Guardian Cryptic 28,867 by Imogen

by

A slow solve and tricky to parse in several places. My favourites were 14ac, 24ac, 25ac, 8dn, and especially 1ac. Thanks to Imogen.

 

ACROSS
1 BISHOP
After mistake on circuit, pressure for F1 starter (6)
in chess, White’s kingside bishop piece starts at F1 (column F, row 1 of the board)

BISH=slang for a blunder=”mistake” + O=circle shape=”circuit” + P (pressure)
5 PASTRAMI
Meat from sheep I finished first (8)
RAM=”sheep” + I, with PAST=”finished” going first
9 DEEP BLUE
Indigo for a chess computer (4,4)
double definition – Deep Blue the chess computer played against then reigning world champion Garry Kasparov
10 ALCOTT
Rural cottage is this writer‘s bolthole? (6)
Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women

hidden in rur-AL COTT-age
11 AMAZING GRACE
Care to relax, after putting energy into a comic song (7,5)
anagram/”to relax” of (Care)*, after ZING=”energy” in A MAG[azine]=”a comic”
13 ANNA
For her, partner (not male) not available (4)
m-AN=”partner” [for her], minus ‘m’ for “male”, plus N/A=”not available”
14 OVERTURN
Upset voter stumbles against ballot box (8)
anagram/”stumbles” of (voter)* + URN=”ballot box”
17 CONDENSE
Reduce studies in first chapter? (8)
DENS=”studies” [as in rooms], inside C ONE=Chapter One=”first chapter”
18 MOAT
One goes round castle, treading nothing into carpet (4)
O=”nothing” inside MAT=”carpet”
20 HEADS OR TAILS
What did you say, you tosser? (5,2,5)
cryptic definition, referring to a tossing of a coin
23 CAVORT
Tore off from opera, back at top speed to dance (6)
[IL] TROVA-tore=Verdi “opera”, minus the ‘tore’ and reversed/”back”, after C=speed of light=”top speed”
24 ALLIANCE
Partnership lacking say in loyalty (8)
ALL-EG-IANCE=”loyalty”, minus EG=e.g.=”say”
25 STOLIDLY
Without imagination, super­market replaces legend’s recipe (8)
LIDL=”supermarket”, replacing ‘r’ (recipe) in STO-r-Y=”legend”
26 WAPITI
Deer turns over something with one foot (6)
WAPITI is a name for elk

reversal/”turns over” of IT=”something” + I=”one” + PAW=”foot”
DOWN
2 IBEX
In the country I am an unknown animal (4)
I BE=”I am”, “In the country” e.g. as said by someone in the West Country, plus X=”unknown” in maths
3 HAPHAZARD
Random bloke caught out over pitfall (9)
c-HAP=”bloke”, minus ‘c’ for “caught” (cricket abbr.), plus HAZARD=”pitfall”
4 PILLAR
Send fruitlessly from here to post in this box (6)
reference to the phrase ‘from pillar to post’ to describe moving back and forth aimlessly
5 PLENIPOTENTIARY
Appoint entirely unsatisfactory diplomat (15)
anagram/”unsatisfactory” of (Appoint entirely)*
6 SPANGLED
Glittering, like part of American flag (8)
the American flag is known as the Star SPANGLED Banner
7 RICER
Trainspotter losing head — it’s like a sieve (5)
definition: a device used to e.g. press potatoes through holes to make mash

G-RICER is slang for a “Trainspotter”, minus the head letter
8 METACARPAL
Went to see a fellow motoring enthusiast to give a bit of a hand (10)
MET A CAR PAL=”Went to see a fellow motoring enthusiast”
12 INTOLERANT
Bigoted, enjoying the bilingual harangue (10)
INTO=”enjoying” + LE=”the [in French]” + RANT=”harangue”

not sure if “bilingual” is an instruction to translate into a second language other than English, or if it is a reference to LE meaning “the” in Italian as well as French
15 TIME STAMP
I mark the moment the paper is on the carpet — picked up quietly (4-5)
TIMES=”[news]paper” + MAT=”carpet” reversed vertically/”picked up” + P (piano, “quietly”)

a second use of MAT=”carpet”
16 UNWONTED
Rare single: not running in between (8)
UNWED=”single”, with anagram/”running” of (not)* inside
19 WILLOW
Bat showing determination on old wicket (6)
WILL=”determination” + O (old) + W (wicket, cricket abbr)
21 DROLL
Be out of sleeping bag? That’s odd (5)
Be-DROLL=”sleeping bag”, minus the “Be”
22 SCUT
Small incision in tail (4)
definition: a short tail of e.g. a rabbit or deer

