Guardian Cryptic 27,090 by Philistine

by

The puzzle may e found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27090. It comes with:

Special instructions: An anniversary tribute

The anniversary is one year to the day of the death of David Bowie. Several of his songs and albums appear in the grid: I find 10A/22A ASHES TO ASHES, 12A HUNKY-DORY, 13A/27D/14A ROCK AND ROLL SUICIDE, 1D/19A STARMAN, 25D TIME, 11A/13D REBEL REBEL and 23D HEROES – some clued whole, some in parts, including the two REBELs. In addition, there are several other allusions: 9A TURN A HAIR (see, for example, this), 6D/5D BABY GRANDSON, Stenton David Jones (Jones being David Bowie’s real surname), born just six minths after his grandfather’s death, 20A SEGUE, used in three of his song titles, and the man himself appears at 17A.
The puzzle itself was mostly straightforward, which has given me time to do the digging for the above paragraph.

Across
9 TURN A HAIR Flinch from Arthur, in a fix (4,1,4)
This became a little easier when I read the first word as it was printed, not as ‘filch’. It is an anagram (‘fix’) of ‘Arthur in a’, and the definition is more commonly seen in the negative NOT TURN A HAIR, meaning ‘do not filch’. Or something.
10, 22 ASHES TO ASHES With a hostess improperly chasing the above tennis player, the end is inevitable (5,2,5)
A charade of ASHE (‘the above tennis player’, a reference to ‘Arthur’ from the above clue to 9A) plus STOASHES, an anagram (‘improperly’) of ‘a hostess’. The definition is a reference to the Anglican burial service.
11 REBEL Rise of Hilaire Belloc (5)
A hidden answer (‘of’) in ‘HilaiRE BELloc’.
12 HUNKY-DORY Fine and nice-looking fish (5-4)
A charade of HUNKY (‘nice-looking’) plus DORY (‘fish’).
13, 27 ROCK AND ROLL Peter with an amusing kind of music (4,3,4)
A charade of ROCK (‘Peter’) plus ‘an’ plus DROLL (‘amusing’).
14 SUICIDE Knowing no bounds, Medicis push back for the ultimate escape (7)
‘[m]EDICI[s] [p]US[h]’, with both words minus their outer letters (‘knowing no bounds’), and reversed (‘back’).
17 BOWIE Knife that’s commemorated here (5)
The American pioneer James Bowie gives the knife, and the stage name of David Bowie.
19 MAN Island or not? (3)
A cryptic reference to John Donne’s famous quotation “No man is an island”, unless, of course, it is the Isle of Man between England and Ireland.
20 SEGUE House guest in transit the other way round (5)
A hidden answer ‘in’ ‘houSE GUEst’. Note that ‘the other way round’ places the definition in the middle of the clue.
21 LINCTUS Lunatics lacking a form of medication (7)
An anagram (‘form of’) of ‘lun[a]tics’ minus the A (‘lacking a’).
22   See 10
24 PRETTIEST Most fair, if minister adopts the riot act at last (9)
An envelope (‘adopts’) of ETT (‘thE rioT acT‘ at last’) in PRIEST (‘minister’).
26 CARER End of life wasted in calling for nurse (5)
A subtraction: CARE[e]R (‘calling’) minus the E (‘end of lifE wasted’).
28 RHEUM Note hesitation about hospital discharge (5)
An envelope (‘about’) of H (‘hospital’) in RE (‘note’ of the tonic sol-fa) plus UM (‘hesitation’) .
29 RAISE HELL Shell uncovered in Israel exploded to cause a disturbance (5,4)
An envelope (‘in’) of ‘[s]HEL[l]’ minus its outer letters (‘uncovered’) in RAISEL, an anagram (‘exploded’) of ‘Israel’.
Down
1 STAR Lead deserters head north (4)
A reversal (‘head north’ in a down light) of RATS (the proverbial ‘deserters’).
2 ARABIC Use this when in the Sahara, bickering (6)
A hidden answer ‘in’ ‘the SahARA BICkering’, with an extended definition.
3 PARLIAMENT Men partial to get drunk in this house (10)
An anagram (‘to get drunk’) of ‘men partial’.
4 DASHED Father grabbed the girl and ran (6)
An envelope (‘grabbed’) of SHE (‘the girl’) in DAD (‘father’).
5   See 6
6, 5 BABY GRANDSON Piano’s working for new arrival (4,8)
A charade of BABY GRAND’S (‘piano’s’) plus ON (‘working’).
7 WHOOPING Sort of crane to install ring in annex (8)
An envelope (‘to install … in’) of HOOP (‘ring’) in WING (‘annex’).
8 ESPY Spot in the Hautes-Pyrénées (4)
A hidden answer ‘in the’ ‘HautES-PYrénées‘
13 REBEL Be revolting and look revoltingly up and over top of bra (5)
An envelope (‘over’) of B (‘top of Bra’) in REEL, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of LEER (‘look revoltingly’).
15 IN SNATCHES Sporadically gets darker, rising within a short distance (2,8)
An envelope (‘within’) of SNAT, a reversal (‘rising’ in a down light’) of TANS (‘gets darker’) in INCHES (‘a short distance’).
16 EWERS Pitchers titchers? (5)
[s]EWERS ([s]’titchers’). An unusual device.
18 WONDERED Thought to have secured victory right in the middle of the action (8)
A charade of WON (‘have secured victory’) plus DERED, an envelope (‘in the middle’) of R (‘right’) in DEED (‘the action’).
19 MUSKETRY The Guardian finally kick the bucket: editor held in compiler’s arms (8)
An envelope (‘held in’) of US (‘The Guardian’) plus KETR (‘finally kicK thE buckeT editoR‘) in MY (‘compiler’s’).
22 TITBIT Tasty piece of nipple? (6)
A charade of TIT BIT (‘piece of nipple’), although, since TITBIT is a noun, this clue hovers somewhere between a charade and a punning definition.
23 HEROES Champions need a higher oestrogen dose (6)
A hidden answer (‘dose’) in ‘a higHER OEStrogen’).
24 PURL “To knit or not knit” sounds like some wisdom (4)
‘Sounds like’ PEARL (‘some wisdom’). PURL is a knitting stitch in which the active needle enters the preceding stitch from the back, as opposed to a knit stitch, from the front, and patterns will contain such instructions as “knit one, purl one”; hence the definition.
25 TIME Prison term for the enemy (4)
Double definition.
27   See 13 across
completed grid

