Picaroon rounds off the year of Saturday crosswords with a puzzle that initially baffled me more than most of you, I suspect.
The Special instructions were: ‘Wordplay in all but one of the across clues is 17’. The only potential snag was that, in my paper version, there were no special instructions!
I’ve been trying to guess how I would / could have fathomed the theme without realising that 17ac was the key. On Monday, a couple of people commented on the blog of the Vulcan puzzle that one of the clues was different from the print version. I’d be interested to know how they got on. Mercifully, I’d had a quick look at the Guardian thread (where they don’t give any answers – on pain of death) to see what people had thought of it and found several mentions of a theme / special instructions, so went to the online version of the Saturday puzzle – and there they were.
Having been initially delighted to find Picaroon’s name on the puzzle, I began my solve in a rather (justifiable, I think) grumpy mood but it didn’t take long for Picaroon to regruntle me and I ended up, as ever, enjoying the puzzle.
I decided to start on the down clues, which were all very straightforward and soon had enough crossers to decipher 17ac and thus discover what I was looking for in the across clues – names of gods and goddesses – from Egyptian, Graeco-Roman and Norse mythologies.
It was fun winkling them out but it was all over more quickly than I’d have liked, although I’m not really complaining. It was very clever of Picaroon to manage to include so many. My favourites were CHORUS GIRLS, which, I suspect, might have been the one to alert me to the theme, DEADPAN, CAMEOS (my last one in) and, of the non-themed ones, APEX, OSTMARKS and ACID.
Many thanks to Picaroon and warmest wishes for a brighter and better 2021 to him and to all here.
Definitions are underlined in the clues
Across
4 What programmer does is computer-generated (6)
CODING
CG = computer-generated – ODIN, Norse god of wisdom, poetry, death, divination, magic …
6 Prince with second officers (8)
MARSHALS
HAL (prince) + S (second) – MARS, Roman god of war
9 Intelligence one’s giving Arabs (6)
IRAQIS
IQ (intelligence) + I’S (one’s) – RA, Egyptian god of the sun
10 Awful quality of discs, regularly scratched (8)
DIRENESS
Alternate letters (regularly scratched) of DiScS – IRENE, Greek goddess of peace
11 Dancers rolling cigs around both hands (6,5)
CHORUS GIRLS
An anagram (rolling) of CIGS round RL (both hands) – HORUS, Egyptian god of kingship and the sky
15 Old man welcomes card player with poker face (7)
DEADPAN
DAD (old man) round E (East – bridge player) – PAN, Roman god of the wild, shepherds, flocks, rustic music …
17 Lacking faith in vessel, do glide westwards (7)
GODLESS
Reversed hidden in veSSEL DO Glide
18 Crazy investing sadly returning capital (3,2,6)
DAR ES SALAAM
A reversal (returning) of MAD (crazy) round (investing) ALAS (sadly) – ARES, Greek god of war; Dar es Salaam is the former capital of Tanzania
22 Turned up clutching one lady’s undergarment (8)
CAMISOLE
CAME (turned up) round I (one) – SOL, Roman god of the sun
23 Person sacrificed sheep the wrong way (6)
MARTYR
A reversal (the wrong way) of RAM (sheep) – TYR, Norse god of war
24 Feeling of aversion in country, moving south-east (8)
DISTASTE
STATE (country) with the S (south) moved to the right (east) – DIS, Roman god of the Underworld
25 Computer’s flipping small parts on screen (6)
CAMEOS
A reversal (flipping) of MAC (computer) + EOS – Greek goddess of the dawn
Down
1 Correctly positioned current units on manoeuvres (2,4)
IN SITU
I (current) + an anagram (on manoeuvre) of UNITS
2 Are six fags put out? They may be in bed (10)
SAXIFRAGES
