Guardian 27,582 / Tramp

62 comments on “Guardian 27,582 / Tramp”

1. Great puzzle – favourites were TRIPODS, MINT, YELLOW PAGES and ISLAND. Wasn’t completely sure about SNIP = piece. Many thanks to Tramp & Eileen.

2. droplets @ 1 – dictionary definition of SNIP is “a small piece snipped off”

3. Drofle not droplets – ***** autocorrect!

4. This seemed more challenging than the ABCs but every clue was perfectly formed. Needed help with Own Goal, and missed seeing WAGs as sporting partners and Yellow Pages as numbers here – a real tea tray moment.

   Loved the penguins and agree with Eileen about the quality of the chocolate today.. or is it just that memory is rose-tinted?

   Thanks, Tramp and Eileen.

5. Does one say of a wine “This a nice Graves”? And like drofle I wondered about snip minus pet, but thanks Shirl. I dnk the biscuit (in Oz we have the Tim Tam), but guessable with crossers. Mint was neat, as were tripods, theist and the long &lit anagram at 1a. All in all quite fun and not too taxing.

   Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

6. Penguins in this context was unknown to me, and I’m afraid Jimmy Greaves’ extraordinariness as a striker is less celebrated here in Australia than perhaps in the UK. I got the idea but had no idea of who Tramp might be alluding to.

7. Another excellent puzzle from one of my favourite setters – although Pasquale (it memory serves me right) and Sil might object to the use of “for” in 24a.
   I had lots of ticks – the same as “droplets” along with 22,9 and 1d which took ages to get. Apart from this one the top half went in readily whilst the bottom half was a struggle. MINT was loi – another dreaded four letter word with lots of possibilities – I’d already been past MINT in my trawl through the alphabet without seeing the two times – a lovely TTM (tea tray moment).
   Thanks to Tramp, Eileen and other commenters who I will no doubt have crossed with whilst typing this.

8. Loved 9/22. Why do  polar bears not eat penguins? They can’t get the wrappers off!

9. grantinfreo@5: I’m always happy to talk about wine so I would say “This is a nice Graves” is just as likely as, say, “This is a cheeky/unassuming/superb Beaujolais” or any other variety.

   I remember Penguins very well but have never seen them here in the Fatherland. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritter_Sport for the popular equivalent here.

   Hedgehog@4: Could you explain what you mean by “tea tray moment” please.

   Thanks to Shed and Eileen.

10. Sorry, thanks to Tramp not Shed!!

11. I enjoyed this very much not least because it was a nice level of difficulty – my particular favourites were the penguin and 26a –  a (relatively) younger person was saying that she’d have liked to contact me over the weekend, but didn’t have my number.  She gave me a very blank look when I said ‘we’re in the book’ as apparently telephone directories are only used these days to stand on while measuring the height of teenage children who’ve got taller than you.

    Thanks to Tramp for the entertainment and Eileen for the explanations

     

12. Many thanks to Tramp for fun puzzle and to Eileen for the blog.

    Thanks to Baldy@8 for penguin joke 🙂

    Was I alone in deciding the answer to 13a was SLIP? – ‘I tried to steal/slip away unnoticed’; ‘a piece/slip of paper’. It works for me!

13. Thanks Eileen and Tramp.  crypticsue  @11:  re 26 ac – YELLOW PAGES – coincidentally we’ve just had pushed through the letter box a much slimmed down issue of Yellow Pages, which states on the cover that it is the last ever edition.  A collector’s item?

14. Thanks Martin@9, I’ll look out for one at my bottle-o and enjoy!

15. Hi judygs @12 – I didn’t think of SLIP but it does work for me, too. I’ve just checked the solution and it’s given as SNIP.

16. Thank you Tramp and Eileen.

    An enjoyable puzzle, but I prefer judygs @12 answer of SLIP for 13a – it did not occur to me – a slip on Tramp’s part?

    There are CHOCOLATE and MINT flavoured Penguins, but I cannot find the other two flavours, toffee and orange.

17. Thank you, Eileen! And I’m seriously impressed that you posted the blog without checking the solutions on the Guardian site!

     

18. Thank you, too, Cookie @12!

19. Sorry, that should be Cookie @16…

20. @Eileen, Hedgehog & others. Re Penguins and other treats from an English childhood: Here in Melbourne the other day I snaffled up some ‘proper’ licorice allsorts. That is to say, Bassetts. With Bertie Bassett and all. Big disappointment! Is this yet another example of the rose-coloured spectacle syndrome or have they genuinely gone downhill over the last few decades?
    Second question: I found today’s puzzle more fun (easier, in other words) than Paul’s ABC one yesterday – even though by rights that one should have been right up my historical alley. I suspect it had more to do with tiredness on my part than anything else. Do others find their sleep patterns play a part in their solving ability?

