Guardian 28,044 / Paul

59 comments on “Guardian 28,044 / Paul”

1. Some very interesting things going on with this puzzle.

   Crossers aside, both PLOVER and PEEWEE fit 5d, although by different analyses.

   If 26a had used a dollar sign instead of the sterling symbol, the answer would have been CLAMS (clam is slang for dollar).

   Fast and loose are from a small set of pairs of words that are synonymous in one setting and opposite in another. (That is, happening accidentally, as opposed to good and bad.) Another pair are coverage and exposure (think what the press give, and what a blanket does).

2. Thanks Paul and Eileen

   A DNF – I’ve never come across the expression PLAIN AS DAY.

   A couple of question marks – RATTLING for fast (speed) surely derives from the same meaning as the second definition? “Force” as an anagram indicator?

   VERMEER was my favourite.

3. I had never heard of hairy panic grass either in spite of being an Australian. I also had to search for the
   Asda supermarket chain. I liked the king in a pram and form a queue.

4. And thanks to Paul and Eileen

5. The explanation of 22,20 is undoubtedly correct, but I got it from ‘previous’ being police slang for a person’s criminal record.

6. That was a fun Friday puzzle. My favourites were VERMEER, ULULATE, FORM A QUEUE, SQUID, SOUPCON, DIVE IN, DUNGAREES.

   I am Australian but I had never heard of HAIRY PANIC (found it via google, as well as Hairy Wattle which I have also never heard of).

   Thanks Paul and Eileen.

   * Dr Whatson @1 – I also thought of PEEWEE for 5d and could parse it. I had entered it but had to revise it.

   ** Eileen – you are correct – a clue like 1 down will not work after today 🙁

7. Great stuff. Eileen, you are missing the P(over) in 6d.

8. Michelle @ 6 Sad or not Scots will still be Europeans! I’m curious as to how Peewee parses?

   Mixed bag for me today, some very good, some meh and a couple that didn’t feel quite right (force and circling in 16 for instance) but educational and fun.

   Particularly liked trendy and base rate.

   Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

9. Should say power not pover.

10. It took me a while to rethink a couple of answers which held me up – I started with COLONEL (“rank”) at 11a thinking it was a homophone of KERNEL (“Bare bones”) and also went for PEEWEE in 5d (as discussed above by Dr What’sOn@1. Revised thinking was required when I ran into problems with crossers. Like Vina@3, I had not heard of HAIRY PANIC grasses (14a) but I am interested to learn something new about Australia from my UK-based puzzle. Favourites were 1a SNAIL MAIL, 17a SOUPCON (how do you add a cedilla?), 22a/20d FORM A QUEUE as Vina mentioned, 8d AMERICAN EMBASSY and 15d GARIBALDI. For some reason I disliked the clue for 13a RAIN. One of my dear old Mum’s favourite sayings was 3d/23d PLAIN AS DAY which I got despite also not knowing the supermarket chain.

    [19a CHARIOTEER reminded me of my first overseas trip to Greece in their winter 1979/1980. I travelled so very far across the world and on a very long journey on a rattling (!) bus from Athens to Delphi on a day trip, determined to see the statue of the Charioteer of Delphi the day before flying out (it was on my must-see list), only to be met with a  sign “Museum closed on Wednesdays”. Still one of the greatest disappointments of my life!

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

11. [Crossed against about five comment or I would have acknowledged others’ contirbutions; I had to dig out my diary of my Greece trip from my memorabilia box to be sure I hadn’t misremembered that story.]

12. Bugger – “contributions”!

13. [Sorry to keep blabbing on – 1d A SCOT = a European – also made me think about today’s key Brexit date. I think if I lived there I would move to Scotland.]

14. Another Aussie who’s never heard of hairy panic; always learning. Found this tougher than yesterday’s Picker, with the curly soupcon sans cedilla, Scot for (til midnight) European, and end in try. A good Paul, and ta Eileen. Bought some croissants at Aldi last week; yes they’re here too.

15. Julie @ 10 – wholly off-piste, but another museum anecdote. Some years back the royal academy in London had an exhibition on the middle ages – they had a big banner outside, saying “The Middle Ages – from 950 to 1430 (or whatever). My wife and her friend went up to see it, but had a decent lunch first with a couple of bottles of wine – when they turned up for the exhibition at 3pm they were infuriated to see that it closed so early (1430) and stomped off to complain – facepalm time.

    Thanks for the blog Eileen – a DNF for me, some clues too allusive or me just not clicking today. I like Paul but find him one of the most difficult setters for me.

16. Another toughie for me.

    I’m surprised at the query of ‘force’ as an anagrind; it’s in the Chambers list and the BRB gives as a definition: ‘7. To break or break open by force.’

