Guardian 28,505 – Paul

79 comments on “Guardian 28,505 – Paul”

1. I found this a bit of a struggle but worth it if only for the hilarious ELONGATE. Thanks Andrew & Paul.

2. For Kiwis at least 15 is just ‘climb it’.

3. A few tricky ones here. I hadn’t heard of ROMAINE.

   I took the mountaineer’s challenge to be “climb it”.

   Thanks Paul and Andrew.

4. I was not really on Paul’s wavenlength and took a while to get going on this.
   Liked WHEN, ELONGATE, HOOF MARK, ROTTEN APPLES.

   New for me: TENON SAW, INSIDE RIGHT (soccer/hockey player).

   Thanks Paul and Andrew.

5. Just to note that the anagrammatic (‘suspect’) element in 16D is (CAB I)* rather than (A CAB)*

6. 10 across a fine clue “Elongate”
   Thatcher and Climate Change also rather good..

7. It could be “climb it” or “climb 8” or even “climb, mate!”. Whatever works for you.

   A reasonably possible Paul with some ingenious parsing and well hidden defs. I stored up trouble for myself by carelessly entering TREASURERS instead of TREASURIES, had an unparsed WREN instead of WHEN (which I love now I’ve seen it) and didn’t get SLAPSHOT at all. I had to check that a ROE was a ruminant: I only got ROMAINE once I remembered how fond Paul is of cluing salads and other greens as “leaves”. Thanks to Paul and to Andrew for parsing the first half of TRANQUIL.

   Favourites ROTTEN APPLES, SEQUESTRATE, HOOFMARK, WREN.

8. Oops – WHEN of course.

9. I’m not convinced that we speak of climbit change, and I wasn’t too impressed by the surface either. I hadn’t heard of a slap shot but Paul played fair with some clear wordplay.
   Not entirely convinced by WEASELS as a definition.
   Enjoyed HOOF MARK and thought SINGULAR, A BIT MUCH and ROMAINE were very neat.
   Thanks both

10. [As he was an astronomer as well as an architect I suppose WREN could be clued as “Astronomical bird.” But what it mainly brings to mind is the archetypal clerihew:
    Sir Christopher Wren
    Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
    If anyone calls
    Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”]

11. Sorry but ELONGATE was not an original clue.Far from it.. Great the first time it was dished up but going a bit cold now

12. copmus @11 – re ELONGATE: I agree in principle, but previously it was ELONGATES (plural).

    As Andrew said, easier than most by Paul, but plenty to enjoy. For me SEQUESTRATE, RUCKSACK and A BIT MUCH. Made a mess of REPLAY (had an unparseable REPEAT). Thanks to P & A.

13. Mr Musk has been a godsend to setters but soon the papers will need to offer a prize for clueing ELONGATE without reference to a billionaire or a scandal. I did not find this as approachable as did our blogger today. Definitely needed a break in the middle before attacking it with fresh eyes. Some peaches – SEQUESTRATE, INSIDE RIGHT, REAL MADRID, TREASURIES, WHEN and RUCKSACK – and some I ticked though the word play was less smooth like ROTTEN APPLES and TRANQUIL. A toss up for COTD between HOOFMARK for the definition and THATCHER for the misdirect. As I had to guess at HOOF for dance, I’ll pick the latter.

    I’ve never heard of a SLAPSHOT and neither climb eight nor climb it work for me I’m afraid. Lovely to see HORNBEAM appear as a bit of a change in the woodland department.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

14. 2D: surely it is alarmed* inserted into rid not +. Otherwise the word “breaking” in the clue becomes nugatory.

15. Spent a while wondering what the ROTTEN things could be. Swines? Sports? Finally got the apples, but share NeilH’s doubts. Weasels are sneaky and back-stabbing; rotten apples are bad apples, which spoil all the other apples.

    I liked A BIT MUCH, and the cow pats that weren’t.

    Thank P and A

16. @14. “Breaking” is the anagram indicator.

