Guardian Cryptic 28,728 by Nutmeg

87 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,728 by Nutmeg”

1. A canine amputee might be three-footed. A yard is three feet, not three foot. 14d just did not do it for me.

2. I found this easier than Nutmeg’s usual, but not easy. A lot of nice clues, with a couple of causes for pause. Like Greg@1 above, I thought THREE FEET was a better-fitting answer to 14d, except it didn’t fit the crossers (but it does have a question-mark).

   I would have thought that COSMIC encompassed extraterrestrial plus terrestrial – we are part of the universe, aren’t we?

3. I felt the same about THREE FEET and also COSMIC; otherwise fine. Thought Crewe was in Staffordshire, but Nutmeg is correct. And it’s another lipogram (no Z), only four days after Fed’s (no Y).

4. I initially had FEET instead of FOOT until CLAMOROUS changed it and checked Chambers which has “foot n (pl feet; also, as a measure, foot;…”. Plural and singular are often mixed apparently incorrectly especially in dialect such as Northern England which I’m familiar with from when I were a lad! Also people generally don’t say “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 feet bargepole.
   The other one I had to wait for crossers for was ON ONES TOES not knowing whether it was ONES or YOUR, the latter being what I would usually say.
   I didn’t think about COSMIC Dr WhO but C2014 supports your point.
   Favourites were PENURY and MEEKLY for the clever visual manipulation of a letter. I’ve seen that before in a David Astle crossword who has also said that he likes the word bed because it looks like one.

5. What a pleasant surprise seeing Nutmeg on a Monday — it was not an “easy Monday” but it was a good one to start the week — it took a bit to get going but everything fell into place except for CREW — the “busy Cheshire station” was beyond my orbit. Favourites included KERATIN, OIL DRUM, ASTIR (STAIR), MEEKLY (nice device — letter inversion), and HESISTANT. Nicely written sensible surfaces as always — thanks to both.

6. I’m a FEET first man too.

   Great start to the week.

   Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO

7. Early signs of what’s going to divide the house. I agree the correct usage is normally FEET but, as Tim C points out, that’s not how it’s used. I’ve been six foot one most of my life, not six feet one. Lovely to see Nutmeg turn to her hand to a Monday style and classily done. Crew did make me smile: a homophone of … Crewe! Brilliant. (Not homophonic but it reminds me of the signs on the way into the Welsh town of Flint which give the Welsh translation – Fflint)

   Favourites today are all short ones – JUST, STAIR/ASTIR, ADULT, JUST, GET ON and GUSTO.

   Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO

8. I liked it all. Some excellent surfaces. Ticks for 19a FRESHENS UP, 22a MOSELLE, 5d MEEKLY, 7,1d BACK TO SQUARE ONE, 8d EXEMPT and 17d HESITANT, a couple of which have already been mentioned in despatches above. I couldn’t parse 21d ALMOND as I wasn’t familiar with the Scots leader, so I needed the blog (which I also enjoyed reading). [Coincidentally, I used ALMOND as the anagram fodder for a Neil Young song quiz I made up recently.] [Tim C@4, thank you for the contribution from David Astle – I will never look at “bed” in quite the same way in the future.]
   Thanks to Nutmeg and PeterO.

9. That was fun, I dithered about THREE FOOT or three feet, and wasn’t sure if I was entering weekly or MEEKLY until I’d worked out SLEDGEHAMMER.

   I’ve used the visual image of bed to help dyslexics picture which way the letters go round.

10. The feet/foot thing is definitely an oddity. “Five foot eight” and “five feet eight inches” both seem correct to me, but not the other way round. It may come from how you would pronounce it if written in numerals ; I think 5’8 or 5’8″ would both be considered OK.

11. ravenrider @10: interesting. We see feet and inches less frequently now but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the first indicated and the second not in a numeric representation. If I saw 5’8, whilst I might know what it meant, I’d assume a typo. But I would articulate 5’8″ as “five foot eight”.

12. [You’re welcome JinA @8. It struck a chord and has stayed with me. Do you ever attempt DA on a Friday?]

13. Thanks, Pierre. This was just right for a Monday Cryptic slot. I especially liked the anagram for TINDERBOX. And CREW, which took me far too long to spot.

14. FOOT as a plural form (when used as a unit of measurement) is absolutely correct. It goes back to the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) genitive plural (declension here).

