[New comment layout] - details here
Hints – look at the date, look at the spelling of LudVig.
Most people are either going to have loved this puzzle or hated it. I think it’s OK to have an unorthodox puzzle on April Fools Day (in fact, I expected it), but I think it may have helped if there had been some other indication than just making the setter’s name a homophone as this is too much of an in-joke for the casual solver, in my opinion.
That said, this was an enjoyable solve once I worked out that all of the across answers were puns or homophones, and all of the down clues had puns or homophones in the clue somewhere.
I couldn’t satisfactorily parse 20ac or 19dn, but I’m sure someone will set me straight.
Other quibbles – STATION in the clue and in the answer of 11ac seemed lazy, as did using a homophone in 25ac, given that this device is already central to the puzzle.
A plea – please limit comments to the solutions and their quality/accuracy. If everyone weighs in to complain that this was unfair, too quirky, too hard, etc, the blog could degenerate.
Thanks, Ludvig… er, Ludwig.
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | MOURNING |
Tatty cardi’s discarded, Morris dancing anyhow in kind of dress (8)
|
| If you remove the letters of *(cardis) [anag:tatty] from MOR(ris) (da)N(c)ING, you are left with MORNING. | ||
| 9 | CHOIRS |
Paper calls for bible study to be dropped (6)
|
| (re)QUIRES (“calls for” with RE (religious education, so “bible study” dropped) | ||
| 10 | LOAN |
Large individual’s unmatched (4)
|
| L (large) + ONE (“individual”) | ||
| 11 | STATIONERY |
One in railway station flipping going nowhere (10)
|
| STATION + A (one) in Ry. (railway) | ||
| 12 | BREAKS |
Puts a stop to cakes perhaps containing drop of rum (6)
|
| BAKES (“cakes, perhaps”) containing [drop of] R(um) | ||
| 14 | PENNANTS |
Operatic location lacking character in the end – making amends (8)
|
| PEN(z)ANCE (“operatic location (The Pirates of Penzance)”) lacking Z (“character in the end” of the alphabet) | ||
| 15 | THROUGH |
Run into the wife in shed (7)
|
| R (run) into THE + W (wife) | ||
| 17 | OSBORNE |
Rocker Ozzy rattled our bones (7)
|
| *(our bones) [anag:rattle] | ||
| 20 | SHEERING |
Cutting short – at the outset – trial (8)
|
| 22 | PETREL |
Favourite kind of sandwich mostly what fuels you (6)
|
| PET (“favourite”) + ROL(l) (“kind of sandwich”, mostly) | ||
| 23 | PRECEDENTS |
Priority being dodgy creed coming into money (10)
|
| *(creed) [anag:dodgy] coming into PENCE (“money”) | ||
| 24 | VEIL |
Farewell depression (4)
|
| Double definition of VALE | ||
| 25 | MANNER |
House style announced (6)
|
| Homophone [announced] of MANNER (“style”) | ||
| 26 | ANNALIST |
Number-cruncher: obsessive, quintessentially – retypes second time (8)
|
| ANAL (“obsessive”) + [quintessentially] (ret)Y(pes) + S (second) + T (time) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | GOMORRAH |
Dead see place with ancient school, tailless cat climbing (8)
|
| (Sea, not see) – <=(HARRO(w) (“ancient school”, tailless) + MOG (“cat”). climbing) | ||
| 2 | BRAN |
Head of Beeb managed serial (4)
|
| (Cereal, not serial) – [head of] B(eeb) + RAN (“managed”) | ||
| 3 | HISSES |
‘What goes with booze?’ That man’s hiding issues? Not half (6)
|
| (Boos, not booze) – HE’S (“that man’s”) hiding ISS(ues) [not half] | ||
| 4 | ECHIDNAS |
Aussie natives dine with cache: bananas (8)
|
| (Cash, no cache) *(dine cash) [anag:bananas] | ||
| 5 | ROUNDABOUT |
Tortuous part of the fare (10)
|
| (Fair, not fare) – double definition | ||
| 6 | ARARAT |
Pair of artists drawn in at arc’s endpoint (6)
|
| (ark, not arc) – RA RA (pair of RAs (members of the Royal Academy, so “artists”) in AT | ||
| 8 | GRAPPA |
German hiphopper heard boos (6)
|
| (booze, not boos) – G (German) + homophone/pun/aural wordplay [heard] of RAPPER (“hiphopper”) | ||
| 13 | ADOLESCENT |
Young and olden cast off (10)
|
| (caste, not cast) – *(olden caste) [anag:off] | ||
| 16 | GUILDERS |
Drug I’ll fake for Dutch old money (8)
|
| (isle, not i’ll) – *(drug isle) [anag:fake] | ||
| 18 | NEEDIEST |
Tricky scene: diet’s most demanding (8)
|
| (seen, not scene) – *(seen diet) [anag:tricky] | ||
| 19 | UGANDA |
Litterbug and/or bottles: a state! (6)
|
| I can see UGANDO in “litterbUG AND Or” indicated by bottles, but A and OR are not homophones, so not sure how this works. | ||
| 21 | HERBAL |
For starters: our extremely ripe brie’s almost lethal. Like some tea? (6)
|
| (hour, not our) [for starters] H(our) E(xtremely) R(ipe) B(rie’s) A(lmost) L(ethal) | ||
| 22 | POSING |
Doing model’s work, apropos in nice clothes (6)
|
| (gneiss, not nice) – Hidden in [clothes] “aproPOS IN Gneiss” | ||
| 24 | VILE |
Disgusting sick’s all gone at last (4)
|
| (six, not sick’s) – VI (six) + (al)L (gon)E [at last] |
wow
Grappa for boos got a bit of a grin, otherwise meh.
