Guardian Prize 28,925 / Brendan

82 comments on “Guardian Prize 28,925 / Brendan”

1. How nice to get in first! Thanks, as always, Eileen. 1ac — idea was that H, I etc. are from the first 11 letters, no anagram indicator required.

2. … and second, but just to correct I meant 8 across of course

3. Loved this.
   SHIFT KEY and BEATLE absolute corkers.
   Thanks to Brendan/Brian and to Eileen 🙂

4. Couldn’t Brendan have had “BFG lost letters….” in 1a.
   Thanks Brendan and Eileen

5. Yeah I guess “letters from” implies “in whatever order” … But yes agree, Eileen, lotsa fun. Coupla (non-!) literary shrugs tho, for the CS Lewis and Poe allusions. And just as well that Dickens was incidental for circular (great clue). Much enjoyed, thanks BG & E. Now for breakfast with Brummie.

6. Another clever themed puzzle from Brendan, although fwiw I prefer it when you have to figure out the theme.

   There were some clues I thought a bit forced, but that might well have been because I didn’t get them fully. Was circular the answer because of O’s in lot-of-people, too, or because circular letters reach a lot of people? Apparently the latter.

   SCRABBLE was clear if you thought of it (I did), but there was no “way in” if you didn’t.

   HIJACKED would have worked better if it involved all first 11 letters, but that would seem impossible, so no complaints!

   I was wondering for a bit where the S went to pluralise TETE-A-TETE; would it be like mothers-in-law? No, because the last part was not adjectival, I concluded.

   Tx B&E

7. Thanks for that, Brian @1 – always good too see you, at any time.

   Just to say that I wrote a draft blog, as usual, last weekend, then left it, as usual, for last-minute thoughts /amendments until the midnight deadline, only to have technical problems (of my own making) in posting – after a full day’s preparation for our annual Christmas Tree Festival, when I wasn’t on top form. I’m about to try to snatch two or three hours’ sleep before the (enjoyable) all-day fray tomorrow, so won’t be able to catch up with most comments until tomorrow evening. Apologies in advance for any errors / omissions.

8. Thought there was some lovely clues in this.

   My favourites included: LIGATURE, SHIFT KEY (my favourite), ENTANGLE, COURTING, DEVASTATED, KAYO

   Thanks Brendan and Eileen

9. Like Dr.Whatson@6. I saw the Os in both halves of the clue for CIRCULAR, surely deliberate. Like the grammar in that clue, with ‘like a letter’ referring to both the circular letters and giving us the definition too at the other end of clue
   While not a Scrabble whiz, it also occurred to me to look up the score for that word. Bingo.

   Can someone tell me, as often happens with homophonic and other dds, how do we know if it’s BEATLE or BEETLE (ignoring punctuation)?

10. Thanks Brendan, I’m always impressed when you have so many thematic clues without sacrificing the quality of the clues in general — another tour-de-force. I failed in the NW corner with CIRCULAR and ECHO and I couldn’t parse the clever HIJACKED; this didn’t spoil my fun because there were so many satisfying clues like ROULETTE, DEVASTATED, SILENT, UPPER CASTE, and SHIFT KEY. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

11. paddymelon @9 I suspect that’s why the punctuation is there, not only the dash to separate the two halves of the clue, but also the apostrophe which connects the sound to the car model.

    A very enjoyable outing for me with the letter theme. Favourites were SCRABBLE, and RUBY.

12. Thanks Eileen. I enjoyed this for a good number of cleverly misleading clues, most of which misled me. Spent a bit of time working out the scrabble values of ‘in itself’ and with Silent Night in mind trying to think of a psalm known as Silent something. After some internal debate I finally put in BEETLE for 25a but it could have gone either way. Tim C @ 11, often enough the punctuation is there to confuse, I read it as ‘Car model is sound… I’m still not sure about ‘warm’ in 6d – unless there is a connotation of promiscuity!

13. Biggles A@12 and TimC@11 on BEETLE/BEATLE. I also thought the punctuation was there to confuse, hence my question. I get the ‘straight’ reading with ‘straight’ punctuation, but I also thought there might be the other possibility. No way of knowing.

14. Thanks, Brendan – this was a real challenge for me, had to keep coming back to it over the week and ended a DNF because I failed to get BEATLE (or even BEETLE). Just couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

    Lots of wonderful penny-dropping moments though, with clues that kept me guessing as Eileen says in her preamble – particularly for ENTANGLE, HIJACKED (I agree, no anagram indicator required), RENT, SCRABBLE, SHIFT KEY and CIRCULAR.