S (small) + CUT=”incision”

72 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,867 by Imogen”

  1. GRICER and BISH and WALITI were new to me and I struggled to parse CAVORT. So some guesswork.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi

  3. Guessed bish, not really au fait with chessboard, thought he must be a brrm brrm driver. Lots to tickle neurons, as per with Im, like “as is my wont/custom”, so unwonted => not customary => rare… hmm. Or like when Terry teases Arthur and he replies “Oh yes, very droll”, he doesn’t mean “odd”, does he? And does “le” occur elsewhere than in French, and does “the bilingual” mean that it should? All part of the fun, ta Imogen and manehi (blog nice and early, have you moved to California 🙂 )

  4. Thank you manehi. I also liked 1A, even though I don’t know chess and took a stab that it must be the position on a chessboard. Great story in the Formula 1 surface reading.
    INTOLERANT held me up. I think you must be right about LE in 2 (unmarked, foreign) languages. Don’t know if that’s fair.

    My favourites were AMAZING GRACE for the chuckle about the (not) ‘comic song’, although I wonder if ‘mag’ for ‘comic’ was fair, without something indicating an example; METACARPAL for the entertaining charade and definition, and WAPITI and SCUT for their images and economical cluing. The word picture of the deer turning something over with one foot was cute and I was thoroughly misdirected looking for something like IFT. PLENIPOTENTIARY was a great find and well-constructed. ALCOTT and PILLAR were interesting for their grammar.

  5. Dance the fourstep:
    First know about Trovatore
    Then subtract tore
    Then reverse the remainder
    Then add speed of light.

    Piecacake!

  6. Lol at grantinfreo @5, CAVORT was one of my last ones in, along with PILLAR, which I did parse, and it went in unparsed from the crossers. Plus I invented a different parsing that satisfied me for CONDENSE when I entered it. I find I’m never quite on Imogen’s wavelength, although I finished this faster that I do most Imogen puzzles.

    Thank you to Imogen and manehi.

  7. INTOLERANT:
    I took ‘enjoying the bilingual’ as one block (INTO LE-two languages mixed).
    I am not sure if LE means THE only in two languages.

  8. I didn’t think that I needed to come here today, then realised that I’d written in several answers without being able to fully parse the clue. I’d never heard of a ‘gricer’, and still don’t know why ‘ballot box’ = ‘urn’.

  9. Re ‘bilingual’, I had a similar solution to KVa @7, but went the other way – “le rant” could be a franglais-ish combination, like “le shuttle” and “le strong silent type”.

    And as KVa suggests, bilingual wouldn’t be strictly correct if referring to French/Italian words for the, as ‘le’ can also mean ‘the’ in Samoan, and possibly other languages.

    BISH unfailingly brings Jennings to mind – “What a ghastly bish!”

    Thanks i & m

  10. I didn’t parse 7d either, as GRICER is new to me. I spent some time trying to fit in ‘anorak’ somehow. I’m also on the side of ‘LE RANT’ being the bilingual harangue. Agree also that spotting the anagram for PLENIPOTENTIARY was excellent. I also spent time trying to fit ALDI into 25a before the penny dropped. Thanks to Imogen and to manehi for the clear blog.

  11. Speaking of anoraks, Tomsdad @10, apparently we have an Oz equivalent, ‘gunzel’ (which I doubt will ever appear in the Graun). Found it while looking up gricer, which did ring the faintest of bells.

  12. Excellent puzzle and blog,
    2 be fine in Suffolk, bah.
    Theres probably somewhere in UK where you could buy cheese etc from a “gricer’s” shop
    Glad I remembered there are two similar sounding titles in the Verdi catalogue
    Every now and then Imogen is up with the best of them-like today
    Thanks all

  13. MAC089 @8, an urn is where you drop your vote in some countries. “Citoyens, aux urnes!”
    Re 1a, look up Matt Bishop on Wikipedia for another F1 connection. I completely missed the chess allusion.

