Guardian 26,349 by Philistine

by

The puzzle may be found at http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26349.

I stazrted noting portmanteau words fairly quickly, but 9A, the gateway clue to the theme , was one of my last entries! Considering that I had half an eye on Federer and Serena in action at the US Open while solving this, it flowed smoothly. On reflection, I am not sure of my list of six portmanteau words: NAPALM seems an odd man out, as a contraction of naphthtenate palmitate. rather than a combination of two separate ideas – and TEX-MEX is another cdntraction, with perhaps a better claim to be a portmanteau. Also, CHORTLE is conjectured to be formed from chuckle and snort, but as far as I know Lewis Carroll did not identify this as its origin. So you pays your money and takes your choice.

completed grid

Across
1 COLUMN Not a row of collaborators as fifth regular feature (6)
 Triple definition: rows and columns of a crossword for example; a fifth column as collaborators with an enemy; and a column in a newspaper,
4 SCRUFF Trump after starting: “Some chicken! Some neck!” (6)
A charade of S C (‘starting Some Chicken’) plus RUFF (‘trump’ as a verb, in bridge for example).
9 PORTMANTEAU WORD Six here playing a part with Tudor women (11,4)
An anagram (‘playing’) of ‘a part’ plus ‘Tudor women’. There are six answers here which migt be described as portmanteau words (11A OXBRIDGE, 12A BEEFCAKE, 15A NAPALM, 1D CHORTLE, 13D FRANGLAIS and 20D CHILLAX).
10 STRONG Sturdy beachwear removing a kind of shirt instead (6)
SARONG (‘beachwear’. The skirt-like garment, widely worn but mainly known in English by its Malaysian and Indonesian name, has been adopted and adapted as a beach wrap) with ‘a’ removed and replaced by T (‘kind of shirt instead’).
11 OXBRIDGE Where to learn about cattle crossing (8)
A charade of OX (‘cattle’) plus BRIDGE (‘crossing’). Another portmanteau word, for Oxford and Cambridge.
12 BEEFCAKE Hunk of meat followed by pudding? (8)
A charade of BEEF (‘meat’) plus CAKE (‘putting’).
14 ROTARY Turning out friendless portrayal (6)
An anagram (‘out’) of ‘[p]ortray[al]’ without PAL (‘friendless’)
15 NAPALM What burnt ally in this country (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of PAL (‘ally’) in NAM (Vietnam, ‘this country’), with an extended definition. I blogged a clue using the same idea in the Everyman 3,537 of 20 July.
18 CRYONICS Keen on ice cream sundae, initially in cold storage (8)
A charade of CRY (‘keen’) plus ‘on’ plus ICS (‘Ice Cream Sundae, initially’).
21 GOOGLIES Cunning ultimate in balls? (8)
An unusual construction: n envelope (‘in’) of G (‘cunninG ultimate’) in GOOLIES (‘balls’), giving the cricket delivery.
22 NITWIT Idiot from Ulster? (6)
A sesquidef (one-and-s-half): NI TWIT, using the equation, common in crosswords if inexact, of Ulster and Northern Ireland.
24 MADAME BUTTERFLY Fat beer tum wobbles in passionately produced opera (6,9)
An envelope (‘in’) of AMEBUTTERF, an anagram (‘wobbles’) of ‘fat beer tum’ in MADLY (‘passionately’). Puccini’s opera is titled in Italian Madama Butterfly. but this is the common English rendering.
25 OBSESS Top jobs, less worry (6)
Remove first letters (‘top’) from ‘[j]obd [l]ess’.
26 TEX-MEX At nearly ten to ten, Times setter first to get chilli con carne? (3-3)
A charade of ‘te[n]’ (‘nearly ten’) plus X (‘ten’, Roman numeral) plus ME (‘setter’) plus X (‘times’), with ‘first’ indicating the order of the last two elements. The question mark denotes a “definition” by example.
Down
1 CHORTLE Carroll had on record this laugh’s etymological origins (7)
A word coined by Lewis Carrolll in Through the Looking-glass.
2 LOTTO Subject of a bid to draw (5)
A charade of LOT (‘subject of a bid’) plus ‘to’.
3 MYALGIA Setter’s queen escapes from Algeria — what a pain! (7)
A charade of MY (‘setter’s’) plus  ‘Alg[er]ia’ without ER (‘queen escapes’).
5 CHAMBER Dictionary incompletely defines “a place of debate” (7)
A subtraction: CHAMBER[s] (‘dictionary’) ‘incompletely’.
6 UNWRITTEN Winter nut is spelt out? No (9)
An anagram (‘spelt out’) of ‘winter nut’.
7 FORAGER Chapter in Steppenwolf, or a German sustenance seeker (7)
A hidden answer (‘chapter n’?) in ‘SteppenwolF OR A GERman’.
8 OTIOSE Ten toes spread out with no purpose (6)
An envelope (‘out’) of IO (‘ten’ as digits) in OTSE, an anagram (‘spread’) of ‘toes’.
13 FRANGLAIS A girl’s fan, peut-être (9)
An anagram (‘peut-être’ – perhaps) of ‘a girls fan’ with an extended definition by example.
16 AVOCADO Green making a fuss about vote cast being halved (7)
An envelope (‘about’) of VO[te] CA[st] (‘VOte CAst being halved’) in ADO (‘fuss’)
17 MAIDENS But French study admitted young women (7)
An envelope (‘admitted) of DEN (‘study’) in MAIS (‘but French’).
18 CASQUE Music a squeezebox provides for headgear (6)
A hidden answer (‘provides for’) in ‘musiC A SQUEezebox’.
19 YANGTZE River voyage danger? Ditch dozens in the centre (7)
Interior letters (‘in the centre’) of ‘voYAge daNGer diTch doZEns’.
20 CHILLAX At first camera held poorly? Cut! Cut and calm down! (7)
A charade of CH (‘at first Camera Held’) plus ILL (‘poorly’) plus AX[e] (‘cut’) ‘cut’. Like 1D, a portmantau word (a description also from Carroll).
23 THRUM No end to the peculiar beat (5)
A charade of ‘th[e]’ (‘no end to the’) plus RUM (‘peculiar’).