17. drofle @12 – Independent on Sunday, 20th June: “19a Stretch out scandal involving Mister Musk? (8)”

    Grim+and+Dim @14 – Doesn’t your alternative parsing of 2D makes ‘after’ nugatory? And if ‘breaking’ is an insertion indicator, then what is the anagrind for ‘alarmed’? If ‘after breaking’ is taken as the anagrind for ‘alarmed’, then I think that Andrew’s parsing works better.

18. Not his hardest but everything I love about Paul. On first read you think where do I start? Then it slowly reveals itself with loads of chuckles and dohs! along the way. 24ac was my favourite as it took ages to spot the clever definition. Thanks Paul and Andrew for the excellent blog.

19. Also I had no problem with climb-it.

20. Nowhere NEAR as hard as a ‘usual’ Paul – in fact, my second cup of coffee (yes, PostMark, coffee…) was still warm when I finished it. The crossword; not the coffee, although the coffee as well…

    ELONGATE may be a bit of a new chestnut but it’s still a larf so please find attached a bit of Mitchell and Webb discussing other ‘gates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of6ZW3in6oA

    About as far as it is possible to be from being a football fan but even so the references were known to me.

    ROMAINE is an interesting one as it is the main ingredient of a Caesar salad and was a new word on arriving in the US (Andrew is correct that we call it ‘Cos.’)

    Thanks Paul (sorry to be missing Zoom number 50 this evening) and Andrew!

21. Thank you for your helpful explanations.

    However for 15ac the homophone challenge to mountaineer is “climb it“ (not “climb eight”).

22. Re parsing of 2D: I initially read it as, quite simply, REAL MAD, which I suppose is a sort of synonym for ALARMED, but doesn’t explain the “after” or the “breaking”. (I did almost immediately spot “after breaking” as a very decent anagrind.)

23. A bit easier than Paul’s recent puzzles, but still hard enough. I failed on ROMAINE, even though I had a pretty good idea what sort of ‘leaves’ Paul was referring to.

    I liked THATCHER and wonder if the proximity of HOOF MARK in the grid of was intended or not. No ‘Carol’ anywhere, so I suppose not.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew

24. Maybe I’m getting silly in my old age, but is there an allusion in the central line to “Why do you climb it?” “‘Cos it’s there…”

25. I was going to say what JerryG@18 and @19 just said! A lovely puzzle – not quite as easy as Paul promised – it was a two session job for me with the SW corner as dessert and with 24ac being both LOI and COD. I don’t really understand the fuss about the (near) homophones – they are just fine with me. I can only recall ELONGATE(S) being used once before here and it was very differently clued with Bill(ionaire) in the mix.

26. Enjoyable puzzle from Paul, uncharacteristically prim but full of clever defs and ingenious constructions.

    Favourites were A BIT MUCH and WHEN.

    CLIMATE is usually pronounced with a schwa in the second syllable, but the homophony was close enough for me.

    The original British name ‘Cos’ for the ELONGATEd lettuce seems to be disappearing. Tesco now calls it ROMAINE.

    Thanks S&B

27. Am I the only one who thought SNAP = power (as in “I seem to have lost my snap today”), SHOT = lost, giving SNAP SHOT based on the slight football theme?

    Just me then. Thanks Paul and Andrew.

28. Spooner’s catflap @ 17 – I’m not as widely puzzled as you are! I just do The Guardian and Azed.

29. re ELONGATE…it is true that this isn’t its first time out (type ELONGATE into the search function above and you’ll discover a fair few examples) but hopefully new solvers are constantly being added to this wonderful hobby and it would seem wrong to take the view that clue ideas must remain unique usages. I remember my little frisson of excitement when I “discovered” Häagen-Dazs contained a “hidden agenda” and had it published in an Indy puzzle only to learn that Tramp had beaten me to it by a couple of years, and that he wasn’t the only one. I follow Elon Musk on Twitter (he’s barking mad by the way) and he himself tweeted this idea a few weeks ago

30. baerchen 29 who put the HARD ON in CHARDONNAY?

31. @copmus
    That was definitely Mr Halpern, I believe

32. Thought this was a varied selection of clues, some helpful anagrams between some fiendishly difficult cryptic ones such as SINGULAR, A BIT MUCH, even ROTTEN APPLES, and my loi ROMAINE. Thought WHEN a clever little clue, and I love the sound of the word SEQUESTRATE. The usual Paul fun and games – I always enjoy the anticipation of the challenge when I see his name down as the day’s setter.

