Guardian Cryptic 29,604 by Qaos

89 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,604 by Qaos”

1. I also enjoyed this. Thanks to setter and blogger

2. As usual, I didn’t spot the theme, though cursorily looked for one. TEDDY making a second appearance, though I think the first time was plural. Enjoyable and, for me, only a couple of across clues solved on first pass until the down clues helped out. No stand-out clues for me, but perhaps if I’d spotted the theme… Thanks to Qaos and loonapick.

3. I really enjoyed this. Some clues flew in e.g. HONEY and SKYE. Others took theme related hard staring to parse e.g. IOTA, SPIT and TOWBOAT (toat? Oh, I get it 😎).

   My favourites were FOOTSIE, COMPARABLE and TOWBOAT.

   I wondered what Roger W was doing there until I realised there is a WATER BEAR (aka Tardigrade). I’ve included a link to one of my favourites below.

   Thank you to loonapick and to Qaos, I must have been on the right wavelength today.

   https://youtu.be/4oK1Jco6JFM?si=fanOeD9Bc_dNDS6G

4. One of my favourite setters, but I hardly ever think to look for a theme. Thanks loonapick and Qaos.

5. Thanks Qaos. I just about remembered Roger WATERS, mel=honey and the base e, and guessed that WBO must be some kind of boxing organisation, but I don’t know if non-Brits will recognise the FTSE or the TUCK SHOP version of shoelaces.

   Quite a few more bears than I spotted, and I still don’t recognise SEA, FOOT or HONEY as themers even now they are highlighted – just my ignorance I expect.

   “Flowers” makes the answer to GARDENERS so obvious (even though it isn’t part of the def) that the clever GARDENIAS parsing is rather wasted. On the other hand, the def for UTTER is beautifully disguised. Thanks loonapick for sorting it all out.

6. Bearfoot is the name of a popular pattern used by quilters

7. Didn’t know shoelaces are candies, nor WBO nor mel. So much to learn …

   (Missed the theme, as always.)

8. There was more craftiness going on here, than I spotted while solving it. Was ” [bare]FOOT” a pun on the theme (13ac)?
   Lovely puzzle, but… am I on my own, in not liking the ellipsis in “paired sequential” clues? On occasion, it is a clever or meaningful linkage, but often, it just seems, well… pointless.
   For example, (Darling Mel) seems enough to me (16dwn).

   Which I only got, because “meli” is honey in Greece, ( where it is ironically very dear, for some reason).

   Despite a few weakish clues ( “brown/ bread” ) etc., it’s a strong and entertaining puzzle, which is what it’s all about.

   Ta, Qaos & loonapick

9. I was pleased to see a rare music question I could answer easily, even if RW hasn’t been a member of Pink Floyd for about 40 years now. I saw Nick Mason playing last year, still a top class drummer at 80 years old.
   Utter was probably my favourite for the well disguised definition. Comparable had me baffled initially, possibly because less of the solution was in the number than usual for Qaos.
   On a side note, I hope I am not breaking etiquette by mentioning the answers in comments. I tend to think that with the answers at the top it is pointless to avoid mentioning them, and when only the clue number is mentioned I don’t always remember the clue referred to.

10. Enjoyable challenge. Looked for theme after I finished the puzzle but could not see it unless bears? Polar, brown, black, honey, teddy, also bear arms, fruit, market? Ah, thanks, loonapick – you saw a lot more than I did!

    Favourites: DEVOTEES, MASSES, COMPARABLE, OUTWARDS.

    I could not parse 18ac apart from def SEA = deep waters.
    11ac – I needed to check why shoelaces are sold at tuck shops – I never heard of candy shoelaces but I do know of tuckshops as we had them in Australia when I was at school.

    New for me: WBO = World Boxing Organization (for 22ac).

    ravenrider@9 – I too wondered about Roger Waters as he left the band decades ago! I saw Pink Floyd in concert in the 1980s and Roger Waters was already not part of the band then.

11. Thanks loonapick.
    Lots of variety in the tricks. Haven’t seen striped before as an alternate letter indicator, as in GREATLY.
    Can’t quite get my head around eclipse in HUGE. Can anyone elaborate?

    gladys @ 5. This non Brit is familiar with FTSE (FOOTSIE) and TUCK SHOPS, but I didn’t know the shoelaces and couldn’t find online, so thanks for that. Why commonly red, I wonder, as loonapick mentions, or is just the shape?

