Guardian 28,622 / Qaos

102 comments on “Guardian 28,622 / Qaos”

1. This was on the easier end for Qaos and the top half went in quickly, the bottom half not so. Searching for the inevitable theme, I found types of BEER – COBRA, CITRON, WINTER, RED ROSE, THROW DOWN, TREACLE and ROCKET (the name of my local). There’s also indirectly BEER KNOT, WATER, BOTTLER, INDOOR BEER (garden) and an Irish Fairy tale from 1825, entitled BREWERY OF EGGSHELLS. I also discovered that you can buy BEER HANGING Christmas decorations!

   Too many number clues for my liking but still enjoyable. I liked ALL HALLOWS DAY and smiled at EGGSHELLS. The parsing of ILLITERATE beats me as well.

   Ta Qaos &

2. I think you got the theme OK Eileen, although my examples are obscure to say the least -)

3. The theme escapes me, too.
   Thanks for illuminating some of the parsing, Eileen and thanks to Qaos for the fun.

4. AlanC @1
   … Or is the theme gardens? – knot, hanging, roof, water, market, beer, community, indoor, rose, treacle – no, that comes from wells.

5. Qaos has tweeted that this may be one for budding solvers. Hope this helps, Eileen.

6. Many thanks, AlanC .

   So I was right about the beers – but not knowledgeable enough to pursue it. I’m grateful to have that cleared up so soon.

7. PeterO @4: definitely a better alternative than mine.

8. I think illiterate is IL + LI + TER + ‘AT E’ where E = East (quarter), so thrice at East. But happy to be corrected if someone’s got a better idea. Pleased to see Steve Biko remembered as well. Thanks to Qaos and to Eileen for the blog.

9. And there are back gardens.

10. ILLITERATE: Seen TE taken as note (is it a quarter note?)
    So can it be TE+RA+TE (assuming RA is another quarter note). Three times ‘a quarter’.
    Wild. Is it? 🙂

    Thanks, Qaos and Eileen!

11. Tomsdad @8: That sounds better!

12. Feliks’ comment @5 seems to confirm PeterO’s suggestion but it’s intriguing that there are so many beers, too.

13. Are the three times in ILLITERATE T + ERA + T? I couldn’t see the quarter, but it makes sense that it is E for East

14. Although I hate gardening and love beer, this was definitely gardens for me, although I did not twig it till I was about three-quarters through.

15. Top half straightforward, bottom half slightly more challenging but not much. Thoroughly enjoyed this. Didn’t spot the theme. (Never do!) Thanks Qaos and Eileen

16. Back garden.
    Also can’t get the parsing of 24 but thought the final E might be the quarter (East)?

17. ILLITERATE contd…

    Or TER (three times) +A + TE (if it is justified as a quarter)

18. Surely the three times areT + ERA + T and E is the quarter.

19. T + ERA + T + East

20. I also wondered about beers, but have only heard of one of AlanC’s list @1 – COBRA. But PeterO might have it @4. I knew there must be a theme, but… Nevertheless, an enjoyable solve with only a few worries. MALADDRESS (NHO) – surely the French is maladresse? And demolish is not quite THROW DOWN, surely. Still, plenty to like: LOAD, BEER, ROOFER, STEVE BIKO (RIP), APIECE, ROSE-RED (I thought of Petra too, Eileen). Thanks, Qaos and Eileen.

21. Thanks Eileen – a likeable enough puzzle from Qaos, but I was with you in not spotting a theme. I think 6d THROW DOWN for “Demolish” and 19d TREACLE for “sentimentality” must be Britishisms, as I didn’t really understand those clues. I enjoyed 1a HAWAII, my FOI, the afore-mentioned 8d ALL HALLOWS’ DAY, and 14d STEVE BIKO, which reminded me of the great Peter Gabriel song. Thanks to Qaos.

22. KJ @ 13!

    Sorry. Had I read your post properly, I wouldn’t have gone on thinking wildly. 🙂

23. [Sorry crossed against several posts as I took too long to type]

24. Thanks for pointing out the theme which escaped me. I wondered about “gardens” too but wasn’t convinced. Hovis @18 and James @19 beat me to it with the parsing of ILLITERATE, my favourite today, together with the ‘Nice lemon’.

    MALADDRESS and THROW DOWN, my last two in, took a bit of working out at the end.

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen

25. Thanks Eileen although I didn’t sleep very well and will have to scratch my head over the parsing of COMMUNITY a while longer.
    No theme for me today so thanks PeterO for that and you could add the STEVE BIKO Garden of Remembrance.
    Very enjoyable and will forgive the partial recycling of KNOT as I think this version is more elegant, thanks Qaos.

