Guardian Cryptic 27,363 by Pan

by

An enjoyable and relatively gentle end to the week. Favourites were 19/29, 3dn, 16dn and 19dn. Thanks to Pan.

Across
1 THRASH Flog rubbish outside hospital (6)
TRASH=”rubbish” outside H[ospital]
4 CALIPER Frantic race to cover cheek with measuring equipment (7)
(race)*, around LIP=”cheek”=impudence
9 PROSECUTE Top of pretty flower given to pretty Sue (9)
P[retty]; plus ROSE=”flower”; plus CUTE=”pretty”
10 CORDS Company doctor returned small trousers (5)
CO[mpany]; plus reversal of DR=”doctor”; plus S[mall]
11 RATEL King tucked into tail of powerful animal (5)
=a badger-like animal
R[ex]=”King”; plus ATE=”tucked into”; plus [powerfu]L
12 RESILIENT Tough soldiers meeting one protected by mum (9)
R[oyal] E[ngineers]=”soldiers”; plus I=”one” inside SILENT=”mum”
13 DESTINY Leaders in Danish economics squander small fortune (7)
D[anish] E[conomics] S[quander]; plus TINY=”small”
15 AVENGE Get even with a very English earl (6)
A V[ery] ENG[lish] E[arl]
17 GOBLET Travel by punt clutching stem of tall glass (6)
GO=”Travel”; plus BET=”punt” around [tal]L
19, 29 SOCKEYE SALMON  Fish cakes cooked with lemon and soy (7,6)
(cakes lemon soy)*
22 ALTERNATE A large bird consumed every second? (9)
=as in “every second” day=> ALTERNATE days
A L[arge], plus TERN=”bird”, plus ATE=”consumed”
24 INDUS Business without exper­ience of river (5)
INDUS[try]=”Business”, minus try=”experience”
26 CACTI Animal covering about one lot of plants (5)
CAT=”Animal”, around C[irca]=”about”; plus I=”one”
27 NONPAREIL American cake decoration sprinkled on praline (9)
see [wiki] link
(on praline)*
28 PORTEND Drink leading to death of herald (7)
PORT=”Drink”; plus END=”death”
29   See 19
Down
1 TAPERED Tread designed to accommodate drill narrowing at one end (7)
(Tread)* around PE=physical education=”drill”
2 ROOST Eggs finally found in bottom shelter (5)
[Egg]S inside ROOT=”bottom”
3 STEEL MILL Plant English tree in peaceful surroundings (5,4)
E[nglish] ELM=”tree”; in STILL=”peaceful”
4 CHELSEA Church given more by leader of affluent part of London (7)
CH[urch]; plus ELSE=in addition=”more”; plus A[ffluent]
5 LOCAL Horrible cola left in pub (5)
(cola)* plus L[eft]
6 PORBEAGLE Head of oceanography leaving unfortunate dog for shark (9)
o[ceanography] leaving P[o]OR=”unfortunate”; plus BEAGLE=”dog”
7 RESITE Move after low mark’s awarded following another crack at exam (6)
E=”low mark” after RESIT=”another crack at exam”
8 QUARRY Game is mine (6)
double definition: =a hunted animal; or =a location for mining
14 SPORTS CAR Mark underwear found in high performance vehicle (6,3)
SCAR=”Mark” under SPORT=”wear”, i.e. “under/wear”
16 ENCHILADA Had a nice buffet including Latin-American dish (9)
(Had a nice)*, around L[atin] – Edit thanks to Trismegistus
18 TRAINED Practised style of jazz outside off-limits diner (7)
TRAD[itional] jazz; around [d]INE[r]
19 SIENNA Woman is returned to earth (6)
=a pigment made from earth
ANNE=”Woman”, plus IS; all reversed/”returned”
20 EPSILON Space to include afterthought on one line over letter (7)
EN=a measurement of distance or “Space” in printing; around all of: PS=postscript=”afterthought” plus I=”one” L[ine] O[ver]
21 MADCAP Reckless graduate given Dutch contraceptive (6)
M[aster of] A[rts]=”graduate”; plus D[utch]; plus cervical CAP=”contraceptive”
23 RAISE So-called level increase (5)
sounds like ‘raze’, to level to the ground
25 DREAM Vision of drink spiked with drug (5)
DRAM=”drink” around E[cstasy]=”drug”

32 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,363 by Pan”

  1. This was a fun puzzle. I was unable to parse the lift + separate under/wear in 14d which I solved by guesswork.

    My favourite was SIENNA.

