Guardian Cryptic N° 26,243 by Orlando

by

The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26243.

I thought this a fairly gentle end to the week, with ingenious use of relatively simple constructions – indeed, it was a pleasure to blog.

 

Across
1. Such a liar may be unmasked (9)
BAREFACED Definition and literal interpretation.
6. Nosh found in aisle at supermarket (4)
EATS A hidden answer (‘found in’) in ‘aislE AT Supermarket’.
8. Training facility affected by Wellington? (4,4)
BOOT CAMP A charade of BOOT (‘Wellington’) plus CAMP (‘affected’).
9. Unpleasant atmosphere when one stops grandmother (6)
MIASMA An envelope (‘stops’) of I (‘one’) in MA’S MA (‘grandmother’).
10. One who succeeds, holding iron lower (6)
HEIFER An envelope (‘holding’) of FE (‘iron’) in HEIR (‘one who succeeds’).
11. Cameron bursting with love? With love! (3,5)
CON AMORE An anagram(‘bursting’) of ‘Cameron’ plus O (‘love’).
12. Entertaining party a communist thought the world of (6)
ADORED An envelope (‘entertaining’) of DO (‘party’) in ‘a’ plus RED (‘communist’).
15. Formal wear preferred at first in chaotic situation (8)
TAILSPIN A charde of TAILS (‘formal wear’) plus P (‘Preferred at first’) plus ‘in’.
16. Scare the stuffing out of fencer in a duel? (8)
AFFRIGHT An envelope (‘in’) of FR (‘F[ence]R‘ with its inner letters removed – ‘the stuffing out’) in ‘a’ plus FIGHT (‘duel’).
19. Girl’s accompaniment for airs? (6)
GRACES Double definition.
21. Proposal by solicitor to get into bed (5,3)
PLANT OUT A charade of PLAN (‘proposal’) plus TOUT (‘solicitor’).
22. Capital is what artist required in Tennessee (6)
TEHRAN An envelope (‘in’) of EH? (‘what’) plus RA (‘artist’) in TN (‘Tennessee’).
24. Tree that’s small, OK? (6)
SALLOW A charade of S (‘small’) plus ALLOW (‘OK’).
25. Weasel finally made one fancy pop (8)
LEMONADE An anagram (‘fancy’) of L (‘weaseL finally’) plus ‘made one’.
26. Endlessly examine poker (4)
STUD STUD[y] (‘examine’) minus its last letter (‘endlessly’).
27. Marilyn to change where change is made (5,4)
ROYAL MINT An anagram (‘change’, the first one) of ‘marilyn to’.

Down
1. Dickens introduced old English drink (5)
BOOZE An envelope (‘introduced’) of O (‘old’) in BOZ (‘Dickens’, a pen-name he used) plus E (‘English’).
2. Tiny creature avoiding northern frontier resort (7)
ROTIFER An anagram (‘resort’) of ‘fro[n]tier’ without the N (‘avoiding northern’).
3. Not unreasonable about line that’s bent (5)
FLAIR An envelope (‘about’) of L (‘line’) in FAIR (‘not unreasonable’).
4. Unoriginal material to be published about time (7)
COPYCAT A charade of COPY (‘material to be published’) plus CA plus T (‘time’).
5. Pantomime character getting out of the habit? (5,4)
DEMON KING A re-articulation as DE-MONKING (‘getting out of the habit’).
6. Renaissance man‘s calculations are upset (7)
ERASMUS A reversal (‘upset’ in a down light) of SUMS (‘calculations’) plus ‘are’.
7. Mercutio’s wandering star (3,6)
TOM CRUISE An anagram (‘wandering’) of ‘Mercutios’.
13. I don’t mess with leaf stripper (9)
DEFOLIANT An anagram (‘mess’) of ‘I dont’ plus ‘leaf’.
14. Brute force, for God, was slipping? (4,2,3)
DOGS OF WAR An anagram (‘slipping’) of ‘for God was’.
17. Standing light went on causing resentment (7)
RANKLED A charade of RANK (‘standing’) plus LED (‘light’).
18. Central features of patio doors match perfectly (7)
TOTALLY A charade of TO (‘central features of paTio doOrs’) plus TALLY (‘match’).
20. African people heard a song (7)
ASHANTI A homophone (‘heard’) of ‘a’ plus CHANTY – or SHANTY – (‘song’)
22. Language expert a millionaire employs (5)
TAMIL A hidden answer (’employs’) in ‘experT A MILlionaire’.
23. Inspect a Buddhist in an oddly selective way (5)
AUDIT Odd letters (‘in  an oddly selective way’) of ‘A bUdDhIsT‘.

