Guardian Cryptic 27,056 by Boatman

53 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,056 by Boatman”

1. Thanks manehi and Boatman!
   Yes the long one early on helped. Though, I did not bother to find the fodder for the possible anagram..also, thanks for explaining the second half of 19a. Liked 5, 6, 9, 20 and 21.

2. I found this surprisingly accessible for a Boatman, though I have to own up to just being too lazy to even try parsing the long clue, which would have defeated me. I liked the references, sometimes misleading, to betting and horse racing with TIRED (another good “just an anagram”), CANUCKS and CAPUT being my favourite clues.

   Thanks to Boatman and Manehi.

3. Surprisingly easy for a Boatman, I thought, and like ilippu and Wordplodder I didn’t bother parsing the long phrase.

   DOOLITTLE is a bad mistake, though it was a very easy clue to solve; “dustman” or “flower-girl” would have worked instead of “friend to animals”.

4. I’m another who didn’t bother to parse the long one.

   I didn’t spot the spelling mistake as I’ve always misspelled it the same as Boatman.

   I see some commentors found this a hard slog but I found it more manageable than this week’s Picaroon which others had described as easy. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I did, however, fail on PALE as I was trying to see the significance of ‘horse’ to the wordplay – should have guessed there was none!

   Thanks to manehi and Boatman.

5. BTW, 19a … KO/kayo again! My conspiracy theory grows about setters having a private bet among themselves to use this word.

6. I agree with the first three contributors’ experiences of the long clue, as I only partially parsed A BIRD IN THE HAND ….Saw some of the anagram letters but missed the tern = BIRD and pass = HAND references in the clue entirely.

   Like iluppu@1, I enjoyed 9a BORN AGAIN and 5d ENDORSES, my LOIs – they held out for a long time, so all the more satisfying.

   Others I liked were 14a SPARTAN and 23d PUNTER (the latter because it fitted the theme so neatly).

   I started filling in 12a as DOLITTLE, then realised I must be wrong as I had insufficient letters, so I added the extra “o” thinking “that looks odd” (but also thinking, well I have been wrong before).

   I thought 2d DRYRUN was two words but again bowed to the setter. It is interesting that in the solve, manehi has his answer as a 3,3 rather than a 6 letter word.

   My pronunciation of 13a rhymes with CHUCKS so was a bit stumped on the NOOKS/ NUCKS sound alike idea for a while.

   Many thanks to both Boatman and manehi.

7. Sorry matrixmania@4 that I didn’t include you in reference to the long clue, but I took so long to type my post that we crossed.

8. Forgot to say – I parsed 24d as IS (“=”) + AY (= aye = ok)

9. In 20 across, my explanation for plain is that once you’ve removed the letters of pianist the remaining letters are in the correct order: so it’s the opposite of an anagrind, in fact. (A nonagrind? An ergonomix?)

10. Thanks Boatman and manehi

    Some characteristic Boatman fun (I liked ENDORSES and OEDIPUS in particular), but overall not one of his best. I too guessed the long one from definition and letter count and didn’t bother trying to parse it. I actually wrote in DOOLITTLE from the end forwards to see how many Os he had included!

    ABET isn’t the same as CONDONE – the former implies an active role absent from the latter.

11. All quite entertaining. Must admit that the long one went in unparsed.KEYPUNCH was last in.

    Thanks to Boatman and manehi.

12. Thanks Boatman and manehi

    I parsed 24D in the same way as Andrew @ 8

13. I’m a little puzzled by 6. Surely “A dress being seen in takes a risk” is the implied construction ( albeit nonsensical)

14. Thanks, Manehi – glad you enjoyed it and teased out all the parsing. Putting in a long solution is always (as would be appropriate on this occasion!) a gamble. I knew it would be pretty easy to guess from the letter count, so that allowed me to relax a little with some of the filler clues that might otherwise have stretched people’s patience. Having guessed the long solution, the wordplay is there as an optional entertainment for those who like to be sure that they’ve completely understood the clue.

    Andrew and Simon – Yes, that’s what I meant. You realised that I wouldn’t have used an equals sign unless there was something sneaky afoot!

    DOOLITTLE – Oh, that’s annoying. Those of you who realised that it was wrong, I hope you didn’t waste too much time (should that be tooo much time?) looking for a non-existent alternative. That got past three independent pairs of eyes, so if you (like Matrixmania) have always spelled it the same way, you’re not alone.

    Blaise – I didn’t realise that I was using a type of indicator that needed naming, but “nonagrind” is an excellent invention! Will it catch on, I wonder …

15. Like Julie @6 I thought Dry Run would be two words, and Canuck doesn’t rhyme with nook where I come from either. Since the setter can’t be expected to take account of every accent in the English language (!) I can see I’m going to have to start doing crosswords with the Queen in my head.

