Guardian Cryptic 26,883 by Philistine

by

Got a bit stuck after a quick start, but nothing too difficult despite a few unusual bits of wordplay. Favourite was 23dn.

Across
1, 5, 28 THE SUN’S OVER THE YARDARM Newspaper’s exposed detectives in harem, wrong time for a drink (3,4,4,3,7)
an acceptable time for a drink, see [wiki]. THE SUN’S=”Newspaper’s”, plus OVERT=”exposed”, plus [Scotland] YARD=”detectives” inside (harem)*
5   See 1
9 ALOUD Let sound be heard (5)
sounds like ‘allowed’=”Let”
10 EXECUTION A kind of exit on cue (9)
(exit on cue)*
11 HOVERCRAFT With ultimate skill, collecting finished vehicle (10)
[Wit]H, plus CRAFT=”skill”, around OVER=”finished”
12 CLUB Card players? (4)
a suit in cards, or a group of players
14 NOMENCLATURE Only women can be cruel at name-calling (12)
NO MEN=”Only women”, plus (cruel at)*
18 CASSETTE DECK Burrow returning yield to fill barrel for player (8,4)
SETT=a badger’s “Burrow”, plus reversal of CEDE=”returning yield”, all inside CASK=”barrel”
21   See 24
22 AND WHAT NOT We hate having no backing nor covering etc (3,7)
W[e] HAT[e] with none of their back letters, with AND NOT=”nor” around it
25 CASSOWARY Start to crow, as very cautious bird (9)
C[row], plus AS, plus SO=”very”, plus WARY=”cautious”
26 BUGLE Not right to enter a property to steal a musical instrument (5)
BUrGLE=”enter a property to steal, without the r[ight]
27 OBLIGES Accommodates forces (7)
double definition – to be obliging, or to impose obligation
28   See 1
Down
1 TRASHY Tasteless tree-hugging endeavour (6)
TRY=”endeavour”, around ASH=”tree”
2 EVOLVE No case for gun to change (6)
[r]EVOLVE[r]=”gun” without its outer letters/”case”
3 UNDERCOVER Hush-hush when in bed? (10)
or UNDER [the] COVER[s]
4 SHEAR Shark cut (5)
double definition – Shark as in to swindle, or to fleece
5 OPEN-FACED Honest kind of sandwich, top end, no crust, with coffee coming up (4-5)
OPEN-FACED can refer to having an honest expression or to a sandwich having a side uncovered.
[t]OP EN[d], plus DECAF=”coffee” reversed
6 EMUS Dance music featuring Australians? (4)
Australian birds. Hidden in [Danc]E MUS[ic]
7 TRIAL RUN Pilot takes learner through air turn manoeuvre (5,3)
as in a pilot scheme or pilot episode. L[earner] inside (air turn)*
8 ENNOBLED Del Boy’s lead character and none other turned up dignified (8)
(Del B[oy] none)*
13 GAS CHAMBER Chat room for 10s (3,7)
 GAS=empty talk=”Chat”, plus CHAMBER=”room”
15 ESTONIANS Europeans seeing school head surrounded by pupils (9)
S[chool] surrounded by ETONIANS=”pupils”
16 SCIROCCO Wind up opening old carriage clock on request in clockmaker’s shop (8)
A Mediterranean wind. Reversal/”up” of the opening letters of O[ld] C[arriage] C[lock] O[n] R[equest] I[n] C[lockmaker’s] S[hop]
17 ESPOUSAL Assumption that when borders cease to exist, despot must fall (8)
=the taking of something upon oneself. Borderless [d]ESPO[t] [m]US[t] [f]AL[l]
19 ENIGMA It’s a mystery why one might read Hemingway (6)
“why” + ENIGMA=”one [of these]” would be anagram fodder of “Hemingway”
20 STREAM Current master plan (6)
(master)*
23 WRYLY One’s said to live well in a sarcastic way (5)
“live well”=live the life of ‘Riley’, which sounds like WRYLY
24, 21 LONG-ROOM  Part of Lord’s pavilion is essentially all for one newly-wed (4,4)
In the cricket ground, see [wiki]. The essentials or centres of [a]L[l] [f]O[r] [o]N[e], plus GROOM=”newly-wed”

62 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,883 by Philistine”

  1. Thanks Philistine and manehi

    I read 4D as ‘s’ plus HEAR (‘hark’) with the single definition ‘cut’.

  2. Thanks manehi and Philistine.

    I needed help to parse 4d, 19d, 22a.

    My favourites were CASSETTE DECK, SCIROCCO, CASSOWARY, BUGLE, TRASHY, NOMENCLATURE.

