Guardian 27,805 / Picaroon

75 comments on “Guardian 27,805 / Picaroon”

1. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

   Slow start. FOI was KNOT, though I did think it was a bit weak. Nice to have scientists as solutions for a change.

   Despite being a ex chemistry teacher, I had never heard of REALIA or HEVESY; fortunately they were both well-clued.

   Favourite was ISAAC NEWTON.

2. 12c building structure is arch?  Great crossie but mostly fairly easy. Thanks for blog

3. Meant to add: you must be pleased to get mention at 20d??

4. [Very restrained of you not to spell out what sort of hairstyle DA stands for, Eileen!]

5. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen!
   18 – mar, then cur with an ie on each side.

6. Thanks, Tony @5 – I knew it must be obvious! I’ll amend the blog.

7. A very clever crossword, and rather easier than it seemed at first glance. The only scientist I had no memory of was HEVESY, and he was clearly signposted. REALIA were new to me too.

   Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

8. As beery hiker said, Hevesy and Realia new to me. Having been a science teacher helped here and Thales was a write-in (his home town, Miletus, can be seen in the Pergammon Museum in Berlin where a large part of the entrance gates are “preserved” and quite magnificent).

   The old Asian put me in mind of George Kaufmann’s famous pun “One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian” – pretty apt for the CP Snow lecture. Kaufmann was a much under-rated wit, who came up with the perfect epitaph (“Over my dead body”).

   We’ve seen Liebig before recently, and “ohm’s law” caused a stink in Weekend Crossword 431 where I felt I had to comment on Snow’s lecture and that GCSE/O level science was surely reasonable fare but many solvers there were appalled to have their home-knitted muesli spoiled by the suggestion they should know of such things.

   Lovely crossword Picaroon – thank you, and Eileen for the blog.

9. Should have known better with Picaroon, but popped in knot for 21 Across instead if the much much subtle mach, and therefore spent some time scratching my head over the SE corner.,.

10. Of…much more…rushing too fast

11. When I solved 20d I was really hoping that Eileen would be the blogger of this one.

    Like her, I was surprised how many of the ‘rarer’ themed people I knew, assisted by the helpful wordplay.

    Not as tricky as many a Picaroon but very enjoyable so thank you to him and especially to Lucky 20d

12. What excellent setting to get all the scientists in the Across spaces without introducing obscurities in the Downs (except I didn’t know REALIA).

    I couldn’t remember THALES or HEVESY, although the latter was nicely clued.

    I, too, liked the whizz in the garden, MARIE CURIE, ASCENDED and, of course, EILEEN.

    Thanks Picaroon and 20D.

13. I was surprised that I managed to complete this puzzle correctly without recouse to aids, as the theme is outside my comfort zone – like Eileen, I gained a GCE pass in General Science but no more. The fact that I was able to get through it is testimony to Picaroon’s exemplary wordplay, and that I enjoyed it so much illustrates his unfailing capacity to entertain.

14. Thank you Picaroon and Eileen.

    Great fun and lovely that Eileen was the blogger.

    Favourite clue was that for MENDEL, I am using his Fundamenta Genetica, bought when visiting his garden in Brno, as a mousepad at the moment.

15. Great to see scientists being celebrated. Once Marie Curie in most easily followed, Hevesy too but who is new. Oedipus smartly clued too. All tied together by chicaneries – neat !

    Thanks Pic, and Eileen for blog (hon. mention too!)

16. Well-done, Picaroon – the only obscurities for me were 2dn, (a term better-known to educationalists than teachers, I suspect) and 25ac who isn’t remembered in spite of the wide use of his Nobel-winning technique.

    Thanks Eileen also for reminding me of  the relevant revolutionary at 11ac – I couldn’t get beyond the improbable Watteau (perhaps some relative of the painter?)

17. Hi again Tony Butler @5 – my apologies: I absent-mindedly changed the entry at 18ac, rather than edited it. I’ve restored my original comment now.

18. peterM Watt Tyler and the peasants’ revolt is hard to forget once you hear about his less well known cousin, Which Tyler, leader of the pedant’s revolt…

19. Exactly what Eileen said in her intro and further comments in the blog. Like Ronald@9 I spent far too long with the obvious (and weak) KNOT holding up the SE. I presume this was a deliberate hidden false word – it will be interesting to see if Picaroon comments. Like other REALIA and HEVESEY were new and favourite is MENDEL for the definition. Many thanks to Picaroon for a different puzzle and to Eileen for the excellent blog to go with her honorary mention.

20. My favourites were THEBAN, ASHORE.

    New for me were ISA= bank account as well as REALIA, Joseph LAGRANGE, and Gregor MENDEL – all of which I found in the online dictionary on my Mac laptop.

