Guardian Cryptic 28,605 by Picaroon

87 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,605 by Picaroon”

1. Thanks, Picaroon and manehi!

   EYE RHYMES: loved it!

2. Who’d have guessed – EYE RHyMES is a thing. DNF for me as I did not get that. But after having only a few tentative ‘S’s’ after going through all the clues the first time I was fairly satisfied to have cracked everything else.

   Thanks Picaroon for a challenging puzzle and manehi for excellent blog.

3. Are humans so weak? We should still be able to distinguish between the drive to drink, and the act of doing so (that is, being a lush).
   But ta to Picaroon & Manehi for the daily mental gym and a couple of parsings.

4. Picaroon (in his various guises) at his very best. Not easy but nothing too esoteric and all gettable with a bit of thinking and patience. Of the ones I parsed properly, HAIRDOS, GO-FASTER STRIPES and last in EYE RHYMES were my favourites. I didn’t see the full cleverness of the ‘Simone Biles’ clue which was a beauty.

   Strange that I’d never come across ‘Dickens’ described as a REALIST before, but there he is again today after appearing elsewhere with the same description yesterday.

   Thanks to Picaroon and manehi

5. EYE RHYMES: hated it! No way I’d have got it without coming here. It’s clever when you know the answer. The rest was good. Thanks all

6. A nice challenge and great fun. Thank you Picaroon and manehi. Yes, 2dn was extremely clever, Clue of the Week?

7. Thanks manehi for explaining MORALISTS and the significance of “twisties”, now added to the list of many good clues.
   LASAGNA took an age as I would spell it ending in E (some online justification for my take, I think) and because it successfully misdirected me into looking up Turner paintings, thank goodness for LA Confidential or I would never have got LANA. Also I think of a wheel of cheese as a whole cheese rather than a piece but in it went.
   Hard but so many great clues as mentioned, thanks Picaroon.

8. Short of time this morning so a quick dip (not that kind, Roz) in here to acknowledge another gem by Picaroon who is settling in as my favourite setter. Splendid from A to Z (strictly speaking A to Y as I failed on EYE RHYMES – which I am sure I’ve seen in puzzles before but,since I never use the phrase, not something that sticks). WHIP ROUND, CHELSEA, NUDISTS and LASAGNA all mentioned in despatches with COTD a toss up between MADAME BUTTERFLY for the clever construction or DOMINICAN for its simple clean surface. Isn’t INDOMITABLENESS an ugly word and has anyone here ever actually used it?

   Thanks Picaroon and manehi

9. Remembered seeing something similar for EYE RHYMES before. Brendan in puzzle 28,217 had They may be used by poets – Keats and Yeats, for example, or spry and Skye, where I have inserted solutions to other clues that were referenced in the actual clue.

   Thought this was a smashing crossword. Never heard of the pageboy hairdo.

10. The Simone Biles reference in 2d was brilliant, as were NARCISSUS, EYE RHYME (is this just a thing in English, stemming from our crazy spelling?), WHIP ROUND, SONATAS.
    A tough but fair and very enjoyable workout.
    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi

11. Dickens as realist … hmm… certainly exposed some harsh realities, but via characters of whom many are caricatures. Enjoyable puzzle, with the dnk eye rhyme as loi. Always have to be reminded that club often means football, but I did remember sebum from school biology. Thanks both.

12. I thought this was brilliant. EYE RHYMES, INDOMITABLENESS, GO-FASTER STRIPES and MADAME BUTTERFLY were just so clever, I’m in awe. Like you WordPlodder @4, I did not know Dickens was a REALIST, even though I studied his works at Uni (probably too much OENOMANIA (new word) at the time). CUBAN came after (W)HEEL but can’t spot a theme. Took a long time to finish but worth the mind-games.

    Ta Picaroon & manehi

13. PS the gymnast thing went straight over my head

14. EYE RHYMES I got immediately – and it must be because I’ve encountered it in a crossword before. Doesn’t make it a less satisfying clue, though.
    Like Gazzh at 7, I also spell LASAGNA with an
    E at the end – which slowed me down. As did the feeling that 14A had to be WHEEL, were it not for my certainty that a wheel must be the whole cheese circle, not a piece of it.
    Also, a nitpicky bit of me winced at the glorious opera Madame Butterfly being described as “a stage show”. (I suppose somewhere in Chambers there’s something lumping all live performances into that category.)
    But these are trifling niggles – for SET ON, HIKER and SWELL were pleasing, WHIP ROUND and DOMINICAN made me grin,
    and INDOMITABLENESS, although a mouthful, was a clever one.
    Thanks Picaroon and Manehi

15. Thanks Hovis at 9 for supplying the info on Eye Rhymes (whilst I was typing!)

16. Lana Turner was in MADAME X and SWELL comes after the synononomous RISER and now I’ll go away 🙂

17. After being disgruntled yesterday, I felt pleased when I saw Picaroon’s byline, and I was not disappointed. Another superb, challenging and witty puzzle from a really excellent compiler.

