Guardian 24,811 – Pasquale
Posted by Uncle Yap on September 22nd, 2009
dd = double definition
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram
As usual, the Don entertains, titillates and challenges in his own unique beguiling ways. I quite enjoyed this even though I had to quickly solve, understand and blog
ACROSS
9 ONE ACROSS This took me a long time before I figured that the first across clue is usually 1 Across which is also (thanks to PaulG) a cha of ONE (each) & A CROSS (which a mule is of a horse and donkey)
10 MANGO Cha of MAN (chap) GO (energy)
11 RIOTERS Cha of RIO (after the port Rio de Janeiro) TERSE (brusque) minus E
12 HERCULE He (the man) R (right) CLUE with L&U interchanged and of course, Agatha Christie’s Poirot needs no further introduction
13 LOIS fLoOsIEs (the even letters) Superman’s girlfriend
14 MONARCHIST An excellent quasi-&lit *(cast iron + HM for His/Her Majesty)
15 TROTSKY Cha of TROT (movement of a horse or hack) SKY (the cable TV channel dominated by Murdoch of Times/Sun fame)
17 MIRANDA Ins of AND in M (male) IRA (terrorists) I have two questions about this clue. We all know Miranda is the name of a girl, made famous by the daughter of Duke Prospero in The Tempest; so why “female once at an inn”? I thought there is an unwritten understanding not to continue to refer to the IRA as terrorists after peace was achieved in Northern Ireland
19 OUT IN FRONT A most amusing dd which reminded me of the beer guts a few days ago
22 STUD Study minus y
23 POTSHOT The pot is hot when it’s freshly taken from the oven
24 AVESTAN Ins of EST (French for is) in A VAN (leading position) for Zoroastrian holy Scriptures.
26 OREAD Cha of O (love) READ (look)
27 SQUARE ONE Simple cha of SQUARE (no trendy) ONE (individual). After solving this, 9Across was a cinch
DOWN
1 WORRALL THOMPSON *(Rollmop who rants) Henry Antony Cardew Worrall Thompson (born 1 May 1951) is an English celebrity chef, television presenter and radio broadcaster. Never heard of him until today
2 GERONIMO GE RONIM (rev of minor eg, child say) O (nothing)
3 OCHE the line, groove or ridge behind which a darts player must stand to throw (also hockey or hockey line). The hockey game played by a Cockney would be ‘ockey (sounds the same as oche)
4 DOGSBODY Cha of DOG’S (setter’s) BODY (matter)
5 ASTHMA *(maths) + A
6 EMBRACER Ins of M (male) BRACE (couple) in ER (hesitation)
7 ANNULI Cha of ANNUL (get rid of) I (one)
8 POTENTIAL DANGER This is one of those reversed anagram clue where the answer is like a clue to “garden”
16 SUNSHADE SUN (newspaper) + ins of AD (advertisement or commercial) in SHE (women’s magazine)
17 MANDAMUS Cha of MAN (fellow) DAM (block) US (the Guardian) a writ or command issued by a higher court to a lower.
18 NOTATION Ins of OT (Old Testament or old books) in NATION (state)
20 TOTTER dd a person who searches through dustbins and rubbish heaps for reusable or saleable items; a rag-and-bone-man, scrap dealer.
21 RETEST *(setter)
25 EZRA dd Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (1885 – 1972) was an American expatriate poet
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 am
Thanks, Uncle Yap
9 ac A mule is a ‘cross’ between a horse and donkey, so: one a cross.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 am
How is ‘fan’ an indicator of an anagram in 14ac ?
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 am
17ac is a reference to the first line of ‘Tarantella’, by Hilaire Belloc:
‘Do you remeber an Inn, Miranda?’
I read 9ac as ON EA[ch] CROSS
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Sorry: ‘remember’!
I thought this was a great puzzle, impeccably clued, so that, for instance, I got AVESTAN simply through the wordplay, as it was a new word for me.
