Guardian Cryptic 28302 Pasquale

by

Thank you to Pasquale. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1. Routine for Jewish comedian, dull person sounding drunk? (6)

SHTICK : “is thick”(is dull/dim) pronounced as ” ‘shtick” by a drunk person. I don’t think “thick” by itself will do.

Defn: A comic routine, in Yiddish, language associated with the Jews.

4. Puzzle given a couple of marks for wrong and right answers, we hear (8)

ACROSTIC : A + homophone of(…, we hear) [“cross”(a mark indicating an written answer is wrong) + “tick”(a mark indicating the same is right)].

9. Trapped in ditch there’s a bear (6)

RUPERT : RUT(a ditch/a narrow channel) containing(Trapped in … there’s) PER(“a”, as in “price per item”).

Defn: … in a children’s comic strip.

10. Nice dean working for decades (8)

DECENNIA : Anagram of(… working) NICE DEAN.

Defn: Plural of “decennium”(a decade).

11. Molecular scientist may use this — only he cannot go wrong (14)

NANOTECHNOLOGY : Anagram of(… wrong) ONLY HE CANNOT GO.

Defn: … ie technology dealing with molecules and atoms.

13. They live in Europe and will be entertained by shouts (10)

HOLLANDERS : AND contained in(will be entertained by) HOLLERS(shouts/yells).

Defn: Old-fashioned term for Netherlanders.

14. Mass of fish traversing lake (4)

CLOD : COD(a food fish) containing(traversing) L(abbrev. for “lake”).

Defn: …/lump of earth or mud, say.

16. Useful cockney chap (4)

ANDY : “handy”(useful/convenient to use) as pronounced by a cockney dropping the aitch.

Defn: A chap’s name.

18. Car being introduced earlier, not very unsafe? (10)

PRECARIOUS : CAR contained in(being introduced – isn’t the preposition “to” missing?) “previous”(earlier/occurring before) minus(not) “v”(abbrev. for “very”).

21. Sinner finally welcomed to hot fires? Maybe Paradise! (3,5,2,4)

THE WORLD TO COME : Anagram of(… fires) [last letter of(… finally) “Sinner” + WELCOMED TO HOT].

Defn: …/the Promised Land, thinking wishfully.

23. Terrible row about a fool losing head in station (5,3)

RADIO TWO : Anagram of(Terrible) ROW + containing(about) [A + “idiot”(a fool) minus its 1st letter(losing head)].

Defn: … on BBC Radio.

24. Fan wants victory immediately (6)

WINNOW : WIN(victory/triumph) + NOW!(immediately!/at once).

Defn: A literary term for what a breeze does, ie. to blow on, like when separating chaff from grain.

25. Travel to sacred ground that is located by church (4,4)

GOD’S ACRE : GO(to travel to) + anagram of(… ground) SACRED.

Defn: That (ground) which is located by a church/a churchyard.

26. Guy may be so enthusiastic (2,4)

ON FIRE : Cryptic defn: The effigy of Guy Fawkes that may be so/burning on Guy Fawkes Night.

Down

1. European run with Coe on the outside (4)

SERB : R(abbrev. for “run” in cricket scores) contained in(with … on the outside) SEB(Sebastian Coe, the British politician and former athlete).

Defn: … from Serbia.

2. Feature of vessel on lake is excellent, excellent! (7)

TOPSAIL : L(abbrev. for “lake”) placed below(on … is, in a down clue) [TOPS(excellent/the best) + AI(A1/in the top grade/excellent, with the Roman numeral substitution)].

Defn:  …, a sailing ship, that is.

3. Soldier in company wanting ‘proper speech’ spoken (8)

CORPORAL : CO(abbrev. for “company”, a commercial firm) plus(wanting) RP(abbrev. for “Received Pronunciation”, considered the standard/proper way to speak English) + ORAL(spoken, as opposed to “written”)

5. Teacher is funny, little child being first one to grin (8,3)

CHESHIRE CAT : Anagram of(… funny)TEACHER IS placed below(… being first, in a down clue) CH(abbrev. for/little “child”).

