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175 comments on “General Discussion”
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Why are Paul B and Hoskins being so unpleasant about Everyman? And who are they?
Hey Fiona Anne,
To answer two of your questions, I am Hoskins (a poor crossword setter in all senses of the word and a drunkard) and I wasn’t being unpleasant about Everyman, but doing a satire (which I hope the totally overblown content of my post – for examples, ‘burn him, BURN HIM …’ – and the self-deprecation of myself helped to show.
However, as it obviously appearing as unpleasant rather than as I intended it I shall cease and desist immediately and offer you my apologies. Was not my intent to be unpleasant about a fellow setter or upset anyone.
Hope that is a satisfactory resolution for you on all fronts. 🙂
Paul b is Paul Bringloe who sets crosswords (as eg Tees, Neo) for most papers except, I think, for the Guardian. He’s probably cross about it
If I were Paul Bringloe, I would definitely be cross about it (4,3), James! 🙂
On the blog for Vlad’s guardian cryptic 28453, there was a diversion into favourite older crosswords. The Australian-themed 23047 was recommended. As an Aussie resident myself I thought I would give it a try and agree that it was very enjoyable although it helps to have a fair amount of Australian GK. So thanks to Sheffieldhatter and Rodshaw for the recommendation. I am commenting here as a later poster on the Vlad blog took them to task for not staying on the topic of the day’s crossword…link below for anyone interested:
I have discovered, a little late, that a puzzle entitled ‘Guru Dakshina’, was recently published here.
“Guru Dakshina” means “an offering to a teacher”. It was a special tribute to Gridman (aka Rishi / C.G.Rishikesh), known here as Rishi and whose passing was mourned here last month.
The clues were set by Sowmya alongside 18 other cruciverbalists from the 1ACross Facebook group viz., Aashwina Mouli, Ajeesh, Amrita Majumdar, Arvind Kannabiran, Bhalchandra Pasupathy, Debasmita Basu, Ganesh Nayak, Kishore Rao, Lakshmi Vaidyanathan, Manish Misra, Mona Sogal, Nicholas Loader, Ramesh Swaminathan, Ramki Krishnan, Santha Ramachandran, SSv Avtaar, Vasant Srinivasan and Vikram Chandrasekhar.
I have done some of it so far and am not sure how much ‘desi’ GK might be needed to finish it. Solution here.
Tony C @6, what a delightful crossword, and a very nice tribute to Rishi. I’ve never been to India, but there was only one word I didn’t know. All gettable, and a pleasure from start to finish.
Among the comments on the answer page is a reference to a clue set by Gridman/Rishi, which is not difficult but tickled me: Duck, dis or dat (5)
Congratulations to Sowmya, who I believe visits 15² sometimes, and to her fellow-setters.
Is it EIDER ? If not it should be.
Dat’s da fella 😉
MrEssexboy you sent me a link on the Fonz the other day and I did reply but I may have been a bit late. Thank you.
Roz @10: Aaayyy!!
Am I the only one to start solving FT 16,798, which says “Clues are listed in alphabetical order of their answers, only to decide that can’t be true. Or am I missing something, obvious or otherwise?
(I know there are differences between UK and US forms of English, but I didn’t think alphabetical order was one of them! 🙂 )
Edk@12 sorry I cannot really help you , my friend will give me the paper copy of this on Monday. I can give a bit of background.
We have a form of crossword called Alphabetical Jigsaw, it was invented by Araucaria. the ANSWER to the first clue will begin with A, the second B and so on. They can go ANYWHERE in the grid, you need a fair number of solutions and then you can start to fit them in.
EdK@USA @12
Julius has posted the following on the Guardian site in response to a comment regarding today’s FT:
“Hi catflat; I’m not entirely sure how the incorrect preamble appeared in today’s FT jigsaw (which is a not terribly elegant – see what I did there? – way of saying that it isn’t my fault, but it should read as follows:
“Solve the clues and fit the answers into the grid. Each letter of the alphabet appears at least once at the beginning of the grid entries”
In other words, it’s an alphabetical jigsaw with the clues jumbled up.
Best wishes, Rob”
Thank you Gaufrid, I will remember this on Monday. I presume the preamble is not correct in the newspaper as well.
Roz @15
I think that is a reasonable assumption.
Gaufrid, thanks so much for confirming that I was not misunderstanding the preamble.
Roz@13: I have done a few alphabetical jigsaws before, but this is the first I can recall attempting where the clues were not in alphabetical order of the answers. So the disagreement between the preamble and the solutions I had found threw me off. Now I can go back to trying to solve the puzzle.
Sorry Edk@17 if I was no help, I will not see a paper copy until Monday. Fortunately Gaufrid has cleared up the mystery.
Essexboy@7, glad you enjoyed it. I haven’t found a lot more time for it yet, but pleased to hear there shouldn’t be any answers beyond my ken. Loved de udder clue, thanks.
Gaufrid @14: Thanks a million for your post. After solving 3 clues whose answers were not in alphabetical order I came here searching for guidance. I can now resume my regular programme.
Anna v f. We are very insular in this country, people know about Bletchley Park but most do not even know about the Polish contribution, they even brought Enigma machines from Germany.
For the Pacific all I know is that the USA used Navajo as their language could not be broken.
The Australian connection is fascinating. Were the girls Japanese speakers or did they have to learn the language as well as break the codes ? Do you know of any books written on this particular topic ?
Hi Roz. The book is “the codebreakers “ by Alli Sinclair. The girls did not speak Japanese and the book did not explain how that worked. I have studied Japanese so am amazed how that worked though I suspect that the messages were in romaji as the system would not have coped with characters. A good question that I also wondered about. Thanks for your interest. Anna v h
Thank you Anna , I will look out for the book. It did not even occur to me that Japanese is written using characters to add another layer of difficulty.
To be fair to the blog, it is actually a glorious sunny day and a Bank Holiday here, a very rare occurrence.
I suspect a lot of people have just added one comment and gone off to enjoy the sunshine, keep posting with interesting topics from the other side of the world.
Anna vH, I am pleased that you have stayed around for long enough to see and respond to Roz’s input above. This commenting community is not ‘a closed shop’, as you described it back on the puzzle blog, but it does, in my experience, take a time to establish a commenting identity, which makes it easier for others to respond to your input.
Allow me, in the spirit of encouragement, to share with you something of my own participation in, and sometimes misplaced expectations of how this site can work.
About a year ago, due to family circumstances, I found myself moving to an agreeable town in the UK where I know nobody whatsoever. For this year, my face-to-face interactions with others have been confined to routine, masked courtesies across shop checkouts and two chats on what Jane Austen called (I think) ‘indifferent topics’ with the young woman who has cut my hair in between lockdowns. Three of my children I saw for an overnight visit they paid in December; two others I have not seen at all. I email them and send them birthday and Christmas cards. We occasionally talk by phone, but I do not like the phone and I do not possess one of those flat ones that you carry around and pore over constantly so that you collide with solid objects in your path, as I saw someone do just yesterday. ‘Social Media’ I just do not do.
It was several months before I started visiting and then participating in 15-squared. At first, I did so very occasionally, and still I do not routinely come on here to say whether I liked or disliked the puzzle or specific clues, which were my first or last ones in, etc., and what my solving experience has been. These matters are of little interest to me 15 minutes after solving, and I do not suppose that they are really of interest to anyone else. But, like you this morning, I started chipping in with pieces of supplementary knowledge, clarifications of obscure or disputed terms, and so on, which other solvers might find interesting. In socially atrophied circumstances, I was at first desperate for anyone to respond saying that they had indeed found it interesting. I still am really, even if it only amounts to Gervase or another participant jesting about my terrible typing.
Responses sometimes happen; at other times no one seems to have noticed. I keep coming back, sadly, to the day’s comments section in hope. Do not take it personally. I now comment more often and on more various matters of communal concern, and as I have done so, I seem to have achieved some kind of ‘recognisability’, which makes responses more frequent. Therefore, my advice is to venture comments more often rather than less often. Hang in here.
Spooner’s catflap @24
If I may be so bold as to “do a Spooner’s”: there are plenty of indifferent people in Austen, but I couldn’t find any indifferent topics. However, just when I thought I’d caught you out, along comes Edmund in Mansfield Park, chapter 46:
The journey was likely to be a silent one. Edmund’s deep sighs often reached Fanny. Had he been alone with her, his heart must have opened in spite of every resolution; but Susan’s presence drove him quite into himself, and his attempts to talk on indifferent subjects could never be long supported.
Incidentally, according to the next para but one, The first division of their journey occupied a long day, and brought them, almost knocked up, to Oxford – an outcome for which Austen’s prior depiction of the journey leaves the modern reader quite unprepared… 😉
ThankyouSpooners cat flap. (Flat cap?). I read the blog every day but usually much later than the last entry and usually have nothing to add. This time I felt that I had something interesting to add so made an effort to get in early. Hence my disappointment. My contributions are rare – four maybe in over ten years. I am not particularly interested in timetaken or favourite clues I like clever construction, new. words and facts.
