Guardian 28,852 / Tramp

99 comments on “Guardian 28,852 / Tramp”

1. I only knew 13d from the commenter on this blog…it’s amazing what you learn here! Apparently a Paddymelon is quite cute.

2. Gosh. We are fortunate!

3. Haha Eileen re Paul and Tramp behind the bike shed, I had a similar thought. Thought this was on the easy side for a risqué Tramp with the SW holding out longest. My favourites were GASTROPUB, WAREHOUSES, PADDYMELON, NASDAQ and the clever MOUNTEBANKED.

   Ta Tramp & Eileen.

4. …oops Many thanks, Tramp and Eileen – faultless!

5. Twisting my melon man! LOI, never heard of it!!

6. Top marks for GASTROPUB, HYSTERIA, NASDAQ, and MOUNTEBANKED (a word I knew but was clueless about its meaning)
   Somewhat surprised to see PADDY used again after the brouhaha last time!

   Cheers T&E

7. Thank you Eileen.
   Yeay! Am I the first to post here?
   I’ve held back all day from posting on the Guardian site.
   For those who haven’t heard my story, you’re about to hear it …. sorry.
   I chose my moniker from Penny Drop Moment, which I got from fifteen squared, when I first found you. Crafted my username from PDM. Irish ancestry paddy and melon for head, with acknowledgement to my Dad who taught me to read when I was four, even though he left school at 11 and worked on a butcher’s cart. But I was thinking of the cute marsupial pademelon, homophone, not the toxic plant paddymelon.

8. paddymelon @7 (sorry) – I was so hoping you would be first!

9. This fairly flew in until I got to the last two – PADDYMELON, which I unashamedly had to look up as I’d not come across it before, and NASDAQ. Very much liked GASTROPUB (surely a setter must have seem the possibilities of this in the past?). Didn’t much like DICKY BIRDS. Couldn’t quite parse CHARLESTON. I know Stannah and Wessex through floor lifts, but not OTIS, which was a guess, could have been Otos, for all I knew. Many thanks Tramp and Eileen…

10. I wondered about SPRUCE too but found this website

11. …yes, and Hi! and good morning our very own Paddymelon…

12. No, I’m not the first. But thank you Chardonneret@1.
    As for the crossword, I really enjoyed it. Favourites as mentioned by earlier posters.

13. bodycheetah @10 – thanks for that: I should have trusted Tramp!

14. Why is PADDY fit?

15. There were lots of great clues here with clever surfaces, but I think I must choose GASTROPUB and BALLET DANCERS as my favourites – both brilliant.

    I don’t think I’ve come across MOUNTEBANK as a verb before.

    That’s a lovely account of your username, paddymelon.

    Many thanks Tramp and Eileen.

16. Tramp had definitely borrowed Paul’s playbook for this one but no complaints from me. This was relatively straightforward once the long down clues went in but was fun nonetheless. Didn’t know what a Paddymelon was (sorry). Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

17. simonc @14 Paddy as in tantrum

18. Simon @ 14 PADDY = tantrum = having a fit is how I parsed it. Or at least, how I justified it retrospectively having had to resort to a word search.

19. Sorry, simonc, autocorrect works its magic again

20. Sailed through 3/4 of it before grinding to a halt in the SW.

    A DNF as had to reveal PADDYMELON.

    Thought I was going to be hampered by having no idea who Anton Du Beke is, but it turned out not to be so.

    Favourite was BALLET DANCERS; not so keen on DICKY BIRDS (‘bird’ for girlfriend? In 2022?)

21. simoc@14 If you are in a paddy you are having a fit of anger

22. Steve69@17
    Do you have to be Irish to have that type of tantrum?

23. Solved SW corner last.

    New for me SPRUCE shrub or bush (I knew about the trees); PADDY = fit of temper; and PADDYMELON which I saw in the dictionary as ‘a plant of the gourd family, especially a trailing or climbing annual that has become naturalized in inland Australia’. I am Australian but I never heard of this plant. I did not know about the wallaby either!

    Thanks, both.

24. simonc@22 No, but being three or four years old helps!

25. simonc @22: as bodycheetah mentions @6, “paddy” to mean a fit of temper has been the subject of much debate on here before. On checking, I see that it was Tramp again, 28,389 on 10 March 2021, starting at comment 31. Personally before that discussion it had never occurred to me that that meaning had any connection with Paddy as the (“often derogatory” – Chambers) term for an Irishman, but apparently that was its origin.

