Guardian 28,615 / Pan

99 comments on “Guardian 28,615 / Pan”

1. Pleasant start to Monday with some interesting words. Although it was a quick solve, I liked SNOWPLOUGH, CHUKKA, NYSTAGMUS, SUSS, CURMUDGEON and my fave, SCAPULA. SEAM took longest to parse.

   Ta Pan & Eileen

2. Oops NYSTAGMA

3. AlanC – I nearly wrote that, too! (I think I was thinking of strabismus.)

4. Straightforward but enjoyable, my only tiny quibble being the use of “who’s” purely as a link word in CURMUDGEON (unless “person” is doing double duty). I agree with Eileen’s favourites, especially ASSISTANT where the parts of the charade fit together so neatly.
   @Eileen, AlanC – 14d is indeed NYSTAGMUS.
   Thanks Pan and Eileen.

5. Real shame about 1d WEATHER, it spoiled an otherwise fine start to the week. All it would have taken was to write the clue as “… aspect of climate” or something similar, to do the job. It’s not simply a case of near-synonyms, it’s this confusion (in part) that drives climate change deniers.

6. beaulieu @ 4 – oh dear! Sorry for misleading you, AlanC. I will amend the blog immediately.

7. AlanC @1 and 2. It is NYSTAGMUS. NYSTAGMA is only 8 letters. Anagram of gymnasts + u (source of unusual)

8. Surely it is nystagmus. Nystagma isn’t enough letters and has no ‘U’?

9. Too slow typing. Thanks for a nice Monday puzzle and for the blog.

10. Chris and Sourdough – see me @6.

11. Sorry, Eileen. As I said @9… too slow typing There were only 3 comments when I started.

12. Haha Eileen, I always follow your lead 🙂

13. I was too slow, too, Sourdough. 🙁

14. Quick and enjoyable to solve but I failed 15ac SEAM.

    New for me: NYSTAGMUS; PROP = ruggby player.

    Favourite: CURMUDGEON.

    Thanks, both.

15. [DrW@5 – IMO this is just another example of words with different technical meanings, but that can be used interchangeably in everyday speech – “Britain’s weather/climate is generally temperate”. You have a point about climate change deniers, but this is a crossword, not part of a campaign.]

16. Revealed NYSTGMUS as, even with the crossers, it was a word not known to me and, I suspect, one of the last into the setter’s grid. Fairly clued but, if it’s a dnk, it would have needed a lucky guess. One or two raised eyebrows at definitions – INTENSE for eager, SEPTIC for rotten, UPPITY for difficult to control but they don’t seemed to have aroused reaction from others and none of them prevented the solve. I’d agree with Eileen on SNOWPLOUGH which is nicely done and on CURMUDGEON – the clue, the word as a favourite and the quibble about equating it with elderly – though ‘old curmudgeon’ and ‘curmudgeonly old …’ are both frequently seen.

    Thanks Pan and Eileen

17. [A total aside but I’d hope the community here would appreciate the irony of an opening statement in a post on a social media platform at the weekend, “A new word entered the Lexicon this weekend – omicron.” Had it appeared on fifteensquared, I doubt I’d have resisted the temptation to reply “No, it’s been in the Lexicon for several thousand years…” 😀 ]

18. beaulieu@15 absolutely, but I was thinking of the advice given to writers who write themselves into a corner: RTATP – rewrite to avoid the problem.

19. Like others have said a good start to the week. My favourites were the same as Eileen’s

    Thanks Pan and Eileen

20. Good start to the week.

    I thought of snowmobile but of course it didn’t parse. As well as CURMUDGEON, I liked DOWNING STREET and SCAPULA.

    Thanks Pan and Eileen.

21. I agree with PostMark @16 re the eyebrow raising definitions, and I would add SEAM. But I also loved Eileen’s (and others’) favourites especially curmudgeon and snowplough. Overall a good puzzle for a Monday. Now for the Quiptic!

22. Eileen @9. Looks like lots of us were commenting at the same time. Thanks for the blog.

23. Thanks Pan and Eileen. Enjoyable fare from Pan. Love the clues for SNOWPLOUGH and SCAPULA. Like everyone else, I’ve not heard of NYSTAGMUS, and I needed all the crossers before I could rearrange the letters into something that looked like a plausible word – but NUSGATMYS didn’t seem very likely, so I guessed right.

