Guardian Cryptic 28,531 by Pan

84 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,531 by Pan”

1. Very quick solve … even including the two new-to-me words at 15A & 23A.

2. Enjoyable, Quiptic-like solve.

   Liked: DEADLOCK.

   New for me: the reptile, CHUCKWALLA in 23ac and alternative spelling of ‘wallah’; TEQUILLA (alternative spelling for tequila); and RAG = red flag for 22d.

   Thanks, both.

3. This place is a pit/den (of iniquity?)?…spose so. Grammar learning here never went much past subject and predicate, but I do know the names of some cases, eg dative, if not what they mean. And the roc bit of decorative I remember from Sinbad (and crosswords). The reptile was a bung and pray. And rag=flag?….hmm. All ok though, ta both.

4. Mostly straightforward, but 7a is a bit of a head-scratcher. Tequila (one L) is the name of the Mexican city, and how it’s spelled on all bottles of the spirit that I’ve ever seen, which is quite a few. None of the online dictionaries referenced by OneLook (that’s a couple of dozen of them) nor the online Chambers even has the two-elled version. Wikipedia redirects LL to L. Although I will say something about the clue: at first sight it seems to be crying out to involve DOWN, so great misdirection; pity nobody in practice spells the name that way.

5. Should 23a have read “… in charge *of* a reptile” for better surface fluency??

6. Thanks Pan for our Monday puzzle. My fave was 5d as I thought the misdirection to remove the T from Hearts was clever. Chuckwalla was a new creature for me but gettable even without seeing walla(h) as in charge.

   I took almost as long over SLEDGE as over the rest of the puzzle. Ended up going through endless letter possibilities but with my heart set on a car brand (dodge maybe) featuring. Pleased to get there in the end.

   The special spelling of TEQuILLA floated by with being noted. I fussed at the rag-flag question for a while but it looks like respectable naval slang.

   Thanks for the early blog manehi.

7. Fairly routine, but hunt = course and person in charge = walla were unknown to me. I liked KIMCHI and I thought ANTLER was nicely hidden. Thanks Pan and to manehi for the blog.

8. Unlike others, quite slow going for me. Missed CHUCKWALLA (seen once before and forgotten) and neither ARAGON nor RHODESIA came quickly. Some good misdirection in the clues made for a more than adequately challenging Monday puzzle.

   Thanks to Pan and manehi

9. I parsed LEAD as “main part” in a theatrical production.
   TEQUILLA was LOI and CHUCKWALLA was new. Walla without an H is common and I’ve seen “wala” too.
   Thanks to Pan and manehi.

10. Great start to the week. I had most trouble with HEATSTROKE (because I tried to take T out of Hearts) and thought the drug reference might be ‘toke’ but saw the parsing in the end.

    Many thanks Pan and manehi

11. Figured the double L in TEQUILLA was a variant so bunged it in without worrying.

    I’d heard of a CHUCKWALLA, no idea from where or why or how, but I did mistakenly think it was CHUCKWALLY, and couldn’t see how wally was person in charge except as a joke. I didn’t know rag for flag either so the wally stayed in charge till ARAGON dropped.

    Auriga@9 I parsed LEAD the same way until I realised that meant part was doing double duty.

    I predict comments on another homophone with the crossers common to both words, but I think the answer is clearly CELLAR.

    Nice Monday puzzle couple of headscratchers but nothing too difficult.

    Thanks Pan and manehi.

12. Walla/h brought to mind punkah wallah, a servant. Having charge of the punkah, true, but not an authority ‘in charge’. Hence the bung and shrug.

13. Good start to the week. Some straightforward clues and others that took a bit more headscratching. The extra L in 7ac was odd but could be the only solution. I’d never heard of a chuckwalla but got there from the crossers.
    Thanks Pan and manehi for a nice Monday challenge.

14. Very enjoyable. I’ve never seen tequila with double-L. And flag/rag stumped me.

15. Tequilla is in my Chambers app.

16. Thanks Pan and manehi. That was a very gentle start to a Monday, notwithstanding that CHUCKWALLA is new to me.

    Auriga @9 – same here on LEAD. I think the whole clue is meant to be a single cryptic definition.

    Hovis @15 – But does it give any citations? No matter, the answer was obvious enough that like Blah @11, I just bunged it in, and assumed someone would be along soon with the “it’s in Chambers” justification.

