Guardian 28,681 / Crucible

91 comments on “Guardian 28,681 / Crucible”

1. A good challenge which came together reasonably well despite some hold ups in the SE and SW. (can’t believe how long it took me to get 18dn when I grew up a five minute bus ride away!) I spotted the theme early ( for the first time in a long time!) which was some help although still left 28 ac as LOI.
   Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

2. Thanks Crucible and Eileen
   Even I saw the theme. Easier than usual from Crucible, but thanks for the parsing of BLASTED OFF. I liked ESTUARIES too, and also ORBIT (“passing remarks”!).

   ALBEDO is basically a measure of the reflectivity of a heavenly body. Venus has a very high one, which is why it is so bright. The definition is thus not spot on, but close enough, I think.

3. Yes, I suspect the definition for ALBEDO is a bit iffy, but it does the job of pointing you in the right direction to find a rather obscure word.
   Bigger issue, really, is RUISLIP, which I guess qualifies for inclusion on the basis that everyone in the world should know everything about b****y London (personally, I find it hard to forgive the part of the place that continues to inflict Alexander Johnson on us).
   But an enjoyable puzzle, not too difficult; favourites were GHOST STORY and ESTUARIES.
   Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

4. Thanks, muffin and NeilH: that was my feeling, too – and the cluing was pretty straightforward.

5. Yes, Eileen, an enjoyable puzzle. I really liked the theme, and the clues 17a ORBIT, 19a BLACK HOLE and 20d CAREFUL. I had some trouble with ECHT at 10a, but fortunately guessed that Brecht was involved, as well as 18d RUISLIP, which was unfamiliar but guessable from the wordplay. Thanks a lot to both Crucible and Eileen.

6. Good fun with an obvious theme helping me with APOLLOS and BLASTED OFF. I had the same thought as you about RUISLIP.

   Ta Crucible & Eileen.

7. Some beautiful clueing in here – subtle and clever with intriguing grammatical twists and turns. And a couple of lovely spots and creations by our setter: the alternatives for LANDING and for the brilliant DOG STAR, talent/LATENT, the carful, the subtraction from the artist, the passing remarks, exposure on the beach. It’s all very good.

   I had a different parse for APOLLOS with OS as a size rating but think Eileen’s is better. I wondered whether X-RAYS look into or through but I’m no physicist. Eileen, you haven’t accounted for the second S in GHOST STORY which comes from MC’s.

   Thanks Crucible and Eileen

8. Enjoyable CROSSWORD, I loved the definition of BLASTED OFF and learned a new meaning of ‘collation’. Thanks Crucible and Eileen (BTW Eileen you’re missing the ‘s’ in your parsing of GHOST STORY).

9. Sorry PostMark @7, we crossed.

10. Thanks, both – I’ll fix it now.

11. Continued from Atrica blog
    I was feeling down after that but this put me Eight Miles High (over to Roger)

12. Es tu Aries? Moi, je suis Leo… Definitely my clue of the day, as well as my last in. I also enjoyed the definition of BLASTED OFF, though I couldn’t parse it, and the passing remarks and the load of passengers.

    I agree about RUISLIP: as a Londoner I know it, but if it had been one of the suburbs of Birmingham or Glasgow I’d have been stumped. I see our local word for island is putting in another appearance too.

13. Lovely theme, not quite speed-of-SUNLIGHT but still seemed to go by in a flash.

    Nice to see the DOG STAR; we’re about as far away from the ‘dog days’ as it’s possible to get, but maybe they’ve got them down under?

    [Fascinating derivation, by the way – ‘dies caniculares’, from which the French get canicule (heatwave), referring to the period following the heliacal rising of Sirius, or dog star. Apparently the ancients thought the time lag between the summer solstice and the hottest days of the year could be explained by the influence of Sirius intensifying the Sun’s rays.

    “Then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest; women are most wanton, but men are feeblest, because Sirius parches head and knees and the skin is dry through heat.” ]

    Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

14. Like Gladys @12, my LOI was ESTUARIES. Lots to enjoy: my favourites were ORBIT, BLASTED OFF and DOG STAR. And an unmissable theme, which makes a change! Many thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

15. Not as knotty as Crucible can be, but enjoyably playful. My highlights were exactly those of PostMark @7 (not for the first time).

    The clue for SUNLIGHT is clever: in the phrase ‘cut imports’ either word could be an envelope indicator.

    ALBEDO is reflectivity, as muffin says, but the definition is close enough for me – and the final O is a crossing letter, which gives a sharp nudge in the right direction.

    Another AIT today!

