Guardian Cryptic 26,820 by Imogen

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/26820.

Not at all easy, with the bottom half going in first, and the top blank, but for a couple of entries, for quite a long time.

Across
1 WARM FRONT Need to hold marines back for airborne advance (4,5)
An envelope (‘to hold’) of RM (Royal ‘Marines’) plus FRO (‘back’) in WANT (‘need’).
6 SABLE Black tie initially discarded by firm (5)
A subtraction: S[t]ABLE (‘firm’) without the T (‘Tie initially doscarded’).
9 FLY OFF THE HANDLE Leave by plane: deal with article first, or lose it (3,3,3,6)
A charade of FLY OFF (‘leave by plane’) plus THE (‘article’) plus HANDLE (‘deal with’).
10 SOLE Hear such music unaccompanied (4)
Sounds like (‘hear’) SOUL (‘such music’).
11 REST EASY Relax: everything difficult has been done? (4,4)
If ‘everything difficult has been done’, the REST is EASY.
14 SMELL A RAT Have suspicion stream all polluted (5,1,3)
An anagram (‘polluted’) of ‘stream all’.
15 RETRO Looking back, hospital worker retired, leaving quietly (5)
A reversal (‘retired’) of [p]ORTER (‘hospital worker’) without the P (‘leaving quietly’, read as quiety leaving).
16 OBEYS Hears appeal to Islamic leaders (5)
O BEYS (‘appeal to Islamic leaders’).
18 GLENGARRY I go ahead, not straight (keeping right twice), boy leading (9)
A charade of GLEN (‘boy’) plus GARRY, an envelope (‘keeping’) of RR (‘right twice’) in GAY (‘not straight’). I suppose the definition refers to the Glengarry bonnet, a Scottish headgear.
20 BLINDING Half-swearing, compulsory to include ’ell, say (8)
An envelope (‘to include’) of L (”ell, say’) in BINDING (‘compulsory’).
21 AMOS Like to secure second book (4)
An envelope (‘to secure’) of MO (‘second’) in AS (‘like’) for the Old Testament book.
25 SEE WHAT ONE CAN DO Offer doubtful help — we had nothing Cantonese to cook (3,4,3,3,2)
An anagram (‘to cook’) of ‘we had’ plus O (‘nothing’) plus ‘cantonese’.
26 NOT UP Umpire’s call assumed reversible (3,2)
A reversal (‘reversible’) of PUT ON (‘assumed’). The umpire might be officiating at a tennis match.
27 LIGHT YEAR Great distance I travelled with lethargy (5,4)
An anagram (‘travelled’) of ‘I’ plus ‘lethargy’.
Down
1 WAFTS Initially, Gilbert holds back blows (5)
An envelope (‘holds’) of AFT (‘back’) in WS (William Schwenck, ‘initially Gilbert’, librettist for Sir Arthur Sullivan).
2 ROYAL WE My husband and I? Just I (5,2)
How is one to describe this – other than obvious (once you get it)? I suppose double definition comes close.
3 FAFF Dither, as a female among others (4)
An envelope (‘among’) of ‘a’ plus F (‘female’) in F F (‘others’ – i.e. other females).
4 OATS In the grass, succeeded getting sexual satisfaction (4)
A charade of OAT (‘grass’) plus S (‘succeeded’).
5 THE BEATLES Group on which policeman may be shortly in case (3,7)
A charade of THE BEAT (‘on which policeman may be’) plus LES[t] (‘in case’) minus its last letter (‘shortly’).
6 SMART DRUGS Bangs up doctor feeding jerks stimulating pills (5,5)
An charade of SMAR, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) plus TDRUGS, an envelope (‘feeding’) of DR (‘doctor’) in TUGS  (‘jerks’).
7 BODY ART Lad just penetrated by tip of weapon that’s piercing (4,3)
BOY (‘lad’) plus DART (‘weapon’) with the D (‘tip’ of DART) penetrating BOY. OK, tatooing is also body art, so we have indication by example here.
8 EVERYBODY Swindle by priest — you cover it up, that’s all (9)
An envelope (‘cover it’) of DO (‘swindle’) plus ‘by’ plus REV (‘priest’) in YE (‘you’), all reversed (‘up’ in a down light).
12 CLOSED SHOP Stopped selling members-only arrangement (6,4)
Double definition.
13 UROGENITAL Loose regulation of a branch of medicine (10)
An anagram (‘loose’) of ‘regulation’.
14 SLOP BASIN Curling lip, a snob’s finding this on tea tray? (4,5)
An anagram (‘curling’) of ‘lip a snobs’.
17 EMINENT Distinguished artist seen on Tate Modern visit at last (7)
A charade of EMIN (Tracey, ‘artist’) plus ENT (‘TatE ModerN visiT at last’).
19 ROMANCE Cameron’s extraordinary affair (7)
An anagram (‘extraordinary’) of ‘Cameron’.
22 SPOOR River that’s spilled over track (5)
A reversal (‘over’) of R (‘river’) plus OOPS (‘that’s spilled’).
23 SNAG Hitch small horse (4)
A charade of S (‘small’) plus NAG (‘horse’).
24 SCAT Get away with wordless singing (4)
Double definiition.
completed grid

