Picaroon is in philosophical mood today…
…with the word “philosopher’ occurring in ten clues, and the philosophers themselves appearing in the answers, in full in one case, but usually as a part of the word. Cleverly done, and with the smooth and elegant clueing we’ve come to expect from this setter. Very enjoyable – thanks to Picaroon.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | VICOMTE | Sex for Roman philosopher is noble (7) VI (=6, “sex” in Latin) + COMTE – I’d guess this is the least familiar philosopher in the puzzle to most people, so perhaps a little naughty not to mention that we’re looking for a foreign nobleman.. |
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| 5. | MILLION | Philosopher, one working a large amount (7) MILL + I + ON (working) |
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| 10. | CLUE | This is a reminder to invest pounds (4) L in CUE – and the clue clues itself |
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| 11. | PILL-POPPER | Sanctimonious lines by philosopher, a junkie (4-6) PI (sanctimonious) + L L + POPPER |
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| 12. | GYRATE | Dance suggestively, in extremely giddy tempo (6) G[idd]Y + RATE (tempo) |
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| 13. | PLATOONS | Philosopher concerned with small units (8) PLATO + ON (concerned with) + S |
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| 14. | TROUSSEAU | Clothing collection and tea picked up by philosopher (9) T (“tea”) + ROUSSEAU |
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| 16. | RELAX | King swallows drop of Lemsip, catching a chill (5) L[emsip] + A in REX |
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| 17. | GARBO | Actress in Ultimo bra, gracefully twirling (5) Hidden in reverse of ultimO BRA, Gracefully |
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| 19. | ACRONYMIC | A friend meets Mike using letters of introduction? (9) A + CRONY + MIC (abbreviation for microphone, also spelled “mike”) |
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| 23. | HEDONISM | Supply me with dosh in search for pleasure (8) (ME DOSH IN)* (supply = in a supple way) |
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| 24. | EXHUME | Unearth erstwhile philosopher (6) EX + HUME |
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| 26. | MARK ANTONY | Roman philosopher running into virgin (4,6) KANT + ON (running) in [the Virgin] MARY |
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| 27. | GRIN | Expression of pleasure as tedium’s cut short (4) GRIN[d] |
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| 28. | VERDICT | Finding court composer’s given precedence (7) VERDI + CT |
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| 29. | ADULATE | Flatter hulk stripping off during a tryst (7) [h]UL[k] in A DATE |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 2. | INLAYER | Hip liberal philosopher — his work is decorative (7) IN (fashionable, hip) + L + AYER |
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| 3. | OMEGA | Head of Oundle has great final term (5) O[undle] + MEGA |
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| 4. | TOPLESS | Slept so badly in a state of deshabille (7) (SLEPT SO)* |
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| 6. | IN PLAY | Plain dancing? We’re told why a ball may be so (2,4) PLAIN* + Y (sounds like “why”) |
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| 7. | LEPROSERY | Doctor or sleepy nurses run kind of hospital (9) R[un] in (OR SLEEPY) – a hospital for lepers |
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| 8. | OCEANIA | A canoe travelling around one large group of islands (7) I in (A CANOE)* |
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| 9. | CLAPHAM COMMON | Acclaim actor lacking refinement in London park (7,6) CLAP + HAM (actor) + COMMON (lacking refinement) |
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| 15. | UNBLOCKED | British philosopher welcomed by German and not hindered (9) B + LOCKE in UND (German for “and”) |
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| 18. | ACETATE | Salt in wonderful starter of tabbouleh getting consumed (7) ACE (wonderful) + T[abbouleh) + ATE (consumed) |
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| 20. | ONE-EYED | Look at cracking cryptic done like a Cyclops? (3-4) EYE in DONE* – the Cyclops had a single eye in the middle of its forehead |
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| 21. | IAMBIST | One first rings a doctor, a specialist in feet (7) A MB in 1 1ST – an iamb is a poetical foot, with the rhythm di-DAH |
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| 22. | PICNIC | Occasion to eat a piece of cake (6) Double definition |
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| 25. | HEGEL | Man turned on philosopher (5) HE + reverse of LEG (the “on” side in cricket). This is the place where the philosopher is actually the answer, rather than just part of it |
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Thanks for a great blog, Andrew.
And what a super puzzle – I absolutely loved it! Far, far too many excellent clues to list – and such a variety.
I don’t think I’d heard of COMTE but we’re familiar enough now with the ‘Roman sex’ device [still worth a chortle 😉 ] so there were enough crossers to supply the answer fairly readily and VICOMTE is in Chambers, so I think it’s fair enough.