  14. Hard going. Took a long time and there were a couple I couldn’t parse – the LIDL ‘supermarket’ at 25a and the ‘bilingual harangue’ at 12d (the franglais LE RANT seems plausible). I also didn’t know the ‘F1’ reference at 1a, the ‘odd’ sense of DROLL, URN for ‘ballot box’ or the ‘rare’ sense of UNWONTED.

    Especially enjoyed the surfaces for HEADS OR TAILS and PILLAR. CAVORT was very difficult but gets my gong as clue of the day. If it ever appears again, I’ll try to remember GinF @5’s instructions!

    Thanks to Imogen and manehi

  15. I have made a number comments about the level of difficulty over the last week so immediately out of the official mourning period a tough one was expected. Thanks Imogen!! The most challenging ones have already been mentioned but I must say who knows the slang term for a trainspotter, except a trainspotter? (I was looking at the characters from the book/film and removing the first letter. Egbie?) Favourite was 8dn.
    Thanks manehi for the blog.

  16. Thanks Imogen and manehi.
    I enjoyed this – there was a lot of GK, but I knew most of it (not GRICER, though – sounds like where the late Queen went for food items). Favourites BISHOP, METACARPAL, and UNWONTED.

  17. I completed this one and thought that some of the clues were brilliant, especially 5D. On the other hand, I thought that 10A was a stinker. I failed to parse 1A, but I’m not surprised as I absolutely loathe chess.

  18. Re 14ac In 5th century Greece voters used to put a white pebble in an urn for yes, and a black pebble for no.
    It would have been nice to have had some clue about ancient voters though!

  19. [muffin @16 – I think ‘gricer’ may be the new King’s term for someone given to grumbling about the monarchy]

  20. I didn’t know gricer for trainspotter. I tried to do something with anorak or nerd before I had sufficient letters to get the answer from the definition. I didnt know bish for mistake either, but the use of F1 was brilliant misdirection. I don’t think mag is fair for comic. But lots to admire in this puzzle especially 8d.

  21. Another who thought a grocery was a posh person’s food shop. I spent some time trying to make mishap work for BISHOP, but a great clue.

  23. I really enjoyed this, only got one on first read through, then somehow found Imogen’s wave length. Loved most clues, especially 8d, 11a, 20a and 23a. Thanks Imogen and manehi

  24. Hard work, that. Got there in the end but with an unhealthy amount of guess-and-checking and lots of clues unparsed.

    New to me: UNWONTED, [g]RICER, SCUT, WAPITI (although Roz did recently advise me to swot up on deers/antelopes, how prescient), the opera name. Two uses of carpet=MAT in crossing clues was odd. In AMAZING GRACE I raised an eyebrow at comic=MAG.

    I did like INTOLERANT though. I live in France and half the conversations I have seem to end up in some kind of Franglais so this one jumped out at me.

    Thanks Imogen for the mental workout, and manehi for unravelling what I could not!

  27. Ground to a complete halt halfway through, but after a reviving cup of tea pushed on again. Though ultimately defeated by two I simply didn’t know – RICER and UNWONTED. Thought both the clues for ANNA and IBEX rather fiendish in their construction. Loved BISHOP and METACARPAL. Did anyone else try out Aldi in 25ac with the L crosser from STOLIDLY in place?

  30. Was pleased to see my namesake predecessor in 9a.

    I thought this quite hard, but normal for Imogen. I really liked BISHOP after I’d figured it out from a guess. Needed the blog though for PILLAR, since I thought PILLAR = post, hence confused by the rest of the clue.

    Really confused about LE=bilingual. If you check Wiktionary you’ll see it is a word in close to 50 languages- even if you rule out the dialects and variants, it’s still plentry more than 2.

  32. Too hard for me. Solved only 11 clues including the long one at 5d then gave up. Came here to read the blog.

    Of the few that I solved, GRICER was new for me.

    Thanks, both.

