Guardian 28,702 / Picaroon

86 comments on “Guardian 28,702 / Picaroon”

1. Do you think the “Dancing bishop” wore a tutu? 🙂

2. I think 1d is STAR in CUD Eileen

3. Of course it is, Shirl – many thanks.

4. I also don’t know about the American in WEDGIE. It’s certainly understood in Australia.
   When did work become play, although FOREPLAY is hard work at times.
   Enjoyed YODEL for “off peak”, UPPERS for the cryptic definition and HIGH ROLLER for the camouflage of “Better”.
   Thanks Eileen and Picaroon.

5. Eileen, I think your preamble sums it up perfectly. Thanks as ever for the blog and thanks to Picaroon for yet another delightful crossword.

6. In the spirit of 2 across, not at all bad.

7. At last a nice athematic (I think) puzzle! Actually, as nothing much leapt out at me to start with, I scanned the clues for obvious anagrams. Hence one of my first entries was STARVELING (great anagram) – and I wondered it there was to be a theme of hempen homespuns….

   The crossword is very heavy on container and subtractive clues, but sometimes that’s just the way the words lead and it didn’t bother me. There was nothing unfamiliar here, fortunately. I agree with Eileen that WEDGIE doesn’t strike me as particularly transatlantic. HOT WIRE may be new to our beloved blogger but it is a rather dated term – modern cars can’t normally be started up this way.

   A lot of fun clues, but I’d like to highlight DOWNRIVER for its construction and surface.

   Good to see a mention of the great Stephane GRAPPELLI.

   Many thanks to the Pirate and Eileen

8. Me@6 23 across

9. Tim C @4 – plays / works of Shakespeare?

10. Lovely puzzle – blessedly unthemed – which I enjoyed a lot.

    2 questions rather than quibbles:

    Firstly, not sure that a star is necessarily a VIP. Most wouldn’t be so categorised in my book.

    Secondly, is the MAINMAST really a spar? My nautical knowledge is not up to defending this contention but I always thought the spars were the horizontal bits and the masts the vertical.

    COD for the fun of it NUMBER TEN

    Many thanks, both.

11. Ah, of course Eileen@9. Duh for me 🙂

12. Brilliant, though I needed Eileen’s clarity of vision to understand how 16a worked. Deeply envious of Eileen having managed not to be aware of HOTWIRE and WEDGIE…
    Favourites NUMBER TEN (what Eileen said), EGG CUSTARD, FOREPLAY, ERUCTATE (the last two worthy of Paul).
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

13. To add to Eileen @9 –

    [In the 1637 poem by Sir John Suckling ‘The Wits, or A Session of the Poets’ in which contemporary poets compete for the laurels, he makes gentle fun of Jonson for having his plays published in a grand folio in 1616 under the title The Works of Benjamin Jonson:

    And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,
    For his were called Works, where others were but plays.]

14. Great puzzle. Really enjoyable. Loved it

15. William@10, I just bunged in MAINMAST and didn’t think so you made me check. Chambers 2014 has spar as “a general term for masts, yards, booms, gaffs, etc. (naut)”, so I guess it’s OK.

16. William and Tim C – this is what I found.

    Sarah @13 – many thanks for that – lovely!

17. I got 16a without parsing and gave up when trying later, as I thought mum was something to do with silence, so thanks for that Eileen. Baffled by WEDGIE being ‘American’ as others have commented. ERUCTION was new and my favourite was the amusing LIMO. Definitely more challenging than the rest of an easyish week.

    Ta Picaroon & Eileen

18. Eileen & TimC: fair enough…glad I didn’t get too sniffy about it!

19. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
    Another one that started very slowly – only OUST and SHIVA on first pass – but speeded up a lot after some went in. I didn’t parse 16a or TRUER. Favourite SEATS as well.
    WEDGIE is definitely known in England – there was an outbreak of them in the school where I taught in the 80s.
    I’ve seen “Where order is kept” as a definition for NUNNERY very recently, but I think it must have been in the Radio Times as I can’t find it through Search here.

20. muffin @19 – I’ve searched for NUNNERY, too. It was definitely very recently and in one of the puzzles discussed here, most likely the Guardian. I don’t do the Radio Times puzzle.

