Guardian Cryptic 28,304 by Pan

83 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,304 by Pan”

1. +1 for where does the P in buttercup come from?

   Never heard of moire.

   But I go have fond memories of rugby commentator Bill Maclaren describing a sidestep as ‘a wee shilly shally’

   Thanks to Pan and Loonapick

2. If Typhoo out the T in Britain, who put the P in???
   I noticed at the time the forgot about it. Editing seems to be a  dying art

3. Just realised I never did fill in 23d before coming here – whoops! Not sure I would have got it, either. Snap on the P in 2d. Otherwise, not too difficult.

4. As they used to say on Blockbusters “I’d like a P please, Bob”

5. As you say loonapick, a slightly tougher Monday but a likeable ‘uzzle’ nonetheless. PILGRIM FATHERS and SETTLERS were linked nicely and CROSS DRESSER was gettable even without the GK. SEBUM and MOIRE were new. Ta Pan & loonapick

6. An easy puzzle to ease us into the week.  Mostly a write-in.

   I was held up a little by RIDE, my LOI.  Agree with loonapick that ‘woman’ really isn’t very good.

   I would have thought that Grayson Perry was well known – he even had an exhibition here in Helsinki last year.

   The missing P – no ideas, but probably something missing from the clue (?)

   Thanks to Pan and to loonapick.

7. (agree about the P) – I didn’t find BRIDE difficult and in fact Chambers defines it as a “a woman about to br married…” so a perfectly good example.

8. Yep, ditto the missing p. As an ignorant heathen, had no idea about Titus, and ditto again re the cross-dressing artist, so a couple of bung and shrugs there. As for the rest, not a write-in but no real probs. Took the def for 8ac as just ‘as well’, with the second ‘as’ being linkage, hmm.. like the ‘of’ in 22d. The 24ac anag was pretty good. Enjoyed, thanks Pan and loonapick.

9. Quite Mondayish but, I agree with loonapick, a tad harder than usual.  Not the smoothest of surfaces and, yes, what we are all assuming to be an error.  And, again like loonapick, I didn’t like ‘bride’.  It’s probably fair but I wasn’t particularly taken by ‘hem’ as the indicator of the final letter of ‘poncho’ – and the answer was a nho.  And the device for IOTAS seemed a bit cumbersome.

   Gripes over, some nice anagrams: the linked by ellipsis TIRESOME and INTO THE BARGAIN were good and PILGRIM FATHERS is of a different class to everything else.  I also thought OVERSIGHT was smooth and, whilst pretty clear, REAP  has a nice surface.

   Thanks Pan and loonapick

10. leaving to one side quite a few quibbles I have with this puzzle, was I the only person who read the surface of 1a over my breakfast chucky egg and wondered how it had made it into The Guardian?

11. We had problems with 4 down.  Why does “then again” mean “at the same time”?  We think it means “on the other hand” as in: “We think you’ll like this restaurant, but then again, not everyone does”

     

12. FOI = 1ac and the schoolboy in me is still chuckling so thanks, Pan, for making a puerile old man happy.

    I was relying on loonapick to help me parse 2dn.

    Inlike PostMark, I liked the device for 22dn.

    Happy Monday to all

13. Had to check it wasn’t a ‘Paul’ when I saw 1a.

    Enjoyed this from ‘an

14. Took a little while to see RIDE, and IOTAS last one in. Liked the link between 25ac and 24ac. Good Monday workout…

15. What a pity about the missing P ( 😉 Ang Almond @4).

    Apart from that, I thought this was a fine Monday puzzle. I particularly liked the ellipsis at 4,5 and the connecting 24 (super anagram) and 25.

    I also had ticks for HANDCUFFS (great surface) and IOTAS.

    Many thanks to Pan and loonapick.

