There is a recent pattern here…I have left the finishing touches to the last minute again…this time due to a recent holiday and a parental 80th birthday…so my sister, who is visiting from Australia, has suggested I should use ChatGPT to fill the spaces…
I’m completely sceptical about this, even after 30+ years shirking working in IT, but here goes…
“Title: A Rollercoaster Ride Through Crossword Conundrums: My Latest Triumph
Introduction:
Greetings, fellow cruciverbalists! Today, I’m thrilled to regale you with the tale of my recent conquest over an intriguing crossword puzzle. This was no ordinary puzzle – it was a wild ride filled with twists, turns, and aha moments. So grab your favorite writing instrument and join me as we relive the adventure!
Setting the Stage:
Picture this: a quiet afternoon, a steaming cup of tea, and a blank crossword grid before me. The promise of hidden words and cryptic clues beckoned, and I was ready for the challenge.
The Dance of Discovery:
Across Clues:
1A. HELICAL
- The guy I call out is spiralling (7)
The dance began with a call-out to “the guy” (HE) followed by a twist and turn, spiraling into “LICAL”. Voila! HELICAL emerged, a word that danced across the grid.
5A. TRACHEA
- Cleopatra cheated a bit and got it in the neck (7)
Oh, the intrigue of deceit! Cleopatra, ever the schemer, “cheated a bit” and found herself in the neck, elegantly revealed as TRACHEA.
9A. RIVEN
- Hell-bent, without divorcing at first, to get separated (5)
A tale of determination! “Hell-bent” without the first letter of “divorcing” led to RIVEN, a separation achieved through sheer will.
Down Clues:
1D. HERESY
- This is why we hear unorthodox view (6)
Ah, the power of sound! “This is why we hear” unveiled HERESY, a viewpoint that sang out in unorthodox harmony.
3D. CONTRABAND
- Suspect carton starting to burst with illegal stuff (10)
A caper of contraband! The “suspect carton” took us on a whirlwind chase, bursting forth with the illicit treasures of CONTRABAND.
5D. TARANTINO
- Top star with rogue nation director (9)
Hollywood intrigue! The “top star” led us to the enigmatic director, TARANTINO, a maestro of cinematic sleight of hand.
The Climax:
As I navigated the grid, each clue became a mini-adventure, a story within a story. The thrill of discovery was palpable, and the answers seemed to leap from the page, each one a victory in itself.
The Grand Finale:
As the final squares filled, I looked upon the completed puzzle with a sense of triumph. The crossword, once a blank canvas, now bore the imprint of my conquest.
Epilogue:
And so, dear fellow word-wranglers, I leave you with this tale of my recent crossword odyssey. Remember, every puzzle is an adventure waiting to be embarked upon, a mystery to be unraveled. So pick up your pen, summon your wit, and let the games begin!
Happy Puzzling!
”
Holy guacamole…this was after feeding it just my last Grauniad blog and the parsings below…I think my fellow bloggers and I can hang up our Bics and our iPads – we are now officially re-dun-dant!
My apologies to Philistine for treating his puzzle in such a philistine way – I did enjoy solving it, but not on a balmy afternoon with a cup of tea, rather on an early morning airport transfer coach in Croatia, with a sweaty white-bread ham sandwich cocooned in clingfilm, listening to their equivalent of ‘Steve Wright in the early morning’ as we split from the hotel to Split…
Lots of lovely surface reads and clever stuff – the ‘CleopaTRA CHEAted’clue; the TALC/curry powder clue – don’t want to get those two mixed up!; the use of : in COLONOSCOPY; the TROLL as a ‘gruff hazard’; APRI in APRICITY as a ‘foolish day’…and lots more.
I did raise an eyebrow at having HYDRATED and DEHYDRATED not just in the same grid but two clues apart and almost adjacent in the grid – maybe there were no alternatives given crossers, but a strange setting/editorial choice…unless they were part of some devious Nina that I have missed?
