Guardian Cryptic 29,551 by Arachne

104 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,551 by Arachne”

1. I’ve quickly become a fan of Arachne. This was a cracker puzzle. Too many good clues with CHEMISE and PERHAPS being my favourites. Excellent misdirection on both.

2. Thanks Arachne for a gem once again. When a setter can clue a dull word like OPENING with a surface that’s poetry I know I’m in for a treat. SIGNALS, PASTY, ATLAS, ERRANT, INTRANET, and PORTLY were among my other favourites but I liked all of it. Thanks PeterO for the blog.

3. I was unaware of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Didn’t know hermits have female counterparts. (Interesting — we don’t seem to have actresses any more.) Pap/hill and SACRA were new to me. So was “lig”, which I gather is a British speciality? And Oakland is in Rutland? I’ll file that away. I thought the “in” in 18d might have been an inclusion indicator, but clearly it ain’t.

4. Wonderful puzzle. I love the way that Arachne writes clues. Hopefully we will be getting more of her puzzles again soon.

   Favourites: GAINSAID, HUSBANDRY, GEMINI, PICK.

   New for me: CIS = Commonwealth of Independent States, formerly constituent republics of the Soviet Union, established in 1991; Oakham being in RUTLAND; SACRA bones; LIG = free lunch.

   Geoff@3 – considering that I often have a tendency in that direction, I loved HERMITESS!

5. Simply delightful. Top to bottom. Smooth as you like. CHEMISE is an absolute beaut with such economy and a surface that could have come straight from the news pages. Other favourites include RIGMAROLE for the right old carry on, LIPSALVE for the amusing surface, GEMINI again for the believability of the surface and ARCHAISM for its elegance. As Tony says @2, OPENING is quite poetic, COLLEGIAN conjured up a super image of Renaissance arguing in class and then what a super job to clue the rather uninspiring YELLOWISH. Come back soon, Arachne.

   Thanks both

6. Thankyou for the timely blog. Great crossword, lovely surfaces and somewhat easier than yesterday’s Paul for me. I think “hermitess” is a horrid word though!

7. I can only join in the general encomia for this puzzle. Only a couple of across clues on the first pass, but then it all flowed with the down clues. Favourites include RIGMAROLE and HUSBANDRY, but you could make a case for many as others have said. LIG was new to me, as it seems, it was to others, but the answer was clear from the crossers and Google quickly confirmed. As far as HERMITESS is concerned, I think there is a move away from using explicitly female forms (as in ‘actress’) as they are deemed sexist, but it would have been a pity to lose that anagram. Thanks to Arachne and to PeterO

8. Lovely puzzle. Great surfaces.
   Faves: LIPSLAVE, FRECKLES, SIT-UPS, EMPATHISE, PERHAPS and HERMITESS.
   EMPATHISE reads like an extended def and HERMITESS like a CAD.
   Neat blog.
   Thanks Arachne and PeterO.

9. Like a cobweb in the morning dew, a beautifully-spun series of glistening surfaces.
   I loved it.
   And that’s all I have to say about that.

10. What Postmark @5 says. I enjoyed it as well.

11. I thought this was reasonably gentle in the top half but it definitely got trickier with the clever RUTLAND, loi. All the gems have been mentioned but I really enjoyed the link between LIPSALVE and ISLE and the clue for CHEMISE. A marvellous treat throughout.

    Ta Arachne & PeterO.

12. Always good to see Arachne again. Like others, the CIS was new to me, and I only knew LIG as a verb meaning to schmooze and freeload at the sort of events that provide free lunches, (and LIGGER for a person who does this) not a noun for the free lunch itself. One or two other rather stretchy definitions (paps = hills, land = find yourself) but nothing ungettable. A couple of words whose existence I hadn’t expected (HERMITESS and COLLEGIAN). But lots and lots of lovely clues: clever hiddens like LE MANS and EMPATHISE, the sneaky definitions for LIPSALVE, CHEMISE and PERHAPS. Favourite I think PORTLY for its smooth surface.

    (Anyone else try to shoehorn (N)ELLIE the elephant into 1 down?)

