Guardian 28,714 – Picaroon

88 comments on “Guardian 28,714 – Picaroon”

1. Thanks Andrew, yet another Mary Poppins puzzle from Picaroon. Lovely.

   I did wonder if there was an error in 11a, not being familiar with that abbreviation for keg, but the error was all mine.

2. Another lovely puzzle form my favourite setter. A relative doddle after yesterday’s tortuous offering. Favourites RHAPSODY and DEFENCES for their splendid surfaces. Thanks Andrew and Pickers.

3. That was enjoyable, especially after yesterday. Came here for the parsing of a couple of clues: MUTUAL and ATTEMPT, plus why EROS meant drive. Clearly clued.

   Thank you to Picaroon and Andrew

4. Widders @1: always interesting to see which themes end up running through a day’s blog and I wonder if you’ve identified today’s with your comment on keg = KG. I’m the second in three posts (probably more by the time I’ve pressed Post) to wonder if there was a typo! It was the only bit of an otherwise typically tight Picaroon that stumped me when parsing. PARADIGM, ELECTRA, COLON, VIAGRA (ho ho), REDWOODS and MUTUAL all get double ticks from me and basically everything else got one 😀 UNICORNS has a delightful surface though they are the first to spring to mind when I encounter ‘fabulous’, let alone ‘fabulous beasts’. Someone on the – rather more friendly today – Guardian site queried ANNECY. I think I’ve driven past it from Lyon airport to the Alps and it is indeed a lakeside resort but I’m not sure how well known it is: the brief Google synopsis notes the town contains a museum with regional artifacts such as Alpine furniture and religious art, plus a natural history exhibit. Sounds like a must see for those, like me, who closely follow Alpine furniture 😀

   Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

5. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
   A slow start but a rapid and satisfying finish. I Googled Eros and drive for that explanation.
   Doesn’t ear=corn need a dbe indicator?

6. I never knew that about omega and omicron: thank you Andrew for pointing out what I now see as obvious.

   I too found parsing GREEK GIFTS problematic with kg for keg.

   Dnk ANNECY

   So much brilliance: favourites included MUTUAL and ECZEMA and RHAPSODY.

   Slight typo in the parsing of ISTHMUS, I think.

   Thanks Picaroon, that was fun!

7. I didn’t get 11a until it was too late to be of any help. 3D had me wondering if I was looking at a Paul!
   I, too, was thrown by KG for keg.

8. Mega. Can’t beta Picaroon. Good enough to eta.

   (That won’t work in the States)

   PM @4 – last year, and the year before, ANNECY was la ville où l’on vit le mieux en France.
   This year it got pipped to the post by Angers.

   Ta(u) Pi and Alpha

9. PostMark@4 – Luckily for me, ANNECY and the surrounding area was the setting for the French crime drama, ‘Killer by the Lake’ (Le tueur du lac) that I watched quite recently. Looked lovely. Alpine furniture happily did not feature, or, if it did, it passed me by. I do seem to recall that raclette was eaten, however.

10. Sheer quality.

11. Enjoyable. Putting in GREEK ROOTS held me up a little, so I couldn’t get PERIODICAL until I revisited it – when I too was puzzled by the keg=KG (Where did the E go?). But plenty of lovely clues – I liked BASILICA best, followed by VIAGRA – well, a Geology degree, and… perhaps best not to go there! Avarice = caviare – who would have thought it? And everything was parsable, unlike… best not to go there either. Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.

12. [TT – where did the E go? On a trip, perhaps]

13. Always great cluing from Picaroon – As George C @ 10 says, sheer quality! Many thanks to P & A.

14. PM @4 – judging by subsequent comments, yes, looks like it! I highly recommend stopping off at Annecy next time you’re passing, it’s truly lovely. I’m not at all surprised it topped the poll mentioned by essexboy.

15. Perhaps it goes without saying that I loved this!

    My ticks were for GREEK GIFTS (I didn’t even notice the ‘missing’ E – such is my faith in the integrity of Picaroon’s cluing!), ECZEMA (I’m a sufferer), PARADIGM, ELECTRA (because I love Sophocles’ play), COLON, because it made me smile – as did VIAGRA, SOLO, for the sad picture it painted, ATTEMPT and CAVIARE (neat anagram).

    I’m with Widdersbel re Annecy – and surprised it’s not more well-known. I spent a lovely week there once (and enjoyed the raclette – thanks for the reminder, Spooner’s catflap).

