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178 comments on “General Discussion”
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Thank you, Admin/Gaufrid, for putting an end to the trolling. I hope that means Anna and Cellomaniac will return forthwith with their intelligent, amusing and enjoyable contributions to these threads.
Question for Cellomaniac – which is the best recording of the Bach Cello Suites in your opinion? I rate the Rostropovich highly; as far as I know my favourite cellist, Jacqueline du Pre, didn’t record them all.
Thanks for your thoughts, cruciverbophile. I do plan to reengage, as I’m hoping the site will be a happier one after this unfortunate interlude, and I too hope that Anna returns soon.
You are correct that du Pre didn’t record all the Bach Suites. She recorded the first two while still in her teens, but never came back to them. How she would have played them in full maturity is something we’ll sadly never know.
The Rostropovich set is indeed one of the best. I highly recommend the DVD version – the same performance as on the CD – in which he discusses his interpretations (with illustrations on the piano!) before each suite.
Which is the best is a matter of personal taste. There are so many good versions out there – Casals of course, Gendron, Starker, Isserlis, Ma, etc. (I have 13 in my CD collection.) My personal favourite is Pierre Fournier on DG. His tempos, phrasing and rhythmic approach come closest to what I hear in my head when I read them.
Another more recent recording is next on my list after Fournier and Rostropovich. It is a live recording from Wigmore Hall by the English cellist, Colin Carr. I heard him play them in Ottawa shortly after he recorded them, and I loved his performance. Knowing that the live experience can bias you as a listener, I approached his recording with some trepidation, but it was just as good.
Thanks for your reply, Cellomaniac, and good to see you back. I discovered the suites only relatively recently, and bought the Rostropovich after hearing it online. 13 recordings of one piece is pretty impressive! I have a large CD collection but I don’t have that many duplicates of anything.
Will there be a solution to FT 16,702 by Wanderer? I think I’ve solved it, but there are a couple of answers I’m not sure about.
EdK@USA
I’ve just posted an analysis of the clues.
Gaufrid
Thanks very much.
This is further to the exchange with Van Winkle in the Crucible blog of Friday Feb 5, @117 & 118.
Van Winkle:
I think you have hit the nail on the head with your comment that the blog has changed character since the pandemic. I agree that there are more comments, and they stray more often from the narrow discussion of the intricacies of the day’s crossword. I suggest that there are two pandemic-related reasons for this:
1. As people have become more housebound, more of them have gravitated to cryptic crosswords to engage their brains. Some are newbies, and some are people who have returned to the cryptic world after a hiatus. Thus the pool of commenters has increased, and the number of comments has increased accordingly.
2. People have lost a lot of their casual social contacts, and they miss the opportunities for sharing their likes and dislikes, their jokes and observations. 225 offers a safe, friendly and relatively troll-free venue (rare in social media these days) for such expression. When you meet someone with a common interest, to want to explore other interests with them is a natural social interaction.
Where we agree to disagree is that you see this as a negative development, whereas I see it as enriching the experience of reading and contributing to the blog.
Mind you, there are inevitably topics that individual readers will have no interest in. For me it is British popular music bands and their repertoire. however, I do not find those discussions annoying – I just skip over them.
But there are also discussions about things that I am happy to learn about – byways of history, linguistics, science, geography. Our community has a wealth of knowledge that I enjoy tapping into. And I enjoy the puns, limericks, Two Ronnies links, etc. It all makes me feel connected to the very interesting people behind the pseudonyms.
We are probably both curious to see what happens to 225 when the pandemic abates and we return to more normal social lives. Will it return to its pre-covid state, or has the genie been let out of the bottle, never to be put back?
Cheers,
Cellomaniac
cellomaniac @7
Many thanks for your input, I agree with what you say. At the start of the first lockdown, I decided to relax my moderation of the site, because people needed to have an outlet for interaction online to replace that which had been lost in real life.
I have continued to do so, despite the fact that some of the puns have become excessive, at least for me. I’m not saying that anything goes, but social interaction is important, even if it can only be done online at the moment. If there is a return to pre-Covid, which personally I doubt, this site will remain troll-free (apart from the very rare exception) so long as I am in charge. This site has been described as an ‘oasis’ and a ‘haven’ on the web and I intend to keep it that way.
Gaufrid@8,
Thank you for all the work you do to make and keep this site so special – oasis and haven are good descriptors. Also, the new look is great. Please stay in charge for as long as you can.
cellomaniac – if Gaufrid is happy, then I cannot be unhappy. But it is a little dismaying that the debate that was had in the Autumn on increase in comments and the subsequent issue of Comment Guidelines has been followed by even weightier Guardian blogs. Some do appear to be interpreting the new guidleines as “write whatever you want as long as you put square brackets around it”. And as only a limited number of people are doing this, the enrichment is actually quite restricted. My concern is that it has become much less straightforward to have constructive discussions about the crossword through all the clutter of off-topic comment, and severl longstanding commentators do no longer participate.
It is a puzzlement to me why this sort of interaction is not taken to other platforms, where a much deeper social engagement would be possible and real friends made.
Hear! Hear! to your comments @9.
[Long debate, this. As you know from previous, VW, I value and enjoy all the personal history and culture that crosswords elicit, not as “clutter” but as enrichment, human sharing. And I applaud Gaufrid for allowing it.]
grantinfreo, I don’t think you need the square brackets here on General Discussion
cruciverbophile @1, cellomaniac @2: For me, Ma’s 1983 recording remains the gold standard but I will go and search out Colin Carr. Wigmore is special – it is ideal for that kind of music and I can only imagine how unique that recording must be.
Cellomanic @7: I can only speak for myself as a newcomer to cryptics since March last year (not quite true – I’ve struggled with them in my 54 years including a spate of solving in the late 80s when I was commuting more regularly but then dropped out in so many ways…). I’m what’s called in management speak an “Individual Contributor” – in other words, my nearest co-workers are 4,500 miles away and we’ll speak at-most once-a-week. That means that intellectually I’ve been very isolated (goodness, that sounds arrogant but it isn’t meant to) as most of my kicks (the legal ones I’m willing to admit to) will have been at my choirs, my piano group, my part-time academic role (not been on campus for 7 months now) my concert visits with mates; the people I share things in common with. All that has gone.
I’ve been utterly amazed at the depth-of-knowledge and humour from the members of 225 and their willingness to teach newbies and oldbies (?!) alike – every day I learn two, three or more new things and I feel some level of connection to like-minded people.
I treat the site as I do the Internet, the cinema or the television – if I don’t like something, there is an off-switch available.
VW @10: “It is a puzzlement to me why this sort of interaction is not taken to other platforms, where a much deeper social engagement would be possible and real friends made.” There isn’t one that would be appropriate for the relatively small numbers of people involved. Facebook is about the closest but that would simply dilute an already small pool. There are aspects of FB which I think it would be useful to have on 225 but honestly the level of traffic is very, very low compared to the several hundred emails most of use wade through each day. Even when the Guardian blog hits a century that is small-beer compared the other things that bleep and pester me 24/7.
There are real friendships being formed – I’ve certainly exchanged emails on a personal level with several of the contributors and setters – turns out that in real life several of us have much in common and may have even crossed paths in the past.
Life is pretty horrible for most people at the moment – 225 does allow me to feel that for a few minutes each day I can live slightly higher up Maslow’s triangle before the mundane kicks in again and I’m back to eat, sleep, repeat…
I’m indebted to Gaufrid and the other bloggers for keeping me sane these past 10 months.
