Guardian 26,575 / Pasquale

57 comments on “Guardian 26,575 / Pasquale”

1. Thanks all
   Much, much better, Guardian!
   As said above some unfamiliar words, for me digamy,twash or t-wash, mangosteen and barytes but all solvable from the cryptics.
   I wasted much time on card palace since castle is not familiar to me.

2. I didn’t spot the inclusion of WATER in 18. I had it as the way to see how squelchy a territory is is to make a log (record) of its water. Duh!

3. I enjoyed this, although like RCWhiting I hadn’t heard of BARYTES or DIGAMY. Couldn’t parse RIOT. Favourites were MANGOSTEEN, BANTERING and MOODINESS.

4. Had no problem sound Mall and Maul (FOI). but lud for judge was new to me (m’lud possibly) as was card castle, only ever heard of house of cards. Similarly “once for all’, has always been “once and for all” to me.

   Plus all the other new words already mentioned, but as others have said all fairly clued and very gettable.

5. Thank you Pasquale and Gaufrid.

   A most enjoyable puzzle. LEMANS for mistresses was new to me, and I presume that in 20d ‘marched’ for ‘deposed’ comes from ‘given his marching orders’.

   I first entered GANDERS at 27a, but it would not parse; I did not know the colloquial meaning of GANNETS (the words are related I see in the dictionary).

   Failed to parse WATERLOGGED. I did like THEMATIC, RIOT, BANTERING and ETRUSCAN!

   Perhaps homophones should be ‘heard’ as ‘received pronounciation’, not as one oneself would pronounce them since there will always be exceptions.

6. cookie@5 – you never been an angry student marching on a demonstration? I took the being deposed as part of the removal of the M.

7. A couple I didn’t know, but strangely it was a fruit we eat a lot of out here in the east which gave me the most trouble, courtesy of the anagrind “chopped”. All in all, rather easier than the average Don, and something almost by way of light relief after today’s Times monster, which had even the great Magoo unable to break the 10-minute barrier. Made me pleased that my blogging day is a Monday.

8. This puzzle felt decidedly “old-fashioned” to me, with words such as DIGAMY (not in Chambers online), DICOT, LEMAN, LUD, GANNET = greedy person, GAMUT = series of notes, DUTY OF CARE, CANNONEER and CARD-CASTLE ((not in Chambers online). It made me wonder if young people – teenagers and 20-somethings – are taking up cryptic crosswords, and if so, how are they coping with puzzles like this?

   I gave up on 5a (I never would have solved this in a million years – this word is so far off my radar as to be in the deepest depths of outer space!), 6d (even though i did think of Judas) and 13d – I got CASTLE but that was because I was thinking of SAND-CASTLE. I have never heard of a CARD-CASTLE and neither has my online dictionary!

   I needed help to parse 18a.

   I liked 7d THEMATIC.

   Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid.

9. AndyK @6, thanks! I was a perpetual student until recently, but never marched.

10. Thanks to the Don; some nice clues with the usual smattering of unknown words.

    Thanks Gaufrid, especially for the parsing of WATERLOGGED, which I missed.

    Michelle @8; the online Chambers is incomplete (the hard-backed version has both DIGAMY and CARD-CASTLE.) So, maybe time to buy the BRB, although if you use the Chambers word wizard, this has a pretty complete dictionary.

    ONCE FOR ALL is in Chambers, although I’ve only ever heard of the ONCE and FOR ALL. Maybe I’m parsing SWAMPING incorrectly but it would seem to make more sense to me to have something like ‘Flooding? There’s shift of position when a politician is removed,’ (or changing when to that in the original.)

    I liked DELUDED for the nicely misleading judge=LUD, WATERLOGGED (after the parsing) & THEMATIC.

11. P.S. Don’t use the ‘Dictionary’ tab on the Chambers word wizard page, just put the word into the solutions box.

12. CARD-CASTLE was new to me too, and entered gingerly instead of CARD-BATTLE.

    At least with Pasquale you know there will be some obscurities, so when I conjured with DICOT I knew there was a good chance it was right. So I enjoyed winkling this out, overall, with BARYTES my favourite – the surface, while plausible, made no sense for so long that it was all the more pleasurable when it finally came.

13. This proceeded haltingly for me until the northeast corner, when it stopped proceediing altogether. BARYTES was a new word to me, and the clues for CANNONEER and THEMATIC eluded me until I cheated.

    The other new words went in all right. I put in (much more familiar) BIGAMY instead of DIGAMY at first, but obviously “big Amy” doesn’t fit the wordplay.

    There are dialects in which “mall” and “maul” aren’t homophones? Wow. For those for whom it’s not: which one rhymes with “all,” and how do you say the other one?

