Guardian Cryptic 28,485 by Paul

74 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,485 by Paul”

1. Thanks Paul and manehi
   I found this very difficult, and for some time I only had LYSIS, IOTA, and SUDDEN.
   A couple of cunningly hidden defintions for TOAST RACK and FATHER CHRISTMAS.
   Favourites PENDANTS and SPELUNKING – the latter very clever!

2. Thanks both. Didn’t SPELUNKING come up recently?

3. Please can you explain the definition for 3d, manehi? It’s the only one I am stuck with. I can’t see how “round home” works (apart from the slice of bread, of course). Thanks

4. I wonder why Paul included “crab” in 23a? “Lion” by itself would have sufficed.

5. Oh! Ask the question and then the answer appears – it’s the home for the rounds!?

6. TerriBlislow @3
   It’s a whimsical “home” (or place) for rounds of bread.

7. Thanks Paul and manehi. Hope no young solvers out there were traumatised in the solving of 5d 😉

8. Yep – much more challenging than I usually find Paul – I was very slow to finish. Agree with muffin@1 re Biden’s trousers – PENDANTS at 25a was a classic. I also liked 13a IOTA (as mentioned by manehi in the preamble) ; an old trick that reminded me of the classic clue which I have forgotten now where the solution is water (H to O?). 20a CONCUPISCENT and 23a VIRAGO were a little easier to see than some other clues, and again like manehi, I loved the ROCK STAR at 17a once I got the idea. Thanks to Paul and manehi.

9. That really was a tough slog which needed a huge amount of help.

   FOI was MEGAWATT but LOI was probably just about everything else (with the exception of 3d where I had the OAST part having once lived in a flat in a converted Oast house in Hadlow, Kent). But SPELUNKING? Even having lived in the US, I’d not heard it before and did not associate it with pot-holing.

   Phew – need a lie down after that…

   Thanks Paul and manehi!

10. TerriB @3: I think it’s a home for rounds of bread.

    I found this puzzle all too clever for me, and many of the surfaces are poor. Thanks to Manehi for unpicking it.

11. Thankyou, although I did complete the puzzle, I hadn’t been able to parse 6d, 12d, or 3d despite more than 2 goes at it. I’ve never heard of loco for screw loose and Lysis, clambake, spelunking were all completely new words, too. Fortunately I did get father chrisrmas quickly which got me started.

12. I found the previous Paul a bit of a trudge but although this took a while to sort out I found the clues logical and witty more like the paul of old
    muffin @4-the combination of crab and lion was helpful to me as i was next in the list and I only had to shove in an A
    And unlike many. I liked CASHEW
    Thanks Paul and manehi

13. Liked VIRAGO, ROCK STAR, LOCOMOTIVE, IOTA.
    New: LYSIS, SPELUNKING (+ did not parse it but shoudl have thought of Sun King).
    Did not parse CASHEW, or ZARA = princess? Zara Tindall is not a princess, in the same way that Kate Middleton, Megan Markle, and Sophie Wessex are not princesses.
    Failed FERRIS.

    Thanks, both.

14. I am embarrassed to ask how the definition in 5d “In truth, a parent” leads to FATHER CHRISTMAS, even though I solved it. Is it meant to be ironic?

15. Thanks manehi. I thought 10 was munch, CHEW , around berries ACAI or some near homophone of such. Had the homophone on the berries,, not the buries. So we’ve got a homophone on an indicator. Is that right? Haven’t encountered that before.

    And why is Father Christmas in truth a parent. It’s all a great big lie! And we expect our kids to tell the truth when we lie to them about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus?

16. I’m with you JinA.

17. Julie
    Water was HIJKLMNO
    The present giver at Christmas isn’t actually Father Christmas, but (usually) parents. Sorry to shatter illusions!

18. Julie@14 – I think it means that the prezzies really come from real-life parents not from a mythical chap with a white beard and red coat? Thanks to Offspinner@10 and Muffin@6 – but I sussed the meaning as soon as I pressed send. Often like that. Thanks also to manehi and the wonderful Paul.

19. JinA@14 – I entirely sympathise. I think it refers to the filling of stockings with presents on Christmas Eve being supposedly done by FC but in fact by a child’s parents. But one sees Father Christmases in so many places (stores, fetes, Mummers Plays etc) that most of the time they are certainly not one’s parents!

