Guardian 28,496 / Boatman

82 comments on “Guardian 28,496 / Boatman”

1. 27 ac is letters 2, 3, 5 &7 of tHIs Tv Show

2. Sorry, 27d

3. Many thanks, Fiery Jack. 😉

4. Thank you, Fiery Jack; I was scratching my head over that one.

   I particularly liked 22a and 24a, for their opaque but perfectly correct descriptions of how to build the answers, and now it seems that 27d is another one. Well done, Boatman, who certainly rang all the changes on “prime.”

   And thank you, Eileen.

5. Embarrassing confession of the day – I spent way too long trying to parse AUTOPSIES for 24ac, despite thinking “cold cuts” was a bit of a distasteful definition. 27d was way cleverer than I thought.

6. I agree about ANTIPASTI though. One of those “it has to be that” solutions once I had a few crossers but couldn’t for the life of me see why. Unless there is some other reversal indicator I am missing, but I cannot see what it could be.

7. As to 24a, Eileen: I seem to recall that, at some point in the language’s history, and perhaps even now, an “easterly” wind blew *from* the east, not *toward* the east. So Boatman was quite correct.

8. Still none the wiser about 25d.

9. npetrikov @7 – thanks for that. I seem to remember now having seen it in a crossword.

10. Thanks, Eileen, I couldn’t parse nine today, though I filled in most of them (NEWSEVENT, AGELESS, IMAMS, ANTIPASTI, SOAP, NINETEEN, AVERSION, POST, HITS); so I clearly needed your help. HITS something to do with THIS?

    I thought NEWS EVENT was an awful clue, the surface barely sense, and so much to guess for the fodder, and the anagram indicator in the wrong place.

    Thanks, too, Boatman

11. npetrikov @7, yes indeed, of course. A boatman at least would understand an easterly as meaning exactly that. Thanks!

    GregfromOz @8, think being seconded to a position. My parsing was post = after = second, which I thought was kind of weak so I much prefer the Eileen solution above.

12. More subtractions than a Kumon maths class but none the worse for that. I spent much of this solve marvelling at Boatman’s ability to create difficulty without resorting to obscure words (ie ones I don’t know) and then got derailed by STELE at the end

    Faves were APSE, AGELESS and DRAWBACK

    Ps: the references to Huguenots and transubstantiation are clearly a link to Stewart Lee’s musings on UKIP (skip 5 mins to go straight to the refs – also the language is a bit fruity – you have been warned!)

13. GregFromOz @ 8 A pale is a part of a pale fence and if you are seconded to a task you are posted to it temporarily.

14. I made NEWS EVENT It’s reported when breaking (def) NEW (hot) SEVEN T. Failed to parse AGELESS, DRAWBACK, ANTIPASTI, AVERSION. Liked the mental image of the IMAMS in their jim-jams…

15. Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. Needed the blog to get the ‘seCOND’ meaning of 25d POST.

16. A lovely crossword, with very clever multiple uses of “prime”. 27d HITS was a brilliant way to wind it up. (Though I did initially think, isn’t one a prime number? But on checking I see it isn’t apparently.)

    I see you’ve put a question mark by it Eileen, but I thought that in EASTENDERS “these characters” was a really good and inventive anagram indicator.

    (Tip for any new solvers: a Boatman puzzle will nearly always have two clues containing the word “Boatman”. In one it will indicate I/me, and in the other an actual boatman.)

    Many thanks Boatman and Eileen.

17. Lord Jim @16 – my question mark indicated ‘What do you think of this?’ so thanks for that. 😉

18. Fiendishly clever stuff from Boatman today. Some very witty and inventive clueing, raised lots of smiles – 17ac especially, what a lovely mental image that conjured. 24dn is brilliant. A few I thought were a tad dubious or convoluted, but on the whole there’s so much to enjoy here that I can easily forgive the minor quibbles. Spent a very satisfying hour filling it all in, though a few solutions were left unparsed (14ac, 24ac, 27dn) – thanks for the blog, Eileen (and Fiery Jack!).