33. Oofyprosser @ 27 – me too

    I think my brain is suffering from the heat. Found this really tough and had quite a few unparsed – but when I came to read the blog many seemed quite straightforward. Oh well.

    Some lovely clues including WHEN (one of the few I got straightaway) SEQUESTRATE, HORNBEAM

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

34. Thanks Andrew, I hadn’t understood SINGULAR though I have seen RANI = Queen before and should have remembered it, I parsed REAL MADRID the same as you.
    Oofyprosser@27 I did toy with that but remembered SLAPSHOT which is an excellent film even if you aren’t particularly into ice hockey, and then twigged the anagram.
    Although I agree that the surface of CLIMATE CHANGE is not going to trouble the Nobel committee I did like that it enabled “current issue” to appear twice but meaning very different things leaving me increasingly misled.
    My LOI was RUCKSACK: rucks in rugby are rarely more than three or four strong these days so took me a while to see the equivalence, and I didn’t know that sack meant burning rather than just invading, pillaging and smashing everything up.
    Anyway I enjoyed this as many seemed to, thanks Paul.

35. Gazzh @34: Re RUCKSACK, I think the SACK element is fire as in dismiss from employment rather than pillage. And, whilst the ruck has indeed become a different beast in modern day rugby, it has an alternative meaning as crowd with a slight sense of unruliness about it. I suspect the rugby usage followed on from that.

36. Did anyone else have problem with 6A? I didn’t think 6A, equating “didn’t appear to” and “wasn’t”, worked grammatically. I wouldn’t say “I wasn’t think…” instead of “I didn’t appear to think…” . Nor “It wasn’t me” for “It didn’t appear to me”. A bit of a liberty taken by Paul but I stand to be corrected.
    I enjoyed the puzzle nonetheless.

37. Gazzh@34: I also wondered about sack=burn, but I expect it’s justified somewhere, as all these semi-synonyms inevitably are.

    Knowing that Paul is from the southern half of the UK makes climb-it change the likeliest pronunciation. It may not please everyone, but it’s what we say round ‘ere (and in New Zealand, apparently).

38. [essexboy @15 ‘Rotten apples are bad apples, which spoil all the other apples’, The Osmonds didn’t think so.

    Glad that I didn’t get stuck up a HORNBEAM.]

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

39. Aha. Thanks PostMark: wrong kind of fire.

40. [baerchen @29: ‘…he’s barking mad by the way…’ He is, but frankly no-more so than many of the other BigTech-ers. In my Cisco days, I remember how even my direct boss was a bit of a fruitcake and displayed the same technolibertarianism/entitlement that his boss John Chambers and people such as Elon Musk, Thiel, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison et al. do. If you really want to depress yourself, go and search out the links between them and our current UK ruling junta. OT – sorry!]

41. @baerchen-yeah it was, A goody. Typhoo put the T in Britain-we wont mention SCUNTHORPE

42. I had the challenge to mountaineer parsed as ‘climb eight’ referring to the Lake District 8 peak challenge.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

43. @pentman 36
    I think it has to be “didn’t appear” = wasn’t, not “didn’t appear to“, which also works a bit better for the indicator, I think (to reverse, not reverse on its own).

    He didn’t appear so = he wasn’t so? Maybe? There are probably better instances.

44. Herb @43: that’s how I saw it. He didn’t appear angry = he wasn’t angry. Strictly not exactly the same – he might be phlegmatic. But it worked for me. The ‘to’ is part of the instruction to reverse.

45. PostMark@35 thank you for that, a much more common use of Sack/Fire that I completely missed, having been misled by the cunning “set on” – very good Paul! I did look up RUCK in an online dictionary and it simply has “i) a large number or quantity, ii) the great mass of undistinguished or inferior persons or things” so is fine by me although I have never heard it used that way (rugby rucks presumably come from ruckus which must also have that original source surely).
    Pentman@36, Herb@43: agree that “to” should be connected with “reverse” and outside that bracket: he didn’t appear at the inquest/ he wasn’t at…

46. [drofle @28 – I mostly confine myself to a diet of Guardian cryptics, but sometime on Sunday I feel a little undernourished after Everyman and forage elsewhere. Chapeau to you if you tackle Azed. I have an irrational dislike of barred puzzles (I think it is a visual thing) but admire those who venture upon them.]

