Guardian 28,056 – Paul

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I made a slow start on this, with very few answers on my first pass through, but once I had a few in I was lucky to guess the long phrases from their enumerattions, and the rest followed without too much trouble. Some great anagrams here: thanks to Paul.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. FLASHY Loud little boy turned modest (6)
Reverse of ALF + SHY
5. MILLPOND Record playing in calm, calm water (8)
LP (record) ON (playing) in MILD (calm)
9. ISTANBUL Saint high on life, ultimately blessed, starts back in big city (8)
SAINT* + reverse of the initial letters of Life Uttimately Blessed
10. RELATE Connect first of ropes and lift (6)
R[opes] + ELATE (to life)
11,20. PRESIDENTIAL OATH OF OFFICE Article of faith I spoon-feed to fool with solemn declaration (12,4,2,6)
A remarkable anagram, of ARTICLE OF FAITH I SPOON FEED
14. UPSTROKE Writer’s movement finished, author’s right significantly advanced? (8)
UP (finished) + [Bram] STOKER, with the R “advanced” to an earlier position: “significantly” because it moves quite a long way
17. PORTIERE Curtain level in hole (8)
TIER (level) in PORE (hole); a portière is “a curtain hung over a door or doorway.”
18. FLOW Seeing return of predator, run! (4)
Reverse of WOLF
23. JOJOBA A political clown and jester initially slipping over in oil (6)
BOJO (nickname of Boris Johnson) in A[nd] J[ester], all reversed. This word always reminds me of Billy Connolly’s joke: “In Glasgow, Jojoba is the month before November”
24,13,2. I COULDN’T CARE LESS Whatever Russian collected proving suspicious (1,7,4,4)
(RUSSIAN COLLECTED)* – another nice anagram
25. MYRA HESS Old pianist, I say, shares playing (4,4)
MY (I say!) + SHARES; Myra Hess was famous for her lunchtime recitals during World War 2, and for her arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
26. NODDLE Nut with piece of cake, but different starter (6)
DODDLE (something easy, a piece of cake) with the first letter changed to give a slang word for the head or “nut”; I’m not keen on clues like this that tell you to change a letter to something unspecified.
Down
3. SNAPPIEST Most elegant content of baby’s nappies, terrifying! (9)
Hidden in baby’S NAPPIES Terrifying
4. YABBER Talk bringing decrease in fish up (6)
EBB in RAY, reversed
5. MULTITUDE OF SINS Problem raised about outfield isn’t surprising, given this many errors? (9,2,4)
(OUTFIELD ISN’T)* in reverse of SUM
6. LARGESSE Giving great yawns, tedious chore ends (8)
LARGE (great) + last letters of yawnS tediouS chorE
7. PILOT Driver having to edge skyward (5)
Reverse of TO LIP
8. NO THANK YOU Too unfunny hiding something up one’s sleeve — I don’t want it! (2,5,3)
HANKY in (TOO UN)*
12. LABORATORY Gold stolen by mischievous altar boy — might trial happen here? (10)
OR in (ALTAR BOY)*
15. REFUELLED Wine bottles bloke endlessly passed round university, topped up again (9)
U in FELLE[r] (bloke), in RED (wine)
16. BEEFCAKE Adonis lowers bar (8)
BEEF (cattle – those that low) + CAKE (bar, as in soap)
19. DISOWN Blue dressing is cut off (6)
IS in (“dressed by”) DOWN (sad, blue)
21. HOO-HA I see nothing well after turning up for performance (3-2)
Reverse of AH (“I see”) O (nothing) OH (well)
22. ANIL Dye brown paper, cutting top and bottom (4)
MANILA with the first and last letters removed

43 comments on “Guardian 28,056 – Paul”

  1. Maybe I was in a bad mood but I found the convoluted long anagrams (which often lead to awkward surfaces) too much work to reverse engineer and just settled for the definitions.

    But thanks for the clear and helpful blog.

  3. After a slow solve, all eventually went in, though I couldn’t parse ANIL. BEEFCAKE, the ‘Whatever’ definition, UPSTROKE and the wordplay for HOO-HA definitely made this all worthwhile.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  4. Stared at my last two, 16 and 17, for longer than all the rest had taken, even knowing that ‘lowers’ probably meant cattle. Once beef rose from the neural swamp, portiere followed. Otherwise not too much sweat, with the long ones providing lots of crossers to go on with. Oh but anil went unparsed, manila being buff rather than brown (laziness really, couldn’t be [unp]arsed). Enjoyed it, thanks Paul and Andrew.