David
MaidenBartok@13 – I am not denying that some think that the way the Guardian blog has gone is brilliant. I am pointing out that it has come at a cost that some of us are not particularly delighted to be paying. As someone who is a late solver and considers it respectful to read all the comments previously made before making one of my one, it is not a simple job to turn a blind eye to the enrichment/trivia. Perhaps a change in policy would be helpful – square brackets around the comments relating to critical discussion of the crossword would make them easier to spot.
But as apparently the last one standing, I concede defeat.
Van Winkle, surely last man standing is the one who remains undefeated?
Van Winkle@14.
You are not alone. As another late solver I find it a bit dispiriting to come here at 11.00pm to find a 100 comments but not so bad that I don’t read them before usually deciding that I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said. No one wants to know how much I enjoyed a puzzle and which clues I enjoyed unless there is a potentially interesting reason why and I would prefer it if others felt the same.
I find quite a lot of the digressions of interest, particularly the linguistic ones from Anna, Gervase and others which one could just about accept as relevant. Some others are amusing to me but may not be to others. The problem for any protocol is accounting for tastes for which of course there is no accounting.
MaidenBartok@13 said that he has exchanged personal emails with contributors and setters. Perhaps others could follow his example?
I have a fear of becoming the club bore and this inhibits my contributing.
Pino,
“No one wants to know how much I enjoyed a puzzle and which clues I enjoyed”
The setter might, although there’s no guarantee they’ll read your comment.
After the recent spate of reversing or turning over birds with grebes going back to help form icebergs and skuas and auks mirroring each other I wondered if there were others. I discovered that when a gannet turns round ten nag, and there’s a backward egret in detergent. I presume contains a reversing emu. A Rail turning round becomes a liar. If you go back to October you find a coot and a knot can colloquially tonk you. A Norse goddess and a dog can go round to give a Godwit, and a linnet can turn to give a very convincing victory.
Phew Petert. You’ve done your homework. I suspect we’ll be hard-pressed to find others though I might volunteer the smew – but only because I’ve discovered a wem is a flaw, stain or scar and, presumably, one can have more than one of them.
On a separate note, I know others find it less interesting but you and I have exchanged comments about repetition of solutions quite often. And I don’t feel they’re the most obvious of words either. it continues to intrigue.
Petert – much sympathy. You must be really stuck for something to do!
On the subject of repeated solutions, I suppose you get to notice these more if you do the other crosswords that are blogged on this site. I did an Everyman recently: ‘Catholic Church upset seeing Celtic half back’ and then Puck in this week’s Guardian: ‘Varied the City football team, after first half’s reversal’. I understand that the identity of the new Everyman setter is a closely guarded secret, but could it be?
sheffield hatter and Postmark. Yes, it’s rather sad but makes you appreciate the time and effort that must go into setting a crossword.
Unless I have missed something I am concerned we haven’t heard of our lovely spider lady lately. Is Arachne ok?
I have no first hand knowledge about Arachne, but she is reported to be well but otherwise occupied at the moment.
Re the number of posts, I print off all the weekday and the prize on the day the solution comes out for that prize and start solving on the Sunday or Monday so I’m always about a week behind. So not only are there always dozens (sometimes over 100) posts when I come here but I still persevere adding my twopennorth even though I know no one reads them (apart from Eileen, god love her and I imagine Gaufrid). And apart from the awful puns (awful and drawn out too much) I wouldn’t change how this site has evolved. Keep up the good work Guafrid
Sorry not the solution for the prize, I meant the actual puzzle itself.
Sugarbutties
I believe that whoever blogs the puzzle you comment on will get an email with your comment in (not just Eileen when she’s the blogger). In addition, I and anyone else who sets up a feed from the comments to any post they’re interested in (in my case, any I’ve commented on) will see your comments.
Hi Tony. How do you set up a feed ?
I completed reading the comments on yesterday’s Enigmatist/Soup tribute to Auracaria this morning and was encouraged to see they moderated somewhat as time went on. I happened to watch this TED talk by Monica Lewinsky from 2015 last night and would recommend that everyone watches it before posting online comments. https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread
Gaufrid – please feel free to take this post down if you feel it is inappropriate or oversteps the mark.
Nice one, WhiteKing. Thank you for posting that link.
Sugarbutties@27, I use the service at https://feedly.com. If you search for “RSS feed reader”, you will find lots of options.
Thank you – sounds far too techie for me
Thanks sh@29
Sugarbutties, Feedly is really very friendly. I’ve just added a feed from comments to the Araucaria tribute page. All I had to do was:
o Copy the URL from the 15² page
o Open Feedly with a touch on the app’s icon on my phone
o touch the large + sign in the options along the bottom
o paste the address into the search box which opens
o select with a touch the appropriate option from those offered
o select with a touch which of my folders I wanted the feed to appear in (but you don’t need to set up folders if you haven’t got many feeds)
o Touch “Done”
That’s it. It’s equally simple to do on PC, but you go to the website instead of using an app. Obviously, you have to register for an account before you can do all that. Good luck.
PS It’s thanks to having a feed from this page that I’m able to respond to you without having to check this page all the time.
No really, I was lost at “Copy the URL” but again many thanks
Sugar Butties @34. Heh heh! It’s really not at all difficult. At some point you worked out how to read and comment on these blogs. Come on, now: deep breath, you can do it.
The URL is the address of the page you are on. E.g. the URL of the 15^2 general comments page is “https://www.fifteensquared.net/general-discussion/”. You should be able to see that near the top of your screen now (you might see “http” rather than “https” — doesn’t matter for your purposes). If you right click on it, you will be offered the option to copy it. If you then right click on the box in Feedly where it asks where you want a feed from, you will have the option to “paste”.
I think the blogger with the best name is Turbolegs and the setter with the best legs is Serpent. Of course, this is just a personal opinion so I would be interested to hear the view of other people on the matter.
Tony Collman @33: Thank you for this! I had no idea about Feedly although I do know abotu RSS feeds (which I don’t think 225 has). Maybe one less source of data-drown now…
MaidenBartok, glad it helped someone, even if Sugarbutties is still paralyzed with technophobia …
Last week Pasquale informed us that stum and must were a rare pair of anagrammatic synonyms. Can anybody think of any others?
Although I can’t think of any at the moment, Petert, I do like the fact that Stanhope and phaetons are anagrams, both referring to types of carriage.
Vile and evil and maybe blue and lube (depending on how one uses it).
I suppose if you are a right-wing Swiss then veil would be both vile and evil.
…and vlei is a word. Being a swamp, it’s not particularly nice either.
Re anagrammatic synonyms: Welsh has a pair of reversed synonyms! The standard word for “now” is “nawr”, but in North Wales they also use “rwan” which means the same thing.
ENRAGED and ANGERED are pretty close as synonyms, though arguably the former has a stronger implication than the latter.
Not exactly synonyms, but altitude and latitude are geographical anagrams.
Dmitri Borgmann, a US actuary and wordmaster, published two books in the 1960s, Language on Vacation and Beyond Language, with a large number of anagram-synonyms, as well as some “antigrams” – anagram-antonyms. Wish I could get hold of the first book, which has a lot of one-word examples; the second mostly has phrases (TURN THE RASCALS OUT! = OUST THE TARNAL CURS!) and names (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = HIS PRAISE WE ALL MAKE).
Does anyone have ideas on how to indicate that the number of a clue (1A or 6D say) is part of the clue?
I have set a clue where the answer is an anagram of the clue number and don’t know how to indicate that
Hi David, it’s difficult without knowing the full clue but have you thought of “in this position” or “found here” or ”on the left”… just some ideas
David@47,
one of the first comments I ever made on 15² concerned a clue which, as far as I recall, used the clue number (which was 11) as the definition, meaning a football team (I think). I don’t think the unusual usage was indicated at all; you just had to work out what was going on. I think quite a few commenters didn’t like it, but don’t let that stop you. Unfortunately, it was so long ago that it seems to be beyond the reach of the 15² search function.
