Guardian Cryptic 27,086 by Paul

by

Admittedly vague memories of The Winter’s Tale…

left me a little confused before I cottoned on: “A Winter’s Tale” [A and not The] refers to another of Shakespeare’s plays, Twelfth Night – today is the Christian festival of the same name. Each of the answers defined as “A Winter’s Tale character” gives a character from Twelfth Night, and the surfaces are sometimes appropriate to the characters: SEBASTIAN is mistakenly believed to have been lost in a shipwreck; ANTONIO rescues SEBASTIAN; ORSINO is caught up in passion and romance; and the surface of 13ac describes VIOLA, who dresses as a man and eventually marries Duke ORSINO.

Favourite was 1dn, and 29ac was new to me. Snorted at 3dn. Thanks Paul.

Across
1 BELUGA Whale hump nursed by princess (6)
LUG=carry something heavy=”hump”, inside “princess” BEA[trice]
4 JACKPOT All to play for, with raise to pocket (7)
JACK=”raise” e.g. a car, plus POT=”pocket” in snooker
9 SEBASTIAN A Winter’s Tale character is absent — a mistake? (9)
(is absent a)*
10 MARIA A Winter’s Tale character with perfect stuff about (5)
AI=A1=first class=”perfect”, plus RAM=press closely in=”stuff”; all reversed or “about”
11 FESTE A Winter’s Tale character‘s endless rot (5)
FESTE[r]=”endless rot”
12 AGUECHEEK A Winter’s Tale character showing nerve after illness (9)
CHEEK=”nerve” after AGUE=”illness”
13 LADETTE Woman acting as boy, character shortly bagging a duke (7)
LETTE[r]=”character shortly”, around A D[uke]
15 LESSEN Mitigate rebuke, say? (6)
homophone of ‘lesson’=”rebuke, say”
17 WEIRDO Crank has to perform with water regulator (6)
DO=”perform” after WEIR=”water regulator”
19 OVEREAT Gorge in middle of Yeovil, a tree ruined (7)
the middle of [Ye]OV[il], plus (a tree)*
22 LIMITLESS nfinit? (9)
‘infinite’=LIMITLESS, with its limits/outer letters removed
24 TABLE Food reliable, though not starter (5)
[s]TABLE=”reliable” without the starting letter
26 VIOLA A Winter’s Tale character one’s played (5)
double definition, the second referring to the instrument
27 ANNAPOLIS Breaking record, work returned is for state capital (9)
=the capital of Maryland. ANNAL=”record”, around OP[us]=”work” reversed/”returned”; plus IS
28 ANTONIO A Winter’s Tale character I love after soon rescuing protagonist at the end (7)
I, plus O=”love”, after all of: ANON=”soon” around [protagonis]T
29 UTAHAN A little stout, a handsome statesman? (6)
=someone from the state of Utah. Hidden in [sto]UT A HAN[dsome]
Down
1 BASHFUL One shy of seven? (7)
One of the seven dwarfs in Disney’s Snow White
2 LOBES Rounded parts of spheres, no apex (5)
[g]LOBES=”spheres” without its apex or top/first letter
3 GAS HEATER Warming device one’s tucking into slit? (3,6)
GASH EATER=”one’s tucking into slit”
4 JONQUIL A bloomer, one abandoning ally and old writer, virtually (7)
=a narcissus flower. JO[I]N=”ally”, with I=”one” abandoning it; plus QUIL[l]=”old writer” with “virtually”=’almost’/’nearly’
5 COMIC Kindness ultimately lacking in vast wit (5)
CO[s]MIC=”vast”, with [Kindnes]s lacking
6 PERSEVERE Salesman’s turned up, very difficult to continue (9)
REP[resentative]=”Salesman” reversed, plus SEVERE=”very diffictul”
7 TRACKS Time frames for courses (6)
T[ime] plus RACKS=”frames”
8 PIRATE Copy Greek character has to tear up (6)
Better parsing thanks to Roger and others: ETA=”Greek character”, plus RIP=”tear; all reversed/”up”
PI=”Greek [alphabet] character”, plus (tear)*
14 DREAMBOAT Beauty cheers up after more bad breaks (9)
TA=thank you=”cheers”, reversed/”up”; after (more bad)*
16 SWEET SPOT Roughly two steps around base of device, best point of contact (5,4)
(two steps)* around [devic]E
18 OREGANO Old Shakespearean wino denied victory — this to add flavour? (7)
O[ld], plus REGAN=one of King Lear’s daughters=”Shakespearean”, plus [win]O minus ‘win’ i.e. “denied victory”
19 ORSINO A Winter’s Tale character caught up in passion is romantic (6)
Hidden, reversed, in [passi]ON IS RO[mantic]
20 TREASON Act of betrayal in the end, lost cause (7)
the end of [los]T, plus REASON=”cause”
21 OLIVIA A Winter’s Tale character in the midst of hoax, raging briefly (6)
the middle letters of [h]OA[x], around LIVI[d]=”raging briefly”
23 TWAIN 26 or 9 inspiring a writer (5)
VIOLA and SEBASTIAN are TWIN siblings, around A
25 BELCH A Winter’s Tale character to discharge (5)
double definition

