Guardian Cryptic 28,540 by Pasquale

71 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,540 by Pasquale”

1. Thanks PeterO – I needed a couple of explanations. I found there were some very easy answers initially (SHABBY, for example), but I had to return for a second session to complete it. In my haste, accidentally revealed TUSSORE when I thought it was TROUSER, but I wouldn’t have got it as I have never heard of TUSSORE.

   The Scotch egg rule no longer applies: we can drink indoors without a substantial meal, now.

   I did wonder about moss, too.

   Thanks, also, Pasquale for a decent challenge.

2. Yes, a peasant little potter from the Don, nothing too taxing. The scotch egg question is familiar, can’t remember from where. Mopiness was loi, though not from botanical hesitancy, just my dimness. Tussore and chelate rang bells only after solving. All good, ta P and P.

3. I suppose that after two excellent puzzles it was too much to ask for a third – and the actual result was this – a mish-mash of hackneyed clues and write-ins.
   Ah well, I suppose real life is not just a continuous BOWL OF CHERRIES …..

4. Enjoyable puzzle. Liked SPOONER.

   New words for me: TUSSORE, CHELATE, SIMOON.

   Unusual to see RAY appear in both 4d and 13ac.

   Thanks, both.

5. [Covid aside, as a colony, we’ve inherited some of the ‘no drink without food’ legalisms; e.g. at cafe/restaurants you can get just a coffee but not just a drink]

6. Relatively light entertainment after Brendan and Picaroon but nonetheless satisfying — I liked the simplicity of FLAN, the anagram for SUBSTANTIAL MEAL, and the surface for COLOURED. Other favourites included MOPINESS and PRESS AGENT. Thanks Pasquale, and PeterO for the detailed blog, especially regarding moss and a substantial meal.

7. Although I finished this quite readily – just 1 1/2 passes – there were a couple of clues where I went back to check dictionary definitions (but not about moss). My first thoughts on seeing “spoon”= “make love” was that that was equating snuggling in a certain configuration to having sex, which may be close but no cigar, so to speak. However, some foraging uncovered that both can have the meaning of showing physical affection, so all is well there.

   As for chelates, my recollection from A-level chemistry centuries ago was that they are not exactly compounds because of some funny bonding involved; in checking, some sources avoid the word and call them complexes, but some say compounds. So I was right, in a way, but so was the setter!

8. Could a BOWL OF CHERRIES be considered a SUBSTANTIAL MEAL as well? Along with LAPS UP and FLAN, there is almost a foodish theme here.
   Good fun though.
   Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

9. Two NHO words crossing (SIMOON and TUSSORE – which appears on Wikipedia as the fourth of seven alternative spellings of “tussar”) held me up a little while. I could work out both, but I needed a search to check. Thanks for the explanation of the seemingly redundant ‘present here’ in 23a, PeterO, and the explanation of the (dubious) moss and the Scotch Egg – something I have never been able to bring myself to sample in a Pommy pub. Thanks also to Pasquale for the enjoyable outing.

10. Bizzarely, I anticipated 8D in a light-hearted comment I made late on Tuesday’s thread, after another contributor had suggested the possibility of a Paul Simon themed puzzle. Here is my comment, which provides a link which will explain more fully the ludicrous matter of the Scotch Egg:

    [Buddy @77: a Paul Simon themed crossword? I’ll chip in with a clue – ‘What you can call a Scotch Egg, Tories claim (4)’ (Sorry, non-British participants, this is something of a political in-joke. This will explain.)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/06/making-a-meal-out-of-it-scotch-egg-sales-soar-in-tier-2 ]

11. That was fun. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

12. Very gentle for a Thursday, held myself up putting doctored in for coloured although why a doctor would be an officer did jar at the time.

    Also didn’t get why ‘present here’ but that makes perfect sense now.

    Mystogre @8 there’s also pesto and I suppose a spooner could be one using a spoon to eat with?

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

13. I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the answers contain pairs of the same letters together, and can’t quite decide if there’s some sort of theme going on (au pairs?), or whether I’m looking too hard for something that isn’t really there. Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.

