Guardian 28,037 / Crucible

81 comments on “Guardian 28,037 / Crucible”

1. I loved this puzzle although I did not finish, having failed 9d (and, after seeing the answer, was unable to parse it except for the anagram of PRIEST).

   Many favourites (basically, half of the puzzle!) – BACCHAE, IRONIST, THEODOLITE, CULTIVATE, EROS, GORGONS, CREON, FATES, WHiTE DWARF, LEANDER.

   Thank you Crucible and Eileen.

2. Marmite. Shall we just leave it at that

3. My cup of tea too Eileen, an early contender for Top Ten puzzles of the year.

4. Was so hoping you would be the blogger, Eileen.

   Here is my comment saved to Word after I solved.

   Following my very dispiriting engagement with yesterday’s Vlad, along comes a beautiful puzzle themed in a way that is right up my alley as a former teacher of Ancient History. (Sorry, that sounds like it’s all about me, and it isn’t. As a strong unionist during my working life, yesterday’s theme also appealed, but I found that puzzle was just too jolly hard for me to solve on the day).
   The Greek theme here – which I was lucky enough to spot about a quarter of the way through – made every theme-related clue a pleasure to solve thereafter. I wrote “very clever” beside both 14a CHARYBDIS (had a lovely image of a wary bishop in my mind!) and the non-themed 11a THEODOLITE. I could have ticked a number of others but I ended up just settling back and enjoying the ride rather than employing an “enjoyment analysis meter”. However I must say my imagination was piqued at the thought of CREON (25d) ripping off his trousers!
   A nice little astronomical sub-theme too.
   I did need to do a post-solve check of ACTA at 10a – Chambers says it refers to “deeds of the saints”, which despite my interest in hagiography, was an unfamiliar word.
   Many many thanks to Crucible for restoring my faith in my solving ability, and to X for the blog.

   So thanks to Eileen (X) is all I need to say now.

    

    

5. Great clues and theme.Never did Greek but have read a bit of Sophocles and Euripides

   And thanks for the blog, Eileen esp Korean/chorean-the best pun and I missed it although I got the answer.

6. Eileen – you must be a fourth weaving goddess to have succeeded in pulling the threads in such a way as to have been assigned the blogspot for this puzzle!  Or was it just Fate?

7. I for one delight in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse!!

   Mind you, if you didn’t have a classical education you were more or less screwed

8. As a fellow ex-classicist, I agree wholeheartedly with Eileen. One of my exam set books was Euripides’ Bacchae. Great puzzle, Crucible.

9. Thanks to setter and blogger. DNF but that’s mostly down to my lack of knowledge on Greek myths etc. I was a bit exasperated by 9D though. A few too many steps for my liking from soul to ‘Chorea’!

10. Enjoyed this but SOUL = SEOUL = KOREAN = CHOREAN was a homophone too far for me.

11. Very enjoyable and right up my street. I was slightly perplexed by 5A as omicron does not appear in “Platon” – I guess that it just indicates a Greek letter, but might have been more elegant to use (for example) Aristophanes.

12. cholecyst @6 – completely random, I assure you! [But I think someone was smiling on me today. 😉 ]

13. And yes, I agree with others about Soul/Seoul/Korean/Chorean – far too tenuous for my liking.

14. I thought this was fairly straightforward once you were clued into the classical references, so long as you had had the benefit of some classical background.     Though thanks to Eileen for the parsing of 9d;  I confess I saw the first part was an anagram and  lazily assumed the rest was as well and didn’t look further, so missed the homophone.   A shame as I’m sure there would have been a moment of triumph if I’d spotted it.

    As others have said, some elegant clues from Crucible to match the classical theme.   Thanks to him and to Eileen for her customary assiduous blog.

15. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    I don’t have a classical education, but I needed Google only for CREON (though I didn’t parse all of TERPSICHOREAN). I must have picked up all the rest somewhere – possibly from crosswords 🙂

16. I’m with you Muffin, much of my classical knowledge has been picked up via crosswords- and today I have learnt the story of the bacchae (courtesy of wiki) and who Creon is. 25d reminded me of a joke punch-line (for the life of me I can’t remember the body of the joke, but it clearly involved greeks and tailors) “euripides trousers, I menda these trousers”, which seems apt for today’s crossword.
    I did enjoy this. Thanks Eileen for clearing up a couple of parsing details and thanks to Crucible for the fun.

