Guardian Cryptic 28,788 by Vulcan

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/28788.

Very heavy on the cryptics and doubles, and stations in between.

ACROSS
1 AIRBRUSH
Broadcast skirmish, so touch up pictures (8)
A charade of AIR (‘broadcast’) plus BRUSH (‘skirmish’).
5 SAUCER
Crockery may be flying! (6)
Crypticish definition.
9 BEDAUBED
Two couches, a uniform between them smeared (8)
An envelope (‘between them’) of ‘a’ plus U (‘uniform’) in BED BED (‘two couches’).
10 MOSAIC
Main road through most of Russian city that is in pieces (6)
An envelope (‘through’) of AI (A1, ‘main road’ though not as main as it once was) in MOSC[ow] (‘Russian city’) minus the last two letters (‘most of’, which more often docks just one letter).
12 SLUSH
Such a corrupt fund that is melting messily away (5)
Double definition.
13 PANATELLA
Aloud, criticise a vote counter smoking this? (9)
Sounds like (‘aloud’) PAN A TELLER (‘criticise a vote counter’).
14 CHEESEPARING
Mean to be taking off some rind? (12)
Definition and literal interpretation.
18 BLOODTHIRSTY
Eager to cause carnage, shortly bid to relax (12)
An anagram (‘relax’) of ‘shortly bid to’.
21 RUNNERS-UP
Beans finished in seconds? (7-2)
Definition and literal interpretation.
23 MOOSE
Deer? Sounds like a cow at end of lane (5)
A charade of MOOS (‘sounds like a cow’) plus E (‘end of lanE‘).
24 EMAILS
Communications that may bring a smile (6)
An anagram (‘that may bring’) of ‘a smile’.
25 GIFT SHOP
For the present, this part of tourist attraction remains open (4,4)
Cryptic definition.
26 KITTEN
Pet, what are you in after nine gear changes? (6)
KIT TEN – KIT as what you are wearing. An indication by example – not all kittens are pets (not vice versa).
27 INFRARED
Remarkably rare find that is out of our range (8)
An anagram (‘remarkably’) of ‘rare find’, the ‘range’ being of vision.
DOWN
1 AMBUSH
Assailant here needs a good hiding (6)
Cryptic definition.
2 RADIUS
Spoke of part of arm (6)
Double definition.
3 ROUGHSHOD
Ride this, trampling over everyone (9)
Cryptic definitionish.
4 STEEPLECHASE
Places seethe with excitement for this race (12)
An anagram (‘with excitement’) of ‘places seethe’.
6 AFOOT
Under way a short distance (5)
A charade of ‘a’ plus FOOT (fairly ‘short distance’).
7 CHAPLAIN
Minister who sounds like a Charlie (8)
‘Sounds like’ CHAPLIN (‘Charlie’).
8 RECHARGE
Replace electricity Her Grace wasted (8)
An anagram (‘wasted’) of ‘Her Grace’.
11 INTERRUPTION
Temporary break ruins routine print (12)
An anagram (‘ruins’) of ‘routine print’.
15 ALTIMETER
Pilot needs this to be highly accurate (9)
A play on ‘highly’ as measuring height.
16 UBER GEEK
Regularly humbled rogue seeks top-class techie (4,4)
Alternate letters (‘regularly’) of ‘hUmBlEd RoGuE sEeKs’.
17 DOWNCAST
Some Northern Irish players unhappy (8)
DOWN CAST (‘some Northern Irish players’, a reference to County Down.
19 KOSHER
King has horse slaughtered and ritually prepared (6)
A charaed of K (‘king’, chess) plus OSHER, an anagram (‘slaughtered’) of ‘horse’.
20 KEYPAD
Part of entrance security vital to flat (6)
A charade of KEY (‘vital’) plus PAD (apartment, ‘flat’).
22 ELLIE
The girl from Montpellier (5)
A hidden answer in ‘MontpELLIEr’

picture of the completed grid

50 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,788 by Vulcan”

  2. Good fun; nothing too challenging. I didn’t think 15d was cryptic till I came here. I’d never heard of cheeseparing, and had initially pencilled in “degenerating”, which mucked up my 3d. Hadn’t heard of an uber geek, either.

