Guardian 27,276 / Shed

53 comments on “Guardian 27,276 / Shed”

1. IVES is the music man in 19D, with KN (knot) on the top. I agree that 11A looks sloppy. I also thought 6D was pretty weak, with BALL and BALLET(IC) essentially being different forms of the same word, so not very cryptic.

2. By the way the IVES referred to is surely Charles, not Burl (of whom I’ve never heard).

3. Seemed like a write-in to start with, but I slowed down after the NW corner. Favourites were PEBBLE, TERRITORY, HEREWARD THE WAKE and ANTIBIOTIC (LOI). Many thanks to Shed and Eileen.

4. I took it as Kn being the abbr for knot, being on top of (Burl) Ives. Even though it didn’t run well.

5. Thanks, Jason and pex – I never thought of the abbreviation. [I’m glad someone else has heard of Burl. 😉 – here’s an earworm for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx3lYqTAlnE ]

6. Solved everything except 11a HEREWARD THE WAKE and 10d FRESCOBALDI. I thought these two needed general knowledge and not just facility with wordplay.

   Sorry if that sounds a bit grumpy, but I got everything else in the puzzle without any use of online references, then stumbled at the last! Probably “could have tried harder”, as I wrote so many times on past students’ school reports.

   With thanks to Shed and Eileen.

7. Kn = abbreviation for knot, being 1 nautical mile per hour

8. I enjoyed this very much, though over too soon. Not sure @Julie in Australia what’s wrong with general knowledge. Isn’t it all GK at some level? But then perhaps that’s just because for me Hereward the Wake and Frecobaldi were my first in 🙂

9. Thanks Shed and Eileen

   A bit disappointing. Generally rather easy, though I had no idea of the wordplay for ESSAYS or KNIVES, and I didn’t bother to try to parse INCONSEQUENTIAL. There seems to be an S missing from the wordplay in MISPRINTS (written before reading the blog!), and the wrong sort of “dessert” in the clue for HEREWARD THE WAKE (the derivation is from “deserve”).

   The ones that I enjoyed the construction of most – ANTIBIOTIC and ALVEOLI – had pretty meaningless surfaces.

   There are lots of local names for the lapwing, so I suppose PEWIT is OK, but “peewit” is much commoner. (The local name around these parts is “tewit”, in fact.)

10. btw Burl Ives gave one of the most OTT screen performances ever in “The big country”. I expect the reference is to Charles, though, although he spent much more of his life running an insurance firm than composing.

11. Thanks Shed and Eileen. I found this fairly easy but could someone please explain why in ESSAYS ES = tablets?

12. Before anyone responds, is it E as in the drug extasy? i.e several doses of it?

13. Sorry ecstasy!!

14. Yes, Martin!

15. There’s a Pulp song “Sorted for Es and whizz”. It contains the great line “I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire”!

16. Do people really talk about an ‘uphill climb’? Seems a bit tautological. ‘Uphill struggle’ sounds more idiomatic to me.

17. Loved the link to “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, Eileen #5. Took me back. It was often played as a children’s song, but there’s much more to it than that. I did think of Charles Ives first though.

    Enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks Shed and Eileen.

18. I suppose “ruined country” could mean a country with lots of ‘ruins’ i.e. archaeological sites. But that interpretation is likely to upset its inhabitants, if takem the wrong way!

19. Thanks both,

    I made the mistake of looking at this at breakfast, so now I shall have to engage in conversation at lunchtime. A super puzzle with some splendid clues.

    The Burl Ives version of BRCM is heavily bowdlerised; the various unbowdlerised versions are much more fun.

20. I didn’t particularly object to dessert for reward in that people say ‘just desserts’ for just rewards, even though, as pointed out, it should really be ‘deserts’ with an archaic meaning.

21. Thanks to Shed and Eileen. I missed the SP = odds for INOCULATE and needed help parsing HEREWARD THE WAKE and MISPRINTS (I was fixated on “sprint”) but much enjoyed this puzzle.

22. I’m with muffin@9 in being a bit underwhelmed by this. I then came here and found it was as straightforward as it seemed – unlike last week’s Nutmeg. That said it is part of the Guardian’s appeal that there is a wide variety of style and difficulty levels which mean there is plenty of diversity in the opinions expressed here – which is a good thing in my view.
    Interesting that Kate Moss made another appearance – is it just coincidence when this happens or is it inevitable and we just notice it when they occur close together?
    Thank you Shed and Eileen.