14. Yes this was a bit of a DODDLE but there were a few potential pop tribute acts to spice things up; Paul SIMOON, Lou Red, SHABBY Ranks
    And coincidentally, MADONNA had a hit with RAY of Light

15. Tree choked by parasitic plant ?

    Perhaps this is over elaborate wordplay in so much as Moss suffocates Pine in the word Mo-pine-ss. So Moss lives around/on the Pine..

16. Re MOSS – Chambers does say that “In literary but not scientific use” parasite can be extended to epiphyte

17. I thought it was spelt SIMOOM, but doubtless the other one exists, and the clue is unambiguous. Agree that moss is not a parasite.

    Re the meaning of SPOON, here’s today’s earworm.

18. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
    LOI MOPINESS – sorry, bodycheetah, another example of Chambers just being wrong; moss gets nothing from the tree it’s growing on other than support, so it isn’t parasitic. I also thought “river” was doing double duty 23a, and don’t understand how “present here” gets round this.
    “Pencil” for RAY in 4d was so loose that I checked my answer. I also thought “half-term” for PERiod was unfair, though I did work it out.
    On the other hand, I loved the extended definition for RHETORIC!

19. There was an Independent puzzle over the Summer containing the nina A Substantial Meal Is A Scotch Egg which may have rung a bell with those of us who have a foot in that camp.

    Several unfamiliar words but either they were gettable from the clue or I was lucky. I share a couple of reactions with muffin @18: RAY for pencil seems rather tenuous but RHETORIC is delightfully clued. Is Kate MOSS parasitic?

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

20. The Scotch egg reference is from the ‘Minister for Silly dancing’ , (Ministry two-step perhaps) Michael Gove, who could not decide whether it was substantial enough to be considered a meal during lockdown regs. ???

21. Thanks PeterO for pointing out the correct parsing of COLOURED, after making the same initial mistake as blah@12 I then decided that COLOUR just meant officer (connected to regimental colours maybe). I also couldn’t see where the P of PERUSED came from, having decided that ER was half of tERm.
    Agree with general tone of comments and was happy to get a couple of the lesser known words from clear clueing but needed google to confirm those two non-standard spellings of obscure words that crossed.
    Some days you want a seven course tasting menu, some days a nicely cooked omelette hits the spot, and I enjoyed this: like muffin I though RHETORIC stood out, thanks Pasquale.

22. gladys @17. My earworm today jumped into my head after the bowl of cherries, which doesn’t really fit the times we’re living in. I must say I prefer The Small Faces’ sentiments: “Life is just a bowl of All-Bran. You wake up every morning and it’s there. So live as only you can. It’s all about, enjoy it, ‘cos ever since you saw it, There ain’t no one can take it away.”

23. Well that was much better for me today. Only got about half of Brendan’s puzzle and a bit more of Picaroon’s (even with aids) – but still enjoyed seeing the answers to the latter.

    Managed to finish today albeit with use of aids and enjoyed it – favourites mostly mentioned – but also RUN TO EARTH.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

24. A very entertaining if not too challenging puzzle. As soon as I saw the Scotch egg and the enumeration in 8d I thought of SUBSTANTIAL MEAL, maybe helped by your clue the other day, Spooner’s catflap @10.

    And speaking of Spooner, we did of course have Crucible’s fake spoonerism a week ago. 3d today isn’t quite the same thing but it was a nice variant to see SPOONER as the answer rather than part of the clue. (Yes Dr. WhatsOn @7, I think we have to take “make love” in its slightly older sense of canoodle.)

    muffin @18: bodycheetah’s quote @16 from Chambers is not “another example of Chambers just being wrong”. The SOED includes for parasite: “Also extended to animals or plants that live as tenants of others, but not at their expense”. So 5a was fine.

    Many thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

25. Thanks Pasquale & PeterO. You know what you’re getting from Pasquale, don’t you? Some unfamiliar/obscure words but all very fairly clued and gettable – SIMOON and TUSSORE are new to me, while ASSESSEE and PORTRAYER are strange (and IMO ugly) forms derived from more common words. The only thing I still don’t really understand, despite PeterO’s explanation, is “present here” in 23ac – that was my LOI, largely because I couldn’t make sense of the clue.

