Guardian 28,716 – Matilda

57 comments on “Guardian 28,716 – Matilda”

1. Thank you to Andrew for the prompt blog. An enjoyable solve in which I particularly liked 13a YOUR MOVE, 7d ACTS UP and 21d UNICORNS. I really appreciate Matilda’s neat puzzles so thanks to Matilda as well.

2. Nice. I claim first UK comment!

3. A quiblet that surely U doesn’t necessarily take us to OPEN university …

4. As Andrew said, very nice! Some really classy cluing, I thought, particularly SATSUMA and UNICORN. Excellent for a Monday. Many thanks to Matilda and Andrew.

5. Sorry – that ‘university’ doesn’t take us to Open University (OU) any more than it takes us to Cambridge, Oxford or Southampton Solent …

6. Monday fun with Matilda: good surfaces and well hidden defs for YOUR MOVE and SHOEMAKER. Nice to see a meaningful ellipsis in the SKINT/SPENT pair.
   I didn’t know BLOSSOM was specifically a young flower.

7. Gladys@6, I suppose blossom is used in the sense that it is the stage before producing fruit, either literally or in the sense that it comes before creating the seed pod e.g in daffodils (I am no expert!)

8. Thank you Matilda and Andrew for a tidy start to the week.
   I liked YOUR MOVE, the SKINT/SPENT pairing and OVERRAN, which made me think of uncomfortable seating at the Verona Arena.

9. Cannot see how the second U is clued in USER GROUP.
   PROGRES (s) + U (you we hear) but that’s short of a second U

10. Ah I think I see now : initiated + interrupted

11. Regarding university=OU, I didn’t need the wordplay but it seems fair enough to me. While there are many universities, as part of the wordplay it has to be an abbreviation, so is either U or one of a small number of well known universities known by their abbreviations. Maybe it’s less fair to non-UK solvers.

12. That was a joy. Lovely surfaces, lots of smiles. Too many to enumerate.

    Thank you Matilda and Andrew.

13. Thanks Andrew and Matilda. Lovely gentle, fun start to Monday morning. Loved SHOEMAKER and, like Gladys, the nice use of ellipsis for the SKINT/SPENT pair.

    Tim P @5 – the OU is an example of a university just as a TERN is an example of a bird, and a SATSUMA is an example of a fruit. I really don’t see the problem.

14. Half way through this puzzle I thought ‘this would be more suitable for a Monday’ and then realised that it actually was Monday. Duh!

    Pleasant pastime, rather heavy on the anagrams, as Andrew noted. I particularly liked the functional ellipsis clues and SATSUMA (my LOI).

    The definition for ELECTRONIC doesn’t work for me, and I can’t think of any justification for BLOSSOM being any younger than any other flower (incidentally, blossom and flower are from the same Proto-Indo-European root) [and a favourite expression of mine is ‘grog-blossom’ (qv)].

    Thanks to S&B

15. Lovely puzzle with several ticks, but can’t see the justification for young in the BLOSSOM clue.

    Surprised that MAILVAN is a single word. Hmmm?

    Many thanks, both.

16. Essentially what Crossbar said @12 – a delightful puzzle.

    I was puzzled by ‘young’ in 1ac, too.

17. All very nice and dandy, though I couldn’t parse SATSUMA, even if it couldn’t be anything else with all the crossers in place. Thanks Matilda and Andrew…

18. Very enjoyable. I had some minor errors — PILLAR for 22d (can one cry “ar” when hurt?!) resulting in FELLERS for 28 that was proving very difficult to parse! I couldn’t account for the O in 13a till I came here, unaware that it was a specific university.

19. Enjoyed this start to the week.

    Like others particularly liked the SKINT/SPENT paring.

    Also liked USER GROUP and the surface of SHOEMAKER

    Thanks Matilda and Andrew

20. Good, entertaining start to the week.

    I enjoyed SATSUMA for the ’round’ reverser, YOUR MOVE for the cheeky ‘I’ve just been’ (maybe after at the beginning?), USER GROUP for the clever double insertion of ‘u’, GREEN LIGHT for the multiple beheadings, and SHOEMAKER for the nice ‘one has a last’.

    Thanks Matilda and Andrew.

21. I chucked in GOVERN instead of GUVNOR by not paying enough attention and soon realised my mistake. My favourites were AWOL for a lovely surface and SHOEMAKER for a well disguised definition.

22. Enjoyable puzzle even though I failed to solve AWOL.

    Liked ASTRONAUT, SPENT & SKINT, YOUR MOVE, SATSUMA (loi).

    Did not parse one O in 13ac (*overmyu) – or is it OU = oxford uni as in OUP = Oxford University Press? Oh I see it is Open University. Fair enough. I have even done some courses with OU but did not think of it today.

    Thanks, both.