21. Martin@9 I think that a TTM (see Whiteking@7) means that the penny suddenly drops when you see how the clue works… but I am a novice and only gradually learning such phrases from regular visits to this site.  Maybe people don’t say the penny drops anymore either!  Presumably it would be at least a pound coin now.

22. Hedgehog @21, I think TTM stands for ‘tea tray moment’, you hit yourseslf over the head with it when the penny drops.

23. I liked this puzzle a lot. The longish anagrams were great, though for a while I had forgotten that Penguins were biscuits in the UK so I took a while to decipher 22/9a CHOLCOLATE BISCUITS out of all those letters. I was going to mention Tim Tams when I came here, but the biscuit barrel has already been emptied by previous Aussie posters. [Greg@6, wondering where you hail from?]
    I had a bit of trouble seeing 19d MINT – as you say, WhiteKing@7, it’s those fiendish four letter words that often prove elusive!
    I was a DNF actually, as like Judygs@12 I thought it was SLIP at 13a.
    Speaking of NOVICES, Hedgehog@21, that was one of my favourite clues (10a). Agree with others’ appreciation of 25a TRIPODS and 26a YELLOW PAGES (the latter clearly about to become a nostalgic curiosity).
    Someone explained tea tray moments on a forum some time back with a link to a comedy sketch where someone who “sees the light” hits himself on the head with a tea tray; sorry I can’t recall any more details.
    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

24. I did mean CHOCOLATE!!!
    [And yes, GertBycee@20, my night’s sleep (or lack thereof) very much affects my solving ability. More so if I try to solve in the mid-afternoon after a lousy night’s sleep the night before. (BTW, my secondary school students were always more difficult to engage after the lunch break than before!) Regarding sleep and solving, though, I also find sometimes that if I go to bed with unsolved clues I have the answers the next morning. Think my brain still works on them as I sleep.]

25. JinA @23, I think it was Bob Blackman singing Mule Train.

26. PS that comes up if you click on the blue print – don’t know what went wrong there.

27. PPS, the discussion is in the comments to Picaroon 26,845

28. Many thanks for the blog Eileen.

    At 13a I had SLIP as in Slip away = Steal away, Slip of paper = piece of paper. To be honest I don’t find either Tramp’s solution or mine completely satisfactory. Otherwise, enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks Trampl

29. Thanks to  Tramp and Eileen. Very enjoyable. I did choose SNIP but did not know the two meanings cited by Eileen. I did not know Jimmy Greaves or Penguin as a candy or “wags” as an abbreviatiion but still arrived at the solutions.

30. Thanks Cookie@25, 26 and 27. Couldn’t get the link to,work but went on YouTube instead. Can I say I didn’t find that clip even remotely funny (and didn’t last time), but it did explain the tea tray moment for me. I admit to having no funny bone when it comes to slapstick. But it is such a strange phrase to apply to our hobby. The research paper investigating PDMs (penny dropping moments) to which a link was provided in Announcements on the fifteensquared site not so long ago prefers “Aha” or “Eureka” moments as alternatives, and I must say I also like those descriptors of the phenomenon better.

31. Even though I slept on it, I still can’t quite see how come=show in 3d. Closest I can get to is show up. Can some kind soul provide a sentence where they are interchangeable? Tx.

32. I thought the “old” was misplaced in the Greaves clue. Would’ve preferred Wine boxes english striker of old, or some such.But that is being rather picky.

    But Greaves on his day could nod in a misplaced assist.

    Otherwise picture perfect as usual from the ever reliable Tramp.

    I love the wine there but its just a memory now.cant afford it anymore.

33. Dr. Whatson, the COED gives for show  “colloq. appear; be present; arrive”.

34. Dr. Whatson @31

    Chambers – ‘show: to appear, to come into sight, to arrive, turn up’. I actually got there by thinking of ‘no-show’ – someone who doesn’t turn up. 😉

35. Dr Whatson @ 31: I invited them to the party, but they didn’t show / didn’t come.. There may be an implicit ‘up’ with show, but the phrase is commonly used without it.

36. Thanks, Guys, I’m now convinced. I won’t say that unlike come, show has the connotation of being seen at the destination, because that will sound like sour Graves (pronunciation notwithstanding).

37. Slip for me too.

38. The dividing line between cheeky and smutty is different for all of us, I suppose. Ho hum. I must be getting old.

    Thanks for the blog, Eileen.