An anagram (put out) of ARE SIX FAGS – I wondered about the plural but found that there are over 400 species; I’d always wondered about the etymology – ‘rock-breaking’ – thinking that it probably referred to the fact that it grows in clefts of rock, but had never looked it up. This does seem to be the most likely explanation but I found that Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History said that he believed it alluded to its medicinal use in (among other things) dissolving kidney stones. I found the relevant passage in this weighty and erudite work on another site but then I lost the link and would have had to pay a considerable number of dollars to pass it on – some of the other medicinal uses were so bizarre that I was going to add the caveat ‘Don’t try this at home’
3 Fools Sun journalist given appraisal (8)
ASSESSED
ASSES (fools) + S (sun) + ED (journalist)
4 Mint drink isn’t quite finished in match (8)
COINCIDE
COIN (mint) – both verbs + CIDE[r] (drink not quite finished)
5 Fancy loading packing area on a slope (8)
DIAGONAL
An anagram (fancy) of LOADING round (packing) A (area)
7 Top ten introduced by a spinning record (4)
APEX
A + a reversal (spinning) of EP (record) + X (ten)
8 Band quiet after covers of Sinatra (4)
SASH
SH (quiet) after S[inatr]A
12 Idea that is sweeping angry elite away (10)
GENERALITY
An anagram (away) of ANGRY ELITE
13 On average, driving aid making a good comeback? (8)
REPARTEE
RE (on) + PAR (average) + TEE (golf driving aid)
14 Old German bread Frank’s putting away quietly (8)
OSTMARKS
[p]OSTMARK’S (frank’s) minus (putting away) p (quietly), bread being slang for money – someone else here will like this
16 Set out to break part of bike stand (8)
PEDESTAL
An anagram (out) of SET in PEDAL (part of bike)
19 Dave stripped, given a rating for divine figure (6)
AVATAR
[d]AV[e] + A TAR (a naval rating)
20 You’ll be sent on a trip by this leader of air force (4)
ACID
A[ir] + CID (police force)
21 Adult writing about love in book (4)
AMOS
A (adult) + MS writing) round O (love)
Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen. CAMISOLE got me started but CAMEOS defeated me.
Thanks Eileen. Online the special instruction was there: 17A in the event at once and too easily revealed the theme. Thereafter the deities danced out one after another from their hiding places and it was soon all over (TYR and EOS, the last two, though bunged in had to wait for Google afterwards for elucidation). I did like REPARTEE.
I revelled in the theme of this puzzle! [Mercifully for me, my online version had the Special Instructions!]
Thanks a million to Picaroon, and to our wonderful Eileen for the blog.
I got 18a first just from the enumeration which made me feel pretty chuffed, but had to come back later after I saw the “GODLESS” device to find ARES. Like you, Eileen, I did like 11a CHORUS GIRLS a great deal – in my case for the crazy visual the clue evoked – and I really appreciated the hidden HORUS…
I have to admit to cheating 2d SAXIFRAGES using the crossers. My bad.But I really enjoyed the interesting explanatory comment in the blog.
Thank you for your kind New Year wishes, Eileen. Thinking of the members of our crossword community all around the world and hoping for a better new year for us all – and indeed for our broader world community.
The GODLESS clue was easily solvable and enabled a fairly easy run through this puzzle.
In all the time spent in the DDR, I never heard the currency referred to as the Ostmark, it was always just the Mark (as opposed to the Deutsche Mark in the BRD). But google tells me that there was indeed an Ostmark after the first World War and that the name was also used in colloquial parlance in the BRD.
I enjoyed the puzzle.
Thanks go to Picaroon and to Eileen.
Re OSTMARKS (btw Eileen it’s plural in the solution) – “somebody else here will like this” – yes indeed! At least two people I should think. Given the construction of the clue, I think PostMark is entitled to count it as a namecheck; and I wonder if Picaroon had seen sheffield hatter’s ‘Frank’ witticism a little while back?
I can sympathise with Eileen’s initial disgruntlement (I very much like ‘regruntled’ by the way). No fault of Picaroon’s though, and in the end this turned out to be one of my favourite puzzles of the year. (The year just gone, that is 😉 )
I was not on the setter’s wavelength for this puzzle. Found some of the clues easier to guess/solve than to parse.
