Guardian 28,725 / Fed

95 comments on “Guardian 28,725 / Fed”

1. Nice one Dave! Lots to enjoy here especially with a few 3-letter solutions on the grid. Thanks Fed and Eileen.

2. What Lucky Eileen said in her prologue

   Thanks to her and to Fed

3. Y?

4. I’m not a great fan of three letter solutions, but 21 is such a good surface it deserves a mention.
   Thanks Fed and Eileen

5. SUE: segue minus eg?

6. Thanks Eileen – some clever clues here, but the 3 letter ones took us ages. Well done Louise for spotting Sue.
   We were stumped by 27A parterre as we thought it was a garden feature.
   The OED says that its use as part of a theatre is American, but Chambers doesn’t.

7. Many thanks, Louise @5 – I’ll amend the blog now.

   You’re right, Auriga @3 – it isn’t there, is it?

8. 26a Segue minus eg
   Thanks Fed and Eileen

9. Yes, as spotted first by Auriga @3, it’s a Y lipogram.

   Good stuff, with lots of difficult parsing. I agree with Louise @5 et al about SUE. I didn’t know SKIN for ‘fell’.

   Favourites were RHOTIC and TRIPLANE.

   Thanks to Fed and Eileen

10. A great puzzle. Thanks to Fed and Eileen for a good challenge and a great blog. Thanks also to Louise@5 for the brilliant spotting of SEGUE for “Proceed without pause”: I thought SUE at 26a must be derived somehow from ENSUE or PURSUE, so that was poor parsing from me. My favourite was 6d CORDON BLEU. Lots else to like though.
    [Thanks to PostMark and others for the recommendation yesterday to have a go at the Rodriguez in the Indy so I could extend the enjoyment I had gleaned from his alter ego Picaroon in the Guardian. It was a terrific crossword and I am so glad I didn’t miss out on it.]

11. I thought there were some tricky parsings here. Failed on the focus of waTch in BIG CAT, didn’t know SKIn meant fell (will need to read my Chambers) and ARC for spin didn’t seem right. Shame about the missing Y for a pangram. First time ever I’ve remembered to look for one.

    However I really enjoyed this. It felt very different to the usual fare and none the worse for that

    Many thanks Fed, and Eileen for the explanations.

12. Thanks Fed and Eileen
    An interesting challenge, but one that I found a bit frustrating as there were several clues that I could partially but not completely parse: SEA SNAIL, TOUSLE (is PE sport? we always made a distinction), SUE (I toyed with ENSUE, but it doesn’t really work), the T is BIG CAT, UBIQUITOUS apart from the QUIT, EMIGRATE (great=star?), TEMPER (I thought the sovereign was ER, so couldn’t explain the EMP), and SKI (never heard of fell as skin).
    Favourites were MISCHIEF and ILL-FATED.

13. Sorry I crossed with the last few comemnts which is why I didn’t acknowledge them. I don’t understand Auriga’s post @3 or Eileen’s repsonse to it @7. Please could you explain what a “Y lipogram” is, WordPlodder@9? Thanks.

14. Oh more crossing – I see now it must refer to a pangram that is missing one letter – in this case, Y. Is that right?
    [“comments” was what I meant to type @13]

15. I read ARC as a verb with provide spin as the definition and PARTERRE as a feature withe theatre role a part of the word play. Auriga@3 or Y not?

16. At first glance thought this would be very difficult with all the short answers – often with long clues. But I really enjoyed it and thought there was a lovely variety of clues.

    Sadly didn’t get TRIPLANE or RHOTIC

    Favourites were: CITIZEN (made me laugh) TARMAC, MISCHIEF, ILL-FATED, ADJUST, TOUSLE

    Thanks Fed and Eileen

17. Thanks, Eileen, nice blog as ever. I don’t always get on so well with Fed but I was definitely on the right wavelength today and really enjoyed this – lovely inventive clueing with lots of satisfying PDMs.