Thanks Lud?ig and loonapick. For 20A I had S[hort]HEARING. For 19D, how about a non-rhotic “or”.
SHEERING: Definition is just cutting; Short at the outset + HEARING.
20a definition is cutting, wordplay is S (short at the outset), HEARING (trial), with SHEERING to be entered.
19d “or”= Awe which gives you the ‘A’.
I quite enjoyed this when I got into it. A nice GARJAN crossword for April Wan.
Thanks Tim C for the awe. Makes more cents to me
Awe thanks Alan @6
Loonapick, I shall honour your bright red plea and limit what I say. Let’s just say that when you remark that “most people are either going to have loved this puzzle or hated it”, I’m definitely in one of those categories.
Thanks Loonypick & Ludvig. Off now to harvest my spaghetti-tree.
Got about half way through but have to accept I always struggle when special instructions(even those that are not actually given!) mean that clues … don’t say what they mean. I realised something was up, yes, from the pseudonym and then ‘dead see’ and ‘serial’ in the first two clues. I can see that the editor has been very clever but do feel somewhat robbed of my morning solve. I admire the grid fill – not easy to cede it with so many theme-relevant words.
Thanks both
I didn’t notice the date or the v in Ludvig. I went looking for special instructions, but couldn’t find any. I knew something was goyon , but couldn’t work out what. Perhaps if I used a more systematic approach, I may have. Having said all that, using gneiss as a homophone for nice seems a little unfair. I’m having to go and look it up now.
Thanks and sorry Loonapick and thanks who?
Good idea for the ‘occasion’. Ludvig succeeded for a while.
Particularly liked PRECEDENCE/PRECEDENTS.
Thanks Ludvig and loonapick.
gneiss and nice seem a fair homophone pair, going by Chambers.
I knew something would be up with the misspelled Ludvig, but took a while to cotton on to the theme being homophones. Was labouring under the impression that there were missing letters that would spell a phrase or something.
Good job blogging this one Loonapick – an unenviable task to explain this all! Definitely a Marmite crossword… fairly enjoyable but resorted to using the ‘check’ button far too much to make this something I’d want to experience again!
I was another missing letter theorist, but never did see the homophone thing as I gave in about three quarters the way through.
Thanks loonapick and Rudevick
I generally don’t attempt puzzles with Special Instructions – and this one didn’t even have them!
Can’t say I enjoyed this. Amazed I made it to the end.
Several I could not fully parse – 15ac; 17ac drop the U; 20ac sheering/shearing; 16d.
Zimmerknees would be doing his (Mac)nutt if he was alive today…
I found this a lot of fun – needed quite a lot of checking, and agree that 11a is a bit weak, but it made a challenging change from the norm. Agree with others about parsing of 20a. Thanks Lugv/wig and loonapick
Just be thankful it wasn’t a Poorl T.O.M @Ate Teen
Don’t do ‘special instructions’.
Thanks both.
I didn’t fully get all the tricks/puns/homophones but I liked having something tricky for April Fools’ Day. Though it’s clear that as loonapick said it was a crossword that was quite polarising, as reflected in the comments on the Guardian site and some on this forum.
I did appreciate loonapick and other explaining some of the parses/plays on words I didn’t see or didn’t understand, and wanted also to thank “Ludvig” for the fun of a “different” crossword.
No objections to an interesting idea which I’m sure lots of you loved, but I got too confused with trying to work out which bit of clue or answer was going to be the sound-alike, and when in the solving process the change had to be applied (for instance, in BREAKS, are we trying to insert an R into BEAKS or BAKES?) It might have helped if I had worked out that there were different systems in place for acrosses and downs. I got about halfway and enjoyed some, but gave up in the end.
One query: this may just be my ignorance, but doesn’t the Latin farewell have two syllables? So VEIL isn’t an adequate sound-alike for both definitions. Or do we get VALE and then apply the sound-alike to that without regard to the original definition? Just too confusing.
Found it all OK. Even though I missed the homophones thing.
Just thought that a lot of the clues contained errors for April Fools Day.
Which wasn’t far off, I suppose.
Confusing but a marvellous feat. Thanks for taking the time to unravel all the alternatives. I wondered if you thought ‘why on my turn?’ Gladys @23, I think it’s the other pronunciation of VALE that gives the solution, although I was confused as well by that one. Ah, I see you edited your original comment. I’m still confused 🫤
Ta Ludvig & loonapick.
