Guardian Cryptic 26,804 by Paul

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26804.

As expected from Paul, some strange surfaces, and a lot of ingenious construction and misdirection.The theme is given in 11A, as (recent) British Chancellors of the Exchequer, who appear both in the answers and the wordplay.

Across
1 DARLING Precious 11 (7)
Double definition; Alistair Darling was Chancellor of the Exchequer 2007-2010.
5 CANASTA Hypocrisy to embrace as a game (7)
An envelope (‘to embrace’) of ‘as’ in CANT (‘hypocrisy’) plus ‘a’.
10 SPOT Reversible lids to identify (4)
TOPS (‘lids’) reversed.
11 CHANCELLOR Record returns by coincidence for the one at this number? (10)
A charade of CHANCE (‘coincidence’) plus LLOR, a reversal (‘returns’) of ROLL (‘record’). The reference is to 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
12 LAMONT Pound value, everyone can see a loss for 11 (6)
A charade of L (‘pound’) plus AMO[u]NT[ (‘value’) minus (‘a loss’) U (‘everyone can see’). Nigel Norman Lamont was Chancellor of the Exchequer 1990-1993.
13 MAUDLING 11 tearful guy, primarily (8)
A charade of MAUDLIN (‘tearful’) plus G (‘Guy, primarily’), for Reginald Maudling, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1962-1964.
14 TEN A PENNY Common scruff in poet, son moving away! (3,1,5)
An envelope (‘in’) of NAPE (‘scruff’) in TENNY[son] (‘poet’) minus SON(‘son moving away’).
16 SCREW Stitch up something with a thread (5)
Double definition; ‘stitch up’ in the sence of incriminate, inform on.
17 QUITO Capital left, nothing (5)
A charade of QUIT (‘left’) plus O (‘nothing’), for the capital of Ecuador.
19 FANTASIST Punching the puncher, soldier as Walter Mitty? (9)
An envelope (‘punching’) of ANT (‘soldier’) plus ‘as’ in FIST (‘the puncher’).
23 HEATHROW Old Tory contention, where migrants may be entering Britain (8)
A charade of HEATH (Ted, ‘old Tory’) plus ROW (‘contention’), for the main London airport.
24 LAWSON Rules working for 11 (6)
A charade of LAWS (‘rules’) plus ON (‘working’). Nigel  Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer 1963 1983-1989.
26 HEADINGLEY Where a test may be sound as a bell in 11 (10)
An envelope of DING (‘sound as a bell’) in HEALEY (Denis, ’11’ Chancellor of the Exchequer 1974-1979), for the cricket ground in Leeds, one of the regular venues of Test cricket.
27 RHEA Bird to catch, tail first (4)
HEAR (‘catch’) with its last letter moved to the front (‘tail first’).
28 OSBORNE 11 from Canberra, might you say? (7)
Sounds like (‘might you say’) OZ BORN (‘from Canberra?’), for George Osborne, the incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer. No relation.
29 GOODBYE I’m going to depart, body failing, end of life (7)
A charade of GO (‘depart’) plus ODBY, an anagram (‘failing’) of ‘body’ plus E (‘end of lifE‘).
Down
2 AT PEACE Replace tape with superb content (2,5)
A charade of ARPE ATPE, an anagram (‘replace’) of ‘tape’ plus ACE (‘superb’).
3 LOTTO Draw wasted, having blown lead (5)
[b]LOTTO (drunk, ‘wasted’) minus its first letter (‘having blown lead’).
4 NECKTIE Hanger-on collared, having kissed the first person to speak? (7)
Sounds like (‘to speak’) NECKED (‘kissed’) plus I (‘the first person’).
6 ACCRUE Gather together a team for conference (6)
Sounds like (‘for conference’) A CREW (‘a team’).
7 ALL BLACKS Rugby team, seven of whom tackling fifty (3,6)
An envelope (‘when tackling’) of L (the third one, Roman numeral ‘fifty’) in ALL BACKS (‘seven of whom’; a rugby union team fields seven backs), for the New Zealand national team.
8 TROUNCE Beat gutless tiger, wild cat (7)
A charade of TR (‘gutless TigeR‘) plus OUNCE (‘wild cat’).
9 TASMANIAN WOLF Elusive fast animal now, the thylacine (9,4)
An anagram (‘elusive’) of ‘fast animal now’.
15 ART STUDIO Sound gathering way below walls in retrospect in creative space (3,6)
An envelope (‘gathering’) of RT(‘walls in RetrospecT‘ – how about that for misdirection?) plus ST (‘way’) in AUDIO (‘sound’).
18 USELESS Former tennis champion in America, inept (7)
An envelope (‘in’) of SELES (Monica, ‘former tennis champion’) in US (‘America’).
20 TALLY-HO Cry on seeing a fox, but trapping friend (5-2)
An envelope (‘trapping’) of ALLY (‘friend’) in THO’ (‘but’).
21 SHOWERY Oddly sorry about 11, as wet (7)
An envelope (‘about’) of HOWE (Sir Geoffroy, ’11’ Chancellor of the Exchequer 1979-1983) in SRY (‘oddly SoRrY‘).
22 IRON-ON Endless fury, over and over, for application under pressure (4-2)
A charade of IR[e] (‘fury’) minus its last letter (‘endless’) plus ON (‘over’) and again.
25 WORLD Pledge to bag Lancashire’s opener, as a great spinner (5)
An envelope  (‘to bag’) of L (‘Lancashire’s opener’) in WORD (‘pledge’).
completed grid

