Guardian 28,166 / Pan

84 comments on “Guardian 28,166 / Pan”

1. Very nice start to the week and thanks for blog.

2. What our esteemed blogger said, really, although I’d exclude “Spin tail of monkey in metal frame” which doesn’t make a lot of sense as a sentence.

   I struggled to parse PERSIMMON and couldn’t do any better than you, Eileen.  No doubt someone will improve on it.

   Many thanks, both, nice week, all,

3. Tough Monday puzzle.

   New: SPONDEE

   Needed google for list of Cambridge colleges to solve 1a.

   I parsed PERSIMMON in the same way as Eileen.

   Thanks Pan and Eileen

4. I also parsed PERSIMMON as you did. Took ages to spot OKRA. I was trying to make something out of ‘pea’ and r for rabbit. There were a couple I could not parse (though of course now I wonder why!). Thank you Eileen for the explanations and to Pan for a lively start to the week.

5. A lovely puzzle – initially I thought it was a bit stiff for a Monday, but gradually got into it. Favourites were SWIMMINGLY and EMERALDS (LOI). Many thanks to Pan and the indefatigable Eileen.

6. Very pleasing start to the week. TUTTIFRUTTI was beautifully constructed, I thought.

   Thanks Eileen and Pan.

7. Slow start but answers dropped in regularly, which was nice. A few dodgy parsings, certainly PERSIMMON and I wasn’t overly happy with STINGRAY or SWIMMINGLY either. EMANATE my favourite.

    

   Fed up with the ‘Monday whingers’ who can’t seem to stop complaining that the Monday puzzle is too hard, or easier than the Cryptic. Typical BTL nonsense, I know, but I wouldn’t want to be a Monday setter.

8. A gourmet offering? I remember when 16dn first opened and together with other “pots” was the place to eat:

   https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2015/dec/08/goodbye-to-the-stockpot-the-last-great-soho-cheap-eatery

9. A paean for Pan? A song of praise [..still unsolved!]? Well not quite but pretty good, a bit to chew, just about right for a Monday. I too could only think of millimetre for very little. And someone on the G thread tersely said ‘okra: fruit’, but I haven’t checked. Liked the wimmin, but toytown was unfamiliar (..mostly US, maybe?). Couldn’t remember whether Caius was Cam or Ox until the crossers nailed it. Enjoyed it, thanks Pan and Eileen.

10. Thanks both. Can I be permitted a mini grumble about the lack of a US indicator for the lawyer in 19d?
    That ship has flown the stable, I suppose.

11. Seems Pan is heading from Monday level towards Prize level.

     

12. Re TOYTOWN – I can remember it being used to describe an underperforming piece of equipment 30 or more years ago

13. Thanks as ever Eileen.  I always appreciate your sure guidance through the parsing of those that have escaped me.  Did not know ‘bis’ as a musical direction so had wondered whether ‘bi’ as in two was doing something.  But didn’t know what.  BARRE is new to me also.  I agree with William @2 with regard to the only properly ugly surface.  Some of the others are delightful.  I particularly enjoyed Pan’s inserting Swedish into SMORGASBORD and Scottish into MANSE.

    I’m afraid PERSIMMON really is looking to parse as per your blog, Eileen.  If that particular abbreviation was going to be used, perhaps “One eating very little fruit” would have done with the ‘imm’ being one millimetre.  Simple Simon came to mind but I couldn’t see how to use him – and, of course, he never actually ate the pie.

    Strange quirk: I’m sure I’ve noticed OARSWOMAN/WOMEN appear more often in crosswordland than the male equivalent.

    Thanks Pan for a nice Monday morning.

14. [Octopus@8, I’d put the book I’m reading pages-down to do the post, and there on the back was a comment by Muriel Spark…snap!]

15. Really enjoyed this for a Monday. Particularly liked the neatness of STRAND and ETNA. M for monumental meant I rather dithered over whether EMERALDS was in fact correct, and therefore loi.

16. Mark @ 13 re SMORGASBORD and MANSE – I could add Rambert  in 9ac BARRE and Italian in 18ac TUTTI-FRUTTI. 😉

17. Thanks Eileen and Pan.

    I did not know that the variant spelling of ‘wimmin’ had been coined by feminists.  I’d only seen it in the works of curmudgeonly misogynists in  right-wing publications such as Private Eye attempting to ridicule progressive ideas with ad feminem attacks.