    Never heard of PADEREWSKI, but on reading up about him, he seems like a very interesting character (and really, I should have heard of him). Despite not knowing the name, the wordplay and crossing letters were enough to give me the solution, confirmed by Wikipedia.

19. I loved this but kicked myself for not seeing what was going on in HITS. I also chewed over ANTIPASTI, but it didn’t ruin my appetite for what was a supreme solve. I missed ‘thirteen’ but happy to see ‘seven’ for today’s prime combo.
    Thank you Boatman & Eileen.

20. Lord Jim @16 yes – I thought “these characters” might raise a few eyebrows but I’ve found the best way to think of Guardian anagrinds is any word that indicates an anagram 🙂 aka “anagrinds are as anagrinds do”

    “Unhappiness is wrong desire” as I think the buddhists may say

21. HITS has to be the clue of the day. Using prime numbers to indicate letters? Fiendish!

    Thanks Boatman and Eileen

22. Quite a lot of use of aids but thought there were some lovely clues and agree that the different ways of using prime was inventive. Couldn’t parse a fair few though.

    Favourites were IMAMS, APSE, ARK (lovely construction), NINETEEN, DRAWBACK (for once was able to get the answer and work out the parsing of a clue like this – got the answers to the other two but couldn’t parse them).

    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen

23. I also appreciated the coincidence of LAPSE & APSE, and ARK & ARARAT (for boat & boatmen in a deluge of primes).

24. Goodness me, what a struggle but what a simply wonderful puzzle. 28a was a hoot of a surface.

    FOI was PADEREWSKI just because it was a known piece of GK for me – I can’t help thinking that we need a musician, poet or writer as our head-of-state at the moment…

    A very elegant crossword indeed.

    Chapeau Boatman; thanks Eileen.

25. Enjoyed that, though my GK fell short on the pianist and it needed a bit of use of the check key, though I could see what the clue wanted.

    With regards to easterly winds, winds are named after the direction they come from because that’s the direction a weather vane will point – once you’ve got that in your mind it’s a lot easier to remember.

26. Enjoyed this despite needing help and failing to parse PREPARE, POST and ANTIPASTI.

    Still feel POST is a little unfair with both parts of the DD being rarer uses of each word – but I guess it’s fine and my fault for not knowing about different fence types 🙂

    Thank you Eileen and Boatman.

27. Very clever puzzle. Got held up in the SW corner by entering [s]MASH in 27 (which at least I could parse!) Also failed to parse 14 (must pay attention to setters’ names) & 21 (Latin not my strong suit). Thanks Eileen & Boatman.

28. I’ve got a vague memory of the HITS trick having been used before, with PRIMARILY being used to indicate “take the prime-numbered letters.” If I remember correctly, it provoked quite a heated discussion

29. Well, that made a change, and a bit too clever for me. Grid filled, but with several needing ‘try a letter and check’, and even then several unparsed. And having initially bunged in ‘idly’ at 6d didn’t help the finish, in the NE corner. Good to have a gnarly one though, ta Boatman and Eileen.

30. Thanks Eileen, Jack and Boatman.
    Took ages doing this but much preferred it to Paul’s Prize on Saturday(which of course has yet to be blogged)
    I thought this had sparkle and lightened up an otherwise dull morning.
    In fact it floated my boat!

31. Thanks, Eileen and all – glad you had fun today.

    I can’t take the credit for inventing the technique that indicates HITS in 27 Dn – it was one of my masterclass students who showed me an example from the Times – the only place I’ve seen it used – and it struck me as an innovation that deserved further exploration. I had a few other clues in my notebook that played on other meanings of “prime”, but that one idea prompted me to put them together in this puzzle. It’s surprisingly hard to find a meaningful phrase that contains a related word in its prime-numbered letters …

    The clue for APSE at 24 Dn was the last to be written – I had a much less interesting clue at first, but the idea of transubstantiation occurred to me just in time for the final edit. I wasn’t expected to follow such rites as a child, but Mrs B was, which may partly explain why they were in my mind.