Anyway, my thanks to Philistine and ChatGPT – hopefully you can tell the difference between our contributions above, and I trust all is clear below…
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1A | HELICAL | The guy I call out is spiralling (7)
HE (the guy) + LICAL (anag, i.e. out, of I CALL) |
| 5A | TRACHEA | Cleopatra cheated a bit and got it in the neck (7)
hidden word in, i.e. a bit of, ‘cleopaTRA CHEAted’ |
| 9A | RIVEN | Hell-bent, without divorcing at first, to get separated (5)
( |
| 10A | CORIANDER | My dear, in cooking find a herb (9)
COR (interjection, my!) + IANDER (anag, i.e. cooking, of DEAR IN) |
| 11A | SURPRISING | Unpredictable ending of talks with rebel leader in revolt (10)
S (last letter of talkS) + U_PRISING (rebellion) around R (leading letter in Rebel) |
| 12A | TALC | To begin with, take a little curry powder (4)
first letters, i.e. ‘to begin with’, of ‘Take A Little Curry’ |
| 14A | BELLIGERENT | Fighting soldier’s back to be embraced by beautiful woman, with tears (11)
BELL_E (beautiful woman) around (embracing) IG (GI, American soldier, back), plus RENT (torn, or ‘with tears’) |
| 18A | COLONOSCOPY | Medical procedure: very backwards and not original (11)
COLON (:) + OS (so, very, backwards) + COPY (not original) |
| 21A | RAPT | Delighted in a blanket, by the sound of it (4)
homophone. i.e. by the sound of it – RAPT (delighted) can sound like WRAPPED (in a blanket)! |
| 22A | DRAWBRIDGE | Perhaps one-all game of defence (10)
DRAW (perhaps one-all) + BRIDGE (card game) |
| 25A | FORESTERS | Woodworkers in favour of organic compounds (9)
FOR (in favour of) + ESTERS (organic compounds) |
| 26A | TROLL | Gruff hazard for undesirable poster (5)
double defn. – the Billy Goats Gruff were menaced by a TROLL under a bridge; and a TROLL might post undesirable opinions on the internet |
| 27A | LIP BALM | It’s soothing to find one empty pub in a restored mall (3,4)
L_ALM (anag, i.e. restored, of MALL) around I (one) + PB (empty PuB) |
| 28A | ECDYSIS | Discarding the cover to fix disc? Yes! (7)
anag, i.e. to fix, of DISC YES |
| Down | ||
| Clue No | Solution | Clue (definition underlined)
Logic/parsing |
| 1D | HERESY | This is why we hear unorthodox view (6)
HERES (here’s, this is, contracted ‘s) + Y (homophone, i.e. we hear, of WHY) |
| 2D | LIVERY | Uniform consignment with half the shop gone (6)
( |
| 3D | CONTRABAND | Suspect carton starting to burst with illegal stuff (10)
CONTRA (anag, i.e. suspect, of CARTON) + B (start of Burst) + AND (with) |
| 4D | LOCUS | Grasshopper mostly in position (5)
LOCUS( |
| 5D | TARANTINO | Top star with rogue nation director (9)
( |
| 6D | AWAY | See 23D (4)
see 23D |
| 7D | HYDRATED | Dry death foiled by being this (8)
anag, i.e. foiled, of DRY DEATH |
| 8D | APRICITY | After foolish day, financial centre gets winter warmth (8)
APRI (April 1, a foolish day!) + CITY (financial centre) |
| 13D | DEHYDRATED | Water creature starting to twitch indeed, lacking water (10)
DE_ED (from in-deed, lifted and separated) around HYDRA (water creature) + T (start of Twitch) |
| 15D | LASER BEAM | A European tucking into refined meal that’s light (5,4)
L_EAM (anag, i.e. refined, of MEAL) around (tucked into by) A + SERB (a European) |
| 16D | SCORNFUL | Ignoring the odds, profane 4 can be derisive (8)
anag, i.e. can be, of RFN (even letters of pRoFaNe, i.e. ignoring the odd letters) + LOCUS (4D) |
| 17D | CLAPTRAP | Show approval for role reversal nonsense (8)
CLAP (show approval) + TRAP (part, or role, reversed) |
| 19D | ODIOUS | Vile musical abandoned by a Spice Girl (6)
( |
| 20D | REALMS | Areas dealing with charity (6)
RE (dealing with) + ALMS (charity) |
| 23D | WASTE (AWAY) | & 6 Drinking tea used to be method to lose weight (5,4)
WAS (used to be) + WAY (method), around, or drinking in, TE_A |
| 24D | ASIA | Essentially bypassed quiet bay to reach land (4)
middle letters, or essence, of ‘bypASsed quIet bAy) |
Thanks mc_rapper67. I’m impressed but I don’t think it is yet time for you to hang up your Bic and iPad, I prefer the less flowery and more direct explanations. I worked my way slowly but fairly steadily through this and learned a couple of new words in the process, APRICITY and ECDYSIS. I had the first four letters of the first plus the 5th and 7th but couldn’t see how ‘apricots’ could be the answer. Some clever construction here, I took some time to come to terms with SCORNFUL and WASTE AWAY and I admired COLONOSCOPY. The use of punctuation marks is not new of course but I still fall for the device.