Defn: …, in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.

6. Old group allowing in church cat (6)

OCELOT : [O(abbrev. for “old”) + LOT(a group of similar items)] containing(allowing in) CE(abbrev. for the Church of England).

Defn: …, a medium-sized wild one.  This one’s not grinning:

7. Work outside home with fine alloy sheet (7)

TINFOIL : TOIL(extremely hard work) containing(outside) [IN(at home/not out) plus(with) F(abbrev. for “fine”)].

Defn: Very thin sheet of an alloy of mainly aluminium, incorrectly called tinfoil, the tin sheet that it superseded.

8. Monster making one cautious — b*** hell! (9)

CHARYBDIS : CHARY(describing one who is cautious/wary) + B + DIS(hell/the underworld).

Defn: Female sea monster in Greek mythology.

12. Fellow erred — wrong ingredient for home-made wine (11)

ELDERFLOWER : Anagram of(… — wrong) FELLOW ERRED.

13. Copper finally enters to pick up ruffian, one put down in a hot spot? (9)

HEARTHRUG : Last letter of(… finally) “Copper” contained in(enters) [HEAR(to pick up/to detect a sound) + THUG(a ruffian/a violent criminal)].

Defn:  …,/a rug placed in front of a fireplace.

15. Part supporting heartless undertaking (8)

FRACTION : “for”(supporting/in favour of) minus its middle letter(heartless) + ACTION(an operation/an act/an undertaking – the latter includes the action of passing a road vehicle in the outer lane by using the inner lane.

17. Study English penned by theologian — it’s awful (7)

DREADED : [READ(to study a subject at university, say) + E(abbrev. for “English”)] contained in(penned by) DD(abbrev. for “Doctor of Divinity”/a graduate in theology).

19. Huge virile-sounding Turk (7)

OSMANLI : OS(abbrev. for “outsize” used as a clothing size for huge/larger than large garments) + homophone of(…-sounding) “manly”(virile/masculine).

Defn: … during the period of the Ottoman Empire.

20. Journey’s end sealed by sound of horn on a car (6)

TOYOTA : Last letter of(…’s end) “Journey” contained in(sealed by) TOOT(the sound of a car horn) placed above(on, in a down clue) A.

Defn: … made by the Toyota Motor Corporation.

22. Sounding like a bird, not half quaint (4)

TWEE : “tweeting”(making a sound like a bird) minus its last 4 letters(not half).

94 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28302 Pasquale”

  2. I took 1A as a drunk person’s pronunciation of STICK. I’ve heard of DRY STICK to mean a dull person, but not STICK on its own.

  4. I think 1ac is a dull stick said drunkenly. This was a steady solve with lots of new words inc DECENNIAL, HOLLANDERS, OSMANLI, GODS ACRE amongst others. I thought ELDERFLOWER and PRECARIOUS were neat. I also thought there might be a military theme when COLONEL and RUPERT went in early but that was it. Ta Scchua for your enlightenment and Pasquale for the fun.

  5. Mostly very good. I needed Google to confirm OSMANLI which was new to me. Decades/DECENNIA seemed a weak definition being too similar to the answer. I’m afraid I can’t see a mention of RUPERT Bear without remembering the Schoolkids’ Oz magazine of 1970 – Google “Schoolkids Oz Rupert” for details (not for the faint-hearted!).

    Favourites included CORPORAL, ELDERFLOWER, DREADED and NANOTECHNOLOGY (which took me ages to get even though I could see the anagram fodder and guessed the last 5 letters).

    Thanks Pasquale and scchua.

