Guardian 26,840 / Paul

54 comments on “Guardian 26,840 / Paul”

1. Thanks Paul and Eileen

   Paul at his least enjoyable for me – so many “guess the answer, then try to parse it” (or not bother, as in the case of GBS) clues. So many loose allusions too – “sun” = “setter”, “bug” = “strep”, “asteroid” = “one shooting up”, “scum” = “shower”, “hinge” = “rest”?

   I couldn’t make any sense of TRENDY apart from the rather neat definition.

   I did like OXTAIL and LONDON TAXI DRIVER.

2. @muffin

   Thanks for your comment yesterday.

3. You are welcome, Mitz – let’s try to maintain the amicable tone here.

4. As ever a fun solve from Paul. I actually finished the Io (from yesterday’s FT) in less time – neither being anything to boast about.

   Slow and steady wins the race they say – although I don’t recall ever having seen a race where that rule applied.

5. Oops – thanks for the blog Eileen.

6. Thanks Eileen- you seemed to read my thoughts on the stages of parsing 6/13. From the impossible anagrind, Swiss family Robinson, gorge…..Very neat wordplay.
   And thanks for “persists” I was thinking pest for bug and…
   And thanks Paul

7. Like Muffin, I guessed a lot of answers and either could not parse them or gave up trying – these were 8d, 18d, 17d, 23a, 4d, 6/13, 5/22, 18a, 3d and 5d – so it was not a very satisfying solve for me but I did manage to finish it so that was something.

   Thanks Eileen and Paul

8. ThAnks Eileen, including for explaining the begin 3D which baffled me. Like others I didn’t enjoy this as much as usual with this normally delightful setter, though I did like the S&M clue. Failed on the Miliband one, going for ‘exited.’

9. The bug in 3D

10. Thanks Paul and Eileen.

    I was another who went down the GORGE path at 6,13 and failed to parse TRENDY. I did like LONDON TAXI DRIVER, TYPESETTER, SERIAL NUMBER, OXTAIL and SAND MARTIN!

11. Thanks Eileen and Paul. Good puzzle, just STREP is a bit American for me. Nice to think of Terry-Thomas with 5d

12. [jennyk, just read your post @96 on yesterday’s puzzle, did you by any chance do your science A-levels at Brighton Technical College?]

13. Scum = shower? Heard on parade ground?
    Would someone explain, please?

14. Dan Milton @13, I had to check that in the dictionary, COED gives shower n 6 Brit. slang contemptible or unpleasant person or group of people.

15. @ Dan Milton,

    Imagine a sergeant major in the mould of Michael Palin in The Meaning of Life but played by Terry Thomas.

16. Finished eventually, but with quite a few unparsed including 6,13, so doesn’t really count as a ‘win’. Of the ones I could parse, many of which I didn’t find too straightforward, I liked LONDON TAXI DRIVER, PREPARATORY and ASTEROID.

    Thanks to Eileen (v. clever to have worked out 6,13) and Paul.

17. For the second day running, Eileen and I don’t agree – what is going on??

    I found this hard work and didn’t really enjoy the fight – sorry Paul – and thank you Eileen

18. In 7d, what indicates that Ed (Millibean) should appear twice? Nice puzzle, I thought. Paul back on better form.

19. I don’t think “Strep” is particularly American. An abbreviation, I suppose. But it’s quite common to hear people talking about “a strep throat” for a streptococcal infection.

20. @ James G

    The Labour party had two Eds in charge at the last election: leader Miliband and shadow chancellor Balls.

21. We enjoyed this, whilst agreeing with muffin that there were several very loose definitions especially 10a and 15d. GBS came early on when we had the r from dryrot and thought at once, by luck, of George. Then it was easy to parse. But thanks Paul. Jusr what we needed on a damp day.

22. Found this a little tricky in places, but all quite enjoyable, if a little verbose. PERSISTS was last in, since it took me a while to convince myself STREP could be an abbreviation. Liked SAND MARTIN.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

23. Thank you, Paul and Eileen.

    There seems to have been a lot of “s and m” clues lately, ones with “and” between two letters. Time was (it seems to me, whose memory is unreliable) that the only clue that did that was “V and A.” It’s fun to see some more examples.

    The only kind of martin I could think of was house martin, which didn’t fit. Had to google the bird to find sand martin.

    I thought at first that the hired capitalist would be a golden something, which held me back a good while.

24. Thanks to Paul and Eileen. I did get TRENDY but took a while before seeing SAND MARTIN (I was trying to fit in SM without the “and” and was only familiar with the purple variety). SHOWER was last in once I had all the crossers. LONDON TAXI DRIVER came late but was much enjoyed.

25. Loved this, and for once got my hands on it before midnight. Paul being witty as I remember him from when I used to do the Guardian crossword years ago. More please.

