Guardian Cryptic 28,879 by Pasquale

85 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,879 by Pasquale”

1. This fitted into the Goldilocks zone of my general knowledge so other than dredging some of the names from the memory banks, I found this an entertaining romp. The only word I didn’t know was NÉVÉ but NERVE was my LOI, and I parsed it as EVEN flipped around R, and didn’t think beyond Good King Wencelas.

   Thanks to loonapick (who might want to override your spellchecker in the blog blurb so it’s Brian Boru) and Pasquale.

2. Re 3 down, I took using an air bridge as much more enjoyable than boarding the plane from the ground and climbing the stairs.

3. BH@2 – suppose it depends on where you are. At a rainy UK airport, I’d agree with your assessment, but in a sunny Mediterranean airport, I’d rather go outside and climb the stairs.

4. The usual very neat clueing from Pasquale this morning. The 2 long central anagrams went in early which opened up the grid. I had heard of Chomsky, Isadora Duncan and Nestor but Brian Boru was totally new. My favourite was 14dn just because it made me chuckle. Thanks to P and loonapick for the blog.

5. I got there in the end, but only after rather more googling than I’d have liked. I’d never heard of NESTOR, National Front, ISADORA DUNCAN, “mardy” nor “neve”. And I thought “ho” for “house” was a bit odd.

6. Indeed, Shanne @1, deep and crisp. [Dyu know the school yard version: Good king Whence The Louse looked out on the Feast of Steven; someone punched him in the snout, made it all uneven .. etc]. Of the other characters, Brian Baru rose from the depths with crossers, Isadora I remember per the gorgeous young Redgrave, and dear old Noam is a living legend. Lots to like, many thx LnP.

7. I feel normal service has been resumed after an easy Saturday and a hard Monday. Thank you Pasquale.
   GDU@5. Ho. for “house” is a standard abbreviation here on maps and signs. “Mardy” is more common in the north of the country and derived from “marred” in the sense of spoiled/moody/sulky. I wish I had never heard of the National Front!
   Thanks to loonapick.

8. A thought on AIR BRIDGE: I associate the phrase with the connections made into, I seem to recall, Berlin during the early days of the Cold War. So more than the trip on an aeroplane mentioned by loonapick in the preamble. I see Wikipedia would have us consider JET BRIDGE as an alternative for the connection in an airport – deffo a nho.

   ORCHESTRA PIT was my favourite today with NUISANCE, CHOMSKY, SPEEDWAY and the delightful HAILSTONE my other big ticks.

   Thanks Pasquale and loonapick

9. Thanks Pasquale and loonapick
   ISADORA DUNCAN was mentioned on Radio3 just before I got to that clue!

10. … as for mardy, I went Surely not, but there it was, a total jorum …

11. Nice puzzle from The Don but, like GinF, needed a fair bit of googljng.

    However, it did lead to a rather shocking glimpse into the unbelievably unlucky life (and death) of Idora Duncan. More here if you’re interested.

    The SE corner gave most trouble due to being convinced that broadcaster in CHOMSKY was a homophone indicator.

    Many thanks for the thoughtful blog, loonapick.

12. That was great fun. Knew BRIAN BORU from drunken evenings, singing Irish songs at Uni. Hadn’t heard of Névé, Mardy or the long dancing word. Favourites were CHOMSKY, SAFFRON, HAILSTONE and ECLIPTIC.

    Ta Pasquale & loonapick.

13. It all seems a long time ago – but not long enough to have made it into the dictionaries. I think this could be what Pasquale had in mind as an air bridge

14. “mardy” in LOMBARDY is a new word for me. My first guess was Calabria, same number of letters, and it started with C (see) and I knew it had to have a B for British in it. I thought that Pasquale was being a bit mean with the intersecting Old Irish King, but the wordplay was very fair and it helped as to where to put the B.
    There are several different theories as to the etymology for ”mardy”. Before I settle on one, are Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midlands people rhotic English speakers?