  3. Nice puzzle. I thought the definitions for MOSAIC and INFRARED were more like descriptions than definitions, but that didn’t detract from the solving.

  4. SAUCER made me laugh for the word picture in the surface.
    Not so sure that the wordplay works in AMBUSH or GIFTSHOP, or the grammar in ROUGHSHOD.
    I quite like cryptic defs, but I thought these were a bridge too far.
    Favourite was KOSHER for the wordplay and def. Also liked CHEESEPARING.

  6. Solved, but I don’t always find cryptic definitions wholly convincing or satisfying, so although there were some entertaining clues, like CHEESEPARING and the neat anagram in BLOODTHIRSTY, I’m more left feeling flat after ALTIMETER and GIFT SHOP, which wordplays failed to convince of their unique solutions to the clues.

    Thank you to PeterO and Vulcan.

  7. Very straightforward this morning. I have also never heard of cheeseparing or Uber geek but both were easily gettable. Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

  8. Tough to get started on. Did not solve anything until I got to the down clues.

    Liked BEDAUBED, runners-up.

    Did not parse 3d, 7d.

    New: CHEESEPARING = mean.

    Thanks, both.

  9. Same comments as some others about GIFT SHOP, AMBUSH and ROUGHSHOD, all of which I annotated with a question mark.

    Always good to come across and remember a word first met in crosswords, in this case CHEESEPARING. Other favourites were the surface for SLUSH and the BLOODTHIRSTY anagram.

    Thanks to Vulcan and to PeterO

  11. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO
    Yes, some odd ones. What does “remains open” contribute in 25a? AMBUSH is weak too, though I did like ROUGHSHOD. as the common expression is “ride roughshod over…”.
    KITTEN another favourite.

  12. KITTEN and ROUGHSHOD were probably worth the effort of the rest.
    Thanks PeterO and Vulcan.

  13. Liked the smooth surface for EMAILS, which did in fact make me smile a little. And I also liked UBER GEEK. A good mixture of anagrams and double meanings this morning, I thought. Not too taxing, but no complaints here…

  14. This passed the time very pleasantly. I was thrown temporarily by ‘broadcast’ being neither an anagrind nor a homophone indicator!

    The CDs were OK for me, though rather numerous; I particularly liked GIFT SHOP. The definition for INFRARED is rather vaguely allusive, but it was clear that there was an anagram here.

    I’m surprised that CHEESEPARING is so unfamiliar. I’d have thought that PANATELLA was the least common word in the puzzle – apart from the delicious UBER GEEK.

    Thanks to S&B

  15. Thanks PeterO and contributors above. It was most enjoyable to have all this fall into place fairly readily. While I thought 11d ALTIMETER was barely cryptic, I do agree with Ronald@13 and Gervase@14 about the one that followed it, UBER GEEK at 16d – it really was a “delicious” clue, Gervase. Prior to learning the “mean” definition today, I always thought CHEESEPARING (14a) was someting you did with wine at the old “wine and cheese” events (remember them?). [Sorry that is a really cheesy joke.]
    Many thanks to Vulcan.

  16. Agree with comments above about some of the cryptic ones.

    I did like MOSAIC even if removing two letters from the end was unusual. And PANATELLA and RUNNERS-UP made me smile.

    Like Gervase @ 14 I took a while to realise that broadcast wasn’t a homophone indicator.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO

  17. [JinA @15 – I thought it was something you did with those little cubes of tropical fruit. So, who wants another cheesy-pineapple one? 😉 ]

    I’ve never met a KITTEN that wasn’t a pet. On checking wiki I find that baby ocelots and lynxes are also kittens, so I suppose strictly it should have a dbe indicator – but then surely the proportion of ‘non-pet kitten: pet kitten’ references in English usage is much lower than the ratio of ‘kitten pet: non-kitten pet’ ones?

    For me the SAUCER and the MOOSE went some way to making up for the not-so-KOSHER ones. Thanks V & P.