23. Hovis @20

    I don’t understand your ‘with an archaic meaning’. ‘Desert’ meaning ‘that which is deserved’ is given as the third definition in both Collins and Chambers and neither gives it as archaic. [It’s the first definition in SOED.] I’ve only ever seen ‘just desserts’ used punningly in the names of restaurants. More here http://blog.dictionary.com/just-deserts/

24. Eileen @23. I didn’t know that meaning but you’re right that it doesn’t say archaic. The reason came from looking up the meaning of just desserts which says ‘because most English speakers are unfamiliar with that old sense of desert, the phrase is often understandably written just desserts’. From grammarist.com.

25. Thank you Shed and Eileen.

    I enjoyed solving this puzzle, but failed to get PLANGENT, a new word for me (MERCATOR came to mind), and needed help with some of the parsing, MISPRINTS and HEREWARD THE WAKE (but not happy with the latter).

26. On previous occasions here I’ve seen mention of “setter’s comments” on the Grauniad website. Yesterday I looked for these comments and could not find them. Can anybody suggest where they are?

27. All pretty straightforward but elegant, though I couldn’t parse INCONSEQUENTIAL. Most of the ones that held out longest were in the SE – it would have helped to get a crosser for 18 earlier as it had to be one of the two…

    Thanks to Shed and Eileen

28. As regards 11a, mothers do say “eat your food up then you can have your pudding”, so perhaps ‘dessert’ could be considered as a reward?

29. Cookie @28. Yes, I think this is the reason behind people thinking the phrase is just desserts as mentioned in @20,24

30. I found this both tricky and enjoyable. I came here to see what others thought of the ‘mistakes’ that I found!

    In ‘just deserts’, ‘deserts’ means reward. I’ve never seen the singular ‘desert’ used in this way. The use of ‘dessert’ seems like a mistake to me despite some of what I’ve read here.

    The other ‘mistake’ I found was in 4d MISPRINTS, so I’m grateful to Eileen for going to all that trouble to prove it was ok. That meaning of ‘rush’ was completely new to me. I found the answer easily enough from ‘Grauniad hallmark’.

    I’m also grateful to Ferryman @7 for explaining KN = ‘knot’ (the nautical speed).

    I thought of Charles Ives before Eileen and other commenters reminded me of Burl Ives.

    All very enjoyable and educational. Thanks to Shed and Eileen.

31. I found this rather odd. About 2/3 of it was pretty much a write in and then I got a bit bogged down -and I got DRAB the wrong way round. This slowed me down with FRESCOBALDI,of whom I’ve never heard, and TERRITORY,the clue for which seemed rather odd. KNIVES was a bit naff too. I assumed the IVES was Charles,of that ilk and not Burl, who was a “pretend” folksinger and seemed to be on Children’s Favourites virtually every week!
    Anyway,a mixed bag.
    Thanks Shed.

32. I’m not sure an unedited film print is ever called a rush, singular. It’s always plural. (re 4d)

33. I got PLANGENT but did not know it meant “mournful” (but have since checked Chambers). I thought it meant “slightly discordant” so often used to decribe the music of Thelonious Monk. Chambers also gives “clangourous” which is a fine word and new to me.

34. I’m too lowbrow to know Charles Ives. I think most Americans of my age would immediately think of only two Ives, both inextricably associated with Christmas. Currier and (James Merritt) Ives are lithographers mentioned in a line of “Sleigh Ride” while Burl Ives was the voice of the snowman narrator in the unavoidable “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” year after year.

    Neither occurred to me even once while I was unsuccessfully trying to parse KNIVES. I was wracking my brain trying to find an association between Robert Preston – THE music man in my universe – and whatever nives are!

    And thanks to everyone who helped me with the Rufus puzzle yesterday. I get it now.

35. I figured 4d was some kind of deliberate error or jokey meta-reference: a misprint in a Guardian crossword clue for “misprints” that mentions the Guardian’s propensity for misprints… probably overthinking this.

    26a really should have been “Tries pills and speaks” – nobody calls them “tablets”.

36. bat020 @ 35

    They are frequently referred to as ‘tabs’, so the clue works fine.

37. bat020 @35

    As I tried to imply in the blog [and, similarly, re the [I think] indisputable ‘spelling mistake’ in 11ac] I had the same thought. With the less common spellings of peewit and loofah, I wondered whether we had some kind of mini-theme here. 😉

38. Like others I’m not all that keen on “topknot” in 19dn, but apart from that I found this a pleasant, reasonably straightforward solve.

39. I’m still convinced that 4d is in error.

    RUSH is only valid in the plural (RUSHES) when relating to the first print of a film in all the dictionaries I have consulted. (SOED, OED and Collins) Even if RUSH can be used in this sense the clue is still very weak.

