Guardian Cryptic 28,400 by Tramp

77 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,400 by Tramp”

1. Enjoyed this more than yesterday’s – liked the clues more – though there were a few I couldn’t parse including ORBS (duh), LOOSENESS (and could someone please explain why NESS =head – thanks in advance)

   Favourites included METRONOME, ORACLES, GOLD MEDAL, COATHANGER, STEPS

   Thanks to Tramp and loonapick

2. Great fun. GOLD MEDAL was my favourite though it took me a while to work out why I had too many Os and too few Ds. I love clues where you have to take letters away. PETANQUE was another favourite.

   Thanks Tramp & loonapick

3. I was hampered by never having heard of the old song – or, at least, by not knowing it was a song. So, after as much time spent staring at the anagram fodder as I’d spent on the rest of the puzzle, this was an eventual use of an anagram solver so a DNF today. Never mind, the rest of the crossword was worth it. I share favourites with Fiona Anne and would add ALGORITHMS and PETANQUE – both splendid anagrams. I misled myself for a while with 13d, convinced it would turn out to be NOTES (‘tones’ in order = music) which was overthinking things.

   Fiona Anne: NESS is another crossword staple and is a geographical term for a headland. Quite a few of them in Scotland.

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick

4. Fiona Anne @1 Ness is a head in the geographical sense of a sticky-out bit of coast like Orford Ness in Suffolk.

5. Enjoyed this, although it was over far too quickly. ABBA was a favourite band, so knew many of the references, even though they often didn’t help. SHEBANGS was a little Paulian.

   Fiona Anne, a ness is a cape, promontory or headland, often used in place names – therefore ‘head’.

   Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

6. I very nearly put BROS for the ‘heavenly bodies’ (B = blood group, ROS = some bank I should have heard of?) Thank heaven a vision of Fred the Shred came into my mind and set me straight.

   Otherwise not too hard but a lot of fun. I sympathise with Abbaphobics – I remember there wasn’t universal acclaim for Paul’s offering last year – but at least this time you could work it all out without having to know Nina Pretty Ballerina. I enjoyed the idea of ABBA performing BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS (with a killer piano intro, naturally, and wearing outfits entirely composed of food items and cooking utensils).

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

7. Thanks to PostMark, gladys and Norbrewer for help with NESS

   (and to Postmark for help yesterday)

   Two more terms to add to my crossword memo notebook – doesn’t mean I will get them in future…. I have been known to go to add something to find it is already there.

8. Thanks loonapick. The two uses of “initially” was an oversight on my part: I normally check these things but must have missed that. Sorry for such laziness.

   I wrote this puzzle in April 2019 when I heard that Abba were to release new material. Ideally, the publication of the puzzle was to coincide with the release. However, we got fed up of waiting so decided to use it now.

   Neil

9. gladys @ 4 I have frequently been to Orford. Lovely place and the fish restaurant in the square is wonderful

10. A few nhos, eg the music mag, the old music hall song and the group Steps, so a bit of bung and shrug. Not a great Abba buff, though you’d have to osmotically impervious not to know of a few songs [and Mamma Mia was a giggle, seeing it with Mrs ginf is a nice memory. And Streep and Walters, like Maggie and Judy, you’d watch them doing anything]. Liked 15d, but the only Step I remember, from one intro unit in Basic, is gosub, all else having gone to neural landfill. Hey ho, all part of life. Thanks both.

11. A musical miscellany with ABBA, STEPS and a bit of Ricky Martin with BEEF AND CARROTS chucked in from left field. I had a great uncle who used to sing all the old time music hall songs, so I knew that one.

    As other have said, GOLD MEDAL, COATHANGER, METRONOME and PETANQUE would be my picks.

