Guardian Cryptic 26746 Tramp

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An enjoyable challenge from Tramp to warm one up for tomorrow’s prize puzzle.  Thanks to Tramp.  Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

9 “Being in sport is exciting” (Shearer and co) (9)

RACEHORSE : Anagram of(exciting) SHEARER AND CO.

Defn: A four-legged being.

10 Spirits (rum, gin): finishes off Bacardi and coke (5)

GENII : Anagram of(rum) { GIN + the last letters, respectively, of(finishes off) [“Bacardi” plus(and) “coke “] }.

11 Baby alone on a teat’s content (7)

NEONATE : Hidden in(…’s content) “alone on a teat “.

12 Arrange good-looking person, ignoring hot model (7)

DISPOSE : “dish”(a good-looking person, especially if female) minus(ignoring) “h” + POSE(to model, for a painting, say).

Answer: As in “Man proposes, God disposes.”

13 Sporting people provided nothing to entertain (4)

FIFA : IF(provided;conditional on) contained in(… to entertain) F.A.(abbrev. for “f*** all” or Fanny Adams;nothing, as in “he’s doing sweet F.A. about it”).

Answer: Abbrev. for the sporting body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.

14 One with leaves in teapot is stirring (10)

POINSETTIA : Anagram of(… stirring) IN TEAPOT IS.

15 Setback as English, with less colour, return to grab sun (7)

RELAPSE : Reversal of(…, return) [ E(abbrev. for “English”) + PALER(with less colour) ] containing(to grab) S(abbrev. for “sun”).

17 Stake to run out, money invested as capital (7)

PALERMO : PALE(a stake, say, an upright in a fence) plus(to) R.O.(abbrev. for “run out”, in cricket scores) containing(… invested) M(abbrev. for “money”).

Defn: … city of Sicily.

19 Cut Beeb: air a TV broadcast (10)

ABBREVIATE : Anagram of(… broadcast) BEEB: AIR A TV.

22 Fight in bar (4)

SPAR : Double defn: 2nd: … used to support sails and rigging.

23 Perfect year turning bad: papers (Conservative press) (7)

IDYLLIC : [ Y(abbrev. for “year”) + reversal of(turning) ILL(bad, as in “to think ill of you”) ] contained in(… press) [ ID(abbrev. for “identity papers” + C(abbrev. for “Conservative”) ].

24 Soldiers come of age, miss women, then get back together (7)

REGROUP : R.E.(abbrev. for the Royal Engineers, branch of the British army) + “grow up”(to come of age) minus(miss) “w”(abbrev. for “women”).

26 BA knocked out from “Crazy fools” (5)

NANAS : “BA” deleted from(knocked out from) “bananas”(crazy;nuts).

27 Whiskers around animal, hard biting its prey (9)

MOUSTACHE : [ Reversal of(around) CAT(an animal) + H(abbrev. for “hard”) ] contained in(biting) MOUSE(a cat’s prey).

Down

1 Changes tons, as Tim Farron gets involved (15)

TRANSFORMATIONS : Anagram of(… gets involved) TONS, AS TIM FARRON.

2 Helping with inside story on baseless rich (8)

SCOOPFUL : SCOOP(an inside story, the first to break in the news) placed above(on, in a down clue) “full”(rich;plentiful) minus its last letter(baseless …, in a down clue).

3 Stop wife getting kiss off cheat (4)

WHOA : W(abbrev. for “wife”) plus(getting) “hoax”(to cheat;to trick) minus(… off) “x”(letter signifying a kiss in written communication).

Answer: An exclamation as an instruction to stop.

4 Horrible German to be sorry? A little (8)

GRUESOME : G(abbrev. for German) + RUE(to be sorry;to regret) + SOME(a little).

5 Trick shot pottable? (4,2)

LEAD ON : LEAD(shot;bullets, collectively, as in gangster-speak “to pump full of lead”) + ON(in billiards-speak, to describe a ball that is pottable).

Defn: To deceive.

6 Finish urge — that woman will (8)

EGGSHELL : EGG(to urge;to prod into some sort of action) + SHE’LL(contraction of “she will”;that woman will).

Defn: …, or surface texture of paint, specifically one with a slight sheen.