17. Had School instead of INFORM at 17ac for a while, before MANDARIN and STURGEON put paid to that. Some nice clues, though of course had to refer to a higher authority before CHUCKWALLA wriggled in…

18. Tbh Widdersbel @16, I only checked after reading Dr Whatson @4.

19. gif @3 – I never learned cases in English at school – we do have them, but I don’t think they’re taught as such, and we don’t have the DATIVE in English anyway (or at least we don’t have separate declensions for it). German has four cases, including DATIVE. Latin is famous for having loads of cases but I never got past the basics with Latin at school. In any case, DATIVE was fresh in my mind after its appearance elsewhere recently, but I don’t think I’m allowed to say where yet…

20. Thanks Pan and manehi
    Mostly good, but I had to use a wordsearch for CHUCKWALLA, as I hadn’t heard of either it or the “walla”. Favourite ANTLER.

21. I don’t care if Tequilla is in Chambers, nobody EVER spells it like that. To be taken with a large dose of salt.

22. I liked RHODESIA and CHUCKWALLA

    Ta Pan & manehi

23. TEQUILLA is given as a variant by both Chambers and the full OED, but it’s clearly a “mistake”, perhaps influenced by other Spanish food and drink names such as manzanilla, sarsparilla, tortilla, vanilla etc.

24. widdersbel @13 I’m trying to learn some German and struggled to understand cases until I realised that we do have them in english, but only in pronouns (as far as I know) and generally we take them for granted and so don’t recognise what they are: I/me/mine, he/him/his etc.

25. I did wonder whether RHODESIA was RHODES + I (as in IC) + A (as in NATO) with the “originally” referring to RHODESIA now being Zimbabwe
    But I think a week of Pembrokeshire sea air has blown away a few brain cells as I didn’t find this as easy as some
    Loved the “dismantled reins” faux anagrind

26. I have now found that the Gordius crossword, Guardian 24733, also had TEQUILLA clued as QUILL in TEA. Teh kee yah anyone?

27. Nothing like a bit of TEQUILLA to kickstart the week 🙂

    Note the LL !

28. I’m another who hadn’t encountered TEQUILLA (sic) previously, and the CHUCKWALLA was also a new beast to me. I couldn’t parse RHODESIA (just brain fade I suspect).

29. The double-L is an error, plain and simple. The pronunciation changes if the L is doubled (te-‘ki-ya rather than te-‘ki-la). Ain’t no drink named TEQUILLA.

30. Just right for our alloted time.

    The ‘Island in the Atlantic’ a wonderful clue and nice misdirection.

    Still can’t get my head round ONE for the setter’s though.

31. And since Pan has riled me with the double-L, I might have a grump about the sloppy ‘a’ in the wordplay (or the definition?) for the lizard at 23a. And how is ON=’over’ in the wordplay for ARAGON? And how is DEN=’pit’ in the EDEN clue?
    Here we see the ‘airy wave of the hand’ style of crossword compilation.

32. pserve_p2 @31 – When Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den, I don’t think he was entering their study or playroom – certainly Rubens did not imagine it thus:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_in_the_lions%27_den#/media/File:Sir_Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Daniel_in_the_Lions'_Den_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

33. Thanks for the blog, I found this pretty neat overall, HEATSTROKE was a very nice clue.
    Walla(H) is in Chambers 93 with one definition supporting the clue.
    DATIVE seems to turn up a lot, far more than all the other cases.
    26AC perhaps should have some reference to the past tense.
    I was half expecting everyone to have spotted a theme that I had totally missed , looking at you AlanC .

34. Pedro @ 30 – ONE does not like Monday crosswords that are roo easy.

35. ravenrider @24 – Exactly! Mostly only evident in pronouns in English, as you say, but the possessive apostrophe-S is a manifestation of the genitive case. (German nouns also mostly take S or ES in the genitive.)

    Although, Pedro @30, note that “setter’s” in 14ac stands for “setter is”, not the genitive form of setter. But it could have been the latter if the solution were OVERTONES…

36. Pleasant start to the week.

    Yes, TEQUILLA is probably a misspelling but you can’t blame the setter if it is in Chambers and the OED. Faced with ?E?U?L?A, there are not many options (Cebuella for the pigmy marmoset?) Of course, the main part of a pencil is a LEAD, so that seemed rather trivial, even if it was supposed to be a dd. I liked RHODESIA.

    Thanks Pan and manehi.

37. pserve_p2 @31 Chambers has ON for OVER and “pit or cave” for DEN

38. 11a We’ve had DATIVE recently once or twice, I forget whether in cryptics or Quiptic or Everyman.

    THANE as a royal companion is new to me. I thought of them as like, say, earls, which is what they all become at the end of the Scottish play. (Did they historically?)

    DEN discussion passim — how about DEN = burrow = pit?