13. Gladys @12. I tried (N)ELLIE!

14. Generally I don’t care about surface readings of clues – I don’t complain if they’re clunky or meaningless – but Arachne has to get bonus points for the smoothness of hers! Also not the tiniest of quibbles about any of them. No particular favourites – all excellent. Only slight reservation was that the enjoyment didn’t last longer.
    Thanks Arachne and PeterO.

15. gladys @12: Acting the LIG is a NI term for someone messing around, but I certainly didn’t know this, nor your meaning.

16. What E.N.Boll& said@9, if I could only be that eloquent.

    KVa@8.. I’m a slave to my LIPSALVE too. 🙂

17. What E.N.Boll& said@9, if I could only be that eloquent.

    KVa@8.. I’m a slave to my LIPSALVE too. 🙂

18. Thanks Arachne and PeterO
    Very good, though I was baffled by LIG in 21a. SIT-UPS was Paulian, FRECKLES another favourite.
    Glencoe has a pap, but Jura has three! (Though I don’t think there’s anywhere you can stand to see all three at the same time – I may be wrong on this.)

19. Always a joy to see Arachne’s byline.

20. I’ll just add to the chorus of approval for Arachne for a pleasantly challenging and most elegant puzzle; and thanks to PeterO for conscientiously producing the customarily clear blog among other commitments. May your voice ring clear and true, sir.

21. I checked LIG and realised I knew it through liggers, although the spell check doesn’t like it. Another TILT was CIS.

    Brilliant to see Arachne again. Thank you to PeterO for the blog.

22. What an absolute treat! In my opinion, this is as good as it gets!

23. Magic!

24. Sorry to be dense but, after all the above, exactly whytf is lig free lunch?

25. I’m not keen on hermitess or collegian because I can’t imagine anyone ever using them. I was going to suggest anchorite as an alternative to hermitess, but it seems that could be male or female too.
    Other than that, I agree with the praise being piled on. Lig was new to me; it could be a useful word but if I ever used it I doubt that anyone would know what I meant.

26. ginf @24… The BRB….

    lig1 /lig/ (slang)
    intransitive verb
    To lie about, to idle
    To be a freeloader, esp in the entertainment industry
    noun
    A party with free refreshments

    ORIGIN: Orig dialect for lie2

    New for me as well, despite having done Azed for a few years… 🙂

27. … but yes, a rare and welcome kiss from the spiderwoman. Mostly a polite peck on the cheek, with a few dnks, like the aforementioned lig, and the CIS nations. And for paps the only thing I lcd think of was old slang for breasts, = hills, very unlikely. Many tas A and P.

28. Thanks Tim C @26: to lie about, idle was what I was trying to say @15, makes perfect sense now and obviously not just a NI term it seems, as is often the case. And yes ginf, I had the very same thought about paps, thinking surely not!

29. Ok Tim, ta for that. Still deels a bit etymologically whytf, but hey ho.

30. Smooth and elegant indeed. I agree with everything PostMark@5 has written.
    Thank you Arachne and PeterO

31. … feels ..

32. However ginf, maybe not that far off

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast-shaped_hill

33. SW corner proved a little sticky.

    I’ve heard the term “ligger” for someone who hangs around with musicians in a wannabe kind of way.

34. Didn’t know lig or cis or the astrological house, but somehow, the overriding elegance of the crossword forgave this and the result was a delight.

    Thanks, PeterO for teasing this out.

35. E.N.Boll& @9 sums it all up beautifully for me.

    I’m dashing out soon to start setting up our annual Christmas Tree Festival, starting on Friday but couldn’t go before solving this gem. Wish I could have had more time to savour it but will just pick out the Spoonerism, since it’s one of the few things no one has mentioned yet – Arachne is one of the very few who knows how to do them – and I appreciated the mention of the lovely little market town barely twenty miles from here.

    Many thanks to Arachne and to lucky PeterO.