    I liked ISADORA DUNCAN. “fantastic”, on first reading, led me down the path of a dancer from legends, but the anagram soon became obvious. I knew about her death, but didn’t know her children also died in an accident, and she had survived previous ones. She was a bit of a rebel in many ways.
    CHOMSKY brought a smile, as did HAILSTONE, UNBEATEN and ODONTOPHOBIA.

15. Growing up in the North of England, I always took mardy to mean whiny and sulky.

16. Well done Eileen.

17. William@11. The link to Isadora Duncan didn’t work for me, don’t know if that’s because of my location.

18. Something to get one’s odontes into (although I finished this much quicker than Anto’s “Quiptic” yesterday!)

    [Incidentally, the Greek οδούς , genitive οδόντος (odoús/odóntos, = tooth), derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Latin dens/dentis, crops up in a lot of English words, most of them medical/scientific. Orthodontics, endodontics, mastodon (“breast tooth” – from the nipple-like projections on the crowns of the molars), iguanadon.]

    PM @8 – indeed, the Berlin Airlift is known in German as the Berliner Luftbrücke (literally, air bridge). But Eileen has an interesting angle.

    ginf @6 – Good thing Wendy’s mouse looks stout!

    Many thanks to the Tooth and the Pick.

19. ‘Entertaining romp’ is not how I would normally describe a Pasquale puzzle but, like Shanne @1, I really enjoyed this one – and I also only got as far as Good King Wenceslas!

    My favourites were NUISANCE, ENAMOURED, BRIAN BORU, UNBEATEN, ISADORA DUNCAN and LOMBARDY, for the inclusion of ‘mardy’, widely used here in the East Midlands.

    Thanks to Pasquale for the puzzle and loonapick for the blog.

20. There’s an article in today’s Guardian highlighting the woeful ignorance in Britain of Irish history, so it’s rather splendid and apt that so huge a figure as Brian Boru should appear today! Great puzzle. Thanks Pasq and Loonap

21. MARDY means irritable/grumpy to me. There’s an early & enjoyable Arctic Monkeys song called Mardy Bum. Paddymelon @14 – they’re not rhotic, no.

    There were some slightly odd definitions here, particularly for a stickler like Pasquale – I liked the clue, but surely 26A should be “AS today’s naughty children must be” or “Today’s naughty children must be THIS”?

    Anyway, thanks to Eileen for the blog and Pasquale for the workout.

22. Eileen @19 – nor would I normally describe a Pasquale as an entertaining romp either, but this one really was.
    essexboy @18 – yes, me too on taking far longer on the Anto Quiptic yesterday than this one (I did Maskerade’s Prize quicker than this cryptic, but that was ridiculously easy and would have made a good Quiptic.)

23. Nice to be back after several days on the road. Thanks Pasquale for the enjoyable (and entertaining) romp. The GK was, luckily, up my street. 10D was a wonderful clue. Thanks loonapick for the blog, especially for the research into definitions which I just shrugged my shoulders at!

24. [eb@18, nice variant, and yes it’s a ripe plum for parody, surprised if isihac or mpfc haven’t done it … ]

25. Very nice, smooth solve, with CHOMSKY the LOI. Particularly liked NUISANCE and ENAMOURED. Didn’t much like the clumsily worded 13ac, though the indication couldn’t have been more pointed. It’s interesting how often the word Orchestra is used as anagram fodder. Thanks for the entertainment, Pasquale, and for the blog, Loonapick.

26. Not me, Jim @21. 😉

27. paddymelon @17: Apologies, me, not you. Try this.

28. I found this way more entertaining than either of yesterday’s offerings, but this probably just means I was more on Pasquale’s wavelength.
    Like JerryG I giggled at HAILSTONE and was also impressed by the smooth surfaces of many of the clues.
    And I really, really wanted there to be some sort of theme linking Chomsky to Isadora Duncan. Not sure how good a social commentator she’d have been – but, given his many other talents, I’m sure the great man would make a marvellous dancer…
    Many thanks to Pasquale and to loonapick

29. “enjoy” can mean to have the use of which would fit here. I loved AIR BRIDGE for having a couple of potential anagrinds and a possible envelope indicator – none which were right 🙂

    Chambers describes neve as uncompacted snow?