Took a while but got there in the end.
Favourites were: COLONOSCOPY (took me ages to sport the colon), HERESY, LIVERY, REALMS, ODIOUS
Thanks Philistine and mc_rapper67
Big tick for the : in COLONOSCOPY and having had a few, it’s not surprising that HYDRATED, DEHYDRATED and ODIOUS appear in the same grid.
Don’t chuck in the day job, mc_rapper67!! Interestingly, I had come across APRICITY recently (a new word not from crossies!). I also wondered about the DE/HYDRATED pair. A pleasant solve, all round. Thanks, Philistine and mc_rapper67.
Thanks rapper and Phil. So, is that an example of AI replacing we humans? If it needs your parsings to start with, I guess not. Fun puzzle anyhow. Apricity and ecdysis were totally new, but otherwise a pretty straight run. [Reservoir Dogs the only one of Tarantino’s seen … me and mrs ginf had to come home and watch an ep of The Bill to de-traumatise]
Thanks Philistine for an excellent crossword. I savored this over several days and I enjoyed every bit of it. I couldn’t parse LIVERY but all else made sense. My top picks included COLONOSCOPY, HERESY, CONTRABAND, TARANTINO, APRICITY (loved the foolish day), CLAPTRAP, ODIOUS, and WASTE AWAY. Thanks mc_rapper67 for the creative blog.
Thanks for the blog, good set of clues and two new words to learn. APRICITY was a very neat clue, new word, but I will use it a lot in future as I am very fond of winter sunshine. ECDYSIS was trickier to be certain being an anagram, I waited until all the downs were in and this seemed the only possibility.
TALC is bottom of the Mhos scale with diamond at the top.
I failed on apricity, even after guessing the city part, and now I can see why. “Foolish day” is the kind of reference that you either see or you don’t. Nothing wrong with the clue though. I’d be interested to know if anybody has heard of the solution.
Thanks, mc_r, not least for the reassurance that AI is unlikely to take over any time soon.
Like many, I had to check ECDYSIS and APRICITY, and for me ESTERS was new also.
Good puzzle, Philistine, not too easy. I wondered if there was a theme, particularly with the two (DE)HYDRATEDs, but couldn’t find one. Can anyone help?
I had to look up APRICITY and liked discovering a new word. I’ve come across ECDYSIS, in insects, had COLONOSCOPY but didn’t spot the : doh!
Roz@7 I’ve just written and submitted a Geocache earth cache and in it suggested that basalt had a higher Moh value than Portland Stone (which is why it’s used for the base of the monument), so your comnent panicked me that I’d misspelt it.
Completed it all and quicker than several weekday crosswords, including yesterday’s Vlad.
Thank you to mc_rapper667 and Philistine.
I rather think ‘Simulated Intelligence’ is a better description of what ChatGPT does, but we seem to be stuck with AI. As for the puzzle, I wasn’t surprised to find that Philistine knew at least two words that I didn’t, and I’m sure by now it’s obvious which they were. At least the clues were helpful. APRICITY wasn’t in my Chambers app, nor was it in my very old printed Shorter Oxford, but the web knew it. Chambers did have ‘apricate’ for basking in the sun, so I did learn a new word for something I enjoy. So, thanks Philistine for an enlightening puzzle, and mc_rapper67 for an entertaining, enlightening blog.
I only tackled this today and finished it more quickly than most prize puzzles, which is probably just a lucky wavelength thing. I did have to use an anagram helper for ECDYSIS though. The COLONOSCOPY trick was fun but I only saw it after the event when nothing else would fit. I’m rather pleased to be in the minority that knew the word APRICITY already 🙂 I remembered it from a Susie Dent etymology book. Lovely word. Surprised that it’s not in Chambers.
Thanks both!
Enjoyable puzzle. My favourite: COLONOSCOPY.
New for me: ECDYSIS; APRICITY.
Thanks, both.
* I prefer human blogger version to ChatGPT which uses way too many exclamation marks, tends to be way too wordy and does not explain very clearly.
