Guardian Cryptic 27,116 by Picaroon

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Lovely stuff from Picaroon – favourites were 9dn and 22dn.

A theme around THE BERLIN WALL, separating the grid into West and East, each with thematic solutions.

completed grid

Across
1 BEDGOWN Daughter in request to have nightie (7)
D[aughter] in BEG=”request”, plus OWN=”have”
5 OBESITY Follow clothing model’s size problem (7)
OBEY=”Follow”, around SIT=pose or “model”
10 COLA Pass one soft drink (4)
COL=mountain “Pass”, plus A=”one”
11 SCHMEICHEL Plot ousting Allende ultimately transformed Chile? He defended Reds’ goal (10)
Peter SCHMEICHEL [wiki] was a goalkeeper for Manchester United – the Red Devils. SCH[e]ME=”Plot” ousting [Allend]e; plus (Chile)*
12 TISSUE Front of tabloid magazine’s web (6)
T[abloid] plus ISSUE=”magazine”
13 BEHEADED European leader having retired, like Louis XVI (8)
E[uropean] plus HEAD=”leader”, all put ‘in BED’=”having retired’
14 CASSANDRA Somewhat bombastic ass and rather a doom-monger (9)
=a prophetess in Greek myth. Hidden in [bombasti]C ASS AND RA[ther]
16 RINSE Clean river around Kent area? (5)
R[iver], plus IN S[outh] E[ast]=”around Kent area”
17 JEANS Girl’s or French man’s clothes (5)
triple definition: JEAN’S is either “Girl’s or “French man’s” – think Jean Valjean – and JEANS=”clothes”
19 TIGER MOTH Rock to hit sheltering bug or insect (5,4)
(to hit)* around GERM=”bug”
23 HEATHROW Ambassador has a fling in get-away location (8)
H[is or Her] E[xcellency]=”Ambassador”, plus A, plus THROW=”fling”
24 SASHAY Prance around, always following band (6)
AY=”always”, after SASH=”band”
26 RITORNELLE Orchestral passage left in dancing reel intro (10)
L[eft] in (reel intro)*
27 AJAX Fabled warrior‘s club (4)
double definition: the hero of the Trojan War; and the Dutch football club
28 LIBERTY Monarch totally disheartened after politician creates free state (7)
E[lizabeth] R[egina]=”Monarch”, plus T[otall]Y; all after LIB[eral]=”politician”
29 ANXIETY Team heading for extra time in some distress (7)
XI=eleven=”Team”, plus E[xtra], plus T[ime]; all inside ANY=”some”
Down
2 EROTICA Stirring material, Mozart’s finale in symphony (7)
[Mozar]T in EROICA=a Beethoven “symphony”
3 GRASS Novelist from Greece New Yorker’s behind (5)
=Günter Grass, German novelist [wiki]. GR[eece], plus ASS=”New Yorker’s [word for] behind”
4 WESTERN Rest freely in city like 3, 10, 17, 22 and 28? (7)
(Rest)* in WEN=nickname for the “city” of London. GRASS, COLA, JEANS, BRANDT and LIBERTY might be found west of THE BERLIN WALL in the crossword grid
6 BRECHT Biographer lacking content on real playwright (6)
=Bertolt Brecht, German playwright [wiki]. B[iographe]R without its contents, plus ECHT=authentic=”real”
7 SOCIALISM Very large revolutionary claim is constructed — by this theory? (9)
O/S=oversized=”Very large”, reversed/”revolutionary”, plus (claim is)*
8 THESEUS Ancient hero outside of Seattle in America (7)
=hero of Greek myth. the outside of S[eattl]E, inside THE US=”America”
9 THE BERLIN WALL Hilbert working with all new element of long division (3,6,4)
(Hilbert all new)*
15 SUNSTROKE Stars smoke cannabis around queen in feverish condition (9)
SUNS=”Stars”, plus TOKE=”smoke cannabis”, around R[egina]=”Queen”
18 EMERITI People honourably discharged from service merit indulgence (7)
Hidden in [servic]E MERIT I[ndulgence]
20 EASTERN Spring festival given name like 6, 7, 21s and the 25? (7)
EASTER=”Spring festival” plus N[ame]. BRECHT, SOCIALISM, TRABANTS and the STASI can be found east of THE BERLIN WALL in the grid
21 TRABANT Bishop drawing up, with worker’s car (7)
an East German car [wiki]. B[ishop] plus ART=”drawing”, both reversed/”up”, plus ANT=”worker”
22 BRANDT Willy starts to become relaxed after nine double tequilas (6)
=Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany [wiki]. Starting letters of B[ecome] R[elax] A[fter] N[ine] D[ouble] T[equilas]
25 STASI Mostly inactive state police (5)
=the East German state police. Most of STASI[s]=”inactive”

