Guardian 27,679 / Boatman

46 comments on “Guardian 27,679 / Boatman”

1. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen.
   The clue for BRENT references BRENT CROSS, a junction and shopping centre on the North Circular Road

2. I think 25 across is a double definition. Compass pointers are needles, but needles are also pointless if lacking a sharp bit at the end, so pointless when pointless.

3. Thanks, first, to baerchen @1 for clearing that up – I had no problem getting the BRENT answer, but had the same subsidiary query as Eileen. Thanks, second, to Eileen for the usual solid and sympathetic blog in the face of adversity: I happen to share your current stress after a laptop charger expired yesterday, causing me to severely ration online time while [still] awaiting its replacement, a very modern anxiety. And a final thank-you for the most pleasurable Boatman puzzle I can recall, which is not meant as a back-handed compliment.

4. Sorry to be dense, but is the ellipsis between 14d and 16d meant to suggest a synonym? If so I am baffled!

5. Thanks Eileen – duck as sack cloth was a TILT. I went for “dessert” as “split” in the simple sense of a desserter e.g. from the army. And thanks baerchen @1 for Brent Cross which I also missed whilst getting the other two parts. I wondered if it had anything to do with the Brent Goose also being a Brant Goose but clearly not.

   Good challenge this morning. I find clues like Blue Chip a little convoluted for my taste and “Tho Marconi” a bit forced as an anagram. In spite of having worked on atomic clocks for some years I’d never heard of the atomichron, though it could be pieced together from the odd crosser and obvious parts like “-chron”. Others I found good fun – nice surfaces, head-scratching constructions and just enough to get the teeth into. Thanks Boatman.

   I found the grid unusual but it intersected nicely so after my first run through all the clues in order, which yielded only about 6 or 7 answers, things opened up bit by bit. I liked that as some grids divide rapidly into separate puzzles or offer little help.

6. thanks Eileen, Boatie and baerchen. Brent Cross indeed. Peter Cook as the Michelin inspector  of caffs on the North Circ.

7. Thanks Eileen, Boatie and baerchen. Brent Cross indeed. Peter Cook as the Michelin inspector  of caffs on the North Circ.Classic stuff B Humphries as the  sauce sommelier. Thems were the days.

8. Thank you Eileen – I don’t envy you your internet battle.  Had the same myself recently.

   Not always happy with the liberties Boatman takes but enjoyed this on the whole with a few quiblets:

   Not sure about soar = escalate.

   I don’t really see how duck and sacking can be synonymous.  Accepted they are both cloth materials, but vastly different.

   Never heard of MICRO-MINI but clued fairly enough.

   In the ECHO clue, one really needs “…leaders of excoriating etc…”

   Other than that, enjoyed looking up DUCK SOUP for something easy.  Is duck soup easy then?  Perhaps an expert will drop in.

   BLUE CHIP was nice also.

   Many thanks to baerchen @1 for the BRENT CROSS elucidation.  Bit unfair on non-Londoners and jolly unfair on non-Brits, I’d have thought.

   Thank you, Boatman, nice week, all.

    

9. Loved it – a groanathon from beginning to end. Duck twelve ways as they say in restaurants. Maybe a couple of iffy synonyms – gothic horrific – but I don’t possess that thar fancy dictionary you all refer to.

   Thanks to Boatman and Eileen-in-haste!

10. I think Eileen nailed it in her description of this one, which to me was a masterclass in crossword construction. People usually talk about personal favourites, but I think there were some objectively interesting features here. POM, for example: on reading the clue at first it seems there’s much too much going on for a three-letter answer, but when you get it the mystery just vanishes and it doesn’t seem contrived at all. In AMUSE, two of the three synonyms were not terribly close but fell just short of being too much of a stretch, and were uncommon to boot (unlike the AM). I could go on, but the other notable characteristic was the intentional lack of parallelism between the clues. The theme-bearing duck and goose were used in a variety of different ways, not just as bases for synonyms. To top it off, “(going) in” was used rather redundantly at the end of 18a, but that couldn’t be said of 4d. Eileen and Boatman, great job.

