When I agreed to stand in for Eileen today, little did I know that when I booted up my pc this morning I would find that a folder containing important records had disappeared overnight and that the recycle bin was empty so no easy restore. As you can imagine, my mind has been on other things (such as how to recover the lost files) so I will simply provide an analysis of the clues and leave it to you to provide a commentary on the puzzle. Sorry, Pasquale, that I haven’t been able to give your puzzle the full attention that it deserves.
Edit: Apologies for the errors below, as I said my mind was elsewhere when writing this up. Thanks to those who pointed them out.
Across
9 Mad slogan supporting an EU migrant? (2,3,4)
UP THE POLE – def. plus cryptic indicator
10 Little energy, no longer alive? Cheer up! (5)
ELATE – E (little energy) LATE (no longer alive)
11 Cockney optimist had to work (7)
OPERATE – [h]OPER (Cockney optimist) ATE (had)
12 A children’s fantasy land’s not right — one lies (7)
ANANIAS – A NA[r]NIA’S (children’s fantasy land’s not right)
13 Heading on organiser’s list creates a stir (2-2)
TO-DO – cryptic/double def. – the first referring to a ‘to-do list’
14 Actors taking part? It leads to voices being raised (10)
CASTRATION – CAST (actors) RATION (part)
16 Old wolf maybe grabs a nymph (7)
OCEANID – O (old) CENID CANID (wolf) around (grabs) A – an error by the setter as pointed out in the comments
17 Trojan, say, breaking law, needing horse to get around (7)
MALWARE – MARE (horse) around (to get around) an anagram (breaking) of LAW
19 It’s about two countries sharing oil out (5-5)
ANGLO-IRISH – an anagram (out) of SHARING OIL
22 Designation of Sir Lionel? (4)
BART – double def.
24 Moved out with group on the road? (7)
TOURING – an anagram (moved) of OUT plus RING (group)
25 The rope tangled in the shrub (3,4)
HOP TREE – an anagram (tangled) of THE ROPE
26 From the sound, interprets certain musical instruments (5)
REEDS – sounds like (from the sound) ‘reads’ (interprets)
27 Turning over message not cast in stone? (9)
REVOCABLE – REV (turning) O (over) OVER reversed (turning) CABLE (message)
Down
1 Annoyed head shed tears outside university, being forced into retirement? (3,3,2,7)
PUT OUT TO PASTURE – PUT OUT (annoyed) TOP (head) plus an anagram (shed) of TEARS around (outside) U (university)
2 Nurse in a casual shirt as someone at conference? (8)
ATTENDEE – TEND (nurse) in A TEE (a casual shirt)
3 Good conductor for one sort of music (5)
METAL – double def.
4 Napoleon on a road, where bodies lie (8)
BONEYARD – BONEY (Napoleon) A RD (road)
5 Old gold coin deformed, with inscription of South Africa (6)
BEZANT – BENT (deformed) around (with inscription of) ZA (South Africa)
6 School subject, with one of its stories that could be changed for the better (9)
REPARABLE – RE (school subject) PARABLE (one of its stories)
7 Container at home with one sort of bread (6)
PANINI – PAN (container) IN (at home) I (one)
8 Political threat left people hiding upstairs? (4,5,3,3)
REDS UNDER THE BED – REDS (left people) UNDER THE BED (hiding upstairs)
15 One who offers praise, waving team’s icon (9)
ENCOMIAST – an anagram (waving) of TEAM’S ICON
17 Buzz rising around one thoroughfare and another that is much desired (4-4)
MUST-HAVE – HUM (buzz) reversed (rising) around ST (one thoroughfare) AVE (another {thoroughfare})
18 An aged garment that doesn’t need exposure to air (8)
ANAEROBE – AN AE (aged) ROBE (garment)
20 Gorge a small measure? Some diners can’t cope with it at all (6)
GLUTEN – GLUT (gorge) EN (small measure)
21 Looking cross about revolutionary newspaper’s view (6)
REGARD – RED (looking cross) around (about) RAG (newspaper) reversed (revolutionary)
23 Space traveller has to hit hard with limited power (5)
SPOCK – SOCK (to hit hard) around (with limited) P (power)
Is “cenid” an alternative for “canid” (dog family, inc wolves) then? if not the clue does not work. Could someone please confirm? Thanks
meant to add – sorry about your woes, Gaufrid, and thanks for your work
Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid
Some uncharacteristic errors from Pasquale today. The “wolf” in 16a is obviously intended to be CANID, not CENID, but that would give OCAANID; the definition in 14 is just wrong (despite popular myth) – the voice remains at the pitch it was before the operation; PANINI is of course plural (though that horse seems to have bolted).