    Crossbar @11 – it’s a very old (obsolete) meaning of fell, but it checks out in the OED. I’m sure I’ve seen it in crosswords before – and probably nowhere else…

18. Nice to see “rhotic”, one of this forum’s favourite words. As he told us a few months ago, the word was invented in the late 1960’s by John Wells (emeritus professor of phonetics at UCL), when he was examining systematic variation in the use of /r/ in Southampton. Rhotic, rhoticity etc have since become standard usage in phonetics and elsewhere.

19. Hello JinA @13 – you’ve probaby worked it out by now, but from the OED:

    lipogram: A composition from which the writer rejects all words that contain a certain letter or letters

20. Petert @15 – PARTERRE is ‘the pit of a theatre, esp the part under the galleries’ (Chambers) – see Shirley @6

21. Enjoyable, with a few sticky ones. I’ve been a music teacher for decades and never heard of a guitar being referred to as an axe. Don’t know why arc is spin. I’m a bit too far away to know of CAMRA. And why is a kettle a cordon? Rhotic, parterre & tousle are new to my lexicon. And I wasn’t aware of a connection between skin and fell.

22. Lipogram sounds like a test for fats!
    Thanks for the blog, Eileen. There were a couple of parsings I couldn’t see, including SUE. (Thanks, Louise @5). And thanks to Fed for the fun.

23. Had to remember that, as well as here in hic et nunc, it can mean this (surprised you learnt this in cws, Eileen … no you were prob referring to rhotic itself…?). And had forgotten the real ale acronym, so tarmac was a bung as was toupee (lazy), but I did get the segue/sue subtractive. Also, don’t know why kettle is cordon … will look it up. Interesting bag of tricks and tropes, thanks Fed, and thanks Eileen.

24. Graninfreo – when the police are dealing with a demonstration they sometimes kettle the participants which means placing them inside a tight police cordon often using metal gates. It is a controversial move that has resulted in injuries in the past and it can’t be a pleasant experience.

25. Geoff @ 21. I associate AXE with heavy metal rather than Julian Bream or Paco de Lucia, so the usage may well have passed you by.

26. grantinfreo @23 – I think you’re joking – yes, I was referring to ‘rhotic’. 😉

    Re kettle = CORDON: this meaning of kettle is in Collins but not in my copy of Chambers – perhaps it’s in the online version. See here for an explanation.

27. … couple other dnks, fell as skin (maybe faintest bell), and parterre as other than garden …

28. Thanks, Shirley @24 – we crossed.

29. Geoff down under
    “kettling” is term for police restricting demonstrators, similar to a cordon.
    Axe for guitar is quite common. There’s the early Pink Floyd song Careful with that axe, Eugene, in which I think the axe refers to the guitar rather than the tool

30. Ta for that, Shirley @24, does ring a faint bell now…

31. Grantinfreo@23 “kettle” comes from the police practice of dealing with demonstrators who may become unruly. The police “kettle” or form a police cordon around the demonstrators to confine them to one area. I understood this one, but some of the other clues were incomprehensible to me!

32. … and ta Eileen @26

33. I’m gratified to see my coinage RHOTIC appear at 9ac.

34. … and ta Chardonneret @31

35. Slightly quirky but enjoyable crossword. The setter earned his money with 34 clues to write.

    I particularly liked RHOTIC, ILLUSIVE, UBIQUITOUS and TEMPER. Chambers has this for kettle: transitive verb
    To contain (protesters) in an enclosed area.

    Thanks Fed and Eileen.

36. It will take me a while to get over the mental image of Cher scratching her bum, but it gave me a good laugh. Nice to see such ingenious clueing today. Thanks both.

37. John Wells @33 – it’s good to hear from you again.

    It was Shed who introduced us to RHOTIC in 2009, with ‘Tenor in drunken choir fought for fort? Not in such a dialect (6)’.

    We used to have a fairly prolific contributor, now sadly departed, who styled himself Rhotician. (He was from Northern Ireland. 😉 )

38. Found it hard to parse some of my answers which I guessed from definition: 9ac apart from OT = books; 10ac apart from T; 26ac; 15d.

    New: TAMP, PARTERRE; fell = skin (for 25d); kettle = CORDON.

    Liked DESERTS, ADJUST.

    Thanks, both.