26. Crikey! There is some tricksy stuff in this one from Qaos. TER=thrice and MALADDRESS are completely unknown to me, and the latter not in my Oxford when I went to check it. ‘outstanding’=standing outside is a stretch too far for me. ‘hot’ is a very tenuous anagrind or me. I missed the meaningful ellipsis for the TREA-CLE clue so couldn’t parse it. And I missed the theme when solving, though the types of garden now seem obvious to me.
    But it was a fun challenge.

27. Many thanks, Hovis and James – that’s got to be it. I’ll add ILLITERATE to my favourites!

28. Aha! TER does not equal ‘thrice’! Good. I like the Hovis@18, James@19 parsings: excellent. Thank you.

29. TassieTim@20. Living in France, I saw MA + LAD and immediately thought of MALADRESS, which was, unfortunately a letter short. I needed Chambers to suggest the double D in the anglicisation. D’oh.

30. As I worked through this quite steadily and successfully I was wondering too what the Qaos theme might be today. But my knowledge of beer brands wasn’t up to it, so didn’t realise what was going on. Did look at the fact that there were about 16 examples of double letters in the answers, but maybe that is par for the course in a completed puzzle anyway. If Double Diamond had appeared, I might have thought something was definitely brewing. Enjoyable…

31. I enjoyed this, although as usual DNF (and as a ‘budding’ setter I missed any and all themes). Can anyone explain why tend=dress? I can see ‘tend to a wound’/’dress a wound’, but the former seems more general than the latter…

    Thanks Eileen and Qaos!

32. LJ@31: “…but the former seems more general…” — because no synonyms are identical.

33. Thanks Qaos and Eileen
    I was held up by putting MALADAPTED at 10a, though I couldn’t account for the ED. APT can mean “tend”, but I’m with LovableJim in not seeing why DRESS does.
    I can accept I for “one”, but not for “first”.
    I suppose there’s no point in saying that 49 is XLIX in Roman numerals, not IL – the subtyracting number in front must be at least a tenth of the number subtracted from.

34. KJ @13 – my apologies: in the scramble to untangle ILLITERATE, I missed your comment. I’ll amend the blog to give you due credit. 😉

35. I completed this and stared at the grid like a bemused contestant on Only Connect looking for a link between the words and failing. Chapeau to Hovis at all for parsing ILLITERATE. (For a Qaos crossword one has to be numerate as well as literate) Thanks, all.

36. Not “at all” but et al.

37. muffin @ 33: Henry I = Henry (the) First.

38. Found this a real mixture today – some (particularly in the top half) went in quite quickly while others took a while and there were a few – mostly already mentioned by others – that I couldn’t parse even when I worked out what they must be.

    Lots to like though including: BEER (made me laugh) IMMENSE, ROOFER, HAWAII, TREACLE

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen (and other commentators for help parsing a few)

39. muffin @33

    Re I = first: think regnal numbers …
    … and, as you imply, IL for fifty is a long-standing bone of contention but I think it’s generally accepted in Crosswordland.

40. Thanks Simon and Eileen – objection withdrawn.

41. Apologies for the cross, Simon @37

42. I think KJ @13 deserves a bit more recognition for being the first here to (almost) explain ILLITERATE.

    What a mixture of easy and baffling!

43. pserve_p2 @32: Of course – I just meant that it felt different enough that I wasn’t sure I had understood the right meaning, as I couldn’t see it at the time but nobody else in the previous comments had seemed to stumble on this part of the parsing. I was initially looking for MALADAPTED to fit, like muffin @33. Anyway, I’ll take all this to mean that the sense of tending to a wound is the proper interpretation of the clue!

    (muffin @33 I also thought that about 49 in Roman numerals – I think I learned about it just a few Super Bowls ago…)

44. I see Eileen had already noticed and given KJ credit.

45. No Weihenstephaner or Old Peculier so no chance on theme.

46. TassieTim @20 / blaise @29 – yes, I thought of the French word for 10ac – ‘maladresse’ has an E on the end (as per TT), so it does fit, and as a result it held me up for a while.

    [Maladroit/maladresse in French are the opposites of adroit/adresse. A game of skill is a jeu d’adresse.]

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen

47. Renewed thanks for all the help. (I have to go out now until late afternoon.)

48. Relatively straightforward but very enjoyable. MALADDRESS was new to me but gettable from the wordplay.

    Nice to have two in a row completed during coffee break after a couple of nightmares last week!

49. A game of two halves for me, the left side going in fairly readily and the right slowing me down. ALL HALLOWS DAY was very good – was anyone else initially wondering if it had something to do with HANGING CITRON (or HAWAII CITRON)?