BART and SPOCK were a bit general-knowledgy.
I did like MALWARE and ANGLO-IRISH.
In addition to the issue highlighted by @terriblyslow, I found the definitions for METAL “good conductor” and PANINI “sort of bread” to be uncharacteristically replete with wiggle room.
MALWARE more than made up for this, though
Thanks to Pasquale and Gaufrid
Sorry to hear of your computer woes, Gaufrid. I suspect many of us have been there, so know how you feel. Remarkable that you’ve been able to post so early, considering.
As I write, there are no comments so I might be the first to query the parsing of 16a. It’s already raising queries on the Guardian site. Cenid doesn’t appear to be a recognised word, whereas Canid is the wolf/dog family – clearly intended by Pasquale. The clue as set gives us two ‘a’s but no ‘e’.
Otherwise an enjoyable, if rather quick, solve today. I guessed ANANIAS from the wordplay and was pleased to find it correct (is this something to do with Anansi who I recall is a trickster?). And I didn’t know BEZANT and entered BESANT from the wordplay so was disappointed to find it wrong.
MALWARE nearly got COTD but CASTRATION nips in there!
Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid
[I meant to ask how come the verb revoKe gives the adjective revoCable (which is the correct spelling)?]
Mark @5
I put BESANT before £checking£. Apparently it is the Old French spelling! However the Z is more authentic as the word derives ultimately from Byzantium (thanks to Google!).
Unable to complete due to 4 words unknown to me. Oceanid as mentioned above, Anaerobe – how is ae aged? And bezant. I entered besant naturally. And encomiast. As I don’t like to wordcheck it was too hard for me
Condolences to Gaufrid-not a good start to the day.Still managed a fine blog.
I enjoyed this apart from the mistake which others have pointed out.
In my Chambers (12th Ed.), South Africa gets three abbreviations:
SA, ZA (Zuid Afrika, the car numberplate thingy) and S Afr.
Yup, I agree about “cenid” and “ae”. The “SA” or “ZA” for South Africa is always one I have to puzzle over.
23d – sorry. Didn’t get the answer, cheated (hey, LOI), looked herein. Not good at all.
I parsed 27a as simply turning “over” = REVO, + cable.
I missed ae for age but I’m assuming it’s an abbreviation of aetat?
You’ll find “AE” in Chambers – it’s an abbreviation of “aetatis” (Latin).
Thanks Pasquale and Gaufrid (commiserations)
I found nothing wrong with 7dn PANINI (for once!)
After all, you could say that humans are a sort of animal, so panini could be said to be a sort of bread.
cholecyst @14
Not convinced – there still seems to be a mismatch. Humans are animals, a human is a sort of animal, humans are a sort of animal? Not sure. I suppose that is colloquial, but a bit sloppy.
Thanks to Pasquale.
Oh Gaufrid, you sound like you are really under the pump. I am sure Eileen really appreciates you standing in for her. Commiserations on your computer challenges.
In terms of today’s solve, I had a similar story to you Rewolf@9, with several blanks in the grid before I gave up.
Could not parse the controversial 16a OCEANID. Missed 1a UP THE POLE (have not heard of this phrase to describe someone who is mad?), 12a ANANIAS, 22a BART, and 5d BEZANT. I solved 15d ENCOMIAST from the anagram but have never met that word before.
But I did like the two long ones, 1d PUT OUT TO PASTURE (which maybe I should be after today’s parlous performance) and 8d REDS UNDER THE BED.
[I was reminded when I solved those and enjoyed the wordplay that each involved, of how much I like long answers, which always give me lots of satisfaction, not to speak of the benefit they provide in terms of lots of crossers!!! In that regard, can I recommend the jumbo crossword you will find under the S&B category, which was composed for the recent Macclesfield gathering by one of our regular participants on fifteensquared, Alan B.(I so wish that I could come to one of those events; it would be fun to meet members of the solving community personally.) It is a great crossword, really taxing, but well worth it, featuring several deliciously long clues. I have also printed off another offering from Macclesfield, by Dalibor, the pseudonym for one of our other valued participants on this blog. I am looking forward to trying that one too. Be careful when you click on the S&B link, as both solutions are already published, but give the puzzles a red-hot go before you read the solutions.]