57 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,090 by Philistine”

  1. An enjoyable puzzle – thanks Philistine. And thanks very much for the blog, PeterO. I couldn’t parse 16 or 19d. Still confused about 20a reference to the other way round – I expect I’m being very slow!

  2. Gillian @1, you’re not being slow. It’s another unusual device.

    “House guest in transit the other way round (5)” It’s actually “transit in house guest,” because you have to find a word meaning “transit” hidden in houSEGUEst. So “the other way round” is telling you that you have to flip the order in which the clue appears.

    Another way to say it is that the setter is breaking the rules, and expects us to forgive him.

    The one from this set that made me say, “Hrrmmmm?” was “Pitchers titchers?” for which I put EWERS only because nothing else fit. The parsing given here, which I’m sure is correct, still strikes me as being in the category, “How on earth were you really supposed to get that?”

    In short, I was a bit surprised that PeterO found this as straightforward as all that.

    Anyway, of course I love the theme; I was a big fan of Bowie’s, although I didn’t really discover his music until later (the 90s, after the best stuff was already done). Well done.

  3. A lovely puzzle which I enjoyed very much. Just put “Dark Star”, Bowie’s final album, on the CD player, and will segue to “Pinups”, one of my favourite old albums subsequently. RIP. I still feel deep sorrow that he is gone, as he was one of my rock and roll heroes! BTW, “The PRETTIEST Star” is another Bowie song.

