A tricky little number from Don today.
He does like to expose us to unusual words doesn’t he, glad I was at home today to have access to my dictionaries. This felt like hard work at times and a bit of a general knowledge test.
Across
A removed from CO(a)STER, a merchant boat
M.O.T. (test for roadworthyness in UK cars) & HE & RED
Old name for bits of Eastern Canada, don’t we all know that :-), R(iver) removed from A(r)CADIA
As in a Rugby Union player of which there are 15 in a side; N(umber) & DO (party) both in STAFF
A butterfly of the family Papilionidae and split as swallow tail it could be like uroboros which is s symbol of a snake like creature that appears to be eating its own tail. Is your dictionary getting well thumbed today?
HI replacing O(ld) in COPPER
H(igh) E(xplosive) & F(emale) in TALL as in tall tales, “almost” seems redundant.
Probably a full &lit but I’m no Monet expert. A(ce) in odd letters of C(o)L(o)U(r) & DEMON (one with great skill) & ET (french for AND)
Devon town with a suffragan (asssistant) Bishop; DOCTRINE* unorthodox
OR & TREE (pine) an purple flower
KIN in the BUMPS. Not sure if the bumps are a particlarly British thing.
Worms don’t have lungs…
Down
A double definition, genial is an adjective relating to the chin
TRACT (area) in CONED – like a roadworks area
HELLENIC* translated
Horse racing disguised as kids’ stuff, CLASS (form)& 1 & starts of C(ardboard) S(cissors)
SHAM (phoney) & heartless AN(t)IC (archaic word for buffoon)
(b)ROOK
D,E,F (successive notes) & T(ime)
Written as WORK AROUND this could be K (little King) & ROW reversed
UN (french A) & TIN (can) all in HAG (witch)
LATHE caught by FAD
A form of pinball popular in Japan; A CHINK in the river PO. Another dictionary check here.
RUM reversed & repeated
A fungal disease of various kinds in potatoes, apples, etc; hidden in hiS CABbages
GERM(an) without A N(ew)
Thanks Pasquale and flashling
Odd mixture. I got off to a flying start by writing in th first 5 across clues at once (though with a minor quibble about 4a – see below), then ground to a halt. Some BIFDs (1d I didn’t know the chin reference, 2d and 14d) got me going again and I finished, with the SE going in last. PACHINKO was new to me.
CREDITON is a bit generally knowledgy. I was brought up in a parish that was under the suffragan bishop there, so it was easy enough for me, but obscure to non-Devonians, I would think.
COSTER is now OK, I suppose, but it is a contraction of COSTERMONGER (and related words) – a trader (monger) in apples (costers or costards), so originally the street trader part was the “monger”.
Phew! Pure essence of Pasquale today – unless you have dictionary and encyclopedia to hand: no chance. The grammar of CONTRACTED doesn’t work for me – it appears to say that CONED should be inside TRACT rather than the other way about.
Despite the fact that I played rugby in my university days (as a winger and 40 years ago) I did not make the connection between stand-off and rugby. It was not a term I heard and I suspect it was not used in Australia at the time. However,I did suspect that one of fifteen referred to rugby. Maybe I should have googled it.
Next time
I have never been on Pasquale’s wavelength, and today was no exception. The things that I do not enjoy about his puzzles are the obscure words (in this puzzle ‘suffragan’ and ‘uroboros’ in the clues as well as PACHINKO, COSTER & ORPINE in the answers); dependence on general knowledge (swallowtail butterfly, and Acadia being an ex-colony of Canada); Brit-centric terms or names (MOT = test, CREDITON = town with a suffragan bishop, CLASSIC = horse race, BUMPS = birthday act?); and sadly, he seems to have absolutely no sense of humour. I agree with the commenters in the Guardian who wrote “As usual, the Don demonstrates that he’s a walking dictionary. Unlikely to crack the comedy circuit, though.” and “Holy mackerel. 4a living in the wrong country I suppose.” and “O God my brain ‘urts.” 🙂
All in all, I prefer Screw to Pasquale any day!
Apart from some of the words mentioned above, new word for me was GENIAL = ’relating to the chin’ and I also learnt that there are 15 players in a rugby team – well, that’s another “general knowledge” clue!
I failed to solve 23a and 21d, and my BIFDs were 12d, 13d, 17a, 24a (have no idea what the BUMPS = birthday act is supposed to mean, so it probably is a British thing), 2d (got ‘tract’ but failed to see how CONED works), 5d (I suspected that ANTIC might be an archaic word for buffoon but I could not be bothered looking it up in the dictionary) – so it was not an enjoyable solve for me.