18. PostMark@8 yes I agree it is an unwieldy word and think I have far more often seen and possibly even used INDOMITABILITY which is equivalent according to Collins online. Reminds me of one of those motivational posters that I once saw in a sports hall exhorting people to channel their “aggressiveness” – what’s wrong with “aggression”, I thought?
    Thanks Hovis@9 that is exactly where I first encountered it too.

19. Am I missing something in the parsing of INDOMITABLENESS? The anagram only accounts for 12 letters (leaving out IND) — or is this an example of OMITABLENESS?

20. Ian@19 you need to include the ‘and’ preceding..

21. @19 it’s an anagram of T AND SIMONE BILES

22. Good old Pickers
    Just read the instructions carefully and chuckle.
    I’d gladly pay a fiver for this puzzle
    Thanks all

23. Quite right. I’ll get my coat.

24. Great fun. Loved the plump cat, and pageboy took me straight back to “The New Avengers” and Joanna Lumley in spandex. Thanks both.

25. What copmus said – and that’s on top of what I paid for the paper. 😉

26. For quite a while I struggled to find a toehold, and eventually, imagining that the long Resilience clue at 2d might end in -NESS, was able to then insert ASSYRIA, CHELSEA and the one that got things going a bit, SPEAKING TRUMPET in the SW corner. Thereafter never quite felt in control, though smiled to see the GO FASTER STRIPES of Trap 6 for the anagram at 7d. Good memories of our local dog track on wintry Tuesday evenings. LOI was HAIRDOS, and needed Manehi to explain exactly how that one worked. Phew! Very glad to finish this….

27. Gazzh@7 re 5 ac – If the menu says ‘lasagna’, ask the waiter if it really means ‘lasagne’, otherwise you might get just one sheet of pasta.
    Hovis@9: ‘spry’ and ‘Skye’ (or even ‘sky’) form no sort of rhyme.

28. The brilliance of the clue for INDOMITABLENESS was worth the ugly word. WHIP ROUND, EYE RHYMES, MADAME BUTTERFLY were all great as well. I had WEDGE for WHEEL for a while. Edge for list almost works and it’s a better definition.

29. Very entertaining puzzle with some clever constructions. Too many good clues to list, and some great surfaces.

    OENOMANIA was a new one to me, but my scanty Greek led me straight to it, once I realised that DIPSOMANIA didn’t fit. EYE RHYMES was my LOI – I missed Brendan’s version in an earlier puzzle.

    Re LASAGNA: the composed dish is usually termed ‘lasagne’ in the UK but ‘lasagna’ in the US. The etymology of the word is probably from the vessel in which it was cooked (cf casserole, terrine, paella, balti). However, in Italian, the packets of pasta sheets are always labelled ‘lasagne’ (plural of ‘lasagna’). When it comes to the finished dish, it is normally called ‘lasagne’ in Italy – pasta dishes always use plural forms. Indeed, some Italian dictionaries only give the plural form for the dish; others suggest the plural form is more common. Wikipedia suggests that the singular form is used more in Southern Italy. That might explain why it is common in the US – most Italian immigrants to America came from the south. And also why Italian dictionaries – from sophisticated northern publishing houses – are reluctant to countenance ‘hick’ usages!

    Thanks to the pirate and manehi

30. Tough puzzle, even with the three long clues solved.

    Favourites: HIKER, LATEE RISER, LASAGNA, WHIP-ROUND, NARCISSUS.

    New for me: SPEAKING TRUMPET, EYE RHYMES, OENOMANIA; CROSS = a pass of the ball across the field towards the centre close to one’s opponents’ goal (for 12ac).

    Being a big fan of Simone Biles, I understood the twisties reference in that clue.

    I did not parse 4d.

    Thanks, both.

31. Thanks Picaroon and manehi
    Excellent puzzle, marred only by the loose definition for CUBAN. Favourite NUDISTS.

32. Tricky but enjoyable. Loved HAIRDOS.
    Only got EYE RHYMES by cheating on the app, but love it now it has been explained by manehi. (I’m a paper solver and only resort to online when desperate).

    Isn’t there another expression (possibly more literary) for EYE RHYMES? Something in the back of my head but can’t bring it to mind.

