Guardian 28,986 – Anto

87 comments on “Guardian 28,986 – Anto”

1. No stranger to the odd cuss when necessary, but even I found 12a a tad coarse.

   Not keen on this setter’s quirky style and strained surfaces, but did like TRENDY.

   Many thanks both.

2. I find Anto puzzles a bit like some jazz. It’s going along fine then something jars. Thanks Anto and Andrew.

3. I agree with William. I am fed up with ambiguous clues like 19d. Sad start to the crossword week.

4. William @1 – tend to agree with you on 12a. My reading of 19d yields CRETIN – not a word you hear very often these days, for good reasons. Is ‘I could eat an elephant’ actually a phrase (like the horse version)? And I’ll be interested to hear if anyone, anywhere, refers to a DJ as a ‘jock’. NHO DAD JEANS either, though it had to be that. A search revealed it is a thing, though the article I found also refers to something called ‘normcore’. I hope I never encounter that in a crossie! Sorry to sound negative, as there were many clues we did enjoy. Thanks, Anto and Andrew.

5. Some abbreviations in here with which I am unfamiliar: great for G, high for H and the oft-debated information for I which is used twice in interlocking clues. I’m not sure the instructions are telling me to halve two words in AWOL and I’d have liked to have seen some kind of possessive indicator for the initial letters in GOLF. CRETAN can be parsed in either way and the vital letter that differentiates it from the slightly tasteless CRETIN is unchecked. What is ‘set on’ doing in the clue for OPAL? I’m surprised to find RENT in both a clue and a solution. And – thank Goodness – not all Etonians want to be in Government. Throw in a handful of nonsensical surfaces and it makes for a very strange puzzle. Maybe I just got out of bed on the wrong side today.

   Thanks anyway to Anto and to Andrew for persevering with the blog

6. Andrew, I think you have misread 1d. It is DRAW NOUT, so it does need the homophone indicator.

7. Shirl @6. I’ve always seen the word as NOWT. Chambers gives the primary spelling with a W.

8. Glad I wasn’t the only one troubled by 19d. The natural reading of the surface is surely that you start with the islander (Cretan), you exchange an I for the A, and you get a word for “fool” which, as others have observed, is tasteless.
   14a with one hardly-cryptic-at-all definition of ELEPHANT and another definition-in-an-expression-which-isn’t-really-an-expression-at-all is one of the weakest clues I’ve seen for some time.
   Against which, I’ll forgive Anto a great deal for the delightful surface of 21d, and while I suppose 11a should have a question mark, the absence of one doesn’t really spoil anything. Both 11a and the old PM can 12a, anyway.
   Oh, and CIGARETTES was rather fine.
   Thanks to Anto and Andrew. Now to face Monday… 🙁

9. Agree with most of above – too many initial letters of random words used (though I’ll accept I for information, as one does actually see that used for tourist information offices), ambiguous CRETAN, nho the unfashionable trousers, nor the elephant-eating metaphor …
   Crispy@7 (and Andrew) – Shirl@6 is correct – the second word is spelt OUT not OWT, so homophone indicator is needed (and that was actually quite a good clue.)
   Thanks both.

10. Unlike you Andrew, I didn’t think the bottom half was easy and I imagine, for some of us, this will take longer than most Monday puzzles. I thought ORISON was referring to O + Rishi but couldn’t explain the missing hi. I laughed at SOD OFF, STONEHENGE and OLD ETONIAN. I agree with PM @5 about the questionable abbreviations. The ambiguity of CRETAN/CRETIN was disappointing after the RAIN/REIN debate. A real mixed bag today.

    Ta Anto & Andrew.

11. Thanks (?) Anto and Andrew
    Typically sloppy puzzle from Anto. The second definition for ELEPHANT is nonsense. “Land” for CLINCH is loose. What are DAD JEANS?
    19d is doubly disturbing. Not only is either solution valid, I’m pretty sure that “fool” for CRETIN is outside the Guardian style guide; a cretin is someone with a thyroid imbalance, so has a medical condition.
    I did like OVERSHADOW.
    For those in search of a good puzzle today, try Carpathian’s Quiptic – it’s a peach!

