Guardian Cryptic 27697 Chifonie

by

Thank you to Chifonie for an enjoyable crossword. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 Policeman seizes haul in fortified house (4,5)

PEEL TOWER : PEELER(a policeman, named after Sir Robert Peel, regarded as father of the modern British police force) containing(seizes) TOW(to haul/to pull along).

Defn: A small fortified tower, one of a series originally built as watch towers used to warn of approaching danger, also called a pele tower.

6 Doctor keeps Victorian pickup quiet (5)

MUTED : MD(abbrev. for “Medicinae Doctor”, Latin for Doctor of Medicine) containing(keeps) UTE(short for a utility vehicle/a pickup in Australia of which Victoria is a state).

9 Mature scripture writer (5)

RIPEN : RI(abbrev. for “religious instruction”/the teaching of scripture/religious writings) + PEN(a writer/writing instrument).

10 Marty sees problem in instalment plan (4,5)

EASY TERMS : Anagram of(… problem) MARTY SEES.

11 Broken chairs in the way here by the Irish Sea (10)

LANCASHIRE : Anagram of(Broken) CHAIRS contained in(in the) LANE(a way/a narrow road).

Defn: County in England by the Irish Sea.

12 Stern parent (4)

REAR : Double defn: 1st: … on a boat or ship; and 2nd: To bring up children/the young.

14 Even a place of higher education has class (7)

UNIFORM : UNI(short for “university”/a place of higher education) plus(has) FORM(a group of students/a class in a place of education).

15 Former partner modelled naked (7)

EXPOSED : EX(a former partner/a partner since separated or divorced) + POSED(modelled, say, for a photograph or painting).

17 Charlie gets poorer daily (7)

CLEANER : C(letter represented by “Charlie” in the phonetic alphabet) + LEANER(poorer/more meagre, as in “leaner margins in the retail trade”).

Defn: One is employed to clean, say, someone’s home every day/daily.

19 Function where Hazel meets man (7)

TANGENT : TAN(hazel/a brownish colour) + GENT(short for “gentleman”/a formal or polite way to refer to a man).

Defn: … in trigonometry relating 2 sides of a right-angled triangle.

20 Be sorry about daughter being discourteous (4)

RUDE : RUE(to be sorry for/to regret) containing(about) D(abbrev. for “daughter”).

22 Distress character reversing jalopy (10)

RATTLETRAP : RATTLE(to distress/to discomfort) + reversal of(… reversing) PART(a character/a role in, say, a play or movie).

25 Love Bill’s speech (9)

ADORATION : AD(abbrev. for “advertisement”, a form of which is the bill/poster/handbill) + ORATION(a speech).

26 A sign tooth decay hasn’t started (5)

ARIES : “caries”(tooth decay) minus its 1st letter(hasn’t started).

Defn: … in astrology.

27 Mollycoddle girl in US city (5)

NANNY : ANN(a girl’s name) contained in(in) NY(abbrev. for New York, a US city).

Defn: To overprotect someone.

28 Uncouth set slates building (9)

TASTELESS : Anagram of(… building) SET SLATES.

Down

1 Supernatural being left in danger (5)

PERIL : PERI(in Persian mythology, a superhuman being taking the form of a good fairy) + L(abbrev. for “left”).

2 Thoughtful when supporting old dear (9)

EXPENSIVE : PENSIVE(thoughtful/engaged in deep thought) placed below(when supporting, in a down clue) EX-(prefix signifying former/old, as in “the ex-PM”).

3 Model worker gets a rise or equivalent (10)

TANTAMOUNT : T(model of a car made by the Ford Motor Company) + ANT(social insect, a member of which may be from the worker caste) plus(gets) A + MOUNT(to increase/to rise, as in “prices mount as Christmas approaches”).

Defn: … in effect/amounting to the same, as in “his silence was tantamount to a confession”.

4 King involved in crash in Wales (7)

WREXHAM : REX(Latin for King) contained in(involved in) WHAM(to crash/bang into).

Defn: Town in northern Wales.

5 Bookstore? (7)

RESERVE : Clue to be read as “Book store”.  Double defn: 1st: To book, say, a seat in the theatre; and 2nd: A store of items set aside for a specific purpose.

