Guardian Cryptic 27,685 by Imogen

by

Fun and challenging stuff, with a quick start into a slow finish and some tricky parsing afterwards. Favourites 13ac, 6dn, 8dn, and 15dn. Thanks to Imogen.

Across
1 CHASE RAINBOWS Have impossible aims: go after bad weather gives way (5,8)
  CHASE=”go after” + RAIN=”bad weather” + BOWS=”gives way”
10 WYSIWYG Regularly awry is pic: why I go for such a preview? (7)
  What You See Is What You Get: a design interface that previews the finished product
regular letters from aWrY iS pIc WhY I Go
11 PLACEBO Put old boy on back — it does nothing to cure him (7)
  PLACE=”Put” + O (old) B (boy) both reversed/”back”
12 YIELD Return homework about the French revolutionary (5)
  DIY=”homework” around LE=”the [in] French”, reversed/”revolutionary”
13 DECREMENT Movement of eyes in modest lowering (9)
  REM (Rapid Eye Movement) inside DECENT=”modest”
14 REICH European visits prosperous kingdom (5)
  E (European) inside RICH=”prosperous”
16 GEOMETRIC Sort of progression of cortege I’m organising (9)
  a geometric progression is a mathematical sequence
(cortege I’m)*
18 MASTICATE Chew gum, having drunk tea (9)
  MASTIC=”gum” + (tea)*
19 SACKS Russian cavalry dropping lettuce in bags (5)
  cosSACKS=”Russian cavalry”, dropping cos=”lettuce”
20 TEARSHEET Doll has teeth and ears in the wrong places (9)
  =Doll Tearsheet is a character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV partt 2 [wiki] 
(teeth ears)*
23 COMBO Smooth old jazzmen (5)
  Combo is a word for a jazz band
COMB=”Smooth” + O (old)
24 LEONORA Several overtures made by man to woman (7)
  LEON=”man” + ORA=”overtures”
ORA is the plural of ‘os’=mouth or opening=aperture, overture
25 PUNGENT Caustic, say, about indefinite number admitted to craft (7)
  E.G.=”say” reversed/”about” + N=”indefinite number”; all inside PUNT=”craft”
26 BERMUDA SHORTS Absurd mother’s horrid in these? (7,6)
  (Absurd mother’s)*
Down
2 HYSTERICS Unscrupulous lawyer heading off one’s constant suppressed laughter (9)
  sHYSTER=”Unscrupulous lawyer” with the head letter taken off + I’S=”one’s” around C (constant)
3 SAWED Said by some to have risen rapidly, but cut (5)
  Homophone of ‘soared’=”to have risen rapidly”
4 RIGID Stiff sort of card supports equipment (5)
  ID=”sort of card” after RIG=”equipment”
5 IN PECTORE Succeeded dodging fare-checker? Outcome finally undisclosed (2,7)
  =a papal practice of leaving a cardinal’s name undisclosed [wiki] 
s (succeeded) removed from INsPECTOR=”fare-checker” + final letter of OutcomE
6 BLAMELESS Innocent bishop deprived of golden fabric? (9)
  B (Bishop) + LAMÉ-LESS=”deprived of golden fabric” [wiki for Lamé]
7 WHERE Place question (5)
  cryptic definition
8 AWAY FROM IT ALL On vacation, no one may use computers! (4,4,2,3)
  AWAY FROM IT (Information Technology), ALL!=”no one may use computers!”
9 CONTACT SPORTS Approaches some seaside towns for football and rugby (7,6)
  CONTACTS PORTS=”Approaches some seaside towns”
15 HAILSTORM After heroin, moralist turns to a drop of the hard stuff (9)
  H (heroin) + (moralist)*
16 GRAVEYARD Serious distance to one’s final destination (9)
  GRAVE=”Serious” + YARD=”distance”
17 RECUMBENT Lying about boss, nearly new (9)
  nearly all of UMBo=a stud on a shield=”boss” inside RECENT=”new”
21 ADORE Around the same thing, live and love (5)
  they ARE=they “live”; around DO (ditto)=”the same thing”
22 TAPAS Pasta cooked as appetisers (5)
  (Pasta)*
23 CAN DO Positive attitude in small company letters (3,2)
  C AND O = letters C + O = co. short for “company”

52 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,685 by Imogen”

  1. Thanks Imogen and manehi

    As usual, more question marks than ticks for me. Some of these were my ignorance (TEARSHEET, IN PECTORE); others were quibbles that I won’t bother to mention.

