Guardian 27,325 – Qaos

68 comments on “Guardian 27,325 – Qaos”

1. The monolith is a big feature at the start of the film ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’, as well as Hal being the computer, as mentioned.

2. More themers: Dr. Heywood FLOYD was a key character in the early part of 2001, a Space Odyssey, and BOWMAN and POOLE were the astronauts of the Jupiter mission.

3. APE possibly an allusion to the opening section of 2001?

4. Quite a few see-the-answer-and-work-back-through-the-clue instances here, it must be said.

   I wondered why “massive” was there in the clue for TRICKY (though I had heard of this gentleman) so well done, Andrew. FLOYD was my LOI, held up by a clever misdirection of the definition.

   Thanks, Qaos and Andrew.

5. Apart from several dodgy anagram indicators (imo), I enjoyed this. I also struggled to get a foothold in the NW, but eventually thought of IMBECILIC and JUPITER and the rest followed, but had to guess TRICKY. Didn’t know STAR TRAP, nor the ENGLISH opening in chess, but both were easy to get. Tiny typo in 7d, need to remove ‘tops’ or put it in brackets.

6. Thanks Qaos and Andrew

   It was the NE that held me up. Qaos is usually one of my favourite compilers, but I didn’t enjoy this one at all. I missed the theme (of course).

   I’ve never heard of (and not been able to find a reference to) ADOBES in the plural. ESSAYS doesn’t seem right for “studies”. I knew CILIC, bur I don’t think that it’s a fair clue to expect solvers to have heard of an obscure Croatian tennis player. I also knew of TRICKY, but I’m not sure that one’s fair either – or the Orlando Bloom one? What is the general opinion on clues that require specific knowledge of this type, rather than relying on wordplay?

   Not a lot of smiles. UNDERGO was favourite, I suppose.

7. ..oh, and Keith FLOYD?

8. I thought this was like yesterday’s in that it started easyish but the screw was turned.

   Though looking for a theme I failed to spot it; in fact, I thought it might be Henry V with CAMPAIGN, ENGLISH and BOWMAN, but I found no further support for this.

   Thanks Andrew and Qaos

9. Just couldn’t get LOI one across, although staring me in the face. Had pencilled in Lucifer at first…

10. …and, of course, HAL was designed (and taught to sing) by Dr. CHANDRA…

11. Thanks Andrew.

    I think it is safe to say that the theme is specifically the film (and book series) 2001, A Space Odyssey, rather than space missions in general.

    SPACE ODYSSEY is in the grid; BOWMAN, FLOYD and POOLE are the three central (human) characters along with HAL (the supercomputer), its original programmer Dr CHANDRA, and several APE like creatures (the chief of which is named “Moonwathcer” in the original short story by Arthur C Clarke). There are three MONOLITHS, placed in the Solar System by the OVERSEERs, an otherwise unexplained alien race who taken an interest in our evolution – the first sparks the beginning of the APEs’ evolution into modern humans. When the second is discovered on the Moon, it leads to the third near JUPITER, and the DISCOVERY mission is sent to observe it. On encountering the third MONOLITH up close, BOWMAN, awestruck, comments “My God, it’s full of STARs”. “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, famously used on the film soundtrack is certainly ANTHEMIC. Anything I have missed? The whole film is very OUT THERE!

    Wonderful stuff, Qaos, thank you very much.

12. Thanks, Andrew.

    I got some of the theme but I’m impressed by how much more there was, so thanks to others, too.

    I really enjoyed it all but favourites were FLOYD – great misdirection – and SPACE, for the neatness of the surface.

    I had a chuckle at 26ac, remembering Tony Hancock’s parody of ‘The Archers’, ‘The Bowmans’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHA89Eyt8Yo

    Many thanks to Qaos for the fun.

13. I crossed with Mitz: I only saw the space missions – I’ve never seen the film – so more thanks to Mitz and Qaos.

14. [Mitz @11
    Minor point. As I recall, the Arthur C. Clarke short story, called The sentinel, was just about the discovery of the monolith on the moon. The apes and the Jupiter voyage featured when he expanded it to 2001, A Space Odyssey. The novel and the Kubrick film evolved together.]

