Guardian Cryptic 29,335 by Jack

87 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,335 by Jack”

1. I completely failed to parse several of these (for example, believing ‘donuts’ in 21a to be the Os and missing the word TORI) and groaned a bit at CHART RE-USE. In 16d, presumably SCALE is “sequence played“.
   Thanks loonapick and Jack.

2. Very hard going; I felt like the Nina (not the theme) after eventually making it through. I’m not sure I knew the meaning of DERACINATE (v. good clue), SCALENE took a bit of work and the parsing of TANDOORI defeated me; I missed TORI for ‘donuts’. The ‘England after losing almost everything’ trick at 13a was a novel way to come up with an excellent surface.

   If you’re looking for something a bit kinder, Jack appears in another guise in today’s FT.

   Thanks to loonapick and to Jack

3. Thank you loonapick. I can’t relate the nina THE KING OF THE CASTLE to the clues which seemed to be related. I thought they were mathematical, algebraic, geometrical, RATIO, SOLIDI, PARENTHETICAL, ROOT, SCALENE, EINSTEIN?

4. 21 across: I had TANDRI meaning lethargy (jam) and two letters O as donuts.

5. This is not showing up in the app?

6. STEM? Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.

7. If I were a pedant, having worked in a Stress Office, I would say that STRESS is not the same as force, but it’s near enough for a crossword (especially as Chambers gives strain as a definition for stress as well). Unable to parse PERSECUTE and TANDOORI.
   King Of The Castle is a maths game paddymelon @6.

8. Thank you Tim C@7. That’s the connection.

9. Tough going and failed on four solutions. Was fooled by the bridge opponents which I thought would be S-N or E-W

   Thanks Loonapick for shining a light on the eight (yes 8!) solutions I couldn’t parse.

10. Well, it appears I completely missed the real theme of the puzzle (maths).

11. After an hour I still had solved only about a dozen, and I wasn’t enjoying it, so I abandoned ship. Looking at the solutions, I think I made the right decision. Jack’s puzzles seem to fluctuate from being ridiculously difficult to challenging but satisfying. Or perhaps it’s just my frame of mind.

    I toddled over to his alter ego in the FT, where I fared rather better.

12. TORI? New to me.

    Today, I don’t know Jack.

13. Thanks Jack for such a lovely puzzle.
    Thanks loonapick for your excellent blog!
    RATIO
    (Fibonacci) sequence, an irrational number, 1.618… : I see a lovely extended def.
    Loved EINSTEIN, TANDOORI, DERACINATE and RATIO!
    pdm@6
    STEM: your comment is quite thematic, I feel.

14. KVa@13. I think we’ve got to the root of it.

15. Thanks Jack and loonapick
    I didn’t enjoy this – lots of loose definitions and tortuous parsings. I don’t see how Kew adds anything to 16.
    I did like NERVOUS for “confused over lines”.

16. ALIMENT tickled my taste buds. Also liked the clues for ASCETIC, OUTING, and OVERTONES.

17. I have to say that I think I should have tossed this one in earlier (like Geoff Down Under @11). Not my finest hour and I struggled with several parsings, and didn’t see the thematic links nor the Nina. Just a wavelength thing I think – or perhaps my chronic aversion to all things mathematical? Nevertheless, a clever puzzle from Jack, and thanks to loonapick and contributors above for helping me to see the light in terms of several solutions.
    P.S. Interestingly, ALIMENT at 18d was my only tick, paddymelon@16.

18. Held up in the south-east with a concentration of less common words and trying for ages to make 21 into something Italian! Saw the STEM but not the nina.
    Like others, I struggled with the parsing, so thanks to loonapick as well as Jack.

19. [Sounds like the Basilisk in the FT might have been more accessible/enjoyable?]

20. I was WAY OUT of my depth in the SE after firing through the other quadrants, so a reluctant DNF. Not a chance of solving TANDOORI, DERACINATE, PARENTHETICAL or SCALENE but I was pleased to parse TORONTO, CHARTREUSE, EINSTEIN and ALIMENT. As a member of Kew Gardens, my favourite was STEM. The discussion about maths above is making my head hurt even more.

    Ta Jack & loonapick.

21. JIA@19
    Yes, but this one was sheer joy! Of course, each one of us has different requirements and perspectives.
    pdm@16
    🙂
    I was searching for PHI (the golden ratio) hiding somewhere in the grid. Only saw FY in TESTIFY (interestingly, Y is used as a homophone of EYE-a first?)

