Guardian Cryptic 28,814 by Qaos

87 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,814 by Qaos”

1. Very enjoyable and nothing too taxing. The only ones I didn’t get were ICARUS & DEMOB. Nothing I didn’t like, apart perhaps from “a” for “acting” in 2d. (I’m sure someone will tell me it’s legit.)

2. Tank you so much for this blog! I am just learning how to do cryptic and this is such a fab resource to read after I’ve completed but can’t see why all the clues fit!

3. VERDITE was new but gettable from the wordplay and looked right. I wasn’t sure about ‘pan’ as an anagrind, or whether SQUEALED was a cryptic definition rather than a double definition as the adjective ‘like a pig’ doesn’t equate to the verb ‘squeal(ed)’.
   I did like the CD QUALIFIERS but my favourite was OUTFIT.

4. Thanks Qaos for another solid crossword. I easily spotted the mobster theme and I think we can add SHOTS and BRUISER to manehi’s list. My top choices were HITS, GODFATHER, ENAMELLED, and OUTFIT. This wasn’t the easiest Qaos puzzle and I had to reveal DEMOB and QUALIFIERS and I couldn’t parse FINGERS. Thanks manehi for the super early blog.

5. Thanks manehi for your early blog, in time for an afternoon nap here.
   Hope all the northerners are faring as well as can be in the heat.
   Welcome Sarah! 15squared is, as you say, a great resource and a great community of solvers.

   I liked DONS (DayGlo necklaces!), ENAMELLED, and BRUISER for their apt surfaces.
   DEMOB was favourite for the misdirection with March 2nd, and also the unindicated gangster speak of the answer. Very funny. Qaos left the best one to last.

   I don’t know that ‘screen’ was necessary in HEAVIES, but it fits with the theme.
   I would also add ARMBAND to the list of themesters in a cryptic way, as the mafia is a band of armed men.

6. This was a lot of fun and a creative idea for a theme. Unusually I got it in time to be of help.

   Liked DEMOB for the misdirecting surface.

   Re 24a: I have always used DON to mean to put on clothes, and wear to mean to have them on, but apparently the meanings overlap. Does “I am going to wear this” refer to the putting or having on? That’s the closest I can come to equating the two.

7. Geoff @1. ‘A’ is for acting as in A/Manager.

8. Very enjoyable crossword and I had lots of fun working through the theme afterwards. My favourites were QUALIFIERS (topical) and DEMOB (apt for theme). Welcome Sarah. Hoping its all a bit cooler today for you all up North. Welcome Sarah.
   Thanks manehi and Qaos.

9. Remembered Qaos always has a theme just in time for it to be no use whatsoever! I had a different parsing for ICARUS which with hindsight was so inane I won’t repeat it 🙂

10. Neatly incorporated theme with a lot packed into the grid. QUALIFIERS, DEMOB and ENAMELLED earned the biggest ticks. I struggled with RESPECT, having not encountered ‘plan’ as an anagrind before. It doesn’t have that sense of movement or change that I associate with anagrinds so I failed to spot what kind of clue I was dealing with and wasted a lot of time thinking of secret plans into which I could insert a synonym for money …

    Thanks Qaos and manehi

11. Welcome Sarah@2: I hope you press on.

    Felt the includer buying in ICARUS was a bit of a strain, but all’s fair in…etc.

    Loved QUALIFIERS and also the very neat construction of DEMOB.

    GODFATHER was an early entry and shouted ‘theme’ but didn’t find it helped much.

    Enjoyable puzzle and good blog, many thanks both.

12. My quickest ever solve, so quite chuffed that Manehi described it as ‘tricky’. Favourite was QUALIFIERS. LOI was VERDITE (new to me). Couldn’t parse DEMOB, so thanks to Manehi for that in particular and the excellent blog as always. And thanks Qaos.

13. I wondered if the theme was marking an anniversary, and I see that The Godfather was released in 1972 (not at this time of year, though). 50 years ago! Ouch!

14. Just realised I also failed to parse RESPECT. Like others, I am not sure that ‘secret plan’ is a good indicator of an anagram of secret. Thanks again Manehi for the explanation.