6 Man put away wife (4)

MATE : M(abbrev. for “male”/a man) + ATE(put away, into one’s stomach)

7 Compact found in Battersea (5)

TERSE : Hidden in(found in) “Battersea“.

Defn: …/concise in expression/with as few as possible number of words.

8 Cast aspersions on circle embarrassed over sex appeal (9)

DISCREDIT : DISC(a flat thing in a circular shape) + RED(embarrassed/what you are when you blush) placed above(over, in a down clue) IT(sex appeal, the “it” in the “it girls”).

The original It Girl:

13 Old writers echo identical passwords (4,6)

OPEN SESAME : O(abbrev. for “old”) + PENS(writer/writing instruments) + E(letter represented by “echo” in the phonetic alphabet) + SAME(identical).

Defn: … to gain admission or access. Originally from the phrase used by Ali Baba to open the 40 thieves’ cave in the Arabian Nights collection of Middle Eastern folk tales

14 Centaur in trouble? That’s doubtful! (9)

UNCERTAIN : Anagram of(… trouble) CENTAUR IN.

16 Subordinate holds fruit for the men of the family (5,4)

SPEAR SIDE : SIDE(subordinate/not the main, as in “a side issue”) containing(holds) PEARS(fruit).

Defn: The male side or members of a family.

18 One is pragmatic about an inclination (7)

REALIST : RE(about/with reference to) [A LIST](an inclination/a leaning to one side).

19 Complaint when Lawrence beat American (7)

TETANUS : T.E.(Lawrence, nicknamed Lawrence of Arabia) + TAN(to beat/to thrash) + US(abbrev. for things American).

Defn: A bacterial disease.

21 Fuzz arresting ring leader in swamp (5)

DROWN : DOWN(fuzz/the soft feathers of a new born bird) containing(arresting) 1st letter of(… leader) “ring“.

Defn: To overwhelm with an excessive amount of something, say, water.

23 Lapdogs harbour small bugs (5)

PESTS : PETS(some of whom are lapdogs) containing(harbour) S(abbrev. for “small”).

Defn: …/things that bug/annoy you.

24 Suspicious of conflict over youth leader (4)

WARY : WAR(conflict, armed or otherwise) placed above(over, in a down clue) 1st letter of(… leader) “youth“.

48 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27697 Chifonie”

  1. A fairly straightforward puzzle, as we have come to expect from Chifonie. SPEAR SIDE was new to me, and the expression has only been used once before in the Guardian, by Chifonie, with an identical clue. This got me looking at the rest of the solutions, and I discovered that this puzzle must have a deliberate element of “Chifonie’s greatest hits” about it:

    Chifonie 25954: Charlie gets poorer daily (7)
    Chifonie 27697: Charlie gets poorer daily (7)

    Chifonie 23930: Doctor keeps Victorian pick-up quiet (5)
    Chifonie 27697: Doctor keeps Victorian pickup quiet (5)

    Chifonie 24377: Old writers echo identical password (4,6)
    Chifonie 27697: Old writers echo identical passwords (4,6)

    Chifonie 23267: Policeman seizes haul in fortified house (4,5)
    Chifonie 27697: Policeman seizes haul in fortified house (4,5)

    Chifonie 24322: One is pragmatic about a desire (7)
    Chifonie 27697: One is pragmatic about an inclination (7)

    Chifonie 23678: Book store (7)
    Chifonie 27697: Bookstore? (7)

    Chifonie 23057: Subordinate holds fruit for the men of the family (5,4)
    Chifonie 27697: Subordinate holds fruit for the men of the family (5,4)

    Chifonie 26658: Function where Hazel gets a man (7)
    Chifonie 27697: Function where Hazel meets man (7)

    Chifonie 24285: Car worker gets a rise or equivalent (10)
    Chifonie 27697: Model worker gets a rise or equivalent (10)

    Chifonie 23524: Compact found in Battersea (5)
    Chifonie 27697: Compact found in Battersea (5)

    Chifonie 27697: Even a place of higher education has class (7)
    Chifonie 22014: Even a place of higher eduction has class (7)

    Chifonie 25259: Crash keeps king somewhere in Wales (7)
    Chifonie 27697: King involved in crash in Wales (7)

    Thanks to Chifonie and scchua

  2. Thanks Both,

    I was going to say there must be more time before Christmas than I thought, because it must be Monday not Thursday, but that would be unfair as this was much better with proper clues rather than a string of CDs and DDs.

