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

PIG EON

pod, train, town, and bird, are the problems here.

the pod is odd - 2nd half of it's easy

town i still can't figure out, but wikipedia gives you the answer. i wonder whether you can spell it a different way that matches the clue better.

american bird. you will kick yourself.

is the train the writer one? think that's another kicker.

-NE- BEAN, i figure. not up on my opera centres though.

American bird - as in a broad? A dame?

OH IT'S A FUCKING HIDDEN WORD

PULLMAN

snap bean? idgi

These (including koogs' post yesterday) are not really convincing me of Araucaria's genius, which iirc everyone else itt was quite determined of

just sayin etc

Intermittent genius, I would say. It can be hard to see the genius in a well-written and totally legit clue when you've been banging your head against it for hours. Otoh I'm not so impressed with convoluted 20+ letter anagrams, especially when there's no definition part in the clue. That "six clues are of a kind and not further defined" thing can fuck off imo.

snap bean is a thing, and american thing. SNAPE being a place they do opera, B from born, AN from AN.

yes, tinamou? who knew!

i got the theme by pure luck, just thought of something that fit, the (1, 9, 5, 6) one.

> These (including koogs' post yesterday) are not really convincing me of Araucaria's genius

yeah, these are the dregs though. that said, PLACIDNESS?

xp we got "the glass" (already had 'the', + good girl), and bingo.

today's guardian:

Be cool and calm when hot in lilac, unfortunately getting cross (7)

(clue straightforward, but am a bit o_O about the answer)

I got the answer but don't get the "unfortunately" bit

I quite liked "Fancy lad and me tied knot! (4,9)"

i am failing badly at the bottom half of yesterday's crossword, including the fancy lad, despite it being an obvious anagram. (that said, 50% is 45% more than i usually manage on weekdays)

and the 'unfortunately' bit is just another anagram indicator - anagram(lilac+h)+x

Hint for that one: it is topical, innit.

I breezed through the top half, very unusual for me especially on a Friday, and then my delusion of genius was destroyed by the bottom half. Have since finished it by cheating on several of the bottom half clues and mostly gone "ohh, of course", with a couple of "blimey, I'd never have got that but it works", so nothing desperately unfair or annoying.

Liked the puzzle on the whole, but maybe that was just because of the ego boost of the top half!

that 'be cool and calm' answer fun. Got it & figured it would be Paul, the scamp. Didn't see the paper but will have a shot at it online now.

Oh man it's saturday I could buy the times and spend the entire bank holiday trying to do the listener.

Hot to catch a girl with nothing on? (5)

I got the answer, LASSO, but do you think 'hot' was a typo for 'how' or am I missing something? (Trying to work 'hot' in hung me up for way longer than it should have!)

Must be a typo.

Also:

What one is supposed to view isn't stated, but agitation is obvious when something does. (6)

SEETHE.

'When something does' led me to believe the word would would end in S (it was unchecked.) Again, I'm probably just quibbling because I spent too long on it, but "when something... SEETHE?" Something SEETHES. "When something does seethe" I guess, but I thought that was pretty clunky. Liked the SEE THE part, though.

it's a clunky clue. every word should count precisely imo

That's been part of my problem, as a novice, is figuring out "is that standard, or fair?" Thanks for letting me ask questions, this forum has been helpful.

Here's one I actually quite liked, and solved rather easily:

Everything I put a label on the wrong way, otherwise it might end up as baggage, or a purse. (9)

ALLIGATOR

I understood "All I tag, else." But it's okay to have the letter "I" in the clue just be included in the answer like that?

it's int he cluse- all I TAG

wow look at that

"Everything I put a label on" is ALL I TAG so the I isn't random

No not random, but I just = I. I suppose you would need to do that sometimes, now that I think of it.

it's kosher alright

Yeah, better that than trying to cram iodine into the clue.

trying to cram iodine into anything is just a bad option #rules4lyfe

Ha! Just one more from my puzzle this week:

Where you might find Irish whiskey, though the grammar of the girl appeared to be crude. (7)

SHEBEEN. Great word I had never encountered before! But is he getting 'grammar of the girl' from the idea that 'she been' should supposedly be 'she's been' or 'she'd been' or something? Even though for instance, 'where has she been' is grammatically fine?

well 9/10 times 'she been' is gonna be bad grammar tbf

Yeah, okay, I guess 'appeared to be' would cover the exceptions.

for me that's still quite ugly tho:

"Where you might find Irish whiskey" = shebeen, fair enough
"though" = doesn't clue anything I don't think. really good cluers avoid adding words that only make the clue appear grammatical
"the grammar of the girl appeared to be" = she been, but this is a bit ugly and again great clues shd be meticulously sensible, logical. this is a bit too vague for me
"crude" = fair enough in the context of what went before, it at least explains why the slightly vague bit is what it is

you can argue that if the clue is gettable or mostly makes sense then it's okay, but from a point of aesthetics there should be no wasted words anywhere

There's an added layer of difficulty when shebeen is a totally unfamiliar word. I figured that out with crosswordsolver.org, then backtracked to try to figure out the secondary cluing. And when I'm still unsure exactly what's going on, that's when I throw it up to the ilx ninjas.

I liked this one from today's Guardian:

Fat cat or animated dog caught stool pigeon (9)

Plutocrat

nice

Good use of cricketing terminology!

This one was good too IMO, also today's Guardian:

March about Stoke Poges when king is deposed (5-4)

Goose Step :)

you're on fire! took me ages of pondering to get that...

once you twigged the anagram it wasn't too bad. the hardest clues are the ones where you can't work out yr line of attack i think

Good use of cricketing terminology!

That's where the c comes from?! I've been learning via puzzles in The Nation, and Frank Lewis being American I haven't run into cricket abbrevs.

c = caught, that is.

Yeah, "c" for caught is an abbreviation used on cricket scoreboards, so it's widely used and accepted in UK crosswords

further sources of confusion: Bowled = b; run out = ro; stumped = st

not out = no

don't think you'd have much use for lbw

Joint, English, strangely out leg before wicket? (5)

lol ok

Guarantee Jimmy will take a meditative chant (7)