51 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,804 by Paul”

  3. Thanks PeterO and Paul.

    I looked up the unknown thylacine, which was a bit of a give away for 9d.

    I think you need a small edit at 12a: LAMONT was Norman not Nigel

    Enjoyable puzzle, no explanations needed for once. LAWSON was my entry to 11ac.

  4. Enjoyed this and, for once, the theme came readily to me; too many good clues to list. Was stuck for ages on 26ac and could have kicked myself when it finally came – I live a stone’s throw from the place & will be going there later this morning!

    Thank you Paul & PeterO.

  5. RE. 24ac.
    “Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer 1963-1989.” – Horrible thought!

    Apart from that, thanks for the blog PeterO – and to Paul.

  6. Thanks Peter and Paul. The theme shone early via the crossers from 7 and 8D and by CHANCE. As a foreigner, needed to delve pretty deep for the names, LOI being LAMONT. No aids needed except for the blind spot bird in the SE corner.

  7. Thanks PeterO and Paul!

    Your parsing of 4D is missing the last ‘E’, and I can’t work out how else to parse it.

  9. 19a…a missed opportunity to feature Gordon (“The Clunking Fist”) Brown?
    Great stuff Paul, and thanks to PeterO for the blog

  10. Thanks, PeterO and Paul.

    I enjoyed this, especially the clues where the Chancellor was only part of the answer – SHOWERY, HEADINGLEY – but I did like OSBORNE, too. [Pity Ted Heath was never Chancellor – for the sake of the crossword, I mean.]

    Three ‘homophone’ clues – and no quibble about any of them!

  11. Good fun – favourites were HEADINGLEY, FANTASIST and NECKTIE. Got stuck for a time on USELESS as I had put in PORTO for 18a (‘Capital left, nothing’) – besides Porto being the former capital of Portugal, Porto-Novo is the capital of Benin. Many thanks to Paul and PeterO.

  13. After yesterday’s delight, another treat. Many thanks, both to Paul and PeterO. Unusually for me, I got to the end with no questions to ask. Is this the golden age of crossword setting?Feels like it. But then sites like this (not that there are any others quite like this one) transform the experience. I look back on previous decades when if you couldn’t work out why even from the solution printed the day after, then that was it; nothing learned. I sense that I have improved because of this site. So many thanks for that too.

  15. Poc @14, yes you are. He was so mild-mannered that Healey (another featured chancellor) likened being attacked by him to being ‘savaged by a dead sheep’. Memorably, Howe later turned on Thatcher and all but secured her resignation. Happy days.

    Well up to Paul’s usual standard. Not only is HEADINGLEY in Leeds, but also Healey was a Leeds MP, though for a grittier part of the city.

  16. Re PORTO – me too!
    I loved this, but then I always love a Paul crossword.

    @PeterO: In the explanation for 2d you’ve put “A charade of ARPE,” when I think you mean A charade of ATPE.

    Thanks for the blog, and thanks to Paul for the puzzle! 🙂

  17. I also put Tasmanian Fowl (I was doing it on the train so couldn’t look it up) which made HEATHROW very difficult to get!

  18. Thanks Paul and PeterO

    Another enjoyable hit out with Paul – PORTO was one of my first entered, QUITO was the last, into the same space.
    Didn’t know enough of the Chancellors of the Exchequer to recognise LAWSON, who was the first of the themed answers prior to getting 11a, to know that this would be the theme. I did remember that they lived at 11 Dowling Street though !

    Lots of interesting clues, especially his trademark humorous homophone at 4d.

