Guardian 28,748 / Pasquale

67 comments on “Guardian 28,748 / Pasquale”

1. Liked BRUTISH and HAVE NOTHING ON.

   Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen!

2. Phew – that was quite a workout! Never heard of ANTIPATER or SANDITON; liked DAMAGES, ANABAPTIST, ULLAGE and CEILIDH in particular. SERBO-CROAT jumped out at me immediately. Many thanks to Pasquale and to Eileen.

3. Thanks Eileen for parsing of ACADEME. Still dont like it (sour grapes?)
   And I dont like serialisations of unfinished books (Edwin Drood put me off)
   I liked the other clues though.

4. Definitely not a puzzle for those who complain about words not to be found in the works of Enid Blyton! Pasquale usually drops in a rarity or two – here they are copious. As it happens, the only one unfamiliar to me was ANTIPATER – Alexander obviously wouldn’t parse at all – but with the crossers the Oedipal reference led me straight there. Familiar to a classicist like Eileen, no doubt; conversely, as a chemist having worked long in industry, ULLAGE was well known to me (lovely word).

   EMPLANE, DELUDABLE and RE-UTTER are a bit strange, but none the worse for that. SANDITON took a bit of brain- racking, as the definition is somewhat vague, but I got there in the end. I particularly liked EPSTEIN.

   Many thanks to Pasquale for a strong challenge to the GK and to Eileen for her customarily masterful blog.

5. Good midweek chewiness. Alas, nho Sanditon — ta for the education @ Eileen and Pasquale.

6. PS SERBO-CROAT is a rather contentious term these days. Hardline nationalists maintain that Serbian and Croatian are different languages, despite their mutual intelligibility.

7. I enjoy expanding my lexicon by one or two in each puzzle, but there were too many obscure words in this one for it to be enjoyable. I’d never heard of CACHOU, ULLAGE, PENDRAGON, SANDITON, LOVAT or ANTIPATER, and only had a vague recollection of CEILIDH. Never heard of Jacob Epstein either. Most of the rest was OK, but nothing to elicit a chuckle or even a smile.

8. ANABAPTIST was another I’d never heard of.

9. Tricky and needed some help with parsing – but some lovely clues.

   Did not know ULLAGE, ANTIPATER or SANDITON and didn’t think RE-UTTER was a word.

   Of the ones I got and parsed I liked DRACULA, LOVAT, CEILIDH, ABACUS, EQUIPPED

   Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

10. CEILIDH (pronounced Cayley, such is Gaelic) was my FOI, it having appeared recently (maybe not a Grauniad crossword).
    I spent ages looking at —D-T-N and kept thinking SANDITON (there’s not much else that fits) as I’m half way through series 2 (no spoilers please) on BBC First (in Aus) and it hadn’t registered that it was an unfinished Austen novel. I finally got there.
    I took some time thinking “Take Nothing On” and “Make Nothing Of” before I settled for HAVE NOTHING ON which is one of those that is obvious when you finally write it in.
    I also hadn’t registered the “one’s” in LUNCH and just didn’t think about it so thanks for tying it down Eileen.
    Favourites were EQUIPPED and ABACUS.

11. More than the usual number of unfamiliar words even for Pasquale! But I did know ANTIPATER – if you’ve read the historical novels of Mary Renault you’ll be familiar with him. PENDRAGON I knew from Uther, but didn’t realise it was a title rather than part of his name. It reminds me of the scene in T H White’s The Once and Future King where they sing “God save King Pendragon, long may his reign drag on”.

    I thought DAMAGES was very good.

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

12. 8d reminded me of the limerick…
    There’s a notable family named Stein.
    There’s Gertrude, there’s Ep, and there’s Ein.
    Gert’s prose is the bunk,
    Ep’s sculpture is junk,
    And no one can understand Ein!

13. The clue made it very clear where the h goes in ceilidh, and had binged Sanditon a while ago, which helped. Vaguely knew Anti pater (chuckle) as Alexander’s general, whereas lovat as in tweedy green feels like it should ring a bell, but … sigh. Ullage was a yes (prob from one of Mrs ginf’s history series), and lagoons being cut off went Che? until the pd .. Oh yes, as in billabong/oxbow lake. So, bit of a workout but fun, ta PnE.