24. PostMark @16 and SinCam @21

    I had the same three queries as you and looked them up:

    SEPTIC: Chambers has ‘putrefying’, Collins ‘of, relating to or caused by putrefaction’.
    UPPITY: Collins – ‘not yielding easily to persuasion or control’.
    I’m not quite so convinced re INTENSE: Collins – ‘characterised by deep or forceful feelings’; Chambers – ‘earnestly or deeply emotional or affecting to have deep feeling’.

    Thanks, PM, for your comment @16. 😉

25. Dr W @5 – I reckon “conditions” would have worked fine instead of “climate” here.

26. Thanks Pan and Eileen
    I don’t understand 8d. No. 10 is in Downing Street, not vice versa. It’s not metonymy, as No.11 Downing Street is nearly as important.
    Anyone who has seen a close-up of James Galway playing the flute will have seen NYSTAGMUS.

27. All been said, really, except that I had the same thoughts re CURMUDGEON as Eileen. Chambers makes no reference to old in the def.

    Technically a dnf for me as I chucked in NASTYGMUS AT 14d. Now seeing it written, I’m thinking of unpleasant antelopes.

    Many thanks, both.

28. Enjoyable, although Monday brain put SPATULA in for 16D and only twigged when the app told me I hadn’t quite got there. 11A and 14D were new to me.

    Thanks Pan and Eileen

29. Nice, straightforward but pleasant start to the week. Thanks P and E.
    (Postmark@17, one of my sad anti-vax friends has pointed out that it’s an anagram of moronic as if that somehow supports his argument!!)

30. William @27, I love it!

31. …and yours, JerryG @29.

32. PS, most of the main dictionaries give ‘weather conditions’ as a description of climate eg Collins: ‘the hot and humid climate of Cyprus’, so I would have thought that climate=weather is OK.

33. I’m half way through Saturday’s Picaroon and one away from yesterday’s Everyman – both of which are defeating me at the moment. So this was a welcome start to the week.

    New to me were CHUKKA, GRENADINE, and NYSTAGMUS but plenty to like as mentioned by Eileen.

    Re INTENSE: SOED has “extremely strong, keen, or pronounced”.

    Thanks Eileen for the usual instructive blog and Pan for the gentle start.

34. Chambers also has “earnest” as a definition for both INTENSE and EAGER so that’s Pan off the hook in my book
    Somewhat serendipitously I went to school with a boy who had NYSTAGMUS – Alastair if you’re out there I’m sorry about the dining room door incident!
    Thanks P&E

35. muffin @26 – sorry, I overlooked your comment.

    I did take 8dn as metonymy. ’10 Downing Street’ is given in more than one list of metonyms for the Prime Minister and his or her staff. I’ve never heard No 11 used in the same way.

36. [bodycheetah @34: haven’t been online at similar time to you for quite a while. I do owe you a solution to “Hill, in Liege, cows Button (4, 9, 4)”. A Welsh summit, otherwise known as Twmpa… Told you you didn’t need to know anything about Formula 1 😉 ]

37. muffin @26 / Eileen @35 – I would have said that both ‘Downing Street’ and ‘Number 10’ are metonyms for ‘the Prime Minister’

38. [pdp11 @ 33

    I too am one away from completing Everyman – wonder if it is the same one – will see here next Sunday maybe – and maybe I’ll get it next Saturday when I have a final look….]

39. widdersbell @37 – thanks, that’s what I meant to imply.

40. Straightforward but also very enjoyable, I had exactly the same definition quibbles as PM and Sincam, but found dictionary support for each. Some very smooth surfaces, and gentle misdirection. I very briefly wondered what on earth a snowplough had to with 8D.

    Thanks Pan and Eileen

    [On the subject of omicron, have I been pronouncing it incorrectly as somewhere between OMAcron & OMERcron all these years? I had to listen carefully when I heard OMMYcron on the radio, I’m reminded of the change in pronunciation of Uranus. Perhaps it’s just me being moronic]

41. [On the pronunciation of omicron, I’ve always said: “Oh micron”, which seems to be the majority support in the dictionaries, although omi-cron seems to be the version given in the media.]