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

16. Even this expat didn’t have any trouble with RUISLIP. Do crossword solvers these days not know the name of every station on the London Underground??? 😉
    I did wonder whether a homophone indicator was needed for 20d given that carful isn’t a word (is it?).
    Enjoyed the theme which I spotted for once. Enjoyed ORBIT for “passing remarks” (very clever), and LANDING for a great cryptic definition.

17. Re ‘passing remarks’: I wished that OBIT were also an abbreviation of obiter dictum / dicta – a remark made by a judge (literally, ‘in passing’) which is not necessary for the legal decision and therefore does not create a precedent. The reminder made the clue even more interesting for me, anyway.

18. TimC @16: The suffix ‘-ful’ is productive in English and can be attached to practically anything. I have used ‘carful’ myself, though it doesn’t appear in Chambers, unlike ‘houseful’ and the more obvious ‘spoonful’, ‘sackful’ etc.

19. [Timc @16 & Eileen @17: I once went to a talk by the, then, Obituaries Editor of the Telegraph which he entitled A Life on Death Row which I thought a superb pun and which has stuck with me ever since. Perhaps he should have moved across to the crossword section? (Interesting snippet; it was 40 years ago so things will almost certainly have changed but, back then, the different dailies had subtly different areas of focus when it came to people outside the main headlines. The Telegraph apparently had a history of covering famous clowns in their obituaries! Cue jokes about Boris, I guess…)]

20. Thanks for that, PostMark. 😉

21. Loved ORBIT and BLASTED OFF. ALLERGY for aversion is common usage, I know, but I never think it is right. I am with Proust in finding just those smells that I am allergic to the most alluring. (Hyacinths at the moment). Encouraging to know I can sometimes learn from experience aits and flights for stairs both came to mind quite easily.

22. NeilH @3 – quite often I come here to comment and see that you’ve said what I’ve thought (and then some) much more humorously and eloquently than I could.

    As a Londoner, even I had to laugh at RUISLIP’s appearance. Whilst I think people should have some knowledge of their capital city, this was a step too far. I await to see what our overseas solvers make of it.

    Tim C @16 – it may be a record that RUISLIP is blessed with five tube stations.

    On GK, there are all sorts of things asked of us by setters. I may be betraying some relative privilege in saying that some knowledge of London, NY and Paris is reasonable?

    Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

23. Failed 26ac.
    I liked ECHT, DOG STAR, MATRIARCH, TITAN, BLACK HOLE, ORBIT.
    New: RUISLIP, ALBEDO.

    Thanks, both.

24. Good fun. So many smile-inducing clues. Thank you Eileen and Crucible.

    I parsed 10 ECHT as authentic (in) German, and the playwright (famous enough not to mention he’s German) minus the br. But Eileen’s is probably much more echt.

    ECHT and ERSATZ occur frequently in crosswords. I think it’s more about the gridfill. A bit like ETUI, and ENNUI. I do have some German and French and am of a certain age, so they jump off the page. I just think they’re funny, as if the setter knows that we know that s/he knows.

    DOGSTAR and BLASTED OFF also tickled me.
    I’d love to meet Crucible at a party. Looking forward to Roz dropping in.

25. Did nobody read Tropic of Ruislip, or see the TV series?

26. Great fun. For once I knew all the general knowledge referenced, and remembered all the crossword tricks used. ESTUARIES, DOG STAR and ORBIT each had very nice wordplay. Fine use of a theme, without any requirement to dig out “fomalhaut” or “bellatrix” from memory or Google.

27. Fair enough Gervase@18. I obviously rely on Chambers too much.

28. Just wanted to say that for once in my life I spotted the theme and it helped me finish. Feeling quite chuffed with that.

    Didn’t Vangelis have an album called Albedo 0.39, referring to the Earth’s reflectivity? Not really my cup of tea, and not a very catchy earworm IIRC.

29. paddymelon @24 – I did toss up as to whether to mention the possible double duty of ‘German’ in 10ac but decided against it. As you say, ECHT appears frequently in crosswords, without an indication, and it’s in the dictionaries.

    I’d love to meet Crucible anywhere! So far, he hasn’t made the Irish Sea crossing to attend an S and B.

30. I took the RU in 18d to mean the Game of Ur as in ‘one slip chasing Ur’. Rugby is a chasing game I suppose, but then the clue starts from the middle with no direction as to how the answer is constructed.

31. simon forbes @30 – I took chasing in 18dn as ‘going after’.

