Guardian Cryptic 28,552 by Crucible

by

A fun challenge – I especially liked 15dn, and other favourites were 10ac, 13ac, and 20dn. Thanks to Crucible.

(…there is an obvious theme of music)

ACROSS
1 HARPIST
Plucky player has time to take in a measure of inflation (7)

HAS + T (time), taking in RPI (Retail Price Index – it can be used to calculate inflation)
5 CONCERT
Show £1 note in court (7)

ONCER is slang for a "£1 note", inside CT (court)
10 GALA
Arthur’s most perfect supporter had left party (4)

GALA-had [wiki] is described as the most perfect knight of King Arthur's Round Table; with "had" removed
11 HOOTENANNY
Scream at English nurse: ‘Listen to folk here!’ (10)

definition: a party where folk music can be heard

HOOT="Scream" + E (English) + NANNY="nurse"
12 RENOIR
Popular place to wed Irish artist (6)

RENO is a US city and a "Popular place to wed", plus IR (Irish)
13 ACOUSTIC
A cricket club about to expel individual based on hearing (8)

A + CC (cricket club) around OUST="expel" + I="individual"
14 BRILLIANT
Fish worker hauls in one diamond (9)

definition: 'brilliant' as a noun can mean a brilliant-cut diamond

BRILL="Fish" + ANT="worker", around I="one"
16 SCORE
Aching to retain a hundred notes (5)

definition: as in musical notes / musical score

SORE="Aching", around C (a hundred in Roman numerals)
17 STING
Good eggs repelled cheat (5)

definition: 'sting' as a noun can mean a deception, or as a verb can mean to cheat

G (Good) + NITS="eggs"; all reversed/repelled
19 ATONALITY
A heavyweight boxer, extremely tidy, ignoring normal scales (9)

A + TON="heavy weight" + Muhammad ALI="boxer" + the extreme outer letters of T-id-Y
23 HABANERA
Greek goddess inspires a bar dance (8)

HERA="Greek goddess", around A + BAN="bar" as a verb
24 INTACT
Complete one part of play about books (6)

I="one" + ACT="part of play"; both around NT (New Testament, "books")
26 PADEREWSKI
Pianist father and daughter were backing runner (10)

definition: a Polish pianist [wiki]

PA="father" + D (daughter) + WERE reversed/"backing" + SKI="runner"
27 TBAR
Lift to be arranged at end of dinner (1-3)

definition: a type of ski lift

TBA (to be arranged) + end letter of dinne-R
28 BARRIER
Advocate getting shot of street obstacle (7)

BARRI-st-ER="Advocate", minus ST (street)
29 LYRICAL
Musical theatre, at least initially (7)

the LYRIC theatre in London + initials of A-t L-east
DOWN
2 AMATEUR
A couple regularly query lay (7)

A + MATE="couple" as a verb + regular letters from q-U-e-R-y
3 PIANO
Spiritual number brings in a grand, perhaps (5)

PI (pious, "Spiritual") + NO (number); both around "A"
4 SCHERZI
On radio, avoids current lively pieces (7)

homophone/"On radio" of 'skirts'="avoids"; plus I=symbol for electrical "current"
6 OCELOT
Spotted cat circle church group (6)

O="circle" + CE (Church of England) + LOT="group"
7 CLASSICAL
Highbrow Charlie Girl I visit briefly (9)

C (Charlie, phonetic alphabet) + LASS="Girl" + I + CAL-[L]="visit briefly"
8 RUNNIER
Athlete swallows one more fluid (7)

RUNNER="Athlete" around I="one"
9 JOHANN STRAUSS
Ladies and gents engage a new supporter to defend a barman (6,7)

definition: as in bars of music

JOHNS=toilets, "Ladies and gents", around A + N (new); plus TRUSS="supporter" around "A"
15 LEND AN EAR
Attend new Hamlet, say, hosted by another mad royal (4,2,3)

N (new) + DANE="Hamlet, say"; all inside King LEAR="another mad royal"
18 TRA-LA-LA
Refrain from painting over articles in Paris (3-2-2)

