Guardian Cryptic 28,230 by Shed

84 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,230 by Shed”

1. Forgetting its MacIntosh origin, I did 14ac as mack plus eel round r, and yes there is a boat called an eel..talk about taking the hard (and wrong) way!

2. Thanks Shed and manehi

   A slow start, but after a few went in it was a straightforward solve, though I didn’t parse PELLICLE. Lots of fun clues. Favourite was NIPPLEWORT, partly for the clever construction, but also because every time we see it the same question occurs – is that nipplewort or wall lettuce?

   Wouldn’t 18d be better with “for” instead of “to”? I toyed with the parsing being L and L or D, but couldn’t see where the D came from, before hitting on the right explanation.

3. Harder than yesterday. Had to use the check this button and the dictionaries quite  a bit. Still couldn’t parse a few – so thanks to Manehi for the explanations – quite obvious – once explained. I did enjoy it though – some of the clues were lovely especially TIGERS, AARDVARK, CONGEST, BROGUE, PALTRY.  Thanks to Shed and Manehi.

4. Many thanks Shed and Manehi, most enjoyable. One small point I took keel as being “on boat” not “boat”

5. Apologies, ignore my comment @4, a keel can be a boat!

6. No doddle, this,despite some gimmes like charge, stray cat, paltry and tigers. Finished up staring at 17 and 5 for ages, then resorting to a bit of check button trial and error…should have got textile unaided, super clue, but pellicle was a nho, and the ‘from’ felt a bit hmmm. Had no idea how to parse tuning, despite the obvious tug, pretty cute clue, and had heard of descry, but not scry, so 2d was a shrug. Interesting mixture, thanks Shed, and thanks manehi.

7. A bit of a struggle today. The bottom half went in quickly but then things slowed down a lot. Like Grantinfreo 17 and 5 took me a while. I had to look up NIPPLEWORT in google as I hadn’t heard of it.
   I couldn’t parse ZUCCHINI, TUNING or PELLICLE so many thanks to Manehi for the blog.
   Cotd was AARDVARK.
   Thanks Shed for giving the brain a work out!

8. A slightly strange puzzle today, I thought.  I generally enjoy Shed and, on the whole, the clues worked as they should but I found quite a number of the surfaces to be ugly and/or nonsensical.  15, 20, 4 and 16 for example.

   Defeated by PELLICLE: a dnk.  ‘Pic’ didn’t come to mind and I don’t recall measuring anything in ells of late so neither did that!  I’m with muffin @2 with the same thought about 18d.  Though I don’t share his evident angst and consternation with regard to the eternal wall lettuce question.  I’ve never heard of either manifestation of the plant, though NIPPLEWORT was gettable from wordplay. On the subject of plants, having flirted with courgettes in the blog last week, I was delighted to encounter ZUCCHINI as my FOI – though the clue was a bit of a mouthful.  As was the clue for AARDVARK.  Lovely to see the solution for the first time in a puzzle (and began wondering if we were going to arrive at a pangram) but is there a subtle allusion I’m missing with RADA V?  Otherwise it just seems an almost random assortment of the remaining letters.

   Thanks for the workout, Shed, and manehi for the helpful blog.

9. Okay maybe just me then but I found this dreary and a bit of a damp squib after an otherwise excellent week. I won’t bore you with all my niggles but is BROGUE really a “dialect”? Chambers describes it as a “soft Irish accent”

   I thought this was the easiest of the week and would have been better as a Quiptic

   To be fair to Shed I was kept awake half the night by foxes so it’s possible I have my grumpy boots on this morning

   Cheers all

10. A puzzle of four corners. Held up in NE: never heard of the plant and the film was buried deep in my memory. I seem to remember YLANG-YLANG clued the same way about a year ago. Last ones in were the entirely straightforward CHARGE and FIANCE. Ho hum.

    Thanks to Shed and manehi.

11. Isn’t brogue an accent rather than a dialect? An Irish brogue……

12. Mark @8

    🙂

13. Auriga @10

    More recently than that.