    Last comment: Homophones are always contentious here, but I think the suggestion above that they be restricted to received pronunciation is too restrictive. Aside from the fact that native speakers of that dialect are a minority, even in Britain, there’s also the fact that such a rule would restrict some fairly neat clues.

14. Pall Mall cigarettes used to be pronounced Pal Mal, but the Mall in London, if I remember rightly, is pronounced the same as a shopping mall? The OCED gives the same prounciation for MALL and MAWL.

15. mrpenney @ 13 – there’s also the consideration that not everyone’s RP is the same, and that Standard British English (a more common descriptor these days) is different from RP. To many people, at any rate…

16. To answer mrpenney’s question at @13, for me ‘maul’ rhymes with ‘all’ and ‘mall’ with ‘Al’ (the name) or ‘pal’ (as suggested by Cookie).

    This can be confirmed by a visit to Oxford on-line ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ ). This gives a single pronunciation for ‘maul’ but three for ‘mall’ (you can listen to them if that is your want).

    Chambers only gives two for ‘mall’ (the second indicated as predominantly N American) but both sources support my difference in pronunciation.

17. As so often with Pasquale, this was an odd mixture of easy and very obscure. My last in was MANGOSTEEN, which was new to me and I only got it by guess and check – DIGAMY and GAMUT also took far longer than they should have. CARD CASTLE was unfamiliar too – I was toying with SANDCASTLE (as in the king of the castle) for a while…

    Thanks to Gaufrid and Pasquale

18. Sorry, that should be ‘pronunciation’ @14 (my granddaughter’s computer, spell check is stuck on French and the keys stick).

    If the pronunciation of two words is not given as identical in a standard English dictionary, how could they be considered homophones in the crossword of a national newspaper? A regional hint would have to be given in the clue.

    When the possibiliy of a homophone is suggested by ‘report’ etc., could not one be wary and imagine similar words spoken in the theatre, or in a film like ‘Pride and Prejudice'(!); of course none of these arguments apply to the States.

    Final note, MALL is a variant of MAUL, from the Latin malleus ‘hammer’.

19. Thanks Gaufrid and Pasquale
    I found this a bit of a slog and failed to parse ‘waterlogged’ and ‘striding’ fully.
    Digamy is in my I-pad Chambers. I also had sand-castle instead of card-castle. I did not know the latter.
    7d was my Cod.

20. Thanks to Pasquale and to Gaufrid for the parsing I much needed. I had no problem with maul-mall and knew “leman”-mistress but stumbled with BARYTES, the “castle” in CARD CASTLE, DUTY OF CARE (new to me), MANGOSTEEN, DIGAMY, DICOT, TRASH, and the “lud” in DELUDED (another three-letter item to add to my list). For me, tough going but enjoyable nonetheless.

21. Thanks for the blog, Gaufrid, especially the parsing of WATERLOGGED – I could see hoW ATER but couldn’t quite tease out the rest.

    Like Tupu, I found it a bit of a slog – CARD-CASTLE was new to me, too.

    Re 21 ac: I would pronounce MALL as mal but found when I went to America that there it was a ‘mawl’. Collins and Chambers both give both pronunciations, the latter being ‘especially North American’ [Chambers] – so I don’t see any problem with the clue.

    Cookie @14

    The street in London, from which the cigarettes were presumably named, is pronounced Pal Mal – originally the ‘alley’ where the game of pall mall [forerunner of croquet] was played – with a mallet! And in many decades of listening to commentaries on state occasions, I have never heard The Mall pronounced otherwise.

    Anyway, my plaster is at last off and, although stiff, my wrist now feels [almost] as if it belongs to me again – hurrah!

22. Thanks Pasquale for a sometime frustrating puzzle and gaufrid for a helpfful blog. I didn’t get RIOT and couldn’t parse 20d.

    In 1d I thought that ‘little woman’ was a reference to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, so it had to be Jo, Beth or Amy. DIGAMY had me scuttling to the dictionary, where I also found deuterogamy. The list of words I know but will probably never user continues to grow.

    I wrestled longer than I wanted to with THEMATIC in 7d, trying to make it arithmetic. (one of the 3 R’s). I still wince when I hear Arithmetic referred to as Math(s).

23. Hi Michelle @ 8. I don’t know whether young people are taking up cryptics (one of my three twenty-something children is interested) or with old-fashioned words, but I know that this 69-year-old has trouble with some of the new, or new to me, words like GANGSTA and SELFIE-STICK!

    Many thanks to Gaufrid and Pasquale.

24. Eileen @21, thanks, I remember you mentioning before that an early form of croquet was played in The Mall (Mal) in the past.
    I guess the MALL (MAUL) pronunciation has caught-on from American films where it is used when referring to shopping malls!
    So glad your plaster is off.

