Guardian Cryptic 27,739 by Qaos

63 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,739 by Qaos”

1. Lucky me, I turned up here at 15^2 to add a comment on today’s Imogen puzzle, only to see that the blog for “tomorrow’s” Qaos is already up and running (with no comments yet, at least as I begin this).  I agree that this was on the easier side of Qaos’s offerings (and easy for a Friday puzzle also), but it was good fun all the same with the ghost theme.  [I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but I’m pretty sure that there was an old (original series) Star Trek episode where a space probe launched from Earth centuries earlier (which had become a ruthless killing machine by the time our heroes crossed paths with it) refers to Kirk — erroneously, as it eventually turns out — as THE CREATOR.  I saw that entry crossing ENTERPRISE and thought hmm…]

   [UMA reminded me of this.]

   Many thanks to Qaos and PeterO and (anticipatorily) the other commenters, whose comments I will look forward to reading tomorrow.

2. Oh goody, an early blog from Long Island! Hoping it was your turn PeterO, guest visiting soon. Yes very easy for a Friday Qaos, even without spotting the theme as ever. (Didn’t we have space vehicles not too long ago?). Could only think of addle-pated adjectivally, and is a trope a metaphor? They both sort of transfer meaning I suppose. Answers is neat, didn’t parse it at all, d’oh, and took a minute or three to grok iterates as well, and for some reason stared dumbly at first at the crossers for lodge, LOI. Nevertheless a fun stroll, thanks PeterO and Qaos.

3. Surely 6d’s string of zeros (0000) is actually a string of letter ‘o’s (oooo)?

4. Well, PeterO, a bitch may be tough but I think you meant to say butch.

   I have recently been a bit hard on over-eager identifiers of &lits, but I think PRIEST today might actually be a good one.

   Thanks all.

5. Dr. Whatson @4 — haha, funny comment about bitch/butch. I missed that the first time through the blog. I did notice, when looking back over 20dn based on your comment, that there is a typo in the blog for that clue, “Is Est” instead of “Id Est”.

6. Thanks PeterO, and to Qaos for, as others have said above, a pretty easy solve. My only gripe, apart from the o’s for 0’s mentioned by Andy @3, was the double def at 23. I originally put ‘PLACE’ for this, as it can mean ‘one’s house’, and ‘to deposit’ something. Obviously, with other crossers, this was clearly wrong though. But, I did spot the theme, even before finishing – a very rare event!

7. I missed the theme, but enjoyed the puzzle anyway. My favourites were CHALLENGER + ISOTHERMS.

   I could not parse 5a and 6d.

   Thanks Peter and Qaos.

8. Very pleased to be able to access a Guardian crossword at a public library while on an extended road trip, and to enjoy it so much. I liked the theme which I spotted (I now have “Qaos always has a theme” tattooed on my brain.) However I was just a tad disappointed when Endeavour was missing, only because earlier today I saw a replica of Cook’s ship at the Wooden Boat Show in Hobart, Tasmania. Nevertheless thanks to Qaos, and I appreciated the blog, PeterO, especially the help with parsing 27a ANSWERS. Thanks also to DaveMc@1 for the extra info on 3d THE CREATOR.

9. All very straightforward for a Friday, but I quite enjoyed it. Guessed the theme from the first of them…

   Thanks to Qaos and PeterO

10. The earliness of the blog and the responses surely speaks to the ease of this which I felt lacked Qaos’s typical inventiveness, wit and difficulty. I’d go as far as to say much of it was pedestrian though a few delights such as “Manchester” and “The Creator” made me smile. Thanks PeterO for parsing “Answers” – I biffed it alas.

    Not overly happy with “I’m lost” for dropping an “I” and “It’s time” for “it” and a word for time – compared to the subtle misdirection and precision in 3d for example, this seems a bit too loose. “Radio amateur” was a good tea tray cryptic def I felt, and better than the vaguer double def of “lodge”.

    Over too soon – now I’ll have to walk the dog in the rain! Thank you Qaos.

11. Thanks Qaos and PeterO

    Didn’t see the theme, of course. I started well, but the further I went, the more question marks I had. I didn’t parse SHUTTLE, BUTCHERED, EROS or ITERATES, and revealed SPACES (weak defiinition). AMERICA isn’t a country – it’s a continent (or two continents, in fact). ASSISI is losing I, not I’m (as you said, PeterO).