16. My minor quibble is 1dn with fool=silly. Foolish maybe?

17. Like others, found this tougher than the usual Monday fare but still reasonably quick.   FOI was CROSS DRESSER – I can’t beleive that any Gaurdian reader would think him/her obscure given the page and air time he/she seems to get.  MOIRE was in there somewhere and really did not like IOATS.

    Having had a succesful Saturday with the Paul puzzle, I was ready for a relatively easy ride this morning at it wasn’t!

    Thanks to Pan and loonapick and here we go with week number 40 of my cryptic obsession…

18. Shirley@11 I think that there are instances where ‘then again’ also means on the other hand. For instance, you could say “I understand why people criticise the editor but, then again / at the same time, it is not an easy job.”

19. JerryG @16: they’re listed as noun synonyms in Chambers Thesaurus.  “Don’t be a silly!” perhaps?  An abbreviation of silly billy possibly?

20. Two Pauline clues today: 1ac (chuckle); and Titus 1:12, which is very interesting (Grantinfreo @ 8): “One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons”, which gives rise to the Epiminedes Paradox.

    Thanks Pan and loonapick. I tried PURECU and B in BUTTERCUP, but was left with an awkward TT

21. Well, MaidenBartok@17, here’s a guardian weekly reader who is only faintly aware of Grayson Perry, and unfamiliar with both his art and his alter ego; nevertheless no trouble with the clue. Enjoyed most of this: favs PILGRIM FATHERS and HANDCUFFS. Had to think about THEN AGAIN, as to whether it meant at the same time and concluded it did a la the type of example Larry@18 has given. Shame about therror at 2dn; someone didn’t mind their p’s and q’s.

    Thanks to Pan and loonapick

22. Thanks PostMark@19. Quibble withdrawn ( although I don’t think I’ve ever heard silly used as a noun. )

23. Shirley @11 – I meant to say what Larry @18 has now said ( and to agree with loonapick and MaidenBartok @17 re Grayson Perry).

24. 2 P or not 2 P?

    The looseness of 23d isn’t helped by the crossing letters. I can’t help feeling there must be another possible answer that fits _I_E.

    Otherwise a fine Monday puzzle.
    Thanks to Pan and Loonapick.

25. Thanks Pan and loonapick

    I usually warm up with the Quiptic, but I came to a complete halt with only about 1/3 done. I thought my brain must have atrophied, so I turned to this one, and, to my relief, found it mostly very much easier. I didn’t analyse BUTTERCUP closely enough, and thought that an anagram of “pure” was involved.

    I liked THEN AGAIN, as I built it up from its parts to produce a slightly unexpected meaning.

26. I just assumed the ‘p’ came from Pure. In my experience, some setters are very cavalier about using the device of expecting solvers to pick up on unlikely (in fact nonsensical, outside of crossword puzzles) abbreviations in clues. I’ve seen ‘l’ from Large and ‘d’ from Double in the past, amongst others.

27. 2D roots of drab meadow might refer to the B and the P from meadow= pasture? Meadow is actually superfluous to the definition ( there are lots of buttercups in my garden! )

28. [ngaiolaurenson @21: I stand corrected and perfectly prepared to admit what MasterBela often tells me – I am wrong]

29. Maybe 2d was originally “…roots of drab swamp flower” with a faulty late edit?

30. Having looked up Grayson Perry CBE RA, I’m as surprised as MaidenBartok @17 at my never having heard of him, at the very least via, eg, his being interviewed by Niki Bedi or one of our own arts pundits..hey ho, stuff happens, or doesn’t …

31. I too wondered about the floating P in 2d, but bunged it in anyway. Not convinced by fool=SILLY in 1d, nor by evidence=TESTAMENT in 16d (my Chambers app doesn’t list ‘evidence’ as a meaning). Could Pan have been thinking of TESTIMONY?

32. …although I was aware of the Cretan who lied, or didn’t 🙂 ..