  3. Thanks Chifonie and scchua

    Easy but entertaining. I whizzed through up to LOI SPEAR SIDE, which I had never heard of, and didn’t parse as I took “fruit” as PEAR rather than PEARS (I had tried an unparsed SPERM LINE, but had to abandon this when I got RATTLETRAP).

    Interesting post, BH. I didn’t remember coming across any previously. I’m sure I would have remembered the lovely “Victorian pickup”, my favourite clue.

    The printout has instal-ment all on one line, which looked odd, but I chose to ignore it!

  5. Enjoyable all round – hadn’t heard of SPEAR SIDE. A bit surprised by BH’s revelations of re-runs of earlier clues. Many thanks to C & s.

  6. A case of finding myself on the same wavelength as the setter – 1st breeze through left only 6 to complete and those fell in rapid order. Not that it was not delightful – aries was fun, peel tower a TILT and easy terms a new expression for me. Just one of those days when whatever I tried first by way of solution was the right thing so maybe I was channeling subliminal memories of past clues as beery hiker @1 has pointed out so effectively. You’d have thought an editor would pick up that kind of thing? Or perhaps they thought it was very green to recycle…

    Thanks for the excellent blog scchua – it rivals a certain online ‘pedia for thoroughness! and thanks Chifonie for not keeping me distracted too long as I have a lot of baking to do today!

  7. Thanks for the blog, scchua, and the usual visuals which always enhance your published solutions.

    Thanks also to beery@1 for trawling the archives. As for muffin@3, none of the clues felt familiar to me. Oh how quickly we forget, though of course I can’t recall whether I encountered those clues/crosswords the first time round.

    With three unfamiliar clues, this was not a pushover for me, yet other solutions seem to slot in quite easily. The unknowns were 16d SPEAR SIDE, as already mentioned above. The other unknowns for me were 1a PEEL TOWER and 4d WREXHAM, though along with the SPEAR SIDE solution, all were perfectly gettable from the wordplays.

    muffin, I have found two random hyphens over this week’s puzzles; not sure what is going on with the type-setting.

    I really liked 13d OPEN SESAME.

    Thanks to Chifonie.

     

     

  8. Thank you, scchua, both for the blog and the interesting pictorial bonus.

    Curiously, I knew distaff side but not SPEAR SIDE.  Thanks for that Chifonie.

    Loved OPEN SEASAME

    If I may be allowed a little off-topic note, I was away travelling yesterday so unable to join the blog.  Which is a great shame as I wanted to comment on Mr Halpern’s fine surfaces.  I have griped here often about some of his more nonsensical ones and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to be positive.

    Nice week, all.

  9. [JinA

    Just careless copy and paste, I think – in the paper version “instal” is on the end of a line and “ment” is on the next, so a hyphen is required.]

  10. Routine but we’ll constructed and enjoyable nonetheless. Like others I did not know SPEAR SIDE but well clued. I did like TANTAMOUNT and good to see old TE back!
    Thanks for the fun Chiffers and for the illustrated blog Scchua – is that your jalopy?

  11. The hyphens issue is almost certainly due to the latest layout changes in the online version. I would prefer to have no continuation hyphens in any of the versions (in this case putting the whole word on the next line would not have used any more space), but that is probably dictated by house style…

  12. Until recently, like William, I knew ‘distaff side’ but not SPEAR  SIDE. I learned the latter right at the beginning of ep.1 of ‘A Very English Scandal’, the BBC’s really excellent drama on the Jeremy Thorpe affair, in reference to Thorpe’s sexual preferences. (Available on iPlayer – I won’t post a link as registration is required, and it may not be available outside UK). Other than that, a straightforward puzzle, in fact a little too straightforward for my taste. Favourites were LANCASHIRE and TANTAMOUNT.

    Thanks Chifonie and scchua.

  13. Many thanks to DCI Hiker for uncovering the evidence. As i was doing this I was hearing all the Beatles hits from over the road..

    Hello Goodbye!

  14. This was definitely toward the gentle side of Grauniad puzzles, swift entries and few hold-ups.

    I have to say I thought 4d was very iffy – granted, the wordplay leads you to WREXHAM, but the definition – ‘in Wales’ is hardly definitive.

