Guardian 24,580 – Paul
Posted by manehi on December 24th, 2008
Am solving and blogging now after a night out knowing that I won’t get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow/this morning.. surprisingly easy for a Paul, I felt, with a lot of easyish clues among the many nice ones. Merry Christmas all… anyone else get to open their presents by this afternoon 
?
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1,27 | OFFSIDE TRAP | =Sporting ploy, or all of the surface taken together. “OF”, then DE TRAP = rev(parted) = “left back” is put after (“past”) a jumble of “IF” and S[trikers] . |
| 5,19 | SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG | Put this in immediately based on the enumeration.. not too much misdirection here. |
| 10 | ARIA | A, rev(AIR). |
| 11 | STRYCHNINE | The very bitter poison. TRY=”essay”, “penned” in by SCH for school, followed by the square number NINE. |
| 12 | PESETA | SET in PEA |
| 13 | NOTATION | I knew Jacques TATI as a filmmaker, though I suppose comic is fair enough. Inside NOON=twelve. |
| 14 | ALPHA RATS | (A[dvance] A SHARPLY)* |
| 16 | FLEET | neat little double def. |
| 17 | SPELT | Is a type of wheat and W-H-E-A-T is spelt out in the clue. |
| 23 | BUTTER UP | Lovely. “Flatter” is the definition. BUTT followed by rev(PURE)= “straight back”. |
| 24 | PLEXUS | P[ower] + LEXUS. The solar plexus is a major nerve network in the abdomen. |
| 26 | DIPSOMANIA | DIPS, OMANI, A. |
| 28 | GLASGOW | GLOW around (gas)* |
| Down | ||
| 2 | FOR REAL | ERR reversed in FOAL |
| 3, 29ac | SNAKE CHARMER | Both words have similar meanings to “cad”. |
| 4 | DESPAIR | (is padre)* |
| 6 | NICETY | Hidden in GermaNIC ETYmology |
| 7 | GENITALIA | GEN=facts, ITALIA is how Italians would say Italy. Cobblers is slang for a kind of these. |
| 8 | SAN JOSE | J[udge], OS=”so upstanding” all inSANE. |
| 9 | GRANNY DUMPING | Not a phrase I was familiar with. GRAN[d] + NY=(New York) state + DUMP[l]ING=”short, fat person left out” |
| 15 | HALITOSIS | Scrabble is an anagrind on “sloth (ai)”, then IS=exists. “ai” is a fairly well known as a two-letter Scrabble word meaning a kind of sloth. |
| 18 | PLUVIAL | PAL=Intimate in the sense of confidant, around LUV for “love”, with an “I” appearing in there as well. The word means to do with rain. |
| 20 | IMPEACH | Laughed aloud when I got this. I(=one) MP EACH is the “constituency allocation”. |
| 21 | ULULATE | ZULU=South African is beheaded, LATE=dead. |
| 22 | CRIMBO | M[essiah] in CRIB getting O for his birthday tomorrow. |
| 25 | EATER | I am vaguely aware of a phrase similar to “this apple is a good eater” or something. HEATER=warmer loses H for hot. |
December 24th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Some really nice clues in this one.
I thought 1,27ac was terrific.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Manehi 14A appears to be a typo – it’s Alpha RAYS.
Lovely crossword for Crimbo Eve!
December 24th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Merry Christmas manehi & all. Like you I had a laugh at 20dn, and a snigger at 7dn.
25dn – an “eater” or “eating apple” is in contrast to a “cooker”.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Very enjoyable. Perfect crossword for Christmas – fun, but never annoying.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Excellent Paul crossword – I found it a bit harder than his most recent ones, unlike manehi.
1, 27 is a splendid &lit; also liked 20, 22, 23 very much. 7dn was a bit sneaky: ITALIA is certainly Italian for Italy, but ‘say’ implied a homophone, and it isn’t pronounced the same way as the last three syllables of GENITALIA.
December 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
you’ve got a spelling mistake in 14ac – its rays not rats
December 24th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Excellent fun – our favourites were CRIMBO, PLEXUS (last one to go in), SNAKE CHARMER, IMPEACH and BUTTER UP. Merry Christmas (again) everyone
December 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Good stuff, Paul.
Struggled with Crimbo, believe it or not.
December 24th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Good fun stuff from Paul today, but I’ve seen an almost identical clue to 25d somewhere else very recently… unfortunate coincidence.
Merry Christmas everybody!
December 25th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Smutchin – so have I, which makes me think it must have been a Guardian clue, as I very rarely look at other papers’ crosswords.