[It seems churlish to cringe at ‘amount’ in 5ac – but it is one of my bugbears…]
Many thanks to Picaroon for an excellent start to the day.
Brilliant
Thanks to Andrew and Picaroon.
Very pleasant crossword – although a list of obscure philosophers had to be sought.
I thought I’d cracked 15d with UNBRIDLED, using Eric Idle and the Philosopher’s Song from Monty Python. After all, it DID fit the cryptic clue.
But alas the actual answer was much less amusing.
Hi dantheman @3
I, too, wondered why UNBRIDLED wouldn’t fit [I already had the brilliant HEDONISM, which was obviously right] – but it did raise a smile.
I’m ashamed to say that the “Sex for Roman” device took me far too long to twig, making VICOMTE my LOI (and I had to look up M. Comte, too).
Other than that, I was pleased to discover just how many philosophers I (albeit sometimes vaguely) knew the names of.
Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
This went in much quicker than I thought it was going to after the first pass of the across clues yielded only GYRATE and GARBO. I did need a word search for VICOMTE, though, as I hadn’t heard of the philosopher.
Lots to like, with the great EXHUME and MARK ANTONY my favourites.
I suppose the CANOE/OCEAN anagram is as familiar as the CARTHORSE/ORCHESTRA one!
What Eileen said
Thanks to both setter and blogger too
Pure coincidence, I suppose, that VICOMTE pairs Comté with the not much better-known Giambattista Vico?
I think the word Comte may be connected to Voltaire.
Great puzzle, and blog.Many thanks to Andrew and Picaroon
Superb puzzle. Great idea and clue for MARK ANTONY.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew
Eileen has said it – and I was another who thought “unbridled” was the answer to 15d which meant HEDONISM and MARK ANTHONY eluded me for a long time before having to go back to 15d – and even then I thought of “unbrooked” before getting the obvious. LOI was GRIN and favourite was CLUE – short solutions often provide the most challenge for me.
Thanks Picaroon (definitely in my top 3 setters) and Andrew for your excellent blog.
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Good idea to get round the ‘ten clues are undefined’ malarkey. Excellent cluing; my LOI was actually CLUE, which I couldn’t get my head around.
I particularly liked HEDONISM.
Enjoyed this a lot. Re 1a: For me the letters after VI are much more likely to remind me of an excellent Swiss cheese than a philosopher, though admittedly the E has an acute accent on it.
Many thanks Picaroon and Andrew.
Hugely enjoyable puzzle. Failed on VICOMTE.
Great puzzle …I don’t really get the VI=sex bit though and could someone please explain why PI=sanctimonious?
MacLog@ VI – SEX – Latin for six
And if I (or Eileen or…) had a £1 for every time we had to explain that PI – PIOUS – Sanctimonious … we’d be very rich people
Thank you Picaroon and Andrew.
An interesting puzzle, great fun trying to figure out the philosophers. There are several named ROSE that might have fitted in LEPROSERY, for example the American Ernestine Rose, who should be well known, but is not – she is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
A top class puzzle. Quite tricky in places but rewarding.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew
Martin @ 13
Comté is actually French, from Franche-Comté. The Swiss version is Gruyère.
Too much time spent wishing that VISCOUNT would fit into 1a, and then consulting a list of Roman philosophers. And mentally running through court composers of the time of Haydn. Really, I should have known better.
A good week so far (after two days!) – can it continue?
I found this a bit more of a grind than yesterday’s puzzle, but the excellent clueing still made this a pleasure to solve. The two factors that took a bit of the shine off were my inability to call readily to mind all the philosophers I knew (in fact I knew all of them here except COMTÉ) and the relatively unfriendly grid (8 answers having fewer than half of their letters checked – I need crossers!).
I got lucky with 1a VICOMTE, as it came to me quickly after guessing VI at the start. I was pleasantly misled at first by the wordplay in 26a MARK ANTONY and 19a ACRONYMIC, which were two of my favourite clues.
Many thanks to Picaroon, and to Andrew for the blog.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew. Very enjoyable (and, for once, I knew all the philosophers). I did manage to parse HEGEL (after many lapses I have finally learned some cricket terms) but had trouble with VICOMTE and my LOI was PICNIC which eluded me for some time.
This crossword reminds me of Imogen’s DEAD WHITE EUROPEAN MALE puzzle (27,220, June 17th, 2017).
I enjoyed this. I particularly liked TROUSSEAU (which leapt out) and MARK ANTONY. Also PICNIC was lovely in its simplicity.