15. Enjoyable puzzle. I forgot to look for the theme but I saw the Mafia theme after I completed the puzzle.

    Liked GODFATHER, HITS (loi).

    New: Ernie Wise (23ac); VERDITE.

    Thanks, both.

    Bodycheetah @9 – I suspect that you and I parsed ICARUS the same way!

16. That was good. Just one quibble…
    RE-ESTABLISHED = found again?
    Founded again surely. Can anyone defend establish = find?
    (‘Establish a link’ = ‘find a link’? Hmm, maybe I just convinced myself…)

17. I had “respect” as a theme word, also. I found the crossword easy but enjoyable and spotted the theme after getting 7d. Thanks for the fun and for the blog.

18. PS Welcome Sarah @2 !

19. Thanks Qaos and manehi. Spotting the theme early* proved quite helpful in solving a couple here – namely GODFATHER and HEAVIES. All good fun as ever from Qaos. Another vote for DEMOB as favourite here. Also liked WHACKED and ENAMELLED among others.

    *Qaos hinted “family” on twitter, which misled me at first with a couple of clues referencing relatives, but I soon realised what kind of family he meant.

20. PLAN = ARRANGEMENT so with a bit of lateral thinking it can serve as an anagrind? Or maybe I’m just feeling generous as there’s a lovely cool breeze blowing through the house

21. I wonder if someone (essexboy?) can explain why ELABORATE doesn’t have a “u” in it in British English? The etymology looks like it’s closely related to “labour”.
    [I will check tomorrow morning after finishing the puzzle.]

22. Calgal @21 for a guess, elaborate shares the same Latin root as labour but doesn’t derive directly from it. English spelling is never consistent anyway.

23. Calgal – probably to do with how they arrived in English. Labour came via French, elaborate came directly from Latin.

24. I always look for a theme and rarely find one. Obvious now, but I would never use most of the theme words in that way, so it never surfaced. Fwiw, I found it easy by Qaos’s standards.
    My thanks to him and manehi.

25. The general mob theme was fun although it didn’t particularly help me.

    I hadn’t heard of VERDITE but it was quite gettable from the wordplay. There were two clues (4d and 20d) with less than 50% of the letters checked and with three successive letters unchecked – normally not a good thing but luckily they were both fairly easy.

    Thanks Qaos and manehi.

    [By the way, in case anyone’s missed it, as well as Philistine’s prize puzzle on Saturday there was also a “holiday jumbo” by Picaroon, in the “Puzzles summer special” supplement. The answers are due to appear next Saturday. I don’t know if it’s going to be blogged here?]

26. Welcome Sarah @2! I am glad I chose S in Cam rather than Sarah or there would be too many of us!
    Great puzzle, thanks Qaos, and thanks also to manehi – I did not parse FINGERS and just slapped in WINGERS without thinking – d’uh!

27. This was an offer I could not refuse

28. CynicCure@16 I was trying to make “found” work rather than “find” but then the past tense doesn’t work. Unlike others, I was swimming with the fishes with this. I didn’t see “wide out” or the secret anagram for ages.

29. SinCam@26 I had always imagined you as a video surveillance specialist.

30. Hooray, I spotted the theme for once. Boo, didn’t finish. QUALIFIERS too subtle, and VERDITE too nho. Calgal @21 humorous is another word where ou becomes o, and I am sure there are more.

31. Enjoyed the challenge. My only raised eyebrow was RESPECT=consider, which seemed very loose.

32. @21 Nouns ending in “-o(u)r” drop the “u” in derivatives. Compare collaborate, coloration, honorable, rigorous, vigorous, clamorous.

33. Very un erUdite performance chez ginf today, distracted by this and that, needing a bit of guess and check, and bunging in an unparsable and misspelled shepardess (I mean, quelle horreur…). Never mind, glad that you guys enjoyed. Ta Q and m.

34. … although some can keep the u, JW @32, like favourite. As Ravenrider says @22, English is an inconsistent bricolage …

35. [Yes, there will be a blog for the recent holiday jumbo by Picaroon. It will appear on Saturday morning].

