The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27493.
Pan sets Quiptics and Guardian Cryptics, and this one I think might have fit into eother slot. After yesterday’s tour de force from Picaroon, it was clearly working in lower country, but nevertheless is a sound and enjoyable puzzle. A couple of the definitions were near-but-not-quite synonyms.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SEPARATED | Back copies marked and sorted out (9) |
| A charade of SEPA, a reversal (‘back’) of APES (‘copies’) plus RATED (‘marked’). | ||
| 6 | CUBE | Solid 19 scored by youngster at end of race (4) |
| A charade of CUB (‘youngster’) plus E (‘end of racE‘), with a slightly quirky definition ‘solid SQUARE’. | ||
| 8 | CARRIAGE | Transport for Conservative replacing miners’ leader in union (8) |
| [m]ARRIAGE (‘union’) with C (‘Conservative’) ‘replacing’ M (‘Miners’ leader’). With the first letter unchecked, I had to decide whether it was C or M. I think the clue clearly gives the former. | ||
| 9 | NAILED | Caught church official about to snort a line (6) |
| An envelope (‘to snort’) of I (‘a’) plus L (‘line’) in NAED, a reversal (‘about’) of DEAN (‘church official’). | ||
| 10 | DESERT | Leave last of apples out of pudding (6) |
| A subtraction: DES[s]ERT (‘pudding’) minus (‘out of’) S (‘last of appleS‘). | ||
| 11 | TRANSFER | Research covering fine new creative work about to change (8) |
| An envelope (‘covering’) of F (‘fine’) in RES (‘research’; the abbreviation is in Chambers) plus N (‘new’) plus ART (‘creative work’), all reversed (‘about’). | ||
| 12 | REBUFF | Check soldiers with impressive muscles (6) |
| A charade of RE (‘soldiers’) plus BUFF (‘with impressive muscles’). | ||
| 15 | ETERNITY | Tiny tree developed for a very long time (8) |
| An anagram (‘developed’) of ‘tiny tree’. | ||
| 16 | SPOTLESS | Clean clothes taken back to the French ship (8) |
| A charade of SPOT, a reversal (‘taken back’) of TOPS (‘clothes’) plus LE (‘the French’) plus SS (‘ship’) – or perhaps LES plus S? | ||
| 19 | SQUARE | Conservative‘s “question and answer” tour’s ending in the Home Counties (6) |
| An envelope (‘in’) of QU (‘question’) plus A (‘ansqwer’) plus R (‘touR‘s ending’) in SE (south-east, ‘home counties’). | ||
| 21 | PASTILLE | Sticky stuff coating sickly sweet (8) |
| An envelope (‘coating’) of ILL (‘sickly’) in PASTE (‘sticky stuff’). | ||
| 22 | FRINGE | Unconventional kind of college admitting shady group (6) |
| An envelope (‘admitting’) of RING (‘shady group’) in FE (further education, ‘kind of college’). | ||
| 24 | VIOLIN | Instrument for changing oil into French wine (6) |
| An envelope (‘into’) of IOL, an anagram (‘changing’) of ‘oil’ in VIN (‘French wine’). | ||
| 25 | SEASONED | Experienced soprano helped to carry Oberon’s wings (8) |
| An envelope (‘to carry’) of ON (‘OberoN‘s wings’) in S (‘soprano’) plus EASED (‘helped’). | ||
| 26 | DEFY | Brave US agent retired on the Fourth of July (4) |
| A charade of DEF, a reversal (‘retired’) of FED (‘US agent’) plus Y (‘the fourth of JulY‘). | ||
| 27 | HINDRANCE | Animal bloodline interrupted by new obstacle (9) |
| An envelope (‘interrupted by’) of N (‘new’) in HIND (‘animal’) plus RACE (‘bloodline’). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | STALE | Old table top found amongst discounted items (5) |
| An envelope (‘found amongst’) of T (‘Table top’) in SALE (‘discounted items’). | ||
| 2 | PARVENU | Drug dropped in normal place for someone not yet accepted (7) |
| A charade of PAR (‘normal’) plus VENU[e] (‘place’) minus the E (‘drug dropped’). | ||
| 3 | ROAST | Cook a sort of dish (5) |
| Double definition – but they are virtually the same. Thanks to all those who pointed out the anagram (‘cook’) of ‘a sort’, leaving ‘dish’ as the definition – along with other interpretations, giving a far better clue than I had thought. | ||
