Guardian 26,123 / Gordius

29 comments on “Guardian 26,123 / Gordius”

1. Well done Eileen. Although I eventually managed to complete this successfully without aids, I found it difficult. I did not know ‘Sorel’ or ‘Markov Chain’ and deduced them from wordplay.
   The clues seem to me to cover a range from banal (12a and 25a) to inadequate (28a) to questionable (1d) to clever and witty (10a – even if a plural would have been better).
   As always, personal opinions and, of course, I have probably missed the subtleties as usual.

2. Little typo in your 23ac. Eileen. Agree with your comments – bit of a curate’s egg from Gordius.

3. ‘Reed’ can be a mass or bed of reeds so REPUTED just about works.

4. Thank you, greyfox – rogue punctuation now corrected!

   sidey, I see now that SOED [alone of my dictionaries] gives ‘a growth or bed of reeds’ but I’m afraid that still doesn’t make it work for me. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has actually come across that meaning!

5. No such plural usage of REED in Chambers, which I’ve always seen as the authoritative voice on these things. So undoubtedly dodgy. But that’s to be expected with Gordius, alas; sees a good device, but cuts corners in the clueing when he can’t make it work.

   I was diffident about entering HALF-CENTURY for L. If it had been a quick crossword, straight in, but a cryptic …?

   I’ve quite enjoyed Gordius at times but there were far too many loose ends in this puzzle. Got a bit of a chuckle out of LOOPHOLE because, constructing the charade, I was mentally pronouncing it as loo – ph=f – ol� till the penny dropped.

6. Thanks Eileen; you won’t be surprised to learn that I agree with your assessment..

   People over at the Guardian site are raving about 12a: e.g. “as near to clue perfection as you can get. Brilliant.” but it seems very weak to me.

7. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I’m with you — this seemed patchy to me. I didn’t see the parsing of 10ac, which is perhaps not surprising! Markov Chain was new to me, but gettable.

   And I’m another one who thought 12ac barely cryptic. I enjoyed 25ac.

8. I’m among the few who actually has heard of a Markov chain–I spent my college years (Princeton, 1992-1996) surrounded by math and physics majors–but I couldn’t actually tell you what the term means. One of those terms that you never expect to see in a crossword puzzle! Even so, I suspect that defining it as “series of events” is perhaps a bit off.

   Another vote that “L” for half-century is a poor clue. Feels like half the clue is missing–the cryptic half, specifically.

9. Re 10a I thought “reed” referred to the basket Moses was in (an “ark of bulrushes” according to wikipedia) so I took reed to be identifying the material – he was put in reed a you might put on silk, tweed, motley etc. Eccentric I suppose, but it seemed to work. There is also the naturalist’s way of using the singular to refer to collections of plants and animals, which may be what SOED is indicating.

   Alternatively – I just thought of this – was Moses “put in a reed bed” (as “put” is embedded in “reed”)?

10. This is made hard by the ‘didgy’ clues. The ideas are quite simple, we are surprised to find. but the DEFINITIONS are all over the place. Difficult and un staisfying.

11. Thanks Eileen and Gordius

    Usual mixed bag as said. I liked ‘loophole’.

    My first thought for 12a was ‘half-measure’ – summarising the puzzle?

    24d could also have been clued ‘one under 12 in years’.

12. @tupu
    Some say that would clue “agxlixe”…

13. Thank you Eileen, excellent blog as ever.

    I normally like to be in the, “say nothing if you have nothing positive to add”, camp. However, I seem to have difficulty enjoying this setter and this offering has a number of reasons why:

    REPUTED for the reasons many have stated.
    L is simply not a crossword clue for me.
    For FREEDOM to work “first English” has to be read as E. (Ask The Don what he thinks of this device!)
    INTERESTED PARTY again is only half a clue. Perfectly solvable but unsatisfying.

    There are some decent clues too, of course, MUFTI & LOOPHOLE were fine for example.

    Hey-ho.

14. If I can join the party again! I thought a lot of loose cluing. My bugbear was 22d. ‘rather brave’ is ‘bold’. ‘Bolder’ is ‘more brave’ – it’s comparative is it not.

15. Thanks, Eileen and Gordius. I enjoyed this, finding it harder than the usual Gordius.

    10a REPUTED was my last in, and I didn’t see the REED explanation. I just thought it referred to Moses as a man of repute; either way, a bit weak.

