Apologies for this late blog, due to not being able to obtain a copy of the crossword until later in the morning. Thank you to Brendan. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
There is a theme around Lewis Carroll (and of mathematics).
Across
1. Audition viably arranged, characteristic of a certain event (14)
UNAVOIDABILITY : Anagram of(… arranged) AUDITION VIABLY.
Defn: …/of an inevitable event.
8. Horizontal surface in which line meets side (5)
LEDGE : L(abbrev. for “line”) plus(meets) EDGE(the side/the border, say, of a square).
9. Ridicule resolution to replace Conservative by monarch (8)
DERISION : “decision”(resolution/a decisive end to a pending issue, say) with “c”(abbrev. for a member of the Conservative Party) replaced by(to replace … by) R(abbrev. for “Rex” or “Regina”/king or queen respectively/a monarch).
11. Designs in place of words repeatedly found in mathematics (7)
FORMATS : FOR(in place of/as a substitute for, as in “the understudy for the leading actor”) + MATS(2 x “mat”, a word hidden twice in “mathematics”).
12. Using modified ten iron, his pitch changes little (7)
INTONER : Anagram of(Using modified) TEN IRON.
Defn: … when speaking or singing, say.
As to the surface, a golfer would use a pitching wedge, a club giving a higher loft than a 9 iron, used to make a pitch shot.
13. Measure of interest in group of islands, or one (5)
CAPRI : APR(abbrev. for “annual percentage rate”, the amount/measure of interest generated by a sum of money, paid by a borrower to a lender) contained in(in) CI(abbrev. for the Channel Islands, a group of islands in the English Channel).
Defn: … island.
15. Activity at club following being swamped in 8-0 disaster (9)
NIGHTLIFE : F(abbrev. for “following”) contained in(being swamped in) anagram of(… disaster) [ EIGHT(8) + NIL(0) ].
17. Like woeful number produced by adding constant to one third, oddly (9)
THRENODIC : C(abbrev. for an unspecified number that remains constant/invariable, in maths, say) placed after(adding … to) anagram of(…, oddly) [ ONE THIRD ].
Defn: …/a threnody/a lament.
20. For this cube, what’s subtracted from vertical measurement when it’s minimised? (5)
EIGHT : “height”(the vertical measurement of a standing object) minus(what’s subtracted from …) “h”(abbrev. for/when minimising “height”).
Defn: … , specifically the cube of 2.
21. Marine creature‘s head swallowed by old fish (7)
OCTOPOD : TOP(the head/the highest) contained in(swallowed by) [ O(abbrev. for “old”) + COD(a type of edible fish) ].
23. Writer of nonsensical verse both sides repeated in song (7)
CARROLL : R,L(abbrev. for “right” and “left”, respectively/both sides) repeated in CAROL(a song).
25. Reordered mini, alternating with sailor, to drive (8)
AMBITION : Anagram of(Reordered) MINI with each letter separately inserted after every other letter of(alternating with) [ AB(abbrev. for “able-bodied seaman”/a sailor) + TO].
26. Numbers around end of score (for bigger numbers under score) (5)
TEENS : TENS(10s/numbers) containing(around) last letter of(end of) “score“.
Defn: Numbers bigger than 10 but less/under 20/a score, viz. numbers 13 to 19.
27. They can handle distraction as well as 25, 1 down, and 9, according to 23 (14)
ARITHMETICIANS : Cryptic defn: Reference to Lewis Carroll(answer to 23 across)’s “Alice in Wonderland” in which the Mock Turtle says “‘Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” Therefore the practitioners of Arithmetic can handle Distraction, Ambition(answer to 25 across), Uglification(answer to 1 down) and Derision(answer to 9 across).
Down
1. Things look bad after this fruit lies around area (12)
UGLIFICATION : UGLI(a citrus fruit of the Caribbean) + FICTION(lies/non-facts) containing(around) A(abbrev. for “area”).
2. Calculating type found in snakes and ladders? (5)
ADDER : Word hidden(found in) in “adders”(snakes) and “ladders“.
Defn: …/that used to calculate, specifically, to do additions.
3. Possibility, over time, for job in theatre (9)
OPERATION : OPTION(a possibility/an alternative choice) containing(over) ERA(a long period of time).
Defn: …, an operating theatre, that is.
4. Oxford mathematician is evasive about subtracting transcendental number (7)
DODGSON : “dodges”(is evasive/avoids) + ON(about/with reference to) minus(subtracting) “e”(a transcendental number, that which cannot be understood by ordinary reasoning, in this case the number that is used as the base of natural logarithms in mathematics).
