Guardian 28,880 – Qaos

85 comments on “Guardian 28,880 – Qaos”

1. Thanks Qaos and Peter. I also enjoyed this a lot. Got the theme early too – which helped with unravelling TURKISH DELIGHT.

   WHITE baffled me – got the snooker player but failed to remember that Go is also a game. Doh!

2. Yes, lots of fun. I have to say that my parsing of WHITE was Jimmy riddle = piddle = go! Some good hidden words e.g. PANTHEON. Many thanks to Qaos and Andrew.

3. Second and third ones in were WITCH and WARDROBE so for once I spotted the theme which helped. An impressive breadth of thematic inclusions including WHITE (to go with WITCH) and the LAMPPOST.
   An enjoyable outing.

4. Clever, and even cleverer when you see the theme (which I completely missed). You can’t help wondering whether Hillary and Donald in 22a and losing a vote to fraud in 21d were the beginning of a sub-theme.
   There were three or four which I couldn’t parse but which Andrew explains convincingly – though personally I think 17a and 16d are borderline unfair.
   The parsing of 10a suggested by drofle @2, though a bit contrived IMO, adds pleasantly to the gaiety of nations.
   Thanks to Qaos and Andrew

5. Oh, and I had a smile at UNDERTAKE, as here in Oz it’s not only legal but also common in the cities.

6. Not that familiar with the CS Lewis work, so only spotted the theme after finishing and reading the comments on the Guardian site. That then made sense of 26a, my LOI, which I thought was just a GK test. I think ‘British’ in that clue is just helping with the location (I did spend a little time trying to fit in ‘B’ amongst the crossers to try and find the name of an author). However, I enjoyed the crossword without noticing the theme anyway. Is Qaos particularly fond of those constructed numeric clues? They’ve cropped up before, but I don’t remember if Qaos was the setter then. Anyway, thanks to him and to Andrew for the blog.

7. Previous experience of Qaos’s offerings earned him a spot on my “Don’t attempt” list, but I was feeling brave today, and found it to be less intimidating than I remembered. Enjoyable, even.

   No idea why Peter is a safe, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be a rhyming slang explanation there somewhere? I couldn’t work out why SAN was a hospital; Google directed me to Sydney Adventist Hospital, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I was on the wrong track! In 9d, I assume that undertaking describes overtaking on the wrong side, yes? WHITE was beyond me … both definitions.

   Maybe my skills are slowly improving, so I’ll move Qaos to my “Good” list.

8. Thought at first as I made my way through this quite rapidly that it was a bit under par for a Qaos puzzle. However, when I solved LION, then WITCH, then WARDROBE even I could see that there was a theme, and it greatly helped with the solving of LEWIS. Last one in was TURKISH. Couple of nice hidden words in UNKNOT and PANTHEON. Misread West Asian as West African for a while and was trying to illogically force Burkina (Fasa) into 4d. Thanks Qaos and Andrew…

9. Missed the theme: it’s many years since I read the Narnia stories. I also did not know that Go features black and white players, but I managed to get all the answers and enjoyed the puzzle.

10. I found that very satisfying as when solved the clues parsed, or when built up the resulting solution fitted the definition. It would have been even more satisfying if I’d spotted the theme before coming here.

    I like the numeral clues, but having built a small series of Geocaches along a known Roman Road (this section is a track), I know how much difficulty most people seem to have with Roman numerals.

11. …Burkina Faso, even…

12. Has anyone ever heard PETER meaning a safe used outside of a crossword?
    As ever, I forgot to look for and missed the theme completely, despite being familiar with the Narnia books. This would have given me LEWIS instantly, even though I’d forgotten about the chessmen.
    I’m afraid themes and number clues like that for CYCLONE are not my favourites. I expect we’ll get a puzzle soon made up of nothing but number clues. Might be ok for a Genius, I suppose.
    Thanks Qaos, and Andrew for sorting out some parsing the me

13. for me

14. TomsDad @6 a Qaos trademark are the numeric clues.

    GeoffDownUnder @7 san is schoolboy slang for the sanitarium – boarding school sick bay.