    I misread Pasquale as Picaroon in my pre-coffee torpor and spent the whole solve wondering where his light-hearted style had gone!

    Cheers P&L

30. It’s amazing how much I have learned about Irish history from some of the names given to their race horses. BRIAN BORU was made favourite for the Epsom Derby after winning the 2yo Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster about 20 years ago…

31. I parsed 9 as FF in SAR(i) ON, which fits with ‘wearing’. That worked for me even though most likely not intended by the setter. Happens often!

32. AlanC @ 12 – as a rather more refined version try “Brian Boru’s March” by James Galway

33. Paddymelon @14 and Jim @21. Parts of Lancashire are definitely rhotic, but the R isn’t trilled as in Italian.

34. I don’t get “IP” as “religious”, I assume this is some piece of knowledge or a pun I am missing; and the ecliptic is technically a plane, not a circle.

    Névé, yacked with a c instead of two ks, and mardy were new words to me, the latter despite growing up in the West Midlands.

35. essexboy @18 and Eileen @13: I believe they are essentially the same thing. Berlin and the Covid travel arrangements (and flying The Hump to supply China during WW2). It’s just a figurative suggestion of a permanent link between two isolated locations, I think.

36. Re “mardy” : Iona and Peter Opie defined the area where mardy was a commonly used word as an area of the East Midlands roughly centred on Leicestershire, where it means sulky, or liable to tantrums, as in “It’s my ball so you can’t play with it anymore …..¬

37. BRIAN BORU dropped in as soon as I saw the U. The Battle of Clontarf at which he defeated the Vikings had its millennial anniversary in 2014.

    AIR BRIDGE is still used for short/frequent connecting flights. I’ve taken the Puente Aereo between Montevideo and Buenos Aires, a flight of around 20 minutes duration, so that was the sense in which I understood it.

38. Jacob @34: it’s PI for pious. (IP reversed)

39. [The shortest scheduled flight in the world is between Westray and Papa Westray. It lsts just over a minute.]

40. muffin @39: amazing. I see it’s operated by Loganair. If it were Ryanair, I feel sure they’d still be able to sell you something!

41. My take on AIR BRIDGE is that it is the ‘portable bridge placed against an aircraft door to allow passengers to embark or disembark’ [Collins], and as Bodycheetah @29 says, enjoy here can just mean use. Otherwise, why would the clue say about to fly.

    I enjoyed my LOI, UNBEATEN, where I spent a lot of time thinking of synonyms for ‘today’ and ‘naughty children’ to no avail.

    Thanks Pasquale and loonapick.

42. I grew up in Sheffield and “Don’t be such a mardy bum” was commonly heard in, mostly, school playgrounds. Mr. C being from the South had never heard it before meeting me. It’s a very useful phrase. 😀

43. Failed 8d and 26ac.

    New: BRIAN BORU, MARDY (for 15d); and névé = compacted snow (but it was gettable as I am familiar with Italian neve = snow).

    Thanks, both.

44. I knew all the named people and I live in Leicestershire, so pretty straightforward

45. Very enjoyable and light-hearted solve. Favourites already canvassed. Thanks for the blog, loonapick, and the comments, Everyone, which helped me to see a few things I hadnt quite understood. And thanks to Pasquale for an entertaining puzzle.

46. Ronald @30. There was another BRIAN BORU who was a hurdler or chaser even longer ago than that – I remember it as being in the 70s.

    I got NE(R)VE almost straight away, so I must have remembered a false definition of that type of snow in much the same way as our setter – talk about being on the same wavelength!

    Thanks to Pasquale and loonapick.

47. I have a memory from school geography of snow compacting in a corrie as neve being the first stage in the formation of a glacier. I’m sure the neve was compacted back then!

