Guardian Cryptic 27,452 by Picaroon

49 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,452 by Picaroon”

1. A Masterclass of setting and great blog.

   Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

2. Thanks Picaroon and manehi

   Most unusually, I didn’t enjoy this offering from Picaroon. To start with I must admit that I found it very hard – for a long time I only had PILASTER, RICK and ISLANDER. The were too many “guess answer, then try to parse” clues. I will except ALPINIST (a favourite) and ECSTATIC from this, but the definition for the latter is surely wrong (it is according to my Chambers, at least).

   TITO is very dated, and “strip off” to remove COMPE….RS is very loose. “For one” to give EG in 4a is also loose.

   My other favourite was ATOP.

3. I did very badly 🙁 I failed to solve 6a and most of the SW corner (21d, 20d, 24a, 16d).
   New for me was RICK = pain in neck or back, and I have never heard the term RACK RENT term before. Is it commonly used outside UK? (just out of interest)
   My favourites were CONFEDERATE, AFTERSUN.

   Thanks manehi and Picaroon

4. Muffin @2 has read my mind.  One or two I enjoyed – LIQUID was nice and slick, and RICK raised a smile.  One or two loose definitions and some excessive convolutions made it less enjoyable.

5. muffin@2: Good morning. Re TITO I think “strip off” in this case means more “find the hiding place i.e. reveal” than discard all the other letters, though it does amount to the same thing. Agree it is dated, though.

   Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

6. I’m with manehi and copmus. I’d just add 22ac to manehi’s favourites.

   muffin, what’s wrong with EG = ‘for one’? It crops up quite a lot and I’ve always thought it was rather neat.

   Many thanks to Picaroon and to manehi.

7. in RACK RENT I think RACK means, in snooker, “setting up the balls for a new frame” rather than just “frame”, so both “frame” and “opening”. Sorry to be pedantic.

8. Eileen @6

   Yes, I suppose it’s OK, but I, for one, wouldn’t use it in the same way as “for example” 🙂

9. Sorry, I’ve just realised that my interpretation of RACK RENT was wrong! Apologies.

10. Hadn’t heard of 20d, so my only ‘reveal’. 21d was solved via the definition, though its parsing was blindingly obvious (isn’t everything in hindsight?) thanks to Manehi. A great offering for a Friday morning. Many thanks, Picaroon and Manehi.

11. Martin @7 and @9

    I also thought it might have something to do with billiards or snooker

    I am still confused. . . never heard of RACK RENT before – do real estate agents use this term? or the victims? it is not in my online dictionary. . . . I suppose I can do a serious google search now (or tomorrow)

12. michelle@3

    Castle Rackrent, one word, is an Irish novel of 1800 by Maria Edgeworth about the landowning Rackrent family. Edgeworth was a strong 3-down of tenants against ‘horrid letters’. I think I read it decades ago and will now want to re-read. Such themes are always topical.

    Thanks also to Picaroon and manehi for fine puzzle and blog.

     

     

13. Re TITO (@2 and @5). I’m intrigued by the criticism that it’s ‘dated’. He is a major figure in relatively recent history. By the same token you could argue that, say, LEE for ‘General’ is dated. TITO requires a knowledge of 20th Century history. Does that make it ‘dated’?

14. I too enjoyed this; so many thanks to Picaroon! There were a couple I failed to parse, and so I appreciated the excellent blog from manehi (though, once I saw the explanations, I wondered why I’d struggled).

    I hope people didn’t immediately think “well, of course he is” after solving 8d!  (-;

15. Thanks to Picaroon and Manehi. A good workout and a straightforward blog. Last in was 6a. Convinced it was disaster. Except it wasn’t.

16. Thanks Manehi. I usually enjoy Picaroon’s offerings and so it was for most of this one but there were a few that, without the requisite GK, were frustratingly impenetrable. I was pleased when my quick recall of New York boroughs threw up Hebron, but I have never heard of Raymond Blanc and was convinced the words meant more than just “a Frenchman”. I have heard both ‘pudding’ and ‘afters’ for dessert of course but not often enough to equate the two. And is AFTERSUN a brand name for cream? Never seen it so would have looked for 5,3 if I had solved the wordplay. I have heard a vacuum cleaner called a vacuum, a cleaner and a hoover, but never just vac. That abbreviation is reserved for vacation in my lexicon.

    I came up with RACK RENT and presumed it was comparable to ‘rack rate’ which is very common in the hotel industry. The rate before promotions and discounts can be high, but doesn’t justify “horrid”, so I am glad Quenbarrow@12 came up with the reference.

    So, outside my comfort zone today, but I enjoyed most of it and am happy with that.

