Guardian 26,967 / Tramp

41 comments on “Guardian 26,967 / Tramp”

1. Thanks Tramp and Eileen

   Great fun. I missed the AT in DEATHLY and the auction meaning of FETCHES; otherwise all solved and parsed.

   GENESIS and HAMMER did both need a bit of knowledge of the pop scene, I think, Eileen.

2. In 4,3, I think you need to underline “now” as well as part of the definition. Thanks for the blog!

3. To those of us who were at school in the early 80s, the Smiths seemed pretty important at the time, and their song titles are a gift to a setter as talented as Tramp. This was definitely one of his easier ones, and as always it was very enjoyable. Favourites were THIRTYSOMETHINGS and ETERNAL FLAME.

   Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

4. It’s EAT (= to take in) in 13ac.

5. Thanks, Jason @2 and Contrarian @4 – both careless slips, corrected now.

6. Many thanks Eileen for the super blog and your kind words.

   I wrote this puzzle in June 2014. There are a few others ahead of it in the queue but I asked for it to be moved up the order when I found out Morrissey was due to play Manchester on 20th August. The theme was suggested to me by a solver when I asked people if they had any ideas for themes. My older brother is a fan of the band and I am familiar with quite a bit of their material. I particularly like their liebestod, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, and so wanted to try to include that in the clues. I found it difficult though and I was about to give up when “eternal flame” came to me. The Smiths’ song titles are surprisingly hard to work into clues.

   When I look at it now, I am pleased with the puzzle but I feel the clue for 2d is a bit weak. Also, I’ve only just noticed that “set” appears in 27d and the answer to 25d.

   Neil

7. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen; huge fun as ever, although I wonder how Morrissey will feel when solving this over his chucky egg when he sees The Bangles’ Eternal Flame making an appearance!
   Great clue for SUPERHERO
   June 2014 eh? I hope Hugh has backed up his files to an external drive; it sounds like he’s got a few gems in there

8. I loved the use of the theme. “How soon is now” would be interesting to clue-as with Johhny Marr
   Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

9. Loved this.

   Thanks Tramp and Eileen

10. I missed appreciating the theme as I am not familiar with the Smiths or Morrissey.

    I failed to solve 27d, and could not parse 2d, 16d, 29a.

    I was not keen on the ad/product placement of UPS in 22d

    Thanks Eileen and Tramp.

11. Not a THIRTYSOMETHING so can’t claim familiarity with The Smiths’ oeuvre. I’ve always felt I’ve missed out on something that would have mattered to me, had I been younger. Never mind, Tramp’s excellent puzzle has almost made up for it.

    The top half seemed to come much more easily than the bottom. The key to unlocking the latter was summoning up the courage to make an anagram out of Morrissey – not promising fodder.

    But dammit, I can’t get ETERNAL FLAME out of my head …

12. Very enjoyable – even though it is a long time since I was thirtysomething and I know very little about Morrissey and co.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

13. I had never heard of The Smiths, didn’t know they were a band or that Morrissey was their singer, much less any of their song titles. That slowed me down some. And I couldn’t parse “deathly” or “rap” or (embarrassingly) “afro.”

    Still, I enjoyed the wonderful anagrams and also Eileen’s wonderful blog. Thanks to both Eileen and Tramp.

14. Thank you Tramp and Eileen.

    Got off to a flying start, then stuck for a while in the SE corner and needed help to parse SUPERHERO. I googled The Smiths at the end to see what was going on, they were new to me, as were The Bangles, but I had heard of GENESIS and REM pops up quite frequently.

    THIRTYSOMETHINGS, EPISTOLARY and ETERNAL FLAME were great.

15. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.
    Johnny Marr, guitarist and co-songwriter (with Morrissey), makes a nice appearance in 8d.
    Lovely crossword.

16. 15D is (early post)* around I (one).

    Entertaining, even though not familiar with work of Smiths, Morrissey et al.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

17. Remembering other Tramp puzzles I’ve tackled this year I was prepared for something to make me think, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were only two answers that I could fill in quickly – 1d APES and 24a REMISSORY – although the latter has to be a word, which I later checked.