    I don’t think PRIEST works as an &lit, but I suppose it has to, or otherwise “holy man” is doing double duty.

    Favourite was MANCHESTER.

12. Thanks both. When I saw Qaos as the setter I thought “theme”. After I completed the puzzle I thought “hang on, what about the theme?”. Then I saw it. Hey ho

13. Thanks both.
    I didn’t much enjoy this, I’m afraid. Too many questionable clues for me. “oooo” for “0000”, “it’s” for “it”, “I’m” for “I”, AMERICA as a country, are all mentioned by others above. Additionally I didn’t like fans as an anagrind. And (apart from Uma Thurman) is UMA really an English-language girl’s name?
    I did quite like ORTHODONTICS.

14. I think this was probably the quickest I’ve ever solved a Guardian puzzle, including Mondays where an abundance of cds often holds me up. I missed the theme which is obvious now. Favourite was definitely ANSWERS thanks to MrsW spotting the plural As and putting an end to my muttering about it not really working as a clue. Overall it was a mixed bag of elegant and a bit clunky clueing to me.
    JinA – lovely to see you posting again and enjoy your road trip.
    Thanks to Qaos and PeterO.

15. We sometimes say o (oh) for for nought/zero when, e.g., dictating phone numbers, so I spose 6d is ok.

16. A very agreeable gentle solve today, but somehow Addle for Muddled still doesn’t feel quite right to me…

17. Thanks PeterO, needed your parse of ANSWERS.

    All over rather quickly, probably as a result of the theme.

    I also raised an eyebrow over 0000s vs oooos.  It’s a shame as it slightly mars an otherwise excellent clue.

    Employing the E = “first engagement” technique is sloppy setting in my book.  The Don would wince at this I suspect.

    Didn’t much appreciate the confused def in PRIEST either.

    Tick at MANCHESTER though.

    Thank you Qaos, but I like your non-themed offerings more.

    Nice weekend, all.

18. Andy @6 and others, agree that four letter o’s rather than zeros completely ruins a good clue.

19. @William

    has Qaos ever set a non-themed puzzle (as Qaos, in the Guardian , I mean)?

20. Hi all, can someone tell me why there is a ? after Italian town in 5d? I thought Assisi was unquestionably an Italian town. Does the ? have a function that I’m not getting?

21. Thanks Qaos and PeterO.

    On 5ac AMERICA not being a country. Ask President Trump –  “Make America great again.”

22. baerchen @19:  Perhaps not, I should have checked.  I’m not a fan of themes generally, feeling that they are more for the gratification of the setter than the solver, and feel also that they constrain the grid options overly.

23. I thought at the beginning the theme was going to be countries, but I did see the shuttles later.

    I missed the As for answers; nice clue!

    I’ll have my usual rant about using ‘first’ instead of ‘first of’ or ‘at first,’ which could easily be accommodated in most clues. I’ll let Alberich comment about this: ‘“Leading nationalist” does not, in any grammatical sense, convey the letter N. Far better would be “nationalists’ leader”, “leader of nationalists.”

    Entertaining crossword, thanks Qaos and PeterO.

24. Thanks for the blog.

    o’s and 0’s? Nobody bats an eye at “love” standing for O rather than 0?

25. cholecyst @21

    Trump might well think that he’s in charge of the whole continent!

26. Re: o’s and 0’s: Nobody bats an eye at the ubiquitous “one” or the numeral 1 standing for the letter “I” [as in Iceland]? (In addition to what Andy Smith @24 said.)

27. I really enjoyed this – it’s about my level right now (I rarely finish Tuesday through Friday but my batting average is slowly increasing). Although I say I finished, I didn’t actually parse EROS or ANSWERS – nice to not be alone in that. ISOTHERMS was a particular favourite, as was PRIEST. And fess up; was I the only idiot saying “But Uss isn’t a girl’s name is it”? Luckily that passed quickly but it’s still embarrassing. 🙂

    Thanks to Qaos and PeterO

28. Thanks to Qaos and PeterO. Not a lot more to add here, straightforward enough puzzle with (what for me) was an overt theme. Eros was last one for me, and took an age to get. I also questioned the tense in addle, but accept what the blog said. Another fan of challenger and isotherms, but I actually quite liked America (maybe it’s the Python fan in me). Thanks again to Qaos and PeterO.