20. Someone on the G thought berries/buries deserved a red card; nah .. quite fun I thought. Otoh, wondered about scent (unless it can be a verb..?) for sense. A to I (rev) was cute. Pants as US for trousers has come up recently … surely pants is pan-anglo? Some G-threaders thought Alcatraz spurious, prob because Zara’s not a ‘princess’ … Mrs ginf would’ve known, I don’t. ‘For no brass’ was tricky and neat. Liked rolling stone as inspiration for the wheel, sounds plausible. Good one Paul, ta manehi.

21. Well, SPELUNKING and COCUPISCENT not often on my etymological radar, but fairly enough clued. Loved the misdirection of TOAST RACK. The last two in were SONTAG, followed by GRATIS, though for a while I thought I might have to surrender to a topical 2-0 scoreline to Paul. Naughtiness seemed to be required to solve the clueing for 25 across, but was another Paulism misdirect, perhaps knowing we have become used to his penchant for this kind of schoolboy humour.
    Thoroughly enjoyed a tough but rewarding (really mustn’t call it a Sterling) challenge today. Paul remains my favourite setter, and possibly one of the longest serving ones still standing…

22. [Trying to find my usual musical link, I’ve paused on ‘Loco,’ I think an expression that crossed from Spanish to the US (as-in the Mexican-American fast food chain, ‘El Pollo Loco’). and give you the Four Tops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMmBOhM0y2g ]

23. …CONCUPISCENT…there you go, spelling it the way I had it above, I wouldn’t even have found it in the dictionary…

24. I think one of the keys to getting on well with Paul’s puzzles is not to take all of his definitions too seriously, rather like the rules-of-the-road in Boston, Mass or the weather forecast in many places – a suggestion is the better word. ALCATRAZ has a couple of almost-right terms: manehi mentioned Zara/princess, and cooler runs afoul of the jail/prison distinction.

    I don’t mind these approximations too much as long as there aren’t too many of them, since they usually mean there is only one way to solve the clue they’re in. ALCATRAZ was tricky because both directions were affected.

25. I got the general idea for 8d, and tried googling “shidunking” (with “hide” for skin) but obviously to no avail. After I eventually got it, it did ring a bell, and on checking I see Qaos had SPELUNKER a year or so ago (27,973). Why can’t I remember these things?

    The definition for FATHER CHRISTMAS (“In truth a parent”) was clever.

    Thanks Paul and manehi.

26. Needed to reveal the odd letter here and there to struggle through this, so really a DNF. As a former caver/caverneer/spelunker, SPELUNKING just leapt out as soon as I thought ‘Louis XIV – Sun King’. Freddy Mercury was good, too. But too many of the parsings were too convoluted for my liking, even when I had the answer entered. Thanks for all the help there, manehi, and thanks (I think) to Paul.

27. Like Vlad’s puzzle yesterday, I found this really tough. Stared at 12d with all the crossers (_O_O_O_I_E) and all I could think of was ‘lobotomise’ which seemed to relate in some rather dubious way to screws being loose . . . Liked MARSH TIT, ROCK STAR and FATHER CHRISTMAS in particular; hadn’t heard of SPELUNKING. Many thanks to Paul and manehi.

28. Grrrr… that’s the second time in as many days I’ve missed bar=MARS. it was a DNF anyway, with SONTAG, OPEN FIRE, MEGAWATT and TOAST RACK revealed, and FATHER CHRISTMAS, MARSH TIT and STEP DOWN unparsed: not my finest hour.
    Of those I got, I enjoyed VIRAGO, CASHEW, PENDANTS and LOCOMOTIVE, and the well-hidden FERRIS.

29. I am red-faced about the red-suited guy. I just didn’t fully twig to the irony in the definition. It is a very clever clue. At one stage I was trying MOTHER CHRISTMAS due to the matriarch distraction. Sorry about the seeming naïveté.

30. Especially enjoyed the longer words (CONCUPISCENT (FOI), MARSH TIT, SPELUNKING, ALCATRAZ) – right down the scale to LOI (IOTA) which came after a minor panic due to carelessly bunging in AUTO- rather than LOCO- for 12D — which made me just break the hour.
    Thanks Paul, for first-class entertainment, as usual.
    (This makes two excellent puzzles in succession – happy days are here again)

31. Put me down as another who didn’t twig the definition for FATHER CHRISTMAS: that one eventually went in purely from crossers with no idea why.

32. Brilliant! Beautiful clueing with great definition disguise. Quite tough to start but once a few of the longer answers slotted in, the pace picked up.