    Thanks to scchua and Chifonie.

  15. Another who forgot to remember fruit plural, so had spear line instead of side. Sline, urban dictionary, is a vacuous person…belonging to the lowest social class. Yes, I thought, subordinate, how clever. Bah! Otherwise more or less a write-in, apart from peel tower, a tilt, though traces of Bobbies and Peelers remaining from high school history long ago made it gettable.

    Thanks Scchua and Chifonie.

  16. Bit of a breeze this, peel tower notwithstanding. New to me that, but the atmospheric photo ensured it’s now logged in the brain. And the It Girl pic was a lovely bonus too. What is it about the words open sesame? Love that phrase. Hope, magic and mystery entwined. Thanks Chifonie and Scchua for a fun and illuminating hour.

  17. Thanks to Chifonie and scchua. Nothing much to add here, a pretty steady solve and another who did not know spear line. Nontheless still enjoyable and thanks again to Chifonie and scchua.

  18. Nice pics. Thanks. I almost scuppered myself thinking BATTLESHIP for 22a initially, but of course that doesn’t work. Found the RATTLETRAP which led me to SPEAR SIDE, my last one in… previously unknown to me, just like nearly everybody else, it seems. A nicely easy-going, but entertaining puzzle – I was finished well before my lunchtime quiche, which I put in the oven before I started, was cooked. Thanks Scchua and Chifonie.

  19. This was gentler than some Thursday offerings, but well clued and a pleasant solve, with a couple of nice TILTs besides.  Chifonie excels at very simple and concise surfaces, many of which sound like something a person might actually see or hear in the real world (rather than only in cuckoo Crosswordland), and this puzzle was a great case in point.

    beery hiker @1 — wow, that was some impressive research — thanks!  Also impressive is Chifonie’s feat of managing to fit so many words that he used in (different) prior puzzles, into a single grid.

    My favorite clues today included EXPENSIVE, TANTAMOUNT, MUTED, RATTLETRAP, TETANUS (although I wondered about the Paul-ian clueing possibilities for this), and OPEN SESAME.  SPEAR SIDE was vaguely familiar, just enough for me to be confident it was correct, but Googling the term post-solve and reading about spear and distaff (a much more familiar term to me) was a pleasurable TILT.  But my favorite TILT was PEEL TOWER — which I managed to solve in the first instance only because prior GC puzzles have taught me the term “Peeler” for a police officer.  [I know that they are not exactly the same sorts of things, but reading about the signal fires in the peel towers put me immediately in mind of this memorable scene.]

    Many thanks to Chifonie and scchua and the other commenters.

  20. TASTELESS 28a was my LOI because I kept trying to make the letters of “set slate” spell some kind of a building.  It took all the crossers and a bit of time for the tea tray to drop.

    I’d never heard of a PEEL TOWER or SPEAR SIDE, which I suppose is the opposite number to “distaff side.”  I’d often wondered why there was no name for the guys’ side, and just figured it was because as usual the female aspect of something is pointed out and the male is assumed.

    The only use of “peri” I’ve ever met is “Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri.”

  21. Lovely illustrations, scchua especially the jalopy. Enjoyed this between making sausage rolls and chocolate cake.

  22. Some good misdirecting definitions here. 17 could be cocaine (Charlie) but without any support in the rest of the clue.  1d could be angel (supernatural spirit, and L in dANGEr, but leaving me scratching my head about how to lose dr),  8 Could have been desirable (sex appeal, leaving me scrabbling how to embarrass a circle enough to make it fit with dis (cast aspersions).  But it is always a shame not to go to town on Wrexham, so much potential – as in “I play Rugby for a Welsh border team”, “Wrexham?”, “Well, it doesn’t do’em any good”.  Luckily I assumed this is what “crash” meant it got a laugh anyhow.

  25. Thanks to Chifonie and scchua. Enjoyable. I had the same problems already noted (though I did eventually parse PEEL TOWER and SPEAR SIDE). WREXHAM was my LOI.

  28. Not as easy as I expected. PEEL TOWER was new to me but beautifully clued and was my COD. I also liked CLEANER and DISCREDIT,and I groaned at MATE which was LOI.
    Nice puzzle.
    Thanks Chifonie.

  29. Guessed that 16d must be the male equivalent of the distaff side, but it took all the crossers to pin down what it was. Never met it in real life.