    The only ones I needed to use google search for were DA = haircut, and Wat T/yler for 11a – the answer seemed obvious but I wanted to know why.

    Thanks B+S – it was fun to see 20d solve as EILEEN!

     

21. Not “fairly easy” for me, but very rewarding to have persevered after I was on the point of giving up a few times. Same DNK’s as others and failed on 11a for which I entered ‘part’, which sort of parses with ‘Some’ as the def, P for ‘power’ and TRA[JAN] reversed as the ‘revolting leader half lost’. I should have twigged that it didn’t fit in with the other famous scientists in the across clues, so I can’t make out a special case. Anyway, ‘”The computer says no”.

    Especially liked the ‘a whizz in the garden’ def for MENDEL.

    Thanks to Picaroon and to the celebrated Eileen

22. In 22, I briefly convinced myself that the mechanics expert was (at a stretch) WREN, and that the limits were (at a bigger stretch) LACE, but then the thematic LAWRENCE was left undefined.  Never heard of LAGRANGE, but it is much better.

     

    Thanks, Picaroon and 20.

23. So glad you got to blog this, Eileen–Also  recalled a keith Richards Wino’s track!_Great stuff.

24. I enjoyed this immensely. Got off to a fast start but had to struggle with a few including 11a, where I was led astray like WordPlodder@21. Favourites were 9a and 13a, where I chuckled at Newton being described as a lawmaker. Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

25. Maybe just sour grapes, but I didn’t like some of this. Arc for building structure? “A whizz in the garden” for Mendel? “English lawmaker”? Scientists do not make laws, they discover them, and why is “ton” style? Never heard of Realia and sounds like a technical term to me.

    And since my gruntle is dessed anyway, mach is not a valid solution because it is a dimensionless number and so cannot be a measure of speed; it’s more complicated than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_number

    And how obvious a solution is has nothing to do with it: The clue is ambiguous and therefore a poor clue if more than one possible solution fits perfectly. “Run” is not superfluous otherwise since  “knot” is not “in” “walk knot”, it is at the end of it.

     

26. Since this us obviously Eileen Day, I’ll mention what I did a while ago, for a bit of a laugh. I ran text-processing software – you know, the kind used to prove Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare – on 5 years of this column. The 12 most frequent words, after lemmatization and stopword removal, in descending order, were found to be:
    thank
    clue
    puzzle
    like
    definition
    think
    word
    eileen
    just
    time
    crossword
    anagram

    It might appear to an outsider that there are two “themes”, solving crosswords and thanking Eileen.

    Thanks Eileen.

27. I was a chemistry student so concur with Muffin_Although many of these were not in that section.

    If you taught me you would be ancient by now!

28. Thanks, 20d.

    I found this a little tough to start with, until I twigged what the across answers had in common. A couple of names were new to me, but the wordplay was clear.

    Applause to Picaroon for “a whizz in the garden.”

29. Thanks both,
    What a delight that was. I confess to checking Lawrence, which gave me the ‘l’, before putting in Lagrange. Two big ticks for 13a.

30. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

    A lovely puzzle and great fun, but a dnf as 9a defeated me. Ridiculous really as I knew all about Mendel and his work but the clever wordplay led me up the wrong paths. Once I’d read Eileen’s blog it became my favourite. Also enjoyed WATT, ARCHIMEDES and ASHORE.

31. Howard March @25 There is not much one can do when a gruntle is so thoroughly dissed but I have asked questions in the past about things I thought a bit unfair and had reasonable answers which put me right and (either chastened or educated, or both) I felt a bit happier – e.g. yesterday when I queried “G” for gallons as my brain and my dictionary only recognised “gal” as the abbreviation. Another poster pointed out that their more modern dictionaries (Collins and Chambers IIRC) had it in so I accept it is a fair clue.

    So to your points:

    “Arc” was actually “arch” which is a pretty fundamental building structure – arcuation and trabeation being pretty much the sum total of ways of building for most of the history of architecture.

    “A whizz in the garden” immediately sent me off searching for gardeners, forgetting the theme and many here felt it was brilliant misdirection – making a “monk”ey out of us… It’s only my opinion but such a weak definition is OK when combined with a very gettable wordplay, as here. You can’t please everyone as a setter, but this clearly pleased many.

    Do scientists make or discover laws? I don’t think there is a definitive answer to that. Mathematicians often talk about discovering rather than making but they know they are working in an axiomatically defined space. Scientists are making statements about the real world – a law is nothing more than a summary of experimental results in a simple form and often only holds true in certain conditions. I would argue that the process of simplifying and finding the right subset of parameters for a law to hold is an inventive process, so “making” seems appropriate.