39. The phenomenon of “sleeping on it” is well-known among mathematicians, partly thanks to the French mathematician Hadamard, who wrote a book about it. I certainly found when working for my own exams that if I left an unsolved problem for a day or two without thinking about it I could then solve it. As a maths teacher I always felt it unfair that we were expected to have our pupils solve any problem we gave them during the same lesson, or at least for homework, and we seldom gave them the opportunity to sleep on it.

40. Many thanks both.  Cookie@25 – thanks so much for the ‘tea tray’ reference – I’ve been vaguely wondering if it had a specific origin for years … .

41. And another for slip – for exactly the same examples.

42. Not normally a fan of Tramp but I did like this puzzle. I suppose the three long anagrams and YELLOW PAGES being straightforward helped. I liked TWANGS which recalled Duane Eddy and his twangy guitar whose early records I loved. I liked PICASSO too!
    Thanks Tramp.

43. Why is ‘key’ island please?

44. Just realised I forgot to comment on this earlier. For some unknown reason I was a little more on Tramp’s wavelength than usual, and I quite enjoyed this one.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

45. MartinD@43 – think Florida keys, Key Largo etc.

46. Julie@30 – now that I have looked at Bob and the Mule Train, I agree with you! Won’t be using TTM again but hope for many more aha or Eureka moments instead.

    I also didn’t even notice my use of the word ‘NOVICE’ – must have been just in my head from the crossword. It made me sound quite witty too, although not in the league usually found on here.

    ” ‘The Oxford English Dictionary states that this phrase originated by way of allusion to the mechanism of penny-in-the-slot machines. The OED’s earliest citation of a use of the phrase with the ‘now I understand’ meaning, is from The Daily Mirror August 1939: And then the penny dropped, and I saw his meaning!
    ‘The penny drops’ – the meaning and origin of this phrase’ ”

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=origin+of+penny+dropping&ie=&oe=

     

     

     

     

     

47. Loved this puzzle – so many great clues. I did like the chocolate biscuit for a bit of nostalgia.

    Baldy@8 – I spotted recently that Sainsbury’s do their own-brand version of Penguins which have a polar bear on the packet, which always reminds me of that joke. The thing I didn’t realise until later is that the packet only calls them “Polar”. So they’re “Polar bars”. It’s not often I tip my hat to a marketing department, but that is a great bit of work – creating an alternate brand, riffing off on old joke, and creating a nice play on words to boot.

48. This was great midweek puzzling fun.  I was another SLIPper at 13ac.  Like Eileen, I looked about for a theme, and, while not exactly finding one, I did think the puzzle contained (particularly in the Downs) a noticeably high amount of earthy/bawdy/bodily function humor in the surfaces.  Which is not to say that I did not have a chuckle when I read the clues for EXCOMMUNICATORS, ABIDES, UPHEAVAL and PICASSO.  I also liked the long anagrams and YELLOW PAGES.  I did not know the CHOCOLATE BISCUIT brand well (although it did seem vaguely familiar, perhaps from a prior puzzle), but it was gettable from the wordplay and the crossers.

    An enjoyable discussion today about the origins of PDM and TTM.  I have to say that the Bob Blackman clip does not, to me, seem a satisfactory explanation of the origin of the phrase tea-tray moment, as I can see nothing in his [not very funny to me, either] performance that connotes the experience of suddenly realizing something that in retrospect should have been obvious.  “Tea-tray moment” is a phrase I had not heard prior to frequenting the discussion boards here on 15^2, but I long been familiar with, and have frequently used (whenever the occasion arises, probably more frequently than I would like to admit) the phrase “forehead-slapping moment” in such situations, so I always assumed the “tea tray” phrase was a variant of a forehead slap (or face-palm) that was a bit more humorously vivid to make the point.  [Also, to me, PDM and TTM would mean two different things: the former being a moment of inspiration, enlightenment or genius when the solution to a tricky or jokey clue (or to a vexing problem in life outside of the crosswording pastime) suddenly becomes clear, and the latter, by contrast, being a “duh, of course, how did I not see this before?” moment.]

    [I also enjoyed the discussion of solving puzzles and problems during sleep.  It made me think of the chemist Kekule, who, as I recall learning in high school, made not one but two great scientific breakthroughs (one being the molecular structure of benzene, the other one I can’t recall) while napping; and Coleridge, who, as I heard the story, anyway, composed his Kubla Khan poem in his head while in a drug (laudanum?)-induced stupor, and, upon regaining consciousness, began frantically writing it down as fast as he could, until he could not remember any more of the full poem he had dreamed.]