    Enjoyed SUBSTANTIAL MEAL, CHELATE, RHETORIC among others.

    The distinction between parasites and epiphytes is lost on me, so I had no hesitation when filling in 5ac. Likewise, whether or not a CHELATE is a “compound” is not a nicety that has ever troubled me. This may be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing! On the other hand, I might quibble about “zany” being a synonym for QUAINT, but no doubt “it’s in Chambers” so I won’t lose any sleep over that.

26. Yes, relatively gentle after two tough days. Thanks to setter and blogger for clearing up one or two.

27. A medium-rare puzzle for me today; slightly longer than a ‘typical’ Monday but not too much so with a couple of DNKs and some help needed.

    [gif @5: On a Sunday afternoon many years ago, a group of ten of us tackled Ben Cruachan and Stop Diamh, Munro-ing in thick cloud and tramping down in driving rain (yes, it was July in Scotland). We found a small pub and were desperate for a beer but were told ‘No – you can only buy alcohol with food.’ One scone and 28 pints later we were happy and dry…]

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO for the fun!

28. [MB @27: just for the record, it’s September in Scotland and I’m here at the foot of Ben Sgritheall where it has been Agean seas and skies for a week with temperatures in the balmy low twenties!]

29. Widdersbel @25 muffin@18 and maybe others I missed. I’m in the ‘present here’ query camp. Does this mean you could add ‘present here’ to any clue with a double duty element? I still feel im missing something.

    But apart from this I enjoyed today’s puzzle so thanks to Pasquale and PeterO. I felt I was on Pasquales wavelength and things clicked into place nicely.

30. CanberraGirl @29 – I could add that “present here” is a tautology, but it gets me no closer to understanding the clue.

31. Pleasant solve but nothing tricky. I noticed the large amount of double lettering as did Niltac @ 12, and surely it is deliberate. Agree with others that RHETORIC was the pick of the bunch.

    [MB @27: your 28 pints give a whole new interpretation of dry 🙂 ]

32. Michelle@4…yes, I thought having CHELATE, TUSSORE and SIMOON all in the same quadrant a bit mean, but these lesser known words were entirely gettable from their cluing. Thought ASSESSEE and ARRESTED were rather too samey in their construction, too. But the two long down clues helped greatly, and this all slipped in quickly and smoothly. 13 ac and 4d both have RAY appearing, as has already been mentioned. Today is obviously his day in the limelight…

33. [MB @27, yes, and the opening hours were another temperance-related rule, trying to get Himself, and some of His wages, home to the missus and kids, resulting in “the six o’clock swill”]

    [Remembered the faint bell rung by chelate; it was via iron chelate, which a gardening mate said to put on our citrus trees, whose leaves at the time were yellowing]

34. Much more straightforward than the usual Pasquale, I thought, despite TUSSORE being unfamiliar (but I expect one or two unknowns in a Don puzzle).

    I don’t object to the ‘present here’ device, although it’s uncharacteristically left field for this usually very precise setter. However, no amount of sophistry, or entries in respectable dictionaries, will make me accept ‘moss’ as a parasite.

    Thanks to S&B

35. Very much a game of two halves for me today; blithely entered the write-ins and thought I was doing well until the SW and NE corners brought me up short. SIMOON and TUSSORE rang distant bells audibly enough to be confident entries but I was technically defeated by the nho CHELATE, the second half of which I only arrived at after an extended bout of guess and check. Nevertheless an enjoyable solve, so thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

36. It took me far too long to recall the correct phrase even after seeing ” a bowl of …” with the h in place, and I needed it before I could complete the bottom left.
    When dealing with unknown words I tend to first construct something pronouncible and then apply “does it look look like a word”. The latter bit is more flexible when it is clearly a name for something, so I found Simoon easier than chelate or tussore, neither of which I thought plausible and had to resort to google to be sure. With the crossers in place, there weren’t many other possibilities.

37. [AlanC @31: ‘dry’ – you don’t know me, do you?!