32. Loved this, found it hard, blasted off was LOI and possibly COTD. Like others did not know albedo but got it from the crosser and the clue – there is usually one answer hidden in the wordplay. Mostly happy that I saw the theme early on with planet and titan and Dog Star as themes usually go way over my head.\
    Did not parse blasted off.
    Thanks to Eileen and Crucible.
    Meanwhile the scaffolders removed the scaffolding, in 90 minutes, quicker than my solving!

33. [Re the artist missing one, it is curious that in English Tiziano is anglicised to Titian and Raffaello to Raphael, whereas the names of other artists (usually given names or nicknames rather than surnames) are left in their Italian versions. French goes much further: Caravage, Titien, Tintoret etc.]

34. simon forbes@30. Ignore the punctuation? chasing = following. Never heard of RUISLIP btw. But have heard of the game.

35. simon forbes @30 and Eileen @31. What Eileen says. Am a bit late to the party.

36. I can attest that the theme was not “unmissable”.

37. Thx to Crucible for a very entertaining puzzle with one new words @ 10ac and a second with new meaning @ 2dn
    The astronomical theme was very engaging. Lots of Favourites – ECHT, CAREFUL, ESTUARIES m, BLACKHOLE, SUNLIGHT & ORBIT
    Thx to Eileen for blog.

38. A lovely, shimmering constellation of clues.
    DOG STAR is a delight, and I loved LATENT (such a neat anagram).
    Thank you, Crucible & Eileen.

39. As with SinCam@32, my last one in was BLASTED OFF. Which perhaps should have been the launch pad for today’s theme. And I don’t think I’ve ever completed a crossword where I arrived at the solutions to so many of the clues through the definitions. Great clarity, therefore. We’ve recently had Ait for island, so ALIT popped in nicely. ECHT not a word I often come across either, but couldn’t be anything else with the precise clueing. The only one I couldn’t quite parse was RISING. Enjoyable throughout, however…

40. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. What a joy this was to solve, lots of delightful PDMs. “Collation” is a word I’ve not seen for years, but it was lurking there in the back of my mind, waiting to be dug out. Very nice clue. One among many.

    paddymelon @24/Eileen @29 – same thoughts crossed my mind re “German”… You could even argue that “German” is completely redundant in the clue. I think I first came across the word ECHT on the label of my gran’s Echt Kölnisch Wasser 4711 – it’s not an everyday word, perhaps, but probably naturalised enough in English not to need a foreignness indicator.

41. I really enjoyed this with many precise and entertaining clues, although I got a bit bogged down in the SW corner at first.

    Having been brought up in St Albans, I always think of RUISLIP as being in Middlesex (I think it was). Even I had to check that it was in Greater London, so not that easy even for a Brit! Maybe ‘London borough’ might have been preferable.

    I must have seen ECHT before in crosswords but I had forgotten it, and didn’t know COLLATION as a light meal. My picks were BLASTED OFF, ORBIT, ALLERGY and LANDING.

    Thanks Crucible for the entertainment and Eileen for good explanations.

42. I have only ever come across COLLATION in the expression ‘cold collation’ – the alliteration presumably has preserved a rather archaic word. After which, a post-prandial perambulation?

43. ….but (prima) collazione is the usual Italian term for breakfast.

44. I had no hope of parsing BLASTED OFF, so thanks, Eileen.

    I caught on to the theme when I’d finished the puzzle, I think, or it may have been late in the solve. At any rate, my great big favorite was ORBIT.

    Delightful puzzle, thanks to Crucible. Delightful blog, thanks to Eileen.

45. Peters @21 I agree with you about ALLERGY. For those who have a genuine allergy it is frustrating and can be dangerous when people think that when they say they have, for example, a nut allergy, they are just been picky about food. I know in common usage (supported by Chambers) it can mean a dislike, bit I wish it didn’t.

46. Sorry – meant Petert, of course.

47. Petert @21, Crossbar @45; Chambers, ODE and Collins all have the informal usage of ALLERGY meaning dislike. I don’t think anyone would interpret a nut allergy as a dislike of nuts. As is the case for many words, there is both a scientific and an informal meaning – good enough for crosswords, I think.

48. Robi @47 I wasn’t quibbling about its use in crosswords for aversion being valid. But I’m just pointing out that because of this common meaning, it does happen that genuine allergies are taken for just a dislike by some. It does happen.

49. I thought this both fun and fair, the theme just as Eileen described.

    Ruislip I knew from growing up in London (it was just now twice auto-corrected to Russia, which would have made a rather puzzling sentence). It was presumably from my youth too that when I read the beginning of 19a “Former star to boycott …” that my first thought was “yes, Boycott was a former star”, despite being generally a cricket ignoramus.