* It did not help that I failed to notice that ‘The Special instructions were: ‘Wordplay in all but one of the across clues is 17’. and only saw that when I came here to read the blog.
I see now that my failure to read the special instructions meant that I could not parse many of clues that I ‘solved’:
REPARTEE
DIRENESS
MARS/HALS
D/AR ES /SALAAm (except alas + mad <- )
TYR bit in MAR/TYR
EOS bit of CAM/EOS
SOL in CAMI/SOL/E
DIS/TASTE
DEAD/PAN
New: SAXIFRAGES, OSTMARK
Failed ACID, and gave up on the NE corner (5,9, 11 across even though I guessed GIRLS, plus 1 4 5 down)
Thanks, Eileen and Picaroon.
I was having trouble in that I could find plausible answers for a number of across clues, but part of the parsing seemed to be missing – and then I realised that there was a special instruction (d’oh! – no excuse as I was doing it online). Since I already had 17a, I just had to identify the gods in question (Ra, Horus, Ares) and the answers parsed perfectly. This also helped with the remaining across clues, though it was still pretty hard work. Unusually, I ended up with six clues for which I had all the crossers but couldn’t crack for some time. A tough challenge. Thank you to Picaroon and Eileen.
I only failed on 25a, even though I drive a VW EOS.
Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.
Loved this. Picaroon is so smooth.Too many good clues to mention.
In 13dn, REPARTEE, is perhaps “making a” of the def?
[Eileen, etymonline prefers your guess as to the origin of SAXIFRAGE to Pliny’s theory, pointing out that it’s a different word (calculus) for a gall stone.
No mention of the word PEDESTAL should pass without a link to The IT Crowd (YouTube, 2’24”).
Happy New Year, Eileen.]
*part of the def*
This felt like a continuation of, or, as they would say here in the States, a “lite” version of last week’s jumbo prize puzzle. Mercifully, it took a fraction of the time. This one was a lot of fun too, but there were what seemed like a couple of minor logical questions, which I’ll offer as observations, not gripes (since they are rather nit-picky).
If something is IN SITU it means it’s in its original location. This says nothing at all about whether it is in the correct position for whatever is about to be done to it.
Imagine a diamond, with axes (DIAGONALs) horizontal and vertical. If you’re not a mathematician, then in common parlance neither diagonal has a slope.
BTW I want to heartily endorse Eileen’s recommendation of the Indy Morph puzzle she made in the comments section@85 of this week’s Paul blog. Really well worth a visit – thanks Eileen.
Echoing Dr WhatsOn @11, no reflection on Picaroon’s excellent puzzle, but coming to it very soon after Maskarade’s hidden-fish find-a-thon, this did seem like more of the same with a different cast. (And the same problem, because there were Gods I didn’t recognise – Eos, Tyr, and, to my surprise, Irene – just as there had been unfamiliar fish.) Still, the only clue I had a real problem with was OSTMARK, which I didn’t know, and couldn’t parse, but which had to end in ‘mark’ and having realised ‘ost’ would fit with the crossing ‘s’, there it was in Chambers when I checked. (It helped that I dropped Latin in school and took German instead, something I’ve never seen as a mistake – although my wife disagrees. I did eventually make the Frank/Postmark connection, but well after the event.) I particularly liked CHORUS GIRLS, which did indeed give my my first Deity. Thanks, Picaroon, and Eileen – long may you remain gruntled!
I don’t often comment, but wanted to say how much I enjoyed this. GODLESS was my foi and set me merrily on my way. I suspect that as much as I enjoyed solving it, Picaroon enjoyed setting it more. It’s a tour de force to have so many divinities artfully hidden in one puzzle. Thank you to Picaroon for providing such fun and to Eileen for blogging so succinctly.
We got as far as “cameos”, which I thought really must be cameos but couldn’t parse it. We’d already struggled with apparently plausible answers not being fully clued, and at that point we looked online. There was the special instruction and everything fell into place….
… But then when we looked at the paper again, post completion, the rubric was actually there. Only not where good sense and custom would dictate, but instead beneath the grid and clues.