    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

33. I found this tough but unlike yesterday’s (which I gave up on) I managed to finish with a fair bit of help and parsed all but a few (including a word I hadn’t heard of). The four long clues were a great help to get started but the SE really held me up.

    Like others I enjoy Picaroon’s puzzles – even when I struggle.

    Thanks Picaroon and manehi

34. Wot Fiona Anne @33 said!

35. I like indomitableness, fond memories of Asterix. What a great clue, I wonder if that got the puzzle started. Despite the A, I liked LASAGNA for the funny picture of Turner painting dirty dishes. I blame him more than anyone for the scourge of sunset & wave paintings you get in B&Bs.
    Thanks Picaroon, manehi

36. What an absolute gem of a puzzle. Ticks far too numerous to list.

    So refreshing to have a brilliant and witty crossword without the now seemingly mandatory theme. ( If there really is one, please don’t spoil my morning by mentioning it).

    Many thanks to the pirate, more please.

37. I found this tough but a very clever crossword.

    Top clue for me has to be for the rather ugly INDOMITABLENESS.

    Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

38. That was a treat, thanks Picaroon, tricky in places with good variety.
    I admired the ambition in setting RAMEN & OENOMANIA (new to me) rather than say ‘roman’ and ‘ornaments’.
    Is the ‘cat’ for WHIP as in tipcat? Just wondering how it relates to whip.

39. Thanks manehi too for helpful blog!

40. William @36
    Chelsea is a team but then I am in Ireland!

41. wynsum @39
    Whip – cat of nine tails

42. The Simone Biles clue made me smile as I had followed her saga at the Tokyo Olympics.

    I finished (using check at times) but this was tough and even a bit gruelling although fairly clued. The four long entries got me out of jail; so many clues were enjoyable very much after I’d finished and not whilst I was doing the puzzle.

    Thanks Picaroon and, for help parsing several answers, manehi.

43. wynsum @38 The Royal Navy used to use a lash with nine ends known as the cat o’ nine tails, or just “the cat”. I don’t know of any other examples where cat = whip.

44. Thanks for the blog, will follow AlanC@12 and just say brilliant, no need for me to list any more clues.
    It is also my favourite grid, four answers of 15, every answer is an odd number of letters with over half of them checked. It means you are always getting letters to help progress and many first letters which are the most useful.

45. Brendan@41 & ravenrider@43 Thank you!
    & Brendan@40 🙂 a mandate for the blues.

46. Great entertainment. Thanks both.

    Hovis@9: fwiw

47. I had 14 across parsed as meaning LIST, as in a clumsy movement.
    Then W = starter from wine, and HEEL= piece of cheese, say.

48. What all the usual suspects said – splendid crossword as ever from Picaroon, although I did find this one on the tricky side

    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi

49. Great crossword. Confidently entering ‘haircut’ for 1 across slowed us down a bit…

50. Roz @44 – I’ve never thought much about grids but you make a good observation. It was a friendly grid that allowed you to constantly progress. The 15-letters ones, even if you can’t parse, you can guess but in this case there was an anagram which got you on your way. So setter was tough but helpful, which I underestimated 🙂

    My least favourite grids are those where the top row and left column don’t reveal the first letter. Instead you have to manage with the second letter, which if it’s a vowel is not much use to get you going on the crosser!

51. Yes, a great puzzle, but I found it quite a bit harder than yesterday’s Imogen. Another admirer here of INDOMITABLENESS – in fact I think that if I hadn’t got it early I might never have finished, thanks to the number of crossers it supplied.

52. Same quibbles as others: LASAGNE with an E and not knowing OENOMANIA or that Dickens was officially a Realist (since when?). I found this quite tough and didn’t get all of them: of the ones I managed unaided I liked DO-MINICAN, GO FASTER STRIPES, LATE RISER. Nice to see TRUMP reverting to being a property tycoon.

53. pdp11 @ 50 , I much prefer grids where 1AC is on the top line and 1D is extreme left.
    The worst Guardian grid has 8 and 6 letter words in each corner and just four 10s joining them, each corner is virtually isolated.
    Azed has the best grids of course.

54. Alphalpha @46. Thanks for the link. I’ll make sure never to ask for a pageboy if I ever go to a hairdresser again (got used to trimming it myself during lockdown).

55. Agree with Gladys @52 re LASAGNA*. Ever seen SPAGHETTO on a menu?

56. DD et al
    I wonder why people struggle so much with Italian singular/plural. The number of times I’ve ordered panini and only been given one!

57. Roz @53 – yes the grid you describe is the one I was trying to describe. They’re disheartening on first appearance. I’ve never tried Azed because the absence of black squares make them look alien! But I’ll have a go.