15. Great fun-thanks to blogger and posters for pointing out the finer details of the theme. there were a couple of goof synthesisers in there , doing double duty!

16. [I’ve just checked. In the original short story, the artefact was tetrahedral. It became a monolith in the film and novel.]

17. I should probably declare an interest. Many people, when asked “what is your favourite film?” say quite understandably that it is very difficult to pick one, and give maybe a top 5 or a list. For me, 2001 is head and shoulders above any other film ever made, so if I had failed to spot this theme I would never have forgiven myself! I know it is a bit Marmite – Mrs Mitz, for example, has never managed to stay awake to the end…

18. [Quite right, muffin (re #14 and #16)! A further link – a bit tenuous perhaps: in the third book (2061, Odyssey Three) it turns out that an OCEANOGRAPHER would be useful on the mission to Europa…]

19. Mitz @ 17. I’m with Mrs Mitz. Saw the first 15 minutes of 2001 at least 3 times, thanks, I imagine, to Also sprach Zarathustra. I find the better the movie (or its opening theme) the more I’m likely to fall asleep. Only go to matinees these days.
    Oh, the crossword was good too. I was awake to it.

20. Thank you Qaos and Andrew.

    I enjoyed the puzzle even though the theme was completely over my head. I entered TRACEY at 13a and assumed FLOYD Cook was a cricketer, but I was not caught out by the ENGLISH opening having just started to play chess again after a 30 year break.

21. Very clever theme! I suppose another link is the ODEONS where the film was shown.

    [Mitz – perhaps you can explain the ending of the film for the rest of us?]

22. Muffin @6, I would hardly describe Cilic as “obscure.” He’s ranked 5 in the world, was in the Wimbledon final a few months ago and won the US Open in 2014. The “trip hop artist” however …

    Thanks to Qaos and Andrew.

23. @Muffin.

    Can’t agree with you regarding the four examples from this crossword that you cite as being a bit obscure (#6 and #7). Marin Cilic is a grand slam winning tennis player; Orlando Bloom has starred in some of the biggest grossing movies of all time (including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the first three of the Pirates of the Caribbean series); Massive Attack are a many-time award winning group who have sold over 11 million records & Tricky (since leaving them) has had huge solo success and is often described as one of the most influential musicians of his generation; Keith Floyd’s TV shows and books gave him a fan base around the world.

    The GK debate will always rage with respect to what is acceptable in cryptic crosswords, but who draws the line? One person’s obscure bit of niche knowledge is the next’s “everybody knows that, don’t they?” There can only ever be two arbiters: the setter and the editor – I reckon in this puzzle they were right to let all four through.

24. It’s great to come here and discover all the things I’ve missed which add to the fun for those who spot them and for the setter but don’t hinder those (like me) who fail to see them. The combined surfaces of 19 & 21 are excellent in that they provide further misdirection as they have a meaningful common theme. As said elsewhere FLOYD is an outstanding example of misdirection and my LOI.
    As for the GK debate the more contemporary references the better for me – credit to Qaos for getting trip hop into a “broadsheet” crossword! I wouldn’t have known about it without this prompt to explore Wikipedia.
    Thank you to Qaos and Andrew.

25. Mitz @23
    I accept that Cilic and Bloom aren’t as obscure as I said. I’ll even accept Tricky, but Keith Floyd? He might have been well-known 30 odd years ago, but surely no longer?

    (I have loads of cookery books – at a quick count, more than 200, in fact – dating back to Elizabeth David and Julia Child, through Raymond Blanc and Gary Rhodes to Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay – and many others – but I don’t have anything by Keith Floyd.)

26. ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’ almost translated into ‘I’m sorry, Qaos, I’m afraid I can’t do that’ in our house this morning. Like Andrew (to whom many thanks, I relied on you for several) I ended up with a complete blank in the NW corner. The go-and-do-something-else-for-a-bit strategy worked and it fell into place.

    I had the impression that there must be a theme, and if I’d stared at it longer I would have twigged it, since 2001: A Space Odyssey is up there with my favourites. I have known other folk not to be tranfixed by it (the fact that the first two minutes are a completely black screen doesn’t help) but in my opinion it’s a really intelligent film, and the cinematography’s not bad either. As for the ending to the film, JimS … well, there’s a foetus involved. But watch it ten times and then write down your answer on one side of A4 as to what that’s all about.