42. Enjoyable Monday puzzle with a number of favourites especially CURMUDGEON and NYSTAGMUS
    Thanks to Pan and Eileen for the blog.

43. [Fiona Anne @38 I know we’re way off topic but I’m stuck on 1D 🙂 Although I look at the weekend blogs for answers and contributions, I don’t usually comment because a week’s worth of the daily puzzles erases the memories of the previous weekend!]

44. I see that Pan and Carpathian disagree this morning about whether the Note is TE or TI (of course it’s actually whatever is convenient for the clue in hand).
    Failed to parse SEAM and wasted time trying to find a something-borough in Berkshire when my early crossers suggested it. I did know NYSTAGMUS but not sure I knew what PROPONENT meant – though I knew it was a word.

    I liked JANE AUSTEN – not least for the contrast between the refined author and the sordid clue!

    Agree that both DOWNING STREET and Number 10 are metonymns for the government – though possibly not for each other.

45. [Robi @41 and others: I have one of the Oxford Dictionaries on my phone that has an actual person (not software) pronounce words in RP. She says “oh micron”. The origin, it continues, is from Greek o mikron, which looks like “oh micron”! No doubt newer versions of the OED will be updated to reflect the current pronunciation, perhaps to the annoyance of the “prescribe don’t describe” dictionary fans 😉 Chambers, of course, has three pronunciations!]

46. Like Michelle @14 I struggled with SEAM, and although I solved it I had to come here for the parsing – I hadn’t considered the role of ‘leaving’ in that sense, though of course it’s not new.

    I agree with widdersbel @37 that ‘No.10’ and DOWNING STREET are interchangeable and entirely equivalent, and in fact I don’t see the need for the question mark at the end of the clue.

    I usually have a curmudgeonly gripe about anagrams used to clue obscure words (cf Mark @16 & William @27 – NASTYGMUS: very funny!), but for some reason this is a solution that came to me almost without thinking. If it really had been an antelope (nasty or otherwise) I’d no doubt have struggled as usual.

    Thanks to Pan for the briefer than usual entertainment, and to Eileen, especially for your gallant effort to forestall unnecessary discussion of weather/climate.

47. Eileen@35 I think I’ve seen ‘number 11’ used to mean ‘The Chancellor’ or ‘The Treasury’.

48. Enjoyable and swiftly finished. As others NYSTAGMUS was new to me. Took more time trying to figure out how to parse SEAM.

    My favourite was GIRDLE for the smoothest of surfaces.

    Thanks to Pan and Eileen

49. Thanks Pan and Eileen.

    Thumbs up here apart from a vague dog-whistle (am I using this right?) about a CURMUDGEON being ageistly old. I’ve been one (depending on whom you ask) most if not all of my life. The younger version learnt to (but not always) swallow the bile – in my antiquity (and these things are relative) I’ve learnt to spit it out to avoid the distress caused by cramping of the upper lip. One person’s fortrightness is another’s CURMUDGEONliness I suppose. I note that you can see the point of view Eileen.

    I needed your help to parse SCAPULA (doh!) and NOMADIC because I couldn’t get from “on” to “about” in one mighty bound.

50. [SOED on CURMUDGEON: Orig., a mean-spirited or miserly person. Now usu., a gruff, irritable, or cantankerous (esp. elderly) man.]

51. [pdp11 @43

    The one I am stuck on is 19dn – like I said will look at it again on Saturday and then check 225 on Sunday if I still haven’t got it.]

52. Just talking to Mrs. Dr. W about climate vs. weather. We think it may be more of an issue here in the States where the climate change deniers are quite powerful, and everybody we’re aware of takes great care to use the correct term in context. “Tune in to the 11 o’clock news to get tomorrow’s climate forecast.” Not!

53. pdp11@50: doesn’t the SOED allow any female curmudgeons (curmudgeonesses?) Not that I think it’s something women should be pleased to be allowed to be…

54. [pdp11 and Fiona Anne
    You might find this Crossword Forum site helpful.]

55. [muffin @ 54

    Thanks. Since May this year I have been tackling the Everyman puzzles without any aids – don’t always manage to complete but even when I don’t I get pretty close – this week just one to go.

