Guardian Cryptic 28,708 by Maskarade

78 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,708 by Maskarade”

1. Don’t we normally see Maskarade doing the fancy-pants jumbo crosswords for bank holidays?

   A lot of this very obvious, I thought (as usual for Maskarade?) but it took a while for POTOMAC to click and then it was my favourite.

   Don’t often hear the crossing lights called BELISHA BEACONS any more, and I’m sure I’ve come across TATTERDEMALIONS before but had to write out the anagram fodder for that and check in Chambers.

   I thought AFRO was “elan” at first. Elands are antelopes after all so probably jump, and it fits the clue. However, having looked at some images of them they look rather heavy for that, though it says they can leap a 1.5 metre fence from standstill.

   It’s there a G&S thing going on here? BEE(f)-EATERS/Yeomen of the Guard and TITIPU? I’m hopeless at themes.

   All over a bit too quickly for a Friday, but thanks Maskarade and manehi.

2. Thanks Maskarade and manehi
   I usually find Maskarade’s puzzles difficult, and I don’t attempt his Bank Holiday ones, but I breezed through this, finding it much easier than the last two days’. Lots to like; favourites were BELISHA BEACONS, BEE-EATER, and FRESCO (nice anagram that I don’t think I’ve seen before).

3. Mostly very good, I thought, though GOOSEGOGS is a NHO (I could see that gooseberries wouldn’t fit), and I needed to look up G&S works for the subtitle. I did like POTOMAC, AFRO, MOHAIR, ROBOTIC and CRACKERS. Thanks, Maskarade and manehi.

4. muffin@2 don’t be put off by the trickery of Maskarade’s bank holiday offerings. The individual clues are often very easy, not unlike some of today’s.

5. SW corner was easy but struggled after that.
   Thanks Maskerade for an enjoyable challenge.

6. [TassieTim @3
   At the drop of a hat, my father-in-law used to recite this wartime ditty:

   You never get hairs on a duck egg
   You always get hairs on an ape
   And it’s only the hairs on a goosegog
   That stop it from being a grape
   So when grapes are in shortage
   You know what to do
   Just give a goosegog
   A shave and shampoo…]

7. I do like Maskerade’s ‘normal’ puzzles and don’t encounter them very often. Certainly chewy but that does make for a rewarding workout when things fall into place and the clueing is top notch. Not everything parsed for me but that’s my fault rather than the setter.

   Straight to the top of the class goes TATTERDEMALIONS – what a glorious word and not new to anyone who listened to Queen’s early albums. It appears in ‘The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke’ on Queen II and is based on the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd. (A painting that took nine years to complete!) Rather like Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, one of those paintings that repay close examination in Zoom-In mode. The song is somewhat less highbrow but refers to many of the characters in the painting including the ‘ … tatterdemalion and a junketer …’

   After that little moment of highbrow culture, I’ve taken up enough space so will leave it to others to tease out and explore some of the other joys in today’s offering – other than to say what a truly breath-taking anagram for IN LOCO PARENTIS.

   Thanks Maskerade and manehi

8. Enjoyed this tremendously, much to my surprise: I, too, have been abstaining from his prize puzzles. I found, once again this week, the crossword started out quite easy, but the last few were more chewy, but an enjoyable challenge: POTOMAC a great example of what CDs should be; ROBOTIC, CATCH and PACT all pleasing.

   Thanks manehi and Maskarade

9. Anyone who got TATTERDEMALIONS without a word search or a dictionary should be doing Azed on a Sunday. Haven’t heard BELISHA BEACONS (which was my favourite) or GOOSEGOGS since I were a lad. Happy times.

10. Today tatterdemalion and yesterday discombublate. Two words from my book of superior persons book of little words. Re the latter my niece in a us airport posted a sign in an airport where the area for redonning shoes, Belts etc after security checks was labelled. “ recombulation. Is that a word.

11. Wrestled for some time with the top half, and then the bottom half fell quite quickly, but as I didn’t know my G and S and this subtitle, the SE corner was problematic, and last to yield. Liked OUIJA board. There used to be a very good racehorse filly by that name…

12. Great Friday fare. DC current was superb. So many good clues. This was FUN. Loved TATTERDEMALIONS, IN LOCO PARENTIS and many more.
    Thank you Maskarade and manehi.

13. That was fun, with some unexpected words and expressions. I’m another who first tried ELAN instead of AFRO.

    The anagram clues are good, particularly IN LOCO PARENTIS (my old man’s an engine driver) and I agree with muffin that FRESCO is neat.