    Liked the theme, which Alan C gave a big nudge to on the G site. There is an Aussie joke: How much can a koala bear? Of course a koala is not a bear, but a marsupial. Their brains are tiny, in comparison to other mammals, and only weigh about 19 gms. That reminds me of Winnie the Pooh, A Bear of Very Little Brain. I like what follows: and long words bother me. Qaos didn’t give us too many bothersome words today.

12. A lovely Qaos, and a theme I spotted, although the BEAR MARKET and FOOTSIE made me wonder about finances initially.

    ravenrider @9, I tend to use and prefer the answers, not clue numbers, because it saves scrolling up and down to make sense of the comments.

    Thank you to Qaos and loonapick.

13. This week’s puzzles seem to be easier than average – this one included. Mostly very good; not keen on ‘striped’ for ‘take alternate letters of’ in 25a GREATLY but that’s a matter of taste. Favourites include COMPARABLE, UTTER.

    ravenrider@9 – there’s no etiquette against mentioning answers in comments and IMO it does make things clearer – but people usually put them in CAPITALS to make it more obvious.

    loonapick – thanks for parsing of TOW BOAT which eluded me – but WBO is WB Organisation – the Association is a separate body (cf Judean People’s Front, etc. in Life of Brian).

    Thanks both.

14. Lovely crossword with a beautifully crafted theme. I also included SCRATCH, thinking of BALOO in Jungle Book and POKE, as in don’t. Like paddymelon (thanks for the reference),I hadn’t seen striped used like that before and really liked the device. Favourites were FOOTSIE, UTTER, SCIMITARS, GARDENERS, HONEY and the maths clues. I dis did chuckle at WATERS, sexy he is not.

    Ta Qaos & loonapick.

15. E.N.Boll& @8: Not only Greek – “mel” or variants thereof means honey in many languages including French and Spanish (miel), Portuguese (mel), Welsh (mêl) and Italian (miele). It is also the root of English words such as melomel, which is fruit mead. So lots of chances for people to put that one together.

    [I hope the high cost of honey in your area is because Greece, being a producer of the good stuff, does not import the sugar-syrup tainted, mass-produced fake honey which sits on all our supermarket shelves at a ridiculously low price. Real honey is expensive to make and extract. If it costs a couple of euros a jar then it isn’t honey, you can bet. We beekeepers have been railing against the lack of control and labeling on this issue for years.]

    Many thanks to Qaos and loonapick – I enjoyed the puzzle, and was very much on the setter’s wavelength, but did not pick out all the themers for sure.

16. I remember black liquorice shoelaces / bootlaces from my childhood.

17. paddymelon @11: H and G are eclipsing i.e. covering U + E from earth.

18. JoFT@15. [I will only buy raw honey, for health reasons, despite the cost. Our native plants make for interesting variations in taste. We have a lot of problems here in the European bee population, with the Varroa mite/Varroa destructor (good name), supposedly brought in on a ship from Ol’ Blighty. Now people are encouraged to make their gardens friendly to native bees.)

19. Thanks to those btl for the explanation of Mel = HONEY. One of a small number unparsed but this was otherwise on my level.

20. I loved the way “10 across” became IOA in 28 down. Even after putting in the correct answer I was puzzling for ages over what it had to do with ELABORATE!

21. Jackkt@16. SHOELACES. That makes sense. We called them licorice straps.

    AlanC@17. Thanks for H and G eclipsing, individually and separately, U and E. It’s still not an image that makes much sense to me. If H and G were eclipsing the face of Uranus and Earth in the astronomical sense, they would be blacking them out, at least partially. I can picture a rebus, but not the clue in this form

22. I loved that one, too, simonc @20! – also the use of HG in HUGE at 26dn. Several other four-letter answers, too.

    A clever puzzle all round. I spotted a fair few of the bears but can’t pretend to have got them all. Thanks to various folk for pointing them out.

    My (other) ticks were for 9ac POLAR, 11ac TUCK SHOPS, 13ac FOOTSIE, 17ac UTTER, 22ac TOWBOAT (I always like that use of TO A T), 30ac GARDENERS ( it took me a minute or two to realise that flowers was part of the wordplay, rather than the definition – see gladys @5), 3dn ARMS, 16dn HONEY.