Good work, loonapick.
I may be a sandwich short of a picnic but don’t sheering and shearing have similar definitions, ie cutting, only different in meaning? Isn’t S the intiial letter of short (at the outset) part of the wordplay?
Oh, as TimC said @5.
Another one here about the pronunciation of VALE. Is that a sight gag?
Couldn’t make anything of this at all though after reading the blog and comments, I appreciate the humour and cleverness. Not one for a beginner!
[Tim C @20 – Think you might be opening a new can of worms with how ‘Poor’ is pronounced!]
I needed loonapick’s intro to work out why I’d got spelling mistakes in those I’d solved, groaned and returned to solve the rest. I should have known, we’re planning magic tricks with the yoof this afternoon.
I suspect I’m wrong, but for UGANDA I parsed the OR as disappearing (or bottles).
Thank you to loonapick and to Ludwig/vig.
Oh, please don’t get me started on the homophone wars, Crispy @Twenty Ate 🙂
I could have been thoroughly duped, but I saw GBH in row I, Grievous Bodily Harm, and LTS , Laughing to Self, in row 15. Hope loonapick isn’t going to red pen me out for this. It was just an observation.
Shanne @Twenty Nein, see my comment @5 for “or”=”awe” for UGANDA.
AlanC@25
VEIL (vale)
I think it’s the other pronunciation of VALE that gives the solution
This looks all right. What is the joke I am missing?
Took a while (and some frustration) to catch on and special instructions where the special instructions are missing is a bit more “genius” than “daily” but kudos to the editor and Ludvig for having a go at a date-appropriate puzzle with much silliness. At least it’s not boring!
I don’t know how to tell if 24ac is “veil” or “vail” however (meaning to doff as a means of respect wrt a hat, flag, weapon etc). Obscure but if it were the Don we’d shrug and say we’d learned a thing.
I’m less and less bothered about soundalikes not quite working – they are just a type of wordplay for me, and require me to think of an accent where they work.
Clever. And enjoyable in places.
But I think I preferred the backbencher who announced on her Twitter feed that she was joining the Government as the new ‘Minister for Hope, Good Vibes and Positivity’.
Completed. Jest found the con-seat rather tyre sum after a wile.
Enjoyed this very much, thank you M’lud. Some lovely joax. I couldn’t parse VEIL, for once Latin being a handicap. Everything else I appreciated very much. It was nice to get into the right thought process early on, which enabled me to enter confidently SHEERING and PRECEDENTS for example. It was the homophone-influenced anagrams I liked the most. Wry tup, mice treat.
Mostly a bust for me although I guessed something was up when I couldn’t parse the U in MOURNING or the TS in PRECEDENTS. Really liked GRAPPA and HISSES. But still failed to cotton on to the trick (and I didn’t know Ludvig was usually Ludwig so that didn’t help!). Thank you loonapick for explaining all, and Ludwig for what must have been a setting challenge! (A challenging set?) One for the experts.
For VEIL:
1) Use the two different meanings to find VALE: it doesn’t matter that there are two different pronunciations of VALE involved: at this stage it’s a visual clue.
2) Find a sound-alike of VALE, which doesn’t have to sound like both the original meanings!
This two-stage process (wordplay -> intermediate answer -> homophone of intermediate answer -> final answer) is consistent across all the acrosses, but tripped me up on several clues. I enjoyed the downs a lot more.
I’ll echo the first comment and say Wow. I sort of got the pun / homophone theme but not how systematic it is. Quite an amazing feat.
gladys @23: I don’t think VEIL is intended to be a soundalike of the Latin word — it’s just that “farewell” gives you VALE (written not said) and then the definition is “depression” which is also VALE. Then by today’s special rules you enter VEIL. Does that make sense?
Many thanks Ludvig (I think) and loonapick.
I was a fan of this one. I specifically came looking for the joke, being sure that the G wouldn’t let me down… and when I saw that Ludwig was the setter it was pretty much a cert that we’d have a bit of fun. (I didn’t spot the misspelling of the name though.) Favourites were VILE and ARARAT.
I admit though that I stumbled upon the nature of the joke the wrong way… FOI was BRAN and I didn’t even notice that “serial” was not “cereal” (it was during an insomnia moment in the middle of the night and I was barely functional), but was then baffled when the intersecting LONE didn’t fit. What gave the game away was CHOIRS, which of course I expected to be QUIRES but which I revealed out of laziness so as not to have to type it in manually, as I tend to do. [The virtual keyboard on my phone started misbehaving for the Guardian website puzzles a couple of months ago, dropping away after I type any letter typed into the grid, making manual entry a chore. Anyone else had this?]
With the game well and truly up, the rest all became enjoyable. I didn’t spot or/awe or nice/gneiss though, shrugging those off as a dodgy or/a and a posinn->posing instead. Neither did I spot that the two homophones devices were separated between the across clues and the down clues; I don’t solve in clue order and so unfortunately tend to miss that kind of detail.
Thanks both for serving and blogging the very appropriate treat!