    Tiny quibble – the clue for POTOMAC is nicely concise but ‘DC current’ is tautological, like PIN number 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

14. BEE-EATER was neat and I liked TATTERDEMALIONS. Very lazy this morning so resorted to looking up Gilbert and Sullivan. I was distracted by the “on” for OUIJA. Nice to be reminded of the implausibly-named Hore-Belisha, who apparently had a flair for public relations, a fine conceit of himself and was suspected of sharp practice so would never have made it nowadays.

15. I also initially wrote in ELANd for 18a.

16. Gervase@13 Doesn’t the tautology give us the clue? Bluth in the Independent yesterday did something similar.

17. Very enjoyable crossword, with two particularly charming words (TATTERDEMALION and GOOSEGOGS). Like Crossbar @1 I had ELAN for 18a initially. MEMORIAL was my last one in, which is ridiculous as it’s a very easy clue! Thanks M and M.

18. Pretty much what Crossbar@1 said

19. Thought I’d finished it, but confused the novelist (OUIDA) with the board (OUIJA) for 24a 🙁

20. Fun. I enjoyed working out TATTERDEMALIONS, what a great word. My mother used to call Chinese gooseberries (now better known as kiwifruit) ‘goosegogs’, but I never knew it was a real word! I just assumed it was mum playing with words. Thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

21. Me @19: Romanian counts as European, even if the more obvious language using DA doesn’t!

22. How nice to see Maskarade on a school day. Always find his puzzles fun and this was no exception. More fun than challenging, tbh.

    I’ll echo PM @7 in saying that TATTERDEMALIONS is a lovely word. Not a word I’ve ever had cause to use in real life as far as I can recall, and I don’t know where I know it from (definitely not from early Queen albums, I know that much). But, Tim C, I can assure you that I didn’t need to look it up. OROTUND is another lovely word.

    Petert @14 – sounds like he would very likely end up as Prime Minister if he were around now.

23. You can also have AC current.

24. [Hore-BELISHA turned up unexpectedly recently in an attic in South Wales. Sergeant Major Colin Lambert, owner of said attic, had been one of Rudolf Hess’s guards during the latter’s life-long sentence in Spandau, and had somehow managed to acquire a collection of wartime Nazi propaganda posters – which came as a bit of a surprise when his son discovered them.

    The first one begins: ‘Der einst so großmäulige, ehemalige britische Kriegsminister. der Jude Hoare Belisha…‘ (‘The once so loud-mouthed former British War Minister, the Jew Hoare Belisha (sic)…’) There follows an extract from a piece he allegedly wrote for a Buenos Aires newspaper, no doubt somewhat taken out of context. There is then a map showing an area which has become sadly familiar in recent weeks.

    Like PostMark’s Fairy Feller @8, the poster needs to be zoomed up to the max to make out the details. Speaking of whom, how many times did I listen to that Queen II track in those far-off days and never heard TATTERDEMALIONS ?? I blame Freddie’s idiosyncratic pronunciation.]

25. Great fun, a mixture of the obvious and the obscure. Took me ages to work out the anagram for TATTERDEMALIONS.

    POTOMAC was brilliant once the penny dropped, and IN LOCO PARENTIS a great anagram.

    LOI was OUIJA which raised a smile.

    Thanks Maskarafe and manehi

26. Great puzzle, thanks.
    I didn’t know that Belisha beacons are an ‘old’ thing as there is a set right outside my house! I have always called them that, what is the new term please?
    Thanks Maskarade and manehi. Agree 1a my favourite.

27. ^Tiny quibble – the clue for POTOMAC is nicely concise but ‘DC current’ is tautological, like PIN number^

    Wasn’t it meant to be a hint for Washington DC, so not tautological at all.

28. At last, a chance to ask smugly “is this a Monday?” and “I suppose this sort of thing is ok once in a while”.
    Seriously, it was good to have a Friday puzzle that I didn’t find completely inpenetrable. I didn’t finish, but made my best progress all week.
    Thanks to Maskarade and manhi.

29. Entertaining puzzle with a few write-ins, like FRESCO, but other chewier clues such as for TATTERDEMALIONS.

    In BELISHA BEACONS, I assumed the prophet was the usual ELI, which left me with unparsed ‘sha’, doh! Like many others, I thought POTOMAC was superb, despite the surface tautology (I’m sure many people would refer to DC or AC currents – and also PIN numbers). The anagram for IN LOCO PARENTIS was pleasing.

    Thanks Maskarade and manehi.

30. My kind of puzzle! Straight through start to finish, with lots of chuckles en route. Thanks Maskarade and Manehi. Loved 1ac, 11ac, 23ac. (My goosegog bush is just coming into leaf!) Too many others to mention, but absolute favourite is 17ac, with its allusion to Horace: “Exegi monumentum aere perennius.”