    Peter is a safe is English slang – I’ve heard it used by older Londoners, but looking no one really knows why.

15. The proverbial tea tray is taking a severe bashing on my head as the theme, which in hindsight is so obvious, passed me by. After a fast start I thought I’d discovered what happened to Monday’s puzzle but in the end it proved a fair bit tougher. Thanks Qaos and Andrew especially for explaining the extra p in 18dn.

16. Same experience as you, Andrew. SUSAN was a very early answer (and Peter Pan was just ahead of it). As I wrote in SUSAN, part of me was thinking ‘Bit meh, just to have a random female name. S’pose it could be justified if part of a theme – wasn’t it SUSAN in Narnia?’ and the rest is history. I don’t think I have ever twigged a theme when only about 3 or 4 solutions in so thanks for the opportunity, Qaos.

    Thanks Q&A (not often I get to type that)

17. An enjoyable solve and I actually spotted the theme for once. I do struggle a bit with Turkish = West Asian though. I realise it’s standard in the UK to regard the Middle East as part of Asia but I’m pretty sure Turkey is in the EU.

18. Me @1 – just realised I thanked Peter for the blog, not Andrew. Apologies, Andrew! Must have had the theme on my brain.

    PM @16 – similar thought process, but it was the combination of SUSAN and LUCY that really gave the game away for me.

19. EDMUND was very clever. With my name I tend to be more alert to Peter being safe. In the unlikely event that I get to be the first to post here, it will be a case of Safety First.

20. Thanks Qaos and Andrew
    No theme for me, of course, even though I am familiar with the books. I tend to forget an answer once I’ve written it in.
    Why does a cyclone make your head spin?
    Favourite DISREPUTE – very neat.
    LEWIS chessmen is a bit obscure GK. I knew of them from the Peter May books.

21. As it was Qaos, I was looking for a theme which soon became obvious. I’m getting the hang of the numerical clues now – they look bizarre, but are not especially difficult.
    Thanks to Qaos for some clever and elegant clues and to Andrew for the blog.
    [I reread the Narnia books as an adult and they really are revolting.]

22. Crossbar @12… “Has anyone ever heard PETER meaning a safe used outside of a crossword?”… Try “The Sweeney”, Series 2, Episode 9.

23. The theme should have jumped out more quickly than it did but I eventually twigged. Very good. Always enjoyable when there are lots of theme words to find. EDMUND was brilliant and I also liked the tricksy number clues.

    Of course I have really just chipped in to give a massive groan (but also say very clever) to Peter @19! Couldn’t let that go past.

24. I only got the theme at the very end, when desperate to solve the final clues – and it was looking again at WARDROBE and getting LAMPPOST that clicked. This got me EDMUND and WITCH (d’uh) and then LEWIS, my LOI. Oh, and I knew PETER was a safe, from living in London in my teens.
    Thanks Qaos for such a wonderful puzzle and Andrew for the blog.

25. Cruisy solve, ta QnA. Over half-century since reading those books to the kids, so remembered Aslan*, but … Ditto snooker, seen a few Pot Blacks but White was a bung’n’pray, as was Lewis (fascinating find, those chessmen). Enjoyed the numericals, especially cyclone (tho not its damage). Despite the “hidden”, took ages to see pantheon, d’oh. All good fun.

    *[ .. and that’s because there’s a large crayon drawing of him still hanging in the late Mrs ginf’s studio, left over from her TLTWATW-themed 60th birthday, 1995]

26. Early entries for me included SUSAN and LUCY, from which the theme sprang out – most unusually for me. This helped with much of the puzzle which fell out surprisingly easily.

    I enjoyed the alphanumerics, especially 50A = LAMP, and the hidden clues are excellent. Also SIGNALS – ‘about’ is such a sneakily useful word for setters as it can indicate reversal, insertion or anagram.

