Guardian Cryptic 27,748 by Arachne

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The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27748.

It is always a pleasure to blog an Arachne crossword, and this is no exception. I found the wordplay of 10A BORODIN an unconscionable time coming, but apart from that the difficulties were minor ones, created mainly by her trademark witty misdirections. With the meaningful and entertaining surfaces, I find this a crossword as they should be. Many thanks, Arachne.

Across
1 LOCALES Scenes of ecstasy in boozers (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of E (‘ecstasy’ – for once the clue names the drug) in LOCALS (‘boozers’).
5 HOSTESS Hardy character on Tube briefly welcoming woman (7)
A charade of HOS[e] (‘tube’) minus its last letter (‘briefly’) plus TESS (of the d’Urbervilles, ‘Hardy character’).
9 PEDICLE Stalk Spanish hero, returning after exercises (7)
A charade of PE (‘exercises’) plus DICLE, a reversal (‘returning’) of EL CID (‘Spanish hero’).
10 BORODIN Composer dismissing Vivaldi’s first quintet in B (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of ‘[Vival]di’ minus the first five letters (‘dismissing … first quintet’) in BORON (‘B’, chemical symbol).
11 ITINERANT Rambling tirade on single point (9)
A charade of I (‘single’) plus TINE (‘point’) plus RANT (‘tirade’).
12 PERMS Enduring shock waves (5)
Cryptic definition – ‘shock’ for hair.
13 RIGHT Fit cook gutting halibut (5)
A charade of RIG (‘cook’ in the sense of falsify –  but here as a definition, not an anagrind) plus HT (‘gutting HalibuT‘).
15 IRATENESS Arachne admires Cape Wrath (9)
A charade of I RATE (‘Arachne admires’) plus NESS (‘cape’).
17 PREFLIGHT Before taking off partner’s clothes, firstly extinguish flash lamp (9)
A charade of PR (‘PartneR‘s clothes’) plus EF (‘fIrstly Extinguish Flash’) plus LIGHT (‘lamp’).
19 POP-UP Temporary work welcomed by young boxer? (3-2)
An envelope (‘welcomed by’) of OP (‘work’) in PUP (‘young boxer?’ – note the query for indication by example).
22 LATER Subsequently float the ark on a regular basis (5)
Alternate letters (‘on a regular basis’) of ‘fLoAt ThE aRk’.
23 PROPAGATE Broadcast in support of scandal involving dad (9)
An envelope (‘involving’) of PA (‘dad’) in PRO (‘in support of’) plus GATE (‘scandal’; after Watergate, the suffix has become the general term for a political scandal).
25 IGNOBLE Despicable, glib neo-liberal (7)
An anagram (‘liberal’) of ‘glib neo’.
26 ORBITAL Touch parts of mouth and of eye socket (7)
An envelope (‘parts’) of BIT (‘touch’, a smidgen) in ORAL (‘of mouth’).
27 TRAGEDY Disaster outraged young nurses (7)
A hidden answer (‘nurses’) in ‘ouTRAGED Young’.
28 YARDMAN Met chap who works on the railways? (7)
‘Met’ for Metropolitan Police – Scotland Yard, so the first two words of the clue might be regarded as the wordplay, or a second definition.
Down
1 LIPPIER Quiet seaside walk to south of Long Island, more than fresh! (7)
A charade of LI (‘Long Island’ – and, yes, the abbreviation is widely used) plus P (‘quiet’) plus PIER (‘seaside walk’).
2 CODLING Dictator’s pampering young swimmer (7)
Sounds like (‘dictator’s’) CODDLING (‘pampering’).
3 LUCRE Oddly shun clout, career and money (5)
Leave out the odd letters (‘oddly shun’) of ‘cLoUt CaReEr’.
4 SEE-SAWING Watches a fly going this way and that (3-6)
A charade of SEES (‘watches’) plus ‘a’ plus WING (‘fly’).
5 HABIT Inwardly shy baby with quirk (5)
Interior letters (‘inwardly’) of ‘[s]H[y] [b]AB[y] [w]IT[h]’.
6 SCRAP HEAP Half-heartedly approaches rotting pile of rubbish (5,4)
An anagram (‘rotting’) of ‘appr[o]aches’, minus one of its two middle letters (‘half-heartedly’- a device more often used when the two letters are the same).
7 ENDORSE Extremity or side, not middle or back (7)
A charade of END (‘extremity’) plus ‘or’ plus ‘s[id]e’ minus its inner letters (‘not middle’).
8 SINUSES Eighth of dentists busy with small cavities (7)
A charade of S (‘eighth of dentistS‘) plus IN USE (‘busy’) plus S (‘small’).
14 TOLERABLE Mediocre, desolate bunch turned up with empty luggage (9)
A charade of TOLERAB, a reversal (‘turned up’ in a down light) of BARE (‘desolate’) plus LOT (‘bunch’); plus LE (’empty LuggagE‘).
16 ASTRONOMY Branch of science applied to masonry (9)
An anagram (‘applied’) of ‘to masonry’.
17 PALMIST One predicting future of maverick A-list MP (7)
An anagram (‘maverick’) of ‘A-list P’.
18 ESTONIA Toes in a revolting state (7)
An anagram (‘revolting’) of ‘toes in a’.
20 PHANTOM Elephant ominously circling ghostly figure (7)
A hidden answer (‘circling’) in ‘elePHANT OMinously’.
21 PREPLAN In advance, arrange schoolwork on computer network (7)
A charade of PREP (‘schoolwork’) plus LAN (‘computer network’).
23 PIETY Shame about me ignoring male devotion (5)
An envelope (‘about’) of E (‘[m]E‘ minus the M – ‘ignoring the male’) in PITY (‘shame’).
24 AMBER Retired doctors upset about cautionary sign (5)
A charade of AMB, a reversal (‘retired’) of BMA (British Medical Association, ‘doctors’)  plus ER, another reversal (‘upset’ in a down light) of RE (‘about’).
completed grid

