Guardian 27,315 / Tramp

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I’m a late stand-in for scchua who has other commitments at the moment. Only an analysis of the clues from me (no commentary) because I am busy trying to find out why the site has been unavailable on a number of occasions since Wednesday morning and what is being done to prevent further occurrences.

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Across
1 Portion of tandoori cottage cheese (7)
RICOTTA – contained in (portion of) ‘tandooRI COTTAge’

5 Champion winning in game (7)
SUPPORT – UP (winning) in SPORT (game)

9 Idle one filling a second coffee (9)
AMERICANO – ERIC (Idle) AN (one) in (filling) A MO (a second)

10 Develop and rent space (5)
RIPEN – RIP (rent) EN (space)

11 Virgin male getting relief (4)
MAID – M (male) AID (relief)

12 Marathon with top athlete (4,6)
LONG JUMPER – LONG (marathon) JUMPER (top)

14 Sign of Treasure Island covers wearing (6)
GEMINI – GEM (treasure) I (island) around (covers) IN (wearing)

15 Where snot runs, having contracted bug? (7)
NOSTRIL – an anagram (runs) of SNOT plus RIL[e] (contracted bug) – &lit

16 Animals like following Hollywood actor, not in love (7)
ALPACAS – AS (like) after (following) AL PAC[ino] (Hollywood actor, not in love)

18 A cut to ordinary man that’s striking (6)
APOLLO – A POLL (cut) O (ordinary)

20 Drives in Switzerland with gold following — money for Italian Job essentially lost (10)
CHAUFFEURS – CH (Switzerland) AU (gold) FF (following) EUR[o]S (money for Italian Job essentially lost)

21 Turning stomachs seeing filth (4)
SMUT – TUMS (stomachs) reversed (turning)

24 Fondle that woman, husband’s away so it’s safe (5)
PETER – PET (fondle) [h]ER (that woman, husband’s away)

25 Pop an E with dare and go raving (9)
ORANGEADE – an anagram (raving) of AN E DARE GO

26 Fleet Street journalist in a hurry (7)
PRESSED – PRESS (Fleet Street) ED (journalist)

27 Leader McIlroy’s first shot makes green (7)
EMERALD – an anagram (shot) of LEADER M[cIlroy]

Down
1 Substantial money for state (5)
REALM – REAL (substantial) M (money)

2 Crack cocaine: concerning bad habit (7)
CREVICE – C (cocaine) RE (concerning) VICE (bad habit)

3 Couple can, when hugging wife (4)
TWIN – TIN (can) around (when hugging) W (wife)

4 A doctor is in: able to get ordered drug (8,7)
ANABOLIC STEROID an anagram (to get ordered) of A DOCTOR IS IN ABLE

5 Kinky orgasm, naughtier partners forced to come together in this (7,8)
SHOTGUN MARRIAGE – an anagram (kinky) of ORGASM NAUGHTIER

6 Party in Spain — euros exchanged (10)
PERSUASION – an anagram (exchanged) of SPAIN EUROS

7 Theoretically working daily? (2,5)
ON PAPER – ON (working) PAPER (daily)

8 Shoot film in retreat: Doctor in Love (7)
TENDRIL – ET (film) reversed (in retreat) plus DR (doctor) in NIL (love)

13 Do farmers use these branches at bottom of field? (10)
PITCHFORKS – FORKS (branches) after (at bottom of) PITCH (field)

16 Drink from county river running through mountain (7)
ALCOPOP – CO (county) PO (river) in (running through) ALP (mountain)

17 Spin prime minister’s endless talk (7)
PRATTLE – PR (spin) ATTLE[e] (prime minister’s endless)

19 Lesbian character accepting a dance (7)
LAMBADA – LAMBDA (Lesbian {Greek} character) around (accepting) A

22 Time to solve Tramp? (5)
TREAD – T (time) READ (solve)

23 Faint, wiping head getting fever (4)
AGUE – [v]AGUE (faint, wiping head)

63 comments on “Guardian 27,315 / Tramp”

  1. Thanks Tramp, and thanks for standing in, Gaufrid (btw I’m relieved that you know about occasional site problems, though I was totally offline for most of yesterday)

    I enjoyed this, and didn’t find it as difficult as some of Tramp’s; NOSTRIL, EMERALD and PRATTLE were my favourites.

    Long anagrams aren’t my favourite sort of clue, but SHOTGUN MARRIAGE was good.