    Other: SOED has LASAGNE as plural of LASAGNA but Chambers regards them as synonyms, which, in my experience, is how they’re used.

    Once a word enters language A from language B, that word can take on a life of its own in A (and continue developing in B); divergence and lack of faithfulness to the original meaning is nothing new. Some people try to retain semantic and/or syntactic links to a (possibly dead) language but it’s a losing battle.

58. Thanks Picaroon for another excellent crossword. Favourites included LASAGNA, EYE RHYMES, and INDOMITABLENESS, not because I’ll ever use such a clumsy word but because the surface was so apt. I could not solve MOTOCROSS because cross=ball is new to me as is SWELL=dandy. Thanks manehi for the blog.
    [Thanks also to Gervase @29 for the lasagne/lasagna discussion. It’s no surprise that the Italians would exclude “hick” usages from their dictionaries. They, like the French, make painful efforts to insure the “purity” of their languages. English, on the other hand, evolves and seems to be quite freewheeling. That makes it more fun and certainly more suited to cryptic puzzles.]

59. Fun, fun, fun all the way! 2d is a simply brilliant clue given Simone Biles struggles with the twisties and other things in her career.

    Strangely, I found this on the easier side and the long answers went in first and undoubtedly helped.

    Other favourites were HAIRDOS, EYE RHYMES, WHIP-ROUND and NUDISTS.

    Thanks for the entertainment Picaroon, and manehi for the blog

60. Tony S @58, re SWELL: here are Fred and Judy, complete with paroles en français – and is that a couple of tousled pageboys I see?

    Speaking of which, thanks Oofy @24 for the Purdey reminder. David McCallum also sported a pageboy in The Invisible Man, but you might not have seen it.

    Topknot puzzle, thanks P & m.

61. Joanna Lumley and David McCallum joined forces in Sapphire and Steel, I do not remember the haircuts but the series was truly awful.

62. [The haircuts in Sapphire and Steel had moved on a bit (post-pageboy?). I don’t think the plots made an awful lot of sense (even by New Avengers standards), but I do remember the man with no face – somehow more unsettling than complete invisibility.]

63. [ Typically set in a railway station waiting room, lots of talking , awful ghostly special effects, meaningful shots of ticking clocks and usually two children in Victorian clothes. The opening sequence did not inspire confidence, the writers not aware that sapphire and steel are not elements ]

64. [Roz @53: interesting comments on grids. My personal bête noire is the grid that has two four letter words in NW and SE intersecting with the final letter (NW) and first letter (SE). The number of times, one or two of those have held up a completion…}

65. [ Yes I know the one you mean, it is often awkward if two small words are crossing, the grids should have names really. Another one I do not like has two 5 letter across answers in top right and bottom left but only two letters checked in each. ]

66. PostMark@8 on 2dn INDOMITABLENESS. The anagram is clever, but I agree that it’s hard to justify the use of the answer. The OED has only one record of its use, and that was in 1860 (updated 2018). Collins doesn’t expand on this, so for all I know it’s a hapax – only one recorded use. Is this sporting?

    Great crossword – thanks to Picaroon and especially manehl

67. My admiration of this setter is hardly a secret and I think there are some fabulous clues in this puzzle, with EYE RHYMES & INDOMITABLENESS contenders for COTY in my book. Bravo Picaroon, and thanks to manehi

68. essexboy@ 60: Thanks. Nothing like a little visual learning.

69. John R the old one @66: thank you for introducing me to a new word and concept. Sort of reminds me a bit of the Googlewhack popularised by our very own Fed.

70. Thanks Picaroon and manehi. Found this one quite tricky in places but a joy to work at. Managed to parse everything (eventually) except MOTOCROSS (got the ‘CROSS’ bit, but got hung up on thinking MO=‘time’), so thanks for putting me right.

    Last two in were among my favourites, and I needed all the crossing letters for both. EYE RHYMES finally dropped after I stopped reading the clue and instead looked at the words… very satisfying PDM! SONATAS was an ‘it has to be that’ but needed a fair bit of staring at the answer before I saw how it worked. Brilliant.

    So many top class clues, hard to pick a favourite and I think everyone has mentioned – HAIRDOS, WHIP ROUND, NUDISTS, CUBAN (I didn’t have a problem with the definition on that one).

    Lots of idle musings, for the dubious benefit of anyone still reading…

    PM @8 – yeah, INDOMITABLENESS is an ugly word (I got held up for a bit trying to make INDOMITABILITY work, even though it’s not enough letters), but it’s a brilliant clue – agree with JerryG @2 and Petert @28 and baerchen @67, strong contender for COTW, if not COTY.