(gladys @39, you just beat me to it and I think we’re both saying the same thing now 🙂 )
🤠
Lord Jim@42: yes, we agree.
Come Or Nick @37…. I like “wry tup, mice treat” 🙂
I spotted Ludvig straightaway and thought ‘classic Guardian’. Thankfully, I spotted what was going on quite early and the ‘typo’ made sense after I confirmed I hadn’t completely forgotten the basics of the English language.
Got half way through and after the parsing of Uganda also baffled me, I decided to leave it at that. I won’t say if I stopped because I was enjoying it too much or not enough, so as not to fall foul of the rules.
Always nice to try something a little quirky and no better day to do so. As said this is going to be a marmite puzzle. Thanks Loonapick and Ludvig/Ludwig
I thought it was lodes of fun!
Your original first paragraph ruined it and the current one is still a spoiler. Just cut it.
Ludwig’s clever setting is like a Covent Garden street juggler who performs with great energy and sense of fun while occasionally fumbling the tricksy moves. The homophone indication “announced” in MANNER is a dropped ball; the across clues all work with the solution being a homophone of the definition — but the down clues are inconsistent, with some solutions being ‘straight’ (Aussie natives really are ECHIDNAS) and some homophones (GRAPPA sounds like boos); the OR for ‘A’ in UGANDA is a fumble, clearly; the Osbourne/Osborne homophones are a bit lame since they do not have any semantic disjunct like all the other ‘punny’ homophones; the STATION in the clue and solution is another dropped ball; and so on.
It was a fun performance — like the street juggler’s.
The crossing of LOAN and BRAN in the far-NW corner gave this game away immediately, and I confess I had half-expected something tricksy for April 1. Seeing the setter’s name (I didn’t spot the misspelling) further suggested that mischief would ensue after Ludwig’s (ahem!) ‘controversial’ twin crosswords with identical answers but different clues last year. Having thus cracked the case and the different methodologies of the across and down clues, I found this pretty unproblematic and enjoyed the trip, and despite a few clunkers, such as the double-STATION at 11a, I thought it was a very impressive feat of setting for the occasion.
Hearty congratulations to Loonapick for getting this out before midday.
I spotted the Ludvig misspelling and being aware of the date I guessed we were in for some tricks. My first guess was that it might be change a letter to the one alphabetically before (w->v), but that didn’t work.
I resorted to the check button and LONE became LO__ which twigged me to the homophone possibility. I then went back and tried CHOIRS instead of QUIRES which confirmed the theory.
I mostly enjoyed the rest, but there were a few quibbles, especially VALE which has already been discussed. I think the extra step as mentioned by gladys @39 and Lord Jim @40 (ignore the pronunciation of the word, just deal with its written form) is a bit unfair given the puzzle already has additional steps involved.
My favourites were HISSES and GRAPPA, which I guess just shows that I like my boos too much.
Thanks Lud[w|v]ig and loonapick.
You’ve really missed the whole point pserve_p2 @49, especially with the down clues. The across clues have mis-spelled answers, and the down clues have a word mis-spelled in the clue. So ECHIDNAS has the correct spelling for the answer, but “cash” (with “dine” providing the anagram fodder) is mis-spelled as “cache” in the clue. That is consistent with all the other down clues. Similarly, “booze” is mis-spelled as “boos” for GRAPPA which is again consistent for the down clues. For Or=Awe see my post @5.
Tim Sea@53: right — yes, I get that. But if you compare the definition in the clue with the solution, then you see that in the down clues there are some that equate and some which don’t; whereas all the across solutions are mismatched spellings in relation to their definition. That was my point about the patchy nature of the clueing.
That was fun. Can we do another one next year?
I still don’t understand about ” Ludvig” being a clue. I do the paper version. Someone please enlighten me!
????
pserve_p2 @49 and @54 – I don’t think the down clues are inconsistent in the sense of some definitions matching solutions and some not. It’s just that some of the changes in the down clues change a word in the definition, whereas some others change a word in the wordplay.
You mention GRAPPA as an example. The definition is booze, a homophone of “boos” in the clue. In ECHIDNAS, “cache” in the wordplay changes to cash, but the definition is unchanged.
Or am I misunderstanding your point?
I thought I was going mad. I expressed my bewilderment to my other half who pointed out the date. Hard work even then.
The least said the better.
pserve_p2@49&54, I liked your charactization of this setter, and I think the consensus is that STATIONERY, MANNER and OSBORNE are the weaker ones today. I don’t see any inconsistency of the conceit amongst the down clues though; the rule that the setter seems to be using is “replace one of the words in the surface with its homophone before solving”. It’s irrelevant whether that word forms part of the definitional phrase or of the wordplay, and indeed the fact that it could be either keeps us on our toes. I was taken by surprise by “boos” for example, which made that clue for GRAPPA particularly enjoyable for me. [Edit: cross-post with TTP@58]
Regarding VEIL, the underlying solution VALE comes from a dd in which the two sides of that same coin have different pronunciations, so inevitably the setter had to pick just one to produce a homophone. Logically they chose the valley since the other one doesn’t have any homophones. (The fact that VAIL apparently also exists as per JoFT@34 was a slip-up one assumes, though I have to admit that I was blissfully unaware.)