    Most enjoyable crossword. Thank you to the setter. Must pop out now into the garden to gingerly touch that recently appeared monolith with the outstretched fingers of my right hand …

27. @Mitz and @Muffin: I’m with you both on 2001 (novel, story and movie). I’ve seen the film 10 times in the cinema, including 3 times in one week when it came out in 1967 and again on re-release last year. Despite that, I completely failed to see the theme …

28. Well aware of Cilic, Bloom, and Floyd, but Tricky? Bloody impossible!

29. @muffin

    That’s kind of my point. 21 was one of my last in, but with a massive slap to the forehead both because I did use to enjoy KF’s shows and because I had been looking out for any further thematic entries. Equally, I’m quite sure there are many who remember Floyd fondly who would say “Orlando who?”. But there is no hard and fast answer as to where the line of GK acceptability should be drawn and which of the infinite pieces of (generally useless) knowledge out there should fall on which side.

    @poc

    Sounds like you enjoyed 1967 properly, if you know what I mean. Could that be a reason why you missed the theme today? 😉

30. Thanks to the theme, I avoided having 21 as my LOI (as it seems to have been for many others) – after seeing BOWMAN and POOLE, I started looking for FLOYD! But I couldn’t parse it… I was thinking more Pink than Keith….

    A very enjoyable puzzle from Qaos and a much needed set of explanations from Andrew – thanks to both.

31. Eileen @ 12 Yes the Hancock struck a chord with me too-thanks for link-here goes.

32. If we’re talking about the vagaries of people’s GK: I hadn’t heard of 17d before today.

33. @Mitz @11 I’m awestruck at your recall of the detail of 2001, as I was when I first saw it, 40-something years ago, in a full-size cinema with a wide screen and stereo. Definitely one of my top films, but I think my absolute favourite has to be Sunset Boulevard.

34. If we removed “obscure” words from the Guardian crossword we might struggle to fill the grid. Isn’t any word you don’t know obscure?

35. I got the theme, because for once I remembered to look.

    The ending of the film makes a great deal more sense if you read the book. But Clarke himself said that he doesn’t quite understand it. I think we can assume that Kubrick was on some pretty good drugs.

    I did not know Keith Floyd, though the clue and the crossing letters let him get in easily enough. I also didn’t know Tricky, although that may be because trip-hop music isn’t my thing. In both cases, being British might have helped. Again, the other half of the clue got him in. Did know Bloom and Cilic.

    As for the “too obscure” crowd: these complaints seem to be the loudest when the references arise from popular culture that’s more recent than, say, 1990. The same people happily plunk in British TV characters from the 1960s without blinking. I think we need to accept that if this art form is going to keep going into the next generations, the cultural references that appear are going to have to evolve.

36. Thanks Qaos for a great crossword, although I missed the theme, doh, with SPACE ODYSSEY staring me in the face.

    Thanks Andrew; the obscurities for me were TRICKY and STAR TRAP; the latter’s in Chambers but not in the ODE. Apparently, there was a Texas Instruments game called STAR TRAP, which was originally called STAR WARS until George Lucas’s company objected.

    As others have pointed out, Marin ?ili? is not very obscure, as one of this year’s Wimbledon finalists. However, if you’re not interested in tennis, you probably wouldn’t have heard of him. His previous coach Goran Ivaniševi? I used to call Spitovic for his habit of spitting on the Wimbledon turf at regular intervals …

37. I’m unfamiliar with the theme and didn’t finish the puzzle, having become becalmed in the NW.
    However, I wanted to say to MrPenney@35 that if this site had a recommend button, I’d be getting repetitive strain injury bashing it in support of your final paragraph

38. Cilic and Ivanisevic as the html doesn’t like the accents.

39. To be fair to Qaos, I ought to say that if I had seen the theme, I would have enjoyed this much more than I did. It’s certainly very clever!

40. @JimS

    This may help.