14. A very nice surprise to see Shed this morning, after his alter ego Dogberry in the FT on Tuesday. We don’t see either of them often enough.

    Thanks for the blog, manehi – as usual, I agree with your favourites but I have to add 4dn AIR-PUMP, for the lovely surface.

    This is a tiny point but I had 26ac ias ARDVA inside (aboard) ARK.

    Many thanks to Shed for a fun puzzle to end the week.

     

15. Thanks Shed and manehi

    I know SCRY from the Monochrome Set song ‘I’ll Scry Instead’, but I’m yet to encounter a song, or indeed a film about PELLICLE, so that one evaded me.

16. We were defeated by PELLICLE today.

    Favourites were AARDVARK and CONGEST.

    Thanks to Shed and manehi!

17. All very much appreciated, Shed, manehi and previous posters. I was held up considerably by entering REWARD (“for”=RE – now obviously wrong! and “one looked after”=WARD) instead of CHARGE at 7d. 11a NIPPLEWORT, 2d SCRY and 5d PELLICLE were all unfamiliar to me (as for some others who have already posted) and all added to my learning. I liked 1d BUCKAROO and 6d BROWBEATEN. I don’t know of any sense in which a KEEL is a boat (fodder for MACKEREL 14a), so would appreciate any further information – Jay@5, maybe? Eileen@14, I was also struck by the coincidence that you had mentioned Shed as Dogberry earlier in the week, on one of the blogs I caught up on after the event, and then Shed turned up as our setter today.

18. Sorry, not my cup of tea.  Nothing at all unfair, just way too many nonsensical surfaces to make it enjoyable.

    “Homeless animal’s style of singing captivates carrier”?????  

    Hey-ho, been an excellent crossword week otherwise.

19. Julie @17

    The Keel Row is a traditional Geordie song.

20. JinA @17
    Chambers and Collins both give keel as a poetic term for a ship but the ODE has “a flat-bottomed boat of a kind formerly used on the Rivers Tyne and Wear for loading ships carrying coal”.

21. I echo Eileen’s comment. Very pleasant to see Shed/ Dogberry back. Hopefully this will continue.
    My photography background came to the rescue at 5d as pellicule is film in French.
    I was very pleased to work out nipplewort from the word play so that gets my top prize.

22. I liked FLEABAG and AARDVARK but COTD was the lovely NIPPLEWORT. However PELLICLE was beyond me so a dnf. Ta Shed and manehi

23. I found this a lot easier than I recall Shed of many years ago, when I struggled to get about half the answers.

    Like others, stumped with PELLICLE.

    Thanks to Shed and manehi

24. Fun puzzle.

    Favourites: YLANG-YLANG, TUNING, FLEABAG, ZUCCHINI, NIPPLEWORT, TEXTILE, PELLICLE (loi)

    Did not parse GIG ECONOMY

    New: AIR-PUMP

    grantinfreo @1 – I parsed MACKEREL the same way you did!

    I parsed 26 the same way as Eileen @14

    Thanks to Shed and manehi

25. Nice quick solve this morning – absolultey loved 23a YLANG-YLANG (my FOI) having been on another forum earlier discussing his rather high-profile…

    Wasn’t sure if 11a was a plant or a condition…

    Thanks Shed and manehi!

26. gsolphotog@21 …so Shed could have clued it as “Film (French one) not for all”

27. muffin @19. There’s a fine version of The Keel Row on youtube.

28. blaise @27

    You’re being mischievous, aren’t you? That version brings me up in a rash!

    I did find a Kathryn Tickell version, but the playback stopped after a few seconds.