47. Penfold @38 yes! An Osmonds theme beckons. Crazy horses – shores – the possibilities are … Ok quite limited

    I often wonder if Paul sold his soul to the devil for a magic anti-thesaurus containing only synonyms found in nowhere else?

48. Spooner’s catflap. I confess that I’ve never understood how the Azed puzzles work at all. If anyone can provide a simple guide, I’d be extremely grateful.

49. Thanks for the blog. Paul T in at number 1 , well done.
    Penfold @ 38, I am so glad I cannot do links.
    Copmus @ 41 , Paul once had SCUNTHORPE in a crossword and a lot of other hidden very rude words, Wastwater and Widow Twanky were in as well.
    Drofle predicted ELONGATE(S) before it first appeared.

    Is the whiskey okay for W ? I did not think the phonetic alphabet was Irish ??

50. N D @ 48 , it just takes about two years practice and a Chambers dictionary. The puzzle this Sunday was actually very friendly by Azed standard, a good one to make a start.

51. @48. Azed’s cluing is in my opinion majestic. One HAS to have Chambers to hand as many words are very rare! To me it proves you do not need a conventional grid although it makes life easier if there are crosses. If you persevere it is very satisfying. Jonathan Crowther to me is a genius: there is logic in every clue-you just have to work it out! Bit like Turing I suppose .

52. [ In a strange sense the Azed can be “easier” if you get started because so many letters are useful for other clues. This week 1AC and 1D were easy to get and gave 22 letters, many first letters for other words which are the most useful. ]

53. A nice end to the week, with a gentle work-out by Paul’s standards. Some gems in the clueing and plenty of smiles when the penny dropped. Top marks for HOOF MARK, ROMAINE, JETTISON. But joint COTD THATCHER and MACRON, a couple of ROTTEN APPLES if ever there were.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew

54. I found it a bit harder than Paul’s recent offerings, but that was probably because I didn’t have my imagination set to “roam”, necessary for some of the almost-synonyms.

    The repeated appearance of ELONGATE(S) didn’t bother me – in fact it helped me get going. Bear in mind that these puzzles apparently get submitted to the editor weeks if not months ahead of publication.

55. ELONGATE, clued as ‘Drag out scandal involving Tesla CEO?’ first appeared in FT 15958 by Rosa Klebb in August 2018.

    Roz @ 49: WHISKEY is the official spelling in the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, aka the NATO Phonetic Alphabet inter alia.

56. Thank you, ir saves me looking it up later.

57. Roz@49 (as per Simon S@55) it is international and as Whiskey also generally has an E in the US and many other countries, it is not hard to imagine why it appears thus in these alphabets.
    [Your query sent me down an interesting rabbit hole, the wikipedia entry on NATO phonetic alphabet is extremely detailed: it seems to have been adapted from the International Civil Aviation Organization equivalent in 1956 and the ICAO then re-adopted the new NATO words. Wikipedia does have “whisky” in one of its tables but having checked the original document I think this is a typo.]

58. Thank you , I did not think about the American spelling. I am sure I have seen it as whisky in crosswords hence my query.

59. Roz@58 – you’re absolutely correct, and I am horrified, as a lover of a good single malt, when the floating E appears in any reference to Scotch whisky. Irish whiskey on the other hand (God bless Old Bushmills !).

    Paul routed me today, and I had to reveal the last few. Not my finest hour.

60. Can “roe” by itself mean the animal? As in, “There’s a roe under that tree over there.” I always thought the critter was called a “roe deer.”

    MB@20 Your link just takes me to the musical instrument museum from yesterday’s crossword.

    Roz: “whiskey” isn’t the American spelling, it’s the spelling for all kinds of the drink except Scotch, which is “whisky.”

    I remember my father referring to some military alphabet that began “Able, Baker, Charlie, dog.” The only reference to that that I found on googling was a New Yorker review of a book in which the narrator’s father taught her the same alphabet.