21. A nice chewy challenge today which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was very slow to get started and thought I was heading for an epic fail but answers gradually presented themselves. I loved the disguised definitions esp 13ac which was one of my last in. I was staring at the clue for ages trying to think what vehicle might be peculiar to Spain!! Loved it. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

22. When my first two in – after a blank first pass – were TATLER and TRUER, using the CK of Calvin Klein, I thought I was going to be out of my depth with some kind of fashion theme. Found this tough thereafter, and the last two in when the penny dropped for 13ac especially, were SEATS (COTD for me), and LIMO, both coincidentally with a motoring theme. In between struggled with the parsing of ACT OF PARLIAMENT, LITOTES and DOWN RIVER, so many thanks with the clarification this morning, Eileen…

23. muffin @19: Definitions involving ‘keeping’ and ‘order’ are frequent for monastic institutions. I was reminded of one of Rufus’s cryptic def clues: ‘He keeps mum in order’.

24. Muffin@19 and Eileen @20, you will find “where order is kept” as the definition for NUNNERY in Picaroon’s last puzzle 😉

25. I prefer my own: ‘Quiet type gets noisily drunk on gin’

26. Wonderful crossie from my favourite setter. Favourites HIGH ROLLER and NUMBER TEN which made me laugh. Thanks Eileen and Picaroon.

27. Thank you Eileen, a perfect assessment of the many pleasures to be had from this one, in particular for parsing 14A and 16A (which I guessed almost immediately but had to wait a long time to be confident enough to enter, starting slowly exactly as muffin@19 did).
    I liked the tricky but fair clueing of the more obscure (for me) LITOTES and ERUCTATE and went so far as to check whether “Truguccier” was a word before the more obvious penny dropped!
    Can’t decide between GRAPPELLI and YODEL as my favourite, perhaps it will come down to an earworm-off, so thanks Picaroon for plenty of smiles today.

28. Very enjoyable but a DNF as defeated by SEATS; did not read definition part of clue properly and am not good at car marques, SEAT not being well-known (to my knowledge) in NZ. Failed to parse ACT OF PARLIAMENT. Being on one’s uppers is not particularly well-known in this neck of the woods; for me it feels dated (eg something I might read in Wodehouse or older works). It took me a few moments to see it was a dd. Thanks to Picaroon and to Eileen.

29. PS NUMBER TEN was my fav too ChrisM@26

30. Jay @24 – hah! no wonder we couldn’t find it in the 15² archive, then: it was last Saturday’s Prize puzzle! (So we’ve posted a spoiler, muffin. 🙁 ) Sincere apologies, all.

31. As always, a really entertaining puzzle from Picaroon with impeccably good surfaces. YODEL was just brilliant, and I also ticked NUMBER TEN and LIMO, but almost all the clues were good. Couldn’t parse ACT OF PARLIAMENT, so thanks to Eileen for that.

32. Much to savour today, especially ‘off peak’, NUMBER TEN and ‘club sandwiches’ which conjured up a rather messy image.
    Gervase@25 🙂
    Thank you Picaroon & Eileen.

33. 9a was my first in, solved on sight and I loved its wonderful part alliterative surface so much that I couldn’t wait to finish the puzzle to come to the blog and comment.
    Picaroon in all his guises has been my No 1 favourite setter for some time and I think today’s puzzle is one of his best.
    Thanks to him and Eileen as ever.

34. Ok I may be stretching it, but might there be a communist theme? “Oppress” in 14a, starveling in 14d which I’ve only encountered in the Internationale (“Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers”). Rising in 15d, description of the Tatler as a bourgeois magazine in 21d, and really stretching it, oust in 22d and even maybe dystopia in 6d.

35. ACT OF PARLIAMENT stuck out as the only clunky parsing. Rest was good. Thanks both.

36. Sorry about the spoiler.

    I seem to remember that Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls is described as a HIGH ROLLER.

37. Hovis@1. LOL.

38. After a scintillating week of crosswords, I found this one a bit of a struggle today – Picaroon and I, unusually, not on same wavelength. Mainly due to the big one (“what mum does”) holding out until near the end, and even then the SE corner held me up, with Litotes and Eructate (always good to learn a new word or two!) and, finally, that rather tiresome reference to “parties at number 10”… surely that joke stopped being funny many weeks, if not months, ago?? They just won’t let it lie….

