The official bored-at-work cryptic crossword pass it on thread.

Bath salts. The trifecta of Chaucer ref, antiquated sailor ref and groaner pun was just lol... okay... I have a lot to learn.

I needed a new screen name anyhoo.

first word is a wifely character in Chaucer, second is a slang word for sailors

whole thing is something you might add to a bath

xxp

thx, I get it! good clue!

god knows why certain things come up so much in cryptics. as soon as i see "sailor" i'm gonna think "salt", "tar", "RN"...it seems odd to have so much nauticality so commonly used

you forgot AB

esp Rufus in the Gdn on Mondays, he's notorious for his nautical refs

That recent Araucaria with the Winter's Tale theme was rather beyond me in that respect. My work newsletter does a bumper Christmas issue with a crossword every year and the latest one had a Dickens theme, which was a bit daunting at first, but thankfully it only needed a knowledge of titles, not characters or plots.

That seems a fairer way to do it to me, but then my education is also pretty lacking when it comes to these things. Not really that my school didn't do those things, just that I never found the classics we did do interesting enough to get around to the others in my spare time. I've sort of meant to catch up on the complete works of Shakespeare one day but the entire concept of the Great Victorian Novel still fills me with dread tbh

(I quite liked that Chaucer one, though the second sentence seemed unnecessary)

but the second sentence is the definition part, without that there is no def.

I think my point stands though, that several of you are getting all that without any of the cross-letters, and even if i have I have them I'm often wtf.

god knows why certain things come up so much in cryptics. as soon as i see "sailor" i'm gonna think "salt", "tar", "RN"...

i think i went about two decades without seeing "tar" used to refer to a sailor before i started doing cryptics. WHY is "RN" a sailor?

i totally want to modernise cryptic crosswords.

RN = Royal Navy

i think when you get to araucaria levels of general knowledge/reference you're within your rights to use an encyclopedia or the net, and it doesn't really "spoil" the game. the crossword as central nexus of reference hunting is kinda Finnegans Wake-y and inviting you to chase down meta-texts imo

obv a lot of these conventions date back to a time when everybody who bought a broadsheet had a grammar school education and had had the Classics rammed into them whether they liked it or not

like T.S. Eliot pretending that the plain reader shd pick up all his allusions

but the second sentence is the definition part, without that there is no def.

I suppose. To me both sentences read as equally punny definitions of the whole, and the wordplay/lateral thinking signal "?" would make a further definition unnecessary. Or am I thinking of "!"?

(Also the second sentence is only any help with the "Bath" part and not the "salts", but yes, that's beside the point.)

the second sentence clues "bath salts" as a whole, there isn't a meta-reference to them in the first sentence

Araucaria is literally 90-something, so parts of his world of knowledge do tend to be out there from our perspective.

yeah, just had an interesting read re: araucaria and ximenes

& I enjoy out-of-the-way themes. I used to really enjoy those moments when the Listener crossword would spin into this space between arcane theme-reference hunt, logic problem and weird-word crossword.

yeah this is why so many people love araucaria so much

oh yeah! the ximenean/non-ximenean wars are fascinating. I think I linked upthread to some kind of Pascale/Araucaria beef.

(xps) Wow, so he is! A 91-year-old vicar, which seems an unlikely fit both for the Guardian and for his playful but wry sense of humour. I was surprised to read about his background once before, but I guess I didn't realise how old the book I was reading was at the time, because now I'm surprised again!

"tar" for sailor is perfectly fitting with my sad Gilbert & Sullivan-listening childhood (things kids these days may not have, though I guess they're still dragged out for school plays), "salt" took me a few moments to remember, and I never remember RN or AB.

the guardian setter who flummoxes me most is arachne, i think with her last one i managed to get ZERO answers

I am out of the game at the mo but would always struggle with enigmatist.

Araucaria did an Xmas one in 2011 IIRC, which was themed, and the theme was defined separate from the clues as something like "Spooner's curried lentils and poultry".

:-) bah humbug

indeed! It was a total bastard too, luckily I solved it with my Mum who is a crossword fiend.

Opera's another area.