  6. Pretty chewy stuff – slow but steady. Like AlanC and beaulieu I needed to check OSMANLI. Liked RUPERT, and especially RADIO TWO. Re 1a: I can’t see ‘is thick’, as scchua suggests, as being anywhere close to the pronunciation of SHTICK. Must be to do with ‘stick’, surely, as Offspinner@2 says. Many thanks to Pasquale and scchua.

  7. Very enjoyable challenge.

    Favourites: RADIO TWO, HEARTHRUG, ON FIRE, FRACTION, PRECARIOUS, CHARYBDIS.

    New: NANOTECHNOLOGY, GOD’s ACRE, OSMANLI

    I was a bit confused about SHTICK being a dull person sounding drunk.

    Thank you, Pasquale and scchua.

  9. Enjoyed this. OSMANLI  wasn’t familiar (and although I hadn’t encountered DECENNIA before to my knowledge the Latin derivation is regular) but the wordplay got you there.

    Some very neat clues, possibly NANOTECHNOLOGY, THE WORLD TO COME, CHARYBDIS and RADIO TWO favourites. SHTICK was a bit hmmm… though

    Thanks to Pasquale and sschua

  10. Not that long ago a troll popped in here to observe that Guardian solvers seem to think every clue is brilliant, regardless.  A trifle unfair, as any regular reader of this blog will know: I’ve certainly learned never to use words like ‘perfect’ or ‘faultless’ because someone will have a – generally valid – criticism.  Even ‘barely a wasted word’ doesn’t get through.  But here I am again praising a puzzle: I thoroughly enjoyed this by Pasquale – with the customary unusual words but all getattable.  As the other day, nice to enter OSMANLI (totally unknown) and DECENNIA and HOLLANDERS (suspected but rarely encountered) and discover they are correct.

    NANOTECHNOLOGY was LOI: I needed all the crossers before it popped out and SHTICK, which I parsed as Offspinner and Crossbar, was first.  I share some favourites with both AlanC and beaulieu – ELDERFLOWER, PRECARIOUS, CORPORAL and DREADED.  Others that either brought a smile or a nod of appreciation include GODS ACRE, CHARYBDIS, TINFOIL, TOPSAIL, FRACTION and the delightful WINNOW.  I could happily have ticked more; nice surfaces and clever wordplay throughout.  All in all, a great ending to an enjoyable week.

    Thanks Pasquale and scchua

  11. I thought this was quite gentle for Pasquale. OSMANLI was the only unfamiliar word.

    The long anagrams were all good and helpful – ticks for NANOTECHNOLOGY, CHESHIRE CAT, CHARYBDIS and ELDERFLOWER (fond memories of my husband’s home-made wine – and that made from the berries, too).

    Top favourite for me was GOD’S ACRE – beautifully constructed and it’s a lovely expression.

    Collins gives ‘a dull boring person’ for stick.

    Thanks to Pasquale and scchua.

     

  12. Eileen @11: Thanks for the Collins definition.  Stick isn’t in Chambers thesaurus but it does appear in a few online sources as a synonym for bore in the sense of dull person.  Possibly derived from stick-in-the-mud?  Interestingly it appears several times in translator tools – I came across French, German and Spanish translations from stick in the sense used here.

  13. The usual phrase in my family is “a dry old stick”. Speaking of families, my grandmother made a potent ELDERFLOWER wine: my dad used to travel across London to visit my Mum when they were courting, and after a glass or two of my gran’s wine he often fell asleep on the Tube on the way home and got woken up by the staff at the end of the line.
    I liked the ‘andy chap.

  14. Thanks Pasquale and scchua

    SHTICK was FOI from the definition, but I thought that Pasquale must have had a brain-fade on the wordplay – it doesn’t remotely work. I didn’t parse FRACTION as I took FACTION as “supporting.

    I enjoyed the rest. CHARYBDIS was favourite.

  15. PostMark @12 – Chambers dictionary has ‘a person of stiff manner, a person lacking enterprise’. Also ‘a person of a specified character, which chimes with a separate entry in Collins: ‘a familiar name for a person: not a bad old stick’.

