Guardian Cryptic 26,809 by Shed

52 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,809 by Shed”

1. Thanks Shed and manehi

   Tricky,as you say. I didn’t parse BLUEBEARD (getting it from UXORICIDE), TORMENT (new idea to me), or know the Shakespearian dog, though the answer was obvious. I also took ages to parse ENCEPHALOGRAM, led astray by “picture = hologram” (I know that “picture” is in the wrong place in the clue for that to work). STARLIGHT solved STARLING for me as well.

   2d is odd – why didn’t he just give “Plant journalist receives honour”?

   RONDURE my favourite (after I had looked it up and satisfied myself that it dates back long enough for Shakespeare to have used it).

2. Shakespearian “rondure” here!

3. 3d, not 2d.

4. Thanks manehi. I don’t like ‘blued’ for 19 A: I had blue=blew/squandered and beard as stand-in, which is one meaning. But you’re right surely on MISER: I had Dives as the rich man, but the T was superfluous. Guessed rightly for the two Shakespeareans. All good fun.

5. [I forgot to mention “boot” for “start computer”. Most will probably know this, but it derives from an early problem that, essentially, for a computer to start it must already be running. This was likened to “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps”, and the code used to achieve this was the “boot sequence”.

   I expect many of us will at some stage have wanted to apply a less metaphorical boot to a computer!]

6. I think in 19 that “beard ” is American parlance for stand-in- but no homophone indicator of Blue/blue- thats the way I see it.

   And i reckon the word “Shakespeare’s” is a bit of a red herring- it could be said that it makes for a nice surface but a globe is a globe is a globe and the new version of it is excellent.

   Not my favourite Shed today.

7. copmus @6
   I think manehi’s parsing of BLUEBEARD works – the clue has squandereD, so should give BLUED with BEAR (stand) “in”.

   [It has become less necessary, but a “beard” used to be the term for a woman accompanying a homosexual man, in an attempt to conceal his proclivities.]

8. Thanks, manehi.

   A rather gruesome Shed today, with several references to torture and two wife-killers – enjoyable as ever, nonetheless!

   I liked MEANDER, not least because it reminded me of one of my many favourite Araucaria clues: Royal couple are flirting (9).

   I remember ‘blue = squander’ causing problems more than once before and still don’t see why. It’s in all the dictionaries and quite a common expression, as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps it’s because of some confusion with ‘blow’ [past tense ‘blew’] with the same meaning – but there’s no homophone involved in the clue. Being quite a fan of ‘lift and separate’ clues. I rather liked the ‘stand-in’.

   Many thanks to Shed.

9. Sorry, muffin – I was too slow in typing and should have refreshed.

10. [No need to apologise, Eileen.

    Did you think the re-wording for 3d I suggested @1 was better, or am I missing something in the published version?]

11. I found this a very enjoyable challenge, very helpfully blogged – thanks, Shed and manehi. But isn’t it a bit naughty that you can only get 19 if you’ve already got 7, and vice versa, leaving both of them effectively without definition? The only way of breaking this circle (at least for me) was to get the only possible anagram of the probable fodder in 7.

12. I hesitate to reintroduce a note of controversy when the last few weeks have been so positive, but I do have some difficulty when someone suggests a way of constructing an answer for which there is no support, and which defies the rational analysis and agreed position of of everyone else, and then concludes that this puzzle “is not my favourite Shed”. It’s hardly Shed’s fault if someone can’t understand the clue even when it has been explained.

13. Thanks Shed and manehi

    Nice puzzle from Shed today at a good level of difficulty for a mid-weeker, starting off with MEANDER and a chuckle at 29a. Fully parsed all of it apart from the clever hidden answer in MENTOR MENTOR.

    A nice mix of clue types and some neat little tricks – went looking for COLLI strings there for a while until seeing the OR instead of the RE – still hadn’t seen the CELLI plural word before. Needed help with the wife-killer couple as well.

    Finished in the NE corner (again!) with FEUDAL (probably the trickiest clue to get), CORELLI (after the trouble with the wrong army men) and TORMENT (just had to be, but the best that I could muster was an anagram of ‘mentors’ without the s) the last few in.

14. Hi muffin @10

    Not ignoring you – I’ve been doing other things! I was a bit puzzled by the wording of 2dn, too, but I’m not keen on the surface of your rewrite, either, I’m afraid. 🙁 [Since we lost Balls and Miliband, the tired old ED the journalist is back working overtime again.]