33. Started off online and made fair headway but couldn’t get 1dn or 4dn even though I had all but one of the crosses in each case. Went to get the newspaper, filled in what I’d worked out so far, wrote out 1dn with blanks in the margins and it immediately hit me – and how to parse it. Then tried 4dn and same again.

    Writing it out makes it much easier I find (both for across but especially down clues) and I also annotate each clue to check I’ve parsed it. For that i need the newspaper. Now I might read some of it before tackling the quiptic.

34. ..re me @32, meant to say ta to Dave E @(I think)21

35. poc @31: Chambers online dictionary gives “proof, evidence or tribute:  a testament to her hard work.” and @19 I confirmed silly is also listed as synonym for fool.

36. I am NONPLUSSED by the reference to America in 18.  Standard American spelling would call for doubling the S as the final syllable is stressed; cf. ‘traveled.’

37. I’m another who sailed, blissfully unaware, over the missing P. It was my second one in – and having got all excited at seeing SEBUM straight away (always happy to start with a puerile giggle) I simply figured the parsing had “cu” and “pure” and b, and summat else – and meant to look back at it later. Then forgot. Hey ho.
    I would have thought calling a SOCIOPATH a “troublemaker” would be a massive understatement (akin to saying Sweeney Todd was a tad clumsy) – but that’s maybe just me.
    PILGRIM FATHERS and IOTAS were classy, and CROSS DRESSER made me grin.
    Thanks Pan for the fun, and Loonapick for the impeccable blogging

38. As regards 2d, roots of drab could include drap (COED “probably from obsolete drap ‘cloth’ …”) a bit far-fetched ?

    A very enjoyable puzzle, thanks Pan and loonapick.

39. 23d did for me – a fair definition, but a touch nasty with only the vowels available (I was thinking of Alice, of Olive…). Thanks Pan and Loonapick.

40. ‘Don’t shilly shally’ was the immortal command given by Margaret Rutherford as the headmistress to her cookery class when they were left to prepare breakfast for the girls AND boys in the Happiest Days of Your Life. Nobody has ever said it quite like her before or since.

41. one of my favourite fifteensquared features is reading plucky attempts by posters to justify obvious errors

42. I got 23d as ‘rise’ – Erise is a woman’s name.

43. Like IanSW3, I am also NONPLUSSED. I’m American and have never noticed the word being spelled with one S (see, “spelled,” that’s how you know I’m American). I see it’s given as an alternative spelling in the dictionary, but that doesn’t make it common usage over here.

44. Ditto Ian SW3 @36 re 18ac. Bunged it in but thought ‘Really?’

45. A few decent clues, but otherwise my least favourite Monday for ages. Perhaps my view is coloured by RIDE, which is so dubious in my view that it merits ??? not just ? A fabric might ‘ride up’ and hence lift, but I think you need the up.

46. Trailman @45

    “Can I give you a lift?” = “Can I give you a ride?”, yes?

47. hi muffin @46

    Yes, you could argue that one of the many interpretations of “lift” could be “ride”, just as you could interpret that “bride” is one of the virtually unlimited interpretations of “woman”. Faced with the crossers _I_E, I have only admiration for the dogged determination of the plucky solver who could be bothered to run through this array of possibilites. I recently joined a Zoom call hosted by John Halpern (Paul) because the “special guest star” was Hugh Stephenson, the crossword editor of The Guardian. The interesting takeaway for me from this event was Mr Stephenson’s admission that he doesn’t solve any of the puzzles himself. Which explains a lot. Like 23d, for instance.

48. The roots in 2D suggest a missing word as DuncT @29 says – could also be damp that might go with drab.

    I thought this was going to be very easy at the start with a number of write-ins but then it became a bit more chewy.

    I liked INTO THE BARGAIN, SHILLY-SHALLY and HANDCUFFS.

    I obviously respect the views of our over-the-pond contributors but as Chambers gives NONPLUSED as the US version, I think the setter is let off the hook.