39. Nice work from Fed and Eileen. But – just a tiny thing, Eileen: in 17ac the I in thIs needs to be red?

40. This is not my favourite style of cluing, with lots of fiddly little bits to deduce and then put together, but I know others will fall on it with cries of delight, so to each their own. I did manage to parse most of them apart from RHOTIC and PARTERRE (which I also didn’t know in its theatrical sense) and TRIPLANE (which I had as AIRPLANE for ages). Did anyone else try to find a breed of cattle for DIMINISH, in which, just for once, lower actually meant lower?

    No, I can’t see why arc=spin, and I was surprised to find that a limpet really is
    a snail.

41. Hi Roughtrade @39 – what sharp eyes you have! I was pretty sure I’d slip up somewhere: I’ve never used red before.

42. Geoff down under @21 , axe is a common term for the electric guitar perhaps best illustrated by Be Bop Deluxe’s album/song Axe Victim where the cover has an electric guitar shaped like a skull.

43. Thank you Eileen for fathoming TOUSLE (muffin@12 I recall previous debates on pe/sport equivalence but not whether any definitive conclusion was reached, I’m on your side but fear it may be another “arrow” case per yesterday) and Louise for SUE (Julie in Australia, I am another ENSUE, en= em = erm, eh? give up).
    There are still a few fur coat shops clinging on here and I see Fell and Pelz in the window signs there, though SKI = runner still took me a while as did the Triplane/Rhotic combo, but my favourites were TARMAC for the smooth surface (sorry) and the classic Lego construction of MISCHIEF, thanks Fed.

44. PS Gladys@40 yes, I tried to make LIMOUSIN work but couldn’t believe that “limited by course” was a clear instruction to remove the last letter (I find Fed quite precise about his instructions, which helped me walk away). And I was very close to entering SEA SHELL as I didn’t know it was a snail either!

45. I wonder if there has ever been a greater word-count in the clues of a 15×15 puzzle?

46. I had a few questions raised in this one. AXE wasn’t one of them. It’s obviously a guitar (just ask Pete Townshend). ARC and Spin though aren’t to me synonymous. I guess PARTERRE could be “feature of theatre” but it also works as “(garden) Feature” and part being theatre role rather than just role. I did wonder about boob=err but the big C(hambers) has boob = bungle which is close enough. I also wondered about kettle=cordon. As nouns, a kettle usually refers to the area cordoned off rather than the cordon itself. As verbs C has cordon (often with off) as meaning to kettle, so I guess it’s close enough although I would say cordon off rather than just cordon.
    New for me was fell=skin
    I hope this doesn’t come across as too much of a whinge as this was a most enjoyable puzzle, and I have the utmost respect for setters. Given my poor efforts in the Azed clue writing comps I know how difficult it is to come up with a single clue over the space of a few days, let alone a complete crossword full.
    Favourite was TOUSLE for a devious substitution.

    Onya Fed, and yer blood’s worth bottlin’ Eileen

47. To complete the pangram Fed could have had TRY PLANE (a tool apparently) or DRY-PLATE (a photographic process). Otherwise best crossie this week so far.

48. Why is it called an axe?

49. Tim C @48 according to my mate Jimmy Google “the term dates back to the mid-’50s when jazz musicians used it as a slang word for saxophone. Over time, it became a go-to term for the electric guitar.”

50. I’m an unashamed Bluth/Fed fan, and this was no exception. NHO ‘parterre’, ‘hic’, or ‘skin’ for ‘fell’, but worked them out.

    Favourites were 10A, 16A, and 24A.

    Thanks Fed & Eileen.

51. For arc = spin I can only suggest that in cricket if a bowler spins the ball then its trajectory is more of any arc than straight line. Not very convincing though.

52. I think people may have missed Petert’s suggestion @17 –

    ARC (as verb) = provide spin

    As Neill97 says, if you deliver the ball so that its trajectory follows an arc, rather than ‘firing’ ( 😉 ) it in straight, it means it’s more likely to spin.

53. Many thanks to Elaine for unravelling the last three answers that I biffed (TEMPER, SUE, and TOUSLE). What an excellent puzzle, much enjoyed.