  16. Having entered a few easily, I then stared at this fruitlessly for a while till somthing clicked and it all fell into place. Maybe I’m just a bit tired. Liked GOD’S ACRE, ELDERFLOWER. Agree there seems to be a preposition missing in 18a.
    Thanks to Pasquale and Acchua

  17. Not checking it in Chambers or elsewhere, I took it to be from “stick in the mud”.

     

    Why should THE WORLD TO COME take me so long to get?

     

    Thank you, Pasquale and scchua.

  18. Eileen @15: frustratingly, I only have access to the online Chambers at the moment.  Person does appear with the example ‘funny old stick’ but not in the sense we need here.

  19. There are several million definitions for ‘stick’ on wiktionary, including ‘a stiff, stupidly obstinate person’ (cf. Eileen @15) and ‘thin or wiry person’.  Perhaps ‘skinny guy after a skinful’ would have worked better?

    I agree this was gentle for Pasquale, but not complaining.  RUPERT was the trickiest for me, and the best.

    Thanks P & S

  23. Couldn’t get on the right wavelength this morning so struggled with this for quite a while with very few write-ins.

    SHTICK was FOI and NANOTECHNOLOGY fell quite quickly but too many DNKs to complete without a lot of help.

    Good puzzle; hard work.

    Thanks Pasquale and scchua!

  25. November 8th, 2020, was the 100th anniversary since Rupert Bear first appeared in print in the Daily Express newspaper – his annual used to be my favourite Christmas present each year.

    Thank you Pasquale for the puzzle and scchua for the illustrated blog.

  26. scchua and ngaiolaurenson @16

    Re 18ac: if you read ‘car being introduced’ as the equivalent of a Latin Ablative Absolute (see examples here)I think it works. Alternatively, ‘Earlier car being introduced …’ could work. It wouldn’t be a great surface but I’m not keen on the original, as a whole, either!

    Cookie @25 – I used to love my Rupert annual, too.

     

  27. Eileen @26 (& scchua/ngaiolaurenson): I think I read it the same way as you.  I took a ‘with’ as implied at the very beginning; I note it’s in several of the examples in the site you attach.  Being totally ignorant of Latin grammar, I thought of the common phrase “that being said,…” (which often appears without the implied ‘with’).

  28. 16A. Andy brought a vague memory of Handy Andy from my school days when we had abridged versions of English story books for non-detailed study. Is it a character from literature? A Google search yielded videos of cartoons featuring Handy Andy.

  30. This goes to prove that a fairly easy puzzle can still be a quite blissful solve. Almost every clue pleased in one way or another – ON FIRE, SERB, TOYOTA , WINNOW etc. I made it a little more difficult by carelessly bunging in the wrong spelling for SHTICK (a favorite word of mine, that I’ve been spelling wrongly for ever) – so last one in was TOPSAIL (lovely clue). New-to-me were CHARYBDIS and OSMANLI (another fab clue), but they didn’t slow-the-flow. I hope there are more puzzles like this IN THE WORLD TO COME. Thanks setter.

  31. Unlike most of you today, I found this rather tough. However CHARYBDIS was a write-in, as was OSMANLI, which I did know: the Turkish version of the more familiar Ottoman (from the name of the founder sultan Osman, with the ‘belonging to’ suffix -li – which should be spelled with the undotted i for vowel harmony).
    Nice to have a bit more Yiddish with SHTICK, after the recent KVETCH

  32. After the death of George Orwell’s first wife, apparently some people were taken aback by his calm reaction.  He is reported to have said, “Such a shame, she was a good old stick”.  The phrase (now very dated) implies somebody who is basically decent but not very exciting, and I had no problem with “stick” for “dull person” in 1a.  (Orwell was in fact terribly upset, but didn’t like to show his emotions in public, in the manner of the time.)