    Favourites were HAILSTORM and CAN DO.

    I parsed LEONORA differently, as “Several overtures” (Beethoven had several goes at writing an overture for his opera Leonora until he changed its name to Fidelio), and the man  is LEO, the woman NORA. (Though I didn’t like it, as LEONORA is also a woman.)

  2. Interesting. I parsed LEONORA as muffin did, tho’ I’m sure manehi is correct. And a ‘tearsheet’ is the detachable ‘calling card’ of a fashion model, so I just bunged it in as having something to do with pretty women, ‘dolls’, d’you see, Forgot my A-level Shakespeare completely. Still, I finished, but only by luck. Thanks to both.

  3. I parsed Leonora in the same way as Muffin and Grant.   I think that’s the more likely parsing, to be honest.   My experience was like  Manehi’s.   With a few clues going in quickly, thought it was going to be straightforward, but I was very wrong.  Thanks to Manehi for the blog and Imogen for the workout.

  4. I parsed LEONORA as muffin did – I’m sure that’s the intended meaning.

    Not impressed by 1a – CHASE has the exact same meaning in the cryptic reading and the answer.  A similar objection applies (less seriously) to 9d and CONTACT[S]

  5. Thanks both. I found this pretty tricky. Thanks for parsing RECUMBENT, “umbo” new to me. Also never heard of IN PECTORE

  6. A fun workout this morning, thanks Imogen and to Manehi for the blog. Was previously ignorant of IN PECTORE but crossers and a bit of googling revealed it for me at which point it parsed instantly – always nice when a puzzle can add to my (limited) education. Similarly, I’ll blame not parsing TEARSHEETS on my school neglecting WS’s histories.

    LOI was technically 21d as I’d entered AMORE and only saw the error when I hit check all. Should have realised it didn’t properly fit earlier but never mind.

  10. I agree this was a mixture of easy and difficult. IN PECTORE and TEARSHEET were new to me. Favourite was HAILSTORM.

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi.

  11. Well I parsed leonora the same everyone else here, but manehi’s parsing is the  one that fits best with the definition.

    Had no problem with In Pectore. Never heard of Umbo and  I did  not like the definition of recumbent.

  12. Thanks both,

    I needed help with parsing 25a and 17d. 5d and 20a were new to me. I should have known ‘umbo’ as it is a term in mycology for the boss in the middle of the cap of some toadstools. Google needed some persuading to divulge that Doll Tearsheet was a Shakespearean character. So this was quite fun, a lot of easy clues then some more testing material and, as Volante says, an addition to one’s GK.

  13. Another ditto on Leonora, although isn’t the “Fidelio” of the opera called “Leonore”? And Leonore would be a better plural of Leonora for an Italianate name 🙂 (And yes I know the opera is in German.)  Umbo was new to me – I had the answer but did not get the parsing, taking “nearly new” as “recent” so missed the “nearly boss” idea. “In Pectore” was a TILT too, though easy enough to put together.

    Some gems in here – really liked wysiwyg appearing in a crossword (though brought up with document processing rather than wysiwyg I always called it “what you get is what you deserve”), masticate, sacks, graveyard, blameless (ouch when I parsed that), hailstorm for its “drop of the hard stuff”. But how can the same setter produce where, contact sports, “are” for “live” (where is the indication it is that conjugation?) and tapas as an appetiser (I suppose they are seen as such sometimes here but typically they are just small plates of which one eats many as a meal). Not sure about combo meaning jazzmen without it being an exemplar – there are plenty of other combos. But these are minor qualms – I enjoyed it overall, really!

    Thanks Manehi for a few parsing points I missed and the blog, and thanks Imogen for a head-scratcher, teaching me a few things and some lovely sideways looks at the world.

  15. Like others I hadn’t heard of TEARSHEET and IN PECTORE, but got there in the end. Favourites were HAILSTORM, DECREMENT and PUNGENT. Many thanks to Imogen and manehi.