31. Gervase@13. Agree DC current , ATM machine, and PIN number are examples of the RAS syndrome, which is in itself an example of the Redundancy Acronym Syndrome, a linguistic joke, but it is a ‘thing’. It’s an interesting phenomenon. Probably just means that people don’t actually know or think about the acronym itself.
    The clue made me laugh though. The tautology put me on the alert for the answer.

32. Thanks manehi, I didn’t know the other meaning of CLOCHE, and had to look up a fair few of these en route but good to learn things of course and thanks muffin, PostMark and essexboy for the extras above.
    I was another ELAN at first but my only complaint is the “on” in 24A which I found unfairly misleading – ditch it and move “Board” to the front and all would be fine [CEO and CUO here are French and German so it would even be accurate!].
    Anyway thanks Maskerade for all the fun. INTERNAL is my favourite, I love clues where the surface makes good sense but the definition has a slightly different meaning in the surface vs the solution.

33. Sincam@26 I see the highway code just calls them ‘flashing beacons’. We have them in Hong Kong too, but the road users’ code just calls them ‘yellow beacons’. There are fewer Belisha beacons than there used to be (because a lot of zebras have been replaced by pelicans/puffins/toucans/etc) and I imagine many people don’t find the need to refer specifically to them very often.

34. [eb @24: I’d agree the pronunciation by Freddie was unusual but it did get me to look up the word. Oddly enough, when writing the earlier post and thinking of unusual words that find their way into lyrics, I was reminded of Motorhead’s Lemmy who seems like an unusual candidate to have worked ‘parallelogram’ into a song. No idea if he ever composed a crossword…]

35. Very enjoyable despite a few that were new to me and G&S subtitles are rather specialised GK IMHO. I agree that Tatterdemalion is a lovely, if little heard, word and I’ve missed it every time I’ve listened to Queen II ( which is a lot. The early period Queen is my favourite). Thank you Masquerade and manehi.

36. [Didn’t know that one PostMark@34. My favourites are ‘anaesthetised’ on Elvis Costello’s Radio Radio and ‘genuflect’ on the brilliant Jayhawks Smile.]

37. [I have an album by Peppercorn that I like very much, though I know little about her. One song does include “disingenuous”.]

38. Thanks Maskarade and manehi.
    Some fell into place, others worth the effort for TATTERDEMALION & IN LOCO PARENTIS.
    A lovely ‘flickering lantern’, and the alliteration in 15d is fab.

39. I enjoyed this, although quite a lot seemed Mondayish. As others have noted, we’ve had some unusual words recently but it’s good to be reminded of TATTERDEMALIONS et al. Liked OROTUND and POTOMAC (once I got it). Thanks to M & m.

40. New: GOOSEGOGS; THE TOWN OF TITIPU; TATTERDEMALIONS; Belisha beacons.

    Did not parse 17ac.

    Liked BEE-EATER (new word for me, but well clued); CRACKERS.

    Thanks, both

41. That was good fun, though I had to look up THE TOWN OF TITIPU. Rather suspected it would be the subtitle to The Mikado, but Gilbert & Sullivan’s fraffly, fraffly, witty and amusin’ supposedly-comic operas have never been my thing (rather like the critic who growled that he wished The Blue Danube would dry up, but not before The Merry Widow had gone down in it three times and come up twice).
    I loved the other long ones, though, especially TATTERDEMALIONS where the word is as delightful as the wordplay.
    Thanks both.

42. Of course, there is a TATTERDEMALION in Titipu…

43. Never heard of BELISHA BEACONS, but the wordplay was clear. It was less so with GOOSEGOGS, which I’ve also never heard of, and I assembled the bits into “goosegoss,” with “then” being “so” reversed, followed by another S for south.

    TATTERDEMALIONS is a wonderful word I’m sure I’ve never used. I’m going to try now to fit it in somewhere.

    Alan@33 What’s with the pelicans and toucans?

    fit ilke@42 “A thing of shreds and patches?”

    Thanks Maskarade for the pleasant puzzle (got the last three this morning, including TATTERDEMALIONS) and to manehi for the elucidation. (Has “elucidation” appeared in any rock songs?)

44. Just arrived in Florida on holiday so was excited about having an earlier crack than usual. The easier ones went in quickly but I ground to a halt eventually with G&S defeating me (too lazy to start Googling) and the wonderful word TATTERDEMALIONS. I agree with PostMark’s @7, description of IN LOCO PARENTIS, which was my favourite. I’d like to blame jet lag but no excuse for the DNF. Liking the musical allusions from others. I’m sure Yes have a few obscurities in their lyrics.