32. Paul T @27 – Nice alternative answer!

    Blaise @ 28 – Well, I can see why “primarily” would have generated some heat, and not just from those who argue that “extremely” doesn’t say what it means! The example that I’ve seen from the Times was “Manage surety in prime locations in dread (5)”, which is rather more fair, if a little underwhelming in the surface reading, demonstrating how hard it is to make this technique really sing …

33. Thoroughly enjoyable, thanks Boatman and Eileen.
    This really should have been Friday’s puzzle… number 28,499 !

34. Sorry to swim against the general positive appreciation on here today, but I found the Prime theme positively irritating and found little pleasure in the solve. Perhaps just my general downbeat mood this morning…

35. Pleased with myself at parsing 27d. Paderewski figured significantly in my youth in tortured hours of piano practice. Defeated by 12a, was convinced at first it was News Flash, had to guess and check. Thanks for the help, Eileen.

36. Eileen, I have just re-read your explanation of 12a and I see now that it is only an anagram of the when part, and the rest of the clue is just an add on of SEVEN T, so my comment about the fodder @ 10 is misplaced.

37. Jay @33 – Quite right, and superbly spotted!

38. Thanks Eileen for fleshing out APSE so that I can appreciate it fully, providing a better justification of POST = Second that I had considered, and parsing NEWS EVENT where i had taken a similar route to Gladys@14 but this of course leaves “going out” unaccounted for – I think the definition can be extended further but as with Dave Ellison@10 I still find it a little awkward.

    IMAMS took a while to parse as I always thought that bedclothes were sheets, duvet etc rather that pyjamas but it didn’t cause any major difficulty once the crossers were there.

    I had to look up the PM to be sure and got STELE (new word) from a thesaurus but was happy at parsing the rest and really liked the variety of uses to which Prime was put, thanks Boatman.

39. First day back to regular crosswording after several years away and excellent (dare I say prime?) fare from Boatman. The parsing of A(t wo)RK completely floored me as I was trying to reverse 27D and remove primely positioned letters. I completely missed the number two in the middle of the fodder DOH.

40. Thanks for the blog , Boatman on top form and too many top class clues to list, and it lasted the perfect amount of time.
    Lord Jim@16 , one could certainly be a prime but is defined not to be prime. This is so that every non-prime number can be expressed as a unique product of primes.
    Paul@27, see Lord Jim, Boatman has form here.

41. Enjoyed the theme of this puzzle. Found the top half easier than the lower half. SW corner solved last.
    Liked CRIME, FESTIVE, DRAWBACK, ALSATIAN, ARK, DEATH, PREPARE, PRIEST.
    Did not parse SOAPS; AGELESS, ANTIPASTI – and I realise now that I had not parsed HITS correctly.

    Failed POST.

    Thanks Boatman and Eileen.

42. Jay @33 – Bravo! Shame the Guardian’s crossword editors didn’t pick up on that.

43. Boatman @32 – if your solution is a four-letter word, you then have the added difficulty of making sure your container phrase is no more than 10 letters… you have every right to be pleased with yourself for this one.

44. Great puzzle but really hard work for me. Like others, I forgot about easterlies being from the east. Loved all the intricate clueing, esp. AGELESS, PRIEST, HITS (thanks to Fiery Jack @1), IMAMS and more. Many thanks to Boatman and Eileen.

45. Jay @33 – brilliant!
    Last Friday Pasquale (surely coincidentally?) marked 28,493 with an APOSTROPHE at 1 down.

46. Great fun, lots of unusual constrictions and no obscurities. Ta s&b.

47. Boatman @31. I’ve seen the prime locations technique a few times. I mostly associate it with Monk crosswords, for example

    Mountain in which petunia is picked in prime locations. (4)

    which appeared in the FT, on Oct 2, 2019.

48. Brilliant! I can see why Boatmen are few and far between – it must take a fair while to put this together.

    Many thanks Boatman and Eileen.

