Guardian 26,701 / Chifonie

59 comments on “Guardian 26,701 / Chifonie”

1. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen
   Yes, a sound crossword. I was held up by assuming that 4d would start DR for “doctor” (I toyed with DRAPE, but it would have needed to be DRAPES, and I couldn’t see where the APE came from anyway!). I finished in the NW, where I took ages to pick the right type of “suit” for 9a.

2. Thank you, Eileen, and good morning, everyone.

   An enjoyable and straightforward Chifonie today.

   Held up for a while by entering UNALTERED for the Renault + ed anagram. (Sort of works).

   Failed to see IRA for Republicans and took forever to see GNAT in STAGNATE.

   I was wondering why clue the obscure RILKE but then I suppose there are not many words that fit R-L-E.

   Smooth offering, thank you Chifonie.

3. Very smooth. Got held up in the SE corner: at 26a, although I knew English would be ‘E’ I somehow bamboozled myself into thinking it might be doing double duty, so didn’t look far enough afield for the poet. And at 19d Rechabite for teetotaller is new to me, and I still don’t think of a tablet as a computer (despite doing the crossword on one!)

4. Thanks Eileen and Chifonie
   Eileen as ever sums it up well. An enjoyable, slightly old fashioned puzzle without gimmickry but with a nice light touch and immaculate cluing.
   Glad to see Eileen is back on line. It is very frustrating when ‘the system’ goes down.

5. I do enjoy Chifonie’s puzzles since I can usually complete them, although I usually have to parse a few answers post-solve. I first entered WATCH CHAIN, a ‘watch’ could fancifully be a ‘guardian’. RESTRICTED was parsed after entry and, like Eileen, I was not happy with ‘break up’ = SCRAP.

   Thanks to both.

6. Thanks Chifonie & Eileen.

   Straightforward, accurate cluing. I think if you scrap a ship, it’s assumed it will be broken up [it’s in Chambers & Oxford Thesauruses as a synonym.]

   I wasn’t familiar with PECULATOR but did like ORCHESTRAL & RESTRICTED.

7. William @2, there seems to be only one alternative to RILKE, and that is ‘rille’, a cleft or narrow valley on the moon’s surface, a variant of ‘rill’. Perhaps rather fun to clue!

8. I found this fairly kind, but (the new for me) PECULATOR is a good word and I hadn’t met ALBERT for ‘watch chain’ before. CEP is also another term that I don’t see much in that big world outside the confines of the cryptic. I thought SCRAP was OK in the sense given by Robi@6 above.

   Thank you to setter and blogger.

9. As Eileen wrote, a straightforward puzzle, and none the worse for that. Like William @2, I missed IRA so couldn’t fully parse DIES IRAE, but it couldn’t be anything else. Like Cookie @5, I initially entered WATCH CHAIN, and like her and Eileen, I have reservations about SCRAP = “break up”, but it does give a nice surface.

   Thanks to Chifonie and Eileen.

10. WordPlodder @8, you should come to France, CEPs are delicious and are used a lot in food preparations, e.g. soups and sausages.

11. Here you are WordPlodder http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/ingredients/cep-recipes

12. Loved “Ark Royal” in the surface — I always enjoy it when a setter combines elements to make a familiar pairing that has nothing to do with the solution, and this one was especially classy.

    Rechabite and Albert as a chain were new to me.

13. A slight touch up in difficulty compared to yesterday but not much. RILKE was last, after some trial and error – I was looking for an English poet, in spite of myself! Didn’t know what a Rechabite was, so that didn’t help. Did like DEATH.

    Is DIES IRAE a hymn? It’s part of the Requiem Mass, as Eileen’s helpful examples show, but I don’t see it any more a hymn than the Agnus Dei or Sanctus.

14. Trailman @13, you met ‘rechabite’ in the clue of a Chifonie puzzle in October 2014.

15. Not one of Chifonie’s easiest, but maybe I was just off form today. Last in was ACCEPT, favourite was BADMINTON.

    Thanks to Eileen and Chifonie

16. Hi Robi @6

    All I can see for ‘scrap’, as a verb, in my 12th edition Chambers is ‘to consign to the scrapheap; to discard, cease to use, do away with, abandon.’