26. Jeez pdm@7, where was your dad growing up to leave school at 11? Mine was one of eight Depression kids, but still 14 was the minimum.

27. Racy fun.
    Top picks were the super anagrams BALLET DANCERS and MOUNTEBANKED, as Eileen says. I knew the gorgeous pademelon (pronounced PADDYMELON) from a few trips to Tasmania; slightly smaller than wallabies and often spotted roosting at dusk.
    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

28. How long before all the setters are behind the bike sheds sniggering?

29. At Tramp’s easier end, well under the hour, so that’d be just minutes for the speedsters. Yes, g-strings and tits, and “it” raises its head again, to either enjoyment or chagrin 😉 . All good, ta Eileen and Tramp.

30. I too wondered about the Tramp/Paul connection with this most enjoyable, just right for a Friday, crossword

    Thanks very much to Tramp and Eileen – I agree about 8d being the favourite clue of so many good ones

31. Why is there ‘couple’ in 13D?

32. Personally I’m not averse to a trip behind the bike sheds! I enjoyed the fun and laughter along the way.

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

33. [gif@26. My Dad was in Outback Queensland. Eldest son of a widowed mother.]

34. Paul C @31 – ‘couple’ for the two outside letters of MelbournE.

35. Agree with most previous comments although I had never heard of NASDAQ.
    Eileen – surely 16a is parsed as an anagram of HOW A USER with ES? Otherwise there is no A for WAREHOUSES.
    Thanks Tramp, who I always find difficult, although I got this one in the end, and Eileen as ever.

36. Nice to see one of the answers posting here!
    We need to add a Charles Ton to our list
    Impeccable cluing. But combination of a friendly grid and antennae pointing the right way meant it was over rather quickly
    So thanks for the blog Eileen and also to the ever witty Tramp

37. SinCam @35 – of course: careless slip, which I shall fix now.

38. Last time we had a discussion about ‘paddy’ in this sense, I mentioned that I’d never heard it before coming here. I still think it’s racist and should be avoided. Enough said.

39. Favourite was DICKY BIRDS for the misleading tits. ‘Nuff said.

40. Lovely puzzle with, yes, a touch of the Paulian about it though Tramp is perfectly capable of standing on his own risque two feet. Nothing not to like and ticks all over the place. Almost wholly aligned with AlanC with my favourites: GASTROPUB, WAREHOUSES, PADDYMELON, NASDAQ, MOUNTEBANKED and BALLET DANCERS.

    I’m not going to wade into the paddy debate – other than by thanking paddymelon @7 for the insight into the derivation of the pseudonym and to note how refreshing it is to see one of Irish heritage happy to embrace the term in lighthearted spirit. Though, acknowledging poc’s point above, it’s always going to be slightly risky to incorporate in a puzzle these days.

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

41. Don’t want to appear critical of such a good clue but can someone explain why 21A starts with “did do” rather than just “did”?

42. Eileen @34 – It makes no difference but I wondered if Tramp was specifically referring to ME lbourne rather than M elbourn E (the latter being adequately clued with “outskirts of Melbourne” and making me wonder too where couple came into it other than for the surface). Maybe I’m overthinking it and he did just mean a couple of letters rather than a pair together.

43. As always, thanks Eileen for the super blog and kind words

    I wrote this in Feb 2020, just before lockdown. I had a few dance-themed clues waiting for a puzzle, so I threw them in this.

    Neil

44. Eileen are you sure 1d isn’t begs? Where I live down south to tap is to beg?

45. Cedric @ 44 There’s nothing to indicate where an E might come from, but there is a clear instruction to replace O with U.

46. [Dnk the vine melons were toxic, pdm@7, thought they were made into jam in hard times (might be a shaggy bush story, like boiled galah or crow 🙂 )]

47. Worth it just for 21 across! And for me, one of the points of doing these puzzles is to extend my vocabulary so no problem whatsoever with 13 down for those complaining on the Guardian blog, although I did know it, having seen one on a trip to Oz.

48. Thank you for dropping in Tramp. Not a lot of high jinks since the lockdown but you keep us entertained, and very grateful to you for that.