49. Late to the plate today and it’s all been said but did want to record my appreciation of a splendid puzzle. I loved the inventiveness with which this was constructed and one of those overt themes that confound at first, then puzzle, then gradually reveal and finally delight. Right across the board, whether easterly or westerly.

    Chapeau Boatman and thanks Eileen

50. widdersbel @18, MaidenBartok @24 & Chardonneret @35: perhaps due to the ‘prime’ theme, the clue for PADEREWSKI has attracted little comment but, having learned more about the man, I think it’s top form. Not quite &littish – too many words – but the surface is delightfully and cleverly linked to the solution.

51. I biffed in AGELESS but had no idea why. Same for FESTIVE and PREPARE. Thanks for cluing me in, Eileen. And jimjams for pajamas was new to me — in the US it means something like the heebie-jeebies.

    Are SOAPS at prime time in the UK? In the US they tend to be on in the afternoon, or did the last time i was aware of them.

    npetrikov@7 You’re still right. An east wind is from the east, hence the infamous Nor’easters of the New England coast that blow from the NE.

    bodycheetah@12 Your video is blocked to users in my country.

    Thanks for a very classy excursion, Boatman, and for necessary and kindly help, Eileen.

52. Thank you for the parsing of 24 and 27, which were through my guard. Another great success from Sussex.

53. I thought more people might have got stuck on STELE which completely stumped me, despite having three of the five letters! Obviously some bigger gaps in my GK than I imagined…

54. An arcood (prime hard crossword) Fantastic

55. Bullhassocks@53 I admit I started with STELA, thinking of beer.

56. Very inventive and well constructed – with all those primes, prime times, soaps etc something had to give and for me 12a NEWS EVENT and 2d STOP UP were poor surfaces for dodgy solutions.

    On the other hand 24a ANTIPASTI, 22d PRIEST and 24d APSE were superbly constructed with witty surfaces and solutions.

    So thanks to Boatman for an enjoyable ride and to Eileen for parsing HITS which had eluded me.

57. Nice coinage, Petert @54

58. Ark Lark @56 – I can’t claim the credit for HITS: that was the one I couldn’t see. 🙁 Thank Fiery Jack.

59. [ Many theorems for prime numbers still have no proof, the Riemann hypothesis is the big one. Some are very easy to state and understand – Goldbach’s Conjecture – Every even integer greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers.
    Simple, now prove it. ]

60. Valentine@51
    If you have a VPN installed set it to a UK address and this will bypass the blockage, it works in France.

61. PostMark @50 – That’s very kind – thank you. PADEREWSKI is one of those words that just happened to fit into a slot that would otherwise have been a problem – it always feels that the clues for filler words like that deserve some extra attention, so that they don’t feel anticlimactic.

    Valentine @51 – That’s right – SOAPS are generally aired shamelessly on our main terrestrial channels between 7 pm and 8 pm, and they’re occasionally blown up into bloated mini-series that can clog the schedules as late as 9 pm. In their defence, many of them have a fine sense of self-parody, which allows them to blur the line between comedy and drama in an interesting way … And you’re right, of course, about the transatlantic difference in the meaning of JIM-JAMS, like “trunk” or “pants”, a word that needs careful consideration before use …

    Petert @54 – I can live with the concept of an “arcood” – it would be a fine thing if people were using the term in 100 years’ time and trying to work out its etymology …

62. An excellent crossword that should have been the Saturday prize so I would have had the entire week to parse, solve, and savor. I ran out of time last evening and revealed several that I think would have dropped eventually. I ticked OUTLANDER (great surface), ARK, FESTIVE, DEATH, NINETEEN, PRIEST, and ARARAT as favourites. Thanks Boatman and Eileen.

63. Thanks Boatman and Eileen
    I’m with Ronald @34 on this one – it seemed to be a puzzle that was far more fun to set than to solve (as is often the case with B oatman’s puzzles).