Tony @49
It was your sixth comment on 15². The puzzle under discussion was Guardian 27,010 set by Paul and your comment was #15.
Someone I’m trying to help is looking for an Araucaria puzzle, from the 90s we think (certainly pre-dating 2000) with a “bridge” (the card game) theme that uses north, south, east, west references. I wonder if any one recalls this or knows where to look. Not much to go on, but thanks in advance for any ideas
Gaufrid@50, wow, magic! Thanks very much for that. Did you find that with Google advanced search? Or do you have every comment ever made by me against my email?
Nobody said they didn’t like at all. Probably me projecting back my present-day pickiness.
I think that post may also mark my first interchange with the ever-thoughtful AlanB.
The comment which is most personally significant for me, from a while later, is one where I wondered if anyone could advise me where I could find out more about cryptic cluing and in particular, as I (perhaps imperfectly) recall, the use of the question mark at the the end of a clue. You, Gaufrid, were kind enough to tip me off about Alberich’s excellent site, for which many thanks, once again.
Tony @52
No need for Google in this instance. WordPress provides a comment search facility and I just used your email address to find that you had posted 1180 comments, the first being on 3/4/2016. I didn’t have to read many to find the one relevant to the clue that used its number as part of the wordplay.
Gaufrid @53
Yes, of course. I’m actually an editor on a site that uses WordPress myself, so I should have realized how easy that would be, especially given that I said it was one of my first. Thanks again. I really enjoyed seeing it. I ought to try and keep my current comments as short!
Today my first puzzle in a cycle was due to appear in The Hindu but it has not.
No puzzle is lying with the paper.
The crosswords were ready but I did not send them. I decided to call it a day! This after a phenomenal, uninterrupted supply of grids over more than 20 years.
I am happy that I took this decision just before going to hospital for the third time in as many weeks.
Now I am back home OK but I am not in any state to do sustained work.
It is going to be a withdrawn life.
I have enjoyed being here and at the Crossword Centre and DIY COW.
I shall treasure the memories.
Bye.
Rishi
Rishi – I had noticed your recent absence but was not aware of your ill health. So sorry to hear you have been so badly affected, and sad that you find it necessary to give up crosswords – both setting and solving. I hope you eventually feel recovered enough to join in here from time to time. Best wishes.
Rishi @56 – may I add my good wishes to those of sheffield hatter. As you have been indisposed recently, you may not be aware that you made an appearance in Imogen’s puzzle last week (see here, 23dn). I’d like to think the tribute was intentional.
[sorry, @55]
For those who leapt to Vlad’s defence during the Afro bruhaha, today’s 12ac paedophile business drew in the same objectors and a few crossed from defence to attack today. I think this best sums things up.
Medvedox.
“hi @PierreLeNoir
my comment in reply to Nellanpets (not a frequent poster to the cryptic forum, I notice) was prompted by the ludicrous assertion that the compiler was making no connection to child abuse, but that any inference of this was in the (presumably warped) minds of the solver. My justification for saying this is that I compile cryptic puzzles myself (full disclosure: Indy/Knut FT/Julius Telegraph Toughie/Hudson and TES/Magnus) and I can tell you that this is absolute rubbish…the compiler of this puzzle (Richard Browne, former crossword editor of The Times) knew full well what he intended to convey. My issue is with the editor (yes I know, sour grapes, he rejected my puzzles etc)
When I solve the Guardian crossword (a 40 year and counting addiction) over my breakfast chucky egg, I don’t want to have to think about children being assaulted by priests, and I don’t want to have the issue conflated with the affable image of Santa.
One final point – I’ve had quite a few of my own clues rejected on taste grounds and I wouldn’t consider myself at all priggish, but I wouldn’t dream of submitting this clue for publication. You might well disagree of course.”
Rishi, you will be missed. I really liked your insights and tales.
Rishi
I’m another who is sad to see you go and hope you resume solving even if you don’t feel up to setting. As I said in a reply to one of your posts, I’ve really enjoyed the insights into Indian life through your contributions. A bit like an Anna from India! Enjoy your rest but do come back and good luck with recuperation.
Taffy @59. You did right to suggest moving the discussion of 12a in today’s Vulcan to this thread, and your apparent contrition on the Crucible puzzle the other day was welcome, but you couldn’t resist a sly dig, could you: “Shock for a criminal revisited”, indeed.
I think the last time we saw you Gaufrid was remarkably tolerant and did not bar you from the site, but your evident glee at this opportunity to stir things up leaves a sour taste. I hope you are not enjoying yourself too much. Those of us who use this site regularly, and whose opinions are respected, are entitled to criticise the setter’s judgment and the editor’s apparent negligence. You: not so much.
Just had a quick look at the discussion below the crossword on the Guardian site, and quite a few commenters have admired the clue for 12a, using the phrases “very nice”, “don’t see any quibble” and “made me smile”! First real negatives seem to be around 8am GMT, so earlier ones are probably not UK/Ireland, though the clue was still being defended/appreciated around 11am.
sh @63: thanks for that analysis of the timings of comments on the Graun site. As you will have gathered my earlier comment on the Vulcan blog was based on the situation pre 8 am. What upset me was not so much those who claimed to see no disturbing reference, but rather those who were fully aware of the deliberate offence and responded with a conniving wink.
Taffy @59: for what it’s worth (and as should be clear from the above) I’m with you and Melvedox/baerchen on this.
Both: re newly arrived upstarts who challenge the umpire – just occasionally they have a point.
essexboy – This: “those who were fully aware of the deliberate offence and responded with a conniving wink.” Yes, this left another sour taste in my mouth. It’s not about “choosing to be offended”, it’s recognising something totally distasteful being used in a context where we expect wit and entertainment.
OK, so not everyone recognises how distasteful the 12a clue was (as the responses btl on the Guardian crossword site show), but surely it’s the editor’s job to recognise where the line should be drawn – as Medevox/baerchen acknowledged in the quote provided by Taffy @59. I know I was seemingly alone in finding Imogen’s “Death – by hanging? (8)” shocking, and I would still defend Vlad’s “Shock for a criminal (4)”, but if the editor had been looking for this sort of thing we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
sh @62. and later. Others had alluded to the kerfuffle over the notorious clue from from a while ago so apologies for bringing it to the forefront. The thing was that Vlad was gracious enough to admit that the surface was not meant to be literal given the answer, meaning that no offence was intended. Something I was absolutely ok with, it just struck me as needlessly careless. Today the setter was called out, rightly so, by folks I have far, far more respect for. Essexboy, Eileen, Medevox, and many others. You make an exceptionally well observed point regarding “Death – by hanging” (Curtains). Witty, clever etc… traumatic for anyone who’s witnessed it. Apologies for not piping in at the time, but was under semi-censure. I suppose it’s where one draws the line. If you go to see certain comedians these days, they do push the boat..a long way out. I’m sure some jokes will send a nasty electric shock through a few audience members. Come with the show unfortunately. Do puzzles need this? I always the Private Eye one was for this. I have briefly scanned it, but the previous edition’s solutions leave little doubt as to what to expect.
Therefore apologies to you and Gaufrid and anyone else for conflating the two notorious clues. I should have addressed this one alone.
Enuff. I don’t want to be labelled a Troll again.
My thoughts on 12ac, first of all a bit creepy and certain to cause far worse feelings in some of our solvers.