Defn: …, whose pen name was Lewis Carroll.
5. Save man on board threatened by mate that’s crazy (7)
BARKING : BAR(save/except for) + KING(a piece/man on a chessboard, which is threatened/put at risk of losing by a checkmate in a chess game).
6. Learner isn’t turning one letter around for composer (5)
LISZT : L(letter displayed by a learner driver) + “isn’t” with upper-case “n”(one of its letters) rotated by 90 degrees(turning … around) to form “Z”.
7. Decisive defeat in ring — count out (9)
TROUNCING : Anagram of(… out) RING — COUNT.
10. Circle and lines artist arranged for some language experts (12)
ORIENTALISTS : O(letter representing a circle) plus(and) anagram of(… arranged) LINES ARTIST.
Defn: …, who, in this case, study the cultures, including the languages, of the Orient.
14. Send carriage that’s turned up for one not fully engaged (4-5)
PART-TIMER : Reversal of(… that’s turned up, in a down clue) [ REMIT(to send/to forward) + TRAP(a light two-wheeled carriage pulled by a horse or pony) ].
16. Article concerning appetite heartlessly impractical (9)
THEORETIC : THE(an article in grammar) + “orectic”(concerning/relating to appetite/desire) minus its middle letter(heartlessly).
18. Revolutionary movement putting barrier around platform (7)
DADAISM : DAM(a barrier to hold back water, say) containing(putting … around) DAIS(a low raised platform, stood on by a speaker, say).
Defn: … in art.
19. Fair target after company falsified count (7)
COCONUT : CO(abbrev. for “company”/a commercial concern) placed above(after …, in a down clue) anagram of(falsified) COUNT.
22. Use digit or what may be between digits (5)
POINT : Double defn: 1st: …/finger to indicate; and 2nd: The dot placed between digits/numerals to indicate fractions of a unit.
24. Nothing tops excellent end of series (5)
OMEGA : O(letter representing 0/nothing) placed above(tops, in a down clue) MEGA(informal term for “excellent”/epic).
Defn: …, from the last letter in the Greek alphabet.
Thanks Brendan and scchua
I knew there was a theme, but I wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the work to understand 27a.
A DNF, in fact – I had a partially parsed BARRING at 5d.
Favourite COCONUT.
Tiny typo in 1d – extra “I” in FICTION
Lovely fun, Brendan. Really enjoyed that. Did any one else do what I did? Once I twigged the Carroll theme I spent ages trying to justify LEWIS as the five letter island in 13 across.
Thank you, Brendan, for the Wonderland challenge, and to Scchua for the detailed pictorial blog – particularly for parsing 16d, nho ‘orectic’.
I recognised the reference to the Mock Turtle quite early on, though it still took me quite a long time to recall AMBITION and UGLIFICATION. Brendan’s usually humour and innovation pervade the clues, and just for once I found myself wishing there were more of them. Last one in, appropriately, was OMEGA.
Thanks to Brendan and to scchua for the usual thorough job with the blog despite the late appearance of the online puzzle.
Just to say what a privilege it is to live in this period of Brendan’s flowering. Was looking for Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in coils, but BG quite strictly numerical this morning. Have an intelligent 6/7-year-old? Just leave A’s A in W casually in their bedroom and wait for the uncontrollable laughter.
Delightful, inventive, clever Brendan.
Thanks scchua, but query re parsing of THRENODIC: anagram of ONE THIRD plus C? No Roman numeral involved?
The theme was right up my street. Thanks Brendan!
Thanks to scchua for parsing a couple I couldnt see.
I may have mentioned Martin Gardner’s wonderful “Annotated Alice” before. Well worth a look.
So good that we can forgive the indirect anagram.
Thanks scchua, as I didn’t recall the Alice reference so needed all crossers for 27A, also I spotted the MAT in 11a but couldn’t make sense of the whole, and somehow failed to parse 3d too.
Agree with wordworrier@7 so any complaints about indirect anagrams today will have to come from the Scots re 15a! (I suppose 25a is sort-of indirect in a sense but the anagram part is not and I am definitely in favour of it.)
Loved this, thanks Brendan.
Wordworrier @7 I agree on THRENODIC.
Thanks Shirl and wordworrier. Errors corrected.
Thanks for the blog, I agree with the praise for THRENODIC , I thought CARROLL was very original with the double repeat, AMBITION and FORMATS were put together very nicely. NIGHTLIFE deserves a severe Paddington stare.
