Guardian Cryptic 28,899 by Matilda

94 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,899 by Matilda”

1. I thought this a very nice, Goldilocks level puzzle. Especially liked the two u’s in TRAVELLER.

   The way I interpreted 3d was that when (usually) a kid wants something but isn’t asking politely enough, they can be prompted either with “Say Please!” or “Say the magic word!”. I don’t know if this is what PeterO is saying, I think so, but now it’s explicit. Tx both.

2. Dr. WhatsOn @1
   That is just what I had in mind for 3D.

3. Yes, definitely a Goldilocks puzzle. For some time I had THERMOMETER for 18a, searching desperately for a definition, then I realised I’d stuffed up what I thought was the anagram, resulting in a slapped forehead. I couldn’t decide whether to chuckle or groan at MISHMASH. I hope I don’t sound like that when I’ve had a few. I’d never heard of Carla Bruni. And I didn’t parse ESOTERIC — I guess “over” as an anagrind is just within the legal limits. My favourite today was COCCYX (which I didn’t know how to pronounce — but I do now!).

   Thanks Matilda & PeterO.

4. Thanks Matilda for a true delight. It’s not often I tick homophones as favourites but MISHMASH and COCCYX were very satisfying. I thought the use of the ellipsis in 14,18 made sense when often it doesn’t. I also liked ETERNITY, SEMANTIC, and the very clever TRAVELLER. I couldn’t parse ESOTERIC or MACRON so thanks PeterO for the blog.

5. Thank you PeterO. Needed your help for SEMANTIC. I saw ‘calls up’ as a reversal of CITES but couldn’t explain the MAN in the middle, and OPTIC new to me in that sense.

   Liked COCCYX, TRAVELLER for the ”us”, GOING FLAT OUT and RATION for the surfaces, the ellipsis and the wordplay for SPEEDOMETER, the contrary meaning for SHOPPING MALL,
   Nicely misdirected with ASTERIX, thinking it was a reversal, ‘moving east’. Also ALLIANCE, my initial stab was that a ‘nice partnership’ may be a French word meaning partnership. Well, the whole word is, not the anagram at the end.
   The wordplay for ESOTERIC I did find abstruse.
   Speaking of French, I still don’t fully understand MACRON.

6. Stared dumbly at crossers for the final two, 12a and 3d. Then from the depths surfaced a memory of an old priest saying to an interviewer “A fundamentalist is one who fears their faith is in danger”. He was a Coptic. Dnk that meaning of optic, but job done anyway, funny how the mind goes. As for the rest, a gentle waltz through. Ta PnM.

7. Oh, and SPELL PLEASE was really funny. (My initial take was PL=place and EASE= rest. But that would have made it REST PLACE (in the wrong order) or PLACE of REST (needed the ‘of’). I need to tune in to Matilda’s sense of humour more and not overthink some of these clues. But she can be tricky. Good fun.

8. Was I the only one to put WANDER in for 5a? ETERNITY was so obviously right I had to rethink. I had STREAK before ASTERISK, just from definition. MACRON was a puzzle, but as it gave me a route into the acrosses there, it had to be right. Some clever stuff here – MISHMASH, GOING…/SPEEDO…, COCCYX et al. Thanks, Matilda and PeterO.

9. Good 5am insomnia fare. I particularly liked the anagrams with fodder minus letters: traveller & esoteric . And Mishmash made me smile.

   Thanks to setter and blogger both

10. Had to look up Carla Bruni to check for BRUNEI. Missed ‘over’ as the anagrind in ESOTERIC.
    Favourite as MAGIC WORD for such a clever and concise clue.

11. Lovely stuff from Matilda – slightly trickier than her Quiptics but still with the same sense of fun. Definitely a chuckle from me for mish-mash. More of a groan for the Us trick.

    Thanks for the blog, PeterO.

    GDU @3 – I have no problem with “over” as an anagram indicator but I did raise an eyebrow at “polluted”.

12. All the Aussies on early for Matilda due to PeterO’s early blog! Most enjoyable puzzle. Several favourites already mentioned especaially the homophones – but I also liked 7d BARBADOS. You are right about appreciating Matilda’s sense of humour, paddymelon@7. I certainly like her deft touch with clueing. Yes TassieTim@8, I also had WANDER at 5a until I realised 8d had to be ETERNITY, so I had to have a rethink to come up with RAMBLE.

