Guardian Cryptic 26765 by Paul

by

A very enjoyable puzzle – many thanks Paul. Favourites 19ac, 22ac, 27ac, 6dn, and 17dn.

Across
1 PLAINTIFF
Not the accused, obvious difference (9)

PLAIN=”obvious” plus TIFF=quarrel=”difference”
6 MAFIA
Mother and father in America originally a secretive family (5)

M[other] A[nd] F[ather] I[n] A[merica]
9 NEGEV
Desert in Nigerian capital, table lacking in food is recalled (5)

N[igerian], plus VEGEtable=”food”, lacking the table and reversed (“recalled”)
10 PISCO SOUR
South American cocktail to serve — is Greek island into it? (5,4)

POUR=”serve”, with IS and COS=”Greek island” inside it
11 HUE
Tone no good in giant (3)

HU[g]E=”giant”, minus the g[ood]
12 LAUGHING GAS
A number in a fortunate position, gossip (8,3)

=something that numbs. ‘to be LAUGHING’=’to be in a fortunate position’, plus GAS=”gossip”
14 RETIRED
In plant, slowing wheels stopped working (7)

REED=”plant”; with RIT[ardando]=”slowing” as a usical instruction, inside and reversed (“wheels”)
15 REMODEL
Again create film to get government department on board (7)

REEL=”film” around M[inistry] O[f] D[efence]=”government department”
16 SATANIC
Evil answer described by devilish antics (7)

A[nswer] inside (antics)*
19 TRESSES
Vessel in wood, flowers overhead? (7)

=things that flow over your head. S[team]S[hip]=”Vessel” in TREES=”wood”
22 DISNEYESQUE
Pluto and Evil Queen certainly parts — so described? (11)

DIS=”Pluto”, the infernal world; plus (Queen)* with YES=”certainly” parting the anagram
23 ACE
One is cracking (3)

double definition
24 PEPPERONI
Sausage that’s very soft embraced by cooking pioneer (9)

PP=pianissimo=”very soft”, inside (pioneer)*
26 GAMMA
Ray’s character written about in the morning publication (5)

=a Greek character denoting a type of radioactivity ray. AM=”in the morning” plus MAG[azine]=”publication”, all reversed (“written about”)
27 POTTY
On which an infant goes crazy (5)

double definition
28 TRATTORIA
Restaurant where tripe found in perfect dessert, sent back (9)

ROT=”tripe”, inside AI=A1=”perfect” plus TART=”dessert”; all reversed (“sent back”)
Down
1 PANTHER
Male part under head of pretty cat (7)

ANTHER=”Male part” of a flower’s stamen, under P[retty]
2 AUGMENT
Summer resort finally supporting staff — that’s swell (7)

AUG[ust]=”Summer”, plus [resor]T underneath MEN=”staff”
3 NAVEL ORANGE
Leaders in numbers aiming to top Tour de France mountains? One’s not pipped! (5,6)

A seedless variety of orange. N[umbers] A[iming], on top of: VELO RANGE=”Tour de France mountains”, as ‘vélo’ is French for a bicycle
4 IMPOUND
Paul’s on the money? Shut up! (7)

I’M=”Paul’s”, on POUND=”money”
5 FISCHER
Bobby, sedentary champion trawlerman catching cold (7)

Bobby Fischer [wiki] was world chess champion. FISHER=”trawlerman” catching C[old]
6 MOO
Low, though not the lowest in humour (3)

MOO[d]=”humour”, without its lowest letter
7 FLOGGED
Initially, freebie recorded as sold (7)

F[reebie] plus LOGGED=”recorded”
8 AEROSOL
Spray loose bowels of errant bum (7)

(loose ra)* – where ra=”bowels of errant”, and “bum” is the anagrind
13 NUMBER EIGHT
Forward a shade, beginning to edge into the darkness (6,5)

in rugby or football a NUMBER EIGHT would be a forward. UMBER=a brownish colour=”a shade”, plus E[dge]; all inside NIGHT=”the darkness”
16 SODA POP
Put posters up about old American drink (4,3)

POP ADS=”Put posters”, reversed (“up”) and around O[ld]
17 TOSSPOT
Old wino beats drunkard up (7)