    Excellent puzzle, though for me it wasn’t at all Quiptic, or Monday-ish – in fact it took me longer than most recent puzzles by this setter. Perhaps I was trying to use a SLEDGEHAMMER to crack a Nut(meg). Thanks to her and PeterO.

    [JinA @8 – “I wasn’t familiar with the Scots leader” – count your blessings 😉 ]
    [Tim C @4 – my bed looks like a bee]

15. Nutmeg makes a nice change for a Monday: no complaints about the Cryptic being easier than the Quiptic this week (though the Quiptic is no walkover either)! The “inversion” clue for M/W does pop up once in a while, but not often enough for me to spot it here, and I can never, ever do sliding-letter jobs like COMICS.
    I also had THREE FEET until the crossers proved me wrong: either fits the clue.
    TimC @4: I notice that in phrases where there is a YOUR/ONES choice like 13a, setters almost always choose the “posher” alternative.

16. Another cracker from Nutmeg and a joyous start to the week. Regarding 14d, the inclusion of ‘canine’ in the clue led me to assume that the answer needed a truncation of three footed as a dog is often described as a four footed friend – hence, a dog with one leg amputated would be three footed.

17. I too had FEET first, but am perfectly happy with FOOT. I wasn’t convinced by SHAMMER – awkward sort of word. This business of is it ONES or YOUR often crops up. My default is to say YOUR (maybe I’m not posh enough) but I think I’ve only ever seen ONES in a crossword. I expect someone will prove me wrong. 🙂

    Very enjoyable crossword. Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO.

18. Oops Gladys @15. We crossed.

19. One always uses ONES rather than “your”, especially if one is very posh, like wot I is.

20. Perhaps setters are posh, and solvers are not? 😀

21. [I remembered Crewe because it features in so many limericks: Baring-Gould’s book The Lure of the Limerick mentions four, of which a trainspotter’s favourite must go…
    A railroad official at Crewe
    Met an engine one day that he knew.
    Though he nodded and bowed
    The engine was proud,
    And it cut him – it cut him in two.
    (For another take on the same subject, try googling “limerick Crewe elephant”) ]

22. Gladys @15 et al. Maybe the setters usually plump for ONE’S rather than YOUR because and O is a much more useful crosser than a Y…

23. Yet another THREE FEET here, but I agree THREE FOOT is perfectly OK as a measurement. But to describe a three footED dog, not sure that works.

    Otherwise, all very enjoyable.

24. Great puzzle, quite hard work for me. Was also misled by FEET, so CLAMOROUS and COMICS were LOIs. Some great anagrams, including TINDERBOX and UNSIGHTLY. Many thanks to N & P.

25. There are often complaints that the Quiptic is harder than the Monday Crytpic – definitely not the case today!

    Short on time today, so after breezing through the Quiptic, ended up revealing half of this; had to come here to parse several.

    DNK ULT = last month

    3D: not sure how GET ON = AGREE?

    14D: As has been pointed out, a canine amputee is THREE-FOOTED (although ‘three foot’ is used colloquially to mean three feet, to be fair)

    21D: Not convinced by ALMOND = NUTTY

26. Just one further thought on THREE FOOT – I would argue that if the (cryptic) definition were ‘What a canine amputee has?’, then the solution would be THREE FEET – but ‘Like canine amputee?’ requires something adjectival, and for that only THREE FOOT will do – by analogy with a 6 foot fence, a £5 reduction, a 64000 dollar question, or a 28 stone weightlifter.

27. I enjoyed this puzzle: a tougher challenge than usual for a Monday but not so difficult as to prove frustrating. I learned ult for last month (and inst for this month) when I was at school over 60 yers ago but have never encountered it since until this puzzle! I, too, am not happy with 14d, having originally put in threefeet until it did not fit the crossers.

28. Wish I hadn’t convinced myself it was a pangram. Couldn’t find the Z.

29. essexboy@26 I agree with all of your examples, but they are all units of measurement and are valid. A three foot dog just doesn’t work for me as an adjectival phrase, and I would understand it as a dog which is 36 inches long. I have racked my brains but just cannot think of a sentence where “three foot” could be used to refer to a dog with three legs.