15. [muffin @ 5

    ‘and the code used to achieve this was the “boot sequence”’ Even in the late 60s the way to achieve this was by flicking a series of (physical) switches on front of the computer]

    Thanks Shed and manehi

16. muffin @7- I’m aware of all that but it just doesnt sing like a great clue should . Plenty of others I liked though

17. Thanks both. Surely 3d’s definition is “plant journalists” = EMBED (as is done in armies in wars), then the clue makes sense

18. Mostly quite accessible and enjoyable, but with a few obscurities thrown in – RONDURE was unfamiliar as was BLUED, but these were easy enough to guess and check.

    Thanks to Shed and manehi

19. Thanks Shed and manehi.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, even though the reference within clues to other clues led me astray – I thought at first that the 10 in 20d referred to 10a, CRAB, whose ‘drink’ was the “WINE dark sea” (incidentally, our wine here turns deep blue when mixed with the tap water from the Jura mountains).

    MEANDER, TURGID and FEUDAL were great, as were many other clues.

20. In fact it’s still called the boot sequence and for the same reason. In the good old days when men were men and 1Kb of memory was a luxury we had to manually enter the initial boot instructions from switches 🙂

21. I agree with Shirl @ 17 about EMBED. Nice puzzle (but I couldn’t get MISER). I liked the UXORICIDE / BLUEBEARD connection: the first was clearly an anagram. Also liked NUGGET, MEANDER and ENCEPHALOGRAM. Many thanks to Shed and manehi.

22. I agree with Shirl @17 that the clue is written correctly with the plural “journalists”, see here, but perhaps the definition could be either “plant” or “plant journalists”?

23. shirl and drofle
    Yes, I see what you mean. Is there a term for a longer definition that includes a valid one as a shorter part of it?

24. I got all the way done save for BLUEBEARD, with UXORICIDE my last one legitimately in. I couldn’t think of any famous wife-killers beyond Othello. I know of Bluebeard from the Bartok opera, but it hadn’t occurred to me, and the clue made no sense. Even after I cheated, it made no sense. This is because I didn’t know “blue”= squander. But of course, that’s my fault, not the setter’s.

    I’m pretty sure that that sense of “blue” is unknown on this side of the Atlantic. (Eileen, it isn’t in Webster’s, at least not the abridged one.)

25. Thanks Manehi. Can’t say I really approve of the cross referencing between 7/19 although I accept that each was just solvable on its own. Isn’t the term Embed used when a journalist is put in with a group of soldiers as an observer?

26. A beard in the McCarthy era was someone who submitted under his (I doubt it was ever her) name scripts that a blacklisted writer had written. Woody Allen played one in “The Front” in 1976.

    The uxoricide-bluebeard pairing is a bit like the boot sequence — you can’t get either unless you’ve got the other first. Fortunately the parsing clues get can you out of it, though I first eliminated the beginning and end of “druid”. That left me with anagram fodder which, with a few crossers, produced “uxorimice.” A lovely thought.

    uxorimice

27. Valentine @26, perhaps this:

    uxorimouse (n) (pl. uxorimice) 1. a very timid wife. The man eschewed the after-church gathering, because it was always full of uxorimice.

28. Definitely homophonic Blew Beard with latter as stand-in. (Still in common use) Nice one, Shed.

29. This was an excellent crossword, and as enjoyable as the puzzle itself has been the healthy debate about some of the clues.

    On 3D (EMBED) I agree with muffin @1, in spite of what others have said, but with one small reservation. It’s a difficult one, because by introducing journalists Shed has apparently made the clue fairer (’embed journalists’ = ‘plant journalists’ is very clear), but to say ’embed’ = ‘plant journalists’ seems wrong to me. Saying just ‘Plant journalist receives honour’ à la muffin is precise but perhaps no fun for some. That’s my small reservation. Either way I think the clue could be better.

    I too noted the interdependence between 7D (UXORICIDE) and 19A (BLUEBEARD). Not ideal, although I wasn’t hampered by this. If I was hampered at all it was by the clue for BLUEBEARD, which was my last one in. Obviously I knew what I was looking for but couldn’t think of an example straight away, and having only 4 letters didn’t help. When I stumbled upon the answer I had to look up ‘blue/blued’. I had only heard of blow/blew (squander/squandered), so this was, let’s say, a learning point. By the way, I’m convinced it is BEAR inside BLUED and not a homphone.

