Guardian 25636 – Orlando
Posted by Uncle Yap on May 15th, 2012
Quite a pleasant morning’s workout with a rich variety of devices to tax and tickle the brain.
Next week, I shall be taking a short leave to attend the InterHash 2012 in Jogjakarta, Indonesia and perchance to see and hear a gamelan troupe. In my absence, Phil Ashling has kindly agreed to be my locum for the next two Tuesdays.
Place cursor over clue number to read the clue
| Across | ||
| 1 | GATSBY | GATS (rev of STAG party) + BY for Jay Gatsby, the central character in The Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| 4 | SHUNTER | SHUN (have no truck with) TER (TENDER minus END, indicated by endlessly) |
| 9 | MAIDSTONE | *(DOESN’T AIM) for HM Prison Maidstone, a men’s prison in Maidstone, Kent, England. |
| 10 | STORM | STOR (STORE, shop minus E) M (mass) |
| 11 | LASSO | *(ALSO S |
| 12 | FIRST-HAND | FIRST (oldest) HAND (a measure) from the expression from the horse’s mouth |
| 13 | NATTIER | Ins of I (one) in NATTER (rabbit, talk a lot) |
| 15 | STREWN | Ins of TR (IVR for Turkey) in *(NEWS) |
| 17 | SCONCE | S (second) C (century) ONCE (in the old days) |
| 19 | SEVERED | *(DESERVE) |
| 22 | CONCORDAT | CONCORD (capital of New Hampshire,USA) pAcT (odd letters ignored) |
| 24 | REALM | REAL (true) M (first letter of Mayan) |
| 26 | EL CID | *(DELIC |
| 27 | REPRESENT | To show again is to re-present |
| 28 | MILDRED | Tichy way to describe MILD (not extreme or loony) RED (one with leftist inclinations) |
| 29 | PRE-MED | P (first letter of patient) REMEDY (answer to 7) minus Y |
| Down | ||
| 1 | GAMELAN | GAME (plucky) L (first letter of lyrist) AN for a traditional musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Java and Bali, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, kendang (drums) and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings |
| 2 | TWIGS | dd |
| 3 | BOSTONIAN | Ins of TO in BOSNIAN (European) |
| 4 | SIERRAS | Thanks to Matthew@4, the middle of Russia is SS or plural of S, which in phonetic code is SIERRA, hence SIERRAS |
| 5 | UPSET | UP (in college) SET (group of students) |
| 6 | TROJAN WAR | TROJAN (hard worker) WAR (rev of RAW, green) |
| 7 | REMEDY | Ins of M (first letter of metal) in REEDY (piping) |
| 8 | COFFER | C (first letter of camera) OFFER (to volunteer) |
| 14 | TECHNICAL | *(CATCH LINE) |
| 16 | RIVER WEAR | Tichy wear to describe a boater (a hat) as something one wears on the river that flows by Durham |
| 18 | ENDURED | Ins of UR (first and last letters of unpopular) in ENDED (over) |
| 19 | SIT-UPS | SIT UP (don’t go to bed) + S (first letter of sleepy) |
| 20 | DEMOTED | D (daughter) EMOTED (displayed strong feelings) |
| 21 | SCREAM | Ins of RE (about) in SCAM (swindle) |
| 23 | ORDER | dd a tall order |
| 25 | A-TEAM | ATE (didn’t fast) AM (before noon) |
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram
May 15th, 2012 at 3:30 am
re: 4d. I don’t think the homophone works.
May 15th, 2012 at 4:16 am
Thanks Orlando and Uncle Yap. Enjoyed this puzzle. I was waiting for an explanation of 4d. Is it a homophone of areas that is between the two esses? Doesn’t work for me either but I have a NW accent so perhaps I am missing something.
Cheers…
May 15th, 2012 at 4:30 am
Uncle Yap:-
Copy and paste to back up texts in a blank text file?
I take it your computer doesn’t have a default back up every 15 seconds option so you never lose work.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry upon reading what you’d put. However, I have no control of what you do, so I laughed… Had it been me I would of got angry.
Thanks Orlando.
May 15th, 2012 at 6:02 am
I think the point of 4dn is that SIERRA is used as a codeword for the letter S in the NATO phonetic alphabet, which you might use to spell something out clearly over a radio.
May 15th, 2012 at 7:28 am
Thanks, UY.
New word of the day for me was GAMELAN as a musical ensemble. I heard of it as an instrument.
Agree with Matthew @4. The middle of Russia “on the radio” is Sierra Sierra.
May 15th, 2012 at 8:51 am
Thanks, UY. Late to the party today, I’m afraid.
Enjoy yourself in Yogya – you’ll definitely get to see and hear a lot of GAMELANs as they’re hard to avoid up there!
May 15th, 2012 at 9:32 am
I’m a bit puzzled by 18d. The definition’s presumably “Bore”, but that doesn’t seem to agree with the tense of “Endured”. Am I missing something?
May 15th, 2012 at 9:45 am
He bore (past tense of bear) / endured the tedium of the long speeches
May 15th, 2012 at 10:38 am
Thanks UY and Orlando for an excellent blog and very fine puzzle
It is specially good to have a puzzle with such direct connections once seen between clue and answer without necessarily having to first guess the words and then fit them to the clues.
One clue still left me a bit ‘clueless’! Last in was ‘endured’. I realised it was UR in Ended but I missed the verbal use of bore (past tense) as UY explains. I was left thinking it should have to be ‘a bore’ who is endured. I also thought stopping = ended (i.e. having an end) which was over UR. Apologies to readers enduring this lengthy confession!