  4. Thanks manehi and Philistine.

    Good end to great week!

    Loved NOMENCLATURE, OPEN-FACED and ESPOUSAL.

  5. Thanks, manehi. I do enjoy Philistine’s puzzles, even if this was on the easy side.

    Others have noted the Boatmanesque SHEAR. Also, you have to explain “turned up” in ENNOBLED: it’s a reversal of DELB (NONE)* I presume.

  6. Thanks – enjoyed this after a dismal failure with the Capability Brown themed puzzle from yesterday (had heard the name but knew nothing about him). Thanks to Philistine and manehi. This was enjoyable especially 1a etc THE SUN’S OVER THE YARDARM and of course 6d EMUS (sorry to be so parochial). 13d GAS CHAMBERS was neat but “chat” seemed to make it a bit too light-hearted for my liking. Slight error as I put ANY instead of AND WHATNOT; had to come here to see the correct parsing.

  7. PS Have not seen that spelling of SCIROCCO before, but had the parsing and then checked online to find that alternative spelling.

  9. Thanks Philistine and manehi

    My quickest ever Philistine, thanks mainly for the long write-in starting at 1ac. Favourites were NOMENCLATURE and WRYLY.

    I was puzzled by the SHEAR answer, and I think the S-HEAR explanation works better. I was also a bit confused by OPEN-FACED, as I took “type of sandwich” to be OPEN, so wondered why he had clued “open” twice.

    I thought 13d was in rather poor taste.

  11. I haven’t met the OPEN-FACED sandwich before – it’s either open or open-topped around here. AND WHATNOT is another one I’ve never seen used, and I’d make it three words anyway.

  12. Thanks for the blog, manehi and Philistine for another most enjoyable puzzle.

    My favourites were THE SUN’S OVER THE YARDARM [a frequent observation of mine 😉 ] NOMENCLATURE, for the surface and construction and because I like the word, ENIGMA and WRYLY.

    Re S HEAR – Boatmanesque? I’m pretty sure the first time I met this device was quite a while ago in a Philistine puzzle that I blogged. The answer [or the wordplay] was SPORT but it’s too common a word for me to be able to find it in the archive. I remember it because I couldn’t parse it!

  13. Volkswagen were quite right to use the spelling SCIROCCO, the Italian version of the name in Arabic for this wind. ‘sci-‘ in Italian represents the sound denoted by ‘shi-‘ in English.
    I agree with NeilW about the decryption of the clue for ENNOBLED – very nice word play.
    It’s a pity that the clue for AND WHATNOT included the ungrammatical ‘nor’ rather than ‘or’.

  14. Fabulous crossword, many thanks to blogger & setter.

    Not quite sure what is going on in the Del Boy clue ENNOBLED. I saw the anagram readily enough but as NeilW et al have mentioned there’s also the ‘turned up’ part to explain.

    Held up unnecessarily reasoning out AND WHATNOT, as in my line of work AND-NOT and NOR gates are definitely not synonymous.

    CASSETTE DECK brought back memories of a technology I most certainly do not mourn the passing of. Any one else waste hours trying to remove mangled tape from the gizzards of this beast and then even more twirling the cassette round on a pencil trying to get it back?

    Failed on parsing SHEAR but am now sure PeterO et al are right. Eileen is right inasmuch as we have seen this device before but I can’t recall when either. Perhaps Beery Hiker will drop in and enlighten us.

    I aid wry-ly to myself about a dozen times before the penny dropped!

    Logomachist @13 Good technical point but you’ve rather spoiled the clue for me now!

    SCIROCCO & GAS CHAMBER were my highlights in this excellent puzzle.

    Many thanks Philistine.

    Nice weekend, all.

  16. Hi Eileen @12. I’m sure you’re right: it’s true that Philistine does go in for the lift and separate device as well; I just think we see an awful lot more of it in Boatman’s puzzles than any other setter. If it was Philistine who invented it, then my apologies. 🙂

  17. No need for apology, Neil @16: I’m certainly not saying Philistine invented ‘lift and separate’ – just that that’s my first recollection of that particular version.

  20. I normally enjoy Philistine but 13d left a sour taste and should probably have been vetoed by the editor, not that much else would fit there so it would probably have required a major rewrite to remove it…

    Eileen @12, William @14 – I think this is the one you are looking for:
    Philistine 26079: Games of shaven swine? (5)

    Thanks to manehi and Philistine

  23. Thank you Philistine and manehi.

    I enjoyed this puzzle until towards the end when 13d was one of my last to be solved – I suppose GAS CHAMBER can be regarded as a means of EXECUTION of a condemned prisoner as in the USA, like the electric chair, but…

  24. It seems to happen with Philistine, I go a long way through the clues without getting a foothold (STREAM) and then they fall, if not like ninepins, then at least with satisfying regularity. And aha moments too, like ESPOUSAL and EXECUTION. But while I was happy to write in the latter, I was less keen when it led to 13d.