30. Fiery Jack @29 (and eb @26): a great list. And, by coincidence or design, all are things one might encounter on Bondi beach 😉

    Oh, and FJ, if the three footed dog were to be 36″ high, it might be a three foot, three footed dog. (Isn’t that nine feet? Nine square feet?)

31. [essexboy @14 – “my bed looks like a bee”… you must not be as old fashioned as me]
    Gladys @15, and Shirl @19 and others, I’m definitely not posh.

32. Excellent.

33. essexboy @26: I like your defence, but wouldn’t ”like canine amputee” need to be “three footed?

34. Enjoyable puzzle, neither too easy nor too difficult.

    Liked MEEKLY, THREE FOOT, MOSELLE.

    I did not parse 1ac, 24ac.

    Was very pleased with myself to solve 18ac CREW as I have changed trains at that station recently!

    Thanks, both.

35. Curiously, SLEDGEHAMMER and ALMOND were among my very few entries on first pass, so was sure we were on to an uncharacteristic Nutmeg theme.

36. Steve69 @ 25

    21D: Not convinced by ALMOND = NUTTY

    I think it works if you use ‘almond’ as an adjective: ‘The cake has a nutty flavour” “Yes, it has an almond taste”.

37. [JinA @8 and essexboy@14, Serendipitous recent Tweet….
    David Astle @dontattempt
    Words that look what they mean – like bed, zigzag, llama, boob – are called iconomatopoeia
    8:41 AM · Apr 10, 2022]

38. Fiery Jack /William – how about a 3-point turn or a 4-way junction? (the structure – no plural ‘s’ in an adj. phrase – still holds, even if they aren’t units of measurement)

    I take the point that the normal adjective for a dog would be three-footED – but Nutmeg has given us a question mark to tell is there is something quirky going on, so I would take THREE-FOOT as a whimsical adjective (nevertheless obeying the ‘no pluralising’ rule for constructing such adjectives) – very much along the same lines as Paul’s ‘like a jet?’ for JETTY.

    The way I see it is this –

    The clue is in 2 parts

    ‘Like canine amputee?’ could be either THREE-FOOTED (standard) or THREE-FOOT (whimsical).

    ‘Yard’ could be either THREE FEET or THREE FOOT

    So only THREE FOOT fits both parts.

    (Time for me to lie down on my Bondi bee)

39. In the Goldilocks zone for a Monday puzzle, with some great surfaces – my pick are ADULT, TINDERBOX, ENTITLED, PENURY – and a big hand for the anagram at 7, 1.

    I was another who jumped in FEET first, though I have no issue with the clue…

    Nobody has answered Steve69’s query @25: ‘We don’t GET ON’ = ‘We don’t AGREE’ – in the sense of not finding each other agreeable.

    Thanks to S&B

40. Simon S @36
    I can see the argument about ALMOND as an adjective but I’m not convinced. In speech (although not in writing) you’d say an ‘almond-y’ or ‘almond-like’ taste wouldn’t you? Or more likely, ‘it tastes of almonds’. Would we be happy with FRUITY being the definition for APPLE? Maybe I’m just being picky!

    Gervase @36
    Saying you agree with someone isn’t the same as saying you find them agreeable though? I find my wife very agreeable, but we certainly don’t agree all the time!

41. I also entered ‘three feet’ initially, but I have no problem with ‘three foot’ and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the discussion here about it so thanks to everyone today.

42. Crewe is perhaps best known as the station where the young lady in the song was “put off” when she had gone too far/

43. essexboy@38, fair points, and do we need to remember it is a cryptic crossword and not a scholarly essay.

44. I meant we do, of course. You can tell from the lack of a ? that there was nothing whimsical going on there 🙂

45. Steve69 @40: I see your point. Perhaps the closer AGREEment is in an expression like: ‘Some foods don’t AGREE with me’ = ‘I can’t GET ON with certain foods’ – though I AGREE it is a wee bit of a stretch 🙂

46. Thanks for the blog , Nutmeg on the correct day for once. 7,1D is a very neat anagram and GUSTO is nicely hidden. Cosmic is not quite right as noted by several.
    Fortunately THREE FOOT was a down clue so I had the O in but my first thought was THREE FEET , in fact I would always call it a three LEGGED dog , no mention of foot/footed/feet.
    ASTIR is truly awful , do we not have a crossword editor ?