  34. As usual with Imogen, this was a struggle.

    Racer at 7 could have been another F1 starter, and avoided the rather obscure gRICER and RICER. I liked BISHOP as the F1 starter, CAVORT for the wordplay, PLENIPOTENTIARY for a good anagram spot, and INTOLERANT for the bilingual harangue. I thought DROLL might have been d(e)-ROLL, doh!

    Thanks Imogen for the torment and manehi for clarifying everything.

  37. Phew – distinctly tough and a fair few I didn’t have a hope of parsing, but some wonderful touches, including the anagram for PLENIPOTENTIARY, the F1 starter, and the playful METACARPAL.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi.

  38. PLENIPOTENTIARY has been lodged in my brain since O-Level History so was my FOI. It also makes a (presumably) rare appearance in the pantheon of modern music in Bill Callahan’s lovely song “Pigeons”

    I’m another in the franglais camp for LE RANT and I liked the faux homophone indicator in TIME-STAMP

    I was less keen on the “for her” ANNA – it just seemed designed to mislead rather than misdirect

    Cheers M&I

  40. As a lifelong gricer/anorak meaning railway enthusiast I and my fellow ones have never really got to the bottom of where gricer came from. It has been a subject of debate for over 60 years . Another definition in railway circles is a DAA: Daft as A…….holes! First time I have ever seen it in a crossword. Fame for us at last!!

  41. nho LIDL, though apparently there are some on Long Island. Nho of a bish, nor yet a gricer, either, but I don’t think we have trainspotters in the US, though of course we have our share of nerds.

    I wouldn’t exactly say that the American flag is “known as” the Star-Spangled Banner. That’s what it’s called in the national anthem, but I don’t think people generally refer to it as such. (It does have, or used to have at least, the nickname of Old Glory.)

    In case you were wondering how to pronounce WAPITI, consult Ogden Nash: “Hippity-hoppity, Here come the wapiti.”

    essexboy@9, your breadth of knowledge amazes me over and over. Imagine, in the same comment you supply a word in Samoan, a language most of us are much less to know about than French or Italian, and a quotation from a public-school novel I’m also guessing most of us haven’t read.

    Thanks to Imogen, manehi and all the commenters.

  42. A splendid crossword. Like bodycheetah @38, I was particularly taken by the double-bluff ‘picked up’ in 15D TIME-STAMP – and the ‘F1’ in 1A BISHOP is another nice piece of misdirection. Now it has been pointed out to me, I like the (pseudo?) Franglais LE RANT in 12D INTOLERANT; I went with LE as bilingual – for example, French and Italian (Il Grido, La Strada, I Vitelloni, Le Amiche). I am impressed by essexboy @9 wading through the wictionary entry for LE to come up with the Samoan (or, essexboy, do you just happen to have a smattering of Samoan?), but, still, I see nothing wrong in saying that LE is ‘the’ in (at least) two languages.

  43. Thanks for the blog, I thought ANNA and HEADS OR TAILS were pretty weak but the rest was rather special. Really enjoyed this and my number of circled clues is much higher than usual. Great to have two chess references, GRICER I only know from crosswords , like MrEssexboy I just took LE RANT as a bilingual harangue.
    I once saw a clue – Le football weekend perhaps ? ( 9 ) .

  45. A gem of a puzzle! So much to admire.

    BISHOP, CAVORT and METACARPAL were my top picks but really almost all the clues had clever twists.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi

  47. We have Lidl here (East Coast USA) now, but it apparently hasn’t soaked into my consciousness in a way that allowed me to parse 22A. We don’t have either bish = mistake or g-ricers, so I had to hit the check button for those.

  48. Panthes@47: never heard of them. The two public school books that I can remember ending are Tom Brown’s School Days and Stalky & Co.

  49. ^ Not ending, reading.

    I guess it’s gricers, not g-ricers. In any case we don’t have either the phenomenon or the name; just the Irvine Welch novel and subsequent movie, in which trainspotting itself didn’t really play a role as far as I can remember.

    It does not seem very 21st century to assume that Anna’s partner will be male.