54. I had no problem with arc/spin, having read it as span. A case of read what you want it to be
    Muffin @ 29. In the Pink Floyd’s ‘Careful with that axe Eugene’, I think the meaning is of a considerably darker nature.

55. As we have a local fellmonger who deals in sheepskins, fell was fortunately no problem.

56. Times Refugee @53

    Alas, it wasn’t me (or Elaine!) who unravelled SUE.

    Since, like JinA and Gazzh, I pondered ensue / pursue, I’ll take this opportunity to ask something that I’ve wanted to ask for ages, in defence of my spelling ‘cluing’ (backed up by Collins – my Chambers doesn’t list the word at all: I think it was made up by cruciverbalists). Would anyone write sueing / ensueing / pursueing?

    Incidentally, ‘clue’ is the later spelling of ‘clew’, ‘a ball of thread’, or, as a verb, ‘to indicate, as with a clew’. Chambers – ‘clew: a thread that guides through a labyrinth’, as did Ariadne’s for Theseus – lovely!

57. I rather agree with Gladys@40. Call me old fashioned, perhaps, but I didn’t enjoy the wordy, rather clumsy to read cluing. Managed to struggle through the top half, but gave up with the rest of it and came on here to read Eileen’s as usual excellent clarity with how the answers were to be arrived at. And there really was some very clever stuff involved, but above my pay grade today, I’m afraid.

58. Arc as a verb can definitely be equated to spin although most of us just envisage the curve.

    Having had my name so frequently mixed up with Dave Gorman’s to the extent it now infuriates me, I’m so glad his crosswords are of such quality that I can read his name again without a frown!

59. An AXE can be almost any instrument (perhaps not a drums) – I’ve heard it used in reference to a harmonica and most definitely the saxophone. And a musician will use it to produce ‘chops’ which I would define as the characteristic musical moves of that musician. These days its use would be most commonly applied to a (-n electric) guitar.

    So ‘fell’ is a skin in the sense of a pelt – TILT reading between the lines of the blog (I wasn’t sure which meaning of ‘skin’ was intended – obvious really).

    What a fascinating discussion of RHOTIC, a word I can safely say I had never met outside of this forum. May I ask if anyone (hint hint) knows the derivation of the word? The ‘rh-‘ is particularly succulent.

    Thanks Fed (I enjoyed that, UBIQUITOUS in particular) and Eileen (brava for the enhanced blog which for me was worth the (but your) effort – I needed several helps; I would offer that ‘segue’ would have been more accessible if the definition had been ‘Continue without pause’ which is more what I take it to mean).

60. Another hugely enjoyable puzzle from Fed, who has really made his mark since appearing here. Thank you for leaving us with that image of Cher!

    Like others, parsing SUE had me head-scratching: I thought I had to remove EG from something but PURSUE was lodged in my mind. Thanks Louise@5 for destupefying me.

    No one has pointed out that there aren’t any plain anagrams in the puzzle, which must be quite rare? The clueing as usual was inventive and showed a lot of breadth in vocab and types of clues whilst remaining doable for me.

    Thanks Fed and Eileen.

61. When I found out there was no Y in the grid, I went looking for a place to put it. Found one right away – HIYA at 1d.

62. Parterre (lit. ‘On the ground’) is the standard French word for those seats in a theatre which are usually called stalls in the UK. I imagine that it came into use in England when Charles II reopened the theatres after the Civil War, he having spent a lot of his exile in France. Along with another innovation: actresses.

63. A couple of parsings fooled me and I tried to squeeze a Y into later solutions.
    Very enjoyable thanks Fed and Eileen

64. Alphalpha @59

    Re RHOTIC: see comments 18 and 33
    and Chambers: ‘(phonetics) adj r-pronouncing, ie denoting a dialect or accent, in which r is pronounced when it occurs before a consonant or before a pause (Gr rho, the Greek R)’.

    pdp11 @60
    I did notice, when solving, that there were no plain anagrams, then forgot to mention it when writing up the blog!

65. I thought this was a lot of fun, not easy in places because of Fed’s sly constructions, but time well spent.

    As for Floyd’s axe, I had always assumed that the long loud scream was because of a certain heavy sharp object, and I’m not talking about guitar tuning.