    I agree with your comment on what usually happens to ships after they’ve been scrapped – cf my comment in the blog re cars – but that doesn’t mean that it always happens, or make the verbs synonymous. [Leading a horse to water does not equal making him drink. 😉 ] I really don’t want to start a protracted discussion on a fairly trivial point but wanted to reassure myself that, this time, I hadn’t missed something in [my] Chambers!

    Hi Valentine @12

    Thank you for making that point about Ark Royal – I love clues like that, too!

    And Trailman @ 13

    DIES IRAE is defined as a hymn [used in a Mass for the dead] in both Collins and Chambers.

17. @13 and @16: yes, ‘hymn’ is perfectly fair, and the clue for DIES IRAE was a lot better than the shocker for KYRIE in yesterday’s quiptic!

18. This was not difficult but still very enjoyable. Not having a tablet(!) with me while I was out, and not knowing what a rechabite is, I had to guess TABLET, and had to leave RILKE until I got home. (I keep forgetting that ‘ilk’ also means type, but I wasn’t sure of the ‘L’ anyway.)

    It’s good when a majority of the clues can be solved forwards, as it were, from the wordplay to the answer, sometimes replaying this sequence if the answer is not certain. Relying more on inspiration and guessing is also good if you want to enjoy a challenge – as I often do. I’ll see what tomorrow brings!

    Chifonie did a good job here, as did Eileen.

19. Hahahaha Rog!

20. Thanks Cookie @14, though alas ‘met’ isn’t the same as ‘remembered’ over the course of a year.

    On DIES IRAE, I’ve not got beyond the New English Hymnal on what counts. Though I’ve not consulted it for some decades so maybe my memory is playing tricks there too.

21. I enjoyed this one. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

    Coincidentally peculate was today’s “Word of the Day” on wordsmith.org [link] which I had just read on the email subscription. (I know it’s a bit American but I like getting those mails every morning).

    The time of year for ceps and all other fungoid growth is upon us. Last week we had lovely big edible-looking cep grow on our lawn, but it was soon followed by a mass of classic toadstool fly agarics around the same place. I wonder if that cep would’ve been edible or if it would have absorbed a dose of the fly agaric poison?
    I’m far too sensible (aka too much of a coward) to have tried. You’ve only got one liver, and mine takes enough punishment as it is.

    I knew Rechabite from when it recently cropped up in a crossword.
    Searching, I find I must redefine recently: It must’ve been a whole year ago – almost exactly – and it was Chifonie then too [blog link Guardian 26386 2014-10-09] . Time. sheesh.

22. Thanks Cookie @10&11. My tastes are pretty unsophisticated I’m afraid but you’ve encouraged me to broaden my horizons. Hazelnut-crusted brill with sautéed ceps and Jerusalem artichoke purée indeed! A bit more exotic than tonight’s fare of colcannon – now there’s a good word beloved of cryptic setters – and frozen mixed veg. See how cryptic crosswords can truly change lives.

    Thanks again.

23. 26a alternative Rolfe (Edwin, poet) from R + OLF (file extension or type .OLF, well we are mentioning computers today!) + E

24. Here is a lovely site with simpler CEP recipes
    http://www.mimithorisson.com/2012/10/15/the-wacky-and-wonderful-world-of-cepes

25. [I haven’t looked at Cookie’s links – they may say this – but ceps are called porcini in Italy. You may have heard of them?]

26. [muffin, the common name for CEP in England was/is ‘penny bun’, I have never heard it, have you?]

27. [Rings a vague bell, but most of us in England aren’t confident enough of identification to risk foraging for fungi.]

28. “Sell it for scrap” does not translate to “sell it for discard” (discard doesn’t fit does it?), but “sell it for breaking up” seems to be the intention. So it never occured to me there was a problem.

29. I found this extremely easy until EQUIPE and I’m still in the dark as to what it means. Actually,I don’t know what RECHABITE means either but TABLET had to be correct.
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Chifonie.

30. [muffin, CEPs dry very well, keeping their flavour, some supermarkets probably sell them in the UK.]

31. Thanks to Chifonie and Eileen. Like others I got TABLET by guessing that Rechabite = TT and did not know Albert = watch chain (though I did get the PAPER part right off) but EQUIPE was new to me (though I had no trouble parsing it). RILKE was one of my first in (“ilk” is a common ingredient in US puzzles). Very enjoyable.

