Guardian 28,173 / Crucible

70 comments on “Guardian 28,173 / Crucible”

1. I found it easier than yesterdays. Last one in was sashes, having tried to parse sussex as the answer on the grounds there is probably a sussex cup in racing or something. The real answer is of course far simpler.

   Thanks to Crucible and Eileen

2. Thought this would be quickly completed, but in the end found the NW and SE corners rather chewy. Had dashed in Negligee for 27ac before realising the correctly clued but more obscure PEIGNOIR.

3. PEIGNOIR needed a google to check afterwards. PROSTATE was a nice bit of deception and caused a bit of head scratching once Playboy and Penthouse were eliminated.

4. Wonderful puzzle – I loved playing “Spotto” with the theme words. Much appreciated, Qaos and Eileen. Favourites were 10a PONCHO, 13a TRACKSUIT, 14a BELOW THE BELT, 23a RIOJA and 16d ODD SOCKS. I think “jugs” is slang for a woman’s breasts in the US, thus DÉCOLLETÉ at 3d.

5. Not hard this although the neurons were gluey today. Stared dimly at the crossers for haute couture, which I’m sure wrote itself for seasoned solvers. Also haw for fruit and jugs for bosom were a bit out of focus, and domino as cloak was a che? All swam into view eventually, part of the fun, thanks both.

6. Sorry!!!! Crucible! I had to draw up my own grid as we are out in our sailboat with no access to a printer, thus working from my phone.

7. Some unknown words/phrases today (PEIGNOIR, DECOLLETE, DONKEY JACKET), but we enjoyed them a lot because the parsing meant we knew we were right!

   Thanks to Crucible for a fun puzzle and Eileen for the explanations!

8. Done at a canter. The only issue for me was that I didn’t know DOMINO also means ‘cloak’. I particularly liked FOURTH OF JULY. Thanks, Crucible and Eileen.

9. I didn’t have a lot of time for this – my Mum’s birthday (92 since you ask). It went fairly smoothly for three quarters of it, but the NE held out – and DOMINO, which I had to reveal. I understand the wordplay (sort of – I know ‘wards’ are minors, but I baulk at making them equivalents), but I cannot see the definition. Eileen, you say 6d = CLOAK, but how is a cloak a domino? There is obviously some other meaning of cloak (or domino) of which I am unaware. The NE did fall, and most of it seemed straightforward once I got it, though while I know decolletage, I didn’t know it’s shorter version. And another query: why do kickers give up? I liked RIOJA, ODD SOCKS, SASHES (my FOI) and DONKEY JACKET. Thanks, Crucible and Eileen (especially if you can clear the above queries up). [Are you in Leicester? Stay safe.]

10. Hi Julie @4 – yes, as I said, guessed and then checked, Chambers doesn’t specify it as American.

11. DOMINO was a mystery to me too, but a Crucible puzzle is always a pleasure – I always appreciate a mixture of write-ins and head-scratchers and he always seems to get the balance right. PUGILIST was my favourite and I was side-tracked for a long time over people that might wear gloves without once considering boxing.

    DECOLLETE was Paul-worthy. Not sure whether that’s a compliment or not.

12. TassieTim@9 – KICKERS give up smoking, or drinking, or other vices. Possibly crosswords.

13. Tassie Tim @9 – DOMINO: ‘a cape with a hood, worn by a master or a priest; a long cloak of black silk with a hood, used in masked balls…’ [Chambers].

    [Yes, I’m in Leicester, taking care – thanks.]

14. [Nice way to isolate, JinA. Safe sailing! (My first ocean sail was on an H28, classic little craft; with the diesel cut, nice breeze and swell, I found myself thinking Aah yes, I can see why people do this!)]

15. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

    Even I saw the theme. HAUTE COUTURE and GARTER favourites. I think 13a would have been better with hearts instead of Hearts.

    I raised an eyebrow at “trees” giving OAK. I know that in some animals the singular can also be the plural – sheep, fish, for example – but I haven’t come across it in the plant kingdom.

    Take care, Eileen!

16. Mrs PEIGNOIR was a character in Fawlty Towers, which helped with 27a.  I liked the way DONKEY JACKET intersected with HAUTE COUTURE!  (Thanks for the Michael Foot link, Eileen.  Of course what he was wearing was not really a donkey jacket.)