50. Robi @41: RUISLIP is in the London Borough of Hillingdon but I had to check as well, thinking of Middx.

51. Funny thing is that I spotted the theme which could hardly be missed but had no recognition of it when I was putting in the solutions. Ho hum. Pleasant length solve for me.
    Forgot to parse ESTUARIES which is a shame…would I have got it? ALIT again! ECHT again(?)

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen

52. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning for overseas solvers that RUISLIP is pronounced “ryeslip” (I think!)

53. Thanks for the blog, great puzzle and unmissable theme even for me. I will even forgive the ALBEDO clue.
    RIGEL is perfect for viewing every evening this month, a blue supergiant and the best candidate for the next supernova. Orion dominates the Southern sky and Rigel is very bright at bottom right. We have very few blue naked eye stars and Rigel is the best. At the same time use Orion’s belt which points down directly to Canis Major ans the DOG STAR Sirius, the brightest in our night sky.

54. Must not forget TITAN , the only solar system moon with a significant atmosphere. Ethane plays the role of water, solid at the poles, liquid lakes and a gas in the atmosphere, even producing rain.
    All the major moons of Saturn are named after the Titans.

55. Thanks Crucible, I thoroughly enjoyed this themed crossword. Favourites included GLIMMER, ORBIT, RISING, the oft mentioned BLASTED OFF and DOG STAR. I also liked the clever compactness of LATENT. I needed a word finder for RUISLIP. I’ve seen ECHT before, the first time in a cafe where I drank Echt Kriekenbier, a delicious sour Flanders red ale. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

56. Top half OK, bottom half beyond me.
    Thanks for the blog.

57. X-RAYS – they look into – is perhaps referring to X-ray crystallography, think Rosalind Franklin.

58. How many brains do you have Roz?

59. AlanC I know a lot about a small number of things, they rarely turn up in crosswords so I have to make the most of it when they do.

60. Roz@53 Is Rigel likely to go supernova before Betelgeuse?

61. Even I spotted this theme! This was good fun, although much easier than a normal Crucible.

    Many delightful surfaces too.

    The pick of the bunch (being a rose from Cape) was BLASTED OFF.

    Thanks Crucible and Eileen

62. wynsum @ 60 nobody really knows, Rigel is hotter and more massive and unstable , all blue stars have a short lifetime , it is why we see so few. However Betelgeuse might still be nearer the end, we have no way of measuring the proportion of iron nuclei in the core.
    Betelgeuse is top left in Orion , very red. Both can be seen for free tonight.

63. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. Even I recognized the theme early on, which helped with APOLLOS and BLASTED OFF. The latter, my LOI, went in on the strength of the definition and the crossers, but I needed the blog for the wordplay (which, in retrospect, wasn’t hard). By contrast, I guessed RUISLIP purely from the wordplay and then googled to see if such a place existed. Those three made the SW corner the last to fall.

64. Roz @59 strikes me you are being too modest, I think you know a lot about a lot!!!
    Your comments always make fascinating and enjoyable reading.

65. Thank you HYD , I know a lot about the very large and the very small but not much in between.

66. Thanks Roz – I’ll look out for both when it stops raining. I hadn’t realised until just now that Rigel means ‘foot’ (of Orion) and Betelgeuse ‘hand of the giant’ (i.e. Orion)!

67. [When I had my first Observer’s book of astronomy (aged about 7), I was convinced that Betelgeuse was pronounced Belchugeez!]

68. Orion is the best constellation of all, so easy to find , nice dark skies when it is prominent . Can easily be used to point to other stars – Sirius, Procyon, Aldebaran , the Pleiades , Castor and Pollux ……

69. Orion’s Belt is something even I can recognise in the night sky. It’s a useful reference point. Not tonight though – far too cloudy.

70. A relatively quick and enjoyable solve for me.

    I hesitated over ALIT, because I thought the past tense of alight was ALIGHTED. I seem to have some support from Chambers for this, as they have “alighted (or alit)”. So it’s ok but I can’t remember seeing it before. Of course, the wordplay was such that it couldn’t be anything else, which was largely the case with today’s clues.

    I’ve had other days recently where nothing at all seemed to be wordplay, and anything could have been the definition. Picaroon on 28 January, for example, which I gave up after two weeks ( 🙂 ) and even when I saw the filled grid I still couldn’t see how some of the clues worked. It took me back to my very early days of the Guardian crossword, when there was no fifteensquared to help.

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

71. The belt points directly downwards to Sirius and almost directly upwards to Aldebaran, the clouds are the problem. All last week there was a small chance to see Uranus with the naked eye , quite rare, but the weather ruined everything.