    This was the hardest Paul I’ve ever done. I got hardly any of it last night or this morning before I hit the check button.

    So thanks, Paul, for a real challenge and Andrew for untying some knots.

61. Valentine@60 I do not really know anything about whisk(e)y , that is why I was asking.
    Gazzh@57 told me US had an E.
    I know how to spell gin.
    Roe by itself can be used to mean a small species of deer, also called roe-deer.

62. Valentine @ 60

    The Able Baker Charlie alphabet was originally developed by the RAF. I’m guessing that it was adopted by the USAAF when the US entered WWII to avoid confusion, and was then superseded.

63. Simon S@62 That makes sense. My father was in the US Navy in WWII.

64. MB@20. The link seems to lead to some delightful music on old pianos rather than Mitchell and Webb. Could be my phone…

65. Ian@64 Same happened to me (see me@60. It’s left over from yesterday when MB added it to a conversation about pianos. It needs to be replaced with the right link — not your phone’s or my laptop’s fault.

    MaidenBartok, change your link!

66. [IanSW @64 and Valentine @65: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9JgxhXW5w. Count your lucky stars it wasn’t a link to the incredibly boring ‘strategy’ session I was on after the fortepiano video yesterday…]

67. Valentine @60 and Roz @61: I’m not sure that’s right re spelling of whisky. The US may be a huge market which means its adoption of the whiskey spelling has a big influence but only the US and Ireland spell it that way (and, even in the US, some brands like Maker’s Mark spell it without the ‘e’). There are about 15 or 16 other countries in which whisky is distilled, Scotland and Japan being the principal, and the whisky spelling is standard throughout. Given that both spellings originate in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland, the word obviously travelled across the Atlantic and it was Irish settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee who began distilling in the late 18th century and, naturally, adopted the whiskey spelling.

68. Thank you MrPostMark @ 67 , I have given up on the spelling of whisk(e)y from now on.
    What about the phonetic alphabet ? Although I now know there are several versions. Whisky or whiskey or both ?

69. Herb@43 & Postmark@44 & Gazzh@45.
    Thanks. I think your analyses and examples appear to make the clue more tenable.

70. SimonS@62 There’s comprehensive list of variants on the Royal Signals Museum website

71. Here’s the link:

72. Sorry tried to post the link, but the tab d1dn’t work
    https://www.facebook.com/The.Royal.Signals.Museum/posts/the-history-of-the-military-phonetic-alphabetthe-increasing-use-of-wireless-and-/970294246353762/

73. [Roz @68. The phonetic alphabet adopted by the ITU is the NATO version which has an “E.”]

74. Thanks peterM

75. Two other words in the NATO alphabet (Alfa and Juliett) have non-standard spellings which are meant to make sure that the f sound in one and the final t in the other are pronounced correctly (pronunciation is controlled very tightly to avoid misunderstanding). The official W spelling is definitely WHISKEY, but I can’t see why that would have been chosen – it can’t be a pronunciation issue.

76. Thank you MaidenBartok , Gladys and Simon S earlier. I will try not to forget this.

77. gladys@75 I think it’s a historical thing: many immigrants to the US were Irish, who drank ‘whiskey’ – as opposed to Scots, who drank ‘whisky’. So the US spelling includes ‘e’.

78. [gladys @75: I’ve just worked out that I’ve had my Amateur Radio licence for 38 years and NEVER noticed the spelling of ‘Alfa’ before!

    As for mis-understanding, I do remember one QSO with an amateur in the southern part of the Netherlands who really struggled to pronounce the ‘G’ of my callsign phonetically with ‘GOLF’ coming out as ‘HOLOF’ which is the soft-G sound we no-longer have in English.

    My grandmother had a friend from central Russia who’s husband was called ‘Harry’ – at least, that’s what we all thought until we went to his funeral only to find out that his first name was ‘Gareth…’]

79. Slapshot?…i bunged in snapshot without checking the anagram. Then failed on the last few wearily. Couldn’t see Rotten even with apples in!
    You win Paul thanks and to Andrew

Comments are closed.