Guardian Cryptic 27,620 by Puck

by

Rhe puzzle may be found ar https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27620.

A puzzle that I found squarely in my Goldilocks zone, with many clues keeping me on my toes, without being convoluted or seeming contrived. I see only wisps of themes – drinks, envelopes, words that turn out to have functions other than the ones usual for a cryptic. All good stuff; thanks, Puck.

Across
1 HOARSE Rough area in bay, perhaps (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of A (‘area’) in HORSE (‘bay, perhaps’).
4 GIN SLING Traps fish in cold drink (3,5)
A charade of GINS (‘traps’) plus LING (‘fish’).
9 MERRY Blunder into setter’s jolly (5)
An envelope (‘into’) of ERR (‘blunder’) in MY (‘setter’s’).
10 MAPLE LEAF Pale flame around national emblem (5,4)
An anagram (‘around’) of ‘pale flame’, for the Canadian ‘national emblem’.
11 SUNDOWNER Drink with setter — a depressing experience (9)
A charadeof SUN (‘setter’ – although the sun also rises) plus DOWNER (‘a depressing experience’).
12 TEASE Drinks with English guy (5)
A charade of TEAS (‘drinks) plus E (‘English’).
13 COUNTERPUNCH Boxer might take this drink, sitting next to bar (12)
A charade of COUNTER (‘bar’) plus PUNCH (‘drink’).
17 HAIR’S BREADTH Very small margin showing musical’s range (5,7)
A charade of HAIR’S (‘musical’s’) plus BREADTH (‘range’).
20 OLIVE Female, old, with bad back (5)
A charade of O (‘old’) plus LIVE, a reversal (‘back’) of EVIL (‘bad’), for the female name.
21 PUBLICITY Boozer allowed yard plugs? (9)
A charade of PUB (‘boozer’) plus LICIT (‘allowed’) plus Y (‘yard’).
23 DECOLLETE Remove gathering in part of collar with a low neckline (9)
An envelope (‘gathering in’) of COL (‘part of COLlar’) in DELETE (‘remove’). The answer being borrowed from the French, it should have a acute accent on the final E.
24 SHOJI Japanese screen shop Jim closed early (5)
‘sho[w] ji[m]’ with both words truncated (‘closed early’).
25 MOTORIST Driver reversed right over cat? It’s messy (8)
A charade of MOTOR, a reversal (‘reversed’) of R (‘right’) plus O (‘over’) plus TOM (‘cat’); plus IST, an anagram (‘messy’) of ‘it’s’.
26 STAY ON Remain a year in county, returning after time away (4,2)
An envelope (‘in’) of A Y (‘a year’) in STON, a reversal (‘returning’) of NOT[t]S (Nottinghamshire, ‘county’), minus a T (‘after time away’).
Down
1 HOMESICK Nostalgic setter’s one into wine (8)
An envelope (‘into’) of ME’ (‘setter”) plus S (from the apostrophy s) plus I (‘one’) in HOCK (‘wine’).
2 AERONAUT Balloonist, say, in bar with tipsy aunt (8)
A charade of AERO (chocolate ‘bar’; trade name) plus NAUT, an anagram (‘tipsy’) of ‘aunt’.
3 SAY-SO Final authority is Mum? (3-2)
SAYS 0 (‘is mum’).
5 IMPERTURBABLE Calm after suffering a terrible bump (13)
An anagram (‘after suffering’) of ‘a terrible bump’.
6 SPECTACLE Spot crown jewels kings have left for display (9)
Devious: SPEC[k] (‘spot’ as a noun, a small mark) plus TAC[k]LE (‘crown jewels’ – more often, and less grandiosely, “the family jewels”, I think; anyway, colloquialisms for the male genitalia) minus a K in each particle (‘kings having left’).
7 ICECAP The first cold before March is over in permanently cold area (6)
A charade of I (‘the first’) plus C (‘cold’) plus ECAP, a reversal (‘is over’) of PACE (‘march’).
8 GAFFER Boss finding return of whistle-blower something tiresome (6)
A reversal (‘return of’) of REF (‘whistle-blower’) plus FAG (‘something tiresome’).
10 MINOR PROPHETS Joel’s peers are surprised he imports porn (5,8)
An anagram (‘surprised’) of ‘he imports porn’; Joel is one of the books of the Old Testament, or the Tanakh; along with the other eleven eponymous prophets, they are referred to as MINOR because the relatively short length of their books.
14 TRAVELLER Old Morris sales rep? (9)
Double definition; the first is a reference to an estate or station wagon version of the Morris Minor car.
15 ADVISORY Recommending power gets put into a small boat (8)
An envelope (‘gets put into’) of VIS (‘power’, from the Latin; were you also looking for a P?) in A DORY (‘a small boat’).
16 PHRYGIAN Cooler sounding Scot in musical mode (8)
A charade of PHRYG, a homophone (‘sounding’) of FRIDGE (‘cooler’) plus IAN (‘Scot’).
18 CONDOM Minister initially supporting Tory party member’s cover-up? (6)
A charade of CON (Conservative, ‘Tory’) plus DO (‘party’) plus M (‘Minister initially’).
19 BIG CAT Say The Lion King’s last century acting, in part (3,3)
An envelope (‘in’) of G (‘kinG‘s last’) plus C (‘century’) plus A (‘acting’) in BIT (‘part’).
22 INSET Small map of Spain in this month’s brief (5)
An envlope (‘in’) of E (‘Spain’ IVR) in INST (‘this month’s brief’).
completed grid