    “ton” as style came up elsewhere this week, and was much used in the Regency and Victorian eras (as “le bon ton” and “haut ton”) to refer to people of high fashion or style. On it’s own the word “ton” has thus become to mean “fashion” or “style” and I was ignorant of it too until this week.

    I don’t understand why a dimensionless number cannot be a measure of something. We often use them in science – for example I might happily talk about something having a relative density of 0.8, meaning 0.8 times that of water. No units, no problem. Or Relative Molecular Mass, which is very widely used and is the ratio of the mass of a molecule to a standard mass. Mach number as a measure of speed I find hard to nitpick.

    Is “knot” *in* “walk not”? All depends on your definition of “in”. Mathematically is “456” a subset (and therefore “in”) “123456”? Absolutely. Is it “inside” it? Maybe not. Is my name “in” the list “Eileen Grantinfreo Thezed”? I think it is. “in” can mean many things – is a window a thing found in a house? I doubt many would exclude it on the basis that “in” can only mean “inside”.

    I hope this doesn’t come over as too argumentative – I’ve criticised what I perceived as errors in the past and learned lots. If I don’t like a crossword, I say so and a number have not been to my taste, and others have disagreed. It all makes the world go round, but I don’t think the things you say are wrong are all quite as black as you have painted them.

    Anyway, it is sunny and my bees need inspecting so I shall go and enjoy the outdoors for a bit.

     

32. Didn’t know REALIA; never heard of HEVESY or LAGRANGE, but the rest were at least names I recognised, despite being on the arts side of things since I was 14. Loved the clue for MENDEL, and fell into the KNOT trap of course. Thanks 20d!

33. Not wanting to lower the tone too much, but here goes anyway, I think the 9a clue to Mendel has another layer. His work featured research into peas. Peas in the garden, not a mile from a homophone for a wiz (whiz) = pee in the garden. Sorry, I’ll get my coat.

34. thezed @31 – I’ve been out since before Howard March commented but, even if I had been here, I couldn’t have begun to compose so comprehensive an answer, so many thanks for that [including the monk-ey joke]. I do like to answer queries [when I can] – my contribution would have been that I think questions re pi = good and ton = style / fashion should be in our FAQ list, they crop  up so often.

35. I really enjoyed this – at least until I got to 9a, 11a, 2d and 5d, which were beyond me. Despite my lifelong interest in science generally, I didn’t know LAWRENCE or HEVESY, but I did relish getting all those famous names: EILEEN (General Science), KEPLER (Astronomy), LIEBIG (Chemistry), and so on and so on.
    I enjoyed Dr Whatson’s analysis @26 just as much.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

36. monkeypuzzler @33  I was so absorbed by thezed’s comment and so anxious to respond to it that I’ve only just noticed yours [in my email inbox]  which must have appeared while I was typing. I had no idea of that use of ‘whiz[z]’ and now see that Chambers has it as ‘US slang’ [as well as ‘a person remarkably talented or skilful at something’]. Another thing I’ve learned today. 😉

37. I think it’s all been said – a very good puzzle. With comment of the day (IMHO) being thezed @31’s polite and reasoned response to Howard March’s criticisms.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

38. Howard Ma(r)ch @25 I am surprised you left range = limits out of your list.

    I was another one who was slip knotted, at first.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen!

     

39. Several people on the Guardian site have said things along the lines of “it can’t be KNOT as that doesn’t fit with the theme or the crossers”. This doesn’t help if it was the first one in, as it was for me!

40. Many thanks to Picaroon and to Eileen. As 20dn slipped in towards the end I did so hope you would be the blogger, Eileen.

    Delighted to see Alexander von Humboldt making an appearance. A long time ago I was an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung scholar in Germany, and he is still not well enough known outside his native country, although he was lauded worldwide as a great scientist during his lifetime.

    18ac might have had “twice” or “double” at the beginning, although that might have made it too easy.

     

41. This looks like a good time for this history of science graduate to make his first post! It seems to me that the GK requirement was just about right, as I too knew all the themed answers except HEVESY. As a one-time librarian, REALIA was quite familiar, as it is what we call things that we have to catalogue that are, well, things.