28 comments on “Guardian Cryptic N° 26,243 by Orlando”

  1. Enjoyed this very much although I missed one – I didn’t get 15 despite having all the crosses in! I was convinced for some reason that it was anagram of situation with one letter out. 🙁

    Re. 11: got it thanks to the word play, but shouldn’t the clue contain some indicator that it is an Italian term? Or is “con amore” in regular use in English?

    Thanks to Orlando for a great time, and to PeterO for the blog!

  2. Forgot to add that I was convinced the last four letters of 15 were “suit” – formal wear, right? 🙂

  3. re Abhay, I too thought I was ‘suit’ – I had a rather unconvincing ‘tailsuit’ for a while even though it didn’t parse.

    Particularly liked ‘de-monking’ and ‘Ma’s Ma’. I always thought it was spelled ‘Teheran’.

    Anyway, good fun and thanks for the blog.

  4. Thanks Orlando and PeterO

    A curious mix of clues I loved and clues I didn’t understand even when having entered the answer. The former include AFFRIGHT, ROYAL MINT, DEFOLIANT and DOGS OF WAR – great clues all. Lots of other good ones too. Thanks to PeterO for explanations of the latter (22a, 4d, 17d).

    I liked DEMON KING, but can’t think of a pantomime in which he appears – any suggestions?

    I have relations who live in Llantrisant, affectionately known as “the hole with the mint in it”.

  5. Muffin – the Demon King is a generic term for 1 of the 4 staple characters which every panto must have: the dame;the prinicipal boy; the principal girl and the demon king. So Captain Hook would be the demon king in Peter Pan for example.
    Hope this helps.
    Nice ending to the week from Orlando

  7. I forgot to add that it was the &lit elements of DEFOLIANT (“leaf stripper”) and DOGS OF WAR (“slipping” referring to “Let slip…..”) that I particularly liked.

  8. Thanks PeterO.

    I thought the TOM CRUISE anagram was a great spot by Orlando – and what a lovely surface! – as was CON AMORE [we’ve had the CAMERON / ROMANCE one several times but this was a nice new slant. [Abhay @1, it’s a musical direction and in the English dictionaries, so no problem, I think.]

    Other favourites were 16ac and 6dn. The surfaces throughout, as always with Orlando, are immaculate.

    [Aoxomoxoa’s comment @3 made me smile – Abhay on April 7th:
    “Took some time to get 18 as I have always seen it spelt “Tehran”.”. 😉

    Many thanks to Orlando for another lovely puzzle.

  9. I was convinced there was a tie in 15a for ages – then a suit – finally got all the crosses but still had to resort to trying out all possible letters until tails appeared. Never quite parsed 17d or flair=bent, but lots of lovely clues here – miasma, royal mint and dogs of war were favourites.

  10. Completed successfully, but I needed the blog to show me how good the clues were. I failed to parse ‘miasma’ and thought that the tense was wrong in ‘rankled’ until Peter’s blog demonstrated that I had not understood the clue properly.
    Like Eileen, I was tickled by the comments about ‘Tehran/Teheran’, coming so soon upon each other (not quite the same as the ‘sulphur/sulfur’ debate, but indicative that solvers have to be alert to alternatives). [Having said that, I am reminded that I thought that the ‘Thatch/Teach alternatives that were crucial to one of yesterday’s solutions took things too far in obscurity].

