Guardian 25,960 / Paul

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Vintage Paul, with  witty,  ingenious cluing, providing lots of laughs and a couple of groans.  Many thanks, Paul – I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Across

1 Grub knocked back, American fool
DOOFUS
reversal [knocked back] of FOOD [grub] + US [American] – a new word for me [and you know what I mean!]

5 Keen perception in place of old stories?
SAGACITY
SAGA CITY – I rather liked that one

9 Grain was short in promotion, creating competition among retailers
PRICE WAR
RICE[ grain] + WA[s] [was short] in PR [promotion]

10 Pronounced as “venson”? I haven’t a clue!
NO IDEA
A typical Paul clue: sounds like [pronounced] ‘no-i deer’ – ven[i]son
A witty reworking of the [very] old joke – I don’t know how many times I heard it from my children:
‘What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea’ … always closely followed by
‘What do you call a dead deer with no eyes? Still no idea.’

11 Jolly good to punch Hitler, hated terribly
 LIGHT-HEARTED
G [good] in [to punch] an anagram [terribly] of HITLER HATED – great surface

13 Sport to sell, as a rugby ball’s passed?
GOLF
A reversal [as rugby ball’s passed, i.e. backwards] of FLOG [sell] – and I don’t think there’s any ambiguity here

14 Recklessly determined man, fast pocketing pound
HELL-BENT
HE [man] + LENT [fast] round [pocketing] LB [pound] – another nice surface

17 Ten was poorly invested in money for boater
COXSWAIN
X [ten] + anagram [poorly] of WAS in COIN [money]

18 Some news, a bit of excitement
ITEM
‘Hidden’ in excITEMent

20 Reproduce artist, say, for the royal issue
PRINCESS ANNE
If you look at this sideways and then take a run at it, it might sound like [say] ‘Print Cézanne’ [reproduce artist] – it raised a laugh, anyway

23 Determined to get female eating horse, then surprised ultimately
DOGGED
DOE [female] round [eating] GG [horse] + last letter of surpriseD

24 Wear thin pants, exposing one’s private parts
IN THE RAW
Anagram [pants] of WEAR THIN – as I said, vintage Paul

25 Face ship holding an inferno back
SANSERIF
SS [ship] round [holding] AN + reversal [back] of FIRE [inferno]
Sanserif [or sans serif] is a typeface and I can never see it without instantly thinking of the marvellous April Fool Guardian spoof from 1977 about the fictional archipelago of San Serriffe, shaped like a semi-colon. The two main islands were called Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse and everything about it was to do with printing terms: it was ruled over by the dictator, General M.J.Pica, which we had in our crossword yesterday.You can read about it here

26 Intent to try returning dairy product
YOGURT
Reversal [returning] of  GO [try] in YURT  [‘in tent’ – more vintage Paul]

Down

2 Vegetable fine with radish, wanting plate
OKRA
OK [fine] + RA[dish] [wanting plate]

3 Information including dossier written up for surgical operations
FACE-LIFTS
FACTS [information] round [including] a reversal [written up, in a down clue] of FILE [dossier]

4 Amount of money earned in the City? That stinks!
SEWAGE
SE WAGE: we’re more used to seeing ‘City’ defined as ‘EC’ but London is in the South East

5 Namely lab animal caught, having paws to smell as scent tested
SCRATCH-AND-SNIFF
An intricate charade of SC [scilicet – namely] + RAT [lab animal] + C [caught] + HANDS [paws] + NIFF [smell]

6 Taking great care, trap left for man in the country
GINGERLY
GIN [trap] + L [left] replacing ‘man’ in GER[man]Y [country]

7 Person yelling “Score!” in ear, off and on
CRIER
Alternate letters [off and on] of sCoRe In EaR

8 The display involving uranium is beneath that
THEREUNDER
THE RENDER [the display – as a verb] round [involving] U [uranium]

12 Clap hands initially on ogre, or a deviant
GONORRHOEA
Anagram [deviant] of initial letter of Hands + ON OGRE OR A , for a clever slang definition that I didn’t know

15 Breakfast item that can’t be beaten?
BOILED EGG
Cryptic definition, which sounds more like Rufus than Paul

16 One’s days are numbered
CALENDAR
And another!

19 Conceited, not living with pigs?
SNOTTY
NOT in STY, which could mean living with pigs!

21 Spiced drink, say, drunk by setter, not going down
NEGUS
EG [say] in [drunk by] a reversal [going up – not going down] of SUN [setter – but not Paul, nor a dog, this time]:  a negus is a kind of hot toddy, said to have been invented by Colonel Negus, which appears in the works of the Brontes, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens

22 Fish surviving wife?
PARR
Double definition, referring to Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, featured in the mnemonic, ‘ divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived’.

