Guardian 28,079 – Crucible

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Good entertainment from Crucible this morning, with one outrageously parochial/dated reference, and one clue I can’t fully parse at 11a. Thanks to Crucible.


There’s a fairly obvious theme, with lots of answers related to Greek (and some Roman) mythology.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. TOPICAL Trendy sultry Romeo’s stripped (7)
TROPICAL less R[omeo]
5. DELPHIC CID managed with help from ambiguous source (7)
Anagram of CID + HELP. The Delphic Oracle was famous for giving ambiguous or misleading answers to questions
10. MYTH This writer’s article abridged an old wives’ tale (4)
MY (the writer’s) + TH[e]
11. AMIABILITY Back plan to expand talent and charm (10)
I presume ABILITY is from “talent”, but I can’t explain the AMI part. Thanks to Shirl: it’s reverse of AIM (plan) in ABILITY
12. SPURGE Euphorbia‘s left out of ostentatious display (6)
SPLURGE (ostentatious display) less L
13. ODYSSEUS Old Latin god saved unknown vessel for Greek traveller (8)
Y (unknown) + SS (ship, vessel) in O DEUS (Latin for god)
14. LANGUEDOC French region‘s ageless tongue and revolutionary law (9)
LANGUAGE less AGE + reverse of CODE
16. LIMES Trees defining boundary of the Roman Empire (5)
Double definition: the Latin word Limes (related to “limit”) can be used to describe to boundaries of the Roman empire, though it wasn’t used in this sense by the Romans themselves. Perhaps a bit unfair to those who (like me) didn’t know it, as PINES would fit just as well (and reminded me of Respighi’s symphonic poem Pines of Rome)
17. CERES She oversaw agriculture before entering civil service (5)
ERE (before) in CS; Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture
19. PARTHENON Leave Scottish woman running temple (9)
PART (to leave) + HEN (Scots term for a woman) + ON (running)
23. BACKLASH Consequence of impact made by old ship’s cat? (8)
The cat o’ nine tails was used to LASH the BACK of its unfortunate victims
24. THEBES Not quite the perfect ancient city (6)
THE BES[t]
26. SINE QUA NON Essential function shortly to entertain queen (4,3,3)
QU in SINE (trigonometric function) + ANON (soon, shortly)
27. GOTH Bought horse, one clad in black (4)
GOT (bought) + H, with the definition referring to a member of the goth subculture
28. MESSINA Jam in a city in Italy (7)
MESS + IN A
29. ICINESS Former chemical business head’s hostility (7)
ICI (former chemical company) + NESS (geographical head)
Down
2. OLYMPIA I’m struggling with old play for London venue (7)
Anagram of I’M + OLD PLAY
3. ICHOR Unlimited rich ore that filled ancient vessels (5)
[r]ICH OR[e]; it’s “the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods and/or immortals.”
4. ACADEME Plug English in top universities (7)
AD (plug) + E in ACME (top)
6. EMBRYO Possible result of congress organised by Rome (6)
(BY ROME)* – the congress being the sexual kind
7. PALESTINE Contested area in case pamphleteer comes round (9)
LEST (in case) in [Thomas] PAINE
8. INTRUDE Disturb cow in roundabout with no hesitation (7)
ERMINTRUDE (the cow in The Magic Roundabout) less ERM; I think you need to be of a certain age to have a chance of parsing this,,,
9. TIMON OF ATHENS Forget about plump female in new very big play (5,2,6)
Reverse (“about”) of OMIT (forget) + FAT HEN in N + OS (large)
15. GREEK KEYS Aegean islands perhaps make meandering patterns (5,4)
GREEKL (Aegean) + KEYS (Islands). A Greek Key is a meandering pattern used as a border.
18. EVASIVE Roundabout very like one seen during the day before (7)
V AS I in EVE (day before)
20. TITANIC Stupendous upstanding citizen wins one bronze (7)
I TAN (bronze) in reverse of CIT[izen]
21. ORESTES Ring about scenery put up for Euripides drama (7)
O (ring) + RE (about) + reverse of SETS (theatrical scenery)
22. SATURN Probes go round it and go under it (6)
SA (Sex Appeal, “it”) + TURN (a go)
25. ELGIN River rises, overwhelming grand Scottish town (5)
G in reverse of NILE

53 comments on “Guardian 28,079 – Crucible”

  4. Thanks Shirl, AMI had me confused too. This was a dnf as I’d never heard of GREEK KEYS. I’m old enought to remember The Magic Roundabout, but even so, in my youth “SA” and “it” were both already old-fashioned terms, found mainly in crosswords. The Greek mythology theme helped a bit (it’s unusual for me to spot a theme, much less find it useful).

    Thanks Andrew and Crucible.

