Guardian27,066 / Pasquale

50 comments on “Guardian27,066 / Pasquale”

1. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

   When I had to Google “tribe dan” to find “The lost tribe of Dan”, my first thought was “what a contrast from yesterday”. In fact it was probably my quickest Pasquale solve, though with the usual number of clues highlighted for comment. Favourites were BONGO DRUM and ACID RAIN.

   I didn’t parse POTLACH, and it’s a rare spelling – POTLATCH is much more common; I missed the parsing of POULTERER too. It’s fortunate that hidden TATE was so obvious, as I’ve never heard of the poet (having now read your blog, Eileen, Nahum Tate is familiar, but I didn’t know that he was a) Irish or b) a poet!). DOMINICANS are friars rather than monks – a minor point, but it wouldn’t have spoiled the clue to get it right. WASTABLE is an adjective defined by a nounal phrase (”item fit for the skip”).

2. 11 – INTONATION surely?

3. Pleasantly completable for a Pasquale. Only 23d we couldn’t parse.

   Thanks Eileen and Pasquale

4. Looks like a typo, Peter – Eileen has given the parsing for INTONATION

5. Thanks, muffin @4 – of course: ‘More haste less speed’- I’m rushing to get out and pressed ‘Publish’ instead of ‘Preview’ and hoped for the best! Fixed now – I hope there are not too many more, as I’m off now!

6. Muffin@1: good point about Dominicans, but, according to Chambers, the term “friar” is often loosely applied to monks in general. I, for one, entered the answer without thinking of any differentiation & I’m sure I”m not alone!

   Quite enjoyed this; thank you Quixote & Eileen.

7. JuneG @6
   Yes, as I said, it’s a minor point, but it wouldn’t have been a problem for Pasquale to get it right.

8. I also found this hugely easier than most by Pasquale, although I couldn’t get STOTINKA. Favourites were HEDONIST, BONGO DRUM, NIGHT and TWEE. Eileen – re POULTERER wordplay: yes, a bit odd as the definition seems to be ‘One may give’. Many thanks to the Don and Eileen.

9. Quite tricky today but all solved successfully with the occasional electronic check – POTLACH (which, I thought, was spelled differently) and STOTINKA (not a word I’d heard of before – though I’m sure our many Bulgarian contributors will tell me it’s in regular usage!)

   Many clues got a tick from me. Favourites included MAIN COURSE, STETTED (for the clue; it’s an ugly word) and MISFIT but top marks, today, to the delightful DOMINICANS. As Eileen says, a delightful image.

   Thanks to Pasquale for the entertainment and Eileen for the parsing. I couldn’t get the wordplay to work with POULTERER either – unless it’s meant to be &littish

10. [Just a last point of Dominicans: they were known as “Black Friars”, which distinguished them from “Black Monks”, who were Benedictines.]

11. Thank you, Eileen, failed to parse SALEM (although now staggeringly obvious) and had to look up the lost tribe.

    This is the 5th consecutive crossword knocked off in record time and puts me in that perilous place of smug complacency, believing that I have now officially ‘cracked cryptics’. Cue something beastly from Boatman or vile from Vlad I expect, to put me firmly back in my place.

    Muffin @1 well spotted. I blithely wrote it in but now wonder what is the essential difference between monks and friars?

    Didn’t know one could stet (verb) but will now irritate my wife by using it ad nauseam.

    One of The Don’s milder offerings but nonetheless enjoyable for that.

    Nice week, all.

12. [William @11
    Friars were mendicant orders, wandering around begging, basically. They didn’t live in monasteries (though they did have bases called “friaries”).]

    (btw 4 posts, all the captchas asking me to create 12 – it’s running out of numbers!)

13. I think POULTERER (15D,not 14 per the blog) is an &lit, the whole referencing the tradional source of Xmas dinner. My favourite clue of the day.

    William @11: monks live cloistered lives in monastries and priories. Friars live in the community. One might have expected the Don to pick that up, but Dominicans are RC, and the Don is very C of E, so might regard too close acquaintance as threatening his immortal soul! On-line dictionaries have monk and friar as synonyms anyway,

14. I agree with Eileen, muffin and others that this was not as challenging as a Pasquale usually is, but for me at least it was definitely not a write-in!

    I found 14a CAPILLARIES easier than it might have been, having come across ‘caries’ = ‘decay’ very recently. That was a good clue, along with others of which 22a STENTORIAN and 3d DOMINICANS were at the top of my list.

    23d had to be NAMES, but I took the lazy route to see why (I came here!). As for 2d VALETS, my LOI, I should have been less hasty: I saw ‘farewell’ and bunged in VALETE, only to see how stupid I was when I came to see the answer, and read the clue properly, on this page!

    Thanks to Pasquale for an entertaining puzzle and to Eileen for the blog.

15. Muffin @11 Many thanks, seems everyone knew this but me. Fear not with the captchas, the number of combinations even with single-digit sums as bogglingly large.

    Goujeers @13 made me laugh!