    The PDM for me was when I saw the second “REBEL” at 13d and briefly thought Philistine might have made a mistake. Then I saw how very clever the puzzle was, and many of the Bowie references fell into place easily.

    19d MUSKETRY was my LOI, and the parsing was a challenge.

    Interesting that I have been working on a funeral ceremony I am celebrating later in the week, and typed the phrase “ASHES TO ASHES” 10/22a for the Committal only this morning before I started on the crossword.

    As with previous commentators, for me, 16d EWERS went unparsed, but ultimately I found the device interesting, although perhaps dropping the “s” might have warranted an indicator?

    A minor quibble, though – for me, this puzzle was just 12a, HUNKY DORY!

  4. I only saw the more obvious themers, so thanks PeterO (and Julie) for the rest, and for MAN which I should have seen but didn’t.

  5. I must live in another world as the theme really passed me by (I tentatively put in BLADE for “Knife that’s commemmorated here”, thinking the theme might be some anniversary of a Sheffield football club!). But the puzzle was straightforward enough, although I also didn’t parse EWERS. Favourites were PRETTIEST, CARER AND MUSKETRY. Many thanks to Philistine and PeterO.

  6. Thanks Philistine. A safe and peaceful journey to David Bowie and to my father, who also departed on this day,nine years ago

  7. drofle @5: I, too, thought ‘blade’ at first but left it blank as I couldn’t understand the commemorated reference. Silly me. I only came to it as second but last one in – having just got the ‘W’ from WONDERED. So obvious! And I’d even thought – “HUNKY DORY – that’s a Bowie album”. But still hadn’t spotted the theme. Very very clever.

    I liked plenty of the clues (I join the pack in struggling with EWERS. I still don’t get it!) I thought MAN, SEGUE, BABY GRANDSON, SUICIDE and PRETTIEST were all cleverly constructed.

    I also smiled at Philistine’s cheekiness: the cluing for the 13d REBEL is amusing and TITBIT made me snort.

    Thanks to PeterO for the informative review and, of course, to Philistine for the challenge.

  8. Quite a challenge for me today. When I saw that it was an anniversary puzzle the David Bowie theme came to mind very quickly and it was confirmed by 17ac. However, apart from “Rebel Rebel”, most of the thematic answers went over my head as I only know Bowie’s early work. Needed a lot of help in linking my answers to his oeuvre!

    That said, there were many excellent clues and my lack of knowledge of the theme did not detract from my enjoyment of the puzzle as a whole. One quibble though (and before anyone else says it, it’s probably sour grapes on my part!): thought the parsing of 16d was a stretch too far.

    Thanks to Philistine and, especially, to PeterO for the much needed blog.

  9. Myself @7: the penny has just dropped re EWERS. I guess we, as solvers, occasionally complain about ‘old chestnuts’ and tired devices. So I should applaud a setter who’s exploring (for me) new approaches. But I can’t say I particularly like this one now I understand it. Sorry Philistine.

  10. Thanks Philistine and PeterO

    I got the three LHS down clues straight away, then BOWIE, so the theme was obvious (I had resisted the temptation to Google the date), and I was going really quickly and thinking “this is unusually easy for a Philistine”, until I ground to a halt on SEGUE and EWERS.

    I thought MAN was a great clue.

  11. I totally missed the theme of this puzzle!

    I failed to solve 14 20 24a and 7 16 24 25d and I solved but could not parse 9a 19a 17a

    My favourites were MUSKETRY, TITBIT, ASHES TO ASHES

    Thanks PeterO

  14. michelle @12: as per my earlier note, I think I now get EWERS. Definition = ‘pitchers’. ‘titchers’ is ‘stitchers’ without the initial ‘s’. A synonym for ‘stitchers’ is ‘sewers’. Apply the same device and drop the initial ‘s’ and you get ‘ewers’.

    Hope that’s right!

