The thing so many people love about P&As - the senselessness, silliness, and arbitrariness of the clues - is what a serious cryptic puzzle lover like me resents about them.
That said, Erik Agard gave me a gift, with the clues today that were (as Deadline hinted) more like truncated cryptic clues than the wackiness of the usual P&A.
Thanks, Erik!
Please explain answer to 14D. I have STETTED filled in
@david
We have an anagram clue situation here. "stet" is the word for an editor's command applied to a piece of text being proofread to indicate that all prior editorial comments on that piece are to be discarded; it basically says for that piece: "let it stand (the way the author wrote it)". This is what "kept" in the clue is indicating.
@Dr W
thank you makes sense now
Thank heaven for the comments, and thank you all; I'd miss so much otherwise; even if I get the answer, sometimes I don't understand what the clue means. Also makes me feel not quite so alone when I see that others have that confusion as well.
But I really love P & As and enjoyed this one though it took me longer than usual. I doubt I'll ever try cryptics however.
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I think I did pretty well -- got most of it except for an amusing kerfluffle regarding 5-down: I gather from the discussion that the clue was capital O printed in red. Reason I say that is because Mrs W and I do the puzzles, and we get the newsprint version, so I printer-copy one for myself so she can work on the original. Thus all my versions are in black and white.
Now I can scream. :-)
Nevertheless I still don't get 1 across -- even though it means "total" is the same as "overall". Not in my background. I've heard "overall"used in the context of an estimate or an approximation.
I got an Excedrin headache after completing this challenging puzzle. Thank you Erik Asgard!
Lack of agar irked the Japanese chef making red bean jelly.
@Dan
I see what you're doing. I think "the jelly maker" would be enough.
Okay, thanks to earlier commenters, I now see that there are different clues for IONIC and REDO in the print version than in my AcrossLite, and apparently the online version..
But can someone explain what Caitlin means by comparing 25A's clue to the hidden words at 18A and 7D, but citing "middle," which appears nowhere in the clue. What I am seeing at 25A is [Cream tour], which is just a straightforward anagram, and identified as such.
What am I missing?
I finished the puzzle quite quickly (and happily), with only PIPS needing major head-scratching and coming back to. But then I read the column and got all confused. Odd that.
The one problem I have with PandAs is that my brain can go into full-blown cryptic mode, and I sometimes start looking for "other halves" of the clues. But that's okay. Variety is good.
Eric's been a busy boy this week. That's good too.
@Deadline
Took me a while to parse through your confusion over middle...and then i was confused....
But i think i solved it....Caitlin perhaps didnt mean 25A and transposed the numbers for 52A.....52 has the word middle and is a similar type of cryptic.
@Paul
Thanks very much. I see what you're saying, but I don't think that's it.
52A is a close to a traditional cryptic-style clue, with a cryptic element and a "straight" element. The word "middle" appears in the straight part, and the entry itself is an anagram at the end.
@Deadline
"tour" gets creamed. And a rout means getting creamed. I think I'd put "middle" down to one of Caitlin's "oopses".
One of the best P and A’s in a while. Especially liked 56A and 8D (won’t spoil it for others). Right up there with the P and A master - Mel Taub
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If anyone is puzzled by Caitlin's references to "I atop IC" for 53A, or a "red O" for 5D, there were different clues given in different versions of this puzzle. If you download the "Newspaper version" of the PDF, you'll see the clues as Caitlin describes them, where 5D is simply the letter O shown in red, and 53A shows the letter I sitting above the letters IC. The online version apparently couldn't accommodate those clues, and so has these clues instead:
5D: Memo heading about a shindig
53A: Having artificial body parts except for the head
If there are other clue differences, I haven't spotted them.
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@Alan J
I can't find a difference, but I do not understand what Caitlin is talking about re 25A. I didn't have any problem with the clue I see, but it doesn't coincide with her comment.
I continue to find the PandAs and the Cryptics incredibly fascinating, but I absolutely cannot DO them.
For me, this blog is like being a spectator at a ball game.
I got BURNT (no double meaning intended) and a few other words. Then I “Checked” them, and half of them were wrong.
For instance, DANGLERS for 61A. I had been thinking like, “D”-anglers.
Then I hit a total wall, so I gave up and “Revealed” the rest of it.
52D took me a long time to figure out even after revealing.
OK, PI……P.S.
And then there was 35A and 49D.
This time it was a mini-theme about skipping letters.
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@Jerrold
Oldie: Says Teacher, "Use the word 'debate' in a sentence."
Student replies, "De boys went fishing, but forgot debate."
3
@Jerrold
when i first started doing P and A i felt the same way....The upside with P and A vs cryptic is that it has spaces like a traditional crossword so you can guess and the spaces and reverse engineer your answer...
At some point the P and A tricks might just *click* and then you'll find them easy and fun.
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@Paul I was trying to figure out what you meant by “spaces”.
Do you mean that every square is used twice?
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Switchbacks is one of my favorite “middle” puzzles.
It is always very easy to make up my own diagram on paper.
[SPOILER ALERT]
This time, it was almost too easy.
I began with the overlapping PRIMEVAL and PALM READER.
PLOT, GOLGOTHA and AERATOR were also gimmes.
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For 53A, my explanation for the answer was ionic = "Bionic" missing its head
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@jam
I on IC
@Etaoin Shrdlu But what do you mean by “I on IC”?
I don’t understand how that relates to artificial body parts.
@Jerrold
In the print version, the clue was a capital "I" placed on top of capital "IC" in two lines of type.
The on-line version must have been unable to render the clue in that way.
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Very accessible and quite entertaining.