Comments on: Guardian 24378 - Arachne - Ma is a Ms

By: David

David — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:02:47 +0000

Easington, at Peterlee, County Durham, Dave.

By: dave brown

dave brown — Sat, 03 May 2008 12:55:39 +0000

Moving gradually to lose a third of the old colliery EASING Where is the old colliery?

By: Paul B

Paul B — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:09:58 +0000

I’ve been musing on this one, and I think the problem is twofold.

As mentioned, ‘trove’ can mean ‘hidden treasure’ as well as simply ‘treasure’, so the answer (if anyone were to deduce it) could always be ‘hidden hidden treasure’.

But as to deduction, it’s a real toughie: hidden clues are never - or oughtn’t be - indirect, and this one actually is. Better off, I suspect, hiding ‘treasure’.

And therein, probably, lies the essence of the setter’s problem …

By: Shed

Shed — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:01:56 +0000

11 ac: ’stews’ is a rather archaic word for ‘brothel’. I found this a struggle but in the end a rewarding one, with some interesting new ways of doing old tricks. Though I share other contributors’ reservations about HIDDEN TREASURE, which I couldn’t figure out the crypting of at all.

By: manehi

manehi — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:38:20 +0000

6a: it’s not quite an &lit, is it? the definition is talented = ABLE, while the “&lit” reading would lead you to CABLE, which still needs to lose its leader to give the answer. Still, I suppose that you can get CABLE from “talented Lib Dem” or just “Lib Dem” and then the rest is used only once.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:04:35 +0000

6a: There is certainly double duty done here, because the clue is surely a rather good &lit - Vince Cable (temporary leader pending election of Clegg) is widely considered to be the Lib Dems’ most impressive MP.

22a looked like MIASMAS (I prefer ‘miasmata’ as the plural, don’t you?), but I had to cheat to find SAMSA, it being decades since I read Metamorphosen. I also tried to stick a K in there for a while.

Also took me a while to get 18d - I haven’t previously come across ‘cardinal’ used in a crossword to mean an integer (ie cardinal rather than ordinal number) and got stuck on DER (’red’ reversed) until it dawned on me.

24a is clever - at first I took ‘assorted’ to be the anagrind, rather than the letters to be shuffled, but (I + UNSTABLE)* didn’t get me very far!

By: manehi

manehi — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:53:47 +0000

Testy, nice as that is, surely it would lead to TROVE and not HIDDEN TREASURE?

Re Kafka, I tried to work K into the answer for a long while before thinking of Samsa. But that’s no fault of the compiler’s.

By: ilancaron

ilancaron — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:44:26 +0000

I thought the Kafka clue was quite fair — Gregor Samsa is his best known character and quite doable from the wordplay.

By: Testy

Testy — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:42:04 +0000

Valuable secret that Rover has buried!

By: manehi

manehi — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:11:18 +0000

Added edits. Agree that 3d could be better, but can’t think how, without including a hidden word indicator - I guess the problem is that “trove” is the hidden treasure, and a clearer clue would have to point at it more explicitly.