Guardian Cryptic 27,114 by Brummie

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A stellar theme, but not such a stellar puzzle.

There were some very good clues in here, (22ac for example) and some well hidden definitions (8dn, say), but overall, the weakness of some of the clues meant that this was a bit beneath the standard I have come to expect from this setter.

I have commented in the blog on 9ac, 11ac, (although Brummie’s treatment of these has support among the commneters), and 19ac, but there were one or two other clues that were average at best.

Thanks, Brummie.

Across
9 ONYOURWAY Leave a convenient stopping-off place (2,4,3)
A convenient stopping off place would be “on your way”, but the grammar doesn’t match here.  “A convenient stopping off place” is a noun, but “on your way” isn’t.
10 TORSO Approximately to the right of top of tree trunk (5)
T(ree) + OR SO  (“approximately”)
11 NITRE Parasite on part of fertiliser? (5)
NIT (“parasite”) + RE

Technically, the nit is not a parasite, it is the empty egg casing of a parasite.
12 ADHERENCE Observant quality present in fluid dance (9)
HERE (“present”) in *(dance)
13 DAMAGES Mother gets on for Mars (7)
DAM (“mother”) + AGES (“gets on”)
14 NEBULAS Stars from here backing Elton at city in America? (7)
<=BEN (“Elton”) + L.A. in U.S.
17 ASTRA Car — middle of fan belt lacks power (5)
(f)A(n) + STRA(p)
19 RED It’s often pocketed, being light (3)
The red ball is the most-often pocketed colour in a game of snooker, but “light” for RED is a bit weak.
20 SISAL Elvis is alive, full of fibre! (5)
Hidden in “ElviS IS ALive”
21 FANATIC Nut cracking, in fact, absorbs one (7)
*(in fact) “absorbing” A
22 SLEEPER Agent‘s below-the-line item (7)
Double definition, the second a cryptic one.
24 CHALLENGE Test space craft with no tail (9)
CHALLENGE(r)
26 BLACK Grimly funny champion (outside left) (5)
BACK “outside” L(eft)
28 SHIFT Dress transfer (5)
Double definition
29 SATELLITE Attendant puts a report in place (9)
A TELL in SITE
Down
1 MOON Limo once cleared of external insects to give a rear view (4)
li(MO ON)ce
2 SYSTEM Tense, in excited, messy way (6)
T(ense) in *(messy)
3 SUPERGIANT Signature scrawled all over page, which is largely brilliant (10)
*(signature) “over” P(age)
4 SWEATS Slave over South American tracksuit (6)
SWEAT “over” S(outh)

The Americans call a tracksuit “sweats”
5 SYPHONED Uneasy phone discussion not entirely conveyed (8)
Hidden in “uneaSY PHONE Discussion”
6 STAR Those who squeal about mark on horse (4)
<=RATS
7 WRINKLES Gathers shellfish round river (8)
WINKLES “round” R(iver)
8 HOLE Scrape top off aggregate (4)
(w)HOLE
13 DWARF Happy, say, moving forward (no alternative) (5)
*(fward) (FORWARD without OR)
15 BASKETBALL Kebab stall prepared game (10)
*(kebab stall)
16 SOLAR Sort of power that lifts Los Alamos Red Tops (5)
<=LOS+  A(lamos) + R(ed) (thanks to ElTel@comment 2 below – I originally parsed this differently, but ElTel’s parsing makes more sense)
18 TANZANIA Brown needs one inch A-Z up country (8)
TAN + <=A IN. A-Z
19 RICHNESS Rolling cape’s magnificence (8)
RICH (“rolling”) + NESS (“cape”)
22 SLEUTH Sherlock‘s lute playing breaks silence (6)
*(lute) “breaking SH (“silence”)
23 PLACID Composed some material in C? The other way round (6)
C in PLAID
24, 25 CASTLOTS  Try to single someone out, as prolific anglers do (4,4)
Prolific anglers would CAST LOTS of times
25   See 24
27 KEEP Look over tower (4)
<=PEEK

*anagram

47 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,114 by Brummie”

  1. Thanks loonapick and Brummie.

    A little hard to finish; got most of it quite easily in the (sleepless) night, but struggled with CHALLENGE, CAST LOTS and SHIFT this morning.

    I made the theme: NEBULAS, ASTRA, RED DWARF, BLACK HOLE, SATELLITE, MOON, SOLAR SYSTEM, SUPERGIANT, STAR, along with some in the clues.