51 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,620 by Puck”

  1. As there are no comments and I browse this site regularly just thought I would say thanks to all the people who put in the effort to create and maintain it

  2. Seconding what Andy above says – I don’t always feel the need to comment myself, but I always enjoy the blog and seeing others’ thoughts. The site adds a lot to the enjoyment of the puzzles.

    I agree with PeterO that this was a clever and satisfying solve, with ingenious uses of the word ‘setter’ to add to the other mini-themes. I couldn’t fully pasre DECOLLETE or ADVISORY so thanks for the explanantions, and cheers to Puck.

  3. I really liked this Friday fun from Puck, although it was no push-over. I can’t see a consistent theme either, PeterO. However some nice little inter-linkings happening.

    Favourites were 17a HAIR’S BREADTH, 2d AERONAUT (loved the tipsy aunt image), 6d SPECTACLE (in which the “crown jewels” reminded me one of my husband’s favourite jokes, “spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch”), 10d MINOR PROPHETS (“he imports porn”!!!!) and my LOI 18d CONDOM. All very Puckish and just a little naughty in places.

    Thanks to Puck and PeterO.

    [Couldn’t agree more, Andy from Oz@1. Good to have you here. We are lucky we get the puzzle before the solvers in the UK as we get a bit of a head-start before the forum really starts buzzing. Where are you from? Julie on the Sunshine Coast.]

  4. [We crossed, Bullhassocks@2 – good of you to affirm Andy’s sentiments; can I say that I always appreciate your posts.]

  5. I struggled to solve 5 clues and gave up. I was not on the setter’s wavelength at all today 🙁

    I enjoyed reading the blog. Thanks Peter!

  6. I spotted cocktails GIN SLING, MAPLE LEAF, SUNDOWNER, PUNCH, and associated stuff, OLIVE,  ICE and possibly, after all these, MERRY.

     

    Enjoyed this, thanks Puck and PeterO

  7. Very enjoyable exercise from Puck today. I appreciated the Japanese word at 24ac but I came here to say that while I have never heard of the Aero chocolate bar (or Polo mints, or 99 ice creams…) 2dn was a write-in anyway because I am very familiar with the aerobars used by cyclists in triathlons and time trials. Pure coincidence, or clever clueing from Puck? Thanks to PeterO also, the thorough explanations are appreciated.

  8. I thought 10 down was a neat clue as there were two thirteen-letter phrases either side of the anagrind so needed crossers to work out which was the anagrist. A couple of DNKs thst I had to check afterwards but nicely clued.