    Ilan Caron@5 I think the surface meaning of 23a is meant to be “throw a reptile to person in charge.” An odd picture. CHUCKWALLA came to me as a word I’d heard before with no idea of what it meant, but with “chuck” in the first part the word dropped by.

    Got everything last night except HEATSTROKE, which came to me in a stroke of insight this morning.

    Pleasant Monday puzzle — thanks, Pan and manehi.

39. I have managed to resist quibbling about ETHANE=GAS, it is actually fine for a crossword, but on Saturn’s moon Titan there are natural lakes of liquid ethane ( and methane ) .

40. Another good puzzle for a lazy Monday morning.

    Liked KIMCHI (and to eat) and ETHANE (like the word thane), HEATSTROKE (when I finally got there – like others I tired to take the *t* out of heart).

    For a while I wondered if the *cor* in DECORATIVE might refer to the expression Cor! used by some when seeing a *fabulous bird* but no.

    Thanks Pan and manehi

41. I read 24a as a double definition with ‘part’ doing double duty – which is excused or indicated by the question mark. Otherwise why would there be a question mark?

42. I took LEAD as part of pencil with ? meaning an example of one of the parts .
    I also took main = LEAD from electrical wiring.

43. Robi @36 – sorry, but I’m going to blame the setter even if TEQUILLA is in Chambers. Not because it makes the crossword harder or unfair, but because I don’t enjoy writing in misspellings.

44. TEQUILLA of course has a get out of jail free card from Chambers: do any of these strange spellings ever get corrected, or is it a case of once in Chambers, it’s legitimate until the end of time?

    I agree with grantinfreo about the WALLA – the char-wallah is the bloke who brings the tea, but is he “in charge” of it?

    Same problems as other people: den=pit, rag=flag, and some time wasted trying to fit Rhode Island (which is in the Atlantic) into Rhodesia before I remembered the other one.

    I’m off to find out what a CHUCKWALLA is when it’s at home.

45. For the record, the DATIVE case expresses the indirect object (‘to’ or ‘for’), e.g. ‘She gave (to) her father a present’; ‘He bought (for) his mother a present’. The word comes from the Latin verb ‘to give’.

46. pserve_p2 @31 Tower bridge is over/on the Thames river.

    Kingsley @43 How can a word that is in the dictionary be called a misspelling? It’s in my Chambers as “Tequila or Tequilla”, followed by the definition. It doen’t even suggest that one is any less valid than the other.

47. Pleasant little puzzle, although I winced at TEQUILLA. As Andrew @23 said, this spelling is a mistake, substituting the common Spanish diminutive suffix. It isn’t listed in my copy of the SOED – does the full OED give an example of its usage? It seems that Guardian setters are deliberately seeking out iffy entries in Chambers (we had congenital = complete last week)!

    Roz @39: At standard pressure, ethane boils at -88°C or thereabouts. As terrestrial temperatures almost never get this low, I think calling it a gas is perfectly justifiable. After all, chlorine boils at a toasty -34°C, and few would quibble at that being called a gas.

48. I did say I did not quibble and it was fine for crosswords, I just wanted to present a less geo-centric view of things.

49. Roz @42. To clue a word as ‘part of’ something is not, as far as I can see, a definition by example, so wouldn’t require a question mark. (The other way round, maybe, but to use ‘lead for pencil?’ as a clue for PART would be grossly unfair.)

    And I can’t see an equivalence or link from ‘main’ via electricity to LEAD. One would plug the LEAD of an amplifier or kettle into the ‘mains’, perhaps that’s what you were thinking of?

50. Not at all , in the domestic ring main system , the main wires that can carry the 30A are referred to as the main or the lead . It is nothing to do with the wires , or leads, used to plug things in.

51. roz@39 We call water a liquid even though it is both a gas and a solid at various temperatures on our own planet. It’s just a liquid most of the time.

    gladys@44 Rhode Island is on the Atlantic, not in it. In spite of its name, Rhode Island is not an island.

    Eileen@45 Other examples of the dative could be 23a “Throw person in charge a reptile,” or the song “Throw momma from the train A kiss, a kiss..”

52. Sorry Valentine but your water example is terrible. Water is a liquid, wherever it is but steam and ice are a different matter, so to speak.

53. Valentine @51, I was not actually objecting if you read my post, I was just paying tribute to Titan where the Sirens swim.
    On Titan the smaller hydrocarbons play a similar role to water on Earth , forming solids , liquids and gases and even rain.

54. Hi Valentine @51

    Sure – both with the ‘to’ meaning. (I didn’t know the song. ;-))

55. Valentine @51: “Rhode Island is on the Atlantic, not in it. In spite of its name, Rhode Island is not an island.”

    Indeed so, and I thought of intervening to make this point earlier, but I deemed it better to leave it to you as the contributor best placed geographically to do so authoritatively.