17. I thought puzzle this was excellent! I loved the definition for RACK RENT and the ‘rain’ part of REGAIN. The nearest I got to a grumble was the description of ER as ‘leader’, which I thought was pushing it a bit.

    I can’t remember where, but I’m sure I’ve seen ISLANDER’s wordplay used before as a homophone for ICELANDER.

    Thanks to all.

18. A perfect mixture of trickiness and fun   Thank you to Picaroon and Manehi

19. My day always looks brighter when I see that the Guardian puzzle is set by Picaroon, and I enjoyed today’s offering as much as ever. I always feel that, unlike some setters, Picaroon wants the solver to complete the puzzle successfully without outside assistance, but to have to put some effort in to achieve it.

20. Fairly horrible grid, useful for alphabeticals and setters in a hurry (only 26 clues.)

    I didn’t really enjoy this, although probably because I’m not good enough at solving. I didn’t know RACK RENT, and failed on the SW corner, although there was a good clue for CAVA in retrospect. Like muffin @2 I queried doolally = ecstatic but Oxford has ‘transported with excitement or pleasure,’ so that seems to cover it.

    I was convinced that ‘Over sixteen’ meant adult, but may have got this if I had realised what Raymond Blanc’s pudding was about.

21. Greatly enjoyed this although couldn’t get AFTERSUN. Favourites were BLUNDERBUSS, AMNESIA, LIQUID, CAVA and ATOP. Many thanks to P & m.

22. P.S. … and thanks to Picaroon and manehi for a good blog.

23. Probably the best Graun puzzle since the last Arachne.

24. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi. I am in the camp of enjoyed this, but on the other hand still found it very tough, with an awkward grid. I nearly gave up a few times, but persevered and eventually got there, and agree with the liking of clues people have suggested. I was held up in the SW until the penny dropped with cava which then led to aftersun. My last one in was atop which I struggled to parse until a bit of finger counting helped out. Feeling quite chuffed after my last three Friday failures (one of which was a Picaroon I think), because I have at last got a full week of completions. That said will probably come unstuck tomorrow. Thanks again to Picaroon and manehi.

25. Thanks both,

     

    It gave steadily – nothing too easy, nothing impossible – which is always a sign of a good puzzle.

26. I enjoyed this.  I had an unusually hard time — last night I got only four answers — PENT-UP, IMMORAL, REPUBLIC and ISLANDER.  Most of the others emerged this morning, but I needed the check button for some, and had to reveal CAVA.  I’ve never heard of RICK as a pain in the neck, the word I know is CRICK, so I tried to find a way to remove the C.

    I liked ATOP and HEBRON.  Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

27. Like George Clements @19, “I always feel that, unlike some setters, Picaroon wants the solver to complete the puzzle successfully without outside assistance, but to have to put some effort in to achieve it.”

    Unusually, though, I had a couple of minor niggles with this crossword.

    I thought the wordplay in TITO was a bit loose. (However, I don’t share others’ concerns that Tito is in any way ‘dated’.)

    In REGAIN, I thought ‘for one’ was also a bit loose for ‘eg’, which means ‘for example’ without any number specified. More often than not, ‘for example’ and ‘for one’ are interchangeable, but I for one (!) would not use ‘for one’ to indicate ‘eg’.

    RACK RENT was new to me, but as I always expect with this setter the clue was good enough to tease out this rather appropriate phrase.

    I loved AFTERSUN, which I had to get in order to make progress in the SW corner, my other favourites being HEBRON, PENT-UP and LIQUID.

    MAny thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

28. I saw Picaroon and said to Mrs W “we’re in for some fun” but it turned out to be a more arduous solve than I imagined so whilst there was lots to enjoy I didn’t find it as much fun as I hoped – but that was down to my solving ability not the setter’s clueing.
    In the end it was a DNF with the SW proving too much for me – although as others have said there is nothing too tricky with hindsight. I even wrote out the alphabet from A to P but still didn’t see it! Brilliant.
    Thanks to Picaroon for another great puzzle and to manehi for making everything clear.

29. As always with Picaroon, there is some great misdirection here – another fine crossword, but quite a tricky one to finish. HEBRON was last in, though I needed all the crossers to remember RACK RENT and several others took me a while to parse.

    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi

30. There aren’t that many nonsensical trendy cluing devices in this one either, so it must be good. Not necessarily as good as some other Picaroons, but well up there. I had the same feeling as muffin to a degree.

31. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi. I got off to a very slow start, but things then fell into place. I knew RACK RENT (maybe from some 19th-century novel) but not AFTERSUN (though I could parse it). I’ve finally caught on to the use of exclamations in the clues – this time MY in GIN RUMMY. LOI were CAVA and ATOP. I find the comments about TITO above interesting given the omnipresent NEY in crosswordland.

