Guardian 26,650 – Crucible

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An enjoyable puzzle from Crucible, with lots of links to the key answer at 3,23,25, which luckily I got early on (working back from 24a). Just one homophonic quibble, but otherwise very soundly clued – thanks to Crucible.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. THE PITS Worst place for the 25s (3,4)
Double definition – gravel pits, perhaps, and a reminder of John McEnroe’s Wimbledon tantrums: “You are the pits of the world!”
5. GAZETTE Receive note about Arizona 3 (7)
AZ n GET TE
10. SNIP Steal what 23 do (4)
Double definition
11. BROADSHEET He set out to follow minor route to 3 (10)
B ROAD (minor route) + (HE SET)*
12. HAIRDO It’s not easy to catch one ordinary mullet, perhaps (6)
I in HARD + O[rdinary]
13. SEASONAL A boy dives into lock, depending on the time of year (8)
A SON in SEAL
14. PEN AND INK Old PA friend drinks a shot in court, drawing media (3,3,3)
A in [William] PENN + DINK (tennis shot)
16. TITLE Central Scotland in draw for championship (5)
[sco]TL[and] in TIE
17. PRUNE Business that covers northeast to axe branches? (5)
PRU (Prudential, insurance company familarly known as The Pru) + NE
19. ODD MAN OUT Unusual amount reworked in film (3,3,3)
ODD (unusual) + AMOUNT* for the 1947 film starring James Mason
24. BASALT Estonian, say, collects a singular 25 (6)
A S in BALT
26. STYLE SHEET With Yankee, he settles complex PC template (5,5)
(Y HE SETTLES)* – I would write this as one word, especially in the IT sense (and Chambers agrees with me)
27. OPAL Minor surgery occasionally fails 25 (4)
OP (operation – “minor” because it’s a contraction, I suppose) + [f]A[i]L[s]
28. PLAYFUL Jolly priest was prostrate with flu, shivering (7)
P + LAY + FLU*
29. ORLEANS City in France or area in town there (7)
OR + A in LENS
Down
2. HENBANE This plant stores poison? Then ban edible contents (7)
Hidden in tHEN BAN Edible
3,23,25. PAPER SCISSORS STONE A game of two hands (5,8,5)
A slightly cryptic definition: each of the two players of the game uses one hand
4. TABLOID With this 3, he’s ready, perhaps, to produce daily broadsheet (7)
A composite anagram: (DAILY BROADSHEET)* = TABLOID HE’S READY. A nice find, but it seems a pity that BROADSHEET also occurs as the answer to 11a, which intersects this one
6. ANDEAN Retired editor sent in articles from long range (6)
ED reversed in AN AN
7. ETHIOPIAN African writer impressed by The Piano after editing (9)
I (the writer) in (THE PIANO)*
8. TOENAIL Translate Old English into New Latin? It needs 23 (7)
OE in LATIN*
9. DOTS AND DASHES Signal marks Dorothy’s race in mountains (4,3,6)
DOT’S + DASH in ANDES – the “signal marks” as in Morse code. Again, strange to see the Andes appearing twice and close together.
15. AUNT SALLY Soldier’s colleague picked up easy target (4,5)
Homophone (a non-RP one for a change) of ANT’S + ALLY. This doesn’t quite work for me, even with “aunt” = “ant”, as the homophone indicator can’t apply to ALLY
18. RECITAL Social centre stops next revolutionary gig (7)
[so]CI[al] in reverse of LATER
20. MOBSTER Second best criminal runs for hood (7)
MO + BEST* + R
21. UNLEARN Try to forget information nun spread about king (7)
LEAR in NUN*
22. HONSHU Big island’s hard on footwear, so I’ve heard (6)
H + ON + “Shoe” – Honshu is the largest island of Japan

80 comments on “Guardian 26,650 – Crucible”

  1. Well constructed but a bit easy for a Friday, and a few clumsy word repetitions as noted. Could have done with a bit of editorial help. Thanks to setter and blogger, though.

  2. Thanks for the helpful blog, Andrew. This was fun.
    For 1, I had a different double definition: ‘the pits’ = worst place, and ‘pits’ = fruit stone, as in cherry pits.

  3. Thanks Andrew. I also got the theme within minutes via 19-20-24-25 and the rest soon followed. I couldn’t parse four obviously right answers at all, and decided to wait for your revelations. 17’s Pru beat me as did the 27 reasoning; ditto 4 and I still don’t like 15.

