Guardian 28,658 / Paul

64 comments on “Guardian 28,658 / Paul”

1. I liked EDAMAME, POSTAL, GROCER.
   New for me: BARBARA Castle.
   I could not parse 13d – anagram of CRCR BYMEIE – I agree that in the clue wiper shoud be wiped – in which case it makes sense.
   Thanks, both.

2. Thanks, Eileen. Now I can see how 13d works. Half the grid filled on the first pass but the rest was a bit chewier.
   Thanks also to Paul.

3. I am a big Paul fan and thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks P. I thought the theme was royalty so close but no cigar. Thanks for the blog Eileen.

4. A very clever use of the chess pieces, used in various ways – I particularly liked the different castles in 15/17 across. A typo in 20A Eileen: it’s MAN (king or queen) in GOURD (fruit). Thanks Paul and Eileen.

5. Thanks for clearing up CYBERCRIME, Eileen (would it were as easy as that!). I’m absolutely aligned with your opening comments – this was another top notch Paul and I quite like this style; where there is a common theme running through many clues but resolving itself in different an unexpected ways in the solutions. BARBARA WINDSOR probably being the best example.

   Particular highlights for me: AID AND ABET lovely use of both saint and the unlikely anagram, CHARLES I for the relevant surface, HOCK for its brevity and themed relevance, and GROCER for the brilliant use of Corgi.

   I parsed GOURMAND as man in gourd. Man is (still?) a term that can be used for all chess pieces including, oddly, the queen.

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

6. Another puzzle served up at the right temperature for me. Eileen speaks for me too in her comments.

7. Thanks, Larry @4 – fixed now.

8. Thanks Paul and Eileen
   I don’t think I would have parsed CYBERCRIME even without the typo. I liked DEO GRATIAS (FOI) and BARBARA WINDSOR.
   I’ve never heard GLAM for “lovely”.

9. As often with Paul’s puzzles I found the clues ranged from instantly gettable to not got at all.

   Still I enjoyed what I managed and found the blog helpful in explaining what I didn’t

   Favourites included: CHARLES 1, HENRY JAMES, LEADER

   Thanks Paul and Eileen

10. Thanks for the blog, Eileen, I agree with you on pretty much all points. 13d was also my LOI – I twigged the solution from the crossing letters and reverse engineered the parsing, like you deducing that “wiper” was a typo. BARBARA CASTLE was my FOI and made me laugh. STITCHED UP was more of a groan than a chuckle for me, but an appreciative one. BEDIVERE required checking a list of names for a reminder (I struggled to recall much beyond Lancelot, Gawain and Perceval) but was blindingly obvious once I saw it so I’m kicking myself for not trying a bit harder to get there unaided. Thanks for the fun, Paul.

    I guess this is the opposite of a ghost theme – where a lot of clues appear to be related but aren’t. Do we have a name for this?

11. I’m glad you explained the typo in CYBERCRIME, Eileen as only that would make sense. Very clever puzzle and loved BARBARA WINDSOR (Carry on Camping will stay with me forever). Agree that ONEILL needs no further discussion.

    Ta Paul & Eileen

12. *BARBARA WINDSOR, obviously. I got the WINDSOR first and after quickly discounting WINDSOR DAVIES, the penny soon dropped. Such a fun clue.

13. I totally agree with Eileen’s masterly analysis. Regretfully, not 100% today: once you get an idea into your head it’s sometimes hard to get it out again. I saw the PPE bit of PUPPET but, maybe because of its proximity to HOCK I couldn’t get POPPED (= “in pawn”, like the weasel) out of my head. Couldn’t really justify POD as “place”, though. Now, if the clue had been “School keeping masks etc in pawn”… So, one failed check and lots of laughs.