    Tramp has the art of giving little away with his innocent one-word definitions that could indicate so many different words with many different meanings. An intuitive solver would get through this quicker than I did, but I have no complaints – I really enjoyed my successful tilt at this puzzle, in which all the clues were fair.

    The setter himself felt 2d SONATA was a bit weak, but I thought it was fine. The only clues I might call weak were 25d SETS, 27a SHOW and 29a SUPERHERO. My favourites, among many fine clues, were 9a PHOTOSHOP, 11a STAVE, 4d/3d THIRTYSOMETHINGS, 8d DEWY and 13d DEBUG.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

18. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen. I know little about the Smiths etc. but that did not stop me from enjoying the cluing here. I needed Eileen’s help to parse DEADLY and missed pus = matter in SUPERHERO. Last in were FRY-UPS (I took a while before getting UPS) and SHOW (which still puzzles me).

19. Thanks, gwep @16 – amended.

20. I was never a fan of The Smiths nor Morrissey. I prefer a more tuneful and agreeable sound to assail my lug holes. However, this was great fun. Thanks E and T.

21. 18 ACD Show is being used as a verb – most people would say “show up” but “show” seems to have become an acceptable alternative. I imagine it is an American import.

22. Thr opposite “no show” is commoner.

23. 22 muffin Indeed, that’s what made me surmise that the use of show as an intransitive verb, as in the clue, is an American import. This seems to be the case, as Merriam Webster has show as an intransitive verb.

24. How does “come” get to mean “show”?

25. @Rompiballe, I suppose it is “come” = “show (up)”

26. This was enjoyable. I needed the blog for one or two of the parsings, so many thanks Eileen.

    Re 16d, isn’t this really a clue for FLUTES rather than for LUTES? That is, FLUTES means instruments whether or not it has its first letter, whereas LUTES doesn’t.

27. On second thoughts, I suppose LUTES can be instruments, ie lutes, with the first letter, or instruments, ie flutes, without the first letter. So please ignore my previous comment!

28. JimS @26,27
    I think the clue works best for FLUTES, but as you say it can made to work, a bit less elegantly in my opinion, for LUTES as well.

29. JimS: it’s a good point

30. Yeah, I’ve mainly seen “show” for “come, appear” in its negative sense. As in, “I waited 45 minutes for my date, but he didn’t show.” Not like this has ever happened to me…(whistles idly)

    It wouldn’t surprise me if it were an Americanism, but I hadn’t thought of it as such. Of course, in my universe there aren’t Americanisms. There’s normal English and there are Britishisms, so I’m not the most reliable source.

    I should probably mention that “Eternal Flame” is what they were playing as the “last slow dance” when I was first old enough to go to school dances. As no one had ever actually bothered to teach anyone to dance, what occurred during slow dances consisted mainly of holding another person and rocking back and forth. (During the fast dances, it mostly consisted of flopping around like a rag doll.) If you lacked someone to rock back and forth with, you sat the slow dances out. As I was still pretending to be heterosexual (even pretending to myself), the whole thing was rather traumatic for my still-young ego. Anyway, that’s my memory of “Eternal Flame,” which I imagine dates me pretty precisely.

    As for The Smiths, I knew a dude in college who was really into them. They did anything for me, though that dude did try his hardest to change that.

31. I liked the majority of this but I couldn’t see SHOW which I suppose can mean “come” but I can’t say I liked it much. I quite liked the Smiths at the time and some of the early ones have worn quite well. The solo Morrissey, on the other hand, is beyond awful- and don’t get me started on Genesis. I liked FRY UPS and REMISSORY.
    Thanks Tramp.