    This was a very enjoyable puzzle.  I really liked 23a RADIO TWO.  One slight query: in 25a, can GO mean “travel to” rather than just “travel”?  Perhaps as in “Go west, young man”?  Or can we effectively ignore the “to” as a link word?

    Many thanks Pasquale and scchua.

  33. This was my longest solve time this week for a G.Top half went in unaided but help from computer was enlisted in the lower section
    Very enhoyable, Thanks scchua and Pasquale
    ANDY reminded me of Minder

  34. Found this tough, needed the anagrams to get an early foothold. Struggled ultimately with the SE corner, particularly OSMANLI, and tied myself in knots before realising that Guy represented Guido F….Wasn’t at all ON FIRE with this today, therefore. Liked PRECARIOUS and RUPERT.

  35. I vaguely seem to remember a blue plaque to the creator of Rupert Bear, Mary Tourtel, just round the corner from a well known chain of economy hotels I stayed in a while ago in Canterbury…

  36. I enjoyed the challenge. The new words CHARYBDIS and OSMANLI went in fairly easily as the clues weren’t too convoluted.  Didn’t appreciate the use of ‘fires’ as an anagrind in 21 but no doubt it must be recognised as such by those in authority. 😉

    SHTICK, TWEE and TOYOTA  seemed familiar from some time back.

    I didn’t parse CORPORAL, failing to make the connection between ‘proper speech’ and ‘received pronunciation’ ,RP.

  37. Thanks auriga@8.  Somehow the extra “e” crept into the clue while I was pasting it, and then copied the error into the explanation.

  38. Ottoman fitted in nicely at 19 but obviously didn’t parse.

    I liked RUPERT (took me ages to connect to the PER = A trick), CHESHIRE CAT and HEARTHRUG. For those who do not know about NANOTECHNOLOGY, this may be useful – it’s worth considering this for the future.

    Thanks Pasquale and scchua.

  39. Lord Jim@32

    Go home. (I’m not being rude!)

    I think ‘go’ as a verb can mean to move from one place to another, so setters can use the ‘to’ as fits.

  42. Deegee @39: I’m already at home!  (As I suspect are most of us.)  But that will do nicely, thank you.  I thought Pasquale was too meticulous to have a superfluous word, but I just couldn’t think of a good example.

  43. scchua: 10 DECENNIA is an anagram of “nice dean” not “nic dean”.

    Can anyone explain to me what “DIS” has to do with “hell” in 8 CHARYBDIS?

  47. I had no trouble with the wordplay for SHTICK, but it was the definition that gave me pause, because the word is so commonly used here in the US for any kind of routine, not just those by Jewish comedians, that I wondered whether I was missing something specifically Jewish. I guess this is another case of the word being more broadly applied over here…

  50. Iroquois@47: It’s used more generally in the UK too, though not so often. I think it’s just a nod to the Yiddish origin of the word

  51. Pasquale not at his best today, with repetitions of three devices – L for lake, wrong as an anagram flag and two clues with words directly implanted in the solutions. All could have been avoided (eg “strange ingredient”) easily by Pasquale, or spotted by the editor. So rather disappointed overall by the Pasquale challenge.

     

  52. Today’s solve was just right, thank you Pasquale. LOI was 9ac even though Canterbury has been (rather mutedly given lockdown) celebrating the 100th anniversary of Rupert because his creator, Mary Tourtel, was born and lived in the city.

    Clue of the day was 23ac.

     

  53. @KeithM

    That is the editor’s function. Unfortunately the Guardian editor years ago decided he didn’t need to bother reading, let alone editing, puzzles by certain setters.

  54. Worked through this steadily and in good time until held up, unaccountably, by 15d. I just couldn’t see it, convinced that I was looking for a ‘part supporting’ which was also a word for ‘undertaking’ with its heart (middle letter) removed. So even when FRACTION was pretty much the only option, I had to get Mrs T to check it. A shame: I’d been really pleased by winkling out the likes of SHTICK, OSMANLI and TOPSAIL with hardly a second thought.