56 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,748 by Arachne”

  1. Sadly for me, I was not on Arachne’s wavelength today. Usually I enjoy her puzzles a lot more. I gave up on the NE where I failed to solve 5a, 12a, 7d and I solved but could not fully parse 28a (yard), 24d (never heard of BMA), 10a (never would have worked this out), 6d.

    New for me was PEDICAL.

    I liked 19a POP-Up and 17a PREFLIGHT.

    Thanks Peter and Arachne.

  2. Whew! What a difference a day makes! Slow to get locales, codling, see-saw (not helped by printout lacking hyphen) and endorse, all of which made finishing a slog. Several lazy dnps along the way, eg orbital and amber (must remember BMA, a la AMA here). And absy no idea about LOI Borodin, although B for Boron has been used before. Hey ho, got there ntl.

    Thanks to the Weaver for the workout and to PeterO for the unravelling.

  3. PS Remembered stem as peduncle, junior high school botany, so had to look up alternative versions: peduncle, pedicel, pedicle (Collins).

  4. Many thanks for parsing of BORODIN-easy when you know how. One of many brilliant clues.

    Thanks to Arachne and peter O

  5. Maybe i should get up early more often. A quick one for me, perfectly fine puzzle but just like the last Arachne we had i feel some of her magic has gone missing. Couldn’t parse Borodin but had to be

  6. Thanks Arachne and PeterO

    I think I was unlucky in the order I solved the clues, as I had a “This is a bit repetitive” feeling – two hiddens one after the other, two alternate letters (and an internal letters), lots of anagrams..

    I didn’t parse BORODIN either.

    Favourites were PEDICLE and SINUSES.

  7. Although I’m a linguist, I loved chemistry at school and knew Boron and BORODIN.  One of several excellent clues.  Also liked 17 ac and 14 dn.

    Wasn’t too sure how ORBITAL worked, so thanks to PeterO for that explanation.

    Thanks indeed to Arachne.