36. Enjoyed that one and for once spotted the theme and it even helped me finish (e.g. for RESPECT – definitely a theme word!)

37. Careered through this, thinking that I’d never experienced a Qaos write in before. Then juddered to a complete halt in the SW corner with the trilogy of the excellently clued QUALIFIERS, VERDITE and OUTFIT taking longer than the rest of the puzzle put together to unlock. Loved WISE GUYS. Thought TRIBUTE and BRUISER rather samey for consecutive down clues. Enjoyed the journey.

38. Thanks for a likeable puzzle, Qaos, and for a helpful blog, manehi. I saw the theme after I had finished as I remembered the mantra “Qaos always has a theme”. I enjoyed spotting all the theme-related words even though I didn’t see it in time to be of any assistance in the solve. Most of my favourites (!) have already been elaborated (!) although I did apppreciate 14a ESSENTIAL and Ernie and the Guys helping me to get 23a WISE GUYS.

39. When I solved GODFATHER, I gathered that that, along with HEAVIES, DONS and DEMOB must be the theme but I know next to nothing about it, so couldn’t have picked out many more.

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed the puzzle, especially ESSENTIAL, QUALIFIED, ICARUS and RESPECT.

    Many thanks to qaos and manehi.

40. (Can someone please enlighten me about Piccaroons Jumbo. What paper? Also reference to Qaos twitter: some of us don’t do social media )

41. I enjoyed that although there were a couple I didn’t get and a couple more I didn’t parse. Spotted the theme for once but it didn’t really help.

    QUALIFIERS and SQUEALER made me laugh.

    Thanks Qaos and manehi

42. Liked it, but agree with the quibblers. I think Qaos got ‘to find’ and ‘to found’ muddled up in RE-ESTABLISHED. And RESPECT = ‘consider’? Wiktionary marks that usage as obsolete, the only quote provided being from Ben Johnson in 1597. Respect = consideration is OK, but I’m dubious about the equivalence of the verbs.

    Lord Jim @25: I think the grid is the same as the one used by Anto recently, which was not entirely to Andrew’s taste. 😉 Perhaps it’s a recent addition to the Guardian set?

    Thanks to manehi for the helpful blog, and to Qaos of course. I hope he doesn’t send the HEAVIES round.

43. [Calgal @21: you’ve had a number of responses already, but since you were kind enough to mention me I thought I’d add my twopenn’orth/two cents. As JW @32 points out, it’s part of a pattern. There are oddities, though, as ginf says – and no one seems sure how to spell humo(u)rist, even in consecutive sentences. 😉 You Yanks have it easy.]

44. Thanks Qaos and manehi

    Cedric @ 40

    The physical G included a puzzles supplement at the weekend. Inter alia it included a Picaroon jumbo which hasn’t been made available online (yet).

    On twitter, Qaos posts on his puzzle days that it’s one of his, and includes a fairly innocuous reference to his theme.

45. Really liked QUALIFIERS especially after yesterday’s weather – and after I had realised it was nothing to do with ice hockey etc.

46. @simon s
    Many thanks. Always take the print edition of the Grauni: had no idea! Will look in the recycling bin! Your comments much appreciated

47. essexboy@33, myself@22, calgal@21, brian-with-an-eye @30 et al
    Although elaborate arrived by a different route to labour, laborious clearly derives from labour but loses a U like humorous does. Possibly too many Us looks wrong. Are there any similar examples of a word derived from a “-our” word ending in “ous” that keep the U?
    Humorist looks American to my eye, yet humorous doesn’t. It really is what you are used to seeing.

48. I found that (mostly) surprisingly easy, almost quiptically so. Maybe I’ve watched too many gangster films. It took me ages to get QUALIFIERS though, and it was bunged in as fitting but the parsing penny didn’t drop til I got here… the coincidental current heatwave misdirected me. VERDITE is new to me but was guessable given the Victor and the reference to green.

    Liked WHACKED, GODFATHER, ARMBAND and EASIEST. Minor quibble, (probably borne out of watching too many gangster films) but I don’t equate HEAVIES with ‘villains’… to me the ‘villains’ are the main baddies and HEAVIES are background henchmen. But I’m probably splitting hairs there.