ART="painting" reversed/"over", plus LA and LA: definite articles in French / in Paris
20 NOISILY
Top seed unwise to sacrifice length with racket (7)

NO I=Number 1="Top Seed" + SILLY="unwise" minus one L (length)
21 TOCCATA
Piece played staccato with no introduction (7)

anagram/"played" of ([s]taccato)*, without the first letter/"introduction"
22 SERENE
Home Counties guy across the Channel composed (6)

SE (the South East, "Home Counties") + RENE=René=French name="guy across the Channel"
25 TUTTI
Bar last pair, voicing pique all at once (5)

definition: musical instruction to play/sing all together

TUTTI-NG="voicing pique", minus the "last pair" of letters

52 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,552 by Crucible”

  1. thanks manehi for the clear blog! in particular clearing up RPI in harpist (I had landed on harpist incorrectly myself by thinking PSI was involved) and GALA[had] – I didn’t think of King Arthur allusion (had Bea on my brain).

  2. What a satisfying puzzle!

    We’re having a Polish musician week, what with Chopin/Szopen a couple of days ago, and now Paderewski who was a pianist, composer and Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland after WW1.

    Thanks to Crucible and manehi

  5. What a lot of lovely clues. I enjoyed all of them.

    DNK HOOTENANNY or TBAR and I always thought that Reno was a place you went to get divorced rather than married but that’s the great thing about crosswords: you have enormous fun and you get an education too!

    Thanks Crucible and manehi

  6. Thanks, Crucible, for a very elegant themed puzzle. And thanks to manehi. I’d just submit that SCHERZI is more a homophone of ‘scare-tsi’ than of ‘skirts-i’.

  7. Fun crossword, helpful theme. Took me a while to realise SCHERZI was supposed to be a homophone. You don’t hear skirts-o on R3!
    My thanks to Criclible and manehi.

  8. Slow but satisfying with some tricky parsing (I’m looking at you, JOHANN STRAUSS, though it was GALAhad who held out to the very end.) Liked HARPIST, RENOIR, ATONALITY, PADEREWSKI, LEND AN EAR (which gave me trouble until I worked out where the E in Lear needed to be).

    I don’t ski, so T-BAR was new, and I suspect that for many UK solvers HOOTENANNY may be associated more with Jools Holland than folk music. I spent ages wondering why I couldn’t parse MACARENA, until I found out it was HABANERA.

    Thanks Crucible and manehi.

  9. Exactly at Crossbar’s opening statement. Thanks also for the PADEREWSKI thought – I’d forgotten the pianist and PM were the same.

    Enjoyed the oncer part of concert – harks back to yesterday’s Sweeney.

    Not too keen on the homophone in SCHERZI. I would have thought most people would rhyme the 1st syllable with cares but maybe that’s just me.

    Lovely stuff from the firepot this morning, many thanks.

  11. I loved this-like yesterday, sheer entertainment.
    I’m pretty sure there’s no Ocelot concerto and if there was TS would be turning in him grave
    Thanks all

  12. Took me ages to get on Crucible’s wavelength this morning. A masterpiece of misdirection with some very sneaky definitions, lay in 2D and composed in 22D, both hitting the theme beautifully but ultimately not music related at all.

    Was pleased to have dredged Paderewski from the depths of my memory. Fairly sure I’ve only heard of him once before in a crossword long ago.

    Thanks both.

  15. What a delightful puzzle!

    Once again, I shared manehi’s favourites, adding 5ac,CONCERT, 26ac PADEREWKI, 21dn TOCCATA and 22dn SERENE 9for the use of ‘composed’.

    Many thanks to Crucible and manehi.

  16. For 4 down I’ve always thought it was pronounced more like shirts – i. So I spent time trying to justify “shirks” as a synonym for avoids.

  17. Eileen @15: I also liked SERENE but couldn’t bring myself to tick it as words like “severe” and “Everest” etc in crosswords only ever yield unhelpful crossing Es!

  18. Toughest of the week for me. DNF thanks to 10ac, 23ac and 22dn but thanks to manehi I now see what eluded me and and have been cursing my stupidity!! What made this fun was all the misdirection as mentioned by others. (And I thought Scherzi was a judge on X Factor!)