63 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,086 by Paul”

  1. Thanks manehi. This was very nice. I managed to finish it without referring elsewhere, though I somehow didn’t see the exact swap of plays. Last in was 28A, as I couldn’t get Stalin out of my mind from the lettering, until that belch.

  2. Thanks manehi,
    Fortunately or unfortunately one of the commenters below the online version had posted an outright spoiler. Fortunate in the sense that I was able to hone in on the correct play more quickly (with gratuitous reference checking as I’ve never seen either play) but unfortunate because I lost the wonderful pdm that I’m sure others would have felt.

    Despite all that, my favourite today was actually off-theme – the delightful BASHFUL.

    Thanks to manehi for the blog and to Paul for an inventive puzzle.

  3. I suggested to the moderators that they might consider the removal of this spoiler, which appeared in the first comment of the day, but so far they seem to have taken no action.

    One wonders why someone would think it appropriate to make a comment like this on the thread below the crossword. The comment which followed, with a cryptic reference to being pursued by a bear, contained an obvious and amusing Shakespearean allusion without giving anything away.

  4. I did this on my phone so the comments were well out of sight. Consequently I too was led some way up the garden path trying to find the relevant A Winter’s Tale work before the penny dropped with 13ac, whose surface clearly refers to Viola and the plot of Twelfth Night.

    Like others, I loved BASHFUL for it’s concise and clever surface, but the near &lit-ish nature of the themed clues is nothing short of brilliant.

    Thanks Paul and Manehi.

  5. Great stuff! I expect most of us fell into the ‘wrong play’ trap. Thanks to both.
    For 8d I had ETA (Greek character) RIP (tear), all reversed (up). But manehi’s is neater.

  6. Roger @5: I parsed PIRATE the same way you did. ‘Up’ works better as a reversal indicator than as an anagrind, I think.

  7. Was quite indignant when Feste & Sebastian were among my first ones in – thought that Paul & the editor had lost the plot until the penny dropped and I remembered the date. – very clever misdirection with the change of “The” to “A”. Paul is definitely “The Lord of Misrule” today!

    Fun apart, found much to like in this. As with the others, 1d was my favourite but there are too many other good ones to list. Many thanks to Paul & manehi.

  8. I really enjoyed this but was, as others have said, totally misled until I too got 26a VIOLA. Prior to that, like JuneG@7, I thought Paul and the editor had both lost the plot, or at least the characters!!!! So I was delighted to see that I was barking up the wrong tree, especially once I recalled it’s THE not A WINTER’s TALE. A very timely theme as I took down the Christmas tree today, knowing that the twelve days had elapsed and that today celebrates the Epiphany. (BTW, I guess the “winter” reference was even more misleading for those of us struggling with over 30 degree heat in the Southern Hemisphere.)