    I think Crucible (and the editor?) must know that some people will be offended by 3d.

17. Thanks for parsing the PUGILIST who had me floored.

18. Me too, for a while, gladys!

    I meant to put ‘donkey jacket’ in inverted commas, Lord Jim. I remember there was a lot of discussion about it at the time.

19. One or two on the G thread suggested same re 3d, Lord Jim, and I went Really? Of all the allusions to private parts, male and female, over the years, this must be one of the most innocuous, surely.

20. Boffo @12 – thanks. I have heard ‘to kick a habit’, and ‘kicking a vice’, but never before of a person who does so being a kicker. And thanks Eileen @13 for the domino definition – also new to me. Live and learn.

21. grantinfreo @19 I’m looking forward to the day when a setter clues VIRTUE SIGNALLING

22. Fun puzzle, especially for us francophiles! As Lord Jim says, Mme Peignoir was a French lady in Fawlty Towers, who, I believe, wore a dressing gown and nightie throughout, thus tantalising Basil. A few somewhat risqué clues today again – has Paul taken over the editor rôle? LOI domino, as I didn’t recognise that meaning. Well done Eileen, and thank you for the reminder of Michael Foot.

23. TassieTim @20 I guess kickers is in the same vein as rivers being referred to as flowers or bankers etc.  Not something you’ll likely come across outside of crosswordland 🙂

24. This was my first Tuesday/Crucible cryptic and I had several reveals: RIOJA, DOMINO, PONCHO.  Never heard of PONCHO as a woollen garment, except maybe for upland Patagonian gauchos? To me it is light (plastic) rain gear for rainforests. On the other hand, some clues were easily parsed and confirmed my guesses. I enjoyed the French ones. Was surprised to see ‘jugs’ in this sense, but it did confirm my guess.

    Perhaps I would have been more on Crucible’s wavelength if I had not been rattled after being unable to find my car this morning in a huge underground car park with four levels!

    Thanks Crucible and Eileen, esp. for the link (I was in the UK for all of that time).

25. Re 13ac Hearts (and Partick Thistle) have launched a petition in the Court of Session against the Scottish Professional Football League. The initial hearing was originally set for today but will now be held tomorrow. If Crucible is, like myself, a follower of Hearts he will be tracking this suit. He will also be of the opinion that the SPFL has acted in a 14ac manner.

26. Yes, great link, Eileen. Journalism can be so nasty, eg the Mail saying William Hague looked like a child molester on day-release…ouch!

27. muffin @15: plant names can be used as mass nouns (rather than ‘plurals’) in the same way as a regular mass noun like ‘sand’ (“the area was covered in sand”), so “the hillside was covered with oak” or “we’ve planted the upper field with cherry and rowan”.

28. Thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

    I normally find Crucible a challenge, but this was more straightforward than most, helped by 4 and 11dn going in quickly.

    Muffin @15 – like Feliks @25, I saw 13ac as a reference to Heart of Midlothian FC.

29. What fun! I double bluffed myself at 3dn thinking Crucible was putting schoolboy thoughts into our minds with jugs and that it would ultimately mean a vessel with a handle, so DECOLLETE raised a cheeky smile. But plenty of smiles all round especially PROSTATE.

    PEIGNOIR needed a verify being new to me and I needed the blog to parse the first half of PUGILIST.

    Thanks Crucible and Eileen.

30. Well, I struggled to make a start this morning, going more than half way through the across clues unsuccessfully before starting on the downs. Then, the tumblers clicked into place and I was on Crucible’s wavelength.
    Had a chuckle at DÉCOLLETÉ, rechecking whether or not it was an offering from Paul as setter, and charged through to the SE corner. Undone by PEIGNOIR and DOMINO so a DNF for me, even though I bunged them in unknown and unparsed. Thanks Eileen for sorting them out for me, and Crucible for the entertainment!

31. Marienkaefer @28, Muffin @15

    I don’t think that there is a reference to HMFC in 13ac. Although there appears to be no hard and fast rule the names of card suits are often capitalised. My earlier post was merely to highlight a coincidence of which few would be aware.