47. Yet another – join the queue – who shot himself in the FOOT with Feet firmly in place at first. Also wasn’t sure which way round it was at first re COMICS or Cosmic. Therefore the SW corner was last to yield. Liked EXEMPT and CREDITWORTHY. A pleasant surprise to find Nutmeg providing the entertainment this particular Monday…

48. A welcome change for a Monday with an excellent puzzle pitched at a decent level.

    I too had THREE FEET to start with but can see there are no real objections to THREE FOOT – either can be correct in context. I am six foot too as it happens.

    Favourite was BACK TO SQUARE ONE.

    Thanks Nutmeg and PeterO

49. I enjoyed this four anagram puzzle. I don’t think there is a canine equivalent to “unidexter” as in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch.

50. Happy Monday. Thanks to Nutmeg, one of my favourite setters. Lots of ticks inc MEEKLY, GUSTO, PENURY, STAIR/ASTIR
    Thanks to PeterO for the blog and for parsing a couple I couldn’t. A thought on 8D …. taking ‘European politician’ as a single phrase to equate to EMP doesn’t work for me. The title is MEP but there is no indication of an anagram. What I did was see E as indicated by ‘European’; and separately to see MP as indicated by ‘politician’.

51. That was a nice crossword – I enjoyed it.
    And, like Sourdough@41, I’ve enjoyed the discussion here about foot and feet. Am beginning to feel sorry for the poor dog though.
    Like Roz@46, I would probably refer to the dog as “three-legged”. I wonder if that’s because a vet, if an amputation is necessary, will perhaps take off more than just the foot, to lessen the chance of further injury if the dog tries to walk on the stump.
    Thanks to Nutmeg and PeterO.

52. A minor quibble but I found the ‘s after extraterrestrial redundant and therefore misleading. Am I nitpicking?

    Still fun. Thanks to both.

53. Thanks to Nutmeg for a lovely start to the week with the perfect balance of clues.
    Thanks also to PeterO for the blog but I have to agree with ShropshireLass @50 re MEP/EMP parsing as part of 8D

54. Re ONES vs YOUR (@numerous). I always assume ONES because it is a Pommy crossie, and therefore they talk posh.

55. I’m not on form today thanks to a late night with the Masters and I put my struggle down to an inability to square the definitions with the clues in many cases: ‘accredited’=ENTITLED, ‘spare’=EXEMPT, ‘way up’=STAIR, ‘correct’=JUST. No complaints as such – it just wasn’t going to happen for me.

    Grateful to Nutmeg for the entertainment offered and to PeterO for the analysis.

56. I thought 14d was unfair to the extent that the clue didn’t inform us that the dog had had feet grafted on where its paws would usually be before it had one of its legs cut off. And if you’re going to be that cruel, why stop at one leg?

57. Alphalpha @ 55: EXEMPT = spare works best if you see them as verbs (which I think is indicated by the ‘to’ in the clue).

58. Like Alphalpha @55, I’ll blame the Masters! Found this extremely tough, not helped by having FOOT and YOUR written in, and also not spotting until the very end, after writing the answer in, that BACK TO SQUARE ONE was an anagram – that made the whole thing a lot harder! Needed several of the explanations above to parse the answers (thanks!). Minor quibble – surely Earth is part of the cosmos, hence cosmos does not mean extra-terrestrial?

59. Simon S@57: Got that thanks – it just seemed to me (searching for excuses) that the definitions were slightly tenuous in some cases. And so they should be perhaps.

60. 13a to avoid ambiguity – “Vigilant Queen dancing in Swan Lake?”

61. I don’t think “ult” ever made it across the pond, or at least I’ve never met it in real life. But it lurks in British detective fiction of earlier decades when people write business letters about having received something on the 17th ult and replied on the 4th inst, with results expected on the10th prox, the last of the three.

    Liked that anagrams, none of which looked forced (so hard to avoid). Thanks, Nutmeg and PeterO.

62. I’m another with FEET. You would never say there were three foot in a yard. For me, THREEFOOT is one word.

63. Thanks PeterO as I hadn’t understood COMICS and wondered about the MER at the end of 1a.
    My feelings generally summed up by Alphalpha though not for that reason, just general Monday grogginess on my part (eg my indignant initial harrumph that Andover is not a port!).
    Of the various quibbles above thanks Van Winkle for nailing my nagging feeling that something else didn’t quite work there.
    How well known is MOSELLE wine these days? I know it exists but it was certainly well down my list (perfectly fair clue of course and nice to have a change from the Rioja/Asti etc brigade).
    When I finally picked up some momentum I thought 1/7d; GUSTO; MEEKLY especially worth it, thanks Nutmeg.