We imagined a typesetter or page designer or what have you who doesn’t particularly interest themselves in the cryptic.
Armed with the rubric this was an enjoyable if fairly mild challenge
Anotther excellent puzzle from Picaroon, with the usual excellent and much needed blog from Eileen, for which much thanks.
Failed to parse 23d MARTYR and 25a CAMEOS, not knowing those gods, but the solutions were gettable anyway. Failed sheepishly on 14d OSTMARKS, feeling guilty for missing out on the shoutout to PostMark.
Favourite among many was 11a CHORUS GIRL, and like Eileen I enjoyed this gruntling crossword.
Clever gridfill but a little disappointing to have the gateway clue so easy to solve. It made the across clues rather a write-in. Having said that, I read the special instructions to mean that all but one of the across clues excluding 17 were GODLESS, so by the time I came to the last (CODING), I never looked for the god and was puzzled by what I thought was a sort of strange CD. Can’t think why I didn’t see the obvious final deity.
Thanks, Picaroon and Eileen. I didn’t manage the OSTMARKS parse, so thanks again for that.
Andrew B @14 – Well I never, so it is! Who’d have thought of looking there?
Thanks, essexboy @5 – amended now.
(p)OSTMARKS! Nice one. Good to see our friend up there amongst the pantheon of gods.
I also liked SAXIFRAGES, both the clue and the plants.
Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.
My paper shop decided they would close all Christmas weekend, so I never got to see the printed Saturday paper (I’m off to get it now), and hence had no problem finding the rubric asI worked online. But DNF, as CAMEOS and REPARTEE eluded me. Pity, as it was a clever puzzle, with a good introduction from 17a. Phitonelly@16, I have no problem with a simple gateway clue!
Thanks for explaining OSTMARKS, which I could not parse. But (Anna@4 and others) the word was familiar, as I recall that, during the unification of the two Germanys, a big issue was merging the currencies, which were generally referred to in English as Deutschmark and Ostmark.
Thanks as ever, Eileen and Picaroon. A happy (and happier) new year to all.
I solved the gateway clue fairly early on, so this was a pleasant solve. Good setting to get all the gods in without obscurities.
I also particularly liked CHORUS GIRLS.
Thanks Picaroon and Eileen for the explanation of the lift-and-separate south-east, which perplexed me.
Many thanks Eileen for explaining Ostmarks. I struggled with O for old and stark’s for frank’s but got stuck on how M could be ‘quietly’ and gave up. All others went in eventually and with great enjoyment thanks Picaroon.
sjshart @ 19
OSTMARK. Yes, I think that’s right. It’s Deutsche Mark of course. Although, as you rightly say, everyone when speaking English writes and says it the way you did, though !! I do vaguely remember people talking about WESTMARK, or ‘die Mark dort drüben’. You had to go to the special shop if you wanted to spend them. Can’t remember what it was called now.
I completed this fairly quickly last Saturday night, a rarity for me for a Saturday puzzle. I’m not sure what it says about me but I saw the instructions in the paper version before I’d even read any of the clues.
essexboy @5. “I wonder if Picaroon had seen sheffield hatter’s ‘Frank’ witticism a little while back?” Well, perhaps he did, but I had certainly forgotten it, and so failed to parse OSTMARKS! This also left me one short as my doubt about the terminal S meant that CAMEOS failed to make an appearance, despite a speculative EOS being mentally pencilled in.
Being a paper solver I didn’t see the special instruction until long after I had already deduced it from DAR ES SALAAM, IRAQIS and 17a. As Andrew B has also noticed, it was printed underneath the standard paragraph about the prize puzzle not having a prize, which of course no one reads. Except Dormouse @23, who evidently reads the paper from the bottom up!
Strange – our paper had the instruction – makes you wonder how many different versions are out there?
I found this great fun albeit a missed opportunity to clue CAMEO in a down clue with Word Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjAantupsA
[Nice to see the Dormouse sitting next to the Hatter. Anna seems to have taken the place of the March Hare.]