13. Whoops! Meant to say many thanks to Matilda and PeterO.

14. I loved the Us trick, and MISHMASH, as well as MAGIC WORD.

    Thanks Matilda and PeterO

    PS. Re: GDU@3/widdersbel@11, ‘Polluted’ makes sense to me for an anagram. Less keen on ‘over’; maybe a half-step too far to go from ‘upturned’ to ‘in disarray’.

15. Another UUs fan here. Weirdly, Carla Bruni was the first Carla that popped into my head – she’s also a former model and passable singer

    Enjoyed being misled by BARBADOS and thought ESOTERIC was fun. SCATTY on the other hand, could have done with a bit more work

    Cheers P&M

16. Jim @14 – “over” is definitely a stretch. It requires the adverbial sense of “Away from the vertical, or (more generally) from the normal or expected position” (OED) but I think the clue needs an adjective.

    “Polluted” simply doesn’t have that sense of displacement/movement (I think it would work better as an insertion indicator).

    But I was able to solve the clues which is all that really matters – if you can deduce the setter’s intentions, these minor quibbles can easily be forgiven.

17. Although it’s not really the solver’s quibbles that need forgiving, is it… never mind. I’ll shut up now.

18. Loved this for the same reasons as previous solvers.

    Had to look up the diacritic macron.

    Re things French, Figaro once ran 2 pictures side by side, one of Lewis Hamilton brandishing a winners trophy, and the other of Nicolas Sarkozy and his new trophy wife, Ms Bruni. The captions read, respectively, “Premier à Monte Carlo” and “Premier à monter Carla”

19. Re MACRON, it took a while to see but then the crossers triggered the memory that yesterday I discovered that the Unicode character ̄ (̄) works in HTML to give a “combining macron” which means I can more easily write ‘tt&#772’ in my Web pages rather than the not-so-exact ‘tt’.

20. character ‘̄ (̃)’ — please can we have a preview pane?

21. I give up…

22. Very enjoyable puzzle. MISHMASH, CHANGE OF COURSE, BARBADOS, all very good.

    With respect PeterO, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the “a” in 23a. TAROT is indeed contained in reverse in “a suit or a trump”. As Brendan commented a while ago, “I don’t share the view sometimes expressed here that superfluous words in clues must be avoided at all costs”. If there had been several extra words the clue would have been a bit clumsy, but the odd additional word for the sake of the surface is only a problem if it causes the clue not to work properly (IMHO).

    Many thanks both.

23. Can someone please explain the significance of THE LAST in 26 across, (THE LAST of half a dozen roosters)?

24. Not too tricky but as others have said, filled with lovely humour. I was another wandererer at 5ac. I agree with Bodycheetah @15 that SCATTY was a bit light. Needed MACRON explanation.

    Ta Matilda & PeterO.

25. northnorthwest, the second last would be cock 5, the last cock 6.

26. Lots to enjoy here as others have already pointed out. (Good morning/evening to all our Australian friends!) Thanks to Matilda and PeterO. I had a few where I was fairly certain about the solution whilst lacking clarity about the parsing, not least Macron, coccyx, mishmash and optic so todays blog was a godsend.

27. Good fun from Matilda, particularly the MISHMASH (haven’t seen a “drunk” clue in quite a while) and the missing us. Nice to see a meaningful ellipsis too. I learned about the COCCYX, unfortunately, some years ago when my mum fractured hers: a painful business. The MACRON as a diacritical mark is new to me, and was my last in. Thanks, Matilda and PeterO.

28. Thanks Matilda and PeterO
    Not too difficult to fill the grid, but several took rather more effort to parse. I never did parse MACRON, never having heard of the diacritical mark. Can we look forward to a German President Umlaut?

29. Geoff Down Under
    Ah, yes! I see it now. Thank you.

30. Forgot to add that MISHMASHwas favourite.

31. I liked COCCYX, TRAVELLER and MISHMASH when the penny finally dropped. I, too, thought of Carla Bruni straight away and almost dismissed it as a bit niche. Having got MACRON and BRUNEI, I searched in vain for any more French presidential connections, Thanks, both.

32. French connection here. Carla made the news(including private Eye) when she married Sarkozy.
    She was also the tour guide in Midnight in Paris
    I have to say Macron is an improvement on Sarkozy
    Nice puzzle.

33. muffin@28 [President Umlaut as played on screen by Tilde Swinton?]

34. Enjoyed this, and also enjoyed Widdersbel’s argument with himself @16 and 17. I think ‘polluted’ is fine as an anagrind if we buy into the analogy that the ‘proper’ spelling of a word is good and pure, while any deviation in the order of the letters is bad/dirty/corrupted.