12. TassieTim @4: the term shock jock helped me although I was trying to fit in the Scottish Ian at first.

13. Despite Andrew’s description as “generally easy”, I found this on the tougher side for a Monday. The north was fine, but the south (especially the south west) was a bit of a struggle. 11A: OLD ETONIAN made me smile. 14 A: ELEPHANT, seems rather weak; but I may be missing something (?) With thanks to Anto and Andrew.

14. Surely there is a ‘homophone’ indicator (“sounds like”) in DRAWN OUT so the …NOUT sounds like NOWT.
    My list compared mostly with PostMark’s @5 so maybe we both got out of the same side of bed (not the same bed I hasten to add). G for great and H for high aren’t supported by the big C (H for height is).
    The only H point for me was TRENDY for the deceptively hidden definition.

15. Another one here who’s a bit grumpy about 19d – more the wordplay than the definition, in my case. But there was some good stuff here, especially ETONIAN (even if the lack of a ? grated a touch), CIGARETTES, and a ‘polite’ clue for the unusual ORISON. And I’d not specifically heard of DAD JEANS, but it was very solvable, and I thought quite fun.

    Thanks both.

16. Something of a curate’s egg. I thought GOLF was clever in that groups of people wander around looking for holes.
    “Overly” is an unnecessary grammatical aberration which simply shouldn’t exist.
    Thanks to A&A

17. Well I have to disagree with the complaints above. I did find this quite challenging for a Monday but very rewarding with lots of aha moments, especially 23a, 14a, 1d, 16d and 15a.
    Thanks Anto and Andrew.

18. Beauliea @9. The parsing is DRAW + NOWT. As a Northerner who’s seen plenty of dialect, NOWT is the spelling used.

19. Crispy@18 – you are right but missed a final step in parsing You get to DRAWN OWT, but the answer is DRAWN OUT – a homophone.

20. [Just to add, as a Scot, I don’t tend to think of those residents of England north of Birmingham as being “up north” at all.]

21. Liked CLINCH, IN SITU, CIGARETTES.

    11ac OLD ETONIAN was fine by me – I think Anto was saying that sarcastically as a sort of political comment.

    New for me: ORISON.

    I did not quite manage to parse 9ac apart from LET = rent.

    Thanks, both.

22. Unlike Andrew, I found this quite a struggle for a Monday, but that was welcome as I don’t like write-ins. Perhaps I’m not on Anto’s wavelength. Enjoyed CIGARETTES (LOI FOR ME), NUTRIENT and HAIRLINE. Thanks to A & A.

23. Not too hard, but I concur with all of the previous grumbles. Apparently NOUT is a valid alternative spelling for NOWT, but pretty obscure. 14 was particularly galling because the common term for an extra-large serving isn’t Elephant, it’s Jumbo, which makes the definition no definition at all, just the original word.

24. AlanC @12 – thanks for the thought, though I would say a shock jock is a (nasty version of a) talk show host, who doesn’t – as far as I know because I never listen to one – play music (discs) – hence not a DJ. But I could be wrong.

25. Beaulieu @19. See your point now (or nou, or, since you’re a Scot, noo)

26. Thanks Andrew, for me the highs (eg 15a, 13d, 23a) far outweighed the lows though I can see why antiAntoists might take the opposite view.
    Muffin@11 thank you as I was not aware of that medical definition, I thought it was just a synonym for ‘muppet’ so will strike it from my vocab and not post the BOC earworm that had been in my head.
    TassieTim@4/24 i thought the same as you re “jock” but it is in my online dictionary as 2nd meaning so I think we have to accept it (and I liked the clue overall even though my own pair of 16d mysteriously shrank during lockdown and can no longer be worn).
    Anyway quite a few of these made me think and smile so thanks for the Monday kickstart Anto.

27. I eventually decided that 14a must indeed be ELEPHANT: I suppose people do say they could eat one (one bite at a time), but it’s not that clear. I also said really? to SOD OFF, for entirely different reasons. CLINCH=land is a bit of a stretch, but I suppose you clinch/land a deal.

    I liked TRENDY for a well hidden def, also CIGARETTES and the “plain structure”.