Thanks again for your encouragement. Anna.
Thanks to Roz too
Re. ‘indifferent subjects’ – thank you, essexboy @25 – that was the phrase that I was half-remembering.
essexboy @25 (and Spooner’s of course): I half-recognised the half-remembered reference, so many thanks for looking it up. I thought being “knocked up” or not was a binary condition, so “almost” knocked up looks questionable, even if we allow the phrase to be in *modern* usage. More modern, I’ll accept, than Jane’s usage of the phrase to mean (as you know) something quite different. (Imagine spending a whole day in a coach to get from Portsmouth to Oxford, a distance of some 80 miles.)
essexboy @25: I’m afraid that when we studied Emma for A-level we were highly amused when “she found… Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her” in the carriage on the way back from the Westons.
LJ @29: 😉 And what a put-down for Mr E: ‘Believe me, sir, I am far, very far, from gratified’ !
Wasn’t this supposed to be a conversation about whether the Guardian blog is a closed shop of a small number of contributors talking amongst themselves? Better add this page to the charge sheet.
Crikey, VW. So now we’re not even allowed to talk among ourselves on General Discussion! I am far, very far, from gratified.
Anna @26: I’m glad you stayed around too. And I know what you (and Spooner’s catflap) are talking about. It’s always nice to elicit a comment or response from others (unless it’s another put down from VW). I don’t do too badly on the whole – but then I occasionally enjoy punfests with the likes of MaidenBartok and Penfold, who is still laying low – but I could point you at clues I’ve suggested when someone has wondered “…if anyone has ever tried to clue XYZ…”, snippets of information I thought to be interesting and, recently, a limerick composed specifically to highlight the fact that two virtually identical ditties had been posted by separate contributors. All to be met with the sound of tumbleweed…
I think it’s chance more than anything – though catflap does make an interesting point about establishing a commenting identity. Not that that should matter but maybe it helps. I really don’t think there’s any closed shop element – though warmth, commonality and a history of interaction will always make it easier for those who post and respond to each other frequently. New solvers/posters certainly tend to get a warm welcome and encouragement. (And – last thought – I’ve had the odd occasion where I’ve attracted comments I’d rather not have received. And generally felt somewhat aggrieved by same. So it can cut both ways 😉
Finally, having said all that, your contribution re the Australian Bletchley Park did deserve response and I’m ashamed to admit I’m one of those who didn’t take the opportunity, for which my apologies. Of course, there’s no reason at all why Britain should have had a monopoly on that kind of activity (even if we did – luckily – have the only Alan Turing). I’m guessing the US – for sure – and probably the USSR had similar establishments though I’ve never heard mention. And maybe the Axis powers too?
Thanks sh @32 😉
PM @33: Your thoughtful analysis deserves more than tumbleweed and the distant howl of a lonesome coyote.
I agree that chance plays a big part. Sometimes it’s all down to unfortunate timing. You can post something deep and meaningful @17, say, and half a minute later @18 comes along, entirely unaware of your post, and takes the discussion in a whole new direction. There’s then a flurry of posts, all referring to @18, and before you know it we’ve reached @40 and everyone’s forgotten @17. It’s not intentionally rude, but it can feel that way to poor old No. 17.
It’s also very difficult to predict what’s going to spark people’s interest. A carefully crafted contribution can get zero response, while a chance afterthought catches someone’s imagination, and they pick up the ball and run with it. Actually, once you get used to the unpredictability, that’s part of the joy of 15².
By the way, I haven’t looked yet at the Brendan blog because there are still two clues I’m stuck on. Assuming I can finish the puzzle some time in the next year or so, I shall return to the blog and read Anna’s contribution with great interest.
essexboy @34 (and Mark @33): sometimes it can seem like the sound of a coyote howling might be the only appropriate response.
When you read comments like No 31, you can hardly be surprised that people get put off posting here. In fairness this comment was probably an attempt at humour, though new posters will see it as a put-down, as PostMark so accurately describes it. The contributor in question has form for criticising other posters when they talk about, say, a piece of music brought to attention by the day’s puzzle, but despite his pleas to stay “on topic” he seldom discusses the clues or other crossword-related matters. Even if he does, it’s usually to display his right-on credentials.
On balance, I preferred Hedge-Hoggy. He was obnoxious too, and probably a troll, but at least he was generally polite to other posters and had some interesting – if controversial – things to say about crosswords.
cruciverbophile @36 – the comment @31 was pointing out the small irony that a conversation about how to avoid being ignored had switched so quickly to chatter about some completely unrelated topic. It sort of proved the point that had been made.
If you review my recent comments, they have largely been on the same theme – that the value of this site as a place to discuss crossword intrigues has been considerably reduced by the difficulty on the Guardian site of following the thread of a coherent debate through all the chaff of diary entries and digressions – and where there is good evidence to support this theme. One person’s hope that people would follow the Site Policies and Comment Guidelines is clearly another person’s put down.
The others have been about holding the Guardian to its right-on standards for the content of its crosswords.
Apart from that, I generally come late to the crossword, by which time there is usually nothing to be said, so I say nothing.
And there was me thinking a General Discussion thread was for … um … general discussion, which isn’t limited to a single topic. Oh, well.
Thanks for the heads-up, Tony@6 – a nice tribute.
*** WARNING***
It is possible that this comment may contain spoilers, so if you haven’t done last Saturday’s prize or yesterday’s cryptic, read no further.
Paul has recently (yesterday # 28,463 – I will call it Cryptic – and last Saturday #28,458 – I will call it Prize) produced a couple of themed crosswords that elicited dramatically different responses on this site. Themed puzzles often elicit negative responses when the theme is either too obscure or of no interest to particular solvers.
Prize was (almost) universally admired and liked: the theme was readily apparent, it permeated the whole puzzle, and was within everyone’s general knowledge.
Cryptic drew criticisms: the theme was unfamiliar and/or of no interest, the clues were clunky, definitions were vague, etc.
Here’s my take on the two puzzles, and the criticisms of yesterday’s Cryptic:
1. Themed puzzles can be fun, whether the theme is up your alley or not. If it is UYA, the recognition factor adds to the pleasure. If it is not UYA, you can enjoy learning about the theme, and it can add to your “general” knowledge. So, a complaint that a theme is too obscure is not, in my view a valid complaint. However…
2. …If a theme involves specific, and for some people esoteric knowledge, it can be frustrating or unenjoyable, if the specific knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for solving the puzzle, particularly if it is needed for many clues. Cryptic is an example of this; if you didn’t know the names of the various characters, as many as 12 of the clues were unfathomable.
3. Really good themed puzzles often include specific or esoteric (for some) knowledge, but the clues can be solved without having that knowledge. (Among others, Brendan is a master at this.) If you have the knowledge it adds to the pleasure of the solving; if not, the puzzle is still enjoyable, and the fifteensquared blog enhances that enjoyment.
4. Themes often cause the setter to resort to clunky or meaningless surfaces. Clever or witty surfaces are a source of pleasure in cryptic crosswords. Poor or awkward surfaces make the puzzle less interesting. Cryptic was, in my view, an example of this. This is not a criticism of the theme per se, but of a frequent side effect of the theme. Prize was an example of the opposite – the way Paul worked the theme into every clue, with generally excellent surfaces was a treat to behold.
For what it’s worth, I twigged to the theme of Cryptic, and was able to dredge up from recesses of my aging brain the names required to complete the puzzle. But because of the clunky surfaces and some questionable definitions, I found this puzzle less than top-notch.
So, there’s my two cents worth (tupp’orth to my transatlantic friends).
cellomaniac – thanks for your spoiler alert on the fruit puzzle blog! And thanks also for your thoughtful analysis of the two Paul themed puzzles. I don’t have anything to say in contradiction to what you have written, but I will say that I personally enjoy themed puzzles that are on the edge of my knowledge range. For example, I can remember a few years ago doing an Araucaria which was based on the poems of Browning, about which I thought I knew almost nothing, but I managed to complete it by solving the clues (now, there’s a novel thought) and sifting through the cobwebs and dust in my memory banks.
The “half a dozen others here” (as it says in the clue for 3d) were all known to me, but mostly inaccessible at first, and it was the combination of the crossers, the shapes of the words and the hints in the clues that enabled me to access the memories. This is so much more satisfying – and such an interesting process! – than, as some people seem to do, looking up a list on Google after solving one or two, just to finish the crossword; and then say how tedious it has been!
cellomaniac @40
*two penn’orth
Very good Cellomaniac, you have put my views on themes very succinctly. As it is GD I can risk boring everyone with clue analysis. Three clues, at least, in the CRYPTIC were well below the standard of the rest.