32. I’m familiar with EQUIPE as it’s what the cycle teams (Tour de France etc.) are called.

    [Cookie – I have a packet of dried porcini in the store cupboard, from my last visit to Italy.]

33. It’s gratifying how much one learns as a byproduct of solving crosswords. Thanks to muffin I now know ceps are porcini mushrooms, which are delicious and can be bought from lots of places. A restaurant in West Dulwich was renamed Da Porcini in recent years – I’ve forgotten its previous name.

34. ACD@31 et al

    I’ve just seen that in the last Chifonie puzzle I blogged there was ‘Albert to contemplate a mountain range (5,5)’
    [WATCH CHAIN] [and also – double definition – ‘Fights for waste food (6)’! 😉 ]

35. [Alan Browne @33
    Have you been in Dulwich long enough to remember Chez Nico in East Dulwich? It was a remarkable place to find “out of town” at the time.]

36. I love setters who have their own distinct voice (which is why I can never get too cross with Rufus), and Chifonie is definitely one of that group. His style is very pure (“Doctor hated curtains (5)” being a fine example), and any deviousnesses seem natural rather than heavy-handed or contrived; when solving Chifonie you can almost smell those walks on the Lake District fells!

    Thanks Eileen, and Chifonie for an untaxing but very pleasant afternoon tea.

37. [muffin @35
    Mustn’t overdo this private stuff! No, I’m a frequent visitor to East Dulwich and thereabouts, but I don’t remember Chez Nico.]

38. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen

    A typically elegant puzzle on the easier side of the Guardian spectrum by this setter – but always enjoyable and fitted perfectly in to the train ride home.

    Still a couple of new words in today – the French EQUIPE and PECULATOR. I have come across Herr RILKE previously in some crossword and ‘Rechabite’ was a throw back to early secondary school days when we had “Temperance classes” ( I think that they were called) which taught about the virtues of non-drinking- fortunately, I obviously paid little attention to them !!

    I was another WATCH CHAIN enter-er which held me up with the last few in being 1d, 2d and 3d along with the deceptively harder than it should have been CLUBS.

39. Thanks Chifonie and Eileen for an elegant and gentle solve.

    Rilke is a wonderful and often profoundly moving poet. One of his most famous poems is Herbsstag – autumn day. There are several English versions here -http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke4.html – though none of them in my view really catch the essence of the verse, especially the moving last stanza.

40. I enjoyed this but didn’t get 7d. I have never heard of it and would not equate “longs for” to “dies” so no way into this even though I had all the crossers.

41. John M@40 – I’m dying/longing for a drink

42. Oh, Robi, go and have one – the sun’s well over the yardarm at this time of year. 😉

43. muffin@35 aah Chez Nico, I remember making the pilgrimage from Blackheath decades ago, while he was still in a house.He moved into the West End eventually.

44. [Harhop @ 43 – yes, we’ve not lived in London for over thirty years (we were at the top of Dog Kennel Hill), and he had moved even before that. We did take advantage of his proximity several times before that, though!]

45. JohnM @40. I see what you’re getting at: ‘longs for’ equates to ‘dies for’, so ‘for’ is just one of those filler words like ‘in’ that compilers have to use sometimes to give the clue a passable surface. Chifonie has used this device in four other clues today: 9A, 14A, 3D and 5D.

46. A well contructed puzzle and immaculately clued.

    It was a bit of a Monday offering though and was over very quickly. My only brief hold up was PECULATOR which I had never heard. Howvever it did jump out of the fodder very readily and a little knowledge of Latin and a Catholic upbringing made it likely enough to write in.

    Still enjoyable though. Perhaps we are being softened up for some real challenges later in the week.

    Thanks to Eileen and Chifonie

47. Alan Browne @45

    Re 7dn: I know just what you mean, which is why I resorted to a facetious reply to Robi, having not commented on the blog.

    The devices that you mention re this clue and others are, as you say, commonly used as fillers and are therefore generally accepted, I think – hence no comment on my part.

    I’ll admit that Chifonie’s cluing style does not put him among my top favourite setters [but that’s just me] but I did enjoy this one.

48. [muffin, I went to buy a few CEPs at the supermarket today, but was too late for the fresh ones; resorted to the dried fungi section, but was put off on spotting bags of ‘Trompettes de la mort’.]

