Guardian Cryptic 28,460 by Tramp

73 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,460 by Tramp”

1. “Dirty” is an adjective, “smudge” a noun or verb, yes? Struggling too with the link between “cast” and “model”.

2. Dirty can be a verb Geoff @1.

   Favourites today were HOPING and EIDER but I needed to use Check a few times where I wasn’t convinced of the definitions elsewhere.

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick

3. Geoff@1 – “to dirty” can be a verb.
   “Cast” and “model” are interchangeable both as verbs meaning “to mould”, or as nouns meaning something cast or modelled, say from clay or metal.

4. Thanks Tramp and loonapick
   I think (cobblers’) LAST works better for the model than “cast”.
   Why is “flat” STRAIGHT?

5. I agree with loonapick that this was a game of two halves but for me it was right ( which filled quickly) and left ( where numerous clues foxed me for a while longer.) Overall this was a satisfying puzzle with one or two minor quibbles already identified. Thanks to Tramp and the aforementioned loonapick.

6. [Old joke;
   How do you get down from a horse?
   You don’t, you get down from a duck…]

7. Bit of a mixed bag with some clunky surfaces I thought. COCKTAIL DRESSES and BIOMARKER stood out but MEMBRANE took way too long to solve.

   Ta Tramp & loonapick

8. I think its pretty cool having Spenser spelt as the old writer as it makes nice misdirection

9. copmus@8. Yes, especially as Chambers is full of archaic spellings attributed to the old chap.

10. I know that pedantry is going out of style, but for me a stile isn’t IN a field but on its rim (or between two of them). I’d have been happy with “Steps into…”

11. What loonapick said (btw, ‘…also mush more…’ in the blog although mush is what my brain felt like when I started to tackle the southside. Ugh.

    The misspelt ‘Spen[s/c]er’ had me off Googling like a mad-thing for several minutes. Whilst there were several write-ins south-of-the-border (STILLETTO, AT REST, SPRITE, STRAIGHT), most appeared not to help with the not-write-ins – a very unforgiving grid indeed.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick!

12. [blaise @10: When did pedantry go out of style? I certainly haven’t had that memo…]

13. I also had trouble with identifying which “model” had to be topless in PASTE. Found this heavy going, and eventually gave up on MEMBRANE and bunged in ABLOOM without knowing why. BRANch was my guess for the de-tailed class, and I expect somebody will tell me why flat=STRAIGHT. I smiled at STILETTO and HOPING, but I really don’t like this game-of-two-halves grid.

14. Hard work! Like loonapick, getting COCKTAIL DRESSES helped a lot. Some really tricky clues such as ABLOOM, VANILLA and CHEEKS, but very enjoyable. Many thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

15. Just to be different – the bottom half went in went in quite smoothly (apart from ABLOOM) but I wondered if I was ever going to complete the NW corner. When it finally yielded I uttered a ‘Phew’, or possibly Gordon Bennett, similar to my reaction to finishing last week’s Enigmatist.

    Coincidences galore this week. For those who’ve been following the GD page, I wondered if we could combine Tramp’s clue with Rishi’s: Get down from dis or dat? (5) And thanks loonapick/MB @11/Roz for the inadvertent reminder of Amundsen’s forwarding address (4).

    Thanks to Tramp for the workout, and loonapick for parsing everything – especially the indirect anagram at 1d where I had no idea.

16. muffin @4/ Gladys @13: a straight/flat denial?

17. Brand for class would elicit the merest of mers but for my aversion to everything having a ‘brand’, eg teams playing their ‘brand’ of football. Hey ho. Hocus to me means hocus pocus ie nonsense, but I’m happy for it to mean cheat if it does (and it sounds a bit like hoax). Apols if these points are already said… guilty of posting before reading. Liked the puzzle overall, ta both.

18. Thanks essexboy @16

19. I found this very tricky, as per usual for Tramp, but with much to enjoy.

    ABLOOM and MEMBRANE took me an age and LOI was STERILE – here I feel the wordplay has been sacrificed for the surface.

    I particularly enjoyed HOPING, BIOMARKER and INHERIT (snigger), and the Marx & Spenser clue was clever, despite the spelling.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

20. After sailing through Brendan’s tour de force yesterday morning, I was brought down to earth with a bang today and a DNF big time! Defeated by MEMBRANE like gladys and by the linked VANILLA and SWERVE unlike anybody else so far. Oh, and by HOCUSES which simply never occurred; the list goes on… ABLOOM is a lovely clue and hugely satisfying to parse. Other ticks went to STILETTO, HOPING and COCKTAIL DRESSES already highlighted by others, along with MITRAL and INHERIT. The spelling of Spencer did throw me slightly which means STAINS is knocked off top spot by the splendidly crafted BIOMARKER.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick

