Guardian Cryptic 27,563 by Pasquale

by

The puzzle can be solved online here.

A humdinger from the great man this morning, with some unusual words in the solutions.  The first two across set the tone.

If you haven’t solved the puzzle yet, I’d suggest going for the two long down clues first as they are gettable and should give you an “in” to a few of the across lights.

My favourite clues were 5,6 and 7 dn.

Not one for the faint-hearted and I’m glad I got up early this morning!

Thanks Pasquale.

Across
1 SATRAP Governor took place in parlia­ment, talking rhythmically (6)
SAT (“took place in parlaiament”) + RAP (“talking rhythmically”)

A satrap was a governor in ancient Persia.
5 BLOSSOMY Flowery death met with honour in past (8)
LOSS (“death”) met with O(rder) of M(erit) in BY (“past”)
9 STINGRAY Fish to go off course, one no good getting caught (8)
STRAY (“to go off course”) with I (“one”) NG (“no good”) caught
10 TREVOR Fellow who preaches in a Dartmoor location? (6)
REV(erend) (“who preaches”) in TOR (“a Dartmoor location?”)
11 OPPO Mate getting into top position (4)
Hidden in “tOP POsition“
12 RANDOMNESS Man’s snored dreadfully — feature of irregular noise (10)
*(mans snored)
13 GNARLY Any girl, sadly, won’t want one bent like an old man (6)
*(any grl)  (“any girl” without the I (the one not wanted))
14 EASEMENT Soldiers in each group will get legal right (8)
MEN (“soldiers”) in EA(ch) SET (“group”)
16 BLACK ROD Person admitting deficiency, right person to knock on door (5,3)
BOD (“person”) admitting LACK (“deficiency”) + R(Ight)

The usher of the House of Lords who summons the House of Commons at the opening session of the UK Parlaiment is called Black Rod.  He knocks loudly on the door of the House of Commons as part of the ceremony.
19 FLASHY Attack that’s kept quiet or loud? (6)
FLAY (“attack”) that’s kept SH (“quiet”)
21 LION’S SHARE Majority that’s associated with a bit of pride? (5,5)
Cryptic defintion
23 GOSH My word, a hospital that helps sick children! (4)
Double definition, the second being the acronym for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
24 CAREER Run a sequence of jobs (6)
Double definition
25 CREDENZA Race around holding letter finally found at back of study in a cupboard (8)
*(race) holding Z (“letter finally found”) at back of DEN
26 TENANTRY Group having to deal with a letter? (8)
Crpytic definition
27 SATIRE Mockery making one Christian organisation weary (6)
S(alvation) A(rmy) (“Christian organisation”) + TIRE (“weary”)
Down
2 ANTEPENULTIMATE Dish me up Latinate ten? Such is X! (15)
*(me up latinate ten)

X is the antepenultimate letter of the alphabet.
3 RANCOUR Hostility must be managed on playing area, curtailed (7)
RAN (“managed”) on COUR(t) (“playing area”, curtailed)
4 PORTRAYER Artist shows doorkeeper holding light pencil (9)
PORTER (“door keeper”) holding RAY (“light pencil”)
5 BEYONCE What’s almost too difficult for church singer (7)
BEYON(d) (almost “too difficult for”) + CE (“Church” of England)
6 OUTDO Trump‘s unacceptable act (5)
OUT (“unacceptable”) + DO (“act”)
7 STERNUM Bone in back — er, it’s one at the front! (7)
STERN (“back”) + UM (“er”)
8 MOOG SYNTHESIZER Electronic music device that could make rest home so zingy (4,11)
*(rest home so zingy)
15 SOFTENERS Chemical agents more frequently carried by ship (9)
OFTENER (“more frequently”) carried on SS (steam”ship”)
17 CANDELA Tin and lead fused in scientific unit (7)
CAN (“tin”) + *(lead)
18 DIARCHY Avoiding professional expertise to conceal cunning government style (7)
DIY (do it youself, so “avoiding professional expertise”) to conceal ARCH (“cunning”)
20 AUGMENT Increase of good chaps in a union after upheaval (7)
G(ood) MEN (“chaps”) in A <=TU (trade “union”, after upheaval), so A(U(G-MEN)T)
22 STRUT Support belief son will rise to the top (5)
(S)TRU(s)T (“belief”, with S(on) rising to the top)

*anagram

38 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,563 by Pasquale”

  1. I enjoyed this puzzle. My favourites were 18d, 14a, 10a.

    I am not sure why RAY = light pencil in 4d.

    Thanks loonapick and Pasquale

  2. Hard going and after a few sessions I eventually met my match down in the SW corner, despite guessing CANDELA correctly.  Still, the clues were all fair, including for the unfamiliar words and I don’t think it was unreasonably difficult, or at least not as hard as a few in the last few days – take a bow Nimrod and (locally) DA.

    The ‘Trump’ clue was good – if there hasn’t yet been a dedicated Trump themed puzzle it’s about time there was one – and I was pleased with myself for not finding BEYONCE ‘too difficult’.