TOPS SOT=”beats drunkard”, reversed (“up”)
18 CHEROOT
The sack for a young person stealing favourite cigar (7)

COT=”The sack [i.e. bed] for a young person”, around HERO=”favourite”
19, 20 TEQUILA SLAMMER
Student partial to quite a fashionable, cooler cocktail (7,7)

L[earner]=”Student”, inside (quite a)*, plus SLAMMER=”cooler”=jail
20  
See 19
21 SMETANA
A macadamia initially squeezed between buttocks, when doing a backflip, he scored! (7)

Bedrich Smetana [wiki] was a composer, and wrote scores. A, plus M[academia] inside NATES=”buttocks” reversed (“doing a backflip”)
25 ELY
Not entirely drivel, you see (3)

a cathedral city. Hidden in “[driv]EL Y[ou]” “Not [entir]ELY drivel” edit thanks to WordPlodder and others

31 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26765 by Paul”

  2. Yes, a very pleasant Monday solve, with some head scratching required. I wondered if LAUGHING GAS was going to be the gateway to a comedy theme, but I couldn’t take this any further. My favourites were DISNEYESQUE and CHEROOT. 25d can also be parsed as ‘Not entirely drivEL You see’.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

  3. No pdf print available so I used the normal Print function.

    The printout went over two pages. There was a small grid and very large text.

    Secondly, the online version no longer works on Firefox; perhaps, this is because I have disabled Java (reported malware).

  4. A nice change to see Paul on a Monday, albeit at his gentlest. Many good clues, with only a couple causing me problems – had to look up 10ac as I’m not well up on cocktails and I’m still not convinced about 19ac, even though the answer was obvious from the wordplay. I’m sure that someone out there can come up with a good explanation!

    Thank you Paul and manehi.

  6. Wordplodder @2 is being too modest, I think. That parsing of 25d. is surely the correct one. Otherwise ‘not entirely” would be doing double duty and ‘drivel, you’ would be redundant.

  7. Thanks Paul and manehi
    I really liked the last Paul, but this was back to normal. What is the “in” doing in “Desert in Nigerian capital…………”? Why “partial” in 19,20? “Summer” = “AUG”? I hope we do better than that next year!
    I could go on.
    I parsed 25 as Wordplodder @2 suggests.

  9. I struggled, working slowly outwards from the SW corner. Lots that I couldn’t parse completely, so I’m extra-grateful for the blog today.

    Like others, I saw ELY as being not the the entirety of “drivEL You”.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi.

  10. Thanks Paul and manehi.

    I missed Rufus finding this crossword rather difficult for a Monday morning. I did not know the cocktails and I needed help with some of the parsing. POTTY and TOSSPOT were really good.

  11. PISCO SOUR was new to me but Paul was uncharacteristically literal with his definition to compensate. I did enjoy though his more abstruse defs, as with ‘Bobby, sedentary champion’ and the ‘forward’ of 13d.

    [BTW in football a number 8 could play more or less anywhere these days – for my team West Ham it’s the defensive midfielder Kouyate – but in rugby union it’s a specialist forward position.]

  12. Thanks Paul and manehi. Very enjoyable, and a gentle descent after Imogen’s stunner. A rufus would have been like crashing to earth (I hasten to add that I do like Rufus).

    PaulW @ 3: I too normally get the pdf, so had to use the Print version today. Tried it in landscape at first, which just printed as far as 23 / 18 then stopped, so switched to portrait and it was fine on a single sheet.

    Whatever has happened to you in Firefox may have been triggered closer to home: it’s working fine for me today, and I don’t have Java installed on that particular machine. There was an update to Firefox at the weekend, but that shoudln’t have affected anything.

    hth

  13. Meant to say that I think 22 is pretty much &lit, as Pluto & the Evil Queen are both characters (parts) in Disney cartoons. Any takers?

  16. Muck @15
    Yes, that’s the clue in my (English edition) paper too. I didn’t notice as I did in on a printout (so that the rest of the family can read the paper.)

  17. Thanks to Paul and manehi. I don’t know my cocktails so had to struggle with PISCO SOUR (though not TEQUILA SLAMMER). I got RETIRED but needed help seeing the rit-tir and got AEROSOL without understanding the “bowels of errant.” NUMBER EIGHT was clear from the clues so the link to “forward” came afterward. Even with all the crossers in DISNEYESQUE defeated me. Not a Rufus Monday, at least for me.

