Guardian Cryptic 27,433 by Paul

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27433.

An entertaining reminder from Paul that the crossword is not the only puzzle around.

Across
8 SCORPION Shaking rear in defiance, poisoner with toxic tail aggravated, as stinger (8)
An anagram (‘aggravated’) of ‘poisoner’ less E (‘shaking rear in defiancE‘) plus C (‘with toxiC tail’), with an extended definition.
9 HOODOO Gangster ducks bad luck (6)
A charade of HOOD (‘gangster’) plus O O (‘ducks’).
10, 24 down GOAL LINE Exhausted after try, back in glee making mark on the field (4,4)
A charade of GO (‘try’) plus ALL IN (‘exhausted’) plus E (‘back in gleE‘).
11 DOUBLE DUTY Undoubtedly less relaxation ultimately, after organising two functions (6,4)
An anagram (‘after organising’) of ‘u[n]doubtedly’ minus the N (‘less relaxatioN ultimately’).
12 STAPLE Power in old chief (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of P (‘power’) in STALE (‘old’).
14 ISOMETRY Equality of measure turns to misery (8)
An anagram (‘turns’) of ‘to misery’.
15 SCRATCH Withdraw score (7)
Double definition
17 ATTRACT Pull a motor backwards, three times round (7)
A charade of ‘a’ plus TTRACT, an envelope (’round’) of RAC, a reversal (‘backwards’) of CAR (‘motor’) in T T T (‘three times’).
20 BEWILDER Puzzle has to remain more outrageous (8)
BE WILDER (‘remain more outrageous’).
22 SPHINX Puzzle setter cross after local entering error (6)
A charade of SPHIN, an envelope (‘entering’) of PH (public house, ‘local’) in SIN (‘error’); plus X (‘cross’).
23 MICROWAVED Heated up, warm voice melted heart of model (10)
An anagram (‘melted’) of ‘worm voice’ plus D (‘heart of moDel’).
24 LAOS Country, capital city once gutted (4)
LA[g]OS (‘capital city once’ of Nigeria) minus its middle letter (‘gutted’).
25 TEASER Stunner covering rear in picture puzzle (6)
An envelope (‘covering’) of E (‘rear in picturE‘) in TASER (‘stunner’).
26 LIKENING Comparing internal material, knife edges cutting through (8)
An envelope (‘cutting through’) of KE (‘KnifE edges’) in LINING (‘internal material’).;
Down
1 ACROSTIC Puzzle a ferocious beast, just over half still to go in (8)
An envelope (‘to go in’) of STI (‘just over half STIll’) in ‘a’ plus CROC (‘ferocious beast’).
2 ORAL Test of popular opinion after upset (4)
A hudden answer (‘of’) in ‘popuLAR Opinion’ reversed (‘after upset’).
3 RIDDLE Puzzle, cooker not opening (6)
[g]RIDDLE (‘cooker’) minus its first letter (‘not opening’).
4 INSULIN Slight cut in hormone (7)
A charade of INSUL[t] (‘slight’) minus its last letter (cut’) plus ‘in’.
5 CHILL OUT Laid up in house with minor wound for dressing, relax (5,3)
A double envelope (‘in’ and ‘for dressing’) of ILL (‘laid up’) in HO (‘house’) in CUT (‘minor wound’).
6 WORDSEARCH 500 more lousy boxes with devious puzzle (10)
A charade of WORDSE, an envelope (‘boxes’) of D (Roman numeral, ‘500’) in WORSE (‘more lousy’); plus ARCH (‘devious’).
7 POSTER Notice theme initially in puzzle (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of T (‘Theme initially’) in POSER (‘puzzle’).
13 PLAGIARISE Appropriate force restraining prisoner, immediately aggro starts (10)
An envelope (‘restraining’) of LAG (‘prisoner’) plus IA (‘Immediate Aggro starts’) in PRISE (‘force’).
16 CODEWORD Line holding up outstanding puzzle (8)
An envelope (‘holding’) of DEWO, a reversal (‘up’ in a down light) of OWED (‘outstanding’) in CORD (‘line’).
18 CONFOUND Puzzle deception set up (8)
A charade of CON (‘deception’) plus FOUND (‘set up’).
19 TRAVELS Proceeds from event finally attributed to composer? (7)
A charade of T (‘evenT finally’) plus RAVEL’S (‘attributed to composer?’).
21 EXITED English team having drawn, no one left (6)
A charade of E (‘English’) plus XI (eleven, ‘team’) plus T[i]ED (‘drawn’) minus the I (‘no one’).
22 SUDOKU Upstanding partners in supposed special relationship about to complete puzzle (6)
An envelope (‘about’) of DO (‘complete’) in SUKU, a reversal (‘upstanding’ in a down light) of UK US (‘partners in supposed special relationship’).
24   See 10
completed grid

35 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,433 by Paul”

  1. I’m feeling really satisfied to have completed this, as the first pass yielded only SPHINX.

    I slowly chipped away and got there in the end, but it was hard work. Several of the parsings took a while to click – SCORPION in particular. I was also misled by the use of puzzle as noun and then verb in BEWILDER and CONFOUND. and I kept trying to include “rebus” in there somewhere.