49. Lovely stuff, and for once I seemed to get on Tramp’s wavelength faster than usual. Maybe the right mixture of smut and anagrams for my little brain. Thanks Eileen for the parsing of Charleston.
    [Ronald @9. I did know OTIS as an elevator company, but the one I remember most is the one that takes me up 3 floors to my GP’s surgery and sets me talking with a lisp: Schindler’s Lift…]

50. Loved this, and as with a few others found it much less challenging than a typical Tramp.

    Liked GASTROPUB the best, especially as it disambiguated the crossing CATS/CAST.

51. Thanks Tramp (and Eileen of course). That was fun.

52. I think I can safely say this was a well received puzzle?
    Pasddymelon took me ages as LOI!
    And then I saw that I must have “checked all” in trying to solve it, and 26a was not NASSAU.

    It is time to get out of bed after doing yesterday’s and today’s back to back!

    The Y in 13d looked a safe bet but “check” showed it was wrong when it was right!
    Has anyone else noticed that flaw? It happens regularly, but not as often and the converse where or leaves wrong letters in place.

    Best clue of the week 13d , and my only reveal – so cheesed at that!

    Paddy for fit? Googled Paddy and got a whole page of Paddy Power links – so did not bother after that. So much time wasted on one clue bur a great puzzle Tramp.
    Thanks to the LADY (Eileen) and the Tramp! Had to be careful of the order there :O)

53. Cedric @44 – it’s a different use of ‘tap’: to tap (someone) for money is to beg; the clue has to do with phone-tapping.

    Thanks, akarebornbeginner @52. 😉

54. Sorry. I still don’t get the connection between “dicky birds” and “tits”.

55. Ken, tits are birds or ‘dicky birds’ in nursery parlance:

    Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall,
    One named Peter, one named Paul

    Or else, ‘a little dicky bird told me that…’ (something heard on the grapevine)

56. Lovely crossword . Thank you Tramp. Have wondered how Paddymelon came up with that moniker. Now I know!
    Never heard mountebank used as a verb and never heard Nasdaq. So learnt a lot today thanks to Eileen. Super blog!

57. Thanks Tramp & Eileen. Thought this was on the easier side for Tramp, but no less enjoyable than his usual fare – one of my favourite setters.

    Ken @54 – dicky birds are any small bird, such as tits (blue, coal, great etc).

58. Love a bit of Benny Hill in the clueing! Thanks both.

59. Thanks! Couldn’t escape the Freudian trap.

60. Thanks both. Came here mainly to see if DICKY BIRDS had divided opinion….and so it is, with the added bonus of someone having to ask how it works….already answered, I know, otherwise my advice would be to start somewhere in the 1970s

61. Sorry if anyone is offended by bird/girlfriend. It is denoted in Collins and Chambers as slang and not vulgar slang. I can see how it could cause offence.

62. I have (not all that) often wondered why girls are called birds. They say it’s a term revived in the 60s and 70s, but revived from what? Well, as early as 1300, bird was used to mean girl, but this was probably owing to confusion with another similar Middle English word, burde, which aslo means young woman. And then some people think that there is in fact no link at all between the ME burde and 60s bird. Oh well.

    My fave is blade (to mean young woman), which I now see is from the NW of Ireland. My old mate Keir (RIP) used it all the time, along with other bizarre slang words that he’d unearthed, and he didn’t know the origin.

    Fine puzzle from the Tramp.

63. Definitely Private Eye style. BTW does anyone blog their puzzles?

    Thanks both.

64. Loved it. Very pleased with myself for getting mountebanked and NASDAQ in particular. Loads of great clues, but nothing got more of a snigger than “Trim Bush”.

65. Such an enjoyable puzzle. I was defeated by DICKY BIRDS; I know that a tit is a bird but didn’t know about them being referred to as dicky birds. Plus “dicky” for dodgy and “bird” for girlfriend were also new – I suspect this is a British thing? And is it really offensive? Some people seem cut up about it!

66. Paul b @ 62. ME often used ‘briddes’ for ‘birds’.

    Referring to girls as birds was absolute common parlance in the 60s and 70s. There was even a TV sitcom written by a woman, Carla Lane, called ‘The Liverbirds’ about the lives of two young Liverpudlian woman.