64. In Mark Twain’s ‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’ a fighting dog wins all his fights by grabbing the other dog’s rear leg and hanging on, until he’s matched with a three-footed opponent. Just saying ..,

65. Thanks Nutmeg and Peter O
    I came to the site expecting a long discussion about the merits of the town of ANDOVER as a port. I’ve never seen many ships on the River Anton! The actual parsing of the clue is much more satisfying!

66. “A metre measures three foot three; it’s longer than a yard, you see.”

67. My problem getting 14 was having PRAISEWORTHY in at 27, which seemed to work so well that I had great difficulty readjusting my thought process.
    I found this generally quite tough, with the synonyms not jumping out today. I liked the beautifully engineered anagram for BACK TO SQUARE ONE best. I also got suckered into looking up Andover in Wiki. It’s interesting that “English” is included in the clue just to allow the “an”.
    Thanks, N & P.

68. I had just finished a tricky puzzle from the weekend batch that I enjoy working on through the week when I picked this up. As I expected, it turned out to be a gem of a puzzle. I tried but failed to get the longest words first but had to be content to start with PENURY and work along and upwards from there. None of it was a doddle, but nothing was difficult either, and I savoured all the clues with their notably good surfaces (as also noted by others).

    Thanks to Nutmeg and PeterO.

69. 20D very satisfying …so smooth.

70. Foot and feet interchangeable for me so not a problem. Didn’t see anything cryptic in CREDITWORTHY either wholly or in its parts but a minor point.
    Thanks both

71. Roz @46 … how can you justify describing a clue as ‘truly awful’? That’s just so rude in relation to something that is no more than a pastime, and a free one at that. By all means dislike a clue or maybe cite your opinion but to make it a statement – especially in the face of no corroborating complaints – isn’t cricket.

72. Tim Phillips@71, knowing this site’s sticklerocity for the proper use of language, you might have mistwigged. Per the OED, “truly awful” would be the highest praise given on this page to any clue.

73. On this whole foot/feet business. Three feet make a yard – as twelve inches make a foot. We may say “Six foot four” to describe the height of someone, of course. But a dog with one missing leg has three feet, not three foot. It may be three-footed (or more likely, three-legged), but if it is to be described – and this would seem rather heartless – as a “three-foot”, it surely demands a hyphen at least (5-4). A three-legged friend, a three-legged friend, he’ll never let you down. (This is my first comment ever – can you tell?)

74. Didn’t have time to finish yesterday, as I had got badly stuck in the lower half of the grid, mostly because of the E from THREE FEET making CLAMOROUS hard to get. Most people who made the same mistake seem happy with the explanation that ‘three foot’ is used colloquially to mean three feet (as acknowledged by Steve69 @25) and that ‘Like canine amputee?’ requires something adjectival, and for that only THREE FOOT will do (as argued by essexboy @26). Neither of these convinces me – a dog after single amputation of a limb is three-footed, and the definition in the clue is ‘in yard?’, which prompts “how many FEET in a yard”, not “how long is a yard?”. Apologies that my point has been made already – fortunately very few will see this post!

    The comment “truly awful” in regard to the clue for ASTIR surely refers to the use of ‘moving’ as both definition and anagrind, which some people think is wrong (even when excused/indicated by a question mark) and therefore deserving of such disapprobation, however rude it may seem. I, on the other hand, see a word doing double duty as just another tool in the setter’s armoury, and its use therefore meriting applause.

    I didn’t find this crossword at all Quiptic-ish, and it took me ages to see the “simple charade” in 27a, which was among my last ones in. I think sometimes I trip myself up trying to see something complex when in fact it’s meant to be a lot easier.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and PeterO.

75. Alec – welcome as a commenter! I’m glad your first contribution agreed with mine posted a couple of minutes later. 🙂 Hope to see you again soon.

76. Alec @73 – welcome to the site from me too (even though you didn’t agree with me 😉 )

    I think we can get round the hyphen problem by treating ‘yard’ as the ‘straight’ definition, and ‘like canine amputee’ as the cryptic element/wordplay.