    Ta Maskarade & manehi

45. Typically, I found this hard to start, though later on with a few crossers things got easier. My first was THE TOWN OF TITIPU, which I didn’t know, but once I’d worked out “the town of” the remaining letters rang some dim and distant bell.

    There were quite a lot of anagrams, but I don’t mind that when the answers are not obvious. Several fairly obscure words, but nothing that I had never come across, though OROTUND is confined to crosswords in my experience.

46. [Jon Anderson of Yes is a model of lyrical clarity AlanC@44. ‘My eyes convinced, eclipsed with the younger moon attained with love. It changed as almost strained amidst clear manna from above.’ from Close to the Edge. Who hasn’t had similar thoughts?]

47. Ah JerryG, probably my all time favourite album!

48. [Valentine@43 – lyrics.com has a few hits for “elucidation”, seems to be obscure metal bands in the main eg Bal-Sagoth and Wizardthrone. I think Carcass did that sort of thing better and with a sense of humour. If you accept dodgy nowhere near homophones, Paul Simon did sing about “…a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires…” on the Boy in the Bubble.]

49. When I wrapped this up last night (I’m in the US) I was expecting to see some comments about UK-centricity of some of the answers, but was mistaken (Valentine came close). Maybe POTOMAC (a lovely clue) balanced it out a bit.

    I was another with ELAN at first.

50. I’ll admit to a DNF – just low energy and with a swelling agenda for the day opted to reveal rather than chew. Enjoyable for all that.

    I’m forever intrigued by the mental process of clue-solving. I had jousted with the ‘warden’ in 6d to no avail and when the G&S subtitle presented itself I wondered if (given that there was probably an’of’ involved) The Yeomen of the Guard might present possibilities. Returning later to 6d with some crossers who should pop up but a BEE(F)-EATER. There seems to be an undercurrent in the mind working away surreptitiously.

    They were GOOSEGO(B)S where I grew up.

    [JerryG@46: Thanks – you made me laugh.]

    And thanks also to Maskarade and manehi.

51. Lots to like in this puzzle, with some clever clues, word play and parsing with a couple of new words along the way. Liked the triple definition for 15dn [Has there ever been a quadruple definition?]
    Too many favourites to list, but had real lol with AFRO
    Thx to Maskarade and manehi.

52. My grandmother used tatterdemalion as an adjective to describe tattered, ramshackle clothes, but never as a noun to describe the people wearing them. They were ragamuffins.

53. Thanks both,

    Very enjoyable way to offset the depressing article elsewhere in the paper saying that the urge for an afternoon nap is a sign of dementia.

    GOOSEGOGS was the name for the fruit WIWAL in Lincolnshire. [‘Greg grogs’ were garden snails – the only mention of which on p1 of a google search turned out to be in a book of provincial words from Lincolnshire dated1863.]

54. ShropshireLass @51

    We’ve seen quite a number of quadruple definitions – and even quintuples!

    Here are some samples

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/01/21/guardian-prize-27094-by-puck/

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2016/10/04/guardian-27006-imogen/

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2016/11/17/financial-times-15390-by-alberich/

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/04/20/independent-10770-radian/

    http://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/11/04/independent-10315-by-hoskins/

    There are more Guardian ones but I gave up delving in the archive. 😉

55. Since I’m a fan of Gozo in the FT I thought I’d give this a try. Big mistake — I got half of it completed after several hours and threw in the towel. Thanks to both.

56. [Hope you’ve got tickets for the June tour AlanC as I’ve read today that they’re playing CTTE in full instead of Relayer!]

57. Lots to like about this; several good anagrams and even the NHOs (GOOSEGOGS, TATTER* and G&S) were fairly clued.

    It’s strange how I struggled on Mon-Wed but found yesterday’s and today’s relatively straightforward. It just goes to show how sometimes you’re on the setter’s wavelength and sometimes not.

    I knew BELISHA BEACON from childhood (was it GXM aka DV aka DP?) but it’s no longer in fashion and I don’t recall ever seeing it in writing. [So] I looked it up. Nice to know its origin (and spelling) now (and even more after eb@24’s story).

    Thanks both.