I loved ASTHMA and POTENTIAL DANGER and I thought the symmetry of ONE ACROSS and SQUARE ONE was very clever.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 am
Many thanks, Uncle Yap.
This was too tough for me: I couldn’t get 1d, 9a, 3d or 24a.
However, I do prefer them to be too hard rather than too easy.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
ACP (re 2 above)
I read ‘fan’ as being a supporter of ‘HM’
Maybe ‘Cast’ was the anagram indicator as well as being part of the anagram?
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
Bryan, I thought the anagram indicator could be ‘cast’, as you say, or ‘fan’ (blows stuff around, or is that a bit unlikely??)
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
I wasn’t too taken with some of these clues – I thought that 1 down was weak, didn’t understand the use of ‘people’ in 8 down, and also I thought that ‘totter’ was a bit lame.
Eileen, you say that you got ‘avestan’ from the wordplay, without knowing the word previously. Well, shouldn’t that be the minimum requirement in a cryptic clue such as this?
However, I would say that fan has to be the anagrind in 14 ac, otherwise the clue would make no sense.
Here’s hoping for Paul or Shed tomorrow…
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:22 am
Crikey, yes, of course. I was just reiterating the point that is often made here – that a less familiar word should have particularly straightforward wordplay, as we have here. The same applies to MANDAMUS, which may be less well-known.
And re TOTTER: I thought the dd: ‘rock’ / ‘collector rummaging …’ was rather nice.
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
I failed here, after struggling for a bit.
I had BREAD[fruit] (E in BRAD) for 10ac which held me up no end in the NE corner.
I never got MIRANDA, as (a stupid mistake) I entered 6dn as EMBRACES… so all I could get for 17ac was MASONRY [could these people be called terrorists?] (SON in MARY) – but then that buggered up 8dn.
I guessed 20dn as TOTTER, due to knowing of the old rag-and-bone men, but why ‘rock collector’ here?
Oh well!
Nick
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:29 am
OK, I now see comment#9 posted as I was typing – I understand 20dn now Doh!
Nick
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Me too, re 20d… very good!
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Thanks, Uncle Yap
Got badly stuck on this one. Didn’t help myself by solving 10ac as ‘peach’ and 12ac as ‘redtops’.
At least I added ‘mamdamus’ and ‘avestan’ to my vocab.
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
14ac I too would like to know what the part of speech ought to be for ‘fan’. I don’t think in this case it can be nounal, as ‘a fan of’ doesn’t seem, in my nearest two dictionaries, to equate to ‘a spreading out of’. So it must be … um … the transitive – to move (by a fan) – or intransitive – to move (like a fan) or to flutter. Taking the plural for the three elements.
Don?
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
i too had peach at 10ac e inside chap*, which led me to christmas dinner for 8d!, this in turn meant 6d 7d and 12ac remained uncompleted. oh dear!
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Moving swiftly on, 17ac doesn’t really need that QM (where’s the extra crypticity it purports to indicate?) and wouldn’t ‘Old language in Paris is in a leading position’ have been neater, less contentious grammatically, and easier? But 17dn is a masterstroke: no doubts there.
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Re 17ac: I think the QM may be there because the poem is perhaps not so well-known, rather than any added crypticity. I managed to remember it from reading it in school and being charmed by the rhythm:
‘Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the bedding
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?’
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Eileen, 17ac Miranda. You must have a memory of pachydermic proportions to dredge that up. I’m very impressed!
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Cholecyst
I’ve said several times recently that it’s a sign of advancing years to be able to recite things learned decades ago and not be able to recall the name of someone I met last week – or where I put my glasses!
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Sorry – I didn’t mean the Miranda clue, but the Avestan one. I should have posted:
24ac doesn’t really need that QM (where’s the extra crypticity it purports to indicate?) and wouldn’t ‘Old language in Paris is in a leading position’ have been neater, less contentious grammatically, and easier?