64. 27 down was clever! (It had to be HITS but I couldn’t parse it)

65. Yikes, that was a toughie-but-goodie.

    Ticks all over the place and a star for the breadth of inventiveness.

    Still chuckling over the Jim-jams clue.

    I recall learning about wind directions and being given the mnemonic “you don’t care where it’s going, only where it’s been”.

    First rate Boatman, many thanks.

66. Never met an OUTLANDER before, but on reflection it’s clearly a cognate of German Ausländer. The uitlanders (i.e. the British) who flocked to Transvaal during the Witwatersrand gold rush played a big part in the build-up to the Boer War.

    I enjoyed the upside-down Mount ARARAT, as it reminded me of Steed’s first encounter with Tara King (all you need is a boom-de-ay).

    NINETEEN is my earworm today, but I’m torn between Paul Hardcastle and Rory Bremner.

    MB @24: Are you throwing your hat in the ring? 😉

    Nice of Boatman to include a shout-out to yours truly at 4d.

    Many thanks to him and Eileen.

67. Loved this though did not parse everything. All those meanings of prome: wonderful. Thank you to Eileen for explaining and to Boatman for a brilliant puzzle.

68. Fine, inventive puzzle.
    I did wonder about DRAWBACK which seems to be a sort of indirect anagram. Gettable here because of the crossers, but don’t these clues normally have the actual anagram fodder (i.e. WARD instead of MINOR here)?
    I completely missed the ANTIPASTI parsing. It’s amusing that easterly means either from the east (for winds) or to the east (for say, travellers). So, as an indicator, it’s a little vague, to say the least!
    Faves: AGELESS, PADEREWSKI and OBSERVANT. Nice to see a river called a river and a different one from the usual suspects.
    Thanks, Boatman and Eileen.

69. [essexboy @66: My manifesto pledge is free pianos for all…]

70. That was beyond my level, but I got two-thirds of the way through. I’m not sure I have ever seen a Boatman puzzle before so pleased with the result, though many of the clues were solved from the definition.
    Of the ones I could not solve, when revealed, the wordplay remained a mystery, so looking forward to checking the blog.
    Thanks both.

71. [ MrEssexboy @66 are you secretly Andrew Adonis , the former education minister ? ]

    DRAW(BACK) is surely just WARD which is a possible clue for minor. One of the few clues here that is not actually original.

72. [MB @69: better keep quiet about that…]

73. Muffin@63…thanks for that, at least there’s one other person on here who had the same feelings as me about this puzzle today.
    Perhaps it was simply caused by the irritation I get whenever Amazon try to get me to sign up to their Prime package…

74. Just wanted to add my thanks for a brilliant puzzle. I’ve been infrequently posting crossword clues on Facebook, because some of my friends are fans/trying to get in to them. I hadn’t done it for over a year, but I did it today for “Imams” just because “Jimjams” is such a lovely word, and it made me smile. I ran out of time so cheated on a few (which were probably too clever for me with hindsight), but felt very smart about the ones I did get (Hits, memorably).

75. Ronald @34 & muffin @63. I’m going to join you in the “irritated” camp, but at least I can identify the source of my irritation: my local paper shop didn’t have a copy of the Guardian this morning, and I had to make a trip to get one. By the time I started on the crossword it was competing for attention with the Tour de France, hence perhaps some of the irritation.

    But I must admit I think I would have found the constant iteration of ‘prime’ (and ‘prime cut’ and ‘prime suspect’) a little grating at the best of times. As someone said, no doubt challenging and enjoyable to compile, but for me less pleasure to solve. Or maybe that’s because I ground to an ignominious halt with a number of clues (the product of the two smallest primes, as it happens) still unsolved in the SE, or as we now have to think of it, ‘from a north-westerly’.

    I was always aware of the naming of the winds being from where they blow, but things that are blown by them are going in the opposite direction. So a ship, a leaf, or in this case a group of words, IT’S A PIT(y) described as ‘easterly’ are still going East, as far as I can see. To be going west the clue would have to be ‘endless that’s a shame from easterly blowing’. Sorry for spoiling the general appreciation of this clue, in amelioration of which I offer Isn’t it a pity by George Harrison.