71 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,116 by Picaroon”

  1. Thanks manehi and Picaroon.

    Having gotten 3, 10, 22 was on a wild goose chase to find links to 17, 22 in spite of getting 9d early on.
    Only upon hitting 20 I saw the divide. Good stuff.

    Liked 5, 17, 19, 2 and 22.

  3. This was a fun puzzle, and I was helped a lot by the theme.
    New for me was WEN = City of London and (as a non-football fan) SCHMEICHEL but thanks to google I discovered the player after I had worked out the SCHME bit of the clue.
    My favourites were BEHEADED, HEATHROW + RINSE (LOI).
    Thank you Picaroon and manehi.

  4. I cobbled together a solution to this with lots of guesses, so glad to get confirmation and/or elucidation from your blog, manehi. I could not parse many of my answers.

    Like michelle@3, WEN as a name for London in 4d was an unknown, and I had to google the football player at 11a SCHMEICHEL based on some of the crossers. At this point I discovered that Leicester is known as the Reds. I did not know that AJAX at 27a was also a football club, although I appreciated the mini-theme of ancient Greek characters with AJAX, CASSANDRA at 14a and THESEUS at 8d.

    Other bung-ins for me were 26a RITORNELLE and 21d TRABANT, both unfamiliar. Also HEATHROW at 23a and ANXIETY were guesses, using the cross letters and wordplay.

    I am ashamed to say that while I “got” the WESTERN 4d and EASTERN 20d idea, I did not see that the words in question were “divided” by 9d, THE BERLIN WALL, on the grid itself. Very clever, Picaroon.

    That being said, I am with manehi in really liking the key clue, 9d THE BERLIN WALL, and I concur with both manehi and ilippu about 22d, BRANDT, an enjoyable clue. My other favourite, with ilippu, was 17a JEANS.

    I learned a lot today, so really appreciate the thinking behind both the puzzle and the solve, Picaroon and manehi.

  5. Is it stating the bleeding obvious to remark that all the words relating to 4d WESTERN are about West Berlin (Gunter Grass was from West Berlin and Willy Brandt its Mayor at one time) or concepts more associated with the West like Coca Cola, jeans and liberty, while the 20d EASTERN words relate to East Berlin/East Germany (Brecht whose theatre company was in East Berlin, and who died there, Stasi its police force and with Socialism as its ideological base, and the TRABANT being manufactured there)???? Not sure if this was implied in defining WESTERN and EASTERN in the blog.

    BTW, thanks to google for some of the above info…

  6. Brilliant. 22d the perfect example of its kind.
    Bravo Picaroon and thanks to manehi (particularly for going to the trouble of the visual art presentation!)

  7. Julie in Australia @4: possibly some minor confusion. Peter Schmeichel was goalkeeper for Manchester United for many years and MU are also known as the Red Devils or Reds. Not sure where you have found your Leicester allusion but suspect it’s a red herring. Schmeichel never played for them and they’ve known as the Foxes rather than the Reds.

    I hardly think we can criticise a solver half a globe away for not being familiar with English football club historical player rosters or nicknames! I’d be hard-pressed to name any Australian team other than the big rugby franchises.