18. I thought the allusive surfaces as highlighted by Mark@13 and expanded on by Eileen@16 shows very thoughtful setting and really add to the puzzle. Likewise SCRAM. I also thought OKRA was well-hidden with a nice surface. EMERALDS and SWIMMINGLY (thanks for the WIMMIN info Eileen – I’d always thought it was derogatory) also got ticks. Great puzzle and blog – thanks to both Pan and Eileen – three in a row from you is a treat.

19. Feliks@17 – we crossed – that was my knowledge of WIMMIN as well.

20. Googled cambridge colleges and casius isnt one? Google says its gonville and caius?

21. George @20
    yes you’re right but it’s always called Caius pronounced keys

22. Ah okay but that’s just obscure knowledge then that you cant even google…. so frustrating! Otherwise good puzzle

23. A very pleasant start to the week.  I had an idea that TOYTOWN (27a) was where Noddy and Bigears hung out, but having checked my facts on these important matters, it seems that was Toyland.  TOYTOWN was the abode of Larry the Lamb and friends.

    Many thanks Pan and Eileen.

24. Thanks for being on deck again, Eileen. I liked this little bit of brain exercise, so thank you to Pan for some clever setting. My favourites were 12a ETNA (as Ronald said@15), 14a SMORGASBORD (as mentioned by Mark@13), 16d STOCKPOT and 17d STINGRAY. Like gif@9, I didn’t know that implication of TOYTOWN, 27a.

25. Eileen @16 Good point.  As WhiteKing @18 says, that sort of clueing really does elevate.  I know that none of those are &littish but they have that sort of feel about them.

26. A challenge but we managed to complete it! Disappointingly failed to parse EMANATE. TOYTOWN and CANT were new.

    Favourites were SPOTLIGHT and STINGRAY.

    Thanks Pan and Eileen!

     

27. Thanks for the blog and persimmon parsing.

    According to google, Gonville and Caius started off as Gonvile Hall in 13 something, set up by a Gonvile, then refounded in 15 something by a Caius and renamed G&c college. My dad went there. And yes, always refererred to as Keys college – to fool the uninitiated, just as Magdalene College is always called Maudlin….

28. Yes, enjoyable with lots to enjoy. Liked TUTTI-FRUTTI and SWIMMINGLY amongst others. Haven’t seen ‘wimmin’ for a while, which made me smile, as did the allusive references noted by Mark@13 (and Eileen@16 ). TILT TOYTOWN.

    Thanks to Pan for the fun and Eileen for the blog.

29. I remember Neil Kinnock in 1991, with typical Labour Party contempt for any sort of direct action, calling anti-Poll Tax demonstrators “toytown revolutionaries”.  He was too ignorant to realise that my generation recalled Toytown with great affection, and took it as a compliment.

30. Andy@27 and, curiously, Balliol is pronounced Balloyle in Toronto.

     

    Thanks Pan and Eileen. I was knocked off my perch by BARRE, and was convinced it was BARSE, with BASE being the basic support.

     

     

31. Thanks for the blog Eileen and to Pan for the puzzle. It looks like I was the only one to have “ante” for “etna” (until crossers put me right) reading it as being defined by “stake” and “found over” ie wordplay applying to Etna. Otherwise the instruction is “over stake” and I don’t think you can “over something” (though I did have to admit last week you could “up something” so maybe I am wrong again!)

    That aside I admired “smorgasbord” – I think there is a special craft in putting together a clue which, while not &lit, uses thw wordplay to give additional hints to the answer, especially with a long anagram like this. Not overly hard, just a delight to solve and what else are most of us here for but to be delighted?

32. Nice start to the week. I agree with the parking of 25a which seems reasonable enough to me.

    Thanks Pam and Eileen

33. Andy @27 and Dave @30 – interesting! I went to Oxford (Balliol in fact) and there is a similarly named Magdalen college also pronounced maudlin, but somewhere in my past I was (clearly erroneously) told that the Oxford one was said maudlin and the Cambridge one was mag-da-len so thank you for saving me a future faux pas!

    Thanks to Pan for the Monday fun – harder but more precise and satisfying than many Monday puzzles (Vulcan I’m looking at you…) – and Eileen for the blog. Seems I went to Chambers for the same verifications (toytown and wimmin). I’m ashamed to say that having thought of oarsman and seeing it didn’t fit or quite parse, OARSWOMAN took me far too long to land upon. I’ll blame societal sexist conditioning regarding the naming of sportspersons. Manatee to EMANATE is particularly satisfying.