    I think 26a really needs a definition-by-example indicator – most ROOFERs are not thatchers!

    Many thanks Qaos and Eileen.

50. Some very easy like HANGING, some not… Like Eileen, I couldn’t parse the rest of ILLITERATE. Missed both possible themes (and me a gardener, too). Beers are like rock groups: almost anything can be the name of one, so I agree that it’s gardens.
    MALADDRESS is a new one, but having thought of maladroit and maladresse I eventually got there.
    Favourites ROSE RED (for the Petra allusion), WINTER, EGGSHELLS, IMMENSE (the best of the number clues).
    PS: PeterO@4 – Doesn’t everyone know that treacle comes from mines?

51. Good fun. I found this much more straightforward than usual for a Qaos, although I was also decoyed by ‘three times’ = TER and failed to parse ILLITERATE.

    Favourites were BEER (nice surface) and ALL HALLOWS DAY (misdirection of the Qaotic alphanumerics).

    MALADDRESS stuck out as an unusual word in a sea of workaday ones – but this is often a sign of the constraints faced by a setter aiming for as many thematic solutions as possible. Needless to say, I didn’t spot the theme (or even bother to look for one).

    BOTTLER also raised a smile. It derives from the expression ‘losing one’s bottle’, where ‘bottle’ is rhyming slang – ‘bottle and glass’ (with Cockney long A) = ‘arse’, ie losing control of one’s sphincter.

    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen.

52. gladys @50: I take your point about the vast number of beers but having been the one who came up with the rock group theme, I thought that was a bit dismissive. I was only trying….

53. Good, fun crossword.

    I didn’t know MALADDRESS, which I see Collins gives as archaic, although not Chambers. I particularly liked EGGSHELLS, ALL HALLOWS DAY, THROW DOWN and TREACLE (where I liked the use of the ellipses). As muffin points out, IL is not really 49, but it’s tempting to use in a crossword. I guess the alternative is that it’s 51 backwards.

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

    Knowing that it was Qaos, I did look for a theme, but failed.

54. BTW, Chambers says that THROW DOWN is to demolish.

55. Thanks Eileen.

    Slowly feeling emboldened to attempt Monday Cryptics. Got 22 / 29 clues fairly quickly.

56. [AlanC/gladys – I thought there was a rock’n’roll theme… Johnny WINTER, SlipKNOT, Dr HOOK, EGGy POP, Bat out of SHELLS, TopLOADer, ROCKET man, BACK in Black, STEVE Miller Band, The DOORs, DOWN DOWN, Axl ROSE, Simply R… Ok maybe not 😉 ]

57. Lord Jim @ 49: I think Qaos is on firm ground using Thatcher to clue ROOFER, as all thatchers are roofers, but think he would need a dbe indicator if using ‘roofer’ to clue ‘thatcher’.

58. … and I’m sure there are other transmanchisms, like politesse… any others …?

59. eb @56: haha that made my day, one shouldn’t get too sensitive about these things and I’ll just add The WATERboys 🙂

60. A bit too Mondayish for my liking although I did like STEVE BIKO and I struggled to figure out MALADDRESS.

    Like Eileen I was glad to see a meaningful ellipse at 18,19d

    Thanks Qaos and Eileen

61. Winter gardens too?

    Very enjoyable, thanks Qaos and Eileen

62. Very nice puzzle. Thanks Qaos

63. That was a lot of fun, thanks Qaos & Eileen.
    The BEER garden themes ESCAPEd me but with 8d now makes me think of the Augustiner-Bräu in Munich and the Oktoberfest.
    CITRON might be found in a Limonaia (itself in a lovely Italian garden) and ROCKET in a herb garden, not to mention ROCK & WINTER gardens.
    COBRA, as well as being a beer, apparently make lawnmowers (required to cut grass on 1/11)!

64. A clever and entertaining puzzle for a cold and wet Tuesday. Cracked the numerical clues and many favourites. CITRON; COMMUNITY; ATTEMPTS; and the heartwarming tribute to STEVEBIKO. [ A Hero from my youth]
    Thanks to Qaos and Eileen for the blog.