17. What a (literally) classy delight after yesterday’s bleak offering  — again, the quality control  of these puzzles is all but non-existent. Great clues, a steady solve from start to finish, no problems parsing, and a feeling of elation when the last clue went in (18D).  I must admit I had never heard of 14A, but it was readily solved from the clue, and it’s always nice to learn something new.  May this be the new norm (I wish!).

18. Well as a scientist who has banged on about “Two Cultures” whenever people complain because a science term creeps into a puzzle, it’d be churlish of me to not let the ancient historians (take the adjective either way…) have their day!

    I think a couple of these were a stretch without knowing some of the material more in-depth (Euterpe and Creon come to mind) but any solver worth their salt has to know Erato by now. Terpsichorean ditto, and the double homophone is (perhaps) a bit of a cheat but given the answer came first, then the anagram of Priest and finally the tea tray moment it is a cheat I am more than willing to forgive. In fact the whole puzzle was colourful, witty and fun to unravel.

    Someone will have to say it though – the statue in Piccadilly Circus is Anteros (Eros’ brother) and formally known as the Angel of Christian Charity. But it’s a mistake so widely made that we (almost) have to accept it.

19. ngaiolaurenson @16

    You may have heard the expression “between Scylla and Charybdis” for a dilemma.

20. Some great variety this week!  Not my subject area today but I had some recollection of almost all and the wordplay in the clues was so tight that I could get them all OK.  Many thanks to Crucible and to Eileen!

21. TheZed @18 – I did ponder whether to be the one to say it – but decided against it: I knew someone would!

22. I keep thinking we’re due an Arachne and when I started solving this puzzle I thought we might get one! I hope this crossword has found its way to the setter Charybdis. For whatever reason I don’t have much of a picture in my head of what to expect from a Crucible puzzle, but I’ve made a note to remember this elegant and entertaining puzzle next time I see his name. Favourite clue today CREON. Thanks to Crucible and to Eileen for the blog.

23. Rats – I wanted to chime in with the Anteros v Eros thing but arrived too late.  If anyone’s interested, the story is here.

    What a delightful stroll through mythology, Crucible has created a thing of beauty this morning.

    My heart sank when my LOI was _ A _ E _ but FATES was so cleanly clued it was unmistakable.

    A non-classicist, I had to did out an old Mythology Compendium and, boy, those ancients must have been on some pretty mind-expanding hooch to come up with those stories! Great stuff.

    RIN TIN TIN remains my favourite.

    Many thanks to Eileen for the first-rate blog.

    Nice week, all.

24. thanks Muffin@19, I have heard of Scylla and Charybdis.
    Thanks also to TheZed218- I did not know that.

25. …dig out – sorry, can’t type.

26. This was great fun. Many years of study of the Eng Lit canon provided me with just about enough knowledge to solve these. I had no idea that EUROPA was the mother of Minos, but hey! the hidden wasn’t too hidden. I thought the EROS clue was a cracker. As was 26a, with Snow White and Seven Dwarfs: very witty and neat surface. Had the theme not been so entertaining, I might have had a grump about the totally arbitrary R=radical and C=college.

    Thanks for this one, Crucible. And thanks to our blogger.

27. Loved this! I thought that most crossword solvers were of the generation for whom Latin and Greek were standard parts of the education? They certainly were for me. Even so, I missed Josh@13’s point about omega and omicron. And like everyone else, am grateful to Eileen for figuring out “chorean.” Still, you don’t need to be a classicist to know that word, just a lover of dance. Why do other Muses not have adjectives in common use, I wonder?

28. Thanks Eileen. The theme was obvious from the start, and if anything made finishing the puzzle a little too easy for those with the right knowledge; e.g. TERPSICHOREAN was a write-in for me from “about dancing”.

    There was a similar clue for EROS in a recent Azed: “Popular circus character, hard up (4)” (it was a down clue); I pointed out the Eros/Anteros thing in my blog at the time.

