Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,446 / Tramp

56 comments on “Guardian Saturday Puzzle 28,446 / Tramp”

1. Thans Eileen. This took me some time to get started but once a few of the gaps were filled progress was steady. I made it harder for myself than necessary by confidently entering 5a the wrong way round. I’m not much of a fan for long anagrams like 5, 8 and 12,6 which I think can become rather too convoluted even if I have to admire the setter’s ingenuity. 20a tempted me to think that Tramp might be emulating Paul. Not too sure that important date = era which is usually a range of dates. LOI was the simple 18a, I couldn’t go past ‘tear’ for quite some time thinking hopefully that the edge of a denim garment is often frayed.

2. I agree that there were some accessible clues to give us a way into the puzzle: mine were CAST DOWN, APPREHENSION and RING PULL, all of them helping me to solve the excellent clue to COLLECTOR’S ITEMS.

   Once again the quality of clues in a Saturday puzzle (which is the only Guardian puzzle I tackle regularly these days) was right up there, my top five being COLLECTOR’S ITEMS, TONE POEM, DUMPS, VETERINARY SURGEONS and ETCHINGS.

   I left just one clue unsolved (23a). I guessed MARTIN only because I thought TIN would go there, and a friend helpfully explained the rest to me. (I should have seen it, of course.)

   Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

3. Eileen has already said just about everything I intended to say about this puzzle, so I’ll merely echo and give my thanks to her and Tramp. But – just for the sake of adding something – while on the topic of prize-puzzles, yesterday I came across surely the craziest-ever prize puzzle (#23047 in 2004) set by Kookaburra (really, that’s what he called himself/herself!). I don’t speak ‘strine’, but having managed to solve all but three clues (which I’d never have solved from here to eternity), I came away bloodied but defiant. Those solvers among us from down-under should love this one.

4. One across, made me laugh. 23 Across, Martin and 9 Across, Ring Pull, such deceptive definitions . 5 Down too, very clever getting Strictly Come Dancing all in. Also, 10 across, pretty much a triple definition… I could Ramble on. Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

5. Thanks Eileen, you said it all so well – including re TEAM which defeated me (my struggle was like Biggles’s). Big tick to Tramp for the What Have You in 16D, a classic clue as you say. And my last, like yours, was in the bottom right where I had to look up “Dop.’

6. rodhsaw #3 -truly tricky that one (Googled, pressed ‘reveal all’) with all the down clues’ answers upside down, as per special instructions. On the whole the clues were gettable, some easy. Kookaburra seems to have fled without a trace.

7. re 22 down – I had “Dope” as the answer, since Collins gives Dop as a small drink (plus E, ecstasy)

8. Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen. Barked up the wrong tree by filling in COLLECTIVE NOUNS at 5d (just a guess given some crossers) but after a rethink I saw COLLECTORS’ ITEMS and that assisted with some others. Ones I liked a lot (some of which Eileen and others have mentioned already, sorry to be repetitive), were 9a RING PULL, 23a MARTIN, 24a EMOTICON and 12d/6d VETERINARY SURGEONS, but I need help from a friend with whom I correspond about crosswrods to see if ETCHED was correct at 16d, and how it worked. [Will have a look for the Kookaburra – thanks, rodshaw@3 – but not hopeful after molonglo’s post.]

9. DNF for me, as I ended up having considered all the correct answers but left three blank. I could see MARTIN from the wordplay, but left it blank because I couldn’t see the relevance of ‘downer’ (obvious now, of course), I could see COKE but wasn’t game to enter a singular drug (I did consider ‘tope’ as ‘pot’ reversed plus ‘e’ but couldn’t justify the reversal, and couldn’t decide between ‘tear’ and ‘team’. Other than that… Well, there were some very nice clues there, particularly ETCHINGS and the Reservoir Dogs. Thanks to Tramp, who beat me on this one, and to Eileen for explaining just how he did it.