48. Very enjoyable solve. I found this fell out much more easily than yesterday’s – fortunately I knew all the personages.

    NEVE as an English word was unfamiliar, but like Michelle @43 I knew it as the Italian word for snow.

    I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the word ODONTOPHOBIA but I constructed it from the etymology (cf essexboy @18). However I think it should refer to a fear of teeth, rather than dentists, so I would quibble with the clue as written. (‘Dentophobia’, which loonapick quotes, is a horrid piece of Latin-Greek miscegenation – ‘television’ is the only such mule which is accepted through long usage 🙂 ). Fear of dentists should be ‘odontoiatrophobia’ – a much commoner condition.

    Thanks to S&B

49. PS: Probably ‘odontiatrophobia’, with elision of the adjacent vowels 🙂

50. Nice to be reminded of the Ken Russell film of ISADORA DUNCAN and of the author of “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously” which always seemed to me more like a crossword clue than a grammatically correct but impossible sentence. Thanks to Pasquale and Loonapick.

51. Gervase @48/49. Yes, that seems to make sense, but to be honest I didn’t worry too much about the definition, as the anagram was so obvious once I’d crossed out the letters P-H-O-B-I-A in the fodder.

    [Welcome back, by the way!]

52. Eileen@13 — the air bridge takes into account R, “the average amount of people someone with the virus infects.” I thought, “I bet that made Eileen wince.”

    Gervase@48 How about “automobile” for another mule?

    Thanks for a pleasant challenge, Pasquale, and a good blog, loonapick.

53. sh @51: thanks!

    [Further to essexboy’s useful etymological aside @18, could I add that the postulated Proto-Germanic word for tooth was *tanths, also from the same Proto-Indo-European root, whence German ‘Zahn’, Swedish ‘tand’ – and, of course, ‘tooth’ itself]

54. muffin @47: I have exactly the same recollections and I’m pretty sure that, along with occasional crossword appearances, it’s the only time I’ve encountered it. I suppose there are not that many new glaciers being created these days!

55. [Valentine @52: Quite right, and there must be others. ‘Automobile’ is a French coinage but Anglophones are responsible for most other auto hybrids. ‘Autopilot’ is an interesting one – ostensibly from Greek auto plus English pilot, but ‘pilot’ itself has an interesting history. According to Wiktionary:

    From Middle French pilot, pillot, from Italian pilota, piloto, older also pedotta, pedot(t)o (the form in pil- is probably influenced by pileggiare (“to sail, navigate”)); ultimately from unattested Byzantine Greek *??????? (*p?d?t?s, “helmsman”), from Ancient Greek ????? (p?dón, “blade of an oar, oar”), hence also Ancient and Modern Greek ???????? (p?dálion, “rudder”).

    So it may be pure Greek after all 🙂 ]

56. Sorry, the Greek letters got mangled in the transfer!

57. Good fun – kept forgetting it was from the Don, seemed less formal to me but I can’t really explain.
    I did admire NUISANCE; a very worthy 1 Across

    Lively puzzle; many thanks, Pasquale – and loonapick

58. ….”lovely” even, rather than “lively”!
    Bloomin’ speelchucker…..

59. Lovely stuff, and though NEVE and BORU required Google confirmation, both were pretty clear. Much of it went in first go, so the Don was in a benevolent mood I would say.
    Thanks to both.

60. There was too much beyond my orbit in both the wordplay and answers to be truly enjoyable (as often the case with Pasquale) but I always take a stab because of clues like NUISANCE, SAFFRON, ENAMOURED (great surface), CONDEMNATIONS, and CRAYON as well as the opportunity to learn a thing or two. Thanks to both.

61. Névé, definitely meaning compacted snow, is something mountaineers yearn for. Granulated snow sounds like sugar snow, and is to be avoided.

    Rev Marjorie @32, James Galway always plays beautifully, rather too beautifully in my opinion for a clan march.

62. Hi Valentine @52 – I’ve only just seen your comment

    Ouch!! (I didn’t read that far.)