  20. Despite not knowing UBER GEEK, I enjoyed this puzzle. Unlike some others, I liked the cryptic definitions. Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

  21. Vulcan is back for the usual Monday fare that was enjoyable.

    I liked PANATELLA because of the vote counter image, BLOODTHIRSTY as a good anagram, and UBER GEEK for the clever regular appearances.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

  23. Is it just me who thinks INFRA-RED should be hyphenated? Otherwise it would be pronounced ‘IN-FRARED, which doesn’t make sense.
    But no complaints, and for once I finished well before lunchtime!

  24. I assembled UBER GEEK last night from the wordplay, but didn’t realize it was something people actually said until I googled it this morning.

    Pleasant stroll, thanks Vulcan and PeterO.

  25. Enjoyable stuff – I can go either way with cryptic defs, but these were quite fun.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO

  26. Thanks for the blog, apart from a couple of Rufus clues I thought this was very good. I will join the praise for KITTEN, 3 out of 4 long words had nice anagrams , especially bloodthirsty.
    INFRARED could have had visual range, we definitely detect infrared ourselves.
    For 16D, I thought we were not meant to refer to the nerds as geeks ?

  27. Very brief with some barely cryptic clueing. Maybe I should give up on Mondays.

    Thanks Vulcan and PeterO

  28. AuntRuth @23: INFRARED is sometimes hyphenated, but this is rare. I suppose it is a common enough word for it not to be deceptive. Unlike ‘misled’, which is frequently, on first acquaintance, mistaken for the past tense of ‘misle’ 🙂
    [And Isaac Asimov once suggested you could tell a chemist by asking them to pronounce the word ‘unionised’]

  29. 2 Down. Radius is actually part of the forearm and not the arm, if one is being strictly anatomically correct.

  31. Rp@29 but isn’t the forearm itself a part of the arm and therefore the radius part of the arm as a whole?

    I’m generally pretty open-minded about link words but the “of” for RADIUS had me trying out my bed Paddington stare

  33. As is traditional, I found that easier than the Quiptic. I’m sure someone swaps them around just before publication. Rather a lot of descriptive clues, some of which I wouldn’t even call cryptic.

    New to me: CHEESEPARING and PANATELLA.

    Liked: KITTEN, RUNNERS-UP, DEBAUBED, MOSAIC.

  34. Gervase @14 et al: Any time I see “broadcast” I automatically think AIR. Useful in this particular puzzle.

  35. For one brief moment I was trying to imagine what a “bed Paddington stare” meant , I am so glad it was just a typing error.
    [ Summer Solstice tomorrow, sunrise about 4.40, if you get up half an hour earlier there is the chance to see 5 planets, pretty rare. You need a good Eastern horizon, Mercury is tricky ]

  36. Disappointing DNF for me, failing on 3d, 14a and 18a. I will need the explanations to help me understand them.
    Enjoyed the rest, thanks both.

  37. I struggled to get into the setter’s mindset today, far from the easy ride that some have mentioned. So much so that I even considered changing 2d to RADIAL (=’of part of the arm’), but I couldn’t also make it mean ‘spoke’. This is an odd clue, with ‘of’ looking so much like ‘or’ in the surface reading, that when I realised it was indeed ‘of’, I was convinced that RADIUS was wrong. After all this, SLUSH was suddenly obvious – though I did somehow connect ‘that is’=IE to the answer to make a SLUSHIE, which also messily melts away, so I seem to have got more than my money’s worth out of 12a.

    I’m not sure I understand PeterO’s objection to ‘pet’=KITTEN. Haven’t we seen ‘pet=CAT or DOG a million times, so why not KITTEN? As many others have said, this was a very good clue that seems to have raised plenty of smiles. (I think essexboy @17 is trying to say that the set of pets and the set of kittens intersect, so either would serve as a clue for the other without the need for an indication of DBE. Which on reflection is perhaps what PeterO was saying, but I think the conclusion is faulty. I hope someone can explain where I’ve gone wrong.)

    Thanks to Vulcan and PeterO.