*anagram

48 comments on “Guardian 26,349 by Philistine”

  1. CHORTLE can be derived from the original letters of the clue’s first seven words – making 1D a particularly clever &lit, I think. At least, it made me chortle.

  2. Thanks Peter. I feel a complete 22A for blithely finishing the thing and even admiring the elusiveness of late-entry 9A without actually spotting the theme. Never heard of CHILLAX but there was no other option and I put it down to another bit of UK jabberwocky. I liked it all (thanks Philistine) and in particular the cunning ultimate one in.

  3. Ah well, I can go one better than the lot of you. Not only was 9a my last in; it went in as ‘contractual work’. CHORTLE is a wonderful clue.

  4. Thanks, Peter, for a fine blog. I liked the puzzle too, but struggled to finish the SW corner. PORTMANTEAU WORD was one of my last in.

    I was going to raise ‘green’ for AVOCADO as a niggle, but now realise it’s referring to the colour and not the fruit. I don’t like ‘cattle’ for OX, though. Cattle is a mass noun; you can’t have ‘a cattle’. So the clue needs OXEN. But then it wouldn’t work.

    TEX-MEX I would just describe as an abbreviaion of TEXAN-MEXICAN, like ROM-COM, so I don’t really think it’s a blended word, like SMOG or BRUNCH, which is what I always understood a portmanteau word to be. Happen I’m wrong.

    Thanks to Philistine for this one.

  5. Isn’t it strange how different we see things? The SW corner was my starter for ten and then the SE and the top half was where I struggled. Dare I say my favourite was 21ac!

    Like ulaca 9ac threw me for a while as I got the clue numbers wrong and was trying to do something with ‘exclamation mark’ from the clue for 4ac, then when I got the numbers sorted I thought it must be some sort of ‘card’! Eventually I noticed the theme and had a light bulb moment.

  7. Thanks, PeterO.

    Interesting puzzle, with some ingenious and unorthodox clueing.

    PORTMANTEAU WORD was one of my later entries, and I’m still not entirely sure which are Philistine’s intended six (NAPALM or TEX-MEX? Probably the former). I disagree with K’s D @4 over OXBRIDGE: if you take ‘cattle crossing’ as the definition of a livestock transportation structure, rather than as a charade, then ‘ox bridge’ is a perfectly reasonable synonym. On the other hand, 21a doesn’t work for me: the clue seems to point to a singular noun (‘ultimate’) rather than a plural. Amusing though.

    Favourites were CHORTLE (clever &lit), CRYONICS and the keyword at 9a.

  9. Thank you, PeterO.

    I enjoyed all of this and confess (as others) to entering the key to the theme last.

    GOOGLIES was a guilty schoolboyish pleasure, thanks Philistine.

    I think THANKSGIVUKKAH (when Thanksgiving coincided with the Jewish Hannukah) is up there with the most repellent portmanteaux (if that’s the plural).

    Nice week all.

  10. Thanks Philistine for an entertaining solve.

    Thanks PeterO; I managed not to see any goolies during the solve. 😉

    Is BEEFCAKE really a portmanteau word? I thought it was just the male equivalent of cheesecake. I would have thought that TEX-MEX was the sixth one, ‘having a blend of Mexican and southern American features.’ [Oxford]

    My favourite today was CHORTLE. 😆

  12. I too wouldn’t class BEEFCAKE as portmanteau, more the simple idea that a well-built chap might be analogous to a cake of beef. I briefly wondered if THRUM (throb, strum), NITWIT (nit, twit) or LOTTO (lottery, bingo) might be one of the six, but Chambers doesn’t agree.