    Finally, to IanSW, ellipses are a kind of approved cheat, used when neither the left or right part are well-formed sentences or noun phrases, so cannot be clues if one follows the “rules”. By connecting them this way one long grammatically correct sentence is formed, saving the day. There is usually no connection between the answers.

11. Thanks Boatman, Eileen and baerchen; quack quack!

    One of the most enjoyable of the Boatman’s offerings. DUCK SOUP = easy can be found here  – not something I’ve come across before. I did particularly like the clue for CROUCH.

12. Eileen – Thank you! I can’t say how pleased I am to have pleased you this morning. After years of reading your postings, I take your approval as a firm indication that I’m doing something right … As for routers, I have never possessed one that worked reliably for more than a week or two. I’m sure that future generations will be surprised that we tolerate this, in much the way that millennials can’t comprehend the logic behind having a telephone that can only be used while sitting on a specially designed seat by the front door.

    Ian I – I very much like your alternative parsing! One of the pleasures of reading solvers’ comments is to see how it’s possible to find layers of meaning in a piece of work that its creator was unaware of. It’s easy to see how this can work in other art forms – a novel or a painting, say – but it’s always fascinated me that it can apply to something as simple as a three-word clue.

    Ian S – Not an intended synonym, in this case. I do like that use of ellipsis, but in this case it’s just there so that the surface readings make grammatical sense … and I liked the imagery it creates as a result.

    William – There was some agonising during editing about whether “duck” can be fairly used to indicate “sacking”. You’re absolutely right that they’re not synonyms, but sacking can be made of duck (Chambers, definition number 3), hence “duck, perhaps” as definition-by-example.

13. It’s now some decades since I drove with the bro-in-law round the North Circ from Crouch End to a large DIY mart at Brent Cross; so, no recall there, and dnk the goose, so a dnf. Orherwise quite fun, with smileable surfaces, eg the deranged potus, and the shrill Mirror editorial. A couple of other dnks, atomichron, and only dimly remember duck soup=easy, and micro-mini was a biff. Ditto blue chip. Too many bits of lego, just bung them in. Lazy, but wth.

    Thanks to Boatman, and to Eileen (sympathy for the tech probs, a pain in the proverbial).

14. And thank you, Dr W, with apologies for crossing with your comment about ellipses. It’s a real pleasure for me to see someone fully getting the point of my themes – if you ever feel like dropping into one of my actual masterclasses, I’ll show you how more than half of the time that I spend on a puzzle goes into creating and classifying clues that use the theme in different ways (not to mention persuading them to fit together in a grid).

15. Many thanks Boatman and Eileen.  Very enjoyable.  (Though no traditional double use of “Boatman”!)  Favourite was 9a AMUSE, very neat.

    Eileen, I read 5d as an &lit.

16. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. As others have said a very enjoyable solve from beginning to end. Certainly not that easy, but ultimately gettable. Never heard of the painter in 30, therefore the answer a bit of a guess. That and love (which I loved) were last ones. I also liked amuse, looks up to and spinach. Thanks again to Boatman and Eileen (Hope you get your router sorted. We ended up buying a mobile router which we can use anywhere, and when the one we have decides to “go walkabouts”).

17. It’s a long time since I’ve played Duck, Duck, Goose! Great fun today and happy to have completed it. Persoanl faves were 5d (not hard to solve but a nice double usage of comical) and 7d (nice misdirection, linking back to the half duck in 2d).

    Thanks to Eileen (never let IT equipment know you are time-challenged!), to Boatman (including the visit) and to Dr. Whatson (for I too did not know that rule…).

18. Thank you Boatman for an amusing crossword and Eileen for taking such trouble over the blog.

    Also thanks to baerchen @1 for reminding me of Brent Cross – attempted robberies there keep popping up in the news…

    Loved the ducks and geese theme, duck SOUP brought many happy memories of the Marx brothers to mind but I did not know the idiom.