39. Tricky for me but with some really good allusive definitions.

    The ODE gives WEDGIE as ‘mainly North American’. Lots to like: MAINMAST with fighting graduates; YODEL with call off peak, HOT-WIRE for the surface; WEDGIE, where I think the definition includes pulling; ACT OF PARLIAMENT for what mum does; and NUMBER TEN, as Eileen says, which keeps on giving.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

40. Wow, I solved a Friday Picaroon in under half an hour!
    Only 28 more clues to go.

41. Robi @39: That may be the source of Picaroon’s allusion, but the OED is woefully out of date. The expression may have been coined across the pond, but it has been widely current here for a long time, as many of us have noted.

42. Liked NUMBER TEN.

    Did not parse 16ac, 2d.

    New: ERUCTATE, LITOTES – both of which were well-clued.

    Thanks, both.

43. Re ERUCTATE, which was apparently unfamiliar to some of us, see Psalm 45 (44 in the Vulgate): ‘My heart is indicting’ – Eructavit cor meum 🙂

44. Sign of a misspent youth … 12 was clear to me 😉

45. Where I come from a wedgie was an undie-grundie

46. Eileen’s prologue sums up this crossword perfectly

    Thanks to her and Picaroon

47. Terrific puzzle.

    I think (can’t easily find a citation) that HIGH ROLLER comes from craps – someone who stakes/wins large sums on the roll of the dice.

    Ian @38 – the Number 10 parties weren’t so very recent, but sometimes setters drop by here and say that they submitted their puzzle some months before publication.

    Thanks for the GRAPPELLI link, Eileen. Here’s another, a duet with another decent fiddler by the name of Menuhin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzIEaNRoj3k

48. Wonderful puzzle, just what was needed.

    Humour galore, and plenty of misdirection, though I spent inordinately long getting 2d and 13a to finish.

    So many favourites – GRAPPELLI, ACT OF PARLIAMENT (brilliant!), DOWNRIVER, TRUER, NUMBER TEN, FOREPLAY and LIMO

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

49. That was fun with, as JerryG @ 21, says some lovely disguised definitions like YODEL

    Needed help parsing a few – which of course now seem obvious

    STOP PRESS made me smile as did OUST, TRUER

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

50. What crypticsue@46 said.

    I was done for by the combination of LITOTES and ERUCTATE but no complaints.

51. All good in my book with the possible exception, as noted by one or two others, of ACT OF PARLIAMENT which is one of those words I can imagine putting in as the one 15 letter solution, maybe with the ‘future for Bill’ idea in mind, and then cursing when the time came to cryptically assemble it.

    I did find myself particularly smiling at a couple of the slightly naughty ones – ERUCTATE made me laugh out loud and FOREPLAY wasn’t far behind. UPPERS also clever. But my three favourites are all clean and of impeccable taste: GRAPPELLI, STARVELING and DOWNRIVER.

    I do love the way Picaroon assembles his cryptic elements so elegantly and effortlessly.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

52. Gervase @41; it seems to be more popular in the US than the UK. I must say that I had never heard of it, apart from in relation to a shoe.

53. Eileen — none of the expressions new to you were new to me, and I’m wondering if they’re American. Thanks for parsing ACT OF PARLIAMENT and FLAT and supplying the fashion designer in TRUER.

    I got stuck on 2d/13a. I made 13a SITES (places) with SIT (park) + ES (sign on vehicles from Spain). Then 2d had INST (in street) being boxed by MA + … what? What to do with MAINST_T and where was the other graduate? Only got it this morning.

    Eileen@16 None of those words is a synonym for “mainmast” (though having jibbed at “spar” I looked it up in The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea and found “a general term for any wooden support used in the rigging of a ship; it embraces all masts, yards, booms, gaffs, etc.” But although all those things are spars, they aren’t each other. A mast is not a boom or a gaff, a mainmast isn’t a mizzen, etc

    I think of a club sandwich as having three slices of bread with any filling, but looking it up tells me that originally it was the filling (chicken, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise in white toast) that was the defining ingredient, not the three slices. I still think my definition has become the current one.

    Gervase@41 Robi@ refers to the ODE (Oxford Dictionary of English), not the venerable OED (Oxford English Dictionary). They’re different books. The ODE is a one-volume, contemporary work, not meant to be a boiled-down OED.