41. mrpenney @35, It’s not the age of the reference that’s the real problem. Some people just don’t do popular music (myself included, though I’d have no problem with jazz standards through the 1940s, long before my birth), just as some don’t do sport, and I think both dislikes are perhaps more prevalent among crossword solvers than in the population at large. There are often snippets of GK that I do not recognise from the world of the arts and sciences, but I generally welcome learning something interesting and potentially useful — I just don’t see how clip clop music could be either.

42. Quite an entertaining challenge as always from Qaos. I thought the theme was a possibility when HAL went in early but promptly forgot about it until ODYSSEY was last in. The film is not familiar enough for me to have spotted more than a third of the references. IDLE WHEEL and STAR TRAP were new to me but all of the more obscure solutions were clued fairly.

    Thanks to Qaos and Andrew (and Mitz)

43. That’s a great link, Mitz, thank you.

44. [Totally off topic: the double version of the chair in this scene – the one that the two women are sitting on at the beginning – remarkably turned up on Antiques Roadshow last Sunday! And no-one thought to mention that it (the scene) was the crowning glory in Leonard Rossiter’s career…]

45. Thanks to Qaos and Andrew. TRICKY and FLOYD gave me trouble, but I’m always pleased when I can parse something that has a cricket component (DISCOVERY). In doing Guardian puzzles I start with the assumption that my GK (or generation) does not correspond to that of setter and most solvers and proceed accordingly. I did know Cilic and STAR TRAP.

46. Some may have missed the big significance of 28A. OUT THERE may be the answer but a further look at the clue reveals the appearance of the MONOLITHS. They appear 3 times in the film to transform humanity.

47. Thanks Qaos, quite a puzzle.

    I got HAL and APE early on (i tend to start with the short ones) and that immediately made me think of 2001. Stupidly I then forgot about that completely while I tried to sort out NW, so it was pleasant to come here and see just how pervasive the theme is. Very clever.

    I knew Floyd, funnily enough, though I’ve never seen his shows and i don’t have his cook books. Tricky was harder, but I managed to track him down eventually. I struggled with the tennis player because I was looking for a 9-letter one, imbecilic indeed.

    The GK didn’t bother me today, which I think is because I eventually solved it. I find I get much more annoyed when I don’t solve it, and I am hoping desperately that that is normal psychology.

    Great stuff, thanks again Qaos and thanks Andrew and also MItz.

48. Thanks Qaos & Andrew

    mitz @ 23 & bodycheetah @ 34

    I think I’ve posted before that “That’s obscure” is actually a synonym for “I didn’t know it”.

49. Thanks both,

    Super puzzle. I was defeated by 21, despite having played with combinations of ‘fly’ and I couldn’t parse 5 or 13. It didn’t help to have put ‘bowyer’ in for 26, at first.

50. Simon S @48
    Not in this case; if you read my post again you will see that I say that I did know all the ones I complained about 🙂

51. muffin @ 50

    (In the nicest possible way) I didn’t address my comment to you for that very reason 🙂

52. Sorry Simon – I misunderstood

53. I got more enjoyment from the blog and comments than from the crossword, but I must also say that although I didn’t know TRICKY or FLOYD from Adam I have no objection at all to their inclusion in the crossword and would not decry other solvers’ enjoyment of it (whether that was in spite of or because of these famous or obscure names). I happened to know CILIC, and that knowledge helped me to get the answer.

    There were several good clues here that I noted while tut-tutting some others. My favourites were 19a DISCOVERY, 7d SPACE, 9d OCEANOGRAPHER and 18d OVERSEER. I know very little about ‘2001’ (although getting SPACE and ODYSSEY made me think a theme must be afoot!), but that lack of knowledge was no barrier to solving the clues.

    Thanks to Qaos and Andrew.

54. Since I’ve never understood the ending of 2001 (I get about as far as the “I’m sorry Dave…” bit before I’m lost), not surprising that I missed the theme! A pity! There are many other words connected with the movie that Andrew didn’t mention (BOWMAN, POOLE and FLOYD, for instance) but I’m sure someone above has posted a list.

    And there I was trying thinking of putting LUCIFER in 1a rather than JUPITER! (is LUCIFER a sort of ‘god’?) Anyway, I sussed out JUPITER in the end!

