Quite fun

 We rather enjoyed this clue in last Saturday's Guardian Prize crossword.

A super surface!

Beginning

 Roughly fifty years ago, give or take, I solved my first ever Guardian cryptic crossword clue.  It was an Araucaria, of course.  We were in the library at school.

The clue was "Begin description of dining room (8)".

This week's Prize crossword by Matilda included "Start talking about the restaurant I went to last night? (8)".

They do, of course, have the same answer.

Centenary: Chile Pine

 So today, it was 100 years since the birth of Araucaria, John Graham.  The doyen of cryptic crossword setters in the second half of the 20th Century.

And, I thought, a suitable homage to him in today's Guardian, although it proved to be rather Marmite for the solvers - at least from the comments on Fifteensquared and the Graun's own comments section.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

To Brexit

This goes back to September 12th, but is probably worth a share even so... One of Philistine's.

Dining Room

A long, long time ago, as a callow sixth-former in Tottenham, I joined some of the upper sixth who were trying to finish The Guardian's Cryptic Crossword. It was the final clue of a puzzle set by the great Arucaria:
“Begin description of dining room (8)”
I somehow saw it immediately: INITIATE.
And I was hooked.
So when in today's challenge we had 22 across: "They say solver had dinner late, to lose strength (9) - which gave ATTENUATE, although it was a weaker clue, I was joyfully reminded of that moment.
So thanks 'Philistine'!

Shannon, Entropy and Guardian Crosswords...

As part of the Fifteensquared discussion of a Crossword by Brummie in the Guardian last Wednesday, this thread started:-

Dr. Whatson says:

February 27, 2019 at 3:15 am

There’s something about Brummie you folks may find interesting.  His puzzles have the most helpful crossers of all setters here.   This is following the notion that the more unusual the letter (e.g. Z, J) the more helpful it is as a crosser, the more common (e.g. E, T) the less helpful.  I won’t go into details, but you can calculate the helpfulness via entropy, and his numbers are statistically significantly higher than the average.  At the other end of the spectrum is Chifonie, with Pan nipping at his heels.  Nobody else stands out. I don’t imagine this is intentional on any of their parts, but rather a side-effect of their grid-filling methods/software.

How is this useful?  Probably not much, except if you’re stuck on a Brummie, maybe that crosser is a B or a C.

thezed says:

February 27, 2019 at 1:23 pm

.....

Dr. Whatson @1 – re entropy, the first time I came across comments on this was in Claude Shannon (engineer, inventor of a juggling robot and, more famously, the man who invented information and communication theory, giving us Shannon’s Law) who discussed information contained in language in terms of its entropy. In his seminal paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (free link) on page 15 he even briefly detours into the necessary redundancy in a language in order to be able to make crosswords possible. English is well-suited it turns out. He goes into more detail on language, but not on crosswords, in his “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English” (here). I’ve not read a biography recently so do not know if he was a cruciverbalist on top of his other talents, but I’ve always treasured that little detour in one of the most important papers of the 20th century.

Well, crikey, I thought.

I did it Again!

Last week I managed to do this again.

Centenary

So Thursday's cryptic in the Guardian was a nice effort by Paul celebrating the Centenary of the Crossword. Lots of the greats identified by clue and solution, Araucaria, of course, but also Ximenes, Torquemada, Engma(tist) and others.  All rather jolly.

So, for those in London I'm off to 'Sloggers and Betters' at the Penderel's Oak in Holborn.  Should be fun if rather fannish, I fear.

Shed, Paul and Enigmatist

Today, the these three setters have prepared a tribute crossword to the man.  And it is all about him, and lovely.

Farewell

Oh My.
Farewell John Graham, our Araucaria.
Unlike the chaste Lord Archer, never vegetating.
Rest in Peace.

Cryptic Bowie

Nice Paul crossword midweek on a David Bowie theme...
See the Fifteensquared entry for more...

Araucaria last Saturday

A lovely warm article in last Saturday's Guardian.  Prompted, of course, by the news that he has terminal cancer - and how he shared that news. Well worth a read.