  4. I did not find this puzzle easy and would have given up after solving only 3 or 4 clues but I decided to persevere. As others comment that it is/was easy, maybe my brain is not working well today 🙁

    I needed help to parse 14a (old PA friend), 4d, 17a (product placement!).

    I parsed 10a as snip = steal in the sense of a bargain – is that correct?

    The homophone was a bit of a mixed bag (I’m not a big fan of US pronunciation), and I also did not much like the repetitiveness of ‘broadsheet’ in 3d & 11a as well as Andes/Andean in 6 & 9d.

    I parsed 1a as Roger@2 did.

    Thanks Crucible and Andrew

  5. Thanks Crucible and Andrew
    I’ve never heard the game called anything other than “Rock, paper, scissors”, so that delayed my start. BROADSHEET was my way in to PAPER.
    I’ve also never heard BASALT referred to as a “stone” – it’s a rock. Also, JOYFUL isn’t that close to PLAYFUL.
    I was going to comment on the odd repetitions, but Andrew has already mentioned them. Perhaps this was compiled over quite a long time and Crucible simply didn’t notice?
    I did like PRUNE (“Business that covers”!) and THE PITS – I agree with Roger @2 about the fruit-stones being intended.

  8. Very enjoyable solve.

    I have to admit that I was surprised to find BROADSHEET both as an answer and as part of a surface – but if you get 11d first (as I did) it does raise the question “What’s that doing there?” – to which the most obvious answer is: Fodder letters; which helps that one along – and it seemed a price worth paying for such an otherwise good clue as 4d.

    One step better might have been for BROADSHEET to appear in 26a where we have STYLESHEET – another SHEET. Error or not it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the solve but certainly an unusual turn-up for the books.

    Why always the moans about puns. Surely (by Afrit) all we need is that someone somewhere says it like that. And even if they don’t, surely the groanworthier the better – that’s what Muir and Norden depended on for laughs.

    ANT’S ALLY becomes AUNT’S ALLY

    It’s perfectly common for pun indications to leave part of the operand unaltered.

    Many thanks to S&B

  9. Thank you, Andrew.

    As others have said, this all went in rapidly enough but several left me scratching the noggin:

    I don’t understand GAZETTE. Is there another meaning relating to ‘stone’? I thought ‘to gazette’ was to publish someone’s promotion.

    For me the PEN AND INK clue is a step too far, just too convoluted for enjoyment.

    Like Muffin, I’ve never heard the game called anything but Rock, Paper, Scissors but I have to agree it was eminently getable nonetheless.

    This puzzle does have the feel of a pot pourri assembled from bits and pieces and not finally checked, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

    Thank you, Crucible, nice weekend, all.

    The TABLOID clue was clever and I enjoyed ANDEAN (from a long range!) and DOTS AND DASHES notwithstanding the unfortunate connection.

    Is the setter an American gentleman or lady perhaps? I can’t see any other justification for the surprising homophone ant/aunt.

  11. Actually in 4d, referencing 11a – instead of literally spelling out its answer – would have been fine. Maybe that was the original intention – and wouldn’t that have been nifty?

    The normal software doesn’t support cross-references very well. Ie it doesn’t update them as edits to the grid take place which affect the clue-numbering.

  13. I thought that the aunt/ant homophone was close enough. It’s the different pronunciation of the final Y that spoils it for me. (Aunt SallEE/ant’s allI)

  15. Many thanks. Very enjoyable, although quite a quick solve.
    I’m probably wrong, but I didn’t have 15d as a homophone. I parsed it as ANT’S ALLY, with the insertion (“picked”) of U for Up.

  18. I enjoyed this puzzle. I think that criticism of the two broadsheet and Andes references is a little picky, and I particularly liked the compound anagram for TABLOID.

  19. Thanks for AUNT SALLY which I didn’t see because that isn’t a homophone for me (or maybe jkb_ing is right, but I couldn’t parse it, anyway), and PEN AND INK which passed me by like the tennis shot I’ve never heard of. I also know the game as rock-paper-scissors but after getting SCISSORS via SNIP, the rest was obvious.

  20. A bit of a mixed bag for me, mainly because the game isn’t one that instantly springs to my mind (my fault, not Crucible’s, I hasten to add). I, also, wasn’t too keen on the repetition, as already pointed out. Otherwise, many good clues, so thanks to Crucible.