28. Have to disagree with some of the naysayers. “G” we instantly react to as abbreviated “Great” in Great Britain. “H” is standard “High” in High Tension ( Roz, where are you, to back me up ?). Having said this, I am one who would plump for CRETIN ( as said, in bad taste ) as opposed to CRETAN.

    Thought TRENDY was trendily clued. Massive strike day in GB. Will await what the OLD ETONIANs have to say.

    Thank you Anto and Andrew. Double “A” marks, today.

29. A curious mix, the bottom half being less Mondayish I thought.

    19d – I settled on CRETIN as the answer. And the homophone indicator must be needed in 1d.

    Thanks Anto and Andrew

30. Thanks both.

    I quite enjoyed this puzzle. Lots of clever clues.

31. I may have a case of Mondayitis, but it seems the Editor is off duty, and/or hasn’t delegated again.
    Thanks to posters here I’ve done my homework and now know what SOD OFF means. I already knew ”cretin” and don’t like it. OK if it was indicated in some way.

    OTOH I don’t subscribe to Mondayism (ie a day when Guardian cryptics should necessarily be easier ) and there are some gems here … OVERSHADOW, HAIRLINE, ORISON, IN SITU, GRIP, DAD JEANS, KIDNEY.

    The iffy ones have been mentioned already. An interesting thing for this solver to note, one who likes interesting surfaces, is that Anto seems to be an example of a setter who maybe places too much emphasis on the surface at the cost of solvability and fairness. ( I never thought I’d say that.) CLINCH? JUMBO?

32. JOCK is recognised by Chambers as short for disc jockey, though I’d never come across it. I had no problem with DRAWN OUT as the homophone is clearly indicated.

    Otherwise, I agree with most other objections, and would add that ‘break’=’rend’ doesn’t work for me, especially as ‘tear’=’rend’ appears in the same puzzle. Very much a curate’s egg.

33. The top half went in relatively smoothly for me, but the bottom half took much more effort.

    Flea @28; we have had this sort of conversation many times. If you allow G=Great as in Great Britain, why not B=Broadcasting, as in BBC. Good luck in trying to find g=great and h=high in dictionaries, which should be the source for acceptable abbreviations. 19D to me gives CRETIN from the wordplay. CLINCH=land is a bit obscure, but as gladys @27 points out, you do clinch/land a deal.

    I did enjoy OLD ETONIAN, though not the sentiment, CONSIDER for the on-side, CIGARETTES for the plastic products, and STONEHENGE, where I spent some time racking my brain to think of gene structures that fitted in.

    Thanks Anto and Andrew.

34. TassieTim @24: American, Howard Stern, is probably the best known ‘shock jock’ and he certainly played music on various rock and country stations.

35. Not a great start to the week, easy enough but quite flaky in parts!

36. Most of my way through this I was thinking, Vulcan seems to be getting a little trickier each Monday – until I realised that Anto was the setter today. Some crafty clues, particularly liked STONEHENGE, too. Boris in all his human forms seems to be getting quite an airing in recent Guardian cryptics, and was fooled enough to have ORISON as my LOI today…

37. In addition to the many complaints listed above, I disliked the repetition of OFF as a solution in 12 & 3 and RENT in 9 & 26. OUT also appeared in both 9 & 1d.

38. MACO89@23
    Regarding ELEPHANT, TassieTim@4 has raised a question, which I share.

    The setter seems to suggest ‘eat an elephant’ as an upgraded version of ‘eat a horse’. You will eat a horse when you are very hungry, but you will order an elephant (yes. yes. To eat it) when you are really hungry.
    A question mark at the end of the clue might have made it better, I feel.

39. Maybe fashions in France are different but my niggle today is with DAD JEANS. Definitely not UNfashionable: half the young girls are wearing them.

40. I came here to find what I was plainly missing in the cluing for14a, and was utterly disappointed. I know it’s simple to criticise & harder to do, so I’ll take Thumper’s mum’s advice in Bambi and not say anything if I’ve nothing nice to say.
    [Andrew in your explanation of 18d you’ve used H for high, so AIRLINE is just flyers]

41. [For those who don’t know the origin of Jumbo, it was the name given to a normal-sized baby elephant (probably from “mumbo-jumbo”) that grew into the largest elephant in captivity. He was exhibited in a circus (Barnum and Bailey?) until he was killed when a train collided with him. Never ones to miss a main chance, the owners had the skin stuffed and the skeleton mounted so that he could be displayed in two places at the same time.]