    But I do use aids for other puzzles so thanks for the link.]

56. [Hope it’s useful, Fiona Anne. The posters on the site form quite a community!]

57. Postmark @38 my lack of cattle knowledge held me up there! Also couldn’t get Standard Liege out of my brain

58. What we say about 1d in New England is, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

    In the US, “uppity” means “having ideas above your station,” and for that, usually read “race.”

    This was fun to do, thanks Pan. And Eileen, thanks as ever for introducing sanity to muddle.

59. A very nice puzzle and blog, thanks. I think No10 and Downing Street are both metonyms for the same thing. I don’t know if that makes the, metonyms for each other. All of which discussion reminds me of James Thurber’s Here lies Miss Groby

60. https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2010/01/thurber-tonight-my-life-and-hard-times_13.html I failed to get the link for Here lies Miss Groby to work.

61. My old geography teacher, a curmudgeon of high order, and than whom there can be no higher authority, defined climate as average weather. So I think 1d is fine.

62. Petert @59/60 – wonderful! Many thanks

63. Re the pronunciation of omicron, it’s one two letters O from Greek: the large one is o-mega, and the small one is o-micron, so ‘my’ would seem to be the correct way to say it.

64. gladys @53 it is curious although, in my experience, curmudgeons tend to be men 😀 . You’ll be pleased to know that my other OED has a bad-tempered person, especially an old one and Chambers goes for an avaricious, ill-natured churlish person The origin of this fine word, alas, is unknown to all my dictionaries.

    [muffin @54 thank you for the link.]

65. I’m another of the oh-micron pronounciation school. And does anyone know why they chose this letter of the Greek alphabet for the latest variant. Just glad they didn’t dub it Omega. That might have indicated the end of human life as we know it…
    Haven’t seen a good CHUKKA played since I used to watch the polo down the road from where I used to live at Ham House, Surrey.

66. pdp11 @64; you might like to have a look at this for CURMUDGEON.

67. Thanks for the blog, AlanC straight in at number 1 again, same as it ever was.
    Ronald @65 I do know one minor mutation was called MU but did not spread also they need to avoid Xi because of the Chinese leader.
    A Downing Street source will invariably apply to one of the liars employed at No 10. As for the puzzle perhaps I should remain silent.

68. [Ronald @65 – WHO are working their way through the Greek alphabet. The preceding letters (apart from nu and xi) were taken. Even though we’re still talking about delta, the other letters were given to mutations that didn’t break into the big time. Omicron was briefly called nu (I think) but being a homophone for “new”, it was quickly dropped. And xi looks Chinese, specifically similar to the name of the current Chinese leader, Xi Jinping! I read this but others may know better.]

69. [Sorry my post crossed with Roz @67.
    Robi @66 – many thanks for the fascinating link! Catawampus is surely a word that needs more usage! I wonder how many people used it to describe Storm Arwen this weekend?]

70. Ah, thanks very much for that enlightenment, Roz@67 and pdp11@68. I was wondering why they had seemingly jumped from the much publicised Delta (4th letter in Greek alphabet) all the way to Omicron (15th? letter) so rapidly…

71. … and many thanks to you, too, Robi @66. What a lovely new word!

72. [Thank you contributors at 40, 41, 45, 63 and 65, for restoring my sanity on the pronunciation of omicron. The current trend so grated, but when I sought confirmation on the web of the pronunciation of omicron, all I could find was the current trend. I did Greek in my second year at secondary school, and I was trying to recall how the teacher pronounced it, but it is so long ago that I can’t remember. I must have learnt it from him. Being a mathematician, we make extensive use of Greek letters, so I though my maths teachers must have mispronounced it too. However, I have jut realised omicron (pace Knuth) is an exception in that it isn’t used in maths.]

    Thanks Eileen and Pan

73. Omicron is not used in particle physics either when nearly every other Greek letter is used.
    Perhaps too easy to mistake for zero in physics and maths.
    It is used in astronomy for the fifteenth star of a constellation in magnitude but this makes it a very minor usage.