  11. Yet again, too many write-ins – the first six across clues in particular. However, I ‘ll forgive all for the sake of the wonderful, glorious, groan-evoking clue at 5d.

  13. Lovely puzzle – add me to the “—-SUIT” brigade…

    I think my favourite clue might be MIASMA. DEMON KING was also excellent, although I spent a long time convinced that the “DEMON” was the habit (as in the demon drink), which meant I took a long time to get the second word.

    I was also convinced that 24 could be equally validly parsed as “OAKIES”: tree = OAK, that is = IE, small = S, with the word itself being either a slangy way of saying OK, or the people of Oklahoma (OK) – although on checking dictionaries, it looks like its only ever written without the “A” in both senses, this is entirely my error, not Orlando’s.

  14. Enjoyable solve with plenty of good clues.

    Thanks PeterO; I was another getting stuck with ‘suit’ in 15. DEMON KING and PLANT OUT were especially good, I thought.

  15. Thanks to PeterO for the blog. You explained several where I had the answer but not the parsing.

    I agree with Eccles45 ‘groan-making’ for 5d! That was one I failed to parse.
    MIASMA took me an age because I was determined to force NAN in there somewhere. 🙁

  16. Thanks all
    Very enjoyable,just the right degree of difficulty for me.
    Last in, but only because I had not read the clue before, was 19ac.
    Favourite 24 across. I found it difficult to parse 4 down.

  17. This is the sort of puzzle I really like. I think it is the quality and precision of the clues whether they are easy to solve or not. As others say there are some really nice constructions here.

  18. I agree with Cryptocyclist, in spite of joining Abhay in getting 15 wrong.

    I don’t mind being defeated by clever cluing. But (sorry Boatman) I don’t like the artificial difficulty of words in the clue being broken or run together or being synonyms of the word actually needed.

  19. Thing about Teheran/Tehran is that it’s really spelled [something Farsi]. How you transliterate it into the Roman alphabet depends on what system you’re using. You can get similar debates about all kinds of other words: tsar/czar; Peking/Beijing; suq/souk; qat/kat (with the former a favorite among Scrabble players); tref/treyf/treif; etc.

    Except in that last case, any of these is kosher for crossword purposes, I’d say (and I except that last case because if it’s tref, by definition it ain’t kosher).

    –M.

  20. Mostly a stroll but demon king / de-monking was entered as a guess.

    Rather more enjoyable than the boatman beasting yesterday as i do the guardian generally as an after work calm down.

  21. Even though I found this relatively straightforward I thought it was a top-quality puzzle. Count me as another who was looking for “suit” at the end of 15ac until the penny dropped. DEMON KING was my LOI after I finally saw the clever “de-monking”. Because of the “pantomime character” reference at the start of the clue and the D?M checkers at the start of the answer I had been considering the inclusion of “dame” somewhere in the answer.

  22. Add me to the “SUIT” brigade. I spent a long time looking for some esoteric formal wear before I got to the chaos!

    21A also had me thinking for too long about protagonists either in courtrooms or under red (or blue) lights. I finally reversed engineered from bed to the correct solicitor!

    Best Orlando for a while. Some great misdirection and he also had me fooled into thinking some of his clues were incorrect before I looked again.

    Thanks to PeterO and Orlando

  23. Yes: thanks all general agreement here from Sue and me.

    Red faces too, for having gone searching for a possible actor called TIM CRUSOE (I think he might indeed be a DeFoe character though) 🙂

  26. Thanks Peter O and Orlando

    Got to this quite late after a brief look earlier.

    Very enjoyable with the usual immaculate clues as Eileen notes. I ticked 21a, 26a, 27a, and 5d in anot very systematic way.

  28. I do so love Orlando – seemingly effortless grace, charm and subtlety.

    An interesting contrast to yesterday.

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