29. I’m not convinced that muddled= addle.

30. re “oooo” = “0000” as others have commented we accept “1” = “I” and “0” = “O” and use of “10” = “IO” has become more common recently or even “ten” = “IO”. So it would seem fair on that basis. However, here we are asked to read the letter “o” as  “zero” so the other way round, and read a string of them as something they are not i.e. zeroes not ohs. So I do think the boundaries are pushed by this one so ultimately the question is whether that’s OK. Personally I like to see the odd bit of boundary manipulation (cruciverbal gerrymandering?) and Qaos usually does a fair bit of it, especially with numerical clues, so in this instance I am actually pretty happy with the parsing as a sort of one-off rather than a trend setter.

    In terms of “first engagement” (and, better, things like “second rate”) I’ve seen it a fair bit and it does seem to me to be a little bit of last resort – it annoys me as much as a poor surface that makes little sense other than as a clue. I find the “80%” etc technique more annoying when overused as the number in most instances is arbitrary to fit the wordplay rather than the surface.

31. “One” for I has a better basis than “love” (or zero) for O: an I is indisputably a Roman-numeral 1. But we’ve decided long ago that in crossword-land, an O and an 0 are the same character. Today we’ve extended that to o, and I don’t see that as much bigger of a stretch.

    As often happens to me, I was in the bottom half of the puzzle before I got solidly started. (It takes a while before my brain is properly turned on.) When I was perhaps a third of the way done, the “Qaos always has a theme” thing kicked in, and COLUMBIA, CHALLENGER, and ATLANTIS were right there. As a nerd of the right age bracket, for me that made the other theme entries write-ins.

    Of course America is a country. That is one of the word’s two most prominent meanings. People have tried to argue that that’s improper, but I’m afraid that argument was lost probably two hundred years ago. The problem you face is that there simply isn’t another non-awkward name for the country. USA is an acronym, and if you spell it out, you get a tedious official name. (Kinda like The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.) And los Estados Unidos Mexicanos would rightly complain if you shorten it to United States.

32. muffin @11: Collins has:

    America n 1 short for the United States of America

33. j2o, this seems to work

    “Resent it not, shake not thy addle Head, And be no more by Clubs and Rascals led.”

    Goldsmith, Edmund, from vocabulary.com

34. Regarding America, occasionally you see people creating neologisms but they don’t catch on. “Usania”, for example. I’ve heard it said that Canadians don’t like being told they come from America, or even from North America. It’s a bit like it’s common for Americans to use English when they mean British, but it’s a grave insult to call a Scot English.

35. Missed the theme as usual, but that didn’t get in the way of a pretty straightforward Qaos. I don’t usually finish without help across the kitchen table.
    I’ve been using 15’2 for years and thought I should finally say thank you to all the setters and bloggers ?

36. @33, that should be Goldsmid, not Goldsmith – apologies.

37. Howard March, it’s the Canadians in my experience who are the most likely to call themselves North American, at least in contexts in which Canada and the US are entwined. (E.g., most of the US sports leagues have a team or two in Canada–much as the FA has a few Welsh clubs over there. North of the border, they call them North American sports leagues, which you never hear down here, except sometimes with reference to the NHL, which has 7 Canadian teams.) But otherwise, spot on.

    Out of curiosity, do folks in Belfast resent that the UK is usually called just Britain?

38. beaulieu @13

    Many of the points you make are things which grate on you – which does not invalidate them, but does limit them somewhat. Over zero-o, apart from the points already made, “Hawaii five-o” springs to my mind. Like it or not, the device “it’s” , to be interpreted as “it has”, with only the ‘it’ contributing to the answer, is by no means uncommon. Then there is that actress from AMERICA: certainly UMA is not a girl’s name, apart from people called by that name (Wikipedia lists a round 10 of them sufficiently well known to have their own pages. Given that the name is of Sanskrit origin, it is hardly surprising that most of them are Indian – and Uma Thurman’s father is a professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University. What exactly do you mean by an “English-language name”? Many very common names are of non-English origin, so I suppose that your intent is a name uncommon in English-speaking countries. True, but I do not see that that invalidates its use in a crossword.