25. I rather agree with Michelle on this puzzle. I did get BARYTES from the wordplay but had no idea what it meant. I didn’t know DIGAMY -LOI- but I laughed out loud when I got it. MAUL isn’t a homophone for MALL unless you’re auditioning for Downton! And others have mentioned the other obscenities.
    I did the bottom half quite quickly but most of the top took an age. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know the second meaning of GAMUT.
    Mostly enjoyable though.
    Thanks Pasquale.

26. Oops I meant obscurities.
    Sorry!

27. Peter Asplnwall @25, I think both Gaufrid and Eileen would agree that those auditioning for Downton would have to pronounce MALL as MAL; the MALL / MAUL pronunciation is probably American where it is used when referring to shopping MALLS, and 21a refers to ‘shopping centres’.

28. Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid

    I liked COMBINATION and DUTY OF CARE very much………………..but…………..; a judge would never be called “lud” – m’lud, yes, but not just lud; DICOT is an unindicated abbreviation (dicotyledon); ST for stop is apparently used by the US Postal Service (Google tells me), but surely isn’t in general use?; decisively is once AND for all.

    Why is “logged” a containment indicator?

    I reluctantly entered CARD CASTLE – I only know “house of cards”, and I gave up on TRASH (still don’t really see it).

29. P.S. I’m sure we all discussed maul/mall fairly recently, but I can’t find it in a quick search.

30. Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid

    muffin @ 28: it isn’t ST for STOP, it’s ST(OP) with RIDING (using a bike) replacing (for) OP (work).

    hth

31. Thanks Simon

32. …and Gaufrid – I read the blog in a hurry and rather carelessly.

33. Hi muffin @28
    Simon S has beaten me to it regarding 8dn. I would just add that ‘lud’, ‘dicot’ and ‘once for all’ can all be justified in at least one of the usual references.

    Regarding 26ac, you might criticise (pan) TRASH or put it in the waste bin (can).

34. Thanks again, Gaufrid
    That makes 26 clearer – don’t like it much, though.
    I’ll bow to your research on “lud” and “once for all”. My point on “dicot” was slightly different. I agree that “dicot” (and “monocot”) are in common usage, but they are abbreviated forms, and these are generally indicated (“in short” etc.)

35. Got held up with 5a entering tunes- u with anagram (publication) of sent going around which to me works just as well as the correct parsing. Apart from this another great offering from the Don

36. Cookie@27. I disagree. MAUL is the posh version of MALL. I’ve no doubt there are many variations in the Americas but who cares?/

37. Finished this but didn’t enjoy it.

    I didn’t think it was particularly well clued and the likes of BARYTES, and MANGOSTEEN are just unnecessary bordering on unfair. Anybody can make a puzzle difficult by choosing esoteric words for the the grid. However “it’s not big and it’s not clever” 😉 . Just lazy!

    I didn’t parse THEMATICS and should have but I still don’t think the parsing for STRIDING works. It was obviously STOP RIDING minus work (OP) but it appears some words are missing from the wordplay. (Surely “for” is insufficient?)

    So we’ve had Rufus at his best folowed by Pasquale at his worst! What does the rest of the week have to offer?

    Finally my old favourite the “homophone” rears its head again. I know I’ve said it before but indicators like “report”, “on the radio”, broadcast” etc to me indicate “sounds like” but not “homophone”. Because the indicator suggests transmission we can accept a little distortion in the reception. This also gets rid of all the arguments about which pronunciation is referred to.

    Thanks to Gaufrid and Pasquale

38. B(NTO)
    I suppose it depends on your background. As an ex-chemist, barytes was virtually a write-in for me.
    Having had it (three times!) explained to me, I think STRIDING works fine:
    Stop using a bike for work or walking
    STOP, using a bike (riding) for work (op)?

39. muffin @38

    Thanks for the reply.

    I understand how the answer is arrived at. (I actually did that!) But why does “for work” indicate that we should remove the OP from STOP? Or are some of the other words in the wordplay doing double duty? I can’t see how they can.

40. Tough stuff! 5a was left unsolved. Needed parsing help with 18a and 8d. When I almost finished without 5a, there was no joy! Thanks Gaufrid and Pasquale.

41. @39
    If you write STOP using RIDING for (ie instead of) OP you get STRIDING.

42. RIDING for OP is OK for me – the “or” is a bit more troubling.

43. Tough stuff. When I almost
    finished without 5a there was no joy! Thanks Gaufrid and Pasquale.

44. Peter Asplnwall @36, thanks, perhaps that is why I have been so confused all day, 7 years spent in the ‘Americas’ has not helped; I will have to check with my eldest son (Harrow) and my eldest grandson (Eton),’posh’ is one thing, but received pronunciation might be another.

45. @ muffin, if I may

    I see the inclusion of ‘or’ as an attempt at misdirection, luring the unwary reader (like myself for a few minutes) into grouping riding with walking, in which case it doesn’t seem to make any sense, In another sense however, ‘or’ is an explicit separator of the definition and the word play.

