Guardian 27,230 / Paul

35 comments on “Guardian 27,230 / Paul”

1. Thanks, Eileen, for parsing the only one that defeated me: BLEAK.

   I agree – a fairly straightforward offering from Paul. My favourite was PLEASE HOLD THE LINE.

2. This was easier than a lot of recent Paul offerings mostly because all of the trickier parsings were easy enough to guess from definitions and crossers and parse retrospectively. BLEAK was last in – had forgotten the fish, and I must admit that I didn’t even try to parse BED AND BREAKFAST or PLEASE HOLD THE LINE.

   Thanks to Paul and Eileen

3. I agree with your summary, Eileen: I completed about 90% of this on my morning commute and polished off the rest while waiting for my computer to boot up. SPINNERET was unfamiliar, and some of the parsing eluded me, but as I wasn’t blogging the puzzle, I didn’t worry. I was expecting Prince Hal rather than Prince Harry at 18 down, which held me up a little.

4. No excuses for the fish, as Paul used it himself as recently as April:

   Paul 23719: Cold and raw fish (5)
   Rover 24503: Cold fish (5)
   Paul 27178: Cold fish (5)
   Paul 27230: Swimmer looking miserable (5)

5. Paul’s given me some problems recently but not so today. Was rather hoping that every one else found this a real toughie but never mind.

6. Thanks Paul, Eileen
   Not too hard, but I thought 14/16 was perfect, and 15, and 10
   @Eileen. You’re probably not spending enough time in small rivers.

7. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Paul.

   Delighted to complete this on a plane trip from Brisbane to Melbourne with no online reference tools available to confirm unknown words like 6d SPINNERET and the fish at 23d BLEAK.

   Thanks to Eileen for the blog. I agree with your favourites and also liked 8d BED AND BREAKFAST and 18d HARLOTRY.

8. 14/16 &litish? The whole surface rings true. Brilliant clue. I have good days and bad days with Paul, but I enjoyed this one. I did know the web designer. Lovely.

9. Thank you Paul and Eileen.

   The clue for PLEASE HOLD THE LINE was great, unfortunately I wrote in the answer from the enumeration which was a shame, as I also did for BED AND BREAKFAST, but the clue for PENCE was my favourite.

10. As usual in my opinion, this was an elegant offering from Paul. Solving the long clues quickly was a major help in tackling the rest of the puzzle. PENCE made me smile and whenever I come across REPTILIAN again I will always see it back to front. Whether or not there is a lot of love in HARLOTRY is a moot point, but I will leave it to others to debate! Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

11. For those, like me, who didn’t understand 6D SPINNERET — the “web designer” is a spider and the spinneret is:
    any of a number of different organs through which the silk, gossamer, or thread of spiders, silkworms, and certain other insects is produced

12. 11A MANGOES – Bishop is also a variety of Mango! Thanks Paul/Eileen!

13. Thanks Paul and Eileen. Simpler than expected but lots of fun.

    I think the parsing on 27 needs a tweak: HES [that chap’s] in TAURUS.

    I kicked myself for not seeing 23 sooner. I certainly look bleak when that’s all I catch!

14. Thanks to Paul and Eileen. BLEAK, SPINNERET, and BILL EDDIE were new to me – and I did not spot “waves” as an anagram indicator for FLOPPIER. LOI were TURN TO and THESAURUS. Getting the long answers, however, made for relatively smooth sailing. Lots of fun.

15. Thank you Paul and Eileen

    Not too touogh for Paul, especially with the long clues.

    After the recent election, I am moderately encouraged that 1dn is becoming a little out of date.

    There’s a letter in today’s Guardian complaining about the difficulty of the cryptic crosswords saying they “are mostly an impossible Mensa entrance test”. When people tell me that they are not clever enough to do a cryptic crossword, I say that cleverness can often get in the way of being able to solve them. It’s a devious mind that’s needed.

    And you don’t need Mensa levels of cleverness to do the Fifteensquared captcha …

16. sorry, tough.

17. In 26 across why does Bangladesh = H?

18. Chris @17

    The close, ie end, of Bangladesh is “h”.

    As per my comment above, a clever person might be thinking of an actual island near Bangladesh.

19. Ah OK thanks – rather new to this

20. Can someone please explain the “to contain it” in 2dn?

21. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Fairly easy, though I too didn’t bother to try to parse BED AND BREAKFAST. Favourite was SPINNERET.

    “Sex” would have been more appropriate than “love” in 18d, surely (lancsolver implied the same earlier).

    Why is “End” = DISSOLVE? “Drop” for DIVE in it seems a bit odd too.

22. @jeceris We get the “d” at the start of the clue from “beginning to decay”. The anagram part is just of the words “I weep on”.

    So “to contain it” tells us the anagram part has to hold the “d” we got earlier.

    @muffin – official bodies get dissolved to end them – the dissolution of parliament etc. And if a companies profits drop sharply, they can be said to have dived.

23. [muffin, I wondered about that too, perhaps Haigh and the acid bath…]

24. Ah, thank you MarkN @2, we crossed.

25. Thanks you MarkN

26. Very agreeable puzzle. Not one of Paul’s trickiest but none the worse for that. I had to look up BLEAK, and HARLOTRY(LOI) fooled me. I was trying to get HAL in! I took “Love for sale” as the song which is clearly about prostitution, although the phrase itself seems clear enough.
    Good fun – and the temperature has dropped!!
    Thanks Paul.

27. Thanks, DrF @13 – amended now. [I’ve been out since mid-morning.]

28. An entertaining puzzle, not too taxing but with plenty to enjoy. Favourites included PENCE, PLEASE HOLD THE LINE (an all too familiar experience) and FLOPPIER. TURN TO was my LOI. I’d got TUR[in] earlier but it took me quite a while to realise the “out” was an anagrind.

    Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

29. An entertaining puzzle even though I didn’t have time to finish, and needed some parsing help. Loved PENCE and COSINE – as an ex mathematician, nice to see.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

30. Don’t like 9ac. REPTILIAN is too far away from ‘contemptible’.

31. Peter @30

    I wondered about that, too, before writing the blog but looked up Chambers and found, under ‘reptile’: ‘a base, malignant, abject or treacherous person’, with ‘reptilian’ as the adjective – sounds pretty contemptible to me.

32. re last entries:

    didn’t Denis Thatcher refer to the press as ‘the reptiles’? – not intending to be complimentary. Or was that just in Private Eye’s ‘Dear Bill’ feature? Either way, it was plausible.

    but the usage does seem unfair to reptiles, who have as much right to live their lives on the planet as we do.

33. A disappointingly easy Paul with little humour and not much to commend it.

    Peter @30

    The OED agrees with me that “reptilian” is pretty damn close to “contemptible”

    reptilian, adj. and n.

    Pronunciation: Brit. /r?p?t?l??n/, U.S. /r?p?t?lj?n/, /r?p?t?li?n/
    Frequency (in current use):

    …

    2. fig. Low, mean; contemptible, underhand; nasty, malignant.

34. Re 27 across: Astrologers divide the zodiac into 12 signs and 12 houses. Taurus is one of signs not one of the houses. Of course, I don’t believe in all that astrology nonsense. I would say that, wouldn’t I, being a Capricorn.

35. BNTO @33
    I disagree – after recent long struggles with Arachne, Nutmeg and an earlier Paul, I found it refreshingly easy. I’ve had enough of tortuous (and tortured) wordplay. There was humour too. Favourites were 17a 19a 21d.

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