    For the last, I guessed early it was to do with the common letter O but needed nearly all the crossing letters to finally get it. Lovely clue.

    And thanks of course for the blog, Eileen.

15. Biggles A @12 – I also got hung up on reading the clue as “Car model is sound…” which is why I failed to solve it, but now I’ve seen the explanation I think it’s clear enough that the homophone belongs to the car model.

16. Thanks Eileen. A bit daunted by the letter theme but answers came steadily, though the why of them was at times elusive. Google needed for the Screwtape irony and the Poe purloining. Unlike Fiona Anne above, LIGATURE was my least favourite clue as there seemed no definition and the “of them” badly distracted. But HIJACKED was a great clue, last in: the only word that would fit, but why…. then a great aha!

17. I agree with Eileen
    A very well-constructed set of clues.

18. Molongo @16 – on 5D. A LIGATURE is a printing term for ‘a character formed from two or more letters’. So the straight part ‘links the two of them (=letter)’ seems perfectly OK. One section =ter seems a bit weak.

19. Thanks, Tigger @18 – I omitted to explain that.

20. Like many Prize puzzles I didn’t complete this on the day but came back to it with fresher eyes during the week for the last few holdouts. My LOI was also my favourite: ROULETTE – one of those clues where you wonder why it took you so long. The literary references were interesting: the Dickens one turned out not to need knowledge of the book, but the Lewis one did, a little anyway. As ever I come away from a crossword marginally more educated.

    Thank you both!

21. Lots to enjoy here with SHIFT KEY, SCRABBLE & LIGATURE all getting ticks. Also liked the proximity of CODERS and RUBY (a programming language)

    HIJACKED was LOI and I thought it was a bit underwhelming. Not sure BG@1 explanation improves things much – what next? Letters from first 26?

    Still excellent overall IMHO

    Cheers E&B

22. Also wondered whether LOVE LETTER would have made the cut if not for the theme?

23. I liked the clue for LIGATURE. Figured out what the 2 of them were from the clue and the theme. However agree with tigger@18 that the ‘section’ to be replaced, ‘ter’, was a bit under-clued.

    Interesting that maybe the last bastion of the ligature is in cryptic crossword land with the &lit.
    https://proofed.co.uk/writing-tips/spelling-tips-ligatures-and-when-to-use-them/

24. LOVE LETTER is also an amusing game.

    Generally I loved this, know the Screwtape Letters and the Poe story, the Dickens I looked up in case it mattered, and it didn’t. I suspect I’ve failed as I entered BEETLE.

    Thanks to Eileen (you too with a tree festival this weekend) and Brendan/Brian.

25. 1d reminded me of an old Araucaria clue.

    o (8,6)

    Thanks B & E

26. An excellent crossword. The two things rhat I liked best were (1) the use of multiple meanings og ‘letter’ and (2) the clever and well-judged use of all kinds of ”definition’ for the answers from dictionary definitions to whimsical descriptions. I chose BEATLE over BEETLE but could have chosen the latter, I feel.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

27. As Eileen has said, “loved it”, I didn’t want the fun to end.

    I had KAYO and EDITORS in early on, and then struggled for a while, until I let my mind go free, and then it was one penny drop moment after another.

    It was easy and hard at the same time!!
    Completely fair and everything made sense. Thanks Brian

28. Very clever puzzle and clues. I needed some help from google for the GK in this puzzle. New for me: “The Purloined Letter”, 1844 short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe (for 12ac); The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis (for 9ac); Dombey and Son – by Dickens. Also new was KAYO which I had always imagined as simply KO.

    I could not parse:
    1d apart from the def
    7d except rev of IS + LENT

    Liked LOVE LETTER, SCRABBLE, ENTANGLE, SHIFT KEY, BEATLE.

    Thanks, both.

29. Glad to endorse Eileen’s blog and comments by others above. An excellent and amusing puzzle by Brendan. I always tackle the Prize puzzle over several days, doing a few clues at a time. This helped me to overcome the multiple meaning traps in this puzzle.
    Favourite clue was LIGATURE. I don’t agree with Molongo@16 and Tigger@18 that the section ‘TER’ needed any more signposting. It was just a very clever clue. I even wrote ‘Clever’ next to the clue when I got it. I also added double ticks to 11ac, 1d, 6d, and 13d and lots more single ticks. My one embarrassing failure was falling into the Beetle trap in 25ac by failing to figure out the significance of the letters. Dohhh!

