Guardian 27,835 / Paul

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It’s Paul rounding off the week, with just the right amount of challenge and some witty surfaces, providing several smiles along the way.

I enjoyed this – many thanks, Paul.

Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 British introduced to articles from Greece, perhaps (6)
THEBAN
B [British] in THE AN [articles] – with a ‘perhaps’, as there was also a Thebes in ancient Egypt

5 Getting to be charming and proper (8)
BECOMING
Double definition

9 Recall snigger, laughing ultimately about a bird (5,3)
GREAT TIT
A reversal [recall] of TITTER [snigger] + [laughin]G round A

10 Far from developed pond dweller I own, by the sound of it? (6)
MINUTE
Sounds like ‘my newt’ [pond dweller I own] – this is one of the first punning jokes I ever heard, as a child, so I’ve always loved it

11 Time to reflect on depraved premier in Washington being irresponsible (5-3-4)
DEVIL-MAY-CARE
A reversal [to reflect] of ERA [time] after EVIL MAY [depraved premier] in DC [Washington] – great surface!

13 Colonnade attaches to Athenian houses (4)
STOA
Hidden [houses] in attacheS TO Athenian

14 Directive almost involving Reagan trimmed down the big guns (8)
ORDNANCE
ORDE[r] [directive, almost] round NANC[y] [Reagan, trimmed down] – a change from the ‘directive’ being ‘ordinance’

17 Drug reduced, might that hurt? (8)
UPPERCUT
UPPER [drug] + CUT [reduced]

20, 24 Cricketer right to go, unfortunately run is declined to the frustration of the present opener? (9,3,8)
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED
BATTE[r] [Cricketer minus [to go] r {right}] + an anagram [unfortunately] of RUN IS DECLINED TO – one of my favourites

23 One featuring in sort of diagram, a capital city (6)
VIENNA
I [one] in VENN [sort of diagram] + A

25 Item blown up muffles encouraging cries coming from the Austrian Alps (8)
TYROLESE
TYRE [item blown up] round OLÉS [encouraging cries]

26 Reason, perhaps, egg breaks (6)
SANITY
NIT [egg] in SAY [perhaps]

Down

2 Instrument designed for cutting? Top shaved (4)
HARP
[s]HARP [designed for cutting]

3 Go for one day keeping apart swine and pheasant, say (5,4)
BOARD GAME
D [day] keeping apart BOAR [swine] and GAME [pheasant, say]

4 Mother last to swat greenbottles? (6)
NATIVE
NAÏVE [green] round [bottles] [swa]T: mother as an adjective, as in motherland / tongue – another favourite

5 In the main, some fighting fit: athlete left with bone to repair (6,2,3,4)
BATTLE OF THE NILE
An anagram [to repair] of FIT ATHLETE L [left] and BONE

6 Regular mostly keeps together with specially trained soldier (8)
COMMANDO
COMMO[n] [regular, mostly] round AND [together with]

7 Crazed genius’s heart controlled by tablet, perhaps? (5)
MANIC
Middle letters of geNIus in MAC [tablet, perhaps]

8 Buff beauty in ballet (10)
NUTCRACKER
NUT [buff] + CRACKER [beauty]

12 Those inherited after a break-up in my past life (10)
STEPFAMILY
At first sight, this seemed to be just a cryptic definition but it’s a clever anagram [break-up] of MY PAST LIFE – &littish and another favourite

15 Sick spell and sick feeling after a change of policy (5,4)
ABOUT TURN
BOUT [sick spell] + TURN [ sick feeling] after A

16 Hood, warmer one (8)
SCARFACE
SCARF [warmer] + ACE [one]

19 Articulate Presbyterian leader strikes (6)
KNOCKS
Sounds like [articulate] [John] Knox [Presbyterian]

21 South American steps on llama trotting to market, all finally going berserk (5)
TANGO
An anagram [going berserk] of the final letters of oN llamA trottinG tO markeT – another great surface

22, 18 In bar, drunk oft remaining (4,4)
LEFT OVER
An anagram [drunk] of OFT in LEVER [bar]

38 comments on “Guardian 27,835 / Paul”

  1. Thanks Paul and Eileen

    Three-quarters of this didn’t take long, but the remainder did!  5d jumped out at me from the anagram; I got the other long ones quickly from crossers, letter count and definitons, but confess that I didn’t bother to parse them. I also missed the parsing of SANITY – I like it now.

