
To me relying on obscure words and K that is far from G is a sign of a setter who has lost touch with the spirit of crosswords and is in danger of limiting their appeal.
Slightly random question but linked to a topic within the thread for Guardian 27935 – I’d like to know if anyone has ever won the Private Eye crossword using an email entry, as I can’t believe they ever bother to look at emails (and how would they pick one at random? Surely they just open an envelope and if it’s wrong just open another until they get a winner, and they are never ALL wrong?) – unfortunately my subscription copy usually arrives so late that I don’t have time to complete and then post the reply, even by airmail. And it’s not like I’m on the other side of the world. So are there any lucky email winners out there?
Muffin, Sudoku 4550 Wed 25 Sep 2019.
I tried this just now, it appeared to be very hard. I took 37 mins before having to stop because of an error; however, I had spotted the key, so the second time through I took just 15 mins and it was quite easy.
The key is that in the bottom right hand large square, the bottom left small square has to be a 7. By methodically filling in all about the 1s, 2s, …, 9s, you will arrive at this conclusion: it cannot be 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 because of the given numbers; and it cannot be a 2 by dint of having methodically filled in all the 1s to 9s.
Thanks Dave Ellison!
Why don’t you give the answers and explanations for the Globe and Mail cryptics?
Looking for a serviceable cryptic crossword clue for HUAWEI
None of this sounds like newcastle ‘howay’ rubbish. Thanks lads.
Hi Solvers, I have been trying my hand at making a puzzle and wonder if anyone here would care to look at it and give me some feedback? I’m yet to find a way to make those mirror image grids and have just used an online puzzle creator.
https://crosswordlabs.com/view/a-lot-of-setters-helped-with-this
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, be nice 🙂
Can anyone tell us when the fifteen squared blogs started?
We plunder the guardian crossword archives and enjoy fifteen squared for comments and explanations, but there are several lately that we have not found ( Azeds and Guardian cryptics/ prize). Are older posts deleted?
Panthes @85
The first blog was published on 1/11/2006 (Guardian 23,910) so you won’t find anything prior to that. No posts have been intentionally deleted.
MartinG, you need to have a lot more crossing than that. Generally, there should at least as many checked letters in a word as unchecked.
I have created a (free) crossword/word puzzle helper that may be of interest to people here. As well as wildcard searches it allows for finding matches or anagrams involving letter deletion/substitution/replacement which is useful when doing crosswords like the Listener etc. It will work with any ansi word list – there are French, German, Spanish and Italian examples in the data folder but other languages could easily be added. There is a multiword feature as well, although this can be a bit slow.
Any words listed after a search can be double-clicked on to retrieve the definition from the currently selected web page.
The repository is on github just search for cgyule/words and download the zip. The program requires .Net Framework 4 on Windows 7 or above. There is a readme.docx file with some instructions. The program source (c#, VS2017 express) is also included, feel free to hack it about. I would be happy to receive any feedback or suggestions.