    Favourite of many other good clues was GOSH.

    Thanks to Pasquale and loonapick

  4. Thanks Pasquale and loonapick

    Great puzzle, very satisfying to complete. Any number of favourites.

    I didn’t parse BLOSSOMY as I thought the B would be part of the honour. I was also puzzled by the “pencil” bit in 4d, but I suppose that it indicates a thin beam – i.e. pencil-shaped.

  5. Thanks for kind comments. In the BEYONCE clue ‘beyon’ is clued by ‘almost too difficult for’. That ‘for’ is important, and in any case I would never use ‘for’ as an indication to add something. I was challenged on Radio 4 to make up an instant clue for BEYONCE earlier this year. It wasn’t very good, so I thought I’d have a go at leisure in the quietness of my study.

  7. Thank you Pasquale for this and dropping in so early.

    I really enjoyed this due to some wonderful clueing. Couldn’t get DIARCHY or parse BLOSSOMY though. BY = past? Well just about (I’m seeing it as in ‘times gone by’.

    Also thanks to loonapick for your appraisal.

     

  8. Thanks Loonapick and Pasquale for the great puzzle and for dropping in. I didn’t really notice the precision of 5d, just sort of got it and put it in.

    The long anagram at 2d jumped out, along with stingray, portrayer, rancour and satrap (a regular), at which stage I checked to see if it was really the Don. It was, and was a bit of a workout. I dnk the Rev Trevor and had to check; the cupboard, ditto, rang only the faintest of bells, as did candela from physics half a century ago. The ‘synth’, otoh, is familiar via muso gk, which helped.

    All in all an enjoyable stretch, so thanks again L and P.

  9. lovely – thanks Pasquale and Loonapick. Not so much new words (apart from diarchy) as reminders of old ones (I’m sure I once knew a credenza was a bit of furniture, and something about easements) and all the tricky words were elegantly clued. A break in the middle was useful – I came back and started reading the clues and doing what they told me. As I wrote “stray” into the crossers I had for 9 across, left and write brains were competing to add “ing” for “one no good” on the one side and “ing” to make the fish on the other side. Just do what the clue tells you 🙂 Once I had a few crossers for 2d I reached for my tea tray – lovely cryptic definition. Next stop, preantepenultimate?

    Is this the first time Beyonce has met a Moog? (RIP Robert Moog btw)

  11. Many thanks, loonapick.

    A schoolmasterly offering from His Highness this morning.  His puzzles always have a didactic feel and urge me to look things up.

    Michelle @1:  I, too, questioned the light pencil reference but Chambers includes “a narrow ray of light” under pencil.

    Not quite convinced by tor = Dartmoor location.  I would have said a tor could be found in a Dartmoor location.  Also struggle a little to make LIONS SHARE = a bit of pride.  Only very minor quibbles.

    Most enjoyable, many thanks, Don.

    Nice week, all

  12. A humdinger indeed but all gettable from the clear wordplay – mind you I did know the words he wanted us to find.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Loonapick too

  14. Pasquale@5-thanks for that info-BEYONCE was about my favourite clue.I would have put TOTO  for 11 were ut not for a clash!

  15. Thank you Pasquale and loonapick.

    A real challenge for me. I was another who would have put TOTO at 11a, but it had to be OPPO after I checked in the dictionary. I also had trouble with TREVOR, thinking of the prison did not help.

  16. Thanks to Pasquale. I liked having your comments on the 15squared forum. Love it that you can get just as muddled as the rest of us when you post. Not so your impeccably clued puzzles!

    I thought these were great: 1a SATRAP, 9a STINGRAY, 21a LIONS SHARE (despite the apostrophe thing) and 26a TENANTRY (LOI for me as well as a lol). And I could elaborate.

    Enjoyable, and have appreciated your solve, loonapick, and the povs (psofv?) of other contributors so far.

  17. This went in surprisingly easily for a Pasquale and whilst there lots of good clues I didnt have many ticks – but then I didn’t appreciate to preciseness of BEYONCÉ. At the risk of upsetting Don fans (and maybe the man himself) I thought BLOSSOMY was a “lazy” solution. Technically it’s a word and appears in dictionaries, but it feels like a word made up to fill the grid – although having said that there’s only that and BLOSSOMS as possibilities according to the word search I use so I’m being unfair.
    GNARLY felt a bit like this as well. I must have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning!
    Is there anything to read into there being 9 solutions with a Y in them? Or is it just that it’s a common way of ending descriptive words.
    My favourite today was also the loi – CAREER.
    Many thanks to setter and blogger – and I’ll try and get out of the other side tomorrow 🙂 .

  18. WhiteKing@17

    I’ll always associate ‘blossomy’ with Dennis Potter’s memorable last interview (with Melvyn Bragg in March 94):

    “Below my window, for example, the blossom is out in full. It’s a plum tree. It looks like apple blossom, but it’s white. And instead of saying, ‘Oh, that’s nice blossom, looking at it through the window when I’m writing, it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomiest blossom that there ever could be.”