    Thanks Pan and loonapick.

49. Robi @48, you are right that the setter is off the hook, but when I checked several online dictionaries (but not Chambers), none indicated NONPLUSED as American.  I then went to my 1943 American dictionary (I mistrust anything more recent) and was surprised to find it put the stress on the first syllable (hence no doubling of the S).  I’ve never heard that pronunciation on either side of the Atlantic before but will adopt it henceforth.

50. Grayson Perry hosted an excellent series recently on TV during the first lockdown. Entitled “Grayson’s Art Club” it was on channel 4 and is available via the All4 hub. He has a delightful and engaging manner with all his interlocutors and with us, the TV audience. Worth watching.

51. @baerchen @10 – it seems to be a Monday tradition for some – ahem – cheekier words to find their way in.

     

    Anyone else unsatisfied by the fodder for PILGRIM FATHERS – farmers plight I’m fine with, and I from Island, but if stopping means the end of island there’s nothing to say it goes into the fodder, and if it doesn’t then it seems to imply that the I should appear at one end or the other? Probably haven’t explained that very well, and seeing as nobody else has raised it I’m assuming it’s all well and good?

    Might have been a bit loose, but it was more fun than the Quiptic…

52. Ben T @51: I took stopping in the sense of interrupting – which comes somewhere in the middle – rather than ending.  Does that help?

53. I usually find quibbles about the wording of surfaces tiresome, but I am surprised that no-one (not even Eileen, whom I regard as the foremost arbiter of grammar and syntax on this site) has objected to the wording of 22dn.  ‘QU’ is not substituted but replaced by ‘I’.  ‘I’ is substituted for ‘QU’.  No doubt I’ll be told that the former has become accepted usage – so much the worse for our rapidly deteriorating language.

54. Ben T@51 & Mark @52. I thought of stopping as an insertion indicator, as in putting a stopper in a bottle: you do the anagram and then put an I in it.

55. Never heard of Grayson Perry. Perhaps I don’t read the same papers and watch the same TV channels as others.

    I managed to complete this puzzle with my LOI being 23d, having gone through most of the alphabet for a possible first letter.

56. Thanks both sheffield hatter @54 and Mark @52 – I can sort of see the arguments you’re making.

57. Thanks both,
    Kamintone@53 OED is happy with ‘substitute by’ and indicates it is an older rather than newer usage.

58. I’ve never heard NONPLUS with the accent on the first syllable, but then I was born well after 1943. Thanks to IanSW3, though, fir looking that up. It does explain the spelling, or at least the spelling 75 or so years ago.

59. Kamintone@53 – I have not been ignoring you: I’ve been out – I actually got a dental appointment!

    I remember lengthy discussion here about this before. Collins actually spells it out:

    ‘Although substitute and replace have the same meaning, the structures they are used in are different. You replace  A with B, while you substitute B for A. Accordingly, he replaced the worn tyre with a new one and he substituted a new tyre for the worn one are both correct ways of saying the same thing.’

    It’s a tricky one to get your head round and I must admit that, in my haste to go out this morning I rather overlooked it.

    (Of course, in this case, it’s the setter making the substitution anyway, 😉 )

60. Thanks, loonapick.

    If we’re taking bets on the missing word in the clue for BUTTERCUP, I’ll have a notional fiver on “limp.”

    Re NONPLUSED, here’s Jeremy Butterfield in his 2015 revision of Fowler’s Modern English Usage:

    “The past participle is spelt nonplussed about ten times as often as with a single -s-, in line with the rule that words of more than one syllable ending in vowel + consonant double that consonant if the last syllable is stressed (contrast audited). The nonplused spelling is largely confined to AmE, and recognized by Webster’s Third, but not by the OED nor by ODO.”

    I don’t think Pan is suggesting that NONPLUSED is the American spelling, but (correctly) that it is an American spelling.