72. [Rox @57: I’ve now been thinking Rosalind Franklin for over an hour…]

73. [PostMark @72
    Rosalind Franklin did the X-ray diffraction work that enabled Crick and Watson to guess the structure of DNA (though the technique was older, and the Braggs, father and son, have a greater claim to developing it).
    There is a persistent canard that Franklin was denied a share of the Nobel prize with Crick, Watson, and Wilkins (Franklin’s nominal supervisor) because she was a woman; in fact there’s a much more cogent explanation – she was dead, and Nobels are never awarded posthumously.]

74. [muffin is right about the Nobel but she would probably not have got it anyway- think Lise Meitner, Chien-Shiung Wu , Jocelyn Bell ……..]

75. [Jocelyn Bell was certainly a travesty. Hewish gave me some supervisions at college, and he seemed a really nice man, though that’s not an excuse!]

76. [I didn’t realise that Hahn and Meitner weren’t awarded together. I found this on Wiki:
    According to the Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 29 times for Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1965. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962. However, Meitner received many other honours, including the naming of chemical element 109 meitnerium in 1997.]

77. [ And Wu is the worst example of all, she did the “impossible” experiment. ]

78. [Mmmm – not so clear-cut. A brilliant experiment, but it just confirmed the theory of the two winners. Perhaps she should have shared?]

79. Lots of fun. I enjoyed ESTUARIES and DOG STAR very much, but most of all I enjoyed reading the Wikipedia entries for the various themers. Coincidentally, I just finished a thriller based on the Apollo missions last night, so I was well primed for the puzzle.
    I liked the somewhat oblique definitions here, but squinted a bit at X-RAYS described as “they look into”. Implies rather too much intention on their part, I’d have thought!
    Thanks, Crucible and Eileen.

80. Enjoyable puzzle. I didn’t care for the definition of 14a but I guess I’m the only one! And more than compensated by the other excellent clues and nice theme.

81. [Can I stop thinking Rosalind Franklin now?]

82. Black hole. It would be a great name if it weren’t that they aren’t black and they aren’t holes.

83. muffin@67
    I have only heard it pronounced “beetle juice” and that many years ago, about the same time that you got your Observer Book.

84. No problem with Ruislip for someone brought up next to the other end of the Piccadilly Line.
    According to the Uxbridge English Dictionary, the real meaning of the name is ‘a fall caused by stepping on something usually accompanying curry’.

85. Jeremy Marchant @82 – I don’t recognise your name as a commenter and so, as today’s blogger, I’d like to welcome you to the site. Please forgive me if I’ve missed any previous comments of yours. I hope we’ll hear more from you.
    I realised this morning that I might be on a sticky wicket, once I’d sussed the theme (although, as a Classicist, I did know the derivations) and so I hoped – it seems to have been successfully! – to get my retaliation in first, as far as 22dn was concerned. 😉
    I’m afraid that I simply took ‘black hole’ as I’d always understood it, without looking it up – and no one else seems to have questioned it.

86. Jeremy Marchant @82. “Black hole. It would be a great name if it weren’t that they aren’t black and they aren’t holes.” But BLACK HOLE is what they are called, which is all we are concerned with here. 🙂 The first result on a Google search is this: Black holes are what’s left after large stars die and their cores collapse. So there’s not a problem as far as the clue is concerned.

    Eileen – your pre-emptive research with regard to ALBEDO was as successful as you’d hoped, but Crucible had made it easy for us by including the answer in ‘maritAL BED Occasionally’ – which I must admit had me quickly checking the odd letters in ‘marital bed’ to see if the answer was there! There’s usually less debate about a non-scientific definition for a scientific concept if the answer is obvious from the wordplay.

    Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

87. @82 black refers to absence of light and most physicists/astronomers have not questioned it. Urban legend has it that early references referred to the Black hole of Calcutta.

88. ECHT & ALBEDO needed confirmation. ESTUARIES & BLASTED OFF jt favs in a fun puzzle with a theme even I could spot.
    Good fun. Thanks all.

89. Sorry, I know I’m a day late so probably no one will see it, but please please can someone explain to me why the definition “where bankers end up” means estuaries? I just can’t see it at all and it’s driving me crackers…whilst everyone seems to think it’s a great and clever clue.

90. DamsonSam @ 89
    I, and the blogger Eileen, will see your comment, even if no one else does. A ‘banker’ is a cryptic indicator for a river, i.e. it has banks, and rivers have an estuary before they enter the sea.

91. Ah, thank you Gaufrid. I am now familiar with flower meaning river, and always smile when it comes up in a clue, but that meaning of banker is new for me, I hadn’t come across it before, so thanks for explaining!

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