BEAK , we do not wish to see public school slang used, surely we have gone beyond this,
KLEIN , elk is not in the CHAMBERS or COLLINS dictionary, it is a very obscure type of leather, The clue needs to acknowledge this in some way, ” rare leather ” would do and the clue would still work. CHIC = IN is just about okay but very lazy,.
DAFFY is just about in Chambers but not in COLLINS, it is both an abbreviation and a colloquialism, neither is acknowledged. ” short local flower ” would do . DUCK is also weak.
I am a big fan of Paul and most of this crossword is very good, I am not expecting every clue to be brilliant but every clue should at least be adequate.
Roz – I agree with you about ELK; I was prepared to forgive DAFFY because of the theme, but I admit you have a strong argument there; but much as I abhor the separate school system for the children of the self-perpetuating elite, I cannot see why the Guardian should be expected to instruct its crossword setters to omit this kind of clue. Look how often Eton appears, for example. And if we’re going to exclude things we disapprove of, or find distasteful, where do you draw the line? There was a clue the other day which resulted in the solution GESTAPO – several commenters below the line said how much they enjoyed solving it. Words used in crosswords lose their baggage, in my opinion; even though sometimes it’s hard to avoid looking past the word to its associations. (I remember how shocked I was by the clue ‘Death — by hanging?’ back in February, but no one else batted an eyelid; the answer was CURTAINS, but the imagery for me was less mundane.) BEAK is a word that in old fashioned usage meant magistrate and schoolmaster – it’s just a piece of general knowledge. Solve the clue and move on.
Roz @43
I don’t think your criticisms of those specific clues are accurate. I just looked at the online Chambers and Collins dictionaries and found:-
beak (Collins)
in British English
(bi?k)
NOUN
1. the projecting jaws of a bird, covered with a horny sheath; bill
2. a Brit slang word for judge, magistrate, headmaster, schoolmaster
daffy (Chambers)
noun (daffies) colloq a daffodil
elk (Collins)
a stout pliable waterproof leather made from calfskin or horsehide
@ all
It seems that the lowbrow theme upset people rather a lot. I agree that cluing names that are perhaps unfamiliar with anagrams can be annoying. FWIW, I think that the general opinion that Paul produced a well below par puzzle are over the top. I liked the theme but then I have familiarity with the cartoons from childhood. One of the Bugs Bunny ones contains my favourite line from a cartoon:
Bugs (sitting up against a tree on a beautiful spring morning singing a lullaby) – “I dream of Jeannie – she’s a light brown hare”
Tony Collman@42, via Google I found support for tupp’orth, tuppence worth, two penn’orth, tuppenny worth, tuppennys’ worth, etc. In the interests of economy, I picked the shortest one. Cheers.
cellomaniac/Tony – If we’re talking about economy, hap’orth is cheaper and also shorter, referring as it does to half a penny rather than two of them. Though the meaning is a little different, as in not undermining a country’s defences against a possible pandemic for a ha’porth of protective equipment. Anyway, I’ve had my two penn’orth.
cellomaniac @40 … there are two questionable steps in your analysis.
1. In his Cryptic, Paul did provide a relatively straightforward key clue that opened up the theme. The themed answers were therefore only unfathomable to those that did not have the knowledge and were unwilling to acquire it. Paul gave them the “in”.
2. For some of us, clever/witty surfaces come a fair way down the list of essential attributes for a crossword. We as often have problems with setters forcing allusions one step too far in order to secure an elegant surface.
Seems to me that many of the things that make a great crossword for some have precisely the potential to make it a mediocre one for others. Polarisation of views usually confirms this, rather than that the community has divided into those that are right and those that are wrong.
Van Winkle @48, with respect I don’t think your criticisms demonstrate that those points in my analysis are questionable.
1. Re “only unfathomable to those who did not have the knowledge and are were unwilling to acquire it”: I acknowledged that the clues in the Friday Cryptic were only unfathomable to those who lacked the knowledge. My point was that if you lack that knowledge, you can’t solve the clue without gaining that knowledge, which requires researching the cartoon characters in Warner Brothers productions. That is not even a major problem if it applies to one or two solutions – that is what Google is for – but in this case it applied to 12 entries in the grid. Pulling a list of cartoon characters and matching them to the clues for 12 grid entries is not my idea of cryptic fun – it certainly does not lend itself to penny-drop moments. I also made the point that a well-constructed themed puzzle should be solvable without the knowledge of the theme, so that you can learn about the theme from the solving, rather than having to look up the theme elements in order to solve.
2. I agree that some solvers (I’m guessing that includes you) do not care about surfaces as much as others. But that does not make my analysis questionable, it only suggests that my point is less important to some solvers than it is to others.
Phitonelly @45 , thanks for your input. I am afraid I am still using a very battered Chambers 93 and a Collins that I once won for a Guardian Saturday prize. I still think my points stand. If Paul had used magistrates that is common slang . For “masters” or “beaks ” the vast majority of people say teachers.
Elk is still a very rare leather however you find the reference. I suspect most people had never heard of it until this crossword, that is fine but the rarity needs some sort of hint in the clue.
Daffy is in my Chambers, the flower is daffodil and daffy is an abbreviation used colloquially in certain areas, again the clue needs to hint at this.
Bugs Bunny was (is) always my favourite and I well remember the light brown hare.
There is a channel called Talking Pictures and every Saturday morning it shows typical Saturday morning cinema, we have it on series record. This week it had Porky Pig and Daffy Duck with a very brief appearance for Bugs.
Van Winkle @48 raises a point I had never really thought about.
When I read a clue I do not even notice how the sentence reads, I simply take it apart to find the word play and with luck connect it to a definition. It seems that some people are interested in how the clue reads in itself , which is fine but of no concern to me. I just want an accurate definition and precise word play.
I also agree, no right or wrong just diversity of views.
Roz@51: I value a smooth surface for its capacity to mislead; for instance when two words which are usually taken together to lform a common phrase need to be mentally prised apart and dealt with separately, or when an easily disregarded link word turns out to be an essential part of the clue, or even the definition. I also enjoy the occasional ridiculous or surreal image conjured up. I don’t enjoy a clue which on the surface is a random collection of unrelated words (“Labyrinth lieutenant, old, vanquished at first? Congratulations!” for MAZEL TOV in last Sunday’s Everyman for instance – technically correct, but ugly). But it’s a matter of taste.
By the way, thanks for the pointer to Talking Pictures’ Saturday morning offering: I’ll look out for that.
I see what you mean Gladys, it is just I am too impatient, That is why I always miss the theme unless there are lots of number referrals. You are right about the Everyman clue, it makes no sense whatsoever, the word play though is quite accurate.
Saturday 11.45 – Porky Pig and Gabby Goat??
Ximenes , on April 1st , produced a puzzle where one quarter of the grid, a whole corner, had special clues. The solver did not know this. Each clue had two possible solutions which fitted the word play and the definition. On choosing the “incorrect ” answers, they all fitted together perfectly in the grid until they met an answer from a normal clue where it no longer worked. The “correct ” answers did work with the rest of the grid.
Cellomaniac, fair enough. I appreciate these are foreign phrases to you anyway, but to me (and Sheffield Hatter @47?) the only one that chimes is ‘two penn’orth’. It’s such a long time ago that tuppence was a thing other than (apparently) a girl’s name.
Btw, as you may recall, PENN’ORTH was an answer in a recent prize, although, annoyingly, it was enumerated without the apostrophe.
@Anna van Hoof@22 The Japanese would not have used Romaji, they have their own Morse code like encoding for hiragana. See the Wikipedia entry for “Wabun code”. I learned of the existence of this code when I visited the Bletchley Park Museum.
sh@47 and Tony C @55 For me an ‘aporth was always daft, while tuppence was a euphemism, but why give two pennorth when most people only offer you a penny for your thoughts?
– whereas ladies needed to spend a penny on other necessities.
Decimal currency has been with us in the UK for fifty years now, but has yet to produce any memorable turns of phrase.
Roz@54, that sounds fascinating. Do you have a reference number or year for that puzzle?
Jay @59, sorry I do not have much. My Grandmother told me about it. Probably early 1960s , it was definitely April !st on a Sunday so you may be able to pin down the year using old calendars.
Roz @53, Gabby Goat featured in three very early Looney Tunes cartoons alongside Porky Pig and was never heard of again. I would post a link, but I know you are averse to links. You will doubtless see her in her brief and ancient glory at 11.45 on Saturday.
