Guardian Cryptic 27,012 by Tramp

by

Tramp is as difficult and as fun as always…

…with a Batman/comics theme running through several of the clues – 12ac, 13ac, 22ac, 2dn, 5dn, 8dn/15ac, 18dn and 20dn. Favourites today were 4ac, 22ac, 24ac, 26ac and 6dn. Thanks, Tramp

Across
1 SECURE Chain dog; get collars (6)
Edit thanks to matrixmania in comments: definition is “Chain”, with CUR=”dog” collared by SEE=understand=”get”

[ Think this is a triple definition – “Chain”=’fasten’; “dog”=’fasten with a dog’ – see [wiki]; “get collars”=’arrest, put into custody’. “get” is also a definition of SECURE, but then “collars” wouldn’t fit ]
4 BANDIT Dash to wrestle with robber (6)
BIT=small amount=”Dash” as in a ‘dash of pepper’, wrestling around AND=”with”
9 FIRM Good company (4)
double definition
10 STRONG SUIT Best quality acting by star lacking a good costume (6,4)
ON=”acting”, after ST[a]R lacking an a, plus G[ood], plus SUIT=”costume”
11 STACKS Fires: temperature drops in chimneys (6)
SACKS=”Fires” an employee, with T[emperature] dropping inside
12 GOAT MOTH One flies to Gotham criminal (4,4)
(to Gotham)*
13 PUBLISHER Turn up with Batman at the start, relish fighting Penguin? (9)
Penguin Books is a publisher. Reversal/”Turn” of UP, plus the start of B[atman], plus (relish)*
15   See 8
16 PIMP Fancy man, married, spreading seed around? (4)
M[arried] with PIP=”seed” spread around it
17 STICKY END Disaster close to border (6,3)
STICKY=humid, muggy=”close”, plus END=”border”
21 PURULENT Weeping priest to turn to line (part of Bible) (8)
=containing pus. P[riest], plus U as in ‘U-turn’, plus RULE=”line”, plus N[ew] T[estament]=”part of Bible”
22 SPHINX Head of Police: “Hard to cut crime by Riddler and Catwoman?” (6)
P[olice] and H[ard] cutting into SIN=”crime”, plus X=multiplication symbol=multiplied “by”
24 BAKING SODA Rising agent of bank said: “Go away” (6,4)
(bank said go)*
25 SLID Went down pole, given cover (4)
S[outh]=”pole”, plus LID=”cover”
26 ELEVEN Footballer and England manager both miss their first team (6)
[P]ELE=”Footballer” [wiki] and [S]VEN=”England manager” [wiki]
27 USHERS Guides addicts injecting heroin (6)
USERS=”addicts”, with H[eroin] inside
Down
1 SHIHTZU Dog dirt on park for animals picked up (4-3)
sounds like/”picked up [by ear]”: ‘shit’=”dirt” and ‘zoo’=”park for animals”
2 COMIC Joker and Batman? (5)
double definition, the second by example
3 RESISTS Avoids Sun, papers put outside (7)
S[un], with RESITS=exam “papers” put outside
5 ANNUAL Recall cover for a 2 book? (6)
ANNUL=”Recall”, covering A
6 DISEMBODY Take from person? Some did by being wicked (9)
(Some did by)*
7 TWIN TUB One’s spinning drums and string instrument endlessly (4-3)
A washing machine with spinning drums – “One’s”=>’One has’. TWIN[e]=”string” and TUB[a]=”instrument”, both missing their ends.
8, 15 FRAGMENTATION BOMB Batman and Robin met fog after exploding grenade (13,4)
(Batman Robin met fog)*
14 LIMOUSINE Car to remain outside flash American home (9)
LIE=”remain”, outside all of: MO[ment]=”flash”, plus US=”American”, plus IN=”home”
16 PLUMAGE Cat say returning to house left feathers (7)
PUMA=”Cat”, plus reversal/’turning” of E.G.=”say”, all around L[eft]
18 CO-STARS Small actors, Dynamic Duo on screen? (2-5)
(S[mall] actors)*
19 NANNIES Mothers and partners taking in show (7)
=”Mothers” in the sense of ‘is [over]protective’. N[orth] and S[outh] are bridge partners, taking in ANNIE=musical “show”
20 BEAGLE Dog in British 2 (6)
B[ritish] plus EAGLE=a British “comic” [wiki]
23 HASTE Rush hour on a street, middle of queue (5)
H[our] plus A plus ST[reet] plus [qu]E[ue]

38 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,012 by Tramp”

  1. Thanks for the blog, manehi.

    I parsed SECURE as cur (dog) contained within see (get). I see… I get it.