63. Thanks for the blog, good range and variety of clues and knowledge.
    ECLIPTIC was very neat, the ecliptic plane meets the celestial sphere in a great circle also called the ecliptic so the definition is fine. It is always shown as a circle on astronomical charts.

64. Good puzzle, great blog. I always took AIR BRIDGE to mean an operation like the Berlin Airlift.

65. Monolingual is my favourite hybrid word.

66. Fine puzzle, full of quirkiness. Favourites were HAILSTONE and CHOMSKY, my last two in.

    Thanks Pasquale and loonapick

67. [Roz @65: that betrays a hyperactive mind.]

68. [ MrEssexboy@67 , hard to switch off after studying Yangian supersymmetry all day ]

69. [Roz and essexboy: There are lots, aren’t there. Monolingual is a cross between unilingual and monoglot. Hyperactive rather than superactive perhaps because so many medical terms are Greek where hyper- would be natural]

70. Roz@68 Is there a corresponding Yingian supersymmetry?

71. essexboy @ 18

    I’ve just seen your excellent post. Yep. Have you got the same problem as I have, with keying the breathings on initial vowels, and rho? Your postings are so good, that I can’t believe you forgot to put them in.
    If you ever find out how to do it, please do let me know.

    Anna

72. Nice puzzle.
    I like SHADES as a word for ghosts. I initially tried to force TROTSKY into 24 but the pesky parsing wouldn’t allow it 🙁 . I guessed AIR BRIDGE early on from the letter count but needed crossers to feel comfortable. I was thinking more along the lines of Large Jack Daniels because of the “enjoy” in the definition.
    Lots of good anagrams today. I wonder if ISADORA DUNCAN has been done this way before.
    Good fun. Thanks, Pazza and loona.

    muffin @39, I once took a similar scheduled flight from St Kitts to Nevis lasting about a minute. There were 12 seats in the plane and it was crowded, so somebody had to sit next to the pilot 🙂 . Eddie Izzard once had a great sketch about such a flight, involving Jammie Dodgers I seem to recall.

73. Well I knew all the words and gk except AIR BRIDGE but found it quite tough.
    Thanks Pasquale and Loonapick

74. [phitonelly @72
    I remember that sketch. The co-pilot is…..my flask of coffee!}

75. Not my cup of vichyssoise (isn’t spell-check great?) but thanks both and here’s the sketch.

76. [Thanks Alphalpha!]

77. [Anna @71, thank you for your kind words. The codes I use for the Greek letters are here. As you can see, it’s fine for modern Greek, with tonos and dialytika, but no way of doing rough and smooth breathings as far as I can see.

    I’ve just done a quick Google search and found this, which suggests there is a way, but I think you have to purchase specialist software, and it’s all a bit übertechy for me.]

78. Super puzzle, a few parsings to double-check.
    As ever with the Don, some new words I am looking forward to finding out more about.
    Thanks both.

79. Pleased as punch to complete. Super puzzle. 16d last in & a real head scratcher for me – is the IP pious reversed ?
    Thanks both

80. Many thanks, essexboy.
    I’ll have a good look at that.
    Anna

81. Thanks for posting the sketch, Alphalpha. Still funny!

82. H@79: It’s ‘Pi’ (a word unique to Crosswordland meaning ‘holy’) reversed, not pious.

83. Pi is another word I’ve heard used in real life, my mother used it a lot to describe people being a bit sanctimonious or holier than thou, including me as a teenager.

84. Without looking through all the comments, where does PI for religious come from? I’ve come across the old expression pi-jawed … is that related?

    A chewy solve, but since I haven’t finished Monday’s effort yet, I’ll take it!

85. Apparently pi is a common abbreviation for pious (common to crossworders that is !)
    Neve is a commonly used for compacted snow amongst mountaineers.
    I’m confused to how ecliptic (adjective?) is the same as circle (noun or verb).
    Had to Google a list of Irish kings and famous dancers but enjoyed expanding my general knowledge.
    Great puzzle

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