  6. I found this quite tough, having to resort to some help from Bradford, occasionally.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

    [slight typos in 10ac: ELATYE (to life) should be ELATE (to lift), I think]

     

  7. Enjoyed this, but my favourite moment was [finally] parsing 16 and remembering Rufus’s classic: A bar of soap (6,6)

  8. Thanks Paul and Andrew

    Some loosenesses here, I thought. I didn’t like UPSTROKE – there are quite a lot of authors. I agree about NODDLE. I parsed ANIL as (t)AN (b)IL(l), but didn’t like it; (m)ANIL(a) is better.

    Favourite was NO THANK YOU.

  9. Thanks Paul and Andrew.

    I think 23a is the initial ‘a’ followed by ‘bojo’ and J[ester]. Don’t see an insertion indicator. Long anagrams read very nicely.

    Paul’s puzzles are always made easier by a few long write-ins, in this case 8d and 24a.

  10. Yes muffin, did think about authors, eg Updike; it took call all the crossers, but the clue did work.

    The recalcitrant beefcake is my fave, couldn’t be succincter.

  11. nice and gentle I have to say i prefer the blog to the puzzle

    Its one of those where its easy to guess the answer then check to see that it parses.

    And they do but some more neatly than others. I liked the pianist and MILLPOND

    but I’ve been spoilt this week by Vlad, Nutmeg, Serpent and Monk -all on top form and I think J Hallpern suffers from the output expected of him.

    In the past (when I was a rookie solver) I would burst out laughing from some puzzles and he can still do a goodie but this was only OK

  12. Rather shot myself in the foot by persuading myself that 15 down was REFRESHED, thinking that FRESHER might be a bloke passed round university, with the R chopped off. So I COULDNT get that part of 24 across until I realised the error of my ways. Quite tough in other places, too…

  13. Perfectly solvable but, for me, this is another example of what has now typical of this setter.

    A number of awkward surfaces and strained definitions.  Article of faith I spoon-feed to fool with solemn declaration.  Wot?

    Mr Halpern is perfectly capable of creating good clues but often chooses not to, which I find odd.

    For example PILOT & NO THANK YOU – excellent clues with smooth surfaces.  More like this please, Mr H.

    Nice weekend, all.

  14. blaise @7:  Ah – it was Rufus, was it?  Thanks for that.  I often trot that clue out to non-believers whom I wish to convert to crossworders.

  15. I do enjoy a good big anagram, though I often get them from the crossers/def/enumeration and confirm it afterwards. I would be interested to know if anybody actually worked back from manila and Stoker to ANIL and UPSTROKE, and I didn’t know PORTIERE. I don’t enjoy most Pauls these days as much as I used to.

  16. One on the first pass, and then a slow struggle to completion. Some good anagrams, although taking up so much of the grid makes starting difficult.

    My favourite was BEEFCAKE.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

  17. I found this puzzle quite difficult but I was aided by the long ones.

    My favourites were JOJOBA, NO THANK YOU, ISTANBUL.

    New for me was Myra Hess.

    Thank, Paul and Andrew.

  18. I heard on the radio yesterday that Myra Hess and Joyce Grenfell became great friends, and Grenfell made the sandwiches for the National Gallery concerts!

  22. Thank you Paul and Andrew.

    What a strange grid, all those Hs, I have seen it before but wonder if Paul used it in honour of Dame Myra Hess, her birthday is February 25, 1890 (he included her in his PLAYER crossword, 27,014, in 2016).

  23. I had no complaint about vagueness in the clue for NODDLE. After all, there were only 25 possible choices. I much prefer that to having to choose among thousands of unspecified male or female names.

    Lots of clever clues from Paul as noted above, but less of his wit than usual. Still an enjoyable and satisfying solve. Thanks to Paul and to Andrew, especially for explaining JOJOBA. I had seen that nickname for your current PM, but I didn’t make the connection.

  24. I’m with copmus on this one.

    Cookie @ 22: I think it was Brendan, or possibly Puck, some years back who used this H grid and had A B C D E F G as the initial letters of the column 1 solutions.