    Needed your help with 17a Andrew, so thanks for that. Could have kicked myself for missing the “Pru” – used the company for years!

    Had no problem with seeing 15d as a homophone, using “picked up” as the indicator. In the UK it’s a N/S divide thing – I’m from the NE & think it’s very funny that my husband’s family in East Anglia call me “Arenty”! Homophones in general can cause a problem to me, but I get round this by saying the word out loud in different accents (not recommended on public transport, though!).

  22. Thanks to Crucible and Andrew. A happy competitive hour solving it side by side with my elderly father – one copy each. I too was held up initially by thinking of the game as “rock, paper scissors”. A bit surprised by the repetitions already noted – couldn’t 4 dn cross refer to 11ac? But all great fun. I’ll have to think of something else to do on the train back to London.

  24. I agree with Muffin and others regarding Rock, Paper, Scissors. That’s the only way I have ever heard it but never mind.

    As to the homophone, W.S. Gilbert had something to say:

    SIR JOSEPH: I am the monarch of the sea,
    The ruler of the Queen’s Navee,
    Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants.
    COUSIN HEBE. And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and
    his aunts!
    REL. And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his
    aunts!
    SIR JOSEPH. When at anchor here I ride,
    My bosom swells with pride,
    And I snap my fingers at a foeman’s taunts;
    COUSIN HEBE. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and
    his aunts!
    ALL. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his
    aunts!
    (Pirates of Penzance, Act 1)

  25. Very good, poc! Reminds me of:

    I asked the maid in dulcet tone
    To order me a buttered scone;
    The silly girl has been and gone
    And ordered me a buttered scone.

    But I found this more of a curate’s egg than a scone.

    Thanks anyway to Crucible and Andrew

  28. Thanks Crucible and Andrew. I didn’t pick up at all that ‘pick up’ in 15d signaled a ‘sounds like’ clue: I assumed it was an anagram indicator and used UNITS as soldiers: changed the I to an A and got AUNTS: a bit contorted, but the definition and numeration gave it away regardless.

    I do like jkb_ing’s parsing @15 though, and agree with Roger @2 for stones = pits in fruits.

    [In the context of formatting web pages, style sheets remain as two words (CSS = Cascading Style Sheets)]

  29. Muffin @27

    Bishop: I am afraid you have a bad egg Mr Jones

    Curate: Oh no My Lord I assure you, parts of it are excellent

    It was indeed a (diplomatic) untruth since an egg can only be wholly good or wholly bad. I think it was supposed to be a metaphor on the state of the Church of England.

    I warned you I was being pedantic …

  30. I don’t go for these bitty themed puzzles much. The clues often don’t make sense if you translate the number into the word it represents, which I think weakens things.

    11a has the redundant ‘to’; 12a has O for ordinary which I find quite obscure and unusual; 13a ‘dependent’ I think would be better; 14a ‘old PA friend I find terribly difficult and obscure; 16a ‘central’ I don’t like; 17a ‘to cut branches’ would surely be better; 24a BALT I don’t know; 26a ‘complex’ is not really right; 3 23 25a not a good CD; 4d doesn’t need ‘perhaps’ at all; 6d ‘sent’ is just convenient padding; 8d why have ‘translate’ there?; 15d does not sound correctly; 18d ‘centre’ I don’t like; 20d ‘criminal’ I don’t like.

    HH

  31. Not Crucible’s finest hour – not because of the level of difficulty, which was nicely in my comfort zone, but because of BROADSHEET as clue / answer, nearly the same with ANDEAN etc. A shame because ANDEAN would otherwise have been my Clue of the Day.

    PRUNE last in; I was bamboozled by the ? into thinking something else was going on. Receiving a letter from the Pru this morning made absolutely no difference to my equating it with ‘company’.

  32. HH @30
    I wondered about “translate” in 8d too, but it can also mean “move”, so “move OE into new Latin”?

  33. @Trailman- they were both fine clues but maybe should have been farmed out to another puzzle.Then after an appearance of Arachne it is easy to be picky!

  35. I was another who started with BASALT which gave an immediate entry to the theme. So this was very much at the easier end of Crucible’s range. One or two things felt a little slapdash, but it was all quite fun.

    Thnks to Crucible and Andrew

  36. Re Freddy: I’ve also only come across STYLE SHEET (as two words) in the context of formatting web pages, in which case it is not (solely) a PC template. I’m guessing a clue such as “With Yankee, he settles formats” (with “formats” implying more that one “format” – the first being the anagram indicator, the second giving the definition) breaks all sorts of rules.