42. Thanks Andrew.
    I found this a step up from the usual Monday, particularly the bottom half.
    21d was a new word for me.
    Like others, surely 19d should be CRETIN?
    I still don’t understand the Elephant with the large appetite? One eats a horse, not an elephant?
    I agree with others that 1d needed a homophone indicator.
    That said, there were some excellent clues.
    Thanks Anto.

43. Some lovely clues – STONEHENGE and CONSIDER were really nice I thought. And I’m very reluctant to create a “don’t bother” list because I want to keep an open mind to creative clueing… but I think Anto’s going to be my first inductee.

    I get that fairness in crosswords is a real horses for courses thing – there are no rules and all that. But from the unsourced abbreviations that literally no other setter uses, the careless mistake in CRETAN, the lack of DBE indicator in OLD ETONIAN, the random bits of connective tissue that don’t make grammatical sense… I’m out. Fair play if you enjoy it. Thanks Andrew for a helpful blog.

44. HoofItYouDonkey@42: 1d does have a homophone indicator: “sounds like”

45. HoofItYouDoney: apologies. I misunderstood the tenor of your comment.

46. Aah Robi, the debate goes on ! It’s a bit like VAR ( video frames on past play scenarios ) in football to aid decisions re the football laws. With its limited angles, it doesn’t always give great truth, but it changes debate.

    I did some quick abbreviation look-ups in my old Chambers (2003). You cannot get L for Learner. You have to line up L-Driver or L-Plate and then “reverse” learner out of it. But you needed apprentice=learner=L for today’s parsing ( 3 dn ) and, upon consulting dictionaries, it might well evolve as a two stage affair. The two items I quote at @28 are easily findable in Chambers but not at the start of G, H. Regarding “Great”: you have to go to GB ( alongside the pure GB, you get all the ‘offshores’ GBJ GBM etc ) ; regarding “high” : you have to go to HT. My true opinion is half-my-analysis / half-with-you but the essence is that the solver gets enjoyment from the setter’s presentation and I think the audience could have been on a GREAT HIGH with his phraseology. He can’t give you owt for nowt.

    Ronald@36 — yes human Boris forms do crop up often, Johnson, Becker, Karloff …; I’m waiting with bated breath till “Boris the spider” makes an appearance. Alternatively, I don’t recall having seen Yeltsin. Have envisaged a GOLFing clue : Tiny Els, past president of the federation.

47. poc @45 – No problem, my poor explanation of what I meant!

48. Flea @46 I’ve seen Yeltsin recently, maybe in the last six months. Don’t remember if it was Guardian or FT.
    Thanks to Andrew and Anto.
    As one commentator recently posted, there is only one rule in crosswords – the setter sets and the solver solves.

49. Flea @ 46 YELTSIN was clued as Boris by Imogen in 28941, 15/12/22.

50. Thanks for the blog, I thought this was good for a Monday despite sharing some of the grumbles above.
    I actually think LET OUT and IN SITU were the worst offenders, “parts” are reversed for OUTLET and SIT IN is not turned round or we get NITIS .
    Overall I liked the imagination for clues like CIGARETTES and TRENDY.

51. I got the whole top filled in last night and almost nothing on the bottom. Found a few more and checked a few more this morning.

    I tried to make GOLF mean “looking for openings (holes)” but couldn’t make sense of the rest of it.

    Flea@46 We also had Boris Spassky a few puzzles ago.

    Thanks, Anto and Andrew. I had few grumps, I enjoyed both the puzzle and the blog.

52. Rob @33 and Flea @46 – the usual discussion of the acceptability of certain single-letter abbreviations, and in particular the viewpoint that they need to be in a reliable dictionary to ‘count’, is often slightly flawed, I think, in that there are a couple of very common ones that seem to get a free pass in this regard…

    We see ‘small’ for S (it’s in 12a above) and ‘large’ for L quite often in crosswords, and neither are in Chambers (although interestingly, ‘medium’ = M is), but we’re surely all familiar with the concept of S-M-L in clothing sizes, so whether they’re in a dictionary or not seems beside the point to this solver. It makes me wonder why we don’t see ‘high’ to clue H or ‘low’ for L as they are similarly common in everyday English. Same with ‘yes’ for Y and ‘no’ for N, which I also haven’t seen but don’t know why not.