Thank you flashling and Pasquale
I have a quibble, just because I don’t often have the chance to quibble with Pasquale. Can “starts with cardboard and scissors” really be interpreted as CS?
Michelle @4: in fact Rugby League has 13 players per side. Rugby Union has 15.
Muffin @1 – COSTER was used im the late 19th century by Gilbert – “When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother” (Pirates of Penzance)
Michelle @4 – an unfortunate birthday celebrant is given the BUMPS by people grabbing his/her arms and legs and throwing his/her body up and down. Pretty unpleasant.
Kevin@3 stand-off for fly-half is generally considered a term from the 50s/60s even in the NH.
Michelle@4 whilst I agree with you with some of the more obscure terms. I think complaining about Brit-centric terms in a British newspaper is a bit harsh, I was aware of Credition as a town, though not as home to a suffragan Bishop, and the term suffragan would be familiar to anybody with a passing acquaintance with the good old CofE. Similarly likely that you would have suffered the Bumps at some point in your childhood, and the annual nail-biter that is the MOT is something else to be suffered.
Thanks to Pasquale and flashling. I had trouble getting started but did manage to get to the finish line. I did know PACHINKO but needed Google to confirm FLATHEAD, ORPINE, and GENIAL-chin. I needed flashling’s help to parse WORKAROUND and CLAUDE MONET, and BUMPKINS was last in (I kept trying to squeeze in “buffoons” to no avail). A good workout.
Even as a non-Brit I thought this was OK, if pretty hard. Plenty of new words – suffragan, antic, uroboros, ORPINE and the anatomical meaning of GENIAL for starters. I’d also not heard of the BUMPS. There were various other unmentionable indignities to which the lucky birthday boy could be subjected in my childhood! My first one in was actually 9a – Cajun and all that, and my COD was the deceptively simple looking 21d – ‘Ange’ for Mrs. Merkel anyone?
By the way, IMHO 14d is about the best eating fish there is, which is reflected in its price in my part of the world.
Thanks to S&B.
poc@6 – thanks – I will file that info away for the future
Shirl@8 – thankfully I have never experienced that!
andyk@9 – I don’t want to simply complain about Brit-centric terms. My intentions are good. My hope is that for the long-term survival of cryptic crosswords, a more “international” approach might be the way to go. It is no longer the case that the puzzles are limited to British newspaper/British readership – the internet (including the Guardian website) have changed that.
BTW I was brought up CofE and attended a CofE girls grammar school in Melbourne, Australia – but we were never taught about suffragan bishops in small towns in the UK!
I didn’t find this too obscure – only needed to check ORPINE and for the second meaning of GENIAL. I actually found it more enjoyable than some Pasquales, so thanks to him and flashling. Favourites were CLAUDE MONET, FLATHEAD and CHIPPER.
Workabout as a single word caused me a problem because I was using Chambers 10th edition. However when I checked I discovered it had made into the 11th and subsequent editions.
One of the Don’s more obscure and educational offerings – I found this a bit of a struggle, but got there in the end with FLATHEAD last in. Too many unknown words or usages to list them all. Liked CLAUDE MONET and CONTRACTED
Thanks to flashling and Pasquale
Thank you, flashling, had to wait for your parse of WORK AROUND & GENIAL.
Unlike others, I rather enjoyed this, but then I derive fun from crosswords that teach me new things such as the uruboros, the antic, genial (relating to the chin) and so on.
Enjoyed the &lit MONET but thought THE FALL a bit infra-don.
Nice week, all.
michelle@12
There is no doubt that nowadays crossword puzzles of one country are not confined to where they originate. However, I don’t agree that they must be “international” in approach.
In India until 1971 all crosswords in broadsheets or magazines were simply reproduced from UK newspapers. Often clues would be British-centric but solvers accepted them as part of the dodge. Educated solvers got a kick out of surmounting them and were foxed only by the most obscure references.
In 1971 the home-grown crossword appeared in India but even this in early years was imitative of the British-centric crosswords. You could be more loyal than the king, you know. Indian references bar a Gandhi or Nehru were few and far between.
It was only later that an indigenous element was introduced and today setters have become a little more adventurous in imparting it to the puzzles that they set. But this can never be overdone because it is just that Indian terms/proper nouns/place names do not and cannot offer much flexibility in clueing.