  9. Absolutely superb challenge from Picaroon today – as always. Very clever theme(s) and the divider mechanism is absolutely brilliant. And the themes didn’t distort the overall puzzle which sometimes happens: all clues stood up on their own two feet.

    I didn’t know RITORNELLE although I knew it was an anagram and just had to go through the combinations and press ‘Check This’. AJAX defeated me as I never even thought about a football club. And BERLIN WALL – which is very clever – remained unsolved far longer than it should as I was fixated on the mathematical long division – as I was clearly intended to be by the setter.

    Some risque allusions that made me smile today in EROTICA, GRASS, the clue for BRANDT and ‘toke’ in SUNSTROKE.

    Thanks manehi for helpful blog.

  10. Sorry for father-son confusion, Mark@7 and manehi – googled surname and found Leicester and thought when I skim-read the info that they were a Red team? Appreciate the time you both took to respond to a muddled Antipodean. [But Mark, surely you have heard of the Queensland Reds – or in League, the Brisbane Broncos?]

  11. Mark @7. I won’t be the only one to point out that Peter Schmeichel’s son Kaspar is now goalkeeper for Leicester, hence the confusion. But you’re right the reference in the clue is to the great MU goalkeeper.

    Got the theme, but missed the subtlety of the East/West divide in the grid. Doh! But I thought the quality of clues was good overall without too much sacrifice to the theme as can sometimes be the case.

  12. manehi @8: I live and learn! Rugby more my game. But now I see how Leicester popped up. The clue, as you noted, clearly refers to Peter.

  13. Julie in Australia @10: no problem Julie. As I said, the rugby franchises – Reds, Warratahs, Brumbies etc are known to me but I’m embarrassed to say that’s as far as it goes…

  14. Stunning puzzle and blog – huge thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

    Brava Julie, for your gallant googling! I’m not usually in a position to put anyone right re football but I do know that Kasper [sic] plays for my local team! I wonder if you were somehow sidetracked by a reference to our famous Red Leicester cheese?

  15. Brilliant puzzle which i completed without twigging the German divide. Which makes it doubly brilliant i think.

  17. Interesting echo of Enigmatic Variations 1259 in the Sunday Tel, as very fully blogged in mid-Jan by mc_rapper67, (and illustrated as imaginatively as this Picaroon puzzle has been by manehi, though less colourfully). Similar East/West division with a vertical Iron Curtain in the middle. Worth looking at. Let me echo the thanks to both Picaroon and manehi for a specially entertaining start to the day. 7d SOCIALISM was a favourite.

  18. @17 above: sorry, should have credited the EV Iron Curtain setter: Samuel. And the blog solution there does have colours, though less bright ones than manehi uses.

  19. I couldn’t agree more – a fantastic puzzle. Like Julie in Oz I hadn’t seen the dividing BERLIN WALL. Silly me. Favourites were SUNSTROKE, ANXIETY, LIBERTY and GRASS. Many thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

  20. Great puzzle very enjoyable and clever use of the Berlin Wall theme. Best Guardian cryptic for quite a while.

  21. Julie@4
    I also had to google Ajax club. I knew the hero but not the club, as I know nothing at all about football in any part of the world!

    re the Schmeichel clue – I don’t even remember who i found via google – the fact that it was a football player was enough for me and I wasn’t too fussed about the Red bit of the clue!

    That said, I really enjoyed the puzzle – I thought it was a lot of fun.

  22. What lucky chance that I chose today (the first day of my half term!) to drop in to The Guardian crossword. Such a lovely idea, and great fun to solve.

    Greedily, I found myself wanting even more theme words – but he did so well to include the number he did. Although I suppose, instead of THESEUS, he could have had THE REDS on the Eastern side of the wall!

    Great stuff – thanks to both.

  23. Some crosswords stand out as classics. Just brilliant! – as was the coloured grid in the blog, thank you manehi.
    Bravo Picaroon!