61. I’m surprised to see the suggested obscurity of Grayson Perry – a clue word, not an answer, mind you – is an issue.  If you don’t know a word in a clue (or anywhere else for that matter), you look it up, the playing-field is levelled, and that’s that, imo.  We had a discussion a while back about what kind of use of reference works constitute for a given solver a dnf, and I don’t think anyone thought looking up a clue word to understand it (as opposed, say, to search for synonyms) was disqualifying.  After all, cryptic clues aren’t so much a test of knowledge as a test of what to do with that knowledge.

62. I imagined that Cup was some kind of alternative abbreviation for copper. In SOCIOPATH the grammar of the clue “to setter” suggests me rather than I. Is that a problem?

63. I’ve never heard of Grayson Perry either.  But the answer put itself together anyway.

    In the US, we don’t call them Pilgrim Fathers, just pilgrims.  (After all, some of them were mothers.)  They didn’t call themselves either of those things, the Pilgrim idea showed up in the late nineteenth century.

    kamintone @53 and Eileen @59 I’ve been annoyed too by “substitute” where “replaced” would be correct.  It’s true here as it almost always is that when there’s a pair of words confused with each other, that the confusion goes only one way.  Nobody says “replace” where they should say “substitute.”  Then again, nobody says “imply” where they should say “infer,” or “steal” where they should say “rob.”  So rather than explain the difference between the two words in question, which the addressee will immediately forget, say “When in doubt say ‘replace.'”  If “replace” sounds right, it is.  Same for the other pairs.

64. 23dn was a quick write in having very much taken Muffin@46 ‘s view of “lift” = “ride”.. but thats the luck of the draw i guess.. my fave was 9dn another quickie.. not sure why 8ac took so long… never quite sure how to take all those dots?

    thanks loonapick and pan

65. [Dr. WhatsOn @61. “I don’t think anyone thought looking up a clue word to understand it (as opposed, say, to search for synonyms) was disqualifying.” I would draw a distinction here between looking up the unknown word(s) before or after solving the clue. I prefer, if possible, to solve the clue from the wordplay and crossers, and if that still doesn’t give me enough to be sure of it satisfying the unknown definition, I’ll look it up. That’s the same level of “dnf” as if I have failed to parse a clue; my rule of thumb would be that if it was a prize puzzle (and if I was in the habit of submitting an entry for a prize), I would not say that failing to parse a clue would constitute not finishing, because the adjudicator doesn’t know whether I’ve parsed all the clues!

    In the present case, I knew enough about Grayson Perry to know that CROSS-DRESSER was the right answer. If I hadn’t been able to get that answer from wordplay and crossers, but got it after looking at a Wikipedia article on Grayson Perry, I’d consider that a dnf. The problem with routinely looking up unknown GK is that very often it forms part of the wordplay rather than the definition, so I would always try to solve the clue first.

    As always in this sort of discussion, this is about my own enjoyment of the challenge and satisfaction in completing the puzzle unaided. It is nothing to do with looking down on others if they have different standards, and absolutely nothing to do with cheating.]

66. Being unfamiliar with INTO THE BARGAIN meaning “as well as” and being unable to guess “bride” meaning woman I did not finish this otherwise pleasant crossword. LATER and THEN AGAIN were favourites. I’m not that skilled a nitpicker but the parsing of 2d mystified me as well. The plural “roots” leading to just the single letter “b” and the elusive “p” left me scratching my head. Thanks to both.

67. sheffied hatter @61 For me dnf and not dnf is too binary and disheartening a distinction. I try to do as much as I can without recourse to any assistance, though I often fail, but it feels better when I conclude that titus (rather than aukus or eumus or any other three-letter bird-us) is a letter in the New Testament as opposed to resorting to Googling letters in the New Testament and finding one with a bird in it.

