Guardian 28,567 – Pan

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Almost all very straightforward clueing this morning from Pan: I think this puzzle would have been more suited to the Quiptic slot, but a pleasant, if brief, diversion nonetheless. Thanks to Pan.

 
Across
7 CUP HOOK Chef covering up hot item used for kitchen storage (3,4)
UP H[ot] in COOK
8 DOWAGER Party attended by composer leaving new widow (7)
DO + WAGNER less N
9 MALI Country involved in formal investigation (4)
Hidden in forMAL Investigation
10 BUCHAREST Schubert composition about a European capital (9)
A in SCHUBERT*
12 ROMAN POLANSKI Film-maker in scruffy anorak limps on (5,8)
(ANORAK LIMPS ON)*
13 RESTRAIN Check design of trainers (8)
TRAINERS*
15 GLEN Eagle never crossing valley (4)
Hidden in eaGLE Never
16 ICENI Country losing territory on North Island to old Britons (5)
ICELAND (country) less LAND (territory) + N I
17 TIER One attempting to lose runs level (4)
TRIER less (one) R
18 TYPECAST Strangely tasty cep seen as belonging to the same sort (8)
(TASTY CEP)*
20 CLASS Set of clubs given to girl (5)
C + LASS
21 BILLIARDS Game played by poets nursing sick setter (9)
ILL + I (setter) in BARDS
22 HAWK Bird that can cough things up? (4)
Double definition
24 DOSSIER Vagrant stealing first part of investigator’s brief (7)
I[nvestigator] in DOSSER
25 PLASTER Sticky stuff coating large end of rectangular dressing (7)
L in PASTE (sticky stuff) + [rectangula]R
Down
1 PUMA Animal turned up with mother (4)
Reverse of UP + MA
2 CHAIRMAN One who oversees meeting with Chinese pilot (8)
CH + AIRMAN
3 BOBBIN Spool for thread endlessly going up and down (6)
BOBBIN[g]
5 CAREER In a rush to charge queen (6)
CARE (charge, as a noun – “he is in my care/charge”) + ER
6 WEFT End of scarf covered by moist part of cloth (4)
[scar]F in WET
11 CARPENTER Fish go into chippy (9)
CARP + ENTER
12 RELAY Type of race put down again (5)
RE-LAY
14 IDEAS Aides trained to make plans (5)
AIDES*
16 IMAGINES Independent publications losing Azerbaijani leaders’ pictures (8)
I + MAGAZINES less AZ[erbaijani]
17 TEA CHEST Experiment involving long container (3,5)
ACHE (long) in TEST
19 ENLIST Space given to lean recruit (6)
EN (space, in printing) + LIST (to lean over)
20 CASTLE Social 20 across accepting large, grand residence (6)
L in CASTE (social class)
21 BLOW Hit boy below the belt (4)
B[oy] + LOW (below the belt)
23 WREN Bird heard when crossing river (4)
R in WEN (homophone of “when”)

64 comments on “Guardian 28,567 – Pan”

  1. Pan gives us a classic Monday puzzle. The lower half proved slightly more difficult than the top. This is just what I needed to start the week before I go looking for Unleaded! Thanks Andrew and Pan.

  2. Worth it for CARPENTER which was a cut above the rest. And I rather like WREN. I wonder – do they still use TEA CHESTs these days? I remember them as useful storage containers that one regularly encountered in my youth but I haven’t seen one in years.

    Thanks Pan and Andrew

  3. Thanks Pan and Andrew. Not difficult, as you say, but worth the entry fee for 11d alone, which is lovely.

  4. Not difficult, as others have commented, but no pushover either.

    CUP HOOK took longer than it should have due to reading covering up together rather than separately.

    Similarly, in BLOW, below had to be read separately and not as below the belt.

    Many thanks, both, nice week, all.