10. Favourites: COLLECTORS ITEMS, ETCHINGS.
    Did not parse DOG PADDLE apart for DOG + P, CEMENTER.
    Thanks, both.

11. Thanks Eileen, nice blog. Agree about 16d – excellent. As you say, some lovely misleading definitions, eg ‘downed one’ which I was very pleased with myself for spotting. LOI was CEMENTER, which I finally filled in yesterday.

    Thanks Tramp for a properly challenging but fair and fun puzzle.

12. Many thanks Eileen for the super blog and kind words.

    For 1a, I was using “in” as a link word. I used to think that in was fine but that it didn’t work the other way round. Now I think it is OK to use in : the wordplay is in a word for suit. Others might disagree but I will use it occasionally. I believe the Times allows in.

    For coke, I was thinking plural as in “they’re taking drugs/coke”.

    Neil

13. Many thanks Eileen for the super blog and kind words.

    For 1a, I was using “in” as a link word. I used to think that i|definition] in [wordplay] was fine but that it didn’t work the other way round. Now I think it is OK to use {wordplay] in [definition] : the wordplay is in a word for suit. Others might disagree but I will use it occasionally. I believe the Times allows in.

    For coke, I was thinking plural as in “they’re taking drugs/coke”.

    Neil

14. re 22D – I don’t think DOPE would work. The clue could indicate two drugs to make a drink, but not a drink and a drug to make another drug.

15. Some beautifully disguised definitions here, like RING PULL and VETERINARY SURGEONS – and one too well disguised for me. Now that Tramp has started it, I suppose we will all need to add “downed one” (or even “downer”) to “winger” and “flier” as standard cryptic code for a bird. It certainly had me at a loss, though the wordplay for MARTIN was clear enough.

16. Thanks Eileen, great blog as usual of a fine puzzle. I agreed with most of your analysis and favourites with a couple of exceptions. I treated “in” as merely a necessary connecting word and thought no more of it. But I appreciate Tramp’s justification in response to your doubt about it.
    I have only ever heard the swimming stroke referred to as “dog paddle” so presume the “doggy/doggie” version is British or regional.
    I was a DNF on this as I didn’t solve 22dn. I considered and discarded DOPE and TOPE and realised I was being asked once again to think of some drug slang. I find the incessant references to drugs in the Guardian crosswords tiresome and left it blank in protest. That way it didn’t significantly spoil my enjoyment of the challenge.

17. [I ran quickly through the puzzle recommended by rodshaw@3. No Strine involved, but plenty of references to Australiana, so a gentle solve for anyone with the requisite knowledge. I haven’t lived in Australia since 1977 so was lucky that most of the references existed in my time there. But I drew a blank on 1dn and have no idea about the definition or parsing.]

18. Very much enjoyed doing this puzzle with my mum last week. Thank you Tramp for some great clues and particularly nicely worked definitions (can feature = ring pull) Thanks too Eileen for clearing up the parsing of Martin. I did suggest to my mum that “downed one” could indicate a bird but she was not impressed! But Chambers is her bible, so she must be satisfied now!

19. Very interested by Tramp@12’s explanation of his use of “in” as a “link word” I wonder what others think about these extra words that are used to link wordplay with definition in order to make more elegant surfaces?

20. Whizzed through most of this, thinking ‘gosh (pleasantly) a bit easy for a Saturday’ and then hit the wall.

    MARTIN was the last that eventually went in the next morning. Had to be that but didn’t know adults could have down. One of several cleverly disguised definitions.

    Thanks to Tramp and to Eileen for highlighting the highlights.

21. Tramp’s dropped in and commented on the ‘in’ in 1A which I also saw as a link word and common in cryptic clues.
    In 22D, I confidently bunged in POTE, without looking it up. POT + E (drugs).Thought it was a word in the same family as ‘potable’. Don’t agree with coke in the plural ‘drugs’.