    Also parsed I SAY like Andrew @8 and Simon S @12.

    What is the anagrind for the second part of the long one? Like many others I got it almost immediately (in my case from the rythmn) but I couldn’t parse it.

16. Thanks Boatman and Manehi.

    Enjoyed this a lot, especially OEDIPUS and I SAY (which I parsed like Andrew@8 etc.)together with the surface of BORN AGAIN. And had the same problems as others with ABET and particularly KOS – I don’t really buy this as a stand-alone word (KO) and have blanched before at KAYO, its homophonic cousin, only to be persuaded by cries of “calm down, dear!” from respected eminences grises of this parish.

    Appreciated the blog for various parsings, especially the long one,CAPUT and PALE.

17. Thank you Boatman and manehi.

    A fun puzzle, I visualised horses NOSES in rows at the end of a race, so failed to parse that clue as well as the BIRD one.

18. Crumplehorn @ 15: the anagrind is ‘broken’.

    hth

19. I wrote in the solution to the long clue immediately.

    I think “Doolittle” is a forgivable mistake as I have seen it misspelt in this way a number of times.

    Like Crumplehorn, I thought “Canucks” was unfairly clued, particularly as it is not a well known word.

    Cogwheel also appears in today’s Times Crossword.

20. I agree with most of the above, but would add that syncopated as an anagrind is new to me. What is the justification? Are there any past participles in English which are NOT anagrinds? (He asked rhetorically).

21. I knew it was DO(o)LITTLE from the anag- as that was one of the first in I used pencil.
    I enjoyed this as a nice change from the previous two Graun clues which were immaculately precise.
    Variety!

22. Sorry, MiE – I missed seeing your earlier query @13. I’m being willful with the word order, of course, but I think the clue for 6 Dn says what it needs to say as long as you’re happy to read the part after the comma as being shorthand for something like “… with this being seen therein: a dress”. That feels natural enough to me, but then I remember being taught Reverse Polish Notation, so perhaps I’m atypical – Mrs B certainly thinks so …

    Is it too early in the day to put in a plug for “Boatman – The First 50: Collected Crosswords from the Guardian and the Stories Behind Them”? And is it ok to mention that there are more details on my website, including sample pages and lovely comments from Alan Connor and Hugh Stephenson? How about that it can be ordered direct from the distributor at http://www.ypdbooks.com and that there’s a 25% discount if you’re buying four or more copies for your friends? Ok, I know, that’s enough plug – Ed.

23. “syncopated” is not good for use as an anagrind, it already has a meaning as regards words, the COED gives “syncopate 2 shorten (a word) by dropping interior sounds or letters, as symbology for symbobology, Gloster for Gloucester.”

24. Thanks to Boatman for a challenging puzzle, though I agree with Julie in Australia and crumplehorn that dry run should have been clued as two words. As a result my last entries were CANUCKS and CAPUT. Without the benefit of a quick solution of 15d etc, I think I might have struggled more generally with this one.

25. I wonder if “syncopated” has already been used in crossword clues, although it is only meant to apply to the suppression of interior sounds or letters, I see from Wiki that syncopation can be used in informal speech to suppress the first sound or letter

    [Au]stra[lia]n > colloquial Strine, pronounced /stra?n/

    I [woul]d [ha]ve > I’d’ve, pronounced /?a?d?v/

    Perhaps with crosswords some leeway could be taken and TIRED could be derived from “stirred” for example ?

26. As a Canuck myself, I take issue with the suggested homophone. It may well rhyme with “nook” in Lancashire, e.g, but were talking about North America, aren’t we?

27. Couldn’t get KEYPUNCH or KOS, but enjoyed the puzzle greatly (as always with Boatman). Many thanks to him and to manehi.

28. Thanks to Boatman and manehi. I had my usual trouble with this setter and would have been lost had it not been for the long clue (which, like others, I could not parse). E.g., I could not explain IRONS (I missed the subtraction), KOS, and KEYPUNCH. A big challenge for me.

29. Enjoyed this. We usually look forward not, to Boatman, but this was fairly straightforward. Caput was last in. Thanks to everyone.

30. Challenging but very worthwhile, as usual from Boatman. Failed to parse a few, so thanks for the explanations manehi. Failed completely on DRYRUN as I didn’t know it could be one word. (Can it?)

    Very nice to see the characteristic dual use of “Boatman” in 22a and 23d.