Perhaps less important it is in an awful clue anyway in crossword terms – ” sacked for toying ” is so clumsy and inelegant for a cryptic definition. In fact the whole crossword is poorly set on the whole, perhaps the worst I have seen in the Guardian since Rufus retired. I do not mind crosswords being easy, many people are learning to do cryptics all the time , as I was once, but I do object to lazy cluing.
sheffield hatter @62 – presumably you are awarding yourself the status of someone whose opinions are respected and entitled to criticise the setter’s judgment and the editor’s apparent negligence. Somewhat contradicted by your comment @65 that you would still defend “shock for a criminal”, particularly as the clue was demonstrated to be technically incorrect in its equivalence of shocks and afros. As I recall your contribution to that particular debate, it was largely to deny the experience that several solvers had documented and thus not particularly to be respected.
Can’t we just disagree without getting so pointlessly ad hominem?
Rishi@55
It’s sad that we will no longer hear from you with your interesting and thoughtful comments and sadder still to hear of your poor health. Thank you for all your contributions here and elsewhere.
Rishi @55. Best wishes from me who recalls you from diy cow and elsewhere. Whatever you decide to do now I hope you will be healthy and happy.
Oh dear, here we go again (re: the notorious 12a). I solved the clue, enjoyed the wordplay, understood the implications, thought no more of it, and moved on to the next clue. Now, thanks to a large number of comments (many from commenters whose contributions I enjoy) I have been made to feel guilty about not having a visceral reaction to the offensiveness of the clue. Mea culpa, I admit, but you have spoiled the enjoyment that I once had for this particular crossword, and made me uncomfortably aware of my shortcomings as a sensitive person.
Cellomaniac@73: Sensitivities vary, and what is glaringly offensive to one passes another by completely. For instance, I found the inclusion of the crude Australian sexual verb “root” (clearly clued as that meaning) in a recent Everyman surprising, but nobody else seems particularly bothered by it, so it’s probably just me. The question is whether there are some sensitivities that everybody should be expected to possess in order to be considered civilised? Whatever these are, they seem to change with fashion (racism is now the unforgivable sin and sexual suggestiveness tolerated, whereas in Victorian times the reverse was true). It’s a minefield out there.
cellomaniac @73 – in the previous discussion no claim was made that the clue was inherently racist, just that it was carelessly worded so that you could be taken down a path where you thought that it might be. Either because it looked like a cryptic definition for the haircut of a criminal or through a confusion of anagrinds that afros and criminals were being equated. Many people clearly didn’t have either of these solving experiences, which is their good fortune rather than their failing.
I’ve just got round to starting to read the debate about a clue started (on this thread, continued, apparently from the blogpost to a puzzle) by SH@62, but find I’m baffled. Is this a reference to the clue for FATHER CHRISTMAS, “One’s stocking up, ready for the occasional visitor to drop in”? If so, can someone explain to me what is supposed to be offensive about it? If not, can someone explain (or, ideally, provide a link to) what seems to occupy about a dozen comments here?
Tony @76
The discussion relates to 12ac in this puzzle.
Tony Collman @76. Gaufrid’s link is to the puzzle by Vulcan last Monday, same as yours, but the clue for 12a has been updated “as the original conflicted with editorial guidelines”. It used to read “Priest on holiday who’s sacked for toying with children”.
Dear Gaufrid,
I’ve noticed during the last few days that I have to re-enter my user name & email address each time before posting a comment, although I have checked the “remember me” box. I’m not aware of having made any changes to my browser and haven’t deleted any cookies so I wondered if this issue was unique to me?
Best wishes, Rob
Hi Rob
This issue is not unique to you, many people have reported having the same problem. Your name and email address are stored in a cookie created by your browser and it would appear that, for some reason or other, the browser stops being able to find the cookie or the cookie has become corrupted. Your browser is therefore unable to autofill the comment fields.
The ideal solution would be to delete all 15² cookies and start again but this has been found not to work in some instances. The only reliable method to resolve this issue is to clear the entire browser history/cache, including all cookies, before starting afresh.
Thank you Gaufrid
SH@78, ah, thanks. The bits I had glanced at seem to make more sense now. Perhaps I will bother to go back and read it all. Then again …
Can anyone give a dictionary reference for the word ‘cheat’ as used by solvers who comment on 15² when they have resorted to reference works and the like to complete a puzzle? I only ask because https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/148402241 and I thought it unfair not to give them an opportunity to answer.
Brendan’s poetry-themed guardian puzzle of Wednesday March 31 (#28,407) inspired a plethora of humorous verse, both old favourites and original contributions. If they are not already familiar with it, commenters might be interested in a wonderful story in The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem – The First Sally (A) or Trurl’s Electronic Bard. There is some remarkable versifying in it.
Tony Collman@83, I’ve wanted to ask this for a while. I have gotten good enough to complete cryptics (mostly FT), but I not only use Google or Wikipedia for a reference or two with most, I also need Chambers Word Wizard to figure out a few words from crossers and occasionally an anagram. Generally I see how the parsing works when I find a fitting word. What is the prevailing sentiment among veteran cryptic solvers? Is it “cheating” to use the wizard? Opinions from anyone?
Tony Collman @83. I don’t think there’s a dictionary definition for ‘cheat’ used in the way you refer to. I reckon it’s just a shorthand for “I prefer to solve by myself without resort to reference works, Google, online forums or other people’s suggestions; I know it’s not cheating to have to resort to such things, but I feel like I’ve failed to complete (by my own rules, nobody else’s) if I do so”.
If you can think of a better word, please let me know!
Tony Collman@83 I once asked what people considered to be cheating, and I think the inappropriateness of the word was pointed out to me, but it’s clear some people have much higher standards of what constitutes a DNF than I do. I echo what sheffieldhatter@86 says about it being a shorthand, but I still hear my teachers’ voices saying “You’re only fooling yourself, you know” whenever I have to Google a list of Caribbean Islands or worse, use a wordfinder.
jeff@85 maybe I am a veteran, done the Guardian every single day since 1995. I think there are no actual rules for this, merely one’s own personal guidelines which probably change as you get better at solving.
I will never use anything now to assist me with the Guardian, not even the Chambers dictionary until it is all finished. I may check things in Chambers afterwards .
For the Azed crossword I try to complete it without Chambers just as a personal challenge but often I will need to check words during the solve to make progress.
When I was learning to solve I used the dictionary more and a Chambers Thesaurus which had some lists in the back as well.
Jeff@USA@85
I thought it was fairly clear that, in my opinion at least, the word cheating is entirely inappropriate for any of the activities you list as part of your solving. I suggest you read the Guardian blogpost I linked and comments btl there to reassure yourself. Don’t let smart-arses misuse vocabulary to try and shame you when you do what I am sure is the same as the majority of solvers.
SH@86, I don’t think there’s any word needed for it other than “solving”. Maybe there should be a word for ‘completing a crossword puzzle without recourse to any external sources’? I don’t see why anyone else would be interested, but if commenters really want to draw attention to the fact that they have imposed a rule on themselves, they could say, for example “I had to use an atlas to check that ECLIPSE POINT TOWN was the capital of the Chagos Islands, breaking my self-imposed rule that I must know everything about everything that appears in any crossword I attempt.”
The point I am making is that they shouldn’t (wrongly) use a word which implies moral disapprobation of those who don’t adhere to the rules they have made up for themselves, especially where many of them might be the first to complain if the definition in a clue did not accurately correspond with accepted meanings of the answer word (although how they would know without looking in a dictionary is hard to say).
