DT 29271

104 comments on “DT 29271”

1. Relatively straightforward but quite enjoyable (**/****). The only thing I had a problem with was the blow in 22a, which I’d not heard of, though the answer was clear anyway. I liked 9d and 14d and the cat clues. Thanks to Mr K (nice cat pictures) Nd the setter.

2. Agree this did not require much thought, maybe a limit on anagrams would be good as 11 is probably too many, especially with giveaways like 19D, 11A. Thanks for the funny cat pictures Mr K. Thanks to setter also, it can’t be easy trying to get a puzzle that is neither too easy nor too hard for such a diverse set of puzzlers.

3. Quite gentle apart from 9d. 6d favourite. Ta to all.

4. I think our blogger has highlighted all the clues I would have shortlisted for a favourite, with perhaps the very topical 23a just topping the podium. Perhaps there were too many anagrams to make it wholly enjoyable, but that is just a personal view. Otherwise no complaints.

   Thanks to our setter and Mr K.

5. I knew what to do with 9d, but couldn’t make anything of it, so had to use an anagram solver. I still had to check it on googlething.I didn’t do latin at school. The rest was fairly benign. Many thanks setter and Mr Kitty

6. Bit of a curate’s egg for me, I needed electronic help to check 22a (wap/blow?) along with 3 and 9d. I suspect 14d is pretty dated but it was fairly clued. At least the plethora of anagrams provided an easy foothold and I did like the lurker at 1a, 18d and my COTD 6d. Thought 15d was clever too.
   2.5/2.5*
   Many thanks to the setter and to Mr K for his usual imformative review.

7. Thanks for friendly comments – a bit better reception than my last outing! Re the number of anagrams: try being a setter and see if you can find a better way of cluing a particular word….sometimes the anagram is the best way to produce a neat-sounding clue. It just happened that a lot of the words this time fell into that category – I’ll try harder next time!

   1. Thanks for popping in X Type. Every comment on here is made within the context of us (well me certainly) being in awe of the setter’s skill. Enjoyed your puzzle today.

   2. Thanks for popping in X-Type. It’s always nice to know who has set which puzzles.

      I’ve always found your puzzles light but fun with accurate cluing, which is just right for a Tuesday, and this one is no exception.

      On the subject of anagrams, I had understood that the Telegraph Puzzles Editor provided guidelines for setters and one of these was to specify a maximum number of anagrams (I seem to remember the figure being of the order of 6 – 8). Has that requirement been dropped?

      Many thanks for providing our entertainment today. Many thanks too to Mr K for the great blog and pictures.

      1. Hi again. Re the “maximum number of anagrams” – it isn’t an absolute requirement, just a recommendation: which, like all “rules” can be bent, to suit the circumstances. Obviously our esteemed Editor let it go: so who am I to argue? (P.S. I love anagrams – especially “neat” ones that fit with the clue’s overall meaning…)

   3. Thanks for commenting, and for a fun puzzle to blog. Thanks also for the cats.

   4. Please note that not everyone objects to your anagrams, or, for that matter, wants mind-bending puzzles. Some tiny brains like an easier ride from time to time.

8. Only problem is with 1D: a tick is NOT an insect, it has 8 legs …

   1. Welcome to the blog Brian

   2. Yes! A tick is not an insect.

      1. Welcome to the blog Tony

9. Not having the greatest vocabulary, three relatively obscure words (3d, 22d and 9d (what language is that???, if I had not got 16a, I would have tried shoe-horning Montessori in somehow))..
   I agree, a bit anagram-heavy, but some nice clues in there too.
   The first word of 5d is an acronym, I suppose they are ok?
   15d parsing escaped me, nice clue, thanks for the hint, Mr.K.
   Thanks to x-type too.

   1. HIYD, 9d is one of two Latin philosophical terms popularized by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century.

      1. I thought so….no really, thanks Mr.K, as infomative as ever.

         1. Actually its Senf I should be thanking, apologies!

   2. 3d is why the element Tungsten has the (seemingly bizarre) symbol of W in the periodic table.

      1. Thanks. What the connection between Tungsten and 3d?? Sorry, Chemistry and me never got on well together.

         1. It’s another name for the same thing, used more in some other languages; in English we somehow settled on the name that doesn’t match the symbol.