67. paul b @62: ah so happy for the memory: I grew up in Belfast and my granny used ‘blade’ as a pejorative term for a nasty wee girl. On the
    ‘Paddy’ thing…not an issue for me. I’ve been called it often and I don’t give a stuff.

68. Ian Davis@66: one of my pals lives next door to Nerys Hughes in Weybridge. Classic comedy writing, so sadly lacking today.

69. Alastair @ 63 Private Eye Cyclops puzzles are blogged by this site.

70. Chambers online: Paddy noun (Paddies) 1 sometimes derog a familiar name for an Irishman. 2 (paddy) colloq a fit of rage.

    Is it to throw a paddy? Anyhow, paddies 1 and 2 are the same paddy so I’d say paddy 2 is offensive, even racist.

71. Thanks Tramp for the enjoyment. I had to reveal PADDYMELON; I didn’t know the creature and I wasn’t aware that paddy = fit. I guessed MOUNTEBANKED from the anagram fodder but had no idea what the word meant. DICKY BIRDS was another stab in the dark; I figured “birds” meant girlfriends along the lines of “hens” sometimes meaning women. Of course I knew the American-related clues OTIS and NASDAQ. Thanks Eileen for explaining it all.

72. As I have only ever seen PADEMELON spelt that way for the marsupial, I thought that was an error – mixing up the creature and the plant. But I got it, along with the rest. Loss to like in this one. Thanks, Tramp and Eileen.

73. Thanks Tramp and Eileen
    I raised an eyebrow at SPRUCE = bush too, but the surface works better than with tree, as MarkN @64 alludes to.

74. Michael Caine was an arch birder – I didn’t like it at the time, and it hasn’t improved with age.

75. DICKY BIRD is a very common expression for pretty much any sort of bird in the UK, so much so that people with a surname of BIRD are often nicknamed Dickie (usually with an ie not a y). One of the best known (at least to cricket lovers) was the umpire Dickie Bird.

76. I feel like Goldilocks with Guardian puzzles at the moment, either too easy (ok, not many of those) or too hard. But this one was just right. My favourite clue was DICKY BIRDS, mainly because of the length of time it took me to remember the phrase.
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

77. Thanks Eileen, I got off to a flier and really enjoyed lots of these before grinding to a miserable halt in the SW where I got -MELON and -BIRDS but no further (I am going to blame it on the misleading “couple on” rather than my own inability to think).
    But paddymelon@7 at least I have learned that there is such a thing as a paddymelon – until now I had assumed your real name was Patricia Canteloupe or similar. And it was great to read your story, well done to your old man!
    Thanks Tramp, don’t see you often enough.

78. [me@75 I say Dickie Bird was, because he has retired from umpiring. He is still very much here at 89 years old.]

79. Gazzh @77. I also blame my DNF on the misleading “couple on” rather than my own inability to think! To me, ‘outskirts of Melbourne’ just means the letters ME, and at first I was thinking of MONOTREMES, the small group of animals (or ‘being[s] in Australia’), though obviously nothing else seemed to fit and anyway it had to be plural to stretch to 10 letters. But to get back to the point, ‘couple on outskirts of Melbourne’ is deliberately misleading – I don’t mind being misled if it’s wordplay disguised as definition, or vice versa, or a reversal acting as anagrind, etc. But if it’s just a couple of words bunged in that have no function other than to mislead, it feels a little bit unfair.

    Or maybe after all it’s just my own inability to think!

80. I know I’m late but I wanted to thank tramp for a great puzzle and Eileen for the blog. Also everyone else for their contributions here. My only addition is I parsed paddy melon as ‘pad’ for fit. Chambers includes ‘adjustments’ in its definitions. Then Dy for two as in dyad. That way we avoid the possibility of offence and the outskirts of Melbourne is just ME.

81. Here in the US (in the same time period), of course, “Birds” were “Chicks.”

82. Sheffield hatter thanks as it’s good to have a partner in deflection. But on reflection I think we have to credit Tramp with improving the surface and providing extra clarity, as I suppose the outskirts of Melbourne could just as well be ME…NE. Onwards and upwards!

83. Not sure how would have got on if I hadn’t read GASTROPUB in yesterday’s blog, repeated @ 3 today, before attempting it. Fortunately I realised what was going on before reading any of the others.

84. I’m surprised we haven’t seen Paddymelon before. I’m certain we’ve had the Euro more than once, a much more obscure marsupial I’d have thought.