Penfold @ 26
March Hare? What? Why?
It’s the New year and I’m determined not to be a grump. But I am still allowed to wag a finger or two, I hope 🙂
[Anna the March Hare @27
The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Dormouse sat between the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. They used him as a cushion while he slept.]
https://shop.bl.uk/products/the-mad-hatters-tea-party-card
Despite getting GODLESS straight away, I found this a struggle over several days and much research so I blame fatigue for putting in IRANIS for 9ac having seen a Wikipedia heading that mentioned RANI and gods without reading the full article. It appears that the Rani were a Slavic people who worshipped gods.It’s probably worth remembering RANI for another time.
I think jellyroll@29 is right, but for the wrong reason, and there is another possible answer for 9A, IRANIS. Ran is the Norse sea goddess and therefore parsing would be I for intelligence, RAN, and IS for one’s. My first time posting btw, but would like to say what an oasis of calm this site has been for me, especially during the last year. I am just a Sat Guardian solver but look forward to coming here for explanation, verification and clarification each Saturday morning to spur me on to do better the next week.
Eileen, I’m so glad you found the instructions and revised your opinion – I should be most unhappy to leave you anything less than gruntled! How odd that the instructions had migrated: on the proof I saw, they were in the appropriate position under the grid. (Which reminds me to say that, whilst IN SITU most often does indeed mean ‘in the original position’, it can also mean ‘in the appropriate position’, which is the definition given here.)
I think that Hugh’s take on a Boxing Day puzzle is that it should be relatively gentle (/ solvable with a hangover!)
“South-east” in 24 across is an interesting example of where Guardian style differs from, say, Times style. In the Times, it would say “moving south east”, i.e., prioritising the accuracy of the cryptic instruction. In the Guardian, prioritisation is given to the surface, with the expectation that solvers are happy to ignore e.g., punctuation or spacing to work out the functioning of the cryptic element.
Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy 2021!
Penfold @ 28
Hm. I don’t know what to think.
sheffield hatter@24
My experience was similar to yours. I found the special instructions the day after finishing the puzzle. The clues that led me to them were 6a, 11a, 17a, and DAR ES SALAAM which ceased being the capital of Tanzania in 1974. Good job I didn’t know until my son pointed it out on Sunday. He does the online version and told me that he was helped by reading the instructions and getting 17 as FOI so I had another look.
I’m not sure about puzzles that require us to look up stuff on Google. In this case my knowledge of non-Graeco-Roman deities is limited. I did know ODIN and HORUS but, had to Google TYR and, having I for intelligence and the crossers @9a, I found a goddess called RAN but none called RAQ, so failed.
Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.
Many thanks for dropping in, Picaroon.
It wasn’t you who had disgruntled me in the first place, so it wasn’t my opinion of the puzzle that needed revision. As essexboy @5 said, none of it was your fault.
I’m 100% in favour of the Guardian style – much more fun!
Hi Malevole @30
Sorry, I forgot to say welcome to 15² – I hope we’ll hear from you again!
Malevole@30 – yes, that was exactly my parsing of ‘Iranis’ as a solution to 9A, and it clearly works, so you are entitled to be a bit of a ‘malcontent’ about that. For me, the consequence was that, not having seen Ra in any of the other across solutions, I became convinced that he HAD to be the hidden god in 6A, my last across solution, which held me up badly and eventually caused significant damage to my tin tray.
Wow, we surprisingly managed to do this from the paper version without spotting the special instructions! Doh!
By a process of fitting words in that met the definition we managed to finish correctly but had questions about the parsing of all the across clues except for 17A (!)
The embarrassing thing is that the special instructions *were* actually present on our paper version below the “We regret that in the present circumstances we are unable to process prize entries… ” disclaimer. We just didn’t see them 🙁
Maybe living in the west country we had an early paper edition which had the instructions?
Malevole @30 and Spooner’s catflap @36 (I do like the spoonerised headgear!)