     

32. Does anyone remember the classic 1976 film Mother, Jugs, and Speed, with Raquel Welch as “Jugs”? Thought not..

33. I fairly breezed through everything but DOMINO; after an hour’s distraction on Zoom I gave it further consideration and saw that Prepare = DO was likely to start it off, and then the word came to me. Phew! Favourites were RIOJA, DONKEY JACKET and ODD SOCKS. Nice theme. Many thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

34. bodycheetah@21, having said my piece I won’t stoke the war…

35. Enjoyable. ICECAP was my favourite but lots to like here, including PROSTATE and DECOLLETE.  I was not familiar with DOMINO as a cloak, nor with a DONKEYJACKET.  I did not completely parse PUGILIST either.

    I also wondered about oak as a collective noun, so thanks pserve_p2@27.

    Thanks to Crucible for the fun and Eileen for the blog

    PS Muffin, re yesterday’s comment, indeed I do like Ngaio Marsh’s novels, with the urbane Roderick Alleyn – it’s been a while since  I read them, but have been thinking about looking them out again.

     

     

36. Iroquois @31, my only acquaintance with ‘jugs’ in this context was through that movie title. (No, I didn’t see the movie, as the title screamed out ‘bad comedy.’)

    I loved the puzzle and managed to parse everything except PUGILIST (thanks, Eileen), but needed Collins to confirm the meanings of PEIGNOIR, DOMINO, DECOLLETE and DONKEY JACKET. I was dimly aware of several articles of clothing showing up in the answers, but didn’t recognize them as constituting a theme until I stepped back to look at the completed grid – d’oh! Thanks to Crucible for the fun.

37. bodycheetah@21, Vlad used VIRTUE SIGNALLING in a Guardian cryptic on 10th August 2018, Number 27,584. I remember it well as I had not met the term before that and there were quite a few comments regarding it on the blog.

38. Thanks Julie @37 – great anagram too 🙂

39. Lovely puzzle and if part of the clue for 3d is good enough for Keith Richards I rest my case.

    And thanks to Lord Jim@16 for mentioning the Fawlty reference.

    Also nice to see RIOJA clued in a different way.

    Thanks Eileen and Duggie.

     

40. Like most people here today lots of fun was had with this today. DOMINO as a cloak was new to me. Demijohn for JO was clever. Also can I include the Nina HATS in the theme?

41. I thoroughly enjoyed this which brought smile after smile and a few chortles ie 3d.  I can’t see why anyone would be offended by jugs.  Surely we are all grown ups here,  If you do not wish to use the word so be it – I wouldn’t – but to be offended…….. Favourites were (among many great clues) DECOLLETE, such a lovely word, well worth borrowing from the French,  the cleverly hidden GARTER, and PUGILIST for the lovely misleading definition.

    Very many thanks Eileen – keep safe in Leicester – for several explanations and to Crucible for an absolute cracker.

    Two good ones in a row it could be a classic week!!

42. i was led astray at 18a for too long by the line “So we’ll go to Mother Racket’s and we’ll pawn our monkey jackets And we’ll have another drink before the boat shoves off,” sung to the Sailor’s Hornpipe.  But when I couldn’t think what ?M? SOCKS could be, I finally thought of donkeys.

    There was a puzzle years ago in the Sunday (New York) Times, which always has some sort of a running gimmick, in which some clues were just single letters.  Eventually, thanks to crossers, you realized that Y was “Fourth of July,” O was “Second in command,” and I wish I could remember the others.

    I must have done that Vlad puzzle Julie mentions, but — good for you, Julie, for remembering it after two years!

43. [Yes Valentine@42, when I quickly scanned scchua’s blog on the puzzle, I saw your comment agreeing that VIRTUE SIGNALLING was unfamiliar to you as well.]

44. I’m with Hmmm in Oz – is a PONCHO woolly?   Must go and check out my extensive collection upstairs – that is after I get out of the PEIGNOIR cos it’s killing my thighs…   That was fun for day 2 of crypticland!

45. Jugs isn’t just american slang for breasts.  It’s UK slang as well and I have heard it used many times, but almost exclusively in my youth.  However, it is a coarse, unpleasant word for them and, in my opinion, was a rather inappropriate clue

46. I haven’t heard of U in Maths. I just took it as U for Union as in TUC and NUM.

    Like others, couldn’t parse PUGILIST so thanks for that Eileen

    Unusual for me to complete a Crucible without aids.

