Guardian Cryptic 28,692 by Anto

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,692 by Anto”

1. Definitely harder than a normal Monday but, in the end, rewarding. I thought the Nightingale link for FLORENCE was worthy of Only Connect. My favourites were loi TO CAP IT ALL and LITTLE BO PEEP with HOMESPUN and THE SPLITS coming close.

   Many thanks Anto and loonapick.

2. It took me a while to work out TASER. I struggled to understand TAPS UP as I would have thought it wasn’t an illegal approach, just a confidential one maybe. I enjoyed ICED, SILVERSIDE and THE SPLITS.

3. I thought 20a and 15d superb and 26a and 16d a stretch too far.
   Overall Anto is a good setter to wrestle with.
   Thanks all.

4. Yes, definitely a maturer crossword, and enjoyable: DODO and THE SPLITS were my favourites.

   A while since we have seen an outing of the stock ESSENE.

   Thanks loonapick and Anto

5. Forgot to add HOMESPUN as my top fave

6. 5A and 15D were my favourites. Tim C @2 – at least in football, tapping up is an illegal approach.

   Thanks loonapick and Anto.

7. Entered BERKELEY at first for 25 which held me up for a while, until I realised that the anagram fodder for 5 didn’t have a Y in it. Definitely required more work than the normal Monday offering, but I prefer that, I hesitated at the spelling of 11a, but the answer couldn’t be anything else. Thanks to Anto and Loonapick.

8. I thought “THELMA AND LOUISE” (5 down) was excellent, given that it works as an &lit.

9. I got FLORENCE, but could not see what the “square singer” bit had to do with it. Missed on TAPS UP, an expression I’ve never heard. I was wanting it to be STOPS UP, which is an illegal approach to a player in football, but it didn’t fit.

   Thanks loonapick for clearing that up.

10. Had to look up TAPS UP to discover that it’s an illegal approach to a player under contract to another club.

    Enjoyed the multiple references in FLORENCE but felt they rendered the clue a bit nonsensical from a surface point of view.

    Took ages to see LITTLE BO PEEP. Would have been quicker with shepherdess I suppose.

    LOI AT LATEST which took almost as long as all the rest.

    Enjoyable start to the week, many thanks, both.

11. Don’t know what happened to the italics !

12. A trifle more thought required than usual for Monday, which I agree is no bad thing. The clue for FLORENCE is a bit odd and the surface is not up to the standard of most in the puzzle. Spelling of 11ac caused raised eyebrows.

    Favourite was TO CAP IT ALL.

    I think the whole clue for THELMA AND LOUISE is an allusion to the solution.

    Thanks to S&B

13. Lots of rewarding solves but I came here for the literal meaning of 14a and 17a which escaped m.
    14a makes some sense now , but “nothing after this” is better that “not after that” ?

    I cannot envisage “AT LATEST” being used in a sentence. And 17a is still a total mystery to me?

    Just looked up SAFE WORD to see what it means …… blimey! Did Paul collaborate with Anto on 17a :0)
    Expect AT LATEST to be weird and AT THE LATEST does seem to be far more commonly used.

    I expected LATEST to be connected with “Latest flame” (Elvis song) and I wondered if AT was in a similar vein to a “beating”?

    Cryptic clues were very enjoyable , and 15a (and many others) were amusing. Loona, at my age crouching is sufficient.

14. I agree with Don Rogers @8 re THELMA AND LOUISE – brilliant. Also smirked at THE SPLITS and enjoyed LITTLE BO PEEP. SAFE WORD was my favourite.

    Ta Anto & loonapick

15. I found this a bit of a struggle, especially for a Monday.
    Didn’t know that TAPS UP was a “thing”, legal or otherwise, so cheated it.
    THELMA AND LOUISE I’d heard of, but new nothing about them. Just assumed they had suicidal tendencies.
    SAFE WORD caused an eyebrow raise.
    My favourite was THE SPLITS which made me smile. Even that took me ages and a partial cheat. Also liked DODO, after spending ages trying to get duo in there, and Morecombe and Wise. 😀
    FLORENCE was like one of those clues on Round Britain Quiz on Radio 4, if anyone is familiar with it. And is it still broadcast?
    Thought DISEMBOWELED looked a bit odd to my Brit eye, but just shrugged.