    @peteraspinwall:

    MAUL and MALL are pretty much identical homophones around this neck of the (Pacific North West) woods. If you used your pronunciation here, many people would probably respond with ‘like your English accent,’ probably not how you would respond to them should you encounter a North American in the UK

46. Apologize for duplicate posting. First one did not show up and kept getting error message.

47. I found that a very confusing puzzle, with quite a few clues not successfully parsed. Some answers still seem strange to me, though I accept they are justified by particular resources. Obscure words don’t bother me as long as the construction is clear. It’s the almost familiar ones which niggle. I’ve never come across LUD on its own used for a judge, and I’ve never come across ONCE FOR ALL or CARD-CASTLE in any context. MALL didn’t bother me, though, as I’ve heard both pronunciations quite often.

    Thanks to Pasquale, and particularly to Gaufrid for his explanations.

48. Well done, Sir Geoffrey! This can’t have been the most enjoyable puzzle to blog. Your kindness and generous hard work never cease to amaze me. Thank you so much. Were you standing in for an absentee I wonder?
    However, I had TRASH as a DD rather than a CD though your later comment indicates a change of mind. Also, was your use of ‘want’ rather than ‘wont’ in “……if that is your want” in your first comment a deliberate witticism or simply a slip of the finger?!
    As for the puzzle itself, I think I spent longer on the RIOT/BARYTES pair (not knowing the latter) than all the rest combined (a solid five minutes – at least!) I agree with an earlier commenter that this was perhaps a tad unfair. Unlike others, though, I thought STRIDING was perfectly, and beautifully, clued. And I loved the use of ‘lud’ for ‘lord’ in DELUDED. Such clueing is, for me, a source of pleasure not annoyance. Overall, an enjoyable solve, though I did have to check a couple in my Chambers!
    Thanks to the Don.

49. ….and I must add how genuinely pleased I am that Eileen has her hand back (we don’t always appreciate what we have ’til it’s gone). It must be a lovely relief.
    May I also echo Freddy’s view on maths and arithmetic, the former being an innate art, the latter a learned science. Completely different from each other!

50. William FP @49

    Surely you have your comments on Maths and Arithmetic are the wrong way round?

    Arithmetic being the manipulation of two particular “fields” (I’m using the mathematical term field here). The study of such things, Real Analysis, is the tiniest part of the whole which is Mathematics.

51. Agree on the fairness of using RP for homophones. @Peter if we use upper class pronunciation we should have to allow Earth=Mince (with both pronounced Grind) 😉

52. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1995) states “Guidance on pronunciation follows the system of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and is based on the pronunciation associated especially with southern England (sometimes called ‘Received Pronunciation’).

    I would be interested to hear what other dictionaries use.

53. Just out of interest, the 1964 Oxford Dictionary gives mall (mawl, mal) and pall-mall (pel’mel’); whereas the 1995 edition gives mall (mal, mawl) and pall-mall (pal’mal, pel’mel). (Note that pell-mell, in disorder, has nothing to do with pall-mall.)

54. Brendan (nto) – well, of course you’re right that the Real Numbers are a field (under the normal operations of arithmetic) but that’s not the point I was making. A painted wall makes use of the artist’s palette, but that doesn’t mean it’s art! One can be born a mathematician (or a musician or an artist) but one has to learn ones sums – as with any science. I sympathise with you as there is a semantic problem (I imagine, for example, that most dictionaries would, mistakenly in my view, describe mathematics as a science). But I’m not alone; if one studies maths at Oxford, for example, one will be awarded an MA not an MSc. And so on…
    In any case, the conflation of arithmetic (or ‘sums’) and mathematics to which Freddy@22 referred is an ubiquitous error which I also find wince-making.
    Have a lovely sunny day! 🙂

55. William F P
    If you study Natural Sciences at Cambridge you are awarded a BA! I suspect the same applies at Oxford.

56. Brendan (nto) –
    Nice one, sir! And interesting. I guess it’s all about words – don’t we just love’em?!
    Wx

57. Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid

    Late again …

    Unlike many here, I enjoyed this a lot … always like the ‘unusuals’ from this setter !!!

    And today many of them weren’t – the MANGOSTEEN must be one of the most divine fruits that you can have – introduced to them in Malaysia and will still lash out at $20 / kilo to buy one every now and again here. They are known as a ‘super fruit’ like the goji berry that are used as health tonics and boosts to the auto immune system.

    Seen BARYTES clued before … and with the reference to it’s alternative name of heavy spar. DIGAMY and CARD CASTLE were both new – with the latter drawing the error (I also had an unconvincing SAND CASTLE).

    Liked STRIDING and SWAMPING.

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