Rookie Corner 524

24 comments on “Rookie Corner 524”

1. Thanks Hopping Rhino for another enjoyable puzzle. A very pleasant end to my Sunday evening cruciverabalism.

   Smiles for 13a, 24a, 2d, 15d, and 30d.

   Thanks again and thanks in advance to Prolixic(?).

2. We got subtly misdirected several times (12a for instance) which added to the fun of sorting out this one. 8d gets our vote for favourite.
   Thanks Hopping Rhino.

3. I enjoyed this, Hopping Rhino. It was a lot of fun, with some nice disguises and a good range of difficulties from relatively straightforward to very challenging. I would say this is your best submission so far, and I have only a few very minor comments:

   17a – according to the BRB, the first of the two definitions is American slang.
   23a – I’m not entirely convinced by “connections” as the definition and the clue contains a typo.
   26a – I think “rights” = “dues” not “due”, so the wordplay should say “half” not “largely”.
   28d – this looks to me like a straight non-cryptic definition.

   I had a lot of ticks, with my top picks being 12a, 22a, 28a, 31a, 27d & 29d and the LOL 2d my favourite.

   Many thanks, HR, and very well done. I anticipate a low commentometer score. Please keep them coming.

   1. Thanks RD, I’m glad you see progress.

      Re 17a: Ah. I’d relied on Collins, but Chambers agrees with you/BRB
      23a: I see ‘in’ for this isn’t actually in either Collins or Chambers as a synonym for connections. (I’d had in mind ‘an in with the judge’, say)
      26a: I’d been thinking ‘give him his [due/rights]’, but maybe that doesn’t work?
      28d: This was intended as a DD, with corn as in the cinematic sense (corny)

      1. Hi, HR. Many thanks for responding. I always enjoy the opportunity for a dialogue with setters.

         FYI, the BRB (Big Red Book) is Chambers.

         I’m not sure that the cryptic grammar works for 8d to be a DD with “of” linking the two definitions. Let’s see what Prolixic thinks.

         1. Ah, I had been wondering about BRB.

            Thanks re 28d. I admit I had been under the misapprehension that ‘of’ was a multipurpose link word

4. Great fun – thanks to Hopping Rhino.
   Having totally missed the typo in Saturday’s NTSPP I feel justified in pointing out the one in 23a.
   My ticks went to 16a, 28a, 7d and 30d.

5. Looks as though I may be alone in needing a couple of parsing pointers from Prolixic but at least I have a completed grid and am reasonably content with my answers!
   Top clue for me was 2d and I had a smile for 27d.

   Thanks to Hopping Rhino, good to see you back again.

6. Welcome back, Hopping Rhino.

   An enjoyable solve, but there were two cases of “definition to wordplay” in 8d and 18d, which run contrary to convention. I also felt there was an over-reliance on initial letter constructions (I counted six examples) and “in” was repeated as an insertion indicator. Some of the clues were very straightforward, some more Toughie-like, so it was almost as though two different people had set the puzzle or if, half-way through, it was decided to crank up/reduce the difficulty factor. My favourite clue was the one that produced the widest smile, i.e. 2d.

   Thank you very much, Hopping Rhino.

   1. Thanks Silvanus, all fair comment

7. Like Jane we need a couple of parsing pointers from Prolixic to clarify some of our answers. Thank you for the challenge, Hopping Rhino. Favourites were 10a, 19a and 2d. We look forward to your next one. Thanks in advance to Prolixic.

   1. Thanks Hilton. There’s a growing consensus that 2d was a winner. More clues about 1980s Chancellors of West Germany to follow

8. Thank you for a super lunchtime challenge, HR – beaucoup de clues! Not sure I’ve ever seen six 3-letter clues in a puzzle before, and I welcome them – it must be quite a challenge writing a coherent clue for such short answers, and 20a was one of the highlights for me, with such a smooth surface. Amused at the subtle “wrong ‘uns” theme running through the puzzle, what with the prisons, crimes & crims. I had pencilled queries against very few clues, and bar one these have been noted above; however at 7D – the TAs are no more, sadly, so maybe one should now “coach old volunteers”?

   All in all a most welcome puzzle HR. I appreciated the wit and humour throughout, and the freshness of some of your ideas.

   Other highlights included 2d, 5d, 19a and 30d, but as I’m still celebrating yesterday becoming the latest St Totteringham’s Day, my COTD has to go to 22a!