    I particularly liked CHARIOTEER, DUNGAREES and TRENDY, although the surface picture of the latter was not very pleasant.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen; a Scot and an Englishman will still be European, if only geographically.

17. Unlike grantinfreo@14 I found this much more straightforward than Picaroon yesterday. Perhaps we each in our own way are attuned to certain setters and not to others. No Hairy Panic’s over this puzzle today therefore…

18. Stumped on a couple and eneded up revealing DUNGAREES and SWEATING. Annoyed now as I might well have managed them.

    Am I the only one who bunged in COAGENT at 16a? “A person, force, cause, or other agency working together with another”. Circling I took to be the anagrind and the definition ‘Allied force’ fits perfectly.

19. robert@8

    5 Bird, parrot’s first sweetheart (6)

    -> parrot’s first letter = P/’pee’ + wee = middle/heart of sweet

20. Hovis  – I didn’t understand your comment @7 – nor your correction [?] @9, I’m afraid.

    Julie in Australia @10- I first went to Delphi with a party of schoolgirls on an educational cruise in the ’70s – it was the highlight of the trip. I still have the pendant with the head of the Charioteer that I bought there. You can find a cedilla here – but I forgot to do so! …

    …and @13 – yes, that’s why I’m sad today, so thanks to Andy Smith @15 for a lovely story.

21. [I don’t know where to ask this question.

    Has fifteensquared moved to a new host in the past few days or past week? It is often hard for me to post, plus often I see a weird phrase appear against my name saying ‘[email protected]’, and sometimes the site freezes. Is this only happening to me? I usually use Safari browser.]

22. I’m with Ronald@17 in finding this much more straightforward (and less inspiring) than yesterday’s. I had ticks by OUTLINE BASE RATE and TRENDY for the innocent looking definition. I don’t see how SOUPÇON works – what tells me to put the starter (soup) before the scam (con)? The question mark? Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

23. Good to know none of our Australian friends had heard of the nervous grass.

24. WhiteKing @22 – re SOUPÇON [did it this time!] – I took SOUP as being adjectival: a SOUP CON = a scam for starters. I thought it was rather weak – and I don’t know why the ‘a’ is there.

25. Thank you, Eileen, solid blog to a solid crossword.

    Enjoyed the various “disappointment” anecdotes.  Mine was on a visit to Thessaloniki.  We’d been told by friends of a fantastic taverna that was not to be missed.  We arrived at 6;30 to see the place in darkness with a sign in the window that read “Closed on Mondays”.  Very sad, we walked on and dines elsewhere.  Walking back to the hotel, we passed the taverna which was heaving with dancing and music.  I was so grumpy I went in and asked the manager about the Closed on Mondays sign.  He replied, “But today is Tuesday, sir.”

    Nice weekend, all.

26. Eileen @20. Your parsing gives SPARK LUG. The missing P is from Power.

27. Michelle @ 19 Thanks, don’t think I’ve encountered pee for the letter p before but it makes sense.

     

28. Thanks Eileen@23 for making it work. I also wondered what the “a” was doing but thought I was being over picky to mention it – especially as I usually take avery relaxed view on clueing details. Maybe I’m more relaxed if the resulting surface is worth it – but it wasn’t in this case.

29. Michelle @ 19 P.S. I’m also using Safari and have not encountered the issue you mention.

    Robi @ 16 My query wasn’t with the acceptability of force itself,  forced would have fitted the syntax better but made the surface worse, also having an anagram with a single letter missing and then added in with an instruction that also works as an anagrind seemed odd – the clue works but didn’t feel satisfactorily finished.

    Similar with Soupçon, it clearly works with starter for soup and scam for con but putting them together as a phrase (without which it indicates con soup) made it feel like the clue was trying to match soup con with soup’s on.

30. Thanks, Hovis @26 – very sorry: I didn’t read the clue number and thought you were referring to PLOVER! I’ll correct it now.

31. [I was going to apologise for going “off piste” as Andy Smith@15 called it, by mentioning the 19a CHARIOTEER solution, but have so enjoyed the stories from Andy and William@25 that I have to say “Je ne regrette rien”…

    Total side-bar: I just re-read my entire diary of my Greece trip (so long ago), and while I have enjoyed revisiting long forgotten places and experiences while being embarrassed by some spelling errors e.g. camaraderie misspelt in the original), I am most intrigued by situating my trip in time. I still remember well my deep trepidation about flying over Middle Eastern airspace due to the hostage crisis. I have said in my diary that I had a very real fear that our plane might be blown out of the air.

    The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between the United States and Iran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, after a group of Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.]