14. Thanks Eileen. A puzzle like this helps me understand why Paul is liked by so many. Despite not being familiar with BARBARA Castle, twigged to the answer once I thought of WINDSOR. Pretty much agreed with what you said re favs. Thanks to Paul for the fun

15. I always love a Paul puzzle as I just seem to be on his wavelength (mainly) and thank you for the blog Eileen. I just needed help with the parsing of 9a but I’m still stuck on the use of P from ‘peg’. What about the surface points to this?

16. Thanks Eileen, apart from the typo I was held up with CYBERCRIME as like muffin@8 I doubted GLAM = lovely. Is “lieder” sufficiently used in English to stand without a German indicator? Minor grumble that surely mint=perfect condition is derived from a coin freshly minted so it’s just the same definition twice isn’t it, regardless of the verb/noun switch?
    I thought it was really good otherwise, i liked the many ways the pieces were used, and had quite a few ticks as mentioned above, thanks Paul.

17. Jinniecomelately@15: ‘peg originally’ asks you to take the start/origin of the word peg.

18. Jcl @15: ‘originally’ leads to the first letter of (p)eg.

19. Great puzzle. Thanks to Paul. I hadn’t heard of 15,17a BARBARA WINDSOR but got it from WINDSOR Castle and the crossers (nor had I heard of BARBARA Castles). I had a question mark beside the clue for CYBERCRIME which I solved on the definition only and again I was helped by crossing letters I liked 12a GROCER, 22a PUPPET, 23a HENRY JAMES, 25a GLAMIS (which I knew from “Macbeth”) and 6d STITCHED UP in particular, a couple of those having already been cited by others above. Thanks for the elucidation on several clues, Eileen.

20. Pretty much what Eileen said.
    Concise with odd specks of wit
    Thanks everyone

21. I very much approved of the light-touch chess theme, which was rather stylish, I thought, and did not drag us into a sterile “pick from the list of specialist names/titles” hunt. The chess-y balance of the two castles for BARBARA WINDSOR and the two kings for HENRY JAMES was a beautiful touch. Shame about the mistyped wiped (but I am sure that wasn’t Paul’s error, but the Grauniad’s). A really excellent setting today. Thanks to Paul and to Eileen.

22. widders @10: I’m sure there’s been discussion of your query before but, to my shame, I can’t recall. I think of puzzles like this as having a surface theme. There was a brilliant one on the MyCrossword site with a surface theme of Spooner which I’ve commended on fifteensquared before.

23. Great fun, and a hilarious error in Eileen’s parsing at 18d !

24. Thanks Paul, that was fun, and thanks Eileen for blog – I didn’t see the corgi.
    I like the rhyming pair HINT/MINT
    & how (check)mate almost makes an appearance via China.
    Probably a coincidence, but fun to see BARBARA WINDSOR, Knight and JAMES together.

25. Thanks, cookie @23 – saw your comment just in time before going out for lunch. 😉

26. Like everyone else, I enjoyed this puzzle a lot and was on course for a fairly swift finish before being held up by 8ac and 3d. Widdersbel isn’t the only one to be a bit hazy about the knights of the Round Table, but it was “leader” that came to me last, and I don’t like it! As a Germanist, I can’t think of any instances where “Lied” (plural “Lieder”) could mean “tune(s)” and therefore the solution took a long time to come to me. Am I just being pedantic, as I know I can be; or should setters take a bit more care when referring to foreign words?

27. Cookie@23. It’s all those kings and queens or was it a subconscious desire for a Paulism?

28. Excellent puzzle which was a DNF for me – I failed on BEDIVERE. Not a completely unfamiliar name, but it didn’t come to mind, and without an initial letter and only crossing vowels I abandoned the search to do other things.

    Imaginative use of the chess theme. HOCK was beautifully sly.

    Lots of good clues – H James and Babs W raised smiles. I couldn’t parse CYBERCRIME. “Wiped”, which I agree makes more sense, suggested to me the removal of the surface of a word rather than taking out the contents, but in the context of a computer I suppose it’s entirely reasonable.

    Thanks to JH and Eileen.