    Huge thanks, as ever, to Picaroon for a lovely puzzle and Andrew for a great blog.

16. That was fun.

    I took KG to be what you get after “drinking [from] keg” – I.e. it’s empty.

    That is of course nonsense as “drinking” is the insertion indicator.

    I don’t get the objection to OMEGA as the clue doesn’t say upper or lower case O. Plus I think we’ve all had enough of the word “omicron”. But I do only know these letters from maths, so maybe I’m missing something.

    Thank you Picaroon and Andrew

17. Very clever clueing but way too difficult for me! Only got about half in and had to come here for the parsing of about a third.

    Ah well, it’ll soon be Monday again!

    DNK:
    ELECTRA
    ANNECY
    GUY = RAG
    STOMACH = CORPORATION

18. Had the GREEK part of 11ac in place quite early on, and realised the theme therefore, though took a while to work out the GIFTS bit. Struggled towards the end with RAGTAG and MUTUAL. Liked the misdirection with BASILICA, liked OMEGA, finally. What’s not to like about a Picaroon puzzle, anyway?

19. Well, it seems that kg = keg(s) is in Chambers. Threw me for a long time as well, but ended up with the usual it can’t be anything else. What I still don’t get though, is why anyone needs an abbreviation for a 3 letter single syllable word.

    Excellent puzzle though!

20. I was saved from a DNF by my low-brow tastes as ANNECY cropped up recently in the Netflix property porn show The Parisian Agency 🙂

    Lovely puzzle and light relief after yesterday’s slog

    Cheers all

21. Great puzzle that all fell into place after 11a, as opposed to my DNF yesterday.
    Danaos time et dona ferentes

22. Sorry should have been timeo, but predictive text struck

23. Memory of Annecy: being in a supermarket with Prince’s Sexy MF playing over the tannoy. Expletives definitely not deleted. And of course no-one but me at all phased …

    Thanks to setter and blogger

24. Fiery Jack@19 why anyone needs an abbreviation for a 3 letter single syllable word
    reminds me of WWW, more syllables than the full thing

25. Very enjoyable puzzle. Took me 5 answers to discover the theme which made the rest of the across solutions easier for me.

    Liked ISTHMUS, VIAGRA, HEDONIST, PARADIGM, MELODY.

    New: ANNECY.

    Thanks, both.

26. Well, in a different sort of way, that was just as challenging and enjoyable as yesterday’s. GREEK GIFTS came too late to help much and like Eileen I didn’t spot the missing e. Checked that it is in Chambers as kg. One for the memory banks (I wish). I’d forgotten or never knew guy=rag. Favourite was PARADIGM, such a good surface.

27. Well, to a Greek this was indeed a gift and what a lovely one it was too.
    Thank you.

28. Fiery Jack @19 why anyone needs an abbreviation for a 3 letter single syllable word…. so manufacturers of taps don’t have to write the word hot on the tap.

29. Picaroon is my go-to setter for an unfussy, unthemed, honest-to-goodness crossword. (Took a serious mauling yesterday).

    Like others, the GREEK GIFTS revealed far too late to be of any help but it was still a nice aha moment when it came.

    Many thanks to the pirate and for the excellent blog.

30. Tim C @28 that is a fair point well made

31. Excellent crossword for those of us who have lived long on the alms-basket of words (Love’s Labour’s Lost).

    I haven’t come across kg for keg either, but I confess I chucked the answer in without checking that ‘keg’ would have given an extra E (:

    Lots to like – the surface for HERO is great and VIAGRA raised a smile. But above all, there are so many beautiful words in the puzzle.

    ANNECY is indeed a lovely spot. essexboy @8: ‘Angers accolade angers Annecy’?

    BTW the average clue length here is 7.1 words, which is pushing it a bit, but worth it for such a splendid offering.

    Many thanks to the Pirate and Andrew.

32. [MattWillD @16 et al. The first thing that comes to my mind with Omicron, is the the renowned physician from the Trollope novels – Dr Omicron Pie. Even the current plague designation hasn’t supplanted that.]