I wondered about IRANI too, but there are two problems:
(i) The Iranians aren’t Arabs;
(ii) They aren’t called Iranis! The Iranis do exist however; they are a community of Persian Zoroastrians who migrated to India during the British Raj. And, given my county allegiance, I can’t let the opportunity slip to give a shout out to one of their illustrious sons 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Irani
Benpointer @37 – I think all we paper solvers had the same versions (see comments 14, 17, 24, 33, etc.)
I thought I had looked so carefully but I would never have dreamed of looking there.
Well done on getting all the answers!
In case the typographer is looking, I think that I am most likely to see special instructions if they are above the across clues. They would have fitted in there on this occasion as the down clues would all have fitted in the rh column. I might have missed them under the grid.
Malevole@30
Welcome aboard. Glad to see that someone else solved and parsed 9a as I did. It works as well as Picaroon’s version.
me @38
I’ve just seen this which seems to undermine my point (ii)
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Irani
Not sure what Chambers would say?
Penfold@26: As long as no-one tries to stuff me into a teapot.
It was in italics. Everything else under the grid was in bold. That made it stand out to me.
I enjoyed this thematic crossword very much. It was well constructed and well clued, the clues showing the precision and clarity that I recognise in this setter’s puzzles. I got the godless theme not from 17a GODLESS but from the clues and answers to CAMISOLE, DISTASTE and MARTYR. IRAQIS and CAMEOS were my last two to get.
All very fair, and expertly done.
[Naturally, Ostmarks were known as Marks in the DDR, as Anna pointed out, just as East Berlin was known as Berlin – something I once had to know when driving to West Berlin through the DDR from the West and having to follow road signs away from Berlin and towards West Berlin.]
Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.
Alan B @ 43
You’ve just made me remember that in the DDR all the road signs to Berlin were always: ‘Berlin – Hauptstadt der DDR’.
Dormouse @42. “It was in italics. Everything else under the grid was in bold. That made it stand out to me.” All I saw at a glance was the prize disclaimer that has been there for months, and I only finally looked below it when I realised, from the missing wordplay, that there must be a special instruction. As Pino @40 points out, there was plenty of room for the rubric above the clues where it would have been immediately apparent to those of us who are not blessed with the vision of dormice!
Anna @44
How right you are! I’d forgotten (after, um, 40 years) that signage for Berlin in the DDR. However, I do remember one sign on the main highway, on the approach to Berlin, which just said starkly ‘Berlin’ going straight on and ‘West Berlin’ going off to the right. It was very important for a Westerner to take that exit.
Dormouse and sheffield hatter
I really don’t want to labour this but it was the very fact that ‘everything else’ was in bold – and, as you say, it’s been there for months – that made anything below it (for me) invisible!
On seeing the special instructions, I skipped straight to 17, and guessed that “westwards” indicated the trick, ie. all wordplay reversed. But the first across clue I tried set me right. My only other stumble was 10a, where I was trying to find variant spellings of the Norse god Vili in order to construct “VILENESS”.
Please can somebody explain how “writing” provides MS in 21d?
Essexboy@38 Thank you, and I am glad you like the user name – I do tend to flit in and out of these forums under different aliases, but may stick with this one for a bit. Ethnicity point taken, although I took the view that setters can (ahem!) stretch strict definitions a bit in this area – see the recent correspondence about ‘old Hindu’ = ‘Jain’.
Yes, Ronnie Irani. Having a different county affiliation (but why was Brian Hardie never given a go at test level?) I do remember Ronnie I as one of the parade of ‘new Bothams’, pre-Flintoff and Stokes – see also Capel, Pringle, DeFreitas, Lewis C., etc. And (oh dear!) Chris Cowdrey …
BiglyNifty @48
MS is the recognised abbreviation of ‘manuscript’ – it crops up fairly often in crosswords.
Spooner’s catflap @49
The use of multiple identities on this site is not acceptable (see the Site Policy) so please only use one.
I’m surprised that quite a few have said they didn’t know TYR. I suppose I had a thing about the Norse gods when I was a boy, and I remember being particularly struck by the story of Tyr and Fenrir (or Fenris Wolf, as I remember the name in the stories I read). https://norse-mythology.org/tales/the-binding-of-fenrir/ Quite a contrast with the Graeco-Roman gods and their petty vanity and jealousy.