    Top marks for FATHER CHRISTMAS (great def), ALCATRAZ, IOTA, MARSH TIT and VIRAGO.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi

33. I would say a round of toast is a toasterful, not just a slice.

34. On reflection, this was a strange puzzle geographically. There were some very British items – Father Christmas, toast rack, brass, but also some very American ones – spelunking, clambake, loco. Throw in a couple of French references and here we are!

35. After yesterday’s tour de force another toughie from Paul who at this moment is cavorting around the UK meeting his fans. Way up to his usual standard eg Marsh tit and toilet tissue! Quite superb. Thanks for the analysis

36. A dnf as I didn’t get SONTAG, though I might have done if I had the G from GRATIS – I was doubtful about that because for some reason I had completely forgotten about the sitar as an instrument. CONCUPISCENT is a word I’ve seen but never used, and if I had written it, I’d have spelt it with an extra “i” before the “e”, so I learned something!
    Like others, favourite was FATHER CHRISTMAS.
    michelle@13 – Zara is not-a-princess in a different way from the others you mention – she is of royal blood while they are wives of royals. But I’m slightly surprised that I know this, and it really doesn’t matter in the least .
    Thanks Paul and manehi.

37. As for Ms Coldangelo and others a lascivious Tory mug was my way in. I enjoyed SPELUNKING and ALCATRAZ though, in real life, I wouldn’t. Like Gladys I failed to learn from the last time Mars equalled bar. Thanks to Paul for the entertainment and to manehi for explaining TOAST RACK, which I thought was an excessively esoteric reference to the iconic Manchester building, once a student residence.

38. What is “supply” doing in 5a?

    We just had Mars bars recently — isn’t there a prohibition against trade names?

    “Round” for a slice of bread is something I vaguely remember running across, but not something I’d come up with on my own

    Several American words in this puzzle — loco (slang in English, perhaps, but in Spanish it’s just the word or “crazy.”). spelunking (word coined in the 40’s from Ltin “spelunca” for cave), and clambake.

    The toast rack is a mystery to me — not the clue, but the thing itself. Why create a device to speed the cooling of toast? If I couldn’t eat it the minute it came out of the toaster, I’d put it on a plate and cover it with a napkin. I guess you just have to be British.

    Since Zara is of royal blood, why isn’t she a princess? I do recall that Diana couldn’t called “Princess Diana” because she didn’t have that position by birth (though of course everybody did it anyway), but that doesn’t apply to Zra. There must be a subtlety here I’m missing. I guess you have to be British.

    I loved GRATIS, my COD! Thanks Paul and manehi.

39. Goodness me, we struggled through that, properly difficult.

40. Tricky! All those disguised defs and the reappearance of MARS made me wonder if Paul and Vlad had achieved psychic transference.

    Many cleverly constructed clues, but slightly at the expense of the smoothness of some of the surfaces. I particularly liked CLAMBAKE for its great surface. My only quibblet was the non-princess (The Telegraph wouldn’t have allowed that!).

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

41. [Valentine @38
    If you put recently toasted bread on a plate (or, horror, cover it with a cloth) the water vapour it continues to give off will make it soggy. Keeping the slices separate in a toast rack prevents this happening.]

42. That was entertainingly chewy!
    Thanks Paul. And thanks manehi for parsing CASHEW which is dazzling: I was blindsided by it. I also struggled with SPELUNKING (nho), at first trying to peel skin from the Sun King which is never a good idea.

43. Ronald @ 21 . I think Paul is third longest serving after Pasquale and Enigmatist. I remember doing his first puzzle.

44. Roz@43…thanks very much for supplying that info! Had often wondered which of the solvers are getting long in the tooth…

45. Gasp! That was a struggle.

    There’s some great stuff here; FATHER CHRISTMAS, CLAMBAKE, IOTA, and so on but felt the puzzle a little let down by some of the surfaces. The most glaring was probably, Sheets found in bathroom, matter on linen dry.

    MaidenBartok @22: loved the 4 Tops!

46. Way beyond my level, but fascinating to go through the parsing.
    I think I can safely say that I am unlikely to ever aspire to so solving a Paul puzzle, such as this.
    Thanks to Paul and Manehi.

47. Btw, are British B&Bs the last places on earth where one’s likely to see a TOAST RACK I wonder?

48. [Valentine @38: I like my toast to be stone cold with a very even layer of butter on top and then marmalade. And I’m with Muffin @41 on never covering the toast because that makes it VERY soggy.]