Only vaguely apropos, in the charming contemporary children’s cartoon series, Peppa Pig, there is a character called Gabriella Goat. Gabriella Goat lives in Italy and is visited by Peppa and her family in a series of episodes in which they take a holiday there. In Italy, Peppa Pig is not so much a cult show as a national obsession. It is, as all English-language programming and films are, dubbed into Italian. (This has the curious effect that, on the way to Italy, Daddy Pig speaks perfect Italian, but as soon as they arrive his Italian is comically atrocious.) At any rate, in the Italian version, Gabriella Goat is called Gabriella Capra, and while I was living there – probably in 2014 – a real person called Gabriella Capra went to law demanding reparations from the Peppa Pig production company in the UK for the humiliation and mockery that she had to endure from family and colleagues. I’m afraid that I do not know, but can only guess, the outcome.
Thanks for the information. It is a 1937 cartoon so maybe the goat was culled shortly afterwards.
I am afraid that Peppa Pig is one of my mortal enemies along with Makka Pakka, Iggle Piggle, Mr Tumble and others.
Fortunately it is easy to get DVDs of Mr Benn, Bagpuss etc.
Roz@60 perhaps Ximenes no.690, Sunday April 1st 1962!
Ximenes wrote on #690…
“… the leg-pull was far, far more successful than I meant. What I intended was that you should solve an apparently easy puzzle quickly […], having on the way wondered a little about the clumsiness of some of the “wicked” clues, and that you should then think about the date and search for, and find, the right answers. In their first forms several of the “wicked” clues led less soundly to the spoof answers; when I reread them, I said to myself “No, they’ll never fall for that”, so I took a lot of trouble to make them as convincing as possible. I wish now that I had left them alone: to judge by what eventually happened, quite enough legs would still have been pulled. […] I can only hope that I am forgiven: I can picture the enjoyment of the solvers who reacted as I meant, but they were all too few, and I fear there may be some hard thoughts elsewhere. In case their thinkers have lost confidence in me, I assure them that I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like this on a normal occasion. If they did lose confidence, it would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed for me. My final view, anyway, is that the whole thing was, as Bernard Darwin might have said, quoting his beloved Dickens, “rayther too rich”. “
FT16798. Do I assume that because of the incorrect instruction nobody felt able to give it the 15 Squared treatment – or have I missed it?
Alan @65. I think the FT “Prize” puzzle is blogged more than a week late – this one should be Thursday 10th unless Gaufrid knows better.
Jay@64 that must be it. The year seems just right and not many years would have April 1st on a Sunday. I think the Observer had very few correct entries that week.
My grandmother told me that her mother did Torquemada in the 1930s and twice she was the only correct entrant for the prize. This may not actually be true.
Roz, Jay, here’s a funny thing: I wrote a puzzle for April 1 just gone for the Independent (no. 10,754) which had exactly the same trick as the Ximenes puzzle. The top quarter of the puzzle had obvious(ish) wrong solutions that would only cause trouble once lower solutions didn’t fit. I thought solvers would work back up from the end and sort it all out with a wry chuckle. It didn’t get published like that thanks to having had a trial run just in time to water it down considerably. I was slightly regretful not to have found out how the usual audience would have reacted, so it’s fascinating to see that it had been tried already and that the reaction was exactly as I was warned it would be (disgust, abandonment etc.). My thought processes when writing it were also very similar to those you’ve quoted. The spoof answers had to be as convincing as possible, partly because that was the game, and also because I could not appreciate that the joke would not be immediately seen through. I don’t suppose Ximenes was subject to an editor’s better judgement.
Same thing happened at the TLS a few April firsts ago. However, the spoof answers did have, IIRC, an asterisk by them (but not further indication other than the date of publication to as the tomfoolery). The solvers who were fooled were mostly nonplussed and nonhappy apart from the ones who appreciated being fooled, the solvers who got it loved it. I suppose one could suggest that is often then case for responses to straight crosswords also.
Filbert and Hoskins thanks for such interesting replies. Here is the ultimate setter’s challenge.
Every clue, except one, has two plausible solutions, call them type A and type B.
The remaining clue has one plausible solution and is type C.
All A type solutions fit together with each other and with solution C, this is the completed grid.
All B type solutions fit together with each other and with solution C EXCEPT for one crossing square.
Type C solution is 15 letters long across the bottom, it fails to cross with the final down B solution which is 4 letters long.
GrahamH@56, the Japanese did in fact use Romaji as input to the encryption machines they used during the Second World War. Refer to the Wikipedia entry for “Type B Cipher Machine”. The existence of Wabun code is irrelevant, that is unrelated to encryption and is merely a way of transmitting Japanese via the dots and dashes of Morse code.
The kana (both hiragana and katakana) are widely used in written Japanese, but writing Japanese using purely the phonetic kana is not effective and seems weird to the Japanese. Using Romaji (the 26 English letters) to write a phonetic version of Japanese text is much more common. Every Japanese person I know enters Japanese text on a conventional Western keyboard using romaji for the phonetic Japanese and the entry system presents the probable Japanese (Kanji/kana) equivalent for confirmation or selection of alternatives. Sounds laborious but most Japanese writing is very predictable so the generated Japanese text is nearly always correct.
I lived in Tokyo for 12 years as part-owner of a Japanese IT company employing mostly Japanese staff.
Hoskins@69, would that have been a Talos puzzle, by any chance?
Petert@57, I was unaware of the euphemistic use of ‘tuppence’ until after I wrote my comment but I see there is lively, yet inconclusive discussion in places about its origin.
Tony @72 & Peter @57. I don’t think either of you have mentioned twopenny-halfpenny yet – pronounced tupni-hapni, of course. Useful in the sentence “I wouldn’t give tuppence for your tupni-hapni [insert appropriate noun here], you daft hap’orth”.
Roz, writing clues with 2 answers is a joyless grind. When you finally get one out, the relief is moderated by disappointment at the clue’s inevitable clunkiness. So to your challenge I can only say, where’s the money?
Tony @72 – not me, was the player/editor of the TLS series. Excellent puzzle which got grief it shouldn’t, IMO. But thems the breaks in crossworld.
Thanks Graham at 52 and Colin at 71 for that info on Japanese script. I knew that there is a hiragana version of Braille that we accessed for some of our learners of Japanese but. Not the Morse type version. Nearly thirty years ago I had an early electric word processor forJapanese that I bought in Japan and it had a hiragana keyboard with a screen for possible characters. Fascinating stuff. Anna vh
Anna @ 76 I had never even thought about Japanese characters and keyboards. Haruki Murakami has said before that he writes in English and then changes it to Japanese using squared paper and characters. He thinks it gives him a distinctive style.
Do modern computers and keyboards make it any easier to use characters ?
Colin@71 Thank you for that link. I had forgotten the encryption step, which requires Romaji. You are right that Wabun only works for plain text kana.
Kanji are normally preferred because of brevity, and less ambiguity. But Japanese children learn to read and write hiragana before katakana and kanji, so books for the youngest are mainly/only in hiragana only, I think. (I have seen manga for children where even the katakana are written with furigana.) Adults write hiragana when they don’t know the right kanji, or sometimes for speed when handwriting.
I guess that nowadays with touch screens, a virtual keyboard could use either Romaji or kana, and may even be switchable between them according to user preference.
Sh@73, good one! I’d write that as tuppeny-ha’penny. I think ‘daft ha’porth’ is typical of Yorkshire, perhaps? I used to know a Yorkshireman who used it. I think I imagined he was saying “daft apeth” at the time (whatever one of those would be). Worth mentioning for the benefit of the foreigners, I suppose, that ha’porth is in fact a contraction of halfpenny-worth, if that wasn’t obvious, in context. Shouldn’t it really be ha’p’orth, btw?
Hoskins@75, Broteas is a tough nut to crack sometimes. I’ve just started on his latest today and have got two so far. That April Fool puzzle must have been before I started doing them, as I would have remembered it (as I do Filbert’s).
Graham h at 78. The question of script in the modern context is fascinating. Years ago there was a program that allowed input for Chinese by using the strokes. A very tedious process I think. My Chinese friend uses voice recognition on her phone to construct text for her friends. I don’t know how it works today for Japanese but I acknowledge that the translation option in word is very good. Just like the computer chess has learned what is possible and not. How far have we come.
Just in case anyone is still interested. I don’t know anything (much) about Japanese but I write quite easily in both Chinese (hanzi) and Middle Egyptian (hieroglyphs) on my computer.
Anna @81 I did think that modern keyboards would make it easier for different writing systems. Do you know offhand how many languages still in general use are based on characters rather than an alphabet type system ? I do not know if my terminology is correct but I hope you know what I mean.
I tried to post the following on the Crucible 28,464 blog but it failed to post, maybe there is a cut-off?
I see your points about Guradian policy, Roz@54 and agree with drofle@57 that it would be nice if the Guardian Crossword editor would comment on this.