34. A damnation in predictive text! That was, of course, parsing and Pan!

35. Persimmon. One=person. Contents of pie = i. Very little =mm.
    Ken

36. Ken Swinswood@35 – that’s what I think I said: apologies if it wasn’t clear.

37. Thanks Eileen for the blog, and for the tilt at parsing PERSIMMON for me. I tried and tried to get Simon of simple fame shoehorned in, but conceded defeat. Far brighter minds than mine, on a Monday morn.
    Thought there was a preponderance of anagrams today, not that I mind that, but a lot of great surfaces and misdirections.
    Too hard for a Monday? Pah! If you want an easy start to the week, do the Quiptic!
    Lovely puzzle thanks Pan. More like this one, please

38. No crossword is complete without a cricket reference so I’m taking MM to mean two maiden overs which would be very little 🙂 One of these days someone will use LOCK to mean something other than hair and I am going to be baffled, bamboozled and bewildered. Cheers all

39. AC87@33…this won’t turn into a long, perhaps unnecessary debate about a College that doesn’t actually feature in this particular crossword. However we locals here in Cambridge refer to Magdalene as “Maudlin” too, and I think this might be because it was founded in 1542 by a Lord Audley. But let’s not get into any kind of an argument about this! (Gonville and) Caius most certainly pronounced “Keys”, however…

40. For PERSIMMON,  I took SIMM to be a “single inline memory module” as might be installed in a Raspberry Pie computer.

41. I found this hard to get going on, for a Monday puzzle. And had to do a bit of research. Would you believe I even looked at a map of the cantons of Switzerland for one that might fit after dismissing Bern for 21a? D’oh! At least trawling Cambridge colleges paid dividends. When I did start cracking a few, then everything seemed to get easier. I especially liked EMANATE, my last one in.

42. A Pleasant stroll – after a panicky five minutes staring at a blank grid and thinking “but it’s Monday”! Once on wavelength everything made sense – always want to go to aspidistra whenever there’s a reference to a plant, so that has to be my favourite 🙂

43. …but then realised it didn’t need the S.  So maybe just “inline memory module”

44. bodycheetah @38 Just for you: Cut locks collected in this container. Not quite all. (5)

45. I’ll join in the general praise for this, with TUTTI-FRUTTI, CANT and EMANATE being my favourites. Didn’t realize that wimmin was a respectable spelling of women, perhaps I need to read more feminist literature.

    Dryll @37, you might want to read the comments on this week’s Quiptic before making that particular suggestion, but I agree with you that Monday puzzles should be enjoyed without any prior expectations regarding levels of difficulty.

    Thanks to Pan and Eileen (always a treat to see you in three consecutive blogs).

46. Mark @ 44: Shouldn’t that be ‘Cutting locks”? (If the answer is what I think it is)

     

47. Pedro @46: Don’t think so.  But I realise, having had the temerity to cross the floor, that I may yet learn something about the rules of setting if I turn out to be wrong!  In which case, no doubt to the relief of all, I shall retreat to the relative safety of the solvers’ side of the house.

48. Pedro @ 46 – I think that “cut” is a fairly well known name for the 5 letter answer

49. After I read the comments about the clue for GYRATE, I found this: The idea of the game is to spin the dial which will tell you which body part to clip the monkey to. Once clipped on pull the monkeys tail which will make him laugh.’ So, I think this may be a reference to a children’s game.

    I got a bit stranded in the NW corner but cracked it eventually.

    Good, precise cluing; thanks Pan and Eileen.

50. All was going well until 15d. It looked like it was going to be OARSMAN but not enough letters so what other sort of sportsman could it be? Totally stumped. Then my mind wandered to the other half of the population. This is what sexism does folks. Be warned.

    On the Magdalen = maudlin debate. There’s a village near me called Magdalen Laver. Not too far from Cambridge: 30 miles maybe. But the locals pronounce with a G and a D.

51. Thanks to Eileen for parsing PERSIMMON.

    I like an elegant two-word DD clue, so the clue of the day for me was the maroon fibre.

    Shirl @ your first comment (the mobile version of this site doesn’t number the comments): I’m of the opinion that indicators for Americanisms are, while sometimes helpful, never required. You’re charged with knowing the language–all of it, be the word British, American, Australian, Irish, or Jamaican. (Well, maybe Jamaican is a bridge too far, mon.) American spellings are a different matter–you need to be told if the setter wants a word we all share to end in -ize rather than -ise, for example.