     

29. Bit too elitist for my liking but that’s probably because I didn’t know the answers. Those with a classical education obviously loved it.

30. I liked this, and knew all the references except ACTA and CREON, both of which were pretty obvious from the wordplay. While it is fun deciphering arcane answers from wordplay and half-remembered GK, personally I find it more satisfying when the answer is an everyday word, cleverly concealed. So my favourite was CULTIVATE.

    Thanks Eileen and Crucible.

31. Thanks Crucible and Eileen. Very enjoyable puzzle.

    ‘of soul’ to ‘chorean’ may be tenuous, but I think it must have been too good to pass up.

    ngaiolaurenson @16: The one you’re thinking of is the Greek who takes his torn trousers to the tailor, who says “Euripides?”, to which the reply is “Yes, Eumenides”.

32. Wonder if Crucible was annoyed that he couldn’t quite get “Achilles” (or Achillles 🙂 ) to fit in 23a.

33. A perfect example of why I do G crosswords – variety. Yesterday’s Vlad with the gig economy and the reference to BoJo’s one time muse and today’s classic offering – clued in such a way that a decent level of GK was sufficient to solve. Like muffin and others Creon was the one I needed Google’s help with and ironically the only one I didn’t parse was the non-themed CHALLENGE. I did parse the two level homophone though so will call it a score draw. Many thanks to Crucible for the excellent puzzle and to Eileen for the matching blog.

34. Many thanks, Simon S @31 [and ngaiolaurenson for the nudge] – I didn’t know that one. 😉

35. Enjoyed this one a lot. Thanks C & E!

36. Pserve_p2 and S = succeeded. Still a fun solve.

37. Nitsuj @ 36

    S = succeeded is a standard genealogical abbreviation.

38. Ngaiolaurenson @16 Goes something like: tailor looking at customer’s torn trousers – what were their names?  EURIPIDES and EUMENIDES.

39. Totally impaled yesterday, but this was a lot more fun.
    Puzzled by all the classicist/non-classicist comments. I am most definitely the latter, but had no trouble with the puzzle – it seems, at least in my case, that it relied on recognition rather than recall.

40. Like muffin and ngaiolaurenson (15 & 16), I’ve picked up most of my classics knowledge from Guardian crosswords over the decades. Creon was new me and I got stumped on 9d.

    I took THEODOLITE as THEO + DOLITE (as in Bob Dole) and wondered what the ‘settled’ was doing there. Thanks Eileen for the correct version.

41. ngaiolaurenson@16: you may be thinking of this:
    – Knock knock
    – Who’s there?
    – Euripedes
    – Euripedes who?
    – Euripedes trousers, Eumenides trousers

    I enjoyed this despite having “small Latin and no Greek”, but was perplexed by WHITE DWARF. The answer is obvious but the parsing very suspect. Is Snow White referred to as simply White anywhere in the film?

42. William @23 – sorry!

    poc @41 I see this as an example of a clue whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, individually the two bits of wordplay don’t quite add up perfectly, but the solution, once lit upon, is obviously right and the surface elegant. I’d rather that, than a clue where I *think* i have the right answer but the wordplay allows for too many variations.

43. No classical education but a good deal of instructive help from wiki. What a lovely, witty puzzle. Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

44. Excellent crossword.  Many thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

    I thought 26a WHITE DWARF was great.  poc @41: it’s a joke! – based on the whimsical idea that WHITE could be regarded as Snow White’s surname.  Rather along the same lines as this Everyman clue a few months ago: “Tom’s family are revolting? Yes” (6,2) for THUMBS UP.

45. I am sure Crucible has done similar themes a number of times before, but I can’t think of a quick way of counting them. No problems with any of the GK – like others many of these owe more to crosswords, quizzes and reading than my meagre classical education.

    Thanks to Eileen and Crucible

46. I’m another non-classicist for whom nearly all of the names were at least vaguely familiar, so spotting the theme early was actually helpful with a few of the answers. The double homophone might have annoyed me if ‘terpsi…’ hadn’t been so obvious from crossers, but I could enter it with confidence even without parsing it. Thanks to Eileen for that and for explaining why EROS is a circus figure. Thanks also to Crucible for a gem of a puzzle.