  9. Class throughout from the setter but not the solver. I made life difficult for myself by confidently bunging in OLOGY at the end of 16d before getting 15 and 17a and ending up with an unparsed ASTROLOGY – definitely not a branch of science. I also failed to parse BORODIN or SCRAP HEAP. I see PeterO’s parsing of ORBITAL but does it really work?
    As always my favourites were the concise clues to short solutions RIGHT and PIETY, and the well hidden PHANTOM which took me ages to see.
    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO.

  10. Thanks, PeterO [especially for the parsing of 10ac [brilliant clue] – as you say, a crossword as they should be, for all the usual reasons.

    Rushing out now but many thanks, Arachne, for adding even more sparkle to an already sunny day. 😉

  12. Anna@11 – thanks for trying to save my blushes but the clue is still much better than the solution I came up with!

  13. WhiteKing @ 9. Yes, I think ORBITAL is fine. BIT ‘parts’ (ie. splits) ORAL

     

    Great puzzle – thanks to both.

  14. Good fun but over too soon and I have no excuse but to shift the 3 tonnes of topsoil awaiting my vegetable garden. Mind you it is a beautiful day so good to be outside! Witty and inventive – I loved Borodin (and the extra cleverness of the periodic table clue given he was a professional chemist as well as a composer.

    Thanks to PeterO as another who struggled with an unparsed “orbital” (a single electron wavefunction, another chemistry reference) and boy did I feel stupid missing where “phantom” came from. Arachne’s skill in these clues in making the evident obscure is really her trademark and what makes her puzzles such a delight to solve. That and total fairness – pedicle was a new word to me but what else could it be once a crosses or two was in place?

    One little oddity for me was in 3dn. Usually when we get on “oddly” or “evenly” we start from the beginning of each word separately, but “regularly” applies across the whole phrase. Here that convention is upturned – nothing wrong with it, and no rule broken, but it did throw me at first – don’t know if others were affected in the same way?

    thanks Arachne – a smile to start the day

  15. North-east corner was the sticking point, with Borodin far too obtuse a clue for my brain to solve this morning…

  16. Thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks to Arachne, as always. I was not sure of ‘perms’ at 12a: is this an expression used as the opposite to ‘temps’ ? If so, it is a usage I have not previously encountered.

  17. George @16 I just saw it as a cryptic definition, with the cryptic part being shock for hair – a perm being a hairdo that produces curls (“waves”) that last a long time.

  18. Thanks Arachne and PeterO

    GC @ 16: it’s PERM as in the hairstyle, ie endures or lasts, meaning trips to haidressers can be deferred. Nothing to do with a worker who lasts longer than a temp.

  19. Brilliant crossword but, although I filled the grid, a few went in unparsed, including BORODIN and the excellent ORBITAL.

    Also missed the clever dictator’s homophone indicator which now embarrasses.

    WhiteKing @9:  Me too with – OLOGY at 16d but was lucky enough to spot the anagram before the pen took over from the pencil.

    Many thanks to Ms Webber, nice week, all.

  21. Thank you Arachne for a characteristically witty and taxing puzzle. And thanks PeterO for explaining Borodin.

    Clueing for 22d preplan is fine but the word itself seems redundant to me – when else can one plan except beforehand?

    VERB
    [WITH OBJECT]1Decide on and make arrangements for in advance.

    (OED)

     

  22. Yes, missed the parsing of BORODIN, which was a doubly brilliant clue given that Borodin was also a chemist as pointed out by thezed @14.

    Otherwise all pretty clear and I was really motoring along until held up by 10a. PERMS was also very good and I liked the surface for ESTONIA and for PREFLIGHT.

    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO

  23. I lovedlovedloved this! Too many favorites to name them all, but especially worthy we’re BORODIN, PREFLIGHT, HABIT, TRAGEDY, and especially my CotD, ORBITAL. I also enjoyed the latest appearance of -GATE as a scandal. By now I should probably be automatically looking for this device whenever I see “scandal” in a clue, but for me it continues to provide a struggle, followed by a satisfying PDM.
    Many thanks to Arachne and PeterO and the other commenters.