    “Party” seems a bit more committed than PERSUASION – “he’s of that persuasion” suggests that he shares some views, but isn’t a member?

  2. Thanks for stepping in Gaufrid.

    This was slap-bang in the middle of my Goldilocks zone – loved it all.

    Particular favourites were ALPACAS, ORANGEADE, PETER, PITCHFORKS, PRATTLE, NOSTRIL, & LAMBADA.

    Not terribly fond of ‘read’ = ‘solve’ but that’s a very minor nitpick.

    Elegant clueing everywhere. Many thanks, Tramp.

    Nice weekend, all.

  3. Muffin @1 Persuasion = party. I thought the same but decided in the end that it was just about close enough for crosswords.

  4. muffin & William
    No problem with 6dn. Under PERSUASION there is:
    Chambers – 6. A party adhering to a creed
    Collins – 5. A sect, party, or faction

  5. Thanks for the blog, Gaufrid.

    Another great puzzle from Tramp. My particular favourites today were ALPACAS, CHAUFFEURS and the brilliant EMERALD – a real gem. 😉 I had no problem at all with the cleverly misleading definition of PERSUASION.

    Many thanks to Tramp for a most enjoyable puzzle.

  7. Highly enjoyable, thanks to Tramp & Gaufrid (sorry you’ve got the gremlins in).
    V good long anagram fodder at 5d but the clue for EMERALD was even better.
    Nice weekend, everyone

  8. Thanks to Tramp and Gaufrid.

    Enjoyed this, especially the two long anagrams. Had to come here for the parsing of CHAUFFEURS, from which I learn (don’t I?) that “Job essentially” can mean just the middle letter, the essence if you will, of the word “Job”. A new trope for me, and acceptable for the purposes of a nice surface – one among many. Appropriate that Eric Idle should turn up in among so many “nudge, nudge” allusions.

  9. I’m going to sound a contrary note as I felt this was not Tramp at his best. Unusually I find myself disagreeing with Eileen@5 as I thought the clue for CHAUFFEURS was one of the most contrived for a long time. For me the puzzle lacked the wit and teasing that I’ve come to expect from Tramp. Like muffin@1 I liked the 5d anagram along with 25a.
    I hadn’t come across EN for “space” before – how does this work? And thanks to Gaufrid for persuading me about 6d, as well as the blog and site work, and of course thanks to Tramp.

  11. Thanks Tramp for a very enjoyable crossword, and to Gaufrid for standing-in.

    My most-liked were NOSTRIL, EMERALD and PETER, although I doubt anyone uses this word for safe outside crosswords (?)

  12. WhiteKing @9 EM & EN are printers spaces from the (good?) old days when print had to be typeset carefully by clever people to make it nice to read.

  13. …I should have added that an EM is a unit of space equal to the height of the font used. I think (but don’t really know) that an EN is half this.

  14. Hi WhiteKing @9 – it was precisely the ‘contrivance’ of CHAUFFEURS that I enjoyed: I managed to piece it together from the wordplay, rather than solve-then-parse and there was a very satisfying moment when it all came together. I also liked the Italian Job element – great film! [the original, of course].

    EM and EN are well worth remembering – they crop up quite often in crosswords.

  15. While we’re in mutual education mode, may I ask how “ff” equates to “following”? I blinked on this in my earlier posting.

  16. Thanks William and Eileen for the space enlightenment. Eileen, I can see how solving CHAUFFEURS from the wordplay and then parsing is much more satisfying than the solve-then-parse way I got to it. Had I done what you did it would have got a 🙂 rather than a :-(. Thanks for helping me see it another way.

  17. I thought I knew what em and en stood for, but the last time I tried to research it, I came away more confused!

    What I used to “know” was that an “n-dash” was a dash/hyphen the same width of a lower case n in the font size in use; an “m-dash” was twice the length, the same width as a lower case m.

    As you may gather, this is contradicted online more times than it is confirmed!

  19. muffin @17 Mmm…know what you mean. I think it’s all a bit mirky. I always believed that the em and the en linked horizontal space to the vertical height of the font. An em being a unit of space equal to the height of the font used.

  20. @Muffin
    lest the punters get the impression that Tramp goes rummaging through the bins of the internet (Wiktionary??) looking for random abbreviations, “ff” = following (pages or lines) is in Chambers 🙂

  21. What Eileen said @7 and I’d also second her recommendation @14 to remember em and en as they do turn up an awful lot

    Thanks to Tramp for the fun and Gaufrid for the explanations

  22. Following (sic) baerchen @ 20, ff = following (pages/lines) has been standard usage when citing printed references for donkey’s years. I reckon I must have first come across it at least 50 years ago, and it’s in my 40-yo SOED, unfortunately without giving a date when it was first used.

