Guardian Cryptic 27,514 by Chifonie

by

A pleasant solve, with favourites 9ac and 4dn.

The repetitions of OVER/T and CART in the grid had me looking for a deeper connection, but I haven’t been able to spot one. The reference in 22ac was new to me. Many thanks to Chifonie.

Across
1 CORRODE Eat away at fuel element in heart of reactor (7)
fuel ROD in CORE of a nuclear reactor
5 ARBITER Judge a royal nipper (7)
A Royal BITER=”nipper”
9 LATHE Turner is delayed about an hour (5)
LATE=”delayed” around Hour
10 REPRESENT Theatre company dislike picture (9)
REPertory=”Theatre company”, plus RESENT=”dislike”
11 OVERTURNED Open vessel journalist upset (10)
OVERT=”Open”, URN=”vessel”, EDitor=”journalist”
12 HAIL Greet bad weather (4)
double definition
14 ENCHANTRESS Siren in car sent hens crazy (11)
(car sent hens)*
18 HIPPOCRATES Trendy Italian banker boxes celebrated doctor (11)
=Greek doctor known as the “Father of Medicine”
HIP=”Trendy”, PO=Italian river with banks or “banker”, CRATES=”boxes”
21 REEL Look suggestively back in the dance (4)
LEER=”Look suggestively”, reversed/”back”
22 CHARTREUSE Mrs Mopp has time to recycle liqueur (10)
CHAR=”Mrs Mopp” a char lady in the radio series It’s That Man Again [wiki], Time, REUSE=”recycle”
25 UNCLEARED Relative gets a halt signal that’s not vindicated (9)
UNCLE=”Relative”, A RED=”a halt signal” at traffic lights
26 TAGUS Children’s game gets you and me in river (5)
=river in Spain and Portugal
TAG=”Children’s game”, US=”you and me”
27 HOT SHOE Camera socket stolen by son with long-handled instrument (3,4)
=a bracket on top of a camera that accessories can clip onto
HOT=”stolen” goods that are difficult to sell on, Son, HOE=”long-handled instrument”
28 ECHELON Part of the creche longs for rank (7)
Hidden in crECHE LONgs
Down
1 CALLOW Immature animal eats everything (6)
COW=”animal” around ALL=”everything”
2 ROTTER Cad runs over appealing carnivore (6)
Runs the cricket abbreviation, OTTER=”appealing[?] carnivore”
3 OVER THE TOP Alien hiding in public dance is lacking restraint (4,3,3)
ET=extra-terrestrial=”Alien”, inside OVERT=”public” and HOP=”dance”
4 ERROR Blunder has rascal guillotined (5)
tERROR=brat, “rascal”, with its head/top letter removed or “guillotined”
5 APPLECART Place trap carelessly and this could be upset (9)
=reference to the phrase “upset the applecart”
(Place trap)*
6 BEER Worker gets king a drink (4)
BEE=”Worker”, plus Rex=”king”
7 TEENAGER Youth to generate transformation (8)
(generate)*
8 RUTHLESS Hard-hearted? Girl not so much! (8)
RUTH=”Girl”, LESS=”not so much”
13 AT A STRETCH He attracts constituents but only with difficulty (2,1,7)
(He attracts)*
15 CARTHORSE God’s in charge of working animal (9)
THOR’S=”God’s” in CARE=”charge”
16 THOROUGH Utter nothing in between (8)
O=”nothing” in THROUGH=”between”
17 UPPERCUT Superior reduced strike (8)
UPPER=”Superior”, CUT=”reduced”
19 CUDGEL Stick semi-digested food with jelly (6)
CUD=”semi-digested food”, GEL=”jelly”
20 LESSON Model wearing fewer clothes? (6)
LESS ON=”wearing fewer clothes”
23 RIDGE Travel across German mountain range (5)
RIDE=”Travel” around German
24 LEAH Jacob’s wife finds the meadow hot (4)
=Biblical character
LEA=”meadow”, Hot

32 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,514 by Chifonie”

  1. Gosh. First of the day!!!
    I enjoyed this partly because it only took 15 mins between Moorgate tube and my desk.

  2. Thanks both. I suspect the otter in 2d is less appealing if you happen to be a fish. Maybe he/she plays cricket?

  3. I was unable to parse 1a, and new word for me today was TAGUS river.
    My favourites were 14a, 15d, 22a, 18a.
    Thank you Chifonie and manehi

  4. A pleasant solve – thanks to Chifonie and manehi.

    I also wondered about the justification for “appealing” at 2d. I was hoping someone could explain it, though I do like Shirl’s attempt @2.

    As well as the repetitions of “over(t)” and “cart”, there were also two dances that made me wonder if something was going on.

    Favourite today was 14a, for the surface.

  7. Thank you Chifonie and manehi.

    An ideal puzzle for beginners and fun for others.  I definitely think that OTTERs are appealing!

  10. I raced through this, but enjoyed it a lot. Couldn’t parse CARTHORSE, but now see it’s a rather good clue. Many thanks to C & m.

  11. ‘carnivore’ is a very broad category, I think the adjective ‘appealing’ is there just to help solvers …

  12. All pretty straightforward as we have come to expect on Mondays

    Thanks to Chifonie and manehi

  13. Thanks to Chifonie and manehi. As others have said a pleasant and relatively straightforward solve. I got held up in the SW for a bit largely because hot shoe a new word for me and with the parsing of thorough and carthorse. However latter both in my favourites category along with chartreuse. Thanks again to Chifonie and manehi.

  14. Pleasant straightforward solve, thanks Chifonie.

    Thanks manehi; I thought the boxes was a containment indicator at the beginning.