36 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,820 by Imogen”

  1. I enjoyed this; so many thanks to Imogen and PeterO for help with a number of clues I could not fully parse. However, despite entering GLENGARRY I still have no idea how ‘I go ahead’ makes up the definition.
    Has CAMERON as an anagram for ROMANCE been used before? If not, well done Imogen!!

  2. Very enjoyable tussle – took me a fair while.

    18a “I go *on* ahead” would have been a bit more obvious but the crypticness (so often lacking these days) was still enjoyable – in this and many other clues.

    Many thanks to both setter and blogger.

  3. Hard work, but satisfying in the end. Guessed GLENGARRY from the word play but the “I go ahead” def. is v. good. Favourites were FAFF, BLINDING, SMART DRUGS and the prosaic sounding answer to a tricky clue, EVERYBODY, my COD.

    OBEYS for ‘hears’? I found it in the OED but only as an ‘Obs’ meaning and can’t remember having come across it before, but maybe it is in more common usage and I’m just being thick.

    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO.

  4. I found this hard work too and was stuck for a while on 6 & 7 down. Did enjoy it though; favourites were 1 & 18ac.

    Thank you Imogen & PeterO.

  5. Thanks Imogen and PeterO

    I enjoyed most of this and found it easier than most of Imogen’s; I particularly liked WAFTS and SMELL A RAT.

    However I did think that some of the clueing was a bit loose. “Hear” does necessarily mean “obey”, or the expression “I hear and obey, master” would be tautologous; I suppose BODY ART could be piercing, but it doesn’t have to be; no indication of archaic “you” = “ye” in 8d; “that’s spilled” = “oops”? – very loose!

    I parsed AMOS as AMO (“I love” in Latin) + S “secured on the end” and didn’t like the parsing – yours is much preferable, PeterO!

    CAMERON=ROMANCE has been in at least twice recently – I expect BeeryHiker will be able to give chapter and verse.

  6. Thanks for parsing of SPOOR and WAFTS- the Gilbert ref a bit obscure but it was still gettable.
    I thought “half swearing”was half of EFFING and BLINDING

    and for GLENGARRY the “ahead” works well in a Scottish accent.

  7. Thank you, PeterO for unravelling EVERYBODY among others.

    I find with this setter that the definition is often too loose for me to be able to derive the answer from the clue. I find I have to guess an answer and work backwards and this isn’t my preferred way to do a crossword.

    Mistakenly entered SOLO instead of SOLE.

    Nice &lit-ishness to SLOP BASIN I thought.

    Didn’t have a problem with a GLENGARRY going ‘ahead’ – just slightly poetic really.

    Liked LIGHT YEAR, REST EASY & SEE WHAT ONE CAN DO.

    Nice week, all.

  9. Re 16: I suppose for us dutiful servants of the majestic Imogen, ‘to hear is to obey’. Lots of lovely stuff in here – thank you both.

  10. Thanks Imogen and PeterO.

    Hard going for me, and at the end I just biffed in STOUR at 22d. The help with parsing was very welcome. I particularly liked WARM FRONT, FLY OFF THE HANDLE, EVERYBODY and SLOP BASIN!

  11. Just checked and found that TOUR and “track” are synonyms in the sense of “do” (verb. travel, visit).
    The “s” could perhaps come from “that S spilled over track” giving STOUR. Wishful thinking?