    Many thanks to Qaos for the fun and to loonapick for the blog and the extra bears.

23. simonc@20 re IOTA, that was exactly me too. I Even needed the blog! Faceplant.

    I enjoyed this; there were several nice touches. HONEY is mel in Catalan, too. Only BROWN let the side down, I felt. Took me ages to sort out COMPARABLE!

    Thanks both

24. I thought the shoelaces might be licorice (anyone remember Mrs McGillicuddy?)

25. I’m in agreement with paddymelon@21 regarding HUGE. Somehow I just can’t get my head round it.

26. Another name for a tardigrade is a WATER BEAR (edit: should have read Pauline @3 more carefully). As always, I enjoyed a bit of Qaos!

27. WATER[s] BEARs – Tardigrades, fascinating little animals. — [22a ‘…WBO (World Boxing Organization)’] — {Edit: pipped at the post by Lyssian@26}

28. Good entertaining puzzle, with an excellent variety of devices and constructions – ‘striped’ is ingenious and I have never come across ‘to a T’.

    I found some solutions to be write-ins but many others took a while to see, though the sound of pennies dropping became almost deafening. No theme for me, of course, but I don’t think it would have helped even if I had spotted it.

    Many clever clues – my vote goes for all the four-letter words. Apart from the more obvious SKYE they are all imaginatively and variously constructed.

    JoFT @15: Most Indo-European languages have words for ‘honey’ cognate either with Latin ‘mel’ or English ‘mead’. ‘Honey’ itself is from an etymon found only in the Germanic languages – the only other relevant cognate is ‘qengjë’ – ‘beehive’ in Albanian 🙂

    Thanks to Qaos and loonapick

29. As I recall, shoelaces were liquorice and were originally black. The red variety appeared (for me) around the very early 70s.

    Another gentle offering today, with some nice touches. Weaving in WBO was excellent.

    Thanks Qaos and loonapick

30. I think there might be Cockney Rhyming Slang at work in 20a BROWN. Jonathon Green has “brown bread adj.² [rhy. sl.] 1. dead. (1969–2021) ” First citing:
    1969 [UK] S.T. Kendall Up the Frog 22: I opened the Rory and standing there / Was me one ’n’ t’other called Ted. / ’E says ‘I’m back from Australia.’ Says I ‘we thought you was brahn bread’ …

31. I couldn’t see the link with BEAR in loonapick’s highlighted part of 2d at first – BLACKO BEAR?? BEAR BLACKO?? Then the penny dropped!

32. …and “toast adj.² …3. dead. 2004 [Ire] P. Howard PS, I Scored the Bridesmaids 43: Scooby’s more than stunned. He’s toast.” Dead good.

33. “BROWN bread” in rhyming slang = “dead” as does “toast”. Not sure if that has any BEARing on the solution but that’s how I got there.
    Pipped by FrankieG@30,32

34. FrankieG @30 – I learned brown bread = dead when we performed ‘Me and my girl’ a few years ago.

35. {@27 continued: …and beaten to the punch by Pauline in Brum@3, by three whole hours.}

36. Almost defeated by the tricky NW corner, but once I had persevered and twigged the cornerstone clues SPIT and POLAR, both very cunning and crafty, forced my way over the line, with the hilarious FOOTSIE just about the last one in. Couldn’t quite parse IOTA or UTTER. Don’t think shoelaces were ever my choice in the TUCK SHOPS of my youth. Gobstoppers and nougat more likely. Easiest gridfill for me this morning was Roger WATERS – saw Pink Floyd in their pomp in the very early Seventies at the Albert Hall…

37. I still don’t understand 1d. Why is Pi pious? Is spit meaning double as in spitting image?

38. I had left ?E?R to the end as there were so many possibilities, so the theme was no help in solving.
    I liked FOOTSIE where I thought the definition was going to be ‘stock’, the Chief of Police ejected from club to give UTTER, the novel striped indicator in GREATLY, the surface for HOT ON, the (war) trials of Russia in SURROUNDED, the good time not being GT in SPIT, and the 10 Across in IOTA.

    Thanks Qaos and loonapick for the pick of BEARs.