    But the unfriendly grid, with all of those unchecked initial letters, gave me problems with the last few, and I am ashamed that my last two entries (having spotted the theme so early) were TURKISH (nicely knotty clue) and …LEWIS 🙁

    Thanks to S&B

27. @Desmodeus: Turkey is definitely not in the EU. Part of the mendacious Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum was a poster falsely stating that “Turkey is joining the EU”. It’s also (geographically) in Asia, apart from a relatively small part around Istanbul.

28. Tim C @22. Yes, thanks, re. Peter. I knew I had heard it used in an episode of The Sweeney, but I was dashed if I could remember which one and too busy this morning to track it down.

29. You just beat me to it Andrew@27. But I would have added the word ‘racist’ to that part of the Leave campaign. Also, it is the fact that Turkey straddles Europe and Asian that enables (most of) it to be described as West Asian.

30. First Asian should just be Asia.

31. Seeing the theme – so 7ly handled – early on turned an enjoyable puzzle into a quite delightful one.

    Lots of cleverness apart from the theme: I ticked SCURRIED (great surface), EDMUND, despite the revolting picture, DISREPUTE, for construction and surface and DECEIT, ditto. I always enjoy Qaos’ numerical clues and admired the cleverly hidden PANTHEON.

    Many thanks to Qaos for a lovely puzzle and to Andrew for a great blog.

32. Enjoyed the theme, which even I managed to spot in time for it to be useful in getting TURKISH. I’ve never seen that meaning of UNDERTAKE and it’s not in Chambers. However I did discover that some failed colonists of the Isle of Lewis around 1600 were known as undertakers (as were the planters in Ulster at about the same time).

33. I spotted the theme in time for it to be a real help, which often isn’t the case with Qaos. Very cleverly done, though I think my favourite was the non-theme PANTHEON, an excellent hidden as Eileen says.

    muffin @20: the Lewis chessmen are also known for having inspired the look of the characters in Noggin the Nog.

    Auriga @21: I tend to agree. Children like the Narnia books because of the idea of a fantasy world existing parallel to ours, but I found that looking at them again as an adult, the heavy-handed moralising is quite unpleasant.

    Many thanks Qaos and Andrew.

34. Well, despite having lived in London for many years, and watching many crime dramas (but not the Sweeney, TimC@22 – never appealed somehow) I only know PETER from crosswords, but I’m pleased to see that it does have a life in the real world.

35. According to my oldest dictionary PETER can also mean a prison cell.

36. Thanks to Andrew and Qaos. I fell at the last fence – I didn’t see the CS Lewis connection, so for 24 I had Circle (turn) less L (first letter of Letter) to give Circe (caster of spells). Bother!

37. I suspect that the “British” was added to make the clue a little harder than simply [Defn1=”author” + Defn2=name of place where famous chess pieces were found]. It’s no more redundant than other modifying words that might be used in a definition (e.g. “West Asian”). Like others, I was trying to get a ‘B’ in there somewhere! … because I didn’t pick up the theme. Duh.

38. Having solved WITCH and WARDROBE fairly early on, I realised the theme, which was a help in solving some.

    I liked SCURRIED and EDMUND for the surfaces (despite the unpleasant Clinton/Trump liaison), TURKISH for the wordplay and LEWIS for the British chessmen, where I failed to make an answer including B for a while.

    Thanks Qaos for an entertaining solve and Andrew for a comprehensive blog and revealing the GO/WHITE conundrum.

39. muffin @20. There is a fairground ride called a Cyclone which will result in a spinning head.

40. SH @39
    Thanks for that. Do you think it is fair to use a fairground ride as the definition without some indication?

41. My last one in was LEWIS, at which point I thought there must be a theme, and there indeed was WITCH just above it. (I had been thinking about CIRCE, PatsyT @36, but couldn’t get the parsing to work!) Like muffin @20, I tend to forget an answer as soon as I’ve put it in the grid, so themes are seldom a help as far as I’m concerned.