    I thought 1ac and 12ac were splendid clues, and transferred to, say, a Paul puzzle would surely have evoked praise. I have no problem with “first English” as a device.

    Not sure your refernce for a Markov Chain is the best – it’s a bit wooly, though it does get a little more precise and technical soon after! “sequences of random variables in which the future variable is determined by the present variable but is independent of the way in which the present state arose from its predecessors” might be better – see Andrei Andreyevich Markov in the excellent U of St Andrews’ “The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive”

16. Wiki :- “A Markov Chain… is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another…”. In the vernacular that means a series of events. Is that a cause for sniffy comment? I think not.

17. Herb @12

    You are right as I realised after my comment.

18. Thanks to Eileen for the blog. You cleared up a couple where I had the right answer without understanding the parsing.

    I was quite happy with ‘first English’ giving E: to me that is a common crossword device.

    On 23d I spent quite some time trying to think of a conductor in 6 letters with FF in the middle. I was then going to remove one F i.e. without forte. Eventually I spotted the other meaning of without 🙁

19. While I can see the faults, I actually quite enjoyed it – although it felt a bit like it must be Monday!

    But sometimes it’s nice to have a fairly straightforward solve for a change. The synonyms were all fairly direct, which I think is what made it quite friendly.

    If you think of Moses being “PUT” in a container made of “REED”, then I think that works OK.

    Thanks to Eileen and Gordius (it’s way better than anything I could create!)

20. Tiresome trudge through this I’m sorry to say, but at least, like Eileen, I saw merit in the Moses gag, or potential or something like that. Heigh-ho, as they say. Onwards and hopefully upwards.

21. Re: Markov chain. It is often used in statistical modelling for a series of events. As Wiki puts it, “A series of independent events (for example, a series of coin flips) satisfies the formal definition of a Markov chain.

22. Thanks all
    I enjoyed this, but then I am not as pedantic as some of you!
    ‘Markov chain’ was very familiar but then it is a mathematical expression so everyone can feelvery free to show ignorance (remind me next time we have an obscure WS reference).
    I thought for a long time that 12 ac was ‘hell finishing?’ or similar which would have been cryptic.
    Favourite 13ac.

23. I agree with all the various quibbles. I don’t normally criticise Gordius but I didn’t enjoy this puzzle much. My last three in were MUFTI (didn’t know the conductor but eventually saw the definition), MARKOV CHAIN (gettable from the wordplay once all the checkers were in place), and INTERESTED PARTY with a “what else can it be?” shrug.

24. Well bootkins got this right for me.

    A “tiresome trudge”.

    What a ragbag of a puzzle ranging from the tenuous to the downright wrong!

    As others have said many went in because they had to be what was intended even though they were either dodgy or wrongly defined.

    Does nobody check these puzzles before printing them?

    Thanks to Eileen and Gordius

25. A very, very slow start for Sue and me on this one, but worth the effort in the end, we found.

    It seemed different in character from many puzzles of late, and I struggled in particular with finding the necessary synonyms to make progress.

    There were a few write-ins, but generally the clueing was pretty fiendishly surfaced, with some real beauties, as has been said. I’m happy to take ’em as they come.

    Thanks all.

26. Excellent puzzle but what a dreary (with a couple of honourable exceptions) and of course predictable, chain of comments.

    I fail to see anything in the least bit obscure in it save for those who are ignorant of maths, music and the norms of non-ximenean cluing – well – let’s just say ignorant.

    Anyone who can’t get E from “first English” after noticing that the setter is not a card-carrying ximenean (or some schism thereof) really needs to get help.

    10a “reed” is (or can be) a “mass noun” [google it if you don’t know] – perfectly valid construction.

    Loose -sloppy – didgy (sic) – usual stupid comments. This is how Gordius sets – this is how his grammar works – it ain’t the same as Manley and co. If you don’t like it for Heaven’s sake don’t do his puzzles.

27. Re 28ac, I think quite a few Socialists as well as Tories are likely to have savings accounts these days, though not many with the Co-op Bank, I grant you.

28. Jolly – dreary, predictable, ignorant and stupid. Yes. Stuff and nonsense. There’s a lot of it about.

29. Yes RHOTICIAN! I am glad you have spotted it tioo.

Comments are closed.