  12. Great puzzle, but quite hard work. Lots of excellent clues – WAFTS, SLOP BASIN, SPOOR and FAFF especially. Thanks to Imogen, and to PeterO for parsing AMOS (like muffin @ 5 I had AMO + S).

  13. This seemed quite straightforward to start with, but had a real sting in the tail, and I ran out of time trying to finish it on paper and resorted to a bit of guess and check. Last in was BODY ART, favourite BLINDING

    Thanks to Imogen and PeterO

  14. These are the previous clues for CAMERON and ROMANCE

    Araucaria 24599: Creator of romance in politics? (7)
    Araucaria 25111: Premier setter embraced by Leslie (7)
    Araucaria 25729: Tory with some US input after 3 (7)
    Araucaria 25925: Photographer endlessly performing? (7)
    Araucaria 25938: Premier destroyer of romance (7)
    Paul 26046: C, half-cut Bush, for example, gatecrashing his party? (7)

    Araucaria 22647: Language of love (7)
    Paul 23323: Women like it, so lie! (7)
    Chifonie 23452: Novel Italian church (7)
    Araucaria 23693: Catholic establishment? That’s novel (7)
    Paul 24037: Might this comprise a candlelit dinner, then bloke caught fertilising eggs? (7)
    Rufus 24392: Account for two Christian churches (7)
    Quantum 24504: Strange manor and church featured in novel (7)
    Rufus 25371: Love of fiction (7)
    Picaroon 25660: Cameron, entangled in extravagant fiction . (7)
    Bonxie 25912: Upright type caught sweetheart in love affair (7)
    Arachne 26192: Cameron broadcast lie (7)
    Paul 26304: Cameron’s foreign affair (7)
    Imogen 26820: Cameron’s extraordinary affair (7)

  15. Thanks to Imogen and PeterO. I think I may finally getting on this setter’s wavelength.

    Like some others, I wasn’t keen on ‘hear’ for ‘obey’. In modern speech ‘I hear what you say’ means ‘I understand your argument but I disagree with you’

  16. Thanks to Imogen and PeterO. I found this puzzle tough going and needed frequent Google checks to confirm solutions (e.g., GLENGARRY for headgear, FAFF). I took a long time before getting the WS initials for Gilbert in WAFTS, NOT UP, and ROYAL WE and could not parse EVERYBODY. For me a challenge, but well worth the effort.

  17. Took a lot of winkling out. Assumed, for example, that there was no way REGULATION would be an anagram of anything so looked for alternative readings for some time. Never having heard of a SLOP BASIN or GLENGARRY didn’t help either.

    And alas I let myself down twice. With SOLO, I’m not alone I see. But perhaps I am unique with OKEHS at 16a. Sounds like OKs, and for all I knew might have been Islamic leaders. In my defence, never thought that OBEYS could mean ‘hears’ (not that OKs does either of course).

  18. I endorse @2 Jolly Swagman’s amendment to 18a. However,4d is inaccurate in a different way — surely the definition of “oats” is sex, regardless of quality? But then………..
    Lots to enjoy elsewhere, though. But I hate the image conjured up by 14d. Out of bed the wrong side, I reckon. Thanks to IMO and Peter O.

  21. For the most part this was a very enjoyable puzzle, and there were some excellent clues. My favourites were 1A (WARM FRONT), 18A (GLENGARRY), 20A (BLINDING) and 2D (ROYAL WE), and there were others that made me think until everything fell into place with a satisfying ‘clunk’.

    Other clues, however, didn’t quite make it for me and had to be guessed at (with difficulty, sometimes) before seeing how the setter could have come up with the wordplay to fit the answer. Clues in this category were:
    16A (OBEYS), 21A (AMOS), 26A (NOT UP), 4D (OATS), 8D (EVERYBODY) and 22D (SPOOR)
    although in the case of 26A ‘put on’ was the easy bit and ‘not up’ the hard bit (is ‘not up’ really a tennis umpire’s call?).

    I also thought 15A (RETRO) needed ‘quietly leaving’ rather than ‘leaving quietly’, and 9A (FLY OFF THE HANDLE) and 11A (REST EASY) were a bit weak in my opinion.

    All these made the puzzle a bit of a slog towards the end, which took a bit of the shine off the beginning and the middle!

    Thanks anyway to Imogen for the challenge and to PeterO for the blog.