  26. Thanks to Philistine and manehi. I needed help parsing BUGLE (I missed the “burgle” link), SHEAR, and ENIGMA – and LONG ROOM was new to me – but this solve went fairly quickly. Very enjoyable.

  27. Challenging puzzle with some nice clues. I liked TRIAL RUN very much.
    On Logomachist@13’s point, using “neither” instead of “no” would work rather well here, since we are removing two last letters from the phrase “We hate”. But is it ungrammatical as is? I would have thought that the “no” justifies the “nor”.
    I also felt that 13 was somewhat tasteless as I was writing it in.
    Thanks, Philistine and manehi.

  28. I enjoyed this and I can’t say I saw any problem with GAS CHAMBER. Rather a clever clue, I thought. I parsed SHARK as Flavia did which also seemed rather clever. Indeed the more I look at the puzzle the better it seems. I loved ENIGMA,ENNOBLED and CASSOWARY-and WRYLY made me smile. LOI LONG ROOM.
    Thanks Philistine.

  29. Felt the same as others about 13dn. However, there is no other solution which fits the check letters according to Onelook.

  30. [William @14 – just caught up with your comment on cassettes – I seem to remember Bic biros worked better than pencils, and it was sometimes necessary to perform drastic surgery using scissors and Sellotape. As you say not a technology to mourn.]

  34. [muffin, if only a clue based on the Mikado could be used for TAX CHAMBER, then working there could lead to 10a, remember KO-KO’s line “There’s the Income Tax Commissioners with all their prying clerks”.]

  35. [William @14 – I recently copied some old cassettes to digital – brought back the pain of trying to find a particular track in the middle of a side, not to mention the eternity it seemed to take to rewind to the beginning.]

    Thanks to all for a good end to a good week. (Spent basking in the sunshine at Loch Alsh, with occasional trips to Skye and Applecross.)

  36. I hate it when muffin comes here and says:
    “My quickest ever Philistine, thanks mainly for the long write-in starting at 1ac.”
    (I know he’s done something like this before with a long phrase that sets him up for the whole crossword but leaves me having to find other ways to get started and force my way in.)

    I honestly enjoyed this puzzle, despite the handicap of not being able to recall the long phrase starting at 1A until YARDARM was the only word that went in at 28A (and then I had to look up the phrase to be sure). I found it a bit challenging in places.

    I go with PeterO @1, NeilW @5 and muffin @9 in their interpretations of SHEAR, ENNOBLED and OPEN-FACED respectively. As manehi said, there were “a few unusual bits of wordplay” in this puzzle, some of which forced me into guessing, but I have no complaints.

    I failed to spot the simple wordplay in 10A for a while (the anagram of EXECUTION). I thought this was a good clue, although my favourites were TRIAL RUN, CASSETTE DECK and CASSOWARY. I had no problem with 13D (GAS CHAMBER).

    I’ve had a break from crosswords since last Saturday, and this one was a nice way to get back into the groove.

    (muffin, don’t take me seriously. Anyway, I savoured this puzzle for longer than you did!)

  38. How could you have GAS CHAMBER in any decent crossword. That is a disgrace. And it isn’t even a very well-written puzzle either, with many shoddy constructions.

  39. toneyvr @37
    You have to read it as “endeavour, tree-hugging”, which you could get by adding commas – Tasteless, tree-hugging, endeavour.

    Alan – many apologies. The phrase was very familiar to me (and Eileen too, apparently), though an even more pedantic friend insists that it should be “fore-yard” rather than “yardarm”.

  40. [It should have been “to” rather than “for”, anyway.

    I think you might remember me writing in SOPHIA LOREN and EVERYTHING YOU SEE I OWE TO SPAGH?ETTI]

  41. Isn’t OPEN-FACED a bit of a mess too?

    Honest kind of sandwich, top end, no crust, with coffee coming up (4-5)

    The answer means ‘honest’ (‘honest-looking’ actually, but heigh-ho), and ‘kind of sandwich’ is OPEN, which just leaves the DECAF to be reversed. So why is there the tOPENd as well? It should have been ‘crusts’ too!

    I was not impressed by this clue, or by that many of the others.

  42. Issy Porter @41
    I said much the same about OPEN-FACED @9. Apparently “open-faced” is a description of a sandwich (which I, and at least one other, have never heard of).