14. I also find EMPLANE to be a rather horrible word, but then I thought that it is cognate with ’embark’ (to get on a ship) — and both are perfectly reasonable formations.

15. I thought SPAN was very well clued, because of the misdirection of “bridge partners” neatly embedded in such a good surface. And the definition of LAGOONS was as sharp and clever as that of ACADEME was dull and gawky. I found much to enjoy here.

16. Don’t mean to brag ( yes I do) but I knew all these words; maybe because, while not being old – I CAN’T be – I’ve been alive a long time. LOI academe. Hate all-vowel crossers.

17. Not for me and I had barely over half done when the cock crew and I had to start revealing. I won’t complain about the obscurities (Eileen has no soft option) but I did enjoy ULLAGE – one of those words I’ve had stored up for further use and never used. I encountered it in the context of the volume of beer remaining in barrels sent back to the brewery for which the brewery would give credit to the pub involved. Lovely word.

    Thanks both.

18. Great puzzle – all soluble without special knowledge – even 7 down!
    Favourite and easy starter – 9 down.

19. Thanks Pasquale for a masterful crossword. When a puzzle has a “theme” of uncommon words I expect to do poorly. CEILIDH, CACHOU, PENDRAGON, SANDITON, ULLAGE, ANTIPATER, and LOVAT were all unfamiliar to me but surprisingly easy to deduce from the wordplay. I failed at CHARGRILL and couldn’t fully parse LUNCH, STONE WALLS, or EPSTEIN — thanks Eileen for the help. DRACULA, BRUTISH, and EQUIPPED were among my favourites.

20. Thanks to Pasquale for a puzzle requiring a degree of perseverance. But always happy to find new words, in this case CACHOU, ANTIPATER, and ULLAGE.
    Thx to Eileen for help in parsing 18d.

21. When working in the hospitality industry the term ullage was used every day when one had to write off liquid that was not fit for sale. Critical work as the booze had had duty paid on it. A good stocktaker could calculate the amount by just lifting the nearly empty barrel. Nice to see the Don use such interesting words

22. Knew ULLAGE as the beer the publican ‘as to ‘ull away!?!
    Enjoyed the challenge today and learning about ANTIPATER.
    Ta Pasquale and Eileen

23. You know you are getting desperate when you Google UELIBE in the vague hope that it’s some kind of vitamin deficiency. SERBO-CROAT is a classic example of how politics shapes what we call a language or a dialect.

24. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen. Good, fun challenge. I had a slightly different parsing for 3d. “be off” meaning “subtract be”, with the anagrind “wicked” and the definition just “nobleman”.

25. 4d

26. [Petert @23: As in the remark made to the sociolinguist Weinreich by one of his students – “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”]

27. @MikeC 24
    In that parsing, what is criminal doing? It’s not part of the fodder.

28. I thought of “ullage” as a word having something or other to do with beer from Ian Robb’s rousing song, “What Have They Done to the Old Rose and Crown?” a lament for the passing of the traditional pub. Here’s the link, sorry about the ad you have to skip.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqCm1WfCE4E . (It’s not acting like a link, I think you’ll have to copy and paste it.) I have to go out and don’t have time to read the whole blog, but I didn’t want to leave without sharing this song.

29. Re 4d, the novel Dracula begins on today’s date, 3rd May..

30. Sorry, I’m a day late!!

31. Thanks for the link Valentine@28.

32. Desmodeus@27 you and Eileen are correct. My mistake.

33. So enjoyed this! All the new words are cleverly and clearly clued with academe the master stroke.

34. My favourite was my LOI, Epstein. Its 40-odd years since I visited Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Pere Lachaise and learned who Epstein was.

35. I found this a bit tenebrific and obnubilated 🙂

36. Despite being tricky, I always felt I was making progress. Pasquale is a master-craftsman. I worked out (then checked) most of my unknowns (ANTIPATER, CEILIDH, ULLAGE, LOVAT, CACHOU) but not SANDITON. So a DNF but happy to enhance my vocab.