  55. Thanks both,
    Some wonderful clues, of which my favourite was ‘God’s acre’.

    24ac works best if fan and winnow are treated as nouns.

  56. Tyngewick @55. Fan and WINNOW can be interchanged as both nouns and verbs, though in the clue the former appears as a noun, so you may well be right.

  57. A bit of an eschatological theme today, I thought. Maybe with All Saints’ Day coming up. If using the check button and Google is a sin, I am heading for the bad place, I am afraid.

  58. Iroquois: I raised the same eyebrow you did at the definition for SHTICK.  I get the feeling that Yiddish-origin words have largely entered the English vocabulary on this side of the Atlantic rather than that one, thanks to our larger and more visible Jewish community.  So they wind up more widespread earlier here, to the point where we no longer think of them as even vaguely foreign. Shtick is in that category, for sure.

    [To those who asked on Wednesday, my first turkey dinner turned out very well–the gravy was too salty, but otherwise good.  But I’ll be happy to go back (fingers crossed) to eating my mother’s next year.]

  59. I used to dread the appearance of Pasquale, but recently excursions have been much more accessible and therefore enjoyable. The previously unknown OSMANLI was clear from the wordplay, and most clues had either helpful wordplay or straightforward definitions, or both, so I guess I agree with those who say this was at the easier end of the spectrum. Some setters seem to go out of their way to construct fiendishly difficult clues for the four-letter words, but here they were all gimmes. Favourite was TOPSAIL with it’s repeated excellents.

  60. Petert @57. I think you need to tear a page off your calendar, because you have missed All Saints’ Day for this year.

  61. Wow, 58 comments so far and no-one has mentioned what I’m about to, so I’m doubtless wrong, but here goes …

    Isn’t the “one” out of place in 8d CHARYBDIS?  If interpreted as in the blog, it makes chary a noun, but it is an adjective, which would make the clue not work.  What am I missing?

  62. Dr W @61: it’s just a linking word. Read the clue as a “monster” followed by inatructions for “making one.”

  63. Dr. WhatsOn @61. I think “making one cautious” is in the sense of “applying this adjective to a person means that they are cautious”.

  64. Dr W @61: my take on it was that “making one” means “making (for) you/one”.  CHARYBDIS gives you (makes for you) the elements of the wordplay.

  65. [We have elderberries, they self-seed, and a passer-by once knocked and asked could she pick some flowers. Sure, help yourself. Later, she dropped us in a bottle…not bad either]. Nice puzzle, btw. Pretty sure I’ve seen decennia and Osmanli in previous cws, long time ago though.

  66. Words like OSMANLI and CHARYBDIS made this impossible for me to finish but I found much to enjoy with NANOTECHNOLOGY, CHESHIRE CAT, and GOD’S ACRE being favourites. I had trouble parsing a number of clues and relied on definitions and crossings to get answers but that’s not unusual for me when I attempt a Pasquale crossword. Thanks to both.

  67. Thank you schhua for sorting out the PER of RUPERT, lovely clue now that I fully understand it, and like you I thought PRECARIOUS a little awkward. I agree with muffin@14 and any others kvetching about the SHTICK wordplay although the crossers gave it away, and I needed google to make sense of Osmanli. VDS Prasad@28, can’t help you with literature as I only know Handy Andies as a brand of paper hankie – I was very happy to get that one when the penny dropped, having learned and soon forgotten the cockney -h device at least once this year. There were a few other good tests of crossword trivia needed today eg Dis, DD, RP.  NANOTECH.. leapt out very quickly but I needed all crossers for THE WORLD TO COME as i took a while to assemble the correct fodder and don’t know the phrase, but then spent a happy half hour over lunch reading about the various ideas of it according to various faiths. Plenty of others were really good, ELDERFLOWER, RADIO TWO and CHESHIRE CAT make the podium, thanks Pasquale.