A few months ago when Boatman did a “pig” theme (27,235) there were a couple of comments to the effect that people weren’t keen on puzzles where the themes feature in the clues rather than emerging from the answers. I thought at the time that this was a strange criticism to make: to my mind they are just different ways to compose a crossword, and one isn’t necessarily better than the other. I note that we haven’t had any such comments today. (So far!)
Hi Sue yes but how does “six” mean “sex” ?
Excellent puzzle. Great fun. Totally stumped by VICOMTE. Feel a bit stupid now having missed the Roman sex thing despite some ancient knowledge of Latin.Too many good clues to single any one out.
Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Yes, a really great puzzle although I was stumped by VICOMTE and OMEGA and thought I had better get on with the rest of my day. Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Well, I missed one today. 1a. FFS! First of all, never heard of M. Comte whoever he may have been (I thought it was a type of cheese). I knew all the other philosophers’ names. Secondly, we ended up with VICOMTE without any indication that we’re looking for a foreign word not in common English usage. Is that really fair? I know full well, if I’d put a clue like that into one of my amateur efforts (which have been pilloried anyway), I’d have been taken to the cleaners….
Apart from this blemish, OK, an OK sort of crossword, I suppose, though LEPROSERY was rather a puzzler.
Would I have been more fulsome in compliments if I’d finished it? Hard to say.
Hi Maclog – if you were to count in Latin as opposed to English, when you got to the number after five you would say sex.
If you remember Jacob Rees Mogg has just named his sixth child Sextus.
Hope that helps
Comte was very familiar to me as one of the founders of Sociology which I taught for many years. He was also the founder of the now discredited Positivism. I thought the other philosophers were very amusingly clued even the formidable HEGEL.
That said, I found this rather difficult- certainly harder than yesterday’s puzzle-and it certainly took me longer to complete!
I struggled over some that seem obvious now – VERDICT,IAMBIST and PICNIC.
Good puzzle.
Thanks Picaroon.
If, as in 1ac, I’d had a Roman to help me in 16ac, I probably wouldn’t have failed to get RELAX.
Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
Bizarre.
A brilliant puzzle with two awful clues.
What was our illustrious ed doing to allow 1A and 16A. (Nothing I suspect 🙂 )
I know I’m a bit thick but why has Eileen an apparent allergy to “amount”?
BNTO
I’ve responded to you on the Imogen thread.Interested if you could answer!
I didn’t see VICOMTE, as I said. I did get RELAX, but “drop of Lemsip” for L is one of my dislikes too.
A million is a number rather than an amount?
Interesting, 5 females, presumably, have commented here, in comparison with more than 20 males, I guess that when mothers have children still reliant on them they do not have time for crosswords…
Hi Cookie
I suspect that most crossworders are more concerned with grandchildren than children! Am I wrong?
Hi muffin, that is comforting, but usually there are more grandmothers than grandfathers since they tend to be younger and to live longer…
I made my way through this puzzle very nicely, enjoying it all the way, until I reached 1ac, which brought me to a full stop with the finish line just ahead of me. I kept returning to and staring at that clue, from time to time, trying without luck to guess the answer from the crossers (riposte? risotto? ricotta?), All. Day. Long. Finally, the mists parted and “‘Sex for Roman’ = VI” popped into mind — as Eileen and others have noted, this is *far* from a first appearance for that device, so shame on me for having failed to spot it sooner — and then I was able to get the rest of the answer based on the definition and the hunch, confirmed in Andrew’s blog, that COMTE was a philosopher. (Always nice to learn new things when enjoying a crossword!) COD for me was PICNIC, which to me seemed almost &littish, and I also enjoyed CLUE for having “This” as its definition. Many other nice clues as well. LEPROSERY and CLAPHAM COMMON were both new to me, but very gettable from the wordplay (the latter was a nice “Charades”-style clue, if that is the correct term for it). Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.
Cookie @35
Your observation was interesting (although, with many commenters above having gender-neutral names, I’m not sure how you would be able to know which are male and which are female), but I wanted to point out that, even if you are correct about the ratio, your conclusion about which members of society have time for *crosswords* is too far a leap.
It could be that the mothers with reliant children to whom you refer *do* have time for crosswords — assuming that is something they enjoy — but do not have time for (or perhaps they are simply not interested in) posting on fifteensquared!