    I’ve also enjoyed the reading the geographical thesaurus entry for ‘ness’ :
    headland
    promontory
    cape
    sticky-out bit 🙂

    Thanks to Tramp, loonapick and gladys

12. Tramp@8 I feel it in my bones that your feelings on ABBA are pretty similar to mine
    But I do believe COATHANGER (possibly alternative spelling) couold be a Kiwi word for a car aerial
    thanks all

13. BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS, MOUND and SHEBANGS were good fun but I thought this was a bit of a mixed bag. I also wondered, as loonapick did, about the enumeration for SOS.

    I looked for other music references apart from STEPS but can only find FREE and Walter TROUT, an American BLUES guitarist and the BLUES BAND(STAND). All good fun after yesterday’s trauma.

    Ta Tramp & loonapick

14. gif @10: [‘neural landfill’ – excellent lol]

15. Lots of fun, this one, with PÉTANQUE, MOUND and GOLD MEDAL doing good service to the theme and inventiveness.

    A small nugget of word-based trivia for everyone: SOS by Abba is the only UK chart hit where both the song title and artist are palindromes (excluding single-letter titles).

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick

16. Some good stuff, but a bit of 12ac with the cluing? 17 and 28 a bit dodgy for me. A nice start to the day, and an earworm to boot. Thanks both.

17. Tricky in places as STEPS were the last thing on my mind. Plenty of aha moments as the solve progressed. I’ll get my coat …

18. Favourites: COATHANGER, METRONOME, SOS.
    New for me: PETANQUE, BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS song; STEPS pop group.

    Thanks, Tramp and loonapick.

19. And the 29a for the most earworm-inducing crossword of all time goes to ….

    Very enjoyable indeed – thanks to Tramp and loonapick

20. Funny how your mind works by association… I had the three crossers for 4D: ?O?L?D (the D being an educated guess) and I’d solved PETANQUE (lovely anagram). And then spent ages trying to think of a song title beginning with BOWLED…

21. I thoroughly enjoyed this – but then I’m a fan, of both ABBA and Tramp.

    There are some clever anagrams here, notably the superb BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS. My other favourites were similar to many others’ – METRONOME, GOLD MEDAL, COATHANGER, and PETANQUE. I was also amused by SHEBANGS and the ‘handy protection’ in 20ac.

    I was impressed again by how many songs Tramp managed to include, in both answers and clues – several times two at once. I was reminded of Tramp’s very first puzzle, which I blogged, which included the titles of all twelve episodes of ‘Fawlty Towers’ (now being resurrected on Monday evenings) in clues and answers.

    Many thanks to Tramp for the fun – and lots of earworms – and loonapick for the blog.

22. Once I saw the theme my heart sank somewhat – Abba again!! I’m sure we’ve had them as a theme several times. Anyway I pressed on and it was quite fun, especially COATHANGER and ALOGRITHMS. Before I got LOOSENESS I wondered whether ‘wantonness’ with one ‘n’ was an alternative spelling (apparently not), as it parses pretty well. Had to wrestle with UNPEG for some time before it clicked. Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

23. Another NOTES for 13d here. It’s 19d which provides the songs for me, though, with both Ricky Martin and The Stone Roses. BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS takes me back to Billy Cotton’s Band Show, though it was usually the Sunday roast beef, that was being dished out as Alan Breeze??? belted out the old songs.

24. Enjoyed this being an ABBA though did think more broadly musically when TROUT, (ie trout quintet Schubert) was an early answer. Sim favs to others. Thanks to Tramp and loonapickl

25. Eileen @21 – I don’t suppose you can remember the archive number – sounds like it might be fun! Not that I ever spot themes – every clue is stand-alone in my book, unless references appear – except when they are as blatant as this one, but the reality is that only two clues required knowledge of actual Abba hits for the answer (and I agree about 1,1,1 above).

26. Good fun, especially the non-ABBA old song – nice spot for the anagram.

    Good use of themed material, including for PETANQUE. I was a bit mystified by the use of ‘lining’ in 11A as a container because it’s often used in the contrary meaning as an inserticator.