    A difficult puzzle but well worth the challenge. The across clues 21, 22 and 24 were my favourites.

  2. Thanks TRamp and manehi

    Difficult, with much electronic help required, and several incomplete or missing parses (BANDIT, PURULENT, LIMOUSINE and NANNIES).

    A couple of oddities. “Papers” for RESITS is correct but really obscure; the “in” in the clue for BEAGLE spoils the cryptic grammar (I was going to point out that this was another clue for “those of a certain age”, as it ceased publication in 1969, but Wiki tells me that it was briefly revived in the 90s).

    I loved PUBLISHER and BAKING SODA.

    (1d reminds me “I went to the zoo the other day. The only animals were little dogs. It was a **** zoo.”)

  3. Really tough but fair and fun. I had to come here to parse a few. So thanks to the blogger. The theming is oddly diffuse – comics, (The) Batman, dogs. But hey, ho.

  6. An enjoyable challenge with too many good clues to list. Don’t know much about Batman, so cringed when I first saw the theme; however, the word-play made my lack of knowledge of no consequence.

    Thank you Tramp & manehi. Thanks too to muffin@2 for the much needed laugh on this wet, grey morning!

  7. Once again, a masterly use of a theme by Tramp. Some great clues – liked PUBLISHER, STICKY END and CO-STARS especially.

    Can’t see anything wrong with BEAGLE.

  10. Good fun, though challenging and quite a few unparsed including ELEVEN, RESISTS and BANDIT. Many good clues including PIMP, STICKY END and my favourite SPHINX.

    Thanks to Tramp and manehi.

  11. Thanks Tramp and manehi

    Bodycheetah @ 9: how about ‘a good friend’ / ‘a firm friend’.

    Chambers eThesaurus has ‘annul’ and ‘recall’ as synonyms in both entries: ‘border’ is given as a synonym for ‘end’, but not the other way round.

  12. Muffin @8,

    ‘In’ is a link word between definition and wordplay – the definition is lying in the wordplay. This is a common device. Nothing wrong with your version but I think Tramp’s gives a better surface.

  13. Thanks to manehi for the blog and to others for the comments.

    I wrote this puzzle as recently as May. I asked for it to be moved up the order when I heard that The Return of the Caped Crusaders was due for release this week.

    muffin@2: Definition in wordplay,

    this device is used in a lot of puzzles. There is debate about whether it works the other way round: I don’t think it does.

    Thanks

    Neil

  14. Tramp @13
    Yes, I’ve seen it before. I’m still not keen on “in” as a linkword as it seems to have a more positive function. My tweaked version of the clue (which implies “comic” as an adjective) avoids the necessity of using it.

  15. Thanks to Tramp and manehi.

    A difficult one for me, with three guesses that proved incorrect: for 22a I had SPHERE as a definition for “head” but did not get the rest (obviously!); I put in EXETER for 26a – I know it as a place name and I think a football team, but bunged it in unparsed; and I tried NURSIES for 19d. All pretty embarrassing with hindsight.

    Really appreciate the parsing here on the blog of several other answers I got without really knowing why.

    Now I think 22a SPHINX is just great!

    I liked the theme/s of comics, Batman and dogs, despite my lack of success.

    21a PURULENT is a new word for me – learning all the time!

    I did enjoy the anagram that led to me getting 8d/15a FRAGMENTATION BOMB quite early. Thought I was going to do well after that breakthrough but in the wash-up that proved to be false confidence.

  16. Thanks to Tramp and manehi – enjoyable but tough, as others have said.

    Having had the unpleasant experience of using twin-tub washing machines in the 1970s, I would question the definition in 7d: as far as I remember the washing drum just rotated slightly in alternate directions; when that part was finished you had to fish out the wet and horribly tangled clothes and put them into the spinner section.

  17. Thanks to Tramp and manehi.

    Quite a few I could not parse. For 20d I initially had BARKER as in Ronnie Barker the late British comic actor.

  18. A wonderful puzzle – I’m full of admiration for Tramp and other setters (I don’t know how they manage it). My favourites were FRAGMENTATION BOMB, PUBLISHER, SPHINX (utterly brilliant) and CO-STARS. Like others, I wondered about ‘annul’ and ‘resits’. Having got 6d, I spent a long time fruitlessly trying to solve 4a, having decided it must have ‘dip’ (robber) at the end. Many thanks to Tramp and manehi.

  19. Found this pretty tough and ended up cheating a little using Check, and left a few unparsed. Plenty to enjoy as always from Tramp. Liked NANNIES. PUBLISHER was last in…

    Thanks to Tramp and manehi

  20. Hard for hardness’s sake? Possibly. One of those puzzles where, even when I get the parsing, it often seems iffy to me – papers = RESITS??