Crossword difficulty is of course subjective and relative to experience and it might be worth remembering that solving the crossword daily for 25 years and counting counts for a lot of the latter. From the comments that you have made I suspect that you started from a higher point than many. I am sure that there are lots of people around who would be proud to finish a crossword in a day. I find Vlad and Philistine’s crosswords easier than I did twelve months ago and I am sure that is down to experience.
One of the things that I like about fifteensquared is that most contributors don’t often cite their solving times or say too much about how easy it was. This kind of contribution I would imagine is quite off-putting, particularly for new solvers.
Ed The Ball @ 83, thank you for reading my comments and for your thoughtful response. I have been trying not to comment on the Guardian puzzles, but I felt this one just went too far and I let my annoyance get the better of me.
I hope you see now that I was only annoyed with the Guardian and certainly not the blogger, my fellow solvers or even the setter.
I will still comment occasionally on topics that arise and maybe clue analysis.
I will always try to respond to people asking for help and try to give them simple, clear and useful advice.
Ed The Ball @83: your comment has in fact appeared not once but twice on the Crucible blog, and several people have posted after you. Anyway, it’s a discussion probably best continued here, if at all.
Roz@84
Thanks for responding. I’ll say no more.
gladys@85
Thanks
The posts including the duplicate here took a while to arrive and I’d never seen them not arrive immediately so the delay made me look a little daft. In fact the second post on the blog was a duplicate of the one here but I had rewritten it slightly from the first.
Ed The Ball @86
For some unknown reason, your three comments had been intercepted by the spam filter and placed in the appropriate queue. I released them as soon as I noticed that they were there.
@Gaufrid, thanks for the explanation.
My failed attempts at posting a link – and later an emoji – on the blog yesterday didn’t help my 15^2 image (if there is such a thing) either.
Roz @ 82
What an interesting question.
Unfortunately the answer is that I don’t know.
Speaking as one who loves languages and writing systems, I just hope that the world manages to keep as many languages as possible in the face of the English onslaught. (The situation is quite appalling here in Helsinki, for example).
Anna@89
Do you mean that some Finns have started speaking English instead of Finnish, or what?
Thanks Anna and I agree that any reduction in any type of diversity is usually a bad thing.
Is it the march of American English through films, TV, popular music and I imagine the internet ?
Are there any great Finnish authors I should be reading ? In translation I am afraid.
One of my Japanese students once put me on to Murakami and I love his work.
Tony @ 90
I have heard Finnish people speaking to their children in ‘English’ in the tram. It is common to hear teenagers talking to each other in a mixture of Finnish and English.
The official languages in Finland are Finnish and Swedish and these two languages were (mostly) the only ones you saw in official and semi-official (eg information from HSL, the transport authority in and around Helsinki) notices when I first came here in 2010. In the last four or five years, the Swedish seems to have disappeared and been replaced with English or ‘English’.
it is a very sad fact that Finnish people value and respect incorrect English more than correct Finnish. In fact, just about anything writen in English immediately radiates authority and respect, in a way that Finnish doesn’t.
In some streets in Helsinki you only see English. No word of Finnish at all.
When I first came, I refused point-blank to speak English or to be spoken to in English. This required a very thick skin 🙂
Roz @ 91
Well yes, inevitably American English is everywhere on the media, though Finnish television does show a lot of British programmes too. I was taken back to my student days only yesterday, watching Lewis.
I shall tell you a secret. When I was young(er) I was so infatuated with learning foreign languages, that I failed to appreciate the literatures that tend to come with them. I managed to get through ‘A’-levels but at university I chose as many options from linguistics and philology as I possibly could. In the end I only had to do one literature paper and for that I chose the mediaeval period – and that was quite fun.
Hence it is that, although I have long since found a love of literature, I cannot speak with any authority on the subject. I can only tell you what I have read and liked:
Elias Lönnrot collected many traditional Finnish folk legends and moulded them into the famous Kalevala. Well recommended.
Riikka Pulkkinen – Raja (The boarder)
Heidi Köngäs – Hyväntekijä (The philanthropist)
Leena Lehtolainen – Ensimmäinen murhani (My first murder)
Sisko Istanmäki – Liian paksu perhoseksi (Too fat to be a butterfly)
(The English titles are my translations, they may not be the actual title of the English translation. If there is an English translation!)
Anna@92, thanks for the information. I do wonder what makes you say that “just about anything writ[t]en in English immediately radiates authority and respect”. (Presumably you mean ‘ and commands respect’, btw?). I don’t really see how a notice can radiate authority except by reference to the source of the notice, which must be the same for both languages if one is a translation of the other?
There was a time, wasn’t there, where a certain type of English person liked to pepper their speech with French and/or Italian words when those nations were considered to be what present-day young folk might describe as ‘cool’?
Tony @94. I don’t want to anticipate Anna’s response, but speaking for myself I think I can say that the way Boris Johnson speaks – peppering his sentences with bits of French and Latin that he knows full well the vast majority of people will not either understand or recognise – is clearly done because he knows that it will tend to “radiate authority and command respect”. The small minority of people who will recognise the words and understand the references to Pericles et al are not really in a position to undermine him by showing how irrelevant they are, or how inconsistent with his actions, so he keeps on doing it.
On a lower level, menus in restaurants written in inappropriate French are designed to make the prospective customer think that the cooking also originated in France; the reverse is also seen in advertisements seen in France, with English words and phrases that native speakers of English might think odd, but which have a certain cachet in France – or had, pre-Brexit.
Thank you very much Anna @ 93, our daughters are very good at tracking down books so I will set them on the trail next time I see them.
In nineteenth century Russian literature it is clear that speaking French is the height of sophistication in Russian high society. It is strange how fashion changes.
I have blissful ignorance of all matters IT so forgive this question please. In Finland is the internet mainly in Finnish or ( American ) English ?
SH@95
C’est si vrai, mon brave!
Roz @ 96
My pleasure.
Russian is one of my little hobbies. Now that I am retired and find the days long and empty, I decided to take up four hobbies to pass the time and to keep my mind semi-alive at least.
I have indeed noticed that there are lots of French loan-words in Russian.
I don’t understand what you mean when you ask if the internet is in Finnish or English? You can access any webpage in any language, just like you can in Britain. I have nothing to do with ‘social media’ but I think it’s all in Finnish. Anything official is in Finnish and Swedish; I think they also have it in English or ‘English’ too. But as I said before, I refuse to have anything to do with anything unless it’s in Finnish.
Roz @ 96
I was just looking over my posting @ 93 and I notice with horror that I wrote my translation of Raja as ‘boarder’. It should be BORDER. I wonder if ‘boundary’ or even ‘boundaries’ in the plural would be better, as the border(s) in question are those between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in personal relationships.
Sheffield Hatter et al
Yes, in the past it was very fashionable to use French, Italian, Latin, even Greek, to show er, well, something, erudition? social standing? But if my own recollections from childhood are anything to go by, the speaker would say those words in a very English accent. No attempt was made to actually sound like a native speaker and there was certainly no attempt to suggest any adoption of the culture of the native speaker.
That is why I think the current international trend towards English is so dangerous. There *is* an attempt to sound like a native speaker of English. There *is* a trend to regard anything American as better. And with the internet, we have a situation which is new in the history of the world. Languages have always borrowed from other languages but now, for the first time, we have a medium which could mean that English (probably the American variety) will be the only language left in 50 (?) 100 (?) years time.
Don’t forget that the Romans never forced anyone to speak Latin. But people felt it was so important that they *chose* to speak Latin. So much so that all the native languages across the empire were lost. How much easier that change will be with the communications of today.
Very depressing.
Anna, sh et al – Julius Caesar (Act I, ii)
Cassius. Did Cicero say any thing?
Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius. To what effect?
Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, Ill ne’er look you i’ the
face again: but those that understood him smiled at
one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own
part, it was Greek to me.
Anna – the book references are great. We will see our daughters in July and they will easily find out if they are in translation and get me copies if so.
I think you over-estimate my internet knowledge which is actually zero. I have this thing called a Chrome book and someone has kindly set it up so I can get on this site, the BBC and my work emails , nothing else.Is this site actually on the internet?
Actually I was glad to read that you can get pages in all languages, that is something at least.
I find your insistence on Finnish hilarious and very admirable. I am equally stubborn about many modern things.
essexboy: “those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads” and said, that Boris, he’s fun, isn’t he.
sh @103: 🙂 Those who pepper their speech with French and Latin (and Greek) are perhaps a bit like those annoying people on 15² who insist on quoting from Shakespeare… except Eileen did it today, so maybe I’m excused.
Roz @ 102
You are not alone. I dislike all things ‘computer’ and much prefer books. I use books for nearly all my own hobbies, not the internet. With the sole exception that I do have one or two ‘friends’ on one Russian social site, as that is the only practical way to practise the language at the moment. Most of what people write there is twaddle so I ignore it but there are one or two people worth communicating with.
