Guardian 26,610 / Chifonie

63 comments on “Guardian 26,610 / Chifonie”

1. Thanks Eileen and Chifonie
   A pleasant start to the week. Elegant cluing and a light touch as usual from this setter.

2. As usual a gentle start to the week with impeccable surfaces.

3. Thanks, Eileen.

   I enjoy Chifonie’s puzzles. This one was gentle enough, but what I like about his clueing is that if you do get stuck on a solution, then there’s usually another one coming along that will get you going again. Losing gracefully, and all that.

   HALF-INCH was good, and I liked SINISTER too (and yes, I concur with your ‘I know, I know’, and please let’s not go there again).

   I was okay with the wordplay for AFFECTED.

   Thanks to the setter too.

4. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

   New words for me were ‘albert’ = WATCH CHAIN and HALF INCH = Cockney rhyming slang for pinch/appropriate.

   The view from Down Under: I’m wondering now if the P in 7a = pence/pennies? For some reason I was fixated on P = policemen/coppers so I guess I did not parse that one correctly! Obviously British coins/currency do not spring to my mind all that quickly…. And my online dictionary says that pence are bronze coins. Are pence made of copper now?

5. Thanks Eileen. Is D a recognised abbreviation for deserted?

6. Thanks Eileen and Chifonie.

   I had 3dn as ED over (covering) WAR + D(eserted)

7. Hi michelle @4

   Sorry – I didn’t make it clear in the blog that P = pence / pennies: ‘coppers’ is a common expression here for loose change. [Chambers gives ‘a coin, made of copper or bronze’.] Of course, policemen are coppers but I don’t think P by itself could indicate policeman – only in PC = Police Constable

   pex @5

   We’ve had discussion about this abbreviation before – it’s in Chambers.

   Quite right, cholecyst @6 – careless posting! I’ll correct it.

8. Wouldn’t
   3 Journalist covering hostilities deserted old king (6)
   give E (WAR D)D ?
   I look at it as
   ED WAR D
   ‘covering’ in the sense ‘in front of’

9. Hi K’s D @3

   Re AFFECTED: I thought there might be quibbles about this, because the ‘gets’ could indicate that CAFE was not part of the anagram. I was okay with it myself, too.

   Rishi @8

   Please see comments 6 and 7 – the blog has been amended.

10. Not a lot to report here. The Albert WATCH CHAIN stirred a distant memory of buying one in an antique shop in Brighton years ago. Now I’m wondering where it got to.

    I can imagine the separation of cafe and deft causing a small stir hereabouts. Otherwise though, as other posters have said, a gentle but elegantly composed puzzle for a Monday morning.

    Nice disguise in 1dn.

11. D for ‘deserted’ may be in Chambers but one might wonder where, in which context, that abbr. would be used.
    In armed forces service register or what?

12. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen.

    An elegant puzzle from Chifonie, most enjoyable. Third day running of blogging for Eileen, do hope she is not too tired.

    As for michelle @4, ‘albert’ and HALF INCH were new to me. I stupidly could not parse RELY.

13. Rishi @11

    I remember making that suggestion last time it came up but I can’t find any evidence for it from Google and I don’t remember what conclusion, if any, we came to.

    Cookie, the Friday blogger always does the following Monday and, because the Prize blog is on a four-week rota, it intervenes from time to time – but that was done and dusted the previous weekend, so no need to worry!

14. An enjoyable run around, although couldn’t get SPLENDID for some reason (I thought there must be a double P in there). Favourites were HALF-INCH, SINISTER and BELT UP. Many thanks to Chifonie and Eileen.

15. It’s a very posh Cockney in 20a. Surely “‘arf inch”. Or is it perhaps one of the Cockneys with aspirations that Labour seems obsessed with post-election.

16. Thanks all
    Last in was splendid because I was loth to drop appended!
    I liked Bengal and rely (I live near Ely!)

17. I like BENGAL because my wife hails from there. She is a Kannadiga but speaks Bengali, besides Hindi, Gujarati, etc., and is often mistaken for an upcountry woman though I am an out-and-out Madrasi.

18. In what sense does EQUALITY equate with IDENTITY?

19. Eileen@7 – thanks for the additional explanation. I am really not sure why the penny did not drop this morning regarding P = pence. Maybe I should have had a cup of coffee or something….

20. Gasman jack @ 18

    I was thinking of EQUALITY = identicalness / identity

21. Thanks Eileen, as you say, fairly gentle start.

    I know Model T is an old favourite but is T alone quite fair? ‘Spose it is with the easy wordplay.

    Rishi @17 Your lady wife is quite a linguist – mine is from about 2000km NE from yours and only English with a London accent!

    Nice week, all.

22. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

    Only got to do this one in short grabs throughout the day, so lucky not too many hitches in it. I do like his puzzles, especially when they are published on a Monday for the ‘gentle start’. He is one for the single letters (7 today, along with a couple of doubles).

    Still enjoyable start to the week !

23. Gasman jack @18 You make a good point. We have ceased to used ‘identity’ in this way, haven’t we? Chambers def starts, ” The state of being the same; sameness; individuality, personality…”

    I wonder quite how and when the accepted meanings of ‘identical’ and ‘identity’ diverged?

24. Quite pleasant for a sunny Monday but not time consuming enough to keep me out of the garden which for me is not a plus. WATCH CHAIN was my LOI. I don’t think I’ve come across ALBERT before but it appears to be common enough. I liked HALF INCH and BENGAL and I haven’t seen anything to quibble about.
    Thanks Chifonie.
    P.S. Eileen I’m still none the wiser as to who the setter on Saturday Live was.

25. Peter Aspinwall @24

    I think it’s a fairly open secret now but I still don’t want to be the one to spell it out here. I gave some pretty broad hints on Saturday – try a bit of googling.

26. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen
    Most points have already been made. I agree with the question marks on 20a, 23a and 3d.
    I particularly liked APHORISM and STACCATO.
    Pedantically, a door isn’t a threshold – that’s the strip below the door.
    An identity in a mathematical sense could be an equality.

27. Hi muffin

    That’s one of the definitions I looked sideways at and was going to say it was a case of metonymy [or synecdoche] but found that, for threshold, Collins gives ‘any doorway or entrance’ and Chambers ‘the place or point of entering, so I reckoned that was good enough.

28. I wouldn’t describe the cluing as ‘elegant’ like tupu, in fact there were a lot of niggles for me. I’m not in a list mood today though. I did like 15 and 20 across. I would not say that ‘covering’ is down-specific.

    HH

29. Hi Eileen
    ……unless you take “door” to mean the large swinging piece of wood or whatever, in which case it’s not a “doorway” or “point of entering”. On the other hand, I suppose that you can “come in through the door”.

30. Mostly pretty straightforward, though I had a few problems in the NW corner – DOOR was last in because I coudn’t deduce that ROOD was invalid until I had the crosser, and one of the meanings of NEAR was unfamiliar. So fair enough in the Rufus-substitute slot.

    Thanks to Eileen (you have been busy the last few days) and Chifonie.

31. Oh beery hiker @30, you anticipate me word for word! I went through the blog and 29 responses thinking I was the only one who had never come across NEAR = tight-fisted. Must have very generous friends. Mind you, I was pretty certain about DOOR as ‘the’ would have got in the way of its reversal.

32. well I agree that ROOD would have been an uglier parsing, but I wasn’t sure enough to rule it out…

33. Mathematicians make a distinction between an equality and an identity. An equality is true in a particular instance and equality, indicated by three parallel lines rather than two, is true all the time.

34. Sorry, delete third ‘equality’ and insert ‘an identity’.

35. Tyngewick@33
    Actually I read the third ‘equality’ as ‘identity’.

36. I didn’t get round to DOOR / ROOD for some time because I had MEAN instead of NEAR for “Tight-fisted? Not far off” as the mean is in the middle, hence “not far off”.

37. I enjoyed this but didn’t parse ‘door’ as I always thought rood was a screen. In all my considerable years I have never heard of near meaning tight-fisted. You live and learn.

38. I made my way through this puzzle with some accurate guesses but needed Eileen’s parsing for HALF INCH (I’m hopeless with Cockney rhyming slang) and ELATED (I missed the Eddie-TED connection), and Albert-WATCH CHAIN needed confirmation from a Google check. Thanks to Chifonie and Eileen.

39. I’m surprised how little known near=tight-fisted seems to be. I learned it from crosswords but perhaps it hasn’t cropped up for a while. ‘Close’ could also have been clued in the same way.

40. William@21 – I had the same thought about T for the Ford Model T as you, but a post-solve read of the Wiki article about the car taught me that T on its own is one of the colloquial names for it, along with Tin Lizzie, Tin Lizzy, T-Model Ford and Model T.

41. Eileen @39 – I have just tried searching the archive (near+tight+fisted) and the only two matches are one from the Indie and one from the FT, plus one more false match from the Indie. So maybe it’s only unfamiliar to those of us who stick to the Guardian…

42. Thanks for that, beery hiker. That’s odd, then: I’m sure I’ve never seen it in books or heard it in conversation but it came readily enough this morning.

43. Possibly “near” for “tight=fisted” is a Northern expression? I’ve heard it in Lancashire.

44. JohnM @37

    The rood screen is named from the crucifix (usually? originally?) mounted on it.

45. I liked this, particularly as I came to it after struggling with the Quiptic. Yes, there are a few minor niggles, but nothing to spoil it for me. My favourites are HALF-INCH and STACCATO.