68. Petert @67. My ignorance of the new testament is such that Aukus or Eumus would probably have sufficed (only joking), but getting the central T, appropriately from 16d TESTAMENT, was the decider for me. Though I did look TITUS up afterwards, to make sure it was one of Paul’s letters, and not some example of a slum landlord in one of the parables (…”it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a letter to enter the kingdom of God” – ok, perhaps not).

69. 2down’s BUTTERCUP: the word “roots” in the clue suggests there were two words whose endings we were to use, and I think “roots of drab damp-meadow flower” or the like was what was supposed to be there. Once again, the Cryptic (apart from the buttercup puzzle) was finished much more quickly and easily than the Quiptic.

70. sheffield hatter ’68. I like the idea of the mean landlord – maybe more like a Carry On Romans character (Titus Bastardus maybe) than a NT one

71. Mostly a Monday-ish solve, though not w/out bumps during the RIDE.

    Entered BUTTERCUP pretty quickly, but spent a while trying to explicate before concluding an error re “P”; think DuncT’s “swamp” a fine suggestion for clue rehab.

    Agree, woman/bride is beyond a stretch, despite the Chambers ref fr/ILAN CARON. Could similarly define “aviator” as “a person flying an airplane”, but doubt we’d accept “person” as a clue for “aviator”; rest of defn provides critical context for the meaning, which is lost when simply plucking/using the pronoun by itself (very much akin to the defn underlining discussion a while back).

    Found METEOR readily solvable, but scientifically dubious. A “heavenly body” is generally defined as “celestial” or “in space” while a meteor is specifically within the atmosphere (meteoroid is before entering the atmosphere… and meteorite is what’s found on the ground afterward).

    At the same time, found THEN AGAIN reasonable. And saw the example @11 as a case where it actually would work; i.e. this seems fine too: “we think you’ll like this restaurant, but at the same time, not everyone does”.

    Nods to setter/blogger/commenters…

72. Thanks, Miche @60 for Fowler on doubled consonants.  I’m surprised to hear what I recognise as the standard AmE rule asserted for BrE, as BrE spelling does not seem to follow any consistent standardised rules!  As I noted before, my 1943 American dictionary gives NONPLUSED as the only spelling, but it also stresses the first syllable as the only pronunciation given.  If that was once the standard AmE pronunciation (but is now obsolete as far as I know), it would explain the variant AmE spellings noted in some (but not all) dictionaries.

73. [Like Petert, I do all I can to solve sans refs, and rate based on that, before trying to suss what I missed. And concur DNF is a rather blunt metric. Ages ago when cutting my teeth on challenging US xwords (Sunday NYTimes, et al), finishing was rarely an option so used a scoring system to better assess/encourage myself:

    -1 per incorrect square
    total of -10 or better = fair
    -5 or better = good
    -0 = excellent
    anything else = poor

    Brought this over to cryptics too, with a tweak: only -0.5 for uncrossed squares (since you’ve half the chance to get them). Still use this today… e.g. on a tough Paul or Vlad I’ll still feel quite good if I come away -5.0 or better 🙂

    Have long wondered if others use scoring systems of their own?]

74. [OddOtter @73. Have long wondered if others use scoring systems of their own? No, but I’m kinda kicking myself for not doing this – could have set up a spreadsheet to see how I performed on Mondays compared with Fridays; when solving Pasquale vs Nutmeg; or even correlated crossword scores with sleep quality and the number of dreams remembered on waking, with a backache and snoring sub-menu. Too late to start now, of course. Great idea though. 😉 ]

75. Not an enjoyable one for me. I enjoy the easy Mondays and this wasn’t, so was put aside.

    Sorry Pan!

     

76. Could someone explain why 4 across leads into 8 across? They both seem self contained to me; or is it just that they both contain anagrams (though that seems quite a weak link): but am probably missing something. Thank you.