74. Dr W @5. I did, certainly, experience a momentary wince at the equation of ‘climate’ and ‘weather’, for the reasons you advance, although I did not allow it to spoil my breakfast. I was reminded of the incident a few years ago when the imbecile Republican Senator, James Inhofe, brought a large snowball into the US Senate Chamber and used it as a prop to argue that if it was snowing outside in Washington DC, how could you argue for the tinpot theory about Global Warming. Anyone who does not remember this can Google it.

75. Thanks Pan for the amusement. I particularly enjoyed JANE AUSTEN for its surface as well as NITROGEN, SEPTIC, SCAPULA, and INTENSE. I thought “popular” was superfluous in the clue for GRENADINE because there was already “in” before “garden.” I couldn’t parse SEAM so thanks Eileen for that. WEATHER and climate are commonly used as synonyms in a casual sense even though they are not synonyms in a scientific sense. I’m sure solvers of the Guardian crossword know the difference so there’s no point in preaching to the choir.

76. The day my scapula is joined to my ulna I shall consider myself remarkably short of humerus.

77. [OFF TOPIC! @Spooner’s Catflap . . . not @74 . . .
    A belated reply to your comment made on Brendan’s recent(ish) “nom-de-plume” cryptic.

    The Araucaria puzzle you refer to was No. 23,113 – The Easter Special in April 2004.
    I managed to track it down (in my personal archive) because I remembered the rubric “Sponsored by Bells” – typically playful of the beloved Rev. And it goes on: “The sponsor’s products will appear in the diagonals”. Sheers genius.

    You’ll be able to access it via the Guardian’s crossword archive.
    It’s one of those jumbo ones Araucaria used to do for bank holidays, it has a 23×23 grid.
    Enjoy! Actually, come to think of it, I might revisit it myself sometime soon.]

78. Greek has a plethora (if two can be described as such) of o’s. Omega sounds like ‘oh’. Omicron is a short o, as in top. I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not pronounced with an omega at the start, but that would seem perverse. Eileen must know how to say it – maybe all the floundering is amusing?

79. BBC now seems to have settled on 3 short vowels, two o’s in top, one i in tip.

80. James @78 – to be honest, I don’t know what the accepted ‘English’ pronunciation is. There have been several suggestions here and I’ve done some googling of pronunciation websites and looking-up of dictionaries.
    Personally, since, as several people have said, omicron means ‘little O’ and omega ‘big O’, I tend to put the emphasis on the second syllable, micron and mega respectively, as they would be in Ancient Greek – I don’t speak Modern!

81. I see others as well as me struggled with SEAM. Because the clue is the wrong way around. Could have been
    “American navy leaving Sailor joint” or it needed some punctuation in my view.
    Thanks Pan and Eileen

82. Travellingran @76: 😀

    On WEATHER = climate, both can be used figuratively to mean ‘the situation we find ourselves in’.

    ‘The political climate in Downing Street’ = ‘The political weather in No. 10’. As Eileen suggested, good enough for a crossword.

    I hope Pan didn’t have anyone in particular in mind at column 5!

    Oh… mega-thanks to Pan and Eileen.

    [To add to Eileen’s remarks @80: The shape of the letter O goes back to Phoenician, but the name ‘omicron’ only as far as Koine Greek ( = New Testament Greek). By that time the pronunciation of the letter had become identical with that of omega (the sounds are still identical in Modern Greek), so the names ‘little O’ and ‘big O’ had to be introduced to make it clear which one to write.]

83. Eileen, essexboy, thanks for extra info. I had never twigged about the micron and mega bits. But now I’m more confused than before – if they sound the same, why are there still two o’s?

84. James, Essexboy is surely mistaken? Nothing else sounds quite like a big ‘O’!

85. Ha. But the big O’s big O is actually a little O! I wonder if he knew?

86. [Blah @84: 🙂

    James @83: you ain’t seen nothin yet. Greeks today have six different ways of writing the sound ‘ee’! All I would say in their defence is… we’re not exactly immune to peculiarities of spelling in modern English.]

87. Just a question. Is ‘N’ a known abbreviation for navy? In RN, yes certainly, but on its own? I didn’t solve this clue I’m afraid.
    Terrific clueing elsewhere here.

88. essexboy – that’s fascinating! I knew the sounds had evolved to be the same but I had never noticed the descriptions held right within the names.