    Thanks to M & P, and to Bodycheetah @15 for the reminder of Carla Bruni’s Quelqu’un m’a dit. I wonder if Messrs Clapton and Jagger do the Graun cryptic? If so 19d wouldn’t (presumably) have posed too many problems.

    [muffin @28/Petert @33 – not sure about President Umlaut, but the across the pond they have VP Comma La Harris, and for Spanish speakers the Americas were discovered by a colon.]

35. Thank you to Matilda for the puzzle, to PeterO for the blog and especially the explanation of 1d, and to William @16 for sharing the sort of Pauline play on words that brightens the day.
    Though speaking of Pauline, I had to check that it wasn’t Paul coming up with the clues for SPEEDOMETER and STREAK.

36. What a delight! – fun from start to finish. All my favourites have been mentioned so I don’t need to try to whittle them down.

    Many thanks to Matilda for brightening up a wet morning and to PeterO for the blog.

37. Another enjoyable puzzle from Matilda. I was another who liked the homophones and the subtraction indications of ‘us’ and ‘cup running’. MACRON also got an ASTERISK. (All these diacritic and punctuational puns bring to mind the Guardian’s San Seriffe, of happy memory).

    At first I thought 9,10 was an anagram, with ‘reorientation’ as the anagrind, but I couldn’t work out the letters to jumble.

    I have no issue with the queried anagrinds or the very slightly extraneous ‘a’ in 23ac, but I did wonder whether ‘patisserie’, as term for baked goods rather than the shop in which they are sold, is a countable noun.

    Thanks to S&B

38. A jolly puzzle – especially liked Mishmash and Barbados. Thanks Matilda, keep on trucking.

39. Here are some examples of a letter bearing a macron diacritic: ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

40. Sorry — they won’t reproduce properly here.

41. — but anyone who has studied Latin or who knows Latvian will be familiar with this diacritic.

42. I found this quite a struggle, solving only 4 across clues on first pass. Down clues were easier. NW corner most difficult for me. I might be getting dumber as lots of people say this was easy/gentle, and lately I found a lot of the puzzles to be tough.

    I did not parse 26ac but guessed it was something about six cocks; 16d, 1d.

    Liked SPEEDOMETERS, TRAVELLER.

    New for me: TRIKE = tricycle.

    Thanks, both.

43. [JW @40 – I know, it’s a pain! The html codes are here, but it’s fiddly to use them. Hopefully this will work:

    ā
    ē
    ī
    ō
    ū ]

44. essexboy @43 – This is what I use: https://slcr.wsu.edu/help-pages/microsoft-keyboards-standard-english-us-101/

45. Tricky for me, but surprisingly quick, and most enjoyable. I have nothing to add to earlier comments, but they too have been fun to read.

46. Re 11d, I don’t think anyone has mentioned that income and profit are not the same thing.

47. Yes, I agree with the Goldilocks comments; some clues very straightforward but others more chewy – Michelle @42, I got stuck in the NW corner as well.

    I was about to complain about pigs=sty? but I see from the blog that it’s the cat in a sty, good clue! I liked MISHMASH, where I spent ages trying to fit ‘mass’ into the clue. I also liked TRAVELLER for the Us and ASTERISK for the wordplay. I see from the dictionaries that COCK SIX is the correct pronunciation, so I won’t complain about the homophone!

    Thanks Matilda for the fun and PeterO for explaining it all.

48. [Eileen @44
    Thanks for that link. However my laptop doesn’t have a numeric keypad, and the Alt number codes don’t seem to work with the ordinary number keys. Do you know a way round this?]

49. Sorry, muffin – no! My IT ‘skills’ are sadly lacking.

50. [Test: this should be e circumflex
    ê
    ]

51. [OK – doing in Word (using “Insert symbol”), then copying and pasting seemed to work.]

52. [Thanks Eileen @44, I remember you posting a link to that very helpful page before, and I’ve subsequently passed on your recommendation to others! The problem is that, as far as I can see, there’s no way on that page of combining a macron with another letter, i.e. getting it to go over the a, e, i etc. A macron by itself is fine ( ¯ = alt 0175).

    Using the html codes on the w3schools site is rather labour-intensive, but it does give you access to a much wider range of characters, including the Greek alphabet here.]