    Still, all in all, quite enjoyable. I wonder if I’ll find the Quiptic more difficult today as I usually do.

    Thanks Anto and loonapick

16. Sorry, knew not new. I blame autocorrect.

17. Crossbar @15: Do watch Thelma & Louise. Superb acting by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, plus a cameo from a very young Brad Pitt. Heartbreaking ending.

    I don’t think RBQ is on any more; which is a shame. I only rarely answered any but enjoyed the tussle.

18. Enjoyed this although there were a couple I couldn’t parse.

    LITTLE BO PEEP was my favourite and made me laugh.

    Thanks Anto and loonapick

19. Crossbar @15: I wonder how many others thought of Morecambe and Wise, as I certainly did with affection 🙂

20. Forgot to add 17A as a cheeky favourite!

21. Enjoyed this, and just about the right level for a Monday, I thought.

    My only serious quibble is with AT LATEST, which surely nobody has ever used without a THE in the middle!

22. It’s good to see that we’re getting a bit of variety on a Monday, no offence to Vulcan. I found this one quite tricky – and was actually quite pleased that I didn’t manage to sort the anagram into SAFE WORD! I’m aware of it but it’s sufficiently far from my normal experience that it simply never occurred to me.

    DODO is right up there along with LITTLE BO PEEP and, of course, THELMA AND LOUISE. And, if a groan at a homophone – or should that be a holmeophone – can signify quality then HOMESPUN certainly deserves a tick. I did have the same couple of issues as others – the surface for FLORENCE and the spelling of DISEMBOWELED. My other question (and this is with my trainee setter’s hat on): is SELFIE strictly speaking an indirect anagram if it includes E for earl in the fodder? I guess the E for earl could be the final E which would take it out of the fodder, so long as ‘with’ does not imply directionality. Anyone else have a view? Or is the E so accepted an abbreviation that it can be included without a problem?

    Crossbar @15: RBQ was certainly broadcast last year – I listen to the whole series on podcast when on my annual winter trip to the Highlands. And as obscure as ever.

    Thanks Anto and loonapick

23. RBQ was on last year and is scheduled to return

24. Never heard TAPS UP, and it’s not in Chambers. Ditto BETA MALE. Can’t imagine AT LATEST being used in a sentence, though apparently it does exist:

    https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=at+latest%2Cat+the+latest&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cat%20latest%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cat%20the%20latest%3B%2Cc0

25. [William @17 I thought I’d stumbled on RBQ not that long ago at some time in the afternoon when I don’t usually listen. It could well have been pre-Covid. Googling it says there are no available episodes to listen to and no upcoming episodes. 🙁 ]
    I’ll give T&L a go when I’m feeling strong.

26. Maybe BOWIE is a reference to JIM BOWIE and his trusty blade which could have been used to disembowel the unfortunate. As an American (presumably) his “arrangement” would have yielded the US spelling? Obviously some double-duty involved but Anto does like to push the boundaries of acceptability

27. Postmark @22 we crossed. Thank you. You’ve confirmed that I didn’t imagine listening to RBQ.

28. Like a few others here, I had no idea what a SAFE WORD was and looking it up afterwards, I’m not sure I needed to know! TAPS UP was also a new term to me. Wish I’d been able to appreciate the cleverness of THELMA AND LOUISE, but never saw the film.

    Favourites were LITTLE BO PEEP and THE SPLITS. Ouch.

    Thanks to Anto and loonapick

29. PM @22, re SELFIE:

    “I guess the E for earl could be the final E which would take it out of the fodder, so long as ‘with’ does not imply directionality”

    – that was how I reconciled myself to it. If you went walking with a dinosaur, he/she might be on your left or on your right, and if you wanted ‘fries with that’, you’d probably be happy irrespective of the relative positions of the fries and the ‘that’.