    Very enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Paul and PeterO.

  2. Agreed. Nothing on the first read through then it began to fall into place. Plagiarise the most tricky as we read appropriate in the wrong way and didn’t think of prise for force until afterwards.
    Thanks to Paul for an entertaining start to the day and to PeterO for the clear explanations.

  3. All good fun – Paul as inventive as ever. Favourites were GOAL LINE, SCORPION (very clever), SUDOKU and MICROWAVED. Many thanks to P & P.

  4. What a dope I am, an unparsed DOODLEGRAM for 6 down stopped me getting the so obvious (now) SPHINX. Otherwise a fun workout from the master and a concise blog.

  7. Thanks for the blog, PeterO.

    Where is everyone today? My excuse for lateness is that I did the Indy and FT puzzles first today. I always do the Guardian, regardless of the setter, since that’s my paper but often have to be more selective with the other two, unless they’re by my favourites, as happened today – both highly recommended.

    Back to Paul: I really enjoyed this and admired the way Paul had managed to include so many thematic answers. Favourites were WORDSEARCH, SPHINX [for the ‘setter’] and MICROWAVED.

    Many thanks, Paul, for an entertaining puzzle.

  8. Breakfast and elevensies needed for this. LOI was ORAL. I have blind spots, sometimes!

    Thanks to PeterO for the parsing and to Paul for the puzzle.

  9. Eileen@7 I don’t know about anyone else but I was gardening. Probably not what you are all doing ‘over there’ in freezing conditions. Anyway, I admire your dedication – 3 a day would take me all day. It’s getting late here so I revealed a couple then kicked myself. But I did find this harder than the recent ‘brain parts’ Paul. Thanks to PeterO for parsings that escaped me, including 11a, 5d and 6d.

  10. A fun puzzle. Thanks Peter O and Paul. I enjoyed the theme. Has any setter ever pulled this trick with the many meanings of “set” (including the crossword-specific one, of course)?

  11. Eileen @7:  No excuse here – took longer than usual to finish, and somewhat longer to parse, that’s all.

    Mr Halpern has become quite mechanical in his clueing but nonetheless continues to come up with some belters.  EXITED was my pick of the crop but also ticked ATTRACT, SPHINX, & INSULIN.

    Is CODEWORD a puzzle?  Not familiar with it.

    Many thanks to PeterO for unraveling it all.

    Nice week, all.

  12. Thanks to Paul for a fun and enjoyable puzzle and PeterO for clarifying the parsing with scorpion and chill out. I started off very slowly with very little in on first pass (even though the theme was clear), but stuck with it and gradually it all unpacked. Like others I particularly liked Sphinx, wordsearch and attract. I did have nightmares with plagiarism. During my latter years in academia this dominated conversations and staff meetings, with many trite discussions about things such as how many words in a row counted as copying with some draconian decisions affecting student’s futures. One of the things I do not miss. Thanks again Paul and PeterO.

  13. Codeword is a puzzle that used to appear on the same page as the crossword in the weekday Guardian.

    I don’t know if that’s where is still is – I haven’t bought a weekday G since the format revamp

  18. Quite enjoyed this – found it pretty tough at first but it got easier once a few crossers were in place. BEWILDER was last in – no excuses for that…

    Thanks to Paul and PeterO

  19. My first DNF for some time. Are the words “has to” in 20ac serving any purpose?  Some very inventive clueing though.

  20. Great fun, and quite a challenge. SPHINX and SUDOKU were my last two in. I liked HOODOO, GOAL LINE, LIKENING and PLAGIARISE best.
    Thanks to Paul and PeterO.

  21. Se corner got me going. Tough all round , excellent test. The clue to 1 down sums it up and rather cleverly sets the agenda right at the start, i see that now i’ve finished!