33. [Crossbar @32: Isn’t his colleague Dr Lambda Mewnew? Rare excursion by Trollope into Dickensian nomenclature]

34. Thanks Andrew, agree entirely with your assessment and add me to the keg queriers (always prefer cask but that’s hard to find here). I am especially happy, and grateful to the setter, that my lack of classical scholarship did not seem an impediment to progress (ELECTRA took longest, having heard of her but not knowing the stories/plays, nicely cryptic defn of return).
    [Lippi@23 – I understand entirely as we get that at Swiss supermarkets, still at least I can blame them rather than myself for empottying my son’s vocabulary. ]
    Brilliant, thanks Picaroon.

35. Another great crossword from Picaroon.

    I got the GREEK early on but took a long time to see the GIFTS, especially because I noticed the kg and, like some others, assumed it was a typo. It is in Collins and the ODE as well as Chambers.

    I really enjoyed the anagrams for ANTAGONIST and PERIODICAL. Other pleasing experiences with PARADIGM, BASILICA and VIAGRA.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

36. A lovely puzzle. I do see what Andrew means about OMEGA, as mega means great in both the wordplay and the answer, but I thought it was a nice clue anyway.

    Kg for keg is indeed in Chambers so it’s fine, though as Fiery Jack says it seems a bit pointless – you’ve only saved one out of three letters, and by the time you’ve had to explain what you meant you’d be wishing you’d written it in full.

    Many thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

37. [In chemistry, mole, the unit for amount of substance, is abbreviated to mol. In the long run it does save a lot of writing!]

38. My thoughts coincide with George Clements @10 and Eileen (no change there) @15

    Thanks very much to Picaroon for a lovely Friday crossword and to Andrew for the lovely Friday blog

39. [Gervase @31 – Angers angers Annecy indeed 🙂
    Got me wondering which other French towns might rain on Annecy’s parade…
    Mind that Gap, Annecy
    Annecy blue as Orange gets gold
    Vicious Vichy vitiates Annecy’s vision
    Ouch! Aix pains Annecy
    I’d better not try anything with Condom.]

40. [eb @39: Condom is a perfectly nice little town in the Armagnac area. Miles Kington once suggested that it should be twinned with Maidenhead…]

41. Very satisfying for me, except for keg and MUTUAL. I still don’t get how TUM can come from corporation. Could someone explain? We’ll probably meet up in Annecy.

42. [Gervase @33 Ah yes, Sir Lamda Mewnew. I thought there was another one. Thanks for the reminder. They always made me smile.]

43. Moniscp @41. A ‘corporation’ is a polite word for what the medical profession calls ‘truncal obesity’, otherwise less politely knows as a ‘beer-belly’ – although I’m sure there are non-beer-related causes of this. Thus ‘corporation’ aligns euphemistically with ‘tum’, short for ‘tummy’.

44. I found this hard but, unlike yesterday, never less than fun and satisfying. I didn’t get 11ac till quite late and after realising what the theme was. It took me about 5/6 across clues before the penny dropped. I’d toyed with musical terms, female names and at one point thought 11ac might be Queen Songs with the Borap references!!
    Thank you Picaroon and Andrew.

45. This might have been my fastest theme-get ever. I normally miss ghost themes, but here 11a told you there was one. My first 2 in were HERO and ISTHMUS, and the only thing I could think of that they had in common was GREEK, and the rest followed.

    FieryJack@19 I would have added “… and did the abbreviation by just dropping one letter”. It’s not as if “k” is ambiguous but “kg” isn’t. Oh well.

46. [Thanks muffin @37. It reminds me of Jno, the traditional abbreviation for the name John, which appears in at least one of the Sherlock Holmes stories (sorry, I can’t remember which). That always slightly puzzled me because, apart from the fact that it again only saves one letter, the remaining letters are in the wrong order.]

47. Andrew – I think you’ve missed an S in your parsing of 15a: M[aiden] in I’S + THUS.

48. [Dave Ellinson @24: Italians get round the cumbersome WWW by pronouncing it as vu-vu-vu (strictly VVV) rather than doppia vu-doppia vu-doppia vu]

49. Thanks Picaroon for my favourite crossword of the week thusfar after failing miserably the last two days. This went in quickly and I had no questions about parsing, a rarity for me. OMEGA, PARADIGM, ANTAGONIST (great anagram), COLON, VIAGRA, RAGTAG, and ERSE all got ticks from me but there really wasn’t a bad clue in the lot. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

50. [thanks Lord Jim@46, interesting link – I wonder if KEG became KG to distinguish it from maybe KK for kilderkin on order forms? – similarly Jon is Jonathan so presumably they needed something else for John, although both Joshua and Josiah compete for JSH so who knows? Unrelatedly, I knew two Johns who were known as Jack “for short” which always puzzled me.]