I took OMEGA as the end of the hadron series for the original three quark model. Predicted by Murray Gell-Mann and detected within months with expected properties.
6d reminded me of a clue I saw years ago. “Vegetable Zo-zo turned sideways”. (Answer ONION)
For the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to 15 across as the indirect anagram and I don’t really have a problem with it.
Agree with wordworrier@7 about the parsing of THRENODIC. I think scchua was rushing to publish after the late publication. I hadn’t remembered the quotation from Lewis Carroll, but it was all gettable in the end, despite seeming impenetrable at first. Enjoyed this, despite my normal routine of doing this over breakfast around 6 am being disrupted. Liked 17, 10 and 18. Thanks to scchua and Brendan
Thanks Brendan and scchua. One minor query: doesn’t “decision” in 9 simply mean to resolve to perform some action, rather than the more elaborate “decisive end to some pending issue”?
Great stuff as usual from Brendan. 1a was very good with the clever use of “a certain event”. And I loved the theme.
15a and 17a each involve an anagram, with a letter (F for “following” and C for “constant” respectively) then being either inserted or added at the end, but those letters are not part of the anagram fodder. So I don’t think they are indirect anagrams (even partial ones). Or is it that people are complaining that you have to derive EIGHT NIL from 8-0 before anagramming it? It didn’t bother me!
Many thanks Brendan and scchua.
I took the constant in THRENODIC to be the speed of light in a vacuum.
As soon as I saw ‘Oxford mathematician’ I put in DODGSON and knew this was a setter on my wavelength! I would have liked a few more Alice-related clues, but no complaints. A crossword I could do – unlike yesterday’s!
4d – The meaning of ‘transcendental‘ as in ‘number’ is a bit more precise than that wishy-washy philosophical definition, i.e. ‘a number that is not algebraic—that is, not the root of a non-zero polynomial of finite degree with rational coefficients. The best known transcendental numbers are pi and e.’
Lord Jim @19, yes it’s the 8-0. I thought the ‘following being’ was F/IS surrounded by an anagram of eight0. Needless to say, that didn’t work!
I didn’t remember the AIW quote, and made slow progress with the puzzle, but it all came together satisfyingly in the end. I particularly liked FORMATS for the hiddens. I remember once asking my parents for an illustrated AIW as a Christmas present. They were very surprised, thinking the book was one for girls. How times have changed!
Thanks Brendan and scchua.
Auntruth@21 Was Alice banned, do you think?
Actually thought INTONER (12a) was much more straightforward ,as my Chambers includes in its definition that to intone means singing in a monotone, therefore the “pitch” (i.e. tone) changes little……….
Thanks both. I am a rare visitor to the Guardian cryptic, but this was very entertaining. I’m no mathematician so some of the nuances escaped me, and I won’t ask my Friday brain to embrace some of the comments in this blog. My only quibble is with ARITHMETICIANS which for me is barely cryptic and not really clued unless you know the quote
Was not really on Brendan’s wavelength today. I solved/guessed but did not parse 11ac, 13ac, 5d (threatened by mate bit); 20ac; 15ac, 17ac, 16d.
Liked the device of n-z for LISZT.
I loved the Carroll quote about Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’
Thanks, both.
Thanks, scchua. Among Carroll’s mathematical contributions, I am most interested in his discussion of “If 6 cats kill 6 rats in 6 minutes, how many will be needed to kill 100 rats in 50 minutes?”
Thanks Brendan for an intelligent and witty crossword. I had read an annotated Alice decades ago but enough of it lodged in my brain to be of some use. As usual there were many wonderful clues with DERISION, CARROLL, TEENS, LISZT, and DADAISM my top picks. I couldn’t parse everything (no surprise there) so thanks scchua for the helpful blog.
12 cats if the killing rate is uniform.
Roz @30 and Brian @28
Surely the cats would get bored before the 8th or 9th rat!
Good point Tony, you have to assume the killing rate is constant to find an answer. In fact each cat would kill 8 and 1/3 rats on average in 50 minutes so just about okay. Even better would be to use a Jack Russell, they never tire of killing rats.
Petert@24 ? I had to think about that one for a minute!
Roz@30, 32. Thinking like a mathematician! Why would the killing rate be uniform? You need to read Carroll’s modelling analysis which takes seriously the idea that the question is about cats and rats, and shows how the answer depends on the assumptions made as to the logistics of the slaughter. Research has shown that children all over the world will tell you that if a runner can run a mile in 4 minutes he/she can run 3 miles in 12 minutes.
