Guardian 26,451 by Pasquale

by

Lots to like here – my favourites were 1dn, 6dn and 14dn…

…and 1ac, everyone.

Across
1 HAPPY CHRISTMAS
Crappy smash hit out to convey seasonal message (5,9)
=”seasonal message”. (Crappy smash hit)*
9 LAID LOW
Learners without financial support — it hurts, making one sick (4,3)
=”sick”. Two L[earner]s, outside AID=”financial support”, plus OW=”it hurts”
10 PURITAN
Joke about educated woman, who didn’t recognise Noel? (7)
=”[someone] who didn’t recognise Noel” [wiki]. PUN=”Joke”, about RITA=”educated woman” in the film ‘Educating Rita’
11 INTRO
Church anthem — it’s lacking jazzy element (5)
=”jazzy element”. The INTROit is a part of the Eucharist i.e. “Church element”, but it is lacking
12 ON THE WING
About to go flying (2,3,4)
=”About to go”; also =”flying”
13 GODLINESS
Virtue having rows in upper part of theatre (9)
=”Virtue”. LINES=”rows”, inside [the] GODS=”upper part of theatre”
14 SOLFA
Musical set left escon­ced in comfortable seat (5)
The musical system. L[eft], inside SOFA=”comfortable seat”
15 ORACH
Edible plant, yellow and long, getting chopped (5)
an edible plant. OR=gold or “yellow” in heraldry, plus ACH[e]=”long, getting chopped”
17 TEMAZEPAM
Drug starts to take effect with little woman admitting state of confusion (9)
=”Drug”. The starting letters of T[ake] E[ffect], plus PAM[ela]=”little woman”, around MAZE=”state of confusion”
20 PRINCIPAL
Head‘s essential nature comes through in speech (9)
=”Head”. Sounds like ‘principle’=”essential nature”
22 WHIST
Say nothing in card game (5)
=”Say nothing”, be silent; also =a “card game”
23 NEUTRON
One runt suffering — it’s very small (7)
is very small. (One runt)*
24 CELLARS
Vehicles covering dist­ance — they may collect bins (7)
=”they may collect bins”, bins being batches of wine. CARS=”Vehicles”, around ELL=a measure of “distance”
25 WHOLEMEAL BREAD
A mellow beer had to be brewed — yeast essential for making it (9,5)
=”yeast essential for making it”. (A mellow beer had)*
Down
1 HOLDING COMPANY
Big business street must be this for Scot (7,7)
=”Big business”. ST[reet] must be HOLDING CO[MPANY] for it to become “SCOT”
2 PRINTED
Was curious about Matthew etc, becoming impressed (7)
=”impressed”. PRIED=”Was curious”, around N[ew] T[estament]=”Matthew etc”
3 YELLOWISH
To make a lot of noise over something wanted is a bit sensational? (9)
=”a bit sensational”, as yellow=”sensational”. YELL=”make a lot of noise”, plus the cricket abbreviation O[ver], plus WISH=”something wanted”
4 HOW COME
Please explain why resid­ence contains old loo (3,4)
=”Please explain why”. HOME=”residence”, around O[ld] plus WC=”loo”
5 IMPETUS
Big road heading north — favourite American drive (7)
=”drive”. The M1 is a “Big road”, reversed (“heading north”), plus PET=”favourite” plus US=”American”
6 TERSE
Brief winter season — victory a boy delivered (5)
=”Brief”. [win]TER SE[a son], with win=”victory” and a son=”a boy” removed or “delivered”
7 ANTHILL
A new work outside hospital in a mound of earth (7)
=”mound of earth”. A plus N[ew] plus TILL=”work [the soil]”, outside H[ospital”
8 ANAGRAMMATISED
Amsterdam again is seen to be this! (14)
this is (Amsterdam again)*, and therefore &lit
14 SIZEWELL B
It’s a source of power, laments 19 audibly (8,1)
is a nuclear power station [wiki]. Sounds like ‘sighs Welby’, where sighs=”laments” and Justin Welby is the current Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore a PRIMATE
16 AZIMUTH
Angle presented by extreme characters — I say nothing must be forbidden (7)
The angle between North and the point on the horizon beneath a celestial body. A and Z are the “extreme characters” of the alphabet, plus I M[o]UTH=”I say” but with the O=”nothing” removed or “forbidden”.
17 TOPONYM
Name of place in which American uncle stables horse (7)
=”Name of place”. Uncle TOM from the American novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, around PONY=”horse”
18 MALACCA
Mum sitting on varnish can, losing sight of bottom, stick (7)
a walking stick. MA=”Mum”, on LAC, a resin used as a “varnish”, plus CA[n]
19 PRIMATE
Thomas Becket? Proper troublemaker! (7)
=an archbishop, for example Thomas Becket. PRIM=”Proper” plus ATE, the Greek goddess of mischief
21 CAROL
Old peasant conveys love for girl in song (5)
=”girl; also =”song”. CARL, archaic for churl or “peasant”, around O=”love”