29. Yes, William@18, I thought some of these surfaces were a bit off-putting too, especially confronting 8ac at the very start. But fair enough cluing throughout. SCRY a new word for me today. Bit of a mixed bag, I thought…

30. Every once in a while someone issues a plaintiff cry for enlightenment and, today, it’s me.  No disrespect at all intended to earlier posters and, of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but AARDVARK appears to be securing the popular vote today and I just don’t see why it’s garnering the praise.  Yes, Shed has spotted ARK at the beginning and ending, which allows him the nice definition element, but, as I posted earlier, the first part of the clue and, thus, the overall surface makes no sense at all.  Unless I am missing something.  The only references I can find to RADA 5/V are the fifth stage of an acting qualification, the 5th convocation of the legislative branch of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament(!), and a brand of shower valve.  All of which would, indeed, be surprising to find on an ark, but none of which make sense.  If ALARM was clued concern when RAL is upset in morning, would we let the setter get away with it?  Can someone explain?

31. Julie @17, re keel. I didn’t know this either but per Chambers a keel is also a ‘low flat-bottomed boat, or barge’.  A ‘keeler or keelman’ is someone who works on such a barge.  Which strangely is a boat without a keel (in the other sense).

32. Another impenetrable puzzle. I am really fed up with all of your setters. As are my friends.
    Where are the laughs? Can nobody replace Araucaria?
    It’s Friday. That means time to take it easy.
    Hope it isn’t Paul tomorrow.

33. Like others I did not know PELLICLE or NIPPLEWORT and also had not heard of LANG LANG (though lsitening to him playing now: lovely!), or of the YLANG-YLANG tree, so needed letter checks for these (of the “There must be a y/x/p so where does it fit…?” sort). However on the plus side I worked a lot of this out from the wordplay, inclusing SCRY which I had also never heard of before.  I was pretty chuffed with myself for that! it also speaks for Shed’s precise cluing, for which many thanks.  Thanks also to Manhi, especially for the parsing of ZUCCHINI and NIPPLEWORT.

34. Mark @30, the way I read the surface of 26a is that five people from RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) are being referred to as the RADA Five (rather like the Birmingham Six), and they find themselves on a floating zoo.  Perhaps an unlikely situation, but the clue does say “surprisingly”!

35. Mark – entirely agree about Aardvark. How about “Floating zoo containing a varied assortment that is missing one of its occupants”? Still not stunningly elegant, but avoids the meaningless reference to the “RADA 5”.

36. Lord Jim @34 – I sort of thought along those lines, too. The clue reminded me of ‘Captain Noah and his floating zoo’, by Joseph Horovitz and Michael Flanders, which my choir have had fun singing.

37. I generally find Shed quite difficult but most of this was pretty easy, although DNF as I’ve never heard of the plant, nor of PELLICULE. Some of the surfaces were poor for no reason: A BROGUE is not a dialect and the clue would work just as well with ‘accent’, and ‘letter to innkeeper’ would have been better as ‘letter for innkeeper’. The ‘definition’ for 13d is really an opinion, something we do see from time to time but rarely so unsupported by anything else in the clue.

38. Like Mark @8. I didn’t really enjoy this because of a number of nonsensical surfaces. Many others did though, so that’s good. I guess it depends on whether you want the setter to tell stories or just provide a technical way to get to the answer.

    Thanks Shed and manehi.

     

39. gsolphotog @21 Being of “a certain generation” I remember peliculle as being thought of as an important word in French O-Level so that you could go and buy your replacement 126 or 110 film whilst on hols in l’Hexagone.

40. Blaise, yes I like your clue.
    Maiden Bartok, indeed but you d have to be careful at a French chemist as I believe, as well as pellicule, singular means film, pellicules means dandruff

41. I’m another who’d never heard of NIPPLEWORT, and needed to do a quick spot of googling. Having taken it onboard, I’m enormously relieved that it’s a plant and not some bra-based ailment.
    A minuscule quibble: is an exile really synonymous with a persona non grata? It didn’t stop me solving it, but the nigglette remains…
    Then again, I enjoyed BUCKAROO and SPECTRAL, liked the succinctness of EARTH, and ZUCCHINI, FLEABAG and YLANG YLANG all made me grin.
    Thanks to Manehi for help completing a couple of pesky parsings, and thanks to Shed for the fun

42. Ah, Shed’s back! And overall it’s a triumphant return. Although 7 & 18D were rather too easy CD’s, the rest was varied and entertaining. Flora and fauna, Hull City FC, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a protozoan membrane: all life is here in the Shed. And any puzzle that includes YLANG YLANG and the wonderful word NIPPLEWORT gets a thumbs up from me.