  24. Me @23 –

    At the risk of proving Muphry’s (or is it Sid’s) Law again, I see that my phone (used to type my previous comment) “helpfully” auto-corrected “were” to “we’re”.

  26. What an excellent crossword; really enjoyable to solve.

    I got a bit stuck in the NE corner and failed to parse BORODIN, doh!

    Many great clues; I ticked PERMS, SINUSES, BORODIN, HABIT, ORBITAL, TOLERABLE … etc.

  27. Thanks to Arachne and PeterO. I really enjoyed this puzzle. I thought this was the spider lady at her very best, if perhaps not at her hardest. Interestingly enough, given the comments above, I had no problem in the NE (with the exception of trying to figure out the di bit of 10ac). It was the NW which held me up. Last ones were lippier, locales, right and itinerant. Lots of nice clues, but I think my favourites were preflight and propagate. Thanks again to Arachne and PeterO.

  28. All at the gentler end of Arachne’s range apart from BORODIN, so thanks for parsing that one. Very enjoyable as ever.

    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO

  29. bagel@21. A plan can be made to deal with the consequences of a prior event. Preplan, to me, suggests having measures in place to address a possible, but perhaps unlikely, future event. If you substitute ‘contingency’ for ‘pre’, I think the clue works ok.

    Many thanks to Arachne and PeterO for a fine puzzle/blog.

  30. Thanks to Arachne and PeterO.

    What more is there to say? Arachne on a beautiful sunny day, I bought both grown up 2dn and the last word in the clue for 13ac – I will be the cook, it is already gutted, and I leave others to judge whether I am fit or not – and now we’re off to see the Bonnard exhibition at Tate Modern.

  31. greensward @29:  Point accepted, but the plan that you refer to is still a strategy which will put some actions into place in the future.  I still think bagel’s point is valid: preplan is tortological and unnecessary.  (Jolly good clue, nonetheless!)

  33. It’s funny, a puzzle can employ an arbitrary number of anagrams, but if it has more than one hidden or every-other-letter device it seems too many.

  35. Dr. Whatson @33

    If you are referring to my comment, I thought I had made it clear that it was the unfortunate order of solving that highlighted it for me. It just happened that I solved the two hiddens one after the other, then the two alternate letters ones one after the other.

    In fact, it’s the number of anagrams that overall seemed excessive.

  36. Fine puzzle, though I had to use the check button a lot for the RHS.  Arachne scores again!  And thanks for the help, PeterO.

    How does PERMS work?  A perm is waves in your shock, but does “enduring” correspond with something?

    Is IRATENESS actually a word?  Couldn’t you just say “ire”?  And if you rate something, you don’t necessarily admire it, you just estimate its worth.  You could rate it really low.

    I dunno about GATE for “scandal.”  I don’t think it exists on its own — could you say “This could develop into a real gate”?

    28a YARDMAN isn’t “chap” doing double duty?  I’ll add that the Hartford minor league baseball team, which used to be the New Britain Rock Cats till the owner moved them two towns over, is now the Hartford Yard Goats.  Really?  That’s a team?  Apparently that used to be how people referred to the railroad workers here in town.

    CODLING Do we also say “troutling”?  “Ideling”?
    “Garling”?

    PALMIST — you have a typo, PeterO — it’s an anagram of A-LIST MP, not A-LIST P.

  38. Valentine @ 36:

    I think it depends on the difference between neutral and expressed meanings of ‘rate’. Yes, you could rate something low, but if you say “I rate that” the chances are you’re expressing admiration/value.

    Chambers certainly has ‘irateness’ as the noun from ‘irate’, and also gives
    cod?ling noun
    A small cod

  39. Hi Valentine @36 – I guess your questions are rhetorical and you’re really just having a bit of fun, because you must have a dictionary or two, haven’t you? But here goes:

    “Is IRATENESS actually a word?” Yes

    “— could you say “This could develop into a real gate”?” No: as PeterO says, it’s a suffix, defined as such in Chambers – ‘attached to the name of a person or place to denote a scandal connected with that person or place [on the analogy of Watergate]’. Arachne is fancifully concocting the word PAGATE [a scandal involving dad]. The way she does that sort of thing is just one of the reasons why I really rate her as a a setter.  😉  Admittedly, that word has shifted in meaning but Chambers has it as ‘esteem’ or ‘value’.