  16. Phew! Much-Googling-In-The-Marsh for me. Still not sure I get RECUMBENT even with Manehi’s explanation. Favourites were HAILSTORM CAN DO and BLAMELESS. Thanks to both.

  17. ….on the other hand, ORA (Azed-ish anyway) from mouth > opening > overture is rather a long chain. I wonder if Imogen made the same mistake as we did?

  18. Oops clicked too early. I have to confess to googling the oft overlooked Lendora overture and running through every spirit and liqueur known to man until the penny dropped on HAILSTORM.

  19. Mastic got its name because people masticated it, so 18A seems less than perfect to me. I suspect thezed is right about LEONORA being an error for Leonore. DECREMENT was a new word for me.

  21. Same comments as many others about LEONORA, TEARSHEET (which I parsed as Grant @2 did) and IN PECTORE.

    The HAILSTORM def. was good, but my favourite was the apparently unexciting, but quite difficult if you were thinking of a double def., WHERE.

    Thank you to Imogen and manehi

  23. VinnyD @19, decrement turns out to be an old word, though I guess not in common usage, except by computer programmers who will be used to the idea of increment and decrement operators e.g. in the language C, putting ++ or — after a variable will add or subtract one from its value and is used in creating enumerated loops such as “for(x=10; x>0; x–)” which will count x down from 10 to 1.

    Re the ongoing Leonor[e|a] debate, the “ora” idea is clever – too clever for me and I agree with muffin @17 that’s it is a step rather too far. Grove online gives ov(s) as abbreviation for overture so I would say that was fairly definitive, especially as there are multiple Leonore overtures performed as separate pieces – number 3 being a very popular concert piece. I’m not a fan generally of extracting parts of music to perform (a friend once coined the term “adaggiectomy” for the excision of the adaggietto from Mahler’s 5th) here the overtures were never actually attached to the final opera!

    Lots to muse on.

     

  25. Not sure why “by some” in 3D SAWED, but nice puzzle, DECREMENT great word, HAILSTORM very nicely defined. 100 minutes. (Posting times doesn’t seem de rigueur here… is that to avoid competitive silliness, or just because it’s embarrassing to admit I took so long?)

  27. Thank you Imogen and manehi.

    Very challenging and help was needed with some parsing.  I also parsed LEONORA as muffin @1 and others.

    copland smith @24 REICH is sometimes used on its own for ‘kingdom’, e.g. das Reich Gottes, the Kingdom of Heaven – Cassell’s German/English dictionary gives for Reich, empire, kingdom, realm.

     

  29. I’m firmly in the camp that believes that there is a slip in the clue for 24 across, and that Imogen intended to refer to the familiar overtures for Leonore (and, understandably, given the way that the word is usually pronounced in English, seems to have neglected to check the spelling).  Very nice crossword, though.

  30. Although Leonore is definitely the correct spelling, Google finds pages and pages of “Leonora” no.3 in particular

  31. I thought this was going to be the quickest Imogen ever, but the last few, especially the unfamiliar IN PECTORE, took me ages, and Google was necessary to conform a couple of others.

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi

  32. Leonora/Leonore: Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book gives Leonore as the title of the overtures, and Leonora as the name of the character.

    Leonore was the title of the French play which was translated for Beethoven.

    But, face it, the characters are Spaniards who have Italianate names in a German libretto based on a French original, so perhaps it is best to accept that the clue was perfectly intelligible – in fact my foi – and agree to Brexit this quadrilingual conundrum.

  33. Thanks to Imogen and manehi. My experience sounds much like many others. Started off very quickly and rattled over half off in no time. However, then came to a grinding halt, and the rest took an age with many new terms to me (all of which have been mentioned). Overall still very enjoyable and particularly liked hysterics, hailstorm and combo. Thanks again to Imogen and manehi.

  34. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Imogen and manehi.

    I agree with manehi’s comments. I did not know UMBO, and I couldn’t see REM (D’oh!). Although I parsed TEARSHEET, I missed the connection with the bard. The concept of IN PECTORE was familiar, but if I ever knew the term, I had completely forgotten it. Multiple overtures led immediately to LEONORA, Leo/Nora, so I didn’t give this more thought.

    I agree that Reich can also be kingdom in English: Mein Vaters Reich = My Father’s Kingdom.