65. V enjoyable although I ended up revealing some which I regretted – but time and tide…..

    LovableJim@31: I took “dress” to mean “tend” in the sense only arising in the tailor’s question “Which side do you dress, Sir?”. A bit of a stretch……

66. Simon S @ 57, you have it backwards. Put ‘for example’ after each of roofer and thatcher, and see which makes sense as a clue. In ‘X, for example’ it is X that is the example.
    In the negligibly short column of things I don’t like about Paul as a setter, I would put using ‘outstanding’ as a containment indicator. Before today, he was the only person I’ve seen using it. I really hope it doesn’t spread further. It doesn’t make sense literally, and even its presumably whimsically intended meaning is far from clear.
    Failed on MALADDRESS, didn’t know it and couldn’t get from tend to dress, also THROW DOWN, couldn’t make out either definition or wordplay.
    Thanks Eileen, Qaos

67. Alphalpha@65, that was my parsing for MALADDRESS and I wondered when someone would propose it.

68. Late to the plate today and it’s mostly been said. Just wanted to acknowledge a cultivated creation by Qaos today – and I’m leaving all puns well a lawn.

    Thanks Q&E

69. Isn’t there a military use of dress?
    e.g. “right dress” is the command to shuffle the right and get evenly spaced out, i.e. tend to the right.

70. grantinfreo@58. As far as transmanchisms (lovely word) go, I’m reminded of Ronard Reagan’s celebrated saying: “There is no word for détente in Russian”

71. Re: ILLITERATE, I was another hoist by my own peTERd. [That was supposed to be funny but when written it just looks weird.]

    In the end, I spent more time looking for the theme (and failing) than solving the puzzle. Good thing it wasn’t necessary.

72. Edward Beard Budding invented the lawnmower in Stroud, Glos, and the Stroud Brewery has a beer named after him: Budding

73. Spent a long time trying to figure out which religious observance was on January 11 before I bunged in ALL HALLOW’S DAY and then I realized it was 1 November. Oh well.

    A lot of these I needed help with the parsing–thanks Eileen and the commenters, and Qaos for the puzzle!

74. I in COMMUNITY?

    Didn’t much like “place” for TOWN in 6d. What isn’t a place?

    Dates confuse me as an American — I read 1/11 as “January 11” and thought “What’s the deal with that?” (Besides that it’s my friend Christine’s birthday.) Got the point eventually.

    16d Why does a beer bottler not bottle Courage?

    Eileen@39 I think you meant IL for forty-nine?

    gladys@50 Thanks for the mention of treacle mines. That led me to the wonderful wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treacle_mining. I had known (though had mostly forgotten) that “treacle” used to be a word for something healing, and that
    the “treacle Bible” was the translation that included “Is there no treacle in Gilead?” But I hadn’t known that certain “healing wells’ around Britain were called “treacle wells,” and that Lewis Carroll didn’t make the phrase up. There are still pubs, I know now, called The Treacle Well. Not surprisingly, now that I know it’s a thing, treacle wells occur in the works of Terry Pratchett.

75. Thanks for the blog, AlanC straight in at number 1 again and a beer theme as well, I will beat you for once on Saturday.
    Needless to say I missed the beer and garden theme but had lost the will to live by the time I did the down clues. At least the comments are worth reading.

76. Simon S @57: as James @66 suggests, “thatcher” is the definition, and a thatcher is an example of a roofer, so it is a definition by example. But it was only a minor quibble.

    Valentine @74: I may be biased, but wouldn’t you agree that the British date format (day / month / year, going in order from smaller to larger) is more logical than the American (month / day / year)?

77. Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

    I had spotted the theme apparently, but like you, Eileen, couldn’t spot more than beer and cobra. Curiously, I tried “cobra citron rose-red beer” in a google search but it came up with nothing much (it does now, though – a reference to today’s clue).

    For 16ac, Recovering abstainer leaves drink, I tried taking TT out of BITTER to give BIER, which sounded like not recovered! Did any one else notice that?

78. Just the SE corner defeated me, mainly because I got bored. No reflection on the crossword just post 4.00 PM brain-freeze.
    No idea what the theme is.
    Thanks both.

79. Roz @75: still 3 outstanding, so you may beat me easily on Sat!

80. Although the solution is easy enough, I find 12a clunky in that there isn’t really an indication that the is actually replaced by , more that is followed by. Happy to be corrected.

    Otherwise pretty straightforward. As Eileen says, it’s nice to see an ellipsis doing its job.
    Thanks to her and Qaos.

81. Looks like I’ve fallen foul of syntax @80.
    Should read … isn’t really an indication that the h is actually replaced by b, more that ookworm is followed by h.
    (must look at the guidelines)

82. Lots to enjoy, thanks Qaos. By the way (apologies if already pointed out) “dress” is defined as “to tend” in Chambers (def. 15)

83. AlanC @79 could be the first and probably last time.

    [ Venus , the moon, Saturn and Jupiter all lined up in the low South West right now. Our one bit of clear sky all day ]

84. nametab @80/81. I’m not sure how you are reading this clue – “…avid reader’s head going hard”. You are perhaps reading ‘going’ as an instruction to lose the head (R) of ‘avid reader’, so (b)OOKWORM and then followed by H? I read ‘going’ as “changing to” or “becoming”, rather than Eileen’s “replaced by”, but the intended effect is the same.