    [Meanwhile, I am pleased to see you resurfacing after Henri was seen heading straight up the Connecticut valley after landfall in RI. I hope you did not suffer too much damage.]

56. Grazie, Eileen@45. Ai dato degli buoni esempie.

57. Roz @50. That must be really obscure electrician-speak! I can’t find anything online by Googling “main lead”, even on DIY forums, only references to actors and parts, or ring mains and the leads you plug in. So it’s hard to believe that your version could have been what Pan was thinking of when writing the clue, but stranger things have happened. 🙂

58. Blah @11
    In Hindi/Urdu WALLY would be the female equivalent of a WALLAH, so CHUCKWALLY would make sense too 🙂
    It’s actually VALA and VALI, but the anglicized version uses a W in place of a V. Incidentally, there’s no distinction between V and W in Indian languages, which is why people from the subcontinent tend use these interchangeably (Wery Vell) – I’m sometimes guilty of it myself!

59. MarkN @46 – A dictionary that includes two variants as headwords is not helpful if you’re looking for the “correct” spelling. If an article in the Guardian mentioned tequila then later in the same article referred to tequilla, it would be considered an error. Likewise if you saw organise and organize in the same article – both “valid” spellings, but we tend to prefer consistency, and variety in spellings is generally seen as a sign of sloppiness.

    As noted in my comment on Nutmeg’s puzzle the other day, Chambers aims to be comprehensive, and include as many spelling variants as possible, often based on flimsy evidence (someone used that spelling once in 1746? Fine, shove it in) – and this is precisely why it is the favoured dictionary of crossword setters, but not the favoured dictionary of those compiling style guides.

    Robi @36 – Pan could have given himself more options by having a different word instead of BURN at 2d – not having a U as the crossing letter gives a few more appealing alternatives (eg MEA CULPA). Something other than SLEDGE at 3d would open up the possibilities even further, and both those slots would still be relatively easy to fill with different crossing letters. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell Pan how to do his job – he’s much better at this than me!

    All that said, I didn’t actually have a problem with TEQUILLA anyway – it was very gettable. Hesitated for a brief moment before writing it in, but assumed it had to be the right answer and quickly moved on to the next clue.

60. sh @57 I would certainly use the term when re-wiring and I have checked Chambers , it is a bit technical but surprisingly they have it correct.
    MAIN – a principal conductor in a branching system distributing electricity.
    LEAD – a main conductor in electrical distribution.

61. [Spooner’s catflap@55 and others if interested — thanksfor your concern. I’m impressed that you know of the Connecticut Valley (valley of the Connecticut River, for those who don’t). We got off pretty easily yesterday. Rhode Isand got it worse as far as wind goes, and we got more rain. It rained hard yesterday and blew hard too, but we had far fewer trees down and powers out than we expected. It’s raining again now here inland in Hartford as Henri passes (has passed? will pass?) by — no, it’s stopped again. It’ll probably be on and off all day. ]

62. Roz @60. Thanks for that. So Chambers seems to have got something right at last! Maybe Pan is an electrician when not writing crosswords.

63. [I had never realised that Rhode Island isn’t an island – I think I confused it with the nearby Martha’s Vineyard. Anyone know why it’s called “island”?]

64. I was surprised with Chambers on this. It is a bit confusing as it is not a main(s) lead. It is a 30A ( or 40 ) MAIN or a 30A LEAD .

65. Am I overreaching to see a colonizer theme (Brit colony of RHODESIA, wallah and MANDARIN taken into English via colonial ties, the rulers of ARAGON sponsored Columbus, EDEN was PM when Egypt ejected British occupying forces…)

    Either way, this was a steady solve for me, with some new words that I was able to guess with crossers (the variant-spirit-spelling-not-to-be-named, LEES). I appreciated Pan’s clean and natural surfaces. Favorite clues were DEADLOCK, HEATSTROKE, ANTLER, and RAMSHACKLE.

    Thanks Pan and manehi!

66. Loren ipsum @65 – well, it’s a THEORY. And STURGEON, of COURSE (from the land of BURNs and WALLAce) – LEADing the CHARGE against the colonial OVERlords. 😉

67. widdersbel @59

    Some time ago, I was tipped the wink that Pan is a female setter – never confirmed, so neither was whether s/he was an electrician. S/he’s good, anyway!

    For my twopenn’orth, manehi’s blog is spot on (and I know we were all taught that it’s graphite, not lead.)