Hadn’t got much of a clue about what exactly was going on here, even with a few in. Something to do with Sounds Like. Anyway, decided to employ the Reveal button and was therefore able to admire the extraordinary ingenuity put into every clue. Chapeaux to all those who persevered to the very end…
I’m lichen this one. Thanks to TimC for a plausible explanation of UGANDA; I figured it was something non-rhotic, but couldn’t figure out exactly what. On that note, ongratulations are due to Ludvig for restraining himself on the non-rhotic front: of the 29 homophones in this puzzle, only two assume that we’re playing fast and loose with the letter R (that or/awe one, which is not even close the way I say it, and the rapper in the GRAPPA clue, which is entirely forgivable).
I love the fact that the nice/gneiss homophone had an outing. Bad geology jokes should never be taken for granite.
Norfolk Dumpling@56: There is a setter who has produced 3 or 4 Grauniad puzzles under the name “Ludwig”. Pronounced in the German fashion, this would be a homophone of “Ludvig” which otherwise looks like a typo. Hence the name is a clue to the trick in the puzzle.
There is also a precedent for tweaking a setter’s pseudonym on April 1 – see last year’s Picaron.
This time, I just assumed (from early on – BRAN was first in) that every solution would have a homophone replaced in either the clue or the solution but not both, and with that in mind things fell into place fairly easily, though I did use Check a few times to confirm.
Complete and utter rubbish. Completely spoiled my afternoon.
Pray explain in detail, Ed@66, to rescue yourself from being in egregious breach of Site Policy #2.
Fule me once…
Ed@66 is onto something: this one should have been tackled before noon according to the April Fools rules; not surprised it spoiled his afternoon.
I’ve struggled to find anything positive to say about this but Ludvig has achieved something I hitherto thought impossible: lifting Maskarade off bottom place in my league of setters
I like the juggler analogy and I was also reminded of people who make scale models of the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks – you can appreciate the effort and achievement but …
Over to the FT then
Cheers L&L
Geoff down under @ 8 says it for me really…
On solving the first clue, MOURNING, as “mornings” which was senseless I assumed a “Grauniad” error…. But, as soon as I realised it was April Fools Day and what was occurring, the solve became much easier. It was as though any true puzzlement had been sacrificed on the altar of conceit. Still, I imagine the constructor’s (or constructors’) fun was all the more!
[As for the words in red, 15² has been going for not that far off twenty years now, without the need for such a brazen rubric. I must say, our site seems to have become somewhat officious of late]
Thanks to LudVig for a really fun crossword today! and to Loonapick for help with a couple I couldn’t fully parse.
I parsed Uganda differently from TimC & others though: litterbUG AND/or (bottles): A state! This seemed quite straightforward at the time, but I guess it doesn’t fit the pattern of Down clues containing homophones in the wordplay.
I took the challenge to be to find the narrowest description of what was going on (i.e. something more specific than “The clues are not quite right”) as quickly as possible. It took half the puzzle to do that, and really I rather enjoyed it.
The NYT Sunday puzzle always has some gimmick, and rather than special instructions as we are used to here for the holiday jumbos, just has a short title that alludes to what is going on. I think if that were done here, the title might be “Sounds off”.
Put me in the ‘meh’ camp. As soon as I read the nonsense making up the first clue, I knew it would be dodgy. Not fun.
I saw “Ludvig” and thought “huh, thought his name had a w.” Failed to remember the relevance of the day. However after resorting to the check to figure out why LONE and BRAN were behaving oddly I mostly enjoyed chasing the homophones. I didn’t mind the repetition of STATION in 11 as it’s literal use of letters and not really synonymous, and “Railway station” is a natural combination. Do agree with the complaints about the homophones for 25ac and 17ac, and also quibble about 22ac–PETROL doesn’t fuel me, it fuels my car.
1d did make me think about other uses of “see place” [edit: Bah, “place” is probably redundant with “see” in this sense]
For one observer, you and I see place around end of break (6)
Well that probably shows how setting is harder than it may seem to us punters! Thanks Ludvig and lunapic.
I’m sure I recall reading that the Ludwig puzzles were created by Alan C and John H. This certainly had the fingerprints of Enigmatist all over it. Sadly I can’t make it to the Parcel Yard this weekend – as I was going through this puzzle I imagined having the chance to go up to him, express my admiration for this puzzle, buy him a pint … and pour it over his head. Wickedly clever piece of work.
Couldn’t be bothered
AP@41, I also happily solved 2d without noticing that the clue had serial rather than cereal. In my case I didn’t have insomnia as a reason to excuse myself, I’d had 2 coffees by mid-morning. I put it down to the prevalence of punning jokes and crossword clues using that homophone leading my brain to not notice. When bran had me replacing loan with lone I spotted the conceit and enjoyed the rest of the fill.
15a was my LOI, I’d decided that “the wife” must be an old school phrase for spouse such as “‘er indoors” and was trying to think of a short phrase to fit.