     

47. It was hard to see how a DINNER JACKET could be any sailor’s workwear, though I did eventually see there was a better fit to the checkers.  DOMINO as a cloak brought to mind The Lilac Domino – a vaguely remembered pre-war musical.

48. When I was in my university mountaineering club we would refer to a safe handhold on a rockface as a jug.
    Possibly this was undergraduate humour reminding us of the security we felt in our milk fed days.
    Thanks to Crucible an Eileen

49. MaidenBartok @44 – from Collins:

    PONCHO: a cloak of a kind originally worn in South America, made of a rectangular or circular piece of cloth with a hole in the middle for the head[C18 from American Sp,. of Amerind origin, from pantho, woollen material];

    Chambers has similar [a ‘blanket’] and adds ‘a cyclist’s waterproof cape of similar design; any similar garment’.

    peterM @47 – that’s where I first heard of that use of DOMINO, as a child – I was fascinated.

    Pedro @48 – I was pleased to find the mathematical reference in Collins [not Chambers] – there’s been quite a bit of discussion here about extracting a single letter from an abbreviation, as you suggest.

     

50. PONCHO was my LOI, but it really shouldn’t have been, as I had spent some time trying to justify it at 19d.

    Thanks to various people for responding to posts of mine.

51. Eileen @44: thank you!   You live and you learn.

    Pedro @46: technically, it is in Set Theory which is a branch of maths.  Alternatively, it is what I scored in my O-Level mock (but luckily had a little time to recover)…

52. I enjoyed this from start to finish, it felt like a Monday puzzle though , a great way to spend a Monday evening as I live in Vancouver I get the puzzle a 4pm on the Canadian West Coast.

53. I’ve been a bit naughty today. We’re visiting friends for lunch (at appropriate distance of course) so I’ve been having to solve on the sly. The best way is to brazen it out and involve our non-solving hosts in the solving. Oh how we laughed over DÉCOLLETÉ and PROSTATE! Thanks Crucible for livening things up.

    Howard @1 if you’re still here, I wondered about SUSSEX too, made worse by knowing that the umpteenth running of the Sussex Stakes will take place at Goodwood next month.

54. Crucible can be tricky for some, easy for others; tough for me after a poor night’s sleep. I think it’s because of the synonyms used which can only be seen if on the same wavelength as the setter. It took me ages to understand K(N)ICKERS, for example, though it raised a small chuckle when I got the reference to kicking a habit; I was unable to parse PUGILIST because I didn’t see bank=lean=LIST (so thanks, Eileen). Never heard of a DOMINO as a cloak; I didn’t get 26a because I didn’t realise that SASH windows were so-called from the French chassis, so that the name specifically refers to the windows as frames; and carelessly writing in DINNER JACKET meant that I was unable to parse 18a too. So a dnf for me, and yet quite a lot of this crossword was almost a write-in for me too.

    I’m sure the capitalisation of Hearts deliberately refers to the football team, not cards, with follow and training both there in the clue, and TRACKSUIT being the answer.

    I agree with SPanza @41 re jugs – it is surely not possible to be offended by words in a crossword puzzle. We’re playing around with words here. Surely words can only cause offence if they are intended to do so. Jugs as a reference to breasts in this context is a humorous allusion to their function as carriers of milk, is it not? Quite possibly it’s undergraduate humour (Dicho @48), but coarse, unpleasant and inappropriate (Volksman 999)? Surely not.

55. This was fairly easy until it wasn’t — my GK does not extend to esoteric garments such as DECOLLETE or PEIGNOR, the former I should have been able to parse, the latter a bit more complex. DOMINO as CLOAK? Favorites were PROSTATE and TRACKSUIT. Thanks Crucible and Eileen

56. Dicho @48 I always heard them called “jug handles” which would abbreviate to “jug” nicely – obviously signifying something you could get a solid grip on easily. Not the etymology you were looking for alas!

    All good fun – thanks to Crucible and Eileen.

57. SPanza @41 I enjoy British crosswords because they’re cryptic but I also like the “naughty” nature of some of the setters and their clues. The puritanism that rules American crosswords apparently hasn’t infected the British ones. I hope it stays that way.