    I only got 29a UTAHAN because I was thinking US states, having just solved 27a ANNAPOLIS.

    Like manehi and other commentators, I did like the shy dwarf at 1d, BASHFUL.

    Thanks to Paul (still my favourite setter), manehi and other forum participants.

  9. I thought the characters seemed strangely familiar. I’ve seen “A Winter’s Tale” – but I studied Twelfth Night for A-level.

  10. Thanks, manehi.

    Paul certainly had the last laugh today – though I had a few myself. One of the best PDMs ever, made all the sweeter by my exasperation [like June’s and Julie’s] over the ‘mistakes’ that had preceded it. ‘The Winter’s Tale’ is one of Shakespeare’s plays I know nothing about [except ‘exit pursued by a bear’] so it was a relief to discover [eventually] that I did, in fact, know all the characters – and they’re all there [what a feat!] except Malvolio, but there were no eight-letter slots.

    I thought it was a brilliant puzzle, especially the allusive nature of some of the clues that manehi points out. I loved the picture of VIOLA as a LADETTE!

    I parsed PIRATE as Roger and swatty did. It’s very interesting that both parsings work. I wonder if it was deliberate – it’s such a clever puzzle.

    Many thanks to Paul – I loved it! [Now to take down the decorations.]

  11. Excellent misdirection from the start but the cluing was crystal clear-follow those and the punchline soon rears its head
    I have read TWT but forget the characters which was handy really.Great stuff.

  12. I enjoyed this a lot, but most of the clever stuff was lost on me, because I’ve not read either of the plays. Rather pleased with myself for finishing it without looking elsewhere for help, because of that. I’m familiar with a fair few Shakespearean names though, so managed to get them in there without knowing where they were from exactly, and got the rest with a little cheeky prodding of the Check button (I got the Ague from the G crosser, but lucked out with a first guess of “steel” for nerve, which got me the two Es needed to then get the correct answer).

  13. This was a good theme. Paul is always enjoyable, and, like most others, I was trying to fit Perdita, Hermione and Bear into the grid to begin with! That said, 22a does not really work for me. Although it was fairly easy to work out the intended answer,(i)nfinit(e/y) really implies limitless limitless, so I spent a little while trying to work out a more precise word (eternallyundending?) before realising that no such word exists!

  14. Totally flummoxed until ORSINO was the gateway clue and then many write-ins with the aid of Wikipedia. Favourites were UTAHAN (a possibly audible clang as the penny dropped), OREGANO (had to be right but took an age to parse) and WEIRDO (which just took too long – not at my sharpest post-Xmas). Didn’t have enough bardology to appreciate the surface elegances of the themed clues until manehi pointed them out – a further layer of pleasure. An enjoyable joust.

    Thanks to both Paul and manehi.

  15. I started with 9ac and felt pleased with myself for remembering him in The Winter’s Tale. Great double misdirection. Roger is surely correct re 8d. There is nothing to suggest an anagram. Thanks Paul. Very entertaining. And thanks Manehi.

  16. Considering the regularity with which the Bardbotherers on this site have pointed out that the play is “The …” rather than “A …”, I’m surprised that so many were confused by the duplicitous reference (slightly excepting those in the southern hemisphere). I suspect a sly dig from Paul.
    Appropriate on a day of fifteensquared cross-referencing, with two of the more regular contributors lurking in the Wordsearch alongside the newspaper version of the crossword.

  18. Thank you Paul and manehi.

    Great fun, Twelfth Night, or What You Will…

    …it took a little while for me to cotton on.

    I also parsed PIRATE as Roger and swatty did, but manehi’s parsing works too, perhaps Eileen conjecture that it might have been deliberate holds?