39. Bit late to comment and doing so just to record thanks to Qaos for an approachable puzzle and to loonapick for a useful blog

40. John W @37; Pi is an abbreviation for pious, although the ODE says it’s dated: adjective British English informal, dated pious in a sanctimonious way: an unnecessarily pi remark. For SPIT, Collins has: informal chiefly Brit ▶ another word for spitting image.

41. Pi in this sense is not so much dated as obsolete, surely. It deserves to be dropped from the crossword lexicon, whether or not it’s in Chambers, in the same way as we no longer have to endure EL for railway.

42. An enjoyable solve.
    Didn’t see the theme

43. The parsings of 22A, 30A, 1D, 6D and 28D defeated me.

    As for 1D: Seeing the explanation here I now vaguely recall we’ve had PI for pious once before here, and absolutely nowhere else in the English language for about a century, I would guess. I complained about it then, and think this one is worse: ‘pious’ and ‘good’ may overlap, but are far from synonyms. Surely there must be better ways to clue PI, or indeed the entire answer.

44. [ronald @36, me and Tassie Tim saw them in Sinny in ’71. (We found that out here, of course 🙂 )]

45. Trailman @41: The EL (Elevated Railroad) is still trundling away in Chicago, as I’m sure mrpenney can confirm – non-British usage, maybe, but far from obsolete.

46. Mostly an enjoyable romp with a few little eyebrow wiggles. Liked: TOW BOAT, GARDENERS, IOTA, HONEY, BEAR, GREATLY and POLAR.

    Less keen on: ‘sexy’ as anagrind in WATERS; using ‘time’ to clue T twice (SPIT, IOTA); ‘single’ to clue S in SPIT and ‘across’ to clue A in IOTA (I’m one of those tiresome pedants who thinks that abbreviations should have Chambers support, although I do make exceptions for S=small and L=large…).

    But I suspect all these are personal preference quibbles more than anything! 🙂

    Thanks to Qaos and loonapick.

47. [More etymological musings on bears and honey: the original Proto-Indo-European word for ‘bear’ has given the Latin ‘ursus’ and its Romance descendants, and the Greek ‘arktos’ (the Arctic is so named from Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation in the Northern sky). But it is suggested that superstition made the word taboo amongst some tribes and euphemisms were substituted, hence the Slavic ‘medved’, which means ‘honey eater’ and the Germanic ‘bear’ (Bär, björn etc), which means ‘brown one’]

48. One of my favourites from the Guardian for a while. POLAR and BEAR were first two in which, by luck, made spotting the theme easy.

    FOOTSIE and TUCK SHOPS seem to be words I don’t hear as much these days.

    So many good ones but TOW BOATS, UTTER, ELABORATE i shall mention.

    Thanks Loonapick and Qaos

49. Very nice puzzle. Spotted the theme at the end though not all variations (though I’m kind of confused by GARDEN–garden bear? bear garden? I’d think those would want to be kept apart?)

    Had the most trouble with the middle west and, well, there’s a reason I didn’t parse FOOTSIE. Didn’t parse TOW BOAT either but TO A T is great and I should’ve seen it. Also missed GARDENERS because I thought “flowers” was in the definition, which made it pretty easy from the crossers anyway. Also sort of assumed BROWN must be “bread” as in money, somehow.

    re: A for across @Rob T 46, surely an exception can be made for an abbreviation that occurs probably at least 50 times on this page? Like Trailman @41, whether something is in current usage is more important to me than whether it’s in Chambers (except for Azed, who gives fair warning)–though I’ve seen PI enough that I’m inured to it, and as Gervase@45 says the EL is still with us.

    Thanks Qaos and loonapick!

50. matt w @49 – the problem with the ‘current usage’ test is that everyone’s vocabulary is slightly different… earlier this week several solvers were foxed by a contemporary definition of ‘posse’, for example. The rigidity of the ‘dictionary test’ is technically much fairer across the board – everyone has the opportunity to find or check the answer, even if it is not part of their current vocabulary 🙂

51. [Gervase @47 and passim: Fascinating. I do now vaguely remember the Arctic link with bear but had long since shelved it away. Another fun etymological tree related to this is the word “metheglin” which refers to a mead with specifically medical benefits from various additions. It comes to us from Latin via Welsh (meddyglyn), which is a pretty rare root I would think, and means “medical liquor” so has no connection to “mead” or “mel”]

52. I finished one! Albeit with a few unparsed. 28d was my favourite by far. It left me cold until I read the blog. Wonderful misdirection. So big thanks to loonapick and Qaos. I’m off to finish a different “one” in celebration

53. I’ve several times heard ‘What does an arctophile collect?’ in pub quizzes.

54. Only became aware of the theme when reading here.

    [As Gaeilge (ie in the Irish language) mil is also the word for honey. The market town of Clonmel is Cluain Meala, the vale/meadow of honey.]