            1. Ta

            2. S. I’ve wondered before about why W = tungsten, so I Googled it:

               Etymology
               The name “tungsten” (from the Swedish tung sten, “heavy stone”) is used in English, French, and many other languages as the name of the element, but not in the Nordic countries. “Tungsten” was the old Swedish name for the mineral scheelite. “Wolfram” (or “volfram”) is used in most European (especially Germanic, Spanish and Slavic) languages and is derived from the mineral wolframite, which is the origin of the chemical symbol W.[14] The name “wolframite” is derived from German “wolf rahm” (“wolf soot” or “wolf cream”), the name given to tungsten by Johan Gottschalk Wallerius in 1747. This, in turn, derives from Latin “lupi spuma”, the name Georg Agricola used for the element in 1546, which translates into English as “wolf’s froth” and is a reference to the large amounts of tin consumed by the mineral during its extraction.

   3. I didn’t know that about 5d. I suppose that like radar and laser, it’s now matured from an acronym to a word.

   4. 5Dn’s first element started out as an acronym, but the full word is nowadays perfectly accepted (by most dictionaries) as a “proper” word in its own right – cf Radar, Laser, etc. (I do so love a pedant!)

10. Thank you, X-Type: as my train arrived at work this morning, I was surprised to find I’d completed the crossword already — I don’t think that’s happened before! And thanks to Mr K: always such fun to read (and bonus kudos for the HTML anchors on individual clues).

    Our 7-year-old was intrigued by the crossword yesterday† and while solving this one I was thinking it would make a pretty good one to go through with them: they’d appreciate the logic in the wordplay and understand how the the clues and answers fit together, even if they wouldn’t be able to solve many.

    Then I got to 14d as one of my last few in, and I’m not sure the 7-year-old needs to learn yet about either the answer or the second word in the clue …

    Anyway, has anybody else here got any experience of introducing cryptic crosswords to children?

    Re 10a and 22a, I’m pretty sure biologists are discovering and naming new breeds of deer-like creatures especially to put in crosswords — surely we don’t need that many of them?

    18d made me smile the most today.

    † As the 7-year-old happened to be walking past, I inquired if they knew any letters of the Greek alphabet — especially a 5-letter one ending in ‘t’ (as I was busily mis-parsing 4d).

    1. Thanks, Smylers, and glad that you appreciated the id attributes on the clues. Nice to see somebody else using them.

11. An enjoyably straightforward solve completed at a fast gallop which did not ‘kill off’ too many 6ds – **/***.
    One error – the 1d six-footer is actually an eight-footer, a.k.a. arachnid.
    Favourite – the aforesaid 6d.
    Thanks to X-Type and Mr K.

    1. Well,well, well. I never knew a tick was an arachnid. Thanks for that bit of knowledge, Senf. You never know when it might come in handy!

       1. We have plenty of them over here and every Spring we get reminded that they are arachnids while being warned to watch out for them because of the possibility of getting ‘bitten’ (not sure they bite as they ‘burrow’ into the skin) especially by a Lyme disease bearing one. Nasty little creatures! I am not sure what they were put on this Earth to do.

          1. We have plenty in Jamaica, and when they hatch they’re called grass lice. If you walk through grass after a hatching, you can feel them crawling up your leg, and they look like a shadow moving up. Horrid things.

    2. I believe a tick hatches with six legs and the other two grow after it has had its first blood meal. I have no proof of this – just something I “read” somewhere.

       1. True (https://tickencounter.org/faq/tick_identification – item 4), but irrelevant. A tick cannot counted as a ‘six footer’ without larva being implied.

12. I agree with Stephen L that this was something of a curates egg. The first 90% went in very quickly, then I was held up by some frankly (for me) obscure words to finish. ***/*, the kind of puzzle that simply frustrates! Thanks to Mr K for his insights.

13. 22a and 3d both required some online assistance today without which would have been left blank. Otherwise I found it fairly straight forward.

14. This was enjoyable but, although I could see 9d was an anagram, I could not get it and had to use the hints. Like Florence, I did not do Latin at school. I got as far as “Amo, amas, amat” then left to do metalwork.

    1d fooled me because I thought the arachnid had the spelling “tick” with “tic” being a muscle spasm. Still, a very enjoyable solve with 15d my COTD.

    With regard to an article in today’s Telegraph who is for the Oxford comma? Personally, I prefer not to use it.