  5. Thanks Shirl – 11a is very obvious now you explain it. I wondered how I’d managed to type NUKE instead of NILE but it must be because U and K are next to I and L on my keyboard.. I’ll update the blog for both points.

  6. Thank you Andrew; I think that 11a is AIM (plan) back in ABILITY.  I also share your concern about 16a.  Had forgotten about Ermintrude too!

    Otherwise I quite enjoyed this and actually spotted the theme very quickly for a change.  Thank you Crucible

  8. 25d ELGIN is of course a CITY – with its Elgin City football team, and its magnificent Cathedral structure still standing.

    On the Scottish theme, it was a bit odd to have HEN featured separately as ‘female’ (9d) and as ‘Scottish woman’ (19a).

    But a v good crossword overall.

  9. Most enjoyable, thank you Crucible — and Andrew, of course. 25, of course conceals a reference to the Parthenon marbles.

  10. Thanks for the helpful blog. I didn’t parse intrude although there was faint bell ringing somewhere. Also thought obviously whiplash rather than backlash and pressed the reveal button because too idle to type it in … Didn’t lnow limes either, guessed pines wrongly. Hey ho. But I liked the puzzle, generally precisely lued if you knew what you were doing …

  11. Thanks Crucible and Andrew

    I checked PINES and replaced it with LIMES when it was wrong – no idea how to parse either! I had forgotten ERMINTRUDE, unfortunately.

    Favourite was SINE QUA NON, but shouldn’t there have been some indication that it wasn’t English?

    Is CIT a valid abbtreviation for “citizen”?

  12. Loved it but could only write in what fitted for 8d-I remember the programme and theme but not the cow.

    Nice to see both Sophocles and Euripides get a mention.

    Latin not a strong subject-SINE QUA NON  OK but LIMES as a latin plural had me scratching

    Great stuff as usual from Crucible.And thanks for blog

  13. Thanks for a great blog, Andrew,  including the interesting links. [I was surprised to see that you’d found one for LIMES – it wouldn’t have occurred to me to google that – and, although I knew the Greek key design, I didn’t know that use of ‘meander’.]

    I loved the theme, of course. And what great clues! I particularly liked DELPHIC, CERES, ICHOR [all super surfaces] and INTRUDE, which made me laugh. I do fondly remember  Ermintrude but seeing cow and roundabout in the same clue made me think immediately of Milton Keynes!

    Many thanks to Crucible for putting a big smile on my face.

    [Hi copmus at 12: LIMES is a Latin singular [‘boundary’ in the clue] – plural ‘limites’, giving us ‘limit’, as Andrew said.]

  14. I forgot to add that PALESTINE is the sort of clue I really don’t like.  You have to guess the answer, then parse – you are not likely to say “pamphleteer – that’ll by PAINE, then”.

  15. Thanks Andrew and Crucible.

    I was another PINES person.

    Andrew@5 It could be worse. I often sign off my emails to my students “Regards”.  One day I hit the T (one above G) and didn’t notice until I had sent the email.

  16. Great puzzle, hard for me – not my specialist subject – but all the better for it. I knew LIMES though, having driven a decent chunk of Die Deutsche Limes-Straße, which is a touristic route along the boundary of the Empire in Germania days.

    Thanks vm to Crucible & Andrew

  17. Another one who plumped for ‘pines’ rather than ‘limes’. though I could ‘t parse either, and I think that it’s a clue that requires somewhat specialist knowledge. I also failed to parse ‘intrude’, though the answer was pretty obvious. Despite the cow and roundabout juxtaposed, I never thought of The Magic Roundabout.

  18. Thanks Andrew, could not parse INTRUDE and correctly gueesed LIMES, so needed the blog for those. Had to work at this to finish it and I guess a technical dnf as googled Euripides and Meander to help with those clues. Did the same as Andy Smith re backlash,oops. Some clever clues and satisfying answers along the way though. Particularly liked SATURN and SINE QUA NON.
    Thanks to Crucible

  19. I enjoyed the theme, but failed to solve LIMES. I “solved” but did not parse BACKLASH, SATURN, INTRUDE (never heard of that cow).

    My favourites were LANGUEDOC, TIMON OF ATHENS.

    New for me today were SPURGE, ICHOR, GREEK KEYS.

    Thanks B+S

     

  20. It was a great gridfill, Oedipus being represented by THEBES

    This and Serpent made another fine puzzle day.

  21. Did not know SPURGE or GREEK KEYS. Was OK on LIMES but only from guessing and then realising it’s also a Latin word.

    The theme was very much front and centre, maybe a bit too much, but I enjoyed it overall. ODYSSEUS was my favourite for the elegant surface.