| 4 | THEATRE | Mad hatter drinking limitless tea in operational part of hospital (7) |
| An envelope (‘drinking’) of E (‘limitless tEa’) in THATRE, an anagram (‘mad’) of ‘hatter’. | ||
| 5 | DUNGAREES | Muck found on a prophet turning up in overalls (9) |
| A charade of DUNG (‘muck’) plus ‘a’ plus REES, a reversal (‘turning up’ in a down light) of SEER (‘prophet’). | ||
| 6 | CRIMSON | Bloody chamber vacated by setter’s relative (7) |
| A charade of CR (‘ChambeR vacated’) plus I’M (‘setter’s’) plus SON (‘relative’). | ||
| 7 | BEEFEATER | Ale-drinking achievement by English yeoman (9) |
| An envelope (‘-drinking’) of FEAT (‘achievement’) plus E (‘English’) in BEER (‘ale’). | ||
| 13 | EMPHASISE | Space on island found during time of stress (9) |
| A charade of EM (‘space’) plus PHASISE, an envelope (‘found during’) of IS (‘island’) in PHASE (‘time’). | ||
| 14 | FREE LUNCH | European eating almost half of elusive meal (4,5) |
| An envelope (‘eating’) of ELU (‘almost half of ELUsive’) in FRENCH (‘European’). The definition does not catch the idiomatic use of the answer. | ||
| 17 | TOTALLY | Quite small child getting supporter (7) |
| A charade of TOT (‘small child’) plus ALLY (‘supporter’). | ||
| 18 | STEPSON | Relative stops worrying about English name (7) |
| A charade of STEPSO, an envelope (‘about’) of E (‘English’) in STPSO, an anagram (‘worrying’) of ‘stops’; plus N (‘name’). Not a blood relative, of course. | ||
| 20 | UNICORN | Vessel containing coin exchanged for fabulous creature (7) |
| AN envelope (‘containing’) of NICO, an anagram (‘exchanged’) of ‘coin’ in URN (‘vessel’). | ||
| 22 | FLAIR | Lecturer entering fine faculty (5) |
| An envelope of L (‘lecturer’) in FAIR (‘fine’). | ||
| 23 | GREBE | Bird nesting in icebergs going north (5) |
| A hidden (‘nesting in’) reversed (‘going north’ in a down light) answer in ‘icEBERGs’. | ||
Rather pleasing that apparently now no facility for comments on the Guardian website!
14 is a semi-&lit in respect of the idiomatic use of the phrase.
Thanks PeterO and Pan.
Quite nice.
Favs:FREE LUNCH, DEFY & REBUFF
Like Flavia@2 I also thought “eludive” as part of definition..foung double duty
Elusive
Doing…sorry for the typos. For some reason I can’t preview or see the whole comment clearly on Samsung tablet.
3d is an anagram
No Guardian comments? Has there been any warning or explanation of this – it appears to be everywhere and not just the crossword.
Thanks to Pan and PeterO.
Like ilippu@3, I liked 14d FREE LUNCH. My other favourites were 9a NAILED, 21a PASTILLE, 27a HINDRANCE and 5d DUNGAREES.
Thanks Pan and PeterO
Quite (not “totally”) nice. Favourite was VIOLIN. As CynicCure says, ROAST is also an anagram of “a sort”.
REBUFF: Surely “buff” in this context just means “unclothed”, and says nothing about any muscles that might therefore be observable. No mention of muscles in my C hambers!
‘In the buff’ means unclothed, but ‘buff’ is slang for trim and toned: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/uptodate/2009/05/090505_uptodate_buff.shtml
Thanks Peter; I agree, this did seem like a much more pedestrian affair, especially after yesterday. And there was some sloppiness, I thought, in the use of son=relative, and of ‘conservative’ twice, even with different meanings. Thanks anyway to Pan.
I believe “buff” is modern parlance for being in good body shape (and unusually can be used for male or female). Re @2 – why rejoice in (probably temporary) absence of forum? I v rarely choose to chip in to that but enjoy reading it after I have finished and like to marvel at the (a) grumpiness, (b) ungraciousness, (c) competitiveness and (d) general blokeiness (that should be a word) of the commentators.