    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen and the other commenters.

49. Another top-class puzzle from Tramp.

50. Late to the party.  Of course, as an American, I needed every single crossing letter before I got CHOCOLATE BISCUIT, and I cheated on GREAVES.  (I still plan, one of these days, to write a baseball-themed cryptic, just for revenge purposes.)  I put in SNIP, but I agree that it’s not terribly satisfactory.  (I didn’t know “snip” as “steal,” but it seemed like plausible UK slang, so there we go.)

    I used to think WAG for wives-and-girlfriends was not normal American usage either–I knew the abbreviation from a couple different places–but then this show came along.  (I haven’t seen it, but they did advertise it on public transit around here for a while.)

51. Enjoyed Tramp’s crossie. EXCOMMUNICATORS my favourite. What a discovery in the fodder and a great surface.

    I’d assumed that the TEA TRAY MOMENT simply produced a lot noisier clang as it fell, particularly if loaded with silver and crockery,  than a penny dropping in the slot machine. In other words, an extreme PENNY DROP MOMENT.  I liked TTM for its   sense of ‘old worldliness’  – who has tea trays anymore? – which I encountered when I first started doing cryptic crosswords, and phrases and abbreviations I  had to learn to ‘join the club’ eg relating to cricket, chess, bible, military.

    I was so intrigued by these two terms when I first joined this blog, that I adopted PDM for my moniker, with a  nod to an Australian animal, of Irish descent, and a (crossword-ish) brain. 🙂

52. Many thanks Eileen for the super blog. Thanks to others for the comments. I wrote this in November 2014.

    I hope this post gets through; I tried to comment on Lato’s puzzle earlier but it failed to appear.

    Neil

53. Great fun from a great setter.  I liked PICASSO and CHOCOLATE BISCUIT especially, but there were many other good clues.

    It’s curious how SLIP and SNIP are equally satisfactory answers at 13a, coming from two different meanings of ‘steal’.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

54. I found this much easier to solve than parse. I couldn’t get SNIP and couldn’t be bothered to guess on GREAVES (and still too lazy to look up Graves).  But there many more I couldn’t parse:  CHOCOLATE BISCUIT, TWANGS, ROOFTOP, TRIPODS were all beyond me.  Favorites though were ADVISORY and COSMETIC SURGERY.

    Fun fact:  YELLOW PAGES in the Netherlands are called the Gouden Gids = Golden Guide.

55. BlueDot, true. But when it first appeared in 1965 it was called “Gele Gids” ( = Yellow Guide). They tried to make it a popular thing by crying out loud “Gele Gids … Gouden Gids” (Gouden indeed meaning Golden but in a sense of being invaluable).

    My father (bless his soul) was very much against the Gouden Gids. Ten years ago it merged with the ‘normal’ phonebook and later this year it won’t be available anymore as a dead tree version.

    And Tramp’s crossword?  We liked it very much.

    Many thanks to Eileen (especially for explaining ‘to take one’ in 22,9) & Tramp.

56. MartinD @ 43

    George Clements @ 45

    I’m sorry, I’m sure I’m missing something here, but why is “key” the definition of ISLAND?

    Key is an example of an island, isn’t it???

    Mercis.

57. Edward Cieslik @ 56 A key is a specific type of island situated on a coral reef. Here’s an extract from Encyclopaedia Britannica:

     

    “Cay, also spelled key, small, low island, usually sandy, situated on a coral reef platform. Such islands are commonly referred to as keys in Florida and parts of the Caribbean. Sand cays are usually built on the edge of the coral platform, opposite the direction from which the prevailing winds blow.”

58. How is “dress down” a synonym for “carpet”?

    Possible American cluelessness here.

59. ColeG @58
    Dressing down and carpeting are expressions used (not often) in England to mean telling off or criticising face to face.
    Lots to enjoy with this one. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.
    I don’t so much sleep on clues as nod off while attempting them.Not surprising as I rarely start before 9.30pm.

60. ColeG @58

    Welcome to the site if you’re new here and my apologies if you’re not.

    If you have Collins or Chambers dictionaries, they both give ‘carpet’ as meaning [informally] ‘reprimand and ‘dress down’ as meaning the same thing [as well as ‘dress informally’, which is the more usual meaning now, I think].

61. Apologies for the crossing, Pino – you posted while I was checking the dictionaries. 😉

62. Thanks Pino and Eileen,

    In the US at least we’ll hear “called on the carpet” so I suppose this is similar. “Dressing down” is familiar hear as well (if not exactly common).

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