32. I found this tricky but very enjoyable.First pass only gave two answers PENT-UP and GIN-RUMMY, then a slow trickle and a sprint finish. (I know, mixed metaphors 🙂 )

    I struggled to parse REGAIN. Just didn’t see the rain connection for ages and thought that drops was an instruction to drop letters from some word or other.

    Many favourites including 6a, 23a, 25a and especially AFTERSUN, ATOP, CAVA and LIQUID.

    I don’t think TITO is dated but I had rather forgotten about him being a Marshal. And as Rog@13 says, if General Lee is OK then why not Tito?

    Thanks to Picaroon for the fun and Manehi for a nice clear blog

33. That ‘strip off’ device we’ve seen before, or something very similar. It’s very inaccurate, and therefore a bit sloppy, to my way of thinking. I normally associate it with removing the first and last letters, and not just any number, especially where one must remove more from one side than the other. Even then, some purists wouldn’t like ‘strip off’ to mean even removal of first and last. I’m not sure which indicators they would like!

34. This was somewhat out of my league and I gave up having completed the NW plus RELINQUISH and ATOP. Looking at the answers, though, it all seems quite obvious and fair and I wish I hadn’t given up so readily. (Echoing a comment of, I think, WhiteKing’s earlier in the week, it is a bad habit of mine that I usually scan the comments below the crossword to get a sense of difficulty and I am sure that affects my perception of how hard the puzzle actually is.)

    Re RACK RENT, it’s not an uncommon term in the legal/property world, although interestingly it has lost its original meaning (per the crossword) and is normally used to mean a market rent.

    Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

35. I found it harder to get started with this one than with any crossword I can recall for a long time. Even with an Azed, there are usually two or three clues that prove straightforward on a first run through. With this one, after about half an hour I hadn’t cracked a single one. Then it slowly came together; and I was able to work through the whole grid.

    There were a lot of clues which were ingenious and required a second or even third look, but none which I found unfair. As WhiteKing observes, 21d is a brilliant clue, not least for its conciseness. LOI was AFTERSUN; I think that having started with “cream pudding”, bringing in a pretty well-known French chef was legitimate.

    There have to be some advantages to being a retired lawyer, and knowing RACK RENT is one of them. You don’t need the literary allusion. Chambers (7th ed – I haven’t checked more recently) gives “rack-rent – a rent stretched to the utmost annual value of the things rented, exorbitant rent”. I think the link to the instrument of torture is deliberate.

36. Loved it! More like this, please!

37. Great Friday fun from Picaroon!  I had many clues ticked as favorites – but I see that only one of them coincided with manehi’s list!  My list was REGAIN, ALPINIST, HEBRON, GIN RUMMY, RELINQUISH, and my two co-COTDs, ATOP and AFTERSUN.

    The wordplay in ATOP, once I saw it, seemed vaguely familiar to me, perhaps from a prior Guardian Cryptic (from Paul maybe?), but the PDM moment was no less enjoyable for that.  AFTERSUN was my LOI, which I stared at for a good long while before the mists parted.  I enjoyed it for being doubly misdirecting – first with the surface, which suggests a cream pudding made by a famous chef [but full disclosure: not famous enough for this US solver!  I ended up Googling his name to see if he was a real person and, if so, if there was anything about him that could help me solve this clue.]  The second misdirection came with the phrase “one from”, which had my solver’s brain immediately convinced that there had to be a word with the letter A or I removed.  A laugh out loud moment when I finally realized that M. Blanc’s significance was only that he is French.  (But not laughing so loudly that my work colleagues might think I was doolally, or might bemock me).

    Incidentally, as I typed “he is French” above, in my mind’s ear I was thinking the comically exaggerated pronunciation of “Frahnsh”, which triggered (synapses being synapses) a recollection of the episode of “Coupling” titled “The End of the Line”, which is, I think, perhaps the funniest and most cleverly written sitcom episode I’ve ever seen.  Just a random Friday thought.

    Back I go to work.  Many thanks to Picaroon and manehi and the other solvers.  Have a great weekend, all!

     

38. I came late to this but unlike the recent Brummie I found this hard going. I needed the check button for AFTERSUN for which I depended on the crossers. Annoyingly the clue proved to be rather good.
    Hardest this week.
    Thanks Picaroon.

39. Coming very late to this – next day Australia time anyway. I had problems with a couple of clues already mentioned, most notably ecstatic for doolally. Two ex-Londoners in this household don’t agree that a doolally person is ecstatic – crazy, maybe or mad or losing the plot, but definitely not happy.

