Guardian 26,852 – Otterden

by

I don’t I’m ever going to be a fan of Otterden’s puzzles, so I’ll be brief. A few very easy anagrams to get us started, a nice couple of the subtractive anagrams that the setter is fond of, but also a lot of rather dodgy cryptic grammar. I can’t fully explain 9a. Thanks to Otterden.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
8. CEMETERY Where one might well end up introducing quantifier into Anglican year (8)
METER in CE Y
9. ABACA Filipino crop a bit in front by this summer (5)
Not sure about this – presumably the “summer” is an ABACUS. The “this” would suggest that the clue is actually defining ABACUS – see also 24a
10. SMUT Obscenities begin to be uttered after sado­masochism (4)
SM + UT[tered]
11. ZEBRAWOODS Booze draws drunk into trees (10)
(BOOZE DRAWS)*
12. LUNGED Dived without a springboard and hurtled forward (6)
PLUNGED less its first letter or “springboard”
14. TALMUDIC A mild TUC review is as from a sacred text (8)
(A MILD TUC)*
15. PHARAOH Ah Harpo! Possibly one of the greats of yesteryear (7)
(AH HARPO)*
17. OLOROSO Prime minister abandons dodgy poolrooms for a sherry (7)
POOLROOMS* less PM
20. MISSPELT Simplest production, where characters have been cast badly (8)
SIMPLEST*
22. JOSEPH This habit would not be adopted by Conrad, for instance (6)
Cryptic/double defnition: a Joseph is “a caped overcoat worn by women in the 18c for riding”, so a man (e.g. Joseph Conrad) wouldn’t wear it
23. ENTOURAGES They trail along behind — hospital department hours being trimmed a long time (10)
ENT (hospital dept) + [h]OUR[s] + AGES
24. DORY This party starts otherwise with fish (4)
TORY with a different (unspecified) first letter. This can surely only be a clue to TORY
25. THERE That’s the place to take a line off the record (5)
THE RECORD minus CORD (line)
26. ELEMENTS How the weather can heat kettles (8)
Double definition, though rather a confused one
Down
1. VERMOUTH Clergyman served up opening drink (8)
Reverse of REV + MOUTH (opening)
2. HEAT Preliminary passion (4)
Double definition
3. SEIZED Took views overheard before first sign of danger (6)
Homophone of “sees” + D[anger]
4. EYEBATH Admire spa from a very small vessel (7)
EYE (admire) + SPA (bath)
5. PARALLEL Matching degree course (8)
Cryptic definition: I think from the meaning of parallel as a line of latitude.
6. MANOEUVRES Leave Ted behind for adventuresome tripping, involving lots of shifting about (10)
ADVENTURESOME* less TED
7. GANDHI Film about collaboration between Goering and Hitler (6)
Hidden in goerinG AND HItler
13. GYROSCOPES Cosy gropes possible with these navigational aids! (10)
(COSY GROPES)*
16. ONE-ARMED Sort of “bandit person” bearing a weapon (3-5)
ONE (person) + ARMED (bearing a weapon)
18. SEPARATE Part when equal bottom — about the last chance (8)
SEAT (bottom) “about” PAR (equal) + [th]E
19. STAGGER They label back to front to confound (7)
TAGGERS (those who label) with the last letter moved to the front
21. INNATE Instinctive move to eat at pub (6)
INN + EAT*
22. JOSHED Teased short girl over cast-off (6)
JO (from “Little Women”) + SHED
24. DOES Provides the odd steroid from the east (4)
Odd letters of StErOiD, reversed

37 comments on “Guardian 26,852 – Otterden”

  1. I think ABACA is A B(it) ACA (Chartered accountant = summer) the answer being a plant grown in the Phillipines.

    I think I preferred Otterdens style when he first appeared in the Guardian. Obviously he copped a lot of flak for wordiness but there was nothing actually wasted. Here (eg 10a “begin to be uttered’ for UT) the looseness doesn’t really earn its keep.

    BUt still a fairly challenging and enjoyable solve.
    Many thanks to both setter and blogger.

  3. Thanks Otterden and Andrew

    To get the good ones out of the way first: I took far too long to see ONE-ARMED, and it became my favourite; I also liked ZEBRAWOODS for the misdirection.

    Now the others. I found the Filipino bananas, but can’t think how ABACA works otherwise; “sprinboard” for “first letter”?; DORY?; what is “chance” doing in 18d? (unless the E is actually from last chancE, but then it would be in the wrong place); the S has moved from bottom to top in the (down clue) STAGGER – would have been better as an across).

