Guardian 28,977 – Fed

85 comments on “Guardian 28,977 – Fed”

1. Most of this was fairly straightforward. I do think 11 and 7 could have done with a bit more clarity with the definitions. i.e. Italian flower and Italian sweeper. I hope that one day the Michael in 5 down doesn’t immediately come to mind. Pleased to see a new (to me) way of clueing “ouija”.

2. Reasonably enjoyable, but plenty of small irritations. Never heard of Michael Gove nor the Crouch in 21d. I’m not comfortable with “up” as an anagrind, as in 1d, nor “inspired” as an inclusion indicator, as in 3d. Never heard of fantasy football, nor beer pong (I’d mistakenly entered “boat race” for the latter, which sort of kind of fits the parsing!). 24a should really be (1,1,5), yes? And I didn’t like “March, maybe” for “mth”.

   By the way, I thought “flower” for “river” was clever when I first saw it, many moons ago, but it’s becoming so hackneyed that it now just elicits a groan. Likewise “banker”. But if it gives others who are not as rusted on to cryptic crosswords a chuckle, fair enough.

   I’m probably just a little grumpier than usual today. Thanks Fed & Andrew.

3. And it’s a pangram.

4. Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. Too many clues a bit clunky with dodgy surfaces. 1a is an example…learn to dumb-bells at first…. Wot?

   Perhaps I’ve been using the phrase wrongly, but I thought something settled was CUT AND DRIED – past tense.

   OOZIEST is not a nice word but I liked ALFRED HITCHCOCK.

   Many thanks both.

5. I managed to get 24 just from the crossers and the obviously inserted B, without parsing it properly. The definition of 12 is a bit loose – just because something oozes, it’s not necessarily sticky, but could be slippery instead.

6. Geoff Down Under @2, I had BOAT RACE as well until PROVERB put me right. Gave me a bit of a chuckle as well, not often a wrong solution fits quite so well.

7. Thanks, Fed & Andrew. I was very much tuned in to Fed’s wavelength today and found this most enjoyable as a result. FANTASY FOOTBALL my favourite.

8. CUT AND DRY did not please my inner grammarian
   I think LIBERO is used in volleyball
   Things you have to do to get a pangram(“and shut that bloody bouzouki player up!”)

9. Just right for me – enough easy-ish ones to get going but plenty to chew over as well. COWCATCHER was the LOI, and never heard the term. Needed Andrew to parse this for me as well as GROOVE (I don’t like to think of Gove so early in the morning). SPORADIC probably my favourite. Thanks to Fed and Andrew.

10. I’m glad everyone so fat has enjoyed this sd much. Do you think TLP is contagious?
    I got 1d straight away and thought I’m on to a flyer, but U was’t. Spme other easy ones around the grid gave me a foothold and it was slow and steady afterwards.
    Heard of a sweeper but not a LUBERO: A playmakijg defender It is CUI AND DRIED but the answer was obvious so who cares?
    Favourites were RAREBIT, WARMTH (MTH is a common abbreviation , so I don’t see the objection), COWCATCHER & BEERPONG. I also liked the two long ones,
    Thanks FED and ANDREW

11. Thanks Andrew for the blog. Needed you for Michael Gove. How many Michaels could there be??

    Agree with Andy@1 about the novel way of cluing OUIJA. There can’t be many (English) words you can reduce to IJ.

    Can’t agree with the definition of BOTOX as a ‘beauty product’, from what I can see, but it does have some very helpful medical applications.

    Got LAPLANDER from Northerner’s circuit .. the rest took a bit of circuitous parsing to solve.

    Haven’t seen a back to front 3 piece charade like COW-CAT-CHER before, but quite liked it. As it was defined as US, I wondered why. Turns out that British railways were usually through fenced off land, so no need for one.
    We have road vehicles down here (cars and utilities) with ”roo bars” and ” bull bars”, although a lot of the time I think it’s just to scare off other drivers in urban traffic.