34 comments on “Guardian 26,451 by Pasquale”

  1. Thanks Pasquale and manehi
    I didn’t parse 1d, or see why the second part of the clue for 6d was there, but otherwise I thought it was very easy. I don’t think I have heard “on the wing” for “about to go”, though.
    Favourites were PURITAN and SIZEWELL B (though this was an easy guess when the last letter was “B”!)

  2. P.S. 1ac to everyone too (though we always say “Merry” rather than “Happy”; the latter goes with “New Year”)

  3. Thanks Pasquale and manehi. It’s a rare treat to find a pasquale that I can get close to finishing (had to look up ORACH and AZIMUTH – lovely words).

    Merry/Happy Christmas to all from me, tooo.

  4. I don’t really get 8D. It seems like a sort of reverse clue, but it doesn’t really work for me. The clue could be adjusted to give any anagram without a definition, e.g. “Team is seen to be this” to get the answer MEAT, MATE, TAME…

  6. I couldn’t get 1d after erroneously putting in FEEL LOW instead of LAID LOW: Fee = financial support (just about) + OW around two learners LL. But very enjoyable as usual. Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

  8. 1a everybody and many thanks, manehi.

    Lovely puzzle from a great setter. SIZEWELL B must be a candidate for COY.

    Didn’t parse all through not knowing ‘Ate’ (Goddess of mischief); ‘or’ for yellow; and ‘lac’ (varnish). 1d was also too clever for this slogger to parse.

    Well done, Don, more in 2015 please!

  9. Like drofle @6, I first put in FEEL LOW, but then had 1d H-F—-, Hofmann psychedelic, or Hoffman Yippie, plus Strasse?, which did not sound promising, and where did Scot fit in…

    I liked PRIMATE and SIZEWELL B!

    Thanks Pasquale and manehei, a great parsing job and I really needed your help.

    Season’s Greetings to All.

  10. Well this was fun, just right for the day. I got the B in 14d before the rest of the clue so immediately dashed in VITAMIN and was really nonplussed when it didn’t fit. No significant delay though. PRIMATE went in next, natch, with a smile on my face.

    Muffin @2, all the cards I sent have HAPPY CHRISTMAS on them. My one moan is that I thought SOLFA was hyphenated. But really I’m too far gone on seasonal happiness to feel that a gripe is the right thing to do.

    Best wishes to all!

  11. Thoroughly enjoyed this, though we failed to parse 11ac – indeed, still don’t understand the connection with “jazzy element” – or (sadly) 1d and, like muffin, missed the last bit of 6d.
    Manehi omitted to mention that 25ac is an anagram too.
    Yes, and we had to look up orach (I still wouldn’t recognise one if I saw it).
    And 1ac to all!

  12. Despite a fast start, I found this harder to finish than yesterday’s Enigmatist, and would never have got the last in (ORACH) without the Check button. TEMAZEPAM was tricky to parse (and to spell), and I’d never have thought of MAZE for “state of confusion”.

    Thanks to manehi and Pasquale and 1 across to all…

  14. [Yes, Cookie – very hedgehoggy – though two of the clues he mentioned, I had, more gently, questioned as well. I’m disappointed we didn’t hear what he thought of yesterday’s]

  15. Thanks all
    I thought 8d and especially 1d were brilliant. Although I wrote in intro I did not parse it.
    I do not fully understand 19d.