    We periodically have the enumeration wars; as I’ve said before, if SOS was in the dictionaries as S.O.S. it would be 1,1,1. But it isn’t, so I think 3 is fair, and that’s what I would use.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

27. Thanks loonapick, i hadn’t seen FELONOUS before (FELON guessable though), forgot One = UN for a long time, nor did I know the music hall song which thus required most of the crossers: but I think Guardian crossword style guidelines never give abbreviations as (1,1…) so you may be fighting a losing battle there (and many record covers have it without the stops anyway). And thanks for the trivia nugget Boffo@15.
    I liked the link between ALGORITHM/STEPS but the ellipses between STROBE and COATHANGER got me very confused, do they serve any other purpose?
    Overall very clever use of song titles in many ways of which GOLD MEDAL appropriately triumphs for me, thanks Tramp.

28. Yes, I’ve come away from this with an earworm – and it’s BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS (Petert, I’m also ancient enough to remember Billy Cotton, Alan Breeze et al, though I learnt most of my music hall repertoire from my dad.)

    I don’t dislike Abba, but we do seem to get them a lot lately. Anyway, at least this time the theme was clearly stated and contained no songs I hadn’t heard of.

    Thanks Loonapick for parsing MOUND which I couldn’t disentangle. I liked the B B & C, COATHANGER and SHEBANGS – which brings me to the question: just what is a shebang, and why are whole ones so important?

29. Thanks for the blog. I liked the puzzle, about my level and I too like ABBA – feel good nonsense. Anyone seen Priscilla Queen of the Desert?

    The catalogue enumeration of the ABBA SOS song is 3.

30. Robi @26: I recall an exchange of posts with hatter on the use of ‘lining’ – well, ‘lines’ actually – in a previous Tramp (comments 71-77)

31. gladys@28 Apparently shebang is a corruption of chabane, which is French for hut and dates from the American Civil War, as does shebeen, but who knows why a whole one is so typical? I think we had the word quite recently,when I raised the same question.

32. Andy Luke @25 – sorry, I’ve only just seen your comment.

    The puzzle is here: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/lookup?crossword_type=cryptic&id=25308

    and the blog:http://www.fifteensquared.net/2011/04/28/guardian-25308-tramp/

33. A very typical Guardian crossword for me, I raced through 90% of it and was left with three to do. Unlike the Telegraph when I tend to eventually work unfinished clues out, in the Guardian I don’t ever seem to work out the final clues and finish the whole crossword.
    Sign of an average solver!
    Lovely crossword, I can enjoy a crossword when I have a DNF as it’s a common occurrence.
    Thanks for the heads up on a couple I could not parse.

34. I found this mostly a write-in, unexpectedly. After reading the first bunch of clues, I thought “Oh no, not another puzzle requiring Abba knowledge”, but it wasn’t, until it was (SOS)! In the end, no big deal.

    [When I saw 9a I was so hoping it was referring to the Melody Maker (which was bought out by the NME some years ago) because I was in it in 1971. Believe me, nothing impresses your kids more than telling them you were in a photograph with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.]

35. Petert@23 – Billy Cotton’s “singer” was indeed Alan Breeze, always referred to as Alan Wheeze by my late father. He was pretty awful, as I recall.

    At 28A, isn’t one of the repetitions of “money” superfluous?

36. Not a fan of (whilst having much respect for) Abba, but I appreciated the references and thought this was a great puzzle. I got held up by unthinkingly writing in WANTONESS, and then again with LOGARITHMS, but got there in the end. As an aside, in 1977 I had my very first date at the cinema. In the hope of things progressing to a slobbering snog in the back row I picked a movie that I would not have been in the slightest bit worried about missing – Abba: The Movie. To my horror, she was a massive fan and was rivetted throughout . . .

37. BigNorm @35 Not if the mound is a pile of money.

38. Anyone else try SWEET for 16d (with an unparsed “records”)?

    BigNorm @35 and Dicho @37: I think Eileen explained this. The first money is M, the second is pOUND, with the missing “p” being the third, plus “small amount”, with the removal given by “dropped off”

39. Second day in a row (as newbie) when I’ve been able to almost complete. This seemed more like the usual Monday fare in difficulty.