  38. Yay – first time my wife and I have managed to finish a cryptic on the day of publication and post on this blog. We usually do crosswords from a couple of weeks ago and spend 3 or 4 days doing a couple of clues whenever we get a moment, so we are always in awe of the commentators on here. Really enjoyed this crossword – as we usually do with Vulcan – and particularly liked 5A, 13A and 20D. Thanks to Vulcan for some great clues and PeterO for clarifying some of the parsing we couldn’t get.

  39. Kandy @38 – it’s a great feeling isn’t it? 🙂

    I remember the first time I completed a cryptic on the day, I was so buzzing I posted on Facebook about it. No-one was much interested! That was before I discovered this blog…

  40. sh @37 – this whole DBE thing is tricky, isn’t it?

    Lots of things in the world can be grouped in different ways, fitted into different hierarchical structures, depending on context, usefulness, intention of the categoriser etc.

    I agree that the ‘set of kittens’ and the ‘set of pets’ are intersecting sets, but I’m not so sure that means either could be clued as the other with no need for a DBE indicator. I think if the solution, or part of a solution, is PET, it would need to be clued ‘dog, say’/’cat, say’/’kitten, say’ – and I’m pretty certain I’ve seen it done like that in the past.

    (Just as I’ve seen MORSE clued as ‘Samuel, say’, notwithstanding the fact that the set of Samuels and the set of Morses are also intersecting sets.)

    My earlier comment @17 about ratios was an attempt to answer the question, “If A and B are intersecting sets, and A can (in some contexts) conceivably be construed as a subset of B, but B can (in some contexts) conceivably be construed as a subset of A, (as with pets/kittens), then which way round should the DBE arrow go?”

    But on second thoughts I’m not sure ‘frequency of mention’ ratios is the best approach. My revised suggestion would be – seeing as DBE implies hierarchy, which of the subset-superset options has a stronger hierarchical feel? In the pet/kitten case, I would argue that ‘a kitten is a kind of pet’ fits much more naturally into a hierarchy of semantic fields than ‘a pet is a kind of kitten’. Hence no need for a DBE indicator in 26ac, but you would need one if the clue/solution were the other way round.

    At least that’s where my thinking has got to so far – happy (sort of 😉 ) to have the flaws pointed out!

  41. essexboy @40. Thanks for responding to my late post, I’m glad you saw it! One thing about this is that of course there are no rules. So it all comes down to whether we think the setter is being fair or not. I’m inclined to agree with (most of) your penultimate paragraph, and as a corollary would be happy to see ‘pet’ as a clue for KITTEN without a DBE indicator, but probably not vice versa.

    Getting back to the setter being perceived to be fair to the solver, if ‘pet’ with a DBE indicator is a fair clue for CAT, DOG and KITTEN, what about IGUANA? I think it would have to be ‘pet?’, wouldn’t it. Same as your ‘Samuel, say’.

    I think sometimes we have to forgive a setter not indicating a definition by example, such as when it would spoil the surface or make the clue too damn easy. I know there are some who would say, “in that case, rewrite the clue”. Personally, I am prepared to allow quite a bit of leeway, even if the clue ends up being fiendishly difficult. (But no doubt you will be able to recall occasions when I have said exactly the opposite. 🙂 )

  42. Well done Kandy@ 38, you should try the Everyman in the Observer , I suspect it is easily available. I used to carry it around with me all week when I was learning to do cryptics.

    MrEssexboy@40, does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves , contain itself ?

  43. sh @41: Could this be a pet? Endless love shown by Pasquale for creature past its glory days (9)

    Roz @42: ah, Russell’s paradox! (not that I really understand it 😉 )

  44. Frege’s paradox really , I just noticed your prowess in set theory above.
    The answer is – If it does it doesn’t , but if it doesn’t it does.

  45. It’s the barber in the village who shaves everyone who doesn’t shave himself.
    (That’s just sloppy use of language, though!)

  48. eb
    The statement should be “the barber shaves everyone else who doesn’t shave himself AND he shaves himself”. The “everyone” is the weasel in the woodpile…

  49. Frege’s Paradox is unavoidable however you phrase it, I could use predicates but probably best not to.
    Any attempts to found mathematics on axioms and pure logic are always doomed.

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