  69. Fun! And unlike earlier this week, was on the right wave length with ~80% going in fairly readily. Then mired in the SE, but eventually got it sorted.

    Agree w/stick as basis for SHTICK, tho initially thought of a REALLY drunk person (so slurring EVERYTHING) saying ‘tick’ (per lexico: British informal, derogatory – A worthless or contemptible person).

    Agree w/Eileen re 18a, and see it as a case of ‘don’t trust the punctuation (or lack thereof)’. I.e. we’d accept “A, B introduced”, and with cryptic convolution (aka Yoda-speak) we’d accept “B introduced, A” (akin to “barring B, A”), thus one malleable comma away from “B introduced A”.

    LOI: FRACTION… stared dumbly for minutes, then PDM and it seemed so straight forward! And COTD: CHARYBDIS… monstrously fun 🙂

    Hats off to our setter, blogger, and commenters!

  70. [beaulieu @5, yes Robert Crumb could be edgy..there must be a museum of those guys somewhere..Furry Freak Bros, Harold Head, Captain Goodvibes, et al… ]

  71. And impressive research, sh @68, ta. Old grey cells still firing, albeit a bit ad hocly (in my case anyway).

  72. Thanks to those who responded to my question.  I’m most convinced by the linking word explanation (although that was not what our esteemed blogger thought). It still seems a little clunky since one tends to think of the wordplay making the definition, but close enough.

  73. 16a ANDY made me think of Andy Capp the comic character (‘andicapp), but I find on looking him up that  he lives in County Durham!  About as far away from Cockney as Andy and Flo can get.

    Thanks to Pasquale for the clever teases and scchua for the clever analyses, and the pictures.  (I had to find my own for Rupert Bear, though, whom I’ve barely heard of.  Or bearly.)

     

  74. Dr. WhatsOn, re “making one”: Perhaps could also see “one” as a reference back to “monster”; in combination w/some (ever malleable) punctuation that might result in “Monster; making one: (wordplay)”.

  75. Re 8down, the interpretation I meant to convey is this: The word “chary” when used to describe one/someone, makes/indicates that that someone is cautious.

  77. Dr. WhatsOn: Yes… am myself an Occam-ist in most things, tho cryptics are a frequent exception, convolution/misdirection being so often encountered therein. For my part, took this particular construct merely as connector while solving; only saw my @74 alternative upon reflection after your comments. But have seen wilder and more convoluted things be the “right” parsing, so who knows? 😉

  78. Enjoyable, though RUPERT did bring back dreadful memories of Paul McCartney’s quite awful ‘Frog Chorus’.
    Thanks for the hints.

  79. Having misspelt 10 ac , I confidently filled in ‘ Clithero Kid’ for 5d! Doh! That and ‘Erection’ for 15 ( part supporting’ )………

  81. Deegee @39 / Lord Jim @32, 42  (if you’re still at home)

    I think the implied ‘to’ in ‘go home’ resides in the ‘home’, not in the ‘go’.

    ‘Home’ can mean either ‘at home’ (Home, home on the range, where the elk and the antelope play) or ‘in a homeward direction’ (Football’s coming home).

    It’s a common translation problem for students of German, where the former is zu Hause but the latter is nach Hause – and I’d imagine the same issue arises in Latin with domi/domum.

    [Incidentally this is why the Wykehamists’ school song ‘Domum, domum, dulce domum’, borrowed by Kenneth Grahame for a chapter heading in The Wind in the Willows, is bad Latin (perhaps Eileen can confirm?).  Assuming the intended meaning to be ‘home sweet home’ rather than ‘sweetly homeward’, the composer picked either the wrong case or the wrong gender.]