    Thanks both.

49. TimC @3 et al: VERDITE was new to me too, despite a geology degree. Turns out it is a made up (and trademarked) word by the ‘crystal healers’ fraternity for chromium-rich fuchsite (a mica). So only tenuously a real word. All was well with the rest, though I suspect I too parsed ICARUS a strange way. Thanks, Qaos and manehi.

50. Sarah @2 – welcome! It’s a fabulous resource, and the people on here (bloggers and commenters alike) are lovely and super-helpful. I only found it myself a few months ago, after starting trying cryptics at the start of the year. It’s an invaluable part of my ongoing cryptic crossword education. You can buy as many ‘how to do cryptic crosswords’ books as you like, but they wouldn’t compare to a daily visit here for a few months!

51. Priestley found/established that phlogiston was really oxygen. Does that help?

52. Hi Cedric @40/46

    I hope you rescue your copy from the recycling – it’s well worth it

    I don’t do social media, either, but you can find Qaos’ hints on his website: http://www.qaos-crosswords.com/

    I’d like to add my welcome to Sarah. 🙂

53. Cedric @40 – you’re not missing anything. As Simon S @44 says, on days when it’s Qaos in the Guardian, he tweets a link to the puzzle on the Guardian website, and includes an oblique reference to the theme. Today it was:

    “My latest @guardian #crossword – one for the family?”

54. Ravenrider@47. Too many U s might be the issue. The first U is retained in LANGUOROUS although of course the noun ends unusually in UOR rather than OUR.

55. (Eileen@52 many thanks

56. 2d News to me that A = “acting.”

    The theme as usual totally escaped me, even though I looked for one. Some of the mobster associations of the answers were new to me.

    VERDITE was a jorum, but plain enough. Something beginning with “verd-” is probably green, and something ending with “-ite” may well be a mineral.

    Michelle @15 Ernie Wise the comedian is a crossword perennial, so you might tuck him into your back pocket of potential solutions.

    Lord Jim@25 How does one got to the “holiday special”?

    jina@38 Ernie and the Guys is a rock band, no?

    eb@43 Thanks for the link to the article on spellings. I might add that Americans sometimes adopt the British spelling “pour faire chic,” not just on the wedding invitations the article mentions. Pretentious housing developments may be called “Something Harbour,” fancy shopping malls the “Something Centre,” etc. Gives a bit of class, doncha know?

    Thanks to Qaos, manehi and essexboy.

57. Valentine: I think (as Simon S said @44) that the Picaroon “holiday jumbo” was only available in Saturday’s paper version and not online. Though strangely Alan Connor’s “The most Guardian crossword ever”, which was also in the puzzles summer special, is on the Guardian site.

    Your examples of pretentious spellings (pretentious in the US that is) remind me of signs we get here advertising a “Christmas Fayre” which annoy me intensely.

58. I like it in reverse, LJ @57, e.g. when our CJ Dennis (poet, early 1900s) says “bong tong” for classy.

59. ravenrider @ 47

    A search of Chambers reveals that the only -ourous word is ANOUROUS, a variant of ANUROUS, meaning tailless.

    So it would appear that there is no word ending -our that retain the U when its adjective is formed.

60. Fun puzzle (though I would have liked more of the alphanumerics). I agree with the quibbles of Dr WhatsOn @6 and essexboy @42 but they were too minor to disturb me much.

    VERDITE was new to me also, but nicely clued, and the etymology was obvious, as Valentine @56 notes.

    Didn’t look for a theme, so didn’t find one (perhaps it might have struck me if there had been a clue with ‘horse’s head in bed’ 🙂 )

    Thanks to S&B

61. Thank you manehi, I found solving this was a very strange process as per Ronald@37.
    I like “pan” as an anagrind (like panning for gold) but didn’t think it quite worked as positioned, and thanks bodycheetah@20 for helping me feel better about “plan” (I also think of the net or plan of a cube where faces that are adjacent in 3D need not be in the 2D net thus have been rearranged in some sense). Enjoyed the o vs ou examples too.
    I retain the same doubts as others over 8d def, and was held up by what I thought was more detail than necessary eg “hard” in 19a and a couple of other places.
    But loved 7d, 15d, 24d and liked that the theme was broad enough to be of no use whatsoever except sense-checking a few. Thanks Qaos.