    Grateful thank to X-Type for an enjoyable puzzle and to Mr. K. for the hints and cats.

    1. Re 1d: you are quite correct, Stephen. The clue says “six-footer briefly”, with the ‘briefly’ indicating to drop the ‘k’ from the word for the six-footer (or eight-footer, apparently).

       And regarding Oxford commas, I believe there’s a rule against talking politics on this blog!

       1. Thanks, Smylers – I missed “briefly”.

          I will not mention the Oxford comma again.

       2. I am not sure that discussing punctuation without reference to the ‘prompt’ for starting the discussion is politics. That would mean that we would not be able to discuss one of Lynne Truss’s book.

          1. You’re right, Senf — I was only joshing in suggesting that whether to use an Oxford comma is a political matter.

             On reflection, it’s more of a religion …

             1. And, perhaps, you have identified a second proscribed subject!

    2. I quite like the Oxford Comma although I have to say I did not become fully aware of it until I studied for an MBA in Kansas some 15 years or so ago. It certainly seems to be more de rigueur in ‘American’ English.

       1. I just have an aversion to a comma going before a conjunction but that is just my personal preference.

          1. Most of the time it is quite unnecessary, but on occasions quite essential to avoid ambiguity. Use when needed.

             1. Like you I’ve never used a comma before a conjunction. Perhaps it is more North American than British?

       2. Does that also explain what happened to the t in dandruft?

15. All straightforward until the 9d stopper. But it is an expression one will remember for the future.

16. I thought this was very entertaining. Thanks to our setter – you shouldn’t be expected to “ try harder”.
    Agreed, the amount of anagramming decipherage made it slightly easier, but, as X-Type says, this often makes the surface a bit more fun (and there are many puzzles which might rate 3 or 4 stars for difficulty which are desperately dull and fail to raise any smiles at all). I’d rather do a **/**** than a ****/** any day.

    I couldn’t complete 22a without looking it up as I had neither heard of the beast nor the rare synonym of blow. For a while I thought the answer might be a medieval musical instrument, which usually have peculiar names.

    Thanks to Mr K as always, although sometimes I worry that the cats in his pictures are unconscious or worse…….

    1. BTW, I like a bit of moral philosophy and enjoy hypothetical tussles between Kant and John Stuart Mill, so 9d not a problem, except in pronunciation, which you have to be sober to achieve, compared to its easier opposite – a priori.

       1. So that’s why I struggle to pronounce 9d!

       2. A priori means reasoning from cause to effect, whereas a posteriori means someone who talks out of his backside! (That’s the more polite version.)

          1. 

    2. Thanks, Bluebird. Pretty sure that the neatly organised cats are sleeping.

17. A very gentle Tuesday puzzle, but enjoyable while it lasted. No stand-out favourite today. 1.5* / 2.5*

18. Really did not get 24a and why”we Americans”? Is Mr K from the other side of the pond?

    1. Indeed he is!

    2. Hi, JB. Yes, this blog was made in the USA. I started out a K like the 2Ks, but I’ve been an American for many years. I do try hard to write here in British English. It’s a continual battle with auto-correct.

       1. If you were originally a Kiwi, surely you would have started out with Britspeak? After 40 years, I still find it difficult to spell American.

          1. A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N 😉

             1. Quite right, speaking in shorthand does confuse sometimes! Thanks for the giggle, RD.

          2. Hi, Merusa. Yes, the first version of English I learned was closer to UK English than to American English, so most of the required spellings and constructions are buried somewhere in my memory. But after speaking and writing American every day for years, I find that it does require some effort to write proper UK English.

19. An enjoyable puzzle although I hadn’t come across the big animal in 22a before. Wasted some time trying to include gracie in 16a, although it turns out that’s Rochdale and not Bury – c’est la vie

20. Fairly easy apart from not liking 3d and I did chemistry and physics. 9d because it’s Latin. Another subject I excelled at and pointless when there is a perfectly acceptable English word. 22 a because they are Elks or Moose. Finally the homophones 24 does not work for me.

    1. How can the homophone not work? The answer is an American word and they pronounce it the same way we pronounce ‘on tray’.

       1. F. I agree with the generic pronunciation but that’s because it’s a French word, not an American one, isn’t it?

    2. BobH I have only just read your comment re 24a. I agree with you as per my Comment 33 below but there again I suppose the reference to America validates it.