42. How is it pronounced, Alun? Is it “reelia” of “ray-ah- lia”, or something else?

43. Ah Muffin. KNOT was my FOI as well but it came a cropper once OHMMETER went in . I was tempted by VOLT for 11ac especially once MANDATED went in. Most of this went in relatively quickly given the limited nature of my scientific knowledge. I’ve got an A level in Logic/ Philosophy of science and that’s as far as I go. I didn’t know LIEBIG and HEVESY but the cluing was good. It was the NW corner that threw me. I’ve never heard of REALIA but MENDAL was LOI and I now think the clue is the best I’ve seen for a long time.
    Excellent puzzle.
    Thanks Picaroon

44. Thank you Eileen and Picaroon! I am surprised by the number of commenters (and I assume solvers) with science backgrounds. My own undergraduate degree is the most useless now possible – Genetics from the ’80s. Monkeypuzzler@33 should win an award for the witty contribution that takes me back to schoolyard slang growing up in Toronto. Welcome Alun@41 – The history of science is endlessly fascinating and I’m jealous of your field. I have taught science and education at university – had never heard of Realia either, therefore a DNF for me.

45. Peter @43

    I used a wordsearch and wondered why OAKFERNS was the answer to 15d (though they are very pretty!)

46. Smashing puzzle.

    Howard March @25 re: ““Run” is not superfluous otherwise since  “knot” is not “in” “walk knot”, it is at the end of it.”

    Try telling the poor guy at the very end of a long queue that he is not “in” the queue. He is the one who feels most in the queue. He is also waiting “in” line for what it’s worth.

    It’s a really silly word to try to argue about. A hole in the wall goes through it (unless you’re talking about the cavity inside one). We talk about how many people there are in the world, when we mean on top of it (or outside it, if you think of it is a solid sphere). A woman in a hat is underneath it. A man in the nude is inside nothing at all.

     

47. thezed @31 – thanks for your comprehensive reply. I was foolish not to notice that “arc” was a typo in the soltion above. As for the rest, all a matter of opinion really, though there seemed to be a lot of loose definitions. Just not to my taste I suppose, though plenty of comments praising the clues I disliked.

48. muffin @42 – “REE-ALE-EE-AH” for me, though it is a word one sees more often written than hears spoken.

49. Many congratulations to Picaroon!

50. Thanks to Eileen and Picaroon

    Depending on which dictionary you consult “gruntle” can mean to groan or to put in good humour. That’s handy because this puzzle did both for me.

    The usual impeccable cluing and attention to detail, but is it just me or is every other crossword themed lately? I often don’t cotton on to a theme in time to make any use of it but I had this one at EDISON. That made every across clue a write-in except HEVESY (never heard of him), and LAGRANGE (because of the lovely doubly cryptic reading).

    But then the down clues made up for it so musn’t gruntle.

    BTW I’m sure 20d is and &lit

51. Thanks Alun!

52. me@50

    “Doubly cryptic” reminds me of this that I saw somewhere once

    He saw action en masse so to speak (5,6)

53. Being a science graduate who has grumbled from time to time about arts bias in crosswords, I was delighted by this. It was superbly constructed and clued – bravo, Picaroon! Not difficult – I got the theme early on and it helped. Like many others, I didn’t know REALIA and HEVESY but they had to be right.

    Thanks, Eileen, for your blog. I agree with you that the old biases have reduced in recent years. I’m gruntled about that. 🙂

54. I’ve just had a couple more hours’ downtime – traditional Friday glass or two of wine with my daughter and partner – but had to say welcome to Alun @35 and thanks for apparently confirming peterM’s comment @16 – in decades of teaching, I used them without knowing what they were called.

    And ‘gruntle’ – lovely word! [which I thought Howard had made up]: I can’t find Dansar’s second definition in any of my dictionaries – but it would make sense of the seemingly opposite ‘disgruntled’ wouldn’t it? I so love this language of ours.

    While I’ve been typing, I’ve seen Dansar’s latest comment. My brain hurts and I’m calling it a day now – sorry, Dansar].. Renewed thanks to Picaroon  and thanks for all the nice comments.

55. Thanks, Median -we crossed.

56. thezed @ 8:  Ha!  Thanks for the Kaufman quotes!

    I also agree with your contention that dimensionless numbers are still measures. In fluid mechanics, Reynolds numbers, Froude numbers and many others convey as much or more information about how a system will behave than any measurement using a single unit of dimension might do.

57. In my comment @35, I shouldn’t have mentioned LAWRENCE, which was the name I found and bunged in, forgetting to go back to solve the clue properly with LAGRANGE. I certainly know of Lagrange, and I liked ‘limits’ to define ‘range’.
    Not my best day today.

58. Eileen@54

    Miriam-Webster has “gruntle” as a transitive verb: “to put in good humour”

59. [Eileen @54

    Do you remember a puzzle from some time ago that featured non-existent “opposites”. The one that comes to mind is “ept” – “if not inept, then not exactly ept”.]