40. Well, emphatically and unarguably a DNF for me today 🙁 .  I ground to a halt in the SW corner, but the whole grid was excruciating.  Perhaps it’s just me having a bad day…..

    Never heard of RACK RENT (I had heard of a rogue landlord called Peter Rachmann who was connected with the Profumo scandal, but that was years ago).  Couldn’t get AFTERSUN or ALPINIST – only after I revealed those was I able to write in ATOP and CAVA.  Not good!

    But of those I did eventually manage to solve, I thought REGAIN and LIQUID were pretty good clues, so I’ll give those a plus.  A bit dubious about ECSTATIC.  Also RICK – shouldn’t it be CRICK?  And TITO the wordplay doesn’t quite cut it, I think.  BLUNDERBUSS was good apart from a superfluous “the”.  Rest was fine.

    Thanks Pickers, I. Must. Do. Better. Next. Time. …. and manehi.

     

     

     

41. Laccaria @40

    Sorry you didn’t quite make it today.  I was luckier: having got stuck also in the SW corner, I simply had to get AFTERSUN in order to complete it, and the clue did in fact give me enough to solve it – it was one of my four favourite clues in the end.

    The grid is certainly what is known as an ‘unfriendly’ one, and it happens to be the same grid as the one used on Monday this week.

42. A couple of late observations and idle responses to earlier posts:

    TITO doesn’t seem to me to be particularly out-dated, unless you subscribe to the ‘history is bunk’ school of thought.  He is certainly more up to the minute than NEY, which is the go to short-form Marshal.  Whqt is more, he had already been put into mind, mine anyway, by 3d – PARTISAN.

    Somebody asked whether RACK RENT was specific to the UK.   I’d say it is even more specific to Ireland, where the payment of rent by tenants to alien landlords became a bit of an issue for a century or three.

    (To Julie-in-Oz:  I saw your reply to a post of mine the other day.  I’ll respond when I know we’re both on the same page.)

     

     

43. I usually enjoy Picaroon, but couldn’t get on with this at all. Now I see the answers I realise it was me not him, except for a few niggles, in common with others.  Found ‘srip off’ unfair to get Tito from ‘competitor’,  didn’t like ‘ecstatic’ as a synonym for’ doolally’ and not very convinced by ”discourage’ for ‘make gloomy’ either.  Trouble is, once you lose faith it becomes much more difficult to carry on.

    Now I see it ‘atop’ is brilliant as is ‘aftersun’. I got ‘liquid’, which is another of my favourites

44. Started this late, got stuck in the South West and went to bed without finishing it; returned refreshed from a night’s sleep, whereupon ALPINIST, CAVA and ATOP revealed themselves quickly: three great clues, probably my favourites.  I don’t believe I have ever used the word whereupon before.

    RACK RENT was a guess, based on the tenuous supposition that it might have something to do with the horrid landlord Peter Rachman, who was an infamous London figure when i was little. I have added the actual explanation to the “crosswords have taught me so much over the years” file.  I thought I discerned a snooker connection between frame and RACK.

    HEBRON was last in, cleverly hidden in The Bronx, and a lot more parsable than Tehran, which I just couldn’t force to work.

    Great work P and A.

45. It occurs to me now – surely AFTERSUN (which I missed) is two words, or at the least hyphenated?  Don’t know – never used the stuff anyway: I take care when I’m out in the sun (my skin burns very easily).  That way lies Melanoma Magnifica, at any rate… 🙁

46. In the tough but unenjoyable box for me. Had to wrench solutions like pulling teeth.
    Thanks to manehi & Picaroon

47. Thanks to Picaroon and Manehi. Dr LC and I really enjoyed the puzzle … we meant only to spend 15 mins at it, but kept on for a while, and revisited later in the day. Didn’t get AFTERSUN (were very close at different times) or CAVA (rather cross not to have got that) but especially enjoyed ATOP and so many others. Very happy with the clues for both, just cross not to have got them.

48. RACK RENT is in the OED, with citations extending from 1605 to 2001 and relating to both Ireland and Britain. The OED even adds a verb, to rack-rent, and derivatives such as rack-rental and rack-renter. I must say i was a perfectly familiar expression to me. (I’m English.)

49. For me, both LIQUID and ATOP felt a little “old chestnutty” I’m afraid so didn’t enjoy either as much as others seem to have. Nevertheless there were some clues that made this more of a puzzle than many recent offerings. For that, I am most grateful. It felt a little Timesish to me (though, of course, M Le Blanc would only be seen dead there!) – a comparison with both pluses and minuses.
    Thanks to P and M.

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