36. Mrs The-Cat who hails from Belfast confirms that in NI a lig is someone who messes around as I. “He’s a big lig”

37. {Jonathon Green: “lig n.2 also liggety [Scot. lug, a fool] (Ulster) a fool (lig is male, liggety female).”}

38. Beautiful puzzle – would we expect anything else from the Spider Woman? Clever constructions and polished surfaces.

    Lig was NHO for me also, but that is what it had to be. My favourites were: RIGMAROLE, LIPSALVE (lol), ARCHAISM, EMPATHISE, CHEMISE (very clever).

    The clue for RHINE is wonderfully devious – which word is ‘dropping beginning’, and is ‘obstruct’ a containment indicator? And all with a charmingly lavatorial surface.

    My only quiblet is that GEMINI is a sign and not a house – these divisions of the ecliptic are quite different things in astrology.

    Many thanks to Arachne and the lucky PeterO

39. Superb! What a total delight with such brevity and smooth surfaces throughout.

    Every clue also without exception was a joy – but special mentions to CHEMISE, GEMINI and PERHAPS

    BTW I have had the enormous pleasure of climbing Paps in Scotland and Ireland. Delightful hills.

    Thanks Arachne and PeterO

40. Always a great start to the day to see Arachne’s name by a crossword

    E N.Boll& @9 sums it up perfectly

    Thanks to Arachne and lucky PeterO

41. Simply marvellous. Thanks both!

42. Really enjoyed the solve, with last two in LIFELONG and ISLE which I needed PeterO’s expertise to parse. As I’ve never heard of Lig before and couldn’t work out the relevance of the 8, though it was staring me in the face. Many thanks both…

43. Great puzzle, faves FRECKLES and HUSBANDRY, but really could have mentioned any of them.

    If I were to have written LIPSALVE I’d have used two words, but apparently that’s not the case for commenters here. So in the spirit of research not complaint, I checked OneLook. 2 dictionaries had it as a single word, one as a hyphenated word, 8 as a two-word entry and dozens as two separate words. Chambers, checked afterwards, joins the dozens. Dunno what to make of all that.

44. PeterO. Thanks to you and to Arachne. Interested to know what you sang in an ecumenical choir at Thanksgiving.

    Gervase@38. RHINE. Having lived on the RHEIN for a while, that spelling is more familiar to me, and I was fooled by the possibility of ‘obstruct’ as a containment indicator. I considered it, but realised it would have had to have been clued as Pachyderm dropping tail to obstruct English river

45. Tomsdad @7, et al, re HERMITESS, explicit gender forms may be un-woke, but can clarify. I remember an article (probably in the Grauniad) pointing out that an elderly male thespian’s predilection for young actresses would have had a different connotation, had “young actors” been used instead!
    ‘Ligger’ writes the Private Eye ‘Celebs’ cartoon strip, frequently featuring freeloading.
    Fab crossword and blog, thanks to both; I too found it less challenging than Monday’s Paul.

46. What you have all said. Brilliant, beautiful clues, very enjoyable!
    TILTs were LIG, PAPS, CIS nations.
    I loved all of it but my COTD was LIPSALVE.
    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO.

47. Like Dr. WhatsOn @43, I would have LIPSALVE as two words, but after sustained brilliance like this, I really don’t care. CHEMISE is worth the admission alone, even more so as it came late to me in the slightly trickier SW corner.

48. A thing of beauty! What a treat.

    Gervase@38, the substance of your quiblet went over my head when I was solving, so the clue just seemed like another star of the show to me.

    gladys@12, “find yourself” equates to “land” in not just one but two ways: to land / find yourself / end up in a place, and to land / find yourself / get a job, say.

    Thanks both

49. A fine puzzle. Gemini a favourite Thank you.

50. This took me an age and I was getting really quite exasperated with it. I ought to have walked away and come back, as much of it was a case of not seeing the wood for the trees: I had a word with myself on finally getting (amongst others) PHONEY, GAINSAID, GEMINI and LE MANS.

    I’m also pleased to have retained the meaning of ‘shift’ from a puzzle some weeks ago, which definitely helped me with my LOI, CHEMISE.

    Very satisfying, but also a relief, to have finished what felt like quite a toughie.