31. Boatman hasn’t acknowledged that 2 should be two words. Was it a mistake, or not?

32. There’s not a lot of point in writing clues for exceptionally long phrases. I’ve never met a solver who bothers to parse them, and I’m certainly not one. I’ve done it a couple of times, and to be honest, it’s an awful lot of work which usually only evokes a response equivalent to “I suppose it’s quite impressive that you managed to write a clue for all that, but I didn’t actually solve it – I just filled it in when it became obvious from the checked letters.”

    And since people in practice fill them in from the enumeration and checkers, I’m not entirely sure that they’re really fair clues. As a setter, I’d be very interested to know what people think.

33. Looks like Boatman is missing hedgehoggy and is mischievously trying to flush him out of retirement with his shameless parade of compileritis. Personally, I loved half of it but gave up with seven clues to go that I had lost interest in unravelling. Like eating an avocado with the stone still in.

    And I thought we went through this last time … just because “for the nonce” means “for the time being”, it doesn’t follow that “nonce” means “time being”. If you check the derivation, “nonce” doesn’t ever appear to have meant anything on its own, until the recent alternative usage.

    As to 12a, is it not common knowledge that Eliza busied herself during her engagement to Freddy by volunteering for the RSPCA and running a dog walking business?

34. I am inclined to agree with Chalmie about clues for long phrases. I have done a few myself, but have found it better to choose a quotation that isn’t too well known. The example here was rather sore-thumbish, however clever. Araucaria often used to clue long phrases in a rather tortuous manner, admired by many, but I confess that I rarely bothered with the parsing. Some of his disciples seem to look for similar admiration by following suit. Talking of getting answers from letter enumeration, Tony Sever at a Times final once remarked to me that he had seen (8,3,4) and immediately thought of HEREWARD THE WAKE.

35. I think this was more to be admired rather than enjoyed. I certainly found
    it hard going,even after getting the long answer- which I didn’t parse either!
    Some of it was good. I particularly liked PUNTER despite it being my LOI.
    Oh well!
    Thanks Boatman.

36. Thanks for the help Simon S @18. I had somehow thought ‘broken’ referred to the first part of the clue but now see that wouldn’t have made sense.

    I like those long phrases that you really get more by intuition than deduction (well, it’s fun once in a while). But I agree with Chalmie @32 that the clueing seems redundant (and heavy) so not something I’d want to see very often.

37. Rompiballe and others – DRY RUN was certainly two words in the first draft of the puzzle. I’m not sure what happened between that and the printed version …

    Don and C’horn – I think we broadly agree about long phrases, though this one amused me (and forms a long-distance thematic link with one of my earlier puzzles, which people who buy my book may congratulate themselves on spotting) but, yes, not to be overdone, and I think we’re seeing fewer of them in the Guardian than we did say 10 or more years ago (Beery H, if you’re still listening – is that borne out by the statistics?). My other thoughts @14 on its place in this particular puzzle …

    and VW – Of course I’m missing hedgehoggy! Aren’t we all?

38. Your justification, dear Boatman, of this clue does strike me (with the utmost respect) as a bit of self-indulgence, something that with maturity you may well learn to avoid! Playing to a minority gallery is not what we should be about, though it hurts me to say so!

39. Here’s another one who’s not really keen on ‘those long ones’.
    For the same reason others have given above.
    As a non-Brit it was perhaps less of a write-in than it was for the majority here, but, that said, the Dutch language has a similar expression.

    All in all, I found this an enjoyable exercise but that is also because I have learnt to ‘accept’ most of Boatman’s, let’s call them, specialities.
    A somewhat easier puzzle than usual.

    While I agree with Mickinely @13 about SARI (6d), I saw immediately what Boatman meant.
    Some setters do it like that, a bit the other way round.
    One can indeed read it the way Boatman explains @13 but to say that ‘it feels natural enough’ (i.e. to him), well, there we differ.

    In a way I do understand how we get ON HIGH at 22d.
    But I am not convinced (at all, yet).
    Can someone please explain this clue as precise as possible to me?

    Finally, that DO[O]LITTLE clue.
    Is ‘tale’ part of the anagram indicator?
    If so, isn’t that a bit odd?
    If not, what is it there for then?

    Many thanks to manehi for an admirable blog.
    And to Boatman for sharing his thoughts with us.

40. Wow! Three setters weighing in!

    I learnt parsing from Don’s “Crossword English” and hold him in high regard.

    As a solver, I am always satisfied if I am able to solve fully, including parsing; if not solving fully is good enough, and learn better parsing from here. I admire all the bloggers here.

    I try to avoid the discussions about accuracy and fairness of clues – not that they are not important, but I am not invested. Therefore, I like that different setters have different styles, and we get to enjoy all of them.