  17. Thanks to all compilers, bloggers and posters (excepting the impolite ones) throughout the year.
    Happy(or Merry)Christmas

  18. Well I found this rather difficult and osmosis came to my aid to compensate for my inability to parse rather a lot of this. I also wanted 14d to be vitamin and I really didn’t understand HOLDING COMPANY so thanks for explaining that. Same with INTRO which I had as IMPRO- jazzy,you see. liked AZIMUTH and TEMAZEPAM.
    Anyway HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all out there.

  22. Thanks to Don for a most apropos Christmas offering. Having lived abroad for so long a combination of failure to recall the current Archbish’s name and more seriously a failure to recall Sizewell from the mists led to me hazarding Seascale B – not far off, as it happens. I was therefore unable to play WHIST at 22a, which had always seemed the likeliest hand. Thanks to Andrew for a couple of other parsings and Season’s Greetings to all.

  23. Wrote in several without parsing, all correct, 1d, 19d, 16d, 15a, 11a, 20a. 12a seemed non-cryptic, didn’t know “about to go”=”on the wing”.

  24. I finished most of this but unlike most solvers I was not very happy.

    A bit sensational = yellowish seems rather tenuous.

    Intro = jazzy element? In my experience it is called the head!

    I have never heard of orach or ate, in that sense.

    I am loth to admit I put callers for 24a: I just never thought of cellars.

    Overall a little disappointed.

  26. I enjoyed this but a few of the parsings were beyond me.

    I was puzzled about “yellowish” = “sensational” but interpreted it along the lines of yellow alerts which are a bit less sensational than the red ones.

    rcw@15 – I too needed Manehi to sort this one out but SIZEWELL B (14dn) is a homophone (audibly) of “sighs Welby” where Welby is the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore a primate as was Thomas Becket (murdered by Henry II)

  27. Thanks Pasquale and manehi

    Ref yellowish/sensational, I saw that as a reference to the yellow (sensationalist) press, certainly in France, mayve elsewhere.

  28. Happy Christmas all.

    I finished this but had never heard of ORACH. Wordplay got me there in the end.

    Some nice clues though. 8d, 17a for instance.

    Thanks to manehi and Pasquale

  29. Ha! I’ve only just got to today’s one, having wrestled long and hard with Enigmatist. But fun right from the start – crappy smash hit, everyone! 😀

  30. JohnM @ 24 Atë as the Greek goddess of mischief and delusion, mentioned in the Iliad, is quite the crossword staple. Chambers specifies ‘jazz’ under its ‘intro’ entry, so the setter’s covered, whatever our own experience/usage might be. 🙂

    (Had to copy, refresh and paste this – captcha has been in the Warninck’s advocaat, continuously denying that 7-4 = 3!)

  32. kamintone @31 is correct I think.

    The “head” is what’s known in classical terms as the “subject”. It’s what the musicians will improvise around and return to “uually” (no rules in jazz!)

    Obviously this comes near the beginning but may not be the “intro” which could in fact bear no resemblance to the “head”

    P.S. I don’t particularly follow jazz any more so don’t ask me any hard questions 😉

  33. As a practising and previously professional jazz musician, I cannot deny that many jazz numbers have intros; but I can’t agree that this is by definition a ‘jazzy element’. Plenty of other forms of music include introductions and I am not aware that performers in other genres are so snobby that they don’t abbreviate the word.

    One of Grieg’s piano concerti springs to kind… http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R7GeKLE0x3s

  34. Thanks Pasquale and manehi

    Happy Christmas a couple of years ago :-))) … and a seasons gift from the Don at the top to start with! 🙂

    Thought it one of the best puzzles that I’d done in ages with a good mix of gettable clues and a couple with a lot of depth in them. Not knowing the power station nor the current Archbishop of Canterbury made 14d a bit harder for me – but saw the cleverness of it when I did.
    Was pleased to see the neat trick with 1d when the penny dropped. Couldn’t see the ‘victory a boy’ bit of 6d (which was my last one in) until coming here though – had just seen it as a hidden clue with padding initially.

    Am really enjoying these older backlog puzzles done more leisurely.

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