  37. Could “Soldier’s colleague picked up easy target” be parsed as “up” to indicate the letter U? So, ANT’S ALLY picked U. (For an American, ANT/AUNT was no problem, but I had no idea what an AUNT SALLY was.)

  39. Thanks to Crucible and Andrew. I needed help parsing PEN AND INK and was surprised at the 2 repetitions but otherwise proceeded quickly.

  41. A bit sloppy I thought although I managed to get everything. PEN AND INK was a guess and, having now seen the parsing, I’d never have worked it out. I only know the game as PAPER SCISSORS STONE so that was easy enough. In fact I didn’t find anything particularly difficult but somehow this wasn’t a very satisfying solve. As someone has said- not this setter’s finest hour!
    Still, thanks Crucible.

  44. Thanks all
    Favourite was 19ac. Although I do not see the need for the film, unusual is the definition and the solution is the cryptic!
    I could not parse opal and still find it very unsatisfactory.
    Does anyone pronounce aunt to rhyme with taunt?

  45. Thanks all
    Favourite was 19ac. Although I do not see the need for the film, unusual is the definition and the solution is the cryptic!
    I could not parse opal and still find it very unsatisfactory.
    Does anyone pronounce aunt to rhyme with taunt

  46. Thanks Crucible and Andrew. It took me a while to get really going since I had never heard of the ‘game of two hands’, but the struggle was enjoyable. Failed to fully parse PEN AND INK.

    I think AUNT SALLY might work as a homophone for some people (NZer’s?), but perhaps the U is meant to be inserted.

    RCWhiting @43, people with ‘a plum in their mouth’, a plummy accent?

  48. muffin @47, yes, that is what I was trying to account for, perhaps a stronger Australian accent of the ‘Emma Chizit’ Strine type, but when I was young some North Islanders would pronounce AUNT SALLY as ‘ant’s ally’.

  50. Why on earth is everyone looking down their noses at American pronunciation?

    (Although there are in fact many Americans who do pronounce AUNT differently from ANT).

    Of course, the homophone still doesn’t work here, since ALLY is not a homophone for ALLEY in any dialect I’m familiar with. (Of course, come to that, “Picked up soldier’s barely passable way to easy target (4,5)” would save the clue, wouldn’t it?

  52. What a pity! It’s been a good week for Guardian crosswords until today. On days when I had no reference source within reach I solved the Arachne and Pasquale crosswords except for two words I have never heard of in yesterday’s Pasquale (TEAPOY and PURL if you must know! I’ve actually heard of PURL but not PURLER.) Not being as skilled as the supersolvers who introduce these blogs, I was highly satisfied with these efforts.

    Today was frustrating. Without the theme, the clues were in general not easy enough, or of sufficient quality I have to say, to solve without help from crossers, and, like many other contributors, I’ve never heard of ‘paper scissors stone’, even though I know the game. I would never have got that phrase without cheating, and, having seen it, I kind of moved on to something else.

    Alan Browne

  53. A style sheet (MartinD @51) is something that every good web page has and is the means by which the way a page is presented and formatted is maintained separately from the content (words, pictures and whatever). Normally you would not see style sheets unless you have a particular kind of display tool that shows you their contents.

    Alan Browne

  54. My wife is from London and huffed a bit at ant/aunt. I am from Glasgow and found no problem with it. (We live in Yorkshire but don’t know what the neighbours say.)

  55. [muffin, ‘ally’ in the particular NZ accent I was referring to would not be quite like RP English, in sounding the Y the back of the tongue tends to move up towards the roof of the mouth and the throat to contract.]

  56. I normally struggle with puzzles that have lots of cross-referenced clues, but I found this pretty easy (apart from the tricky wordplay of 14). The homophone at 15 was awful, and the inclusion of ‘broadsheet’ in the clue to 4d, when it’s also the answer to 11, seems just gauche.

  57. Not as much fun as yesterday but the bar was set rather high.

    poc @24

    Speaking as one who delivered an unmemorable Cousin Hebe in the school opera back in the mists of time, I’m pretty sure I was appearing alongside Sir Joseph Porter and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts in HMS Pinafore, not Pirates. Just in case the question arises again…

  59. Can’t see a problem with 15d. Soldier’s = ant’s (soldier ant). Picked up (u) colleague = ally.

  60. Why so many saying that aunt/ant is American pronunciation? It’s absolutely standard in Scotland. Got to love this ‘united’ kingdom of ours…

  61. Andrew’s “otherwise very soundly clued” and “Ian SW3 @1″‘s Could have done with a bit of editorial help” seem to be odd bedfellows!