    [Also, tough as I found this, I’ll echo another comment above: I found it easier than yesterday’s, of which I managed to solve about 1/3 before throwing in the towel.]

51. This was a satisfying fill for me. Like many above, NHO of LIG. And I needed help for parsing HUSBANDRY — I forgot that IT can mean Italian, and convinced myself that “BIANDRY” was a crime (like bigamy). 🙂

52. Yes, it’s always great to battle with an Arachne puzzle.

    Like many others, I DNK lig or CIS, but that’s what dictionaries are for. Many great clues but I particularly liked FRECKLES with the contracted rash, LIFELONG with the hiding criminal, GEMINI, where house as a definition seems OK to me, HUSBANDRY with the Italian leaving crime for farming, EMPATHISE, well-hidden, YELLOWISH having the cry in the buff, and PASTY, where tense was not T.

    Thanks Arachne and PeterO.

53. Robi @52: Sorry to sound pedantic (who, me?) but referring to GEMINI as a house is clearly an astrological reference, and is clearly wrong. The familiar astrological signs are conventional fixed regions around the ecliptic – the plane of the Solar System along which the Sun, Moon and planets are distributed as seen from Earth. The Sun is observed to move through these signs once in a year. Astrological houses are twelve regions of the ecliptic measured from the ascendant – the point of the ecliptic on the rising horizon. The Sun etc are observed to move through all twelve houses once in 24 hours. Positions of these bodies in signs and houses have different significance in astrology.

    And if you ask why a scientist such as myself is interested in such things, it’s for the same reason that this atheist is interested in religious belief, practice and symbolism – it’s all part of our cultural heritage and gives a deeper understanding of the art and literature of the past.

    Here endeth the lesson 🙂

54. Gervase @53
    I had no idea what an astrological “house” was, so I looked at wiki. The explanation was as clear as mud, but it did say that each house was at least associated with a zodiacal sign – I agree that this isn’t the same as being one.

55. Like many others, LIG was new to me, but what else could it be? I dragged up TUPS from some earlier crossword, never having had cause to hear it elsewhere.

    And I did recall the CIS, which I was surprised to discover still exists.

    Lots to like here.

56. Superb! I am sure we had “lig” or “Ligger” relatively recently. I remember the Private Eye reference.

57. Robi @56
    Your quote doesn’t mention “houses”, but “signs”. Gervase is saying that these aren’t the same.

58. Gervase @53, you might be pedantically correct but Chambers says for house: One of the twelve divisions of the heavens in astrology, and Wikipedia says for: What are the 12 divisions of the heavens in astrology: The zodiac is divided along the ecliptic into 12 equal parts (“signs”), each occupying 30° of celestial longitude. These signs roughly correspond to the astronomical constellations with the following modern names: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. So, I guess that is good enough for me. 🙂

59. [Robi has posted an edited version since I posted @57.]

60. Thoroughly enjoyable. I had to go away and come back to the SW corner to get to the end, and am very glad for the challenge.

    Gladys@12 ‘paps’ and ‘hills’ are virtually interchangeable in Irish English as I recall from many childhood holidays in Kerry. For me at least, there was no stretch.

    ‘Tups’ was buried deeper in my memory – perhaps comics or novels from using words which were common around 100 years ago? Or am I mistaken and is the term still in use?

    My only slight quibble was T for Tesla. Surely there’s a more interesting way to get the letter in?

    Thanks Arachne for a wonderful puzzle and PeterO for a matching blog, and giving the answers to ISLE which I put in from the crossers and then forgot to go back and parse with 8A.

61. Paul @60; perhaps you are not aware that T is the SI unit of magnetic flux density for Tesla, so no different from T = time, Troy etc. I’ve crossed with muffin @62.

62. paul @60
    Tups is a commonly used dialect expression for male sheep. There’s a pub I frequent where the loos are labelled “Tups” and “Ewes”. Using “tup” as a verb is less common, though.
    T is the SI symbol for the flux density unit Tesla.