49. Ronald@44 , it is only from memory but I think I am correct unless someone else has better knowledge.
    Shed has also been around a long time, perhaps just after Paul ? Not seen much of Shed recently.

50. me again@44…and of course I meant Setters rather than Solvers…

51. Thanks manehi, I slogged through this one although it all just about made sense in the end and from the common experience looks like it wasn’t just a post-football hangover. I only knew CLAMBAKE because of seeing it earlier this year when it was helpfully suggested as a US term. And as a different example of Paul’s rather elastic definitions I give you the “song” of the MARSH TIT:

    https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/marsh-tit/

    I understand the criticism of some surfaces but have to dish out points for the wonderful WINE, thought CASHEW very clever but was misled by that question mark, got all tied up with an OAST house often being a round home these days (as it was for MaidenBartok, lucky you) but liked seeing some unusual words come together from the wordplay, thanks Paul.

52. 17a Substance of planet = rock? I think Jupiter and Saturn would like a word. I don’t really go along with the idea of ‘unfairness’ in a crossword – setters can do what they like- but as a bare minimun they should be factually correct.

    Many thanks to Paul and to Manehi for the blog. Like some others I struggled to find the definition of 3. TOAST RACK.

53. Thank you, manehi, for explaining “round,” which is new to me; I took it simply as a colloquial form of ’round, meaning an item customarily found in domestic surroundings [too many -ounds there]. The northwest quadrant, in fact, gave me a lot of trouble, but nothing is more delightfully satisfying than Paul’s penny, when it finally drops!

    Thank you, Paul, for a real challenge, and manehi, for a thorough blog.

54. @copmus 12. Probably too late responding for you to see. In 10a Paul uses a cryptic device to instruct us to use a second cryptic device. As I said on the Guardian site I consider this a sending off offence. Others think it clever, but where will it end? A homophone leads to an anagram leads to an embed?

55. Badaos@54 you ask the right question with the wrong spin, imo. Some of the milder forms of nested operations are quite common and seem to be acceptable to most. We don’t have an Academie Cryptique here to set the rules so setters will push the boundaries and see what push-back they get. [The field does evolve: I have a feeling that many of the techniques in common use today would have horrified solvers a few decades ago.]

56. Roz@43 Surely the longest-ever setter (or most prolific, perhaps) is Rufus. I seem to remember words to that effect when he retired a few years ago.

    [muffin@41, MB@48 Tastes differ. I like toast hot, not stone cold or preferably not even room temperature. I’ve not noticed sogginess in covered toast, probably because I didn’t leave it long enough. (I don’t actually cover it very often, just make a point of eating it while it’s hot.]

    matematic@52 Some planets are rock planets (the inner ones) some are gas giants. Rock is the substance of the one I happen to live on, but the others are more than welcome to a word too.

57. Valentine@38, I take your point as “far less” is more easily seen as directly interchangeable with “significantly reduced” without that pesky “supply” tacked on, but the surface is helped considerably by this extra word and given the complaints about Paul’s surfaces on here maybe we can allow him that one? (Also I was rooting around for some sort of anagram because of it, so it worked as a misdirector for me too – at first I thought the answer might be “Guinness”.)

58. Valentine @ 56, quite correct, Rufus did set for a very long time, as did others.
    I will explain myself more clearly – what I meant was which of our CURRENT setters have been with the Guardian the longest. I have changed my mind about Shed slightly. My current estimate only from memory is – Pasquale, Enigmatist, Shed and then Paul.
    Please correct if you have any actual facts or dates for this .

59. Mr SR is having a little lie down, forehead draped with a cool, damp towel (I will adopt a similar position once I’ve finished here)…
    This is due to the fact that we’ve just finished yesterday’s Vlad after doing today’s Paul this morning; what a workout!

    Loved both and really liked the boundary testing in Paul’s clues.
    Interesting to see the double Mars bars – maybe a pre-crossword one would help us “work and play”; as above, the post-crossword “rest” is also desirable ?
    Many thanks Vlad, Paul, Andrew and manehi.

    [Michelle@13: “ZARA = princess? Zara Tindall is not a princess, in the same way that Kate Middleton, Megan Markle, and Sophie Wessex are not princesses.”