    I was also baffled by the parsing of JOSEPH, never having heard of the garment.

  4. btw B doesn’t stand for “bit”. Although even this isn’t in my Chambers, it is used to stand for “byte” – i.e. 8 bits.

  5. OK – I’ll keep going – re “this”.

    Although “this” is used a lot (mainly) in compound anagrams to key the answer it doesn’t follow that it can never be used for anything else.

    Our most common types of definitions and synonyms (they aren’t really either of those things) supply the general in the clue and want the particular in the answer; adding “this” only explicily states what we tacitly assume to be the case in normality. In 9a it made for an excellent surface – less so in 24a – but still not harmful.

  8. I enjoyed this puzzle, but had a few reservations like others above.

    Anyway, I would just like to express my delight at seeing Gandhi snuggling up between Goering and Hitler. That put a smile on my face.

  9. JS @6
    Of course
    @7
    but “about the last chancE” wouldn’t put the E at the end.

    Another thought on PARALLEL – if two boats were sailing on parallel courses, they would have the same compasss “degree” heading, thus “matching degree course”?

  10. Thanks Andrew and Otterden.

    I found this very easy for an Otterden, filling in fifteen answers on the first run through quite quickly – a record for me, my previous best was ten for an Egoist (remember him?) in July 2003.

    However there was quite a high number I couldn’t explain, and I still don’t see PARALLEL

  11. Not without its problems, but with fewer dodgy constructions than I can remember from Otterden before. GANDHI and MISSPELT would earn a tick no matter who the setter, and by now I’ve got so used to his style that something like SMUT goes straight in.

    But then there’s the ‘springboard’ for decapitation in 12a and a dd that Rufus wouldn’t touch at 26a. So not quite there yet, Mr O.

  12. Thank you to setter, and to blogger et al for explanations and comments.
    I was confused by the wording in a few. Any help in addition to above blogs would be appreciated.
    What is ‘by’ doing in 9a? Is it just there to create surface meaning?
    Similarly, in 26a, what is ‘how’ doing? Would ‘Weather can heat kettles’ work?

  13. Thank you Otterden and Andrew.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, especially GANDHI! I did not know the riding jacket, but with the crossers the answer was obviously JOSEPH.

    I thought PARALLEL might be a double definition, “Matching” and “degree course”.

    muffin @9, it is “the last chancE”, it puts E at the end – “about” is used for placing SEAT around PAR.

  14. Surprised none of you lot have spotted that many of the solutions were words which have been listed as being commonly 20A (including 20A itself!). A hidden theme if you like but not forming part of the solving exercise in any way…just an item of interest perhaps. I await the comment…’just a pointless setter’s showing off?’

  15. New words for me were ABACA, ZEBRAWOODS, OLOROSO.

    I needed help to parse 25a, 24a, 22d.

    Thanks Otterden and Andrew.

  16. @Otterden
    an interesting idea; but I’m not sure that a group of people with varying degrees of addiction to cryptic crosswords is the ideal target group for thinking in terms of mis-spellings

  17. [Muffin @4, your point about b for bit has been answered but it doesn’t look as if your Chambers is highlighting the difference between b and B. A bit is a b, a byte is a B. So not only is your “up to 20Mb/s” network connection probably not delivering anything near 20Mb/s, it would take 8 times longer to download your 2GB movie than you might think even if it were.]

  18. Muffin @4: in fact in IT circles ‘b’ often does mean bit, while ‘B’ means byte. See for example “10 Mbps Ethernet” (megabits per second) versus “10 MB of RAM” (megabytes). And just to keep you on your toes, the “mega” in those two phrases means different things. For communications, it’s a million (10 to the 6th power) whereas in memory capacity it’s 1048576 (2 to the 20th power).

    Furthermore, to pedants a byte is not strictly 8 bits (that would be an octet), but I’d better stop there.

  19. Thanks Otterden and Andrew

    Have been a staunch supporter of this fellow previously, but will run with the pack this time – quite a few clues that were a bit of a stretch – not that they stopped me from correctly solving the puzzle – so overall job done by him. Couldn’t parse SEPARATE at all though.

    Originally had an unparsed ANANA (the pineapple) in at 9a – as a safety check did a word search of A-A-A and found ABACA which parsed quite easily, so was saved from the error.

    Had PARALLEL as a triple definition – meaning a) matching or comparable, b) the lines representing degrees of latitude, and c) to be in a parallel course with (running parallel).

