Cyclops 675 – Remedy Target

12 comments on “Cyclops 675 – Remedy Target”

1. If you take 6 months as 6 x 4 = 24 weeks, then you have to find the lowest common multiple of 2,4,5 and 24. The factors of each are 2, 2.2, 5, 2.2.2.3. So taking the factors of each that encompass all factors, we get 2.2.2.3.5 which is 120 weeks, or about 2 years and 4 months. Hope I got that right.

2. The usual fun from Cyclops and so many good digs – thank you Mc for highlighting them. I’m going to nitpick that a “loom” is a device for weaving, not spinning (which is done on a spinner, spinning wheel, drop stone etc). But hey ho. Cheers Cyclops and here’s to the postie delivering my next Private Eye some time in the coming weeks…I seem to get post about every 3 days.

3. Skinny at #1 – thanks for that – I’d better clear my diary for a week in early September 2022…assuming we are all vaccinated and back to ‘normal’ by then!

   TheZed at #2

   –  I’m not sure if the ‘digs’ are intended by Cyclops, or just the products of my fevered imagination!

   – Fair point on the loom of GLOOM…

   – My Eyes have been hitting my doormat very sporadically, if at all, during lockdown…however, my back-up is that they normally update the puzzle on the website on the Friday of the week of publication, and they include an AcrossLite version which prints reasonably well from that software.

4. Skinny at #1 – sorry for misleading you…it is Cyclops every 2 issues, so every 4 weeks…except for when the Eye throw in a 1 week or 3 week edition, as they are sometimes prone to do around Xmas/Easter…which makes the calculation a bit unpredictable!

5. The zed wouldn’t weaving be an alternative to spinning though?

6. I think you’d be jumping the gun, mc_rapper.  Your Guardian Genius posts here are 26 weeks apart.  And 2.2.5.13 => 260 weeks, ie five years hence.  Whatever, it’ll probably seem more or less normal then anyway.

7. octothorp @5: to make a cloth from e.g. wool you first need to wash and card the wool, to tease it out. Then it needs spinning which binds together lots of short fibres into a long, strong string – the same would be true of the short fibres of plants such as cotton or flax. Finally you can then link the strings together in your chosen manner to make a 2 (or 3) dimensional shape – weaving (on a loom), knitting, crochet, marudai braiding tablet weaving etc. So spinning is a necessary preparatory step before weaving. It’d be like calling “ploughing” “sowing” (but not “sewing”!), or “kneading” “proving”,

   I learned a lot of this from friends who do these various crafts – and I helped build a spinning wheel for one of them from an old chair and a bicycle wheel. I’d never broken the process down  into separate stages before either.

8. No problems with the crossword,but I have to thank TheZed for making me realise I had no idea what spinning was, even though I probably first heard of it over 60 years ago in fairy tales. I have now watched some YouTube and understand. Fascinating.

9. The Friday bank holiday and the suspension of Saturday postal deliveries have driven me to AcrossLite for Cyclops 676.  The covers of the latest Eyes are usually (tantalisingly!) displayed at the start of the Peston programme on ITV on the Wednesdays that one’s subscription copy used to arrive in a bygone age.

10. I’m accustomed enough to the occasional bit of semantic looseness –  something like a word being a synonym of a synonym – not to be bothered, and many people seem not even to notice them.  So, for example, even the spin/weave confounding didn’t bother me: it’s a not uncommon association.   But I do find myself surprised and jarred by the “I’ve” in 3d, despite the required answer being obvious, and I’m surprised no-one else has commented on it.  I just don’t get (Cyclops’s => I’ve) as legitimate.  I seem to being asked to make unjustified mental transformations, perhaps along the lines of (Cyclops’s => mine => Cyclops says it’s his => Cyclops says “I’ve” … => I’ve).  Or am I perhaps missing something or not getting out enough …

11. lemming at #10 – this has obviously been festering at the back of your mind for at least a week!…

    I read the ‘s in 3D as a contraction of ‘has’ in the sense of obligation, rather than ownership – so if someone said ‘lemming’s got to do <something>’, then from your perspective you might think ‘I’ve got to do <something>’.

12. “Jane has got” shortens naturally to “Jane’s got”.  “James has got” does not shorten naturally to “James’s got”.  Certain clues work better for a setter called Brummie than a setter called Cyclops.

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