23. Agree with others that this was a neat puzzle but I still don’t understand why clues 5a and 10a had …
    They did not seem linked in any way at all!
    Thank you Matilda and Andrew for parsing 5a and 13a which had to be right, and now I know why.

24. Tom P at 8: OU seems to me to be equivalent to clueing that uses University to give LSE or MIT which is quite common.

25. Sorry – it should be Tim P at 5!

26. Widders@13 – The Open University is an example of a university, OU is not … I mean, I got the answer OK and I am always berating people here for missing the point but for 99% of the time in our rarified world ‘university’ when not further defined is ‘U’. My coat beckons …

27. Crossed with Bayleaf (how’s your garden?). Shoulders duly shrugged.

    SinCam – inclined to agree with your first point. True, the two joined up do make a sentence in their own right but so does each clue.

28. We talk a lot about indirect anagrams, but SATSUMA looks like an indirect reversal. Is that fair?

    I thought the UNICORN was the lion’s opponent, not partner. Did the Tweedle brothers get it wrong? Weren’t the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown?

    But it was a lovely puzzle. Thank you, Matilda and Andrew.

29. Tim P @26 – OU is a well established abbreviation though – to the point that it even has its own entry in Chambers. As Bayleaf @24 says, some universities are commonly known by their initials, and OU is among them. (OU can also mean Oxford, though I’d speculate Open is more widely understood and is what Matilda meant here.)

    Valentine @28 – “round” is the reversal indicator. Lion and Unicorn are “partners” in that they both appear on the coat of arms of the UK royal family.

30. I’m OK with OU as an example of a university but not LSE (Bayleaf@24). Unless its status has changed it always used to be a SCHOOL of the UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. Please correct me and tell me that it awards its own degrees nowadays, and I’ll be happy. I’ll leave Americans to quibble over MIT if they wish.

    Thanks to Matilda and Andrew for an entertaining puzzgle and blog, and also to gsolphotog@9 & 10 as I too was puzzling over the origin of the 2nd “U” in 19ac

31. Oh (!) I thought the O in 13a came from ’over’

32. [DeepThought @30: The LSE has been awarding degrees in its own right since 2008, before which, as you say, they were University of London qualifications]

33. Gervase@32 thank you, I am happy for the rest of the day now!

34. Except for SATSUMA this crossword fell into place quite quickly. A pleasant experience overall with GREEN LIGHT, AWOL, and UNICORN being favourites. Thanks to both.

35. Thanks Andrew, I took a while to get into this but hoping to put this down to Monday and Matilda’s inventive range on display in many clues (nice to know I am not alone in struggling over SATSUMA). I am also with the crowd on the ellipses, like Gervase@14 found ELECTRONIC not quite satisfactory ( metric spoils the surface for me, and i can’t decide if it is d-by-e missing a ?) but found plenty else to enjoy, USER GROUP was a clever clue for a welcome ‘modern world’ phrase, YOUR MOVE also vg and held me up as I couldn’t get past an unparsed YOUR TURN. Thanks Matilda.

36. Don’t understand 3D. Why does stern mean back ?

37. It’s the back of a boat or ship

38. Thanks for the blog , great for a Monday . I have occasionally been a tutor for the OU and the students invariably call it that so it is fine for me. !6 and 17 Ac are a good example of properly joined clues for once.
    PALATIAL just wins out of many fine clues

39. widdesrbel@29 It’s not the reversal I was objecting to (fairly pointed out, as you say), it was the indirectness of it. I have to come up with A MUST AS as a substitute for “an essential like” and then reverse that. A two step process like an indirect anagram, where I have to come up with a synoym for something and then rearrange it.

40. Lots of fun to be had with this puzzle and some top class constructions. However wasn’t convinced by definitions for ELECTRONIC and USER GROUP. Maybe it’s my background in IT!

    Still thanks to Matilda and Andrew.

41. I did this (and the Quiptic) while watching the Oscars last night. The puzzles were the better entertainment. Good job here by Matilda.

    I agree with others that OU is fine and young is puzzling. You can do a search for “difference between blossom and bloom” which results in some direct hits, but which don’t do much to resolve the mystery.

42. Enjoyed the puzzle, but did hesitate at “air” meaning to dry. We recalled the line in G&S’s SORCEROR : “air his linen, dry his tears.” Is it a UK usage that airing doesn’t just mean freshening with air, but means you may start with something wet?

43. I rather liked the ellipsis in 5/10ac (as well as that in SKINT/SPENT). Firstly, the two in combination made me think of strawberries and cream, which are a Good Thing; and secondly, the fact that they are linked reinforces the thought that ‘top’ is a verb – which is a nice piece of misdirection.

    Valentine – maybe the Lion and the Unicorn in Through the Looking-Glass were sparring partners?