We are pretty well forced to use the internet for so many things here in Finland, so I have had to become a little more confident in its use.
I don’t know what a Chrome book is.
Yep, stubborn. I like it!
Are you in the UK?
Anna @105, I do not know what a Chrome book is really. It is like a small laptop I think, open it up and has a screen. It is from work and has been pre loaded with all I need.
I do actually think the internet must be very good for languages if you need to learn or practise.
We are in the UK, never been to Finland but have been to Sweden and Norway on Inter-rail a long time ago. Have you been there many years ?
ABC murders from Brummie blog on Wednesday.
Our railway station has a sort of unofficial library in the waiting room. People just leave unwanted books and you can borrow and return them as you wish. This morning , amazingly , I found The ABC Murders.
I will quote the blurb from the back page.
A is for Andover – and Mrs Ascher battered to death.
B is for Bexhill – and Betty Barnard strangled.
C is for Sir Carmichael Clarke clubbed and killed.
Beside each body lay a copy of the ABC railway guide- open at the relevant page.
The police were baffled . But the murderer had already made a grave mistake.
He had challenged Hercule Poirot to unmask him …
Roz @107 Bit spooky that, if your surname begins with ‘R’, don’t go to Rochester, Rotherham or Rotherhithe today!
It is very spooky indeed. Fortunately my surname does not begin with R.
Roz @ 106
Eleven years now.
I do not know how you stand the cold Anna, I find England too cold most of the time.
Did you learn Finnish before you went ? I have heard it is very difficult.
I do not know much about this but is it true that Finnish is quite different to all the other European languages ?
Maybe Gaufrid can put Roz and Anna in touch so they can have a chat without clogging up the crossword blog?
There doesn’t seem to be an Azed puzzle today online. Alack and alas!
Pen and paper beats the internet drofle@113. I am sure it will be there for you soon.
Roz @ 111
Your comment made me smile. And yes, it is the reaction of most Brits, when I say I live in Finland.
Today it is 30° in Helsinki. (Centigrade!!). Hot hot hot. Clearly Ra is doing us proud for the Summer Solstice in his celestial boat. I had to rush home from the shop or the milk would have been curdled in the bottle.
It can be very cold in the winter though, and usually is. But we have had the odd very mild winter too.
Roz @ 111
I did fiddle around (please note the technical vocabulary) with Finnish while I was living in Yell. I actually came to Finland in order to learn the language properly. It was going to be a couple of years, then back to the UK. Somehow I never went back.
Finnish is not an Indo-European language, being related to Estonian and Sami (Lapp) very closely and to Hungarian more distantly. So it is indeed fairly different from most European languages. That for me was the attraction. But the verbs do seem very IE to me.
Where I live in Helsinki (overlooking the sea in Lauttasaari, if you want to google the map) is actually very slightly south of where I lived in Yell.
Shall we ask Tony @ 112 to join in? He may not be so inclined to be offensive?
Anna @116. Please continue chatting! This is General Discussion, not a crossword blog.
Sh@117, I think “general discussion” is intended, in the context of a site all about crosswords, to mean ‘discussion not specific to any particular crossword’ not ‘chit-chat about any matter under the sun’. The rubric at the top is: “This page is for the discussion of general crossword related matters and other topics of interest”. To me, someone I don’t know is telling someone else I don’t know that they lived in Yell is neither discussion nor of general interest and notifications I receive about that and similar is SPAM which I have no way of filtering out if I wish to be alerted when someone has something interesting to say about crosswords.
Anna you are very lucky with 30 degrees, it rarely gets that warm here. I did look at the map in our atlas ( not on google ) and Helsinki is surprisingly far South.
Do you get cryptic crosswords in Finnish ? I sometimes think, perhaps naively , that English is particularly suited to crosswords. It is such a mongrel language and there are so many words with incredibly diverse meanings allowing the setter to be very deceptive. We even have words with two meanings that are exactly opposite. Not having different endings for the different noun cases must help as well, allows the setter to not be too precise.
Maybe I am wrong, perhaps everybody thinks their own language is the best one for crosswords. A puzzle for you Anna, can you have crosswords in Japanese or Chinese ?
Tony Collman @118. I sympathise with your frustration at getting notifications of posts that do not interest you, but surely the solution is to disable the notifications and just visit this page from time to time. You quoted “other topics of interest” as one of the purposes of this page, but then go on to reword it as “general interest”. If the topic is of interest to two people, that seems to be fine; if only one person is interested, the topic will soon be dropped. I really don’t see a problem with Anna and Roz having a discussion here. And as Gaufrid has not intervened, I assume that he is ok with it too.
Well at least they’ve started chatting about crosswords now …
Tony Collman @121: I’ve enjoyed many of your contributions and you’ve definitely made GD your hang out page but I’m a tad disappointed in your stance here. It seems everywhere I go on fifteensquared there is someone trying to shut down conversation. This is a social media site and with that goes the likelihood of interaction between people. This community has, in addition to a love of crosswords, and not particularly surprisingly, an active collective mind, considerable curiosity and a love of words and language in general. As a result people find others of like mind, either on a particular topic or in general. And they engage. They get chased off specific pages for not being relevant to the crossword in question and this is where they end up. Where they now appear to be expected to discipline themselves further – “I’ve made a friend but I can only talk about crosswords with them” seems hardly realistic.
Until there is a mechanism (and Gaufrid – IF you read this burble of mine, have you ever thought about it?) for the site to put consenting individuals in direct contact with each other, GD is the only page for an exchange such as Roz and Anna’s. And Gaufrid DOES step in when he thinks it’s gone too far. Tony – you are expert when it comes to use of technology and have demonstrated that – to my benefit – on many times: let me introduce you to the scroll bar on your laptop that enables you to whizz past the offending discussion to something more to your taste 😀
Postmark @122
“(and Gaufrid – IF you read this burble of mine, have you ever thought about it?) for the site to put consenting individuals in direct contact with each other, “
Over the years I have put many people in touch with each other, by forwarding an email address, having received agreement. I will continue to do so.
Thanks Gaufrid. I suspected you would see that. An added service! And, btw, yet another opportunity to express gratitude for the great work you do keeping this site managed as you do. Many thanks.
ATB
Mark
(I would also have understood if you’d skipped my burble. 😀 )
Mark, thank you for your words of appreciation. I have also enjoyed reading many of your comments both here and on the Guardian Prize posts.
I should say, though, this is not my particular “hangout page”. I receive notifications of comments here (along with notifications from many other sites) and if someone raises a topic that interests me, I may come here and comment.
Secondly, I’m not at all trying to put barriers between people who want to get to know each other better or just to have social intercourse. However, a blog with inline comments isn’t the best format for use as a social media site. Anyway Gaufrid has offered to put people in touch by email if they would like that and have such a facility. If this page really is the only way they can have contact then I wouldn’t be so ungracious as to try and interfere with it. I will, as you say, whizz past it — like everyone else it doesn’t concern, I suppose — and hope I don’t miss anything interesting.
Tony Collman @125: what a gracious response. And somehow, having seen the two ladies in question do their stuff on the crossword pages, I doubt we’ll be seeing them engaging in a huge amount of idle chit chat on here. (I nearly said “talking about the weather” … but they did do that! 😀 )
I’m just keeping my head down at the moment ! 🙂
Actually, I did make a quick comment on the Guardian cryptic today, as I was convinced the spiders in question were the tools used in snooker. Nobody seems to be of the same opinion, though. Yet.
And I am aware that I haven’t answered Roz’s question about cryptic crosswords in other languages.
It’s been too hot to think here but yesterday afternoon we had a most impressive thunder and lightning storm and the temperature is a little lower today.
Anna, it’s just a pleasure to welcome you back. A little bit of Finland was missing from my life 😀
I did see your comment – and, unlike the really bad old days, it’s already been noted and responded to which is great. Personally, I would not be surprised if everyone – including the setter – missed that spider connection so good on you for lateral thinking.
Mark @ 128
I’m not back.
The contribution @112 is just a repeat of the same old thing. Reminded me of why I dropped out.
Person offends me. Short discussion ensues, in which excuse is accepted as a ‘gracious response’ Not a word to me. But hey, you lads have it all sorted between you, so that’s just fine.
Bah!! To the lot of yer !!
Anna @129. I’m sorry you feel that way. I did say @117 that you and Roz should keep on chatting and @120 I argued against Tony’s assertion that only matters of general interest (i.e. if he was interested, apparently) should be allowed on this blog. I agree with you that there was no need for Mark to refer to Tony’s post @125 as “gracious”, but that’s just Mark trying to get everyone to play nicely and be happy. Tony has made some interesting contributions on this site, but what he said @112 was downright ungracious and misogynistic in my opinion. And as you said @116, offensive.
