Guardian Cryptic 26,797 by Pasquale

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26797.

Not too difficult, even with the Don’s helping of less common words and references. The puzzle is quite heavy on the envelopes.

Across
7 ARGONAUT Adventurous sailor gets a drink knocked back, when in a boring routine (8)
An envelope (‘when in’) of GONA, a reversal (‘knocked back’) of ‘a’ plus NOG (‘drink’) in ‘a’ plus RUT (‘boring routine’).
9 PEELER Copper device in the kitchen (6)
Double definition, the first being a policeman.
10, 2 BEETROOT Maggot gets round gnarled tree and round vegetable (8)
An envelope (‘gets round’) of EETR, an anagram (‘gnarled’) of ‘tree’ plus O (’round’, the second one) in BOT (‘maggot’).
11 PREFERENCE Money to cover advert seen as priority (10)
An envelope (‘to cover’) of REFER (‘advert’ – not advertisement; Chambers gives for to advert: to turn one’s attention, to refer) in PENCE (‘money’). Again, the definition is straight from Chambers.
12 MORDOR Road into desolate place, wherein is Doom (6)
An envelope (‘into’) of RD(‘road’) in MOOR(‘desolate place’), for the location of Mount Doom in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.
14 TRIMARAN Fit for sailing, managed to secure a vessel (8)
An envelope (‘to secure’) of ‘a’ in TRIM (‘fit for sailing’) plus RAN (‘managed’).
15 SNOBBY Son’s like 18 down and dismissive of plebs? (6)
A charade of S (‘son’) plus NOBBY (‘like 18 down’ – GRANDEES, that is).
17 SEWING Singer’s associated with such energy-packed music (6)
An envelope (‘packed’) of E (‘energy’) in SWING (‘music’), with reference to the sewing machine company.
20 STROMATA Tissues in layers with inbuilt order (8)
An envelope (‘with inbuilt’) of OM (‘Order’ of Merit) in STRATA (‘layers’).
22 SYNTAX Set of rules? Something bad, reportedly a burden (6)
A charade of SYN, sounding like (‘reportedly’) SIN (‘something bad’) plus TAX (‘a burden’).
23 GARETH BALE Footballer hit the bar in high wind (6,4)
An envelope (‘in’) of RETHBA, an anagram (‘hit’) of ‘the bar’ in GALE (‘high wind’). Gareth Bale currently plays for Real Madrid and the Welsh national team. Very smooth surface.
24, 24 down SIDE SHOW Teams who played as a lesser attraction (4,4)
A charade of SIDES (‘teams’) plus HOW, an anagram (‘played’) of ‘who’.
25 TESTIS Part of body is given initial examination (6)
A charade of TEST (‘examination’) plus ‘is’. A part of some bodies, at least.
26 MULL OVER Think about getting cross, almost, with sweetheart (4,4)
A charade of MUL[e] (‘cross’, a hybrid) minus its last letter (‘almost’) plus LOVER (‘sweetheart’).
Down
1 GRIEVOUS Sad bird losing tail that is very restricted (8)
An envelope (‘restricted’) of IE (is est, ‘that is’) plus V (‘very’) in GROUS[e] (‘bird’) minus its last letter (‘losing tail’).
2   See 10
3 PAMPER Pet married, beset by confetti? (6)
An envelope (‘beset by’) of M (‘married’) in PAPER (‘confetti’).
4 APPETITE Tame animal — it is eaten by wild one wanting food (8)
An envelope (‘is eaten by’) of PET (‘tame animal’) plus ‘it’ in APE (‘wild one’). It is unfortunate that ‘pet’ appears in the clue above.
5 FEDERATION Coalition supplied balance, ultimately helping? (10)
A charade of FED (‘supplied’) plus E (‘balancE ultimately’) plus RATION (‘helping’).
6 MERCIA Clemency in short supply before overthrow of excellent old kingdom (6)
A charade of MERC[y] (‘clemency’) cut short (‘in short supply’) plus IA, a reversal (‘overthrow’) of AI (i.e. a-one, ‘excellent’).
8 TREATY Attempt to cage wolf in peace deal (6)
An envelope (‘to cage’) of EAT (‘wolf’) in TRY (‘attempt’).
13 DEO VOLENTE Need to love construed with classical words of hope for the future (3,7)
An anagram (‘construed’) of ‘need to love’, for the phrase meaning “God willing”.
16 BRASHEST Most impudent rascal — the female’s taken in (8)
An envelope (‘taken in’) of SHE’S (‘the female’s’) in BRAT (‘rascal’).
18 GRANDEES Characters in rags need to ruffle privileged folk (8)
An anagram (‘characters in … to ruffle’) of ‘rags need’.
19 BALAAM False prophet offers soothing stuff about people not drinking (6)
An envelope (‘about’) of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous, ‘people not drinking’) in BALM (‘soothing stuff’). The definition ‘false prophet’ for Balaam seems something of a simplification.
21 TEA SET Card on top of table may be mealtime feature (3,3)
A charade of TEASE (‘card’ in the sense of a wag) plus T (‘top of Table’).
22 SHEILA A story has heartlessly upset Victorian girl? (6)
A reversal (‘upset’) of ‘a’ plus LIE (‘story’) plus ‘h[a]s’ (‘has heartlessly), ‘Victorian’ being of the Australian state.
24   See 24 across
completed grid