BTW, I find UK crosswords – which cannot and should not lose the Britishness – now do have Indian terms occasionally. Now it’s not the SARI alone that is sported, it is not CHAPATI alone that is cooking, we have RAITA being tasted.
It’s a bit weird to be able to get PACHINKO (OK, after having first checked for the existence of PACLINTO), but to have no idea of what is going on with its neighbour WORKAROUND, a word that I actually use (though always under the impression that it’s hyphenated). But that’s Pasquale for you.
Contemporary culture could have led to an alternative clueing of THE FALL but I’m not sure if the Don has come across Mark E Smith et al. Archetypal English band in so many ways but would that have been another parochial reference too far?
CONTRACTED my favourite, because of restricted road = coned.
My humour sank again when I saw the compiler’s name and I wasn’t disappointed. I sympathise with most of what Michelle @4 said, apart from the British angle, of course.
Did bumps ever happen save in Jennings or Billy Bunter? I clearly went to a school for oiks, where it never took place. The Times for the Times had a discussion on this in Jan last year, with a reference to a rather quaint view in The Times of India .
Thanks flashling
andyk000 @ 9
” … and the term suffragan would be familiar to anybody with a passing acquaintance with the good old CofE”. I do but I had no idea what it meant.
I got there in the end. Last one in was COSTER, a new term for me. I also didn’t know uroboros, ORPINE, suffragan, CREDITON, the bumps, or M.O.T. The Great Google Encyclopedia confirmed all of them, though. I admit to semi-cheating on CREDITON, which was the third plausibly-a-town arrangement of those letters I tried.
On the other hand, Acadia is well known to me, for the following reason: when the British took over Acadia from the French (and renamed it Nova Scotia), they forced the inhabitants to swear loyalty oaths. Those that refused to do so left; they went to the nearest remaining French colony with vacant land–Louisiana. The name Acadian got corrupted over the years to Cajun, which may be more familiar to you. As my family has Louisiana roots, and as I quite like (and occasionally cook) Cajun cuisine, there you go.
Thanks for the parsing of THE FALL and WORKAROUND, which I BIFDed.
Personally, I feel that Britishisms in a British crossword are simply a hazard that we who live elsewhere have simply agreed to accept. I’m sure that if you did a more difficult American crossword (either the cryptics in Games Magazine or the non-cryptic but very chewy New York Times Sunday crosswords) you’d be baffled by all of the Americanisms.
I remember being bumped many times in the 1950’s.
An article in the Daily Mail brought back memories of being buried in the sand:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3226250/Escapologist-tried-outdo-Houdini-buried-alive-handcuffs-six-feet-soil-nearly-died-rescued.html
mrpenney @21 Fascinating, thanks for that. Never knew the Acadian/Cajun link. We Brits have a lot to answer for one way and another.
Re mrpenney@21, the Saturday N.Y. Times puzzle is usually much harder than the Sunday one (and would correspond to the Guardian prize). Monday through Saturday puzzles increase in difficulty with Thursday providing a theme or gimmick.
Well, only 4 new words for me in the answers cf 7 in don’s telegraph toughie today, which I think puts the obscurities here into perspective.
I missed Mrs merkel, in hindsight no excuse and a nice clue, many thanks flashling for the review. Steady progress from start to finish, but I don’t know where I’d be without my brb.
I remember bumps from childhood, hence not only in UK, always one bump for every year – very happy not to have this now. I liked the MONET though it took me a while to twig, I quite liked the butterfly as well. The suffragan bishop seems incidental information to the clue, a bit jollyswagmanesque. Fits the surface though…
I liked CHIPPER, CONTRACTED (which parsed fine for me @2), DEFT, CLASSICS, WORKAROUND and more
I had to remember that ‘s can be used to switch a noun to adjective, 1d and 5d.
Many thanks pasquale. With two of your puzzles today, I’ll give my vocab training a bit of a rest now.
William @23
Curiously I had read about Acadian/Cajun almost immediately before doing this crossowrd, in Bill Bryson’s “The mother tongue”.
Thanks to Pasquale and flashling. I enjoyed this for the same reason that William @16 mentions.
I like to learn to words and terms. For the same reason I did Azeds until my Chambers fell apart.
Cheers…
Well, I like Cajun music and I live not far from CREDITON so I was in with an advantage from the start. That said this was quite tough and took me quite a long time. There was much to enjoy here however-eg SWALLOWTAIL (FOI) and FLATHEAD (LOI). In between there were some nasties- PACHINKO, ORPINE and SHAMANIC but there is often a touch of the quizword about Pasquale’s puzzles.