19. Thank you, Keyser – I had to rule out several potential grids in which the two half-duck clues would have been too far apart or in the wrong order …

20. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. From the US the BRENT Cross connection was beyond me, and I struggled with the phrase CLOTH-EARS (though I did parse it), MICRO-MINI, and ATOMICHRON. I was hoping to find Mother Goose amidst the others.

21. A bit of a step up from Chifonie yesterday! Enjoyed this one, but failed to parse a couple. ATOMICHRON was new to me.

    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen.

22. Thank you Dr Whatson for the ellipses explanation. I have long ignored them as they never seem to assist on solving the individual clues – now I know why

23. Thanks both,

    I didn’t know ‘Duck Soup’ meant easy before now, (it is in OED, however) or about the atomichron, but it was a reasonable guess for an anagram. The antikythera came to mind, but not its exact name, and I tried for a while to recall the name by playing with the anagram. The theme was fun and didn’t require too much specialised knowledge about the Anseriformes (OK I looked it up).

     

24. Most difficult of the week so far but quite easy for a Boatman with whose puzzles I usually have problems. Actually, I suppose I did with this. SOUP was a guess. I never thought of the Marx Brothers even though I’ve seen the film and I didn’t know Duck soup meant EASY. I got BRENT easily enough but I thought it was a goose as well as a place in London- and I’d forgotten BRENT Cross. Liked OSTENSIBLE.
    Thanks Boatman.

25. Oh, and I’d never heard of DUCK DUCK GOOSE..What an empty life I have led!

26. Made quite a meal out of this, struggled until last one in, the last course, dessert….

27. I’m just back home and very relieved to see a steady white light on the router, after having lost  contact again very shortly after posting the blog, so I must be thankful for small mercies.

    Thanks for all the comments [especially baerchen @1 – glad to see it mystified others, too, though, like grantinfreo, I should have remembered it] and for the sympathy. Thanks, too, to Boatman for dropping in with some explanations.

28. Definitely a fun and witty Boatman puzzle – even more so after coming here and getting the full explanations. I started with a negative mindset when the print out went onto the second page and saw a few clues going into two lines – and it took me a while to get going. Once a few crossers were in there were several “solve from the definition and parse (or not) later” solutions.
    My ticks were all against short clues – AMUSE ELUDE DONALD and my loi LOVE – 7&8d being held up by me sticking with an unparsed EIDER (for 12a) for far too long.
    Many thanks to Boatman for all the variations on duck and goose – who’d have thought these two words had so many things interpretations; to Eileen for the blog and parsings; and to all other contributors for making it an interesting read.

29. Hello Eileen, many sympathies with your router problems. If you have more trouble, people tell me the simplest thing to do is to switch it off, wait a couple of minutes and then switch it on again.

    There’s also this:

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/199130/6_Annoying_Router_Problems_And_How_to_Fix_Them.html

    But perhaps it’ll work ok from now on!

    Thanks for a great blog under the circumstances and of course thanks to Boatman.

30. What a superb, fun puzzle!!  Bravo, Boatman!  An accomplished piece of setting, to be able to work in so many different ways in which the words duck or goose may be used, and also so many different types of wordplay.  I had far too many favorites to name them all, but I wanted to mention especially NEEDLES for its funny surface (inducing a “Wait–what?” reaction at first reading — would that possibly be termed a “WWR”? Haha), and my CotD, LOOKS UP TO, for being just stellar from stem to stern, with its amusing (but unfortunately all too accurate) surface and great wordplay.

    Many thanks to Boatman and Eileen and the other commenters.

31. Martin @29

    We crossed, but your first bit of tech advice was of course immediately reminiscent of this.

32. What a great puzzle. On my first read through I thought I will never complete this and although new to this forum I have learned to fear the phrase ‘set by Boatman’. What made it so good was that it could be solved despite the perceived difficulty and it was fun and satisfying. Thanks to all.

33. Thanks, Martin @29 [and DaveMc, too 😉 ]. Talk Talk actually advise turning a new router off for thirty minutes, which is how I managed to gain just enough space this morning to post the blog [before it went off again!]. They also say that teething problems can be expected for two weeks, which is encouraging.