    In my opinion one is incorrect and the other is the understatement of the century. (I’ll leave the reader to decide which is which!)

    I believe this is a contender for worst puzzle of the year. (But we do have a few months to go 😉 )

    Thanks to Andrew and Crucible

  63. For what it’s worth, I though the same thing as with jkb_ing for 15d. It doesn’t make much sense to have a so-called homophone which is not in fact a homophone for a large part of the readership.

    Otherwise, why are the words “picked up” included in the clue? I have always considered that in working out a clue one starts from the position that the compiler has included everything for a reason.

  64. I also parsed 15d as ANT’S with the U inserted plus ALLY. While I agree that “picked up” can be a homophone indicator, it is in the wrong place to be that in this clue because it would have to apply to “colleague” (ALLY) too, and it doesn’t. I don’t much like “picked” as an inclusion indicator. “Picked up” would be better, but that would leave “up” doing double duty. I wonder whether the clue was (mis)edited before publication. It would be good to know what Crucible intended.

    For me this was definitely “good in parts” – very good in the case of some of the clues, but with some sources of irritation.

    Thanks to Crucible and to Andrew (whose help I needed for quite a few parsings).

  65. I do not believe that there was ever an intention for 15d be interpreted as a homophone – the clue works perfectly well without the need for one, except perhaps for the suspect U.

    I would like to think that Crucible – perhaps with tongue in cheek – intended it as an &lit. If so it was certainly successful.

  66. Yes, &lits that have definitions separate from their word-play: an interesting concept.

    Curiously, I think the homophone still works, so long as you agree that ANT = AUNT requires no additional indication as to dialect, since ALLY pretty much indisputably sounds like ALLY. In anyone’s language.

    I’m here all week.

  67. Paul B @66

    A problem with it as a homophone, even if you accept “ant” = “aunt”, is that if “picked up” is the indicator, its position suggests “ally” is part of the homophone. As mhl and others have pointed out, “ally” as in “colleague” is not pronounced in the same way as the “ally” in the name “Sally”.

  69. I am from NZ but there is no homophone here. It it simply Ant’s Ally which has ‘picked’ a U.

    I think I have seen U and D next to escalators and the like, but it is a bit thin.

  71. Basically, none of us know in which way Crucible intended it to be parsed, and whichever way it was, a sizable chunk of us posting on 225 will still find it unsatisfactory.

  73. ShunaL @ 57

    You are of course right. I sit corrected.

    BTW where I come from (Norn Iron) AUNT and ANT are homophones, while SAW and SORE are not (to pick a random but typical example), so someone is always going to be unhappy. Since it’s usually me, I chortle at the current flurry of objections.

  75. guessed pen and ink quite early on but still don’t get the parsing! Can someone spell it out for this poor ignoramus? Many thanks!

  76. actually, just googled on William Penn and now I get it! By the by, also googled on dink, but all I got was the Dual Income No Kids acronym until I added the word tennis – clearly rather obscure – I’d certainly never heard of it!

  77. For those who don’t like Aunt/Ant, I can only suggest you read Roald Dahl’s The Anteater (in his Dirty Beasts collection)!

  79. Maybe Dave in Spain (59) is not mad. ‘Ant’ is nearly always indicated by ‘worker’; why shouldn’t a soldier ant get a look in for a change? Having said that, I’ve never heard ‘up’ abbreviated as u or ‘pick’ used to mean include or insert into. He should’ve written ‘picked up up’.

  80. Thanks Crucible and k
    Done many months on … and found it hard to break into all of the cross references – it was eventually SCISSORS that provided the gateway after getting the C, S@4 and O. So AUNT SALLY was early in and I had gone down the ‘inserted U’ line of thinking and meaning to check it out, but never did.

    Was able to parse all of the rest apart from PEN AND INK which I spent quite a while trying before coming here – then realised how clever it was and knew that I’d missed a huge aha moment !!!

    Noted the repetitions but didn’t find them at all detrimental to the overall puzzle.

    Finished in the NE corner with TITLE (quite tricky until it was simple), ANDEAN (which I thought was good) and DOTS AND DASHES as the last one in.

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