Thanks to Flavia and TerriBlislow for updating my slang!
Forgot to say that I didn’t like TRANSFER much either – a complicated clue with a very loose definition.
I enjoyed this. Thank you Pan and PeterO.
I agree that 14d only really works if “elusive” is doing double duty: ie the definition is “elusive meal” rather than just “meal”, as there is famously no such thing as a FREE LUNCH. Is such a clue fair / reasonable? I’m undecided.
Re 17d. We discussed a couple of days ago words that can have two opposite meanings, and “quite” seems to be one of them, capable of meaning either “completely” or “somewhat”.
I didn’t spot that 3d was an anagram as well as a dd at first.
Never heard of BUFF in this context either.. Thanks for the clarifications of it.
Lord Jim @14 – as you have hinted – 14d is a paradox: the answer should be FREE LUNCH but it can’t be because there is no such thing as a free lunch!
cholecyst @16: Ha-ha! Nice one. The only bright thing about this crossword.
Nothing to complain about, but not much to applaud either. I’m reminded of a comment on an essay by an English master of mine about a century ago, “Perfectly sound but uninspired offering”.
Nice week, all.
I thought this had a freshness to it.The elegance reminded me of Orlando.I, too, loved the surface for VIOLIN I liked FREE LUNCH too.
Thanks Peter( O and )Pan
Thanks to Pan and PeterO. I enjoyed this but also found it quite tricky in places. I struggled a bit to get going with nothing really “jumping out at me”. Eventually it all began to unpack, but then got held up a bit in the NE and SW. Last ones nailed and emphasise (not fully parsed). I also liked free lunch, dungarees and hindrance. Thanks again to Pan and PeterO.
A bit loose in places, but it fitted into our drive out into the country for a little walk, which was its prime function. Quite liked 26a and 6d.
Very good puzzle on the simpler end i thought. Great surfaces like 1a, 8a, 21a etc , many others. Free lunch is excellent for surface and clever use of elusive. All good for me.
Entertaining crossword, thanks Pan.
Thanks PeterO, 14 had a somewhat elusive definition; strictly double duty but it didn’t hinder the solution. ‘Table top’ doesn’t really mean ‘T’ but something similar seems to be used frequently in the Guardian. I hadn’t noticed the anagram for ROAST, which makes it a much better clue. I’m not sure what ‘scored’ is doing in 6A; is it just padding?
Comments are back up on the Graun but I had some trouble signing in etc. My pseudonym disappeared and I had to go through changing my password for my email account and gawd knows what else. Had to change my pseudonym as I was told ‘user name already in use’. Phew.
I was totally stressed today with the lack of contact with other cryptic addicts/saddos!!
Thanks both,
I very much enjoyed this and it was over all too quickly. I liked 14. The clue works without ‘elusive’ doing double duty but ‘elusive meal’ is very witty. There were lots of good surfaces, too.
Robi @ 22 maybe scored in 6a means “get” as in “I scored some great …”
I enjoyed this lots and thought it had some lovely surfaces. Thanks to Pan.
Most of this went in quickly, but I was held up at the end by some harder ones including REBUFF. Thanks for explaining the parsing of FRINGE and TRANSFER which eluded me in the same way as the subtelty of the ‘elusive meal’.
Favourite was ROAST which would do as an &lit for me.
Thanks to Pan and PeterO
The BUFF definition is in the 13th edition of Chambers.
Thanks to Pan and PeterO. Enjoyable. My only problem was with a few short signals that were new to me (res = research, FE = further education). 14d brought back memories of my favorite acronym (from a Robert Heinlein novel): TINSTAAFL.
I did this earlier in the day before going for a scan. I can’t say I enjoyed either very much. Most of the critical points have already been made so I won’t repeat them.
A bit humdrum overall.
Thanks Pan.
I enjoyed this, although it seemed a bit (or, as noted by Lord Jim @14, perhaps I should say “quite”) like a Monday puzzle on a Thursday.
Given today’s setter, I thought I would create the proper mood for solving this puzzle, so I watched this before I began.