   Many thanks indeed, and in advance also to Prolixic.

   1. Thanks Mustafa – hadn’t previously heard of St Totteringham’s Day, but always good to have a new festival to celebrate. I see it floats in the calendar, like Easter.

      1. And a very similar range of weeks, too – football and religion, eh? I’m happy so long as it happens every year, but for it to occur there is even better than it happening at home!

9. I’m another one who’ll need some pointers from the review. I’m also not at all keen on the grid shape and number of 3/4/5 letter words, though that’s obviously just a personal preference rather than a serious cause for complaint. Particularly enjoyed 5d, 8d despite the “definition to wordplay” and 19a.
   2d is very clever – perhaps too clever as I had the answer 30 minutes before the penny dropped.
   Thanks for the challenge.

   1. Thanks Conference Match. That 2d was challenging shows how much I have to learn. I worried whether it was reasonable to expect solvers to know the German for ‘red’. I thought it they did, the clue was probably too easy – and if they didn’t, it was perhaps impossible (at least without crossers). But it sounds as if neither applied for you.

      Silvanus commented earlier that there was a sharp contrast in the difficulty of the clues, and this certainly wasn’t deliberate. Again, it points to me having more to learn in this area

      1. I always am impressed that setters who provide both back-page & Toughie puzzles are generally able to separate so reliably the relative difficulty levels of their crosswords. As a setter one must feel “gosh, that’s obvious isn’t it?” while a solver can consider the same clue for seconds or for hours. Presumably a skill acquired entirely through long experience compiling the challenges!

      2. I think it’s reasonable to expect solvers to know a few basic words in common foreign languages. I generally enjoy clues like this.
         This time I saw Kohl and started thinking ‘helmut/helmet’, then saw red and wondered if Kohl was a reference to black coloured cosmetics – neither of which made any sense.
         In the end I had the checking letters and filled the gaps with a word meaning fat, which also nicely described the Chancellor.

         In terms of level of challenge.

         ‘German’s red and fat’ would have been the same clue but easier.
         ‘Chancellor Kohl’s red and fat’ has the extra step of realising that the clue meant ‘red and’ to a German speaker. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s what did for me on this occasion.

         You could also have assumed that Kohl is an unusual enough name that you didn’t need to include Chancellor in the clue. That might introduce a little more uncertainty – first identify that it meant Helmut, then that it meant put the words in German, then know the German words.

         I agree that it must be hard to judge though. I find that every time I set a puzzle (crossword, puzzle hunt, music quiz, any format really), once I’ve set a clue it always looks easier to me (having written it) than it is to other people. I suppose it just takes a lot of practice to gauge the level.

10. Very many thanks to Prolixic and all above for the helpful comments. I do love hidden word clues, but clearly overindulged on this occasion.

    May I seek guidance on the ‘Definition to Wordplay’ issue? The following are both from the Telegraph:

    Column to endure when given external support (8)
    Free to pay for facilities on top of Everest (9)

    Are these ones that ‘snuck in’ to the paper, or are they in some way distinct from my amateur efforts above? (Or perhaps you need to learn the rules before you’re allowed to break them).

    Thanks!

    1. The difference with the two clues you have cited here is that each uses the infinitive form of the verbs concerned, i.e. “to endure” and “to pay for”, so they are not actually “definition (leading) to wordplay” constructions.

       1. Ah, OK, thank you. I see 18d clearly fails this test.

          I may be out of my grammatical depth, but for “Bank junior to get NYC transfer”, ‘to get’ is I think also the infinitive form. But perhaps the issue is that GET is anagram fodder, rather than ‘to get’ being used as a synonym for ‘acquire’, say. Thus in my clue ‘to’ is unavoidably an incorrect link word, rather than being a (dropped) part of the wordplay – which is how its used in the two Telegraph clues I was puzzling over. Is that the right way to think about it?

          (The clue could have been ‘Get NYC transfer for bank junior’, which would have solved all this. Hindsight).

          1. Yes, “get” cannot be both part of the anagram fodder and also be a link word (incorrectly) between the definition and the wordplay.

             The revised clue you’ve given would work potentially for some editors, but I’d personally discourage the use of nouns as anagram indicators when placed after the fodder. You won’t see them used that way in any Telegraph puzzles.

11. Late checking back in but just wanted to thank Prolixic for the review and check on the couple of bits of parsing I was unsure about – all sorted now!

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