BNTO @32
You have a point. Those (1A and 16A) are the only clues I marked as weak, although I chose not to highlight them earlier. 1a VICOMTE fell short in the way Andrew mentioned (it is foreign), and 16a RELAX had not only ‘drop of Lemsip’ for L but also the strong filler word ‘catching’ to smooth out the surface. I felt an answer with the pattern –E–A– deserved either a more exemplary or a more accessible clue.
In a crossword with so many good clues a watchful editor might have picked up on these two.
Cookie and others
In the small sample that is my family, my two sisters and I all read the Guardian and do the crossword when we can. (We are all retired and lead busy lives.) It just so happens that I enjoy reading and sometimes contributing to this forum, whereas my two sisters are not inclined to do so. They know that I visit this site because from time to time they appreciate an explanation of the occasional abstruse or dodgy clue – which I am always happy to pass on to them unprompted!
I’m afraid this is just an anecdote, and I can offer no insight into why we have the ‘imbalance’ of the sexes on this forum.
muffin @34
But an amout IS a number.
OED has
amount, n.
…
b. in number.
1801 J. Strutt Glig-gamena Angel-ðeod iii. vi. 221 A number of little birds, to the amount I believe of twelve or fourteen.
1837 A. Alison Hist. Europe VI. l. 714 Fame had magnified the amount of the forces.
1859 B. Smith Arith. & Algebra 4 The Sum or Amount of the several numbers so added.
What makes Eileen think it isn’t?
I’ll answer your reply on other thread later. Rushing off to appointments!!
BNTO
Perhaps Eileen will enlighten us?
BNTO
Perhaps Eileen will enlighten us?
Is it something to do with discrete (countable) or continuous variables? You know, do you say “fewer” or “less”?
Sorry – don’t know what happened there!
Thanks Shirley I get it now
Re gender imbalance in solvers – I’ve often felt it’s shameful, the corresponding imbalance in setters. Why is that? OK there are some excellent female setters (Arachne for instance). But we blokes do tend to dominate. And when I discovered, some time ago, that ‘Imogen’ is actually a bloke, I felt a “Lasciate ogne speranza” moment coming on….
DaveMc @38 – I also tried to fit in RIPOSTE, RISOTTO and RICOTTA at 1a. I was wondering: is RISOTTO the ‘noble’ dish of the Romans? Or is RICOTTA their ‘noble’ cheese? I rather doubted it. Ricotta is only good for pizzas – and patés – in my experience.
Thank you DaveMc and Alan B for your comments – I was just feeling down yesterday evening after this DEAD WHITE EUROPEAN MALE crossword…
muffin @44 and BNTO
Having read that extract from the OED, and in particular the first and third of the three quotes, I’m of the view that amount means something more like quantity, total or sum than simply number. (The second quote would read more naturally, I feel, if it had ‘number’ instead of ‘amount’.)
My Collins dictionary appears to make that distinction: in the 9-line definition of amount the word ‘number’ doesn’t appear at all.
Typically, the answer to ‘how much?’ would be an amount, whereas the answer to ‘how many?’ would be a number.
Hang on though I have just checked and Latin for “six” is “sedecim”!
Sedecim is sixteen: http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/34484/sedecim-sedecie-n-s
The Latin for six is definitely sex, as every sniggering schoolboy used to know..
Cookie @48
In Anne Bradford’s (!) book “Crossword Solvers’ Lists” there are about 300 philosophers listed, of whom six are female. That’s 2%. Ernestine Rose isn’t one of them, by the way.
This is no comfort to you, I know, but I thought you would like to know this unsurprising fact.
Alan B @52, exactly, and most crossword setters are male.
Thanks Andrew have checked again and you are right. I only did first year Latin and it now strikes me as very weird that we never learnt to count!
Alan B @49
The full OED entry starts
amount
1. The sum total to which anything mounts up or reaches:
a. in quantity.
1710 Act 8 Anne in London Gaz. mmmmdcci/3 Shall forfeit double the Amount of the said Drawback.
1852 J. R. McCulloch Treat. Taxation ii. i. 156 A greater amount of revenue.
1879 Wrightson in Cassell’s Techn. Educator IV. 108/1 A smaller amount of straw as litter.
(Hide quotations)
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b. in number.
1801 J. Strutt Glig-gamena Angel-ðeod iii. vi. 221 A number of little birds, to the amount I believe of twelve or fourteen.
1837 A. Alison Hist. Europe VI. l. 714 Fame had magnified the amount of the forces.
1859 B. Smith Arith. & Algebra 4 The Sum or Amount of the several numbers so added.
So it seems pretty unequivocal that the OED thinks that amount can apply to a “quantity” or a “number”. One of the quotes under “in number” is from a book on “Arithmetic”. The clues are there!