  16. Nicely themed, but merely scratched the surface of BOWIE’s oeuvre. You could probably have a themed Bowie puzzle every month of the year and not repeat any solutions.

    I too snorted at TITBIT. But then I have a puerile sense of humour.

  17. muffin@13 and mark@14

    thanks – I never heard of stitchers being sewers – that clue went way over my head but thanks for explaining. . . .

  19. Thanks Philistine and PeterO.

    I got the theme early on but couldn’t remember some of the tracks. Nevertheless a good entertaining tribute.

    My LOI, MUSKETRY had a super clue, I thought. The EWERS clue is one that might have been applauded if set by Paul – I thought it was quite neat.

  20. Thank you Philistine and PeterO.

    I loved this puzzle. I tried to relate the saying “little pitchers have big ears” to the parsing of 16d, titchers pitchers being EWERS…

  21. Enjoyed this, but would probably have appreciated the theme more without the special instruction. WHOOPING was last in.

    Thanks to Philistine and PeterO

  22. A fine puzzle commemorating a fine musician. What an extraordinary person he was. Nice to see that Philistine is a fan.

  23. A couple of other allusions:

    2D Arabic echoes Bowie’s The Secret Life of Arabia

    18D Wondered – wondering is something that crops up a lot in Bowie’s songs, e.g. Little Wonder, Fame (“is it any wonder?”) and Sound and Vision (“don’t you wonder sometimes…?”)

  24. Thanks both, a very clever puzzle. I confess I had to wiki Bowie once I got the theme, not being familiar with his works.

  25. Not sure we really needed to be told there was a theme, but then again, I usually fail to spot them. I hope I would have twigged this unaided: the REBEL REBEL fell early and had me thinking hmmm, then ASHES TO ASHES made me sure: immediately, BOWIE not BLADE and I could be confident that MAN went with STAR. Bit of a shame we could not have had some more late work eg LAZARUS, or BLACK also to partner STAR, but far be it from me to ask a compiler to complicate their grid yet further. Pleased to see TIME featuring, it’s not that well known but still a tremendous song.

    As like others, EWERS / SEGUE were uncertain, compounded for me by having to drag out IN SNATCHES almost letter by letter. But a fine tribute to a great man.

  26. Thanks to Philistine and PeterO. I’m another with a limited knowledge of Bowie’s work so that I needed a Google search after the fact to see the relevance of various solutions. Like others I had trouble parsing EWERS and also SUICIDE, and LINCTUS was new to me. LOI was MUSKETRY. Lots of fun.

  27. Very enjoyable even though the theme was pretty much a repeat of one of yesterday’s offerings. Like beeryhiker, whooping was our last one in. Thanks to everyone. 9

  28. I enjoyed this and got the theme once I sussed the second REBEL. I do agree with some others that the ‘special instructions’ alert was probably not needed but I did enjoy most of Bowie’s music so I recognised the titles etc rather quickly. Tactful of the setter to avoid any reference to the execrable ‘Tin machine’ but perhaps ‘Black star’s might have been included. Still,with Bowie’s back catalogue one is spoilt for choice!
    I’d like to say that I parsed EWERS but I’m afraid I didn’t. It’s rather good now I get it!
    Thanks Philistine.

  29. Thanks to Philistine and PeterO. Enjoyed the theme immensely, which I noticed almost at once (pure chance).

    Re 16D I parsed it slightly differently:-

    titchers – move the ‘s’ to the front and it becomes stitcher

    ewers – move the ‘s’ to the front and it becomes sewer

    The ? does quite reasonably indicate it is a bit of a stretch, I think.

  30. Thanks Philistine and PeterO

    For a continuation and extension of this theme, Philistine appears as Goliath in today’s FT. Well worth a look.

  31. I was stuck on PONDERED for 18d, so couldn’t get BOWIE until I hit “reveal.” Next-to-last one in, WONDERED being last. And know I knew what the theme was, it did me no good at all. The only David Bowie song I could come up with, after considerable prodding from the blog, was “Major Tom,” which I find is actually called “Space Oddity.”