63. Elegant is the right word. Beautiful crossword.

64. Paul @60: “Tups” crops up pretty often in crosswords, which I guess keeps it in common use! But I also used it just a few weeks ago, talking to a friend who keeps sheep, asking her if she’d be putting them to tup soon and whether she keeps a ram for the purpose or hires one in. So I think that is a “yes” to your question.

    On the astrological house vs sign debate, it was a difference I was unaware of and I thank Gervase for drawing it to my attention – I have learned something which makes today (another) good day. I trust his knowledge and understanding over a Wiki page.

    Fabulous puzzle – thank you Arachne, and PeterO. The use of “paps” reminded me of a Paul Sinha fact in a recent show which is that The Mumbles and Manchester are both named after the same bodily part.

65. Robi @58: There are more ways than one of cutting a pie into 12 pieces! I’m happy that you are easily satisfied with lazy inaccuracies. Remember the furore on this site when some hapless setter equates force, weight and mass 🙂

66. Naming hills after breasts is a fairly common thing: the Mumbles in Swansea (from the French “mammelles”) and the Teton range in the USA come to mind. But for “paps” I was only aware of one or two Scottish examples, not that it was widespread in Irish usage, and in all the cases I knew the hills are called paps or tetons or whatever, but “pap” doesn’t actually mean “hill” – it’s just the name given to that particular one because of its shape.

    All I’m saying is that the equivalence didn’t work for me. If it does for everybody else, fine.

    Re astrological houses: it sounds as if it’s inaccurate, but not so inaccurate as to destroy the clue: a frequent occurrence with technical terms in crosswords. And we learned something about astrology (or I did).

67. muffin @62 – as Jack of Few Trades @64 says – if you know about sheep farming at all you hear tups and tupping – as in “Don’t go in that field, the ram’s in there tupping and is protective of his ewes. He’s not done badly, they’re nearly all raddled.” (Raddle being the dye the tup wears to mark the ewes and show mating has occurred.) I had some spectacular bruises once proving that – walking a footpath with some friends, I got to tussle with the ram while the kids and friends got out.

68. gladys@66, re PERHAPS, perhaps that’s what the question mark was for… to indicate a looser equivalence based on naming, rather than a synonym.

69. E.N.Boll&@9 – elegantly put. A joyous experience from start to finish. Very happy to join the chorus of approval for the web-mistress (ouch, sorry) and PeterO for the succinct and super-clear blog.

    Here in France, it’s possible people are less coy regarding the use of female body parts in naming mountains. There’s at least one ‘Mamelon’, and I believe the Grand Tetons in Wyoming were originally named by French explorers.

70. Oops Gladys@66, we crossed

71. gladys @66: I think AP is right – the question mark is suggesting that ‘paps’ is a definition by example

72. Gervase @71
    ….and, very cleverly, the question mark also matches the “maybe”.

73. I’m not at all good at cryptic crosswords, but wouldn’t 18D make more sense as “Is non-standard language turning up in non-verbal messages”?

74. Nothing to add, except that as a fan of clean surface readings, I rank Arachne as a good head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. I had the same NHO list as most of the other non-Brits, except that I do remember the CIS. RUTLAND might be England’s most obscure county–if you asked me to start listing your counties, I think I’d name thirty others first. So it’s small wonder I hadn’t heard of Oakham.

    [Gladys @66: Having been to the Tetons, I must say that whatever horny French fur-trapper named them hadn’t seen any breasts in a long, long time. I’ve rarely seen mountains that remind me less of the female anatomy. They’re too pointy to be called Tetons. Beautiful place, though–actually, “beautiful” is too weak an adjective there.]

75. Another cheer for Arachne (and thanks PeterO!) Particularly nice surfaces and CHEMISE (loi), YELLOWISH, FRECKLES, and GEMINI were particularly nice wordplay. Never heard of LIG like many others but it was clear it had to be something.

    VoodooMike@76: I think it’s “non-standard language” = SLANG followed by IS, the whole thing turning up to make SIGNALS.

76. Jacob @55 et al
    22A SIT-UPS: the word TUP is used a couple of times in Othello – once in the first scene by Iago (of course) “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe”, and much late by Othello himself, I would suggest to indicate how his thinking had been dominated by Iago.