Further to our discussion of “dictionaries reflecting usage”, I’m sure it would be possible to find lots of references to whales as fish; what would you think about one of the definitions of “whale” in the OED being “a very large fish”?
(Of course, as E.L.Wisty tells us, a whale isn’t a fish – it’s an insect, and it lives on bananas!)
Thanks BNTO (@55)
Seeing the full entry makes the OED’s definition clearer.
By the definition in 1b one can say that the sum total of some numbers can total 1 million, and in this case ‘1 million’ can be called an amount as well as a number.
I succeeded, I think, in bringing out the distinction between amount and number, but I would now also say that getting ‘million’ from ‘amount’ in the crossword clue is supported by the dictionary definition.
[On a different note, I would question the wording of the OED’s definition, according to which ‘amount’ can be ‘the sum total to which anything . . . reaches’. Does something ‘reach to’ something else? No, it ‘reaches’ it.]
Me @57
Sorry – clumsy wording of my third paragraph. I meant:
“By the definition in 1b one can say that the sum total of some numbers can reach 1 million, and in this case ‘1 million’ can be called an amount as well as a number.”
I didn’t know “leprosery” — I thought it was a leprosarium. Never heard of Blue John.
Martin@13 and FirmlyDirac@28 — when I was living in France I discovered that comté cheese makes better Welsh rarebit than cheddar!
On number vs amount: the distinction is between mass nouns and count nouns — for which one uses “less” and “fewer” respectively. Mass nouns are for things like oatmeal or justice, which have no plural and may stand for a real or an abstract substance. Count nouns are for entities you can count! And you have less oatmeal or justice than you might, but fewer cats or omnibuses. Eileen, is that what you had in mind?
From philosophers to the Seven Disney Dwarves — never say we aren’t wide-ranging!
I meant to say, “you have an amount or quantity of oatmeal or justice, but a number of cats or omnibuses.”
Valentine @59
Exactly. 😉 The hours I’ve spent helping students to distinguish between amount and number – and less and fewer!
[I had no idea there had been so much discussion fully twenty four hours after the puzzle was published, until I saw muffin’s comment today on my blog of Paul’s puzzle. Apart from when I’m blogging a puzzle, in which case I receive emails of all comments, I don’t usually keep revisiting a blog, unless there’s something that I’m particularly interested in – and certainly not the next day, when most of the discussion seems to have taken place. In this case, I thought muffin had answered BNTO’s query @34 – and then I went to bed and knew nothing more about it!]
[This is so late that no-one will read it, but I still wish to say that a discussion that is long, or late, or both, is not necessarily a ‘protracted’ one, and that for solvers like me who usually solve crosswords late in the day I expect to read, and sometimes post, comments up to (say) 36 hours after publication of the crossword. I don’t find all debates interesting, but I am tolerant of them because it is so easy to skip them. I particularly don’t like long debates, but if, for example, a controversial point remains unanswered it is not always best just to ignore it. muffin’s brief post @34 was a perfectly valid response to a query but was not the final answer to a point of detail. (In fact it was a question more than an answer!)
A blogger of course has to read what comes in, and I am sensitive to that when I decide to post something. If the General Discussion page was used more as intended it would be more natural to relegate longer discussions there – perhaps with a prod from the blogger. (Quite recently I tried to steer a ‘protracted’ discussion to the GD page, but there was only one follower – the day’s blog carried on growing!)]
Hi Alan @62
I do look back to see if there have been further posts on threads that I’ve been interested in, so I have read yours.
I agree that some discussions would be better on the General Discussion thread, but I think that this one was OK as it did arise out of a solution in the puzzle.
Thanks, muffin (@63).
Yes, I meant to make a similar point. The purpose of the GD page is for off-topic comments, but it might also be a better place for comments that go into great detail and are a mile long! This is not a dig at BNTO because his comments were on-topic and gave the sort of detail that I could read, skim-read or ignore at will. (In fact I skim-read them.)
[Alan B, out of interest I researched the percentage of female French philosophers this morning : since the beginning of ‘records’ to the present day they make up 7%, in the XX century 11%, and in the XXI century 17%. In France all pupils taking the equivalent of A levels have to study philosophy, and ‘philo’ is the first examination scheduled for the baccalauréat each year.]
[Cookie @65
Thanks for your comment. Those percentages are very interesting, and the fact that ‘A level’ pupils have to study philosophy equally so.]