Tony: I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone on Fifteensquared describe anyone else’s solving as “cheating”. It’s normally used (in my view semi-ironically) to describe ones own self-ascribed failure to complete cleanly, i.e. according to ones own standards and rules. But perhaps you have in mind an actual example of some “smart-arse” trying to shame another solver?
Petert@87
I don’t quite understand the anecdote about your teacher. However, I’m pretty sure most teachers today are enlightened enough to know that it is more important for their students to know how to find information they need than to memorize everything.
There’s a quote from Einstein to that effect which I can’t quite remember. Don’t feel bad if you find you want to google it to get the definitive wording …
SH@91
They don’t need to directly accuse people of “cheating”, because many of us openly admit to the practices so described. Using the word “cheating” to describe them implies that there is something wrong with them: specifically, that they constitute deceit for one’s own benefit. In fact the only deceit going on is in some solvers deceiving themselves that there is something wrong in resorting to sources.
I remember a time when I would waste time mentally substituting in the letters of the alphabet in turn to fill a couple of blanks in an intransigent last word, until I stumbled on one that seemed to answer the clue. Nowadays I use Word Wizard for the same job. To me, that’s like using a lighter instead of rubbing two sticks together.
If someone can fill a grid from the words and general knowledge they carry around in their head, I congratulate them. Perhaps it is that feat which would be worth remarking on, rather than its contrary?
Tony: I can’t remember using the word “cheating”, except when saying that I wouldn’t dream of accusing someone of cheating for using resources other than what’s between their ears. As Roz said @88, it’s more a matter of setting a “personal challenge”. There’s no point challenging yourself and then telling everyone else that you’ve succeeded when you haven’t! So, if I’ve used resources to finish I’ll cheerfully say I’ve failed. If others want to tell me that I haven’t failed (as you seem to be saying), that’s as cheeky as your imaginary “smart-arse” telling people they’ve cheated.
This is all a bit of a storm in a tea cup, kicked off by that blog post saying “Is it ok to ‘cheat’ when solving puzzles?” Well, of course it’s ok to cheat as long as it doesn’t involve hacking a computer where the answers are being held and then sending in a completed puzzle and claiming a prize – but who would do that? Nobody is the answer.
Isn’t the more important question: what sort of enjoyment do you want from a puzzle? What about people who look up a list of words that fit the clue’s theme and then complain that the crossword was too easy and mechanical because they could just look up the answers and write them in? I’d just say I had a lovely time working out those words from the clues and the crossers; if anything, they’ve cheated themselves of a chance to have a challenging and more enjoyable experience. But that’s their choice.
Yesterday I was doing an old Araucaria from 1990. One clue mentioned a herb called butcher’s broom which I’d never heard of, so I guessed the answer would be an alternative name. I Googled it (the wordplay was impenetrable) but no other names came up except for Latin. Later I got a couple of crossers which gave me a chance of guessing the name. I Googled that plus the original, and got confirmation of the correct answer; I don’t know why the first search failed. Was I happier solving the clue without the online aid? Was I upset that I’d resorted to the online aid when it turned out I could solve the clue without? Had I cheated? Well, obviously not, is the answer to the third question! The others are blowing in the wind…
Tony: I did try to post quite a long answer to you, but it disappeared and when I tried to repost I was told I’d already posted it…
Maybe it’ll turn up.
I didn’t answer your final point, but I suppose that to some extent solvers who set themselves a personal challenge and succeed don’t need any pats on the back, as they have only done it for their own satisfaction. For myself, I am sure that there is more stuff in my head than I am usually able to recover without a lot of digging, so although I do also enjoy rumaging through dictionaries and online resources, it gives me more satisfaction to find things in my own dusty attic.
sheffield hatter @95
For some unknown reason your comment was intercepted as spam. I have reinstated it.
Thanks Gaufrid.
I thought it might have been a verbosity filter!
Tony Collman@89: Thank you. I see it clearly now. Good to know.
@SH, referring to “smart-arses” was very rude, and I apologise for using the word. I wasn’t accusing you of anything personally. I’m saying I don’t like the (mis-)use of the word ‘cheating’ for innocent activities.
Jeff@usa, keeping doing what you enjoy that’s not harming anyone.
jeff@usa Tony has used exactly the right word , enjoy the crossword. It is not an exam paper and will not decide anyone’s future. Use whatever help you need and as you improve you will enjoy the crosswords even more.
Roz @16 of Everyman 3,885: despite my username I’m not really quite the expert on Conrad that you possibly think! But I do have an idea that he several times uses “cat-head” as discussed by Spooner’s catflap @18. With a bit of internet help I’ve managed to find this from The Mirror of the Sea:
the anchor… is not thrown over, but simply allowed to fall. It hangs from the ship’s side at the end of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose end link is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a lever when the order is given.
Sorry but I haven’t found any use of “cat” on its own to mean heave the anchor.
Thanks very much for trying. It was a vague idea I had, probably just this use of cat-head that you have found. Probably cat does not mean to heave the anchor.
I’m sure that among the Patrick O’Brian novels there’s a reference to the anchor being “catted”, but there are 18 of them so I won’t promise to find it any time in the next half hour! I think it’s used in the sense of the anchor having been brought right up to the cathead.
Yes, gladys. The reason for my emphasising ‘SECURING’ when I quoted Wiki back on the Everyman thread was that it appeared to me that ‘heaving’ the anchor was one procedure, followed by ‘catting’, which was a distinct, albeit related, procedure. The pursuit, therefore, of this alternative, non-vomitory route to the ‘heave’ element in the answer to 8d in Friday’s cryptic is likely to have been a false scent, although one that has marginally better equipped me for naval service if I have the misfortune to be press-ganged.
Spooner’s catflap @104. “…one that has marginally better equipped me for naval service if I have the misfortune to be press-ganged.” Be very careful what you wish for!
BTW, in yours @18 on Everyman, you quote ‘the process of securing the anchor is called catting and fishing it.’ I understand fishing to mean binding very tightly with rope so that there is no movement; I got this from a Hornblower novel, I think, where the stub of a broken mast is fished to a smaller spar so that sail can be set.
Tony Collman@92 The teacher anecdote referred to what was a stock phrase among teachers in my unenlightened youth, used whenever someone resorted to a dictionary, or a table of formulas or the answers in the back of the book when we were supposed not too. The artificially high marks we might then get would, of course, have reduced motivation to revise etc. Like sheffield hatter, I have only seen (and once used) the expression “cheat” in an ironic self-deprecatory way. I, like many others, do use Google and other devices, but I admire those that don’t have to, even when they tell me a puzzle was easy when, for me, it wasn’t.
Roz (if you are still tuning in)
Apropos your apparent recalcitrance to engage with with what, back on the Everyman forum, you called ‘technobabble’, really, if you are tech-savvy enough to be on this site, you are amply tech-savvy enough to word-search an etext. Try it.
In the Google search window type, for example, ‘The Secret Sharer etext’ and press Return. The first or second item you are likely to be offered is a Project Gutenberg text of the story. Click on it. You do not need to scroll down; just hold down your ‘Ctrl’ key and press your ‘f’ key. A small window will open up in your top right-hand corner into which you can type a word for which you want to search. It will immediately tell you how many instances of that word – or letter-combination – there are in the text, and you can then rummage through them by clicking the downward arrow in the Find-box. In ‘The End of the Tether’, the use of ‘character’ which you cited is the 8th of 18.
My sincere apologies if this smacks of mansplaining.
No need to apologise but you lost me on in!
Someone kindly set up this thing I am using, think it is called a Chrome book.
There are three things I can click on, this site, the BBC and my work emails, anything else is beyond me, I do not even have a mobile phone.