68. Just last November the citizens of RI voted to change its name from “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” to just Rhode Island. The Providence Plantations part probably covers more of the actual territory of the state but one might understand why the Plantations part was deemed unsuitable. So the state of RI contains many islands but is not, of and itself, an island.

69. Eileen @67. I had a vague recall of that and tried – I hope successfully – to make my discussion of ‘main’/LEAD/electrician gender neutral. 🙂

70. sheffield hatter @69

    Yes, of course you did – but, for me at least, it’s all so irrelevant, anyway. 😉

71. Thanks, Eileen, and apologies to Pan!

72. [Jay in Pittsburgh@58: In my youth, I used to read Dickens and find his comic Cockneys’ accents (wery for very) ridiculous – I knew nobody who talked like that. I don’t know when the native London version of that accent died out, but our new Londoners from the Indian subcontinent have brought it back.]

73. widdersbel @71

    How could you know? – as I said, it was just a whisper and has never been confirmed. 😉

74. Another fascinating day of comments. Spelling variants, Scottish nobility, electrical wiring, cases in grammar in various languages, colonialism, gender politics, und zu weiter…

    JIP@ 58 I certainly can’t claim my thinking it was chuckwally was due to my knowledge of Urdu or Hindi which apart from knowing a few profanities is zero, but I did enjoy your comment- dare I say “wery vitty”.

    Roz and SH@ various, main and lead are correct as Roz has stated but as they are easily confused lead is rarely used outside textbooks. The cable (I use this term to avoid ambiguity) between an electric meter and a CU (consumer unit or in old money fuse box) is a tail. Cables from the CU to sockets are either a main or a ring main. Cables from the the CU to an isolator (such as for an oven or water heater) are feeds, the cables from isolators to appliances are called loads. There may well be other nomenclature regularly used outside the UK that I’m not aware of.

    Various and Eileen,

    My favourite case was always the ablative, in particular the ablative absolute. “Urbe capta Aeneas fugit” springs to mind.

75. I took main part to refer to the lead in a play

76. Hi Blah @ 74

    Since school days, I’ve always loved the absolute absolute, too, and have used it here, more than once, to justify some tricky bits of wordplay.

77. cgp @75. Indeed. This seems the logical interpretation of the clue. Roz has produced a good argument and evidence for her take on this clue, but as I said @41 the only justification I can see for the question mark at the end is that ‘part’ is doing double duty (since ‘of pencil’ clearly doesn’t work). So the ‘main part’ in a play or film, as you say, is the LEAD, and ‘part of pencil’ is also LEAD. The discussion of electrical circuits has been INFORMative and diverting but ultimately not relevant to the clue.

78. essex boy @66 thanks for the riff on my “unsatisfactory hypothesis” 😉

79. I also took main part = lead in its theatrical sense.

80. widdersbel @59: “A dictionary that includes two variants as headwords is not helpful if you’re looking for the “correct” spelling.”

    So Chambers is “not helpful”. Oooookay. Perhaps there is no one correct spelling, then? I mean I would always spell it with one L myself, but I’ll trust the dictionary over my own knowledge.

    I mean, which is correct for the hot pepper – chili, chilli, or chile? Lychee has been clued as most of these as far as I’m aware: leechee, lichi, litchee, litchi, lichee, and also of course lychee. And no-one complained as far as I recall. There are loads of other examples. Actually the dictionary would be a lot slimmer if it weren’t for misspellings that got adopted. Once they’re adopted they’re no longer misspellings. They’re spellings. Complaining about one out of probably thousands smacks of word-snobbery.

81. muffin@53 It had never occurred to me — duhhhh — that some people might think that Rhode Island actually is one, just because that’s its name. But of course.

    Rhode Island is the smallest state, and it’s bisected by Narragansett Bay, which has alsmost as much area as the land part of the state does. In the bay are various islands, and I seem to recall (though I can’t find any history for it now) that the orignial settlement for the colony of Rhode Island was on one of them. Then it expanded to what land was available (not much) between Massachusetts and Connecticut.

    As to some real islands, I heard a joke one day about old colonial times when some bigwig who owned a lot of colonial real estate wanted to leave some of it to his three daughters. The eldest, Martha, chose the big island close to shore and named it Martha’s Vineyard. The second chose the group of islands just off Cape Cod, and they became the Elizabeth Islands. After that, there was only one island left, so Nantucket.

82. Thanks Valentine

83. A bit shocked at the vehemence against TEQUILLA. Never touching the stuff, I just that that was the spelling. Also when it was called RHODESIA, it wasn’t a single British run territory – it was called that after the white colonists declared independence. The British colonies were Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia as part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

84. Some new words. Unexpected electricity involvement for some above…?
    Thanks both

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