[ Sorry Shanne@10 , I do know how to spell but I do not know how to type, I always check but still miss things. These comments are the only place I ever type, I often spell crossword wrong but I know I must check that. ]
Tim C@3 might be on to a theme here. Also Barium sulphate is a powder used for colonscopies. And the colon takes the WASTE AWAY.
Philistine seems to have included more than his customary one or two clues from his day job this time.
I tried to find a connection between HELICAL and TRACHEA but learned a lot about how the heart muscle is now known to be shaped and how it works.
My guess was there was a link between HYDRATED, DEHYDRATED, LIP BALM and ECDYSIS.
I liked the almost counter-intuitive cluing of HYDRATED (dry death) and . twice in DEHYDRATED.
water twice in DEHYDRATED.
A puzzle much enjoyed when I tackled it on the day. APRICITY was my last in (not surprisingly): it’s not in Chambers or Collins, but I did find an entry for it in Collins online, where it says “New Word Suggestion”, then the definition and finally “Approval Status: Under Review”. The contributor described it as an old word worth reviving. As KeithS indicated above (@11), it must be related to ‘apricate’. Both words are new to me.
Thanks to Philistine and mc_rapper.
Yes KeithS@11 and AlanB. Apricate another word meaning to dry out in the sun.
Thank you mc_rapper67 for explaining gruff hazard in TROLL. I didnt know that story. Great clue.
Interesting to try out ChatGPT – it produces something with a sperficial appearance of a blog (albeit an irritatingly verbose one) without any actual content at all. No actual ‘intelligence’ apparent.
… and thanks for the HI (human intelligence) blog!
PS I took a while to parse COLONOSCOPY, at first I thought ‘backward’ was part of the definition – it is indeed a ‘backward’ procedure!
Excellent puzzle. Same 2 new words as most (I vaguely knew there was a word for reptiles/insects shedding skin, but had to guess/confirm the spelling). Although I knew the story title, my childhood bypassed the Billy Goats Gruff tale so the troll connection was new to me. Favourite the much-liked COLONOSCOPY.
ginf@5 – good thing you didn’t misread the schedule and watch a screening of Kill Bill by mistake!
Thanks Philistine and mc_rapper67.
[Pedant corner: Shanne @10. While it is true that basalt would scratch Portland Stone (a limestone) and not vice versa – and thus be ‘harder’, it would not be higher on Moh’s scale, which is a hardness scale for minerals rather than rocks. It just so happens that the major minerals in basalt are all harder than the primary mineral in limestone, i.e. calcite.]
[TassieTim@23 – I’m not good on minerals – it just happens this particular war memorial has what is described as a black granite plinth, which I suspect is basalt, a Portland Stone pedestal, a green marble panel for the World War I names and white marble panels for the WW2 and Afghanistan losses – which neatly encompasses examples of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, all accessible to view from ground level and/or a wheelchair. There’s also a bronze statue of Victory atop it all.]
Completed but with an error. I had Africity which disappointingly does not exist as a synonym for winter warmth.
Knew ECDYSIS from Ancient Greek…
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%94%CE%BA%CE%B4%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B9%CF%82#Ancient_Greek
‘1 A stripping, shedding | 2 An escape’ – both meaning “taking off”.’
…and from ECDYSIAST – a posh word for a stripper.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ecdysiast
‘Coined by H. L. Mencken from ecdysis (“moulting”) (on the model of enthusiast etc.).’
‘…However, the Queen of Ecdysiasts, Gypsy Rose Lee, was not amused. In a 1940 interview, she leveled her guns against Mencken: “Ecdysiast, he calls me! Why, the man… has been reading books! Dictionaries! We don’t wear feathers and molt them off… What does he know about stripping?”‘
I spent ages trying to parse the end of APRIcate, to no avail until the TTM. APRICITY is in the ODE as ‘rare’ and in Wiktionary as ‘obsolete’. I liked the lurking colon, the ‘here’s why’, the ‘top star’, the ‘meal that’s light’, and the ‘method to lose weight’.
An enjoyable solve; thanks Philistine and mcr (and no thanks to ChatGPT).
Thanks Philistine and mc_r
APRICITY is in the OED as dating from 1623, so it’s unsurprising that few seem to have heard of it.
And ECDYSIS is related to the posh term for a stripper, ECDYSIAST.
Between the puzzle and the blog, a bit of a romp one way or another.