    And like the puzzle solutions, once it’s parsed for you, it’s all so obvious!

89. [I find discussions about how the ancient Greeks or Romans or whatever pronounced something amusing. We weren’t there, so how would we know? I do know that people put effort into trying to reconstruct pronunciation (what rhymes with what etc), but this is all supposition and inference. Moreover, I doubt that all ‘ancient Greeks’ pronounced anything much in a single way. Surely there were differing accents. Cf the endless homophone discussions here – to quote just one recent one, how to modern English speakers pronounce DATA? You can only get around this by elevating some regional accent above all others – like Received Pronunciation. My English Midlands wife was once told by her linguistics lecturer that she spoke with a “sub-standard” accent – which is just elitist snobbery.]

90. TassieTim @89: a sub-standard accent? Presumably, that’s just saying “Dive, dive, dive” in a normal manner?

91. Just in from choir practice…

    tim @81 – that device crops up from time to time and usually raises a query: we have to think of it as the sailor leaving the American navy behind.

    John W Bright @87 – N = navy is in Chambers (but not Collins). It quite often appears in crosswords.

    essexboy @82 – well spotted at column 5!

    James @83 – as far as we know (see Tassie Tim @89 😉 ) omicron was a little ( i.e. short) o, as in ‘top’ and omega a big (i.e. long) one, as in ‘tow’.

    Many thanks to all today’s commenters, for the additional information, anecdotes, links, etc. I’ve really enjoyed reading them.

92. Late to the party. Enjoyed the discussion of both the puzzle and the Greek alphabet. The New York Times ran an interesting article today about the Greek-letters-as-COVID-designations thing. Apparently it’s designed to avoid confusion, as well as to avoid what would happen otherwise: labeling the variants based on their origins, which would wind up being inadvertently racist (we’d have the Wuhan virus and its South African variant by now).

    John W Bright @87: N is indeed an abbreviation for Navy, although it’s seldom seen without other letters. RN is the Royal Navy as you say, and over here there’s USN for the US Navy, NROTC for Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps, NCIS (a very popular TV show) for Naval Criminal Investigative Service, etc. And then there’s the football team from the Annapolis naval academy, who have a giant N as their logo.

93. I first said Oh my cron 70 years ago and have done so on the rare occasions I’ve needed to say the word omicrron ever since. I think that the BBC is using the Modern Greek pronunciation which, given that the variant appears to be international and the word is Greek, is fair enough.
    I hope it’s a one- off or we’ll have to change the way we say “microscope” and all the other words beginning with ” micro”.

94. Me@93
    Omicron, of course.

95. [Pino @93: you can get a good idea of the Modern Greek pronunciation of omicron here (click on the loudspeaker symbol on the left-hand side of the page). It’s not exactly what the BBC are saying, but I guess it’s closer than Oh-my-cron! However, they haven’t been following the ‘when in Athens’ rule with previous variants – otherwise beta would have been ‘veeta’, delta ‘thelta’ (voiced ‘th’ as in ‘the’), and mu ‘mee’.]

96. @pdp11 (seriously? PDP11? I am as old as the hills and my first computer was a Vax11)

    Chukka comes from chukkar, Hindi word for a round/lap/wheel. I did not know the polo connection, so it was “could it be chukkar? really? isn’t that Hindi? ” for a while for me. Then put it in diffidently.

97. Blah @84 – I don’t know what it says about me but I was expecting that link to be to a certain scene from When Harry Met Sally.

98. RS @96 thanks for the explanation of CHUKKA.
    [re PDP-11: Maybe I’m as young as the morning but an admirer of old things 😀 ]

99. I liked it so thank you to Pan and Eileen. Curmudgeon is the name of a setter I really enjoy – aka Chalicea – she sets for the 3D Crossword Calendar. Her choice of pseudonyms was explained in a “Meet the Setter” interview:
    Chalicea began as a simple merging of CHARLES (husband) and ALICE (mum). Doc, the editor of 1 Across magazine, accidentally added the A and it stuck. Curmudgeon was an irritated reaction to comments from bloggers and editors such as “Chalicea writes such sweet, ladylike things”. Nobody makes patronising comments about Curmudgeon puzzles.

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