85. [Gazzh@77. Close. My Dad’s name was Patrick/Pat, and the family was from Waterford. I picked up a couple of Irish hitchhikers, teachers of Gaelic and History, in Scotland in the 70s and they told us of our origins.]

    [akarebornbeginner@52. Glad I knew 13 and didn’t have to go googling. That’s my father’s surname! I’ve learned something today as well. Even with his great sense of humour that association would be difficult to live with.]

86. Took me a second go on Saturday morning to get to the end of this, but I am glad that I stuck at it to get to my LOI PADDYMELON. Could only guess it (I didn’t recall Paddy=fit) from our esteemed fellow contributor. And now the bonus of finding out both what it means and how it became a moniker here. Lots to like, and my favourite was NASDAQ. Great blog Eileen, which explained several answers to me (disappointed that I missed Charles Dance). Thanks Tramp.

87. For those looking for today’s prize, I think this must be it as it has yesterday’s solution on it.
    It’s not labelled as a Prize!

    https://crosswords-static.guim.co.uk/gdn.cryptic.20220903.pdf

88. Pork Scotch@41, “Did do” is a bit clunky but makes it more obvious that we’re looking at the past tense of “do” in the sense of “swindle”. I would have found the clue much harder with just “Did”. Interesting hearing that people are offended by “paddy” for fit. Having, or getting in, a (little-p) paddy is standard colloquial usage here and I don’t think it derives from (capital-P) Paddy/Patrick/Irishman at all, but from the paddling of the arms and legs of a toddler having a tantrum.

89. Had another look this morning, but still couldn’t get PADDYMELON. I had the MELON part, but was trying to get something meaning Couple into the first part, as well as Fit. My apologies to our own Paddymelon for not recognising the word.

    I sometimes think we can be a bit over-sensitive with uses of words that could be read as offensive. I know from a position of privilege it is easy to think this, but here is an example that does apply to me. Whilst I would raise an eyebrow (in fact both) if anyone referred to me as their ‘bird’, and indeed would have back in the day, I am not at all offended by the usage in a crossword. It is a fact that the word is/was used to mean that in some places with no intention to offend. Of course, there are some words that have a great big red cross against them, but I would not include bird (or for that matter paddy) amongst them.

90. TassieTim@72, in the spirit of parts of today’s blog, and firmly linguobuccally, aren’t we being a bit animalist? Are living plants ‘beings’?

91. THANK YOU Shirley@87!

92. Matt S @88 – check out the OED – paddy meaning a fit of temper is short for paddywhack, and was originally in reference to Irish people, nothing to do with toddlers. The citations are unambiguous.

93. Another thank you to Shirley@87. I’ve been looking all over! Much appreciated 🙂

94. Bonnylass and Cormac you’re very welcome.
    I’m afraid that because it is a weekend the Prize won’t appear until Monday.
    That’s twice in a couple of weeks it hasn’t been available .
    Perhaps it’s a plot by the Guardian to force us to go out and buy the print copy!

95. I’ve posted this before, but several years ago now, but in the light of the earlier non-appearance of today’s puzzle I’ll post it again.

    The following link takes you straight to the pdf of the cryptic

    crosswords-static.guim.co.uk/gdn.cryptic.20YYMMDD.pdf

    If you keep it in a tab in your browser, all you have to do is change the final digit until the month changes

    and this one to Everyman

    crosswords-static.guim.co.uk/obs.everyman.20YYMMDD.pdf

    I downloaded today’s at around 07:45, and had no idea anything was amiss.

96. Crosswords are great gifts, and there are some lovely clues here. But google can’t find any occurrence of MOUNTEBANKED (other than in online/informal dictionaries) before I got tired. I’m surprised the editor let it through.

97. Poppadom @ 96. The editor let it through because it’s correct. From Chambers:

    mountebank /mown?ti-bangk/
    noun
    A buffoon
    A charlatan
    A quack seller of remedies, etc (obsolete)
    transitive verb
    To gain or bring about by mountebankery
    intransitive verb (or transitive verb with it)
    To act as a mountebank

98. Moth@89 and anyone else interested, ‘bird’s at one time could mean a man. See PG Wodehouse.

99. ‘bird’, not ‘bird’s. Auto correct!

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