    Thanks to Roger GS @26 for the reference to Rhoticity. Here, my personal favourite story was as a student meeting a young lady from Kansas – having then never visited the US. I asked her how her accent differed from other American accents. She responded, “We work our r’s harder” with strong rhoticity even on the final r! She also strongly emphasized the r in pronouncing the nation’s capital (Warshington).

  35. Really tough in places, but a really enjoyable challenge. Tearsheet last to go in…as for others this was beyond me, despite a pretty good knowledge of the old Bard. And didn’t get anywhere near WYSIWYG. What I saw was what I didn’t get! Ended up putting in warning out of sheer desperation which in turn scuppered hysterics. Thanks Imogen and Manehi. Been a good week so far…

  36. Thanks to Imogen and manehi. Tough going for me thanks to umbo and other items already mentioned, though at least I got Doll TEARSHEET quickly.

  37. Thank you, Roger GS, for the article on rhoticity.  It clarified something that’s puzzled me for years.  The Copper family have been song collectors and performers for many generations in Sussex.  When I heard their recording, I thought they sounded like Americans — but it’s because rural Southern England stayed rhotic!

    My impression is that all American Southerners, black or white, rich or poor, speak non-rhotically.  It’s not a class marker there — or anywhere else that I know of in this century.

  38. So it seems no one else made LEONORA even more difficult by having GRAVESEND rather than GRAVESIDE until resorting to the check button with LEOROSE. IN PECTORE was new as well and as well as those mentioned I liked BLAMELESS. Deceptively easy start which led to a grinding finish – and well worth the effort. Many thanks to Imogen and manehi.

  40. @Jeceris @29: understood (laugh emoticon) but shame though, it’d be interesting to see how quickly ace solvers can finish.

  41. Also, unrelated question about another crossword which doesn’t appear to have been blogged, Rufus 20030 in Grauniad of 7 Nov. Answer to 6d “Kids drink it” is surely GOATSMILK, but that’s not accepted, and turning on Answer Cheat it says GEARSTICK. Is that an error?

  42. Didn’t get IN PECTORE. I’ve never heard of the term and,looking at the parsing, I doubt I’d have worked it out. I didn’t know DECREMENT but that was easy to work out. I did know Doll TEARSHEET and saw the character played excellently by Maxine Peake quite recently. I had LEONORE originally but replaced it with the correct answer once 16dn went in- parsed a la Muffin. REICH was one of the first in but I can’t say I like it. I don’t think REICH is a kingdom.
    Nice to see WYSIWYG again.
    Thanks Imogen.

  43. FOI the very easy TAPAS. LOI 24a. Had FREE as the first word for 8d which made me not get 10a and 12a, bah! Easy for an lmogen, this one.

  44. Thanks all – agree that muffin’s LEONORA parsing seems likely. I’ve only ever known female LEOs, so never thought to split it LEO/NORA…

    BlueCanary – “boss” can mean a stud sticking out of e.g. a shield [see wiki], and “umbo” is a word for a shield boss. So “boss, nearly” is UMB[o], inside RECENT=”new”, giving RECUMBENT=”Lying” down

  45. Hi manehi

    I don’t think I’ve ever met a Leo (though I do know a couple of Leons). All the ones I’ve heard of are male, though (Leo McKern springs to mind).

    I was very impressed at your parsing of the ORA bit – above and beyond the call of duty, and it does work 🙂

  47. Or alternatively 🙂

    So Imogen has made a terrible mistake regarding Leonore/Leonora? Perhaps he’s not alone. Read
    this.

    The “a” spelling is very common and both spellings of the name are used in various countries around the world. In the Beethoven context there are several CD/LP covers proclaiming the “Leonora Overture”.

    Bizarrely, in direct contrast to Manehi, I have only ever met male “Leo”s.

  48. Alex @47

    I’m not sure that I would put much reliance on a source that isn’t self-consistent!

     He wrote four overtures for the work (the three Leonore overtures as well as the Fidelio overture).

    However, as I said at 30, Google finds lots of “Leonora” overtures.

  52. stretch @51

    I wondered that, so looked up “contact sport”. Apparently it’s a sport where contact is possible, not where it’s required.

    Americans make a distinction between “collision sports ” like rugby and American football, and “contact sports”, in which they include football.

Comments are closed.