  24. Bravo, Picaroon! Superb puzzle. I particularly liked THE BERLIN WALL, not least for the mathematical misdirection.

    Thanks also to manehi.

  25. Yes, this was a real classic though it wasn’t until I looked at manehi’s graphic solution that I properly appreciated the dividing aspect of the theme. My favourite clues were those for HEATHROW, BRANDT and TIGER MOTH. Plenty of appreciation to Picaroon and manehi

  26. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi. I too had trouble with the football solutions (SCHMEICHEL was LOI). I’ll mentally add Wen to EC as “city of London” and I did not spot Willy as BRANDT until the theme emerged. Great fun.

  28. Thank you Picaroon and manehi.

    What a crossword – I loved the Tiger Moth flying over the Berlin Wall in the grid, it reminded me of a goodwill gesture made by four pilots from the European Community countries who flew over the wall soon after it had been breached I believe, all I can find on the web is that they were a British investment banker, a French housewife, a German dentist and a Danish auto worker in a quartet of 50 year old Tiger Moth biplanes.

  30. A super crossword with a great set of themed clues on either side of the Wall

    Thanks to Picaroon for the entertainment and Manehi for the illustrated explanations

  31. I’ll add my name to so many others – this was a cracker. It was a most interesting theme, and I was amazed to see the west/east divide in your colour chart, manehi, when I came to the blog – what a bonus to appreciate after I’d finished.

    I’ve never heard of WEN [a part of 4d WESTERN], as in ‘the great wen of London’ (which I’ve just found after googling) – nor 26a RITORNELLE, which was also fairly clued to make it solvable.

    Thanks to Picaroon for a brilliant crossword and to manehi for a complete and colourful blog.

  32. Excellent crossword and blog. DNK wen or toke. I had come across RIT as a musical abbreviation, so this helped in solving 26ac.

  33. Another top class puzzle, as Picaroon’s always are. RITORNELLE was new to me too, and I didn’t realise WEN could be a generic city though I was familiar with the Great Wen. So an educational one too.

    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi

  34. Thanks Picaroon and manehi. I enjoyed this puzzle hugely: tough at times but much easier after I had got 9dn.

    I spent three months in the DDR as a graduate student, and actually met (though I did not know at the time) the 25dn officer assigned to keep an eye on me (wonderful clue by the way – the Stasi were active and omnipresent).

    The family I got to know there called their Wartburg (not a 21dn) “Ladybird” because it was red and black. Hence my nickname.

    Theme apart, 23 across raised a smile.

  38. A fine crossword, but I’ve only encountered “stasis” as a noun and “inactive” as an adjective. So STASI (25D) as “mostly inactive” doesn’t work for me. Am I missing something?

  39. David @38 For that reason I parsed it as wordplay = “Mostly inactive state” and defn = “police”. The juxtaposition of state and police was clever misdirection.

  40. I agree with HKrunner – stasi is the truncated stasis (a noun meaning inactive state) and so to respect the grammar the def has to be simply “police”. Of course Manehi is also aware that the Stasi was a state police force.

    What made this puzzle great for me is that I was able to solve it while being only vaguely aware of a German theme. The division on the grid completely escaped me. Thanks Picaroon and Manehi.

  45. Yes, this was very clever and it kept me amused/frustrated for quite a long time. I got 9dn quite quickly- brilliant clue-but I still struggled. I’ve never heard of the footballer,of course,so this slowed me down. Was he famous? Never mind, I’ve forgotten him already! Liked EROTICA.
    Thanks Picaroon.

  46. Grievous error in 11a that would leave Picaroon best advised to avoid Manchester for a while. Putting Peter Schmeichel between the sticks at the wrong end of the East Lancs Road for the Reds rather than the Red Devils will not go down well at Old Trafford. A treacherous crossword, then, but also a fantastic one.