    Luckily old enough to remember right the way from BB&C (Billy Cotton/roast beef) thru’ NME and ABBA. Having spent much time in Teignmouth should have got “ness” (Shaldon) but I didn’t compute.

    Great puzzle, great fun. And thanks for all the helpful comments once again.

40. Lovely puzzle and great use of theme. Especially liked PETANQUE, GOLD MEDAL, BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS and STEPS but my favourite was the English version of MAMMA MIA.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

41. Found this pretty tough going despite being of the ABBA generation and with the flares to prove it. COTD was PETANQUE as I have been known to partake mostly after having had a few Kirs or Ricards first and missing the simple pleasure of Le Bomeur despite being a terrible shot…

    PostMark @3: 4,13d, 22a was known to me but only by the Peter Sellers comedy record version of it which probably does not pass the PC test today but I share simply out of admiration for the man’s vocal abilities and without wishing to go down the should-we/shouldn’t we route if you please… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7h5Bh6ZxbI – the man was a genius.

    [I was mentioning on the Paul Zoom last week that we had a stack of Goon records at home and that my favourite has always been “Bal-Ham, Gateway to the South.” As I used to commute daily through Balham I would always inwardly say “Bal-ham, gateway to the South” as we went through it – until one day when I said it out loud in a packed railway carriage and people started to move away from me… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74aK8w2910c ]

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick!

42. [Eileen@32 Thank you so much. What fun it was, and remembering the manifestation of the hero of the tale in 11d – my LOI – almost brought tears of laughter to my eyes!!]

43. What fun! So entertaining to complete especially after the quiptic slog this week. A puzzle to make you smile. Thank you for the music!

44. Ian Stark @36. You’re not alone in having a totally unjustified LOGARITHM at 15d. This held me up with my last one in, the unfillable O_L_L_S at 14a requiring some rethinking. I like the inventive way Tramp has used his themes to infiltrate the clues rather than to place huge demands on the solver’s general knowledge – though I must admit to an initial thought of “not again!” when seeing the Abba theme. I especially enjoyed anagramising Agnetha (Cor!) into a COATHANGER.

    I agree with Robi @26 about the enumeration of SOS. Chambers has it as all capitals but clearly a word rather than an abbreviation or acronym, with its derivation coming from the easily remembered morse code “…—…”. (I can remember my grandfather – he had been a captain in the merchant navy – telling me that the way to send it was in repeated alternations of the three shorts and three longs, rather than spelling out SOS over and over.)

    Thanks to Mark @30 for recalling a previous discussion – five months ago – about ‘lining’ (or ‘lines’) being on the outside of the target word, like a crowd lining the road to watch the Tour de France. I had forgotten the details of that, but I see that I ended my share of the dispute by going to the pub, which is something that hasn’t happened for an awfully long time.

45. [MaidenBartok@41 Considerably better nostalgia than Billy Cotton]

46. Like Ian Stark @36, I was corralled into a cinema showing Abba: The Movie in the 1970s but in my case dutifully escorting my then-teenage daughter and I was the only person in the audience not a teenage girl.
    Much more my style is BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS, a staple of cockney music-hall star Harry Champion from the early years of the 20th century, whose songs have been recalled in more recent times by the likes of Chas and Dave, Cosmotheka and Joe Brown.

47. Bolb @38 Of course Eileen’s parsing is correct. However on racing through I parsed the small amount to mean the first letter (not a small amount of money = p, or d as we used to call something similar) and so I was left with too much money. A rare occurrence. Under Smaugian influence, a pile of money seemed a good thing.