    On that note, the STINGRAY clue might have been more elegant if “gray” were indicated as an Americanism rather than a homophone.

    In other news, my phone just tried to turn homophone into homophobe. There’s a crossword clue in there somewhere…

52. Shirl @48: It is indeed.  So is a double definition and wordplay allowed?  I’ve seen double and triple definitions but I’m trying to recall a combination of those with wordplay.  I can’t see why it wouldn’t be valid.  Unless, as I said above, there’s a rule I just haven’t come across.

53. [Octopus@8, I went back and clicked on your STOCKPOT story. As someone who has taken to making her own stock in a stockpot over recent “iso” times – along with utilising lots of “comfort food” handed-down recipes – this nostalgic article held lots of appeal for me. Thank you.

    And I wondered which Muriel Spark novel you were reading in association with that link, gif@14.  I once taught a film unit in English class called “The Film School”, a theme I invented, in which we examined untoward influence by charismatic teachers (Miss Jean Brodie from the Muriel Spark film adaptation with the amazing Maggie Smith, and John Keating (Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society”), vis a vis a less charismatic style (Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante in “Stand and Deliver”). The students and I had lots of intriguing discussions! Sorry this is such a far tangent from the crossword at hand, thus the square brackets.]

54. [Comments@33 and @50 from AC87 and Trailman re sexist conditioning and sexism regarding the clue for OARSWOMAN @15d made me think that at least there are some folk on this site who might be open to changed mind-sets.]

55. I didn’t find this easy at all but I got there in the end! BARRE was LOI and CUBIST wasn’t far behind. I didn’t parse PERSIMMON but it had to be right. I did like SWIMMINGLY and SPONDEE. I haven’t seen the latter in a puzzle for some time.
    Thanks Pan.

56. [Hi JinA, no I was reading Sleeping Arrangements by Laura Shane Cunningham, on the back cover of which was a review comment, “A great pleasure”, from Muriel Spark]

57. Hi JinA @54 – I’m reminded of this old ‘riddle’, which I put to my students about thirty years ago, but, googling it just now, I found lots of references to it in the last two or three years.

58. mrpenney @ 51 – I take your point, I just wanted an excuse for a grumble.
    As to STINGRAY, Fish eggs turned grey across the pond?

59. PS: I’ve also just remembered how appalled I was, in my first year of blogging, to find AMBASSADRESS clued – in a Guardian crossword – as ‘diplomat’s wife’.

60. Thanks Pan and Eileen

    Well, sorry to disappoint boffo, but I found this very much easier than the (unusually difficult) Quiptic. The only problem was parsing PERSIMMON – I tried to do something with Simple Simon too, but couldn’t make it work.

    A couple of lovely clues, though – ASPIDISTRA, and the wonderful SMORGASBORD.

61. Mark @ 52

    I’m pretty sure Philistine has had cues with two definitions and wordplay inbetween, but I may be mixing it up with a single definition and two or more sets of wordplay.

62. Hi Eileen

    Your riddle was used in the golf film Tin Cup. Tin Cup (Kevin Costner) a golf teaching professional, poses it to his hangers on, who don’t get it. His next learner, Rene Russo, turns up and he says “I thought I had a Dr. Griswold…..?”

63. Just to set the record straight, the Oxbridge Colleges are spelt differently. Oxford is Magdalen whereas at Cambridge a final ‘e’ is added so Magdalene. They are both pronouned ‘maudlin’.

64. Thanks be to Pan and Eileen.
    Had to pop by to praise MANATEE; also for the parsing of PERSIMMON (hmmm…) and (blush) DONATION.
    It seems I was the only one to try to justify “scrap” for SCRAM – the surface reading seemed to offer support: was amused to be corrected by SINGLE MALT.

65. muffin @62 – I’ve a real soft spot for Tin Cup. It’s kind of about golf, but you don’t need to know that much about it to enjoy it, and happily not your typical sporting story. (I’m the kind of idiot who’d do what KC’s character does near the end, so I can relate to it so well.)

    As to the crossword, I enjoyed it a lot. A little stiffer than a regular Monday, but some lovely clues in there. I managed to dredge “spondee”out of some dusty corner of my brain – that’s definitely only ever been seen in crosswords by me.

66. JinA @54 – much as I made light of it in my original comment @33 it’s slightly terrifying that my brain didn’t make that leap. I’d certainly have been much happier with myself if that hadn’t been the case!