21. I liked this puzzle and didn’t mind the number of anagrams. My only hold up was on 16a as I started with “intergal….” on the way to a much bigger space journey.
    I wondered about the use of “old” in 3d. Presumably, this was to indicate that the word is no longer used but I’m not sure that is completely the case. Both Collins and the BRB suggest that the word is pejorative as it was considered of lesser value than tin.
    Many thanks to setter and to Mr K for has typically fine blog.

    1. I started out with “intergal…” as well, I needed e-help to get off that track.

       1. So did I, though I managed to rectify pretty quickly.

22. I quite enjoyed today’s offering, if only because it mentions my home town. (The one just south of Manchester, not the one just north!).

    I didn’t know 9d or 22a, and I’m not sure I have ever seen wap=blow.

    Many thanks to X-Type and Mr K.

23. On the wavelength for most but was searching for a supernatural being on 21d. An unself didn’t quite seem right – and it wasn’t. Thanks to the X-Man and Mr K. Success at crosswords is definitely a posteriori. Suduko relies more on a priori.

24. Me again! Too much to just let it go, in these conversations…. The “large deer” is a species in its own right – and last year in Quebec, I had the most dee-licious filet mignon of it (along with Bison and Elk). The “Oxford comma” is not an English affectation: it is absolutely necessary when changing the gist of a sentence, for clarity of expression, and not at all to be railed against as “not allowed before a conjunction” (did you see what I just did, in the above sentence?). As for “a posteriori” etc: they are Latin phrases brought into (mostly legalistic) English, because they are a way of expressing a more complex meaning in very few words…’bye for now…

    1. Oh don’t go…..!

    2. I remember the Oxford comma being explained to me (and the rest of the class, of course!) by an American (!) trainee teacher about 57 years ago in primary school in this country (we did things differently, then!). His advice was that you could use it if you wanted to or not. I never have but I think your illustrative sentence reads perfectly well with or without the comma. I have no problem with “a posteriori” and liked the anagram. I cannot comment about the large deer having never had the (dis)pleasure of trying it. I did, however, look it up to check it was right!

    3. I’m a big fan of the Oxford comma, to me it’s entirely logical, and the only time I wouldn’t use it is if the clauses were short as below.
       “He wrote plays and he also acted”

    4. XT. You are spot-on with your example of the correct/required use of the “Oxford comma”, above. But the most common discussion regarding this comma is when it is used (some say unnecessarily) in a simple list of items (or whatever), such as: “… in the UK, Germany, and Spain”.

       1. “the UK, Germany and Spain when it matters”
          “the UK, Germany, and Spain when it matters”
          “the UK, Germany and Spain, when it matters”
          Clarity is the test for all punctuation: “have you eaten Grandma?”

          1. Yes, absolutely, it should be used (or not) when it matters for clarity. Giving an old chestnut of an example where a comma (not an Oxford comma) is obviously required is no help when specifically discussing whether the Oxford comma should be used (as a matter of principal/habit) after the second item in a simple list of 3 items.

             1. * That should read principle, not principal.

25. Wow! So much erudition in some of the comments that X-Type has generated by his puzzle. What an excellent blog today – thank you all for the enlightenment! Re the puzzle, I thoroughly enjoyed those clues I could solve. Thank you Mr 🐈 for your fine explanations and for taking the trouble to translate them to UK English.

26. Done and dusted in a relatively short time apart from the necessity to look up the unfamiliar 22a antelope and a long pause to work out the 9d anagram – beyond my Latin skills, I didn’t get much further than the tales of Romulus and Remus!
    Nice to see the location of my grammar school get a mention – I don’t recollect there being many creeps around but then it was rather a long time ago.

    Thanks to X-type and to Mr K – loved the 8a but couldn’t quite decide which way round would be the best way to employ it, what happens when it fills to the brim!

27. **/****. Very enjoyable. No complaints from me re ticks, anagrams or 22a. Thanks to x-type and mr K.

28. An enjoyable solve for us. We knew the large deer in 22a as it was introduced to NZ at some stage. Its name could easily be mistaken to be be a Maori word as ITI is a common suffix meaning small (although this is a big deer).
    Thanks X-type and Mr K.