    Thanks manehi and Pan

  2. Thanks to Pan for a relatively gentle but fun end to the week, and to manehi as I think my parsing was off on one or two.

    But, manehi, I think your parsing of 16d gives a superfluous “A” – the definition must be “American dish”?

  3. Thanks Pan and manehi

    Very enjoyable, but I didn’t find it as easy as you did, manehi. The East went in quickly, the SW slowly, and then the NW very slowly! Favourites were PROSECUTE, RESILIENT, GOBLET, ALTERNATE, STEEL MILL (“plant” very misleading!) and ENCHILADA.

    I took the “in” in 14 to be an inclusion indicator, leaving me puzzled about how “ports” could relate to “underwear”.

    Not keen on “given more” for ELSE in 4d; for me “else” is “instead of” rather than “as well as”. I’m also not keen on “returned” as a reversal indicator in a down clue (for SIENNA), but I expect that’s just me. Should a Greek letter have been indicated for EPSILON?

  4. I forgot to say I had never come across NONPAREIL as a cake – in the culinary sense for me, “nonpareil” is the superior variety of small capers, wonderfully inappropriate for a sweet dish!

  6. Yes, a bit of a breeze compared to most puzzles, but enjoyable. I also couldn’t parse SPORTS CAR – silly me. Like muffin, I liked STEEL MILL and GOBLET. Many thanks to Pan and manehi.

  7. I managed to finish this fairly quickly, but without getting on the same wavelength as the setter somehow, so it seemed a struggle and not all that enjoyable. Probably just me out of sorts today.

    Didn’t know RATEL or PORBEAGLE but worked them out, nor that meaning of NONPAREIL. And needed Manehi for some parsing (thank you).

    Favourites were 3d and 19/29.

    Thank you Pan and Manehi.

  9. Lovely puzzle with smooth surfaces all over the shop.

    Ticks at RATEL, DESTINY, GOBLET, ALTERNATE, & STEEL MILL but Best in Show goes to the lovely lift & separate SPORTS CAR.

    A delight to find what the Americans call hundreds & thousands.

    Took longest over MADCAP because of it’s seemingly double usage of Dutch.

    Fine end to a particularly good crozzie week, than you Pan.

    Nice weekend, all.

  10. oboist @5: Me too. “From stem to stern” is a fairly well-known expression so not sure how L is the ‘stem’ of ‘tall’.

    Perhaps we’re both missing something.

  15. Thanks Pan and manehi; very enjoyable crossword.

    Unfortunate about the conflicting meanings of stem, but I just took it as the bit of a glass near the bottom. I didn’t know this meaning of NONPAREIL but it was well-clued.

    I did particularly like the fish cakes and the high-performance vehicle.

  16. Simon @14
    I don’t think I would say “Do you want anything more?”. I would say “Do you want any more?”, meaning more of the same; or “Do you want anything else?”, meaning “Do you want something different?” – i.e. alternative.

  17. Found this a fairly gentle end to the week. On the more/else theme, “anything else?” asked by a shop assistant (of the fork ‘andles type, good old Ronnie Barker) would mean the same as “Is there anything more you require?”, wouldn’t it.

    Thanks Pan and manehi and a good weekend to all.

  19. William @9 I think the definitions have evolved, hundreds and thousands are generally known as sprinkles in the USA nowadays and nonpareils are a particular type of candy(called jazzies in the UK).

    An enjoyable solve, 11 was new to me, was happy with 17 as stem is also ‘the root of a word’ (I know it’s an etymological root but it’s good enough for me as a cryptic indicator).

    Thanks to Pan and Manehi.

  20. I thought this was going to be a write in but after the opening flurry of solutions I ground to a halt. I had smileys against the clues already mentioned with my gold star going to GOBLET for the “travel by punt” misdirection which more than compensated for any misgivings I had over “stem”. I was also another trying to figure out how ports related to underwear.
    PORBEAGLE was lurking somewhere in the back of my mind – and muffin, surely eating shark or otherwise is less to do with social acceptability and more to do with species preservation?
    Thanks for an excellent puzzle Pan and for the blog which made things clear.