26. Mitz @20 – Balls may have been prominent at the last election, but he wasn’t part of the leadership (Miliband and Harman). And he didn’t resign but was voted out. So either Ed B is not implicated, or the clue is a bit off. I settled for it being a bit off and went with the Ed duo.

27. VW @26 – I think anyone on the front bench is in the leadership, and the chancellor/shadow chancellor is pretty near the top of the greasy pole (and is often more influential than the deputy leader)

28. Taking muffin’s list of quibbles – meant in the nicest possible way, of course – I think only the asteroid one is a bit dodgy. But since I don’t know my asteroid from my meteorite, I won’t risk making a fool of myself by further comment. Actually, although GBS will of course just be chucked in once you have a few crossers (well done, Eileen, sorting it out), I thought there was a lot Og good – and original – stuff. The last thing you can say about this puzzle is that John Halpern just keeps churning them out.

    I especially liked TRENDY, RESTRAIN (honest, muffin) and EDITED. Even though I’ve lived outside the UK for donkey’s years and bookmark my UK news sources to the sports pages (more facts there, as CS Lewis used to say), I thought the last named was very clever.

29. Seems to be a bit of a split in opinion here, some liking it and others not. I’m a bit in the latter camp alas: not as much sparkle as I usually get from Paul, SAND MARTIN obv tops.

    EDITED was an act of faith since I didn’t get the clue. Looking at the blog, surely it can’t be a double-Miliband for ED ED, for that would simply be ‘Labour leader’; ‘leadership’ could credibly be Miliband and Balls, and they both resigned, not just one.

    I will defend BERN as the Swiss canton though. If you know one, it’s probably Bern. There’s an allusion here perhaps to GBS’s Arms and the Man, its protagonist Bluntschli being a Swiss professional soldier.

30. Just seen Van Winkle @26. He’s right of course.

31. Van Winkle @26 Balls was resigned to his fate perhaps?

32. Hi ulaca
    Most of my quibbles were about “looseness” rather than “dodginess”, but the ASTEROID one is distinctly dodgy – is Paul confusing them with meteors?
    Incidentally, “meteroids” are small rocks in space, minding their own business, “meteors” are shooting stars in the sky, and “meteorites” are remnants of meteors that actually make it to the surface of the Earth.

33. Unusually for this setter I didn’t enjoy this and could not finish it, or be bothered to try. Too many connections beyond my ken required. River = Fleet, Labour leadership = EdEd, scum = shower as examples. But I accept that those may well be obvious to many or even most solvers so don’t blame the setter. Thanks Eileen.

34. I really enjoyed this; liked especially the London taxi driver and the sand martin! Thank you Paul & Eileen.

    Just to add my twopennyworth to the “Strep” debate: the abbreviation is indeed very common, in England as well as the USA. Can hardly ever remember saying its full name in my many years of nursing!

    [Eileen: the author whose name you couldn’t recall was Johann David Wyss. Thank you for the reminder of a favourite book of my childhood.]

35. I thought this rather good even if I did get bogged down once or twice. Initially I had SCALES for 1dn which screwed up the LONDON in 9ac, and it took me far too long to see MAOIST and TRENDY. Both were well clued though. EXITED was good.
    Thanks Paul.

36. I didn’t have Fleet down as LONDON RIVER, just as RIVER, which left me scratching around to parse the first word: nice definition though. Favourite was OXTAIL.

    As for parsing George Bernard Shaw: well, it’s a hard job but somebody had to do it. I didn’t.

    There was a young man from Moose Jaw
    Who wanted to meet Bernard Shaw
    When his friends asked him why
    He made no reply
    He just sharpened an axe and a saw…

37. Isn’t the double Ed in 7d because of the “re-signed”?

38. JuneG @34

    I googled the author as soon as I saw the clue and was excited to see that he had three names, the third one having four letters, not noticing to begin with that the enumeration of the first two was the wrong way round, therefore impossible.

    Thanks to Mitz @15 for the clip [that’s what I had in mind] – I had to go out late morning so have only just seen the query.

    STREP is a respectable abbreviation this side, too: see here: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/streptococcal-infections/pages/introduction.aspx [I was going to say that I thought I first heard it on ‘Angels’, decades ago, then realised that was ‘staph’ – but it’s the same principle!]

    Thanks Gladys @36 😉

    Re the repetition of ED: I was hoping someone would take that up – I didn’t really understand it!

39. I side with those who took the double edder to mean the two Eds, as they were often referred to as such.

40. Going back to hinge/rest – Eileen has given a convincing example of how hinges and rests might be interchangeable, but can anyone do the same for hinge and rest? I can’t think of one.

41. ……….I suppose “It might hinge on” and “It might rest on”, but neither usage is at all common, I would think. (“It might come down to….”?)