    Couldn’t parse TRICKY but perhaps, like many others, I wasn’t meant to. No problem!

    Thanks Qaos and Andrew.

55. Enjoyed this, saw the film recently and found it tedious. Missed the theme of course.

    To expand on a previous comment, I think you only notice it is GK if you don’t know it. I’ve had to plough through pages of Shakespeare and Dickens characters on multiple occasions when no one here has raised an eyelid and everything I know about the Ring Cycle has come from trying to complete these things! However, I knew all the people in this one without Google and didn’t even register them as GK. (Although Floyd was LOI)

    Thank you Qaos and Andrew.

56. I’m always excited to see that Qaos is the setter, and today’s puzzle did not disappoint. Unfortunately I didn’t see the ghost theme (despite looking for it, as I was confident there would be one), until after the puzzle was completed, and I drilled down on the answers in the grid until the lightbulb went on. I am by no means an expert on 2001 (or its sequel 2010), and in fact I have never seen either of them start to finish, but I believe I must have seen portions of the original about 2 or 3 dozen times over the years, so I was able to jot down all of the words noted by Mitz @11 *except* OVERSEERs and CHANDRA, whose significance I missed. I wrote down a few others that I thought might also be part of Qaos’s (brilliant) theming: IDLE WHEEL (because of the wheel-shaped space station), IMPLODE (doesn’t Jupiter implode in 2010?), and what I believe could have been two references to Arthur C. Clarke himself, who was an ENGLISH author and was also, if I remember correctly, an OCEANOGRAPHER, at least an amateur one.
    I thought there were many excellent clues — my favorite was IMPLODE (for using “pop” in “pop idol” as an anagrind) — but it was from reading the blog and comments above that I gained a greater appreciation for the clueing of OUT THERE (thanks to Walpip @46) and ENGLISH (thanks to Andrew – I did not know who Nigel Short was).
    I tried to figure out the significance of (but never came up with anything convincing) the use of ellipses connecting the clues for the left and right halves of the second, third and fifth lines of the Across entries. Did anyone else get this?
    Many thanks to Qaos and Andrew , as well as many contributors above.

57. Me @56
    Sorry, I meant “the” many contributors above. Didn’t mean to suggest that I was giving thanks to only *some* contributors (I was not intending I ne of those “you know who you are” moments!).

58. Sheesh. Fat fingers in that last post. I meant to say, “not intending *one* of those …”

59. I struggled with this until about two thirds of the way in when suddenly I got the theme. This made it (relatively) easy to finish the puzzle.I did see the film when it first came out and thought it pretty good. The score was especially good and introduced me to Ligeti whose work I’d never heard before. Anyway, back to the plot,some of the cluing was fiendish-JUPITER and ODYSSEY particularly.
    I thought TRICKY rather easy,I’ve listened to quite a lot of his stuff. I’ve never heard of CILIC though.
    Ultimately enjoyable but it was hard work.
    Thanks Qaos.

60. [Peter @59
    Do you know this Ligeti piece? Rather different from those used in 2001.]

61. Very similar experience to yours, Andrew, taking a long time to fill in the blank NW corner because of ignorance of Croatian tennis players and trip hop artists (whatever they are) – though I still haven’t got into the habit of looking for themes.

62. It’s late in the day and I can only agree with those who found this an enjoyable crossword.
    Like some others, I raced through most of it before coming to a complete standstill in the NW.
    TRICKY wasn’t a problem [although I find “Massive” British trip hop artist slightly clumsy].
    It led to ESSAYS and then it stopped.
    Was looking for a 9-letter Croat with a name ending in C.
    Only after getting ADOBES (looking in Bradford’s, I’m afraid), everything fell in place.

    Two more things.

    Qaos is very good in handling ghost themes but if I don’t see them immediately (like today), I usually don’t look any further.
    Not a problem actually, because it’s a ghost theme.
    But I am always quite surprised that many comments are about the theme rather than about the clueing.
    Look at other Qaos blogs and you’ll find something similar.