30. Another tour-de-force from Brendan.

    More straightforward than some of Brendan’s although some of the literary references passed me by. I remember looking up Dombey and Son and finding references to letters, so just shrugged – but actually a nicely misleading clue. I also liked ROULETTE for the better options, BEATLE for the somewhat left-field definition, SCRABBLE, where I quickly totted up the letter values, and LOVE LETTER, which I thought was a super cd/dd.

    Thanks Brendan and Eileen.

31. I don’t think you need to know who wrote the Purloined Letter (though I did) – it’s clearly the title of a mystery story, and the seeker might have been HOLMES – except that he fits neither the crossers nor the anagram, and SLEUTH does.

32. JohnJB @29 – agreed on 5d. Great clue. “Literature” is given en clair in the clue so from the enumeration (8) you can infer that the section to be replaced is three letters. Making it any more explicit would be overkill.

33. As mentioned in today’s Guardian letters, the HUSTLE/SLEUTH anagram was in both the Quick and the Prize last Saturday, so for those like me who do the Quick first, there was one less puzzle in the Prize. Which was annoying, and surely could have been avoided. Clever crossword, leading to some tortuous clues, I thought.

34. Delightful! Loved BEATLE

35. Thanks Eileen
    I didn’t understand G J P & R and had also bunged in beetle. Even after the reveal I needed your blog to understand it.
    Slight correction to 7d: [p]salm not p[s]alm
    Biggles@12 I also thought of Silent Night and somehow convinced myself that psalm 23 had “silent waters” when they are, in fact, “quiet” (in the hymn) or “still” (RSV and other bible translations).
    Shall I be the first Scrabble pedant to point out that one can score much less than 14 by using two blank tiles in place of B/C?

36. Completely missed BEATLE but bunged in BEETLE without understanding the initials. Nontheless a great puzzle.

37. Thanks Brendan and Eileen. I am another one who eventually plumped for BEETLE over BEATLE. Missed a trick with 24a, I thought. The answer could have been RUNE. Even in the clue, demand=RUN (as in demand for/run on toilet rolls,say!)

38. Lin @35 haha top quality pedantry though if you used two blanks to score less than 14 you’re my kind of opponent 🙂

39. Crispy @25 – that’s genius! 🙂

40. Very much enjoyed the misdirection in this. A couple of the clues I solved and then much later realised the different meaning of the defining phrase that helped it all make sense… (the “better” in 14a and the “letter” in 24a). Loved the suit-pressing and the winning hand too! A rare full completion for me – slightly sad it was over so quickly but satisfying to finish.

41. Thanks Eileen and agree entirely with your assessment, but grateful also to Tigger@18 for making full sense of LIGATURE as I had thought it a bit woolly, of course as usual with Brendan I was missing quite a lot! Got 25A the right way round at the second bite with the same reasoning as Tim C@11 and after that couldn’t see it any other way. I did wonder if 8A was quite complete and like Tim the toffee@4 noted the absent BFG, reference to whom could have removed my confusion, on the other hand it was gettable with crossers so no lingering complaints and appreciate the horse’s mouth (sorry Brendan) clarifying the intent, thanks also for a wonderful puzzle.

42. Eileen — tiny niggle — there are two L’s in Edgar Allan Poe.

    And thanks for explaining ENTANGLE — I was stuck on ENT from Tolkien’s world of magic, and then what to do with the rest of the word?

    A RUBY is red, but it doesn’t make me red.

    DrW — translate and think of the plural — would you say “heads-to-head”?

    As well as ae and oe (sorry, can’t do the characters) there’s fi. A friend of mine astounded her professor father by pointing out that “fi” are written as a combined character when fish are what’s in your fine kettle.

    Crispy@25, what is the answer to your Araucaria clue?

    Thanks to Brendan for wonderful misdirection, and to Eileen for her joyful commentary that adds to my enjoyment.

43. Who or what is BFG? Is it Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant or have I totally missed something?

44. What a brilliant crossword puzzle! It’s incredible how Brendan, who I believe has been setting longer than anyone else on the scene, continually comes up with such fresh cluing devices. Terrific working of a theme, too.