  22. Would never have got LIMES, but Aurigetta knew it immediately. GOTH took me far longer than it should have done and I rather liked SINE QUA NON. I had forgotten The Magic Roundabout.

    My thanks to Crucible and Andrew.

  23. Thank you Crucible for an interesting puzzle and Andrew for a very helpful blog.

    Loved the Roman congress, much more likely to be fruitful…

  24. A number of lovely clues and misdirection and excellent use of the theme but I thought “limes” a very poor clue. If something requires what is expected to be obscure knowledge, it should be clued with with wordplay to build it (rather than a CD) or with crossers which at least disambiguate. If I’d had “L_M_S” as crossers (the “s” being obvious) I’d have looked up “limes” and felt good about learning something. Instead I had a random guess and a sense of dissatisfaction. Similarly “backlash” – I am sure I was not alone in finding “whiplash” an equally good solution (it is a “consequence of impact” and fits the second part given the question mark at the end).

    Both of these could’ve been picked up in editing and made this puzzle into a delight all round. Even with a poor knowledge of the classics (enough to recognise all these answers however) the theme was fine and helpful, which is a good sign.

    I’d be interested to see how “limes” compares to the particle clue the other day – similarly obscure to those of another culture but clued with a homophone and definition. I saw a few comments from people who did not get it and a few from people who guessed and looked up.

    Anyhow, thank you Crucible and thank you Andrew for a couple of parsings I’d not figured out.

  25. My rudimentary O Level Latin from the early 60’s couldn’t inform me whether 16ac should have been LIMES or PINES. Found this a struggle, especially after trying to shoehorn in Shibboleth instead of the far more obvious AMIABILITY at 11ac, with 3 crossers in place at that time…

  26. Thank you, Andrew, for the excellent blog.  Rather a lot there that I failed to fully parse (LIMES, INTRUDE etc) and didn’t know of the edging pattern formed of a continuous line – meandering pattern.

    Much here to admire but my favourite was the beautifully constructed SATURN.

    A drop of nectar from The Gods today.  Many thanks Crucible.

    Nice week, all.

  27. At my level of cryptic solving skill this kind of puzzle is the most rewarding. First read through I got ichor embryo and odysseus. Ever so slowly it came together. Didnt get languedoc or greek islands and didnt fully parse amiabilty and intrude. Correctly guessed limes and spurge, both unknown.

  29. One for Eileen et al. My computer and I ‘solved’ this, but too much GK needed for this, IMHO. It’s about time we had a scientific crossword to balance things.

    In retrospect, some good clues and setters can’t be expected to please everyone with their themes.

    Thanks Crucible and Andrew.

  30. An excellent crossword which I needed a bit of work with DuckDuckGo (I no longer google things) and Wikipedia to complete. I would never have got Spurge without looking up Euphorbia, for example.  An impressive proportion of clues with classical references.

    Unusually for me, I spotted the theme straight away, but since my first four were Delphic, Myth, Odysseus, and Ceres it was hard to miss.

    TheZed @24 – I managed to get there without having to guess the answer and check it, but I was lucky. I assumed it was the name of a river that was also a tree, tried to find info about the borders of the Roman Empire, found a Wikipedia page with that title, and found “Limes” mentioned near the start.

  31. A theme that even Tiresias would have spotted, and it helped give me a quick way in with several of the clues. Like others I was not familiar with GREEK KEYS, but LIMES rang a very faint bell, though I agree that it was uncomfortably obscure, especially given the crossers. ORESTES took longer than it should have as I have seen Aeschylus’ version of the tale but was unfamiliar with the Euripides. I liked LANGUEDOC and INTRUDE. The Magic Roundabout was part of my childhood (English version written and narrated by Emma Thompson’s father, Eric)

  32. Andrew, OLYMPIA is an anagram of I’M + O + PLAY, not “old play.”  And thanks for parsing PALESTINE, I got nowhere with it.  I have heard of Thomas Paine, though, while Ermintrude is beyond me.  You have to be of a certain age and a certain nationality.

    I don’t think of SPLURGE as an ostentatious display so much as a perhaps self-indulgent expense, which may or may not be ostentatious.  You might splurge on a grand dinner or a vacation, for instance, without displaying either to other folks.

    copmus @12 LIMES is both singular and plural, like “sheep” in English.

  33. I forgot to say thank you to Crucible for a fine puzzle and thank you (with a sigh of relief) to Andrew.  Good job, both.

  34. As so often happens, I managed to solve the tricky clues only to stumble over more obvious ones (TOPICAL and ICINESS today, although in my defense I’ve never heard of the chemical company). I got to LIMES by the same route as Howard @30. Never heard of the cow either, so thanks to Andrew for clearing that up, and thanks to Crucible for the workout.