    LIBERO, once I got the wordplay, led me via Google to a distinction between a sweeper in football and one in volleyball, something I’ll never need to know again.

    I thought 16A INCLUDE was devious, referring to 17D, which was difficult anyway, and all it was was just a clue, any clue.

    Quite liked CENSORIAL, and BAILIFF.

12. Good fun, but so many insertion, subtraction and substitution anagrams today! LIBERO was one such: a fiddly clue for a word I’ve never met (though miraculously I did remember Peter CROUCH). Thanks for parsing CB RADIO: cardio = exercise didn’t come to mind (I’m lazy) so asking me to slide letters in it was a bridge too far.
    Like William@4, I know the phrase as CUT AND DRIED.

13. Very enjoyable. A good mix of fairly straighforward and much more chewy. I especially liked RAREBIT and COWCATCHER. Not being a sports fan I had never heard of LIBERO. I have no problem with “flower” as either indicating a river or a bloom. After all, in both cases there is quite a list (!) With thanks to both.

14. Glad I’m not the only one to be mildly troubled by CUT AND DRY for settled.
    Equally glad that I didn’t get 5d, though unlike Redrodney @9 I would rather not have to think of Gove at all.
    That apart, an enjoyable start to the day.
    I was familiar with the COWCATCHER but until looking at Wikipedia this morning I hadn’t realised that the idea had been proposed by Charles Babbage, of early computer fame, though apparently in standard Babbage fashion his design never appears to have been put into production.
    Thanks to Fed and Andrew.

15. LIBERO seems to represent an escalation in indirect anagrammery. We often get single-letter abbreviations (eg H for hard) as letters to be added to the anagram fodder, and although I personally don’t like it, it’s generally accepted. But E isn’t an abbreviation for ‘drug’, it’s an example of a drug – and as such it’s a step closer to the ‘think of a synonym for this word, then make an anagram out of it’ type of clue. Doubly unfair, in my view, as ‘libero’ is a rather obscure word for anyone who’s not that into football. (I was lucky because I knew it from German.)

    I did like the groovy bouzoukis. Thanks Fed and Andrew.

16. As Paddymelon @11 says, British railways were fenced – indeed a huge financial burden on Britain’s railway system is the obligation resting on the railway companies to fence their lines securely.
    But trams used cowcatchers. I recall my father telling me once that he had good reason to be glad of the fact after he came off his bicycle in front of a Birmingham Corporation tramcar.

17. Geoff Down Under @2 It wasn’t until I read your comment that I understood how TIBER could be a “flower”, so thank you.

18. Thanks Fed and Andrew

    Very unfriendly for overseas solvers, I expect.

    Like FJ, I had BOAT RACE – a much better answer in fact; BO A TRACE (for those that don’t know the competition, it’s generally a post rugby match one, where two teams of eight line up, each with a pint of beer. As soon as the first has the glass upside down on his head, the second can start drinking. The first team with all eight glasses on their heads is the winner. It’s up to each player whether he drinks the beer before putting the glass upside down on his head!)

    I didn’t like the unindicated abbreviation for “month” either. GROOVE was also pretty obscure.

    MAYBE reminded of the description of diplomats. If a diplomat says “yes” he means “maybe”; if he says “maybe” he means “no”; if he says “no” he’s not a diplomat….

19. Re. COWCATCHER there is a story that during the very early days of railways in Britain, somebody asked the Duke of Wellington, an advocate for the new technology, “But what would happen if a cow wandered on to the line?”. And the Duke allegedly replied “That would be very unfortunate – for the cow.”

20. [NeilH @16
    I’ve just started reading a “Railway detective” story that opens with a lamb being killed on a railway track and the shepherd bemoaning how much it would cost to fence off the track. I wonder if this will be the start of the railways having to fence the tgracks?]

21. Libero: good on Fed for coming up with a new sporting term, not from football, rugger, cricket or golf. Or is it generalisable? And is it in fact new to cwland … archivists?