48. It’s the first time I’ve been in time to post for ages but I have read the blogs with interest. Many thanks to Loonapick & Tramp – a really enjoyable solve. I too was stuck on LOGARITHM for ages, until I finally saw the light. The BOILED BEEF anagram was my favourite. Thank you to Eileen@21 for the links and esseyboy@6 for the mental picture.
    [Andy@29 Pricilla is indeed a wonderful film. One of the people I went to see it when it previewed with fell out of their seat laughing… and there was, I seem to remember, a standing ovaton at the end – happy days].

49. Anyone else get FART for 1d? OK, just me, then

50. Bear+of+little+brain @38 and Dicho @47 – not me today! It’s loonapick – but I think he meant
    ‘
    M (money) + (p)OUND (“small amount of money” (penny) dropped off of “pound“)

51. Eileen @50 Apologies to you and loonapick. I must learn to read through the entire blog and not just dip in and out.

52. No problem, Dicho. 😉

53. Having never heard of BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS, STEPS, or the magazine NME I could not finish this without revealing a few. No matter, except for the hard-to-read surface of FELONOUS I found this a lot of fun. Favourites were TROUT, WATERLOO, SHEBANGS (amusing surface), and OVERDO. Thanks loonapick for parsing — there were a few I couldn’t fully untangle. Thanks Tramp.

54. This was quite a quick post-lunch solve which I’ve only just got round to putting on the blog. Enjoyed it quite a lot, especially the disjunction between loads of Abba songs and BOILED BEEF AND CARROTS. I really don’t think there was a clue I didn’t like.

55. I have a vague memory of Sing Something Simple in the 1970s, on the radio on Sunday after the Top 20 pop chart programme. It may have been the Kings Singers ? Full of old music hall, Run Rabbit Run, Roll out the Barrel and of course Boiled Beef and Carrots. Does anyone have better knowledge of this ?

56. Hi Roz @55

    The programme rang a bell but I couldn’t remember who the singers were (just knew it wasn’t the King’s Singers!).

    I’ve just found this

57. @Roz

    Sing Something Simple featured the Adams Singers, led by Cliff Adams.

    This was in the days of “needletime”, when a BBC agreement with the Musicians Union and the BPI meant it was very restricted in the number of commercially released recordings it could play each day. To fill in the gaps, much airtime was filled up with in-house recordings by the likes of the Adams Singers.

    Thank goodness those days are long gone!

58. Roz @45 Yes, very easy listening, but I think that it was the Adams Singers and it was on immediately before the Top 40 because I’d catch the end of it as I tuned in to listen to (and tape holding the microphone of my cassette player up the the radiogram) the latest chart rundown.

59. [I pressed ‘Post’, only to find that the ‘The Charts’ had already started:
    Eileen is straight in at this week’s No.56 with ‘Wikipedia’, Nigel L’s ‘Needletime’ is No.57 with a bullet and Fiona Anne is still No.1.]

60. Penfold@58 I’ve always thought “easy listening” a very unfortunate term since it seems to suggest “not for thinking people” when in fact it’s much more a generational selector. At least, younger people I know don’t seem to find it easy to listen to.

61. Thank you very much Eileen, Nigel L and Penfold. The Adams singers of course, I remember now it has been said. On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep was another favourite for them.

62. An obvious theme yes – but is there also a sub-theme or is it just me ?

63. Just discovered the site does not support emojis – time for an upgrade as their use is becoming ubiquitous these days?

64. I like that there are no emojis here – I think they are tiresome

65. 😉 ?

66. PS: I also find them tiresome and won’t be posting any more.

67. Too tiresome for words….
    (emojis that is)

    Not quite my cup of blood today but much to admire. Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

68. Was reminded of the late great Sir Terry Pratchett in 5d, with his felonius monk (“Soul Music”). And was also reminded that I don’t own ABBA’s greatest hits on CD, so have rectified that particular omission! Excellent crossword – thanks to Tramp.