    Had to use my solving app to work through solutions to *U*ULENT – I was convinced the LE was a reversed EL, the solver’s famous (railway) line, and there would be a *U*U priest that wasn’t a GURU. Didn’t know the word PURULENT and I hope never to have to use it.

    Still, liked PUBLISHER, and anything which allows me to recall the Eagle can’t be all bad. And, at about the same time, we had a BEAGLE!

  21. A very enjoyable crossword, and mostly quite challenging. I particularly liked the way the theme was incorporated into the puzzle, not requiring much, or any, knowledge of it, and the neat and clever use of the theme names in clues like 8d/15a FRAGMENTATION BOMB (how did Tramp come up with a short phrase with Batman and Robin mixed up in it!), 2d COMIC and 22a SPHINX.

    I needed help only on 4a BANDIT – I didn’t see how ‘dash’ and ‘with’ contributed to the answer, even after going back to it at the end, so thanks to manehi for the explanation.

    I was also a bit slow to get STRONG SUIT, thinking for a while that the whole answer was a costume, and trying in vain some ideas like AI (A1 = best quality) in SAILOR SUIT, but a second look at this well-crafted (and crafty) clue yielded the answer, which helped me get 5d ANNUAL and then 4a (BANDIT).

    Thanks to Tramp for an excellent puzzle.

  22. Thanks to Tramp and manehi. Like others I found this one tough going but well worth the effort. I did manage to parse ELEVEN (I saw Pele and after a while remembered Sven), but had trouble spelling SHIH-TSU, did not know “resits” in RESISTS or “Eagle” in BEAGLE, and did not parse ANNUAL. The “sticky” in STICKY END slowed me down, but I really liked Penguin-PUBLISHER.

  23. I did find this tricky in parts and I wasn’t always sure of the parsing-RESISTS and ELEVEN. The latter was a footballing clue, so I didn’t try too hard. Annoyingly, because even I have heard of Pele! I hadn’t come across PURULENT before- lovely word though- and does PIMP really = ‘fancy man’?
    I did enjoy this though despite the above grizzles!
    Thanks Tramp.

  26. Made today’s Times cryptic crossword look easy. I spent twice as long on the Guardian and failed to get “purulent”.

  28. I agree that this was a great puzzle, as has been said by many.
    My COD was CO-STARS.
    I only had trouble with line = RULE, and still don’t see it.

  29. Thank you Tramp and manehi.

    Did not have time to comment this morning, but remember I enjoyed the solve, although I needed help with parsing ELEVEN. TWIN TUB was a real laugh with memories of my parents’ two when I was on leave with my family in England when the children were young – still, better than those of the wooden twin tubs, scrubbing board and copper boiler in the wash-house of my NZ childhood.

    jaceris @28, I thought line = RULE since one rules lines on a sheet of paper…

  30. I thought ‘line’ as in ‘take a hard line’ or ‘what’s your line on that?’
    I bet Tramp was really pleased with himself when he thought of “Riddler and Catwoman” – and rightly so.
    Great stuff.

  31. Thank you.. just could not parse so many on this one .. it is difficult when the word is broken into rather small bits.. ala Limousine

  32. Always one of the best. Just how I like them. Thanks Tramp – some great stuff (though you had me on “purulent”; I wasn’t of a mind to search dictionaries. I think that’s the first time you’ve got me – but was it really fair I wonder?)

  33. How does ‘to’ work in 17a and 21a (twice)? It seems to me it doesn’t. If ‘to border’, ‘to turn’ and ‘to line’ were being used as verbs it could be part of the verbal form, but as used in the clues, all three must be nouns (a border, a turn, a line).

  35. I have heard of Batman of course – the films are trumpeted widely. But I don’t know any other characters nor that it was a comic so this was a real slog for me and I resorted to Reveals in order to maintain progress. In retrospect it is clever but I was never going to solve it. Riddler and Catwoman indeed???

  36. @35 HKrunner
    I don’t really dig the whole superhero/Marvel Comics world either, but I have heard of The Riddle of the Sphinx and that the figure is thought to represent the body of a lion and the head of a woman, so I think the clue is standalone soluble as is almost always the case with Tramp’s technique.
    Obviously, an OK+ clue becomes absolutely brilliant if one has heard of The Riddler and Catwoman in the Batman sense (which I had, in the same way I’ve heard of Superman or for that matter Rachmaninov)

  38. Ah, thanks. I see Chambers says it means ‘near’ or ‘by’, but it doesn’t seem to me to correspond to common usage.

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