    Thanks, Chifonie and Eileen.

46. Can anyone find a link to archaic dictionaries? I can’t find why Tight-fisted = Near

47. RedSoules @46

    Thesaurus.com lists both of them as meanings of “stingy”.

48. Boy = Sid? Is that from a show or something?

49. Sid is just a boy’s name – no more or less than that.

50. This is hard work. Harry = Molest? When did that become the definition of Harry? lol

51. jennyk @ 47, 49

    This ‘person’ is a troll who is just taking the piss. Don’t feed it, please.

52. @51

    For someone who does crosswords you should look up the definition of troll….

    What is your problem? You got a problem with me?

    See = ELY on 24d. Can’t find on the internet how ELY = See, anyone?

53. Cathedral See.

54. @53

    Sorry slightly confused, ELY = Cathedral see ? ELY = See (Cathedral in Ely)

55. @52

    Yes

    The second word is off

    The rest is silence

56. @55

    I’ll tell you this. A troll is someone trying to grab attention via nasty means; provoking people by (usu) offensive or controverial opinions/claims.

    I’m merely asking for help with an aspect of discussion as i’m a new member and new to crosswords. I’ve been reading the materials others have been kind enough to post and I still do the crosswords 4 times a week.

    I come on here to discuss/work backwards so I can learn efficiently to complete crosswords in the future.

    RE:

    The second word is off

    The rest is silence

    What do you mean by this?

57. Near meaning stingy, mean, tight etc is commonly used in Westmorland.
    Simon S: why the gratuitous offence to genuine poster?
    Thanks to Eileen & Chifonie.

58. If RedSoules is a troll, then he is quite a cute little one. The questions asked are ones that I can imagine will be helpful to the less experienced visitors who would quite like to know why, for instance, see=Ely (which has still not been explained properly on this page) but are too shy to ask, fearful that their non-possession of anecdotes about the Queen of Tonga and gaslights may find them out.
    (ps – a see is a place where a cathedral, Ely being one of the most obscure of such in the UK (although one of the places most often encountered in Crosswordland.)

59. I think the most difficult thing in blogging [apart from solving and parsing the clues!] is gauging how much to take for granted. I really hate the idea of being patronising but, as a former teacher, I’m always aware that there are newer solvers who may not be up to all the tricks.

    However, there are some devices that have been used so many times that anyone who has solved a few cryptic crosswords must have come up against them. See = Ely is one of the oldest in the book and, to a lesser extent, Harry = molest, which a quick look in any dictionary/ thesaurus would confirm.

    If Redsoules [Used Loser? – see comments 51, 64 and 76 on Friday’s Picaroon blog] is a genuine commenter – and we always welcome new contributors – I suggest that [s]he] should invest in a Collins and / or Chambers and actually read the blog and comments before adding a contribution.

    Or I go along with Simon S @51.

60. But see does not equal Ely. Ely is but one example of a see. Its etymology, if you fancy an anecdote for your anecdotage or whatever, may be in eels.

    As to whether troll equals RedSoules, well, who cares. Trolls come in many varieties, and the ‘keen student’ identity could easily be one that becomes bloody annoying after a (pretty short) while. Lots of ‘keen students’ have been around on 225 over the years.

61. But see does equal Ely. In the same way as, for instance, animal would equal gorilla. It is but one example of an animal.

    Of course, we could write all these with “for example” afterwards but that would telegraph the meaning that the setter has tried so hard to disguise. Some latitude is surely called for.

62. There is a difference between saying someone asks too many questions which could easily be answered by learning to use online resources (cheaper for most people than buying a paper dictionary, and more portable for some people) and accusing them of doing that maliciously (i.e. being a troll).

    Ely = see is not really obvious. If you don’t already know Ely has a cathedral, the bishop’s seat definition for “see” wouldn’t necessarily jump out at you, and in some online dictionaries it is buried quite a way down the page. To suggest that someone should know it just because it is common in cryptic crosswords is unrealistic. I did the Guardian cryptic in the paper for many years, then had a subscription to their online cryptics until they got rid of that. After a break from crosswords which I blame largely on Killer Sudoku, I came back to them a few months ago. With all that exposure to cryptics, I still frequently see comments along the lines of “that’s an old chestnut” or “as usual …” when that particular word play is completely new to me.

    Having said all that, if RS really is a troll, he’s achieved exactly what he wanted by getting us to discuss him (or her, if a trollette) so perhaps it would have been better for those who think he is one just to ignore him and any responses to his questions and assume that everyone would eventually get fed up with answering him.

63. Jenny @62 – well said! I agree with most of what you say. What some here may be missing is that the same person has been posting similar questions on the Guardian comments page – they have been testing the patience of the regulars there too.

Comments are closed.