21. [gif 217: thanks so much for giving me an excuse to link to the obvious earworm ]

    Dictionaries do suggest that there is a link between hoax and hocus: this from Wikipedia The English philologist Robert Nares (1753–1829) says that the word hoax was coined in the late 18th century as a contraction of the verb hocus, which means “to cheat,” “to impose upon” or (according to Merriam-Webster) “to befuddle often with drugged liquor.” Hocus is a shortening of the magic incantation hocus pocus,[6] whose origin is disputed. ]

22. The two long across anagrams were a great help to get things going this morning. The fiddly ABLOOM and BUTTONS were the last pair in, though I did wonder for a while whether Bitlots might be a so far unknown word to fit into 16d…

23. Coupla other things. A swing bowler makes the ball swerve in the air … any other contexts for this equivalence? Hating and despising are different. Didn’t notice the poet in the retail chain. essexboy@15, love Rishi’s dis or dat, very cute.

24. As for yesterday, there was much to enjoy in this puzzle, with almost all clues providing a satisfying challenge, and a fairly swift overall solve.. LOI was ABLOOM (great clue, I had AB penciled in at the first pass, but then the rest held out until the last hurrah). Other well-crafted clues included STILETTO, VANILLA, SHEBEEN, TANGENT and HOPING. The two long anagrams were also well-designed, especially COCKTAIL DRESSES.
    Thanks very much Tramp, no quibbles from me.

25. Pm @27, ta for that link, never heard them before. That guy is wonderfully mad! And ta for the hocus research… it makes sense.

26. It’s only an assumption that “Spenser” is a misspelling for “Spencer”. It doesn’t affect the answer and Tramp would be quite entitled to mis-direct us down the blind alley of believing the spelling was significant. Overall a sinewy puzzle – thanks to Tramp and Peter O.

27. I’ve been caught out several times by “number” = some form of anaesthetic so I wasn’t falling for that one again. No sir 🙂

28. Like JerryG @5 I found the right side easier than the left and there were a few there I couldn’t get.

    HOPING, DESPISED, BIOMARKER my favourites

    Thanks Tramp and PeterO

29. I usually find Tramp pretty tough though this one was less so than some others. However I wonder why ‘chops’ are equivalent to CHEEKS? (4a). I also raised an eyebrow at ‘class’ meaning ‘BRAN[d]’ (12a) and two eyebrows for ‘CAS[t]’ as equivalent to ‘model’ (23d). I wouldn’t regard the two as meaning the same thing, though others clearly disagree.

30. Thanks Tramp and PeterO

    You can also have a flat/straight line on a heart monitor, though you wouldn’t want one.

    poc @ 29: babies and young children with a round face are often called ‘chubbychops’, cf also “I punched him in the chops”. It’s been an informal expression for the face for 60 years or more.

31. A nice challenge for a beautiful morning.

    I don’t think I noticed either half being more difficult than the other – the two anagrams, both of which I liked, helped in both.

    Other favourites were CHEEKS, STAINS, ABLOOM, HOPING, which made me smile, and VANILLA.

    blaise @10 – so long as there’s a 15², I don’t see pedantry going out of style just yet (but I appreciated your pun).

    Many thanks to Tramp and to loonapick.

32. I found this difficult and was surprised that I could actually finish it.
    Thanks T+L

33. Simon S@30: yes, I see. Thanks.

34. poc @29 & Simon S @30: I think one can go further and define chops specifically as the fleshy covering of the jaws (Merriam-Webster). Chambers gives the derivation as 16c: from chap the lower half of the cheek. I don’t know if muttonchop whiskers which cover that part of the face are so named for the link or because they resemble lamb chops. Or both.

    I see it’s also defined as the mouth (as in Simon’s “smack in the chops”) though I’m not sure that works with CHEEKS quite as well.

35. Definitely a proper challenge of two halves for me too – I did the bottom half before it was time to meet a friend for a lovely walk in the woods, and I returned to my battle with the top half over lunch.

    Thanks to Tramp for the brain-stretching and loonapick for the blog

36. Thank you loonapick, you have cleared up a couple of loose ends including BRAN(d) – add me to those disliking it as a synonym for Class but I hope to remember the alternative meaning of “detailed” – at least I eventually twigged the numbers game, and was in good company where misled elsewhere. Thanks also to various contributors above for sorting out some other grey areas and double-thanks to setter Paul, without his trope and recent clue I would never have got my LOI ABLOOM. I found this a tough challenge (a game of two halves indeed, but NW+SE in first for me) but enjoyed it, thanks Tramp.

37. Opposite to you, manehi, I filled in the whole bottom half with almost nothing in the top. With a few crossers I got DRESSES, and what was left made up COCKTAIL. VENDING MACHINES, though, took a good while.

    Anybody else have MITRED for 10a? That had RED for “left” and the rest unexplained.