    I quite liked the LESS ON, but I’m not sure in what context LESSON is model? I also liked CORRODE.

  15. Thanks both, pleasing solve with a tick at the model wearing fewer clothes.

    I, too, queried the appealing otter – not very appealing to fishermen I can assure you.

    Other than that, all smoothly clued – I’m warming to this setter.

    Nice week, all.

  16. As Cookie says @7, ideal for beginners like me. Managed to finish it and some of them came pretty quickly. There were a couple of very well designed clues I thought. I would have got the Doctor quicker if only I’d remember that banker = river in this crazy puzzle universe.

    Thank you to Chifonie and manehi.

  17. Robi at 14. An object lesson in good behaviour, say, is a model example of what something should be. I found this straightforward, but was irritated by the way overt was twice clued, rather than an alternative being found. I can’t see a justification for appealing featuring in 2d.

  18. Thanks to Chifonie and manehi.

    A bit of a romp, but also got snarled up in SW until UPPERCUT hit me from nowhere.  Favourite was HIPPOCRATES for the misdirection, also involving boxing as it happens.  Not convinced that UNCLEARED is the same as “not vindicated”, but why quibble – it’s Monday and the start of a fresh week.

  19. Thanks to Chifonie and manehi. Lots of fun. I did not know HOT SHOE or Mrs. Mop for CHARTREUSE but I assumed from the name she was a “char”  in crosswordland so that I did parse both.

  20. My first full solve in weeks, although I’d never heard of Mrs Mopp because I don’t listen to radio in the 1940s, and HOT SHOE was a google-it-afterwards. I came here to see if there was a justification for ‘appealing’ other than that otters are awesome, and I’m happy to see that there isn’t.

  21. Never heard of HOT SHOE but with the crossers it couldn’t be anything else. An enjoyable but rather quick solve. I liked HIPPOCRATES- and I like OTTERS but living close to the Tarka Trail, I suppose I would!
    Thanks Chifonie.

  22. Thanks to Manehi and Chifonie. A pleasant way to start the week without stretching the brain too much. I’d heard of MRS MOPP although I didn’t know it came from ITMA, so thank you for that information. As for HOT SHOE – well I’ve been an amateur photographer since the 1970s so no problem there !

  24. In Glasgow, a noted Indian restaurant always had Chicken Tarka on the menu. When an acquaintance of mine asked just what that was, he got the reply – “Chicken Tarka… well it’s like Chicken Tikka, only ‘otter.”

     

  25. Fun and accessible, cleanly clued apart from the queries already mentioned. Thanks to Chifonie and manehi l, and to Mister T@24 for the very amusing Tarka story.

  26. I live in a village in the mountains of northern Granada, Andalucía. Not far from us, in Castril, is a gorge walk by the river, with a stretch of it on the river bank before climbing up to a bridge then through through a tunnel, finishing at the bar at the end of the walk. We had friends out at Christmas and took them there, and whereas there are usually a few people around we had the whole walk to ourselves. We turned a corner before the bridge and saw a sleek, furry tail dip down into the river, then a little whiskered face popped up, looked at us for a couple of seconds, then disappeared again. I can confirm that an otter is definitely appealing.

  27. at the risk of irritating the off-topic police, one of my wife’s Florence uni chums works as a part-time tour guide aimed at high rollers; mostly Americans and Russians. Before she could avert their gaze, some tourists on Ponte Vecchio spotted a family of largeish rats doing the individual medley in the Arno and started filming…”oh wow honey look at the cute little otters”

  29. MisterT@24, PopS@26, Baerchen@28: definitely not off topic – the topic being whether the clue for 2d correctly identified otters as appealing. It is precisely those kind of comments that make this site so enjoyable. Thanks to you three, and Chifonie and manehi for the excellent blog-fodder. (Favourites for me were ENCHANTRESS and CARTHORSE.)

  30. A very nice puzzle to start off the week.  There were some concise and elegant surfaces, and some enjoyable wordplay.  I liked CARTHORSE, because it was *not* clued as an anagram of orchestra, resulting in a nice PDM when I finally saw the parsing justifying what the crossers and definition demanded.  I also enjoyed ENCHANTRESS and HIPPOCRATES, the latter especially because (of course!) it contained the latest appearance of one of The Three Most Important Rivers, etc. etc.  But my CotD was CHARTREUSE.  Like ACD @19, I did not recognize Mrs. Mopp, but a name like that led directly to “char” in the answer.  [I believe I have never heard of “It’s That Man Again”.  Had this been an American puzzle, I might have suspected Mrs. Mopp to be a possible reference to Carol Burnett’s famous character, but (a) it is not (an American puzzle), and (b) in any event, I’m pretty sure Ms. Burnett’s character was given no name other than “the charwoman”.]

    I enjoyed the discussion of the “appealing carnivore”, including the amusing anecdotes from Mister T@24, Pop Spencer@26, and baerchen@27, and the video from Cookie @8.  Other than a few suspected but unconfirmed sightings (any of which may have been a muskrat or a nutria instead), I think I have never seen river otters in the wild, but I hope I eventually will.  However, I have seen their larger cousins the sea otters a number of times, and those are most definitely appealing creatures as well!

    Many thanks to Chifonie and manehi and the other commenters.

  31. Just to add that I thought CORRODE very clever as all 3 elements of it relate to a nuclear reactor.

    Thanks Chif and manehi (I do like your clear clue brake-downs)

     

  32. If you’d like a book about the delightfulness of otters read Ring Of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell and the sequels.

Comments are closed.