  9. I too enjoyed the various ‘setters’: I had SUNDOWNER as a possible answer early on, but took ages to remember that the sun is also a setter. Like PeterO, I spent too much time trying to get P into 15d. Thanks to Puck for a very entertaining, not to mention naughty, puzzle, which caused lots of smiles and headscratching.

  10. Thanks Puck and PeterO

    A mixture for me of clues I loved (SUNDOWNER, IMPERTURBABLE, PHRYGIAN, CONDOM), clues I didn’t know the words, so wordsearches needed (DECOLLETE, SHOJI), and clues I didn’t think were all that good.

    The not-so-good: I like clues to be as concise as possible, so thought “cold” was superfluous in 4a; HAIR is a musical from 50 years ago; AERO chocolate bar is an obscurity.

    I see that you have justified the S in HOMESICK as “from the apostrophe”, PeterO, but it still seems to read as the horrible “me’s”.

    Is TRAVELLER a test to see if the Guardian crossword solvers also read the Guardian letters page?

  12. Thanks, PeterO, for the  blog and Puck for a cheekily enjoyable puzzle.

    My favourites today were the clever anagrams IMPERTURBABLE and MINOR PROPHETS – both great surfaces and neat misdirection in the latter, as Frankie the cat says, and, of course, CONDOM [brilliant surface] and SPECTACLE. I liked SAY-SO, too.

     

  13. 15d: ADPINGHY? ADINGPHY? Talk about clutching at straws!

    Thanks Puck and PeterO. Very entertaining puzzle, well blogged.

  15. Many thanks for the comments by the Aussies and Bullhassocks re the excellence of this site.  Couldn’t agree more.

    Finished but failed on some of the more abstruse parsing (vis = power; crown jewels etc)

    Almost always enjoy this setter.

    Nice weekend, all.

  16. Yes, a lovely puzzle. It took me a long time to get HOMESICK, but when I saw it I added it to my list of favourites. Couldn’t parse SAY-SO (silly me); my other favourites were, like Eileen’s, SPECTACLE and CONDOM. Greensward@13 – yes, I also struggled with ADPINGHY etc!! Many thanks to Puck and PeterO, and hello to Andy from Oz@1 and of course Julie, who get a head start but have a possible handicap as regards familiarity with some British words.

  17. Gor blimey gaffer done me up like a kipper. Real brainteaser today – beaten hands down by 16, didn’t know vis for power and spent ages looking for a David Sullivan until the penny dropped at 10d. A prophet named after Billy Joel surely not! Liked the cheeky bits.

    Thanks to Puck and to PeterO for the comprehensive blog.

  18. Goldilocks indeed! Loved the naughty ones, hated setter’s=me’s and having to bung in obscure phryg= cooler, even if correct. Maybe I’m just grumpy after an unparsed guess at ‘stay in’ for Remain due to the current mess. Politicians, grrrrrr!!!

  19. Thanks Puck, largely enjoyable, although I had some niggles. I don’t understand the ‘with’ in 11; shouldn’t this be ‘from’ or some such? And is ‘the first’ really I? I know ‘I’ is the first person but can it be just the first?

    I guess we were supposed to be misled by Billy Joel, but I find these biblical references somewhat tedious. And frigging PHRYGIAN, although that is just my ignorance.

    Thanks PeterO for demystifying the Aero bar – I spent ages trying to justify it.

  20. Thanks to Puck and PeterO. I struggled here, as often is true with this setter. I did parse SHOJI (though had to look it up), did not know the Aero bar, had trouble parsing NICE CAT, and took a long time spotting the Notts in STAY ON.

  21. Hard start, easy finish. Not a single across answer on first reading and then if filled up from the bottom. I play in Phrygian mode quite a lot.

    Thanks to Puck and PeterO.

  23. Agree with William@15, also DNF but still appreciate the excellent blog and all the contributions, not least the antipodean ones.

    Many thanks Puck and PeterO.

    Oofyprosser@18: current mess is a good summary of it all! Could a united Ireland be a possible part solution? Sorry to drop this bombshell here but I would hesitate to suggest this anywhere else!