    I’m personally in favour of a ‘common sense everyday English’ rule of thumb being as valid as a dictionary entry. The alternative stance seems unnecessarily restrictive to me.

53. This was alright, I guess. Not vastly satisfying.
    I acknowledge that I am very late on the Friday rain/rein fiasco, but I wanted to add my tuppence worth: I am maddened by people’s usage of ‘free reign’ instead of ‘free rein’. One can blame spellcheckers, but a dash of vigilance is the duty of the sender.

54. Yes, Flea@46…the other Boris who popped up here recently was Spassky the Russian chess grandmaster, also my LOI that particular day…

55. …and that’s a very smooth golf themed clue. Except that Ernie E is 191 cm tall!

56. My first thought on seeing 19d was, oh no, another one of those ambiguous clues. But if you write it out as

    cretan (I becomes A) cretin

    you see (at least I saw) that the only way to make it work is to pair the wordplay operation in the middle with cretin to make CRETAN, which is thereby the definition, and hence the answer.

57. No, this wasn’t on the same level as the Picaroon/Rosa Klebb/Serpent trifecta we had on Saturday but I enjoyed this nonetheless. TRENDY, CIGARETTES, PAY OFF, OVERSHADOW, and GRIP all earned ticks from me. Thanks to both.

58. I’m with @40 monkeypuzzler in following Thumper’s mother’s advice

59. Dr WhatsOn @56, that is simply not the only way to write it out. It’s a very poor clue.

    ‘Fool exchanging information for a Greek islander’ is a simple rewrite that would have removed the ambiguity, by making clear it is ‘fool’ doing the exchanging. But between this sloppy setter and absent editor, such things are sadly inevitable.

60. I enjoyed this. Thank you Anto and Andrew.

61. Tony@57 has reminded me to plug the Rosa Klebb (Arachne) puzzle in the FT from Saturday (4/2), Pete does a great blog which will be on the Saturday coming (11/2). Should be easy to find and the FT has no dodgy ownership issues.

62. ‘Easy’ and ‘Mondayish’? Well, not for me. Couldn’t get anywhere with this one and threw the towel in with less than a quarter done and even less giving any satisfaction. Reading the above, I can see why. I’m not especially familiar with Anto’s ‘style’, but, if this is representative, I’ll live with that. Just not up to standard for The Guardian, I’d say.

63. I was working under the assumption the ELEPHANT was a Britishism I’d never heard meaning a large order of something. Not sure if I’m disappointed or not.
    I had no guess how to parse CRETAN. Maybe the correct answer was intended to be “cretin” and the Guardian set up the puzzle wrong?

    Other than that, I found the puzzle enjoyable. Anto continues to grow on me.

64. Did you exchange
    A walk-on part in the war
    For a leading role in a cage?

    If you exchange A for B, you start out with A, then swap it and end up with B – which leads us to CRETAN.

    The “exchanged information for a” can then be read as:
    “Exchanged: I for A” = “I exchanged for A” – an ablative absolute, mutatis mutandis-type construction which could apply equally to the thing before it or the thing after it.

    Tricky though – especially without a confirmatory crosser.

    Thanks Anto and Andrew, I enjoyed the challenge – and I’m so glad they didn’t put this in the Quiptic slot! (which, as muffin says, is very admirably filled by Carpathian today)

65. It’s Thumper’s father, not his mother, who reportedly tells the young rabbit in Bambi that if he can’t think of anything nice to say he should remain silent (his mother asks Thumper to repeat what his father told him that morning, which he reluctantly does). As this demonstrates, I can be as pedantic as anyone, but I’m with Dr WhatsOn@56 in finding Cretan the natural answer to 19D, even if the word order is bit convoluted, and I didn’t hesitate to put it in. Quite different from Rein/Rain, where no experienced solver doubted that the latter was the right answer, as the setter later confirmed. Thanks to setter and blogger.

