Comments on: Guardian 24,442 / Araucaria - Proboscis Puzzler

By: Mr Beaver

Mr Beaver — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:32:41 +0000

As another with a sciency background, I didn’t find the references here too obscure (though adelphi=brothers was certainly beyond me).
I quite like the way Auraucaria (and others) sends us scuttling to the reference books or Wikipedia to verify some arcane titbit; one or two stick to pile of random knowledge that is my mind !

By: Speckled Jim

Speckled Jim — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:17:09 +0000

Yes, fair enough. I shouldn’t moan. My main beef was with the Laurie Lee / Cider With Rosie combination that I had to cheat on to get started. I guess I just prefer (have a better chance with) puzzles that don’t stray into general knowledge like that.

(ps - Qaos - you mean the Rover puzzle labelled “not exciting”, “boring” and “at the easier end of the scale” by the resident intelligentsia?!)

By: manehi

manehi — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:28:47 +0000

As a youngish and sciency solver myself, I often struggle with references, but I don’t think this puzzle was too bad - while the references may have been relatively obscure, I don’t think not knowing Greek/Latin would have stopped me from putting in DELPHI or EQUAL (QUA, incidentally, seems to be a favourite word among economics scholars), and I managed TIN TRAY without knowing the Masefield poem. While it may be frustrating and detract from the enjoyment of individual clues, part of the reason I do crosswords is that I do, as Dave says, pick up little bits of knowledge here and there. I shudder to think of how much botanical etc. study I would have had to have done to have systematically learned every plant/bird/fish/river and so on that come up in these puzzles…

Chris and Jean: while geography is one of my bugbears, I do believe that Bali lies in the South of the Pacific. I agree that ENG is slightly odd as an abbreviation for the English people, if you accept that UK roughly equals English, I suppose “some” could be read in the crossword meaning of “some of the letters of X”.. which still isn’t very satisfactory, I know. I did find it difficult to decide which clues to leave out in this blog, as almost all seemed to need some explanation.

By: Chris and Jean

Chris and Jean — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:31:57 +0000

We had no problem with anything but 17ac, which no-one mentions. Bali is not a Pacific resort, and we had much trouble trying Bondi. Also “eng” is a strange way of describing “some UK folk”.

This clue is what we call “not very Araucaria”, on whose logic and precision one can normally rely.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:51:14 +0000

I guess every younger generation of solvers has the same problem - I’m a scientist, never studied any classics / literature, but picked up knowledge of Greek / Latin through doing cryptic crosswords. You have to start somewhere…. and it doesn’t happen overnight.

By: Qaos

Qaos — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:24:48 +0000

Speckled Jim: As a science person too, I totally sympathise. I thought this xword was very tough - more so without reference books. The younger generation will have to get hold of yesterday’s xword by Rover to compensate :-).

By: Speckled Jim

Speckled Jim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:02:03 +0000

Teesween and Dave, I’m so pleased for you. I must devote my time to learning the works of Laurie Lee (who I’ve never heard of, for better or worse), Kipling, Blake, Ney (ditto previous bracket), Masefield (and again), as well as learning ancient Greek and Latin in case words like ‘brothers’ and ‘as (more or less)’ come up. Dare I ask what a younger generation of crossword solvers is supposed to do?

By: dave

dave — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:03:05 +0000

23d. Marry = by Mary, a very mild oath (indeed!) I thought.
16a. was my last, but I woke very early and had this finished inside 10 minutes before 6.30 this morning.
Clearly solving with a residual degree of alcohol is beneficial to me.
This benefit failed to last through the days other commitments, alas.

By: teesween

teesween — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:30:29 +0000

But good fun for me with no degrees at all!

By: Speckled Jim

Speckled Jim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:04:34 +0000

Another frustrating Araucaria puzzle, full of references to (obscure) poets, latin, greek and writers. Not fun for those with degrees in science!