  25. A second consecutive tough workout for me. I found the SW particularly troublesome, though HOO-HA and BEEFCAKE, once solved, were my favourites. PORTIERE, NODDLE and ANIL were all new words to me. I struggled with my parsing again. I couldn’t quite get REFUELLED to work (as I know a few fellas, but no fellers)

    Thanks to all. I’ll hopefully find some weekend form.

  26. Thanks, Andrew for the clear blog. (In 23a the anagram of SHARES needs indicating). Thanks, too, to Paul for a worthy Friday challenge. I came expecting a Valentine Day’s puzzle [and tried hard with this line of thought in 9a but to no avail] but was pleased instead to get a wry political commentary in clues such as 11/20a and 23a.

  30. Another joyless grind,  not a single clue raised a smile, there was zero pride of completion, and once again, I wish I had the foresight to walk away from it and do something useful instead.

  33. To DaveinNC@23 re: 26A. I see it as 25x the number of possible words you first thought of, which can be quite a lot.

  34. I knew it couldn’t last…  A DNF for me today.  Defeated by several – ANIL, PORTIERE (both new to me), JOJOBA (Bojo is a nickname I’ve heard but never used) and I gave up on I COULDN’T CARE LESS.

    Along with others, I thought BEEFCAKE and PILOT were excellent.  Smooth surfaces and neat construction.  I also liked RELATE and MILLPOND is my COTD.

    That said, at the risk of accusations of sour grapes due to the DNF, I’m not enjoying Paul quite as much as I used to.  Others have commented in connection with previous puzzles that he’s opting for more and more multiple word, multiple light answers.  Sometimes very cleverly and I can’t deny that the long anagrams here are quite a feat.  But Paul is producing some clunky surfaces that are just convoluted and I simply get less pleasure from wrestling with them.

    Thanks nonetheless to both Paul and Andrew

  35. We are with DaveinNC @23 on the NODDLE type clues: as Yorkshire Lass put it ‘if you give us the replacement letter, you might as well give us the answer’. (This is the bowdlerised text).

    HOO-HA a particular favourite. As so often with Paul we were ‘surely he couldn’t possibly mean XXX’, before realising ‘oh yes he could!’ ANIL was a write in as ‘dye’ so often is anil, but the real puzzle of identifying the word it came from was a lovely test. And – pace grantinfreo @4 – HMRC’s billets-doux go out in ‘brown envelopes’, so brown for manila has usage on its side.

    Thanks to Paul for  an enjoyable puzzle and to Andrew for his clear and helpful blog.

     

     

  37. I enjoyed the two long anagrams, 5D and JOJOBA, but having solved four clues with clear links to current political wastes of space, I found myself looking for similar answers elsewhere. For example, when I had the crossers for the second half of 25A, I so wanted the answer to be “fake news”, even though nothing in the clue indicated that. Hey ho.
    A satisfying solve nevertheless: thanks to Paul and also to Andrew for help with parsing UPSTROKE and ANIL.

  38. I found this rather good. 11/20 was my favourite by a long way, alluding, it seems to me, to the Trump inauguration. As Andrew says, remarkable anagram and a relevant surface to boot. Also liked I COULDN’T CARE LESS, LABORATORY, HOO-HA and BEEFCAKE. I agree with Freddy Hand @9 about the JOJOBA parse. PORTIERE was new to me.
    Good fun. Thanks, Paul and Andrew.

  39. Compared to a super puzzle by the same setter that I completed this week, this one I thought was a bit less cryptic and a bit more opaque, but I enjoyed it nevertheless, leaving just a few clues unsolved at the end. I especially liked the remarkable long anagrams.
    Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  42. 23ac: this was the second time in just one week that the usually very neutral Paul had a dig at Boris.
    Not that I disagree but quite remarkable.

  43. So often here, the baseless (in my opinion) quibbles are self-justification of inability to solve. After all, it’s often the same commentator(s) who moan. I agree with Irishman@35; neither NODDLE nor UPSTROKE was unfair.
    However, I agree that this wasn’t Paul at his best – but even Federer and O’Sullivan lose some games yet remain the best, and most entertaining, in their fields.
    As for those who complain about surfaces – this is a puzzle not a poem, any resemblance to the latter being a bonus not a necessity. I do my crosswords for intellectual, rather than artistic, fulfilment. Not that I don’t appreciate a great surface – PRESIDENTIAL OATH OF OFFICE being a superb example.
    Once again my thanks to this very special compiler – and to Andrew too for his generous effort.

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