77. mrpenney @74: RUTLAND is best known for being the smallest of England’s traditional counties (RI qv 🙂 )

78. A quality puzzle, as many others have said, which I thoroughly enjoyed – I’m glad I found the time to do it.

    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO, and to others for some interesting discussions on paps, tups and other topics.

79. Frankie@36 Hailing from Belfast myself, I’ve often been called a big lig. When my sister said “You big eejit”, she meant it affectionately. It was her way of telling me I’d been silly but that all was well now. “You big lig” has a similar meaning. It makes me nostalgic for home thinking about it!

    I didn’t know the freeload meaning at all.

80. AlanC@15 To act the lig – I’d forgotten all about that! Stop acting the lig!

    As I mentioned above, all this talk of lig is making me homesick!

81. @74 and @77…I imagine Rutland would have been even more obscure between 1974 and 1997 when I believe it was absorbed by/became part of Leicestershire…

82. Paul@60 A Tesla is an electric car so why is Wayward monarch driving Tesla not interesting enough?

83. Lovely crossword
    Thanks to Aracne & PeterO
    For 18d, did anyone notice that ‘non-standard language is turning up’ can be parsed as NAL? The rest of the parsing for the SIGS part wouldn’t work, but hey-ho

84. I’ll join in the chorus of praise for this puzzle. It’s great to see Arachne back.

    There were quite a few things in this puzzle I didn’t know, but the clueing was fair and precise enough that I was able to puzzle them out, and as a result I learned some things.

    To show off my ignorance, here’s a (probably incomplete) list of things I didn’t know before finishing this puzzle:

    LIPSALVE can be written as one word.
    LIG
    TUP as a verb (I knew it could be a male sheep.)
    PAP as a hill
    There is a word HERMITESS
    RUTLAND

    (I also failed to parse CHEMISE, but now that I see how it’s put together I did actually know all the pieces. Like many people here, I’m old enough to remember when the CIS came into being.)

85. The name of Rutland was of course kept alive in the 1970s by its TV channel
    .

86. VoodooMike@73, I agree that that’s an ever-so-slightly more pleasing surface, but it would require an additional indication that both “is” and “non-standard language” are to be inverted independently rather than as a block. I can’t immediately spot a way to achieve that, and certainly not one that’s as silky as the original surface.

87. [Duplicate post]

88. For me yesterday’s Paul was a debacle, an un-pisted mogulled black that I completely flunked; today’s beautifully prepared red from Arachne restored my morale. My thanks to her, and PeterO.

89. Wonderful to see my favourite setter back again, hope that we see more of her! Delightful surfaces and devious trickery. Thank you Arachne

90. Arachne is in a league of her own. I agree with mrpenney @74 (I often do!) in that she’s head & shoulders above all the other Grauniad setters.
    I had ticks all over the place, but GAINSAID and ATLAS are beautiful examples of her concise and elegant clues. Thank you Arachne and PeterO.
    [mr penney, since you haven’t heard of Rutland, chances are you’re also unaware of Rutland Weekend Television, nor its feature film spin-off, The Rutles. A glorious spoof about the Pre-Fab Four, with impressively-accurate parody songs, and featuring a cameo appearance from one G. Harrison. You may enjoy it!]

91. Another Connecticut lunchtime solve of a puzzle from one of my favorite setters – after struggling with Paul yesterday, this was a great relief. I liked the naughty sit-ups and the backwards French city. I just biffed lifelong as my last one, as I didn’t remember lig, even though I probably blogged it in some Mephisto.

92. As someone said yesterday, a delight from beginning to end (but they were referring to Tuesday’s Paul, of course). And it wasn’t easy, with about a quarter of the clues requiring stepping away and taking a few deep breaths before trying again.

    I was fine with PAPS and TUPS, but shrugged at LIG. Enjoyed RIGMAROLE and the nearby Spoonerism.

    More please, Mr Editor.

    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO.