29. I really enjoyed this, not least for the educational blog discussions.
    I knew the animal in 22a, but I would’ve spelt the smart blow as “whap”, probably from reading too many comics.
    I feel so clever today, I solved 3d pretty smartish as I remembered it, not because I know the first thing about it.
    Faves were the cat clues.
    Thanks to X-type for the fun and to Mr. K for his always informative hints.

30. The blog today was as educational and enlightening as the puzzle. thy synonym for blow and the deer-like creature it produced were both beyond me today. I have filed it away for future use as these antelopes etc crop up a lot. 24a was an obvious bung in but I had to say it out loud a few times before the homonym worked. Lots of the others were a pleasure and I didn’t notice the anagram heavy thing so I agree that it should be a guide not a rule. I particularly liked 11a as I think I knew him 😜 9d an education too but once I got the checkers it filled itself. my surviving 6d is off for a rest.

    Thanks to Mr K and X-type

31. A nice enjoyable solve **/*** 😃 9d was new to me thank goodness it was an anagram 😬 Favourites were 6d and 22a 👍 Thanks very much to X-type and to Mr K (useless info: 22a ,a regular Countdown word, was a bi-plane that was the mainstay of the RAF in the Middle East between the two Word Wars made by Westland 🌴

    1. Didn’t the term used in that sense refer to the noise it made?

32. 1 Down should read eight-footer!

33. That was testing but not excessively so possibly due to a surfeit of anagrams. SW was a bit slow to yield. 24a depends on how the first two letters are pronounced. Amazing the contexts in which MrK finds outlets for feline associations! I didn’t know the big creature in 22a or the heavy stone in 3d comprising two more animals. 15d just about qualifies as a Fav. Thank you X-Type and MrK.

34. I was going to comment and say that I found this harder than the toughie but I seem to be out on a limb and any road the blog was as much fun as the crossword. Damn Aston Villa have just scored. Many thanks to all.

    1. Two up at Elland Road, can’t see it lasting though!

35. Fascinating blog today! I’d never heard of a wahiti. Still don’t understand the American reference in entree. Never mind. Thanks to all.

    1. Hi, Greta. Re entrée, Chambers says:

       1.A dish served between the chief courses of a formal dinner, ie between fish and roast meat, also (esp N American) a main course, and (esp Aust) a starter

       So in Australia and NZ, entrée refers to the starter, in the US it refers to the main course, and elsewhere it’s somewhere in between.

36. I found this a tad annoying. I was sailing through (even managed 9d) thinking it was one of the easiest crosswords I’d done and then I got completely stuck on 3d and 22a, neither of which I had heard of and which I couldn’t guess from the clue. So rather frustratingly I had to resort to electronic help which distinctly spoilt the sense of fun and achievement.

37. Well sometimes it pays to comment late. Reading the comments was almost as entertaining as trying (and failing) to complete an enjoyable if anagram packed crossword – great to have the setter contributing.
    A pretty straightforward solve other than 9d which took a couple of stabs and confirmation courtesy of Mr Google (I’m with Hoofit where Latin is involved). I gave up however at 22a, read the hint & looked at the pic – still couldn’t get it……..
    I wonder if a wapiti will stick in my brain in the same way an agouti does.
    Thanks to all.

38. Mr K, thank you so much for the delightful cats – and for the help parsing 9d! It rang a (very distant) bell, but it’s a very long time since I did Latin!
    X-Type, thank you for a most enjoyable solve!
    PS: I like the Oxford comma, and use it often!

39. Great fun. Stymied by 22a and needed Mr K’s help with 3d and then remembered why the symbol for tungsten is W. Great cat photos and the enormous leaf hiding another cat of sorts. No complaints from me about the alleged surfeit of anagrams. Thanks to setter and blogger.

40. Reading it all at breakfast on Wednesday, very busy yesterday, did the crossword very late – great fun, enjoyed the comments (what would Lyn Truss have to say about my punctuation?)

41. The crossword, review and blog comments are an enjoyable education – thanks Mr K and especially X-type. Doing this one a day late gave me a chance to enjoy all three components to the full. Even if I had never heard of 22a, I have now!

42. Very busy blog indeed.
    Happy official 11th birthday to Big Dave.
    Never complained on a Tuesday.
    Always as good as ever.
    Thanks to X-Type and to Mr K.

43. 4*/4*………….
    liked 14D ” trim spliff in dodgy nightclub (4,5) “

44. Fairly straightforward. Noticed a bit of radish around in both crosswords today!

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