I can understand that you would rather not be forced to use your elbows to get a hearing, but there are plenty of people still using this site who expressed regret that you stopped joining in (myself included), and I think your recent contributions have been appreciated, not only for their content but because they seemed to signal your return to the crossword community. Both you and Roz have things to say, so I hope you will continue to say them.
I’ve compiled a wee cryptic for anyone interested in having a go.
I don’t set them often, so I hope you’ll forgive the odd trespass. Hope you like it if you do give it a spin.
(I thought I’d interest the Guardian Friday solvers with it but my post seems to have been pulled. Hey ho.)
Sh@130
“misogynistic”
What are your grounds for asserting that my complaints had anything to do with the sex of the commenters? Please withdraw and apologise.
Maybe misogynistic is the wrong word. Please tell me what is the word to use when a man complains about women indulging in ‘chit-chat about any matter under the sun’; when he wants them to do it somewhere else ‘without clogging up the crossword blog’ so that ‘if someone raises a topic that interests me, I may come here and comment’. If that word is not ‘misogynistic’ I will withdraw and apologise and then use that word instead.
I don’t think there is a need for Tony to provide you with a word to replace a word you have used incorrectly, SH. That is down to you – so I reckon you should withdraw the comment and apologise, come up with the correct word, or stand by the comment without any dancing. 🙂
Hoskins – OK then, if you think I should withdraw and apologise, tell me how I have used the word incorrectly. I said “maybe” it is the wrong word, but there must still be a word that correctly describes Tony’s attitude towards the conversation that Anna and Roz were having on this General Discussion forum. It seemed to me that the way he expressed himself had quite a lot to do with the fact that Anna and Roz are names normally given to females; and, I acknowledge, also quite a lot to do with how he perceives this forum, and the sort of things that he thinks we should be discussing here. However, the use of the term “chit-chat” is a put-down that is typical of men denigrating what they perceive as the unimportant things that women talk about.
I have no personal animosity towards Tony Collman, but Anna has said @116 how she found Tony’s post @112 offensive. I believe that Anna finds that she is treated here differently from the way that contributors with a typically masculine name are treated; I am inclined to agree with her.
And for what it’s worth, I confirm that I am no longer dancing.
Sorry Hoskins @134, but I too found Tony’s post @112 offensive, precisely because it had echoes of a thousand casually misogynistic comments heard over the years in pubs, clubs, office canteens etc.
Perhaps it was the sense that he was going over the heads of the women affected, rather than addressing them directly, and having a word with the man in charge – with the intended result that the women’s annoying chit-chat would be removed from the public arena and relegated to the private sphere where it belongs.
Honestly, Tony – would you have adopted that tone if it had been a couple of blokes having a conversation? There have been plenty of examples of male contributors to this forum going off on a tangent, but I can’t recall your treating them in that fashion.
And, if we’re in the business of demanding apologies – the people who are most deserving of an apology are Anna and Roz, and they still haven’t had one.
SH – I fancy you are still dancing because you are still asking others to correct your word or find a new one. The simpler – and non-little-fish-big-fish-cardboard-box – way would be for you just to have stood by what you said or retracted it without that bells and whistles, IMO.
EB – Just because they remind you of the things you have experienced in the past does not, in my opinion, mean the comments were the same in this case. It is easy to frame something in one way when, in fact, it might not have anything to do with the frame one has given it at all.
To all … perhaps Tony’s comments were just a culmination of all types of humans going off on a tangent, perhaps Tony has a personality that sees things only one way, perhaps Tony was having a bad day, perhaps Tony was within his rights to say how he felt about interruptions whatever the reason, perhaps a major part of Tony’s life is forum interaction and things that really interest him and make his day and so his first response was reflecting that he only wanted those things before he then reflected that he wouldn’t want to stop other folk talking too. Perhaps it is something else …
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I dunno, but isn’t it is better to give everyone a little leeway and a break and try to assume good intentions or honest intentions or bad day/misworded communications than start throwing serious words around?
Here’s an idea – how about everyone apologises to everyone and moves on? I will start things rolling:
Sorry to Roz and Anna for engaging in a conversation here I prolly shoulda stayed out of. Sorry to The Everyman who mighta thought I was having a go at them recently. And sorry to SH and EB for anything and everything I might have done in replying to them in this conversation. And sorry to Tony for possibly putting ideas out there about him that might no be accurate. And sorry to everyone having to read all this.
See? Pretty easy and hopeful beneficial. Now it is all your turns … have at it and lets move on to a happier place and let the healing begin! 🙂
Anna @129 I am sorry if my questions have brought you back to this page and I hope you are not too upset. I feel like I have stepped into a minefield, Clearly you have had problems before that I know nothing about so I cannot comment. Perhaps Mr Gaufrid should start a new page.
Sorry to interrupt again, but I wonder if you can recommend a forum where lovers of English Cryptics can share their puzzles and passion for wordplay? It’s a bit of a shame that 225 doesn’t host such a forum. Perhaps one day, eh?
Cheers.
Sam @139
Try https://www.mycrossword.co.uk/
Thanks, Gaufrid.
Anna @129: I think you’ve exceeded the warmth of my welcome back in the frigidity of your response, which is a shame given that we corresponded well in the past and I have entreated you to return on several occasions. Ho hum. I certainly don’t see myself as having participated in any kind of misogynistic ‘sorting it out between the lads’ and gender really doesn’t play a part in how I perceive my fellow posters. (Though I am guilty of referring to those with overtly male pseudonyms as ‘he’ and female as ‘she’ which I probably shouldn’t do). As for “gracious”, I simply picked up on the word “ungracious” in the comment I was replying to and fed it back. As hatter observes, I always rather hope people on this site might get along and mend their differences – and generally get into the stormiest of hot water for attempting to pour oil upon it. But, as you’re not here, I guess there’s little danger of that happening again in this case.
This may have been covered already, but why does this site still treat the Guardian Saturday puzzle as if it was a prize, with a week’s delay before the blog?
Paul @143
The Guardian still does not give the solution for a week, so a blog post would be a spoiler.
Two indirect anagrams today (Sunday). One in the Guardian subject of extensive discussion, one, perhaps less indirect, in the Independent, not commented on at all. Is there an agenda emerging against Everyman? I, for one, feel a bit less enthusiastic about Tees’ puzzles now.
In the last couple of weeks it has become apparent, at least to me, that there is a need for a Meta-discussion page for those who wish to continue discussions about discussions as opposed to discussions about topics arising from the crossword puzzles (which is what this General Discussion page is for).
Many recent comments have gone beyond ‘broader discussion of aspects of a crossword puzzle or of topics arising from it’ [my words reflecting Site Policy] and degenerated into a discussion about discussions and how to conduct them, to the detriment of the flow of whatever topical exchanges were current.
If Meta-discussion is considered too high-brow a title for a new page, Storms in Teacups (suggested by a friend with whom I have discussed the recent phenomenon) would be a satisfactory alternative.
Thank you for your voice of common sense, Alan B. Perhaps too much of taking things too seriously on this site?
Alan @146, yes, but …
AlanB @146: I think this is one of the drawbacks of a linear blog. One option (which I have mentioned to Gaufrid before) is to move to a nested blog a-la Facebook (other social media was available until they acquired the lot of ’em) but that has an overhead in terms of signing-up and management by Gaufrid.
Gaufrid has done an amazing job in connecting people who wish to be contacted – I’ve corresponded with at least 5 others over the course of the past 16 months thanks to his electronic Rolodex and certainly my life has been enriched for knowing these people although I suspect that they will have had to find counselling to deal with me – sorry ’bout that y’all.
We do have the https://forum.mycrossword.co.uk site which has a ‘General Discussion’ forum open for all (and every) topic in a nested format (complete with the ability to be notified if your topic is updated). I’m perfectly happy for people to use/abuse that if they so wish and create their own topics. (The main part of the site is dedicated to discussions about the MyCrossword.co.uk site – I run the forum site on behalf of Raider).
Sam @131: Fabulous puzzle – thanks! Can I suggest that you upload it to http://www.mycrossword.co.uk/ ?
MaidenBartok @149
Thank you for your comment in reply to mine.
I take your point about nested blogs, and I know two other sites (and there are many more) that use that format. I have always felt that the linear format favoured and adopted by Gaufrid for this site is well suited to it as it makes it so easy to keep up with the flow of more than one topic being discussed in relation to the crossword – and indeed easy enough to ignore and pass over sub-topics or individual comments that are not of interest – and it has wide coverage of crosswordland.
As you probably know, the Guardian weekday crossword thread on this forum underwent a significant change many months ago, characterised by a large increase in the number of comments, with frequent repetition and what came to be called ‘bloating’ of the blog page, making it tiresome and difficult for commenters (except perhaps those who dominated the blog pages) to follow their topics of interest and continue to contribute to them. I only mention this for context and have no wish to dwell on it.