    I don’t want Boatman to be thinking that I had a totally negative experience with his carefully crafted crossword, as I did appreciate a lot of the cleverness. And I didn’t notice the repetition of the subtraction device in 6d ACME and 7d NINETEEN as I didn’t solve them sequentially! But I hesitated over writing in SOAPS for a ridiculously long time (the time taken by the peloton to climb the Col de Portet-d’Aspet, probably) as I didn’t see the reverse clue technique. It was all too much for a Tuesday in July.

    It took several beers at a few of my local pubs this evening (a square rather than a prime, as it happens) to loosen the brain cells enough to solve all bar PREPARE, which was, for me, a prime number of synonyms for ‘prime’ too far. (Seventeen, probably. 🙂 )

    Thanks to Boatman and Eileen. Apologies to Gaufrid for a lengthy late post.

76. [essexboy @66. NINETEEN was the age that my grandmother told me that she felt inside – on the occasion of her 95th birthday. This justifies (I hope) a performance of Nineteen Forever by Joe Jackson.]

77. Enjoyed this, although a struggle with clues mentioned by others. Thanks Boatman and Eileen.

    Regarding FESTIVE. No-one seems to have mentioned it but I read the definition : ‘As Saturnalia’ (adjectival) and the wordplay: ‘is to a Roman in prime’.

    I liked the surface as a kind of cryptic definition in itself. Made me smile.

78. Thanks Boatman and Eileen. One or two unparsed but pleasant solve once I got past the frustration of having so many “prime”s blocking my path.

79. I only see the guardian once a fortnight when i get my shopping delivered, so I am very out of practice. But i really enjoyed this one although I only got about half the answers and had to look the rest up on here. While working on the puzzle I thought up a Boatmanesque clue. It is probably much too easy for all you clever folk, but what do you think of it?
    Boatman is shorter, confused and has no target. 7 letters.

80. [John D @79: thanks, and welcome to the forum! I enjoyed your clue – is it ‘aimless’?

    If you want me to put my critical hat on, I’m going to call foul because it’s an ‘indirect (or two-stage) anagram’ – first you have to replace ‘Boatman is’ with ‘I am’, then you have to rearrange the letters. Granted, it’s a very gettable substitution, and straightforward rearrangement, but as you may have gathered from the previous day’s Pan blog* (see comment 30 onwards) this sort of device always sparks a debate, and I’m on the stick-in-the-mud side of the argument!

    I’m just thinking – perhaps an anagram (‘confused’) is too much of a heavy-duty tool to turn I AM LESS into AIMLESS? It’s only a one-letter change, and if it’s a down clue there might be a neater way of raising the A or lowering the I, which would also sidestep the ‘indirect anagram’ gripe in my last para.

    Two other quibbles: (i) Some might say there is a ‘parts of speech’ mismatch between definition and solution – ‘has no target’ is a verb phrase, aimless is an adjective; (ii) the surface reading (although I’ve seen worse!). ‘Is shorter’ indicates a lessening of physical height; couldn’t we find some way of suggesting that Boatman is morally, mentally or reputationally damaged? (I hope he doesn’t read this 😉 )

    How about ‘Boatman is downgraded, ego diminished, having no purpose’?

    *P.S. Of course, if you’re a once-a-fortnight person you won’t have seen the Pan puzzle or blog. Did you know you can do all the Guardian puzzles online (here)? If you enjoyed this one I’m sure there are others you would like – today’s Picaroon is good fun.]

81. Alright, but some libertarian cruft here, 20 dubious definition, 29ac dubious parsing and 5 down poor clue overall.

82. Very late to the fray (weekly reader – never get round to the crossword for several days!) – but just wanted to express surprise that no-one referred to the pianist’s nickname in the wonderfully non-pc “It Aint Half Hot Mum” – I must be getting old!

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