66. MrEssexboy@64 , it is a bit like gluon exchange between quarks in Quantum Chromodynamics, two ways to look at it as long as CPT invariance is maintained.

67. Thanks for the correction Sagittarius @65! Haven’t seen it since the kids were wee about 30 years ago.
    But I must say wrt the rein/rain to-do, EVERY experienced solver doubted the latter was the right answer, as the setter later confirmed!

68. [ Roz @66 – how did I not think of that?! 😉 ]

69. [You are clearly not thinking small enough ]

70. I don’t normally venture to the grown-up cryptics but I found a lot of these quite parseable. ORISON was definitely a good clue because I had never heard of the word but still managed to build it before looking it up!

71. For all his foibles, I find Anto fun and I mostly enjoyed this. Thanks, Anto and Andrew.

    NB Thumperists; the best way to say nothing is to not leave a comment. You’re actually making your opinion very clear by telling us that you’re not telling us your opinion.

72. altreus @70 – I agree, ORISON is a lovely word. I think I first came across it as part of the title of one of the sections in David Mitchell’s wonderful Cloud Atlas.

73. [ For anyone who hasn’t come across ORISON:
    Anthem for Doomed Youth (Wilfred Owen) ]

74. Hamlet to Ophelia: Nymph in thy orisons…

75. [ beaulieu@20, since Englanders consider their country to be the centre of the universe, and London to be the centre of their country, it is only natural for them to use the expression “up north” as they do. If you accept that, it would be appropriate for you as a true Scot to say that they are from down north. ]

    Re 19a CRETIN/CRETAN, the two solutions are, as essexboy and Roz say @64 and66, equally logical, and so the clue should only be acceptable if the correct solution is identifiable from the crossers. This one failed. And thanks, muffin@11 for pointing out the medical origin of the word “cretin” – I shall avoid using this word in future.

76. Essexboy @73 – crikey, I would have come across much earlier in my life than the David Mitchell book but obviously it didn’t stick.

    Cellomaniac @75 – as DrW observed earlier, the instruction in the clue to replace an I with an A is clear enough. It’s the word order that makes it confusing. That would be resolved by the rewrite suggested by cardamom @59.

77. I enjoyed this very much (although I did find it hard to get on Anto’s wavelength) and none of the quibbles offered spoiled my enjoyment (‘cretin’ has still quite common currency in my parish, having long since lost its association with a thyroid condition and meaning ‘idiot’ in it’s own right, rather like ‘muppet’ if somewhat harsher. To curtail its use because of its sad origins would mean I could never say e.g. “I was slaving away at the crossword for hours” – it just doesn’t mean that anymore). So thanks both.

    [(Spoiler alert):
    SOD OFF this week. COCK-UP last week. Where will all this end? Hilarious to me but it’s bound to offend some; SOD OFF is really a quite vulgar expression. It’s a crossword after all: suppose one were trying to persuade, say, a youngster towards the gentle cruciverbal arts? “…blah blah blah and the definition is ‘get away’….”]

78. Sod off too coarse? Wibf…

79. gif@: lol

80. @ Widdersbel 71 yes that’s one view of Thumperism, but not the only one.

81. It’s the use of ‘exchanged…for’ that causes the problem in 19d. Try this: I went to the bank and exchanged dollars for pounds. Which currency did I have when I left the bank?

    I’m not convinced by essexboy’s reasoning@64. In the clue, a Cretan could have exchanged the A they already had for a freely available I, making a ‘fool’. But to arrive at CRETAN rather than CRETIN there has to be another actor doing the exchanging, as the Cretan doesn’t exist until the I has been changed to an A and the ‘fool’ is not the subject of the sentence.

    It’s a mess.

82. sh @81 – glad someone picked up on my argument @64 – even if you didn’t agree with it!

    My answer to your currency question would be to refer Collins online:
    VERB
    1. (transitive)
    to give up, part with, or transfer (one thing) for an equivalent
    to exchange gifts
    to exchange Swiss francs for dollars

    … i.e. I would understand that you went into the bank with dollars and came out with pounds. (If it became clear from the context that you came out with dollars, I would assume that you meant to say that you exchanged pounds for dollars, but the words didn’t quite come out right!)