    The clue to TUNING could have replaced “erotic writer” with “Trent Reznor’s band” (Nine Inch Nails, often known as NIN for short). Less erudite, but matching “play with” better.

    Some might think 26Ac is a dangerous animal, but it’s not: aard vark never hurt anyone.

43. What Eileen said

44. Whoops – 7 & 18Dn are DD’s, not CD’s.

45. I found most of this unusually easy for Shed, partly because the surfaces were not (for the most part) very misleading. It’s interesting to see two valued contributors disagreeing about this: Mark says that 4d is “ugly and/or nonsensical”, whilke Eileen highlights it for its “lovely surface”.

    I spent about as long on MACKEREL and PELLICLE as the rest of the grid. When the fish was landed, I got the film from the crossers. Some of the rest were shoo-ins: vegetable ending in I; tree/pianist double (seen it recently); dance/drink/sailor (yawn); even SC[a]RY, although I’d never come across SCRY before; remembered BUCKAROO from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, so I offer this for your delectation.

    I agree with Eileen’s subtly different parsing of AARVARK, and her explanation of the RADA Five. Some have criticised Shed’s use of dialect for BROGUE, but in his defence he did end the clue with a question mark (not sure that’s enough to excuse it, though).

    Thanks to Shed, manehi (especially for the parsing of PELLICLE, which I missed) and Penfold for the musical suggestion (here’s a link).

46. sheffield hatter – it was the Bottom / Puck combination that I found ‘lovely’. 😉

47. Not a bad puzzle by any means, but alas not up to the standard of the previous four this week – though at least it was all done-and-parsed very quickly. One or two fun clues (TUNING, BROWBEATEN, NIPPLEWORT) – but more were clunky, cliched or obvious ((ZUCCHINI, AARDVARK, MACKEREL, ROLE, RUMBA).

48. Self @45. Apologies to Lord Jim @34 – the RADA Five was your contribution, not Eileen’s.

49. Thanks Manehi and Shed.
    In terms of solving time this was a puzzle of two halves for me – PELLICLE and all the rest of the puzzle.

50. gsolphotog @40. You had me scratching my head over that, but, yes, indeed it does.

51. Gaufrid @20 – so the ‘keel’ the OED refers to is a boat without a keel (i.e. flat bottomed)? Strange. (Jay @31 – just seen you have had the same thought). I had the West completely filled, with only two in the East. Got the SE first, then failed with nhos PELLICLE/NIPPLEWORT (unknown random plants… ugh! unknown random films are almost as bad, though this one turned out not to be a moving picture, despite my certainty it was). I know Jackaroo and the derived Jillaroo, but nho BUCKAROO before. Thanks, manehi for unravelling some rather tortuous – to me – parsings, and to Shed.

52. Blaise : D

53. 2Scotcheggs @42, I thought NIN was Russell Crowe’s band…is it the same one?

54. 2Scotcheggs@42 Yes, I always think ‘never hurt anyone’ whenever I see aardvark ?

    Toothless Tigers recently, but a least Hull City has the distinction of being the only English football team name to have no letters that you can colour in. Swindon Town is, of course, the only team name to contain none of the letters of the word MACKEREL.

55. poc@37 – I don’t follow why not knowing a word means a DNF. Today, for example, though I don’t recall knowing NIPPLEWORT, the wordplay was clear and gave the solution. Similarly, with other relatively abstruse words where wordplay leads to a clear solution, I wouldn’t consider it a DNF even if I checked in dictionary postsolve (I didn’t bother to check nipplewort as so clearly correct).
    Surfaces did not concern me and I fully agree with Mark@34 and Eileen@36 (I’d visualised five drama students who’d found themselves in a rather odd location – just as I’d expect in a cryptic!).
    I quite enjoyed this though agree with muffin@2 that it was somewhat straightforward.
    Many thanks, both and all.