    Re your point @39, I think the general consensus is that indirect reversals are OK, and indirect ‘cycling’ is OK (eg MEWS → SMEW), but indirect anagrams aren’t, because the sheer number of permutations makes them unfair. Suppose a word in the clue has 20 ‘reasonable’ synonyms (which would not be unusual) and each of those is 6 letters long (I’m trying to keep the maths manageable); that would give us 14,400 possible letter sequences (I think).

    pianola @42 – I wouldn’t say wet exactly, but it might be a bit damp?

    Thanks Matilda and Andrew.

44. Pianola@42 – as a Brit I had no problem with air = dry but you make a good point. My sense of it from childhood is that if the laundry – especially sheets etc. – was not aired, it tended to smell a bit dank or musty, like the inside of a cave, and that implies a degree of moisture. Although an environmental no-no, there are those who tumble-dry washing but the put it out on the line to air (it’s OK, my wife doesn’t do crosswords, let alone read 225!)

45. … but then …

46. I took ‘dry open’ to be ‘arid’ without the d

47. Re 18dn PRAIRIE, As there’s some discussion above as to whether air can mean dry, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned airing cupboards. Chambers has these as “large cupboards for drying and storing clothes and linen”. Is this just a British thing? Many if not most homes here have one, and these often house a hot water cylinder which keeps them warm. You wouldn’t put wet items in them, but something very slightly damp possibly. I keep all my bed linen and towels in one.

48. Crossbar@47 used to have an airing cupboard and I loved it. They are dying out now, hot water cylinders being replaced by combination flow boilers.
    An interesting point is they were often called the linen PRESS . Press still turns up in puzzles meaning cupboard.

49. Nicely written and fits the Monday remit to a T. I was a little surprised that GUVNOR was used without any indication of the informal spelling.
    Sin Cam @23 and Tim Phillips @27, the ellipsis is needed otherwise the clue for 17 doesn’t parse – it too needs the “in the street” bit.
    Crossbar @47, pianola @ 42 and Roz @ 48,
    Round where I live in Pennsylvania, most houses have basements and the hot water tank is usually there. The airing cupboard is generally known here as the linen closet and tends not to be heated, so putting damp sheets in there leads to mould, as someone above said. I personally haven’t heard “airing cupboard” used this side of the pond, so the air = dry synonym may be less obvious (although it’s in Collins online, for one).

50. That was excellent, just what was needed on a Monday with the prospect of 5 days work ahead.
    Does ELECTRONIC mean USING COMPUTER CONTROL? I suppose so.
    Now for the Pasquale quiptic, I just hope there are not too many 13th century Chinese religious festivals in the crossword.
    Thanks both.

51. No puzzle is perfect, but this one comes close. Just right for a Monday, and with clever and amusing clues. I thought the SKINT / SPENT paired surfaces were brilliant. I had lots of other ticks, but double ticks for 4d OVERRAN, 7d SHOEMAKER and 22d PILLOW for their wonderful surfaces.
    Thanks Matilda for the exceptional fun, and Andrew for the blog, which for possibly the first time ever I didn’t need for any parsings.

    michelle@22 and widdersbel@29, as an overseas solver, I read OU as Oxford University, as that is more familiar to me than Open University.

    Re air=dry, we mortals perspire, which a lot of animals don’t do, and so we go outside to benefit from the breeze, which explains the proverb ‘to air is human…” (It’s -10C here in Ottawa, so I’ll put my coat on.)

52. Looks like pretty much all my favourite in this lovely crossie have been identified, though I was delighted by the LACE UPS/SHOEMAKER pairing as well – don’t think anyone else has mentioned that. I also went for Oxford for OU, though on reflection Open University is better. Thanks, Matilda and Andrew.

53. Philistine used ‘university’ to clue OU almost a year ago (see here). I’ve not re-read the comments on that crossword, but no doubt they were similar to today’s.

    It took me forever to get SATSUMA – brain fade I guess – just didn’t see ’round’ as indicating a reversal, though of course it can do; and ‘an essential’=A MUST was pretty misleading. Well, it misled me, anyway!

    Thanks to Matilda and Andrew.

54. [Thanks sh @53 for digging that out. Have just looked at the comments and no one queried university = OU at all! Only two comments on the clue as far as I can see:
    PostMark @9: ‘My favourite is probably I ASK YOU’
    AlanC @31: ‘My favourite was I ASK YOU’
    But worth it for a reminder of PM’s and others’ light bulb jokes.]

55. Cellomaniac@51 OU does of course fit for Oxford but in seven years there I never once called it OU.
    However, OU students call it the OU, and talk about OU exams or assignments, Probably a very UK thing though.

56. TimPhillips @27 – thanks, that makes sense, I will check future clues for this now!

57. 13a re: the discussion on Open University. Surely the OPEN part comes from “getting to grips with”?

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