7 Make fast? On the contrary (one local runner) (6)

UNBOLT : UN(“one”, in the local lingo or dialect) + BOLT(Usain, fastest runner ever recorded).

8 Screwing pig — Cameron hater is one making film (15)

CINEMATOGRAPHER : Anagram of(Screwing) PIG — CAMERON HATER.

16 Don’t look as often outstanding (8)

PEERLESS : [PEER LESS](don’t look as often).

Defn: Without compare.

17 Die in a film that’s released (5,3)

PETER OUT : PETER(a film about serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper) plus(that’s) OUT(released).

18 See 20

20, 18 Labour hope Corbyn, a red, is excellent (6,8)

BEYOND REPROACH : Anagram of(Labour) HOPE CORBYN, A RED.

21 Screw with it and climax (6)

INCOME : IN(with it;following the latest trend) + COME(to climax in sexual intercourse).

Answer: “Screw” in slang.

25 Name backing European exit (4)

GATE : Reversal of(… backing) TAG(to name something) + E(abbrev. for European).

55 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26746 Tramp”

  5. Thanks Tramp and Steve B re 17 down. If I hadn’t come across that lesser-known film, I’d still be searching for the explanation. Doh!
    Re 27 across, I had the same doubt initially, Bembo, but then I thought of something taking a bite, making a hole in what’s been bitten, and filling that hole with itself!

  7. Not convinced by 27A, as for me, like Bembo, “biting” implies “containing”. I can’t find a way of reading it as it’s intended.

  16. Well, if you didn’t smile at this, then you must have had a sense of humour bypass in a previous life. I loved the contemporary references (especially to PigGate and FIFA) and the puerile humour in INCOME hit the spot too. But it was all good, and not too strenuous because of the clear clueing and the generous grid.

    Well done, Tramp, and thanks to scchua for the blog.

  17. Having got the crossers for 4, had an amusing moment wondering if it was ‘arsehole’. No offence, Germans….or anyone else…….

  18. Thanks Tramp and scchua

    Pleasant puzzle to finish the week which felt like it was at the easier end of his difficulty scale.

    I had gone with a more obscure Austro-Hungarian film, PETER – so good to see the proper parsing for 17d. Had a smile as the same thought as martin@17 had with the crossing letters at 4d – a nice construct when the true answer presented.

    Didn’t spot any theme other than the topical references to current affairs in the clue surfaces. Did like the delicate misdirection in the word play of many of them.

    Finished up in the top of the grid with WHOA, LEAD ON and UNBOLT as the last few in.

  19. A very enjoyable puzzle, not one of Tramp’s most difficult but with a few tricky moments. Last in was NEONATE after SCOOPFUL. Liked RACEHORSE, NANAS and BEYOND REPROACH

    Thanks to Tramp and scchua

  20. Thanks to Tramp ans scchua. I needed help parsing the second half of PALERMO and also LEAD ON (I missed the ON = pottable in billiards) and needed the crossers to get WHOA but much enjoyed the process.

  21. Many thanks to Tramp and scchua – I do like it when the setter drops by. Really enjoyable solve – loved the political references.

    Was the use of the word “sporting” in 13ac meant to be a tad ironic given current circumstances?

  22. I made a good start with this, but then got stuck in the NE. I returned to it after lunch and got all but one, resorting to a word-finder for UNBOLT. I understood BOLT but still doubted the parsing of UN even though I knew it was both French and dialect for “one”. I also failed to parse NEONATE (wrongly thought it was an anagram of “on a teat” and didn’t look any further) and FIFA.

    BEYOND REPROACH was a particular favourite but RACEHORSE, WHOA and CINEMATOGRAPHER were close runners-up.

    Thanks to Tramp and scchua.

  23. In a puzzle that started slowly but then speeded up, there were some very good clues here – GRUESOME, NEONATE and the topical BEYOND REPROACH possibly top of my list. Couldn’t parse PETER OUT but I now see where it’s coming from.

    But I always seem to have one clue that gives me trouble. Today it was UNBOLT. True, I should have twigged runner = BOLT sooner, but ‘one local’ = UN is well beyond me. Which dialect? Generally when it’s presumed rhyming slang or similar there’s an indication of what we’re aiming at (as in EastEnders on Wednesday). If it’s French, then there’s an indicator too (even if only a ref to Nice etc). Here neither; too tough for Trailman.