69. [Roz @54 &61: I’ve only just finished spitting out my tea!! The KING’S SINGERS?!!! I’m glad you were corrected. Whilst the King’s Singers certainly have done some cheesy stuff, the Cliff Adams Singers really were the ultimate in fermented milk product. I don’t think much of the current crop of King’s Singers – I think the original (Brian Kay et al.) had a much more choral feel to them and some of their recordings do stand the test of time.

    Unfortunately (and rather stupidly), when the nationwide FM transmitter scheme was planned, not enough space was left for Radio 1 so for many years there was an unholy alliance between Radio 1 and Radio 2 such that the FM stereo of Radio 2 was handed over to Radio 1 for teh Top 40 (and I seem to remember the Tommy Vance show but not 100% sure…) on a Sunday evening.

    Also unfortunately, the programme immediately before the switch over was the ultimate in Radio 2 slush – either Sing Something Simple or the sniggeringly puerilely-named “The Organist Entertains…”

    Most of this was because the police radio was slap-bang in the middle of Band II for many years and it wasn’t until they were cleared that Radio 1 could be plonked unceremoniously in the “wrong” part of the band. Luckily for me, London got a Radio 1 transmitter quite early on.]

70. [MB @69: I am sure I remember Tommy Vance being on a Friday. Indeed, The Friday Night Rock Show. In those days I used to tape the 2 hour show on both sides of a 120 minute tape with a rush upstairs to switch over at 11.00. When Soap ended. Ah, the 1970’s…]

71. A fun solve and I especially liked the way Tramp managed to get the two songs into 28 and 29a. 19d got me thinking about why “banging” is “having sex with”. I think it must be the slapping noise of flesh against flesh, but does it indicate a certain amount of aggression?

72. MaidenBartok @69 thank you for all the extra information.
    I did put a ? after the King’s Singers, I was only about 7 years old so vague memory and I thought some people would know much more. I just wanted to listen to the top 20 show then.

73. [PostMark @70: Oh yes! Friday evenings – thanks! Radio London (by then a BBC station) had been simulcasting Radio 1 for years in FM stereo for years when it shutdown in the evenings and was a just-good-enough signal in Southend. Robbie Vincent was my “thing” on a Sunday evening until he swore profusely on national radio and ended up with his own show on Radio London. Then the BBC decided to try and clean-up Radio London, sacked Tony Blackburn, Robbie Vincent and a few others and we’re left with the awful state of BBC local radio that we have today… ]

74. No more on Sing Something Simple I see. PeterW@71 I think “Banging ” was just slang a while ago, starts with the younger people and then becomes common and then they move on . Maybe it was after “screwing ” and before “bonking” , no doubt there is new slang these days which I have not heard of.

75. Similar to Gazzh@27, I was wondering what the ellipses alluded to between 2d and 3D?

76. PeterW @ 71 and Roz @ 74 – Violent terms for sex have a long history, turns out. (Uh, I’m not sure of this site’s policy on metalinguistic discussion of obscenities, so forgive me the preemptive censoring.) It’s difficult to track down the origins of vulgar words, but from (what I remember from uni) our best guesses for the etymology of ‘f–k’ is that it came about around the same time as the scandinavian cognates that mean ‘to hit’.

    @everyone re:emojis – they’re a means to communicate gesture (and therefore body language) through textual media! Similar to the *stage directions in asterisks*. The very first emoticon was created as a means of communicating tone of voice (specifically – whether a post was supposed to be taken seriously or not), after all!

    Gazzh@27 and Brissie@75 – Ellipses are generally used in cryptics merely to make the surface make sense and can usually be ignored. Unless you’re asking what this specific surface is supposed to read as, in which case I’m as stumped as you are.

    3D – Being American, COR for ‘English version of Mamma Mia’ took me a bit to get, but it tickled me when I did. (I’ve only really heard it collocated as part of ‘Cor blimey!’)

77. Various @ various. A setter will sometimes use …. after and before two consecutive clues that are linked , however tenuously . In this case the two clues can just about be read as one sentence and concern dresses during an Abba performance on the surface.

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