    The two typos noted have been corrected. While I I was writing up the blog, the cat commandeered an arm for a snooze. I corrected a good number of the resulting errors during proof-reading, but missed those two – and of course, the spellchecker gave me no warning of either.

    DaveMc @1

    [The link you give encourages me to wander even further off theme. I recall a monologue from many (many) years ago which may have been the inspiration for Letterman’s bit. I cannot remember who was the speaker, but she recounted a nightmare in which she was the host of a party even though she had no idea of the guest list until they arrived. The guests were all real people with unusual first names, and it turned out that none of them knew the others, so she had to make pairwise introductions, along the lines of “Oprah, Una. Una, Oprah” (although that particular pair were not invited, and probably had not been born at the time of the monologue). Finally getting exasperated with this, she was faced three late arrivals together – Anna Magnani, Mata Hari and Pia Zadora. Throwing caution to the winds, she announced to the entire gathering “Anna Mata Pia”.]

    j2o @ 29

    Look it up. For example, try Collins on line.

39. PeterO @38, I did not find any dictionary that could give an example where addle = muddled.  I had to search for the example given @33,36.  Here is another

    “Thus for the poet; but his brains grow addle, And all the rest is purely from this noddle.”

    Scott, Walter, Sir, from vocabulary.com

    Of interest, perhaps, is that both Goldsmid and Scott were Scots.

40. Thanks to Qaos and PeterO. I too needed help parsing ANSWERS but did not have problems with the various issues raised above.

41. I always forget which setter has themes and which doesn’t so I missed the theme as I often do. I thought this a little more straightforward than Qaos usually is but this wasn’t a write in by any means. I liked RADIO AMATEUR and THE CREATOR. I did wonder about UMA but the answer couldn’t be anything else.
    Thanks Qaos.

42. Thanks both,

    I enjoyed this thoroughly, particularly because I spotted the theme before completion, for once. After yesterday’s crossword the combination of 1ac and 1d jumped out. There were a couple of places in the clueing where I thought, ‘There’ll be trouble in 15^2 over that’. But the crossword was so pleasing I couldn’t be bothered to nitpick.

43. Tyngewick @42

    Agreed on all points.

    Cookie @39

    The Collins link that I gave @38 fits the bill.

44. PeterO @43, sorry to be a bore, but I cannot find a phrase after consulting the Collins link where the words addle and muddled can be interchanged.  Hopefully someone can put me me right. Apologies.

45. On ADDLE:    Shakespeare uses it to mean scrambled, which has a similar meaning to MUDDLED, in Romeo and Juliet ( I saw the RSC production in Newcastle last week).

    “Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarreling. Thou hast quarreled with a man for coughing in the street because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun”  (Mercutio)

     

46. Cookie @ 44: Chambers has ADDLE = MUDDLED as definition 4 of the adjectival version.

47. Thanks PeterO and Qaos. A nice straightforward puzzle on a Friday – that was a nice surprise after a heavy week by Guardian standards. Utter another here who didn’t parse ANSWERS although it’s glaringly obvious now. Favourites were ISOTHERMS and MANCHESTER. As I said a week or two back, I’m awestruck by the amount of regular solvers who aren’t looking for a theme from the word go when solving a Qaos puzzle !!

48. Although the typesetter would have used the O key and not the 0 key to write the oooos in 6d, why does this mean they can’t be zeroes?  They certainly look like them, especially the way I would write them. Or am I committing some terrible error pas when imagining that zero can be represented by a circle?

49. It always bothers me when the response to a question about some word is “Well it’s in Chambers.” To have to go there admits it’s not in common usage, nor even used enough to be in a less comprehensive dictionary. If I had my way, such usages would be confined to prize puzzles, or else could be used in weekdays with an indicator in the clue. But then, (fortunately) nobody made me king.

50. cholecyst @45, thank you, that will be a more recognizable example than those given by me from Scott and Goldsmid even though they are more recent (19th century) – and thank you Simon S, but that is the same as Collins gives without an example.