56. Thanks both,
    ‘Wort’ on the end of a plant name often means that it was used to cure ailments of the preceding part. Nipplewort is said to have anti-inflammatory properties and to have been used for mastitis. It’s also a flower that we came across in our lockdown walks, so I knew it, but I haven’t come across it in a crossword before.

57. More irritating obscurities. I really dislike these clues. Film = pellicle? Come on!

58. And yes, I know it’s in Chambers.

59. grantinfreo @53: I’m not aware of any connection between Russell Crowe and NIN, but I vaguely recalled him being in a band with a strange name. A quick Google, and: ah yes, it was called 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.

60. My first dnf for some time as I had to go online to check possibles at 11a. Only when -WORT came up did a solution heave into view. I see it from the parsing of course but that’s no help now. And it had all been going so well beforehand.
    PELLICLE only arrived after the aforementioned but the French ‘pellicule’ helped.

61. Ah well, 2Se, so much for my street cred 🙂

62. muffin @28, what, the sainted Kathleen?? (There was a riff about her, last year?, again sparked by ‘keel’, over which I got taken to task for irrelevance by RVW).

63. It was good to see Shed again.  (I see he set a Guardian puzzle recently, but I must have missed that one.)  I made a good start and worked through this from the top down, coming to a stop in the bottom right.  It took me a long time to think of TEXTILE for ‘fabric’, and, typically, ROLE was my last in (a simple type of clue and indeed a simple clue).

    AARDVARK was indeed a strange clue.  The ‘?’ was really there to suggest that it might have been one of the creatures in the ark, but cheekily it could be said also to be asking the solver “Will this do?”

    Thanks to Shed for the puzzle and manehi for the blog.

64. There were two clues (22ac & 19dn) where “out” was used to mean ‘on the outside’ … but it doesn’t, does it? This reminds me of ‘first year’ for Y, etc. Dog whistling.

    “Letter” and “landlord” (18dn) are barely different meanings are they, and the “to” which joins them has no cryptic meaning at all but is just there to create a meaningful surface.

    Some surfaces didn’t seem to mean much, like 4dn, but I really liked 22dn for it’s great surface and crisp wordplay. 12dn and24ac, too,

65. Thanks Shed for the fun. Loved AIR-PUMP with its hilarious surface. For a second I thought there might be a theme of setters with Puck in 4d and AARDVARK @ 26a but no others were present. Defeated by PELLICLE — not familiar with “ell” as a measure. Certainly easier than the Dogberry earlier this week. Thanks Manehi for the blog.

66. grantinfreo @62 – I am watching. Or, rather, I am not, as by weight of popular opinion I conceded defeat in my moral crusade against off-topicality. Apologies for past indiscretions. But note the outcome of last Friday’s blog when boots were filled – comment 104.

67. No problems with brogue.

    OED agrees

    brogue, n.3

    A strongly-marked dialectal pronunciation or accent; now particularly used of the peculiarities that generally mark the English speech of Ireland, which is treated spec. as the brogue.

68. I have been out for much of the day since posting my query @30 and only get to respond towards the end of the afternoon.  So I fear my thanks to those, led by Lord Jim, who commented as a result will go unseen by most.

    I appreciate the insight – and can see how you’ve parsed AARDVARK – but, I’m sorry, I remain unconvinced.  There is/was a Birmingham Six (and a Guildford Four and the Magnificent seven).  There is no RADA Five (and, yes, convention would suggest the word rather than the numeral).  So it remains extremely tenuous and a poor surface in my book.  If that was really Shed’s intent, maybe “Five members of RADA surprisingly etc…” might have worked.