    PostMark @28: Ben Sgritheall was on my list of Munros on that holiday but was swapped for Ben More. These days the 28 pints have taken far too much of a toll on me to go back to Munro-ing and yes, I remember a particular jaunt across Kerrera in August sweltering in 27C. Lucky you being up there – enjoy!]

38. CHELATE and TUSSORE were fine as those I know, one from a Chemistry degree, the other from dressmaking. It was SIMOON that I had to look up, which when I looked up winds in my Crossword dictionary was spelt SIMOOM, so I shrugged and built the version required. I liked the SUBSTANTIAL MEAL, especially when said chain of pubs is in the news as lacking beer, after having had ways paved for them for far too long.

    The other thing I looked up was MOSS, which the RHS site says is non-parasitic, rather as I thought from biology A level, unlike mistletoe.

39. LordJim @24
    If the organisms are living with other organisms “but not at their expense”, they are, by definition, not parasites. I can’t imagine how the SOED could think otherwise.

40. muffin @39 – dictionaries don’t prescribe meaning, they describe usage.

41. widdersbel @40
    You could lots of instances of whales being referred to as fish, but that doesn’t make them correct!

42. ..find..

43. Muffin @40, this is precisely why I said earlier that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing – it just ends up spoiling your enjoyment of the crossword!

    In my ignorance, I was happy to take 5ac at face value. But I might not be so forgiving of WHALE being clued as “fish”. Such a hypocrite, I know.

44. 🙂

45. I don’t know why so many commenters feel it necessary to criticise the setter over the ‘parasitic’ element of the clue at 5a when it has been more than adequately dealt with by PeterO in his very thorough blog. Likewise ‘present here’, which I spotted for myself and saw my interpretation confirmed by our blogger. Why does everyone (including now me!) have to get their two pennorth in? (Notice how many of the words in this paragraph have doubled letters? 😉 )

    I thought this was at the easier end of the spectrum for Pasquale, and wrote in CHELATE from the wordplay without checking whether or not it was a compound – never heard of it in fact, but what else could it have been?

46. SH @45
    Your reading of PeterO’s comment on “parasite” differs from mine!

47. Almost a DODDLE, not quite a J(AUNT). I was held up by SIMOON for far too long though.

    Agree with all quibbles re moss described as a parasite, but didn’t prevent the obvious answer.

    I too am intrigued by the plethora of double letters in the answers. It cannot be coincidence, but I cannot see where they lead.

    Anyway thanks to Pasquale and to PeterO

48. I’m surprised that no-one has commented on ‘tongue-tied’ for SPOONER . From what I’ve read Spooner was nervous or had a nervous tic, but I don’t know if that was any more accurate than ‘tongue-tied’. I’ve also read that his reputation for ‘Spoonerisms’ was a bit overblown.

    Spoonerisms are not about the tongue, but the brain. In the transposition of consonants they demonstrate internalization of linguistic rules, similar to other ‘errors’ in first and second language acquisition.

    [I spoonerise when I’m tired, like putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard. My dad did a beauty. He put the alarm clock on front door step and the milk bottles beside the bed. My husband spoonerises for comic effect. He’s really good at it, and not a trained linguist like me, or a cryptocruciverbalist, but he’s now giving cryptics a go. A couple of days ago I said I need to work ‘smarster and farter’. The first is nonsense but the consonants were consistent in that they were in the same, in this case, medial position.]

    The real ‘tongue-tied’ is ankyloglossia, where there is a physical restriction of the movement of the tongue.

    [Thank you for your indulgence. TMI?]

49. paddymelon @48. Thanks for the delightful examples of mental mix ups. I’ve done things like that, and I’m sure others would own up to similar, but putting the alarm clock on the front doorstep is classic.

    I think the use of ‘tongue-tied’ in the glue is justifiable if we look at the Spoonerism (whether overblown or not) as an example of a mental rather than physical impediment to saying what you mean in an intelligible way.

50. *glue*?

    Now who’s got a speech impediment. 🙂

51. muffin, just out of interest I looked up “fish” in the SOED, and the first definition is:
    In pop. language, any animal living exclusively in the water, including cetaceans, crustaceans, molluscs etc.
    It gives the following quote from Goldsmith:
    The whale, the limpet, the tortoise and the oyster… as men have been willing to give them all the name of fishes, it is wisest for us to conform.