22. A few tough ones today – with LIBERO, COWCACTCHER and IN CREDIT remaining elusive. Had to do some googling to learn a few new words, but enjoyed lots of this,

    Thanks Fed!

23. Nothing much more to say than others really. CUT AND DRY grated although valid, and I’m never sure of the order when “inspired” is used as an indicator (in MAYBE). Never heard of LIBERO although t’internet comes up with volleyball before football.
    No problems with ‘mth’ as an abbreviation.

24. Enjoyed the few football references today. Libero had crossed over from Italian (like catenaccio) but has gone out of the common football parlance pretty much as the sweeper position itself has disappeared from the game.
    Minor quibble, I always thought it was cut an dried not cut and dry?

25. I was soundly beaten by the previous Fed but I was on his wavelength today. Agree with quibbles over CUT AND DRY and OOZIEST. My favourites were ALFRED HITCHCOCK, INCLUDE and CB RADIO. I did notice the pangram but it didn’t help with LIBERO, which I guessed from the fodder. Love the word OBSEQUIOUS.

    Ta Fed & Andrew.

26. Yes, it is unfriendly to our overseas visitors, but let’s be honest folks, it’s in a British paper!! Seems fair to me. Thanks Fed and Andrew.

27. RHS was relatively easy but LHS took more time. Yes there are some quibbles but I don’t think they detracted from an enjoyable solve.
    I’m worried that over the years Gove has begun to look like the more sensible face of the Tory party. (I shall now go and wash my mouth out with S and W.)
    I always thought in football a sweeper was a player who breaks up play in front of the back four whereas a libero is a creative player from the same position. Beckenbauer for example?
    Copmus@8 is that a Monty Python quote? I know it but can’t place it.
    Thanks to Fed and Andrew.

28. I liked this despite agreeing with some of the quibbles above – they didn’t spoil the fun for me. Like Gladys I amazingly remembered Peter CROUCH. First one in was ECHO and last was GROOVE, possibly because I never think of that dreadful Minister for so-called Levelling Up. Why doesn’t Parliament move to Birmingham, or even better, Leeds? There’d be some levelling up if that happened.
    Sorry for political moan , thank you Fed and Andrew

29. @oofyprosser, the Guardian ceased to consider itself a British paper many years ago, and now markets itself as an international masthead. Some people need to catch up, obviously.

30. At first sweep through I thought this might prove, well, too Cryptic a puzzle. And after I nervously inserted Gooiest instead of OOZIEST at 12 across things only became, well, stickier. However, ALFRED HITCHCOCK got things going, though wasn’t sure about how RAREBIT worked exactly. Can’t be very often that a definition is introduced by 9 words as in COWCATCHER, and how about an anagram involving 6 vowels, as in OBSEQUIOUS? Have to admit a DNF as LIBERO didn’t make me think of the footballing term for sweeper, though I did know it. And FANTASY FOOTBALL my COTD in what I thought was quite a challenge this morning. Cut and Dried I’m also more familiar with than CUT AND DRY, though everything pointed to that as the solution. Thanks Fed and Andrew…

31. …and Peter CROUCH seems to be everywhere in the media these days, especially in adverts on the Sports channels, plus a very popular podcast..

32. …thirdly and finally. Whenever I see the word OBSEQUIOUS I think of the Uriah Heep character in Dickens. Also standing too close to the speakers when watching the band of that name playing live a good while ago and wrecking my hearing as a result. No more from me this morning…

33. Liked PROVERB, RAREBIT, CB RADIO, GROOVE, DUDE.

    I did not parse 19ac COWCATCHER (new word for me) but suspected CAT might be involved.

    New for me: smart = cute (for 26ac); Peter CROUCH = England footballer; LIBERO = sweeper (soccer); BEER PONG – ugh, this game sounds very unhygienic!

    Thanks, both.