    8ac, HIJACKED: I don’t think there’s any need for an anagram indicator. Saying that the answer uses letters from the first eleven in the alphabet doesn’t necessarily imply that they come in alphabetical order. The fact that the definition seems to scream “I am an anagram indicator” is just another demonstration of the setter’s cunning. Certainly had me fooled for quite a while!

    9ac, IRONIC: Didn’t know of The Screwtape Letters and was interested to learn about them. (What, to me, are) obscurities are very welcome when they come in the clue, rather than the answer.

    11ac, TETE-À-TETES: I also wondered about this plural, but on consideration, ‘tetes-a-tete’ didn’t sound any better.

    12ac, SLEUTH: I recognised what story was referred to, having read it some time ago, but couldn’t remember what it was called (despite it being named in the clue!) or who wrote it. I thought it might be one of the Sherlock Holmes shorts. Thanks very much for the reminder, @Eileen.

    25ac, BEATLE: one of my last ones in, which I finally got by seeing the possibility of ‘beetle’ from the clue and crossers, shortly after which the penny dropped. Initially (npi), I thought it a bit unfair to (apparently randomly) rearrange the names from the traditional J, P, G & R order, but now it’s been pointed out that they were given in alphabetical order in the clue, that seems fair enough.

    4dn, EDITORS: @Eileen, you forgot the I in the fodder.

    6dn LOVE LETTER: is it really a double definition? Or just a cryptic definition?

    18dn, ENTANGLE: I only noticed on my final check before coming here that I never solved this one and so resorted to Word Wizard to get the answer. Hadn’t thought beyond the phonic meaning of ‘snarl’ till I saw the answer in the list.

    22ac, CODERS: @Eileen, this clue had its blue highlighting in the blog overlooked, for some reason.

45. I’m afraid I neglected to read the comments before posting mine. I’ve just read Brian Greer’s entry @1, and I’m pleased to see we agree about the lack of need for an anagram indicator! 🙂

    Apologies, if I have repeated points made by other solvers too.

46. I’m completely in the dark as to ‘said to press a suit’. Anyone to my rescue, thanks?

47. Bodycheetah@21, I suspect you may not be British. Your sarcasm falls rather flat, not only because “from the first 26” would not help delineate the answer in any way, but also because two of our best-loved sports here in the UK (football and cricket), as well as others, are played between teams of eleven, so the phrase “first eleven” has connotations which spring immediately to mind for us and distract from the literal meaning intended in the clue. ‘Letters from the first 26’ will never appear in a clue, but ‘letters from the second eleven’ might. ‘Fifteen’ would also work in this device (Rugby Union).

48. Paddymelon @13: “no way of knowing”. Time to reach for Occam’s razor? Trying to make BEETLE fit the clue seems perverse. Why ignore the punctuation and admit clumsy grammar when you don’t need to?

49. A suit, besides something to wear, is a campaign to persuade the object of your affections to return them – hence the word suitor for a hopeful lover. Your actions in this campaign are (or used to be) known as “pressing your suit” and a passionate LOVE LETTER or two might well be part of them.

50. Valentine@42, this may be a particularly British turn of phrase, but if you take two slices of bread and put a piece of cheese between them, that’ll make you a sandwich. Geddit?

51. Valentine@42, 43:

    Sorry, don’t get your joke(?) about the kettle.

    Re the Araucaria clue, the answer is contained across the answer and clue in 1ac here.

    BF&G are the three letters of the first eleven not appearing in HIJACKED.

52. Me@51, Valentine@42, oops! I mean 1dn, CIRCULAR.

53. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the sub-theme formed by LOVE LETTER, TETE-A-TETES, COURTING and PROPOSAL. Maybe ENTANGLE was part of this group – I suppose it depends how well the tete-a-tete goes.

    I failed on the Beatles, having been successfully deflected by alphabetical order – also not getting UPPER CASTE didn’t help. I normally render this as TORY IDIOTS or DO WE DESERVE THIS, but neither would fit.

    Thanks to Brendan and Eileen.

54. I still do not understand 8a, could someone explain it, as I do not see an indication as to what letters to remove, all help is appreciated.

    Keep on solving

    Worworcrossol

55. Worworcrossol @54 (very difficult name to type!) – it’s a bit like 15d in yesterday’s Harpo, where (spoiler alert) ‘several points’ is used to indicate a number of letters that equate to points of the compass in the answer (DR)ESS SENSE without indicating which they are or what order they are in. Solving the clue depends to some extent on being on the setter’s wavelength.

    Keep on solving – you too!

56. gladys@49. Much appreciated, thanks. Knew of suitor but not suit in that sense.