    Every dictionary example I can find of ‘exchange X for Y’ has X as the thing given up, and Y as the thing gained in return.

    From Wiktionary:
    I’ll gladly exchange my place for yours.
    I’d like to exchange this shirt for one in a larger size.
    Since his arrest, the mob boss has exchanged a mansion for a jail cell.

    And from Collins again:
    If the car you have leased is clearly unsatisfactory, you can always exchange it for another.
    The zero-tolerance approach to reckless and accidental head contact has exchanged one threat to rugby for another.
    Banks and cash machines are closed until tomorrow, when the old notes can be exchanged for new ones.
    Any tokens you win can be exchanged after the game for a prize.

    [This post is getting overly long (sorry Auriga!), so I’ll come to Part 2 in a sec… ]

83. [Part 2]

    Your second point is that the ‘fool’ is not the subject of the sentence. But that only applies to the surface reading.

    The first thing that should tell us there is something tricky going on with the verb ‘exchanged’ is that it appears to be in the past tense – indeed, it is in the past tense, for the purpose of the surface.

    But cryptic instructions are generally written in the present (sometimes in the imperative mood). That’s natural and logical: the setter is telling the solver what to do now, or saying what the result is if certain instructions are followed.

    So when we see a past tense in a clue we know something is afoot – it could be a cd-type clue alluding to past events, but more often the word that’s apparently in the past tense is actually performing a different function at the cryptic level.

    For example, in 4d, ‘Butcher ran motel somewhere in Canada’. In the surface, the butcher is the subject of the sentence, and what he did (‘ran motel’) is in the past tense. But at the cryptic level, ‘ran motel’ simply provides a string of letters which are to be anagrammed, and the verb is actually ‘butcher’ in the (present) imperative, instructing the solver to wreak havoc on the order in which those letters appear.

84. [Part 3]

    So, how does ‘Islander exchanged information for a fool’ work?

    At the cryptic level, the ‘exchanged’ isn’t a past tense with ‘islander’ as the subject – it functions instead as an adjectival participle, operating on ‘information’ (= the letter ‘i’) and replacing it with ‘a’. (As I suggested @64, it may help to imagine a colon between ‘exchanged’ and ‘information’.)

    So the structure is:
    “X, with certain letters exchanged, Y”

    Now, the most obvious way of interpreting that instruction is:
    “Take X, then perform the exchange operation on it, which will give you Y, and Y is the solution you need”.

    But an equally valid reading is:
    “The solution is an example of X – or, looking at it another way, subject to the exchange operation having been performed upon Y, Y”.

    Hence the order of the cryptic elements leaves both solutions open, but in my view the fact that that the ‘for’ immediately precedes the ‘a’ (see @82) points conclusively in the direction of CRETAN.

85. essexboy @above
    I was going to make the point sheffield hatter made but decided against, partly from being unsure, partly from a reluctance to add to the amount of attention given to what appears to be just an approximate mess.
    1) The middle bit, ‘exchanged information for a’ needs a colon as you say. Exchanged has no subject and placed in the middle of the clue, I don’t agree that there’s anything to justify attaching it to one end of the clue or the other.
    2) I agree that in the sentence ‘I exchanged dollars for pounds’, I probably end up with pounds, but I don’t agree that the opposite result is excluded, even if it’s not the common usage. In ‘exchanged: dollars for pounds’ I can happily read that as getting dollars for pounds. If you say ‘dollars for pounds in exchange’ that’s quite ambiguous. Exchanging is a symmetrical operation, compared to say, substitution, where one of the objects must be used and one discarded.

86. Thanks for responding, James @85. I would still go for CRETAN, but I concede your point that the reverse reading can’t be excluded. And thanks again to sheffield hatter for his part in the exchange, and apologies to anyone who waded through my earlier posts when they could have been enjoying life.

87. essexboy @84. Thanks for your detailed and well thought through responses, and especially for your acknowledgement that either reading is valid. That being the case, the setter should have written a different version, especially as the contentious letter is unchecked. 🙂

Comments are closed.