I guessed APRICITY from knowing the Latin apricus, ‘exposed (from the Latin ‘aperire’, to open) to the sun, sunny, basking in the sun, bathed in sunlight’, which occurs a lot in poetry, but even my big Latin dictionary makes no mention of the sun in winter and googling revealed that Samuel Johnson’s dictionary has simply ‘warmth of the sun, sunshine’. I also found this article from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/22/weatherwatch-warm-winter-sun-theres-a-word-for-that
Like others, I had to rely on crossers to solve the obvious anagram for ECDYSIS.
Once again, I had too many favourites to list and having had a couple in the last year, I wouldn’t have expected to say that 18ac was one of them but I do like that kind of clue.
Many thanks to Philistine for the puzzle and mcr for an even more entertaining than usual blog.
APRICITY comes from Latin APRICUS “sunny”. The etymology of APRICOT is much more involved:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apricot#Etymology
‘…with influence from Latin apricum (“sunny place”)…’ – but ultimately from PRAECOX
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/praecox#Latin
1 ripe before its time; premature | 2 PRECOcious; untimely.
Floundering with this blog.
What is ChatGPT supposed to mean?
I liked the puzzle, though.
Super puzzle. Hilarious blog. Thanks, Philistine and mc.
For extra fun, try getting ChatGPT to write some cryptic clues…
Anna @31 according to Bard is: “ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is trained on a massive dataset of text and code, and can be used to generate human-like conversations, answer questions, and compose different kinds of creative content”
Thank you bodycheetah.
So does that mean that our blogger got ChatGPT to write the blog for him?
Is that why it reads ‘odd’?
Where do you get this ChatGPT from?
Ahhh yes, Eileen @29, but does Samuel Johnson’s dictionary have contrafibularity in it?
When I googled APRICITY last week, I got this fun article by the folks at Merriam-Webster: Apricity and Other Rare Wintry Words. For those of you who don’t believe in clicking through, the word appears to have been invented by a lexicographer in the 17th century, and never caught on.
TALC need not be powder. I remember in a geology class in school the teacher had hand samples of most of the Mohs index minerals (no diamond, duh), and had an assignment comparing them. In a sample that large, talc has a soapy feel to it.
Another school memory was triggered by the ester in FORESTER. In my organic chemistry class, one of the labs was to synthesize an ester, specifically the one frequently used in artificial banana oil. The whole lab reeked of bananas for days.
Lastly, I appreciated the ironic “dry death” anagram in HYDRATED.
Ignore that. This was supposed to be the link
Back in the day (pre-ChatGPT, pre- Large Language Models) my job was AI research (I’m now mostly retired, but teach it, part-time). Back then I built a program to solve cryptic clues (cold, no help from blog). It worked, but only had a success rate of one or two clues per puzzle, thanks to the ever-inventiveness of our setters. [With a bit of intervention from me, like telling it how to interpret phrases it didn’t know, it could get up to about 2/3 of a puzzle.] I will try to dust it off later today and see how it does with this puzzle.
Thanks Philistine and mc. I’m a failure! APRICOTS, COLONOSTOMY. Doh!
I think this has been one of my favourite crosswords to do (only started doing cryptics a couple of months ago). Lovely to feel on the wavelength! COLONOSCOPIES and LASER BEAM and RIVEN my favourites. Got muddled with the AWAY WASTE – is it common for words to be back to front like this?
I think this has been one of my favourite crosswords to do (only started doing cryptics a couple of months ago). Lovely to feel on the wavelength! COLONOSCOPY and LASER BEAM and RIVEN my favourites. Got muddled with the AWAY WASTE – is it common for words to be back to front like this?
I actually found this surprisingly straightforward, the first time I can say this about a Saturday prize, having been roundly defeated by Qaos last week. Apricity and Ecdysis were new to me.
APRICITY and ECDYSIS also new to me. Got the first by parsing and checking, the second using word search.
I don’t know when Philistine came from Palestine to the UK, but I’ve always assumed it was as an adult, so I was quite surprised to see the reference to the children’s story of the billy goats Gruff. Perhaps he learnt it reading to his own children from a book of traditional stories?
For the record, my own AI program got 12 right, and for three more it got the wordplay but didn’t know the definition. So score one for GOFAI (good old-fashioned AI).
QuietEars@40 not sure what you mean by AWAY WASTE ? The definition and word play give WASTE AWAY and the clue says 23,6 with 6 saying – see 23.