Thanks to Ludw(v)ig and loonapick.
[DrW @73: I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that of the seven puzzles I do daily, six of them managed to slip in some extra gimmick today (only the Wordle didn’t, and they don’t really have a lot of latitude for gimmicks with that one). Spelling Bee wins the award for the most brazen: it was a repeat of the puzzle from just two days ago, only with a different letter made mandatory. The Guardian gets the nod for the trickiest gimmick, but I’m in the camp that enjoyed it. Also fond of what the New York Times xwd did today.]
[NYT also has a gimmick every Thursday, but your special instructions then come in an answer in the bottom half of the puzzle somewhere that gives you a little hint.]
Can’t be bothered
I agree with Geoff DU @8 and Bodycheetah @70.
I noticed the misspelling of the setter’s name and spotted that a few of the clues ‘didn’t quite work’, but I’ve had to come here to find out what’s going on. Now I can see the undisclosed complication, I’ll have another crack at it. FWIW I don’t feel cheated – just temporarily confused (and no hard feelings to Ludwig, you b……!) 😉
OK: you win. Well done to all who managed it, and even to those who persevered for longer than I did. And thanks to our blogger, whose job I certainly don’t want.
This was a slow start but when the penny dropped I thought it was great fun.
For some reason I put the obscure LOWN (Scot. calm) rather than LOAN – don’t know what I was thinking! – and missed sick’s = six, but apart from that all good and feeling smug.
Thanks to Ludwig and loonapick
I suspect the red message is aimed mainly at me so I will not read the comments and cause trouble , the sun is lovely and the sea is calling my name . Just say that the clue for STATIONERY is one of the worst I have ever seen .
FFS – I got there but, FFS
Balfour@67. I think Ed@66 has said his piece and disappeared, just like he did last week. (See 29652 by Paul, comment #25.)
I agree with Dr. WhatsOn@73. I usually solve in the newspaper, but I quickly saw that using the check button would help me to identify whether or not my guesses were correct, without the need to apply Tippex to my Guardian; for example when the checker came back with SHE_RINGS. My first thoughts on starting this were, why is there no rubric? But I quickly saw that the mispelling – or as it turned out, the homophone – in the setter’s name was all the instructions we needed.
Thanks to Ludo and Loonapick.
I have to say I tend to agree with Roz about the clue for STATIONERY. Was it intended to be a super-easy clue to confirm the way the clues and answers worked? (Similarly, BRAN in the down clues.) If that was the intention, I would rather see those examples in a rubric, but then there would be no “April Fool!” moment, I suppose.
Didn’t enjoy or rate this much…I always struggle with homophones, so concede I am biased…was satisfied to have finished, albeit with some fortuitous guesswork and retro parsing. Couldn’t parse 19d, thank you to Tim C@5
Thanks to Ludwig and Loonapick for the blog
19D: “Awe” is the homophone for “or” and that’s what makes it work.
I was dun up like a kipper, and yes Roz is right, as always!
SH@88 yes 7 letters in a row , in order , in both clue and answer , must be a record . The dodgy letter does not cross so need a firm idea about what all the Across are doing before changing A to E .
Antonknee@91 , not always , I did make a mistake once .
This was impressive & quite fun once I realised what was going on with the homophones.
JC @93: you came, you saw, and you conquered?
Roz@92 I wonder if any setter has ever given the clue just the same word as the answer?
I stumbled downstairs this morning and turned the corner to be met with a cry of “April Fool!” from the youngster, accompanied by a pie in the face (well, a dish of squirty cream). On any other day I would of course have been furious, but somewhat surprised myself today by being quite tickled – not as much as him of course.
Thanks Tim C for the or/awe and loonapick overall and for the nice gneiss as I missed both of those – i had started off thinking it was just missing or extra letters, as a few others above did, so the full revelation was a nice pdm, and it was fun trying to spot the puns during or after each solve. I like the proximate juxtaposition of boos and booze in 3d and 8d, maybe another hint at what was going on. And thanks Ludvig for creating something special.
Roz @85. I don’t think it was aimed at you in particular, although I know you got into some trouble over the second of Ludwig’s twin crosswords last year. If you had read the online comments beneath the puzzle on the G’s website, you would have seen that, even before loonapick uploaded his blog, it had attracted a level of vitriol that I have rarely seen. I think loonapick just wanted to preempt, if he could, a similar outbreak here, in which he was largely, but not completely, successful.
Dave Ellison @95: the New York Times once ran a puzzle that broke literally all the rules somewhere in the puzzle (e.g., same word twice, two-letter word, asymmetric), and then identified their errors as answers elsewhere (so some of the answers were SAME WORD TWICE, TWO-LETTER WORD, and ASYMMETRIC). I’m fairly sure they did ANSWER IN CLUE or something along those lines too…
I quite enjoyed this after I understood (roughly) what was going on, starting with GUILDERS. As to UGANDA, I took it that UGAND was bottled (forget the /or, it’s just part of the container) and the final A is in the clue.
Thanks everyone, and roll on 1/4/26!