29. A nice one from Paul. Only a slight niggle but I was taught the Latin was Gratias Deo for Thanks be to God. Slightly think that tunes for lieder is a bit off. Songs would have been better me thinks. Nice blog Eileen.

30. I didn’t really understand HOCK. I put it in as I couldn’t see what else the answer could be and I know that it is a white wine – is that all there is to it? Or am I missing something?

31. Fiona Anne @ 30

    If you pawn something, you’re said to hock it.

32. Unlike Eileen, I found this one requiring too much GK. Had no idea about the BARBARAs, GLAMIS, BEDIVERE.

    Nothing wrong with it, of course. Just that I would not put this as one of the best crosswords, for one of my requirements is that one uses as few proper nouns as possible 🙂

33. Felt very confused at first whether there was a theme of chess, castles or cricketing terms. First one in the rather unadventurous hidden HINT. Really liked the Double Castles, Double Kings clues. Struggled at the end with my last two in, LEADER, then BEDIVERE. Thought 13 down read clumsily, but impressed by Paul being able to fit Queen ANNE into a word that meant parsimony. Enjoyed the usual fun and games provided by this setter…

34. …must pay more attention at the back of the class…hadn’t properly read the above, so hadn’t picked up on the typo in 13d which had read so awkwardly…

35. Simon S @ 31

    Thanks – but I got that bit – I know that pawn and hock are synonyms.

    It’s the white I don’t get.

36. Fiona Anne @35 – Hock = white wine, nothing more complicated than that. I’m surprised muffin hasn’t commented on that one since it’s a metonym.

37. Fiona Anne @35: As widdersbel says, ‘white’ is just a colloquial abbreviation, as in ‘I’ll have a glass of white’. It is far commoner to see ‘wine’ in a clue to indicate RED.

38. Also the surface ties in beautifully with the chess pseudo-theme (which is what decided to call it, PostMark)

39. blaise@13: another POPPED here.

    Good fun from Paul, though I couldn’t parse CYBERCRIME (complicated enough even without the typo) and sniffed a bit at GLAM=lovely. Liked the kings and the castles (poor Barbara Windsor, a fine actress condemned to be remembered for a Carry On wardrobe malfunction.)
    Liked STITCHED UP and the corgis.

40. Thanks widdersbel and Gervase

    I was overcomplicating

    (must look up metonym)

41. Widdersbel@10 Roz and I had a short discussion about this last month proposing a few terms here, about #44, but nothing was finally resolved.

42. widdersbel@38 – I like the ‘pseudo-theme’ tag. It could make a distinction between this kind of ‘facade’ and other surface themes.

43. Still a relative novice but am a big fan of Paul’s work and loved today’s puzzle. Excellent mix of wit and misdirection in the surfaces and as ever lots of fun to be had with the answers. Too many clues to mention but a big tick for BARBARA WINDSOR (spent ages trying to think of a Barbara who was a sports star!) The typo in 13D threw me in terms of parsing but was otherwise a great clue. Thanks, Eileen for the explanation.

44. I have to agree with vicktim@26 – Lieder are definitely ‘songs’, not ‘tunes’

45. I, too, felt that LIEDER should be songs, not tunes. A most enjoyable crossword, just the way I like it: at first glance I think “I’ll never finish this”, but eventually with persistence, I do. Thanks, Eileen, for explaining 13 down. A typo in the Guardian? Surely not! Thanks, too, Paul.

46. A variation on the BARBARA WINDSOR clue from Paul back in 2012, no. 25,596

    Two Barbaras making a pile for Elizabeth? (7,6)

47. A very enjoyable puzzle, just enough head scratchers to make it interesting.

    I agree with many comments above about the fine clueing but I also loved AID AND ABET for its succinct construction.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

48. I found this tougher than the usual Paul, the NW in particular. BEDIVERE held out until near the end and I was convinved that the BARBARA WINDSOR clue would be a reverse anagram type with “castles” as fodder, so that also took a while. Some very satisfying unexpected answers of which HERBARIA was my favourite, bacause the wordplay came into focus so nicely after finally seeing the answer.
    It’s strange how Paul loves odd word orders. The clue “Number of balls thrown, grey” could just as easily be written in a more natural style as say, “grey set of balls thrown”. I guess it’s just a personal choice.
    I’m curious about the comments about the LEADER clue. In English, tunes/songs are used synonymously in a colloquial way, Is this not true in colloquial German?
    Thanks, Paul and Eileen.