53. Hmm, yes, I see what you mean, eb: I’ve never needed a macron. 😉

54. This fell into place very pleasingly after a slowish start. Though I had simply no idea how Monsieur MACRON could be arrived at. Probably needed a tincture of of something strong to see MISHMASH, too. Very much liked how GOING FLAT OUT morphed into SPEEDOMETERS with the dot dot dot linking the two perfectly, for a change…

55. [Eileen @53: Just as well you’re not a Māori 😉 ]

56. [The pronunciation of the ‘ccy’ in COCCYX is the usual one for Latin derived words in English containing ‘cci’: accident, occipital etc. (not if they’re lifted from Italian, of course, where ‘cci’ represents ‘chee’). An exception is ‘flaccid’ – although Fowler sternly instructs that it should be pronounced ‘flaksid’, this sounds much too crisp and rigid, and nowadays we prefer the more onomatopoeic ‘flassid’ 🙂 ]

57. Petert@33 that’s acute idea!!!

58. Very gentle, but full of fun making it a complete delight. No quibbles about any of it from me.

    Loved MISHMASH, PORCELAIN , TRAVELLER and MAGIC WORD

    Thanks Matilda and PeterO

59. AuntRuth@57 Thanks. I was afraid I would get bad reviews, but it sounds like there isn’t a dire critic today.

60. You’ll get into grave trouble with comments like that

61. Thanks to Matilda for a most enjoyable puzzle, to brighten a dull wet day completed by myself and other half whilst travelling.
    Thanks to PeterO for the blog.

62. [He said “more poorly”, but I said “iller” (sorry if this sparks a homophone debate)]

63. Thanks Matilda (m~)(?) and PeterO.

    MISHMASH got the blue riband today – loved it. And COCCYX was great once I understood it (I am tempted to spark a homophone debate by saying that around here we pronounce that to rhyme with blancmange, but it’s just too silly).

    Gervase@37: Whatever about ‘patisserie’ being countable POFITEROLES certainly (and usually) are.

    On MACRON á é í ó and ú can be generated using the AltGr key fwiw (but of course these are not macrons).

64. Really enjoyed this, and not just because it’s a rare Thursday that I get a completion. The misdirection of ‘us’ was a nice touch, but the chapeau today goes to COCCYX, which I didn’t parse.

65. PeterO in the parsing of SCATTY you need to capitalize CAT but non IN.

    If I’ve heard of Carla Bruni, I’ve forgotten her. Same for MACRON, which I now recall from Latin class. I didn’t know of another language that used it but a visit to google tells me it appears in Latvian — and Maori, thanks essexboy. It’s also used in transcriptions of various languages, but I don’t think that counts.

    Thanks, Matilda and PeterO.

66. alphalpha@63 What is the ALtGr key? I have an Alt key, but not that other one.

67. [Valentine @66
    On my laptop keyboard it’s immediately to the right of the space bar. It doesn’t give symbols with the number keys for me, though (see 48)]

68. V@66: What muffin said – may be a European thing?

69. Very ‘pleasing’. Thanks both.

70. [Valentine @66
    It isn’t a US thing! See here. ]

71. Thanks for the blog, I think this is the best Matilda puzzle I have ever done. Sorry I will repeat some comments but I must praise some clues. TRAVELLER and ESOTERIC are great subtraction anagrams, 14 and 18 Ac are actually meaningfully linked for once.
    MISHMASH is one of my favourite words and a very novel homophone clue. MACRON a brilliant double definition, usually my least favourite clue, and a very deceptive homophone indicator.
    For 27Ac I went through about 100 stars trying to find one to give danger after moving E , had to finish the Downs to get the answer.

72. [ MrEssexboy@43 , my Personal Electronic Notemaker produces all diacritics effortlessly , I would send you a link but it is too advanced to interface with the current, primitive version of the internet ]

73. Lots of fun. Thanks Matilda. And thanks PeterO for several parsings that escaped me, including uu and MACRON meaning.

74. [ç?ñt yôü jùst hold down the letter key until the diacritics appear?]

75. Aha – some more successful than others!

76. Roz@71 A case of a lot of learning not being a dangerous thing?

77. [Bodycheetah@75 – I had an exchange with the previous admin about unicode support and the upshot was that it was inexplicably broken and they didn’t want to fix it. I even offered to help – – to avoid the sort of hoops people have to jump through to enter certain characters, including the full range of emoji.

    The website uses WordPress, which has unicode support out of the box. My guess was that a plugin probably broke support since the bit they did look at (the db character set) was correct &129335 .]

78. [Ha that last character was supposed to be 🤷 ]

79. Peter@76 , the next star I find I will name it Jopar-dey after the Sumerian goddess of crosswords.

80. Struggled to parse SEMANTIC as I had ‘calls up’ as cites – setic as an envelope on man, thus couldn’t see where to go.