Luckily my wife pointed out what day it was after a couple of clues. It still took a while.
What daja57@1 said (wow) – in the positive sense. Didn’t finish, but I’m in the loved it group.
Muffin @ 16 😊 and loved everybody’s contributions today! Lunar pick how did you do it? Wow indeed.
First I moaned it was all wrong then spouse pointed out date, and only thought briefly as I later entered search term to come here that all my life I had been mispronouncing a famous composer – clearly should have been LUDFIG…
Like many others here I stumbled along – missing letters? Homophones ? frequently thinking I’d finally got the low down and boldly writing my answers in PEN, only to find … – how was I to know that ALL the across clues had to be wrong when I had got STATIONARY and PRECEDENCE? Not to mention PENZANCE although that got changed to PENDANTS and I’m afraid my model girl activity had to remain as PREENS.
Hilarious crossword! Take a bow setters and blogger!
Could the two ‘u’s (Osbourne and Mourning)
be a reference to Ludwig being spelt Ludvig – double u – w?? Says my friend Caz Dale…
Very seldom finish this without assistance and always use check word after every entry but even forgetting the date I sussed the theme after 3 or 4 answers. “AWE” took a while but I got there eventually. Enjoyed every minute of this and completed it with less help than usual. Thanks Ludwig and Loonapick.
LUDVIG BRAN LOAN/LONE gave us the theme as well, we enjoyed the puzzle with a couple of frowns at same things mentioned by others ( STATIONERY for example)
The special request from the blogger reminds me of a joke about a footballer who disputed a ref’s decision. ‘What would you do if I called you a @@a@?’ ‘I’d send you off’. ‘What would you do if I thought you were a @@@?’. ‘I can’t send you off for what you think’. ‘In that case, I think you’re a @@@.’ The crossword also reminds me of a friend who would say in answer to a feeble attempt at humour, ‘I get it, it’s like a joke, only not funny.’ So, I think this was self indulgent nonsense that was like a joke but not funny.
mrpenney@98: That rings a bell. The clues were something like “What 26 across does and shouldn’t” I think?
Didn’t pick up on 1st April, but annoyance at errors gave way to intrigue and I solved quite a few “Aha!” type lateral moves. Enjoyable but like a crunchy omelette.
Congrats to loonapick on the blog! I twigged something was going on when my 10 across LONE wouldn’t let me enter BRAN for 2 down – I’d read ‘serial’ as ‘cereal’ somehow, so worked it out early. However, took me much longer than usual and more checking than I usually do. OK with me if it’s just one day of the year.
I got about half of this done before falling asleep last night, but with several not fully parsed, and by that time had forgotten all about 01 04 25, so just thought that there’d been a mis-edit in there being no special instructions.
I’d usually have gone back and finished in the morning, but glad that I came here instead.
Thanks all.
Thanks for all the comments, especially the early ones that cleared up the couple of parsings I didn’t get, although, as a (rhotic) Scot, AWE and OR sound nothing alike to me.
Balfour@97, you are right, I was not picking on Roz (@ 85) or any other individual. It was in repsonse to what I had seen on the Guardian site. Even with this plea, this puzzle has elicited over 100 comments – I just didn’t want to see every second comment either criticising or defending the concept. We would have ended up with many more comments and it would have been difficult to see the woods for the trees.
I thought I saw a comment yesterday from someone claiming that I had given away too much info in the first line of my intro, although I skimmed through and can’t find the comment now. Apologies for that, but I did that for two reasons:-
1) It’s boring constantly writing – today’s setter is xxxx, and
2) I felt it was appropriate in this case.
In my head, although I may be wrong, most people coming to this site have already looked at the puzzle on ehich they wish to comment (indeed, most have already completed it), so I saw no harm in giving a couple of hints to those people who had tried, but failed to see the devices being used.
It took a few clues to cotton on to the unwritten rules, then it was almost a write-in. Though a couple of homophone pairs escaped me at first OR/AWE (and I wondered what the Rhotics would then say) and SICK’S/SIX.
Only noticed LUDVIG well after half way.
I also only come here having completed it.
I hope Loonapick doesn’t mind, but as it’s the day after and the dust has settled….
I know it’s a puzzle in a UK paper, but here in Spain 1st April isn’t Fools Day. My brain must have seen Lud and filled in the rest without registering a difference in spelling. If I’d seen the V it wouldn’t have registered as I have no TV, no VPN and no access to UK TV so all I know of the programme that spurned the setter is what I’ve read here. Just a little hint, like look at the date, might have helped. The V for W was just too subtle for me.
I got about 30% through, realised something odd was going on and gave up. My thought was some sort of omitted letter pangram, so I was on the wrong track completely.
It’s not like I feel the need to solve each and every puzzle, so I’m really not moaning, just thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have made it a tad more obvious for those of us in exile.
Apologies loonapick, thanks lud*ig and on to today.
Loonapick@111, I’ve made a comment in General Discussion since I think you’ve raised a more general point of interest. Thanks!