  22. Alan 21
    Yes, “not up” is an umpire’s call in tennis (and squash). It means that the ball has bounced twice before the player has hit it.

  23. A lovely puzzle. Sometimes I’ve found this setter really difficult but this yielded quite quickly,or, at least it did until I came to OBEYS which took me almost as long as the rest of the puzzle! I suppose it derives from “to hear is to obey”
    I really enjoyed this.
    Thanks Imogen.

  25. Thanks PeterO and Imogen.

    Didn’t get Oats and Obeys, never the less it was an enjoyable workout – having got most of the parsing right!

  26. muffin @22

    I’m amazed that I’ve never come across ‘not up’ having watched tennis from time to time on TV (while others have been actively following it). I tried looking it up, but I own up to not trying too hard after not finding it.

    It’s a 100% precise and fair clue, unlike what I implied in my earlier post.

  27. Alan @26
    I don’t watch tennis or squash, but I was on the receiving end of the call too often while I was playing them – you obviously watch a higher standard! (Difficult not to, really….)

  28. muffin @27
    I don’t watch tennis any more, but when I did it was professional tennis, of course, so by definition it was to a high standard.
    I like to learn from crosswords, so ‘not up’ is another term to add to my store. I know much more about cricket, which can be inscrutable to some.

  29. I found this fairly easy and was only held up by what I still consider to be “dodgy” definitions.

    They have been mentioned already but I’ll list my main bugbears anyway.

    “that’s spilled” does not equate to “oops” although this may be a reaction to that event.

    SOED decribes “hear” to mean “obey” as long archaic!

    These two clues took as long to solve as the rest of the crossword! Possibly because they are wrong so I was searching for something that was right. 😉

    I did play an awful lot of cricket in my youth and “Not up” was often used by the square leg umpire to indicate that a ball hadn’t carried to a fielder who was claiming a catch. (Of course this never used to happen until the later years of my career as no fielder would ever have clamed a non-carrying catch. Unfortunately a different kind of ethos began to enter the game of certain teams! I believe the technical term is cheating.)

    Thanks to PeterO and Imogen

    Thanks to PeterO

  30. My COED, not an archaic edition (1995), gives hear v. trans. be ready to obey (an order) – and the word “obey” going back through the French to the Latin means “hear”.

  31. In GLENGARRY, to replace the definition with Swagman’s lazily suggested ‘I go ON ahead’ would have been in the first instance to misunderstand and so devalue the excellent cryptic device and, second, to relegate same to yet another poor Guardianism (‘ahead’ means ‘a head’). Clearly the device is used here in the same way as words such as ‘asleep’ and ‘amidships’, though playfully, which is entirely acceptable.

    We’ll now ‘a wait’ the excuses.

  32. I guess this is far too late, but 6 down is inaccurate. The term “smart drug” was created to describe a drug that targets a specific region of the body, while a “stimulating pill” is suggestive of a much more general effect. The answer is correct on a word for word basis; smart can mean stimulating, drugs = pills, but that’s all.

  33. Thanks Imogen and PeterO

    I did this crossword yesterday but only got to check it off this morning. Agree that it may have been slightly easier than the norm for this setter, but it was far from being a gimme !!! ROYAL WE was s very quick write-in to get started and it was still in the lhs where I ended up finishing out – with EMINENT, OBEYS and WAFTS the last few in !

    Originally wrote CLOSED DOWN at 12d which slowed things up a little. Was not familiar with NOT UP in either tennis or cricket. I think BLINDING must be a British term as I haven’t heard it used in this sense in Aus.

    Needed help to parse EVERYBODY and OATS.

    Liked FAFF.

  34. brucew@aus @33
    As a Brit, I only know BLINDING from the phrase “effing and blinding” to describe swearing. The “effing”, of course, is use of the F-word. “Blinding” refers to “gor blimey” and its variants, which derive from the mediaeval oath “God blind me”.

  35. Thanks jenny … will store it in with the rest of the Brit colloquialisms in the crossword component of my brain 🙂

  36. Thanks PeterO and Imogen.

    7 answers entered without fully parsing them. It’s a while since I’ve missed out quite so abjectly.

    NOT UP, SCAT (for wordless singing) and SMART DRUGS (as in stimulating rather than specific pills) were all new to me.

    I don’t seem to recall the overlapping of words as in BODY ART before – very clever.

    Liked to get my OATS.

    Must try harder!

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