    Bonnie@16 – lol – spring chicken or not, well done for knowing all the words. Same here about all-vowel-crossers: they don’t narrow down the field enough.

37. blaise@12 So I guess this was written by a non-mathematician/physicist.
    “ullage for some reason was my ear worm just yesterday, so I had no problem with that.

    Thanks Eileen and Pasquale

38. A very fine puzzle, all fairly clued. Took we a while to parse ACADEME so getting the crosser led to LOI SANDITON.

    ULLAGE is familiar to anyone who’s spent some time in old pubs as it was the landlord’s major gripe.

    Favourite was SPAN, very neat.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

39. I definitely knew SANDITON, and I’m kind of surprised at how many hadn’t. Counting that one, Austen only wrote seven novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion are the completed ones), and most of them have been filmed so many times that I figured you’d be saturated with them over there. But hey, I come by my being an Anglophile directly through having read too much 19th-century British literature, so I may have a distorted lens.

    On the other hand, ULLAGE and LOVAT were truly new to me, while ANTIPATER and CACHOU had to be dredged up from the depths of somewhere. Anyway, Pasquale has mastered the art of cluing obscure words clearly (and clear words obscurely), so no complaints here. I got EPSTEIN before I got the referenced 16a, and could only think of disgraced Jeffrey; I was kind of wondering what Pasquale was going to say he worked in–sexism?

    Contra pserve @14, I like EMPLANE as a word; you can’t very well embark on something that isn’t a bark, can you? See also “entrain.”

40. Me @39: I just learned that embus is also a valid word; I wonder why I’ve never seen it in the wild. I guess because the em-[vehicle] formation is a bit formal, and buses are the opposite of formal.

41. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen
    I needed electronic help for ANTIPATER, but was familiar with the rest. A satisfying challenge.
    Minor point: it’s not exactly accurate to describe SANDITON as “unfinished”; it has been finished at least half a dozen times, though admittedly not by Jane Austen!

42. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen. Was happy to finish despite many unfamiliar words. Nho ULLAGE but I gather it’s somewhat short of FULLAGE?

    I’ll see myself out

43. I knew LOVAT because it was the color of my school (Tonbridge) uniform. The other rare words baffled me.

44. Thanks Eileen & Pasquale. Splendid crossword!

45. mrpenney @ 40
    Not only can one embus, but apparently at the end of the journey one can disembus! At least according to army terminology, dimly remembered from cadet force days.

46. Although the solution came easily, I have never encountered the word EMPLANE – ‘board’ is the more usual
    term (don’t forget your emplanation pass 🙂 ). But I have come across ‘deplane’ – not ‘disemplane’, interestingly.

47. Great crossword! Thank you Eileen for explaining the parsing of ACADEME, and hearty thanks to Pasquale for some absolute crackers. DRACULA, BRUTISH and EPSTEIN made me grin.
    I’m also loving the emplane discussion. I may try to work emcar into my conversation at some point…

48. [In all the examples quoted, the prefix is ‘em-‘ because that is the normal form before a labial consonant: b, p. Before other consonants it should be ‘en-‘, as in ‘encar’ and ‘entaxi’. Do not take this as a recommendation to use such monstrosities 🙂 ]

49. Found this another toughie after yesterday’s Qaos offering. Defeated by ANTIPATER, EQUIPPED, CHARGRILL and SANDITON. Didn’t know ULLAGE or CASHOU but managed to get them both from the clueing. A rather poor show from me today, I’m afraid…

50. [Gervase @48: entaxi is OK! (in Greek, that is – εντάξει ) In fact it’s amazing how often they seem to be telling you to get into a taxi 🙂 ]

51. Liked BRUTISH, ANABAPTIST, ACADEME (loi).

    New: CEILIDH, ULLAGE, ANITPATER, sculptor [SIR JACOB] EPSTEIN, cachou.

    I did not parse 8d.

    Thanks, both.

52. Had to give up on this. I play in a ceilidh band but still didn’t get 1a! I’d like to know what you crossword buffs mean by ‘surfaces’?

53. AuntRuth @54 on the “surface” 1a appears to be about a husband wearing a hat after a church do. Beneath the surface it’s something entirely different

54. I’ve read lots of praise for Pasquale’s brilliant clues, but I still can’t see why ‘this world?’ is a definition for ACADEME. Grateful for any help.

