Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Hello, Elle!
Thames Water are not exactly covering themselves in glory, are they!
It is splendid weather here.
I finished off the 1977 puzzle, but it was not enjoyable.
Some clues were not cryptic.
Mr R's lads and lasses are far better setters, I think.

Hi, Rusty!
Okay...now hold onto your hat......I think I am finally getting somewhere with TW......!
No "shinglers" turned up.......but a photographer instead!
It seems he was asked to produce "photographic evidence" that the path "re- instatement" was still unfinished.
He was a lovely man, very apologetic for all the trouble we have been put through.
He said that he would go straight back and tell them that he "had seen with his own eyes" that the work wasn't completed, and would duly email all his photos to Thames Water and Essential Water Services to back that up.
So...... I await now - but not in vain hopefully - a date for the work to be resumed and finally completed!
Whew!
I now have a copy of the 1977 puzzle, and shall turn my attention to that!

Hello, Elle!
What a palaver with the good folks at Thames Water!
Hopefully Mr Snappy will show the pics to whoever it concerns and they get cracking!
It is a great day here, and the forecast is the same all week!!
I will be interested to hear how you and the 1977 puzzle get on!
Do you have the "championship qualifier" too?

Hi, Rusty!
Yes, hopefully, we shall now progress to the finishing of the pathway!
What a nightmare though.......
I made relatively good progress with the "old" 1977 puzzle!
I found it very much easier than the usual crossword......
But not all of the clues could be classified as "cryptic"?
For instance , 5a: Perseus and 8a: sadness were surely "straight" clues?
Perseus turned his enemies to stone by the sight of Medusa's head.
And Tennyson's poem was just a general knowledge question.
The quotation is from "Crossing the Bar", which was connected with a recent clue, wasn't it?
There were, however, still two (interlocking ones) that I couldn't do.......
And one I haven't been able to parse.....
I shall mull these over for a little while.
Light may dawn when I come back from my walk!
No, I don't have the Championship qualifier as well.
That would have been too hard for me, anyway!
Right, off to the park now......it's feeling a tad on the chilly side ......

Hello, Elle!
I think it is warm here.
The Times crosswords at that time were beginning to change.
Twenty years before that you needed to be a Classics scholar to solve them.
They are much better now.
A new crossword editor came in and told the setters to set the kind of crosswords we have today.
I have never heard of Perseus and the clue was no help.
And I know Tennyson was a poet but I would never have known the "missing" word.

Good evening, Rusty!
Today's crossword made a nice change though?
I rather liked it.
But perhaps that was because I did find it much easier.
I really struggle a lot with some of the more cryptic "modern- day" puzzles!
I am not as good at them as you are.
I am down to one unsolved clue now in today's puzzle.......
27a: Card-sharpers returning from the Holy Land? (7)
P?L?E?S
I have no ideas here...what am I missing?
And the parsing , please, for 18a: Visited by Puck in twenty minutes? (9)
I have ANTIPODES, but cannot see why?
All I know about Puck is that he is also know as Robin Goodfellow in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
It's a lovely evening...the best part of the day!

Good evening, Elle!
27, Is not very cryptic either.
To hide/conceal a playing card is to "palm" it.
And apparently pilgrims to the Holy Land brought back palm leaves to show they had been there.
Hence "palmers".
There is a Palm Sunday too, but I do not know of that has anything to to with it.
I have Antipodes, too, but no idea who or what Puck has to do with it.
It is a typical clue from these ancient puzzles.
You either know it or you do not!

May I intervene ?
Puck boasted he could travel around the world in 40 minutes so halfway would be the Antipodes

Hello, Cerasus!
Thank you for that!
I knew there was a saying about a lie being halfway round the world before truth had its boots on (I think that's how it goes).
But I did not know that about Puck.
For my sins, I have never read a Shakespeare book.

Hello rusty

My head is full of useless trivia which occasionally helps with quizzes and the like