  6. William, I’m not entirely sure I understand your point about the clue for BLOW where you say that “below had to be read separately and not as below the belt”. I had the same parsing as Andrew. My issue with this clue is the use of b=boy (using “below” in the word-play for “blow” isn’t brilliant but still)

  7. Thanks Pan and Andrew
    I needed your parse of TIER – thanks.
    I was held up by entering ERNE first at 15a. It nearly works – anagram NEVER without the V for valley (“crossing”), but there’s no anagram indicator.
    I too found the bottom harder than the top. DOWAGER was my favourite.

  8. A quick solve which was very enjoyable for its pleasant surfaces and clear clues. Last ones in were the two birds at 22ac and 23d.

    Favoruites: CARPENTER, CUP HOOK, TEA CHEST, BLOW.

    Thanks, both.

  9. A public holiday here in Australia so I would have liked a puzzle that took a bit longer to solve. Despite my cockiness, I was actually a DNF as my LOI was 17a, where I carelessly went for TIES instead of TIER. Thanks for setting me straight, Andrew. I could just see that nasty little man ROMAN POLANSKI (12a,4d) in a scruffy anorak, limping (some kind of Rainman image crossed my mind too), so that ended up being my favourite clue. I also thought it was neat that SCHUBERT could help to make the European capital, BUCHAREST at 10a. The image of the fish entering the chippy to give the solution CARPENTER at 11d was quite quirky and raised a smile. Thanks to Pan and Andrew.

  10. PostMark@2: real wooden TEA CHESTS are antiques these days, and the last time I moved house they used lots and lots of tea chest sized stout cardboard boxes.

  11. CARPENTER is such a good one that you feel somebody will pop up before long to call it a chestnut. But I’m not complaining.

  12. Enjoyed that – SE held me up for a while.

    Favourites were ICENI, BILLIARDS, CARPENTER, TIER

    Thanks Pan and Andrew

  13. [No public holiday here, JiA @9 – nor in WA or Victoria, I gather.] I too found the bottom half held out longer, but no real complaints when the PDMs arrived. CARPENTER was the pick of the bunch, I agree. Thanks, Andrew and Pan.

  14. Carpenter could be a textbook example of a smooth surface. The clue is so straightforward (once you’ve solved it) but so well hidden by the surface.

  17. gladys @10: I recall them being lined with foil and also thin paper and between 2 and 3 foot square. And I’m fairly sure the cardboard boxes are the same size – presumably based on the chests. I’ve just looked it up on the Web and, apparently, some tea is still shipped in them.

    Minor point of interest: tea chests were used, together with a broom handle and a string, as a rudimentary bass by skiffle groups in the 50’s, including the Quarrymen.

  18. Light entertainment. I agree that CARPENTER was the best of the bunch (I’m surprised I haven’t seen that done before) but I also liked the clue for BUCHAREST.

    I’m sure that B for ‘boy’ must be listed in the dictionaries but I don’t know on what occasions it would be used. [I haven’t looked at a copy for many years, but Who’s Who used to list offspring in the form: 1s 2d – which in pre-decimal days rather seemed to overvalue male heirs]

    Thanks to S&B

  19. Thank you Pan for a pleasant start to the week.
    All was going very well until I was held up by having Boff instead of Blow for 21d. I still think this is a better answer, but had to be abandoned when I just couldn’t see anything that might fit my LoI 24a. Thanks to Andrew for the blog

  20. Pleasant start to the week.

    I think we’ve discussed before that B=boy and G=girl are not in the main dictionaries, although they seem to be used on clothes tags.

    I enjoyed the clues for PLASTER, CARPENTER and ROMAN POLANSKI. The Schubert/BUCHAREST idea has been seen before, as in: A Schubert composition is capital by Armonie in the FT.

    Thanks Pan and Andrew.

  21. Gervase @18. B=’boy’ is not listed in my Chambers. Neither is G for girl, for that matter. I wonder if Pan was thinking of genealogy but got mixed up? [I like the pre-decimal currency joke!]

  22. Robi @20: I think we’ve discussed before… – indeed, as recently as yesterday’s Everyman where you managed to find an Old Girl!

  24. Offspinner @ 23

    Hawk meaning to cough up is used when referring to someone coughing up phlegm – it is meant to be a pretty disgusting sound.