    Pronunciation oddment: David Bowie rhymes with “snowy”, James Bowie of knife fame rhymes with “phooey” and Dr. Bowie at my college rhymed with “zowie.”

    drofle @5 — I put BLADE in too.

    13a Is is fair to assume that everybody knows that “Peter” means “rock” in Greek?

    In 22a, does piece do double duty?

    9a TURN A HAIR. For “more commonly seen in the negative” read “never.” Has anybody ever read “she turned a hair,” or for that matter “He batted an eye”?

    Quibbles and complaints now dealt with, it was a very enjoyable puzzle. It must have been easier than usual, because I got almost all of it last night — except the theme. I got MUSKETRY this morning and I think it’s my COD.

  32. Valentine @31
    I think peter = rock is fine – more people would know it from the New Testament than the Greek, I think (Simon became Peter, the rock on which Jesus intended to build his church).
    If you mean 22d, funnily enough I wondered whether the “piece” was required at all, as I had associated it with the nipple part of the clue. In fact it’s not doing double duty, as the nipple is only a bit of a tit.

  33. mrpenney @2

    I have a rather different take on 20A SEGUE: I do not see Philistine as in any need of forgiveness. By “the rules” I presume you mean that the definition in a clue comes at one end or the other. I would regard this as a rule only in the sense of “as a rule” – it is difficult to come up with a sensible clue with the definition in the middle. Difficult, but not impossible; here is an example to the contrary.
    I did say “mostly straightforward”; perhaps I was lucky that the difficulties that others have mentioned did not hold me up for too long – although, like Cookie @20, the allusion to “little pitchers have big ears” in 16D EWERS did take a while to get past.

  34. Thank you so much Philistine and Peter O. David Bowie was one of my favourites. I was so lucky to see him live he was fantastic. I noticed that Julie in Australia was listening to Dark Star and so was I while doing this puzzle.I really enjoyed this.

  36. I think this puzzle was really clever, though even having latched on to the theme very early on, some of the themed solutions were not in my realm of knowledge: and if I’m honest I didn’t connect to the ones I ought to have known until I had finished the puzzle and read the blog. I also needed the blog to explain the parsing of MUSKETRY. Accordingly my appreciation goes to both Philistine and Peter O

  37. Muffin@32: I knew Peter=Rock from my days of attending Sunday school many years ago when this was considered the norm. I rather suspect that Sunday school attendance is now less common in these more secular times.

  39. Like others, I raced through the first few clues. STAR gave me the first hint of the theme and ASHES TO ASHES confirmed it. Without the theme I would have struggled more on SUICIDE and HUNKY DORY but instead the hardest ones today for me were SEGUE and EWERS. Also MUSKETRY where I always struggle when clues require you to take the last (or first) letters of more than one word – it has caught me out many times.

    @bobloblaw Bowie also once covered The Smiths song “Well I Wonder”.

    Thanks to PeterO and Philistine.

  41. Thanks for the parsing of 16D EWERS, which I’d never have got in a million years (like others, I got the answer from the crossers and the clue’s definition, but had no idea why it was right) and for all the research work you put into your introductory para, Peter0.

  42. Not sure if anyone is still reading, as I came to this late, but I can’t resist noting that despite the near-exhaustive efforts of Peter and the Commenters (not nearly as good a band name as ZS and the Spiders from Mars), there seems to have been one thematic clue which eluded you, the song ‘Time’. I wrote in ‘Suicide’ in the puzzle just as I was listening to ‘Rock and roll suicide’. Means nothing, but pleased me.

  43. I’ll echo the appreciation for this puzzle. I too looked askance at the clueing for SEGUE, but hey – Philistine – unconventionality is kind of implied in the name.

    I guessed EWERS but didn’t even try to parse it because I assumed it was some Britishism that I’d never divine. I also couldn’t get TITBIT since I’m accustomed to “tidbit”. And I couldn’t parse PRETTIEST for some reason although it seems obvious now.