    2D (TORMENT) is the only example in my experience (to my recollection) of an indirect hidden answer, and I didn’t think much of it. There is a question mark, so Shed has got away with it! (Has he?)

    So 16A turned out to be MISER (probably). It could have been anything. I suppose, in the sense of a miser being one who hoards his/her wealth and not just one who hoards, or is tight with, money, this clue works, but we only had -I-E-, and for that we had to get 7D and 8D first. I gave it no thought and put in PILES because I was too busy enjoying the rest of the crossword.

    Anyway, apart form 16A, this was one of the most enjoyable crosswords I have tackled this year, with some super clues and a large helping of fun. There are many favourite clues … but I’ve gone on long enough.

    Many thanks to Shed and manehi.

30. Thanks to Shed and manehi. I had the same trouble with BLUEBEARD-UXORICIDE and TORMENT as already noted (and like mrpenney “blue” as verb was unknown to me in the US) but did eventually get through. Overall, very enjoyable.

31. This was, for me, a confusing puzzle. Some of the clues (and even the parsing) were so obvious that I spent some time thinking the answers must be wrong and looking for alternatives. Then, of course, there were others that I had to cheat to complete.

    18d had me flummoxed as I had not heard of the comic strip. I thought the allusion was to “mon General”. The anagram was easy but the spelling made no sense to me. As an expat in the US spelling has always been an issue, so I was confusing it with punctuation.

    I enjoyed 24a, and 29a had me smiling nostalgically – haven’t heard it spoken for quite a while.

    BTW, if the blog is being scanned by NSA et al, the phrase “needed help with the wife killing couple” must have red lights and sirens going off!

    Thanks for the puzzle and the blog.

32. Oh, and muffin @7, “beard” as a gay man’s sham-marriage wife is by no means dead. Go google “Katie Holmes beard” if you want to read some (mean!) modern examples of the usage. [And for the record, the majority opinion on Mr. Cruise in the gay community is twofold: (a) he’s not gay, he’s just weird; (b) the straights can keep him, thanks.]

    That having been said, the homophone reading of that clue occurred to me, but it just doesn’t work—there’s no homophone indicator, not even arguably. The other explanation fits much better.

33. mrpenney @24 – my apologies: I should have said, ‘all my dictionaries’. I do like your uxorimouse. 😉

    MartinD @28

    Where’s the homophone indicator for ‘blew’?

34. Apologies again, mrpenney – we crossed [I’ve been out all afternoon].

35. MrPenney @ 27 — I was thinking more along the lines of “and Mr. Mouse snarled at Mrs. Mouse — he’s not one of your uxorimice.” (Sorry, I got caught up in domestica and haven’t been back to the blog for a bit.)

36. Thanks Shed and manehi

    A wonderful puzzle, I thought, with lots of as-you-solve smiles.

    Alan Browne @ 29: when I (finally) twigged what was going on at 2D it reminded me that there had been something using a very similar if not identical construction (not using thise two words) within the last two or three years. But of course, it’s not one of those where you can use the search facility, so I have absolutely no idea by whom or what it was. Anyone else?

37. There were some problems with this but I enjoyed it much more than yesterday’s puzzle. Although,as I didn’t enjoy yesterday’s at all, this probably amounts to damning with faint praise!
    Actually, I thought much of this was good. The N side went in very quickly- even CRAB which I admit was a guess. I loved MEANDER and MISER also RONDURE which was new to me. 19ac/7dn were a bit naughty and RUN AGROUND was painful but it made me smile.
    Thanks Shed.

38. First, the niggles. I’m not keen on mutual references between clues (19a/7d), particularly when they also share a crosser. Like molongo @4, I took BLUEBEARD as BLUE = “blew/squandered” and BEARD for “stand-in” but, as others have said, with no homophone indicator manehi must be right. For REFERENCE, is “taste for decapitation” really right? Manehi’s “taste decapitated” might have been better.

    There are lots of lovely clues, though. Favourites included MEANDER and TORMENT (once that penny eventually dropped).

    Thanks, Shed and manehi.

39. I remembered that Anthony Burgess used “blued” in the sense of squandered in “Inside Mr Enderby” (and took the trouble to check). So I am perfectly comfortable with the clue. The fact that the word isn’t used in that sense in American English is neither here nor there: the Guardian is British.