    Same flexibility for down clues in my book:
    ‘scones with jam and cream’ – jam & cream on top
    ‘table lamp with base’ – base underneath

    That said I’m not sure I’d take kindly to ‘with’ as an insertion indicator (tea with milk and sugar).

30. thanks Anto and LP! my FLORENCE parsing was predicated on the assumption that Firenze must have its own well-known piazza and so I decided that “singer” and “who lit up…” were just two additional definitions.

31. eb @29: thanks. To clarify, though, if you reconciled yourself to it, I presume that means you weren’t happy to include E for Earl in the fodder for an overall anagram?

32. Yes, a bit more chewy than the usual Mondays.

    I thought FLORENCE was just a dd; ‘city of noted square’ (Florence) and ‘singer who lit up sick soldiers’ (the lady with the lamp), but maybe it was supposed to reference Berkeley Square?

    I liked THELMA AND LOUISE (although difficult if you hadn’t seen the film), SILVERSIDE (nice allusion) and THE SPLITS (Paulian humour). I see the OED has: at (the) latest: used to specify the latest time or date at which something can have occurred in the past, or can happen or be done in the future. I’m pleased to say that I tried WORD SAFE at first, being ignorant of the alternative (what a sheltered life I’ve lived).

    Thanks Anto and loonapick.

33. I’m sure E=Earl is documented somewhere, and with sufficient manoeuvring it can be excused from being part of an indirect anagram, but I didn’t like that one – unlike DODO, LITTLE BO PEEP and THELMA AND LOUISE, which took a while but was worth the wait. Missed the Berkeley Square nightingale (not knowing Florence, like Ilan Caron I thought it must be there) and couldn’t parse BETA MALE or find the taper in TASER. Nevertheless, very enjoyable – I’m getting to like Anto.

34. … actually my dd doesn’t really explain ‘singer’ unless Florence Nightingale sang.

35. [essexboy @29: ‘scones with jam and cream’ is an unfortunate example because of its ambiguity. Which goes first on the scone is a notorious shibboleth in the West Country!]

36. PM @31: yes, I’m a bit of an outlier in this forum in not liking any indirectness in anagrams – although I noticed sheffield hatter in a recent discussion sort of edging towards the same line (hope I’m not traducing him). SELFIE is the mildest kind of indirect anagram, as E for Earl is a one-letter abbreviation, but we’ve seen setters recently use two-letter ones (EMIRATES = anag. of ‘that is’ with ‘stream’).

    I commented on that occasion that EMIRATES was the kind of indirect anagram that seems to be gaining a foothold – I wish it wasn’t, as I suspect this device will open the door to others (say = EG, city = LA/NY/EC?) and the sheer number of permutations will eventually become off-putting.

    How about ‘Drunken sailor with Geordie superior gives signal (6)’?

    [Gervase @35: I knew I’d be stirring up violent passions with that one. Perhaps we need a SAFE WORD 😉 ]

37. Am I alone in liking TRUMPISM? I also liked many of the others mentioned above, especially THELMA AND LOUISE. I eventually twigged to LOI BETA MALE, but it’s ugly. TAPS UP is never used here in Oz, as far as I know, so that was a guess. Like GregInOz, I was thinking of boots, adn toyed with STUD UP – but ‘stud’ is not quite ‘dust’ reversed – the fight being a ‘dust up’. OK, OK, convoluted thinking, I know. FLORENCE was a bit of a bung and hope. Thanks, Anto (for whom I sometimes find it hard to hit the right wavelength) and loonapick.

38. essexboy@29 and Gervase@35 I think that the fact that “is it jam with cream or cream with jam?” would not work as the controversial question makes eb’s point. I have to admit that I did try to solve SELFIE by assuming E was the first letter. The HO(l)MES pun was all too familiar from the estate agent Sherlock Homes.

39. An enjoyable puzzle with some inventive clues. THELMA AND LOUISE reminded me of Everyman’s “Film in which maidens with auto hell-bent! (6,3,6)” a couple of years ago (3,795).