    “but “light” for RED is a bit weak.” I saw this along the lines of “red” for “wine” which is commonly used.

    Isn’t “it is hte egg of a parasite.” a little, erm, nit picking?

  3. Dave Ellison@2 – I don’t think it is nit-picking (nice one!), but for clarity I have edited my comment on the clue to clarify that the nit is the empty egg casing, ie a dead thing, so cannot possibly be a parasite.

  5. Thanks, loonapick. Well I enjoyed this a lot – was especially stuck on 8d!

    In Brummie’s defence: I saw “leave” as the imperative: ON YOUR WAY! (bike?) I agree that the RED (traffic) light probably needed a question mark. Chambers gives meaning 2 of NIT as the young louse – and it’s surely common parlance?

  6. “On your way” in this sense, is an instruction: “leave!”. Think Genial Harry Grout (RIP) in Porridge telling Fletcher that his audience is finished.

    Both “a convenient stopping-off place” and “on your way” can follow the word “It’s” to mean the same thing, so the two phrases are interchangeable.

  7. NeilW@5 – I appreciate that this may be sacrilege, but the BRB is not always right. Common parlance may indeed have made LICE and NITS interchangeable, but biologically, they are two different things.

    Mitz@6 – I underlined “leave” as the definition, so agree that it is the instruction to leave; I can see that the introduction of it’s makes the clue more sensible.

  8. Thanks Brummie and loonapick

    Dave Ellison @ 1: there’s also RED SHIFT and BLACK DWARF (I don’t see why solutions can’t do double duty!)

  11. I found this difficult and failed to finish, missing two of the four-letter words which I could not get even with the crossers – 6d STAR and 8d HOLE (for the latter I had CORE, thinking the abbreviated word was SCORE). I agree with loonapick that 19a RED was a bit weak, but that was all it could be from the crossers.

    I liked the theme though and thought it clever. I also enjoyed 13a DAMAGES.

  12. Mooble@10, you are not going mad; I think “one” in the clue for 21a FANATIC indicates “a” not “i”.

    Apologies as meant to thank setter and blogger.

  13. Mooble and Julie – My apologies; I really need to find more time to check for typos. I try to get the blog done before I leave for work in the morning, so sometimes it feels like a bit of a rush. That’s not an excuse for sloppiness, though!

  14. I enjoyed this more than loonapick. There’s nothing wrong with 9a as has been pointed out by others. I don’t have a problem with the imprecise use of nit. I didn’t like red for light though, and I thought ‘the other way round’ in 23d was weak, and also unnecessary. Thanks Brummie. I had fun. And thanks loonapick.

  15. I parsed TORSO as OR SO (approximately) to the right of Tree (top of tree), but perhaps that is what the blog says?

    Thank you Brummie and loonapick, but you have got my head itching.

  16. Thanks Brummie and loonapick.

    Nit is given also as a young form of a louse in the BRB, Collins and ODE, so I don’t think we can fault the setter on that. RED = light is a bit weak, although I guess one could say: “I stopped at the light/red,” with respect to a traffic light.

    I guess SCRAPE = HOLE refers to the noun, although surprisingly my ODE gives: ‘make (a hollow)by scraping away soil or rock.’

    Good theme with some fine clues. I particularly liked the two 13s, DWARF and DAMAGES.

  17. Thanks, loonapick, nice blog – no sloppiness detected here.

    Is it convention to have only 1 ‘hidden’ answer? Here we have SISAL & SYPHONED.

    I liked TORSO, FANATIC & DWARF but HOLE took me ages with so little to go on.

    Not quite the Brummie I have come to fear but enjoyable nonetheless.

    Nice week, all.

    PS Missed the theme completely!

  20. OK, I give up – NIT and LOUSE, despite being biologically two different things, appear to have become interchangeable in everyday English, so my “nit-picking” that had me “scratching my head” appears to have been an over-reaction.

  21. Valentine @19, yes, I meant “OR SO to the right of T (top of tree)”

    this is what loonapick had for the clue “Approximately to the right of top of tree trunk (5)”

    “Approximately to the right of TOP is T OR SO”

    now he has changed it to

    “T(op) + OR SO (“approximately”)”

    then where does “tree” come in?

  22. TANZANIA is IN A reversed in TAN + A.

    Nice puzzle. I also completely missed the theme, which I usually do. A pity, because I enjoy themes and wish Iere better at spotting them.

    Thanks, Brummie and loonapick.