57. Worworcrossol @54 – “letters from first eleven” indicates that the solution is made up of a selection from the first 11 letters of the alphabet, ie A to K. The enumeration (8) tells you that you need eight of those 11 letters (I think it would need to be indicated if any of the letters were repeated, so you can assume it’s eight different letters).

    It’s an unusual form of wordplay, which makes it harder to spot, but I’m sure I’ve seen similar before. Most importantly, it’s precise in its instruction to solvers, so perfectly fair in my book.

58. Worworcrossol @54

    As Eileen has said, the word HIJACKED is made up from letters from the “first eleven” of our very own alphabet, so from A to K? I’m not sure Sheffield hatter’s explanation was clear tbh.

59. Sorry, Ant (and Wor). I just meant that the clues are of a similar type, where it’s not really an anagram, as the exact letters are not specified. TBH I’m not sure that ‘taken wrongly ‘ in this clue is functioning as anything other than definition, which the setter Brian Geer @2 seems to confirm.

60. Valentine @42. Circular letter

61. TC@42 yes your examples are much better than my 26. Letters from the first fifteen would be well over half the alphabet!

    I think people from all over the world are probably aware of the concept of a sporting eleven. There is a World Cup on at the moment apparently

    But you’re right – I’m Yorkshire not British

62. Widdersbel @57. I’m not sure “precise” is the word I’d have chosen, but having been obscure in my attempt to explain @55 I’m in no position to criticise. 🙂

63. A great puzzle. What a clever compiler. Many thanks.

    I failed on 2dn. The best I could manage was IAGO: two letters said I and R. To deliver e.g. power is to GO. And IAGO a character giving a final blow in some sense. But knew I was on quicksand.

    LOVE LETTER just seems to be a cryptic definition. So felt a bit odd. But what a superb theme.

    Very clever to arrange John, Paul George and Ringo in alphabetical order.

    SHIFT KEY my favourite.

64. It’s precise in the sense that it’s unambiguous – that is, it’s precise enough to confirm whether or not your solution is correct.

    But ok, maybe it’s not precise in that it doesn’t tell you exactly which of the 11 letters you need or which order to put them in.

65. Yes, I was happy with having got the right answer by referring back to the clue – it would be tricky starting from ABCDEFGHIJK, as Worworcrossol is implying.

66. Steve@46 and 56. gladys@49 Consider the Gilbert and Sullivan song from HMS Pinafore: “Refrain, audacious tar, your suit from pressing!”

    Tony Collman@50 and 51
    Sorry, don’t get your joke about the sandwich.
    Both “fish” and “fine” begin with “fi-“, which is the digraph I’m referring to in some fonts. In that, the dot on the I isn’t there and the top of the I intersects the crossbar of the f. On my printed-from-the-website copy of the puzzle, you can see it in the clue for 1a in the word “first.” But on the screen here, the F and the I appear completely separated.
    I did see that BFG are the letters missing from the first eleven, but I was wondering if BFG was also an abbreviation of some familiar phrase that wasn’t familiar to me. Apparently it wasn’t.

67. Thanks for the comments on my obviously careless errors – and to those who have kindly refrained from repeating them while I was out. I had hoped that the overnight solvers – in more congenial time zones 😉 – might have raised them in time for me to deal with them before I had to leave early this morning for our TreeFest – see me @7.
    I hope they’re all amended now – sorry I’m too tired to acknowledge them all individually but very happy at a hugely successful first day of our CTF. I hope you had a really good day too, Shanne @24. Hard work but so worth it!
    I’ve enjoyed reading the discussions on individual clues, too and I’m delighted to find that other solvers enjoyed it as much as I did.

68. Bodycheetah@61, sorry, didn’t mean to be patronising. Perhaps I didn’t properly understand your objection to “first eleven”? ‘Perm any 8 from 11 given’ is a bit harder than ‘perm some specific 8 from 8 given’, but not much — especially if the fodder for the 8 in the latter case is partly made up of indirect abbreviations, etc.

69. Valentine@66, ah, yes, I understand now. In fact there is something that goes on between Latin and Italian where fl becomes fi, as in fiore from flora(?).

    Re BFG, yes, it’s a Roald Dahl story and means Big Friendly Giant. Also a film.

70. I now see the BFG question stems from Tim the Toffee @4 suggesting 8ac (sic) ould have been: “Letters from first eleven BFG lost wrongly taken” to remove all ambiguity about which letters are in fact needed..