    Favourite was STEPFAMILY.

    (Naturally I didn’t like 8d…)

  2. We had to rush through this so defeated on a few.

    Just came to say that we had plenty of chuckles, in particular the brilliant 20, 24

  3. [Of passing interest, the Battle of the Nile – Aboukir Bay, in fact – was the site of “the boy stood on the burning deck”. Casabianca was the captain and his father, as I recall.]

  4. Thanks both. Re 11a – setters need to get their “premier= MAY” clues in while they can!

  5. My dudgeon was high when I first saw 20,24: my pet hate – a cricket reference – plus a convoluted clue. But I had to pull my neck when I realised that even I knew what a batter was, and that overall it was a great clue.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

  7. I took a while to finish the NW corner. My favourites were MINUTE, LEFTOVER, BOARD GAME, DEVIL-MAY-CARE, SANITY.

    I was not sure how to parse 14a – I was trying to work with ORD[i]NANCE.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen.

  8. I raced through the first half or so before slowing down. I too was dismayed at an apparent cricket clue, but then spotted the solution via crossers so all was well.

    However I fail to see how ‘tablet’ leads to MAC in 7d.

  10. Oh well, it’s a taste thing: I just found this a unexciting set of clues, with surfaces quite lacking. Solutions obtainable, but ho-hum.

    Have commented on drugs before (so many, with different names), but upper fair.

    Next time – thanks Eileen and Paul.

  11. Thanks to Paul and Eileen. I got through more quickly than usual with this setter, but I still struggled with MINUTE, mother = NATIVE, and especially my LOI, TANGO.

  13. The top half went in quickly, but the bottom half was much tougher. I finally gave up and revealed the long cricket clue, after which the rest went in without too much trouble. I liked 16d for its brevity and 11a, where Paul manages to take a swipe at two heads of state in the same clue. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

  15. Admittedly some ‘frustration’ trying to figure it out, but BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED was brilliant for the misdirection, trickiness of the wordplay and originality of the def. which I could identify with immediately I’d worked it out. A candidate for clue of the week for me. UPPERCUT and ‘Mother’ as an adjective were excellent as well.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

  16. Apple Mac make ‘tablets’don’t they? There’s a question mark at the end of 7dn so no probs with this. Lots of fab clues here. 10 ac made me laugh. Batteries not included and stepfamily my favourites. Thanks Paul and Manehi.

  19. Apple make tablets, yes, but they’re branded as iPad, not Mac. Tablet computers are typically defined by their touchscreens (even by Chambers!), and Apple don’t make touchscreen Macs. The Macs are the more traditional computers.

  20. When I did the first read through, I did not get even one clue, so I figured it was going to be a challenge. Came back to it and suddenly got on the wavelength. FOI was Great Tit, LOI Scarface. CODs Vienna and Board Game. Good puzzle and a nice challenge. Thanks to setter and bloggers.

  21. Paul took some liberties with this one, but the electorate seems to be in a generally forgiving mood today, due I’m sure to the overall cleverness.

    I was surprised to see how long it took for equating Macs with tablets to come up. They are complementary offerings in Apple’s hardware product line, so I would call this a clear error. A question-mark isn’t enough to correct a mistake.

    Since e.g. a shard of glass is sharp but is not designed for anything, I think 2d would work better if it said “suitable” instead of “designed”.

    Then we come to BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED. What spoils it just a touch for me is that the definition part is not a definition at all (question-mark notwithstanding) – it is something caused by the answer phrase. There would be plenty of objections to “mosquito” being clued by “malaria”, but this one seems to be not so bad. Probably because it is so clever, and this is why:

    If you saw “present opener” out of context, would you think cricket, or birthdays and wrapping paper? Exactly. So what Paul did with the starting cricket misdirection was to lure you away from reading the phase with its default semantics, and made it really hard to see it in the way you would otherwise most naturally do. Brilliant.

    Thanks.

  22. Was a DNF for me, as I bunged in HORN for 2d (sHORN topped) without worrying about what the “designed for cutting” was doing there.
    I, too, loved 11a and 20,24, and also thought 12d was good.
    Many thanks, as usual, to Paul and Eileen.