51. I found the Private Eye x-word unusually hard, and this unusually easy for a Friday. I’m a space buff so should have got the theme easily. I just never look for these things, duhhh

52. Cookie @ 50
    /
    Mine is eChambers, so generally doesn’t give examples anyway, presumably for reasons of size. But how about addlepate = muddled head?

    The use of ADDLE as an adjective always triggers discussion like this, cf Pasquale 27588, 15/8/18.

53. PeterO @38 – I certainly accept that my quibbles may not be (indeed clearly aren’t) shared by everyone. I’d happily accept one or two such questionable clues in an otherwise good crossword; it’s just that in this case there were enough of them to “grate” on me. I’m glad others enjoyed it.
    By the way, I also thought ANSWERS was good.

54. My best guess for 6d was …=er (as in hesitation), oooos = Os, and I like it better than having the ellipsis unaccounted and o for 0. Of course i can’t account for the 20% off that way unless he has love doing double duty as def and zeros.

    Love love would be an easy and cute clue for zeros, you could just do “love love love 20% off”?

    Oh well, easy to pick at clues when other people have done most of the work. Thanks for the puzzle and the parsings!

55. Might be interesting to note that “addle” or “addlebrained” is very close to the Dutch “adel” and the German “edel” — both of which refer to the ruling classes from the middle ages up to and including the present. Given that intermarriage was a given throughout those/these times, and considering the long-term effects of prolonged incest, including WWI and WWII, I have no problem accepting “addle” as “muddled”. Lets them off easy, if you ask me.

56. My preferred demonym is US American, but it only really flows easily in English.  There’s generally no controversy about saying simply American in the Eastern Hemisphere but I feel awkward using that term if I’m abroad in the Western Hemisphere. Americano doesn’t work at all, “u ese americano” feels weird, norteamericano just seems too vague and estadounidense is also imprecise since Mexico and Venezuela (and I assume others) are also United States.  When I was in Costa Rica, I just said I was gringo but that’s also not great because it generally has disparaging connotations.

57. Thanks to PeterO and Qaos

    I’m a little mystified by some of the comments re 6d.

    The letter o is indicated in this puzzle by BUBBLE – 15d, Duck – 16d, Ring – 19d, and LOVE – 24d. That ZEROS is represented as a string of OS seems to me entirely uncontroversial and well established by precedent.

    Having said that, some of the other clues lead me to suspect that Qaos was a little under the weather when he set this. He can clearly write top grade stuff (27a for instance), but others leave much to be desired – perhaps on another day we might have had:

    18a Relocation of Hampstead Heath’s orchids not to be reviewed (12)

     

58. In case enough has not already been said about 6dn, I wanted to (further) commend Qaos’s choice of o’s instead of 0’s for the quality of the surface, with the amusing (especially if you read the clue out loud) interjection “oooo!” at the end.  What would “Love 20% off … 0000!” even mean?

    PeterO @38, thanks for the “Anna Mata Pia” joke.

    Wishing a nice weekend to all.

59. Keyser@27
    Not only is USS not a girl’s name PUNA and UNAP aren’t cats either.
    Dansar@57
    ZEROS is represented as a string of os, not OS, but I wouldn’t have parsed it even if it had been written as OOOO or even 0000 for that matter. Beginning to feel more oooo about the whole issue.
    7d
    It’s time as a clue for ITERA doesn’t work for me. It has time?
    Thanks to Qaos and PeterO

60. Simon S @52, yes, that is like the example of Edmund Goldsmid I quoted @33, adle head / muddled head.

    I had forgotten that Pasquale puzzle!

61. Thank you Qaos for all the fun, I loved the “bubble rising”,  and thank you PeterO for a super blog, I could not get the ERIC in AMERICA!

62. Thanks PeterO for keeping abreast of the comments.

    I’m pleased to see that someone else (Dr Whatson @ 49) has expressed my thoughts.

63. This was quite straightforward was pleasing – though did most of it way after the rest of you were blogging – that’s what happens when you get the paper at noon and then go out….
    Keyser @27 – we feel your pain – still struggling with Tuesday’s crossword so pleased to have a simpler one for Friday. Spotted the theme (as we knew Qaos has them).

    Thanks PeterO & Qaos – and we’ll continue to aim for the last posting place…..

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