58. JerryG @ 46 — I think ‘genuflect’ was probably copyrighted by Tom Lehrer in The Vatican Rag.

59. PostMark@7 – I’m at least one other who immediately thought of Queen II on solving 2dn. From the time when nobody played the synthesizer.
    Many thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

60. Fun puzzle. I don’t recall tackling a Maskerade before. 1a POTOMAC went in as soon as the clue was read, but the rest was rather slow going. Still had the top half relatively empty this morning (I’m in the US, like AlanC@44 and DrWhatsOn@49) but things fell into place once I was caffeinated. TATTERDEMALIONS reminded me of Captain Haddock from Tintin: “Abecedarian! Rapscallion! Tatterdemalion! Bashi-Bazouk!” etc. Ta manehi and Maskerade.

61. DuncT @59: I think I can confidently say I’ve never encountered the word in any other context. But it obviously made enough of an impact that I was able to solve the clue umpteen years later. (Nice synth riff 😀 )

62. TATTERDEMALIONS now goes in my personal urban dictionary which includes ne’erdowells, rapscallions and ragamuffins. Words to leave cheeky oiks unable to know if they’re being insulted or praised…
    And with the grid empty, I wondered if CHICken could be considered a jumper.
    This was DNF for me with OROTUND and POTOMAC (ok, I looked them up).
    Good fun though.

63. Nice to get only my second success this week, after getting two wrong yesterday, and incompletions on Monday and Wednesday. Good to know the old brain still works sometimes. TITIPU arrived from a dark recess somewhere, and I managed to work out 2d despite having never listened to any Queen albums. POTOMAC was very good, and PACT, my last one in, received a massive tea tray clang by way of applause. Sometimes those little four-letter words are the hardest to solve.

    Many thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

64. Smot @62 you read my mind. I frequently use TATTERDEMALION ( and rapscallion plus meritricious ) just to annoy and confuse my students, hirsute and hircine also useful.
    Nice to have a puzzle with some real old-fashioned words.

65. Found it – Rumpus caused by tatterdemalion turning up in nude ( 7 ) .

66. Great to see Maskarade outside of his usual Bank Holiday tours de force, I think this happens roughly once per year. Like many others POTOMAC and IN LOCO PARENTIS definite favourites, Thanks to Maskarade and to Manehi .

67. Good fun and a bit of reference checking needed. I too am amused by that big word. Thanks Maskarade.
    I wondered if Tony Greig might have had a touch of ginger in his hair colour. I remember him as very fair but…
    Thanks for the blog Manehi.

68. JohnB @ 66

    From Moaljodad, the statto over on the graun thread:

    “For anyone who is interested, exactly one third (13/39) of Maskarade’s Guardian puzzles have now appeared away from the Bank Holiday Special slot: 2 Wednesdays, 2 Thursdays, 6 Fridays and 3 ordinary Saturdays.”

    I think he made his G debut on the 2013 Bank Holiday, presumably when Araucaria was no longer able to.

69. I thought I’d do well on this after getting several clues on the first pass before going to bed (California is 8 hours behind the UK). But had to give up with the large number of unknown-to-me words and phrases.

    For GOOSEGOGS, I found the surface impenetrable. Is there an explanation of how the Home Counties become SE since they encircle London? Wikipedia states that Buckinghamshire is usually included, and it’s to the North.

    Valentine @43: There’s an article in Wikipedia about BELISHA BEACONS that also explains about the puffins, pelicans, and toucans!

70. Calgal @69
    The “Home Counties” is generally regarded as being the SE of England, including Bucks (far to the south of me!)

71. I would never have finished if it weren’t for Freddie Mercury. Thanks Fred! If you haven’t hear Fairy Tellers Masterstroke then snap to it. It’s a work of pure genius.

72. Couldn’t get TATTERDEMALIONS even with all the crossers.

    Thanks to Maskarade and to Manehi

73. I also failed on TATTERDEMALIONS despite having all the crossers. I may have accidentally got the word while fiddling with the anagram letters but didn’t recognise it. Also didn’t know POTOMAC, so DNF for me. How I got the G&S one I don’t know! Anyway thanks for the challenge.

74. Off topic for weird song lyrics, what is sanhedralite ? (Duran Duran – To the Shore , 1982ish)

75. I did not finish this, missing a couple that should have been more obvious. I had never heard of a goosegog, and couldn’t let go gooseberry which didn’t fit. As an aside, I did learn that a gooseberry bush was a 19th century slang term for public hair. Hence babies being born under gooseberry bushes, which I now understand. It’s a lifelong learning journey!
    Many thanks to Maskarade and manehi

76. DC current isn’t tautology because it’s District (of) Columbia current … and yet …

77. GingerTom @75 – I think that one needs to be referred to the dubious etymologies panel. The source seems to be QI, which is notoriously unreliable.

78. I enjoyed this. Learnt about goosegogs and belisha beacons, along with tatterdemalions!

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