    A couple of Aussie references to help me along. The thylacine, is more commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger even though it looked more wolflike – been extinct since the 1930’s when the last one died in a Hobart zoo. OSBORNE was my second to last one, so my local knowledge played little part in that particular clue.

    Thought that HEADINGLY and ALL BLACKS were both very good !

  19. Enjoyed this and found it fairly straightforward, must admit I got the theme after thinking 21d must be SHOWERY and working backwards. All of them were familiar, and only MAUDLING was before my time. Last in was ACCRUE, favourite was ALL BLACKS.

    Thanks to Paul and

  21. Thanks to Paul and PeterO. Here in the US I missed “one at 11” (I might have got one at 10 – and maybe not) but did parse LAWSON (so my first thought was 11ac as chefs) and then SHOWERY-Howe, so that (with the help of Google) I pieced out OSBORNE (whom I did know) and LAMONT, MAULDLING, and DARLING (the last two clear from the clues). I did know ALL BLACKS but not HEADINGLEY (though I could parse it), and TEN A PENNY (a phrase new to me) was last in. I needed assistance to get to the finish line, but I enjoyed the process.

  22. All in here, bar 16 and 17 across. Most satisfying and 11a was my first in, with the linked clues falling in fairly fast.

    All Blacks was second in thanks to the shared ‘l’ but I failed to parse the clue.

    Like others, 9d was sealed thanks to a giveaway definition of thylacine.

    Fittingly for the clue, I was rather thrown off the scent for 20d, racking my brains for cry+fox = ‘pally up’ or similar. Big groan once realised!

  23. Thank you Paul and Peter0. Oddly and early on I had TAXWISE (anag of XIASWET) as 21 down but when I failed to find GOOGLE or similar anywhere, I reverted to the search for 1the great officers of state who have brought the economy to these sunny uplands.

  24. Thanks Paul and PeterO

    Not an entertaining theme as far as I was concerned – I had to give up and Google for my last three (DARLING – who he? – LAMONT and HOWE). I did love the clue for OSBORNE though (notice how carefullY I phrased that).

    I didn’t parse ART STUDIO either. Another PORTO first here.

    THO = BUT? What language is that?

  25. Thanks Paul and PeterO,

    Most enjoyable, QUITO/PORTO was a laugh, by chance I chose the right one having been there. I see that The Budget will be announced on the 24th of March this year, perhaps something similar will turn up on the day?

  26. muffin @24

    Chambers gives THO’ as US or poetic – English, that is.

    The typos in 2D and 24A have been corrected, as has (finally) the conflation of Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont in 12A.

  27. PeterO @26
    Where was the indication in the clue that “but” was to be taken as “US or poetic”? The word in English is THOUGH.

  29. Excellent as usual. I’m much more at home with politicians than I am with some other recent themes. I was another who had PORTO as FOI and QUITO as LOI which slowed matters up somewhat as did my attempts to parse the rather obvious FANTASIST.
    I loved HEADINGLY and SHOWERY and many others.
    Incidentally, I think “savaged by a dead sheep” was used prior to HEALEY/HOWE but I haven’t been able to source it.
    Thanks for the fun Paul.

  30. Geoffrey Howe was very dry politically and oversaw a tight monetarist economic policy, part of the de-industrialisation of the north.

  31. Well, I must be the 94th person to put PORTO in at 17A but had the foresight to use pencil because I had no access to reference sources and knew Porto was not a national capital. Eventually QUITO fell into place.

    I got 9D all right by solving the anagram, but … ‘elusive’ as an anagrind? I’m in the habit of querying words used for this purpose because I seem to lack the imagination necessary to conjure up the intended mental image – as in this case. I’m sure some-one can help.

    This was a delightful crossword, witty and clever as Paul usually is. I found all the theme names easily enough and particularly liked the clues in which the names were part of the answers (HEALEY and HOWE).

    Many thanks to Paul and PeterO.

  32. None of you clever people, whom I follow with mixed emotions mentioned 8d. How many people knew ounce was a wild cat? Or is that old hat to you crossworders?

  34. TROL: Sorry – but -How many people knew ounce was a wild cat? Or is that old hat to you crossworders? Yes it is!

  35. An enjoyable puzzle from Paul.

    My only slight quibble was 9D and the use of “thylacine”. As the wordplay is by no means obvious the solver has a quandary. (All this assumes that the solver is unfamiliar with “thylacine” as I was and I suspect many others)

    Firstly is thylacine a noun or an adjective as it does look more adjectival than nounal?

    There is a massive temptation to look it up which will result in a “write in”. Even if by some miracle the solver decides that “elusive” is an anagrind and even more more miraculously comes up with “tasmanian wolf” for the “adjective” he/she is still going to look it up!