    Not all perfect – I thought MADAME BUTTERFLY was a bit tortured, ABYSSAL a tad clunky, and HUMDRUM was a bit… well, humdrum. And I agree with the minor quibbles over the definition of WHEEL. For 5a, I even got as far as looking up LANE TURNER and wondering why Picaroon was referencing an obscure country & western singer, before I remembered LANA of that ilk. (Thanks for the Italian lesson, Gervase @29)

    gif @11 – George Eliot was quite strongly of the opinion that Dickens was NOT a realist… But I’m happy to give Picaroon the benefit of the doubt on that one.

    Crossbar @32 – heterophone? Or does that require the same spelling?

    Roz @44 – good point about the grid. Definitely solver-friendly, this one. And the four long answers were among my first ones in, which obviously gave me lots of useful crossing letters. (By the way, no cheating for me today! Far too enjoyable to deny myself the pleasure of solving it all unaided.)

    pdp11 @57 – the great thing about Azed’s barred grids is that quite often all but one of the letters in a solution is checked. This is extremely helpful if the clue is an anagram of an obscure word!

71. eb@60 Just spent at least a minute listening to how to invest in property thinking ‘Essex boy has really lost it’ before realising I was watching the French ad before the clip 😀

72. The Guardian grid library has many unfriendly examples. The ones that are bad for solvers are helpful for setters so unfortunately get used more than they might by chance. It’s a shame there’s a limited set, and also odd because some of the grids are clearly customisations of more sensible ones that have subsequently become part of the library. For example, there is one with a down light that has 3 consecutive unchecked squares (letters 2,3,4), which was created by adding a single black square to another grid. That must have been made for a particular puzzle, but at some point the ability to customise has been lost.

73. And trying to decide if the presenter lady’s hairdo could be classed as a bob.

74. James @72 – presume they limit the set to save time on checking every grid submitted for soundness. It probably is about time they gave them an overhaul to weed out the crap ones and add in some new decent ones.

75. [t in c @71/73: just because you (eventually) found it, doesn’t mean I haven’t lost it 😀 ]

76. As a lover of smut, NUDISTS is my clue of the month. What a diamond of a crossword. Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

77. Many thanks indeed, manehi, for the impeccable blog, and to everyone dropping in to discuss the puzzle. I really appreciate the many very generous comments here.

78. Nobody has mentioned that there was nothing in the slightest cryptic about 1a HAIRDOS. The excellence of the clue relied wholly on tricking the solver to think that there would be, when it was actually no more cryptic than a clue for DOGS that read “Whippet labrador pug”.
    And an explanation for why the clue for MADAME BUTTERFLY might say “stage show”. The opera is MADAMA BUTTERFLY, but it was based on a Belasco play called MADAME BUTTERFLY.

79. Van Winkle @ 78

    That’s the essence of Picaroon’s misdirection. “Bob dreads pageboy” reads as a surface. “Whippet labrador pug” doesn’t.

80. widdersbel @70 – thanks. It seems Azed is not on my Guardian phone app so I’m going to have use (shock/horror) pen and paper.

    I’ve had a look at an online example and there’s an issue with the puzzle: half the words seem to be from another language 😉 I’m not sure the clues are entirely in English either 😀

    That said, I’ll print one off and work at.

81. “Pageboy dreads Bob” would put a slightly more sinister slant on it. “Bob bangs duck’s arse” would be Paul’s version. “Mullet dreads beehive” would just be surreal.

82. Some brilliant clueing here and, like everyone it seems my last in was EYE RHYMES. the HAOIRDOS clue was also a gem- thanks to widdersbel above for some nice glosses on the idea.
    Thanks Picaroon & manehi for a really worthwhile Guardian midweek.

83. Van Winkle@78 thanks for the cultural enlightenment, unsurprisingly I had no idea, another nice touch from Picaroon.

84. Only finished this early this morning – absolutely delightful, but for me a proper struggle.

    Thanks for a early morning belly laugh Widdersbel, though I may have to get a new phone as this is now drenched in sprayed coffee!

    Thanks Picaroon and manehi

85. Pdp11@80,

    For a first Azed may I recommend 2573 from the 10th of this month. While never easy, this was lighter than others with less obscure words. It may give you more of a chance to get used to Azed’s style.

86. Sorry pdp11 10th of last month (October)

87. Last one in was EYE RHYMES and only half parsed it. I also noticed the NUTS first in nudists which could have been part of the STUNning clue.

    Thanks, Picaroon and manehi!

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