34. Just here to thank Fed and Andrew and to recall Peter Crouch’s answer to the tired old question unimaginative hacks always ask footballers:
    “What would you be if you weren’t a footballer?”
    “A virgin.”

35. I am in the. same camp as SinCam, enjoying despite quibbles. COWCATCHER was fun to put together and FANTASY FOOTBALL was cleverly constructed. I think Beckenbauer was the archetypal LIBERO so defining it as Italian sweeper would only have confused me.

36. Another who found the RHS easier than the LHS, but all in and dusted. I too forgot about the OBSEQUIOUS oleaginous-ness that is Gove to parse GROOVE and worked out LIBERO from the fodder rather than knowing it.

    Because I was interested I looked up CUT AND DRY and found that it has always (from the mid-17th Century) appeared in both forms: “cut and dry” and “cut and dried” and apparently the metaphor originates from the difference between buying dried herbs as against fresh – see more here from the Grammarphobia blog

37. Bleugh – and thank you to Fed (whose crosswords I really enjoy as they are different) and Andrew

38. Libero – a creative player, different from a sweeper in that the player sweeps in defence and then comes forward and dictates some tremendous attacking play with masterful passes. I was going to mention Beckenbauer as one of the best but JerryG beat me to it. So I’ll plump for Ruud Gullit, at Chelsea in the mid 90’s under the management of Glenn Hoddle.

    Peter Crouch, when at my team, Liverpool, was always greeted by “he’s big, he’s red, his feet stick outta bed, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch” ( Quartermaster’s Stores tune ). He’s now one of the principals in British Sport podcasting.

    JerryG again re copmus/bouzouki : I think the quotation comes from Python: Cheese Shop song.

    I didn’t like CUT AND DRY, but I did like GROOVE very much. Big fan of George Michael and, when he was with us, I had great faith in him. Not a fan of Gove and there’s a careless whisper around that he stabbed David Cameron in the front and Boris Johnson in the back.

    Thank you Fed and Andrew.

39. No no, copmus @8, the bouzouki sounds great, and it disguises the ouzo …

40. I really enjoyed this. It looked impenetrable at first and then everything gradually fell into place. I learned BEER PONG a few weeks ago helping to organise my daughter’s 18th birthday party and was pleased with myself for spotting the answer straight away.

41. [The discussion of COWCATCHERs vs fenced railways reminds me of a theorem they teach in law-and-economics classes (this won someone a Nobel Prize in economics, I forget who): as long as there’s an efficient market, changing the liability rule won’t prevent the most efficient outcome. The example our Nobel laureate used was….fencing a railway to keep out the cows. Whether or not the railroad is liable for dead cows, the fence gets built–all that changes is whether it’s the ranchers or the railway building it, and if one of those is an inefficient outcome, money will change hands to make up for it.]

    Even here in the US, they haven’t had COWCATCHERS on real trains (i.e. not ones deliberately old-timey for the tourists) since the steam era, presumably because those fences got built!

    I had to cheat on GROOVE, LIBERO, and BOUZOUKI, so not my finest hour. I confess to having played both FANTASY FOOTBALL and BEER PONG in my misspent youth, though not both at once.

42. Mention of Franz Beckenbauer reminds me of one of the rounds in the pub quiz I took part in on Tuesday night – we were given a list of cryptically defined band names to decipher. One of them was:

    “Beckenbauer, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse”

    Nothing to do with Liberos, mind.

43. NHO LIBERO or CROUCH (though that one was gettable from the cryptic); GROOVE makes no sense to me even now – certainly not in the sense of ‘rhythm’; and ‘cardio’ doesn’t suggest any form of exercise to me so I came nowhere near parsing CB RADIO (which, surely, should be enumerated as 1,1,5, not 2,5). Other than these minor irritations, there was nothing too challenging here today, but overall it’s a ‘6 out of 10’ sort of puzzle for my money. Thanks even so to setter and blogger.