77. kamintone @53, I sympathise with your comment if you mean what I think – a regret that the word substitute in English has changed its meaning. When I was a lad, if you read “X was substituted” you knew that X replaced something. Now you don’t know whether X replaced something or something replaced X, unless substituted appears with one of the prepositions by or for. I blame the arrival of substitutes in football – at least, that’s the first time I remember hearing “X was substituted” meaning X was taken off the pitch to be replaced by another player. And “substitued by”, as used by Pan, used not to be acceptable English. But there’s nothing we can do about it now – English is as it is, not how our teachers told us it ought to be. And the OED records this, as noted by Tyngewick@57.

    I’m not sure what view Eileen@59 is taking. The quotation from Collins seems to support the more traditional usage in that it doesn’t give “substituted by”.

     

     

78. Enjoyed this although DNF as Titus eluded me – so much for my convent education! Loved 1ac and also checked to see whether it was a Paul. Re Grayson Perry – surely he is a household name? Concur with Dr WhatsOn @61 and warmly agree with KeithM @50. Have been fortunate enough to get to know Grayson over the years and he is as delightful and engaging as he is on TV.

79. Andrew @76

    Please pick another name, or add something to your current one, in future to avoid confusion because one of our bloggers already uses Andrew.

80. Kingsley @77. I’m confused now. You seem to be arguing that substituted should not require ‘by’ (as used by Pan in 22d), and claim OED support for this: “substitued by”, as used by Pan, used not to be acceptable English”. But in fact Tyngewick @57 states that “OED is happy with ‘substitute by’ and indicates it is an older rather than newer usage”. You then claim Collins (as quoted by Eileen @59) in support of your view that ‘by’ is incorrect (because not used in the examples), but in fact the sentences used by Collins do not have the same construction as Pan’s clue.

    I think some of this confusion arises from the way the clue is phrased, which I think may have been misinterpreted, partly because of the setter’s desire to misdirect. “Question substituted by setter” is in the usual crossword way of writing, not in proper sentences, but in a sort of headlinese, sometimes verging on what some here describe as Yoda-speak. Making this part of the clue correspond with normal English, we would say “the question (A) has been substituted by the setter (B)” (A substituted by B). This is similar to the Collins example (substitute B for A) but the passive construction used in the clue, being the other way round, would be wrong if we kept ‘for’ (A substituted for B). This is the mistake often made by sports commentators, having been instructed at some time that “substitute for is correct”, and sticking with it through thick and thin. (Of course, in sport the player on the pitch (A) is substituted by the manager bringing on another player (B), which is the misdirect that Pan was aiming for.)

    Of course, all this confusion would have been avoided if Pan had used ‘replaced’ instead. (And for sports commentators, ‘coming on’ is good!)

81. Andrew @76 (or whatever name you want to use in future!): The use of ellipses can be because some part of the first clue is being used by the setter to do duty also in the second clue, or vice versa, either as part of the word play or as definition. But not always! Sometimes the setter will use an ellipsis to tentatively join the two clues, merely because the surface meaning of the two is close, or can be made to seem so, for the purpose of misleading us poor solvers.

    In this case, it looks like Pan has deliberately used ‘annoying’ as the anagrind in 8a because he had already used a synonym ‘irritating’ in 4a, to make it look as though the ellipsis was meaningful when in fact it wasn’t!

82. I feel suitably chastised for my ignorance in not knowing about Grayson Perry – I don’t recall his cross-dressing making it into the media here in Canada – but thank you Dr WhatsOn@61 for the viewpoint about using reference tools to look up things (usually names in my experience) you don’t know, so that you can understand the clue.

    [ OddOtter@73, I when I started out doing cryptics I measured my progress, 90-100%=A, 80-89%=B, etc. That helped me decide when it was time to move up from easier syndicated puzzles to the Telegraph, and ultimately to the Guardian. Now I occasionally do it to gauge the aging of my brain.

    sheffield hatter@74, get cracking, it’s not too late. And share your spreadsheets with us. ]

83. Yes copmus at 2; editing does seem to be a dying art

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