42. Like some others I found this hard going, and involving too much guesswork. My least favourite Paul puzzle for a long time! But as always there were some nice clues: TYPESETTER, SERIAL NUMBER and SAND MARTIN come to mind. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

43. Hard work and got stuck on taxi driver. I guess I don’t like cryptics much… where capitalist is used as someone who works in the capital. A bit like a hard Rufus.
    Neither asteroids nor meteors ever go up and not sure s&M is seductive…fun maybe 🙂

44. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    muffin @ 41: I think it works better if you substitute ‘will’ for ‘might’ in your example.

45. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Didn’t think that it was too straightforward, but it was started after Thursday night drinks!! Found that it was one where clues just fell slowly one by one, especially by taking the time to work through some of the complex parsing of a few of them along the way.

    I didn’t have SERIAL NUMBER as a cryptic definition, but rather a charade of SERIAL (loosely theme – as in logic maths (of a relation) connected, transitive, and asymmetric, thereby imposing an order on all the members of the domain) and NUMBER (song).

    Finished in the SE corner with that SERIAL NUMBER, ASTEROID (which took longer than it should have) and MORTAL (the same).

46. muffin@41 – there’s the problem … “hinge on” can mean the same as “rest on” as comparable phrases, but “hinge” does not mean “rest” as single words.

47. brucew@aus

    I took the cryptic definition of SERIAL NUMBER as the number / tune which is the theme song of a TV or radio serial.

48. Hi Eileen … Ka-ching … of course, that’s better !!!

49. I enjoyed this puzzle in the main, but it was not one of Paul’s best. Like muffin @1 and Apple Granny @21, I thought Paul was not spot-on today with some of his definitions/indications. Also, why choose ‘Fleet’ as the London river in 9A (LONDON TAXI DRIVER)? (Ok, why not!) The clues were otherwise fair, and clever with it in some cases.

    6A/13A turned out not to be a complete anagram, and having ‘solved’ it, i.e. got the answer from BERN, (WARGODHES)* and a few crossers, I just wasn’t enthusiastic enough to work out the rest. I don’t think this clue was as wonderful as some of you found it.

    Many clues were excellent. My favourite was 18A (SAND MARTIN).

    Thanks Eileen for your interesting blog, and thanks to Paul for the puzzle.

50. So it could be almost a triple definition:
    1) ‘That’s used for identifying’ – equipment, car engines, books, etc.
    2) ‘theme song’ – the music for a TV / radio serial
    3) An &lit cryptic definition that covers the identifying of the show by this music 🙂

51. Great fun – and far more enjoyable than his offering of last week, thankfully – particularly since published on a Thursday when I look forward to the most fun. (I actually thought last week’s rather more ‘quiptical’ perhaps).
    I realise we have differing tastes; for myself, I prefer a puzzle to be puzzling and relish having to use the old grey cells. Paul’s brilliance never ceases to impress, not least his ability to set at varying levels of difficulty.
    I thought some of the definitions were delightful, as Eileen has noted. A particular favourite was LONDON TAXI DRIVER (a clue that had me stumped for some time – far, far better than a ‘write-in’, for me).
    So thank you Paul (and nicely blogged, Eileen; GORGE had me for a while too!)
    A very Happy Easter to the all the gang, and particularly our leader, the Great and Good Gaufrid.
    Wx

52. Yet again, I didn’t get to a puzzle till late and ended up finishing next day. In this case, the top was filled, but I struggled with the bottom half, particularly the bottom right. I did get there today, though, with only DRY ROT left unparsed.

    I found Eileen’s description of her mental process for 6, 13 particularly interesting, because my problem with DRY ROT was also due to an early fixed idea. I got the ROT part quickly but was unsure whether it was dry, wet or some other type. Looking at the clue, I decided “right to bring up “ was the R and a reversed “to”, so the first word had to be clued by “case of disrepair”. By the time GEORGE confirmed DRY, I couldn’t see any other way to parse it until I came here and started kicking myself.

    Re. ASTEROID: at first sight, I agreed with ulaca @28 and muffin @32, but thinking more about it I remembered that meteors have to come from somewhere and they are often from the asteroid belt. Checking that, I found that NASA define a meteor as “the light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star” and a meteoroid as a “small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun”, and they should know. So, is a particle from an asteroid close enough to be acceptable? For me, yes, though I am sure not for everyone here.

    Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

53. Point taken, muffin, but I don’t really think that any of the other four dyads in your list evince looseness!

54. Thanks Eileen and Paul.

    I always feel intimidated by this style of grid. On the one hand I know there will be fewer crossers to help and on the other feel that I’ll have fewer clues to solve.

    And as often the case with Paul, it did take a while to get going.

    My only solve from my first run through the across clues was the simple hidden DEMO and then saw SONNET which got me started properly with TYPESETTER next.

    In the end, not as hard as I feared completing in just two sittings either side of going to see Hobson’s Choice at Richmond (very enjoyable production).

    Last two were the clever SERIAL NUMBER and MORTAL.

    Really enjoyed SAND MARTIN.

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