49 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,797 by Pasquale”

  1. Thanks Peter. At 21d, I think that ‘tease’ refers to card in the sense of carding wool in preparation for sponning rather than a wag, but I could be wrong.

  3. Nice puzzle – very few were write-ins for me, but all yielded after some thought. Favourites were APPETITE, FEDERATION, ARGONAUT and GARETH BALE (an answer that might tax our US friends). Many thanks to P and P.

  4. Loved the compactness of 22d and 20a. Such a variety of ways to mislead us, throughout the exercise. Very enjoyable,making the task worthwhile. My thanks to the Pod!

  5. The surname, in a football-related surface, of GARETH BALE appeared the other day in a Guardian puzzle, so hopefully those who weren’t aware of him then will be now.

    The good thing about Pasquale puzzles is that you can expect the unexpected, so words like STROMATA make perfect sense. SEWING was very good I thought. A couple of others had me flummoxed in the parsing, eg grub = bot, cross = mule. And I’ve not advanced beyond advert = ad or bill etc, so that’s another one to file away.

  7. Anyone else have KETTLE for 9, again as a double definition. This caused me no end of problems in the northeast. I’ve never come across that meaning of advert, so thanks for that, Peter. My other new learnings for today were BOT and GRANDEES
    Thanks also to Pasquale for another entertaining puzzle.

  8. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

    I enjoyed this, even though I needed help with some of the parsing. GARETH BALE and MORDOR were unknown to me (my husband used to read “Lord of the Rings” to our sons, not I). I especially liked ARGONAUT, STROMATA, SYNTAX and GRIEVOUS.

    Here is some treadle sewing machine music, more energy-packed than the recording I posted last year.

  9. phitonelly @7, I also tried KETTLE, thinking of kettledrums, but could not convince myself that there was a copper section in the orchestra…

  10. Looked pretty hard for a start but came together nicely in the end. Good cluing which helped in coming up with less familiar words such as STROMATA and BALAAM. Missed out on MUL[e] for ‘cross’ – worth storing away as I’m sure it will appear again at some time. PEELER – trickier than it looked at first glance – and SEWING were my favourites.

    Thank you to Pasquale and PeterO.

  11. Good in parts but I’m afraid “wanting food” = APPETITE doesn’t work for me. Peckish, hungry, famished, esurient etc. yes, but “I’m feeling a bit APPETITE”? No.

  12. I found this easier than I do most Pasquale puzzles, but it was just as enjoyable. The only problems were PREFERENCE and SYNTAX. For PREFERENCE, I saw that it was a possibility, but I didn’t know that meaning of REFER, and PRECEDENCE seemed to fit the definition better. In the end, as REFER is at least a word and I couldn’t do anything with RECED, I entered it and the Check button confirmed it. For SYNTAX, my LOI, I kept cgoing back to it with no success, then suddenly that penny dropped.