And of course this god’s name is preserved in English in the name of the second day of the week (Tyr/Tiu/Tiw), just as his equivalent Mars is in France and other Romance cultures.
Great fun with the crossword pantheon. I enjoyed the ones everybody did.
Did anybody else have TAPE at 7d? (It sort of works.) It messed me up all week, till this morning when I said, “That pesky P has to be wrong, what else can 7d be?” Then I was able to get the last two acrosses.
Thanks Picaroon for the charming device and Eileen for the company.
Admin@51 So – let me understand this – if a setter who sets for different publications under different pseudonyms intervenes in a comment thread on one of their puzzles, as they sometimes do, using the setter name pertinent to that puzzle, and then intervenes in another comment thread using the setter name specific to that puzzle, the setter is in breach of Site Policy? That is the logical conclusion to be drawn from your intervention. Have you ever pulled a setter up for doing this?
Spooner’s catflap @54
You will note the “without a valid reason”. I included this for the very scenario that you have outlined. One ‘valid reason’ allows a setter to post comments using his/her real name (or a single alternative pseudonym) and his/her setting pseudonyms.
@50 Thanks, Eileen. I’d considered the woman’s title, multiple sclerosis, Microsoft, and (bit of a stretch) Marks & Spencer, before writing it in anyway.
Wonderful puzzle. Seeing that there was something up with all (but one) of the across clues was intimidating, and after I got 2d (1d was FOI) and then 17ac I didn’t understand how that was going to help, but then I got 18ac by figuring out “ALAS” backwards and then getting the capital, and was able to reverse engineer the theme from that. 7d was brilliant, 4d and 23ac and 12d also particularly nice IMO.
For 25ac I was first thinking PIXELS and then PANELS when I had to crossers (with “EL” as the deity), and the real answer came to me as I was going to sleep–I had to resist getting out to type it in. I also got hung up on 6ac for the longest time because I got the first A first and was convinced HAL had to be at the beginning, plus I was afraid it was going to be some UK officers I’d never heard of.
Got 13d and 14d (LOI) from the definitions but couldn’t parse them–thanks Eileen for the explanation. One thing–I think that the ‘s is part of the wordplay in 14d, “Frank’s” has to be “POSTMARKS.”
Thanks again Picaroon and Eileen.
Thanks Eileen for a fine digression on Saxifrage, which I guessed but had no idea what it actually was.
Include me with the other fans of this especially REPARTEE (I am no golfer but I like the double use of golfing terms in the wordplay) and OSTMARKS (when I finally understood it – spent ages trying to use MARKS for FRANKS, and puzzling over the rest, a variation on bagel@21).
But my favourite was CHORUS GIRLS – I would have struggled much more with the various gods (eg DIRENESS was my LOI as never heard of IRENE and it is not a common word) but HORUS features in Iron Maiden’s mighty “Powerslave” so came to mind fairly readily. (And Black Sabbath made an entire album called “TYR” although I have never heard it.)
Thanks Picaroon, this was a very nice entry level to the more complex crosswords where more than straightforward separation into definition vs wordplay is required.
Hi matt w @ 57
Re 14dn – thanks for that. I like to solve Saturday puzzles on the day and write a draft blog straightaway to work on during the week. Last Saturday was Boxing Day, so I probably wasn’t as careful as I should have been, so the answer to 14dn went in as OSTRAMARK – see essexboy’s comment @5, which prompted me to change the answer to OSTRAMARKS and should have alerted me to the related error, which I’ll amend now. Doubly sorry, since, as I said, it was one of my favourites!
I enjoyed your account of your journey through the puzzle – I have those going-to-bed moments, too. ;-)…
…and yours too, Gazzh @59, posted while I’ve been (slowly) typing. It’s particularly gratifying when late posters have evidently read the blog / comments – or both, often quite a feat these days. 😉
But Wot No comment from PostMark?