We’ve had a run of three consecutive “P” setters this week. Could Paul be on for tomorrow?
I think that SPOTLESS and ROAST were my favorites today.
Many thanks to Pan and PeterO and the other commenters.
Maybe it was more like a Monday than a Thursday puzzle – and as I often used to find when Rufus was setting I found it harder to solve. It took me much longer than yesterday’s Picaroon. True, I didn’t help myself by putting an unparsed EXPANSION in for 13d – but even when I got the correct solution from the definition EMPHASISE was still unparsed (I’d forgotten EM=space), along with TRANSFER where I agree with muffin@13. It’s seems a long time since we’ve had SS for ship – so long in fact that I almost forgot that as well. I’m with PetHay in liking HINDRANCE, DUNGAREES and FREE LUNCH.
DaveMc@31 – Thanks for the link to the pipes – I thought it might be to the film Pan’s Labyrinth which would have taken a bit more time to watch.
Thanks to Pan for the puzzle and PeterO for the parsing.
Am I alone in not understanding why space = em? Please explain someone. Thanks
In 13 d I should have said.
Dinah @33. An em is a unit of measurement used in printing. According to my Chambers it is a 12 point lower case “m”.
Dinah @ 33 In printing/typography, “em” and “en” are used to mean specific widths, most often in reference to lengths of horizontal rule (1/2 en = hyphen -, 1 en = range hyphen or dash –, 1 em = long dash —, but they can also refer to the horizontal width of a space. The historical origin was the width of a letter m or n in a particular typeface.
Dinah Hilbourne @33
This is a common crossword usage.
EM and EN are both descriptors of spaces.
Originally printers used to use letters cast on small metal plates to build up the text and use this to “imprint” the text on paper. An “EM” plate was the normal horizontal size of the letter plates used (as “m” is the wideset letter) and an “EN” plate was half this horizontal size (as “n” is half the width of an “m”) Spaces came in two sizes EM or EN.
…For instance, in a professionally typeset book the space between whole words might be an em but the spaces between numbers and symbols in a sum such as “1+1=2” might be en spaces.
I have a few points. I don’t really like CUBE as “solid square” – I think “solid analogue of square” would be more precise, but that would make the surface more clumsy. OK there’s me playing the mathematical pedant…
I don’t have any problems with CARRIAGE v. MARRIAGE. The clue makes it perfectly clear that it’s the former.
I didn’t know this meaning of BUFF but then I’m not into body-building or whatever. (Nor am I accustomed to going à poil, as the French would put it!)
I think FREE LUNCH does carry a hint of the idiomatic meaning, if we allow “elusive” to do double-duty. Is that allowed?
Anyway, excellent work from Pan, some real beauties like TRANSFER (fiendishly hard to parse), BEEFEATER, and the aforesaid FREE LUNCH, to name just three of many gems!
Thanks to Pan and Peter (or should that be thanks to Peter, Pan?)
Thanks to both.
I will add my weight to 3d being an anagram and not double definition.
And in 19a, shouldn’t Conservative be identified as the definition?
As always I enjoyed most of it but could not parse TRANSFER. thanks for that one.
Mystogre @40 et al
Yes, I missed the anagram in 3D ROAST, and indeed Conservative should be underlined in 19A SQUArE (and will be very shortly)
Laccaria @39
Double duty is certainly not allowed. You are asking for a visit from the Crossword Police, and before you know it you will be sentenced to two years in the Sun Junior Coffee-time Easy Clues.
I finally finished one! There were a few I couldn’t parse, so thanks to PeterO for continuing my education. I thought TRANSFER was a little clunky but maybe it’s one for the experts?
EM = SPACE? Is that a typesetting thing?
Keyser @42
Congratulations. 11A TRANSFER indeed required some thrashing about, with the uncommon abbreviation RES, the unobvious (questionable?) definition ‘change’, and an elaborate wordplay thrown in for good measure! For EM, see the comments above.
Me @31
Yes, Paul could be on for tomorrow.
I also thought TRANSFER was questionable until I came up with this “interchangeable” sentence.
The train journey from Lancaster to Newcastle was quite convenient, just one CHANGE/TRANSFER at Carlisle.
Not perfect but pretty good.
PeterO @43
Many thanks.