In recent months I have noticed a similar increase in volume on that particular thread (I am excluding the Saturday Guardian blogs from this), creating what I perceive to be a similar problem, and it was the continued and prolonged discussion on the discussions themselves that prompted me to call for a happy home to be created for those who want to go off-topic to a greater degree and more often. I was not alone, of course, in sensing what was happening and wanting some attention to be given to the issue, but I alone came up with the not too serious suggestion of setting up a meta-discussion page – a suggestion that had its day.
Regrettably, I get less time to tackle crosswords during the week (I missed the Boatman but found time for the Vlad later in the day), but I read the blogs when I can, even when it’s to see what I missed. This is an excellent site, as you say, and I too sometimes correspond privately with solvers I have met here. I was interested to read of your involvement in the MyCrossword site.
[Just testing keyboard emojis as showed up as ?s please ignore
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Blah @152
See here for emoticons.
Thanks gaufrid oddly enough I just resorted to the old fashioned way of colon dash bracket not expecting it to transform but lo and behold…
May I also just say thank you for all your work on the site.
New topic: solving times.
Recently on the Guardian thread, the recently-arrived contributor called Times Refugee incurred some community disapproval through bringing from that other forum the habit of logging and comparing solving times. There, TR said, it is standard practice. TR alludes to this ruefully today in a comment on the G-blog in which he describes the incident as almost having started WW3, this being an admonition to a newbie (jackkt) who had committed the same faux pas.
I confess to having possibly kicked WW3 off, as in the relatively short time that I have been participating here, I had got the distinct impression that mentioning solving times was something of a breach of house etiquette, I assume on grounds that it can be disheartening for less experienced as well as for slower solvers. Also, the ethos of the site seemed on the whole to be hospitable and therefore non-competitive. Speaking personally, I would never dream of timing myself – I am too restless and fidgety by nature ever to solve a puzzle at a single, uninterrupted sitting: there is tea to be made; there are fiddly housework tasks to be fiddled with; there are various news outlets to be dipped into; at this time of year there are the previous day’s baseball scores, reports and highlights to be dipped into. Etcetera.
I bring this up now only because since WW3 and the communal chastening of Times Refugee, I had occasion, in pursuit of a recommendation originating elsewhere, to visit the blog on an Araucaria puzzle dating, I think, from 2009 – certainly pre-2010. Through this, I discovered, to my surprise, that at that time it appears to have been standard practice for bloggers to post their solving times at the head of their blogs.
I wonder if Gaufrid can throw light on when, and for what reasons, this practice was discontinued. I myself am pleased that it was, but I wonder if this change of culture, if I can call it that, within this site was the result of a deliberate policy decision and whether it was prompted by input from participants.
Spooner’s catflap @155
I will give you the background (or at least as much as my failing memory will allow) but it will have to wait until tomorrow.
I can understand the antipathy to people posting solving times. What could possibly interest anybody in knowing that AnonSolver finished it in 14 minutes and 27 seconds? Personally, I love puzzles where I somehow twig what’s in the setter’s mind and dash the lot off before I light my second fag of the morning. Just as I love the ones where I get bogged down, tear out most of my few remaining hairs, drink endless cups of coffee, take a break for a bit of DIY or gardening, soak in a warm bath while ruminating, suddenly remember that I haven’t finished the crozzie and tease out the remaining clues. It’s supposed to be fun, innit?
Ref Spooner Catflap #155 and Gaufrid #156.
Following my “gaffe” this morning I checked out your Comment Guidelines section and found no mention of an embargo on posting solving times, so if it is a policy I suggest you amend the guidelines accordingly. I would mention that it’s no big deal as far as I’m concerned one way or another as I rarely post comments; I only mentioned my time today because I couldn’t believe how simple the puzzle was. I’ve taken longer on occasions to solve The Times Quick Cryptic!
Perhaps it’s a Thing for the Times crossword community because there is a Times Crossword Championship for which speedy, concentrated solving is required. I don’t know about other newspapers, but the Guardian doesn’t have the same competitive spirit, and regular proclaiming of fast solving times is seen as showing off. I prefer my solving, like Spooner’s catflap, at a leisurely pace and often spread over more than one session : speed is not what it’s about.
At one stage, I used to (try to) solve the Times crossies in the Weekend Australian, and (eventually) go to the Times for the Times blog to see the discussion and, sometimes, read the answers I had missed. The TftT site regularly had times on it (surprise, surprise – you’d think the name might give it away) and I always found it grating. [I remember you from there, jackkt]. Here is JoeBlogs citing an 11.37 solving time for a puzzle that took me most of the week. (Hence, I was just a lurker – usually far too late to comment). Fifteensquared, when I discovered early in lockdown both that the Guardian crossies were online and that there was a blog, was a breath of fresh air – for me. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but I would hate to see any reference to solving times that goes beyond the occasional easy/hard, quick/lengthy on 15^2.
As a veteran of WW3 as Lord Jim would say, I will just add my two penn’orth. I never time myself for the Guardian but during term time I do have a twenty minute train journey home so I always know a rough time. If people want to put times on the blog I have no objection, it is like some of the tangential topics that crop up, sometimes they have no interest for me but they could be interesting for someone else.
I did put my Azed target on the WW3 blog, perhaps I should not have. It is purely a personal target between me and Azed that I have never managed, but one day …..
I only mentioned it because Rodshaw ( I think ) mentioned a Sydney crossword with a nominal 30 minute target but it was only an innocent , light-hearted challenge to someone else.
Spooner’s catflap
The creation of Fifteensquared was inspired by the Times for the Times blog which, as indicated by its name, used to concentrate on solving times, presumably because success at the annual Championship required speed-solving. In the early days, the bloggers on 15² tended to be people who participated on TftT and so it was natural for them to include solving times.
Once the site became established, it was clear that visitors were not interested in solving times, in fact some found them off-putting and disheartening, so an (unofficial) policy was put in place to discourage the posting of solving times. I cannot say when exactly this happened because it was quite some time ago and my memory isn’t what it used to be.
I don’t see a problem with the likes of “this one took me longer than usual” but I would prefer to avoid absolute figures.
Thanks for the explanation. Just to mention that The Times newspaper website provides options for competitive solving on a daily basis for those who wish to participate, furnished with performance league-tables etc, so it’s inevitable that would continue to be reflected in the TfTT blog.
Thanks, Gaufrid, for that. I appreciate your taking the time to respond. I spend quite a lot of time mooching around on this site, and it is interesting to have some background on how it has developed over the years.
Has anyone else noticed that of late a higher percentage of the Guardian grids are closer to either two separate halves or four quarters?
At the very end of the Guardian comments thread for Tuesday’s puzzle ( one of the four-quarters grids) Qaos posted this, which I hope he won’t mind me repeating here:)
I appreciate this particular grid isn’t universally loved, but the distribution of thematic word lengths often restricts what Guardian grids can be used. I try to counteract the “four crosswords in one” issue by making the clues easier. That way you’re unlikely to be locked out of a particular quadrant.
Other setters will try to alleviate the problem by having multi-word clues split across the divides – or just leave us to struggle.
There is one available Guardian grid which has no connection at all between the left and right hand sides: it popped up in a recent Quick but I don’t remember any of the Cryptic setters using it.
Gaufrid@162
Yes, indeed. TftT was started by Peter Biddlecombe, winner of the Times Championships more than once, I believe, and currently crossword editor for the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement (where he also sets one in four puzzles as Broteas).
Roz @163, what is WW3, please?
Tony Collman @168 – I refer the honourable gentleman to my comment @155 and to the comment by Times Refugee on that day’s G blog that gave rise to it. Really, though, if you cannot be bothered to read the commenting thread, why intervene?
Tony @168 it is World War 3, someone else used the expression on the original blog.
Thanks, Roz. I think that was a puzzle I didn’t do and so a blog I didn’t read. I was interested in the general topic of solving times and thought WW3 might be shorthand for another blog I didn’t know about.
Sooners Catflap
I will try harder in future to make sure I read every blogpost on 15² and to memorize every detail of any comment you make. Also to bear in mind the new meaning of ‘intervene’ in the context of a public forum.
Today’s (Sat 24 July) Guardian print edition designates the crossword as a ‘cryptic’ rather than a prize but the online version is under the ‘prize’ heading and has no check or reveal buttons. Accepting the current difficulties or a typical Guardian cock-up? I raise the matter because if, de facto, the prize is no longer with us, is there any point in delaying the blog for a week?
Tyngewick @173
There are a number of reasons why we are maintaining the original schedule but the primary one is that the Guardian does not release the solution into the public domain until midday the following Friday and we are not going to pre-empt this.
Fair enough.