    Thanks for the puzzle, Picaroon, and for the perfectly presented blog, Eileen. As ever, your accompaniment make a good puzzle better!

54. Miche @47 Many thanks for the link – Wonderful! (I once had the privilege of hearing the other decent fiddler in person).

55. This was fun, challenging in parts, but with a lot of clever stuff, as expected.

    Whenever I see LITOTES (which seems to be in crosswords only nowadays), one thing comes to mind: Dinsdale! (Sorry if you’re not a MP fan.)

56. Me@39; Eileen, don’t you think that ‘pulling’ is part of the definition of WEDGIE?

57. Valentine @53: Thanks for the correction. I had observed that Robi was quoting the ODE but my fingers (thumbs, actually) misled me to the more familiar OED.

    Robi @52: At its peak, four times more US citations than UK ones from a population five times greater. Does that make it more popular? Statistics, statistics! 🙂

58. Gervase @57; good point! 🙂

59. Thanks Picaroon for this joy ride and your prolific output overall – two excellent crosswords last Saturday and now this gem. I liked many including YODEL, NUMBER TEN, EGG CUSTARD, HIGH ROLLER, CLUE, OUST, and LIMO. I needed a word finder for MAINMAST and FOREPLAY and I couldn’t parse 16a or TRUER; I hadn’t heard of LITOTES but nothing else fit the parsing. I knew Eileen would explain it all. Thanks.

60. Smashing crossword – lots of fun.

    As a Brit rapidly approaching their 50th birthday, I grew up fully aware of the term Wedgie. The only time I recall seeing anything similar mentioned in American media is from the film Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and that’s a “Melvin”, which I assumed was their term for one. But having just checked on Wikipedia, it’s apparently a variant of the Wedgie but done from the front. You live and learn. The page also lists Atomic Wedgie and Hanging Wedgie as variants, should you wish to know more.

61. What a terrific crossword! So much wit to admire, a joy to solve. Tone set by GRAPPELLI and maintained right through to LIMO. A treat!

62. Thanks to Picaroon for a challenging end of week solve. Always happy to pick up new words, LITOTES and ERUCTATE both of which took a lot of processing. Ticks for DOWNRIVER, GRAPPELLI, and YODEL. Thx also to Eileen for her blog.

63. Robi @56 (and 39)- you posted just after I’d gone out. I’ve just arrived home, having waited well over an hour, in the rain, for buses that didn’t come, so I’m feeling very cold and rather grumpy. 😉
    It seems, from the definition, that you’re right about ‘pulling’. I’ll amend the blog now.

    (I’m going out again any minute now!)

64. Gervase @ 43. Glad someone else spent tedious childhood sermons delighting in Vulgate openings of psalms. 45 a definite favourite, along with Quam bonus Israel at 73!

65. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen. I struggled with the NW quadrant, being unfamiliar with the violinist and the nautical term. I managed to finish, but with a couple of biffs-and-shrugs: I still don’t understand why SEATS is a Spanish car or UPPERS has anything to do with being broke. Unlike some of the other commentators, I thought 16a ACT OF PARLIAMENT was brilliant and it made me laugh.

66. SEAT (pronounced “say-att”) is a Spanish make of car, related to Italian Fiats I think.

67. Quite tough to break into, but satisfying to solve eventually. Upticks for DOWNRIVER, STARVELING and HOT-WIRE.
    Thanks, Pickers and Eileen.

    Dr WhatsOn @55, is it coincidence, I wonder, that PALIN appears as a crooked Nina just before this!?

68. Muffin@66 – SEAT is owned by VW.

69. Thanks Mystogre – I wasn’t sure.

70. Verbose @65 – to be “on your uppers” is to be so poor that you’re wearing worn-out shoes: https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-upp1.htm

71. As to whether or not WEDGIE is an American term I first encountered it reading Dilbert cartoons, which are pretty American. Working in an office at the time I was sure he had a spy monitoring everything we did…. Anyway, for those not familiar with the term, here’s an intro, including the twirling, turban and Elbonian versions…

72. muffin @66 – SEAT, along with Skoda, is a member of the Volkswagen group.

73. widdersbel @72
    Did you miss Mystogre @68?