  50. I’ve read some Jennings books, long ago. Lidl’s, by the way, being German, is pronounced Leedle’s, not Liddle’s.

  52. [Valentine / PeterO – I confess my familiarity with the languages of the South Pacific islands is a lot less than I would like it to be (partly because my familiarity with the South Pacific islands is a lot less than I would like it to be).

    Fijian pronouns are often mentioned in linguistics textbooks, because they illustrate how impoverished our English pronominal system is by comparison. As a student I learnt that Fijian has a four-way number distinction system, and hence three different words for ‘we’ (dual, paucal, and plural). I now discover that was an underestimate, since not only is there dual, paucal, and plural, but each of those is divided into an inclusive ‘we’ and an exclusive ‘we’ (depending on whether ‘we’ incudes ‘you’ or not), giving us six we’s and six us’s.]

    Re ’ghastly BISH’, as subsequent posters confirm, the Jennings stories were staple schoolboy (and maybe schoolgirl?) reading for those of us of a certain generation in the UK. Like muffin I preferred them to Just William.

    One more bit of Franglais – I always like hearing French people talk about Le Big Bang – to English ears it sounds like Le Big Bong, suggesting that the Big Bang was triggered by the chimes of Big Ben.

  55. Muffin@51: same here! But later in life learned to love Just William, especially when read by Martin Jarvis on Radio 4.

  56. A slow start, but with a few crossers the answers flew in, although very often with guesswork rather than parsing. None of the clues gave me a chuckle or a satisfying ‘penny drop’ moment, although I was glad to work out the deer that I had never heard of. Thanks Manehi and Imogen.

  57. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the coin but wouldn’t the tosser usually be the one who asks HEADS OR TAILS? ‘Bilingual harange’ seemed silly as well. Why is this use of ‘le’ any more bilingual than the countless other examples of ‘the French (whatever)’ we see in crosswords? Thanks anyway Imogen, the rest was fun.

  58. I too tried to force MISHAP into 1a and gave up. I had CON and DEN for “studies” (17a) and was left staring at the rump SE to no avail. Thanks, manehi, for the enlightenment, and Imogen for the entanglement.

  62. AuntRuth@50 English and German both being Germanic languages, the short “i” of “fish” is common in both, so Lidl could as well rhyme with “fiddle: as with “wheedle.” It may well go the wheedle way, though, I wouldn’t know.

    Thanks to Imogen, manehi and essexboy.

  63. [Valentine – you’re welcome. Lidl does in fact ‘go the wheedle way’ in German, as Aunt Ruth indicates. Except of course English people tend to pronounce a “dark L” at the end of wheedle (and Lidl), unlike the German final L.]

  64. Also of the Jennings generation. Valentine @41, strictly these are preparatory school novels. (If public school is prison, prep school is young offender’s institution/juvie, both of the latter being designed to ensure the inmates reach the former.)
    Thanks to Imogen for the challenge and manehi for the exegesis: needed in my case for 1A.

  65. Just got it finished.
    I’m ashamed to say that ANNA was the last one in. Rather poor clue, I felt.
    I’ve still got my Samoan book, purchased 50 years ago. The definite article is illustrated in the noun phrase ‘O le fale’, ‘the house’ but ‘the houses’ is ‘O fale’, with the omission of le.

    A florin is/was ‘afatala’ (half a dollar).

    Happy days.

    Thanks Imogen and manehi.

  66. I liked ANNA, having worked backwards from N/A, and if Katherine @59 is correct in surmising Imogen’s thinking, I don’t see why anyone should have cause to complain. For me, the north wasn’t too bad, but the south was a struggle and I needed considerable help from a thesaurus, and my parsing was a little incomplete.

  68. I got CAVORT from the crossers but couldn’t parse it because I was thinking of another opera. CAV = colloquial abbreviation for Cavalleria Rusticana. “Cav & Pag” a popular double bill.

  70. That was a DNF for me, even after leaving it overnight and coming back to it, and despite being both a chess-player and a former GRICER. But you can forgive Imogen a great deal for something like MET A CAR PAL.
    Belated thanks, both.

  72. I thought 1ac. was a really clever piece of wording which was perhaps marred by the F1 reference given that chess squares notation is referred to in small, not capital letters. Would not f1 have been less misleading?

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