    George Clements @1 et al
    For TEA SET, as a spinner myself, I did think of “tease” in that sense, but in handspinning at leasr, teasing is a stage which precedes carding (in commercial spinning, I think the equivalent process is “picking”). You have to tease the fleece to get it into a state in which you can load it onto the carder. I think PeterO’s interpretation does just about work. Think of a Carry On film – “Ooh, you are a card!” and “Ooh, you are a tease!” would be fairly equivalent.

    Thank you to Pasquale and PeterO.

  15. Thanks Pasquale & PeterO. Fairly faultless cluing, as ever.

    Well, I guess you get what it says on the tin. Being the Don, it’s BALAAM, rather than napalm or salaam. I’m not too well up on old prophets!

    Anyway, nice to see GARETH BALE making an appearance. I got a bit grumpy about the Singer until the PDM of the capital at the beginning.

  16. Another nice challenge after yesterday’s Nutmeg. Very enjoyable.

    I was interested in what George @1 and drofle @6 said about 21D (TEA SET) where ‘card’ = ‘tease’. I think that works better then card = wag = tease, or whatever, and I would like to think card = tease is what Pasquale had in mind.

    9A (PEELER) was my first in. I never thought of KETTLE (phitonelly @7), which seems as good as PEELER to me. I should have used a pencil, but I got away with it.

    There were many nice touches, and I liked, for example, ‘advert’ = ‘refer’ in 1A (PREFERENCE). Another one: in 22A (SYNTAX), ‘reportedly’ belonged to ‘SYN’, not ‘TAX’.

    A few liberties might have been taken with definitions and indications in the clues for the sake of good surfaces (and some were super smooth), but the only one I thought worth mentioning is 4D (APPETITE), which is defined as ‘wanting food’. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t get it, although clearly the idea is right. An appetite is a ‘wanting of food’ [in the sense of desire, not lack], whereas ‘wanting food’ indicates anything from peckish to ravenous, but not appetite (a noun).

    Thanks to Pasquale for an excellent puzzle and to PeterO for his explanations.

  18. … (again referring to my own post @16) I also meant ‘card’ = ‘tease’ as in teasing wool or cloth when I said I guessed that’s what Pasquale had in mind.

  20. Would 18D not work just well without the words ‘Characters i.e.’, which seem redundant?

    i.e.
    Rags need to ruffle privileged folk
    Ruffle = anagram indicator.
    Privileged folk = definition.

  21. Another cracking puzzle to match Nutmeg yesterday, for me this was trickier to start with, though with the possible exception of STROMATA there is nothing too obscure. Ticked MORDOR, SEWING, SYNTAX and SHEILA. Last in was ARGONAUT after GRIEVOUS.

    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO

  22. Cookie @9,

    I was thinking of the older use of copper as a kettle for steaming. What immediately sprang to my mind was Tiny Tim in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – (if I remember correctly) “Is the pudding steaming in the copper, Peter?”

  23. I parsed TEASE in TEA SET as “a wag” and I still think it’s the most likely!
    This was quite a slow solve for me although it yielded steadily once I got going as is often the case with this setter. LOI was PEELER.
    Interesting that GARETH BALE has occurred in a recent puzzle. My anti football gene has obviously expunged him from my memory because I was convinced that I’d never heard of him.
    I liked TESTIS and SYNTAX.
    Thanks PASQUALE.

  24. phitonelly @22, yes, I also thought of those old large coppers used for boiling linen, we had one in the laundry when I was a child – I think something similar was used for kettledrums originally.

  25. Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO. Again, I had a slow start but then things started to fall into place. I got SHEILA from the clues but needed help seeing the Victoria-Australia connection and got BEETROOT before looking up maggot-bot. I paused for a while over PREFERENCE until I convinced myself that “advert” = “refer” and figured out STROMATA (new to me) from the clues. Last in was GARETH BALE, a name I had come across before even in the US and vaguely remembered. All in all, a good challenge and enjoyable solve.