    DOG PADDLE is what we call it here in Oz, and it surprises me that it’s more commonly Doggy Paddle (over there) when we Aussies are known for turning most things into a diminutive.

    Loved the long anagrams ( which I don’t usually). What a find! And the novel way of cluing ETC.
    Thankyou Tramp and Eileen.
    [Thanks rodshaw for the nudge towards the Kookaburra puzzle. Looking forward to that.]

22. Tom @19: Personally I’m OK with it in certain circumstances (such as this). Some setters do it unnecessarily in my opinion which annoys me, but in this case the small insertion is fine as it so helps the clue to flow.

23. Eileen has said it all again. An excellent puzzle so worthy of a “prize” slot. The balance between the tough and the not so tough was just right for me. The only solution which I was unsure about was DOG PADDLE because for me the DOG has always been a DOGGIE/DOGGY so
    didn’t immediately click.

    Hard to pick out but favourites were:

    – MARTIN for which the misdirection of the definition was classy
    – BEAD which was my LOI but loved the surface
    – EMOTICON for its succinct elegance.

    I didn’t get too distracted with the ‘in’ in 1a

    Many Thanks to Tramp and to Eileen for summing up so well.

24. Neat stuff but TEAM defeated and never got close to decoding why ETCHINGS was correct. Loved RING PULL most. Thanks all.

25. I was completely happy with the ‘in’ in 1a and saw it just as Tramp has explained @12. The first eight words of the clue are the wordplay that is found ‘in’ the last word which is the definition. But then I’m notoriously relaxed about such things!

    Super blog, Eileen, which covers both my reactions to the puzzle and the favourites, with ETCHING coming top of the pile. I thought this was Tramp at his best . Thanks to both.

26. Great puzzle and blog. Thank you both. I share the same favourites as others. I used to dislike “in” as a way of introducing a definition, but I have come to accept that it sometimes allows a better surface.

27. Thanks Tramp and Eileen!! I love Tramp puzzles and love Eileen blogs, so very happy ? This crossword last Saturday was a classic Tramp for me. Not easy, but fair, funny, clever & inventive as always. A real pleasure.

28. Just to clarify: I think people might have skimmed over Tramp @13 (as I did at first) assuming it was a technical glitch, and just a repeat of his post @12. In fact it’s not – @13 makes it clear that the issue is not just the use of ‘in’ as a connecting word, but rather the order of the elements in the clue. Some (including Eileen possibly?) may be fine with [definition] in [wordplay], but have reservations about [wordplay] in [definition]. FWIW I’m with the libertines.

    paddymelon @21: Salut mon POTE! Pareil ici.

    Another douze points from me for ETCHINGS; thanks Tramp and Eileen.

29. Yes, Eileen has nailed it in her introduction, and Postmark@25 says what I feel about words like “in” in general – relaxed is the way. I think CEMENTER was the key clue for me that opened up the tricky SW corner that was emptyish to the end, but I haven’t got the hard copy to check. Thanks to Tramp for the puzzle and dropping in, and to Eileen for saying it all for me.

30. I did google DOPE drinks and something came up-fizzy fruit drinks as I recall so i entered that as for me DOPE is DRUGS (or info or idiot)
    COKE?cocaine is a drug.
    Great puzzle though.

31. [copmus and one or two others who might drop in – Penfold, beery hiker, Aqualung, drofle, Grizzlebeard, Ronald all come to mind. You might enjoy today’s Independent by Alchemi. ]

32. Yes, a delight to solve from start to finish.

    I ticked RING PULL, CEMENTER, COLLECTOR’S ITEM and ETCHINGS. Although one could say: “He does drugs/coke”, I tend to agree with copmus @30 that coke is a drug. However, I did solve it after rejecting dope, so no worries.