I am not familiar with Chrome Book. Is there anyone out there who is better equipped than I am in this regard who can help Roz – whom I regard as a valuable contributor to these discussions – to break free from the limitations that she is currently operating under in accessing the web? I do not have a mobile phone either, but that does not disable me from the world of internet possibilities!
Hello again Roz if you are revisiting this forum.
No one seems to be coming to the rescue regarding Chrome Book, and maybe, looking at what happened to the Lady of Shalott, you feel it would be safer to stay where you are, despite its confinements. But perhaps just try this …
If, as you say, you are able to click only on the BBC, work emails and FifteenSquared, then I assume that you are accessing the Guardian cryptic via the link under ‘Today’s Crosswords’ in the top left-hand corner of the 15sq homepage. This gives you access to the Guardian’s crosswords page. Instead of just clicking on the crossword, try clicking on ‘News’ at the left-hand end of the dark blue belt at the top of the page. That will take you straight to the Guardian front page through which you can easily access all the G’s contents. No paywall. Loads of things you can click on. The mirror will not crack from side to side – trust me on that.
Thank you so much for your efforts but I am a lost cause !
I have occasionally been on the Guardian web thing at work and find it unbearable.
It is so cluttered and clumsy with things popping up to annoy me, I prefer holding the paper in my hands.
To do crosswords I need to have the paper copy and a pen in my hand or I cannot concentrate.
Petert@106, ah, I see now the context was a sight-unseen exam. Of course crosswords are not so constrained, even the ones that carry prizes. I think, on fact, even my B.Sc. finals were open-note. That was nearly fifty years ago.
The only thing that constitutes cheating in solving a crossword clue is obtaining the answer directly, by whatever means, without solving it. I should qualify that slightly but I don’t know exactly how, since I got SIGHT READS in the recent Picaroon Prize by feeding the check letters to Word Wizard and in fact it was the only thing that fit, so in a sense, I got it directly, but I still can’t think of that as cheating. If I’d stared at the page long enough, I’m sure the answer would eventually have occurred to me as a possibility and a moment’s thought would have confirmed it answered the clue. Life’s too short for staring at squares for long though, isn’t it?
Tony – if I may channel Petert’s teacher from #87 above, you’ve let the school down, you’ve let yourself down and you’ve let your family down! Seriously though, this just shows why neither I nor Peter would ever suggest that a fellow solver was cheating. It’s just a matter of what aids you are happy resorting to in order to solve the crossword – it’s your challenge, and your choice of tools.
If I’d been faced with the crossers for that clue, and no idea of the synonyms required to make the answer, I’d have just forgotten about it for an hour, or a day, or a week. Maybe it would come to me as I fell asleep, or as I woke the next morning. If it was still bothering me I’d have another look. Sometimes the shape of the word springs out from the grid, sometimes a word in the clue acquires a different meaning. Perhaps I’d shrug and look at the blog on Fifteensquared. But I know I’d get the same level of dissatisfaction from using the online search as by leaving the clue unsolved, so I have never resorted to that; you choose to do so, which is a matter for you, and not for me or anyone else to criticise.
The wordwizard is at its most useful when you have the crossers for a word that you have reason to suspect is new to you (like Pasquale being the setter, or the def being “plant” or “island” or something else with innumerable possibilities), and which therefore cannot miraculously “come to you” later because your subconscious has never heard of it. I’d prefer to find out what it is: the chances are that it will show up again before long.
Sh@113, I haven’t let anyone down, of course, since no one, including my school, my family and myself had any expectation that I would attempt to solve the puzzle without recourse to aids. Perhaps you were in fact thinking of the inflatable boy from an inflatable family who attended an inflatable school and one day went wild with a pin?
I don’t like to leave a grid unfilled when I could get the answer by looking something up (other than the answer itself). It leaves me with a dissatisfied feeling of a duty unfulfilled or a necessary task incomplete. Admittedly that is no less ridiculous than your insistence that you may not consult any reference to help you achieve that completion, since I have no duty to complete the crossword, nor is it right to view it as a necessary task.
In the case of a puzzle for which there is a prize, there is also the point that I get a chance to win some money and I would probably be a couple of hundred pounds or so poorer if I followed your philosophy. However, I do not allow that motive to drive me to use websites where people openly ask for the answers and others give them. I would rather remain poor.
Gladys@114, that is indeed when the Word Wizard is most useful. However it is also great for saving time which might otherwise be spent shuffling alphabetically through possible fills until one that works comes up. I have more important things to do (like writing opinionated comments on fifteensquared :-)).
Hey! My emoticon didn’t get transformed to an emoji.
Tony: you have to leave a space before and a space after: 🙂
Blogging Monday’s Quiptic, Pierre registered what he seemed to regard as a forlorn objection to ‘anticipate’ used to mean ‘expect’.There were, he ventured, possibly only six remaining anglophones who shared this view. Quirister of this parish later intervened to announce himself as one of the six.
This really is a canard which needs to be enchaîné. In a number of late interventions on the Quiptic blog, which – the Quiptic being less visited than the Cryptic forum, and due to my coming late to the party – may have been seen by few participants, I offered several instances of extremely respectable literary authors in the 19th century using ‘anticipate’ in the sense favoured by Pierre but also in the sense of ‘expect’. These included Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. I desisted at this point, but, to continue the argument now, searches of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma show Austen using the verb in the sense favoured by Pierre and Quirister (i.e. to act preemptively in advance of an expected event or situation) only once out of the fourteen instances of the word in those three novels. I submit, therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the project of legitimising one received use of the verb to the exclusion of the other was an exercise is fallacious pedantry conjured up by early 20th-century grammarians and should probably be dropped by its seven remaining adherents.
Can I just query your new arithmetic: six remaining anglophones plus one announcing himself as one of the six leaves a total of six, not seven. That aside I’m inclined to agree with you about both the validity and origins of the argument against the equivalence of anticipate and expect. My Chambers lists ‘to foresee or count upon as certain’ and ‘to expect’ as 4th and 5th definitions, with ‘to forestall’ the 1st. (No doubt anyone with an OED could supply dates for first uses of these.)
The roots of these words are wildly different, possibly justifying the campaign against equivalence: ante+capere for one, and ex+spectare for t’other. So the first is about action and the second observation. But with observation necessarily preceding action, it’s easy to see how the meanings have moved to their present closeness. With George Eliot and Jane Austen in support, I don’t see how your campaign can not succeed.
SH@117, cheers 😉
To those who do the Guardian cryptic online – does anyone know how to get rid of that distracting purple box that appears now – the Master Every Challenge thingy?
It appears with Safari browser, and I thought that yesterday it did nto appear on Opera browser, but today it does 🙁 I want it to go away!
Sorry, I cannot edit the above post. I logged out of Opera browser, cleared cache and cookies etc and then logged back in and now the purple thing has gone – thank goodness!
Re Rishi @55
Very sad news: please see Comments on Guardian thread http://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/04/14/guardian-28419-imogen/#comments
Comment 87 ff
Very sad to hear the news about Rishi. My thoughts to his family and my own thoughts of pleasant memories of his posting on here and his clues and contributions elsewhere. Many thanks to Eileen for bringing his passing to wider attention. A light gone out in the crossword firmament, but one not forgotten.
michelle@22
I tried clearing my Guardian cache, but the purple plague reappears next time I use the Guardian Crossword site. This is the same for Firefox and for Chrome.
It is immensely annoying
Michelle@121, Dave@126
It’s a lot worse on android phone (with Firefox browser). It can take up to 80% of the screen, making it impossible to work on the puzzle. Something can make it shrink to cover only about 10%, but I’m not sure what, and it completely disappears sometimes, but is back to 80% if you refresh the page. It’s taken me until today to do last Saturday’s Prize as a result.