  47. Indeed, Van Winkle @ 46: I tried to solve this (when I realized that I was required to know a soccer player) by Googling a list of old Liverpool goalkeepers (as I’m not a complete ignoramus when it comes to English football). Disappointed to have come up dry, and when the wordplay finally got me the right name and I looked him up, I was surprised to find a Red Devil instead.

    Otherwise, I echo the plaudits here. I solved the Berlin Wall clue roughly halfway through, so the theme was a bit of a solving aid for me.

    I was in the former East Germany, on an exchange visit as a high-school student, shortly after reunification. My host family still had a Trabant parked in their driveway–it didn’t run, of course, and their working car was a brand-new Opel.

  48. 9A. I knew of Hilbert as a brilliant mathematician but principally because his University was ruined by the Nazis through the persecutions of its Jews and he lived through it. Looking him up I see that he was at Gottingen which at one time was in Prussia of which of course Berlin is the capital. The clue was in itself brilliant.

  49. This has been fascinating! It was really tough for me although I did manage to solve all except two of them. It was such a rich experience full of stuff I never heard of, but gettable, and with that great visual separation at 9D, with relevant words on either side (beautifully blogged).
    To add to it, I came here to get the two that had stumped me and have been treated to tales of people’s personal experiences in DDR. Brilliant.
    Thanks everyone

  50. Fabulous puzzle. Deft cluing to boot.
    I read “state” in 25 as doing double duty to get around the adjective/noun disconnect.

    Marienkaefer @34,
    Your post reminded me of a murder mystery novel I read recently – The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason – which features exchange students in the former DDR and their relationship with their Stasi minders. Have you read it?

  51. Even I caught the theme today. Well done, Picaroon. And thanks, manehi.

    I yield my claim to being the world champion of missing the theme to anyone who would step forward to claim it.

    But I remain deeply ashamed of (several years back) missing the theme in a puzzle containing REVOLVER, YELLOW, SUBMARINE, SERGEANT, PEPPER, and other references obvious to everybody except slipstream.

  52. trenodia @48, there is so much more to this puzzle than what immediately meets the eye, no-one has mentioned that Günter GRASS was against unification, and was often regarded as a CASSANDRA…

  53. I enjoyed reading the snippets from people’s memories of the DDR and would just like to add one of my own.
    In about 1980 I lived and worked near Göttingen, close to the Iron Curtain. I can remember, not far from the village where we lived, the bleakness of the no man’s land between the actual West/East border, marked only with flags placed quite far apart, and the Iron Curtain, which was half a kilometre inside the DDR. We could see the towers, and even the soldiers inside them guarding against escape bids.
    I also remember West Berlin’s isolation (except, of course, for the airlifted supplies from the West). One weekend we drove through one of the three ‘corridors’ through the DDR allowed for visitors from West Germany to West Berlin (spotting several Trabants and Wartburgs on the way). It was drummed into us that, inside the DDR, we must absolutely ensure that we leave the autobahn at the West Berlin exit and not continue to Berlin (as the DDR called East Berlin).

  54. Cookie @52
    Thanks for that additional snippet concerning Günter GRASS. I wouldn’t have seen that, and it gives me even more to appreciate in a remarkable crossword. Note that CASSANDRA is mainly in the West of the puzzle but is boldly poking into the East!

  58. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi and to trenodia@48 for explaining who Hilbert was and thus turning what would have been a poor clue into a good one. I thought that the examples of westernism were a bit thin – 2 of the five were West German individuals and 2 were examples of American culture – as opposed to the eastern related clues, 3 of which were specifically East German and the fourth closely associated.
    PaulW@32. As you say Rit. is an abbreviation for a musical term, but usually “ritordando” = slowing down. I haven’t seen it used for “ritornelle” = a repetition or return.
    Though I enjoyed this I might have appreciated it more if I had been attempting it a bit closer to 1989.