    Is FRESCOBALDI really in the public domain? I’m an avid classical music fan and listen to Radio 3 all day and I’ve no recollection of him.

    The other problems have already been pointed out.

    Oh for an editor!!!

40. Frescobaldi is well known to aficionados of Renaissance music in the same way that Craig Disley is well known to aficionados of Grimsby Town.

41. I took the topknot parse simply as kn being the top two letters in knot, rather than nautical reference.
    I’ve only skimmed the blog, so apologies if this has already been suggested but it’s getting late…

42. Oh dear. You’ve all been rather kind to me. 11ac was a mistake: REWARD does not = DESSERT (11ac), and 4dn doesn’t work at all (as I realised as soon as I saw it in the paper, though for some reason not when I was proofing it). This is rather worrying.

    18ac was not my fault, however. My original clue was ‘Dull old tart’, but the editor said we can’t call prostitutes tarts in the Guardian, so I suggested changing it to ‘Turned poet dull’. He changed that to ‘Poet turned dull’ and I protested on the grounds that that doesn’t tell you which word has to be turned, but by that time it was too late to change it.

    The music man I had in mind in 19dn was Charles Ives, but Burl will do just as well. I did hope that the clue for FRESCOBALDI (10dn) would be fairly gettable, given the number of checked letters and fairly straightforward clueing. He’s well worth listening to.

    Thanks all.

43. I found this very difficult. I failed to solve KNIVES, ALVEOLI, INOCULATE, ANTIBIOTIC, FRESCOBALDI.

    Of the ones I solved, I could not parse 20a and 4d.

    Hereward the Wake and pewit were new words for me.

    Thanks Shed and blogger

44. I for one am very grateful to Shed (@42) both for telling us exactly why those clues caused us such puzzlement and for being so frank about where responsibility lay.

45. Nice to hear from Shed. (I did expect him to elighten us)

    Of course we all make mistakes and know how difficult it is to proof read something we have written ourselves.

    However I’m not sure that Shed’s admission tells us were the resonsibility lies. I’m not sure who is reponsible for what finally gets published in the Guardian. (Although I believe some papers do have somebody who would normally be responsible for this! 😉 )

46. Well I am no expert on classical music but I have heard of FRESCOBALDI and it was clearly clued, so no problem with that. Thanks to Shed for the explanations.

47. Shed’s comment that “the editor said we can’t call prostitutes tarts in the Guardian” has been been nagging me since I read it. (Shed’s original idea for 18A “Dull old tart” would have led to the same answer DRAB as the published clue.)

    Yet the same editor passed Paul’s much-praised clue on 30 December last:
    “Tycoon requiring a wig, lacking leadership: a word of caution about this arse (6,5)”

    which, by the way, I seem to remember was solved more easily from the clue’s surface than from the wordplay.

    Inconsistent or what?

48. Speaking as someone who’s an editor himself in his day job, I think ultimate responsibility lies with the editor, but I do appreciate it if the people I’m editing don’t give me too much to correct, so I’m not trying to let myself off the hook re 11ac and 4dn. As for tarts, look what Philistine got away with in the last Prize puzzle, but I can’t say too much about that because the answers haven’t been released yet. Great clue, though.

49. Alan B @47 [I’ve been out all day.]

    …and a much more recent clue, which I can’t mention until Saturday. 😉

50. Shed – blow me, after all this time, we crossed!

51. Eileen @50

    I’ve had no time to look at the Philistine puzzle yet, so I appreciate that you and Shed have observed the rule of silence concerning ‘that’ clue. But you’ve whetted my appetite now!

52. Very honest of Shed to own to the couple of errors. It would have been easy to grab at the excuses such as offered by insightful solvers, combining “dessert” = reward (in food form) and “rush” = print as a back-formation of “rushes”, and then claiming these “apparent” mistakes as a theme in relation to the whole Grauniad thing.

    About General Knowledge – I like the educational dimension of a cryptic crossword – Hereward the Wake and Frescobaldi were both new to me – but I like it most when the cross-letters and clue’s wordplay between them give the solver a decent chance of intelligently guessing the right spelling BEFORE going to references. I found that to be the case with the Frescobaldi clue – indeed I was confident enough of the answer to not bother checking for the composer’s existence. But the clue for Hereward didn’t really pass that test – between the ‘dessert’ mixup and the obscurity of “thew” I had no chance of getting it without hitting Google with a “Fenton hero” enquiry. (It didn’t help that I had “HERCULES THE ___” penciled in for a long time.)

53. Bit late to post this but dyslexia came to my rescue in 4d, guessing ‘miss’ and ‘sprint’ I just didn’t notice the absent ‘s’. Cap raised to Shed for the candid explanation.

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