    A little story to illustrate: my father was on the town council, where the clerk to the council gloried in the initials CWGT. The story goes that at an election count one year, this clerk looked at the votes piling up as the tellers counted them and muttered “Christ We’re Going Tory” (i.e. *changing* from labour to Conservative). A simpler example would be traffic lights *going* red, perhaps.

85. Thanks Qaos for a fun crossword. I enjoyed clues like WINTER, LOAD, WATER, THROW DOWN, and STEVE BIKO, the latter two for their great surfaces. I looked for a theme and noticed the large number of letter pairs in many of the answers but that led nowhere. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

86. SH @84 : I read that clue the same way as nametab initially, ‘going hard’ really only works in the surface I think, but that is not the biggest stretch that Qaos subjects cryptic grammar to anyway. Fun puzzle.
    Thanks Qaos and Eileen.

87. sheffield hatter @ 84.
    I see now – thank you for the enlightenment -:)

88. Thanks again for the comments.

    I can’t respond to them all but just want to say, sheffield hatter @84, that’s exactly what I meant to say (should have included ‘(going)’ after ‘replaced by’). Many thanks for the anecdote – exactly the meaning I had in mind.
    (nametab, @87, I see we have crossed in the meantime.)

    (Really glad to see the appreciation of the STEVE BIKO clue. I must watch my DVD of ‘Cry Freedom’ again.)

89. Thanks Eileen for the blog. I was interested to read that bottler means an outstanding or excellent person in Australia and NZ, given that I cannot recall ever having heard this usage. Maybe it used to be slang but I’m not sure that it still is, at least not in NZ. I do note that none of the Aussie regulars demurred.

90. Thanks Qaos and Eileen – and subsequent commenters for unravelling the finer details. I really needed the blog today to help with the parsing on several, so it’s much appreciated.

91. ngaiolaurenson @89

    That definition is in both Chambers and Collins. It was unknown to me but, like you, I expected to see responses from other regular Antipodeans.

92. Evening all. It’s a little late from me following a long work day, but many thanks for the comments and to Eileen for the detailed blog
    If you’re ever unsure of the ghost theme (and I admit, beer is a very good candidate today) I keep a list of them here hidden by “click to reveal” links to avoid unintended spoilers.
    Best wishes,
    Qaos.

93. blaise @70, yes, one among several Ronnie RayGun isms, like the rather cruel restaurant waiter gag (.. “and for the vegetable?” “Oh he’ll have the same” …). An Oz comedian, Max Gillies, used to do him looking for his school lunch box…

    And as for “bottler”, meaning “bewdie bottler”, ie “ripper” (or ace, or wicked, or …), yes, ngaio and Eileen, it’s many decades since I heard it…

94. ngaiolaurenson @89 – you little bottler! (Like ginf @93, years since I have heard it in the wild).

95. Many thanks Qaos @92 for dropping in – always appreciated – and also for the very interesting link.

    Rather embarrassed not to have spotted the gardens, which should have been rather more accessible to me than the beers!

96. Qaos @92: gleamin

97. Didn’t spot any themes though I did remember to have a look half way through. Couple unparsed : 3 times and BEER.
    Did someone mention TREACLE = antidote to venomous bites?
    Thanks both

98. Very enjoyable puzzle. Took me a while to parse a couple of my answers (12ac & 14d) after guessing the answers.

    Left unparsed: 24ac only got as far as IL + LI + TERATE; 19d did not get the TREA bit of it.

    Favourites: WINTER for its fun construction, IMMENSE, CITRON, ALL HALLOWS’ DAY, ROOFER, BOTTLER (loi).

    New for me: MALADDRESS.

    I did not work out what the theme is. (I never heard of any of those beers.)

    Thanks, both.

99. Thanks ginf@93 and Tassie Tim@94. Familiar with “you little bewdie”. Sounds like bottler may not be current slang either side of the Tasman.

100. Don’t know me beers, but I do know ‘bottler’. I wonder if some Antipodeans here are imported, or a bit younger. It’s familiar to me.
     I was happy to solve this Qaos, full stop, without getting the ghost theme. Is Qaos mellowing with age too?

101. “Bottler” not familiar to me in this sense.

102. Very very late reply which no-one will see. A bottler, in Australia, is someone who is so good that their blood is worth bottling.

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