49. Eileen @47. Absolutely. I would just add that, having compiled a few crosswords of my own over the years, for fun, I know how difficult it is to create a perfect clue every time, and I would let in an innocent filler on occasion to make a clue readable.

    I just appreciate how Chifonie and all the othes are able to turn out (I nearly said churn out) crossword after crossword for our enjoyment and leave relatively little for us to find fault with. I usually pick on more significant points than fillers in my contributions to this page (I felt I had to say something about French non-homophones, or near-homophones, the other day), but in this case the filler was worth mentioning as part of my explanation.

50. Many thanks, Alan Browne @49- well said! [I’m going to bed now.]

51. Some good stuff in there, but I’m surprised no one has taken issue with PECULATOR or DIES IRAE, both unquestionably obscure terms (unless you’re of the religious persuasion, I suppose) and both unsolvable from wordplay.

    With PECULATOR you were stuck with guessing how to distribute the vowels, and there were several feasible combinations. DIES IRAE, well, I see how it works now, but for example ‘key’ can be any of seven letters, and in a term that obtuse that doesn’t feel fair.

52. Simon @51
    I stumbled your late post while looking for something else and noticed it has not yet had a response.

    My take on PECULATOR is that it is a fair clue: the definition is brief but correct, the wordplay is easily found and resolved, and there are no extraneous words. I too had not heard of the word, but (a) I don’t take issue with words that are new to me, provided such words are few and far between – I like to learn; (b) one would hope to arrive at the answer more quickly than throwing in the vowels at random by trying the common endings ‘…ATOR’ and ‘…UTOR’, or even the recognisable beginning ‘PECUL…’.

    I have a minor gripe with the clue for DIES IRAE myself, as I might have implied in an earlier post, namely, that it has a ‘filler’, as I call it, in the form of the word ‘for’. For an unusual word or phrase this is tricky. Otherwise this clue would pass the kind of test I described in the previous paragraph. I already knew DIES IRAE, but if I didn’t I think I would have been happy to learn of it via this puzzle.

    I hope this is helpful.

53. Your ceps/cepes (sorry, can’t manage the accent grave) are our porcini in the US. We often use the Italian rather than the French for a food word — your courgettes are our zucchini, your rocket/roquette is our arugula. I’d better stop, this is making me hungry.

54. Valentine @53
    Interesting – though I think in Italy rocket is rucola/i>.

55. Odd — I thought I’d posted this yesterday, but it doesn’t seem to have appeared.

    I looked up arugula’s definition, and it turns out that rucola/e is the word in standard Italian,but most of our Italian immigrants came from the south, and the Calabrian (from the toe of the boot) way of saying it is more like “aruculu”, which may have become arugula over here, or maybe that’s just another dialect variation. For the whole article, including the original Roman caterpillar connection, go to
    http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-the-word-arugula.

    Probably nobody will ever read this belated post, but what is there to lose?

56. i read it, valentine

57. Thanks Eileen and Chifonie.

    I’m becoming more and more of a fan of Chifonie’s puzzles.

    All clues were solvable in their own right and were clear and unambiguous. And I learnt new – for me – words (EQUIPE, PECULATE, and the Austrian poet RILKE).

    Particularly liked 4dn.

    So thanks again.

58. I’m relatively new to cryptic crosswords and this was the first time I managed to fully complete the Guardian one by myself (with no clues from my dad reading the answers!) I’ve found that I’ve come close with some of Chifonie’s previous crosswords – I’m a big fan of these nice, clear clues. Really enjoyed completing this. Such a satisfying feeling!

    I got the CEP in ACCEPT quite quickly purely because I’ve been on the hunt for ceps in my local area over the last month or so.

    muffin@1, I had the same thought process with DRAPE, etc. Took me a while to realise the significance of “doctor”!

    It’s great how much you learn from doing these. From this crossword alone, I discovered two new words (PECULATOR, WISEACRE), an Austrian poet (RILKE) and the story of Andromeda.

    Many thanks to Chifonie and Eileen. And to all the commenters for an interesting read!

59. The word “ilk” does *not* really mean type; it has come to have that meaning through modern misusage. Much as “begs the question” has come to mean “raises the question” rather than its true meaning of “assumes what is being claimed to be proven”. The language grows poorer through such blurring and mental sloppiness.

    (What “ilk” really means — or meant — is “of or from the same place”.
    Much more subtle and elegant than its new dumbed-down meaning.)

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