22. Failed in the S.W. corner I’m afraid, and left a few unparsed but thoroughly enjoyed the ones I did get. Missed the theme and the Nina (as usual). Thank you to Jack and loonapick.

23. WAY-OUT
    exit=WAY OUT (no hyphen. Right?). Can be accepted as a def nonetheless.
    ‘unconventional’ seems to be the exact def.
    quite=WAY (in the sense of very), wrong=OUT (as in the measurement is out).
    Looks like two def and a wordplay.
    Or ‘quite wrong?’ is a cryptic def.

24. So defeated I can’t even distinguish between the SW & SE. I’m pleased to see that JinA @17 has the same reaction to math/s.

25. I solved only eight clues then gave up. After reading this blog I know I wouldn’t have been able to complete it anyway. Thanks loonapick.

26. Tough one today, with the top half relatively easier than the lower half, where I struggled and eventually gave up. Failed to parse TANDOORI, STRESS, PARENTHETICAL, SCALENE and had to google 1.618 to find out what that was all about. Completely missed the nina and wouldn’t have known the maths game anyway, but I noticed the distinct mathematical cast to the proceedings today with STEM, RATIO, ROOT, SCALENE, SOLIDI as “signs of division” and the parentheses in 8d. You can find TAN and SEC too, though that may just be coincidence.

    Liked PURDAH. I’d forgotten that CHARTREUSE was a monastery as well as a colour.

27. gladys @26, CHARTREUSE is not only a monastery and a colour, but also a nice wee dram, in green or yellow (albeit from the monastery).

28. [I don’t particularly have a dislike of maths, but I know from experience that at the point where it stops being practical arithmetic and becomes a language, I cease to be able to do it. We can’t all be good at everything.]

29. It had to be SCALENE but I got fixated that the ‘sequence played’ was SCENE and so failed to parse. And me learning the oboe, too.

    I thought that the clue for NERVOUS was excellent.

    Thanks to loonapick and Jack.

30. I’d forgotten TORI even though it came up not so long ago. Cant find the site search option on this device.

31. Well this was embarrassing – as soon as I read 2d the next few digits of the number popped into my head, but didn’t see the required answer for quite a while. Even worse, the Fibonacci sequence had a prominent role in a paper I wrote a few years ago.

    KING OF THE CASTLE is a maths game? I thought it was a children’s game where the kids pushed each other off a mound, trying to be the sole occupant.

32. Gave up with five remaining. Very much a ‘guess the answer then try to parse’ puzzle, e.g. ‘ron’ for ‘man’ and the tortuous syntax required for NERVOUS. In the other camp, I very much liked ALIMENT, as a new word that I could get from the word play. Thanks Jack and loonapick.

33. I liked KING OF THE CASTLE
    Thanks for a challenging puzzle -top easier than bottom

34. Tough puzzle. I failed to solve 26ac and 20d and I did not understand why ‘number like 1.618.’ was in the clue for 2d until I googled it.
    I could not parse 21ac, 27ac.
    I did not fully parse 13ac – only got CUT = snubbed and E = england.
    And I didn’t see the nina or theme!

    New for me: CHARTREUSE monastery.

    Thanks, both.

35. michelle@34
    PERSECUTE
    E=English or Spain or one of many other things but not England!
    Strange?

36. Nice to have a really difficult puzzle for once (the usual shortage of checking letters adding to the difficulty in a few places). Thanks to Jack & Loonapick
    TANDOORI: quite hard, as others have noted. I always find the plural verb (jam) with fodder that is in a single unit (with old) very difficult. In the clue for ASCETIC, we have ‘[beginning to appear agnostic] is powerless’, with a singular verb in the same situation, and I don’t really see how it can be asserted that both are acceptable, particularly in the same puzzle.
    PURGE and DERACINATE are both transitive verbs given as intransitive; I presumed ‘undesirable’ went with ‘impulse’, though I agree it doesn’t, and I didn’t get the other one at all, mostly from lack of vocabulary. For PURGE, Chambers has ‘clear of undesirable elements or persons’ but in that case it’s ‘clear [object] of undesirable elements’, and replacing ‘clear’ with ‘get rid’ makes the undesirables the objects.
    EINSTEIN: surely ‘who published’ can’t stand alone as a definition? But then it’s just dangling, and there’s a random point in the clue where wordplay starts.