  29. It’s also worth remembering that doubling is used to indicate a plural, as in bb=books, ll=lines and pp=pages. I have also found hh=hands for the height of a horse, but haven’t come across any setter using that.

  30. Call me immature, but I enjoyed all the smuttily-worded clues – and who would have thought that SHOTGUN MARRIAGE could have a usable two-word anagram?

    Sadly, I fell at the final fence – I just couldn’t get on Tramp’s wavelength for APOLLO. C’est la vie.

    Thanks, Tramp and Gaufrid.

  31. Lambda is a Greek letter and Lesbos is a part of Greece, where Apollo (same quarter) also comes from. Robi@11: Peterman is still used as slang for a safe-breaker. This is in the same quarter as the Italian Job. Then Gemini and twin … Each quadrant has a drink, if you allow ‘shot’. Is there more here, or do I have too much time on my hands?

  32. Thank you Tramp for an enjoyable puzzle, and Gaufrid for standing in.

    I entered ADONIS first at 18a, but A DON does not mean A CUT (share of money) in English, apparently the word is ‘donation’. Favourite clues were those for AMERICANO, PITCHFORKS and CHAUFFEURS.

    Just for the record, ‘pop’ in the ‘drink’ sense was used twice, it does not bother me but setters on the Quiptic site always get slated for such repeats.

  34. @Cookie
    I think to use “pop”= drink twice in the word-play, or indeed twice in the solutions, is possibly a blemish but that’s not the case here

  35. Thanks both,

    Definitely Goldilocks zone for me. Just hard enough to keep me going through lunch, just easy enough to do without artificial aids. Is C a common enough abbreviation for cocaine to pass without notice? OED has two citations, from 1922 and 1959, so I suppose it’s OK. Given that, I thought the misdirection in 2d was splendid – some time wasted on trying to fit an anagram of ‘cocaine’ to the crossers (before I got 14a to give a superfluous ‘e’).

  37. Not sure I get why “Apollo” is “man that’s striking”. I’m also not really that convinced by the letter “c” for cocaine; seems a bit contrived.

    Regarding “nostril”, my parsing was “snot runs” but il(l) for “having contracted bug”. Probably not precise enough to be right and would be more apt if it was “having bug contracted”.

  38. Thanks to Tramp and Gaufrid. I have little to add to what’s been said. I had trouble parsing NOSTRIL and missed the O in “job essentially.” As a retired academic, I’ve been using ff=following ever since I can remember so was surprised to hear that it was not widely known, as opposed to the many other shortcuts in crossword-land such as en-em.

  39. Like Tyngewick @35, a Goldilocks zone puzzle.

    Greg @37, it could be that the Greek God Apollo is thought of as an epitome of male beauty; and there is Apollo Creed of the Rocky films, a boxer and hence one who strikes.

  40. Not sure about this one;the answers were mostly quite straightforward but the parsing was much more difficult. I needed to come here for CHAUFFEUR and I missed ALPACAS. I liked LONG JUMPER,LAMBADA and PRATTLE. The latter was well within my comfort zone because I wrote a thesis on the Labour Party during Clem’s tenure as PM.
    Thanks Tramp.

  41. All very enjoyable except for 1ac which I found slightly weak. Lots of learned comments so I won’t try to think of one myself.

    Many thanks Tramp and Gaufrid.

  43. Very enjoyable. It gave me a similar experience to yesterday’s Shed, both being full of excellent clues, but the Tramp was a bit trickier and therefore a bit more challenging.

    I loved ALPACAS and EMERALD. I also liked the two long anagrams, and the way the setter created such good surfaces for the clues. CHAUFFEURS was ok – I wouldn’t call it contrived, just a bit more complex than most other clues.

    Many thanks to Tramp, and to Gaufrid for the necessarily succinct but very helpful blog.

  44. Very happy to have completed this without any problems and with a smile. Of course my favourites are the two smutty clues, SHOTGUN MARRIAGE and PETER.

    There were plenty more fine clues, for example I enjoyed PRATTLE and LAMBADA.