71. Tony@69 L often becomes I in Italian when it follows a consonant — bianco for white (blank), chiaro for light-colored (clear), pianti for plants…and as you said, fiori for flowers.

72. Eileen @67, this year my involvement stopped at organising our Rainbows unit into making decorations and getting them on the joint Rainbows tree (Santa puppets). Usually I’m more involved and on duty, the first tree festival I ran/made so many trees (clergy team, choir (friends with the person who volunteered), toddler church, church youth group and was involved in the local nature reserve and art society trees), and more than a decade later I’m usually involved in two, but we opted out from having a youthwork tree this year.

73. Eileen anf Shanne — what do people do at a TreeFest? I assume it has to do with decorating Christmas trees, but are they real or artificial trees? Do different groups sponsor a tree each? What am I missing? I wonder if we have them in the US under a different name.

74. Graham@37 – clever idea re RUNE for 24A. However, had Brendan gone that route, he would have missed a different trick, i.e. the use of “letter” as synonym for renter/landlord in the clues. Choose your weapon, I suppose.

    While I agree that 8 & 26 across were fairly clued, I think they’d be nigh impossible to get without some crossers (for me it was the B in SCRABBLE and the K in HIJACKED which lit my typically dim bulb). Upon getting HIJACKED I thought, given the theme, that this would be a pangram, but a few of the usual suspects failed to show. HIJACKED also triggered (awfully inappropriate pun, sorry) a search for a short list of similar words, e.g. sighing, somnolent, crabcake, defy . . . but they did not materialise, either.
    Thanks, B &E, for excellent cryptic and blog – I pray the consistent quality of your outputs never be taken for granted!

75. You are probably right, yehudi.

76. Valentine @73 – community dressed trees in church, here we have 60 odd, two double rows in the north and south aisle, surrounding the main nave, and a circuit to walk around, plus other things, like a raffle, refreshments, a few stalls. Each group/company/individual who wants a tree pays the cost of a tree to decorate it (and can take it home at the end), and people pay a nominal sum to visit the church to see all the trees. It is the big church fundraiser here, and encourages many, many people who wouldn’t normally step inside the building to come in. Services happen as normal, there’s usually a concert on Saturday night, local groups sing and perform during the day, one of the chapels is kept clear for prayer. Lots of free or cheap advertising for those who decorate the trees, but a lot of work to organise them for groups. People who come round get a programme and voting slip as part of their entry and vote for best children’s tree, best commercial organisation, etc. Any leftover trees are sold off at the end.

77. Enjoyable, and with some standout stuff – BEATLE and SILENT are quite brilliant. But is UPPER CASTE really a thing? And I’m sorry, in my book 1a isn’t fair. The clue doesn’t say “Some, but not all letters from first eleven…”
    But thanks as ever to Brendan and Eileen.

78. Shanne @ 76 – sounds very much like ours! Just relaxing with a glass of wine – and the football – after a most successful weekend. Tired but very happy.

79. Neil @73:

    I’m not sure I understand your objection to the first across clue. “Letters from first eleven” includes the meaning that you have spelled out in your longer phrase. This contrasts with, say, “First eleven letters”, which would be wrong for this clue.

    I enjoy crosswords because of the way multiple components of the information (the letter count, the splitting of the clue into definition and wordplay, the definition, the wordplay, the crossers, the theme) individually underdetermine the answer, but together intersect to determine a unique answer.

    I like there to be a playful-sized gap between how obvious the answer is before it is solved and after it is solved. Cryptic crosswords live in the space between a priori and a posteriori.

    On all of these counts, I find 8A to be a delightful clue. There are not that many words of eight distinct letters from ABCDEFGHIJK. If the crossing K is found, that narrows the search space considerably (and corroborates the hypothesis that “first eleven” refers to the alphabet). “Taken wrongly” is a definition that would be unacceptable in any other context than a cryptic crossword but is precise and delightfully witty here, as an a posteriori definition.

80. I meant to address NeilH @77, of course.

81. Neil@77, isn’t “Some, but not all” redundant, given that the clue end: “(8)”?

82. Girabra @79. “Cryptic crosswords live in the space between a priori and a posteriori.” This is very well put.

    A similar thought often occurs to me when solvers (and occasionally bloggers too) write words to the effect of, “I struggled with this but everything seemed straightforward in retrospect.” Well, yes, it would do, because it’s a crossword clue!

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