ThunderWord

Glorious Tramp crossword on Friday, full of FAB references.  I thought it had been written tin response to the death of Gerry Anderson, but this is what Tramp says on Fifteensquared:-

I wrote this puzzle in December completely unaware that Gerry Anderson was dying. I finished the puzzle a few weeks before Christmas and was going to let it simmer for a few months before asking Lato would he be so kind to test solve and give me his comments. After doing a bit of research on Wikipedia, I realised that Thuderbirds will be 50 years old in 2014 so I thought it could get published then. Anyway, I found out that Gerry Anderson had passed away over the Christmas break and so sent the puzzle for checking and text Hugh to see if he could use the puzzle quite soon, which he agreed to.

I got the SCOTT PARKER idea ages ago and decided to keep it back for a future Thunderbirds puzzle. My original idea was to somehow put OWL+TIT+TH, or something similar (TH under “birds”), in a column of unchecked letters and then to define Thunderbirds as “show in fifth column?” or something. I spent ages trying to get this to work but had to give up as few, if any, Guardian grids have eight unchecked cells in a column. When I looked up Gerry Anderson on Wikipedia, I spotted SUPERMARIONATION and thought that might be a better idea. I managed to shoehorn in the pilots Alan, Gordon, Virgil, John, Scott; Brains and Parker and I also got in Scarlet (as in Capt) and Fireball (as in XL5). I tried for ages to get Joe 90 in but it was beyond my ability.

This contained some marvellous clues (IBIS at 7d for example and BRASSICA at 25a).

Oh Araucaria

Arucaria has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13,15.  This puzzle was first published in the December edition of the magazine 1 Across (c) and is repeated here by kind permission.

Oh.

That was the preamble to yesterday's Araucaria Cryptic in the Guardian.

18 down was a write in:- 'Cancer'.

Here is how much I managed over all (not quite all of it, as you can see).

This was so hard to do - not because the clues were extra hard - although I failed to get two solutions.  But because of the theme.

I've posted about the estimable John Graham before, of course, a number of times.  But even for this extraordinary setter, this was an extraordinary crossword (as Tramp said on the Fifteensquared discussions of this puzzle).  To use his own terminal disease as the theme was typical of him, I guess - but even so substantially disconcerting (to say the very last).  It made the National News (the 'Today' program this morning, Guardian front page) and there are, unsurprisingly, letters in today's Guardian (and lots of comments on the Web site).  According to one of the other posts on Fifteensquared he is likely to be around (and puzzling) for a while yet, which does seem good news.

I can remember (I think) the first Araucarian clue I ever solved - "Begin Description of a Dining Room", (8) (*) - in the library at school when I was new sixth-former.  I've been attempting to match the man ever since (and usually struggling).

More than most setters, there always seems to be a playful, emotional heart to many of his puzzles - they are sheer fun, pleasurable, frustrating and satisfying by turns but  rarely merely mechanical tests.

This was no exception and there are many fine clues scattered around it (see 7D and 27A).  But I have never felt so sad when doing a crossword as I did with this one yesterday.

(*) - Initiate.

Doctor Crossword 2013

Not only does November 2013 mark the 60th Anniversary of the first Dr Who, but this year it is 100 years since the first crossword.  See Paul's Web site for more info...

Mad Word

Earlier this year, I mentioned the Guardian's series of Top 10 mentions of Cryptic Crosswords in fiction, plays, music, etc. 

I've just checked back to see who eventually won, and I'm pleased (and surprised) to see Madness in 6th place for Cardiac Arrest!

On Troy

A really nice cryptic today with a theme of the Trojan War.  Many thanks Brendan.  One complaint (a niggle, perhaps) was that "Looter of antiquities" was equated to Elgin. 

Which from my (albeit limited) understanding just isn't true.

Old Masters

Nice crossword about 'Old Masters' from Cruicible yesterday.
Including a pedagogue, and a Breughel.  Lovely.

Crossword blog continued

The next in the Guardian's top 10 mentions of crosswords in fiction is a piece by P. G. Wodehouse called The Truth About George.

This scores:
Accuracy of portrayal of crosswords: 3/10
Positive attitude regarding crosswords: 9/10
Importance of crosswords in plot: 2/10

Wear Word

It was nice to see the River Wear - one of the Three Rivers from earlier in this blog - appearing in Orlando's cryptic crossword on the 15th May.