55. Thanks Qaos and loonapick

    Ref the discussion on the ‘dictionary test’ etc, I believe that if it’s in the dictionary it’s fair game for the setter, whether or not one agrees with the dictionary or not (and I’m not trying to trigger discussion over that!).

    I think the use of single letter abbreviations is a different matter. P W D L F and A have been in common usage for decades in sports league tables, so can reasonably be considered to be part of the vernacular vocabulary, but so far as I know most, if not all of them, do not appear in dictionaries. Conversely, S = SOCIETY does appear in dictionaries, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the wild as a standalone abbreviation.

    In my view, the prime criterion if one does not know a current usage is whether or not the solution can be constructed from the (mix of) information the setter has given, along with any crossers that may already be in place.

    I doubt there will ever be a consensus…

56. Rob T @50, I apply the ‘Adrian test’. He’s my son, early 30s, starting to progress from the Quiptic to cryptics. When he sees that arcana like PI (other than in the mathematical sense, he’s got his GCSE) are needed to progress further, his resolution starts to dip. My point about EL is precisely that, although it indeed survives as a railway /railroad, it’s dropped from usage in the Guardian at least, perhaps because it fails such a test.

57. Thanks Qaos for a reliably enjoyable crossword. My top picks were ELABORATE, FOOTSIE, UTTER, DEVOTEES, and HUGE, my COTD. New to me: TUCK SHOPS, SPIT=double, ‘striped’ as an alternate letter indicator (makes sense), and ‘sexy’ as an anagram indicator (loosely makes sense). Thanks loonapick for the blog.

58. Rob T@50: Maybe in a competition it would be important to come up with an objective notion of fairness, but for me these crosswords are about fun, and it’s more fun for me to encounter innovative devices and vocabulary that I recognize* than it is to be told that, though the answer is something that neither I nor anyone else has ever heard in conversation, we would’ve been able to find it if we’d looked it up in Chambers. (Which I don’t have anyway and isn’t on the internet.)

    I also think that sticking rigidly to Chambers, or any other dictionary, stifles innovation. (Not that that is really an issue for the “A” and “S” we’re talking about here.) I thought it was hilarious when Paul worked in TOTES AMAZEBALLS and I’d hate for it to be disallowed because it’s not in the dictionary. Not everyone will have the same vocabulary but part of the fun is being stretched.

    *[Though I do also find it fun to grumble about British usages and spellings, while or even because I realize that an American doing British crosswords should expect that. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of “the definition was ‘fare goes down here’ and the answer was OESOPHAGI!!”]

    Simon S@55, absolutely agree about the mix of information. That’s part of the reason I liked “striped” as an alternate letter indicator–between GREY and the definition it was reasonable enough to see what the device had to be here.

59. Trailman @56 – ah, but I presume Adrian would have got that that ‘posse’ is a word meaning a group of urban youths, while many solvers (of a certain vintage) did not. My point is, there are as many complaints about archaic words being used in crosswords as there are about neologisms (and/or new meanings for old words) being used… it’s just that the vocabulary gaps are different across demographic / geographic realms as well as across individuals.

    I used to get slightly annoyed about “obscure” words being used in crosswords but over time I realised that there will always be gaps in my vocabulary, I am either too old or too young, too western or too northern, too something to already know a particular word or its meaning… and I take the experience of looking it up as my little ration of education for the day 🙂

60. matt w @58 – fair enough, we should all have our preferences on what makes a crossword enjoyable 🙂

    [ By the way, there is a version of Chambers online but it’s not comprehensive so only partially useful. For example, Chambers Online doesn’t include either TOTES or AMAZEBALLS which are actually both in the latest paid-for edition! 😆 ]

61. Mansplaining is not in Chambers93 .

62. HUGE
    paddymelon@21 and scraggs@25
    (HG eclipsing /hiding/including U)+E. I mean I agree with the blogger and AlanC@17.
    BROWN
    I took it (to) toast as (to) BROWN. Didn’t know the CRS. Not sure that was the
    intended parsing.