  35. Quenbarrow @ 8.   In fact Crucible was quite correct to refer to Elgin as a town. There are various definitions of a city and I guess we’re all familiar with the idea that a city is a large town which has a cathedral. But,more strictly, towns and cities are defined by local government legislation. Until about 25 years ago there were only 4 cities in Scotland; Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. Inverness was promoted to city status in 1997 and Stirling a few years later. Perth has been referred to as the Fair City for centuries but that was inaccurate for most of that time. I think, though I’m not certain, that Perth was granted that status now – sometime in the last 20 years.

  36. I always enjoy this setter’s crosswords, but this one was a severe test of that statement. I had no chance of getting either GREEK KEYS or LIMES, and the parsing of some others had to be an optional pleasure in the time I had. Thanks to Andrew for the explanations. (I had worked out AMIABILITY for myself!)
    I entered PINES at 16a suspecting it might turn out to be LIMES (I do remember a lot of Latin roots).
    Interesting to learn that a hen can be either a female or a Scottish woman.

  37. At one time I had WHIPLASH (which fits the clue but not the crossers) and ELECTRA for the play, which fitted all the crossers I had at the time. LIMES? no idea. I should have remembered Ermintrude, but didn’t. Got the theme very early – quite a nice one for me. Thanks Crucible, and Andrew.

  38. Personally I prefer a theme that I can completely miss until I arrive on this site. No chance of that with this one. I did enjoy EMBRYO & THEBES but struggled to equate TOPICAL & TRENDY which in my book (Chambers) mean quite different things. Also, if you forget something then you might OMIT it but again, the words mean different things. And while I’m enjoying a bit of a rant, maybe we could have a moratorium on SA/IT

  39. For once I spotted the theme nice and early from my first three answers, which then helped make short work of a number of others. Like various others I, too, initially thought of WHIPLASH, until the crossers put paid to it, guessed LIMES – and learned about SPURGE from looking up “euphorbia”. Thanks to Andrew for the help parsing GREEK KEYS and PALESTINE, and thanks to Crucible for a classy puzzle and for reminding me of dear old Ermintrude, my favourite character in Eric Thompson’s brilliant English version. Time for bed…..

  40. Thanks both,
    I enjoyed this even tho’ I made a very slow start. LOI was “topical”. I agree with those who say it is different from “trendy”, whatever a dictionary says. Strangely, muffin @14,I did get Palestine by thinking of Paine as an example of a pamphleteer. Quite a few tilts.

  41. I really enjoyed this (my sort of theme) though the last few clues were a struggle. I’d never heard of Greek keys, so cheated with help from the dictionary; “Ermintrude” I saw only after I’d put in “intrude”; and I eventually got to “limes” via “liminal”.

  42. Finished, but it’s unsatisfying to have to check so many answers afterwards if GK of mythology and Latin is limited. Thanks though.

  43. I got the theme so that was a plus. I doubt I’d have got TIMON OF A or GREEK KEYS without it. I had PINES originally but couldn’t parse it so I referred to Mr Google and LIMES leapt off the page. I couldn’t parse INTRUDE- Magic Roundabout Forsyth!- or EVASIVE but I really liked ICINESS and ORESTES.
    Thanks Crucible.

  44. Hi Sarah @41

    Re LIMES: how interesting! Sorry to put my schoolmarm hat on again, but ‘liminal’ comes from limen, liminis, a threshold [which, of course, is a kind of boundary but a totally different word] – but you got there! [All roads lead to Rome. 😉 ]

  46. I was going to add a town/city comment re Elgin, which was presumably included in the grid by Crucible because of the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Parthenon in Athens for safekeeping, but never returned, but David S @ 35 has already done so.

  48. Funny old world. The first answer that leapt out of the page was LIMES. But I am the secretary of an archaeological society.

  49. Didn’t get to this until this evening – and what a struggle it was. I always enjoy Crucible’s puzzles – even when like this one I needed much help from check button and Bradford’s and gave up with DELPHIC (so obvious with the theme) LIMES (I’ll let myself off that one) and SATURN (when will I remember SA for it?) incomplete. Add to that unparsed 11 and 9 and I was well and truly outplayed today. All that just makes me appreciate both the setter and blogger all the more – thank you both.

  50. Found this hard going but educational – thanks both.
    Muffin @11: CIT is in the BRB as an abbreviation for citizen: it is also a derogatory word (archaic) in its own right for ‘a townsman, not a gentleman’ (it cropped up in another puzzle this week).

  51. Just to be an astronomer, there has only ever been a singular probe going round it, and that was destroyed over 2 years ago. Two other probes went past it, decades ago, so currently nothing probe-y is anywhere near Saturn.

    Thanks all.

  52. I had Tiber for 16a, the boundary of timber although I see that Limes fits the parsing better

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