  25. For reasons I can’t quite explain I didn’t really enjoy this puzzle, despite managing to complete it. Although I did for once spot the theme, that didn’t help me solve many clues, and I found some of the clues a little too clever for my liking. Nevertheless my thanks to Brummie and loonapick for his nit-unpicking!

  26. Mostly straightforward, particularly once the theme was apparent, but I couldn’t see HOLE and gave up and cheated it, very annoying in retrospect. Quite an enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

  27. I enjoyed this more than loonapick. Some pleasantly misleading clues, at least to me (it took me a while to spot why damages had anything to do with Mars).

    Like others, I feel that “they’ve got nits” is common use for an infestation of lice. If we’re going to insist on the technical/scientific meanings of certain words, then watch out for the howls of protests from scientists and (like me) mathematicians every time we get, for example, energy and power used synonymously (and host of other times when terms are clued by their common use, rather than technical meaning).

  28. I’m pretty much at one with lancsolver @25. No glitter, one might say. The theme came early, so having BLACK I looked for HOLE – sorry, beery hiker @26!

  29. Thanks to Brummie and loonapick. I struggled a bit before getting HOLE, RED, RICHNESS (I missed rolling = rich), and SLEEPER (I did not spot the second definition) but SWEATS is part of my vocabulary as I head out to jog. Good fun.

  30. With Julie for 8d (top off score – to scrape – leaving core = aggregate as in ‘hardcore’). And I had highness for 19d (high = rolling as in drunk, and highness = magnificence). Also “on one’s way” for 9a all of which made completing it a bit iffy. Thanks for the blog.

  31. I rather liked this even though I didn’t get the theme. Perhaps this was easier than some from Brummie, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment. I don’t see anything wrong with RED myself and I’m not sure why it has annoyed some of you. My LOI was STAR but, as I say,I didn’t spot the theme.
    Thanks Brummie.

  35. Took me some time but got there apart from RED (like others, couldn’t really believe that red = light) and HOLE – like someone else above, I wondered about CORE. Favourites were WRINKLES, NEBULAS and CAST LOTS. Many thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

  36. I found this puzzle quite challenging but in a good way. I couldn’t parse RED at all, but I was more frustrated with myself for taking so long to see SYPHONED, especially since a lot of my day to day work involves hydraulics.

  37. I enjoyed most of this until I stopped with a few clues still to solve in the bottom half, plus 8d (HOLE) which I also left. Then I found some clues just didn’t give me enough, and I looked up 24/25d CAST LOTS in order to give me the crossers I needed to complete the puzzle (except for HOLE).

    I agree with your comment, loonapick, about the weakness of some of the clues – I think I could have refined four of them or clued them differently. This is a minor gripe, and I think perhaps I can be hard to please, the general standard being so high.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

  38. Not many physicists on here then. You don’t need a specific usage such as a traffic light with the word traffic deviously omitted. Red is a frequency of light, i.e. it is light, full stop.

    I must be getting old, defending clues, whatever next?

  39. Thanks all
    MikeR @27 very well said and should be said more often (I am waiting for a misquoted WS extract).

  44. I’d like to add to what I said earlier by saying how well Brummie incorporated the theme into this puzzle. I rarely spot themes. I spotted this one, but there was much more to it than I suspected. I had to have red shift and black hole pointed out to me on this page – if I had seen them for myself I would have been able to fill some of the empty space (!) in the grid more readily and enjoy the puzzle more.

    Thanks Brummie, and thanks to the commenters who pointed out what was obvious to them but not to me.

  45. Unlike many (most?) here, I found this an absolute joy to solve – with so many delightful definitions as well. I found it quite easy for a Brummie but I still loved it. I’ve read all the comments and there isn’t a single quibble that stands up to scrutiny, in my view, I’m afraid. I particularly enjoyed SWEATS and SATELLITE.

    Enormous thanks to Brummie. And to loonapick (I’ve a feeling on another day you may have enjoyed this more?)

  46. William @45
    Saying that ‘there isn’t a single quibble that stands up to scrutiny’ (in your view) is a rather sweeping statement, if I may say so. Some solvers had genuine quibbles concerning ‘weak clues’ (and one case of doubtful cryptic grammar) that in my view do stand up to scrutiny.
    Perhaps I found your statement a bit strong. Solvers’ views differ: of the few clues I would describe as weak in today’s puzzle there are two that I would have recast if I was the setter (or the active editor!). I respect the fact that you consider them all defensible.

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