32. If I may contribute a happy ending to the various disappointment stories, I had an afternoon to kill after meetings in Cairo before my flight so, naturally, tried to visit the pyramids.  My taxi driver took me there – before announcing they were closed.  But he had a cousin – naturally – who could take me in “around the back”!  With some trepidation, I left suitcase and laptop (!) in the taxi as said cousin arrived … with two camels.  Touring the pyramids and Sphinx, almost alone, on a camel as the sun set … in my dark blue business suit is an experience I will never forget.  The suit smelled of camel ever after.

    Straightforward – apart from PANIC GRASS – but enjoyable.  Paul less risque than usual, though I did enjoy DUNGAREES, my COTD.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

33. Me @32

    HAIRY PANIC of course.

34. Eileen, soupçon  –  I typed soupcon into google and then copied and pasted from there to here; let others do the work for you.

     

    I too found this much easier, and enjoyable, than yesterdays. Thanks Eileen and Paul

35. Isn’t a decent clue supposed to have all of the information required for the answer therein?

    I don’t insert answers that I think may be correct when the clue doesn’t seem to justify.

    But I am (after 20 or so years of doing cryptics) starting to lose patience with poorly defined, obscurantist cruciverbalism, that seems to be written for the compiler’s own self-amusement.

    Note Japanese length end with heretic Roman instrument (12)

36. Is this the place for publishing autobiographies? The odd anecdote is OK but …. lets keep it relevant to the crossword.

37. @Pedro 36:

    “I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.”

38. [Sorry Pedro@36, and anyone else for whom all that was tedious, as I started it with my CHARIOTEER story. I tried to do square brackets to indicate the tangent.]

    [Though I have to say at the same time that I very much appreciate the snippets of human insight and experience I receive through some of the posts on this site.]

     

39. I also found this easier than yesterday’s offering and was well on my way to a rare completion of a Paul, all solved and parsed, but for some reason I couldn’t see DIVE IN even with all crossers in… arrgh! Enjoyed the rest of it, though, especially SNAIL MAIL, SQUID, DUNGAREES, and TRENDY.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

    Oh, and Pedro @36, I generally enjoy the side excursions on this site. If I’m in a hurry, I can always skip over them.

40. Mark @32:  Great story, thank you!  Shame about the suit but you’re more likely to get a seat on the tube with it.

    Julie in Oz @38:  Well said.

41. Once again, started just after midnight, got about half way, and finished over breakfast and lunch. Not a fast solve, but, hey, it’s Friday. Seriously held up by HAIRY PANIC… even though I’d got most of the crossers in it was a case of “surely not, but nothing else fits” – look it up, and b***** me sideways, there it is. Still, we have some similarly mad plant names here in the UK (still united, as at the moment) : on a visit to our Botanic Gardens, my daughter and I were tickled to find a plant rejoicing in its common name of “Horny Goat Weed”.
    Thanks to Paul for an educational experience, and Eileen for the blog.

42. JinA @ 38 I think that most people here appreciate the tangental meanderings so I’d say carry on, I also doubt that Pedro was intending to come across quite so overbearing and was possibly trying to be ironic giving that the comment has absolutely no relevance to the crossword.

43. Nightshift @35 – you are not alone. Many, though, praise the artificial layers of obscurity as adding an element of “challenge”. And perhaps the setters feel obliged to be “inventive” and therefore “different” and”new” and “exciting”. I will stop doing crossswords soon if this trend picks up apace.

    I didn’t feel that there ws too much obscurity today, though, so thanks to Paul. And to Eileen for the blog, although I had parsed 10 ac on completion, but felt confused by your exlanation (How can PRAM be a synonym for “carried like a baby”? “Just after I was born, I was Pram”?). It took another cup of coffee to remind me of my original parsing – it is “I” carried in PRAM (so “like a baby”), of course!

44. William @25 (with apologies to Pedro) – when working in Frascati I went off to visit my favourite cantina, to find it closed, with a sign saying “chiuso per riposi settimanale”, which with my limited Italian I interpreted as – closed for sentimental reasons – oh dear, a death in the family? It was their day off.

45. Trismegistus @43 hmm, yes: I intended my ‘[carried like a baby]’ to refer to ‘in pram’ – sorry if it wasn’t clear.

46. Thanks for the feedback on my protest, and I do realise that most probably are happy to hear about others’ past lives.

    I just felt someone had to say something.

    robert @42 has it right. Thank you.

47. Trismegistus @43:

    My line of thinking is that it should not be necessary to refer to an encyclopedia or dictionary or thesaurus. Many is the time that I have learned a new word or definition purely from a good clear clue. Then, I’ve looked up the dictionary (etc.) to find that the word (the only possible solution I could find) actually exists. Then I’ve looked up more, and learned about some really obscure pastime or tradition or a hithertounaforementioned paradigm.