    I’ve never read the Narnia books – “mysterious LAMPPOST”, indeed – having been an atheist from an early age, so SUSAN to me is instead the hero of Arthur Ransome’s masterpiece, We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea.

    Thanks to Qaos and Andrew.

42. muffin @40. No more or less unfair than any other bit of general knowledge! Is the CYCLONE fairground ride any more obscure/unfair than the chessmen of LEWIS, or the WHITE pieces in the game Go? Or Jimmy WHITE, for that matter.

43. Thanks for the blog, missed the theme but enjoyed the puzzle. SCURRIED was very neat , also TURKISH , WHITE was clever.
    The LEWIS chessmen are definitely worth seeing, perhaps the British is there because chess pieces have been found in many locations, some much older. The ones from LEWIS are actually thought to be Norwegian.

44. I spent way to long trying to make BOARD fit for “chessmen found here”, reasoning that “British” indicated the letter B. Nope.

    Did not pick the theme at all, to my shame. One of my favourite books as a kid. In fact, it turned my onto turkish delight; I figured that any sweet so good that you’d sell out your siblings for it would have to be pretty good.

45. I too was a bit puzzled by the need for “British” in 26a. Clearly LEWIS is in Britain, but the chessmen themselves are thought by some to be Norwegian, so ?????

    Is the word UNDERTAKE as a driving act actually used by anyone, or is it just a pun on Overtake that Qaos made up?

    Talking of which, here in the US the word “pass” is generally used instead of “overtake” – nothing wrong with that, they’re allowed – except that you occasionally see by the side of a road a sign saying “DO NOT PASS”; really strange on first encounter.

46. Whoops, crossed with Roz

47. [Wonderful image gif@25.]

48. Dr. WhatsOn @45
    Yes, an undertake is a thing – a pass on the nearside. Frowned in the UK, but quite standard elsewhere, I think.

49. Saw Lucy early and pleasant to see others pop up. Thought E D English degree was unnecessary as could have been LEARNED = comprehended – L = made.
    Also Go = WHITE? Would chess = white? My first guess was Trump but let’s not Go there.

    Thanks Qaos and Andrew

50. tim the toffee @49. It’s “Go player” and “snooker player”, so “chess player” would have worked too, but the clever deception of ‘Go and snooker…’ would have been missing.

51. Yes, Dr. Whatson @ 45 re UNDERTAKE. I undertook, went down a mountain in southern Germany in the mid 70s, all by myself, all sides and roof impacted, nothing left except a tiny space which helped me to survive. I also thought the clue might have been a bit of black humour.

52. Thanks Qaos and Andrew

    ttt @ 49 it’s an elision of ‘go player’ and ‘snooker player’, a la “Ian Botham was a cricket and football player”. That doesn’t mean he was a cricket 😉

53. I enjoyed this a lot. I noticed the theme halfway through solving when I had LION, WITCH, WARDROBE as well as LUCY, PETER, SUSAN and (turkish) DELIGHT. It made it easier to solve the rest of it because I then went looking for Edmund. Other theme words then appeared such as LAMPPOST, Lewis, White (witch, Jadis) and Turkish.

    Liked LION, CYCLONE, TURKISH.

    Did not parse 10ac.

    New for me: The Lewis Chessmen (for 26ac).

    Thanks, both.

54. [ I didn’t undertake in the technical sense. Just sailed over the edge, 8.30 am. Saw a GI in his fatigues (while they were still there) at the bottom of the ravine and spoke English to him before I passed out again. What did I do? You fish-tailed. Apparently it was from letting the brake off too quickly after overtaking. Never knew of that risk.]

55. For ‘undertake’ , see ODE:
    British catch up with and pass (another vehicle) while travelling on the inside: he undertook me, at 70 mph, while on his mobile phone.