44. I started at a canter but then got a bit bogged down on the LHS until ALFRED HITCHCOCK emerged.

    I’m more familiar with cut and dried, but Shanne @36 has given the justification, and Chambers has CUT AND DRY as the first entry, so I don’t think we can fault the setter here. I thought Michael was a bit vague (maybe George Michael, the politician), but then I suppose there are a lot more possibilities for flower. I DNK LIBERO and BEER PONG. I liked my LOI COWCATCHER with the rather convoluted logic, and CB RADIO, which it is generally agreed in crosswordland (GDU @2) should NOT be 1,1,5.

    Thanks Fed and Andrew.

45. … and BN @43, you’ll never see CB radio punctuated as C.B. radio in dictionaries.

46. JerryG @27 – Copmus @8 bouzouki quote is from the “Cheese Shop” sketch.

47. Thanks Phil.

48. Hmmm. Not without interest (and with some good clues and surfaces) but uneven. I share all of the niggles listed above about definitions and constructions. Shanne’s research @36 suggests that CUT AND DRY is a 16th century usage – archaic, surely, as everyone says ‘cut and dried’ these days. Chambers almost never indicates that a usage is obsolete, unfortunately.

    Like essexboy @15, I don’t like the clue for LIBERO (LOI) – a substitution indication should really come before and not after an anagrind.

    However, it passed the time pleasantly 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

49. Widdersbel@47 : Kaiser Chiefs ? …and Leeds has been mentioned somewhere above, I think.
    Of course FED is comedian / author Dave Gorman and I much enjoyed his teaching Rachel Riley, Susie Dent and Colin Murray how to solve crossword clues during his personal ‘ contribution interlude’ on COUNTDOWN.
    I also think he’s a Liverpool supporter, Libero and Crouchy fan.
    His first COUNTDOWN tuition was : “Klopp is lacking finishers, but looking towards the top spot (5,3)”
    Perhaps I can tempt him on to this blog by saying that IMHO he’s the best Dictionary Corner seconder I ever saw – this isn’t OBSEQUIOUS ( I too love that word ! ), it’s a genuine opinion. I have an actor friend who had a line “you obsequious toad” and he used to practise it in front of me. Think those three words are also in a Trekkie quotation.
    A RAREBIT of Fedism/Gormanism, in the past was writing for the Mrs Merton TV show and, just as this blog is inclined to do : “LET’S HAVE A HEATED DEBATE” – maybe about FANTASY FOOTBALL players to select.

50. I thoroughly enjoyed this but I had a feeling the quibblers would be out in force. Personally I’d be happy to see indirect anagrams as we already have indirect subtractions, reversale, rotations etc.

    Widders @42 I predict a riot ensued from that question
    Flea @38 any more of your George Michael puns and you’ll have to go outside

    Cheers S&B

51. Thanks Andrew, I shared a couple of quibbles but the pluses far outweighed them.

    William@4 I had that same eyebrow raise re 9A: the clue online is as shown in this blog, the pdf I printed unfortunately omits the “carry”, not sure what the newspaper has, so I needed all the crossers and put it down to Grauniaditis.

    Good work from Fed to have Oiky Gove crossing with 12A and 14A – Ronald@32 your cautionary tale reminded me that I know 14A from a slightly lower brow source – Motörhead’s “Orgasmatron” (lyrics well worth a skim, YMMV re the song itself). And i thought the trick for 7d was neat and pretty clear, the only problems being unhelpful crossers and an unfamiliar word – LIBERO probably most plausible, but didn’t Ribelo sometimes play at the back for Cremonese extra B’s in the late 70s? Thanks Fed.

52. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the movie “Convoy” or “rubber duck “/”rubber ducky” in conjunction with CB.

    bodycheetah@50, widders@42 : Ruby or not Ruby links to your question.

    I’ll move this phone to a different corner of the room and set an alarm to wake me up before I go go outside.