  19. A lovely puzzle. LEND AN EAR was great with the two mad Shakespearian royals. And I liked the various incidental musical references within the clues – “lay” in 2d, “spiritual” 3d, “composed” 22d, “bar” 25d…

    Many thanks Crucible and manehi.

  20. Ha William @9: I had the same re(Minder) as you about ONCER. This was a top quality challenge and too many ticks already covered by others. Strange to see only one anagram, TOCATTA, but I think this emphasises the overall cleverness of the construction.

    Ta Crucuble & manehi

  21. I always think of a £1 note as a oner, so had a bit of trouble parsing CONCERT.

    I found this a bit tricky, especially the pianist, but the clues were fine in retrospect.

    I ticked ACOUSTIC and NOISILY.

    Thanks Crucible and manehi.

  23. Thanks Crucible and manehi
    I found this very difficult. For some time I had only FOI (sorry, some previous posters!) GALA and TOCCATA, and I didn’t like the former as it was straight GK with no wordplay if you didn’t recognise the description of Galahad.
    A mixture of satisfying clues where to answer could be built up (LEND AN EAR and PADEREWSKI for instance), and more annoying ones of “guess and answer, then parse), like 11a and 9d.
    I’d add BRILLIANT to my two favourites mentioned above.

  24. Twigged to the plucky player, but had a bit of trouble parsing, as all I could see was PSI (Pounds per square inch), a measure of inflation.

  25. Same problem as Robi @21: I think of £1 as a oner – though I now recall this coming up in a crossword not so long ago. As did PADEREWSKI – in a Boatman just two months ago – so I was delighted to dredge that one up.

    This was bang on wavelength for me today – a pleasure from start to finish. An eyebrow raised at SCHERZI but not as far as a frown. Like some others above, LEND AN EAR earned biggest ticks for the two kings.

    This is a day I would also commend, to those who have the time, the Independent puzzle by Alchemi.

    Thanks Crucible and manehi

  26. Our experiences are all different – I found this the easiest puzzle by far since Monday. Great fun though – TRA-LA-LA raised a smile and I liked the mad royals and the Polish ex-PM. However the homophone for SCHERZI made this Italophile shudder! (Should this be classified as a ‘homoiophone’? Help, please, classicists).

    Thanks Crucible and manehi

  27. I wondered if 15D, LEND AN EAR, with its reference to Hamlet, was consciously echoing what his father’s ghost says to him in Act I, scene 5:

    “Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
    To what I shall unfold.”

  28. A series of slow movements for me, but I got there in the end. LEND AN EAR was worth the effort. A triple Shakespearian reference with its echoes of Marc Anthony’s speech.

  29. Hard puzzle – solved only three on first pass, with 26ac PADEREWSKI my first in. Theme helped me to guess a few solutions without parsing them immediately.

    I liked: RENOIR, LEND AN EAR, GALA.

    I failed to parse: 28ac.

    New for me: ONCER = a one-pound note.

    Thanks, both.

    Haha, by chance the new UK Foreign Secretary (Liz Truss) makes an appearance in today’s puzzle.

  31. I found this tough, but got there thanks to some googling for the pianist. Also I got held up by entering CABARET for CONCERT: a bar is apparently an early nineteenth century term for £1, which gave me A BAR + E (note) inside CT. Felt quite smug at getting that with no crossers, only to be brought down to earth with a bump later. And the correct answer is much better.

  32. Wonderful crossword! Thank you Crucible, loved the theme which helped in the later trickier clues, and thank you manehi for the parsing especially 9d, my LOI, though I kicked myself when I finally understood it!

  33. Lovely musical invention on display here throughout the grid.
    I liked the ‘composed’ SERENE, the Hamlet/Lear duo and all the bars.
    And it was good to see RENOIR & PADEREWSKI again.
    Thanks Crucible & manehi

  34. [essexboy @30: And here’s me thinking I had coined a useful word, only to find that you had beaten me to it! I must have been offline when you posited it. Anyway, you’ll get the priority citation in the OED 🙂 ]

  35. A delightful puzzle, which I started with JOHANN STRAUSS, which assisted several others. A pianist ending with S?I just had to be PADEREWSKI, and there were many good clues as well as that. SCHERZI didn’t quite work for me. Annoyingly, I left the small NW corner incomplete, mainly because I misread the clue to GALA and never went back to re-read it. I found CONCERT quite tough because, like others who have commented here, I know ‘oner’ but not ‘oncer’.
    Thanks to Crucible and manehi.