    In yesterday’s Boatman, Dutch asked a question about the use of ‘for’ in crosswords.
    Shouldn’t it (always) be “wordplay FOR definition” instead of “definition FOR wordplay”?
    Strictly speaking, yes, but it’s certainly not a rarity to see it the other way round.
    Not a problem to me – which was what I wanted to mention in the Boatman blog but didn’t.
    I intended to add something about another use of ‘for’ (which, of course, I also didn’t).
    Coincidentally, today Qaos does exactly what I wanted to discuss.
    In 3d, it clearly is ‘I + MBE + CILIC’ but what is ‘for’ doing there?
    Does it mean ‘given to’ or something like that?
    It doesn’t feel right to me, and even less in a Down clue.
    In the post-Araucaria years, I’ve only seen Moley and Knut/Julius using it.
    Nobody seems to care apparently, so it’s my problem, isn’t it?

    Thanks Andrew.

63. @Sil “For” can mean “in agreement with” which would indicate equivalence and so work either way round.

64. I came to this after seeing Qaos’ tweet about there being a ghost theme. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen the film in question so even after completing the puzzle (a rarity in itself!) the theme didn’t leap out for me. I figured that it was something space related but that was about it. Oh well, enjoyed the puzzle though.

    Fwiw, I liked all of the pop culture/general knowledge references but that’s probably because none of them were new to me. 8d (the chess clue) was particularly neat, I thought.

    Thanks Qaos!

65. Sil @62

    I’ve always taken this use of “for” in the wordplay to be the following meanng of for

    OED

    for

    …

    12

    …

    d. Introducing the intended recipient, or the thing to which something is intended to belong, or in connection with which it is to be used.

    1411 Rolls of Parl. III. 650/1 Certein Commune of Pasture..whiche the said Lord..claymes for hymself and his tenantz.
    1551 W. Turner New Herball sig. F vv Byrche..is good to make..twygges for baskettes.
    1585 T. Washington tr. N. de Nicolay Nauigations Turkie i. xxi. 27 Were set up 2 faire pavillions, the one for him..the other for the Ambassador.
    a1616 Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona (1623) ii. i. 117 Val. Madam, they are for you.
    a1640 P. Massinger Bashful Lover v. i. 48 in 3 New Playes (1655) Your Bottles too, that I carry For your own tooth?
    1660 Act 12 Chas. II c. 4 Sched. at Boxes French boxes for Marmelade or Gelly.
    1759 Idler 3 Feb. 33 The Idler holds the shield for Virtue, as well as the glass for Folly.
    1835–6 Todd’s Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. I. 518/1 For this group of animals M. D’Haan has proposed the name of Asiphonoidia.
    1839 C. Sinclair Holiday House xii. 281 He bought gowns for all the maids.
    1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. III. 20 He had..secured for himself a place in history.
    1861 M. Pattison in Westm. Rev. 19 413 A fireproof chamber for the muniments.
    1861 M. Pattison in Westm. Rev. 19 413 A stone-vaulted kitchen, where dinner could be dressed for an army of guests.

    Of course this works equally well in across or down clues.

66. Mitz @ various: Thank you so much for your contributions to this.

    For me its one of the greatest masterpieces of all time and groundbreaking in so many ways. I first saw it on a curved screen (the ‘Abbey Cinerama’ in Liverpool)

    I am so gutted that I did not get enough in to spot the theme in spite of getting HAL, APE and the brilliant SPACE.

    Thank you for your help Andrew and Qaos for brightening my day (albeit a day late).

67. JS @63, that’s the ‘for’ that I do not question.

    BNTO @65, yes, that’s what I thought too – still, I am really uncomfortable with it (and perhaps many setters agree because hardly anyone uses it).
    Not so very long ago, I even saw (A for B)* = (A + B)*.
    Not my cup of tea (but there are a lot of varieties of tea, I know!)

    Thanks for coming back to my query, much appreciated.

68. Re for.

    A lot of setters, especially in the past, seem to have used “for” as meaning “a word meaning” and hence had it included in surfaces as legitimately throw-awayable padding which tighter setters might nonetheless have disdained, since we normally take that as read.

    Obviously that doesn’t work in situations where a surface word is needed raw (ie not translated into a “synonym” or similar) so that doesn’t excuse it in Sil’s anagram example: (A for B)* = (A + B)* as there the B has to be used raw.

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