  13. Thanks gombold @1

    Federer must have been doing something interesting for that not to reach the blog!

    Your name is new to me, so welcome.

  14. Thanks PeterO and Philistine

    A clever and amusing puzzle. I missed Carroll’s own ‘chortle’ out of the list having reached it through the first letters of ‘Carroll had etc’. I included text-mex and beefcake in my list and would now drop beefcake. Tex-mex better fits the definition of a ‘blend of parts of words’.

  15. Sorry that should of course be ‘tex-mex’. ‘Portmanteau word’ as PeterO notes in parentheses under ‘chillax’ is apparently also a Carroll coinage.

  16. Not so keen on the alleged ‘&lit’ for CHORTLE, which is one of those rather awkward clues, labour-intensive on the part of the setter, that one gets straight away: a ‘write-in’. But I suppose the whole clue defines, in its shambling way. Plus I agree with Gervase about GOOGLIES, where the grammar is flawed for the construction, and there’s double-duty in ‘balls’. I don’t like 13 either, which comes across as nonsense.

    Quite a lot of disruption in the natural order of events for some clues (like the one for PORTMANTEAU WORD), and a ‘trying-too-hard’ feel for the whole thing, for me anyway.

  17. Thanks, PeterO.

    I got the key clue on the first pass, seeing the anagram – not that I can say it particularly helped with the rest: as noted above, there is even a bit of uncertainty over “the six”!

    hedgehoggy @16. To paraphrase, “The most cunning of balls are googlies” works just as well for me as “…is the googly”. But then, my grammar has always been dreadful. 🙂

  18. Enjoyed this – difficult enough to occupy most of my lunch break without ever seeming impenetrable. I had TEX-MEX in my list if 6 too, not BEEFCAKE. Missed the wordplay in GOOGLIES so thanks for that (though these days the doosra and carrom ball might be considered just as cunning and more ultimate, after all the googly or Bosie has been around for over 100 years). Last in was OTIOSE. Favourites were FRANGLAIS and OBSESS.

    Thanks to Philistine and PeterO

  19. Thanks, Peter.

    I enjoyed this one, especially GOOGLIES and FARNGLAIS.

    molonglo @ 2 Paul had CHILLAX on April 29 2011, the only other time it has been used in a crossword covered by this site. Then was the first time I had really noticed it, though I think it was floating around in the news at the time. It has often been used since in associating with David Cameron.

  20. Thanks to PeterO for the blog.

    I also disagreed over singular/plural in 11a: cattle is a plural word but ox is singular.

    13a I marked with a question mark as peut-être is purely French.
    Hey a thought: could FRANGLAIS be the missing portmanteau word?

  21. FRANGLAIS was on my portmanteau list. At least, it was the clue I solved straight after 9a, having twigged what the ‘six’ must be, and by then could identify only four.

    ROTARY is a clever clue – my second last in, with NAPALM following. Both, strangely, require you to do something with PAL.

    Not massively keen on grids like these, with just a couple of linkers between N and S. But I do like cunningly designed themes: thanks Philistine.

  23. Thanks all
    I solved ‘chortle’ from the L,E origins and was delighted to find all the others fitted.
    I solved all the RHS quite quickly (but couldn’t parse 19d) but struggled over the rest; last in was ‘googlies’ in spite of listening to TMS as I solved!

  25. Hi NeilW

    That isn’t the ‘surface’ grammar that niggles me, it’s the sense for the underlying reading. ‘Cunning ultimate in balls?’ is as you say, quite acceptable for a definition of GOOGLY, if perhaps not quite right for GOOGLIES.

  26. NW@24; I would have thought that NITWIT is just a concatenation, being a joining of NIT (for nothing) and WIT. It’s certainly different from brunch, motel etc. But maybe some of our etymologists know different.

  28. Thanks Philistine and PeterO
    I had to go out early, with CRYONICS my only entry, so coming back to it later, I was expecting a struggle. In fact it was an absolute delight – lots of great clues (though I must make special mention of the “laugh out loud” GOOGLIES).
    It seems to be only a J short of a pangram, as far as I can see – B(NTO) will be relieved to hear that this wasn’t an aid to solving.
    I wasn’t sure what the “chapter” was doing in the clue for 7d – could anyone explain?

  30. I wondered about Chapter in 7d too, got most of this quickly but ground to a halt with a few to go.
    Thanks Philistine & Peter.

  31. muffin, I took ‘chapter in’ to be the hidden indicator; a ‘chapter in a book’ is ‘part of a book’. I think Peter was hinting at the same thing in his blog.