  43. muffin @40

    [Actually, it was something else. Annoyingly, I can’t remember what it was. Apology not needed. One day I might know a phrase you don’t!]

  44. Thanks all
    I had shear but did not enter it becauseI could not parse it,
    Favourites 9àc, 13(especially),19 and 23 down.

  45. For me, there is a lot to like in this puzzle, with too many ‘favourite’ clues to list here. However, I too think it would have been better to avoid 13d, or at least to clue it in a less flippant way.

    Thanks, Philistine and manehi.

  46. Thanks Philistine and manehi

    Not quite my first one in … but the long phrase at 1,5,28 was certainly in the first 3 or 4, which helped a lot with the rest of the puzzle.

    Was interesting to see the similarity of device in quite a number of clues – 22a, 2d, 5d, 16d, 17d and 24/21 where words were constructed from single letters or small groups of letters in a phrase. Together with a number of other clues that required the addition / subtraction of single letters in the word play (11a, 25a and 26a). Not right or wrong – just an observation !

    The other interesting point is the offence taken at 13d – often there are answers that have methods of killing or execution – HANGING and QUARTERED (just recently), GARROTTE and we see behead / top as an instruction to take away the first letter. Yet we don’t have similar outrage calls. Again not right or wrong – just another observation.

    For the record, I enjoyed it a lot and finished up by untangling CASSETTE DECK (appropriately) as my last one in.

  47. Sri Setha@38
    You should not confuse your personal standards of taste with the purely technical skill of clue setting.

  49. Re 13D, I guess, giving benefit of the doubt, that no offence was intended, or perhaps even thought of, but it seems to me its inclusion in the puzzle is totally out of order not least with a jokey clue for the answer.

  50. RCWhiting @47, that is rather a dangerous attitude, for me the clue might have passed (see @23), but it takes more than one person to chat…

  51. It’s just idiotic to include an answer like that.

    Furthermore, GAS = chat is cryptic, whilst CHAMBER = room is not, and so we don’t even have a good clue, let alone a respectful one for such a nightmarish answer. Appalling.

  52. Morning John. When you wake up please give me Enjoy a furore very much (4,5). Driving me potty. Today’s guardian prize. I never enter the comp. Many thanks and best regards Pete

  53. Sockpuppet alert.

    But what a cracking puzzle. Got off to a flying start twigging the biggie early.

    Personally I don’t mind if a biggie explodes the whole puzzle – now and again – you wouldn’t want it too often. This one didn’t – although it helped a lot.

    I compensated by putting the answers to 21d, 24d in the wrong way round – so that slowed down the wrap-up.

    Many thanks both.

  54. If you’re all so upset by 13D why not write to the newspaper editor and ask him what his Crosword Editor is doing? (I’m not sure he’ll know 😉 )

    I still suspect this is all part of an ongoing setter’s plot to “out” the editor’s inactivity.

  55. 13D Holocaust Memorial day was only a week ago, on May 5th, which makes this clue particularly unsuitable.

  56. Well, just so long as The Guardian doesn’t have an anti-Semite problem. That would be somewhat ironic, as we watch our media’s integrity slide down the pan.

  57. I’m sure it must have been the American reference that was intended: it came to mind first for me, and I couldn’t see what everyone was on about… (not that I approve of capital punishment either)

  58. southofnonorth @57
    Philistine may well have intended the US reference, but it’s in a British newspaper and I think that for most Brits, at least those of my generation, the Holocaust is what immediately springs to mind.

  59. tree-hugging is a compound adjective describing ENDEAVOUR just as I am a tree-loving person, so no need to read the clue in a strange way.

  60. I have belatedly realised that all the objectors to 13 d

    assumed a particular meaning and so took offence. Having spent many hours in a laboratory while becoming a chemist a gas chamber is an innocuous but welcome safety device which sat in the corner causing no problems!

  61. RCWhiting #60 – but the clue (if you read it again) does not refer to such a device – quite the opposite. I’m prepared to agree, as in my earlier comment, that I’m pretty sure no offence was intended, but it was an unfortunate inclusion (and clue).

  62. Thanks Philistine and manehi.

    I got off to a flying start with THE SUNS OVER THE YARDARM and really enjoyed this apart from three.

    I did resolve SHEAR as S + HARK/HEAR but it still feels a bit uncomfortable. Similarly, is “might read” in 19 really an anagram indicator? And then AND WHATNOT? Hmm!

    These are all feelings and subjective. They almost seemed like they didn’t quite fit with the rest of this otherwise top class puzzle.

    My next to last in was WRYLY which made me laugh and is therefore my favourite.

    Thanks again.

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