[I’m still hoping the Pied Piper will turn up and charm away the proliferation of rats we seem to have here]
A related article…
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789811233975_0001
That was very enjoyable. I slowed down to prolong it. Agree about COCONUT, AMBITION and CARROLL but could mention others too.
This was a fine example of combining humour, bending the “rules”, immaculate clueing, and having a theme whilst minimising obscure words and keeping the puzzle generally accessible. It reminded me that you have to be very good at something before you can make it look effortless.
[For the less mathematical, Roz’s answer is from 100 / (50 / 6). ]
Thanks Brendan and scchua.
LC mocked his own puzzle with… “If a cat can kill a rat in a minute, how long would it be killing 60,000 rats? Ah! How long indeed! My private opinion is that the rats would kill the cat.”
I liked this one – right up my street. Thank you MAC089@22 for clarifying transcendental. I remember being tickled pink on discovering the mathematical meanings of irrational and transcendental. Loved Alice, and although I couldn’t remember all of the uglification quote, got there in the end. Put Mathematician instead of ARITHMETICIAN at first, which stymied the lower left corner for a while. And had to google to confirm Orectic meant what I needed it to and tried a few other Ore.tic ‘words’ first – this is where a dictionary would definitely have been more useful than Google.
[Brian @34 “the answer depends on the assumptions made as to the logistics of the slaughter” – what a concept! Even without allowing the the slowing in the rate of killing as the cats get bored or sated, simply saying one rat takes six minutes to kill, so it’s an average of eight and a third per cat over 50 minutes does not really work. What does a rat that is one third dead look like?]
Done it.
Bloody done it!
Only my third Friday ever, I think, and while I was definitely helped by the mathematical theme (although I didn’t fully remember the Mock Turtle’s speech) I’m still really made up.
Some absolute jaffas in there, AMBITION being the pick of them, but also loved THRENODIC, EIGHT and PART TIMER.
Thanks Brendan and scchua.
Didn’t start this until after lunch but thoroughly enjoyed it. 8-0 clicked immediately with me and isn’t, in my view, an indirect anagram. I am enough of a Carroll “tifoso” to be able to reel off “Father William” by heart so this went down a treat.
LISZT idea was new to me, thought ZO-ZO twice was a witty forerunner.
Should have thanked Geoff Down Under @15 for ONION above.
OPPS
My 1957 “Oxford Dictionary of Quotations”, unfortunately, doesn’t give the Mock Turtle passage and UGLIFICATION had slipped my memory.
[pdp@37 we do not need the sums, the initial statement implies an average kill rate of 1 rat per minute for 6 cats. The kill rate is doubled, so double the cats. ]
Another treat today, many thanks Brendan and scchua.
Re ‘orectic’ in 16d, visitors to Greece may have come across καλή όρεξη = kalí órexi = bon appétit! Anorexia is from the same root. For x → -ct-, think climax/climactic, syntax/syntactical etc.
[Are the cats/rats in a sealed box?]
This was hugely enjoyable, and the theme was right up my street. Big thanks to Brendan and scchua (and the tardiness of the blog really wasn’t scchua’d fault!)
[The cat/rat discussion doesn’t, alas, take into account the limited attention-span of the average feline: our two cats often bring a rodent in, chase it around the place for a bit, then get bored and wander off. The rodent in question sometimes manages to find its own way out again, but more often than not we end up having find it, catch it and eject it.
I suspect the good Reverend Dodgson didn’t actually have any cats of his own…]
[Thank you Roz.
Although there are exceptions, mathematicians are not necessarily good at doing mental arithmetic, so don’t push the bill at us after a multi-person meal at a restaurant, expecting an immediate accounting of who owes what. Mathematicians try to find a way to look at the problem so the answer is obvious, so if the amounts don’t constitute some well known series or other pattern, you’re SOL.]
I loved this once I saw the theme. I had to go searching for a vaguely-remembered quote. 15a is an indirect anagram, the letters are nowhere to be seen. Entered Threnetic which held me up for a bit, also took me ages to get octopus out of my head. I had missed the subtlety of certain in 1a, glad to have that explained here. Many thanks Brendan and blogger
Another Brendan tour de force, which I managed to complete early this morning. With OCTOPOD and EIGHT almost the first two in, I thought there would be a mathematical theme, which of course with Mr DODGSON involved, there was. When I had a C as the first of 5 letters for the island, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be solving Corfu or Crete or perhaps CAPRI…
[MrEssexboy@46, thanks for the Greek, I did wonder about anorexia but not my field at all. Are you quite sure you want me to discuss the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment ? ]
[Thanks Roz@45.