I can’t be the only person on this site who sometimes submits work to a professional editor. They strip out all the things I got wrong and put in correct things instead. It’s a great idea! C’mon, Guardian, how about it!
Panini is an example of the many misuses of foreign words imported into English. Panino is the correct singular form, of course. Latte, meaning milk, is another instance.It should be latte macchiato – milk with a dash of espresso coffee. But this is how languages evolve, and any attempt to correct the tendency is like the legend of Canute and the waves. We might as well just enjoy the rich diversity and inventiveness of language.
Thanks for the excellent and concise analysis, Gaufrid. I do hope you recover those files.
Hugh Stephenson is the editor, but by the looks he hasn’t put up an ‘editor’s update’ since April 30th. I don’t think it’s in his brief to actually test-solve the puzzles, or even check the solutions and working; I think these are taken on trust, mostly due to funds available for the checking. It would certainly be pleasant if the editorial team did check a little more closely puzzles capable of causing considerable consternation to a localised demographic when mistakes are made, but shout too loudly and the whole shooting-match could go down- a daily diet of the quick and slight cryptics for the many, not the few, as are being called for now in the letters pages as the tougher puzzles are lambasted as elitist. On the whole, it isn’t too bad, and the hours poring over clues which don’t seem to work are the price paid for free access to generally excellent puzzles. That’s what these pages are for I suspect- I’ve visited here on numerous occasions to see if it’s the puzzle or just me, so this site is a most useful tool. Many thanks to the contributors and bloggers here and again, can’t be bad for free access to a valuable resource.
Sorry to hear of your woes, gaufrid, and I hope they are not caused by some 17ac!
I don’t think this has been covered above (apart from Mark’s reference to Anansi @5), but ANANIAS as a liar is derived from a rather peculiar story in Acts 5 about two early followers of Jesus, Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who concealed part of the proceeds of sale of some land (instead of donating it all to the apostles). Peter accused Ananias of being influenced by Satan to ‘lie to the Holy Spirit’, whereupon he dropped dead on the spot (followed three hours later by his wife).
It’s a pity that the error at 16a OCEANID crept into this otherwise very good crossword. At the time of writing I haven’t seen any acknowledgement or correction on the Guardian website. I couldn’t fully parse 6d REPARABLE or 23d SPOCK either, but they were definitely down to thickness of the solver.
There are many good clues here, of which my favourites were 17a MALWARE and 18d ANAEROBE. 2d ATTENDEE is one of those ‘-EE’ words that look wrong to me, but it is long established by usage and is correct.
Julie @16
[Thanks for the mention in your bracketed comment. There are in fact 4 recent puzzles posted here under S&B Puzzles – by Dalibor, Dutch, Exit and myself. All are blogged here too except for the one by Dutch, which is blogged elsewhere and has a link.]
Many thanks to both Pasquale and Gaufrid, neither of whom have had the best of luck today.
Thanks to Pasquale and Gaufrid. Like others I had trouble with OCEANID, BEZANT (the AZ), and AE for aged and had never encountered UP THE POLE for mad. I did know ANANIAS as a liar from glosses on the name of that character in Jonson’s The Alchemist. A struggle for me but worth the effort.
Sympathy to Gaufrid! Thank you for soldiering through.
Castration doesn’t make anybody’s voice higher. It just prevents if from going lower if it’s done before voice-breaking age.
I thought that Sir Lionel, whoever he was, must be a baronet. Never heard of the Oliver guy.
I liked PUT OUT TO PASTURE.
RE is a school subject?
Revoke and revocable both come from “vocare,” to name or call. “Revoke” gets its K because “revoce” would have to be pronounced “re-vosse.”
Rewolf @8 — South Africa is ZA because in Dutch/Afrikaans it’s Zuidafrika.
RE is Religious Education Valentine.
My post @17 was probably over-the-top sarcy, but I was feeling annoyed. I rarely solve other cryptics – do the Times, FT, Indy etc suffer from errors occasionally creeping through?
Thank you Pasquale and Gaufrid – do hope the lost files turn up.
An enjoyable puzzle. ENCOMIAST was a new word for me as was the abbreviation ae for aged (aetatis).