56. Tx muffin@48 and pm@51. I’ve seen the activity a lot, especially around New York, but had no idea the word existed (in that sense). So maybe Qaos could have got away without the question-mark.

    [Heads up to dangerous drivers in US and maybe elsewhere. In the next few years, the cameras and other sensors in new cars will detect bad behaviors and report back to insurance companies, who will raise your rates. Right now they are just gathering data to establish baselines.]

57. Thanks Qaos. I found this difficult at first but easier as I went on. I could not fully parse the double definitions WHITE, LEWIS, or UNDERTAKE but all else made sense. WARDROBE and WITCH triggered the theme but I needed a wiki reference to flesh it out. I ticked many clues including SIGNALS, WARDROBE, WITCH, PETER PAN, PANTHEON, DELIGHT, and DECEIT. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

58. Lots of posts above along the lines of “I never spotted the theme”, as there often are. Once I was like you, but this place opened my eyes to themes, NINAs and pangrams, after decades of solving in blissful themeless ignorance. And especially if it’s Qaos – which translates as “there will be a theme” – then there will be a theme.

    This was the usual Qaos mix of fun, algebra, theme and ingenuity, my only query being the non-snooker meaning of WHITE.

    TURKISH was last one in, and the only theme-related answer I missed (it’s been a long time since I was forced to read the books to my kids, and I found them rather racist – the books, not my kids).
    Great stuff Q&A!

59. I am a little surprised that some people do not know about Go. It quite often turns up in word play , go=game in either direction. One of the oldest known games , very easy to learn, very hard to play well. Never play against Chinese students.
    Perhaps – Othello and snooker player . ( do people know Othello is white v black ? )

60. Roz @59: Othello doesn’t work for me in this clue for the same reason that chess doesn’t (see mine @50).

61. Spotted the theme at precisely the right moment for it be of no use whatsoever as I’d unwittingly got all the themed clues. So my attempts to find Tumnus etc. came to nought and delayed the finish

    Having just driven down the M1 I have to confess to some undertaking as the left-hand lane was virtually empty the whole way while the centre and outside lanes were clogged up with tailgating muppets

    Cheers Q&A

62. Sheffield Hatter I was thinking of the Moor of Venice on a night out with Jimmy White.

63. Dr WhatsOn @56 – the official wording in the Highway Code is “Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake” (would be overtaking on the right in the US equivalent, of course).

    Pedants will tell you that undertaking is something you do with dead bodies, not cars, but it’s widely accepted as informal usage.

64. Another non-theme spotter. Great fun though, thanks Qaos and Andrew. Chambers has peter – a safe, a prison cell, a till and a witness box, the last two being Australian. No etymology, just slang. Interestingly, it also has peterman, a safe blower. It’s bound to turn up again soon.

65. It helped to spot the theme!

    Thanks Qaos and Andrew

66. Unlike seemingly everyone else, I got WHITE from my knowledge of Go, not snooker (never heard of any snooker players, really). I also hadn’t heard of the Lewis chessmen; that answer only went in because I’d figured out the theme by then. (Which was not early; the only other entry it still had time to help with was EDMUND.)

    On the “is Turkey in Asia” debate up above: anyone ever heard of Asia Minor?

    Even as a teenager, I found the transparent Christian allegory in Narnia a bit annoying. (And I was still a practicing Catholic back then–I’ve long since lapsed.) It helps that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is at least a good story; many of the later books don’t even offer that.

67. DNF because I put an unparsed CYCLING in for CYCLONE, d’oh!

    And this may or not be intended as part of the theme, but while there is no Aslan in the crossword it is the TURKISH word for LION.

68. Easy theme, easy puzzle, very enjoyable.

    Ta Qaos & Andrew.

69. FJ @67 – there may not be an (untranslated) Aslan, but there is a slan (backwards) in 14a, and a couple of backwards CS’s.

    Also congrats to Qaos on slicing the (Gordian?) KNOT. I thunk not that it was possible. And thunks to Andrew too.