    I do like setters dropping in here, occasionally, to clarify something in their own puzzles.

41. Fun but oh dear! Scuppered by 16d where I had CHINS for CHAINS minus A. Hey ho.

    Thanks Boatman and manehi.

42. Thanks Boatman and manehi.

    After DOOLITTLE, 15 etc was my second one in. I usually go through the clues in order (as Eileen does; where are you, we haven’t seen you since 25 Nov), but exceptionally the enumeration caught my eye, and the answer popped out without even looking at the clue, or using the crossers from DOOLITTLE. I think these long ones should go the way of quotation clues which used to be fairly common in the 60s.

    Was HEREWARD THE WAKE correct, Pasquale? overstep the mark, partners for life, softened the blow, stalling for time, strapped for cash and swinging the lead would also fit.

43. I saw “stake” in 17ac as wager, as in “I will put up my house against your yacht”, rather than to support. Fits in with the theme. I wonder which Boatman intended.

44. Yes: HEREWARD THE WAKE was the answer. Maybe it was the combination of the letters and a definition such as ‘hero’, but from what I rember the wordplay was scarcely looked at

45. Yet another puzzle which obviously bypassed our “illustrious Ed”.

46. It’s worth writing GOOD clues for any word or phrase length 🙂

47. Hi Dave Ellison @42, if you’re still there…

    Busy week, on the whole, and so most things had been said by the time I read the blogs – but I do sometimes follow the Thumper principle. 😉

    The one thing I would have said about today’s, funnily enough, is that I usually do go through the clues in order but, today, the long one caught my eye and went in straightaway, as for others, and unparsed [many thanks, manehi, and well done! – did anyone else manage / bother to do so?]

    As others have said, ENDORSED is a clever clue, which I have met several times before [eg Bradman [Pasquale]’Backs last runners in race, not the first (8)’ but, as I’ve said more than once, these classics deserve resurrecting for the sake of newer solvers who may not have met them before. [Interestingly, one of the puzzles [also blogged by manehi] that turned up in my search with ‘Party endorses transfers (8)
    =”transfers”. CON[servative]=”Party” plus SIGNS=”endorses”’ had DR DOLITTLE as the answer for ‘Film musical found a way to come back with old title restored (2,8)]

    Hi Lautus @41 – I started off with CH[a]INS, too. 🙁

    Thanks for the puzzle, Boatman.

48. A series of ungrammatical statements punctuated by the odd fair clue or chestnut.

49. What about the ‘s’ in ‘kos’? Doesn’t say ‘umpire’s calls’

50. I finished this puzzle this morning after a busy day yesterday. It was both quirky and challenging, and I enjoyed the experience. As I am so late, pretty much all has been said already – the blog made an interesting read.

    I didn’t parse KOS, and I forgot to go back to I SAY to parse that one. Both were fair, but I’m not surprised I didn’t work out KOS quickly. The spelling error at 12a (DOOLITTLE) passed me by – and anyway I had no reference sources to hand to check it. I saw the idea of the first part of the long phrase starting at 15d, and TERN stood out, but because I was keen to make progress in the time I had I let that pass too – like most solvers I got the answer quite early on.

    There was a lot to appreciate in this. Thanks Boatman and manehi.

51. Phyllida @49

    It’s because the umpire’s call is ‘out’, the extended form of KOS being ‘knocks out’, as manehi explained in his blog.

    I hope this helps.

52. In case Boatman should pop by again, I’d like him to know that I’m one of those (a minority I gather) who enjoyed the wordplay in the “long” one. I used the anagrist for second half, consciously, simultaneously with considering the enumeration, subconsciously. Having the solution, I then immediately saw the tern in pass. As others know, this whole process takes just a few seconds – but that’s how I can best explain the way I solved it. I then paused for a greater number of seconds – to appreciate the ‘niceness’ of the clue’s construction. I hope Boatman understands that none of his work on that, particularly enjoyable, clue was wasted on this solver.
    Incidentally, I do agree with Pasquale but (with as much respect as he afforded the artist of this work) it didn’t quite apply to this clue – for me at any rate.
    I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle – my only concern being that CANUCKS is sufficiently unusual to warrant more direct/exact wordplay?
    Excellent blog. Thanks, manehi. And, of course, thanks to our Boatman.

53. What’s wrong with islands in the SE Aegean, I wonder? That would have ‘KO’d’ the need for all that messing about!

    And why isn’t it ‘the pasatern’s’ for that awful clue? That would be too logical, would it?

    I am sorry, but this is parlous stuff.

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