  18. How glad I am that I did this in the newspaper!
    Not quite as easy as some have said but enjoyable enough. I’ve never heard of PISCO SOUR which was LOI but the cluing was clear enough. I liked SMETANA and DISNEYESQUE. I can’t say I liked NEGEV much but I thought the rest okay.
    Thanks Paul.

  19. Well I wasn’t expecting to see Paul on a Monday, but I’m not complaining. Found this a little tricky, largely because of deficiencies in general knowledge – I’d never heard of PISCO, SOUR or otherwise…

    Thanks to Paul and manehi

  20. I asked for a fish, and they gave me a serpent; if a change from Rufus was needed, Nutmeg, Orlando, Chifonie or Crucible, inter alia, would have been far more appropriate for a Monday. I gave up in disgust.

  21. In the season of goodwill it’s nice to see that all comments comply with site policy:

    2. Any criticism of a puzzle or clue must be valid, constructive and presented in a polite manner. The reason for any dissatisfaction should be clearly indicated. Comments that do not comply with these criteria may be removed.

  24. My criticism is not of the setter, but of the editor. Such a puzzle as today’s is too far removed from the tenor of Rufus’s crosswords and of those setters I mentioned, some of whom occasionally appear on Mondays. No offence was intended to Paul.

  26. Brendan @ 25 – Me too. I don’t like the look of the PDF version, so I use the ‘Print’ function but have to write in any missing clues. With all this high tech, it’s a bit odd that the Graun can’t get this right.

  27. I was about to shut my laptop down for the night when I realised I hadn’t read this blog. When I started reading it, I realised that I’d also left a lot of clues not fully parsed. (sigh) I decided it was too late to try to finish them now and I have a lot to do over the next few days so I read those parsings anyway. I had needed help from DH (who did read the blog in order to help me) to get some of the answers, and I think quite a few of the unfinished parsings would have needed help too.

    I too missed having one of the easier Monday setters today, but perhaps that was because it was a UK Bank Holiday and the editor thought we needed something to occupy some of our extra free time. We did have a very nice Quiptic too, for those of us who appreciate less challenging cryptics.

    Thanks, Paul, even though you beat me today, and very grateful thanks to manehi.

  28. Re Dave @ 22: We really hate the new format too. Its not so much the printing as the fact that on traditional screens (at least)you have to keep moving up and down to see all the clues.

    Its also irritating having all the social network icons in yer face across the top. Bit like most TV channels these days where the logo distracts from what you are trying to look at.

    Whew! been waiting to get that off my chest for months.

  29. Good to see that it is not just me.

    In the past, the print version of Guardian crosswords was excellent.
    But for some reason, the good things of the past are never treasured.

    As PaulW @3 says, the grid is too tiny – one can hardly read the clue numbers! – and the font(size) for the clues is rather ‘ugly’.
    In some puzzles one or two clues need a second page – a bad thing.
    They must have seen that at the Guardian.
    Or not, of course.
    If they’re happy with it, then they don’t have the right feel for what is good for consuumers, in my opinion.

    I know, Guardian crosswords are for free and I appreciate that very much.
    However, the print version is a huge step back.
    [but not as bad as the Independent’s]

  30. Thanks Paul and manehi

    Forgot that this was presented on a Monday and found it a lot tougher going than some here. It was one of those puzzles that just got filled in throughout the day. Didn’t know PISCO SOUR and had to look up NUMBER EIGHT to confirm that it was a rugby position.

    Thought that PEPPERONI was excellent – he certainly had me looking for a chef named PERONI or PEERONI for too long. DISNEYESQUE was also very good, after the penny finally dropped – a very clever &lit.

    Finished with TEQUILA SLAMMER, DISNEYESQUE and TRESSES the last one in (and that took a bit of convincing with the definition).

  31. Thanks manehi and Paul.

    A nice puzzle with s lit to like. PISCO SOUR was a new one on me but clearly clued.

    Enjoyed TOSSPOT, DISNEYESQUE and POTTY.

    Finished with TEQUILA SLAMMER – well that’s what usually finishes me!

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