47. My knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology is fairly superficial, but the figures and deities in the puzzle were well enough known to allow me to complete it, and I enjoyed it very much.

48. Eileen, just in case you didn’t spot it, my comment at 32 was meant to highlight a spelling error in the blog.

49. Re 20d

    Lucifer is the latin name for Venus, the morning star. It is in Collins online

50. ITMA, no ITGA – It’s That Grid Again; the one that lends itself so well to themed puzzles. If a black square is placed over the P of Europa and another over the I of Cicero you have got Boatman’s grid of Friday last. Well done to Crucible for making the bopping muse (great clue) hold out until the very end; for me at least, and I don’t think I will be alone.

    Many thanks to Crucible for a super puzzle and congratulations to Eileen for being so lucky.

51. Fond memories for me; given an O’ level choice between Virgil’s Georgics and Caesar’s Gallic (I think) Wars, I voted for Virgil. I was alone and didn’t even read the Caesar. In the exam after staring into space for ten minutes, I turned to the near impossible alternative unseens. One was a bit of Cicero and for me NOT unseen, turning a certain fail into a pass.

52. Dr. Whatson @ 39:

    Being an incompetent classicist / incompetent scientist, I’m still puzzling about how to get my triangles to you.

53. I didn’t have much of a classical education but I had heard of all the themed people   28a I knew from studying Byron’s Don Juan for A-Level English Lit.  I enjoyed the crossword very much

    Thanks to Crucible and to (even luckier than usual) Eileen

54. Came fairly late to this, impressed by how many classical references ended up in the same puzzle/melting pot. Just couldn’t parse TERPSICHOREAN, though the answer simply couldn’t have been anything else…

55. Fine puzzle, super blog perfectly (if randomly) assigned.

    I knew the classical references in the puzzle, but I’d never heard of Anteros.  Thanks for that to TheZed @18.

    Man walks into an ancient Greek tailor’s with a pair of ripped trousers. Tailor says, “Euripides?” Man says, “Yeah. Eumenides?”

    Medusa’s gaze didn’t turn you to stone, looking at her did. Perseus got around that with his shiny mirror shield.Man walks into an ancient Greek tailor’s with a pair of ripped trousers. Tailor says, “Euripides?” Man says, “Yeah. Eumenides?” Medusa’s gaze didn’t turn you to stone, looking at her did. Perseus got around that with his shiny mirror shield.Man walks into an ancient Greek tailor’s with a pair of ripped trousers. Tailor says, “Euripides?” Man says, “Yeah. Eumenides?” Medusa’s gaze didn’t turn you to stone, looking at hmirror shield.

56. I’m not a classicist but I’ve always loved Greek,Roman and Norse mythology so this was something of a breeze. I didn’t know ACTA though! Everything else appears to have been said.
    Thanks Crucible.

57. Maybe it’s just me being dim, but I don’t see how neuter=doctor. I bunged in the muse, rejected the [n]EUTER+PE parsing and came here for enlightenment. Only to be as confused as before

58. I’ve had the cat doctored, dear.

59. This was a pleasure to solve – more enjoyable than yesterday’s very different offering. I endorse the point made about variety, though, which is something I appreciate very much and is what one certainly gets with the Guardian.

    I found this to be was up my street too, having done well in Latin at school and broadened my classical knowledge over the years as a subject of interest. At school we studied Acta Diurna, a Latin ‘newspaper’, as a learning tool, and I think (Eileen) that that is the actual title of the original important announcement sheet posted in Rome.

    I enjoyed also the sub-plot here about Euripedes. I still remember a themed crossword from years (generations?) ago by Torquemada (I think) with a Knock Knock theme. A clue read “Blank pants – I make-a you another pair”, and the answer was Euripedes [replacing the blank].

    I can easily forget which Muse is which, but I’ve never forgotten the Terpsichorean muse since I first saw Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch!

    Thanks to all commenters for making such interesting reading, and thanks of course to Eileen and Crucible.

60. Arossignol @57 When we take a pet to the vet to be “done” (spayed or castrated) we often say it’s being “doctored” and the euphemism is backed up as informal usage in dictionaries. I hope that explains a little more?