  26. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
    Late to this today, so not much to add. LOI and favourite SEWING. I wonder how Paul might have clued TESTIS?

  27. Cookie @19

    I don’t think anyone has commented yet on your suggestion for improving the clue at 4D (APPETITE). I think your clue with ‘… with relish’ at the end would solve the problem very well. There are a number of synonyms to choose from, ‘relish’ seems perfect to me, and it works.

    bobloblaw @20

    Likewise, your suggestion would I think improve the clue for 18D (GRANDEES) and also have the virtue of succinctness. I strongly suspect that the setter thought that beginning the clue with “Rags need to ruffle …” would have given away the anagram too easily, and he therefore felt the need to create a diversion at the beginning. His clue is valid but a bit clunky.

  28. Good one, muffin (@26)

    I’ve only recently begun to distinguish the styles of the Guardian setters, except for Rufus who is unique. Paul’s was one of the next to impress his style on me, partly for the reason you hint at. If I had the time I would try to think up a ‘Paul’ clue for 25A (but I hasten to add Pasquale’s clue was excellent).

    There are just two other setters that I have not embraced fully yet (so to speak) because I find them iffy (but I won’t name them because I think it’s just me, and I still need to get used to them), but otherwise I find all compilers extremely good – brilliant, even – and some I might recognise from the puzzle if the name was hidden from me, but I have a little way to go yet to tell them all apart.

  29. Hi muffin @26

    Paul clued it in Puzzle 26,032 [August 2013] but I can’t find the Guardian’s archive today and it’s before we started giving the clues in 15² blogs.

    In December, Wanderer had ‘Model fixed up for formal ball?’

  32. Derek @30

    Good point (spurious ‘?’ in 22A).

    I saw the ‘?’ when solving this clue but I didn’t twig at the time that it wasn’t needed. I agree it is spurious.

  33. Thanks all
    I couldn’t solve mordor since my exposure to Tolkein is zero.
    I liked 24a/d and peeler ( good misdirection) and refer = advert!

  34. Thank you, PeterO. Needed your parse of PREFERENCE.

    Tough to break into this one and then it yielded slowly due to the frustrating preponderance of crossing vowels, but got there in the end.

    Loved SEWING, PEELER & STROMATA.

    I’m sure it’s right but I would never equate ‘brash’ with ‘impudent’. Probably one of those words whose putative meaning has changed over the years.

    With the others re APPETITE – I wonder if The Don might grace us as he sometimes does to explain.

    Fine puzzle, Pasquale, many thanks.

  35. Surely “wanting food” is a gerund? Just as “making food” = “the making of food” = cookery, “wanting food” = “the wanting of food” = appetite.

  36. I’m glad to see that others had the same concerns as I do about appetite. I wondered if I was being dense or pernickety, but it just seems plain wrong.

  37. Pasquale back to his old ways!

    The cluing was fine and made the solution posible but I still think that the use of STROMATA and ADVERT=REFER etc is a lazy way to make a clue difficult. Any average setter can find an esoteric word in the dictionary and write a cryptic clue for it. The clue is then automatically difficult for the majority of solvers due to the nature of the solution or wordplay! Most setters don’t do this but for some reason Pasquale seems to love it?

    I still found this enjoyable and solvable however. I had no problem with 4D. The SOED has 1 (A) desire to satisfy a natural need, esp. for food ….. for appetite. So if wanting is the gerund in the sense of “being in need of” there is no problem surely.

    Of course I won’t, like others, thank P for educating me with these wonderful new words as of course I’ll never use them. What a hit I would be down at the local if I started using “advert” in the sense of refer. (I don’t think so)

    Congratulations also to PeterO and the other posters who found this easier than other Pasquale puzzles. (or even just “easy” per se.) I found it quite difficult myself though perhaps this was due to my near exhaustion after replacing my shredded shed roof in the 12 hours we have been granted without rain and gale force winds up here in Cumbria. No doubt Storm Leonard (or whatever) will come along in a week or two and undo all!