  26. Thanks to Puck and PeterO. Nice puzzle which I enjoyed a lot. Top half went in quite readily, but bottom half, particularly SE, took much longer. Three new words for me in the bottom half (16, 23 and 24) but could not parse advisory. That said, I could not think of anything else it could be. I also liked condom and say so, and thanks again to Puck and PeterO.

  27. Pretty perfect I thought. Started with Maple Leaf, then the rest of the RHS then the bottom, ending with the tricky upper left quadrant. I had ticked Spectacle as my clue of the year but then so many other superb ones followed. Unlike muffin I loved the playful apostrophe s in 1d.
    Great blog too, much needed by me, particularly parsing of 23 ac.

  28. Robi @ 19. The “with” in 11 seems perfectly ok to me as in TEAS with E, whereas your suggested “from” doesn’t fit.

  30. [Have just come back to read these subsequent posts. Thanks to all for your contributions which greatly enrich my solo solving experience.]

  31. I’m another who found this in the Goldilocks zone. I gave up with ticks once I’d got to 10, and whilst I see the niggles when they’re pointed out they didn’t bother me at all when solving. I was also in the ADPHINGY class and needed PeterO’s blog to get the vis part. The pick of the week for me – thanks to P&P and all contributors.

  32. I usually don’t post this early, but there were still many comments to read! Much of what I could say has been said, but I’d like to catch the mood of some comments here and say that I very much like to read all solvers’ comments, even on blogs of puzzles I have attempted but not commented on myself.
    This was great fun, much like yesterday’s but perhaps a bit more so. I loved SPECTACLE and MINOR PROPHETS and appreciated the trickery (puckery, perhaps) in several other clues.
    In 1d I saw ‘setter’ and the s following it (with the apostrophe) as consecutive cryptic elements, and I thought both the surface and the cryptic grammar were ok.
    [Eileen, I posted late on your blog of yesterday’s Paul and would have addressed it to you and put my point across in a different way if I had read what you wrote about the clue in question. Sorry if my comment came across as offhand.]

  33. Thanks Puck and PeterO. I enjoyed this a lot. Filled the grid but did not have a clue (sorry!) how to parse 6d. Terrific – and 19d’s not bad either.

  35. This was great fun and gently educational; a bit like the benevolent, schoolmasterly Picaroon.
    I love to learn something new (SHOJI, VIS), or dredge up something from the memory’s
    dusty attic (PHRYGIAN).
    Thank you Manehi and Picaroon.
    Can anyone give me an example of VIS in a sentence.
    I’m beginning to think Collins online uses a dreadful algorithm
    to find its examples. It gives power as a definition of VIS
    on its own, and then gives an example with vis-à-vis.

  37. il principe @35

    Fortunately my Collins print edition does not make that mistake because it does not give any examples of the use of vis.

    While I’m about it, I must thank Puck and PeterO – which I forgot to do in my earlier comment.

    (il principe, you clearly meant PeterO and Puck rather than Manehi and Picaroon.)

  38. Alan B @32 – I saw nothing to take exception to in your comment: in my haste, I did make a mistake about the definition. 😉

  39. 24a PeterO, you probably meant sho[p]. not sho[w], closing early.

    Loved IMPERTURBABLE/”a terrible bump.”  Can’t resist a fancy anagram.

    Missed the Notts in STAY ON, though I do know the abbreviations if nudged.

    Dorian, Ionian and Aeolian were too short for 16d and Mixolydian was too long, so that left PHYRGIAN as the likely choice.  Helps to have sung some early music.

  40. A day of distractions (i.e. duties!) so late to the party today. Hi to Andy, we’re neighbours. Everything said already above, a fun challenge, loved the naughty bits, had to cheat and look up modes for phrygian (6th grade theory about 6 decades ago). Wonder who’ll be setting tomorrow’s prize. Good week all.

  41. For vis, think of a brown loaf. Hovis is a contraction of hominis vis, Latin meaning the strength of man. Don’t think you’d get it past trading standards these days, but a bold claim.