74. Robi @52/Gervase @57 – thanks for introducing me to Google Trends. One query: am I right in thinking the graph represents the popularity of ‘wedgie’ as a search term on Google? If so, then there’s another factor worth considering, which is that people tend to do Google searches for words they are unfamiliar with – which is more likely to be the case in the UK.

    In particular, I’d guess the fact that the number of UK searches was almost the same as in the US in the earlier period (2004 – 2006) – despite the much higher US population – suggests that at that time many Brits were hearing the word ‘wedgie’ for the first time and wondering what it meant. As it got more familiar over here, the number of UK searches relative to the US declined.

    For an idea of how much the word is actually used (in writing at least), have a look at the Ngram results for the US and the UK. In American books it appears in the late 1930s; in the UK not till the 60s. In both countries there’s a sharp upswing in the 90s/2000s. The most recent data show US usage running about 50% higher than in the UK (expressed as a percentage of all words used in the US and UK corpora respectively).

    [By the way I’m not deliberately ignoring our friends down under, or in Ireland or Canada or elsewhere – it’s just Ngram only offers British/American comparisons as far as I can see.
    🙁 ]

    [blaise – not ignoring you either, I just took a very long time typing the above – thanks for the elucidation]

75. Thanks Blaise@71. Haven’t had a blast of Dilbert in a long while.

    Eileen@: Waiting in the rain for inattentive buses! Poor you, you’re entitled to be grumpy. Hopefully you’ve by now settled down with a jorum at your elbow and the The Works of Benjamin Jonson blazing merrily on the fire. 🙂

    muffin@: insofar as I ever gave a Rhett Butler I always thought Seats were related to Fiat too.

    phitonelly@67: Good Palintological spot.

76. Miche @70 – thanks, for the second time today! (I always enjoy your posts.)

    I did ponder whether to give the derivation of ‘on your uppers’. I’m (still, after all these years of blogging) constantly torn between explaining things that I might think obvious, while not wanting to appear to be patronising, and, at the same time bearing in mind the huge range – cultural, geographical, etc – of our contributors, which makes this site of ours so enriching.

77. Eileen, I am in a similar demographic boat to MarkN@60 yet never encountered wedgies at school fortunately (we did have chinese burns and learned the folly of admitting to collecting stamps), knowing them only from US pop culture as he mentions, so would say that any colloquial/slang references in clues are worth a link to further edification, if your time allows (as well as cultural/biblical/historical refs too of course).
    SEAT did have a strong link with Fiat in its early days, interesting how Fiat developed partnerships outside its homeland regardless of political orientation (I used to drive a Yugo and these were also based on old Fiat models).

78. [Alphalpha @75 – what a lovely post and lovelier than you could have imagined. Forgive me if I indulge myself, since I don’t expect many others will be listening by now.
    My ‘going-out’ @73 was our decades-long family Friday evening after-work wind-down – at which I learned, surprisingly, today, that I can hope to be a great grandma in the autumn. I had almost begun to give up hope.
    What a topsy-turvy day!

79. Alphalpha @75. “I always thought Seats were related to Fiat” (and Gazzh @77 and muffin). That was what I recall Len Deighton writing in his Horse Under Water, which was set in the Iberian peninsula in the early 60s. As I recall, he said they were Fiat cars that were assembled under licence in Spain.

80. Eileen @ 78

    Congratulations!

81. Thank you, Simon @ 80 😉

82. Congratulations, and what a lovely family custom to have in your life! Hope you’re toasty now. (Or maybe snuggled up in bed, it being almost midnight where you are.)

83. A couple I didn’t parse. ACT OF PARENT I missed and TRUCKER. Yes NUNNERY was in last Saturday Prize which I haven’t finished yet but…already noticed spoiler in the blog on 225 home page. Oh well I’ll finish it now.
    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen and congratulations….we never close

84. Thanks muffin@66 and miche@70

85. eileen@76 I don’t think any reader would find it patronsing if you over-explain.

    I’m only ever coming here when I have completely failed to parse a clue. UPPERS was the only one I couldn’t parse here, and your solution didn’t help me at all until I read the comments.

86. I agree Eileen that we should see more of this sitter. Pleasant start to Monday morning with some amusing surfaces. I liked PARANOID, CARELESS, SOB STORY, MENACE, APOCRYPHAL and GENIUS (if only..). NW held out longest and I was looking for a J to complete the pangram but no cigar this time.

    Ta Carpathian & Eileen

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