52. Lord Jim @51
    They might as well be. After all, there’s no such thing as a “fish“!

53. [ sheffield hatter @ 49 and 50. Yes, my dad only ‘woke up’ when he couldn’t hear the clock ticking and reached down and felt the milk bottles. Those were the days when clocks ticked and milk was delivered miraculously while you slept.

    I liked the slip of the finger on the keys at ‘glue’. Very funny.]

54. muffin @46. “Your reading of PeterO’s comment on “parasite” differs from mine!”

    This is what PeterO wrote: “I suspect that he was led astray by Chambers in 5A MOPINESS. (…) as a layman, the description ‘parasitic plant’ seems to me wide of the mark. Even though many mosses grow on trees, they are epiphytic, not parasitic.”

    You said @18 “moss gets nothing from the tree it’s growing on other than support, so it isn’t parasitic.” And @39 “organisms (that) are living with other organisms “but not at their expense”, (…) are, by definition, not parasites.”

    I said @45 that this clue “has been more than adequately dealt with by PeterO”. So how is my reading of the blogger’s handling of this clue different from yours?

55. [paddymelon @53. Yes, I laughed at my own slip, but was it a mental slip or a physical one?]

56. Thanks for the blog, a lot of neat clues here. SUBSTANTIAL MEAL is very apt.
    I did like SIMOON, nice to learn a new word and the clue is clear, a classic example of obscure word ( to me anyway ) with simple , precise wordplay.

    I think whales are called fish in Moby Dick but I am not reading it all again. Over to you Lord Jim and Spooner’s Catflap.

57. The description of whales as fish long precedes Moby-Dick: here is the Book of Jonah from the King James Bible:

    1:17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
    2:1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly, 2:2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

    The first sentence of this is in fact quoted in the prefatory ‘Extracts’ provided by Melville in his persona as ‘a Sub-Sub-Librarian’, along with various other instances of whales identified as fish, and this text provides the starting-point for the sermon delivered in Chapter 9. Of course, the Pequod is a ship engaged in the whale-FISHery and yes, the whale is referred to as a fish in many places in the novel. There is of course no taxonomical confusion in this – ‘fish’ is just a general term for creatures that swim in the sea.

58. Very enjoyable puzzle – I learned at least three new words: TUSSORE, CHELATE & SIMOON. Like others here I could work them out but needed Dr. Google to verify!
    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

59. Thank you SC@57, I appreciate the effort and the enlightenment.

60. [You are welcome, Roz. When you have read and taught as many books as I have, the effort is for the most part just checking, at my age, that I am not misremembering. Along with solving the crossword every day, it serves to reassure me that my marbles are still in my possession.]]

61. A bit late today. Not a DODDLE but very much 2d and a 8d.
    Good to see Spooner promoted – are there any other clues for which he is the solution?
    Thanks to Pasquale & PeterO.

62. A bit sloppy of the Don to have two RAYs, and intersecting at that. Also two uses of the subtraction device. I’ve given up wondering why the editor doesn’t look over these things. An easier offering from the setter than usual.

63. Apolgies for the non-parasite — not sure where I got that error from. An ignorant unchecked assumption maybe

64. A rather small mistake in a very sound crossword, I would settle for that every single day.

65. Whilst we have your attention, Pasquale, may I thank you for including my full name as solutions in one of your offerings earlier this year.

66. Thanks, Pasquale @63. I was just a little irritated at some posters trying to justify an obvious (if forgiveable) error.
    I will forgive a lot for “Bombast from silly tories” 🙂

67. …silly rich Tories!

68. [My favourite figure of rhetoric – “argumentum ad baculum” – threatening someone with a big stick until they agree with you!]

69. [ Life is like A BOWL OF CHERRIES: dark and hard at the core! ]

70. Thanks, PeterO, for the parsing of the PER in PERUSED, which eluded me, and thanks, Pasquale, for an enjoyable brain work-out.

71. My hubby has a genetic disorder where his body retains iron. Chelate can be used to try to reduce this

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