    If I have to look up a solution page to find the answer, then I’m not really learning.

    I do appreciate that it is about code-breaking, and compilers can write clues insohowever they are wont to do, but I don’t work for intelligence services, and I’m not going to spend more than a hour or so on a crossword.

    Anyhow, I’ve still left a deliberately obscure clue:

    Note Japanese length end with heretic Roman instrument (12)

     

48. Julie@38
    I visited Delphi in 1972 and saw the charioteer, and I have a small replica at home. I have no problem remembering the date, I was on my honeymoon. Epidaurus was also memorable.

49. I don’t believe that trendy is ‘in’ at the moment. On the other hand is in ‘trendy’?

50. Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

    I seem to be going through an unparsing fancy at the moment and again arrived here with a hatful that needed help from her estimable self – but no complaints, just me being too impatient to grind it out.  I do enjoy Paul and am inclined to cut slack, but while I liked DUNGAREES are they really trousers? And, and this is why I dropped by, I didn’t enjoy HAIRY PANIC at all: there really is no way of getting from the clue to the answer without the general knowledge (but others managed so yah boo sucks to me I guess…).

    Interesting that JinA has PLAIN AS DAY in her armoury; I’m with muffin: “clear as day” and “plain as a pikestaff” (but what does that mean?) I have, but not “plain as day”.

51. Why it took me so long to get DIVE IN,or be unable to parse DUNGAREES, I cant think – or perhaps the last three words explain why!
    I did like this though,SQUID and Vermeer were my faves.
    Thanks Paul.

52. The bird is pewee not peewee (no listing in Chamber’s). Even if it were, Pee for parrot’s head is questionable. Pewee is the tyrant flycatcher quite common in the US.

53. On the “clear as day” “plain as day” front:
    I could only think of the former, whereas my partner reckoned the latter is the more commonplace. Hey ho.
    After Asda and Aldi had made an appearance, I kept an eye out for others (okay, maybe not Sainsburys or Morrisons – and Fortnum & Mason’s hadn’t a hope – but Tesco was a possibility, as was Waitrose…..)
    I enjoyed AMERICAN EMBASSY, ULULATE, SQUID and GARIBALDI, hadn’t (of course!) heard of HAIRY PANIC, and bit back a sob about Scots being europeans. You see, I’d been assiduously NOT looking at online news all day, only to find myself being ambushed by a crossword-clue!…..
    Thanks to Paul, and also to Eileen for the ever-classy blog

54. Wellbeck @53 – many thanks for the sympathetic response. I don’t think I could have coped with a themed puzzle today.

    ULULATE is one of my favourite onomatopoeic words, derived from the verb that Virgil uses in Aeneid II to describe the wailing of the women at the fall of Troy, which linked in nicely for me with PRIAM @10ac.

55. A DNF for me as I lazily entered an unparsed OUTSIDE for 11a.  (I was thinking ‘bare possibility’ = ‘outside possibility’?)

    J in A:  I liked your anecdotes too.  I know there is a rule against going off-topic in the Site Policy, but I for one am grateful that Gaufrid ‘enforces’ this with a good deal of latitude.  As with other kinds of indulgence, a little transgression in moderation can brighten up one’s day.

56. I know and use PLAIN AS DAY but have never heard of ASDA so the parsing eluded me. I would use “clear as day” as well but slightly differently.  Clear is when something (like an explanation) is easily or thoroughly understood, whereas plain is when something (an object or person) is sitting right in front of you, whether you notice it or not.

57. DNF as I was looking for a cinema genre, so missed DIVE IN.

58. Here’s the answer to my deliberately obscure clue: ‘Note Japanese length end with heretic Roman instrument (12)’

    UT – the first note in original solfeggio.

    RI – a Japanese measurement equivalent to 3.9 – 4.0 kilometers.

    CUL – end (French; because English (language) is probably about 40% French (OK, Latin/Romance for the pedandics)).

    ARIUS – Apparently, he was a heretic, because he said something about Baby Jesus that one of the Roman Emperors (or maybe a bishop) didn’t like.

    Answer: ‘UTRICULARIUS’: a Roman Bagpipe (possibly/probably the ancestor of the Zampogna).

    P.S. I could have left ‘Japanese’ & ‘Roman’ out of the clue, for the sake (rice wine) of deliberate (imprisoning) obscurantism.

59. Should have got tostada sooner, it’s a regular breakfast for me here in Andalucía, with tomato garlic and olive oil Hungry now³

Comments are closed.