  20. I enjoy most of this very much, but FOI was ACME at 11 (M in ACE) which caused a bit of a hold-up.

    I am disappointed the Don perpetrated the abomination at 26. How on earth is a solver meant to know which of the possible words that could be denoted by such a cryptic definition is the right one? It’s fundamental to a sound cryptic clue that there must be a second route to the answer.

  21. Thanks Loonapick for the enlightenment, except that I still do not understand 26a, it remains cryptic. Could someone explain, please.

  23. Thanks to Pasquale and loonapick. As has been said a tricky challenge, but nonetheless enjoyable with it. Luckily for me the two long ones were anagrams, because I am not sure I would have got them otherwise. Last one in tenantry, but a DNF for me because I could not get Trevor (even though I thought about it once and rejected it on the basis of it being a place in North Wales). Not sure where that logic came from, but I was convinced the clue ended in tor. That said still a lovely puzzle and I also really liked Beyoncé. Thanks again to Pasquale and loonapick.

  24. Thanks loonapick and Pasquale.

     

    I, too, found about half the clues went in quite easily, but not so the last few. CAREER was also my LOI, but I can’t see why I didn’t solve this much earlier on.

    The AUT is no more, Peter@19, though I lazily assumed that was what was meant. It became the UCU in 2007 after merging with NATFHE. I see there still is a C(anadian)AUT, however.

     

  25. Also was thinking of the AUT and I had PEDANTRY as the admittedly not very witty solution for 26.

  26. I found this one relatively straightforward, though it did take a while to see TENANTRY which was last in. All of the other slightly sbscure stuff was fairly clued.

    Thanks to Pasquale and loonapick

  27. Is there more to TREVOR than its being a man’s name?  GOSH defeated me, I didn’t know the hospital.

    Up to today I thought TOR was just another word for “hill.”  But the Dartmoor reference sent me to wikipedia and then to a site with pictures of all the tors on Dartmoor. http://www.richkni.co.uk/dartmoor/tors.htm  Now I’m wondering why there aren’t tors everywhere there’s underlying bedrock.  What is it about Dartmoor that makes it have tors while most other counties don’t?

    I enjoyed the excellent anagrams in 2d and 8d, and even more the picture of the grandads and grandmas grooving to the moog.  In fact there were many delightful surfaces in this puzzle.  I also liked the rhythmically talking governor in 1a, the flowery death with honor, the slightly Paul-ish mate in the top position, and Trump’s unacceptable act — which one would you choose?

    Pasquale, what were you apologizing for in @6?  the first person pronoun in @5?

    Thanks, Pasquale and loonapick.

  28. Valentine @ 27

    I’m guessing, based on limited knowledge, but it may be that the underlying bedrock in the Southwest is, I believe, predominantly granite, so wouldn’t erode as much as the softer sandstones/gritstones/limestones elsewhere in the country.

    In 6, Pasquale was apologising for spelling his name PASQAULE.

  29. [Valentine @27

    Dartmoor is granite, which is very hard except in the cracks, so weather to leave the large blocks which are the tors.

    Look more carefully at who posted @5!]

  31. Valentine:  There are tors in Derbyshire and Cheshire – Shining Tor is the highest point in Cheshire.

     

    A vg puzzle nonetheless.

  32. whiteking @17. Neat point about 9 solutions including the letter Y. I thought this completed an unobtrusively pleasing alphabetical trio XYZ, coming between antepenultimate (2d) and final (25ac). An echo in its way of Picaroon’s great J-puzzle of a few days ago. Thanks to Pasquale for this one and, as others have said, for dropping in so early.

  34. I rather liked this. A challenging puzzle but quite solvable given sufficient time. I wouldn’t have got TENANTRY without the crossers and it was helpful that the two long answers were anagrams – I didn’t bother to work out 8dn, so obvious was the answer. Nice to see OPPO a reminder of my youth on Merseyside where the expression was common. GNARLY was FOI and I liked OUTDO and TREVOR.
    Thanks Pasquale.

  35. My kind of puzzle.

    Also (very) pleased by Pasquale saying “in any case I would never use ‘for’ as an indication to add something“.

    Many thanks to loonapick & Pasquale.

  36. Judygs@18 (any connection to Roger G’s?) – thank you for the Dennis Potter quote – very blossomy.
    Goujeers@20 – what other words are there that fit this cryptic definition? I thought the ? indicated letter wasn’t to be taken in the usual sense and whilst I didn’t know the word, the clue together with the crossers led me to the solution.

  38. Pretty tough. I had the whole lhs filled before I got much on the rhs. I had to resort to Word Wizard to get the last three: CREDENZA, DIARCHY and TENANTRY, the first two being unknown to me and the third barely known. All parsed once identified.

    In 27, the surplus(?) “one” seems strangely at odds with the typical exactitude shown in 5d.

    I was surprised to see BEYONCE as an answer in a Pasquale puzzle, but the story of the interview (which I remember listening to) explains it nicely.

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