93. Having seen Arachne eulogised and sorely missed in many previous blogs I sat up at once when her name was on today’s puzzle and I totally get why she’s so admired. I’ve never managed to get so many answers on the first pass as I made a point of studying the clues properly, looking for the definitions and seeing how the constructs played out. The SW corner held out the longest and I had to resort to a few word searches. When FELON leapt out of one option, LIG became moot thankfully. Knew of CIS but didn’t need it as I was on the right “shift” track so got it from the crossers. I though paps was a bit Paulian as I didn’t know of the other meaning.
    Likes….all of them. A joy to behold. Shanne….if ever there was a Cryptic for your QC folks to look over, I’d suggest this. Not because it’s a write in, not all are simple, but it’s setting at its finest and a lot of very gettable clues.
    Huge thanks to Arachne, I hope to see more of your exemplary work. Also to PeterO for the precise, succinct and informative blog

94. Just to add my voice to the chorus of praise – a super crossword. Would love to see more from this setter.

    Thanks Arachne and PeterO.

95. Late to the party but what a fine crossword. Arachne on top form and a good blog from PeterO. More please.

    E.N.Bolls& @9 sums it up perfectly.

    Incidentally ‘lig’ in Danish means ‘body’ of a person who has died. On that cheery note I wish everyone a good evening.

96. Like others, I really enjoyed this. I’m miffed that I didn’t get (and never would have) 17 and 24 but it was a very enjoyable dnf.

97. grantinfreo@27
    From the bible “Blessed be the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck” (Luke11.27)
    Not just a slang word.

98. Loved this – not too easy not too hard (only got 5 answers in yesterday’s Paul) and really clever clues but beautifully clear once parsed, so you know you’ve got it right.

99. After giving up on both last week’s Quiptic and Monday puzzle, this one was a lot of fun. Though I’m too young to remember the fall of the Soviet Union, like Arachne I have a degree in Russian and became familiar with the CIS during my time studying, so CHEMISE didn’t give me as much trouble as some.

    That said, I got totally stuck on LIG for “free lunch” (never heard of it) and I guessed ISLE from the crossers but had no idea of the parsing – I have come across clues referencing other clues before, but not often enough for it to stick in my mind as something to consider.

    Thanks Arachne and PeterO for the puzzle and blog, a very nice way to end my Wednesday!

100. What can I say? A delight from start to finish. Thanks to wonderful Arachne, diligent PeterO and all on this site who enjoyed this crossword and this blog.

101. PeterO, I join the choir here to give thanks for the return of Arachne. Long may we have the pleasure of her company.

102. Just a quick post to say that I only normally attempt the Quiptics, Quick Cryptics, and Everyman puzzles. After completing them all this week (and especially as the Quiptic was reportedly considered quite hard) I decided to try my luck at yesterday’s puzzle by Paul. Umm.. no. I think I got two and guessed at a third before resorting to reveals. I’m put back in my place.

     So many thanks to Taffy for recommending this puzzle on the Quiptic blog comments. I decided to give it a go and to my surprise, I completed it! Probably my favourite element to crosswords is working out a clue from the cryptic element, without knowing the word itself or the definition. This happened twice, firstly with GAINSAID which I did not know, but I wrote both halves in and decided to look up to check, and secondly with YELLOWISH, where I started filling in possible elements and the word suddenly appeared, without knowing that definition of buff.

     So thanks are due to Arachne, Peter and Taffy.

103. Loved GAS MAIN and MASS GAIN! Very nice puzzle. Thanks!!

104. [Paul @102. You are most welcome. Having seen mention that Arachne had appeared for the first time this year in the first Saturday Prize this month I decided to give it a go. I don’t have the patience to nibble away for days, so settled in for a several hour slog, using the check button and word search along the way. It’s much tougher, but also an absolute delight when you get to the end. Just a few very minor quibbles in the blog comments, everyone was overjoyed to see her back and universally appreciative of the puzzle. Miniscule spoiler alert, we all found the bottom half was easier than the top. Also, as per Hectence and the Quiptic, look for unusual anagrids, absolutely anything that could mean ‘disruptive’.]

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