37. My first attempt at 15a was TOUR

38. Tried every version I could think of on top of the i, except solid. Lack of GK on that and forgetting TORI was my undoing. Parent as author also foxed me. You win Jack, but only ‘cos you know more than me! Thanks both.

39. I really thought I was going to be heavily defeated by Jack this morning with just the anagram at 14d in place. But I STEADFASTly stuck to my task, though 15ac was by no means the ONLY one I couldn’t parse. Even when Jack himself appeared in the clue for IMPART I was thinking playing card, car jack or whatever for quite a while. Very pleased with myself for completing this, even if I say so myself…

40. This was very difficult for me, couldn’t parse half of what I got either, had to leave for work, so left most of it undone and looking at the blog now can safely say I would never have finished. Thanks loonapick and Jack.

41. Me too Peter@37 – particularly as the city is traditionally spelt Lyons with an s in English – like Ma sails

42. I was more like the dirty rascal than the Nina, and needed a bit of help to finish. Since my visit to Lyon, I get emails from ONLY LYON, so that was the only easy clue. PERSECUTE was good.

43. Very clever puzzle with some ingenious constructions (including the matryoshka for OUTING). As someone who rarely spots ghost themes, Ninas are a step too far and don’t add anything for me, sadly.

    I’m afraid I found this rather a slog, with quite a lot of clues left unparsed (sorry, Jason!). DERACINATE took an unconscionably long time to solve – ‘nationalism’ seems completely random. Why not ‘nettles’?

    However I did enjoy EINSTEIN, ALIMENT, SOLIDI and the small but perfectly formed FRET and STEM.

    Thanks to S&B

44. Very difficult, got there in the end but not sure how much I enjoyed doing so. Agree that Kew was unnecessary (and a touch unfair?) and had PITCH instead of PURGE which delayed me for the longest time…

45. Thanks Jack and loonapick,
    the top fell happily into place but poor maths let me down in the SW.
    But I liked FRET, NERVOUS and STEADFAST

46. Thanks for the blog , double snake day , this one far better than the FT , fantastic wordplay , I will just mention the containment devices for TANDOORI , OUTING, ALIMENT and NERVOUS .
    For TESTIFY I took it as providing observer sounds like IFY , I think the blog is saying the same.
    Kew Gardens is my favourite place of all but I rarely get to go now.
    JET is the Joint European Torus , closing down now , looks like a large doughnut.

47. Several issues for me today. Some words utterly new to me and some parsings so obscure I got splinters under my fingernails through scratching my head.

48. James@36: I thought of EINSTEIN as a CAD: Einstein, who published articles in German about scientific topics originally. Or maybe a partial CAD? After all the hair-splitting definitions of clue types yesterday I’m no longer sure, but you know what I mean.

49. Why spell doughnut donut? I was thinking american? Or has the spelling changed in the UK? I can’t remember hearing or seeing torus as a circular shape, số my parsing of TANDOORI was two doughnuts in tandri, whatever that may be.
    I filled in about 2/3(this is a solidus not ÷) and eventually finished the rest, some pársed, some not. I’m not sure I enjoyed coming up against the limits of my A level maths

50. I enjoyed that even though a lot of it was ‘filling in the blanks’ and retro justifying the answers (in particular 24a. DERACINATE, which took a long time). 21a. TANDOORI was another solve from definition and crossers but it was fun working out the wordplay. Sat and pondered the apparent contradiction in clueing RATIO as ‘an irrational number like 1.618…’, but of course ‘ratio’ here is being used in the more general sense of proportion rather than an arithmetical fraction. And after all that still needed the blog to make sense of 27a. STRESS. So many thanks to Loonapick for a fine blog (and for pointing out the central Nina), and to Jack for a very enjoyable puzzle.

51. Glad I jumped ship early.
    Thanks Jack, but far too tough for me.
    Thanks L. for the enlightenment, good parsing!!

52. No way

53. gladys@48
    EINSTEIN
    I would have categorised this clue as CAD but according to the agreement reached between KVa and KVa (!!!) yesterday, let me say it’s a CAD but not an &lit.
    loonapick calls it a semi &lit. It’s the same thing…
    I feel the blogger, you and I are on the same page on EINSTEIN.
    James@36
    Several subtle points in your post.
    TANDOORI: ANDO jams TORI or AND, O jam TORI? Seen both types of clueing.
    ASCETIC: If we read it as ‘A SCEpTIC is without P’? Of course, I get your point.
    DERACINATE: Collins gives ‘extirpate’ as one meaning. So the ‘eradicate’ could work as the def and the whole clue as an extended def.
    PURGE: Collins says ‘to rid (something) of (impure or undesirable elements)’. Doesn’t solve the problem.
    Collins says this as well:
    VERB INTRANSITIVE
    to become clean, clear, or pure
    Seems to work now (considering that ‘undesirable’ could mean ‘an undesirable person or thing’).