However, quite enjoyable.
Thanks Pasquale.
Yeah pretty tough but got there eventually with much use of gadgets.
Michelle, CLASSIC in the horse racing sense is not Brit-centric. Pretty well every country that has horse racing has races, usually for 3 year olds, which are refered to as Classics. We started it admittedly, but it has been world wide for donkey’s years.
Slogged to the end of this.
Pasquale at his worst. The use of such esoteric knowledge and words is just downright lazy setting. How I wish we had a functioning editor.
I’m also not convinced of the use of “in need of” in 21D. In need of” actually means requiring. So in fact the wordplay leads to germanan! Of course “lacking” can replace “in need of” but it is a leap too far to then use another meaning of “lacking” to get the result required.
Thanks to flashling
Dutch@25
Thanks for your comment about the apostrophe. I am a very inexpert solver who got into cryptics about two years ago and the presence of an apostrophe in clues has long puzzled me – I wouldn’t be able to manage at all without this brilliant site!
While I am at the keyboard – and this is not relevant to today’s puzzle – I will mention a pet aversion which is the use of “it” as a synonym for sex appeal (and the other). We had it yesterday in a clue that seemed to have contributors drooling (Screw’s PILLOW-TALK). Nobody, but nobody, uses the word in normal conversation and its use in a clue surely serves to put people off who are trying to get the hang of cryptics. I know it’s part of the cruciverbal convention but its usage is old-fashioned, off-putting and excluding.
Jovis, you aren’t the first person–even this month!–that has commented on it=sex being both archaic and odd. I’m totally with you on that one.
On the apostrophe, remember that an apostrophe-s might be any of a possessive (making the indicated word an adjective), a contraction for “is,” or a contraction for “has.” In its role as “is,” it might even be ignored altogether as connecting tissue (definition is wordplay). Try all four if you’re confused.
Guys? it=sex archaic? I know dozens of people of all ages who will say things like “Do think (s)he’s getting it?” about a developing relationship. So archaic? Really?
Brendan @30:
Pasquale at his worst. The use of such esoteric knowledge and words is just downright lazy setting. How I wish we had a functioning editor.
That is a bit of a statement.
Just like others we found this hard but persevered and finished the puzzle far away from resources (in a Waitrose cafe, free-ish coffee!) without mistakes.
Perhaps, ‘obscure’ words like ORPINE or ACADIA needed to be checked [we didn’t] but we thought they sounded plausible (with some bells ringing).
Last one in was FLATHEAD (14d) without fully understanding why – actually, the only one without correct parsing.
Lazy setting?
ORPINE could have been ERMINE, ARRIVE and a lot more.
But Pasquale likes to give us some ‘new’ words.
And why not? As long as the clueing is watertight, I won’t complain.
Therefore I don’t.
For some all this is a reason to not attach a ‘PASSED’ sticker to the end product.
I do see why but, perhaps unfortunately, I’m not like that.
Pasquale at his worst?
Really?
Yes, he was in a serious mood today.
For some he’s always in a serious mood (I don’t agree).
We’re all different, aren’t we?
(just like setters)
Thanks Flash!
I really didn’t like 1d or 5d. Really inelegant. And really unlike Don.
Sil, are you sure Pasquale “likes to give us some ‘new’ words”? If he does don’t you think that’s a little patronising. I personally think that this is a sure fire way of making a puzzle difficult. (Oh and it’s not much effort!)
Just pick some esoteric facts and words. Voila. Bearing in mind that a lot of solvers don’t like to use reference works.
“Credition has a suffragan bishop”. Oh really
“Acadia” is an old part of Canada” Is it?
“uroboros” ???
“orpine” ???
“pachinko” ???
Surely it’s an editor’s job to check puzzles. One of the criteria must surely be that the general knowledge to solve a puzzle shouldn’t be excessively specialised. At least not for more than a couple of clues?
Thanks for the “education” Pasquale. Please don’t bother.
The art of a good clue is to use ordinary words for solutions and to clue them in an apparently simple way yet still manage to bewitch the solver into not seeing the answer! Then comes the “Aha” moment followed by “Why didn’t I see that?”
Or is it just a general knowledge quiz?
I loved the good honest arguments in this blog. I happen to side with Michelle on this one, but I just wanted to add my view that sacrificing clarity (or accuracy, even, as in 14D) for the clue’s smooth or misleading surface detracts from the quality of this puzzle – and one or two others from a couple of weeks ago.