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

33. Did all but three last weekend and then forgot and had to retrieve the paper from the recycling this morning to finish off MARTIN, BEAD & COLLECTORS ITEMS before coming here. Very enjoyable solve, so many thanks to Tramp for that (and for coming here to justify ‘in’, which, pace Eileen, I didn’t think needed any justification). And thanks to Eileen for the super-enthusiastic blog and the list of TONE POEMs!

    I also saw COKE=drugs in the same way as our setter and blogger, and find it surprising that so many commenters don’t get it.

    [Thanks to rodshaw @3 for the Australia Day prize crossword from 17 years ago. And thanks too (I think) to molonglo @6 for revealing all and telling us the clues were all gettable! A novel way of solving a crossword puzzle – perhaps I’ll give it a go.]

34. Managed to finish, though couldn’t parse MARTIN. All the same, I can’t oiffhand think of a phrase where PAIN can be directly substituted for SMART.
    Similary, DATE = ERA seems iffy.

35. Thanks Tramp and Eileen.
    DNF for me. Failed on BEAD and TEAM with unparsed guesses HEAD and TEAR. Couldn’t get past the first word of the clue!

36. Hi poc @ 34

    Collins – smart: a stinging pain
    Chambers – era: an important date (as in the clue); smart: a smarting pain

37. Eileen@36: thanks. Chambers doesn´t have that definition of SMART. I can´t say I’ve ever seen ERA used in that way (“1066 was an ERA”?) but OK.

38. poc @37. My 10th edition of Chambers (2006) has smart: a smarting pain as the first definition (as noun), exactly as Eileen has quoted it.

39. Belated thanks to Tramp for dropping in and elucidating.

    I’ve been regretting commenting on ‘in’. I knew it was a link word and barely noticed it when solving. When I came to write the blog, it occurred to me that there might be comments, as there often are, so I decided to anticipate them. As has happened to me before, the opposite happened! (Sorry, Neil. 🙁 )

40. Sheffield Hatter@38: Yes, I see it now. Apologies.

41. Thanks Eileen, I had the same eyebrow raised as poc@34 (if you see what I mean) regarding ERA so am glad that you sorted that out, I think there was some debate not too long ago about the equivalence or otherwise of various types of pain so I wasn’t too bothered by smart (although I neither like nor use it in that sense).
    I am also delighted you prompted and that Tramp popped in to explain his use of “in” to be more than surface smoothing – it took me a long time to feel comfortable with the reflexivity (?) of this and others (gets, gives, makes?) but i think now that while us solvers generally construct a word from some wordplay, it is presumably the other way round for most setters, starting from a filled grid of words, so I am fine with it (and we may do it that way round too when parsing). Of course some are trickier than others as they may be misdirecting us to try to do something more with them, but that’s all part of the game.
    You can add me to the fan club for this one, solved this mostly at the start of the week but MARTIN held out until yesterday and what a smile of relief when it popped out of the eaves of my brain somehow (I had considered MANTIN and HANTIN for a while), but of all those praised here I thought EMOTICON was best, thanks Tramp.

42. poc@37. At the risk of slipping into self-parody (oh, lord, it is old Catflap again, unearthing literary vindications of obscure or disputed usages!), I do have to hand an instance of ‘era’ used in the sense required by the clue and supported by Chambers via Eileen@36. This comes from a novel with which I am extremely familiar, and which I would recommend to everyone – ‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ by James Hogg (1824); “I conceived at first that I saw a vision, and that my guardian angel had appeared to me at this important era of my life; but this singular being read my thoughts in my looks, anticipating the very words that I was going to utter.”

43. 2d I read “at work” as “in”, as in “The doctor is in.” “Not on strike” works too. That four-letterer was my LOI — I kept trying to work in OP until I got RING PULL — lovely clue.

    DOG PADDLE looks familiar to me — maybe it’s more of a US usage.

    7d How is Mike Pence MP without any “initial” suggestion?

    What a delightful puzzle, and what a fine blog.

    Today is the first day ever, I think, when I read all the comments and then hit “refresh” to find no new ones! Is everyone done talking?