    Finished in the SE corner with ELEMENTS, JOSHED and JOSEPH the last few in.

  20. Not bad for an Otterden, but still an odd mixture of easy ones, obscurities and clues that don’t quite work. ABACA was last in – thought it might be that but I didn’t know the crop until I looked it up. ZEBRAWOOD was unfamiliar too, as was JOSEPH the garment – took me a while to break into the SE corner. The only one commonly misspelt by me is PHARAOH, and that has come up very recently so I learnt that lesson…

    Thanks to Andrew and Otterden.

  21. Not a great fan of this setter but I thought this (mostly) OK. The parsing of ABACA eluded me although I got the ‘summer’ part but spent ages looking for a mathematician! I’d never heard of a JOSEPH either but it had to be right.
    Liked CEMETERY though.
    Thanks Otterden.

  22. Thanks to Otterden and Andrews. Like others I had trouble parsing ABACA (even after looking it up) and JOSEPH (I didn’t know the coat) and took a while before seeing ELEMENTS, but I did struggle through – and I have been known to misspell PHARAOH and the UK version of the US “maneuvers.”

  23. Well, since everyone’s slagging Otterden, let me say that I quite enjoyed this. I couldn’t parse ABACA, but all the rest worked for me and several made me grin. My favourite: PARALLEL.

  24. Had to move my web site, so I was looking for an excuse to get the new URL and my name updated, though I suspect it’s done on a per post basis.

    I’m not sure why people are not fond of this. There are a couple of things I used to find irksome, unknown words (only two), words that might not be in the forefront of what passes for my brain etc. But if I’ve learnt one thing since I started on here several years ago, it is that these things turn up and it’s part of the experience. So I’m not at all sure why this one is any different. I get the impression that people have made their minds up in advance and are thus judging harshly.

    OK, URL associated, job done!

  25. I was confused by the wordplay for ABACA, DORY, PARALLEL and SEPARATE, and I hadn’t heard of the riding habit, so those clues were entered partially or fully unparsed. I also agree with many of the above-mentioned niggles, so overall it wasn’t a good puzzle for me. However, I did like the GANDHI clue, and also PHARAOH and MANOEUVRES.

    Thanks, Otterden and Andrew.

  27. If you had misspelt PHAROAH, then the crosser should have been fine for ONE ARMED, provided you misspelt it correctly. 😉

  28. i thought this was very poor. For example, surfaces like 23 which was just gibberish, or anagrams like 13 which add nothing to the answer, along with virtual write ins like 10. Apologies to those who enjoyed it, of course.

  29. Is Parallel not a triple definition?

    I too had Anana rather than Abaca. Never heard of it. Same for the riding jacket.

    Thanks to Andrew and Otterden

  30. I enjoyed most of this, and particularly liked GANDHI and TALMUDIC. But like other people I have major gripes about a few clues. Despite the comments by JollySwagman, I don’t think the word “this” is right in 9A and 24A. For the latter, “Party starts otherwise with this fish” would have been OK, if rather vague, but to apply “this” to “party” just doesn’t seem to me to work.

  31. Nearly all the criticisms seem to have been addressed. Turns out the crossword is much better than many first gave it credit. I do wonder, though, what the crossword editor actually does on the Guardian.
    26 ac was a perfectly good clue. A very good one perhaps. What would the weather have to be to heat kettles? It would have to be the elements. What’s wrong with that? Always a good idea I think to assume the compiler is cleverer than we first think.

  32. Thanks both. I’ll give two cheers for this puzzle. The surfaces of some clues were a bit labyrinthine but mostly they worked. Being one, I didn’t recognise ACAs as (mere) summers.

  33. Managed to solve it, but far too many iffy clues for my liking. Did anyone vet this crossword before publication?

  35. Good puzzle I thought. The Tory/Dory flip-flop only resolved by the crosser. Funnily enough my LOI was “heat”. Just couldn’t see it. Derr – as the kids say.

  36. xjpotter @31

    The answer to your question is “Almost nothing it would appear.”.

    I’ll let others decide to which question. 😉

  37. Thanks Andrew and Otterden.

    I agree to some extent with the criticisms above – particularly “springboard” meaning a first letter in 12ac and “This Party” = Tory in 24ac but I think I am warming to Otterden.

    At the end of the day, my only unparsed solution was PARALLEL and I think that Bruce has it spot on.

    I didn’t twig the misspelling theme but as Otterden has added, it wasn’t necessary for the solve.

    So actually, pretty good really. Nothing stands out as exceptional but overall a good challenge.

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