  43. Even later than usual! Anyway, this was good even if it wasn’t especially easy.Last in was the brilliant PHRYGIAN and there were lots of other goodies HAIRS BREADTH, MINOR PROPHETS and CONDOM. On the latter, I see that Nigel Farage condoms are on sale at UKIP’s conference. His picture is on the wrapper. I leave a space for any joke you wish to add.

    I couldn’t parse ADVISORY so thanks for that. I wondered about a cocktail theme as a result of SUNDOWNER and GIN SLING but if there is one it’s rather thin.
    Thanks Puck.

  44. Limping in late today.

    Loved CONDOM.

    Also liked the use of VIS.  I remember we had to chant the declination of vis at school – we loved the accusative VIM as it was the name of a detergent at the time.  (Still is perhaps?).

    Thanks Puck.

  45. Anna, know Vim well, not sure if it’s still extant (another one, Gumption, same era, is). Meanwhile both Mrs ginf and I envy your having to decline vis, as Latin was no longer curriculum here in our school years. Sad.

  46. I enjoyed the puzzle, the blog, and the comments above.  My favorite clues today included MAPLE LEAF, SAY-SO (although I feel certain we have seen this answer clued in the same, or at least a very similar, way, on more than one occasion in prior Cryptics), MINOR PROPHETS, IMPETURBABLE, and CONDOM, and CotD for me was SPECTACLE, for its cleverness/naughtiness combo (“puckery” — nice one, Alan B @32!).

    I also enjoyed the nice misdirection of “The Lion King” in the clue for BIG CAT, despite the rather stilted surface when read as a whole.  [That clue also reminded me of Sir Elton, who has now commenced his world-wide “farewell” concert tour, in which his only shows in our neck of the woods (Washington, DC) are happening tonight and tomorrow.  He has been my wife’s top musical idol for over 40 years, so she is pretty distraught that this weekend may be her last time ever seeing him perform live and in person.]

    Many thanks to Puck and PeterO and the other commenters.  Have a nice weekend, all.

  47. [Anna @44

    I also remember the declension of vis from my schooldays because it was incomplete: vis, vis, vim, -, -, vi.  I also remember what a friend who attended a different school told me of the way she had to learn it: vis, vis, vim, wanting, wanting, vi – exactly as printed in their textbook.]

  48. Well, it’s still Friday where I am. Didn’t get to it till late in the day.

    Isn’t it truly amazing how one can benefit from a youthful education? – in my case more years ago than I care to be reminded.

    Scanning through the clues, I saw “musical mode”. Could it really be? There are only a handful of them and it clearly wasn’t Hypomixolydian, but it indicated a homophone with FRIDGE. Bingo! PHRYGIAN. FOI!! My O-level music teacher would be truly amazed that I have actually remembered something. Ditto my O-level Latin master for vis, vim, etc. alla Anna @44.

    Loved the surface and naughtiness of CONDOM. Also liked SPECTACLE, but I needed final guidance from PeterO. Btw, I also like the “spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch” joke (JinA @3), a Rabbi crossing himself after being mugged. I believe I also recently saw an Aero bar here in the USA. If I see one again, I’ll indulge myself.

    Many thanks to Puck and PeterO

  49. Very late here but only finished (gave up) this morning and wanted to say how good I found this, lots of nice misdirection. I thought 18 was a great surface and SPECTACLE was inventive and satisfying to get.

    Failed on PHRYGIAN and six others I couldn’t parse, three of which even after the blog… Took to internet searches for “gin trap” and “bay horse” and was about to hit search on “tease guy” but forbore at the last moment!

  50. [On the assumption that this might be the Last Post, I should like to pay tribute to Watership Down which, if I remember rightly, ended with the same sentence as it began by echoing the sentiments of Andy’s first comment.]

    Great puzzle. CONDOM was rather good I thought. Huge thanks to Puck and PeterO.

  51. (il principe, you clearly meant PeterO and Puck rather than Manehi and Picaroon.)
    Yes, sorry. I put the whole thing on the wrong day; don’t know what I’m doing.
    Thank you Alan B and Markfieldpete and Valentine for the forgotten modes.

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