  22. A very pleasant puzzle with lots of nice surfaces. My last one in was STEEL MILL, which was very clever. I was of course trying to think of a different sort of plant.

    It was good to see “flower” actually meaning flower for the second day running! (9a, and 2d yesterday.)

  23. Thanks to Pan and manehi. Easy but very enjoyable. I too was misled by “plant” and parsed, then had to look up PORBEAGLE.

  24. All pretty straightforward apart from a few bits of trivia – NONPAREIL in a cake context was new to me and STEEL MILL was last in. All very pleasant but I preferred the days when Friday puzzles were challenging…

  25. Thanks both,

    I think it is still socially acceptable to eat some kinds of shark, e.g. lesser spotted dog fish, and very tasty they are too.

  26. This puzzle went pretty smoothly for me, although I hadn’t correctly parsed SPORTS CAR or TAPERED (in the last case, it was because I wasn’t all the way awake yet). Lots to like here.

    Describing enchiladas as American seemed a little off, unless you’re prepared to use the “from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere” definition. And I guess there are unique Tex-Mex and New Mexico versions of the dish that hail from this side of the border, and anyway Mexican food is so common here that it doesn’t really count as foreign any more. I mean, I make enchiladas, and I’m of Irish/German extraction and never lived less than 800 miles from Mexico.

    (Yes, that was me arguing with myself).

    Hadn’t heard of the shark, but the clue was clear enough that it couldn’t have been anything else. Naturally I had no problem with NONPAREIL, which proves yet again that in no area are US/UK language differences more pronounced than in the realm of dessert.

  28. Thanks to Pan and manehi.

    Had a strange experience with this: nothing on the first pass, went away and on return had, almost, a write-in! How does this happen? RATEL, NONPAREIL and SIENNA were LOIs and rated among favourites.

    The “man eating shark” discussion reminds me of consternation caused by a friend reporting that he had observed “sheep eating seaweed” on the foreshore.

  29. I didn’t enjoy this at all. Most of it was easy enough but I think I tried to look for answers that were less obvious than those that proved to be correct- SPORTS CAR,RATEL etc. Not one for me!

  30. A relatively gentle Friday after the hard work-outs earlier in the week! What’s not to like? I thought PROSECUTE was pretty neat, as were SOCKEYE SALMON and SPORTS CAR (if you’re not bothered by the ‘lift and separate’) – although in the latter the surface is a bit of a give-away!

    NONPAREIL I’d never heard of in that sense – thought it was an early steam loco but the latter is actually ‘Sanspareil’. Anyway, after a fairly obvious write-in I looked it up – Wiki only gives it in the plural as NONPAREILS (what we Brits call ‘Hundreds and Thousands’) so is the clue strictly correct?

    The only other minor blemish I’ll mention, is the use of ATE twice over in the wordplay (in RATEL and ALTERNATE).

    I did know PORBEAGLE – another excellent clue.

    I spent ages looking for SIENNA, my LOI. Trying to think of all possible girls’ names to fit S-E-N-. And SIENNA was staring me in the face all the time. D’oh!

    Good work Pan and manehi.

  32. Posting a day late – oh well.
    I was pleased as punch to perceive a puzzle from Pan pursuing previous puzzles from those other prolific and perspicacious practitioners of puzzling prowess, Paul, Picaroon, Philistine and “Prufus”! We had a houseguest with us for Thanksgiving through this morning, so I was able to solve this puzzle only over the course of numerous short intervals yesterday. I had everything solved by the end of the day, except — like many others, I now see — I just couldn’t understand why “ports” would be used for underwear. (I was wondering if I was behind the times, and there might now be a type of underwear that was a cross between pants (in the UK, not American, connotation) and shorts, called “ports”. Sort of like a “spork”, except for underwear – haha!!). Finally, this morning, the lightbulb went on and I spotted the wordplay for “under wear” — great clue! My second-favorite of the day. CotD for me was GOBLET, for its “travel by punt” misdirection. Bravo! (The “stem” part didn’t bother me, as I think the “stem of tall glass” phrasing already had me thinking of bottom or end of the word [tall], and not the front as in “stem to stern”.)
    Many thanks to Pan, manehi, and other commenters.

Comments are closed.