  59. Just brilliant. Picaroon rules! All the information to solve the clue is there staring you in the face, and yet it takes time (ages) to see it. And CASSANDRA must be one of the best ever hidden words – I only spotted it after Mrs W came up the Greek doom-monger. Thanks for a great blog Maheni – Sil’s comment captures everything about today’s adventure.

  60. [this is not my shortest comment ever]

    A new morning has broken (sorry for those who don’t like Cat Stevens) and I think it’s time to say something more about this crossword.
    (Peter) SCHMEICHEL was not hard to find but, indeed, ManU fans would be rather offended when calling him a Red.
    I admit, I thought he might have been a Liverpool goalkeeper so I didn’t think about it more than I perhaps should have.
    Forgiven.

    The grid layout is just wonderful but I must say that I saw it only after manehi’s colourful picture of that grid.
    “Wow!” was my verdict and it still is.

    However, in a way, I am also with Pino @58.
    Three out of my first five solutions were all Germany related, and so I thought I cracked what was going on.
    To be honest, in the end I was a bit disappointed that WESTERN and EASTERN wasn’t just about Germany.
    At the time of solving, I felt that COLA and LIBERTY were out of place.
    So perhaps I should have said ‘Wow-ish’ but I didn’t.

    In the late seventies and early nineties, I’ve been quite a few times in Berlin (with students, as part of a school trip). I have seen the wall when there still was one, I have been in East and West.
    We always warned students not to cross the road when a Trabant was coming their way.
    There might be a real chance that it would fall apart after a crash …..

  61. I love the brevity of Sil van den Hoek’s summation @57, and now risk being too prolific a poster.

    But just want to say I have found this particular forum on the Picaroon fascinating and hugely interesting.

    I loved all the stories that have emerged as a result of the Western/Eastern sides theme. There have been new layers of meaning added by so many contributors. Thank you, one and all.

    Two things came to mind regarding Berlin: another brilliant novel called “Stasiland” by Australian author Anna Funder [phitonelly@50 and Marienkaefer@34], and David Bowie’s Berlin years, when he shared an apartment in the shadow of the Wall with Iggy Pop as they both tried to beat their drug habits. Bowie’s “Heroes” from the Berlin Trilogy and Iggy’s “Lust for Life” – two of my favourite albums ever – were the creative products of this time.

  62. P.S? Sil van den Hoek@60; we crossed. I was really glad you came back with a lengthier comment and your great story!

  63. Julie, I’m not sure we crossed – I was there two minutes earlier than you ….. 🙂
    As to when I was in Berlin, it was in the early eighties (not in the early nineties).

  65. This footie ignoramus but Coronation Street enthusiast, having worked out the cryptic element of 11 across, confidently wrote in the resulting otherwise unfamiliar name, as it had belonged to a large and slobbery dog in the series.

  66. Thanks, manehi, for the beautifully presented grid and great blog.

    This puzzle was inspired by reading Maxim Leo’s Haltet euer Herz bereit: Eine ostdeutsche Familiengeschichte. He mentions wanting Western jeans, and the excitement of getting some. I was previously unaware that jeans had had such a status in East Germany. I would have preferred 10 across to be Coke, since East Germany did have Vita Cola. However, thematic crosswords can be quite hard to work into one of the Guardian’s standard grids, especially here as there is a spatial configuration. I suppose I was lucky that there is a grid with a 13-letter solution running down the middle!

  67. And finally: thank you Picaroon (@66) for that interesting background on this crossword, especially on its ‘orogin’.

  69. Virtuoso stuff. Wonderful! Didn’t finish it until this morning and (as usual) hadn’t a clue what was going on.

    Many thanks, Picaroon and Manehi.

  71. Sorry that no-one mentioned the wonderful film “Goodbye Lenin”. If you’ve never seen it do so. Its observation on the aftermath of the fall of the wall is touching, funny- and German!
    Like several others it was only the splendid blog that pointed out the physical division of the grid which I’d missed. I usually reserve my weekday crosswording to Paul and reserve my efforts for Sunday’s Azed but this was a delight.

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