81. Really, really enjoyed this. Great fun.
    As noted above, if “cat” is part of the answer (2d), why is it in the clue too? Couldn’t Tom have been among the pigs?
    Thank you to the setter and blogger.

82. Like a couple of others I had WANDER at 5a, but it was easily fixed. I also had a tentative PEDANTIC at 17d, which just shows that I have spent too much time writing and reading comments on this site; luckily I didn’t write it in.

    I broke, or very badly bruised, my COCCYX when I was thrown in a canal after a boat race nearly 50 years ago, and heard the bone pronounced correctly by the doctor after x-ray at A&E, so the homophone held no danger for me.

    Thanks to Matilda & PeterO.

83. Forest Fan @81. Perhaps Matilda was hinting at the expression “set a cat among the pigeons”, as a bit of (dare I say gentle) misdirection.

    BTW I forgot to say I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle @42, finding some puzzles tougher recently. (See my comment @64 in last week’s Paul.) It can be demoralising when you find something difficult while all around you are saying how easy it is! I hope it gets better for you soon.

84. Roz @71: concerning subtraction anagrams — I join in the seeming universal acclaim (see how well liked it is: Dr What’s ON @1…Paddy Melon @5…Body Cheetah @15…Robi @47…White Devil @64…sorry if I missed anyone) for the subtracted double-u for TRAVELLER, subtraction was also used for “cup” in ESOTERIC and “is” in STREAK. Three subtraction instructions in a single puzzle is one too many, methinks.

85. What fun – many thanks to Matilda, and
    PeterO. Also to Petert@33 for .mooting Tilde Swinton as President Umlaut (a Brexit drama, I imagine – high time), and other delight-enhancing commenters.

86. Well I didn’t know the diacritic in 1d. I guessed the president must live on (sustained by) a diet of macarons (sounds).

87. sheffield hatter@83 thanks for your sympathy and I agree with your linked comments at the Paul puzzle last week

88. Late to this – both Covid and flu jabs yesterday (at different places) meant I forgot to come and post on here. I love Matilda’s setting and found this a joy, noticeably tougher than her Quiptics, but still fun.

    essexboy @52 following the discussion on symbols, there are various lists with HTML codes – this isn’t the one I used to use, but lists all letters with their diacritical marks, often with a form that I remember when I’m coding e.g. à instead of à, and includes the macron, albeit only with numbers: ā. Or I cheat and post on my phone where if I hold down a letter I get the different options (which is helping relearning French).

    Thank you to Matilda and PeterO

89. Oops – that worked too well – I’ve got all the diacritical marks there.

    I use “& a grave;” (without spaces) to get à because I can remember that, and it works for all the French diacritical marks, so acute – á – “& a acute;” – circumflex, although that uses circ – â “& a circ;” and cedilla, but that uses cedil – so ç – “&c cedil;” (and the German umlaut is similar).

    There is a digital form for all the symbols, where à is “& #224 ;” – which I have to look up. The equivalent for the macron is “& #257 ;” – which is how I got the a macron above – ā – without the spacing.

90. [Many thanks Shanne @88/89, I do a similar thing with the Greek letters, as it’s a lot easier to type &alpha etc than remember the number codes.

    One thing I would recommend – for acute accents it saves an awful lot of time if you follow Alphalpha’s advice @63 – just hold down the Alt Gr key (to the right of the space bar on most laptops) in combination with any of the vowels.

    I also found out by accident that Alt Gr + S toggles you in and out of split screen in Word, which is handy if I’m doing translations within a single document.]

91. Thank you PeterO for the macron and everyone for more info and puns (coincidentally I learned how to do a Delta symbol today). The only anagrind I struggled to believe was “negotiating” and I am still not quite happy about ‘starting off’ (‘start off’ would be fine but ruins the surface). Offspinner@46 i have heard the two used colloquially for the same idea so didn’t mind (but “net income” is probably better, agreed). I am having a slow brain week too (highly correlated with lack of sleep, I reckon), and the variety of devices on show here meant a slow but very enjoyable solve, thanks Matilda.

92. Shanne@88 Thanks for the explanation and examples. And muffin@66, thanks for the tip, but it doesn’t work for me. I tried holding down the Alt key that’s to the right of the space bar and typing an A while in this comments box, and instead of getting an A with something over it, my name under the box is now highlighted in purple. Go figure.

93. Late to the party, enjoyed all the notable features as above.

    How ?bout “C?rds from whist or ? trump….” ?s ?n ?ltern?tive 23? clue?

94. Oh my – those didn’t post correctly… sorry. They’re all the a’s.

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