[Anna,
Shops in the DDR where you could spend hard currency were called ‘intershop’ (an abbreviation for ‘international, I think).]
BiglyNifty,
MS is the abbreviation for’manuscript’, hence “writing”.
[Ah, I see Eileen has already explained MS (without using the word “writing”, which I searched for to see if it had been answered).]
Tony Collman @63 – and BiglyNiftly had responded @56 two hours before you posted. 😉
[@Eileen, yes, I was reading through the comments which had appeared since I first contributed and noticed a couple of places I wanted to help. If I wait till I’ve read them all, I forget what I was going to say and to whom, so I search in the page for a keyword to see if someone else has made the point. In this case, I chose badly (“writing”), so missed your reply and its acknowledgement. If you compare the times of my two comments relating to this subject, you will see how long it took me to get to your response after explaining MS myself. Ho hum. At least I didn’t duplicate with “Intershop”, Although Anna doesn’t seem to have noticed it.]
@SH, I was surprised myself not to have heard of Tyr. Thanks very much for the link to that wonderful story.
@Valentine, I feel very confident in saying that Picaroon would never clue a T with “top ten” or similar, so it couldn’t be TAPE.
@Gazzh, Irene not common? I’m sure you must have come across a few women named after that goddess (although usually pronounced “Ai-reen”. There’s also ‘irenic’, meaning “tending to create peace, pacific” (Chambers).
An amazing construction — thanks Picaroon — this was my favourite prize since Puck’s carapace masterpiece in November. Setting a cryptic must be hard enough but to add a complex twist only increases my admiration for such a feat. Thanks Eileen as always for the blog.
[Tony Collman@65 and probably of no interest to others – Irene may be a common enough first name (although perhaps not in my generation – I can think of Irene Handl who is certainly older but couldn’t pick her out of a police line-up, not that this is ever likely to be necessary, and I do know a couple of Europeans called Irena that are in my age range) – but my point is that it is not particularly commonly known as the name of a God(dess) – and by that I mean that I don’t recall it from any Harryhausen film, metal song, or Gene Wolfe novel, such is the extent of my classical education. Not saying she didn’t feature, just that in GK terms she must be considered far more obscure than Athena, Aphrodite and so on.]
We use the paper version and spent some time with a number of down clues solved and answers for across clues, but found there was something missing from the wordplay for all the across clues. We eventually found the special instructions hidden away and went on to solve reasonably quickly.
We think it was an excellent puzzle finding gods to fit in all the across answers can’t be easy so thank you Picaroon for a fine Christmas puzzle.
And thank you Eileen for a very helpful blog.
[@Gazzh, fair enough. I myself haven’t listened to enough heavy metal to have heard of Tyr :-)]
Well I parked this ages ago not having expected an offering on Dec 26 but I’ve enjoyed it muchly in the interim. So thanks to Picaroon for the super-numerary distraction.
Eileen, it distresses me to think of you working to produce your blog from the paper version. For one thing it hints that you may have to type in all the clues yourself! without the benefit of copy+paste that modern life offers. À chacun son goût (as blancmange purveyors say) but please tell me that you have a pragmatic preference for working from paper so that I can relax. Thank you for this blog among blogs and a big HNY. [My reason for this outpouring is that the clue for DAR-ES-SALAAM is, in the online version, very slightly different from the above – which hints at the absence of Ctrl+V.] (I’m in danger of offering involuntary offence here – please pay no heed if it rankles in any way.)
I am sure only Eileen will see this post so it may be superfluous to offer benevolent aspirations for all setters, bloggers and contributors during the next solar orbit, but I do so nonetheless.
[And (Eileen) thanks for regruntle – I’ll use that.
Alphalpha @70
Many thanks for your concern – I’m really touched – but you can relax: I do indeed cut and paste from the print version (so I would have found the special instructions when I came to write the blog, if I hadn’t done so by accident before) and I have no idea how the ‘once’ dropped off the end of the clue. I’m very impressed that you spotted it and I’m certainly not rankled. 😉
Happy New Year!