    I’m a complete technophobe [as Gaufrid can testify] and rely completely on outside help, which, in the main, I’m fortunate to have, so any advice is really lost on me – but please feel free to chat among yourselves. 😉

34. Thanks Eileen and Boatman! This was hard going but scrupulously fair – a little Word Wizardry was retired to finish it. Got BRENT with no trouble but missed the obvious allusion to Brent Cross in parsing, despite having driven around Staples Corner four days ago – D’oh ! My sympathies to anyone suffering router problems, I generally find that leaving the buggers severely alone once they’re set up and working properly pays dividends. Inevitably though they will occasionally get their knickers in a twist, so the need to reboot once every couple of months is to be expected.

35. Boatman @12:  Re Duck/sacking, fair point.  Thanks again for a blue 4d puzzle.

    Also, on reflection, soar/escalate now seem fine if one thinks about prices.  Apologies.

36. My favourite was DESSERT, and lots of other chuckles and groans as it slowly took shape. I suppose, ‘in I’m’ backwards just about works for Boatman’s trademark self reference but I never saw it,so put it inunparsed. Altogether a very good puzzle so thanks Boatman and Eileen and all the other contributors to a particularly interesting discussion.

37. Really enjoyed this. Was down to 3 clues unaided and then had to do a bit of research. I couldn’t find a reference to the hyphenated version of ‘micromini’ online, and hadn’t heard of the painter, so I threw it in as a best guess. ‘Gothic’ had persuasive wordplay to corroborate, but I didn’t know the ‘horrific’ meaning. Finally, I too was stumped by ‘Brent’. Again, I guessed with ‘Bleat’, hoping that that to ‘bleat’ and to ‘goose’ were synonyms in that they both might mean to ‘moan’ or ‘complain’ – but they don’t! Thanks heaps to Boatman and Eileen.

38. Poor me here in Kenya, failed to crack BRENT but no complaints, you live and learn.

39. The shame of it:
    As an incurable horophile I have to admit to retiring with my
    slate and chalk for twenty minutes before I unravelled
    ATOMICHRON.
    My sympathies Eileen; an, until today, inexplicable drawing of
    what seems to be a dinosaur appears when my connection
    cuts out, which is often. I hit the space bar in error, whereupon
    the dinosaur jumped in the air and then set off at a rate of
    knots across a desert and ran headlong into a cactus ! I’m more
    baffled than ever.
    DUCK SOUP = easy; not having a thesaurus with me I wonder
    if words and phrases for easy occupy as many columns as those
    for money and mad. (4,4,5) Duck, duck, goose; there’s a clue challenge.
    New to me. Along with Eileen’s ‘THOU gavest’ for stress, I’ll have to use it
    as a kinesthetic method for the different sounds of cat and cut; is there a dack?
    Today is one of those wonderful occasions
    when following up all the threads of things I have learnt from
    Boatman, Eileen and the rest of the family will provide hours
    of fun. Many thanks to all.

40. PS 101 things to do with ducks and geese……a wonderfully worked theme. Louisa once turned up to a lesson with the efforts of a now sadly deceased goose. The (one egg) omelette fed both of us amply. (Is the goose still in her glass case in the superb Queen’s Head in Newton ?)

    Chadwick: there’s no shame in not making a connection between BRENT and CROSS, I didn’t; being allergic to shopping, it’s probably selective amnesia. Antikytheras, Peter Cook on the N. Circular, things to do with DDG in Prague kindergartens, I’ll be to busy for a beer !

    Many thanks again to all.

     

41. Lots of fun, notwithstanding the fact that I was another “furriner” who failed to finish (with B-E-T for 20a BRENT). Great blog under duress, Eileen. Thanks for the parsing of some unknowns and things I failed to see. Appreciated you and Boatman continuing to contribute to the interesting discussions and feedback. Favourite was the aforementioned 18a, POM.

42. Definitely the hardest Guardian crossword so far this week (and since we had a Paul last Saturday, the midweek will surely end with a Paul) but also one of the easier Boatmans – as others have said.