    Without going too off topic I seem to remember a Nutmeg (I think) clue which was for some unisex noun such as shopkeeper or indeed sportsperson and in the clue this person was referred to as “she” or “her” (sorry I really can’t remember the details!). There was outcry in the comments that we should be expected to not take the fact this person was a female in the clue as some huge hint that the answer would be specifically female too and Nutmeg very graciously pointed out that there was no reason whatsoever that imaginary crossword people ought to all be men.

67. AC87 et al

    Both Arachne (first) and Nutmeg routinely use “she” to denote an unspecified person.

68. A much more enjoyable solve than the past few Monday Vulcans. Like many others have said some nice clues eg EMANATE SMORGASBORD SINGLE MALT.
    I parsed PERSIMMON exactly as Eileen did without trying to be any more complex. I did spend some time trying to think of 6 letter artist beginning with C before seeing (c-ing?) the light.
    Thanks Eileen and Pan

69. Muffin @67 – quite right too! Sad it’s worthy of note.

70. As explained in the text after the riddle, cognitive schema, once embedded, are really hard to shake, and the ‘dominant male’ schema has been a long time in the making (think burning of ‘witches’, or further back, who got to vote in ancient Greece, or much further, to when those revered female fertility figurines began to disappear from the archaeological record).

71. Quick, enjoyable solve.
    Re PERSIMMON, I too parsed it as mm=millimeter=very little (ugh!), but could it be that m=minute=little, so mm=very little (ugh again…)?

72. AC87 @66 As one who was raised in a male dominated era, I’m generally surprised to see she or her when I expect he or him. That pleases me because it adds to the cryptic depth of the clue.

73. come now George @22, obscure knowledge?…

    anyway tell that to my wife who finds every cricket reference an opaque mystery.

74. Thanks to Eileen and Pan

    Except for 12,

    and 25

75. To JinA [A very late, off-piste, and unfortunately exclusively male addition to your list: Peter O’Toole in “Goodbye Mr Chips”]

76. Surely in 14a “capital “ is unnecessary? If the clue ended in Swedish it would give us the S. Swedish capital is Stockholm so yet another S. A bit confused…
    Great puzzle. Found it a bit tricky for a Monday!!
    Thanks

77. Loved this tricky puzzle, and it called me out – on eventually cracking ‘swimmingly’ I was muttering to myself that ‘wimmin’ = ‘females’ sounded a bit derogatory; but ‘oarswoman’ was my LOI, such was my unwittingly sexist fixation on ‘athlete’ being male. Entertained and educated, thank you Pan (and Eileen)!

78. Why are the times of the post awry?

79. Dave Ellison @78

    In what way?

80. Gaufrid@79 I have put some examples here

    Is it just me? There are some entries with yesterday’ date (22/June)

     

81. OOPs red face time – just realised I am looking at Pan’s crossword, not Qaos’ – apologies

     

82. This was my first Cryptic (since doing about a dozen Quiptics in the last two weeks) and done without any reveals, so I am quite chuffed. A pleasant diversion during these tumultuous times.

    There were some I could not parse, but definitions, crossers and high-probability letter combinations came to the rescue.

    The first quarter was a bit nerve-wracking, only getting MISO, OKRA, ETNA , AGENDA and TONGA. Then blank staring until IDEALISTIC, SMORGASBOARD, TUTTI-FRUTTI and ASPIDISTRA materialised. The last quarter was so much easier. I spent quite a while cycling through the Cambridge Colleges until 2, 3 and 4 suggested the answer. Luckily we did J.C. at school.

    Re 15, I had OAR from the crossers and MAN for athlete … then I realised that OMAN was a sultanate, so I added an O and left it for a while. The W of SWIMMINGLY nailed it.

    I did not know SPONDEE or TOYTOWN. We have a BARRE fitness studio in our village. GYRATE was my LOI.

    Favourites were STRAND and TUTTI-FRUTTI (anyone remember Chubby Checker?) and ASPIDISTRA.

    Thanks to Pan and to Eileen for the blog.

83. As a “Monday whinger” I did find this hard (can’t do any of the other days) but got there in the end. For 1a I saw Cassius Clay – also an old assassin of the boxing ring. My dad went to Caius too!

84. As a “Monday whinger” I did find this hard (can’t do any of the other days) but got there in the end. For 1a I saw Cassius Clay – also an old assassin of the boxing ring. My father went to Caius too

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