  19. This was fantastic. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a puzzle more. I groaned initially when I saw the Winter’s Tale reference because I’ve never seen the play I thought was being referred to.
    Happily,I saw the anagram that became SEBASTIAN and,because I am familiar with TWELFTH NIGHT, the penny dropped quite quickly!
    I liked BELUGA,BASHFUL and WEIRDO. Great stuff.
    Thanks Paul.

  20. What Eileen said – apart from the fact that I took the decorations down the other day!

    Thanks to Paul for a wonderful crossword and to Manehi for the blog

  21. There was I busy polishing my Perditas and Leonteses and Autolyci, or whatever the plurals may be, when none of them drop in. Hmm, must be using the bit parts that I can’t remember, I thought. But fancy there being a BELCH in both plays!

    I know Twelfth Night barely at all, far less than TWT, though clearly I don’t know TWT well enough to realise that it’s not actually AWT. Mercifully AGUECHEEK put me on the right track, so Paul’s clues are fair enough even for one like me.

    Picaroon’s cracker on Tuesday and now this today. Blessed indeed!

  22. Lovely crossword, wasted on me since I wasn’t familiar enough with either play to see the joke until quite late on. All of the characters were deducible from the wordplay, so no complaints.

    Thanks to Paul and manehi

  23. As Eileen said about another puzzle, this one not only was up my street but strolled in and made itself comfy with a nice cup of tea in the parlor. I fell in love with the play when I saw it on television as a child, played Viola in college and was music director for a friend’s production years later, at which time I found I’d memorized large chunks of the play.

    The Winter’s Tale was an acceptable place to roam in, Bohemia rather than Illyria, but — like Xjpotter @17 — I found myself searching for an Antonio in the Winter’s Tale I’d hauled out. And all the Winter’s Tale characters I could think of had the wrong number of letters for the grid. 13ac just made me say, “But that’s the wrong play!” until my pdm clue, MARIA, made me realize it was the right one.

    Julie, the states in these puzzles are almost always US ones, I think I’ve only once seen a state that was somewhere else, though they also exist in Australia, India and Mexico. I’m often surprised by how much US knowledge Guardian readers are expected to know — state capitals, really?

    I’ve seen an alternative spelling for someone from Utah, Utahn, but I don’t know if anybody really uses it.

    1ac BELUGA — nice to see a princess who is neither Di nor Ida.

    I’ve always thought Twelfth Night was January 6th. Isn’t today Eleventh Night?

  25. This was brilliant. BASHFUL was FOI (great clue), which then helped to get FESTE, leading to “Which play was he in?”, followed by the penny dropping with the realisation of what day it is. Excellent.

    (Valentine: Wikipedia says “Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night on either 5 or 6 January.”)

  26. I’m genuinely glad so many people enjoyed it but I suspect many others just turned the page at seeing a puzzle so totally dominated by its theme. This week’s picaroon was a lovely example of an elegantly integrated theme that didn’t overwhelm the solve. Still each to their own

  27. A great puzzle from Paul- really conned until the penny dropped-1down brilliant. Happy new year Mr H-look forward to more of your gems in 2017.

  29. Thanks to Paul and manehi. I got AGUECHEEK early on so that everything quickly fell into place. Also easily accessible was ANNAPOLIS (I grew up in Maryland), and I knew LADETTE from previous puzzles. Great fun. Note: since so many plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries are set in a fictive Italy, the name ANTONIO turns up everywhere (seven in Shakespeare alone not counting Mark Antony).

  30. That Feste’s name is mentioned just once in the whole play is our excuse for not knowing him. The list of characters in my complete works simply says clown. Great work from Paul as usual. Thanks to everyone.

  31. Thank you manehi.

    We really enjoyed this puzzle, the misdirection was very clever. Charles did have a problem after realising it was not THE Winters Tale thinking it might be about Pantomimes (Woman acting as a boy led him down that path). We didn’t get very far with that, BUTTONS didn’t fit in 28ac.