  25. Offspinner @23 – an example to add to Fiona Anne’s explanation @24:

    “The band settled on the name Hawkwind after briefly being billed as Hawkwind Zoo, Hawkwind being the nickname of Turner derived from his unappealing habit of clearing his throat (hawking) and excessive flatulence (wind).”

  26. I carelessly wrote ROMAN POLANSKI in ink right across so it rather messed up my grid but I got by. My last two were the birds, neither of which satisfied me. I didn’t know the other meaning for HAWK, and I slightly pronounce the H in WHEN. However, still very pleasing and my favourites have already been mentioned. Thanks Pan and Andrew

  28. When I was a little boy I read and understood the prohibitive messages “HAWKers will be prosecuted” to mean that you got into serious trouble if you were caught hawking and spitting in public. Soon disabused of that idea, when I realised the other meaning of “hawking” goods.
    Anyway, really enjoyed Pan’s smooth surfaces today, the aforementioned CARPENTER and also IMAGINES in particular…

  29. Chambers says that “hawk” in the sense of “To force up (phlegm etc) from the throat is “Prob[ably] imit[ative]”. Tastelessness alert: there was a story in my late mother’s family of two men on a Scottish train:

    Man 1: Where are you going?
    Man 2: I’m going to Hawick [pronounced approx. “hoick”]
    Man 1: Ah, I’m going to Hawick too. [the last two words sounding like someone hawking and spitting out the product]

  30. I also jibbed at B=’boy’ (Gervase@18).
    As a def ‘in a rush’=CAREER looks iffy to me, too: even if the ‘in’ is put aside as surface filler, ‘a rush’ would indicate a noun solution and in the ‘rush’ sense I don’t think CAREER exists as a noun. ([???]’She left the room in a career’).

  31. I struggled with the birds in the SE and some of the SW which was disappointing considering it was a quiptic level CW.
    I must get out of the habit about having an unshakeable belief that a clue works the way I see it, not the way the setter writes it! Grrr
    Thanks both.

  32. Mondays are straying into the too-straightforward category I fear.

    I agree with many others that CARPENTER was pick of the bunch.

    Thanks Pan and Andrew

  33. B = boy only seems familiar in the abbreviation OB, from which it is inseparable (unlike the O, which is used in other contexts). It seems to me like the K for ‘Kingdom’ (as in UK) which I don’t recall having seen in a charade.

  34. baerchen @6: Sorry, posted then dashed.

    It was only a minor point to try to explain why I took so long finding the answer. I was trying fir a word or abbreviation for “boy” below something for belt.

    No criticism of the setter, just that clues like this always seem to hold me up.

  36. B in OB = Old Boy was good enough for me, dictionaries or no dictionaries.

    The one eyebrow-raising moment today was “played” as a link word in 21a. Not sure what the justification for that might be, other than making a nice surface.

  38. Well, that was easy. I finished almost before I started. It’s nice to have an enjoyable one that’s not too much of a strain on the grey matter occasionally!

  39. Thanks to Pan and Andrew for an encouraging start to the week.
    I thought HAWK would dominate the groups discussion – some good exchanges.
    My favourites were CARPENTER, ICENI, BUCHAREST and PLASTER.

  41. Rompibale @40. I think ‘In a rush to charge queen’ is a rearrangement of the more conventional ‘charge queen in a rush’, i.e. the wordplay ‘charge’=CARE and ‘queen’=ER can be found ‘in’ CAREER. Which of course will now prompt someone to ask “Where does the “to” come from in 5d?” 🙂

  42. Thanks for the blog, my favourites already mentioned.
    As Gladys mentioned, TEA CHESTS were traditionally used for moving house , the only trouble being they were so heavy themselves. Fill one with books and you will never move it. I wonder if they largely died out with tea bags replacing loose tea ?

  43. Roz @42 I think TEA CHESTS largely died our because companies did not want to store them. I have just moved and these days the customer just orders cardboxes from Amazon then takes them down the tip when finished with.
    The ‘throwaway world’ we now live in.