    I’ll sign off now – like the French Sweeper – Marcel Desailly – said : un ouef is enough.

53. Flea @52 you’re right in fact Convoy is one of the earliest examples of the niche genre C&W rap

54. I’m one of those who got held up for ages on C B RADIO, because I was looking for a two-letter word that began with C.
    It would seem, from the abrupt put-downs by earlier commenters, that there’s nothing amiss with describing CB this way – in which case, are RSVP VDQS NSFW etc etc all 4-letter words? Come to think of it, is etc a 3-letter one?
    If so, it feels a tad unfair…
    At least the probable pangram helped me think of BOTOX. And COWCATCHER was fun.
    Thanks to Fed and Andrew

55. My initial thought was ‘these are clunky clues’ but I got to the delightful CUTER and then felt better about the whole grid. A few quibbles as already mentioned above, but everything was gettable and I enjoyed a lot of the clues. Thanks Fed and Andrew.

56. Widdersbel @42: I was just about to answer your question but I see Bodycheetah and Flea have hit the back of the net already.

57. I’m an overseas (US) solver, but had no problem with CROUCH (from watching PL, over the years) nor Gove (keeping up with UK news, when I can bear to, and I think a few mentions in Cryptics). Much prefer CUT AND DRied. Thought INCLUDE was ingenious.

    Thanks F&A

58. Wonderful puzzle, and I’m not sure why people are complaining; I thought the clues were delightful. The only one I missed was GROOVE – being American I sadly never heard about Michael Gove…

59. Jay @58
    Happily rather than sadly re Gove, I would think.
    I’m still seething about 17d – BOAT RACE is a much better answer.

60. Wellbeck@54 – I think the answer to your question is yes, and I think I’ve seen RSVP clued in just this way. The convention appears to be (someone on this site kindly explained it to me years ago, and see also Robi@45) that if a dictionary definition (Chambers being the likely arbiter) puts a full stop after the capital letter then it counts as a 1 letter entry, and if it is clued as a set of capitals without full stops then it is indicated by the total number of letters, even if each of those letters is itself an abbreviation. Like so much in crossword land, there’s no overwhelming reason why this has to be the case, and one could argue for a different approach, but that’s the nature of any convention . So one knows for next time…….!

61. The COWCATCHER was a feature of the old steam locomotives, but surely not of modern diesel ones, so shouldn’t the clue read “were”?

    I think of “mon” rather than “mth” as the abbreviation for “month.”

    Never heard of Peter CROUCH of course, but the wordplay was very plain.

    We used to have rarebit for supper sometimes when I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve seen it since, though I make it occasionally.

    Thanks, Fed and Andrew.

62. Thanks for the blog, OBSEQUIOUS was a very clever anagram and very precise with the “completely ” timeless. CB RADIO was neat , a reminder of the prototype internet nerds.
    LIBERO deserves a severe Paddington stare for several reasons.
    Overall yet another baa-lamb , we desperately need a big, bad wolf tomorrow and Saturday .

63. Like Ronald@32, OBSEQUIOUS immediately brings Uriah Heep to mind. Gove, however, reminds me of another Victorian fictional character: Obadiah Slope from Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles, played by the incomparable, much missed, Alan Rickman in the BBC dramatisation from 1982. Odious Obadiah, he was dubbed in the reviews, most aptly.

64. You can argue that the LIBERO construction doesn’t use an indirect anagram, because you can make an anagram of Bristol first (LIBSTRO) and then do the E for ST substitution. But it felt indirect-ish to me too. Not helped by not knowing the term, in my case.
    Good surfaces today. The pangram helped me with MAYBE. LOI GROOVE.
    Thanks, Andrew and Fed. I am, indeed, having just finished lunch.