  30. Peel towers were all about protecting your property from border reivers (while you waited to go out reiving yourselves). On the borders, “surnames” were more important than nationalitiies. Major ones included Charlton, Armstrong, and Graham. See here.

  31. Thanks to Chifonie and scchua. And to beery hiker@1 with a gasp of wonder at such duplexity (is that the right word?).  On reflection I felt a tingle when OPEN SESAME leapt forth from the cerebral chasms, but not quite the right tingle?

    Anyway only chiming in at this late hour to observe that the “peri” in PERIL is a creature who in my experience inhabits only crosswordland, existing nowhere else. A rare beast, but do others have others viz words that they have encountered only in crosswords?

     

  32. Alphalpha @31

    I remember a Punch cartoon from years ago. A zoo keeper is explaining to a visitor why the gnu cage is papered with crossword puzzles: “We like to keep animals in their natural environment”

  34. Alphalpha @31

    From American crosswords I would nominate aerie, ell, arete, and été.  And ute and tor actually, but neither of those raise any eyebrows here.

  35. Blue Dot:

    Do not forget that if you have a beige sewing kit in American Crosswordland, you must call it an ECRU ETUI.  The only famous architect is EERO Saarinen, and tennis matches are forever played by ILIE Nastase and Arthur ASHE.  And TERI GARR is the only actress besides CHER who matters, unless you count AVA Gardner.  People in Crosswordland love the musical stylings of YMA Sumac and Yoko ONO, and of course the poetry of Edgar Allan POE.  The visual arts of Crosswordland have a distinct tendency to the avant-garde, with JOAN MIRO, Salvador DALI, MAN RAY, ERTE, and Paul KLEE putting in frequent appearances, along with the entire DADA movement.   Yet the muses of Crosswordland are ERATO and CLIO, who wouldn’t approve of much of this.

  36. Coming to this late, but I can say I also know “peri” from the Schumann oratorio The Peri and Paradise.  In fact, I’ve been to more performances of that work than I have off Iolanthe.  Based on a poem by Thomas Moore, the Irish poet.

    I knew PEEL TOWER from the one in Corbridge near where my sister lives.  It’s now a pub and we went there for pre-Christmas drinks last year.

  37. An enjoyable solve, not least for the remarkably plausible surfaces as DaveMc pointed out @19. I agree with William@8 that Paul’s surfaces yesterday were better than usual but Chifonie is the master or mistress. Thanks to her/him, to scchua, and to Beery Hiker@1. I must have at least attempted all these clues in the past but didn’t remember one of them.

  38. Intrigued and impressed by Beery Hiker being able to access all those crosswords and the time taken to find the clues. How do you do it?! Do you store them? Once done mine are gone

  39. El Ingles, yes spear side is the opposite of distaff side. It reflects the once typical occupations of the sexes.

  40. mrpenney @35 (and further in reply to BlueDot@34) —

    Haha, yes, but when it comes to entertainment, don’t forget INA Balin, IDA Lupino, EDIE Adams, Joann DRU, ANI DiFranco (in the more contemporary American crosswords — in older crosswords ANI is, to reuse a term from my post @19, “cuckoo”), and Fred Astaire’s apparently more famous sis, ADELE.

    Also, ENYA and SADE have both toured frequently in American Crosswordland since the 1990s.

    And from the animal kingdom, watch out for the ANOA!

  41. Phyllida, this site is searchable, which makes it a handy archive of old crossword clues. But BH’s effort in compiling that was still significant.

  44. American solvers boast other curious points of knowledge such as Charles Lamb’s pseudonym, fencing foils, arrow venom, and a number of flightless birds extinct and otherwise.

    Nice puzzle but did note the repetition of clue elements PEN and TAN. Still not as bad as one of the clues appearing, albeit with a flip, today in 27698 …

  46. Phyllida @38 – I wrote a program a couple of years ago, to extract the clues from the crossword HTML files, and I used it to create a big spreadsheet listing all of the clues back to the start of the archive in June 1999. Keeping it up to date takes about a minute a day, and once you have a list to work with most of the analysis is easy…

  47. Did anyone else have AGENT for 9ac ? Mature = age. Scripture = NT (New Testament). Still, I have no idea why that would be a writer !

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