60. […or was it “if not inert, then not exactly ert”?]

61. Dansar @58 – thanks. As I hoped I implied, I did want to believe that definition!

    Muffin @59  – I do and I was obliquely hinting at it in my comment but I’m too tired [and emotional 😉 ] to search for it now.

62. [The search, for once, didn’t help – “ept” found lots of puzzles published in September, and “ert” Puzzles by Filbert et al!]

63. Eileen@61- yes, you clearly implied that. I was just leaving you a reference you could look up in the morning – I thought you were in bed!

64. I’m late–it’s the end of a long day here.  I’ve read the comments and have nothing to add, except surprise (@ Eileen @34) that “whizz” to mean “urinate” is specifically American.  I mean, the surface of the clue, which is quite funny, doesn’t make any sense if you don’t first read it that way–soldiers citing a man for urinating in public.

    Here, in my experience “a particularly adept person” is always wiz without the h; if you spell it with an h, you’re taking a whiz (in the garden or otherwise).

65. MrPenney@64. I’m sure you’re right. It’s short for wizard, isn’t it? I’m not proud of the fact that I didn’t even study General Science at O Level but I didn’t which made this an interesting task. Pleased to have worked out REALIA, KEPLER and HEVESY solely from the wordplay. Forgave myself for not getting LAGRANGE. Doesn’t Humboldt have a penguin named after him? As I said when he cropped up recently I recognised LIEBIG from seeing his name on packets of OXO cubes.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

66. With Mr Penney here: wiz, as in a clever person, I’ve understood to be a contraction of wizard. Whizz in the garden is something else. Other feature of the clue is how long, once crossing E was in  place, RE for soldiers stuck in place.

    Re 21a, Mach and Thezed@31 response and passim, properly a measurement is the relating of a quantity to a metric. If your metric is the speed of sound, then Mach number is very properly a measure of speed – dimensionally they absolutely match. A distance of six inches relates to six times the distance of an inch on a ruler.

    Evident from these posts also is the impact of the ordering of the solve: As 15d ohmmeter in early for this little solver (luckily with a good anagram-matist’s eye), the Mach/knot issue never arose and, as noted instead got hooked on Rendel at 9a.

    Join few points made in supporting more science in xwords – what a vocabulary to work with! Challenge, though, is navigating between GK and abstruseness. As Eileen has pointed out, Shakespeare/arts rightly forms a core of xword-GK because back when they were starting everyone (at least those interested in xwords) were so educated . Maybe not so much these days, but witness the number of those recognising Doll Tearsheet earlier this week! Notwithstanding, perhaps our compilers might be nudged towards a broader vocabulary that recognises this educational change.

    A new day beginning here in the antipodes, breakfast on the table and then, like Thezed@31, I’m off to say hallo to the bees.

67. Delightful puzzle and great blog! Thanks to Picaroon, to Eileen, who is indeed a woman I am inclined to listen to, and commentators one and all.

68. Thanks for such a refreshing puzzle and witty comments: not least the Which Tyler on 11ac. The cryptic in 9ac astounds: the “with American going” sort of doing double duty.

69. Like several others this was topically right up my street, like most it seems, had never heard of HEVESY or REALIA.

    Personally I loved the definitions such as “A whizz in the garden” and “English lawmaker”. (He defined the laws, therefore made them)

70. Late as always, and not much to add, but this was such a clever puzzle that I feel obliged to post. Top blogging from “20d”, one disgruntled customer who prompted an impressively comprehensive and gracious response, lots of scientists, two new facts learned (REALIA and HEVESY), which at 65 is encouraging

71. I’m very glad that the clue to 20 down has been read as a tribute to our esteemed blogger. That’s exactly how it was intended!

72. Thank you, Picaroon. I’m always delighted to see your name on a puzzle I’m to blog and I’m so glad that this one fortuitously fell into my lap – and that it pleased so many other people, too.

73. In case anyone’s curious the (doubly cryptic) parsing(s) @52 were

    He understood action on mass

    and

    He saw action en masse ( a masse is a spin shot in billiards pronounced “massay”). Masse is the anagrind for SAW ACTION EN

    Isaac Newton

74. Just one more thing

    I have a long standing codicil in my will that says any epitaph must include Spike Milligan’s ” I told you I was ill”.

    I hadn’t known of Kaufmann’s quip @8. It may cost me a few quid at SUE GRABBIT & RUNNE’S

75. If anybody is still reading, I too thought I had invented gruntle, inspired by Douglas Adams: “let us examine the ineffable and see if it may not after all be effed” or similar. And I still say mach on its own is not a speed, despite all the well informed points above. How can it be when the speed of sound varies?

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