65. [Can’t erase my eye-roll re George Michael: like, Wake me up before you go-go …? So profound! (apols in advance to his fans)]

66. [ginf @65, I’m sure if it was sung in Italian with appropriate orchestration it would count as high culture 😉 ]

67. [Agree re Rickman’s Slope, KJ @63, superb. Trollope’s archetypal characters are less glaring than Dickens’s but no less powerful. Septimus Harding, the essence of humbly unshakeable morality, is another one… Donald Pleasance as him was superp too]

68. [Yep probably, eb @66. Mrs ginf, whose Italian was fluent while mine is del strada, often used to remark on the banality of opera libretti]

69. Geoff Down Under @2: since none of the ensuing 65 comments support your complaint about “up” as an anagrind, allow me to second your emotion at the 66th attempt.

70. Loved this. Libero I knew from an ancient videogame called Libero Grande. I’m no expert on the subject but there’s not enough football in crosswords. I only watch the women’s game these days if I get a chance. It’s the most popular sport in the country. Cricket is far from it (but the knowledge is expected) – and I adore cricket. It just seems skew-whiff.

    Likewise almost nothing in the way of videogames. It’s the most lucrative entertainment industry on the planet and it gets almost zero focus. How do you expect to attract new solvers if the puzzles aren’t relevant? I have got so many clues due to playing video games.

71. Loved it but then I’m a huge fan of this setter (number 2 in my dream team of DT Toughie setters as Django). Didn’t find the clues in the least clunky & the wordplay always precise giving you a chance if the answers are unfamiliar (COWCATCHER & LIBERO in my case). Annoyed I didn’t peg Gove (14a apt) but otherwise parsed. Plenty of ticks for me – ALFRED HITCHCOCK just edges FANTASY FOOTBALL as my pick.
    Thanks Fed & Andrew

72. WRT GROOVE, I had the GRO__E from the middle of George backwards and entered it still wondering how the OV meant Michael. Thanks, Fed and Andrew.

73. Geoff Down Under @2 and AndrewTyndall @69: I’m sure we’ve discussed “up” as an anagram indicator before. Chambers includes for “up”: “amiss” and “in an excited state; in revolt”. For the former, think of “There’s something up with him”, “What’s up?” etc. For the latter, in The Sign of Four, when Jonathan Small is describing his experiences during the Indian Mutiny, he says “The whole country was up like a swarm of bees”. Seems ok to me.

74. MarkN @70, I think cricket is common in crosswords mostly* because it has a rich terminology – much of it either short or with abbreviated forms, thanks to scorecards. ON, OFF, LEG, OVER, W, B, NO… so many helpful little bits for clues. Football can provide good answers, but it’s far less useful for providing parts of wordplay. Too much of the terminology is too long-winded, and even when there are abbreviations they’re things like GK, LB, RB, which are not common letter pairs in normal English. And I’m not sure there’s much video game terminology that would be useful either – MMO and RTS, perhaps.

    * Obviously there’s also a history of crosswords and cricket having historically appealed to similar demographics. And to be fair it’s pretty difficult to do a crossword while watching a football match in the way you can at the cricket.

75. The problem with anagram indicators such as UP is that they are synonyms for words or phrases that are of themselves much better anagram indicators, such as AMISS or IN AN EXCITED STATE. An indicator such as BROKEN on the other hand is incontrovertible, and far more helpful to solvers.

76. Tom @74: It’s not so much football being part of clues, it’s that it just doesn’t feature. It can be the definitions. that’s fine. But it almost never happens. Same with videogames. I was delighted when one turned up recently. One in maybe twenty years. Here’s one I wrote a while ago.

    Vadespacers Machine? (5,8)

    Everyone should be able to get it, because it’s common knowledge. It just never turns up in crosswordland, and I think it should.