Is it logical that some might consider his Wozzeck cold? (4)

The only way i was going to get this was via Wiki, and even then why is this 'logical?' Does it have to do with what his name means in German?

I think it's 'ice' 'berg' association. I can't see much happening with that 'logical' but I might be missing something.

Duh, iceberg, I'm sure that's what he was going for. Dunno why that didn't occur to me. Which comes from berg = mountain anyway.

Sad news about Araucaria. Although I still don't get 90% of his clues.

yeah, was almost getting a bit weepy about that. bit pissed too, mind. felt there was a touch of larkin's going, going about it in a way. last of an old world that wasn't the horrible old ersatz tory world we seem to see being ressurected in rhetorical stone around us. he wasn't averse to unfuddyish pop culture refs either. that said, lex's want to modernise cryptic crosswords is an interesting path into

it's something i've periodically thought about, as probably anyone has who has thought like NV 'tar wtf'. so evocative of a period yet has become an abstract knowledge set. how to update? how do we define a common educated xword lexicon? with educated not being, surely, 'type of school' educated. it needs to be open to a wide set of populist and high subjects, so to take two examples - sport... um... what's 'high' but not public school these days? not classics, obv. history is surely still available. periodic table can stay (I learnt more it from crosswords than chemistry).

Pop charts would have felt fair game at a time when they were more central than they are now, but it's hard to see where pop can get a look in, unless it's pop-beyond-pop - Superbowl Beyonce level, but that's not going to provide a set of terms. other sorts of 'pop', like high-street shops maybe. modern slang could probably come in. i don't do crosswords regularly, but surely 'lol' has made an appearance.

what other new areas provide large amounts of well-known technical terms and abbreviations? (Cricket being the best example from current crosswords).

Got to go to bed. Seeing my nan in the morning, still a demon whist and crossword fiend at Araucaria age - see if she's got any ideas.

interesting path into...

um

modern stuff

One for lex in today's Guardian...

Temporary suspension gives a diva a change of heart (8)

I liked that.

Teared up at the Araucaria news too. He's one of the greatest setters, and for every clue where there's a warped surface or liberty with 'the rules', there are a dozen that are ingenious, dazzling, entertaining, unexpected, neat – he's the most fun.

He's also lured a lot of people in I think – he's the one occasional solvers remember, partly for the name, and partly for those elliptical alluring (2,3,3,4,5,6,2, 7,3,4) type clues, or the mad interlocking multiple x-ref ones. There's a real sense of accomplishment when you realise you're getting him and solving his grids - reach a point where you really look forward to his name appearing. As I've said before he (with Paul) remains my favourite Guardian setter.

It will not be the same without him, at all.

One for lex in today's Guardian...

Temporary suspension gives a diva a change of heart (8)

― jlgt, Saturday, January 12, 2013 5:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the sad thing is i still can't solve this

starts with an a

abeyance!!!!!!!

beyoncé reference! yes!

Help! Two I do not understand even when I have the answer:

Sort of this to a sort of 13, worn by some men. (7) (13 was "Flower pots tie in a better arrangement, possibly = POINSETTIA)

The answer is TIEPINS. Why?

Republicans not about to be hosts, perhaps. (10) = INNKEEPERS. How does this work?

first one is an anagram with "to a" removed, feels badly clued but i'm pretty hungover/drunk

Republicans without "about" = -re = publicans = innkeepers

is the first one "Short of this" or "sort of this"?

first one kinda works, anag of 'this to a' where 'this' = 'tiepins'. although two 'sorts' seems superfluous.

So, on the first one they're using one "sort" to mean anagram, which is common, and a second to mean discard? Which I've never seen.

i don't like the first clue at all, can't make it work properly

Second one is pretty simple when it's explained to me, but "not about" meaning there is no "RE" seems clumsy to me too. Didn't care for either of those.

you don't like that, how about this:

A pious type, Winston, fit to move the queen (10) = CHURCHGOER - winston fit = churchill - ill

(today's grauniad)

Wow, that's a stretch, and I have to admit I still dont get where GOER comes from. Move = GO and ER = ?

Elizabeth Regina, our Queen

Yeah, I just used Wiki. I've never seen that one before.