  36. A good mental workout which left me wondering, with an abundance of words like SCHERZI, TUTTI, TOCCATA etc ., whether Crucible uses an unusually high number of words ending in A, I, O or U?

    For those of you, like me, who need to get out more the stats are hear 🙂

  38. You often hear CLASSICAL music (or its lovers) described as highbrow or sophisticated, so no problem with the clue, but that usage always strikes me as – well, if not conceited or self-congratulatory – then something less than perfectly appropriate. The intended pronunciation of SCHERZI was certainly not highbrow.

    All that aside, the rest of the puzzle was great fun.

  39. Having worked happily on the CLASSICAL theme, 11ac for my LOI was a bit lowbrow. And yes, scherzo is pronounced SCARE-TSO, not SKIRTS-O.

  40. Didn’t register the theme, though Eileen is right –it’s obvious. I think I’ve heard of the RPI, but didn’t come up with it. Definitely hadn’t heard of CC – Cricket Club.

    I’m probably not the only one who spent too much time trying to make 14a (BRILLIANT) (into a kind of fish or 2d (AMATEUR) into a kind of song. I tried to find “toot” as a homphone of something in TUTTI, but couldn’t, of course, even though I was hoping there was a kind of song called “apairur,”

    I’m with everybody on SCHERZI as “scare-tsy”, rather than “skirtsy.” And let me point out that this entry is in the plural, SCHERZI, not scherzo as some commenters have put it.

    Thank you Crucible and manehi. It was fun.

  42. Thanks for the blog , super puzzle, I almost got misled by the supporter in 9D with a bra for Brahms and the wrong enumeration.
    PADEREWSKI is classic setting, obscure name for me but the word play is so clear and precise making it solvable, could almost be Azed.

  43. [Roz check out Eccles from yesterday’s Independent, several obscure (to me at least) words very clearly clued similarly to paderewski today.]

  44. Thank you Blah but I completely boycott the Independent, I would never buy it or even take someone’s donated crossword from their paper, I do that with the FT.

  45. Delightful puzzle, a nice level of difficulty but helped greatly by the obvious theme (HARPIST and PIANO were my FOIs).

    Lots of wonderful clueing but my faves were CLASSICAL, PADEREWSKI, and JOHANN STRAUSS

    re the owner/oncer debate, I’ve only ever heard or used oner so I spent too long reading the clue as requiring the note C to be inserted in ONER inside CT! It only requires double work from “in”!!!

    Thanks to Crucible and manehi

  46. That was slow going as anagrams are where I get my toehold in many crosswords. I did get there in the end after using a word finder for several, including PADEREWSKI, a pianist unknown to me. I did know STING, not exactly a classical artist but I did see him in Threepenny Opera once. My favourite was ATONALITY. Thanks manehi for the blog — I couldn’t parse GALA or ACOUSTIC. Thanks Crucible.

  48. Nice puzzle: thanks to setter, and to blogger for sorting out JOHANN STRAUSS for me. I saw the johns but missed the truss. Missing the john could be worse, I suppose. Anyway, a fun solve today.

  49. Thanks both. This was like watching dominoes fall in slow motion – very satisfying and not too fast. It’s a long time since I encountered an OCELOT in a crossword – I remember it being a TILT so many years ago. Then it turned out not to be so very useful as they never (rarely?) occur in conversation.

  50. Last ones for me were CONCERT (logged on here to check how it worked) , HOOTENANNY (new word to me) And JOHANN STRAUSS (I missed the truss and needed to check how that parsed too. As for 4 down I spotted the I for current and thought that SCHERZI fitted the definition and spotted the homophone indicator but it took me ages to work out how Crucible thought the word is pronounced.

Comments are closed.