    Thank you Paul for cheering up a wintry day.

  32. Having settled on the right play, I struggled to fit Curio or Clown in the remaining 5 letter slot. Does anyone know the reference to where the clown’s name Feste is actually used? It’s not listed in the Dramatis Personae in my Complete Works.

  34. Twelfth Night, II, iv

    Duke: Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends.
    Now, good Cesario {Viola’s name in disguise], but that piece of song,
    That old and antique song we heard last night;…
    Come, but one verse.

    Curio: He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it.

    Duke: Who was it?

    Curio: Feste the jester, my lord, a fool that the Lady Olivia’s father took much delight in. He is about the house.

  37. Thanks Paul and manehi

    I know only two things about “The winter’s tale” – Autolycus the “picker-up of unconsidered trifles” and “exit, pursued by a bear” (from memory – I may have got them wrong!), so I picked this up with some trepidation. However my FOI – SEBASTIAN – pointed me in the right direction and it was probably my quickest Paul solve ever, but I also enjoyed it a lot more than generally with Paul too.

  38. I don’t know how long I spent staring at an empty grid today. Almost gave up. Particularly as I don’t know The Winter’s Tale. Eventually a few non Winter’s Tale clues dropped in and then VIOLA which brought Twelfth Night into play. I have to confess – I’m sorry but I just don’t know the play well enough to recall characters other than Malvolio and, funnily enough, the poor once mentioned FESTE. So I had to solve with a character list to hand and then parsed some of them afterwards which is complete cheating. I don’t think I’d have got to some of the answers from the wordplay alone.

    Loved BASHFUL, BELUGA and WEIRDO, as did others here. It was nice to see a very clever clue for TREASON and I also gave big ticks to JACKPOT and the very clever TWAIN: inspired indeed! But my favourite – though I suspect others may have seen it before as I’m surprised no one else has mentioned it – was LIMITLESS.

    Thanks very much to both Paul and manehi

  39. Mahehi’s blog is not displaying properly on my iPhone, so I can see only the left had part of his parsings. Anyone else similarly afflicted?

  42. Hi Xjpotter @15

    We’ve had ‘up’ [Chambers: ‘in an excited state; in revolt’] as an anagram indicator several times – and it has usually been challenged. 😉

  43. For what it’s worth, I parsed PIRATE as manehi did originally too, and was quite happy with it; however the ETA RIP parsing is more pleasing. Interesting!

  44. Either 6 months of doing the crossword and visiting this blog everyday have meant I’ve got better at solving, or the puzzles are more gentle – or it could be both.

    Like many I was up the garden path thinking I must be wrong and Orsino is in TWT, until along came Sebastian and Aguecheek and I decided to check and Paul’s brilliant misdirection penny dropped.

    Bashful, beluga and limitless were my favourites, along with my LOI – weirdo. Great fun – thank you Paul and maheni.

  45. 8dn PIRATE:

    I had RIP reversed + ATE (Greek character = (appropriately) goddess of mischief.

    A brilliant crossword that completely fooled me at first.

    Thanks m and P

  47. Thank you Paul. One of my top 5 Guardian crosswords of the last 10 years. Up there to my mind with a Mozart piano concerto as a work of art. (OK maybe I’ve had one glass of wine too many…)

  49. I nearly always start my comments with “I agree with Muffin” and today is no exception. I too only know the same two characters from TWT, though my signpost to Twelfth Night was Feste rather than Sebastian after which the rest followed quickly. I supppose that it helps to be a bit of an Autolycus when setting and solving crosswords. Seeing the number of clues beginning with A Winter’s Tale I almost broke the habit of a lifetime by going straight to the Wikipedia list of characters but that would have taken away the pleasure of solving if it had worked. As it was the result would have served me right for cheating. Thanks to Paul and manehi.