  33. I completed the puzzle without identifying the theme as usual. I’m very bad at themes and I always kick myself once it has been pointed out. NAPALM took me a long time to get but it was CHORTLE which was the last in.
    Nice puzzle; thanks Philistine!

  35. I found this a complete delight. Witty, challenging enough and an enjoyable theme. (I’ve been a bit under-whelmed by double letters featuring as a theme.) I recognise some of the niggles above, but really didn’t mind them in the context of so much fun. Which is what we’re after, isn’t it?

  36. I didn’t find this particularly easy, but it was an enjoyable solve. Like a few others PORTMANTEAU WORD was my LOI (after OTIOSE), and I hadn’t seen the theme before then.

    I concur with Gervase@7’s parsing of OXBRIDGE.

  40. A very enjoyable puzzle, which rather to my surprise I managed to complete. Predictably I failed to spot the theme, and took the ‘six’ in 9 to refer to 6dn. All my best efforts couldn’t turn UNWRITTEN into a portmanteau word.

    Thanks to Philistine and PeterO.

    19dn cleverly refers to the ‘Yangtze Incident’ of 1948, now hardly remembered, when a British warship found itself up that river in the middle of the fighting leading to the installation of communism in China. For the crew, it really was “river voyage danger”.

  41. A lovely crossword from Philistine. It seemed to be very easy but then temporarily ground to a halt with about 7 to go.

    Much fun though and some really nice clues.

    Of course I didn’t notice the theme (as ever). PORTMANTEAU WORD was my next to LOI.

    Really liked 24A. This like some of the others that were complained about were &lits which if read as such probably answer the complaints. (I think 😉 )

    Thanks to PeterO and Philistine.

  42. Let me first say that I liked this crossword.
    Thoughtful as ever, as we’ve come to expect from Philistine.

    I also think that this setter is slowly moving towards Paul.
    In inventiveness, in naughtiness (today only in 21ac, but look at previous puzzles), in level of difficulty (relatively easy), in twinkliness (um, that isn’t a word 🙂 but it should be).

    But now there’s the pedantic in me.
    Recently, on two occasions (actually in FT blogs, Monk (13 Aug) and Alberich (20 Aug)) there was a discussion on whether devices with multiple fodders are acceptable or not, or at least should be signposted.
    Now I couldn’t be bothered too much by it as setters do it all the time. I think it’s OK, as does e.g. Indy setter Alchemi who dropped by ‘over there’.
    But just like trying to limit the number of cryptic definitions one should, in my opinion, not overuse this device.
    I was surprised that Monk used it three times in one puzzle but he was quick to justify it (using some mathematical laws).
    In this place, Tramp does it quite often in order to get his theme-related surfaces right. Fair enough.

    Now today.
    Philistine must have set a World Record as he does this seven times.
    SEVEN! In 4ac, 18ac, 25ac, 1d, 16d, 19d and 20d.
    I think that is really something that you can call overkill and something that our beloved setter should have avoided.

    Having said that, one of these [1d (CHORTLE)] was quite brilliant.

    As to the rest of this enjoyable puzzle, not sure whether 13d (FRANGLAIS) has a definition by example but I liked it.

    I didn’t know that ‘chilli con carne’ is an example of TEX-MEX (but it is).
    For me, TEX-MEX is a musical genre – think Doug Sahm (Mendocino) or Freddy Fender.

    But, boys and girls, in the end quite a few marks from the Dutch jury for this sparkling puzzle.

  43. Just remember that in ‘Carroll had on record this laugh’s etymological origins’, what’s actually on offer is XXXXXXX XXX XX XXXXXX XXXX XXXXX(‘s) XXXXXXXXXXX origins. That’s the faulty cryptic format in a clue that’s much better than some we see of that ilk!

  46. Thanks Philistine and PeterO

    Lovely puzzle that took a lunch time and a train ride home to complete. Got the theme clue about half way through, but it didn’t really help with the solving. As like many of you, I still could not determine which six were the designated portmanteau words anyway! Didn’t realise that NAPALM was made from two words – must be one of the worst things ever invented – still visualise that famous photo of the little Vietnamese girl running from such an attack!

    Missed the SaRONG part of 10a and hadn’t parsed it before coming here.

  47. So is there not still an unresolved question?
    The ‘six here’ in 9 was surely a reference to the portmanteau words appearing in the answers to the puzzle, but there is a reasonable case to be made for at least seven words, with TEX-MEX being the most obvious example missing from the suggestions given here.

    It was a great puzzle … and to some extent, still is

  48. @47
    It’s unresolved, but the problem is that there aren’t enough portmanteau words, not that there are too many! I certainly wouldn’t call tex-mex or beefcake portmanteau words but I can see that thrum, on a slightly “folk” etymology, could be one. My guess for the sixth was cryonics (cryogenic bionics) but the dictionaries, with one possible exception, don’t seem to confirm it.

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