    A similar situation exists with points of the compass, as in Lord Jim’s suggestion of ‘Go west, young man’.  West here means ‘in a westward direction’, hence no need for a ‘to’.

    So… I can’t think of any context in which ‘go’ = ‘travel to’.

    You wouldn’t say go Mars, or go California, or go blazes.

    That said (and I’m claiming brownie points there for using an ablative absolute) it doesn’t really bother me to think of ‘to’ as a connecting word, so for me the point is moot (in the American sense – I think!)

  82. I concur w/essexboy’s reasoning re “to”. Apologies if I butcher the grammar, but I believe we’re discussing an adverb that modifies “go”, either as a single word (describing *how* to go, e.g. west or home, meaning in that direction), or as prepositional phrase acting as an adverb (and using “to” so describing *where* to go); as essexboy posits, these don’t seem interchangeable.

    I saw “to” as a chaining indicator for the charade. I.e. just as one considering a list might describe it as running from “A to B to C”, here the charade particles are connected “(travel) to (sacred ground)”. Often such indicators are omitted/implied, but where explicit I think they can be justified as functional, not merely throw away words needed for the surface.

  83. Hi essexboy, @81, if you’re still there

    What an interesting post! – and, after the customary Friday glass of wine or two with my daughter and her partner, too much for me to cope with in detail!

    Quite right: in Latin, domi = at home, domum = towards home. As you say, the Wykehamists’ song makes no sense (but I won’t go into that here: I’ve inflicted enough Latin tuition today with ablative absolute ( ten Brownie points and a Blue Peter badge for yours 😉 ). I was tempted to enter Dr. WhatsOn’s debate this afternoon by chucking in a dative case (indirect object) for ‘one’ but I resisted.

    As for ‘You wouldn’t say go Mars, or go California, or go blazes: ‘ here in Leicester – and I don’t know how widespread in the East Midlands – it’s idiomatic to omit ‘to’. I remember that, when inquiring about the absence of a student, the reply was often, ‘Gone India, Miss’, to the  extent that, in the staff room, we would use it as a generic excuse for absence – and said daughter, a primary school teacher, says it’s one of the banes of her life.

  85. Love/hate to lower the tone but surely the existence of the film “Leningrad Cowboys Go America” suffices to extinuguish any doubt re the first part of 25a?

  86. OddOtter, Eileen, Gazzh – thanks for responding (and sorry I’d gone AWOL!)

    OddOtter – that’s certainly how I saw it, with ‘to’ as a link in the chain.

    Eileen – Santé!/Prost!  (not sure what they said in ancient Rome – although come to think of it Prost is a contraction of Prosit, which I gather is 3rd pers. sing. pres. subj. of proesse).  And thanks for the badge.

    Re ‘Gone India, Miss’ – how fascinating!  I’d never come across it before.

    And Gazzh – sorry to say I’d never come across the Leningrad Cowboys either.  Clearly I need to spend less time zu Hause!

  88. essexboy & Eileen. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for giving me the excuse to watch the Romanes eunt domus scene from Life of Brian. Yes, of course I’m going to share it with you. Enjoy!

  89. I am unconvinced about RP and CO tbh.

    I was happy with Corp for Corporation (Company) but this was not an easy one for me, so I was grateful to get anything to fill in the Eastern side.  The West was more fun,  but still tricky.

    Never heard of Gods Acre , Winnow, Decennia , which I got with guesses and Checks.

    Won’t admit to how many reveals , but it was more than usual.

    Thanks for your help in passing a lot of the day for me Pasquale. Hope to be better next time.

     

  90. I parsed 3d as CORP[oration] “company wanting proper speech” + ORAL “spoken”.  Whichever it is, both parsings work for me.  Very enjoyable puzzle.  Thanks to scchua for parsing Charybdis which I couldn’t see until coming here.

  91. wooden_tree, re 3d: NICE! Like that much better, as seems a more straight forward take on “wanting” and on “speech”… well done!

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