  25. realthog @ 24

    It’s a device that threw me until someone explained it a year or so ago. ‘a’ and ‘per’ can be interchanged in expressions like “twice per [or ‘a’] week” and “widgets, £2 a [or ‘per’] dozen”.

  26. Thanks, Aoxomoxoa @25!

    Hm. Not sure I like that convention, though. Smacks to me of lazy cluing.

    Besides, shouldn’t the correctly structed clue then be (the nonsensical) “Die film in a that’s released”?

  27. realthog @ 26

    No, I think it works (as per SteveB’s explanation @1). If you read it as “in a [implied comma] film….”. Trying to think of a similar phrase…..maybe “in shorts I look ridiculous” (sadly true!). So, “in shorts I”.

  28. Now that I’ve completed the puzzle,it looks quite straightforward but I got stuck after getting about 1/3 of it. The log jam broke after getting the CORBYN anagram. I liked PEERLESS and NANAS ( and INCOME-ooh Er) FIFA raised a smile too.
    Thanks Tramp.

  29. Thanks scchua and Tramp…..I rationalized 27ac remembering Tom and Jerry cartoons – who is the hunter, who is the prey – :-).

    Needed parsing help for FIFA and Peter Out – otherwise a fun and fast solve for me.

  33. Pretty disappointing really. Too much too easy and too much plain wrong.

    The two long down clues were almost gimme anagrams. (8D especially). 27A is wrong. 2D and 7D were very weak. Is “scoop” really “inside story”? (I don’t think so!) “One local” = “un” (is local a valid indication of foreign?!!)

    Some nice clues as well but this puzzle needed an editor. (Still on his holliers apparently)

    The most annoying thing is that one spends time on things like this thinking “it can’t be this as the ed wouldn’t allow it” and then waste time looking for something sensible that one has missed!!

    Thanks to scchua and Tramp

  39. B(NTO) @33 and Cookie @35 et al
    For a newspaper, an inside story will usually be a scoop, but not all scoops are inside stories.

    In the informal sense Cookie cited, I am thinking of someone (anyone, not just someone in the media) asking a friend or colleague he knows has been part of some big event “so what’s the scoop, then?” That’s not a phrasing I would use, but I’ve heard it quite often.

  40. I’m newish to Guardian cryptics so cheat a lot, and lucky to get about 50%, often don’t even understand the explanations. So I thought this must have been fairly easy as I understood almost all of explanations, got 3/4 of clues without cheating.

    I particularly liked 10a – rum, gin. Do I remember correctly that a gin (or jin) was an evil genie – can’t find corroboration.

  42. It’s good to come back from a month away in Australia (where my time spent with grandchildren gave me a holiday from Guardian crosswords) to a puzzle such as this.

    I’m late with this post, but I would just like to say that the praise throughout this blog is well-deserved, and Tramp’s contributions were most welcome. (Incidentally, as others have said over time, a crossword editor would be expected to deal with gremlins like those that were picked up today.) Thanks also to scchua.

    I did wonder about ‘inside story’ (2D) myself, and I agree with what jennyk (@38) says about this, but it turns out this meaning for SCOOP has some authority.

    Sometimes (not today) I find that praise is often meted out despite weaknesses in the clues, almost as if the solver has thought “Well, I solved it and enjoyed it, and in all those clues that don’t quite work, with vague references and extra words, I knew what the compiler intended, so I’ll record my usual thanks.” In spite of that, this is an excellent site, built on intelligent observations and good-natured humour.

    Today’s puzzle was excellent (gremlins excepted) – there was some clever clueing throughout, and I liked the way that Tramp managed to include the names of three UK party leaders as anagram fodder in three of the clues. The humour content was also welcome.

  43. Thanks for the comments.

    I have apologised for the mistake over biting twice but “bite” can mean to cut or penetrate. I always apologise for my mistakes. People post on these sites and they moan about individual clues; a lot of times it is their misunderstanding but they rarely apologise.

    Someone on the Guardian thread moaned that the clue for nanas made no sense. BA was in the A Team and referred to others as “crazy fools”. He also hated flying and had to be knocked out to board a plane.