16. I enjoyed this. Pasquale is often rather daunting, but NESSIE went in straight away and it was reasonably steady going after that. A few obscurities but all fairly gettable.

    STOTINKA is becoming a bit of a crossword regular, and a quick search shows that it has already featured twice this year (Paul, 26,858, and Brummie, 26,894).

    Goujeers @13: I agree that 15d is an &lit, although the surface is perhaps a little clumsy: ie a POULTERER can be responsible for producing a good report of Christmas by supplying lots of turkey.

    Nahum TATE (21a) was notable for producing a rewritten version of King Lear to give it a happy ending (!).

17. Thanks Don and Eileen.

    I took the wordplay in 15 to be one gets the YULEREPORT* anagram when the answer has the end of turkey added. Seems OK to me.

    As I put in POTLACH, I thought “can this really be a word?” However, as the setter was Pasquale one is used to the obscurities. I don’t suppose it’s a word I’m likely to use or remember.

18. Just popped in before dashing out again for lunch with some crossword chums.

    I’m afraid I didn’t think twice before entering DOMINICANS, either, but you’ve all reminded me of the [very] old joke from ‘Round the Horne’ [I think] – in a monastery kitchen: “Are you the fish friar?”. “No, I’m the chipmunk”.
    I really am getting my coat…

19. Is my computer failing to read a character, or is there some arcane meaning of “&lit” which I don’t understand?
    (It appears in Eileen’s blog at 1d, @13 and @16).

    OED gives no fewer than five spellings of 5a.

20. After yesterday’s over-all-too-quickly reintroduction to the world of Guardian cryptics after a month off, I saw Pasquale’s name and expected something tortuous. Not so, and everything fell in to place pretty quickly, albeit from the bottom up. Even two of the three weird words, POTLACH and STOTINKA, seemed vaguely familiar, and STETTED seemed to make sense, if an ugly construction.

    I did need a bit of convincing that an ANTINEUTRON actually existed, as I thought these things were decided by the electrical charge they carry and a neutron by definition has none. But now I see that it has a different baryon number. Well of course.

21. Auriga @ 19: &lit is a term introduced (I believe) by Ximenes, meaning “and literally so”. It refers to clues where the whole clue acts as both definition and wordplay.

    Those who do AZED puzzles knwo that the explanatory “slips” can be found at
    anflit.org.uk

22. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

    An enjoyable puzzle. I failed to parse NEVADAN, but managed to get POTLACH from the clue, it rang a bell from the distant past.

    DOMINICANS was fun, as regards friars and monks, a similar difference exists between sisters and nuns, sisters work outside in service to society, as do friars nowadays, while monks and nuns lead cloistered lives – these often turn up in crosswords in the wrong sense.

23. Auriga @19: if you click on “About Fifteensquared” at the top of the page, there’s a list of notation used, including “&lit”.

    Pasquale himself (Don Manley) wrote the excellent Chambers Crossword Manual, which includes a chapter on the “&lit” clue. He gives the example: “I’m one involved with cost (9)”, answer ECONOMIST.

24. @Eileen 18
    chortle
    Don in very benign mood today, I see.

25. Thanks to Goujeers @21 and JimS @23 for the enlightenment.

26. Hi muffin

    Just looking in out of curiosity, but, in your comment @1, I think you are mistaken about 16dn (WASTABLE). As I read the clue, and Eileen’s parsing, “item” is part of the indicator for TABLE in the wordplay, not part of the overall definition.

27. Pelham Barton @26
    Thanks – I missed that. I agree, more or less, though “fit for the skip” and “wastable” are still some distance apart.

28. re 18a … For those who do not watch The Big Bang Theory … “We had an Auntie Neutron once. She was so generous. No matter how long we stayed or how much she fed us, always no charge.”

29. Not the most difficult Pasquale we have seen, but still quite chewy in places – POTLACH was last in and new to me, and STOTINKA was only familiar because Picaroon used the plural in one of his early puzzles, and as JimS says it has now appeared three times in 2016 alone…

    Thanks to Eileen and Pasquale.

30. Never heard of potlach or potlatch for that matter but after all the crossers were in what else could it be. Not as difficult as some of Pasquales but a good workout nonetheless. Thanks to everyone.

31. On the whole, I enjoyed this but I was left with quite a few queries. MAIN COURSE with that meaning was new to me, as was STET as a transitive verb, and I had forgotten STOTINKA, so I needed to check those online.

    PATROLLER doesn’t come to mind when I see foot- or car-based police or soldiers. I wondered whether it is now used as a gender-free alternative to “patrolman/woman” in the US or elsewhere?

    In 23d, SAN seems a rather dated term. I don’t remember coming across it anywhere other than in old boarding school stories.

    I parsed NIGHT as a double definition, “brief word of farewell” and “at end of day”, but couldn’t see why “man” was there. Thanks for the clarification of that, so now I would call it a triple definition.

    My clear favourite was NESSIE. DOMINICANS deserves a mention too, even with the monk/friar problem.

    Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen.

32. I did this having just returned from the dentists so CAPILLARIES was FOI.

    Quite a contrast to yesterday’s puzzle but quite straightforward for this setter. I knew POULTRER was correct but, like some others, I couldn’t parse it satisfactorily. POTLACH was new to me and I paused over STETTED and WASTABLE. I did know the tribe of Dan though.
    Thanks Pasquale.

    Ps So MAIN COURSE is a sail- who knew?

33. jennyk @31
    Yes, I don’t think I’ve seen SAN since reading “Jennings and Darbyshire”. I don’t think it’s even used in Harry Potter (though I may be wrong there).

34. Coming to this late, I know, but in 22ac what is the significance of “Irish” in the clue? Is there a crossword convention I’m missing?

35. me @33
    Except in crosswords, of course!

    (another Captcha 12 – see me @12 – could it be an omen?)

36. Dermo @34
    21a? He was Irish – see:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahum_Tate

    (not 12 this time – phew!)

37. I like that moment when you get an answer just from reading the clue (no crossers etc) and you know absolutely that it is right even though you haven’t worked it out yet. Then there is the fun of parsing it. Delicious. In this vein my favourites today were BONGO DRUM, DOMINICANS and POULTERERS.

    I struggled on a few others and really need to learn some common Latin words and phrases.

    POTLACH is something I’m involved in every year and have always spelled it like this. But I’m aware of the other spelling mentioned too.

    Relieved to see other Captcha sufferers yesterday – my maths is atrocious and I sometimes don’t comment when faced with even the simplest of sums! 7-5 is just about at my level today. Thanks all.

38. I’m pleased that I’m not the only one who wasn’t familiar with the abbreviation SAN to describe a hospital. The solution was fairly obvious but it’s always satisfying to be able to parse it with certainty. Thanks to Pasquale for an interesting puzzle and to Eileen for her blog

39. In case you still don’t know it, it’s SANITORIUM (from Latin for health?)

    as in:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano

40. lancsolver @38
    I think the term sanatorium as part of a clinic’s name may be more common in continental Europe these days than in the UK or US. [Cookie, do you know?]

    There used to be a lot of sanatoria/sanatoriums (both plurals are acceptable) in the UK back in the days when there were a lot of incurable chronic infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Children and adults were sent to sanatoriums just outside coastal towns or up mountains where the air was thought to be healthier and they were less likely to infect the general public. My father twice spent a year in a sanatorium in Margate when he was a child because he had glandular TB.

41. sana, of course – doh!

42. Adding to me @40
    In the boarding school stories, the sanitorium was just the school’s sick bay, but the purpose was similar, isolating the sick pupils to minimise cross-infection as well as letting them rest until they were fit again.

43. sana and sani are both correct – double doh!

44. thanks for the comments, muffin and jennyk. I am of course familiar with sanatoriums (and even sanitoria!). It was the abbreviation I had never come across previously

45. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen. I struggled with MAIN COURSE and STOTINKA and had forgot that SAN = hospital for NAMES but overall agree that this was easier than most puzzles from this setter and very enjoyable. To add a bit to JimS @16, Nahum Tate not only provided a happy ending to King Lear (Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and Edgar joyfully declares that “truth and virtue shall at last succeed”) that held the stage for some time but was also singled out out by Alexander Pope in his “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” at the end of a putdown of of a series of bad poets.

    The bard whom pilfer’d pastorals renown,
    Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
    And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;
    He who still wanting, though he lived on theft,
    Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
    And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
    Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
    And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad
    It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
    All these my modest satire bade translate,
    And own’d that nine such poets made a Tate.

46. ACD @45 – thank you. 😉

47. I enjoyed the puzzle and found it just challenging enough. Thanks to all the contributors to the forum for adding many different dimensions to the solve. It has been an interesting read.

    With gratitude to Pasquale for the crossword and Eileen for a most helpful blog.

48. jennyk@31 “…so now I would call it a triple definition…”

    Yes, I agree, that is the way I read it

49. jennyk @40, there is now only one sanatorium left in France and I guess that goes for some other countries in Europe. There are many abandoned ones, but it is thought some may have to open again with antibiotic resistance becoming prevalent, especially in Russia where TB is a large problem.

50. I’ve solved a similar NESSIE clue in recent days (can’t recall whether a recent Times or an archived Guardian…) I also marked 15d as an &lit.
    I’m afraid I did find this a ‘write-in’. Indeed I managed to solve ‘à la Eileen’ – that is, in strict order of clues (with exception of POTLACH, left ’til the end). The easiest ‘Don’ I can recall…..
    I thought the comments here more interesting than the crossword. Sorry to moan – I just hope we’re not about to experience a run of ‘easy’ puzzles…
    As chewy as a bowl of junket – in my very humble opinion, of course!
    Thank, nevertheless, to Pasquale (I couldn’t do what he does) and to Eileen, of course, for her continued lucidity, education and generosity.

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