Pete@113 I don’t think a puzzle in a UK paper should make special provision for immigrants. After all, it’s not as though the significance of 1st April is foreign to you. On a related but different matter, like it or not, standard British English is non-rhotic, so homophones will be non-rhotic. There’s no point rhotic commenters mentioning this every time.
Anyway, to get back to our moutons, I thought this was good fun and the puzzle was excellently crafted. Luckily I spotted what was going on almost immediately thanks to “serial” and “lone” – I’m sure this was intentional – which made the whole thing far less frustrating, and I do sympathise with those for whom the penny failed to drop so swiftly.
Loonapick @111 re your last paragraph, PLEASE don’t make that assumption again. The fact* that most people don’t see the front page of fifteensquared before solving is no reason to spoil puzzles for the people who do. I thought this was a well-established rule. It costs you very little to follow it.
* Come to think of it, I don’t know if it even is a fact – the links to the daily puzzles are a good reason to come here first.
Loonapick@111 I am sorry , I thought the message was from KenMac , he usually uses red when he wants to send a message through the blogs, recently he has done this for security messages and the picture things . The first two Ludwig blogs were very chaotic and a lot of hassle for KenMac , partly or even mainly my fault . When he removed my ban I agreed not to cause trouble in Ludwig blogs and I think I managed that okay . Your message seems to have worked pretty well .
A candle in a fireworks store is a very different thing from a bull in a china shop, even if the outcomes might have some things in common.
Loonapick @111, just to say that for the first time ever, after trying to work out what was going on, I came to 15^2 to read the intro only. It helped me greatly and I managed to complete albeit with the need to read the blog itself afterwards for some of the parsings. So from my perspective it was a good call on your part. I would probably have given up otherwise. Fab blog by the way and many thanks.
Re Loonapick@111 since 15 squared exists to tell people how to parse the answers it seems a bit lopsided for you to be accused of a spoiler! I enjoyed the crossword but needed you to see the common links between the across and downs.
I come down on the side of love – but I’d have solved it a lot more quickly if I’d noticed the date!
loonapick @111 – your thoughts make sense, particularly your final paragraph
It seems I was remiss yesterday in not thanking you for your generous contribution, which I do now!
Was solving this a few days after it was published so took waaay too long to cotton on to the fact that it was published in April fools day! Managed to brute force it despite not picking up the full twist.
Thanks very much Loonapick for the explanation of the ones I couldn’t explain.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. Didn’t realise it would be special for April Fool’s nor that Ludvig was a misspelling but when I came across my third answer that seemed to be a typo, I realised what the theme must be. Didn’t manage to complete it without help on a couple but that didn’t spoil the fun.
I find it amusing how many people disliked it because it didn’t follow their perceived rules of a cryptic given how many people dislike cryptics because they don’t know the rules. I enjoy having something that shakes up the rules occasionally.
Thanks to loonapick, particularly for explaining the across/down distinction which I hadn’t noticed, and to Ludwig for a very enjoyable solve.
I’ve come to this a week late, but was conscious of the publication date when I did it, so wasn’t really taken by surprise. I can understand why it rubbed some people up the wrong way, but I picked up on the patterns (both across and down) fairly quickly (OSBORNE and ANNALIST were my first two in, which helped), and rather enjoyed this. I shared Loonapick’s quibble with 11a, but I rather enjoyed the double bluff of 25a. Belated thanks to Loonapick.
Wow! Totally amazing ! Surely this is Brendan ( the most brilliant setter in history !)
Having met this puzzle in the Guardian Weekly of 11th April, we would have appreciated a hint that it had originally been published on April 1st. Having said that, we finished it in two days (good for us), and managed to work out that all the clues were dodgy in some way, but didn’t spot that every bit of dodginess was a homophone. Spotted misspelling of Ludwig but didn’t realise its significance as it was several hours later that we pencilled in our first tentative answer.
Thanks to all involved, we enjoyed it more than hated it…
Well well. This was in my Guardian Weekly dated April 11th. No wonder I was so bemused. Got halfway through before resorting to the wonderful 15 squared blog to be enlightened.
Like others, we got this in Guardian Weakly. Finding it too tricksy to solve confidently, we had to find the online version to check our answers before putting them in! And there we saw the tricksy date!
There is an explanation of this in the April Guardian Crossword blog
Sheering off the direction.
all gone at last is AL not LE.
Wow indeed! An impressive feat of crossword engineering. Whether it’s a satisfying experience for the solver is open to question. I think I’m within loonapick’s guidelines to mention that there was a distinct lack of penny-drop moments. Ideally, there’s a moment of clarity when a clue is solved and parsed, but there was lingering doubt all the way through this one (eg, is it OSBORNE or OSBOURN?). I agree that a “special instruction” of some kind, beyond re-spelling the setter’s name, would have helped
I allowed myself to use the check button as I worked, and was able to get all but six or seven, so not too bad an outcome
Dave Ellison @95, yes, Monty Python did a complete crossword with answers as clues in their Big Red Book (not to be confused with Chambers!). Eg, 2a, Clue: “Dark bird (4,4)”, Answer: DARK BIRD!