    PostMark: the sort of indirect anagram that was condemned by Ximenes was the completely indirect anagram – the “Think of a synonym for this word and make an anagram of that” type. In his book he gave the example “Tough form of monster” for HARDY (anagram of HYDRA). Nearly everyone avoids these. But partially indirect anagrams, where the clue directly gives us most of the anagram fodder but we have to take an extra step to get one or two letters, are quite widely accepted, although some people don’t like them.

    Many thanks Anto and loonapick.

40. The good points easily outweigh the iffy ones
    Excellent blog
    Thanks loonapick and Anto

41. 5A – I’m not sure the definition is either appropriate (people using their public position to express political views, though increasingly common, is always a bit of a distraction) or accurate (for a non-politician to win one election and get 74m votes in another one doesn’t look a lot like idiocy).

42. RBQ alternates with Brain of Britain and Counterpoint in the Radio 4 weekly quiz slot at 3 p.m. on Mondays

43. Shirley @42 I’ll make a point of listening.

44. [Lord Jim @39: thanks for that. I had wanted to anagram the four letters B, R, U and M so had opted for ‘black rum shot’. After a constructive independent review, I revised that to ‘starter of black rum shot’. Hence my interest in incorporation of single abbreviations. B for black and E for earl are well accepted. But with the compass points, chemical elements, international vehicle registrations, it strikes me there’s a lot of potential additions to the given fodder in a mild/partial indirect anagram.]

45. Thx to Anto for challenge and to loonapick for parsing the ones I couldn’t. Laughed at NIGGLE, liked DODO, [the Shepherdess] LITTLE BO PEEP, and can’t agree with those who don’t like Thelma and Louise, I’m with Don Rogers @8 and thought it was excellent.

46. [Gervase @35 The Cornish method is definitely the way to go – A home made scone sliced in two, followed by a layer of Butter then a spread of Strawberry Jam topped with a blob of Cream. Delicious….]

47. Thanks Anto and Loonapick. Plenty of laughs in this one, lots of fun. Same favourites as those already mentioned by others.

    PM @22 – I thought SELFIE was OK on the basis that “flies undone” is pretty obviously an anagram, so we can see that we need one more letter and “Earl” sticks out like a sore thumb. I’ve never seen the abbreviation outside crosswords, but it crops up often enough to be familiar.

48. Ilan Caron @30 – Florence has *several* notable squares, and I found the clue a bit confusing as a result. If you’ve ever seen A Room With A View, the Piazza della Signoria and Piazza Santa Croce both figure prominently in separate scenes. I completely failed to pick up on the reference to the song – got as far as nightingale = singer and didn’t think beyond that.

49. 12 dn Many is either “a lot” or “lots” not “lot”.
    9 ac When you scoop you “bail” not “bale”.

50. J@48 Chambers, as ever, begs to differ on bale/bale

51. Robert @41 agree to differ on both counts: TRUMPISM was a favourite partly because I agree with the sentiment.
    THELMA etc, THE SPLITS and SAFE WORD also highlights for me.

    AT LATEST isn’t a usage I have come across much, and I struggled to reconcile the FLORENCE Nightingale singing in Berkeley Square (which is notedly in London) connections, but all in all a nice puzzle thanks Anto, quite knotty for a Monday, so thanks loonapick for unpicking.

52. More interesting and entertaining than the average which I am very grateful for.

    LITTLE BO PEEP and THELMA AND LOUISE stood out for me.

    BETA MALE held me up more than the whole of the rest of the puzzle!

    Thanks Anto and loonapick

53. Never heard of a beta male, but I suppose they must exist.

    A shunt is an accident? I thought it was shifting rail cars onto a different track.

    What are RBQ and T&L?

    eb@29 Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I go walking with a dinosaur.

    With substitutions, the clue for 25a reads “Florence of nightingale who lit up sick soldiers.” Huhh?

    Thanks for the puzzle, Anto, which I didn’t get much of last night. I definitely needed loonapick’s help this morning. News to me that a bale is a scoop.

54. Valentine @53, see me @15. RBQ = Round Britain Quiz on UK radio with rather involved cryptic questions. T&L = Thelma and Louise.