54. It may be unfair but I always blame the setter when I fail to finish. Or maybe I think the setter has been unfair when I fail to finish. Either way, didn’t enjoy it today.

55. matematico@50 I wondered about RATIO. How can it be the case that “‘ratio’ here is being used in the more general sense of proportion” when it is defined by a number? We are asked to accept specifically that 1.618… is a ratio. Perhaps it is standard to say a number is a ratio, but it seems weird to me. You could then define ratio as any number, eg ‘one’, as 1:1 is the ratio of sides of a square. Pi is a ratio, because it is defined as such. That does not mean that the value given to pi when used as a number is a ratio. Chambers has for ratio ‘the relation of one thing to another of which the quotient is the measure’; isn’t 1.618.. actually the measure of the golden ratio?
    gladys@48, sure, clue as definition it may be. But only some of the clue is wordplay, and the rest is tagged on so that the clue makes sense. If there’s no requirement that the tagged-on bit makes sense by itself then it could be literally anything. What you have is a sentence that defines the solution with an unknown random proportion of it being wordplay and no logic or structure that says what is what.

56. Excellent puzzle but it me a long time to solve it!

57. Alastair @54 – I suppose there has to be a range of difficulties. It would not be right for a constant flow of easy puzzles for the experts, by the same token, continual difficult puzzles like this would be no good for dummies like me.
    We have had a couple of easier puzzles so far this week, so fair-dinkum as the Aussies say.

58. James@55 The Golden Ratio is associated with the Fibonacci sequence, which goes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 … where each term is the sum of the previous two. If you compute the ratio of consecutive terms, that ratio gets closer and closer to 1.618034… , and gets there “in the limit”.

59. KVa @53
    TANDOORI: yes, you see both types. But using both seems to me inconsistent, at least
    ASCETIC: [A] + [agnostic is without power] doesn’t work as a charade because [SCEPTIC is without P] is not equivalent to SCETIC, (unlike eg [SCEPTIC without P]). For the clue to work, it must be [ASCEPTIC is without power]

60. I don’t see the problem with RATIO. The “golden ratio” is a well-known mathematical construct, and it has a value of approximately 1.618.

61. Normally I’m a big fan of Jack and his alter-egos but much of this was beyond me. Thanks to both.

62. Dr. WhatsOn @58
    Yes, I know. More precisely, it is the ratio of two segments of line such that the ratio of the shorter to the longer equals that of the longer to the whole. I expect you knew that, too. What I don’t know is whether it is right to call a number a ratio, which is a comparison between two things. A number is not a comparison.

63. Often a RATIO is not rational , it is just not a ratio of two integers. Pi is the obvious example. In right-angled triangles the trig functions are simple ratios and many of these values are irrational.

64. I did not enjoy this much either: too many unknown terms and tortuous constructions for my liking. I have to hand it to Jack, though, his clues all have great surfaces.

    Thanks Jack and loonapick

65. The way I would put it, that number may not BE a ratio, but is equal to a ratio. That degree of precision in the terminology is way finer than the typical latitude found in synonyms (and of course homophones) that appear in these cryptics. So it has to be ok. IMO.

66. Another dnf. Not my greatest week. Rather liked the lime-eating ant. Currently in a war of attrition with an ant invasion. I’d happily supply them with some limes if they’d stop excavating under my walls.

    Thanks to Jack and loonapick.

67. [Pete @66
    Rather disturbing supplement about invasive ants in yesterday’s Guardian!]

68. HI James @55 and @ 63, I agree with Dr. WhatsOn @58 and @65 Roz @63. My comment was not meant as a criticism of the clue (which imo is a very fine clue), but just an observation on the peculiarity of the language where a ratio need not be rational!

    [My apologies if you know this already as I suspect you do: The link between fractions and ratios was broken a long time ago when the Pythagoreans discovered that the square root of 2 was irrational. The problem being that this number could constructed as the ratio of two sides of a right triangle. This caused them no end of problems and according one story I’ve read, one of their order was murdered as he was about to reveal this secret!]