    I also failed on CHARGRILL, and now that I’ve seen the wordplay explained (‘horse? Not English’=CHARGR) I see now that it’s not just because I’m vegan.

    Must be having a thick day. 🙁

55. AuntRuth @52: each clue may be written by the setter as a sort of newspaper headline or caption — a sentence, phrase or expression that could be read aloud and would make reasonable sense as such. An example of quite a good surface in this puzzle was 22d
    “Shoddy stuff aboard ship piles up” which is grammatically correct and semantically coherent as a statement about rubbish accumulating on a ship. A rather weaker surface was 19a “Cook offering horse? Not English, bad!”: it lacks grammatical flow and its sense is quite hard to decipher. What is “not English”? … the horse? the cook? Are we to interpret ‘horse’ as a foodstuff here? That’s a bit of a semantic stretch. The hanging “bad!” after the comma, is rather clunky, too. Could you imagine anyone writing or saying an expression like that? No, neither can I.

56. So grateful for the expert parsing of 18down – thank you. I had the answer but had somehow contrived to think ‘Adam’ was the ‘first person’ and could then make no sense of the rest of the clue.

57. sh @54: Pasquale likes his this’s, doesn’t he? 13a properly this, 3d break for this, 15d being this, 18d this world. In the last case I took the ‘this’ to be a signpost saying ‘pay attention, definition coming up next’, and the actual def to be just ‘world’.

    World as in milieu, that is, and ACADEME being an example of a milieu.

58. essexboy @57. Thanks for trying! I was hampered by not getting even close to CADE(t) and being distracted by the surface into thinking of Persephone, who was obviously neither relevant nor helpful.

59. I’ve had a busy day, so haven’t been able to respond to comments, as I usually do.

    I’ve been interested in the discussion re EMPLANE.
    mrpenney @39 – both Collins and Chambers have, for ’embark’, ‘board a ship or an aircraft’
    and essexboy @ 50 – thank you for that. 😉

    sheffield hatter @54 – I hesitated slightly over the definition but found, for ACADEME, ‘the academic world’ (Collins) and ‘the world of scholars’ (Chambers).

    I’ve been overtaken while typing this …
    … as one who, like many others here, sets great store by surfaces, I could write an essay on this, so I’m grateful to pserve_p2 @55 for the response to AuntRuth @52.

60. Eileen — what is the family of words you dislike that includes “emplane”? I assume the word’s a spin-off of “embark,” which I don’t think anybody objects to. But it hadn’t occurred to me that it belongs to a class.

    The name Antipater was dimly familiar to me so I bunged it in. Same for Sanditon — sounded like something I’d heard before, no idea where.

    I think of goons as thugs rather than fools, but maybe that’s US of me. It makes the Goon Show sound less facetiously titled than I’d though.

    Lord Jim@11 I’ve read Mary Renault’s historical novels (all, I think), but very long ago and don’t remember Antipater. He must be in one of the Alexander ones (I think there were two?)

    Alphalpha@17 thanks for the description of “ullage.” I’d imagined it from the definition given as the empty unfilled space in a barrel, which didn’t make sense. No wonder the horrid beer in the song is made of “ullage and gas.”

    Petert@23 I also googled UELIBE but unlike you had no attempt at an idea of what it could possibly mean.

    Gervase@48 and essexboy@50 Endinghy? embicycle?

61. Apologies for the ‘bold’ statement above – it was supposed to apply only to ‘or an aircraft’! I’m too tired to try any longer to amend it.

62. Than I’d thought.

63. Hi Valentine @60 – I really was on the way to bed (I solved this puzzle in the early hours) when I saw that we’d crossed.

64. [Valentine @60 : encamel? enquinquereme? ensurrey with the fringe on top? 🙂 ]

65. pserve_p2@55, many thanks for that.

66. essexboy@64 This is the first time EVER that I’ve laughed out loud reading this blog. That’s hilarious!

67. New were CACHOU and EMPLANE. Fans of Titus Groan will know ULLAGE
    Thanks both

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