    Kate and Meghan are actually princesses. I’m not sure about Sophie.
    However, only “blood” princesses* are called “Princess OwnFirstName”, eg Princess Beatrice. K & M would have to be styled Princess William and Princess Henry. Besides which, a title of HRH Duchess might beat “Princess Husband’sName” in a game of Title Top Trumps.
    Apparently, Kate has “Princess of the United Kingdom” under “Occupation” on the Cambridge children’s birth certificates…]

    Right. I’m off to cool my fevered brow and make Mr SR budge up on the fainting couch.

    *Sounds like the next film in a Dracula franchise

60. Gazzh@51: it’s a convention that all birds can be indicated as singers, wingers or flyers – we had a flightless bird defined as a winger not long ago. Well, I suppose it has them even if they aren’t used.

61. Thanks paul and manehi.

    Well done to all who finished this, and are therefore (I hope!) thinking ‘woo hoo im bright, I figured it out’ … I’m not only thinking ‘doh! I’m thick, I didn’t see that’ but in some cases ‘I’m not sure I’d ever see that’ … specifically the definition in 3, the cryptic in 4 (I guessed it meant ‘for no brass’ but was trying to finish it with a reverse of Mi or Ti rather than any random letter in the first third of the alphabet), the definition in 24 (singer = bird?) amongst others. I am thick, and Paul does a decent job exposing it.

62. I could add more clues which were beyond my Ken, but maybe that’s enough …

63. [Valentine: The reason Princess Anne’s descendants don’t have titles is that their parents decided they didn’t want them to. Anne’s first husband (and father of her children) was offered but declined a title upon marrying, and as such the children are commoners as well; titles don’t pass through the female line.]

64. [mrpenney @63: Goodness me – how time flies! I remember making a ‘Royal Wedding’ book in 1973 to celebrate the marriage of Captain Mark Phillips and Princess Anne. I’m an arch republican these days …]

65. Tough puzzle. I could not get TOAST RACK, SONTAG and GRATIS.
    And yes, I immediately noticed the MARS = bar came in two days in a row!

66. Excellent and chewy puzzle, and thanks for the blog manehi! I particularly liked 13ac and 14ac. Fans of musicals might remember “A Real Nice Clambake,” fans of Calvin Trillins’ food writing might remember his article of the same name, but what it makes me think of is The Joy of Cooking: Usually it features fairly accessible recipes you can make in the kitchen, but there’s also a recipe for clambake which begins something like “Dig a pit on the beach, line it with flat stones, make a fire on it and burn it down to coals, layer it with seaweed and clams”… it’s like if a DIY carpentry manual also had instructions for building a bridge.

    [MaidenBartok@22: For a musical cue for “Loco” I would definitely think of “Un Poco Loco” by the amazing Bud Powell!”]

67. [matt w @66: first, catch your hare …]

68. For Julie in Australia (No 8 above), the classic ‘water’ clue was in the Guardian in about 1970. The clue was ‘ABCDEFG … PQRSTUVWXYZ’ (10 letters) and the answer was obviously (!) ‘dehydrated’. I have been trying to forget this since about 1970, but it keeps coming back to haunt me.

69. Gladys@60: I wonder sometimes if any setter would draw a line with this sort of thing, it wasn’t a serious complaint although if eg KIWI was ever defined as “a flyer” I might raise more than one eyebrow!
    Jack@68 what a clue! that was well before my time but can imagine that it would haunt me too.

70. Honestly, maybe my least favorite puzzle in a long time, and I’ve done them every day for years. Really, where to even start. I’ll just leave it with the so many unnecessary and therefore time-wasting extra words in clues.

71. gladys@60 A flightless bird is a winger to the same degree that a river is a banker — not. It has them. But ‘wing” as a verb means “fly,” which is beyond the average kiwi or penguin.

    mrpenney@63 Well, I thought you had to be British to understand the fine points of this royalty stuff, but you’ve proven me wrong.

72. Ronald and Valentine , if you read this, I do know for sure the most recent Guardian setter, it is FED .

73. Peter @37, rather than student residence, the Toast Rack building in Manchester was built as the Hollins Building for the “Domestic Trades College”, later part of Manchester Metropolitan University. Sadly now disused, it was sited next to a circular restaurant block sometimes called the “Poached Egg”. Pevsner apparently called the Toast Rack “a wonderful piece of pop architecture.” A string of developers have looked at the listed building but I don’t think redevelopment has started.

74. Yes toast rack and poached egg were neighbours of mine when I arrived in Manchester 1979.
    Thought (toast rack = round home) rather a stretch too far. Mars bar twice in two days so got it this time.
    Spoiler alert : how can Father Christmas be “in truth”?
    Thanks Paul and blogger

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