62. Nice theme and not too difficult for a Qaos.

    Lots of fun but I do take issue with the unnecessary SportsMEN in 25a. It could easily have been “athletes”. Watching the world championships on TV I’ve noticed women run too…

    Thanks Qaos and manehi

63. Excellent puzzle and a rich vein of a theme, thanks Menhi and Qaos. Tenuously, 4d is neeearly “Easy St[reet]”, but that’s probably not intentional.

64. ^ “Manehi”, even. Thanks!

65. A full display of talents in today’s Guardian puzzle, but then I was ever the cynic.

    Highlights for me include poor cryptic grammar at 5A, 11A, 14A, 2D and 20D, the homophone indicator at 26A, the anagram indicator at 8D, and… well the list goes on. I’d like to specially mention the container indicator ‘buying’ at 6D, which I am almost sure must have its distant tendrils somewhere linking into ‘having purchase on’ or something. No matter though, a truly dreadful puzzle.

    Use of second = B here, the like of which I think we saw somewhere else recently. I’m sure it is a sign.

66. I see a tribute to James Caan, Sonny, firstborn of Don Corleone, who died two weeks ago today.

67. tlp @ 65

    You carp so much at these puzzles I’m amazed that you haven’t stopped doing them.

    If you’d read the clue for 24D correctly you’d have seen that the B derives from “2nd class”.

    And in relation to your comment yesterday, have you considered that setters might compile the sort of puzzles they like to set, rather than those they think you, or any other solver, might like?

68. An enjoyable solve, so thanks, Qaos. The first time I attempted a Qaos puzzle, I really struggled (like Anto’s first quiptic), but they seem to have mellowed or I’ve improved. I didn’t think I needed manehi’s help, as I had understood all the wordplay, but noticed I had ignored the A in HEAVIES, so thanks for the explanation, manehi.
    Judging by your negative comments, the last Plantagenet, I’m relieved there won’t be any more after you!

69. Well Simon S, as it happens you are right about ‘second class’ leading to B, although in Qaos’ perverse world, of course there has to be a colon inserted to make the surface, such as it is, work. Therefore I doff my cap, replete with its yellow flower.

    The thing about badly-written puzzles receiving uncritical acceptance is that people will smile inanely and walk on by as the art of the crossword is slowly lost. All right I get the odd one wrong, but I’m sure I’m entitled to a view, and I’m certainly not always ‘carping’ as you so delicately put it. The Guardian has some good compilers, but due to its apparent lack of editorial supervision, literally anything goes in order to make a surface work.

70. Thanks to Ravenrider@22, Widdersbel@23, John Wells@32, graninfreo@34 for the helpful comments on OUR vs OR and to essexboy@43 for the Wiki link on my earlier question@21. (I should have remembered from our rhotic discussion a few weeks ago to try Wikipedia.)

    [Valentine reminds me of another American affectation: Ye Olde English spellings. A local shopping center calls itself “The Shoppes” (which I have to call “The Shoppies”).

71. BTW, regarding my comment ‘second = B’, I think we were discussing a usage where A), B) etc might equate to ‘first’ or ‘firstly’ etc. Perhaps you had not seen that.

72. Puzzle comments:
    11a: I found it hard to see “pan” as to anagram indicator, but since it’s just the first S moved to the end, I could imagine a camera moving around a circle of letters .
    17a: I parsed this as “pick up” = steal, and (maybe?) metal = coins, so petty thievery
    at 23a: thanks to Qaos to Fawkes which quickly led me to Guy. Had to look up the other men to complete the parsing.
    2d: failed at parsing. (Picking HE’S instead of HE didn’t help.)

    Like Alien@45, I first thought of winter sports, but during the Olympics learned that there are few places left that can guarantee snowy conditions.