32. Nice puzzle – never did like The Smiths – for goodness sake cheer up! – anyway not my era…
    FOI ETERNAL FLAME LOI FETCHES
    All progressed well but struggled a bit with bottom right…
    I guess 24A favourite for finding an anagram of Morissey – I look forward to the Axl Rose (Guns & Roses and latterly AC DC) clue – will be Paul no doubt 🙂

33. Even though I only solved about three-quarters of this, I enjoyed it and appreciated the theme. Thanks Eileen for the enlightenment when I came to the blog. Thanks to Tramp for the fun and for inspiring interesting online comments.

34. I saved this. I am so pleasured by certain solvers that I sometimes delay solving if too busy to enjoy their latest puzzle fully. No names mentioned but you know who you are (Tramp, Arachne, Screw…. etc.)…!

    This was lovely, though possibly his easiest to date? So I wasn’t pleasured quite as smoulderingly as I might have dreamed! Still brilliant.

    [I’ve noticed, though I may be wrong, that Eileen seems to blog a disproportionately large number of Tramp (and Arachne) works; I don’t know who’s more fortunate – Eileen or Tramp!]

35. William F P

    Purely for the record, as I said at the beginning of the blog, it’s ages since I last blogged a Tramp puzzle – last October, in fact, and I prefaced that one with “I’ve just discovered that this is the first Tramp puzzle I’ve blogged this year, which seems hard to believe.”.
    Similarly, I have blogged only one Arachne puzzle since last October – but there I did have to say, “This is beginning to be embarrassing – my third consecutive Arachne blog. [It’s a good job my fellow-bloggers know how our rota works and that there’s no chicanery on my part.]”.

    Be assured that the allocation of blogs is entirely random, following a weekly rota [if that’s not a contradiction in terms] – there might be mutiny in the ranks if it were not so!

36. Fascinating. Many thanks for so kindly replying.
    As I mentioned, I thought I may have been wrong. Perhaps because I’ve recently solved a clutch of Tramp’s puzzles from 2012 and 2013 when I was only taking the Guardian sporadically, and may have drawn conclusions therefrom (possibly mistakenly it seems!). It could be one of those skewed affects of statistical clustering. Or it could simply be that, in the same way that one remembers favourite setters, one also recalls preferred blogs/bloggers.

    Quite apart from the folk mentioned here, I genuinely thought there was more to the allocation of ‘blogging rights’ than a simple cycle – though I may be thinking of Independent blogs, no doubt incorrectly I now gather.

    It is most interesting to learn how these things work.

    All things considered I find your response most revealing. I still feel that when you do blog a Tramp it’s a nice thing for both of you – and us!

37. Thanks Eileen and Tramp.

    A great example of a themed puzzle which doesn’t need specialist knowledge to solve.

    Finally crafted, nice surfaces.

    Surprisingly straightforward for a Friday puzzle. Are we being warmed up for a stinker?

38. I think you may have inadvertently omitted 19A RAP, homophone for WRAP (cover) with caught as indicator. Thank you Eileen & Tramp

39. Thank you, Uncle Yap: not omitted, just incorrectly numbered as 20ac – now amended.

40. Only just got around to this excellent crossword, but thought I better mention that the reason Tramp is dissatisfied with 2d is that it contains only a partial and incorrect reference to a Smiths song – The Boy with the Thorn in His Side.
    Having not heard otherwise, Tramp must also be relieved that he has got away with not giving the litigious Rourke and Joyce equal prominence with Morrissey and Marr(y) in the crossword.

41. Thanks Tramp and Eileen

    Another late one … and a good ‘un as usual from Tramp. It is great that crosswords can keep for a long time and lose none of their goodness. Found this easier than normal for this setter (less than an elapsed hour), although some of the parsing did get a little bit more challenging.

    Thought that the disguising of some of the definitions was excellent – 22a, 19d, 23d and 27d. Had difficulty equating SETS to ‘gigs’ – was of the opinion that a set was more a part of a gig.

    The weaving of the themed band, the two main members (thanks VW@40 for showing the second) and albums into the clues themselves was pretty amazing. Even I managed to figure out with the capitalisation that there would be a theme in this one !

    Ended up in the SW corner with REMISSORY (a new term for me), that SETS and RESPONSE (simple as it was in hindsight) as the last few in.

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