There were 8 words in this puzzle that I either didn’t know or didn’t know the meaning(s) of. For me, that’s too many, but I fully understand why others like to further their education(!). That, and the lack of humour as already noted by others, unfortunately puts me off this setter – and one other, incidentally.
I know this comment is late, but I usually don’t have time to start a puzzle until well after most of you have finished it!
I know it’s late in the day, but I cannot resist congratulating jennyk @38 for agreeing with B(NTO)@36 and then demolishing his argument in her second para, and most of his examples in the third.
Even at my relatively advanced years, I am disappointed if a Guardian cryptic does not introduce to at least one new word every day!
Since I’ve started, I am surprised that no one has referred to Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline, which deals with the travails of the displaced Acadians.
In case anyone thinks Mac Ruaraidh Ghais @38 was imagining my post, it disappeared during the server glitch explained here:
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2015/09/10/missing-comments
The gist was that I agreed with B(NTO) that it is unfair if setters deliberately choose obscure words just to make the puzzle more difficult and that “aha!” moments are much more satisfying than a “what the heck?” ones. However, obscurity is hard to determine, and perhaps none of the words in this puzzle seemed obscure to Pasquale.
The ouroboros/uroboros is a well-known motif found in many cultures and often used by designers, and pachinko parlours are often mentioned in documentaries and fictional works about Japan, so I knew both of those. I’d also heard of the Acadians. Although I didn’t know Crediton has a suffragan bishop, I’m sure that she (and Crediton) received quite a bit of publicity when she was only the fourth woman bishop to be appointed by the CoE earlier this year. Of B(NTO)’s examples, that just leaves “orpine”. I hadn’t heard of it even though I am interested in British wild flowers, so for me that was obscure, but I’m sure other solvers did know it.
Thanks, Mac Ruaraidh Ghais.
Being an habitual ‘dictionary burrower’ myself, I enjoy discovering new words, and — more fiendishly — unsuspected senses of familiar words, in cryptics. They drive me mad at the time of course, but the little sigh of satisfaction when one’s deduction, or even stab in the dark, is proved correct is one of the form’s delights surely. As is the contrasting styles of the setters. It IS frustrating when you don’t ‘get’ a particular compiler but that’s part of the challenge isn’t it? Something to really chew on.
Disappointed with the number of obscure/esoteric words. Slapdash/ramshackle clueing included germ (in need of), classics (with).
Solving this led to a sustained period of depression, from which I am now only beginning to recover.
Hoping for a better crossword today.
I briefly considered suicide trying to complete this.
I was going to leave instructions in my farewell note that Pasquale should be charged for all funeral expenses.
Particular disgust reserved for 21d, 17a. Too many obscure words.
Agree with negative “it”/”sex” comments earlier too.
Geez, you Brits have some cockamamie words and screwball definitions. Maybe I should send you a puzzle full of Chicagoisms and Wisconsin Cheesehead phrases, baseball terms and prairie botanicals, and see how you like it! Even with Roget and Webster, I had to ask Grandpa Bee to look up three answers.
In a crossword published by a US newspaper, I’d expect to find US words and expressions and wouldn’t complain about them. Similarly, for Australian, Canadian, Indian and so on, I’d expect to find terms and references from those countries. In a crossword provide by a UK newspaper (even one with US and Australian editions), I expect to find some specifically British clues and answers, so I’m surprised that so many non-UK people complain about them.
Thanks flashling and Pasquale.
Tough!
New words for me (Acadia and Pachinko) and a new definition (genial relating to the chin).
Failed on 19dn because I had LEGGED (it) for 25ac.
Not as general-knowledgy as some setters so maybe not too much to complain about.
Thanks Pasquale and flashling
Another of the ‘on holidays catch up puzzles’ for me. I actually enjoy the Don’s obscurities and the new learning that it brings. It all adds to the different styles presented by the Guardian stable of setters.
Can’t buy into michelle’s gripe @2 about British centric terms here. Although I don’t solve Australian crosswords much any more, I recall that they contained a lot of parochial terms – again I just put it down to the education factor. Funny … that with FLATHEAD, which is very common (and a delicious eating fish down here), was the clue that gave so many of the ‘home team’ problems. It was nearly a write-in for me.
More than usual to be learned today – both in the clues themselves and the solutions. But when one can derive a word like CREDITON from the wordplay (obvious anagram in this case), look up the town on Wiki and read that amongst other things that it is a’suffragen bishopric’ … well, I just think that it is OK! It was my last one in.
Had my reference tools with me today, so immense enjoyment from this … please don’t ever change, Pasquale.