    As for 8d: to be considerate is to be respectful so close enough for me.

73. Oblivious to the theme & didn’t parse either STEWARDESS or DEMOB fully but an otherwise problem free solve so must have been a gentle Qaos puzzle.
    Thanks all.

74. Lord Jim @25

    Thanks for the tip-off. Jumbo blog will appear on Saturday.

75. Didn’t have time to finish this earlier.
    RESPECT/consider
    Definitions from thefreedictionary.com, both from
    Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary
    respect, v.t., 7. “to hold in esteem or honor”
    consider, v.t., 7. “to regard with respect or honor; esteem.”
    The closest to 1-1 match in the examples is:
    “consider the feelings of those around you”
    (Something many people, at least in this country, no longer feel they need to do.)

76. Noticed the theme but not the sort of theme to help much…but fun though.
    Thanks both

77. [essexboy@43: Finally read the Art Buchwald link. After reading the entire article, I had to resort to “Find on page” to see that your reference was to the headline and the subtitle — probably each written by different people than the author.

    PS Interestingly, at the very bottom of the page was a “Related Stories link”: PJ O’Rourke, writer and humorist, dies aged 74

    [[very very off-topic: in the early 60s we lived near Washington DC and Art Buchwald was my Dad’s favorite columnist in the Washington Post! I think I was too young to appreciate him then.]]

78. On the subject of complaints, I actually thought this was so bad I was not going to post at all. Frequently on here we get gushing praise for mediocre puzzles with clues that are far too easy . Also the themes, which used to be a rare and enjoyable novelty,now seem to turn up with depressing regularity. One bright spot, last week we had a Vlad and Imogen , no themes, nina , pangram etc, just good , hard clues. More of this would be very welcome.

79. Late again, because I couldn’t finish and gave it a final go this morning before looking at today’s paper. I really should have got OUTFIT – I had even worked out the FIT part, and was trying to wrangle an abbreviation of Caught to mean Dismissed. So close! But the parsing if QUALIFIERS still eluded me, even once I had seen the answer, so thank you manehi for that. I was another doubtful about RESPECT, but I have been more or less convinced by the comments here, so thank you all.

80. Roz@78 I absolutely agree with you about themes, pangrams, ninas.

81. Valentine @56 – good advice, I will certainly try to remember Ernie Wise in future.

82. [Roz@78 and Crossbar@80. I don’t mind a theme or other tricks sometimes, but I agree that lately it’s about getting the theme etc, rather than the solve. It seems that, like everywhere else, in the workplace, watching television, driving a car, walking down the street, multiple things have to be going on for anyone to get their ‘fix’, and that dilutes the focus, quality and pleasure of quiet contemplation. My pet hate is documentaries with a doof doof background.]

83. Crossbar@80 we used to have an occasional theme as a bit of a treat , it is now overkill and the quality of the clues really suffers. I find the rare puzzles that are just a plain crossowrd are far superior.

    PDM@ 82 a very perceptive general point especially for documentaries. I had stopped watching the BBC Horizon science series because of this.
    Last week it was JWST so I had to watch it and to my surprise it was actually brilliant. I wonder if you can access it in some way?

84. [Roz@83 You’re right, the JSWT Horizon WAS very good (and JSWT itself is of course brilliant), but even that had some intrusive “music” and soupy voice-over.]

85. [Oops, JWST. Sighs. Just as well they don’t have me working on it.]

86. [Roz@83. I didn’t see the Horizon JWST but have been watching the feeds.
    Also this week watched a couple of hours of real-time film of Apollo 11’s landing on and leaving of the moon.
    Silent, except for the voices of the astronauts and mission control. What suspense!

    I noticed you haven’t commented on yesterday’s themed Brummie. Gone to the dark side? 🙂 ]

87. PDM@86 I have something called JWST tracker which I am sure is easy to find . It gives the latest information but also many links to all the science behind the observations and the future plans.
    BBC4 showed the same Apollo 11 film in 2019 for the 50th anniversary, the landing is so scary even now.
    Yesterday I decided it was wise to avoid the blog, I like Brummie but it was well below his usual standard.

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