When we have a two-word answer entered in separate parts the setter will always make the order of entry clear. Sometimes this means the second word (6) appears earlier in the grid than the first (23), but we do not start solving until 23 and actual positions in the grid do not matter.
Philistine is one of my favourite setters, and this one demonstrates why – clever constructions, good surfaces, and much wit exhibited throughout. The juxtaposition of 7d and 13d is an excellent example – dry in the HYDRATED clue, and water (twice) in the DEHYDRATED clue.
This one was made even more fun by mc’s unusual blog, and by the delightful comments. Thanks, all, for the enjoyment, and thanks, TimC@35/37 for the Blackadder link.
It’s a cool day here, but the sun is shining, so I’ll apricate this afternoon.
Thanks mc_rapper67 and Philistine. A great puzzle and a quicker solve than most although I took Cots(wold) for financial center and ended up with apricots at 8d. I suspected it didn’t fit with winter warmth but being a Yank I thought it might be rhyming slang or some other cultural oddity.
Nice to complete a prize crossword fairly quickly (for me). Thanks to setter, and blogger for explaining the parsing of ODIOUS. I spent ages trying to fit the name of a stage musical somewhere in the answer!
Did most of this on the Saturday. Got stuck in SE.
Left the rest till quiet moments during the week and finally got Odious and Realms on the treadmill using the crossers and the alphabet. Mixing the mental and the physical. Very satisfying.
Thank you to blogger and setter for their efforts. Great fun.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback so far – much apricated, as usual!
My apologies for not investigating APRICITY further – I vaguely knew of ‘apricate’, but as many commenters have pointed out APRICITY itself is not in either Chambers or Collins, and in both of those ‘apricate’ itself doesn’t specify winter warmth. I was most amused to learn that ‘apricot’ was formerly ‘apricock’, but maybe that is a discussion for a Cyclops blog!
Apologies also to those who weren’t aware of ChatGPT – I have to admit that I have been trying to use the JIIIGA prinicple (Just Ignore It, It’ll Go Away), but my sister swears by it – she is a recruitment consultant and uses it to polish up resumes and spice up cover letters!…
In case anyone couldn’t tell, the AI-generated section was in quotes, but I have now italicised it as well, just to emphasise…and just like self-driving cars, I don’t think I’ll be trusting self-generated blogs for a while…
Dr What’s On – very impressed to hear of your clue-solving program – and the fact you still have the technology to run it…care to share with us what it was written in? I once wrote a Sudoku solver in an Excel macro to solve the Independent’s ‘Super Sudokus’ – 16*16 and characters 0-9, A-F…
I was Mohs-t interested in the exchanges on the hardness of talc and Portland stone – little nuggets and gems of information abound everywhere on this site!…
Also lovely to be reminded of ECDYSIAST…my first ever blog on here included the word CALLIPYGEAN, which has remained with me since!…
Getting to the blog a day late, I find that commenters have already said anything I might have, including the hi-falutin “ecdysiast,” which is how I got ecdysis. Apricity defeated me, though.
Thanks to Philistine and mc_rapper67.
Mc@50, of course the best ecdysiasts are all highly callipygian (sic)! (Thanks for those words.)
Roz @45 thanks. I just assumed that the clue would be the right way round as you read the words down – so away was “above” waste in the crossword in both location and number so I got stuck trying to fit waste away. Do they do this for across clues too – so could (for example) a clue that is BOOK TOKEN be set up as a surface that had TOKEN on one line and BOOK on the line below and then just put in the wrong way round? To fit the grid? Probably overthinking!
QE @ 53 Yes to both questions
QuietEars@53 , you could even have TOKEN BOOK on the same row, say 1Ac and 2Ac, but the clue would appear at 2Ac and be listed 2,1 . Across and Down spaces are mixed sometimes, the only thing that matters is the actual order given in the clues.
Thanks mc_rapper and I hope your sister has enjoyed the fruits of her suggestion! [No offence to her personally but if anything could cause my opinion of recruitment consultants to sink further it would be the use of ChatGPT etc to do what little work they are usually responsible for.] I am very much aligned with the consensus above, so much so that I did the same research as Alan B@17, so thanks Tommy Callan if you’re out there, for your sterling efforts getting new and old words into Collins Online to enhance our vocabularies. And thanks Philistine of course for clueing them and the others so well.