    Thanks to PeterO and Pasquale

  38. I agree with Brendan NTO about APPETITE.
    ‘Wanting’ should be seen as a gerund, as simple as that.

    All in all, very well clued and enjoyable puzzle.
    23ac (GARETH BALE) was wonderful, as was the nusical surface of 17ac (SEWING), our pen-penultimate one in.

    Many thanks to Pasquale [we thought there weren’t actually many ‘obscure’ solutions today, if at all] and PeterO.

  39. Sil van den Hoek (@38)

    Sorry to question your idea of the gerund in 4D. If there is a context in which ‘appetite’ can replace ‘wanting food’ then it works, but I cannot find one despite trying and despite checking in an English (not Latin!) grammar.

    It hardly matters as far as enjoyment of the crossword is concerned – and the clue is readily solved – but I know other posters have questioned the use of ‘wanting food’ as the indicator for ‘appetite’ in the clue in question (4D), and they definitely have a point.

  40. Eileen @29. muffin @31 = this one and the Paul you mentioned are the only two instances in the Guardian archive, though Brendan (23890) clued the plural “Low grade in examinations only boys get (6)”

  41. Alan @39

    Appetite makes sure we eat to maintain the body.

    Wanting food makes sure we eat to maintain the body.

    Not the most elegant of sentences but they both mean the same thing and are grammatically correct. (As far as I can manage 😉 )

  43. Apart from not being happy about APPETITE, I had parsed it as PET in an anagram (wild) of PET. I realise now that the A is then unaccounted for so thanks PeterO.

  44. Brendan @41

    This is late, but I hope you see it. Thank you for going to the trouble of giving me an example.

    I have to hand it to you. Language (use and grammar) is a strong point of mine, and I went to the trouble of going through all the generic examples given in the grammar I looked up of the use of verbal nouns before I posted, and I didn’t find one to match what you have cooked up, which of course is perfectly valid even if it is not a sentence you would ever use! I see Cookie agrees with you too. The clue, by the way, could have been more elegant, but that is nit-picking.

    Ah well. The best of luck with your shed roof.

  45. Enjoyable and straightforward for a Pasquale.

    I’m with George Clements on the parsing of 21d, as, while card and tease in the ovine sense are pretty much synonymous, a card is more oddball, humourist or wit than tease.

  46. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

    This did have an impenetrable-looking feel to it for a start but it gradually gave itself up. Not too many obscurities to be found – MORDOR (haven’t been too involved in the Tolkien novels), STROMATA (which did have a familiar feel to it, but had to look it up and check), the football player GARETH BALE and BALAAM.

    Ended up with SHEILA as my last one in – originally had an unparsed STELLA. Have now learnt with both Rufus and Pasquale, if you can’t parse it, then there is a high likelihood that you have put in the wrong word !!! Was self-admonished when I saw the antipodean flavour to it after all.

    A lot of neat clues here, with ARGONAUT and MERCIA among the better ones.

  47. PeterO – re: 19d, I found the description of Balaam as a “false prophet” to be rather clever. Although recognized as a genuine prophet, he was false in the sense that he betrayed the Israelites to the king of Moab.

  48. Alan @44

    Sorry never came back to this thread.

    Thanks for the reponse. I think the confusion was really caused by the the two opposite meanings of “want”! (why does English have so many of these?) Of course I’m sure Pasquale was aware that this would mislead and let his word play assist with the misdirection. 🙂

    Shed roof is still in place although I haven’t yet managed to to the tidying tucks round the edges as the temperature plummeted towards sundown making the felt brittle and likely to snap with such manhandling! I’ll probably have to wait until Easter!

  49. Thanks PeterO and Pasquale.

    Ground this out with relative ease but not too much enjoyment. Maybe it’s just me tired after a long day?

    DEO VOLENTE and BALAAM were both new to me but elegantly clued so gettable.

    I did 26ac PREFERENCE for some time before concluding that REFER = advert – that’s a relief!

    Did like 25ac, but then I’m quite attached to mine.

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