58. I remember the term “jugs” being used as slang for breasts when I was a teenager so quite a long time before the Raquel Welch film. It was meant coarsly then and I don’t think it’s become any less so over the years. I was rather surprised to see it as part of a clue but there you are!
    I thought this rather an easy ride, and the theme leapt off the page. ENSUE took a long time to see and I really can’t see why now.
    Thanks Crucible.

59. Unlike Tony Santucci above, I am beginning to find the ‘naughty’ nature – read lavatorial – of the Grauniad’s crosswords a tad distasteful. And me a Brit, and all! Mind you, having lived in the US for two decades my ultra-liberal nature may have suffered somewhat. Nonetheless, loved the puzzle.

60. Thanks to Eileen and to Crucible.  Three-quarters of this went in very easily – so easily in fact that the clues were solved in the order they were printed – however the combination of PEIGNOIR and DOMINO as a kind of cloak meant that the SE corner took as long as the rest of the puzzle put together, and eventually word search was required in order to unlock it.  Like others, I thought RIOJA in particular was clued very cleverly.   TheZed @56 – if the criterion was to get a solid grip easily, then presumably it was first necessary for them to achieve a certain rating on the BSH scale ?

61. MaidenBartok: Thanks for those snippets.

     

62. MaidenBartok @ 51: To expand a little, anyone who has seen a Venn Diagram of two coloured discs, labelled A, B say has seen A U B, the set consisting of the elements that are in A or in B. This notion pervades all of Mathematics.

63. Peignoir from un peigne (a comb) and se peigner (to comb one’s hair). So when I read peignoir I think of a lady combing her hair in a nightie before bedtime.

64. sheffield hatter @54 — I didn’t know the derivation of sash from chassis, thank you for that.  It reminds me of square dancing, which is full of terms from the  French quadrilles also danced in the same regions in bygone days.  “Promenade,” for instance, or “Allemand left” from “a la main gauche.”  The sliding step of “chasser” became “sashay,” which then expanded from the specific dance step to things like, “You think you can just sashay in here and …”

    And “chassis” always reminds me of Joxer Daly in Juno and the Paycock — “The world is in a state of chassis.”

     

     

     

65. A good and varied set of clues.  I got all four French words/phrases early on and thought that a rather obvious theme had revealed itself early, but I duly changed my mind about what the theme was having got a few more solutions.  All very nicely done.

    Thanks to Crucible, Eileen and other commenters.  Sorry you happen to be in the locked-down cocoon in the middle of England, Eileen.

66. Valentine @ 64: and ‘dosie do’ comes from the French ‘dos à dos’ (back to back)!

67. Just finished this.  I came back to it after Brummie today to see if one last valiant effort could dislodge 25a and 19d, so was delighted when PUGILIST and DOMINO finally fell into place.  Mind you, domino = cloak was a guess, and I couldn’t parse the left half of PUGILIST, so thank you Eileen for the explanations.

    Continuing the sartorial theme, I wonder if 1a/5a ROUND (Oval?) OFFICE CAP is the sort of thing the Donald might don.  Especially with HATS and USA appearing in close proximity as ninas.  (I guess he wouldn’t wear a PONCHO though…)

    I remember Michael Foot’s wife, Jill Craigie, sounding very upset at the time over press coverage of the DONKEY JACKET that-never-was.  In fact it was an expensive item she had gone to the trouble of selecting for him.  This article from Wales Online explains – although it mistakenly implies (in 2007) that the true story is a new revelation.  Unfortunately the Simon Hoggart series ‘Great Political Myths’, to which the article refers, appears to be no longer available.  It was re-broadcast following his death in 2014 as a tribute.  It’s a shame we can’t listen again, as according to the article it also sheds light on Guacamole-gate!

    Belated thanks Crucible and Eileen.

68. Many thanks for that, essexboy, if you’re still there.

    Yes, it’s a great pity we can’t hear Simon Hoggart. I still miss him on The News Quiz and loved his Parliamentary sketches and Saturday columns in the Guardian. He was a crossword enthusiast and a great friend of Araucaria.

69. Thanks for that Eileen, I didn’t know about Simon Hoggart’s crossword connections.  I’ve just looked at his wikipedia page and see that he went to school (for a time) in your neck of the woods.

70. The most famous ponchos must surely belong to Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name, and Marty McFly in Back to the Future III! I first came across a domino as a masquerade cloak in Georgette Heyer novels.

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