33 comments on “Guardian 25,960 / Paul”

  1. Thanks Paul and Eileen
    Easy enough to solve, but a lot of “checking” involved for me. Rather a mixed bag, I though – some really lovely clues (DOOFUS, SAGACITY, NO IDEA, GONORRHOEA, NEGUS for instance) but also some I thought a bit weak – Eileen indicated BOILED EGG and CALENDAR were a Rufusian, and ITEM wasn’t a very well-concealed “hidden”.
    I don’t think I have seen “pants” as an anagram indicator before, but it made a great surface in 24ac!

  3. P.P.S. I’m not all that happy about “city”=”SE”. The SE of England is rather more than London. However there are a lot of SE postcodes in London, though I don’t think any of them are in the “City” in the restricted sense.

  4. Like 10a (and I suppose 25a), 26a reminded me of old jokes, specifically the ones involving adverbs. In this case…
    “We went camping this summer”, she said intently.

  6. Good fun again today, though I needed to look up (here) PARR & NEGUS. Hadn’t met the former as a fish, and was completely misled by “setter”!

    Thought 20a was brilliant…

  7. Thanks Eileen. Agree with your summary: Paul at his best, though not most difficult. I was determined, having caught it quickly, not to look up the spelling of GONORRHOEA and waited to get all the crossing answers. Another quick solve for BOILED EGG: but I still don’t get it exactly.

  8. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. I needed your help to parse 5a, 13a & 26a.

    I liked 22d, 2d, 1a, 4d & 9a and my favourites were NO IDEA, GINGERLY, NEGUS & PRINCESS ANNE.

  9. Thanks Eileen and Paul

    A clever and fun puzzle from Paul. ‘Doofus’ and ‘scatch and sniff’ were new to me but clear enough.

    Lots of ticks – 5a, 11a, 13a, 20a!(too outrageous, I hope, for even the homophonophobes to grump about), 6d, 12d, and 21d.

  10. @7 molonglo: I tink the idea is that’s its scrambled eggs and omelettes that can be beaten.

    Loved GONORRHOEA…

  12. Thanks, Eileen. I do crosswords mainly to be entertained, and this was certainly entertaining, with some really funny clues. There were a couple that pleaded for indulgence (PRINCESS ANNE, for example) but overall a fine offering from Paul.

    There is a third line to the ‘no-eye-deer’ joke, by the way, but it’s not one you’d want your grandchildren to know about.

    On which note: What did the STD germ say as he jumped off the cliff? I’m a goner ‘ere.

    I’ll get me coat.

  13. Hi K’s D

    I think I do know that to which you refer. 😉

    However, I didn’t know your 12d joke, so thanks for that.

  14. Thanks, Eileen.

    Another fun puzzle from Paul, which I raced through, unusually – though there were quite a few write-ins here, including GONORRHOEA (molonglo’s comment at 7 about having to check the spelling reminded me of the mnemonic for an etymologically related tricky word: dash in a rush, run home, or else accident).

    City = SE is certainly inexact (muffin @2) but Paul has added a question mark to cover himself, and the great surface made this one of my favourites. Others were 10a, 24a (splendid anagrind), 26a (unlike some, I love this device), 19d. The attempted homophone at 20a is so outrageous that it raised a smile.

  16. A fine puzzle indeed, though who’d have thought I would have to work out how to spell 12a for cryptic or any other purposes ocme to that.

    Thanks very much to Paul for the entertaining start to the day and to Eileen for the explanations.