  50. Valentine @23 — people I know from Utah insist that “Utahn” is the only correct spelling, and it is indeed more common (according to Google). But there is dictionary support for “Utahan”, so it’s fair game no matter what the Utahns say.

    I know Twelfth Night reasonably well and Winter’s Tale not at all. Orsino was the first of the characters I got. I knew that he was in Twelfth Night, but I thought to myself, “I guess there must be a character of the same name in A Winter’s Tale.” The penny didn’t drop for me until the second character (which I think was Sebastian for me).

    I didn’t catch until I came here that the play is “The (not A) Winter’s Tale”. That’s a particularly clever hidden-in-plain-sight hint that something funny is going on.

  51. This was a delight on two levels. First, there was the clever misdirection, which in itself was satisfying, especially given the date. But second, and even better, there were the dogmatic pedants who blundered in during the day on the online thread, pointing out the correct title of the play and thereby demonstrating that they had completely missed the point. Priceless.

  52. As it happens, I did them both for A Level, and then again at Cambridge. The penny dropped for me with my very first character, MARIA, which is odd, because that is one of the most generic names in the play.

    Surely GAS HEATER, whose parsing I did not understand until I came here, is a bit risqué even for Paul? With a less inventive theme to draw the attention, I would have thought half the comments here would have been about that.

  54. To Roger@52. The dictionary meanings of ‘gash’ include “a long, deep cut or wound” as in “a bad gash in one leg became infected” and synonyms include “laceration, cut, slash, tear, gouge, puncture, score, incision, slit, split, rip, rent, nick, cleft”.

    I can’t see anything risqué about any of this. If you have thought of a particular slang usage of “gash”, that is hardly Paul’s fault. Perhaps your linguistics are simply too cunning?

  58. To Ian@54: First, thanks for replying! This is the only reply I have ever had to anything on this site, which has always seemed to me something of an insiders’ club.

    My linguistics are indeed cunning, and yes, the cunning part led me immediately to that particular slang usage. And I bet it did for Paul also. I have often seen him make risqué references before, but not, I think, to practices that my parents would have frowned on.

    But then I realize that I am older now than either of my parents ever were, and theirs are not the standards by which I should be judging!

  59. To Roger@58

    And thanks for your reply. You may well be right about Paul. The beauty of this is that someone entirely innocent of the slang could still get the answer. To the pure, all things are pure.

    Sometimes less is more. I am tempted to recount the story of the blonde who goes into a bar an asks for a double entendre, so the barman gives her one.

    Practices that are frowned upon by some might bring a smile to the face of others, as it were, but I am not sure how long we can go on with this theme before someone considers that we have breached community standards. So far I have avoided the ultimate ignominy of being deleted for that reason.

    I am also a relative newcomer and outsider, and have not learned all the language of ‘penny drop moments” and ‘tea trays” which appear regularly in these threads.

  60. Only did this puzzle today and soon realised which WT it was but missed the significance. Thoroughly enjoyed it, only needing to cheat on Aguecheek who I’d never heard of.

    BTW Roger & Ian, I raised an eyebrow when I initially read the clue and was gobsmacked when I parsed the answer. I’m a glutton for double entendres whether intentional or not.

  61. Thanks, Ian and Pex. I have no idea what a “tea tray” is either. As for doubles entendres, I had a lot of fun with them a few years ago, introducing American audiences in Baltimore, where I now live, to the joys of an English pantomime, which I wrote and directed professionally. My dame (Widow Weptalot), though an American actor, caught the idiom beautifully, and proved a master at shooting over the heads of the children straight into the dirty minds of their parents.

  62. Up above the world you fly
    Like a tea-tray in the sky …

    Ian, Roger and Pex — I haven’t a clue about tea-trays either, but I’m green with jealousy that your Baltimore friends, Roger, got to see a pantomime on this side the pond. I’ve wanted to see one all my life, and once was even in Great Britain in December, but couldn’t manage it. Well, some day ….

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