55. Valentine @53

    “Rear end SHUNT” is very common parlance for motor accidents of the kind where a car drives into the rear of the car in front.

56. Thanks both.

    Not my cup of blood but hard to say why – a wavelength thing as TassieTim@37 said. Just not in form I think.

    akaRebornBeginner@13: I have encountered e.g. “on my desk by Monday morning at latest” which certainly meant ‘not after that!’.

    Loved the surface for GRANDIOSE.

57. Thanks, loonapick, for parsing TASER, the one I couldn’t get. I’ve never heard of SAFE WORD, BETA MALE, AT LATEST or THELMA AND LOUISE, so I’m quite pleased to have completed this puzzle. Thanks, Anto.

58. Too hard for me. Failed 14ac, 23ac, 16d and I could not parse 26ac, 21d.

    Liked TRUMPISM.

    New: SHUNT = car accident.

59. [WARNING: CLUE & SOLUTION FROM LAST WEEK’S QAOS PUZZLE DISCUSSED HERE!

    essexboy @36. The “indirect anagram fodder” I sort of objected to was in Qaos 28686 – see #35. My semi-objection was to ’10CC? Strangely’=>CCENT (in ECCENTRIC). That is a long way from ‘earl with flies’ and Mark’s ‘black rum’ @44.

    I think generally the objection is where there is too much of a stretch, so solvers generally don’t mind ‘point’ for one of N,S,E or W if it’s to be inserted somewhere, but don’t like it when it forms part of the anagrist. ‘That’s’=>IE is another that is used in wordplay but can be frowned upon in anagrams. To me it largely depends on how easy it is to resolve the wordplay into a solution, so I had no problem with SELFIE but had doubts about ECCENTRIC, which were somewhat assuaged by the aptness of the clue’s surface and its general solvability.

    As has been said many times, there are no rules; we just discuss here things that we feel may be unfair, or which we don’t like. ]

60. Thank you loonapick, I did fathom the singer of Berkeley Square but didn’t understand why the soldiers were lit up- I still don’t think that clue entirely makes sense but like its style – thanks also various people for the RBQ comments, I have somehow missed this entirely so far and must put that right.
    As a gamma male at best i thought the definition of 9A was a bit harsh and am indebted to Cyclops for introducing me to the ESSENEs a couple of years back or I would never have got that one. Alphalpha@56 re AT LATEST, me too, often seen in “alpha e-mails”.
    Really enjoyed this, DODO and SAFE WORD both stood out for me, thanks Anto.

61. Like jeceris @49 I was looking for TOLA or STOL for ‘many back’, but I don’t think we can say that ‘many’ does not equal LOT; or at least, there’s some support for the use in dictionaries and thesauruses. And Chambers, as Bodycheetah @50 pointed out, has BALE as an alternative spelling of BAIL.

    Where I struggled today was with some of the definitions, such as ‘it should stop a beating’ and ‘no longer with us’, but these and others just required a bit of thinking outside the box, which is welcome. At least there’s a bit of a grin when the penny drops!

    I liked the clue for FLORENCE; although I appreciate that some found the surface clunky, it worked for me.

    Thanks to Anto and loonpick. And thanks to Gazzh too for “alpha e-mails” – glad I don’t have to put up with those since retiring from work!

62. Thanks Anto. I liked SAFE WORD, ESSENE, THELMA AND LOUISE (great anagram), UNSPOILT, and TASER. I didn’t like TRUMPISM (not that I’m a fan of his) but because I think that cow has been milked dry. (I also think the same of Boris Johnson.) At this point the skewering has become trite. I thought AT LATEST was awkward without “the” between “at” and “latest” as Steve69 @21 pointed out. Thanks loonapick for the blog.

63. Didn’t the clue for 10 (Underwear found in shopping area aboard ship) appear in another Guardian puzzle recently, say within the last month?

64. DougV @63; you’re right, the same clue by Anto 2 weeks ago in Quiptic 1,161.

65. To all compilers: stop using any word at all to indicate its first letter. E = earl. Stop it.

66. Gazzh@60: Florence Nightingale was famously the Lady With The Lamp who patrolled her wards full of sick soldiers at night – so they were lit up? That clue has got too many passing references for its own good and they trip over each others’ feet.