    Many thanks Tramp and many thanks Gaufrid

  46. Dashhouse @45

    I didn’t know that, and I don’t think that it was necessary to know that in order to solve the clue. Might Tramp have mentioned it if it was his intention when he popped in earlier?

    peterM @29 mentioned “doubling”, including “hh” for hands. I was idly trying to think of an “hh” word – thank you for providing one 🙂

  48. When I saw that Tramp was the setter, my heart leaped at the possibility that we might get to see Tramp’s parody of Orcadian brew.

    Just kidding, but like Plotinus @31, I noticed that we got ALCOPOP, ORANGEADE, and AMERICANO to slake our thirst instead. (I missed the PORT to be supped in the NE quadrant, and I still cannot see “shot” there – only “shoot” and “snot”).

    Like many others above, I thought EMERALD was a splendid clue – what a great surface! Other favorites were AMERICANO (including its Monty Python reference in the wordplay), NOSTRIL, ALPACAS and SHOTGUN MARRIAGE. I had to will myself to solve the parsing in CHAUFFEURS on my own (I was assuming that “following” took care of only one F, and I was stuck trying to see how the rest of the clue would lead to “FEURS”) and not to just give up and come here for it, but once the penny dropped, I liked this clue very much as well.

    I solved 19d exactly as described by Dashhouse @45. I believe that lambda (as the actual Greek letter, less so as the six-letter English word) as a symbol for lesbian is fairly well-known here in the USA, and not just within the LGBT community.

    Many thanks to Tramp for a very enjoyable wrap-up to the week, and also to Gaufrid for the blog.

  49. My first thought on “Eric” was “Eric, or little by little” (who could, very loosely, be described as “idle”; however the Python works much better!

  51. Enjoyed the crossword, thanks Tramp and all commentators, especially Peter Aspinwall who seems remarkably compos mentis given his apparent great age……..

  52. Very good crossword – for me the best of the week.
    From the first one in (RICOTTA) [does that really exist, ‘tandoori cottage cheese’?] …
    … to the last (TREAD) – with some hesitation, though.
    Where angels fear to tramp // I always read the clues.
    And now to be serious, they’re both in Chambers: tread/tramp(le) and read/solve.

    No particular favourite, all very evenly clued.
    For which thanks to Tread.

    (and to Gaufrid, of course)

  54. Thanks Gaufrid, for standing in for me. And apologies to all for the late notice/absence. I initially thought I could still make it (cf. my placeholder post), but my deal negotiation, with a looming deadline, took longer than I expected. Cheers!

  55. Dashhouse@45 and muffin@46 – Lambda was actually adopted as a symbol for the LGBT community in general, not just lesbians. It’s not a symbol I’ve ever taken to, I have to say. It seems quite random and doesn’t carry the historical depth of the rainbow flag or pink triangle. Having said that, I appreciate the work of Lambda Legal in the US, and Lambda Rising Bookstore in Washington, DC was (and perhaps still is?) a great place to visit.

  59. Good offering from Tramp – I started this one in mid-afternoon but soon put it down with only three or four lights filled. No picnic! Eventually put to bed late in the evening. I had an early-on quibble about TWIN (shouldn’t it have been TWINS?) but then I realised that TWIN as a verb fits perfectly.

    I have my usual beefs about over-use of initial letters without indicators – but I recognise I’m swimming against the tide here! Tramp has been more discreet than some in their use. In particular, I liked PETER – where the initial H has to be removed, not added. Took me back to the good old days of watching Z-Cars – had to think a while before I remembered about “Peterman” being a word for “Safe-cracker”.

    Favourite? Hard to pick, lots of good-‘uns. OK, ALPACAS was pretty neat. You’d have to be living on Mars these past 50 years, not to know who Al Pacino is!

    My GK left me cold however when I came to LAMBADA. Had to look that one up. I was trying to fit SAPPHO plus another letter in there…..

    Thanks Tramp and Gaufrid.

  61. An accidental visitor to this website & now it’s in my daily routine ( it really isn’t helping my crossword addiction) Was so horrified at the idea of tandoori cottage cheese whilst eating my breakfast that I nearly missed the answer. I’m a sucker for an anagram so loved 4 &5 today. Many thanks to the setters, bloggers & interesting & informative comments. Great stuff!

  62. Started this full of enthusiasm on Friday – and then came to a grinding halt for two days on the NE and SW corners. CHAFFEURS was my breakthrough – Steve had totally forgotten that CH is the abbreviation for Switzerland on cars even though we go there twice a year…. Really liked SHOTGUN MARRIAGE as well. Though I bet no one else reads this comment as we are so late posting it!

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