69. nichbach@49: American donuts are toroidal, whilst our doughnuts are round.
    Spent a while trying to get phi into 2dn, expecting more than a DBE.

70. Ugh

71. muffin@67. Thanks for the pointer. Fascinating. I think my plan to get a 12 bore and take them out one by one won’t work.

72. Dr. WhatsOn @58 – thanks for explaining the 1.618034.
    I was well aware of the Fibonacci sequence, it was even around when I was doing ‘A’ level maths.
    That makes perfect sense now.

73. I got all the answers without aids, but not all the parsings. Many years ago, the school I attended and I decided that it would be less embarrassing on both sides if they did not enter me for the GCE examination.

74. Staunch does not mean stanch. Steven Pinker admits that both are permissible but it is ‘classier’ to keep them distinct!
    Not fun today.

75. Jack’s puzzles increase my appreciation for most every other setter.

76. Eventually got all the solutions but not all the parsings. Too clever for me. Thanks Jack and loonspick

77. I generally enjoy Jack puzzles but this one wasn’t my cuppa – some clues too tricksy (eg a semi-lit anagram in DERACINATE, the two-step ‘fructivorous’ in ALIMENT) and some with stretchy synonyms – CUT/snubbed (yes, it’s in Chambers; the 19th entry for CUT…); diSTRESS/trial and STRESS/force; TAKE/profit (TAKE is turnover/income… profit is what’s left after costs).

    It felt more like a prize puzzle than a regular weekday cryptic. And the theme whistled over my head as per.

    But thanks both, onwards to tomorrow!

78. I agree that it’s perfectly reasonable to have some puzzles that are ‘up there’ on the difficulty scale. It doesn’t stop me feeling miserable when I invest a lot of time on one that I only get 2/3 of, and that with some difficulty, and then discover that the missing bits were way beyond me anyway. Sorry.

79. Dr. WhatsOn @65, that’s all fair enough. The answer could only be one thing, from it being a hidden word, crossers leaving few possibilities and the definition indicating something mathsy. My moment of difficulty came between realising what the answer was and remembering what 1.618… represented. In that gap I couldn’t see how to get from ‘number’ to ‘ratio’.
    A ratio has a value. We can say ‘the golden ratio is 1.618…’, because we understand from the rest of the sentence that 1.618 is being given as a ratio. It is 1.618../1, a decimal approximation for (1 + 5^1/2)/2. But the clue asks ‘what is this number?’ without context. There’s not enough information to get to ratio, a concept that requires two values, from a number, which is a single value. So the clue requires familiarity with that particular number, like any clue defined by example. It’s a factual question, posing as a mathematical question. It only makes sense if you know the value of the golden ratio. If you don’t, you’ll doubtless get the answer anyway, but you’re left to consider ‘1.618 is a ratio’. Since there’s an infinite number of ratios that’s pretty meaningless.

80. I don’t mind whether crosswords are hard or difficult as long as they’re fun. This was a joyless slog with the only redeeming factor being that other than a couple of ‘gosh, aren’t I clever’ types there were mercifully and unusually few of the ‘I solved that before my coffee was cold enough to drink’ brigade.

81. We’ll said, Dave F@80.
    1.618… is the Golden Ratio. How much more of a ratio does it need to be?

82. I care for setters, love some setters, admire every setter.
    (I could NOT clue ‘RED’ in Paul’s Centenary @The Belvedere ..)
    If I found a solve `a joyless slog` I’d keep me gob shut.
    Thanks, Jack.

83. Phew. The comments were nearly as difficult to wade through as the puzzle. A bit too tough for me to properly enjoy and I really needed the excellent blog.

    Thanks Jack and loonapick

84. Well said dirky

85. Sometimes it is just better to take a literal walk in the park – and it was a lovely day here in Glos. Funny how mathematicians think the more they explain the clearer it gets – when the reverse is true. Controversial!!

86. I got no further than halfway and threw in the towel this morning, hence this very late comment. However, I did spot the golden section (ratio) something that along with the division of the rectangle, I taught at art school – a good servant but a bad master, as the saying goes. Fibonacci numbers and Wentworth Darcy-Thompson – it all links up. On to Thursday’s…

87. Gervase @43: “DERACINATE took an unconscionably long time to solve – ‘nationalism’ seems completely random. Why not ‘nettles’?”

    Because the &lit wouldn’t work.

    Lots of people airing their mathematical ignorance with pride, as usual. Their loss. Mathematics is full of beauty and wonder – if you can be bothered.

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