63. Good crossword (didn’t realise there was a theme until I arrived here, as usual), well written blog, entertaining set of comments.

    Especially like the discussion around dictionary vs archaisms vs youth slang etc. Think RobT@59 sums it up nicely – although I have to admit that I do get annoyed when we get “youth of today” slang that are “just not a proper words”, whatever the dictionary may say! I guess that just reveals my own age/prejudices.

    The only time, before or since, I have come across TOTES AMAZEBALLS was in that Paul crossword – needless to say, I wasn’t a fan!

    I also noted the apologetic note from PostMark@39 that he was “a bit late to comment”, timed at 11:38! I rarely get to the crossword or comment until at least mid-afternoon, and frequently it’s late at night or even the following day. So no apology necessary, methinks 🙂

64. Too late for anyone to read, but 20a reminded me of Alan Bennett’s story about Liverpool. Having breakfast at the Adelphi he asked the young waiter for brown toast. The waiter put white bread through the toaster and asked him if it was brown enough ..,

65. I agree with RobT’s point that you will always be too (or not enough) something to know some of the words. My mathematical and scientific education is limited, so I know the base e and c=speed of light (and various other terms) only from having learned them here. But those are current, if specialised, terms and very familiar to many solvers, whereas PI is near-obsolete and has to be explained just about every time somebody uses it. The trouble is that if you’re a setter, it’s so useful.

66. I found this very approachable and finished quite quickly.

    IOTA was the only clue I ticked. I did appreciate that Qaos managed to include so many theme words without resorting to obscure fillers.

    I am another one who missed parsing TOW BOAT, and like GDU@7 I wondered what TUCK SHOP sells SHOE LACES. I did not like the way 6d required us to separate a single number into parts to get COM, with no indicator telling us to do so.

    Thanks to Qaos for the puzzle, and providing a refuge from I0 in the FT. And thanks to loonapick for the blog.

67. Once I spotted the BEAR theme I went looking for all the ‘bears’ that Qaos couldn’t fit in: POOH, PADDINGTON, YOGI, BALOO, RUPERT etc… But as always, plenty of themers to sound out. I see that others before me have pointed out WATER BEAR – according to some reports the only living organisms currently on the Moon…

    And then there were Qaos’s trademark ‘number’ clues. I’m wise to the need to do a lot of lift-and-separates in some of them, so I thought COMPARABLE was pretty neat! And IOTA where the word ‘across’ seems redundant (since there isn’t a 10 down) but isn’t!

    The parsing for GARDENERS also pretty cool, but it’s a pity the write-in is so obvious.

    The only hold-up, predictably, was WATERS. That’s my ignorance showing! Had to do a quick delve into Wiki.

    Took me a long time to parse the “to a T” part of TOW BOAT.

    Thanks to Qaos and Loonapick.

68. Sorry, being thick…why does HENRY = H?
    I think if I had known that, I would have finished.

69. HYD@68 , it is a derived SI unit , symbol H for henry , used to measure self or mutual inductance , a transformer for example has a mutual inductance measured in H .

70. Roz@61 and@69,ooh! is that you back again? Great news if it is indeed you…😁

71. Completely agree with Matt T @58. To me, the nadir of the ‘but it‘s in Chambers’ excuse came with ST to mean ‘quiet!’ that appeared in a Qaos December 2021 puzzle (which has suddenly emerged from our reserve stock). Well I couldn’t find ST (must have been the wrong Chambers Rob T @60 – mine’s 1978 plus looked in free online), but even if I had, I don‘t care! If I said it everyone would look at me askance and if I read it, I’d just assume it was a misprint.
    I think common sense on behalf of the setter is the best yardstick, and if I ever meet Qaos I’ll make sure to ST him and see what happens ….
    But I don’t mind PI as short for pious- still plenty of those people about to use it on.
    Have been slightly disappointed with the last two G crosswords, bit flat somehow and neither Brummie or Qaos quite on form we thought. Hence the reserve store! But others seem to have enjoyed them, so all is good.
    Many thanks to Qaos and Lunapick.