49. phitonelly @48
    It’s the words that make a tune into a song.

50. muffin @49
    I’m aware of that. That’s why I said “colloquially”.

51. muffin and phitonelly I used to be bemused when my son said he was going to listen to some tunes, which were usually songs but never Lieder.

52. I enjoyed this a lot, and think CASTLE is absolutely fine for the piece (and the move).

    Didn’t know the knight (or the waterbird!), and couldn’t get HOCK. Ended up with HANK (and there is in fact a famous Hank White), which stuffed me on 18D

    Thanks Eileen and Paul

53. [I’ve just looked where the curious name of “rook” for the “castle” derives from. Apparently it comes from a Persian word for “chariot”.]

54. 15a, yes Barbara Castle, but also almost always when St Barbara (patron saint of artillery & gunpowder) appears in a painting she is depicted with a castle with 3 windows symbolizing the trinity. So the reference to Barbara in the clue is a link to a castle even without reference to the Labour politician.

55. …. This was life enhancing for me realising I could still crack Paul, barring the pesky Bedivere, after a stroke out of the blue last week. So most of my brain is working well. Many thanks to Paul and Eileen and all the comments….

56. The book about the Arthurian knights I read when I was young I’m fairly sure had BedEvere, but it seems that BedIvere is the more standard spelling.

57. Barbara Castle? Really? Surely we can do better than that. The good lady has not been a public figure for 40 years (I mean this in the sense of being headlines fodder). This enjoyable pursuit (cryptic crosswords) is in danger of disappearing down the omnivorous and voracious plughole of history if we accept such outofdateologisms.

    Lots of wit and fun though.

    Thanks to Paul and Eileen.

    (I also thought Aidan was a bit of a stretch)

58. Like Eileen, I thought this was a cut above many of Paul’s recent outings. In fact it is two in a row that have struck me that way. If he keeps this up, he’ll be on my (and Eileen’s?) list of favourite setters.

    Along with blaise and gladys I POPPED at 22a, so a dnf.

    Re tunes, songs, and lieder, I have a young friend, a good musician, who refers to all pieces of music as songs. It sounds funny to hear her refer to Beethoven’s Fifth as a great song.

    Thanks Paul and Eileen for the excellent puzzle and blog.

59. cellomaniac@: American jazz players of my acquaintance don’t seem to have the concept of a tune – everything is a song.

60. muffin@53 thanks, i did not know that and would never have guessed it, and I was held up on BEDIVERE by the (to me) unfamiliar spelling too.
    IB@55 not sure what to say except glad you are still with us and solving well, hope for better fortune for your health for the rest of the year.
    My query on LEADER was whether clueing LIEDER without a Germanic indicator was fair to Anglophile solvers, I didn’t even consider that tunes and songs may differ – how could Dennis Waterman “write da feem choon, sing da feem choon” if they were? And birdsong has no words, generally…

61. Aphalpha@57 – for readers of the Guardian, Barbara Castle still occupies a high place in the pantheon of promoters of women’s rights an social reformers. Seems like a highly worthy reference in a Guardian crossword to me.

62. We parsed 16d as an anagram of BY IE and C (omputer wipe)R twice

63. Thank you @Larry and @AlanC – I was having a lights off moment 🙂

64. Just catching up so a few days late and typo not fixed online yet!

    Enjoyed but didn’t parse CYBERCRIME or see typo until now

    Thanks Paul and Eileen

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