77. MarkN@76 Vadespacers may be common knowledge, but I didn’t get the memo. What is the solution to your clue?

78. [Valentine@77. While we’re waiting for MarkN@76 to pop back in, my take is that it is a rebussy type clue.
    VADE space RS > SPACE INVADERS, with machine possibly as a verb meaning to shape or reshape. ]

79. Yep! Space Invaders. Machine was the definition. Arcade machines are big old cabinets that I love to bits. I’m not saying it’s a good clue, but as a cultural reference I’d expect everyone to know it. And yet almost never in crosswords. Highest grossing entertainmant medium in the world. Far beyond film and television. Doesn’t get a look in. Gamers are exactly the audience crosswords should be tyrying to attract, because they love playing. Yet, almost nothing.

80. [MarkN@79. Yes, thought ”machine” was part of the definition, but also thought it might be doing double duty.
    Never been an arcade game person, but not prejudiced. My brain and body just work differently to the skills needed there. My son’s very good at them and I was very grateful to a lady who ran a parlour where the kids dropped in after school and she kept a cheerful eye on them. On the question of sci fi and popular culture clues, I’ve seen many. I know, because they often challenge me, but then so do clues about football, Harry Potter, movies ……… ]

81. Sagitarrius at 60 (if you’re still around) thank you!

82. paddymelon@80: Games now cover all bases. I love frantic action (despite never really being that good at it). But one of the most memorable I’ve played is What Became Of Edith Finch? It’s a so called Walking Simulator, because it basically plays itself. The player just moves the story on. I thought I’d hate it. It’s amazing. I have parts of it stuck in my head still some years later. The fish factory – oh my gosh!

    Or you’ve got stuff like Crusader Kings 2 (not got around to the sequel yet, which is meant to be better) where you get to be an arsehole through the whole of history. Honestly, it’s amazing. You pick a medieval monarch to start as, and then get to shape history, mainly by decision making. There is combat, but that’s not the fun bit. The fun is in mucking around with people’s lives. You can make that minor royal nephew you never liked marry the elderly queen of somewhere inconsequential, and see how it pans out. One of them will probably plot treason. Then stick them both in a dungeon when they hate you for it. It’s all about dynasty building, but you can have so much fun just trying to be as awful as possible. I’ve never acheived anything playing it (there’s not really a win condition). I just have loads of fun playing it.

    So many more that don’t need skills – honestly, there’s a world of amazing stuff out there that’s really accessible and engaging.

83. Thanks Andrew and thanks all.

    It’s a shame that some people seemed to have a missing word in the first clue – but these things happen.

    I’ve spent my crosswording life being reluctantly educated about cricket so it always makes me smile when people moan about the inclusion of football references as if it’s somehow not on!

    Geoff Down Under @2, Lord Jim @73 more than adequately justifies the use of ‘up’ as an anagram indicator. It’s variously defined as ‘in an excited state’, ‘in revolt’ and ‘amiss’ none of which seem controversial, but the first seems to me to be as perfect an indication of anagramming letters as one could imagine.

    I can’t see any reason to object to ‘inspire’ as an inclusion indicator either.
    inspire – to draw or inhale into the lungs.

    If we’re comfortable with the various forms of eating and drinking indicating that something is being taken in, I can’t see why being breathed in should be any different. It’s quite frequently seen. Picaroon used it in September, for example and you didn’t raise a grumble then, Geoff.

84. Re RSVP (1,1,1,1) or (4), the convention has been noted above, but not the reason for it. If a clue is solvable primarily from the enumeration, most if not all of the cryptic quality of the clue is lost (or at least made redundant).

    Thanks Fed, Andrew and commenters for the non-cardio exercise and for the humour.

85. I live in NZ and I’ve only just finished this xword after returning to it a day later – The groove answer, honestly, how on earth is anyone expected to work that out “The essence”???? Gove???? Or why do you need to be an English football fanatic or follower to solve a Guardian crossword. Crouch??? Libero??? Though I confess I did miss the relatively straightforward construction the clue and it could have been solved rather more easily. Pleased to complete it, but I didn’t really enjoy some of the solving. The flower/river convention is just a bit clichéed now . I also have a serious issue using “up” as an anagram marker.

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