I used to print out the print version for the Guardian but now have to use the pdf instead as the purple plague (even when minimised) seems to obliterate the bottom right of the printout (on Safari).
On a side note, when I don’t have access to a printer, I bring up the pdf on my iPad and then select the markup option and write the answers in using my iPencil. I sometimes (after a suggestion from another poster) save it to iBooks first and then choose markup.
Just a quick note about the FT paywall. If you google FT Crossword 16762 and click on top entry you can bypass this. Found this out from another poster sometime ago. No doubt the paywall will disappear soon.
There are browser extensions which bypass certain paywalls, including the FT one when it appears. The morality/legality of these is dubious, so I won’t post any links – but if the FT one really is a temporary glitch, there can’t be any harm in using an extension as a temporary workaround.
Especially for American solvers: I just noticed that today’s New York Times cryptic is by “John Halpern and friends” (apparently mainly Will Shortz, the NYT puzzle editor). The story behind the puzzle is at
<a href="http://https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/crosswords/variety-special-cryptic.html
Iroquois, the address is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/crosswords/variety-special-cryptic.html
Interestingly, John Halpern (best known to many as ‘Paul’ in the Guardian, where he is lead setter) is introduced by the words:
If you have ever solved a puzzle by “Mudd” in the Financial Times, “Dada” in The Telegraph, “Mara” in The Times (U.K. — requires a subscription) or “Punk” in The Independent, then you’ve already tried your hand at a John Halpern creation.
Later, John does himself say, during a spiel about the crossword and its creation:
These events are all part of my game to raise a million pounds for charity, in honour of my late brother Paul, who died when I was 21, and whose name I took for a pseudonym in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian.
Thanks for setting the link straight–trouble getting it in on my phone. I also noticed the odd omission of the Guardian from the intro. Fun puzzle, not too taxing.
My pleasure, Iroquois. Unfortunately the puzzle itself needs a sub …
Galatea is a modern (ish ) addition to the Pygmalion story, not used at all in Ovid’s original poem.
See The Classical Journal 66.4 from 1971 – Meyer Reinhold – The naming of Pygmalion’s animated statue.
Or 27 from 1932 – Helen Law – The name Galatea in the Pygmalion Myth.
Hi Roz. Did you see mine @67 on the Vulcan thread? Apparently Galatea is Greek, denoting a very pale woman, which suggests that Rousseau or whoever derived it from the way Pygmalion described his statue when he was appealing to the gods to make her into a woman.
Has anyone worked out how to get rid of that purple box on the Guardian puzzle – the ‘master every challenge’ ad? It is covering half of the clues. It really spoils my enjoyment of doing the puzzles lately.
I can use safari, google, chrome or opera browsers on my laptop – which one is best?
I’ll just make a brief appearance to explain how I got rid of the purple box on the Guardian puzzle page. Download Adblock Plus (it’s free). When on the Guardian page, click on the ABP hexagon. Click on Block Element. This will allow you to block the various elements that make up the purple box. If I remember correctly there are three different elements to be dealt with. You should then be free of the purple menace.
Thanks Anna @141 re the ‘purple menace’ – and good to see you!
Thanks, Anna @141. Good to see you’re at least still solving and following, even if you are still determined to deprive us of your erudite remarks on linguistics and so on.
Anna @ 141
thanks – I will try that
Anna – I hope you don’t feel you’re being pestered – but there’s one for the linguists in today’s Graun. Do comment if the Sprachgeist moves you.
I find it disturbing that despite a word from Admin a couple of days ago, the Guardian cryptic blogs are still dominated by a handful of bloggers who chat amongst themselves, filling up the blog..
Perhaps a limit on total entries or total words per person per day would benefit the rest of us who use 225 to check parsings and get a feel for what others thought about the crossword of the day.
I do not of course include the initial solver/blogger who should have as many entries as required.
That seems a bit harsh Pedro. At 2:18 there were only 54 comments posted on what was quite a chewy but well received Friday puzzle and the remainder of the comments seemed to chime nicely with the subject matter without spiralling out of hand. Judicious use of [] helps too, as does a hint to get over to here if things become more general. Censorship is not a good look on such a friendly forum.
Taffy – it was Thursdays (and previous days’ ) blogs that prompted me to write.
I’ve checked and Thursday, for instance had 7734 words of which 3700 were this handful of names.
Hi Pedro, I stand corrected, apologies. Thursday’s blog did run a little wild on reflection but having sifted through it all, most was related to the puzzle and not stream of conscious digression, so difficult to see what could have been moved over to here. The Brendan blog is sound stuff, I enjoyed reading through that, so it’s not universally bad.
Agree: last couple of days a lot better
Is it me, The Guardian site or my PC going insane?
The last 4 days seem to show the previous day’s day and date at the top of the crossword.
Actually its been happening since clocks went forward and I’ve just noticed!
Pedro @151
It would appear to be an error on the Guardian website because I have just found the same thing. A similar error is also on the Quick crossword page.
A spoiler for yesterday’s Indy puzzle is unfortunately visible in the preamble to today’s Indy blog.
Thanks Gaufrid (relieved its not me).
For anyone who was following the unfolding of ‘Spoilergate’, as one contributor called it, in the comments section of the May 1st Blog on the previous Saturday’s Guardian Prize , it seems from much later comments, @54 and thereafter, appearing after most participants have moved on (and which I visited only because I was waiting for Everyman Blog, which was later than usual) that the matter has ended the participation in these forums both of Roz as a commenter and of PeeDee as a blogger.
I think that, unfortunately, two issues became entangled here. One was to do with ‘site policy’, but I do not think that Roz’s recommendation @19 would have drawn PeeDee’s or anyone else’s ire had it not been for her slightly later comment @24, which was prompted by her knowledge of the current Prize and which therefore, in combination with @19, was seen to be a potential spoiler, and drofle immediately issued a gentle caveat.
The other was to do with what appears to have been PeeDee’s growing irritation, which I suspect some share, with Roz’s constant complaint that these puzzles are too easy (for her, but not for many others, including sometimes for me, although I am a pretty accomplished solver). It is not entirely true, as PeeDee claims @60 in his restrictive characterisation, that these forums are not for participants to register how hard or easy they found a puzzle – or to inform us what their FOI, LOI, DNK, DNF or COD were. If that species of comment were to be excluded, threads would be a great deal shorter, almost to vanishing point! Despite PeeDee’s scruple on this matter, I suspect that a number of participants enjoy seeing how other participants fared in the shared activity of solving, or failing to. Although I have no inclination to expose my own FOIs etc, I too find this sometimes interesting and informative.
The business is probably now beyond recall, but I think that, while PeeDee’s concern about the effect of the @19 and @24 comments by Roz was a legitimate cause for concern (and Roz could have just put her hands up on that and said ‘My bad’ as Penfold did), the convergence with the ‘these puzzles are too easy’ recurrent note in Roz’s recent comments was especially toxic. I have no solution to offer on this, and am not inclined to coax either combatant back to this site if they are determined to leave it. But it should perhaps give us all some cause for reflection.
Spooner’s catflap @ 156 – thanks for your comment.
I’m very appreciative of all the bloggers, but do feel that PeeDee’s exasperation with Roz was rather over the top. As for people getting fed up with her (is it definitely a her?) saying how easy the puzzles are, I find that I’m simply full of admiration! She did a Carte Blanche Azed in less than two hours, as I remember.