Sh@40 once each cat has eaten its allotted 8 rats, the remaining 4 rats are a free for all and some sharing may occur 😉
This reminded of the story of Queen Victoria liking one of the Alice books so much that she asked LC to send his next work. He sent a mathematical treatise. The story turns out to be false and he, in Symbolic Logic, put the “silly story” to bed.
]
[Wellbeck @47. I think your cats must be thinking that it’s ok to stop after one-third killing the rat. The rat, being two-thirds alive, eventually recovers and wonders off.]
Everyone’s assuming that the cats are hunting down the mice. It could be that it takes six cats six minutes to assemble the instant-kill-all-rats machine. One cat would need 36 minutes to assemble it in , so could kill 100 rats in 50 minutes with time to spare.
Super crossword and thankfully not too much Alice in Wonderland debate about the breaking of nonexistent rules.
Jay@36 thanks much for this link. See also:
Jay@36 thanks much for this link. See also the Wikipedia entry for “age of the captain”.
(don’t know how to link)
Brian@56 thanks for that, I found it and will study
[Roz @51, I have the T-shirt, but I’m afraid the discussion would soon enter territory un-kent. I do know a joke about Heisenberg, in which he gets pulled over by a cop for speeding. “Do you know you were doing 95 mph?” “Darn it, now I don’t know where I am.”]
Schrödinger was also stopped for speeding. The cop told him he needed to search the car.
“Mr Schrödinger, do you know you have a dead cat in a box in the boot?”
“I do now.”
[sh @ 53: inspired by your comment, I shall now keep my fingers crossed that our two cats, despite all appearances to the contrary, are secretly cunning, clever, assiduous – and good at maths. And that the rodents are cooperating gamely.]
[And I LOVE the Schrödinger speeding gags!]
[I have always questioned Schrödinger’s choice of organism. Anyone who has ever been a cat’s staff will know that the cat would be sufficiently self-aware to collapse the wave function by itself.
I was taken aback many years ago when, playing 20 questions with some friends and my 8 year old daughter, she picked “Schrödinger’s cat” as the unknown. She must have been paying more attention to random chat than I thought! She didn’t follow up on her early scientific interest, though…]
I enjoyed this puzzle, thanks Brendan and scchua for the blog under less-than-ideal conditions!
27A was maybe a little unsatisfying with the definition only from an unremembered quote, but got there eventually from the crossers.
Total mystery, today.
Thanks both.
I started this close to supposed bedtime and set myself a target of completing it before midnight local time. It took me until 23:58! But it was a (for me) surprisingly doable Friday puzzle. I spotted CARROLL and DODGSON but not the mathematical theme.
Liked: CAPRI, TEENS, the clever reversal in PART-TIMER.
Cheers both. I really must go to bed now…
Brilliant! Thanks B and S.
So many references in theme and one favourite which wasn’t one…LISZT. Haven’t read since my children were little so 20-25 years ago. Happy days.
Many thanks Brendan and scchua.
[ EB@58 some of my students have a T-shirt reading dead/alive in a clever block of letters, is that it?
Full marks for effort for the joke but I am sure you know that it is the MOMENTUM and position operators that do not commute. He could know his position but have uncertainty in mass or direction, momentum is a vector. ]
Wonderfully clever as usual from Brendan. I was stumped half way through last night; finished it this morning but had to look up the quote which I didn’t know. Lots of beautiful and cunning clues and a few I couldn’t parse. I don’t do the Guardian crossword every day but try not to miss a Brendan.
Thanks to him and scchua for the explanation for THEORETIC.
[Roz @67
1) Yes
2) I’m glad you’re sure I knew that!]
re: 8-0
NOT being British, but in a math-themed puzzle, I thought 8 minus 0 = 8. But where does the “L” come from (having incorrectly throwing the “IN” into the anagram mix?
As a sports score, I had read it as “eight to zero” or “eight-oh” (but should’ve known better — my English husband would say “eight-nil”, of course.)
Wow. Brendan is always great, but this was sublime. So many delightful realisations, whether it’s “mat” being contained repeatedly in “mathematics”, the “isn’t turning one letter around” to get ISZT, the impressive double reversal of PART-TIMER, the way all of 26a comes together, the unexpected certainness of 1A… Just a delight to solve. Thanks very much to Brendan (and to scchua for a couple of explanations we’d missed).