The Miranda one for me was made obscure where it need not have been. As a result, it relies quite heavily upon whether or not the audience has read Belloc, which is flimsy I think. For IRA, perhaps ‘gunmen once’ is fairer. After all, we might reflect that the murder of innocent civilians is not entirely the province of ‘terrorists’ these days.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
There is no QM in 17ac. There is one in 15ac.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Paul B
Sorry for adding to the confusion: I didn’t look back to the clue – just looked it up on the blog. You’re quite right, of course, jvh.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Struggled quite a bit today, but in the end got all but 4. Annoyingly, I guessed at AVESTAN and then rubbed it out because I thought the answer must be something I’d at least have heard of. Never heard of a MANDAMUS either. Ho hum.
Loved 14ac. Very elegant but clever construction.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
re “24ac doesn’t really need that QM (where’s the extra crypticity it purports to indicate?)” the QM would seem to indicate that no one refers to ‘a’ van in the frontal sense.
And as for the IRA, terrorists to the core.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I go there in the end, but what a struggle. It took me to work and back and some more, today (that’s approximately 70 minutes, rightback).
After all that, I found it marginally disappointing. There are the good clues others have reviewed, but I wasn’t enthralled by 1d (it doesn’t quite make sense), 12a (I would expect a ssecond name), 17a (for reasons others have given), 26a (read = to look at?)and possibly 4d (body = matter?).
14a fan – my Bradford says it may indicate an anagram, but with no supporting explanation.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I thought 14Ac and 1Dn were both first-rate ‘anag. & lit.’s – check out the Chambers definition of ‘rollmop’. And I’d lay good money that Pasquale intended ‘fan’ to take the intransitive verb sense (i.e. ‘to flutter’).
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Sorry, I meant 8d, not 1d. 1d was indeed first-rate. I meant the surface in 8d. It requires some punctuation, say “Garden – is this….”
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
14dn: I thought this was excellent and agree with Richard (#26) that ‘fan’ is intended intransitively.
In barred cryptic puzzles I think the convention is that intransitive anagram indicators can be used in the plural, as here (i.e. the letters “fan [out]“), or the singular, regardless of the number of letters or words (the thinking being, I suppose, that the anagram fodder can be considered as a single group or as several individual letters). I may, of course, be quite wrong here.
And Dave, I can assure you this took me longer than getting to work and back today!
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I’m away this week, but thanks for the comments. No time to respond in detail.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 am
That is unfortunate. It would be nice to know, even after Derrida, the author’s intent.
OTOH thanks indeed to Richard and to Rightback for the info regarding the deployment of ‘fan’ as the anagrind. I’d been aware for some time of the accepted grammatical concepts for anagram fodder, but I’m new to the convention – if that is what it is, as suggested – as to use of intransitive-verbal anagrinds.
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:08 am
I made the same ‘peach’ mistake as did others, which completely messed me up for that corner. Oh well…
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 am
Thank you for replying re ‘fan’. I see it more as ‘spread’ than ‘rearrange’.
Apart from that, I enjoyed the puzzle. After struggling with all the Don incarnations previously, I think I’m becoming accustomed to him.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:39 am
It just means a fan of HM (Her Majesty)
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
I know it’s part of the definition. But then there’s no anagram indicator if that be solely it.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Well, as discussed ‘fan’ is the (intransitive-verbal) anagram indicator. But because the clue is what is known as ‘&lit’ the whole thing becomes the definition: yes, you can separate out the component parts (in this case the anagram fodder and indicator) but there won’t be any definition in the ordinary sense.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I was thrown in 10 across by the alternative solution PEACH (anagram of CHAP with E for energy!
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Re 25D: No-one has queried why EZRA=book. I’ve just googled it and discovered it’s a book of the Old Testament.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
An enjoyable puzzle. On a point of order the legal term mandamus has been renamed a “mandatory order.”
September 24th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Don’t ‘Indians’ come from India?
October 5th, 2009 at 4:21 am
I missed “oche”. Not being a darts player I found this extremely obscure (and it’s not in my edition of Chambers), and the homophone clue was no help.