51. [Gazzh: I always remember from the Jennings books the boy whose surname was Temple and whose nickname was Bod. His initials were C.A.T. so he was naturally referred to as Dog, which became “shortened” to Dogsbody, which was further shortened to Bod.]

52. My favourite setter bar none, and he came up trumps again today. Lovely stuff from start to finish, with a “laugh out loud” moment when “Viagra” finally went in, and brought back happy memories of a lovely sunny day spent in Annecy, many years ago. My attention to detail is clearly at fault, as I hadn’t even noticed the “kg” abbreviation. Finally, thanks for the explanation of Eros, that was the only parsing that foxed me today.

53. Completely missed DON in HEIST.

    Andrew, SUN in UNICORNS needs to be marked as an anagram.

    Inspired by PostMark@4, I googled “Alpine furniture” to see if perhaps I wanted to follow it too, or at least to see what it is. All I could find were corporations claiming to sell the stuff, and showing pictures that looked like everybody’s living room sofa. I’m still mystified. I guess I’ll have to go to Annecy and find out.

    essexboy@8 I went to the article you linked, but didn’t learn anything much about Annecy, since the article was mostly about the list, its criteria, and who else was high on it.

    MattWillD@16 Omega and omicron aren’t upper and lower case of each other, they’re different letters.

    Not having heard of the Jennings books I looked them up and found that they were among that rather large body of British children’s books set in public or preparatory schools. We have no such tradition over here, and I suppose even the most avid of Harry Potter fans in the US don’t realize that Hogwarts is spang in the middle of a British book tradition.

    Something like the CAT = Bod story happened to my brother some forty years ago when he lived in a shared house with some friends. They had a notebook where people wrote down phone messages that had come in for someone else, and Allen signed his with his initials, APD. His housemates started calling him “Ap,” then lengthened that to “Apper” and further to “Apperoo,” then shortened it to “Roo,” lengthened that to “Rooner,” expanded that to “Tufted Spring Roonlet” (a still undiscovered bird species in Western Massachusetts) and then shortened that to TSR.

54. Perhaps “drinking keg” has the side effect of leaving KEG empty: KG. 😉

55. The calm after the storm. Trust Picaroon to bring order to the Guardian CC universe. Reliably challenging, enjoyable and immaculately clued.

    When I got REDWOODS, I wondered if ROODS meant crosses. I also didn’t now that RAG=GUY. Nice to learn some new words. I didn’t know KG=KEG and thought it might be familiar to the beer-people but it seems to be a new one to quite a few people.

    eb@various 😀 Keep the puns coming 😉

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

56. [Gervase @ 40 My cousin who in the 60s used to dabble in bric-a-brac and second hand stuff once had a street sign saying “No through way to MaidenHead Passage”]

57. [Ian @52: I respect you for giving us only the bare bones and probably should take my cue from that and enquire no further but you do post an intriguing line: a “laugh out loud” moment when “Viagra” finally went in and brought back happy memories of a lovely sunny day spent in Annecy, many years ago. I’m not sure what the emoji indicator is for surprised enquiring expression but I would enter it if I did! 😀 ]

58. Fantastic fare from the pirate as usual. Oddly and purely coincidentally I did know kg for keg, as I happened upon it in Chambers a few days ago, and remember thinking at the time if I’d bought a keg and it only had a mass of a kg would that mean it was empty?

59. [Lord Jim@51 thank you for reminding me of Temple and his nickname ( I still remember Darbishire explaining in one book that the word derived from eke-name ), Valentine@53 that’s a remarkable chain, I had a friend at school called Bodge but that was a chain of five only, starting from Harris. There was a discussion of children’s books on the radio the other day, consensus was that so many were set in boarding schools because it conveniently kept interfering parents out of the way. PM@57 – nice!]

60. Part of the considerable charm of Annecy may be its relative obscurity. I mean, if Guardian readers don’t know it… The town and its pristine lake are delightful, even for those of us who were unaware — until today — of the homage to Alpine furniture.

61. Delayed by trying to fit WASTED into 7d (he was Ted), but eventually sorted out GREEK GIFTS. I’ll take Picaroon’s word for it that ANNECY is a lakeside resort and EROS is a drive: neither obvious. A smile for VIAGRA.