70. The origin of ‘peter’ meaning safe is unclear. The most common explanation is that it is Cockney rhyming slang: Peter Pan = can – another slang term for a strongbox. Which rather muddies the clue!

71. The rhyming slang explanation of peter=safe is implausible: the OED has a citation from 1827, and Peter Pan didn’t appear until c. 1902. There are several alternative explanations but no one seems to know for sure.

72. Here’s an interesting derivation for peter and an advertisement all in one. I once found a buried safe in a house I owned, but didn’t know that it was so easy to break in, so left it there for future generations … .

    best,

    geof

73. Lovely puzzle, well-worked theme, and I even recognised it before the end. WHITE was my only uncertain one.

    Thanks Qaos and Andrew.

74. I totally missed the theme, even though I remembered to look for one, and shame on me. It wasn’t some obscure rock band’s greatest hits from the ’70’s but one of my beloved children’s classics, that I read many times. If you’d asked me at any time in the last 60-some years to name the four children, I could have done it, but I never thought of them today. Andrew, how could you have thought of it with just SUSAN to go on?

    Thanks, Qaos and Andrew.

75. Like Andrew, FOI was SUSAN. Hmm, Qaos = theme. Perhaps? Second one EDMUND, then WITCH. I knew for sure then. Lots of fun searching out words from a real favourite of mine. Thanks, Qaos and Andrew.

76. Interesting to see some of the reactions here to Narnia. As a life long atheist, the heavy handed Christian imagery never worried me because they are (mostly) good yarns. Is anyone worried about, say, Neil Gaiman’s use of old myths and legends in American Gods? [Confession: we have a son named Corin – from A Horse and his Boy].

77. Muffin@20 Cyclone is a meteorological term for a rotating system of winds round an area of low pressure, possibly a better idea for spinning heads than the fairground ride

78. [Wow, pdm@51,54, how horrifyingly traumatising. I’m sure I would’ve had nightmares for years after …]

79. Macmorris @64, yes, I remember hearing my parents talking about someone being caught “tickling the peter”, i.e. stealing from the till.

80. Ah I see know Go……player
    Thanks guys

81. [gif@78. Still have a subliminal moment of panic rising every time I’m on a long sweeping left hand bend. The interesting thing is that when I was airborne there was no panic. Just a peaceful going with the flow and a quiet thought “That’s it”. Maybe that helped reduce my injuries.

    The challenge came when I had to be cleared by the neurologist who surprisingly only spoke Schwäbisch to me, checking on my understanding past and present, when I was far more familiar with Hochdeutsch. Fortunately I knew enough of the dialect to convince him to let me out.]

82. [Hours later, sorry, but … Wonderful you survived, and not surprising there’s residual feeling.

    Om a lighter note, re language in that region (summer of ’67), two sources were unintelligible not only to my rough hochdeutch but to my girlfriend, a Munchner, too: one was a cowherd halfway up a mountain trail whose barn we had snuck into, the other was what the Chiemsee boatmen said when we returned the boat … it sounded ribald, and they were probably right 😉 ]

83. [gif@82 🙂 ]

84. Late thanks Andrew for Go (kicking myself as I enjoy a game occasionally) and AMP where I stupidly asked myself where the MP came from despite knowing what A stands for in the surface! I thought this was tougher than many Qaos puzzles with some complex wordplay but lots of very good clues, though maybe ‘old men found here’ would have been a more cryptic definition for 26a – I reckon Qaos was trying to be helpful with the British qualifier even if it’s inaccurate. Thanks to him for a fine challenge.

85. Sheffield Hatter@42
    Is the CYCLONE fairground ride any more obscure/unfair than the chessmen of LEWIS, or the WHITE pieces in the game Go? Or Jimmy WHITE, for that matter. Possibly. I’ve never heard of the fairground ride, but I found the other references obvious. Perhaps it’s just me.

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