  44. There seems to be a correlation between liking Bowie’s music and being good at the Guardian crossword. If so, there’s no hope for me.

  48. Like michelle @11, I totally missed the theme and mainly for that reason didn’t enjoy this crossword very much. I had already solved REBEL and REBEL, and realised that these must be theme-related, but it didn’t mean anything to me, and 17a BOWIE remained unsolved.

    Some of the clues were excellent, and I enjoyed solving at least half of this crossword, quite late in the day, in blissful ignorance of any connections the answer-words might have had with each other (or with 17 across). Others, though, were somewhat laboured in their construction, and I stopped after a while. I guessed some quite easy answers, including MAN and EWERS, and it was good to come here and see how the cryptic bits were supposed to work. Two clues I should have solved but failed on were 29 RAISE HELL and 24d PURL.

    Thanks to Philistine and PeterO.

  51. If you were listening to Dark Star you’re more likely to have been listening to the Grateful Dead than David Bowie… 😉

  52. [My daughter, born 1981, became a David Bowie fan, seeing him live a couple of times, and was never more impressed with me than when she discovered that I had bought the seminal Berlin trio of albums on their issue – Low, Heroes and Lodger (though I never thought that Lodger was all that good). However I also bought BlackStar as a tribute; she listened to it and described it as sounding like “two giraffes fighting”. It’s growing on me, though.]

  53. Great crossword and a fitting tribute, to a great STAR – which probably refers to at least four songs, the one called simply Star, as well as Starman, The Prettiest Star and Blackstar. As well as 16d we struggled with the parsing of 26a, so thank you Peter O!

  54. I am actually quite surprised that only Simon S @30 mentioned today’s FT puzzle by Goliath.
    Beery Hiker @21 said: Enjoyed this, but would probably have appreciated the theme more without the special instruction.
    Well, that is what Goliath exactly did this morning – which was when I did that crossword.
    And as for many solvers of this Guardian puzzle, the double appearance of REBEL opened up the theme for me.
    In the Indy blog today Knut, who in his crossword ‘commemorated’ another pop icon, stated:
    @beeryhiker must be in statistical Nirvana about four separate clues for REBEL in two puzzles on the same day; it will break the archive algorithm!
    Yes, extraordinary, and by the same setter!

    Seeing An anniversary tribute and who the setter was, made this Philistine offering a write-in in parts.
    Goliath had at 22d “Weapon that’s commemorated here” – compare this to 17ac in the Guardian puzzle.
    13,27 containing ‘kind of music’ and the enumeration (4,3,4), well, that must be ROCK AND ROLL, so where’s SUICIDE – bingo!
    ASHES TO ASHES (10,22) I couldn’t be bothered to parse, I’m afraid.
    STAR (1d) could have been linked to ‘black’ (as it was in the FT) or ‘dust’ but Philistine chose MAN (which was actually a gem of a clue).
    Nice to see my favourite Bowie album at 12ac (although hyphened).

    As to the cluing as such, Philstine was very Philistine on many occassions, especially in the multi fodder clues (such as 14ac and 19d).
    Goliath was even more Philistine as there were some clues with additional wordplay.
    In the end, I liked that crossword more but that was probably due to ‘which one comes first’.

    Many thanks to our beloved setter who I never would have linked to David Bowie.
    You can’t be sure whether he is a fan or not.
    Tramp (who is not around enough nowadays) wrote themed crosswords about things that weren’t on his ‘wedding list’.

    Thanks PeterO for your comprehensive blog.

  56. I got the theme quickly as 6 Music have been talking of little else. Got ewers but couldn’t parse it, segue defeated me entirely. Enjoyable puzzle overall. Many thanks PeterO and Philistine

  57. Thanks all
    I feel about DB like Trump feels about M.Streep!

    Last in was carer but only because I had failed to parse it earlier.
    Favourites were 22 and 16 down.

Comments are closed.