72. Roz@69 – Thanks, good to see you back.

73. Trailman @41 As well as losing pi for good (no pun intended) I’d like to see the back of sa/it for sex appeal.

74. Phil @73, now that I do agree with! IT really grates.

75. Is the use of dated slang terms – which you could find in a lot of early 20th century novels – so different from the hackneyed crossword tricks where flowers are rivers, wingers are birds, and six-footers are insects? My objection to Qaos’s device here is that it doesn’t mean ‘good’ but sanctimonious and moralistic. This usage of PI is irrational 🙂

76. Gervase @75, goody-two-shoes?

77. Coincidence that we have this theme on the day that RFK Jr appears before the Senators committee ?

78. I’m with Gervase @75 on “pi”, the problem isn’t the use of it in itself, it’s just not a synonym for “good”. It all seems to stem from either a misinterpretation (if I’m being generous) or a deliberate stretch (if I’m not) on the part of setters going way into the history of crosswording…

    “good” has as one of its dictionary definitions “pious“. So far so good 🙂 … “pious”, in its own entry, means “dutiful“. Sounds nice and positive, and it makes sense that “pious” is a valid synonym for “good”.

    But the problems is this: “pi” (not “pious”) means “obtrusively religious, sanctimonious“. In this form, deliberately shortened to two letters, it became a separate word that has the negative connotations.

    In summary:
    – “pious” = “good”
    – “pi” ≠ “pious”
    – “pi” ≠ “good”

79. In 13 ac, since FOOTSIE is slang for the stock market itself rather than an “activity” within it, I took the clue as a double definition, with “Stock market” and “activity performed under the table”.being the two definitions.

80. I did not pick that up. Yes, I agree with jeceris@79.

81. I raised an eyebrow at FOOTSIE. I agree that the second definition is “activity performed under the table”, but the “sounds like” isn’t for the Stock market itself – rather it’s the index of share prices.

82. As seems usual with Qaos, a mix of write-ins and stuff requiring a bit more thought. Top marks for COMPARABLE (a typical Qaos clue), SCIMITARS (for the great surface), HONEY (for Rufus-esque economy) and TOW BOAT (for the “to a T”).

83. Solved this with my brother listening to an Irish session in a Manchester pub. Most enjoyable, thank you Qaos (and loonapick). So many good clues but favourites: UTTER and DEVOTEES. We didn’t get the theme – drat! Very clever.

84. This one I solved about 40% of through proper parsing. The others came with brute guesswork. Loonapick’s blog helped a second stage of Aha!, since I don’t see myself as an expert solver.
    Qaos’ skill and tell seem to be the focus on misleading by playing on an action word – here EXTRACT or SAY which tells you how to parse – in a deceptive sentence. E.g.. In the context, I never saw extract as “to extract” – only as a synonym of “essence” or “summary” to be used to construct the solution. Similarly, “SAY” which tells me to see it as an example or even a homophone is actually the definition.
    A new discovery each day!

    Thanks both

85. Not sure if intentional but most famour version of SKYE boat song these days is by Bear McCreary

86. Cluing COM as 10001000 is just rubbish, and spoiled a very good crossword.

87. Adrian old chap, Arabic to Roman numeral conversions are often like this in crosswords, and the eye roll that they get is the fun, such as we have in life these days.

88. [Just to highlight, this is the day Roz returned to the blog (@61, @69)! I’ve missed you Roz, and am delighted to see you back!]

89. Second completion in a row, though I did need loonapick to parse FOOTSIE, TOW BOAT, and COMPARABLE. I also struggled with parsing SEA because for some reason my eye kept going to 22a TOW BOAT as the reference clue instead of 23d WATERS

    Didn’t figure out the candy shoelaces in the TUCK SHOP. Cue the childhood memories, thanks again to loonapick!

    As gladys@5 points out, it’s a shame that “flowers”, which begins the wordplay in GARDENERS, draws us toward the solution instead of away from it. The best clues do the latter!

    Last in was SPIT, a diabolical clue

    Adrian@86 and Etu@87, I should add that number clues like “10001000” are a particular trademark of Qaos puzzles — there’s usually at least one in each puzzle. This one had me counting in binary, but I didn’t get very far!

Comments are closed.