I found the clue for MALWARE very good, but rather worrying…
Gaufrid, thanks for the solutions despite the despair of having lost a lot of data. By way of thanks for your work ,I could recommend using RECUVA (freeware) to see if you can find your folder again.
Cheers and good luck
Gaufrid,
thanks for giving us the answers despite the despair caused by your data loss. In thanks I could recommend RECUVA (free software) which has saved my life many times in the past.
Good luck and cheers
Thanks all. Some new words and one abbreviation for me too.
I’m going to say Dohhhh (almost appropriately!) but why is BART a designation?
cholecyst @14 I’m struggling to see how the indisputable fact that humans are a type of animal proves that grilled sandwiches are a type of bread.
A shortened form of ‘baronet’, Eric @ 29.
robert @30. How treacherous language is. I always thought panini were a kind of bread rolls – toast has nowt to do with it.
As always, this was educational – OCEANID, BEZANT and ENCOMIAST were all new to me. Shame the error in OCEANID wasn’t spotted before publication. I agree with Valentine @24 about castration too, but that seems a very minor quibble.
Thanks to Pasquale and Gaufrid
Eric @29, it puzzled me too, best I can offer is that Bart is the abbreviation for Baronet and the correct way to address a Baronet is Sir…
It doesn’t follow that a Sir is a Baronet though and I’m not sure what the Lionel is for other than word association (I didn’t know that Lionel Bart was a baronet or a Sir)!
Valentine @24
Thanks for the REVOKE/REVOCABLE explanation.
Robert @34 – Lionel doesn’t have to be a Sir – the clue is partitioned “Designation of Sir/Lionel” (double def.).
Muffin @3 – I don’t agree that the definition of 14 is wrong. You could argue that the operation leads to voice being ‘raised’ later in life, compared to what it would otherwise have been. I don’t think Alessandro Moreschi would have much appreciated being dismissed as a ‘popular myth’!
It looks like the general consensus is, 16 has an error. The Latin or Greek root “caeno-” or “ceno-” which would make “cenid” has nothing to do with doggies. Rather it is a word for “recent”, as in “caenozoic”. And if you look up “caenidae” you’ll hit on a type of mayfly!
Looking at the PANINI debate – I always thought that ‘panini’ referred to the bread roll that the filling is put in, as well as the complete sandwich. But Wiki appears to suggest not – it says that the bread part is more properly called ‘ciabatta’ or similar. So I defer to those who query 7 – though I thought at first it was OK.
Pasquale on holiday in France apologises for clue to Oceanid and has sent emergency replacement to editor
Firmly Dirac @36 I know that Lionel doesn’t have to be a Sir but what’s that got to do with my post? You seem to be saying that the Lionel is there for word association with Bart which is what I wrote!
As far as I know Bart is not the designation of Sir, it’s the designation for a Baronet which is one of various groups of people who are referred to as Sir.
robert @39
Are you missing the Lionel Bart connection (writer of musicals such as “Oliver!”)
FirmlyDirac @36
Special pleading? I don’t see a “compared with what it would have been” in the clue 🙂
Muffin @40 If you mean the connection as in word association of Lionel and Bart then no which is why I wrote it and his name in my earlier post!
If you mean the connection in that he was a Baronet or otherwise entitled as Sir then yes I am which is why I wrote that I didn’t know he was a Baronet.
Is there a specific connection I’m missing?
Hi robert
It was a poor clue, as I said earlier. It works in two parts:
Designation of Sir = BART (or it could do)
Lionel – BART
A nice and not so difficult offering from Don. No problem with CASTRATION, BART or PANINI, and the errant clue was very gettable, so I’ll forgive him that. Nice to see Ananias popping up along with Narnia. He’d have got on well with the White Witch, methinks.
Castrati aren’t a myth, but it’s a myth,as muffin said, that castration of an adult man produces a soprano. The voice, to quote muffin, remains at whatever pitch it was at before the process. If it’s done to a pre-adolescent boy, though, it doesn’t change later as boys’ voices usually do in their teens. The boy soprano stays up there.
Please could someone extend my apology to GU as I do not have my password on my Nexus. Were I at home I would have grovelled twice!
Thanks!
I had “ananias” written down, but it looked too bizarre to even be worth checking. Doh! Otherwise I had them all, despite “AE” being new to me and the oddity with Oceanid. I liked “Boneyard”. I think the phrase “Up The Pole” for “mad” is new to me. “Up The Stick” means something _quite_ different.