    I originally just had “one’ for ‘un’ . The last time I added “northern one” someone on here said that “un” was well-known and didn’t need the “northern”. The editor changed it to “foreign one” but I changed it to “local one”.

    I got lovely messages from Arachne, Vlad and Klingsor (three of the best in the business) so overall I’m quite pleased with the puzzle.

    Increasingly, I dread reading the blogs.

    It’s hard to type on this phone so I apologise if there are mistakes.

    Neil

  44. Tramp, keep them coming! We loved this one, with its clever laugh-aloud political clueing. Please ignore the wingers and trolls and give us more of such clever and entertaining stuff.

  45. Tramp @43 and crosswordfan @ 44. I agree. There are always the usual suspects, both here and on the Guardian site, who’ll have a moan no matter what. This was a good crossword which I for one enjoyed. As Simon S said @ 38, it’s the wood that’s important, not the trees. These are meant to be amusing diversions and if the odd sloppy clue creeps in, so what?

  46. Thanks for the comments on 2D and 7D.

    I still think they are very weak. (They stilll seem slightly wrong in retrospect when one has the answer and I think would be classed as unfair in the Ximenean sense)

    A “scoop” surely is a story which a newspaper has exclusively. An “inside story” is only a “scoop” if it is the sole property of one paper. A “leaked” document for instance would only be a “scoop” if it was leaked to one newspaper. I don’t believe the general use of the word “scoop” has changed to include this. So I disagree with the quoted sources. “one local” is still very weak IMHO.

    I’m not criticising Tramp so much as our “esteemed ed”. There does seem to be a lot of obvious questiobable stuff being published over the last year which a brief perusal of the puzzle could avoid!!!

  47. ChrisP, welcome. I also only get about 50% of the clues, and that after doing cryptics for a year, and then take ages trying to solve the rest, but now manage not to use the ‘reveal’ button, but do use ‘check’. Have you tried the Everyman crosswords, I can usually finish those.

    Here is an explanation about Jinn in the sense or ‘evil spirits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn

    and here for GENII http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(mythology)

    I can see why you were confused, me too.

  48. Nice one, Tramp!

    Apologies for late posting but only got round to it last night over a pint in the pub.

    Good fun (WHOA and INCOME were favourites) and I thought the political anagrams were brilliant.

  50. Tramp @43
    I’m sorry that you dread reading these blogs. I think most of us appreciate it when compilers do read our comments and sometimes comment themselves. I certainly do, even when I don’t post thanks.

    Apart from a very few serial complainers, most posters here at worst combine praise with a few specific complaints, and if those complaints are unjustified others usually defend those clues (as has happened here with “scoop” and “un”). If we didn’t say why we have doubts about a particular clue even after reading the blogger’s parsing, we wouldn’t ever learn from other posters’ alternative or more detailed explanations.

  51. Tramp, nearly every puzzle has one or more clues that are controversial, don’t let it bother you, in fact the comments following the blog would be very dull if all the clues met with universal approval.

  52. By the way, 27a works fine, if you had not posted your comment @4, I would not have posted my silly one @10. One can easily visualise the cat biting into the mouse, and his whiskers spreading out – the cat is ‘biting’ into its prey, not swallowing it whole.

  53. Thanks for the enjoyable puzzle, Tramp. Anyone who arrived at “unbolt” or “moustache” could not have been in any doubt that those were the correct answers, regardless of any quibbles about the surface. I’m frankly amazed by the carping. Even if the crossword was rubbish, which it certainly wasn’t, I don’t think I’d have any right to complain. It’s not as if we pay anything to download it.

  54. The fact is that the carping is often wrong. “Local one” is “un” and “biting” is fine, although unconventional, as an insertion indicator.

  55. Thanks scchua for the blog and Tramp for the puzzle and contributions above.

    No need for such contrition Tramp. It’s a fine job you do and the entertainment you provide is greatly appreciated.

    Keep them coming – even with the odd minor error. After all, that’s what gives us solvers something to bang on about.

    By the way, did I mention that ‘NANAS’ for fools is probably derived from BANANAS anyway?

    Boo, hiss to you Hamish.

    Thanks again.

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