    I know Shed is an accomplished and well-regarded setter, and, yes, he’s also Dogberry who is highly esteemed and, yes, he appears here less frequently so we are all pleased to see his name at the top of a puzzle.  But I get pleasure from surfaces that mislead and misdirect, that allude, that lead to the tea-tray moment and, in the case of Paul, that titillate or potentially outrage.  Within those surfaces are the devices and wordplay that enable solution.  For me, today, too many of Shed’s clues were clunky juxtapositions of elements that, to be sure, led to the answer but without the satisfaction of the surface.  It was interesting to see Eileen’s clarification that the ‘lovely’ element of 4d was the Puck/Bottom combination and I agree.  It would be hard to persuade me that adding ‘vacuum-maker’ to that Shakespearean duo results in smoothness.  And as for Trick and joke, reportedly, with clog, what on earth is that meant to mean?

    Sorry to be somewhat curmudgeonly today but, just as I’m always happy to praise the generally excellent fare we are so frequently served in the Guardian, I’m going to call out one that, I feel, is not up to the mark.

69. I felt this was rather too Quipticish for Shed. I also tripped up at the last (PELLICLE). Quite liked FLEABAG.
    Mark @68, maybe the CONGEST clue alludes to a Dutch version of Tommy Cooper 😉 .
    Thanks, Shed and manehi.

70. phitonelly @69: just like that?

71. Spot on perspective Mark concerning clunky surfaces.
    Thought this puzzle was unbalanced in its style – mixture of really simple and quite obscure, but thanks to Shed and Manehi

72. Mark @68. Good point, well argued. I don’t think it’s curmudgeonly to point these things out.

    It seems to me in retrospect that there’s something unfinished about quite a few of the clues, that the whole thing is like a first draft that doesn’t just need polishing but totally rethinking. For example, in 9a the use of “beater” to clue HEART is a good idea, and maybe linking it to “world” would have worked, as in world-beating. But first of all it doesn’t quite work, and secondly world is a very straightforward definition of EARTH. So planet is substituted for world, leading to the even more awkward “planet-beater”. Clearly, however good the initial idea was, it was not going to lead to a good clue and the whole idea needed dumping and start over.

    A better, and simpler, example is the way several commenters here have suggested that “Letter for innkeeper” would have been a much more elegant clue than what Shed actually used in 18d. This should have been obvious too to the editor or to the setter’s nearest and dearest. There were some good clues and some good ideas for clues, but there was an overall clunkiness that detracted a little from the enjoyment.

73. But be fair Mark. We can now look forward to the unveiling of the well-known Ware 4 (or possibly the Ware 6) if a clue is ever needed for Waiver.

74. Thanks to Shed and manehi. A technical DNF on PELLICLE for me.
    I think the criticism of surfaces is justified.
    I parsed the ZU of ZUCCHINI as ZU[id], but that would be ‘South Afrikaans’.

75. Had to cheat on PELLICLE and the “NI” in NIPPLEWORT – still don’t get why pin=leg.

    But great puzzle anyway.

76. Jay @75

    British slang. Non PC, but a girl with good legs might be described as having “a nice pair of pins”.

77. It occurred to me today that a mackintosh and a mackinaw are two entirely different coats. That’s really all I have to say at this point.

78. I had never noticed that Leo Varadkar’s surname was an anagram of AARDVARK until it jumped out at me today when I was tussling with 26.

79. Hi VW @68, no apology needed, you were just standing your ground…

80. William F P @55. One person’s clarity is another person’s obscurity. I could post-reveal parse the convoluted nipplewort (though not pellicle), but there is no way I would have constructed them from their clues.

81. Late as usual, and virtually all of my comments have been covered already (basically, fun with a few flaws), but surely “frightening, empty” is SY, not SCRY.

82. 8a: ZUCCHINI is plural, so the clue should read ‘vegetables’.

83. Sorry, Mycat, you are mistaken there. “vegetable” is correct, because “zucchini” is singular, with plural “zucchinis” or “zucchini”.

84. Zucchini is the Italian plural of zucchino. In Australia and the US, it has been adopted as a singular. Cf spaghetti, panini. Of course, in ‘proper’ English they are courgettes!

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