    On that reading, it doesn’t matter if the punctuation for the cryptic part doesn’t match exactly. For example, a recent Everyman clue was ‘Part of record that might be whispered’ (1-4), the solution being A-SIDE. The enumeration only works for the definition – ‘part of record’ – for the cryptic part, ‘that might be whispered’, we need to disregard the hyphen.

    sh @74 – similarly, I think we can happily overcome the ‘in yard’ problem if we just see ‘yard’ as the def, and the ‘in’ as a connecting word.

    The other thing about THREE FOOT is that it’s not colloquial or dialectal – it’s a standard English plural form, supported by dictionaries as noted by Tim C @4. You may not have had time to follow up my links @14, but if you do you’ll see that the FOOT in such usages is actually a development of Old English genitive plural fōta (as opposed to nominative plural fēt).

    VW @72 – awesome 🙂

77. 72, 74 and 76 – the word used to mean really good by my teenage grandsons is ‘sick’. However I am convinced that Roz is not down with the kids on this occasion …

78. essexboy @76. I follow your explanation of the different plural forms, and find it interesting but not to the point. Yes, we say (and correctly), “I am six foot two”. But the answer to the question “what is a yard” has to be “three feet”, surely. Those of us who are “around 70” used to recite the old measures at school when we were seven or so: “12 inches make a foot, three feet make a yard” and so on. If you’d said “foot” in that context you’d have missed out on your gold star.

79. sh @78 – I would say that, if the definition in the clue is X, the solution Y doesn’t always have to answer the question ‘What is an X?’

    Sometimes Y can be an example of X; sometimes it’s just that, in certain circumstances, Y can be substituted for X in a sentence while preserving the meaning.

    In this case, surely “It’s a yard long” is interchangeable with “It’s three foot long”?

    (Btw, what happened to ‘I would say that it is wrong to expect direct equivalence between definition and solution. A hint or an allusion should be good enough most of the time.’ ?

    I told you I was saving that one up 😉 }

80. Ha ha! I wasn’t so much criticising the clue, or even saying that it was wrong. But when so many solvers have all made the same “mistake”, there’s got to be a good reason for it. Probably the only ones who got it “right” first time had already solved the crossing CLAMOROUS. I’ve only continued the conversation long after everyone except you has lost interest because the explanations didn’t really seem convincing – and that includes your “It’s three foot long”! (I can hear myself saying “It’s three foot six”, but I reckon I’d say “It’s three feet long”. But then I don’t have a rhotic accent.)

    Have you got a whole file of things that I’ve written below these blogs, or is it just that one? Just wondering how many of my own petards I’m going to be hoist by in future. 🙂

81. sh

    Q. Where can you find a three foot ruler?
    A. At a yard sale

    (OK, that works better in the US)

    [Don’t worry, that was the extent of my archive of your bons mots. In any case I suspect I’ve given a few hostages to fortune myself… ]

82. Tough for a Monday. Finally got there on Wednesday morning, with a bit of cheat-checking as well.

83. I found this quite tricky in a number of places but fair (I fell into the feet/foot trap however I can accept the reasoning). I do have a fairly major (whilst keeping this in perspective) issue with 26 across though. I see the rationale but even with the question mark I don’t understand how ‘moving’ is allowed to be both definition and instruction without any indication that it does double duty – I don’t understand how the question mark can indicate that I can ignore 23/stair when looking for the definition

84. Precisely Leo@83, this is where the crossword editor should do their job properly.

85. Leo @83
    I think the original idea of adding a question mark to a clue (when it was not because the clue was phrased as a question, or because the setter decided to put it there) was as an indication “Warning: this clue is doing something unorthodox”. Recently it has been used specifically to suggest an indication by example instead of a definition, but I think that that is because that is the most common indiscretion. Anyhow, that sums up how I read it here.

86. A big fat DNF, I fear, collapsing in the S. I had THREE FEET as well which didn’t help.

87. Thanks PeterO, that sort of makes sense however this explanation suggests, to me, that the question mark should have been after moving and not 23 since stair is not an example of astir.
    Of course I also suspect that had I got this correct I would not be quibbling as much.
    Thank you for the blog (and the additional assistance)

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