All in all I think it would be good if folks lightened up and didn’t take the whole thing so seriously. I don’t even mind the endless puns (and the delving into the history of Richard III or whoever it was the other day). All part of life’s rich tapestry.
This is a repeat of what I said on the blog but it may be interesting to some! Roz, I am surprized that we still have the rule for a Saturday puzzle. It is no longer a prize and I suspect it won’t be again. There is no reason to prevent discussion for a week under the ‘new normal’ situation. There are now several sites out there which publish each answer by the following morning some with parsing, so as I say I can’t see the Guardian reinstituting a prize. If a solver does not want to risk a spoiler s\he might refrain from 15^ until s/he has either finished or given up. And, lets face it, with everything else that is going on, a hint to a daily crossword is not exactly life shattering. Roz come back I say, and if you honestly find a crossword easy tell us all; it is your right. I for one am impressed by those out there who can do a Times in less than 10 minutes as Morse claimed. And those that lie about these things have their own reasons. Enough said. We have already lost Anne from Finland which was very sad and we have the same few hogging the site with puns and HMHB trivia, which is just fine so please add your pennyworth it is very valuable!
drofle @157. You may not be aware that this was not the first time Roz had dropped a hint about a puzzle that was not the subject of the blog under which she was posting. On that occasion, when I drew attention to the site policy, in what I thought was a retrained fashion, she accused me of being a “male authority figure”. (See 28374, #33, #38 & #43.) I agree with you about lightening up, but dropping hints like this is against site policy; the fact that some people have expressed their appreciation for the hints is neither here nor there. As PeeDee said, there are other places for doing that.
Giving spoilers away to readers on fifteensquared is not the only reason for the “no comments on prize puzzles”, possibly not even the most important one.
Fifteensquared generally does not have official permission to reproduce the content of the newspaper websites. To survive as we are we need to maintain a good relationship with the content owners. Our intention is to support their efforts, not to undermine them. If the Guardian does not provide a way to comment on their own site then neither do we. Fifteensquared is not a place to post a comment because “you can’t post it on The Guardian yet”.
First go to the Guardian and persuade them to allow comments on Prize puzzles there. Then it is up for debate if and how we should allow them here.
…and here’s my response to SPanza, likewise copied across from Saturday’s blog:
If a solver does not want to risk a spoiler s\he might refrain from 15^ until s/he has either finished or given up. Sound advice, but surely it is asking too much of site users to refrain from reading the blog for puzzle no.28428 until they have completed puzzle no.28434? This blog is for last Saturday’s crossword by Tramp, but the spoiler is for the new one from Bogus. If you want to suggest to Gaufrid that the Saturday puzzle should be blogged the same day, as happens through the week, that is another matter, but I would guess that is not going to happen until/unless The Guardian confirms that prize puzzles will not be reinstated.
@drofle
I have been blogging the Guardian Prize for 10 years. My frustration in my comments is born of of 10 years worth of people who either don’t feel the need follow the rules themselves, or who do follow the rules but write long comments justifying why others don’t need to follow the rules. Trying to monitor these comments is a long and thankless task and grinds one down eventually.
If people want to support fifteensquared and don’t want to go as actually writing a blog themselves, then there are two simple things people can do:
1) follow the site rules themselves
2) encourage others to follow them too
@PeeDee – Surely over your ten years there haven’t been that many people who don’t follow the rules? I realise it has come up recently, but I’ve been using 15squared for many years and don’t remember this as having been a major issue.
Any commenter who regularly states that the puzzles are too easy (and Roz is by no means the only one to have done this) runs the risk of looking like a show-off, even if that wasn’t his/her intention. It’s hard not to read the subtext “I’m really good at this crossword lark and I want you all to know that!” NO puzzle is easy for those just starting out as solvers, whereas solvers with long experience and a reasonable talent for unravelling wordplay are unlikely to be detained for long by any standard daily puzzle. There’s no reason why people shouldn’t state that they finished a puzzle quickly, but careful attention to the wording is advisable when doing so.
I have no strong opinion about spoilers/prize crosswords, but it will be a great shame if we lose more posters and a highly regarded blogger as a result of the arguments over this.
Well said cruciverbophile @ 164, the last paragraph of your comment is key!!
Spooner’s Catflap @156 – my frustration is certainly not with Roz’s comments on how easily she completes a puzzle. Saying how easy you find a puzzle is not against site policy as far as I am aware. She can say that as often as she likes as far as I am concerned. There is no rule that says you have to be humble about it either.
My frustration is about trying to get people to follow the actual site rule of not posting on the current prize. I write these blogs to help people solve the puzzles, that is what I come here for. Moderating the comments is the unpleasant and rather thankless downside of being a blogger. I am not a circus animal to be “baited” with a naughty comment to see if I will rise up and scold the perpetrator.
I’m completely with you PeeDee. I’ve seen several comments along the lines of “I can’t see a problem with hints/spoilers”. Well, the problem is that it’s against site policy. Potential solutions suggest themselves. And campaigning for the policy to be changed is not one of them.
PeeDee@166
I hope that you can be persuaded to change your mind but, whether you can or not, thank you for your hard work over the years.
Thank you Pino. I’m not giving up blogging completely, just the Guardian weekend puzzle (and that only once every 4 weeks). I don’t solve the Guardian very often any more and I am a bit out of touch with both the setters and the Guardian community in general. I have been blogging the Guardian for a very long while now. I’m just a bit tired, time for someone else to have a go.
@drofle @163 – It is not only the Guardian that has prize puzzles, and the relative lack of problem comments does not happen by itself, it is the result of people moderating the comments and a general ongoing persuasion of people to follow the site policy.
Incidentally, I guess somewhere around 99% of comments that fifteensquared receive never make it onto the site. Most of these are caught by the spam filter, some have to be removed manually by the ever hard working Gaufrid, and a small minority are just plain abusive, some from disgruntled ex-commenters and in one case even a disgruntled setter. The site remains the relatively problem-free place it is by hard work, not because the Internet is such a nice place.
@drofle – I just read your comment on the Guardian blog @53 hoping that Roz is being asked to leave by “the powers that be”.
I can reassure you that Roz has certainly not been asked to leave by me. Quite the opposite, I hope to persuade her to stay and become a blogger. She has a lot of crossword knowledge to share.
@171 – I mean …is *not* being asked to leave…
sheffield hatter @159: I remember well the blog you allude to, when Roz advocated 17A as an accessible point of entry into that day’s Woodstock-themed Prize by Paul, but I have to suppose that I did not stay on the thread for long enough that Saturday to see you characterised as a ‘male authority figure’. I would have remembered that…
PeeDee: pleased to learn that you are not withdrawing from the field altogether, and thank you for your eye-opener on What We Never Get To See. There was a delay in the appearance of my comment earlier @156 that kicked off this discussion, which I thought must be a technical glitch on my part or on the site’s, but which I guess must have been due to Gaufrid’s giving it a few minutes’ critical scrutiny.
@PeeDee – I echo Spooner’s catflap’s comment about What We Never Get To See – very revealing. I moderate a Facebook group, but we don’t suffer spam; we just need to keep an eye out for things getting unduly argumentative.
@drofle, I don’t know much about Facebook, I don’t use social media at all really. Out of interest, do people have to be invited to join your Facebook group or can people post anonymously? It would be interesting to know how the spam is controlled.
@PeeDee – It’s a closed group: people have to ask to join, and the admins decide whether to let them in or not. So really there’s no opportunity for spam. There are also open groups that anyone can join, and private groups that can’t even be found if you search for them. So it’s a very different ball game from a website like 15squared.
Thanks for that drofle.
@PeeDee 170 … Who was the setter!