News 2 Ashburton Guardian. Tuesday, July 4, 2017 ASHBURTON DISTRICT COURT ‘Gratuitous violence’: Sentence extended A 20-year-old man imprisoned for 22 months for.
Thanks, Eileen.What a great puzzle. Much easier than yesterday, provided you twigged the theme early on, but still tricky and, I’m sorry Mr JH, much more fun. My way in was the obvious anagram at 17,25 which confirmed my suspicion.I agree with you that the fourth container only works if the definition were of VACANCY.Surprised you didn’t comment on the spelling of TUNNELER without any “US” indicator.I agree with Stella that A SWELL is “much wave motion” – well, compared to a ripple, anyway. Thanks, Eileen, needed you for 9a, 6d, 16d and 30a.Very enjoyable, especially after yesterday’s.I missed getting 6d as I was convinced it was the eleventh veg.
I am still puzzled by this number despite the putative explanations above.5d VACANT: I had a feeling I had seen something like this before. PUCK 25,004 May 7 2010 25a had VACANT as the answer to “One container within another that’s (6)”, but I have this feeling there was another clue with a sequence of four or five of the same word.15d: DIE I see the first part but don’t understand why I would need this at the casino?. Thanks Eileen, and Boatman for an excellent puzzle.This is the type of a theme puzzle that is enjoyable – the theme is general enough that one still has to tease out the related answers.My entree was MARROW.
Many excellent clues to like – MUSHY PEAS, a cluelike answer, TURNIP, another one of those, and BOGGLING. I’m with Alex in Oz and Thomas99 on LEGUME being the 11th vegetable (though strictly speaking, it’s a family of vegetables), for the same reasons they mention. Also if one considers MANGETOUT as 2 lights, then one should do the same with RED LENTIL, shouldn’t one?. Entertaining as it is to think of you all settling into a day of arguing about the LEGUME / MANGETOUT controversy, I’ll put you out of your misery and confirm that Alex and Thomas have penetrated my logic successfully – after all, if I’d meant “Vegetable” to be both definition and hidden-word fodder it would have been doing double-duty, and we can’t have that Or can we?Glad you’re having fun, anyway. My only sadness with this puzzle was that the Guardian content-management system can’t print Greek letters – otherwise, I’d have been able to have a single-character clue at 1 Dn, which would have been something of a record, I’d like to think I’m ignoring the conventionally blank indication for a well-known eight-letter word, obviously.
Thanks Eileen, particularly for putting me right in the only crossword I have ever done where not only did one across elude me, but there wasn’t one.Thanks Boatman, this was as much fun I have had in a long time. Reviewing other comments, it is clear that I can read meat and poison reactions; to me, yesterday was hard work for little reward, today an exhilarating workout. Was I alone in speculating that the theme might be madness related (madhouse, lunatic, Bedlam and perhaps fool in the clues, and the un-Grauniad-like vegetable connection)?. Lovely crossword. Totally stuffed on 30a.Bit stuffed at first in N.W corner as I too started off with SPLIT rather than mushy. Once the pi clue dawned I realised it was mushy.
I was unhappy with split as it didn’t seem quite right.The linkage dawned fairly rapidly but I do wonder about the use of that linkage, ie vegetable, five times in the other clues. A bit of a signifier as the POMO brigade might put it. Or “oh dear, what a giveaway” as Monty Python put it.And an iPad is as useless as the Guardian CMS as it does not have the pi symbol. In fact it is useless at everything but that is a rant for a different blog (I wanted a Windows 7 Netbook for my birthday but got an effing crapple thing). RishiI deliberately didn’t include Chambers’second definition of ‘ana’, as in that case it’s a suffix: ‘-ana’, which, for me, does not justify it as a bona fide word and that’s what was being discussed.However, I’m glad you sent me back to Chambers, because, underneath that second definition, I discovered what I was looking for earlier, because I knew that I’d seen it there on a previous occasion, when ANA was clued as ‘gossip’: ‘a collection of someone’s table talk, or of gossip, literary anecdotes or possessions’ – this time without the –. Thanks Eileen and BoatmanI too found this as hard as yesterday’s but I enjoyed it slightly less.Thanks Eileen for the parsing of 9a.
I think this is very clever but I seem to remember that such multiple action has been the source of some dispute i.e. Lunatic to maniac minus man to iac to one across.I too decided legume was no.
11.I liked several clues inc. 7a (I also fell at first for split peas – I took mushy ones to be a cooked form), 19a, 25a, 29a, 1d!, 11d, 23d (read as by Stella etc).I also got into difficulties over 6d which I fgirst thought was outbid (out + bid(e)) but was dragged into the correct answer by mange tout. Thanks, Eileen.Boatman puzzles are usually tricky but rewarding and this was no exception.