    If Robi @11 in particular liked CROUCH (23d), then that clue must be all right (because you can’t fool Robi).

    Yet, I would say – like Eileen – it just about works. And to be honest I am not so (100%) sure that Boatman wanted us solvers to see this as “it’s ultimate stuffing” rather than “its ultimate // stuffing”.  Our setter has done that before (with some solvers, including me) complaining about it. At that occasion he said something along the lines of “punctuation doesn’t matter” – well, mmm, sometimes it does, IMO.

    Anyway, apart from this, Boatman was not only in an easy(ish) mood, he was also behaving himself a lot more than usual.

    So all in all, enjoyable, adventurous in places and on a handful occasions him doing things that I wouldn’t have done. Perhaps, to settle the latter we could ask ITV or the BBC to give us some time on air?  🙂

    (but not when Man City plays Liverpool)

    Many thanks Eileen for your blog and Boatman for the entertainment.

43. 5d … the duck in question is also comical .. in two senses of the word … nice.

44. Just a detail but the London Borough of Brent is a bit more than a road junction and a shopping centre. Great puzzle by the way

45. I didn’t get the “duck in cricket = love in tennis” equivalence but found the answer via terms of endearment (or familiarity): both “duck” (or “duckie”) and “love” being used in this way.

46. 22A Didn’t know “duck” can mean “a durable, closely woven heavy cotton or linen fabric” (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/duck). I assumed the clue was referring to putting a duck in a sack after shooting it.

    27A Tea leaves are the result of having a drink? Find the word “result” a bit odd here and does this clue work if you use tea bags rather than loose tea leaves and a teapot? I mean you throw the tea bag away BEFORE drinking the tea, not after.

    30A I thought micro-mini referred to a very short mini-skirt. Apparently here it’s short for microminiature (which isn’t hyphenated in The Free Dictionary) and in the field of electronics means “very small”: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/microminiature. How on earth does “Boatman’s” produce “I’m”? Surely it should be MY? e.g. Boatman’s house = MY house (or HIS house) (or if it’s “Boatman is”, then “I am” or “he is”). Very convoluted clue. Until seeing the explanation here at fifteensquared this clue had me totally stumped. Plus WordWeb (Android app) and Crossword Solver (https://crossword-solver.org) didn’t suggest MICRO-MINI when using question marks for the unknown letters (and I tried MICROMINI, MICRO-MINI and MICRO MINI). Hadn’t heard of MIRO the painter before.

    23D “It’s” vs “its” threw me. Unfair in that respect IMO. Plus “It’s” is redundant anyway, it could be deleted (couldn’t it?) and the clue would still work. Otherwise a clever clue.

    24D Gothic = horrific? A big stretch IMO. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/gothic has “primitive and barbarous in style, behaviour, etc”, which isn’t really close enough in meaning to “horrific” IMO. Or is this a ref to Gothic horror fiction? But that’s a stretch too IMO.

    5D “comical” is an anag indic now? “Funny” works because it has two meanings: funny odd and funny ha-ha, but can the same be said of comical? Thought it was probably Donald (or Howard) and how I missed that OLDAND is an anagram of DONALD is beyond me.

    7D Like the misdirection. I kept reading “Other half of duck” rather than just “Other half”, meaning partner/spouse. Clever clue.

    29D This one had be totally stumped, even after knowing the answer. I thought it was a reference to the film Duck Soup, but apparently “duck soup” can mean “something that is easy to do or accomplish” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/duck-soup) – I’ve never heard this expression before. Not sure why the clue reads “It’s SAID to be easy”. That unfairly (IMO) made me think it was a homophone indicator. I get that “in this way” = “so” (as in “thus”), but how on earth does “up” = “scoring more”? If a rugby team (say) is 12 points up on the opposing team, then they’ve SCORED (past tense) 12 more points than the other side, I don’t see how this clue works using SCORING (present participle).

    This crossword was a mixed bag. Some great clues in places, but Boatman takes liberties at times IMO.

     

     

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