  23. As a puzzle wouldn’t be a puzzle without a capacity to bewilder, the “has to” can be taken as part of the definition – “… puzzle has to … bewilder …”

  27. Eileen @7
    I’m glad you put in a word for the excellent crosswords to be found also in the FT and the Indy. I’m more like Gillian @9 in that I usually have time only for the Guardian, which is my paper and my first choice of crossword. (Even then, that’s only for about 5 days a week.)
    Over the last several months, though, I have tackled a few crosswords by Anax, Dutch and Rosa Klebb on friends’ recommendations, and they were excellent.
    With a bit of luck I will find a bit more time in future for my hobby away from the Guardian as well as with it.

  28. Themed-clue puzzles are not my favourite (I prefer ‘ghosts’) but I stuck at it, and it was worth it!  At any rate, all the ‘puzzles’ went in nicely, though I did wonder for a while whether CODEWORD is strictly kosher?  It appears to be unique to the (printed) Grauniad puzzle-page, Chambers kens it not, nor does Wikipedia.  So is this fair on those who come to the Graun solely for the cryptic?  (for the record, I do usually tackle the Codeword.  It’s a nice not-too-hard diversion before plunging into the Cryptic!)

    This was within a whisker of being a DNF for me.  9a.  I puzzled over possible fits for H_O_O_: “HOOPOE”?  “HEOROT”?  Eventually I half-cheated – typed in HOO___ online and ‘check’d.  At least that narrowed my choices, and finally HOODOO clicked.  I believe it’s a variant spelling of VOODOO – a more familiar version?

    Like SPHINX a lot.  Excellent misdirection, with “setter” for once not referring to Paul &Co!  Also SCORPION works fine with a lot of &lit stuff – albeit somewhat wordy (Q: could the words “as stinger” have been left out, making it a literal &lit?).  On looking at DOUBLE DUTY and its fodder, I wondered why I didn’t spot it sooner, seeing as a six-letter sequence DOUB_ED appears in both fodder and solution.  But the change in pronunciation is enough to hold people off!

    WORDSEARCH is another good’un.  Two potential anagrinds, “lousy” and “devious” – and neither of them is!

    Good work from Paul – thanks to him and Peter.

     

     

  30. I couldn’t get anywhere with this at first-except HOODOO – so I laid it aside and returned to it this afternoon. It gradually unravelled and,once I got into my stride, really enjoyed it. I was accompanied by some rather good Scandinavian jazz from Bobo Stenson which probably helped my solving ability. LAOS was LOI.
    Thanks Paul.

  32. Hi Laccaria @28

    I’m a pretty recent [enthusiastic] convert to the Codeword – and I’m usually with Crossbar but it depends on the earlier courses. 😉

    It isn’t unique to the Guardian: I believe the Indy also publishes a daily one, as does Michael Curl [our loved Orlando] on http://bestforpuzzles.com/

    Alan B @27 – I usually find that I’m more or less on the same wavelength as you, so thanks for that. For newer Guardian commenters, who may not be aware, there are several compilers who set for other papers under different names [see here : and several others, like my two favourites mentioned today + others, like those mentioned by Alan B, who have not [yet] [apart from the beloved Rosa 😉 ] made it to the Guardian – worth looking out for.

  33. Re SCORPION – when the only crosser I had was ORAL, I was toying with the possibility of CHIRONEX for a while – now that would have been wicked!  But of course the potential of having an X in 4d rather turned me off that idea.  For those who don’t know, and can’t be bothered to wiki, Chironex is the Latin name for the Box Jellyfish – that nasty piece of work that has a habit of taking out Aussie swimmers.  It would be interesting to see whether that word ever worms its way into a cryptic – probably to howls of agony (literally?) from some solvers!

  34. Thanks to Paul and PeterO, I too was a slow starter but did get to the finish line and much enjoyed the puzzle-puzzling. Re PetHay@12, I too unfondly remember issues with student plagiarism, but one recent result has been software designed to catch examples, a tool that has led to scholarly attempts to identify phrases or N-grams to back up attributions studies for the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries (who wrote X?). The notion of plagiarism, however, is a later development (perhaps as late as the 19th century).

  35. I always enjoy seeing that the setter of the day is Paul, and this one was right up there with his usual high standard.  The puzzles-in-a-puzzle theme was great fun, and, even when there was a puzzle type whose name that I did not recognize (CODEWORD), the impeccable clueing led me to a single answer that had to be (and was) correct.  Favorites included DOUBLE DUTY, EXITED, and — for the exact reason stated by Laccaria @28 — WORDSEARCH.

    I found the word “supposed” in the clue for 22ac to be wince-inducing.  But then, I have been wincing daily, multiple times a day, since November 8, 2016.

    Many thanks to Paul, PeterO, and the other commenters.

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