    We had the same trick with “out” meaning “in flower” recently, but I totally missed it. Phooey on me.

    Thanks, Tramp and loonapick. Nice morning today, it seems.

38. Me @25, I meant Postmark @21 …

39. The better the misdirection, the less I mind the near-miss synonyms, probably out of sheer relief at solving. That was the story of this puzzle. Some lovely clues, all mentioned above as favorites.

    It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else, but I always think it’s a shame to see “needing” (or “wanting”) as a link word (19d) since it has clear semantics that is not being exercised. I’ve seen some justifications, but they are never ringing endorsements. It’s a common usage, I know, but always strikes me as a bit of a cop-out.

40. Poc@29 and postmark@34 : According to my grandmother, your chops are what you smear jam all over when eating jam butties too enthusiastically at one year old.

41. I had STERILE written in for 1d, and, while struggling to find a parsing, noticed that it was an anagram of (to)ILETS RE(gularly). That, in turn, led me to (re)viewing the alternating letters of “larger toilets”, which I’d previously cast aside, as an anagram.

    An anagram of alternating letters strikes me as a fair clue. All the necessary tools (“regularly”, “reviewed”) were laid out here. It strikes me as less of a stretch than, say, “too much going over” = “over the top going over” = TTO.

    Enjoyable puzzle and blog. Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

42. Re,12A, the online Collins dictionary offers both ‘brand’ and ‘class’ as synonyms of ‘label’ used as a verb. Possibly Tramp intended ‘class’ in the wordplay to be resolved as a verb rather than as a noun.

43. As the evening wore on I ended up revealing a few that were just not dropping including STILETTO, VANILLA. and SHEBEEN, an unfamiliar word for me. I thought ABLOOM was great with “out” being the definition instead of being an anagram indicator or a subtraction word. Other favourites were HOPING, EIDER, and INHERIT. Thanks to both.

44. Dr Whatson@39 I sort-of see what you mean but here the wordplay elements IN and HER really do need or want the final element IT in order to form the full solution. But i suppose “having” instead would work here, would that have been a better choice do you think? Or maybe I don’t see what you mean at all, and sorry if so.

    Doug431@41, interesting point and I think we will occasionally see skirmishes on the direct/indirect anagram border as setters try to extend the range of devices on offer: agree that, if it is explicit (eg no substitutions or synonyms), it is within the bounds of fairness, even if trickier than usual.

45. Gazzh@44, yes exactly, it’s a “sort-of” justification, not a full-throated endorsement. By that logic, in fact, every bit of the clue needs every other bit to work – true, but redundant.

46. For SMUDGE I thought “dirty” a better anagram indicator than “for a brew”, so I parsed “brew” as the definition in the sense of the smoke for a herring cure. I’d a never got EIDER without having seen the recent uses of “down”. HOPING was my favourite today.

47. I don’t time myself when solving, so I can only guess at5 five or six sessions of 15 or 20 minutes over a period of five hours. Came very close to bunging in some “words that fit” but gained a reprieve when I saw SETTLE and STRAIGHT – though I struggle to see the former’s second def ‘come down’. After this I rejected HARLOTS at 16d and VERBIAGE at 12a, and suddenly all the right answers fizzed into my brain. That’s my longest session with concrete brain syndrome, I reckon.

    One query which perhaps someone can help me with: ‘visited’=BEEN? In the sentence “Have you visited Barnard Castle”, the correct substitute for visited is been to. In the alternative sentence “Mr Cummings has been; you’ve just missed him”, I can’t see anyone substituting visited for been; why would you? (Paid a visit, maybe.)

    I wonder if Tramp will be popping in to solve the Spenser mystery – my money’s on deliberate use of the S-spelling, anyone want to bet on it being an accident?

48. sheffield hatter @47, hope ‘Spenser’ was an accident, because I have a pretty extensive knowledge of Edmund Spenser’s oeuvre, and when I saw it I thought, “Aha, many solvers will assume this is a typo, but this is Tramp disguising a reference to ES. Hey, this will be fun.” I spent so long trying to find a Spenserian link that I entirely failed to notice that it was just another darned, Everymanly, ‘initially’ clue and finally bunged STAINS in in exasperation. If it was a typo, I forgive, being frequently guilty of these myself, as some fellow-commenters sometimes point out. If it was deliberate misdirection, Grrr! on behalf of the Spenserian community, if such exists.

49. Very enjoyable. Tricky in parts but none the worse for that.

    Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

50. sh @47: Has Sœur Sourire visited today?

    Spooner’s @48: indeed, grrr and double grrr.

51. Sh@47 Has the doctor visited/been?

52. Thanks for the blog and the comments

    Sorry about Spencer. I need a break.