    Do we also say “troutling”?  “Ideling”? Not as far as I know but CODLING has its own entry in all my dictionaries as a small / young cod. [It’s also a type of apple.]

     

  41. Hi Muffin, no I was just reflecting on my own reaction to what might be in a given puzzle, regardless of solving order.

  42. I usually enjoy Arachne’s puzzles but this was more of a slog than usual. Not that there was nothing to enjoy- HOSTESS was excellent- but I found myself flagging before reaching the end. I didn’t manage to parse BORODIN- or ORBITAL come to that and I was somewhat slow in getting YARDMAN. PEDICLE was new to me.
    Probably my comeuppance for being snotty about Vulcan yesterday.
    Thanks Arachne.

  44. Valentine @36 (and Eileen @39) –

    It appears that “troutling” is indeed a word for a small/young trout, found in at least some dictionaries.  It is not in the online version of Chambers that I can access, but it is in the online Collins, where it is defined as “Another name for troutlet”.  On the other hand, “ideling” and “garling” do not appear to be words.  [And Lingling or Ling-Ling may be other things, such as the former name of a city or the name of a former panda, but it is not a little fish.]

  45. DaveMc @ 44 (and others elsewhere)

    ‘Troutling’ is in my current eChambers, and indeed in my >40yo SOED as a small/young trout. Who’d’a thought it?

  46. Great stuff but I held myself up by putting LINEMAN instead of YARDMAN which I think, as we always do, works just as well? Until the crossers ruled it out

  47. Thanks to PeterO and Arachne

    Top stuff as always from Arachne, elegant and concise with one or two head scratchers to show that she could truly bamboozle us if she chose.

  48. Dr. Whatson @41 – interesting comment as, when stuck, I often look for specific types of clue (if I’m still to discover any of that type), somehow believing that there will probably be a certain number of each major cryptic device in each puzzle.  Doesn’t always follow, of course, but certain setters seem more likely to use specific types of device.  Muffin @6’s comment of “two hiddens one after the other, two alternate letters” was also my experience, which somehow went against a completely spurious “normal”!

  49. I could kick myself because I experimented with both “boron” and “di” from Vivaldi but never got them to gel into BORODIN.  I know Borodin of course from those compilations of classical music that were always being hocked on television in the ’70s and ’80s so that we plebes could feel cultured.  They would always start out with a snippet from “Strangers in Paradise” before explaining that we were idiots for thinking it was from “Kismet” because it was actually Borodin’s something or other.

  50. Echoing other commenters, I thought the clues to BORODIN and PREFLIGHT were brilliant in their different ways, the former for the ingenuity of the wordplay and the latter for the perfection of both its construction and its surface.

    There were of many other excellent clues, but I got bogged down with a few others and left the crossword unfinished.

    Thanks to Arachne and PeterO.

  51. Eileen @39

    Apparently a codling used to be a young apple as well as a young fish.  Here’s Malvolio describing Viola disguised as a man:

    Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy, as a squash is before ’tis a peascod or a codling when ’tis almost an apple, ’tis with him in standing water between boy and man.  One would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him.

    I can still hear Malvolio’s voice from my college production of Twelfth Night droning disdainfully at Olivia.  (I played Viola, which had been a lifetime dream of mine.)

    Yes I have a dictionary or two, though none that begin with C, and an occasional twitchy sense of fun.

  52. Thanks, Valentine – I knew I’d heard codling as an apple somewhere but We did ‘Twelfth Night’ earlier on and didn’t learn so much of it by heart as those for O and A Level but, together with peascod, it rings a distant bell now.

  53. I never did it in class (we did other plays, don’t recall any comedies) but fell in love with it as a child when I saw a production on television.

  54. I was later music director for a friend’s production at the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, and by the end of that I had the play half memorized.

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