66. Really good crossword, with some tricky parsing. Some very clever construction, but retaining smooth surfaces eg ILLUSIVE.

    Failed to parse SUE.

    Other favourites were CORDON BLEU, RHOTIC and DESERTS

    Thanks Fed and Eileen

67. I realise that some crossword solutions refer to things from hundreds or thousands of years ago, but 12a was rather quaint.

68. Kind of proud of myself for parsing SUE, even though Eileen didn’t!

    Not so proud of missing several of the others that Eileen saw, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t cherry-pick my data.

    There was no way I’d ever have equated CORDON with kettle if I hadn’t pressed reveal, and I’m still struggling to justify it to myself, although consensus in the comments is that it’s a me thing.

    Anyway, thanks setter and blogger; this is one of my few forays outside of the quiptic and I feel like it was a gentle one!

69. Eileen 56; in my electronic version of Chambers ‘cluing’ is listed, although it doesn’t appear under transitive verb
    To direct or indicate with a clue.

70. Eileen@56 – re sueing / ensueing / pursueing – they all look a bit odd to me but I wonder if this is just a case of convention/familiarity. “Cluing” and “Clueing” both seem fine to me but the “uing” and “ueing” endings make me pause when I have to spell them out. I remember a quiz question years ago: what word has five consecutive vowels? The answering is related to your question 😉

71. well that took a while, but glad to fill the grid in the end, even if I couldn’t parse sue, tousle, foe or temper. Thanks for the explanations Eileen and for the mental work-out Fed.

72. [Eileen@56 for some reason I think I have seen “sueing” before, but the other two look very odd indeed with that “e”. On the other hand, if the current cold snap continues I may find myself fonduing/fondueing again and I am leaning towards e-inclusion there. Which probably doesn’t help you at all, sorry! But thanks for the derivation of “clue” – very nice, as you say.]

73. Thanks Fed for a challenging and ultimately satisfying crossword. I failed only with PARTERRE but there were a number I couldn’t parse (e.g. CORDON BLEU, SUE) so thanks Eileen and the blog for the help. RHOTIC was a favourite (a word I learned from Fifteensquared), along with ILLUSIVE, DIVA (great surface), MISCHIEF, ILL-FATED, and DESERTS. I’m looking forward to more Fed/Bluth, a setter who taxes but doesn’t bankrupt my brain.

74. Pax @DigbyDavies – comment 47 – but I’d never heard of either a TRY PLANE or a DRY PLATE. How about changing 21d to FRY and 24a to TRUSTY?

    @Eileen – glad to see that Rhotician, once of this parish, has not been forgotten.

75. Talking of pangrams (nearly) my adult son recently compiled a quadruple pangram (i.e. every letter appearing 4 times). There are no more unusual words than we find regularly in Guardian crosswords and all of his university friends and work colleagues (to whom he provides a regular supply of crosswords) were able to completed it so it’s clearly very doable. I found it very interesting.

76. This is the record (AFAIK): a quintuple pangram

77. Bit late, but those wondering about the use of axe for a guitar may look (or listen) up ‘All The Way From Memphis’ by Mott the Hoople, from 1973. Plenty of muso slang there too!

78. Mitz@ 76. Thanks for that; it’s excellent.

79. I wonder if the e in clueing is acceptable because it ultimately derives from a noun, whereas ensuing, pursuing et al derive from verbs?

    Or maybe the verb ‘clew’ led to ‘clewing’, so when clew became clue clueing continued to be spelled in full.

80. Thanks for the blog, Eileen. And for the comments, all.

    It seems that when I originally submitted this it was a pangram. But as Anto clued the word TRUSTY a week ago, I changed 24a to TOUSLE (and FLY to FOE). But many weeks had elapsed by then and the fact that it had originally been a pangram didn’t even occur to me!

81. I’m a recent graduate from the quiptic to cryptic and I thoroughly enjoyed this. My glossary sadly let me down on rhotic and parterre…but the plus is new found knowledge. One q if anyone can help: I still haven’t got my head around the use of ellipsis at the start and end of clues, as in 21 and 22d. Is is simply a stylistic device for the surfaces or does it help in some other way??