67. hilt @ 65

    E for Earl is in Chambers, so is fair game. Sorry!

    Edit to add – just checked Collins and it’s there too.

68. I didn’t tag THELMA AND LOUISE as an &lit. as only one of the men Thelma and Louise encountered in the movie could have been described as “in heat” and I don’t recall any of them being particularly loud either, so semi &lit. possibly.

69. Sorry Loonapick @ 67, and Mssrs Chambers and Collins, but I am with Hilt @ 65 on this one.
    And sorry Robert @ 41. getting 74 million votes in the second election just looks like 74 million idiots to me.
    Anyway, thanks Anto for a witty crossword, and thanks Loonapick for an extremely useful blog.

70. Sorry Job and Hilt @65, but the standard dictionaries – principally Chambers for the Guardian, sometimes Collins for the Indy – provide the established and (within their limits) authoritative frameworks within which setters and solvers negotiate the business of wordplay. If you reject E for Earl because you don’t happen to like it, then you are in effect rejecting the whole protocol. The framework is not what works for you.

71. Robi @64: Thanks for hunting that down. I’m glad to see it wasn’t lifted from another setter.

72. I’m with hilt and Job. Just because a dictionary gives an abbreviation is not a good reason to use it in a crossword. I’ve reached 70 without coming across E as an abbreviation for Earl. Abbreviations should be kept to those in common circulation. One dictionary I checked gives 78 possibilities for E. No one can possibly know them all.

73. And I’ve reached 58 without ever seeing ESSENE before so should that be excluded from the setter’s palette? Isn’t learning stuff part of what makes this fun? As the buddhists say: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but by learning new tricks you may avoid becoming an old dog 🙂

74. Job @69. “I am with Hilt @ 65 on this one.” But as Loonapick pointed out @67, E is a standard abbreviation for ‘earl’, and for earth, east, eastern, ecstasy (the drug – hence just drug or pill, etc), electronic (hence, for example, over the internet as in e-mail, etc), English, European, Spain (international vehicle registration) – all of these are in Chambers and other dictionaries.

    Baeticatus @72. “Just because a dictionary gives an abbreviation is not a good reason to use it in a crossword.” Seems pretty good to me. But which of these do you accept and which do you want crossword setters to stop using? How do you define “common circulation”? And if you’ve “reached 70 without coming across E as an abbreviation for Earl” then you obviously didn’t do Imogen’s cryptic 28676 here (see 4d) less than three weeks ago.

    BTW, the setters are not going to stop using them. 🙂

    Easier, on the whole, to learn to use them yourselves, as all other solvers and bloggers have learnt. And as bodycheetah says @73 “Isn’t learning stuff part of what makes this fun?”

75. No one has to like all of the rules of a game but if you agree to play you have little choice but to follow them. I personally like the wide range of words that can be abbreviated with a single letter because it gives the setter more leeway in constructing a clue with a readable surface instead of some concocted word salad.

76. Oh dear.
    This muppet has precious few crosswords he can solve and Monday in the Graun is usually one of them.
    But not today. I think I managed 5 answers. Hopefully I can find the Sun picture crossword somewhere.
    Still there is the Quiptic left to do.
    Thanks both.

77. [sh @59 – thanks for reminding me of the Qaos discussion, and yes, I take your point. There’s clearly a difference of degree between a single-letter abbreviation (as used, for example, by Nutmeg last Thursday) and Qaos’s ‘10cc’ – although someone new to cryptics (and also possibly hilt/Job/Baeticatus!) might find the idea that ‘earl’ can be changed to ‘E’ just as much of a stretch as ‘10’ becoming TEN.

    I don’t like either (in the context of anagram fodder) but I know I’m in a minority.

    Where I think there may be some common ground between us is your point @73/85 in the Qaos blog re the ‘thin end of the wedge’ (and like you, I apologise for the cliché!). It’s not that I’m imputing any evil intent to crossword setters – well, not all of them – it’s just that if a device is regarded as well-established, without any complaints, it’s very easy to continue to use it and maybe push the boundaries further.