44. Hi Valentine

    Re 7dn – they aren’t initials: Mike = M in the NATO alphabet and P (or p) is the recognised abbreviation for penny or pence in the UK.

45. Well, duhhh … No wonder there were no other comments (except mercifully yours) — mine was so hopelessly dumb!

46. Thanks Tramp and Eileen!

    For 22d I had TOPE, figuring that “and” was TOP somehow + E for “drugs.” I suppose I can’t justify that.

    I also missed 12/6. With Biggles @1a, what I really have trouble with is the long anagrams where one of the words is incomplete; it means that I can’t count letters in the words to see which ones might work. Fair dos for a Saturday puzzle though.

47. Re 7dn:

    My apologies – I didn’t look back at my blog before posting comment 44. Gaufrid has just informed me that my parsing is incorrect: ‘Tips’ is the definition and the parsing is simply ‘D (democrat) + US ( American) round (to limit) M (mike) P (pence) – which, of course, I knew when I solved it. Another casualty of the gap between solve and blog in a Saturday puzzle. (But that’s no excuse!)
    I’ll amend the blog now.

48. Thanks all. Interesting discussion.

    I have used “downed one” for bird a couple of times. I think, from memory, I first used it in a cocktail-themed puzzle to define sand lark. It was something like:

    Downed one Sex on the Beach? (4,4)

    I’m currently on the M6 after visiting my mum who is recovering from a cataract op.

    Neil

49. Tramp @48. Hope she’s doing ok…

    …and you’re not driving!

50. Seconded! 😉

51. Very nice crossword! Thank you to Tramp and to Eileen for the blog post.

    I wasn’t keen on 22d. There are too many nouns and verbs that mean “drink”, and and too many words for different types of drug. Drugs being what they are, one can’t necessarily keep up with the latest slang.

    The point is: I wrote down COKE but could not rule out the possibility that some other combination of drink and drugs would fit.

    How would one rule out alternate solutions? I’m curious to know how setters and editors assess possible ambiguity in clues like this.

52. Superb fun so thanks Tramp. Those disguised definitions had me smiling right through.
    Eileen, in my part of the world (I am on my breakfast coffee) the swimming stroke was always DOG PADDLE. Thanks for the blog too.

53. As a relative newcomer to Guardian crosswords I occasionally dip into the archives for an extra puzzle. I had just finished one by Arachne with the clue: “Stroke head of grumpy old man during picnic; ” the answer was DOG PADDLE. Imagine my surprise to see DOG PADDLE in the very next crossword I attempted — Tramp’s top-notch prize — thanks for the fun. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

54. Thanks tramp and Eileen – only finished it 10 mins ago – glad others struggled with the four letters although my LOI was actually MARTIN – blinded by the surface.

55. I liked this one a lot. Normally, I don’t get on very well with Tramp puzzles but things seemed to click this time. I didn’t get BEAD, CEMENTER, and VICE CHAIRMAN but I got all the others, which is by far the best I’ve ever done on a Tramp grid.

56. Enjoyably chewy and I was very satisfied when I completed it. I immediately thought of ETC for “what have you”, but then thought there couldn’t be a word that started with those letters. Definitely a clue for Eileen’s little book. I really liked “can feature”, too.

    I’m sometimes thought very fussy about wordplay but I unhesitatingly accept ‘in’ in either direction and I was a bit surprised that Eileen picked on it as it is so commonly used like this*. (I’m guessing that when referring to ‘directionality’ of link words, Tramp tried to use angle brackets in his first attempt to explain and moved to square — with one curly! — for the second shot. Things in angle brackets don’t come out, presumably because of their special role in html?). However, I think Pedro @22 is very wrong to say “in this case the small insertion is fine as it so helps the clue to flow”. A small word with no function at all except to help the surface is never ok in my book and I feel sure Tramp would agree.

    *I see Eileen later expressed surprise at herself, too!

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