  23. I was always told (possibly by some hypercorrect Brits on this transatlantic sports message board I used to oost to) that a cricketer is a batsman and that only baseball players were batters. Apparently not. Perhaps these were also the same people who scoffed at the word soccer, which is British in origin. I liked that clue, incidentally.

    I also appreciated DEVIL-MAY-CARE, and BOARD GAME for the “go for one day” start, among many others.

    Isn’t 5A actually intended as a triple definition? The “charming” sense of BECOMING isn’t quite the same as the “proper” one. “She’s a very becoming young lady” isn’t talking about her propriety, and “your conduct is not becoming” isn’t talking about charm.

  24. I thought that 20 was brilliant although I actually revealed it, thinking I couldn’t be bothered with cricket….could ‘sharp’ be the noun meaning a sharp surgical implement, so designed?

  25. Very enjoyable, but I’m still annoyed with myself that I couldn’t see STEPFAMILY, one of several brilliant clues.

     

  26. One of Paul’s better ones. Took me far too long to see UPPERCUT and SCARFACE at the end.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen

  28. Thanks Paul and Eileen. Enjoyed but dnf- I was another (s)HORN. OK, it’s wrong but the correct reading could be more tightly clued, imho. Lots else to like.

  29. Like Bear of little brain @22, I had also put HORN for 2d. I parsed it as [t]HORN, which seemed somewhat plausible (though not fully satisfactory) as a thorn is designed (by nature or by God, depending on your viewpoint) to cut. [s]HARP works much better. Thanks to Paul and Eileen for an enjoyable puzzle and blog!

  30. Pretty much perfect – a few went in quickly, some took some lateral thinking, and the ones we really struggled with were all obvious once we’d solved them. Batteries not included our favourite.
    Thanks to Paul, and Eileen.

  31. Slow brained today. Only had STOA on the first pass and then nothing until -finally- DEVIL MAY CARE opened it up. LOI was NATIVE which was a bung so thanks to Eileen for the parsing. Clever puzzle which I should have enjoyed more!
    Thanks Paul.

  32. Long slow solve – and all the better for it. A pity about the unequivocal error in equating “mac” with “tablet” (Apple is the company, they make tablets called iPads, phones called iPhones and computers called Macs…I am with Dr. WhatsOn in calling this one out and the editor should have done better) because the rest of it was full of brilliant misdirection. Paul, “you spun me round, round baby right round, like a record baby, round round”.

    Not all excellent puzzles have themes or super smooth surfaces – some are just utterly fair but weirdly dazzling. Thank you Eileen for confirming the parsing. There were a number I put in and parsed later thinking “it has to be something like this” but actually the detail of the parsing was worthwhile.

  33. I finished up with many more ticks than I usually do in a Paul puzzle – 10,13,26a and 3,8,12,19d along with 20/24a for the definition but not for the wordplay. 11a was another “that must be the answer but the clue doesn’t engage me enough to want to work it out” solution – which I often find with Paul. There were some others that I didn’t parse but now see them as clever clues that I didn’t work on – notably 25a and 6d. Many thanks to Paul and Eileen.

  34. Thanks to Eileen and Paul

    Some very nice stuff here – Paul can do the surfaces when he feels like it.

    One small point @12d – I think the def must be THOSE INHERITED – you inherit nothing from the break-up.

  35. A DNF for me as I thought 25 was DOLOMITE, which I half-parsed as ‘item blown up’. ‘Austrian Alps’ also seemed right for the location, although as I know very well but didn’t think through at the time, the Dolomites are in the South Tyrol, which has been Italian territory since the end of the First World War. Moral – think things through before bunging them in.

    Otherwise, I found this rather easier than a lot of recent Paul puzzles. I agree with copmus@6 – felt like a natural Paul puzzle. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

  36. tackled this today. typically for me with a Paul crossword, it took me a while to get started and then a slow solve. but, alsoo typically, some entertaining clues along the way. I did enjoy stepfamily, sanity and especially batteries not included. thanks to Paul and to Eileen.

  37. I too saw BECOMING as a triple for which reason it was the clue I ticked.

    A typical lovely Paul – continually entertaining.

    Many thanks, both and all.

  38. I recently posted how my ignorance sometimes helps me get solutions. Same again here with MAC.

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