    Neil

53. Eb@50 Is that a French euphemism?

54. sheffield hatter @47, Spooner’s catflap@48: In my teaching days, I often admonished students to read the entire question before embarking on an answer. Occasionally, I follow the advice myself. I read all the way to the word “initially”, and slapped in STAINS. Did I notice the spelling of Spenser? I don’t recall. Of course, this approach doesn’t always lead to the path of least resistance: see “out” in the clue for ABLOOM.

    If I were the setter, I wouldn’t answer the Spenser/Spencer question. It’s best to retain an air of mystery concerning the extent of one’s deviousness, even if some tortured souls are suffering from a burning need for closure. 😉

55. Tramp @52: Didn’t see this before I posted @54. You’re kinder than I, I see.

56. [Petert @53: only in the sense that I thought it politic to avoid explicit mention of D*m*n*c 😉

    That said, the line Dominique, nique, nique does sound a bit unfortunate in French.

    The real Singing Nun story has a tragic end – see wiki ]

57. This setter lives in some universe I have no access to

58. Doug431 @54. The syntax and semantics of a cryptic crossword clue are NOT those of an examination question. Completely false equivalence. Sheesh!

59. Spooner’s catflap @58: Of course you’re right. Reading all the way to the end of a clue would be absurd.

    You got sidetracked by an aspect of the clue that was of particular interest to you; you posted here in order to say so, and we all understand that. We’ve all done it. And I was having fun at your expense. I thought you’d recognize that. I didn’t intend to offend. Sorry.

60. I wished I’d never started this because so many clues did not say what they meant. Midweek Guardian’s puzzles I normally miss, saving my efforts for Azed and I regretted this a lot but couldn’t give up though enraged by too many clumsy wordings..
    An example is 4 across “It’s said to cause a smile, mostly eating last of pork chops (6)” leading to CHEEKS. “It” surely refers to the answer. “What’s” would be OK. Cheese was obvious but the clue does not say what it’s trying to.

61. essexboy @50. I don’t know if your enquiry about a visit from Soeur Sourire was a hint at a touch of grumpiness in mine @47. If I had been grumpy, I reckon the link you posted would have kept me that way for the rest of the week. Luckily I wasn’t in the least bit grumpy and managed to switch off the You Tube clip before two minutes had passed; two minutes, I’ll have you know, that I have now debited from your account.

    petert @51 “Has the doctor visited/been?” I’m not sure that concrete brain syndrome is actually treatable on the NHS. Oh, you mean that been and visited are substitutable in the phrase? Yes, possibly.

    Keith Thomas @60. I feel your pain. But if all cryptic clues said exactly what they meant, they wouldn’t really be cryptic. You say that “It” surely refers to the answer – well, that’s what the setter wants you to think! A really clever setter will set things up so that it looks like “It” only refers to a bit of wordplay (as it does in this clue) but in fact it refers to the answer. Sacré bleu! You seem to be well on your way to an attack of concrete brain syndrome – you have my sympathy.

62. Keith: I wish I’d never started it, too

63. Too hard for me. Some of these I never would have got and I’m glad I didn’t spend longer on it.

64. Keith @ 60

    “so many clues did not say what they meant”

    Er, that’s why they’re called cryptic.

65. A challenging and very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks a lot Tramp and loonapick.

66. keith@60. Not sure if I see what you meant to say 🙂
    I have no problem with ‘It’s said to cause a smile’ = CHEESE.

67. Nice one Tramp and thanks to blogger.

    I wonder why number= cocktail dress and mark = m. Could a car be a number? Or a boat or a jumper or a haircut? Cricket bat, item of jewellery? I’ll stop there.

68. Timmytimtim @67 it is more of a lady thing – I will wear this nice little number tonight – try and imagine Hedy Lamarr saying it.
    M = Mark is the old German currency and it is in Chambers.

69. Various@60 onwards – “I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean ” Afrit.
    Adopted by Ximenes as his guiding principle. The clue can be as cryptic as possible but a successful solver should have no doubt what to enter once they have solved it, I think Tramp has made a pretty good job of that here.

70. Opposite to you, manehi, I filled in the whole bottom half with almost nothing in the top. With a few crossers I got DRESSES, and what was left made up COCKTAIL. VENDING MACHINES, though, took a good while.

    Anybody else have MITRED for 10a? That had RED for “left” and the rest unexplained.

    We had the same trick with “out” meaning “in flower” recently, but I totally missed it. Phooey on me.

    Hatter@47 Dust settles when it comes down onto a surface.

71. Roz@68 Hedy Lamar, the co-inventor of frequency hopping, would agree a cricket bat could be a number I feel sure.

72. One of the worst crosswords I’ve attempted for some time. Too many synonym stretches in one puzzle (flat=straight?), amongst other things.

73. Valentine @70. Dust settles when it STOPS coming down.

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