Today’s Guardian – your struggle won’t be as long as the setter’s!

12 comments on “Today’s Guardian – your struggle won’t be as long as the setter’s!”

1. A nice puzzle. I didn’t time it but it must have come in at around fifteen minutes.

   I had a major quibble at 10ac, where EIFFEL the engineer sounding like EYEFUL, a wide view, surely needs a homophone indicator? …but since that turns out not to be the answer, clearly it doesn’t. ;-D It’s the first time I’ve ever attempted a Grauniad grid, and I’m familiar enough with the local daily rag’s puzzles where homophones are frequently not indicated. This seemed like a good bet for “easy clue that isn’t up to Times standard,” but it isn’t one.

   Good luck to the setter in his travails on Sunday. Maybe he can take his mind off the pain by thinking up interesting new clues for cliched words…

   1. My fault I expect but I’m rather confused by your post. For the avoidance of doubt, the answer to 10A is not Eiffel and the clue is not a homophone!

      This is normal Guardian fare, less disciplined than the Times with a mild theme and a number of clues that you can’t solve until you’ve solved some others. This makes the NW corner a little more difficult than it might otherwise be. I’m not sure the Times would allow 8A and the anagrind at 2D is a little unusual.

      1. I might not have made myself clear. I at first entered EIFFEL, and cursed the fact that no homophind was present – because (a) I’ve come across a clue before where EIFFEL=engineer was rhymed with EYEFUL=a sight, though I don’t recall in what crossword; and (b) because I’ve done xwords in other papers where it’s quite normal for homophinds, words indicating anagrams etc. to be completely missing, so you have to work out for yourself what the wordplay is. Obviously the Times would never allow such jiggery-pokery; I didn’t know from personal experience whether the Telegraph would – although since this guy is a Times setter, he’d probably never write such a bad clue in the first place.

         It eventually came apparent that EIFFEL was completely wrong, and I ended up owing the setter a mental apology!

         1. Thanks for that. The xwords in the UK quality press (Times, Financial Times, Independent, Guardian and Telegraph) are all produced to a high standard. The daily cryptics obey the main Ximenian rules and the bar xwords are stricter than that.
      2. My impression is that Paul’s puzzles at the Guardian are more disciplined than they used to be. Yes there are things in this puzzle that wouldn’t happen at the Times, but every clue seemed to me perfectly logical – splitting RC into its two parts bothers me much less than doing the same with “indeed”, because it stands for a two-word phrase. And “pants” in its modern slang meaning is a splendid AI unless it becomes a cliché – use it sparingly, setters!

         [And with strict Ximenean Manley and CD-fiend Squires mixing with the libertarian majority, there isn’t really such a thing as “normal Guardian fare”.]

         1. The splitting of RC to produce R=run and C=about is fine by me too and I agree better than in-deed. However, so far as I know R-R is not an accepted abbreviation for Rolls Royce and that’s what I had in mind.

            I agree pants=rubbish is good and used beautifully in the clue. It isn’t in common use and when combined with other factors made the NW corner for me a little harder than the rest of what was a reasonably straightforward if enjoyable puzzle. I’ll join in your plea for sparing future use.

            I suggest we agree to disagree on the meaning of normal with its connotations of most frequent; majority; etc

            1. Normal: fair point – but however much one style is in the majority, the Guardian setters retain their styles in a way that doesn’t happen at the Times, where the editor amends clues to achieve a “Times style”. So a G puzzle can be much more “abnormal” than a T one.

               Given the fame of the logo with two Rs, linking a double R with Rolls-Royce seems pretty reasonable – it’s done on their own web-site. As the name is hyphenated, whether you should put RR or R-R seems anyone’s guess.

               1. I suppose we may never know, but I’d guess John would have originally offered RR as it would make the clue look even better, and that the xwd ed decided the hyphen was needed.

                  That being the case, though, surely there would have been little harm in changing RC to R-C?

                  1. I wouldn’t like R-C – it would unfairly seem to mean something else, Roman Catholic being two words and “RC” a well-established form for the abbrev.
               2. You’ll laugh when you get round to solving Mephisto 2539!
2. If I may go all Forrest Gump for a moment, John’s crosswords really do seem like a box of chocolates. Here and there you have to put question marks, wondering if some of the devices/defs really stand up. But countering these is such a wealth of inventiveness and exuberance you end up not caring about anything that appears a little loose.

   At the end of it – in a way which seems applicable to John more than any other setter I can think of – you just feel like you’ve had a supremely entertaining solve.

   Thankfully (and while EIFFEL had sprung to mind on reading the clue) I didn’t fall into the trap but, even if it had turned out to be the right answer with a dodgy clue I probably wouldn’t have cared. Blame the editor for not spotting it ;o)

   Finish a Paul/Mudd/Punk puzzle and you generally do so with a grin on your face.

   1. I’ll second anax there – I have been doing the G’s crosswords mostly to get better at thematic crosswords, and he’s one of the setters I am happy to see – the sense of humor in the clues is pretty much in line with mine. While we’re straying beyond the Times, I also like it when I see Dac or Phi appear in the Independent.

Comments are closed.