40. I agree with Eileen et al (thanks al) that it does not have much to do with the crossword, but another older use of beard refers to a courtier who is coerced into marrying the king’s mistress in order to provide an excuse for her presence in court.

    Alan Browne @29

    Chambers latest edition gives as one definition for embed:

    to place (a journalist) within a military unit to facilitate the reporting on a conflict.

    Whether this goes for you or against depends on your interpretation of the brackets.

41. Quite a lot for everyone to talk about in this one, but to me it’s a proper Guardian puzzle. I like Shed, and I enjoyed this, but in my humble one, he has done better. Then of course, you look at individual clues and some of them are knock-outs!

42. I was happy with EMBED = place journalists, by the way, with one of them (ED) getting the honour.

43. 19a, BLUE, squandered, and BEARD = stand-in, could be valid, perhaps not what Shed intended, but how interesting…

44. Cookie @43
    But “BLUE” meaning squander is present tense, so it needs the final D to make it mean “squandered”.

45. PeterO @40

    Thanks for your input to this EMBED thing.

    The dictionary does what dictionaries do – place a phrase in parentheses to give context to the word of interest.

    The Chambers definition tells us that plant and embed are interchangeable in this context, so that

    embed = plant
    embed a journalist … = plant a journalist …

    but not embed = plant a journalist.

    I think the verdict on the clue should be given according to how loose you would allow its grammar to be. I come down on the strict side of the divide, so I would say (again) that the clue could do with a slight improvement, and muffin gave us a nice simple example.

46. jennyk @44, “I blue £1,000” and “I squandered £1,000” were the same in the past, blue is thought most probably to be a variant of “blow”. Never heard anyone say “I blued £1,000”, I live in a time warp having not lived in an English speaking country for over 50 years.

47. Cookie @46
    I don’t think the etymology is very helpful here. Chambers online doesn’t seem to have “blue” in that sense, but both Collins and Oxford have the past tense as “blued”, not “blue”. I suspect that when you’ve heard people saying “I blue/blew £1,000” they would have spelt it as “blew”. That’s what I would say and how I’d spell it. If I was thinking of it as “blue”, I’d say “blued” … but I don’t think of it as that at all and I was surprised when the clue turned out to be using it with that spelling.

48. Collins lists ‘blued’ as the past tense or participle, so it’s totally okay. The ‘stand-in’ bit means ‘BEAR put in’, so we have BEAR in BLUED. Those of us trying to justify BLUE/ BEARD are not going to have much luck.

    An excellent puzzle by Shed, one of the very best.

49. I agree with Paul B @48 although BEARD = STAND-IN is totally justified from a vocabulary point of view it is hard to justify from the word play due to the slight uncertainty about the past particple of blue meaning squander. This is made doubly difficult as there seems to be some disabreement/uncertainty about this which is further muddied by the fact thet the verb “blue” exists to mean “make blue” whose pple is blued for certain!

    The etymology of “blue” suggests a mishearing of “blew” and a misunderstanding of the tense to get the present “blue” anyway! So OED and Collins suggest pple is “blued”. However SOED seems to suggest pple is “blue”. Aaaargh!

    So nice idea and maybe Shed even had the seen this and thought pple could be “blue”. However it does seem rather “lucky” that “stand-in” can be interpreted in the two ways. (i.e. noun = “beard” or an intruction to insert “stand” = “bear”.)

    So it’s quite simple really! 😉

50. On BLUEBEARD: I also think Paul (@48) must be right, and that is indeed exactly how manehi interpreted the clue at the top of the page and how I understood it when solving it. I strongly suspect it is what Shed intended.

    The crossword and blog together have been educational – a lot to enjoy!

51. A belated observation on “rondure” – Walt Whitman uses it:

    http://www.bartleby.com/236/120.html

    I only know because Vaughan Williams set those words in the Sea Symphony.

52. Thanks manehi and Shed.

    Like many others, I missed the intent of MENTORS at 2dn. Very clever.

    My problem with UXORICIDE/BLUEBEARD is more to do with 7 being the act and 19 a perpetrator. Shouldn’t 7 have said “by 19, say” and shouldn’t 19 have been “squandered stand-in did 7” – or some such.

    Clearly these were the answers but …..

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