I did find it more or less as hard as yesterday’s.Like some others, I plumped for SPLIT PEAS at first, and also OUTBID for 6d (BID being the start of ‘bide’, ie ‘to live’, although ‘excluded’ seemed extraneous).My first few theme entries were all pulses, so I thought the puzzle might have been more flatulent than it turned out. CARROTS broadened the field for me ?Monday’s Rufus and Tuesday’s Gordius were both relatively difficult, for them.
After yesterday’s Enigmatist and today’s Boatman I await Friday with some trepidation!. Eileen: Just one little comment on your (admirable) blog – it is perhaps a little unfair to refer to 7a as an ‘indirect anagram’. That term is used to describe an anagram of a word which is not explicitly present, but is a synonym of one of the words in the clue.
This is always frowned upon.Instead it is a reverse clue, in which the solution could be used as a clue for the expression in the clue as written. Reverse clues are not strictly Ximenean either, but are not doubly cryptic – and are great fun. Thanks for the blog, Eileen, and thanks to Boatman for a great puzzle. I found this a little easier than yesterday’s, which I didn’t finish. My way in to the vegetable theme was CARROTS, having guessed correctly that the first word of 17,25 was RED.Had to cheat to get CUMANA, not helped by misreading the clue as ‘Mental image of God’.And I would never have seen the wordplay for 9ac! So thanks to Eileen for explaining it.After I had finished and noted 10 vegetables, I assumed LEGUME must be the 11th.Oh, and I was in MUSHY PEAS camp. Hi tupu @39 Sorry, I’ve been out at a pantomime rehearsal – ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, believe it or not!
so have only just seen your comment.I’m not sure that we’ve been using ‘a step too far’ as a technical term. S is quite often clued as an abbreviation for ‘small’ you see it as such on clothing labels, for instance but I felt it was a bit of a leap to clue it by the synonym ‘little’ – which, for me, was a bit further than taking three letters from a synonym for ‘lunatic’in 9ac. In the blog, I was asking what others thought.Thanks, Gervase, @40. I knew when I wrote it that ‘indirect’ wasn’t right but I just couldn’t think of ‘reverse’. You’re right, of course – and the same applies to 1dn.I don’t think it matters whether the peas are cooked, or dried, or not. I thought we were discussing the anagram indicator, split or mushy.
The word PEAS appeared in the answer, so, for me, it was part of the theme. Spilt may be better as an indicator, Thomas99, but ‘spilt pea’ is not a recognised expression, so. For me, that wouldn’t work.Sorry to be still in pantomime mode but I think we’re splitting hairs now, as well as peas.
For some reason or another I never had the opportunity to solve this year’s Boatman crosswords on the day itself. But today, hurrah, at last!I like Boatman’s puzzles very much not the previous one though and this one was indeed worth the Saturday spot.But mainly for its ‘feelgood factor’, not for being appropriately hard, because we thought this puzzle wasn’t.Well, nothing is after yesterday’s IMO, magnificent Enigmatist. ?Where I didn’t appreciate yesterday’s “Gem” that much, I really liked 7ac and 1d in particular. What a pity that it wasn’t possible to print Greek characters. What a silliness too, in this day and age.Of course, Boatman was there himself, as ever.And initially I thought that all these vegetables in the clues would be used in different ways, another one of Boatman’s specialities.
Not today.No problems with cum, ana, mange and tout – they’re all in the dictionary.We liked the simple but smiling charades of 11d (OKRA) and 16ac (CARROTS).And, Eileen, we/I agree that 15d is probably the COD.Only at 29ac (S=little) and 23d (much wave motion?) and the fun-clue at 5d (which is more fun than cryptically precise) we raised our eyebrows.But apart from that, good fun.Very good fun. Although I wrote in the answer confidently, I wouldn’t have been able to parse ONE ACROSS in a month of Sundays, so thanks to Eileen for that.I thought the contrast between yesterday’s Enigmatist and today’s Boatman was exemplified by two pairs of clues. 1) The totally obscure POTOROO (E) and ASSIENTOS (B) were I thought obscurely clued by E and fairly clued by B, respectively. In fact, I confidently wrote the latter in without checking the dictionary.2) The mini-clues “Gem?” (E) and “pi?!” (B) also showed up the difference between these two setters. The answer TWIN (which I had to come here for) did not even elicit a groan from me; it’s just a bad clue. Whereas TURNIP (and to a lesser extent MUSHY PEAS – I didn’t think of SPLIT but it’s a valid alternative) is definitely smile-worthy.I enjoyed OKRA too, so thanks to Boatman for an enjoyable crossword (though I thought CUMANA was unfair: I refuse to scan the atlas for possible South American cities, and as has been pointed out, CU is not the only metal that fits).
Hi EileenThanksI was not being critical of ‘mushy peas’ and thought it was a very clever clue. I was simply pointing out a difference between it and other theme answers, worth noting I think because the invention of cooking was a vital step, like language, in our emergence as a species. It is still different in your terms, since the others are all unqualified.Re ‘step too far’ I was not trying to suggest it was a technical term but simply loosely attributing it to a kind of argument I seem to remember from some earlier blogs. Once again I liked it a great deal (in retrospect in this case since I needed your insight to understand it properly). For me the distance from clue to answer is rather long since it contains several steps after the initial substitution (un’man’ning, and then transcribing twice).