    Surely it would be better to replace “thylacine” with a phrase such as “beast down under” or even something more cryptic to not give the game away quite so easily?

    The rest of the puzzle was very entertaining 😉

    Thanks to PeterO and Paul

  36. Brendan @ 35

    It would be interesting to know whether the clue for 9 was Paul’s original or a subsequent edit…

  37. BNTO @ 35 and Simon @ 36: I agree with Simon that it seems a rather odd (and prosaic) clue for Paul. I got it without any crossers because I saw WOLF in the anagram letters, but it stands out from the rest of the clues.

  38. Posts 35-37

    It’s not a conspiracy theory yet, but one wonders how a clue that is ‘out of character’ got there (referring to 9D TASMANIAN WOLF). Earlier I commented only on the anagrind ‘elusive’, but of course there is the stark fact highlighted by Brendan that you can just look up thylacine and write the answer in.

    It’s tough to write a good clue for this phrase that is neither too easy nor too difficult. I’ve just spent half an hour on it and come up with the following (using Brendan’s ‘beast down under’):

    “Beast down under had flight first class going back thanks to bloke on top (9,4)”

    I do compile the odd crossword on occasion and can appreciate what the excellent Guardian stable of setters come up with time after time.

  40. PORTO wasn’t my first in, but QUITO was my last. There have been times before where provincial or state capitals have been clued as “capital”, so I had no hesitation in guessing PORTO for 17ac, until I looked at 18dn! I’m sure Paul knew exactly what would happen. Touché, for the umpteenth time!

  41. Even though I got the theme fairly quickly, I found this tricky, particularly the SE corner. ACCRUE was my LOI as it took me a long time to realise that “team for conference” was a homophone indicator. I couldn’t fully parse LAMONT, missing U = “everyone can see”. As I was reading this blog I realised that when I got 11a, I was in such a rush to look at the clues referencing it that I forgot to parse the construction part. Also I had misparsed TEN A PENNY, stretching “scruff” to mean “ape” and not even noticing that left an unexplained third N.

    Favourites include GOODBYE, FANTASIST and HEATHROW.

    I did know “thylacine”, though I think of it more as the tiger than the wolf, so I didn’t need to look up its meaning, but I agree that the clue is awkward for the reasons B(NTO) gave @35.

    Thanks, Paul and PeterO.

  42. I seem to be the only person never to have come across TEN A PENNY. Two a penny, yes.

    I enjoyed this a lot, with the already noted reservation about the Tazzie animal. Naturally, another PORTO, for the reason given by Linxit.

  43. Enjoyed the ‘great spinner’ but having the w and the r as crossers, delayed myself a long time by putting in WARNE and wondering how it parsed.

  44. Job @43

    Count me in as an initial WARNE enterer. Obviously Paul drew us into a cricket frame of mind with his Lancashire opener. (Although I’m fairly sure that Shane never played for Lancs or could ever be described as an opener!)

  45. ulaca @42

    My thoughts were similar to yours, and I first came up with ‘two a penny’ which I couldn’t make from the clue.

    However, I have actually come across ‘ten a penny’, so then it was easy for me, and I have to say I thought this was one of the best clues today. It’s kind of setter’s luck to find two words (‘common scruff’ in this case) that go so well together but have to be separated to solve the clue, but good setters see these possibilites (or look for them) and then make excellent use of them.

    On looking up both ‘two a penny’ and ‘ten a penny’ I see that the latter can mean ‘plentiful, common or cheap’ but the former just ‘common or cheap’. This is perhaps a fine distinction, but I sense it is there.

  46. I got Osbourne and Lawson from the wordplay, googled them (I’m a Yank, so not strong on British politicians) to get Chancellor of the Exchequer the on further googled for 11 Downing St. Then the wordplay at 11 yielded chancellor and the rest fell in nicely. Thanks Paul and PeterO.

  48. Sadoldsweat @47
    In a cinema, films with a U rating can be watched by customers of any age, so “every9ne can see”.

  50. Another missing chancellor from the xword was Anthony Barber (70s)- a great opportunity for a cryptic definition along the lines of “11 known for making cuts”.

  51. Thanks Paul and PeterO.

    Nice theme, nicely executed.

    Maudling was my way in and made steady progress from there on over three sessions.

    I too thought that TASMANIAN WOLF was a bit of a giveaway once I looked thylacine up in the dictionary.

    I toyed with PORTO for a while too but held off since it’s regional rather than national.

    Liked the homophones in 4dn and 28ac.

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