  44. Yes HYD I see what you mean, I presume the removal company supplied and then took back the tea chests ? Last time we moved they gave us cardboard boxes as MrPostMark said ( similar size ) and I think they may have taken them back, not quite sure, long time ago.

  46. e.a. @45
    I see your problem, but remember that Donald Trump is a much more frequent visitor to Guardian crosswords, and he scr???d an entire nation!

  47. e.a. @45 There is a good Quentin Tarantino film with Pitt/DiCaprio called ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’, which tells a different version of Sharon Tate/Charles Manson tragedy.

  50. …. for those among you thinking any cryptic crossword is too easy – there are some of us who are just getting going on them and need plenty of practice / examples / opportunity and, occasionally at least, success if we’re to master these tests … so pleasebe kind enough to put up with the occasional one eh?

  51. Trier in Lincoln @50. I’ve been doing these crosswords for most of my life, and I still struggle with a few clues per puzzle, and on bad days it feels like nothing is ever going to be written in the grid. When, after several false starts, I finally get going and eventually complete, I come here to find commenters saying how “gentle” it was! It really makes me grind my teeth.

    In my experience there are clues that seem easy but they are only so because of (what many people describe as) being on the same wavelength as the setter – this may be a shared pool of general knowledge, or seeing past the surface reading of the clue, or just that the brain feels particularly fluid and words pop up unexpectedly and magically fit the clues. This is not the same as the crossword being easy, and commenters should try to distinguish by saying “I found this easy” rather than “this was gentle”.

    I thought today’s was well written, with several instances where the setter has used straightforward synonyms (chef for cook, or level for tier, for example), where something requiring more lateral thinking could have been used on another day. And there are still some smile-making moments, like CARPENTER that quite a few people have mentioned, and the Schubert anagram.

    I hope you keep on trying, and keep on coming here.

  52. [SanDiegoBrit @49: An hour after you posted so no idea if you’ll pop back in but thought I should congratulate you on your slice of musical history.]

  53. I’ve been printing these off for the past year and we’ll used to them now, but I’m always amazed by the number who have them completed before my start, usually lunchtime!

  55. MargEll @54
    It’s WEN (sounds like “when”, though someone disputed this earlier!) around R for river – common crossword abbreviation.

  57. Anyone else try CROW for 22?
    Other than that, no issues. But I did speculate on why we have a trier (who tries) but a dryer that dries.

  58. MargEll@54 – river is this case is just the letter R (for river) inside WEN (a homophone for when).

    Wonder whether anyone else on 17d tried to place a word long inside the word TEST but after the first T rather than after the E. I chose ITCH and then thought “surely there cannot be such a thing but maybe it is a UK-ism I don’t recognize”. Silly me.

  59. Not easy for me but completed in the end. A few that took quite a while to get my head round, others like CARPENTER which was excellent fun but leapt out at once, ICENI too. BLOW was a struggle until I got the B as a crosser. HAWK in this sense new to me but fell for the same reason. EN as a space is an education.

    Stick with it Trier and come here for the explanations as sometimes the answers appear to make no sense (although today EACH in TEST was purely laziness to look harder on my part).
    Leave Azed alone for a while! Lots of words you never knew existed.

    Thanks to Pan and Andrew.

  61. CardiffGirl @53. Some of us are in a different time zone. We get quite a few hours start on UK solvers!

  62. SanDiegoBrit@49
    So did I. In the same year even. Mine was painted pale blue. Any guesses what colour my bedroom was?
    As well as 11d I liked the anagrinds at 10, 12 and 13. They all fitted the subject making good surfaces. In fact the surfaces throughout were smooth.
    Thanks to Pan and Andrew.

  63. Very belated thanks to Fiona Anne @24 for enlightening me about that unpleasant definition, which I’d certainly never come across before.

  64. Late to the show, but with a couple of comments:

    JinA@19, your mental image of CARPENTER brought a favourite cartoon to mind – a fish sitting at a bar, glaring at the bartender, and saying “yes, I’m out of water, but I’m also out of scotch”.

    PM@17, in North America we used an upturned pail for the resonator, and called the instrument a gut-bucket.

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