    Take lift-and-separate, for example, which is now very common in Guardian puzzles. I’m happy with that – it’s often very witty, requires just a little lateral thinking, and doesn’t have huge permutation-multiplying potential. But indirect anagrammery does have that potential, as PostMark illustrates @44 today, and that’s why I occasionally like to wave a red flag.

    As you concluded last Monday, This forum is a means of getting out there the information that some of us think there are boundaries that are maybe being stretched a little too far. (And also that some of us disagree!)

    (P.S. That’s why I’m happy to see the Earl-haters expressing their point of view here too 😉 ) ]

78. [Thanks essexboy for a very thoughtful contribution. Are you involved at all in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine? I’m sure your skills would come in handy.]

79. [sh – thanks for the compliment – I suspect that discussing with yourself and other 15²-ers may be slightly more pleasant than dealing with Putin.]

80. Re the Earl dispute: a lot of less well known abbreviations are in the Holy Book and therefore you have to accept that setters are allowed to use them. This doesn’t mean you have to like it when they do.

81. I sympathise in general with the grumblers although E for Earl is now familiar to me. Out of curiosity, I picked a random letter, S, and checked the Holy Book. There are 25 words available to the setter! How many people would be happy (apart from Roz) at seeing S clued by entropy or strangeness?!

    There are clearly words we would mostly accept (eg South for S) and there are others which would be a stretch especially the physics words above for the layperson. We have to leave to the judgement of the setter which of those between the acceptable and unacceptable to include.

    For the crossword to evolve, setters are entitled (even expected by some) to push boundaries. I’m sure there are clue types that were once met with collective eyebrows being raised that now no longer trigger any facial movement except perhaps a smile.

    PS tougher than usual Monday offering. SAFE WORD was brilliant (and it’s very sweet some hadn’t come across the word), THE SPLITS conjured up an amusing image and THELMA AND LOUISE was a trip down memory lane.

82. Single-letter abbreviation (I call them SLAs because it’s a PITA to type out in full) is clearly giving some people a right old bone. Of contention.

    My feeling is that it is unfair to enable or permit compilers to use anything ever used as an SLA, as solvers cannot be expected to know the ones that are seldom used, or indeed used for the nonce. And even if they happen to be sitting next to a copy of the dreaded Scottish Book, without knowing which letter is being indicated, they still wouldn’t stand a chance. The Times and The Daily Telegraph agree with me on this, as they both issue their panels with a list of permissible SLAs, with which solvers, as you might expect, have become au fait.

    Such limits do make compilers work (slightly) harder to get their surfaces to sound convincing, but then, judging by the quality of the cluing we find in those two journals, it is by no means impossible. Personally I don’t see a problem with limitation on this score, as if you’re any good there’s always another way to proceed, and as hinted at above, originality and cleverness need not necessarily suffer under such circumstances. It is also pleasing to note that in papers that don’t impose restrictions, many compilers don’t resort to SLA obscurity to gets themselves out of a hole.

    There you go. That’s my view. All I’d hope for is that a list for all SLAs deemed allowable could be standardised and shared across the five major providers of blocked puzzles, especially if some degree of logic could be introduced to it.

    For DLAs, well, that’s another discussion waiting to happen. The Times doesn’t put up with IVRs or Internet digraphs, for example.

    TTFN
    Ts.

83. PS, speaking of things that are found in dictionaries, what is a SAFE WORD?

84. paul b@82/83 – there is some merit in a standardised list. My feeling (without statistical evidence) is that my favourite setters on G don’t resort to “obscure” SLAs. Cryptics would become very boring if every word becomes a potential candidate for SLAs and we have to look them up to see if they are in fact SLAs.

    Out of sensitivity for those who’d rather not know, here’s a link to safe word.

85. I was going to respond to paul but pdp beat me to it.

    I really enjoyed this one, although the last few were a struggle. I thought FLORENCE was exceptional and I also enjoyed THELMA AND LOUISE, SILVERSIDE and LITTLE BO PEEP.

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