62. Enjoyed this and blog.
    But 11 ac was ruined for me by the common “providing” where it should be “provided” for IF.

63. ‘Lac d’Annecy’ by Paul Cézanne is in the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House.

64. Enjoyable but I’m left wondering how EMA “chases” the “half cut Bohemians”. Surely it surrounds them.

65. jeceris @ 64: you’re reading it as “English graduate chases”. It’s “English” then “graduate chases”.

66. Simon @65.
    So I am.
    Thanks.

67. Keith@62; “ruined”? Blimey.

68. I used to work in Annecy a couple of days a week and it is well worth a visit.

69. “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” is only a very loose translation of the original “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, from the Aeniad. It’s really “I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts”.

70. Thanks for the blog, a gift for MrEssexboy and a nuclear theme ( copyright Dr Whats On ) . A lot of good clues with few issues.
    OMEGA is the last in the series particle for the original three quark model of Murray Gell-Mann. it has triple strangeness and was undiscovered at the time. Gell-Mann described its properties and it was soon discovered exactly as predicted , very powerful evidence for the quark model. Alas it lost its status when charmed particles turned up.

71. Very nicely clued, but I would have liked a more lowbrow theme after MELODY and RHAPSODY revealed themselves. SIG!
    Thanks, Pickers and Anders.

72. [Roz @70
    Today’s earworm!]

73. SDB @69: Flann O’Brien’s novel ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ (which is excellent) includes the shadowy characters Timothy Danaos and Dona Ferentes 🙂

74. Oh that’s clever.

75. This seemed much easier than recent offerings from Picaroon, but this may have been because my brain was sharpened rather than dulled by the recent confrontation with Mobo. (I only gave up trying to solve it a couple of hours ago.) I was briefly held up by RAG for ‘guy’, but it couldn’t have been anything else.

    Like jvh @63 I knew Annecy from the Cézanne, a print of which my mother had above her fireplace.

    [Thanks to Valentine @53 for “Tufted Spring Roonlet” 🙂 ]

    [Thanks to Gervase @73 for prompting me to try reading Flann O’Brien again.]

76. Why is ECZEMA == Complaint?

77. Never mind… saw in the dictionary that complaint can mean an illness.

78. SanDiegoBrit @69, if you’re still there – I’m sorry, I’ve only just seen your post.
    I don’t think that Andrew’s blog suggests that ‘Beware of …’ is the literal translation of your quotation from the Aeneid but it is the well-known saying derived from it.
    I think I’ve commented here before that there’s more to the quotation: the simple little word ‘et’ (usually, of course, ‘and’) can mean not only ‘even’ but also ‘especially’ – just one of the reasons I love Virgil. ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum’ is another, especially just now.

79. Hi Harry @76 – as I said @15, it’s a complaint of mine. 🙁

80. gladys @61 et al: EROS and THANATOS – sex drive and death drive. David Walsh’s MONA (the best art museum in the world) has rooms with these names.

81. Really a relief to have a puzzle that I could mostly solve today. (gave up on MUTUAL and ANNECY)
    But I so wanted 7 down to be LIONEL (Messi)

    Thank you, Picaroon for several hours of pleasant brain exercise and Andrew for explaining what left me puzzled.

82. I remember a gourmet collague going on holiday to Annecy in the 60s and compaining that if he had stuck to the legal limit on currency in force at the time he would only have eaten once in a week. Google tells me that there are 7 Michelin-starred restaurants on the Lac d’Annecy, one with three, two with two and four with one.

83. the abbreviation of keg seems problematic, since KG would make me wonder when they started selling beer by the pound!

84. I’m another expecting a typo re KEG and I didn’t know EROS was drive. Plenty of clever stuff.
    Thanks both

85. [phitonelly@71 just popping back to acknowledge your powers of observation, Captain Black would have had no chance of infiltrating anything with you around.]

86. Valentine @53

    I know they are different letters! My question related to the explanation in the parsing where Andrew had issues with the clue which I didn’t understand.

    I realise I wasn’t clear, sorry!

87. Many thanks, Andrew, for another insightful and illuminating blog.
    Best wishes to one and all!

88. I had 11across as an envelope (drinking) of Greeks (welcomes) and (dodgy) keg with if (providing).

Comments are closed.