  18. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Re 8D, I don’t think ‘display’ is necessarily a verb. Where I used to work, when we wanted a graphical illustration of a product, especially in situ (as they were buried in real-life use), we used to ask the design team to produce a render.

    Simon ô¿ô

  19. Quite right, Simon – thanks for that: I didn’t like ‘the render’.

    I see now that Chambers gives ‘ v [in computer graphics]to convert a description of [an image] into pixels’ and ‘n, an act of rendering, that which is rendered’, which sounds like what you said.

  20. Entertaining today from Paul, solved in between short bouts of tourism.

    See ‘clap’ in a Paul puzzle and one possible answer stands out. It helped though to have the medically-trained Mrs Trailman on hand to aid spelling.

    Thanks Eileen for parsing YOGURT; I was wondering what UGO in TRY (rev) could mean. But the negative was city = SE, simply wrong in this Londoner’s book.

  21. Thanks Eileen & Paul.

    Laughs all the way, just the sort of thing that makes me say, “Oh, good!” when I see Paul’s name as the setter.

    Have a nice week.

  22. Playful Paul. His homophones are funny because they are so naff. 🙂

    Thanks Eileen; I was another like Trailman to reverse ‘try’ and get left with UGO. 🙁

    I guess Paul had a lapse and meant Home Counties for SE instead of City??

  23. I too wondered about city/SE. However, as Eileen notes, ‘the city’, as part of London is in the SE, and so a SE wage might (hence the ?) be earned in ‘the city’. Too much fuss on this one perhaps?

  24. Plenty of amusement with this one, although I agree that it wasn’t one of Paul’s hardest.

    After having made too many stupid mistakes of late I was happy that I spelled GONORRHOEA correctly with only a couple of checkers in place. My reaction to both 15dn and 16dn was also ‘Rufusian’, and you can count me as another who wasn’t overly happy with SE/City.

  25. Thanks, Eileen–I had.. no idea what was up with 10, although I caught a whiff and filled it in. Thanks for the generous explanation. I assume you’ve heard the one about Eileen followed by the one about Irene. Not to be repeated.

  26. As previously stated a typical enjoyable Paul crossword with the usual “fun”.

    I thought perhaps I was getting better but apparently a lot of the regulars also found this easy for Paul 🙁

    Don’t see the problem with SE for London. It is a London postcode area as I think Muffin has already said so clearly SE Wage can be interpreted as one earned in London.

    Thanks to Eileen and Paul.

    P.S. God forbid that Paul is turning into Rufus. Nonsense!

  29. For what it’s worth, I think Paul’s “SE wage” probably just means a wage earned in the South East of the country, of which a City (of London) worker’s wage is an example. I’d guess he liked the fact that it gave him a way of using what looks like another London postcode instead of the predictable “EC”, as it throws a little spanner in the parsing works (although after reading these comments he may have changed his mind…)

    I don’t think it’s conceivable that he got his London postcodes confused. He’s from the South East himself (Brighton).

  30. Thanks Eileen.
    Not sure you’ve fully explained 19 (snotty means conceited – not “living with pigs”), but maybe that was too obvious.
    I was thrown by 20; thought it was something to do with “the artist formerly known as ..”, but if you’re not familiar with doofus you may not have a clue what I’m on about!

  31. Hi Nightjar

    Apologies for the ambiguity: definitions are underlined in the blog, so ‘snotty = conceited’. The wordplay is NOT in STY: I meant that ‘in sty’ could mean ‘living with pigs’ but I realise now that that’s not entirely clear.

  32. Thomas99 @29

    “For what it’s worth, I think Paul’s “SE wage” probably just means a wage earned in the South East of the country, of which a City (of London) worker’s wage is an example.”
    I think that’s more or less what tupu was saying @23 – and certainly the way I read it. [I share tupu’s surprse at all the fuss: surely we’re well used to [eg] ‘Newcastle’ being used to clue NE?]

  33. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Finished this one on Wednesday, but only checked the blog for it today !

    Found it medium hard rather than easy – made a mess of GINGERLY initially by unsuccessfully trying to fit in genteelly, didn’t spot the obvious ha for ITEM and took an age to get the right parsing of YOGURT.

    As others, I thought 20a was an outrageous homophone that brought a mega smile.

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