82. Garson @81
    Very occasionally the ellipses are meaningful, but usually they are there to try to make sense of the surfaces of the two clues. Generally you can ignore them.

83. Eileen@64: ‘Rho’ – of course. Pass the tea tray please.

    (Now to introduce it into conversation. Perhaps: ‘I love the ways you roll your ‘r’s – it’s very rhotic.’) (Perhaps not.)

84. Alphalpha @83
    Careful – it’s the rhoticity (?) that distinguishes the American “ass” from the British “arse” (or ‘r’s?)!

85. Many thanks Fed, great crossie and Eileen for the blog that shone light where there was darkness.
    Great to be reminded of ‘Careful with that Axe Eugine’, I loved the early Floyd.
    Again, close, but no cigar. My vocabulary seems sadly lacking…RHOTIC, PARTERRE were unknown.
    Thanks DG, been a fan of yours for a long time…

86. Bluth @80 – good question…sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, does that help?

87. me @84
    I may have posted this before, but I remember, many years ago, doing an Everyman puzzle. I had aclue that was an anagram. I had
    UP TO HIS ???? IN IT.
    The letters I had left were A R S E.

    It turned out to be EARS!

88. Ah thanks muffin@82 and Hoof@86 (think that was in answer to me)…should have known!

89. Bluth @80

    Thanks for dropping in, especially as it was my first blog of one of yours (looking forward to the next one) – but it’s always appreciated when bloggers do, especially when they shed some light, so thanks for the input re the near-pangram, which didn’t bother me in the slightest, as I never usually think to look for them!

    Hi Alphalpa @83
    Oh dear, I thought you were being facetious @59, hence my mock-patronising tone @64 – my apologies.
    But I love your aside! I could have used it to my rhotic Scottish husband but, sadly, he died before the appearance of Shed’s clue (see comment 37) which, being a tenor in a choir, he would have loved!

90. Eileen@89: I seem to be able to do facetious unintentionally – I’ve been accused before without understanding what was meant. I really must look it up.

    [Google: treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humour; flippant.]

    That would be me betimes for sure. Not on this occasion though; I was merely interested how a neologism could have garnered a fully-fledged ‘rh-‘ beginning usually reserved for such as rheumatism and rhodedendrons. Much thanks for the help.

91. Alphalpha @90 – so sorry!

    No ‘accusation’ intended – a genuine misunderstanding on both sides, I think.

    I’m going to bed now – I was up quite early with this. 😉

    Thanks again.

92. Had quite forgotten Fed was DG – love his Django puzzles in the Telegraph Toughie slot. Sadly fell a few shy of completion- inexcusably revealed the TRI bit of PLANE, RHOTIC & RAJ plus failed to parse SUE. I too was expecting a Y.
    An enjoyable & well clued puzzle.
    Thanks Fed & Eileen

93. Loved this, though I thought yesterday’s blush was even better. Two things I didn’t understand in this puzzle (and I didn’t read 90 comments so forgive me if this has already been mentioned)
    Why is BIG CAT ok as a grid entry (falls into blue card territory: red card, yellow card, green card are things but blue card is not). And why in 24d use ‘missing gold’ adjectival instead of just having it at the end (improving surface and grammar)? Ah, that kind of sovereign. Ok

    Minor niggles in a lovely puzzle. Thanks Fed and blogger

94. BIG CAT is actually a widely used term when classifying the cat family, although there is no general agreement on the members. However , all variations agree that the LION ( tiger, leopard , jaguar) is a BIG CAT.

95. Dutch@93 to expand on Roz’s anwer – do a google search for “big cat sightings uk” – you will find a variety of purported pumas etc on the loose and causing mayhem, rather than pics of someone’s Tiddles who happens to be a few cm above average for a moggy. We had one in my childhood neck of the woods, never actually seen but the occasional dead sheep bore all the signs apparently. If you are in the Netherlands perhaps they have the same thing (or maybe they just blame the wolves and bears?) – in the UK these big cats in the wild apparently came from private menageries that became illegal at some point in the past, although they may well be semi-urban myths.

Comments are closed.