I don’t remember seeing so many before but that may just be me. What a lovely puzzle, with some hilariously streamlined clues. I got but failed to parse 9a and 6d, and sadly, the wonderful 15d. SPLIT never occurred to me, though for a while when I had only entered PEAS I was plumping for MIXED.I liked how there were other vegetables involved besides the unclued theme ones.
I liked that getting the theme didn’t ruin the puzzle; I liked that there were no tomatoes. My COD was “all of them”.Thanks for the blog Eileen to help me parse what I couldn’t, everyone else for the great discussion, and Boatman for this elegant treat and for dropping by!.
Oh I also meant to mention the grid. This is the “grid from hell” that always gets me mad at Rufus – lots of unchecked first and last letters, and four quadrants only joined by one checked letter each. Strange how that didn’t really interfere here, except for the dawning gloom that finishing up the NE wasn’t going to help with my half-empty NW at all.I’d put that down to good cluing and probably a fair recognition that this grid is hard to work with for solvers. So kudos to Boatman for that, as well!.
Financial Times no.13,847 by REDSHANK
Posted by Ringo on November 10th, 2011
Oops. Problems here. I’m not sure how it’s come out in the pink paper, but the PDF puzzle I’ve got from the FT website is all to cock: rogue white squares and clues strewn here, there and everywhere. I think I’ve managed to pick my way through the wreckage okay, though.
A shame, because this is a decent puzzle. A couple of the &lits had me on my feet and applauding wildly.
ACROSS
1. NOSINESS Double definition: curiosity, and the defining characteristic of the big-beaked Cyrano de Bergerac
5. PATOISToi [a form of ‘you’ in French] within pas [‘step’ in French]; ‘with Nancy‘ seems a strange indicator for ‘in French’, though (‘in Nancy’ would have made more sense (but would, I realise, have been less cryptic))
10. SHINGLEH(arbour) within single [one run in cricket]
11. OROGENY Anagram of one orgy to give the geologic process of mountain formation
12. LIFER Hidden in reverse in featuRE FILm
13. WAIT FOR ITW [Welsh] + ait [island] + I [1, one] within fort [castle]
14. LABOUR LEADER Anagram of euro deal blair minus i(taly) to give the post formerly held by Gordon Brown
17. ACTUALLY 18ac. IN THE GRID SECOND FIDDLE Double definition: a second violinist (fiddler) would need a bow, and Nick Clegg plays ‘second fiddle’ to David Cameron in the UK’s coalition government
21. LAUNDERERLA [Los Angeles] + (Th)underer [old nickname for the Times of London]
23. TRUROR [river] within anagram of rout(e) to give Cornwall’s only city
24. MARTYRS Anagram of R(idle)y (L)at(i)m(e)r + s(tate); the whole provides the definition (somewhat contrivedly) and alludes to the English heretics
25. AIRLINE Double definition: a hose or line that inflates something with air, and Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
26. ON SONG S(ociety) within on [working] + on + g(olf)
27. STOLIDLYLidl [German supermarket] within anagram of toys
DOWN
1. NESTLENewcastle minus w(omen) + ca [circa, about]
2. SNIFFYIf within S(tephe)n F(r)y
3. NIGERIA Anagram of regain + a The grid provides nine squares, not seven: the FINAL two squares should be ignored
4. SHERWOOD FOREST Anagram of Hoods few resort; again, the whole, alluding to the legend of Robin Hood, provides the definition
6. ALOOF O [ring] within anagram of foal
7. OVERRIDE Anagram of o(ld) driver + (verg)e
8. SHYSTERS Anagram of theyre + sss [$$$, a few dollars…]
9. ROBIN REDBREAST Anagram of b(ird) birders are not, and a third elaborate &lit (the allusion being, of course, to Erithacus rubecula)
15. ACTUALLY 16dn. IN THE GRID O SOLE MIO Anagram of a solo melody I minus the letters of lady to give the famous Neapolitan song that translates into English as ‘Just One Cornetto‘…
16. ACTUALLY 17dn. IN THE GRID ACQUIRES Sounds like a choir’s [choral group’s]
18. ACTUALLY 15dn IN THE GRID LITERAL This one’s tricksy enough even without the (appropriate) misprint: a literal is an error in printing, and sounds like (when read out: ‘as read’ is, I think, the homphone indicator, not another definition of ‘literal’) littoral, on the beach The grid provides nine squares, not seven: the FIRST two squares should be ignored
19. BURIED(C)uri(a) within bed [plot]
20. LONELY A cryptic clue for ‘lily’ might be one [I] within lly
22. DOYEN Ye [corrupted old spelling of ‘the’] within don [fellow: it could be either a fellow’s name or an academic fellow, I suppose]