I ticked lots of clues including 1a, 4a, 12a,13a, 19a,28a, 6d,8d, 19d21d.
May 15th, 2012 at 11:11 am
Thanks Uncle Yap and Orlando.
I just popped in to say 26ac made me smile, as I live in the Cid’s home town, and Vivar, the village where he was born, is just up the road, towards Santander
May 15th, 2012 at 11:18 am
Thanks all
A rather odd one,this.
I must have tried at least ten without success then 15ac went in but the top remained barren.
Then I spotted the over-defined 29ac and of course that gave me 7d immediately. A pity since I would have struggled to get ‘piping’= ‘reedy’ any time soon.
The whole thing then collapsed around my ears.
I did like ‘pact oddly ignored’ (22ac) which was a clever variation on the oddly, evenly, regular device which has become common over recent years.
May 15th, 2012 at 11:20 am
I forgot to add that 28ac made me smile gently, no hilarious guffaws, I’m afraid.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Strange. Crossword 25636 seems to be completely different to the one you’re answering here. Frinstance the answer to 1ac is TRIPLES
May 15th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Malc @13 I think the Guardian have got their knickers in a twist. The pdf of today’s puzzle is the one UY solved. On the Guardian website, however, it’s attributed to Tramp and the interactive puzzle (attributed to Orlando) is the one you are presumably looking at. I haven’t seen the paper yet so I don’t know which one they printed.
Thanks for the blog, UY. I enjoyed this. Missed the parsing of 4dn.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Yes, an amazing balls-up by the Guardian editor led to Tramp’s puzzle – which had apparently been pulled due to late corrections hot having been done – going online, though appearing, when I went there at least, as set by Orlando. A quick trawl of the clues confirmed to me that this could not possibly be the case! However, if you go there now I think the right puzzle, the replacement supplied by Michael Curl, is where it should be.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
… and the grids were different too, which helps!
May 15th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Thanks Orlando aka Tramp [see this post on the Grauniad site: ‘Hi Originally it was going to be me today but the puzzle needed a few amendments and I couldn’t guarantee I’d be able to do them in time as I was away with work and Hugh’s been away. My effort was moved to later in the month.
Tramp’
Thanks UY; it took me a while to get started on this one. Luckily, GAMELAN appeared in a March puzzle. I liked the SHUNTER, although of course I was looking for a word meaning tender that had been truncated. MILDRED was also good. I think TROJAN WAR would fulfil the RCW criterion of not having an obvious definition!
May 15th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Robi,absolutely, unlike ‘drugs before operation (3-3)’,see @11.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
P.S. There is another [heartbreaking] response from Tramp at 11.37 on the Guardian site, which might have a slight spoiler for his puzzle due to be published on 31st of this month. The printed puzzle in my Guardian is the Orlando one, and the only problem I found on the online version was the wrong attribution to Tramp.
May 15th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Uh, it’s as I said: both puzzles have appeared online, not necessarily attributed to the correct compiler.
May 15th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Thanks, UY.
Most enjoyable crossword, as expected from Orlando, with neat constructions and plausible surface readings.
I got slightly stuck in the NW, having first put WITTIER (I in WITTER) for 13a, but then saw GAMELAN and sorted it out. SIERRAS took me a little while to parse, but the NATO phonetic alphabet explanation did eventually dawn.
I liked the allusion to JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in 11a, but favourite clue has to be 28a.
May 15th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
I’m confused (which is not unusual) but I solved the Orlando puzzle that popped up online when I accessed it this morning, and enjoyed it. Orlando is just about the right level of challenge for me, and there is always some thoughtful and inventive clueing. Today my favourites were all acrosses: MILDRED, LASSO and MAIDSTONE.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
May 15th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Jumped in with Greenland as a New Englander.
If only Greenland was in Europe and it somehow made sense to the clue!!
May 15th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
I was stumped by the bottom left corner as I put in Madonna (Loony – left- not applicable) which seemed like a good answer and this threw me.
May 15th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Thanks, Orlando, for the entertainment and Uncle Yap for the explanations!
This was just the ticket for a thundery afternoon’s welcome back to England after several weeks of mostly sunny Italy!
Shunter leapt out at me and Trojan War. I was trying to be too clever by half on Lasso by trying to connect it to Catcher in the Rye! However, once solved, the clue made perfect sense – as did Sierras
Giovanna x
May 15th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Thanks to UY for the blog.
I found this puzzle very hard to get started on but once begun things began to fall into place – eventually.
I needed this blog to explain SIERRAS
May 15th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Guitarists would have prefered 23 to lead to STACK !
May 15th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
D Lazenby – but it would have needed a double L! RIP Jim and may the stacks keep rockin’
May 16th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Where is the solution to the online version 25,636?
May 16th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
davey b @29
There was an error on the Guardian website and the wrong puzzle appeared on-line for a while (Orlando was the correct one). I believe that this puzzle is due to appear in the paper, and presumably on-line, at the end of the month and we will blog it then.
May 18th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Thanks Orlando and Uncle Yap
Found this a very nice puzzle to work through – it broke into two halves for me with the bottom half going in without too many problems. It was the top half and especially the NE corner that was the hold up – with SHUNTER and UPSET being last in (not familiar with UP referring to being a university). Like a number of others I needed the explanation on the SIERRAS = SS – very clever.
A number of other fun clues – especially liked 12a both the construction and the surface and 11a was also nicely put together with the diversion beautifully crafted.