    When various of us were due to collect our doctoral degrees, the in joke was, being “doctored” in the ceremony would make future generations unlikely. One might argue that receiving a doctrate in physics makes you unlikely to reproduce anyway, of course!

61. It was all Greek to me, and I derived no pleasure whatsoever from trying to solve this.

62. (Me @59
    Sorry about the illiterate sentence starting my 2nd para.  Delete ‘was’.)

63. SimonS@37 Thanks. Still stocking my list of accepted abbreviations

64. Very late to the party today, having finished the puzzle on the train home.

    Despite my name, I’m not a classicist either, but it was still an easy theme for me. Clever clues and elegant surfaces.

    The double homophone escaped me, but it was closer than a lot of them are!

    Thanks all round.

65. Hi Alan B @58 – yes, I knew it as Acta Diurna [‘Daily doings’]: I only found out from Wikipedia this morning that  the gazettes were also called simply ACTA. [see here]

    Valentine @55 – well spotted! I realised that when I wrote the blog: my ‘whose gaze’ should have read ‘to gaze upon whom’. 😉

    Hovis @48 – no, I hadn’t spotted it and I’ve been out. [More of a lapsus digiti than a spelling mistake, I think.] I’ll correct it, for the archive.

66. I too recall the Acta Diurna Latin newspaper, with its cartoon of Poppaedius Nauta (Popeye the sailor man to non-classicists!). Happy days.

67. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

    Pretty well all Greek to me (someone had to say it…) but an amount of enjoyment from the likes of LEANDER and OUTCOME.  Also the comments today are very informative: LUCIFER equals Venus? Who’d’ve thunk? Now to introduce it into a conversation…..

68. Good fun, thanks to Crucible and Eileen. I see the answers included SCHILLER and CHARYBDIS!!

69. Thanks, Hornbeam. 😉

70. After yesterday’s fiasco on my part,(got only two) this one was up my street. Almost all clues were smooth. Fave 2d.

71. Stupid TerpsichoreaL, but ‘of soul’ WAS a bit sneaky!

72. Re Alphalpha

    Lucifer was the Latin name of the planet Venus, which is also the Morning Star, Lucifer, the bearer of light. Not to be confused with Venus, goddess of love.

73. Thanks to Eileen and Crucible

    I saw 16a as a DD – “Lots”, “deities” + wordplay, with the “F” provided by the first letter of “female” – “female face”

    In 9d I wondered if there might be a word, (corian or corean perhaps) meaning relating to the core/soul, to account for the missing second homophone indicator, but I couldn’t find one.

74. Many thanks to both. I do not have a classical  education so was astonished at how much I recognised. Mainly, I guess, through the daily dose here. I did have to check a few to make sure I had deciphered the clue correctly. Mainly I would like to express my appreciation that the clues were so well written I was able to complete it. That says far more about the setter that the solver.

75. Re 9d can’t help but think “chorean” is an anagram of “Acheron” the river that the dead crossed to reach Hades. But goodness knows how it’s parsed

76. Nice one – and the blog was rather special too.

    An early run through (before I twigged the classical theme) made me think that either Heloise or Abelard might be the solution for 28ac., both names including two foreign articles.

77. John Wells @8
    I think we had BACCHAE not so long ago. I seem to recall you saying that it was one oof your set books and my saying that I read it for A level. It might even have been in one of Crucible’s. I think that he often drops in classical references, though not so many as this time.
    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen. Well done for parsing 9d.

78. Very enjoyable, and the classical references were not too obscure for someone educated at a school where Classics was not on the curriculum.

    I think the best version of the old joke comes from an episode of Frasier : “Audrey, you borrowed the dress, you tore it. As an old Greek haberdasher once said, Euripides, Eumenides.”

    Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

79. I always thought that snogging was more kissing than cuddling, otherwise this one was just hard enough to be entertaining (as opposed to Wednesday’s Vlad).

80. Brilliant puzzle . . . until I got Cleon and Creon muddled!

81. Having been away most of the week, I’m playing catch up. This one was a real pleasure, though I couldn’t parse a few of them (TERPSICHOREAN, Theodolite, and a few others), so many thanks to Eileen for the explanations. And thanks to Crucible for a fun outing.

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