Guardian 28,910 – Pasquale

77 comments on “Guardian 28,910 – Pasquale”

1. Toughest of the week so far. Some words I didn’t know, Avesta Elan Vital, and some pretty obscure GK, the old lingo and the name of a character in a very old book. Still I got there in the end. Thanks P and A.

2. Thanks both. GAME BIRD is brilliant

3. I also queried con=one studying, and gave up completely on FOCI: who knew that the Father of the Chapel had an abbreviation of his very own? Well, Pasquale, obviously, and Chambers too, I expect, so ho hum, it’s legal.

   I did like the Ambridge clue – for those unfamiliar with The Archers, many plots involve GAME BIRDS.

4. It’s a relief to see your opening words, Andrew, which make me feel I might not be alone in finding this quite challenging. If I was on the wavelength yesterday, I have moved to the other end of the scale this morning. My first pass through the grid led to precisely four solutions and barely a useful crosser. Eventually things did drop although I had to seek help for ELAN VITAL which is new. I also failed to parse FOCI – FOC is nho – the ‘Greek troublemaker’ in EXCORIATE and to solve SPEARS (second day in a row I’ve encountered her and failed to connect her with singing …) I also found CLOCK TOWER a very tricky cd to spot.

   Favourites include PERFORMER, FREESIA, WEATHER MAP, GAME BIRD and HARRIS. At one point I did wonder if there was to be a JKJ theme with that series of clues all beginning ‘One’ of which, HARRIS, was one – or three.

   Thanks Pasquale and Andrew

5. Thank you Andrew. Needed your help with FOCI.
   SALAMANDERS are amphibians, but they and reptiles belong to a higher category Herpetofauna.

6. Yes – tough. Fortunately I saw MIDDLE LOW GERMAN quickly, having realised MAP would be at the end of 1d. Made a mess of RUSTIC (had unparsed RUSSIA); didn’t know ATE in EXCORIATE. Liked MAINSTAY and DENIGRATES in particular. Thanks to P & A.

7. Some obscurities / gaps in my GK made for a tough solve with lots of tentative checking. Some I got from crossers / wordplay / bunging without understanding them (eg HARRIS). ELAN VITAL is new to me but retrospectively makes sense. MIDDLE LOW GERMAN is one I only got by recognising it as an anagram and plugging away until it yielded. FOCI I got from the two crossers and ‘points’ but nho the union leader.

   Still a lot to like though: LIONISED, GAME BIRD, CLOCK TOWER, PERFORMER and COVERED.

   Thanks for the workout!

8. Tough challenge today but very educational. Quite a few nho but all fair with enough crossers. Liked the simplicity of PERFORMER and the neat BEAD. Super blog Andrew.

   Ta both.

9. In order to parse 9 across, you need to remove the d from lad before you do the anagram.

10. The G-threaders say we had a TMIAB thing recently, but nothing rang in this old belfry, so Harris was a bung and pray. Ditto Avesta, dnk the asteroid, and foci, dnk the rather quaint acronym. Otherwise chewy but pretty straight from the Don, thanks, and thanks Andrew.

11. CW @ 9: and the O from violent (and not the T).

12. That was tough I knew Harris from both Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel (a cycling tour around Germany) but needed all the crossers to bring him to mind. I had similar thoughts about FOCI, I thought the Fathers of the Chapel went when the unions were broken with the papers moving away from Fleet Street. I just about remember El Vino as a journalists’ pub, but I started buying the Times for myself as a student for the crossword just before the year long strike, and was involved in the college newspaper at the same time.

    Can I point out your anagram fodder for 9a should be A LA(d) VI(o) LENT? It’s nearly a lad with violent missing love. Which I’ve just checked and is in Chambers as French and ÉLAN VITAL.

    Thank you to Pasquale and Andrew.

13. It’s reptile? which could be interpreted as questioning whether SALAMANDER is a reptile

    I was more puzzled by what the “what’s” was doing in the wordplay

    Cheers P&A

14. Cat’s Whiskers @9 is correct. The anagram is A LA(d) VI(o)LENT. The ‘mostly’ refers to LAD, not VIOLENT.

15. I don’t mind obscure GK, but didn’t like the use of one bit of obscure GK (vesta as an asteroid) to provide another (avesta). Still, as they say on quiz programmes, they’re only easy if you know the answer. Thanks to P and A.

16. I didn’t bother finishing this after “solving” SALAMANDER. It’s like calling whales fish!

17. Wondered if the ‘one’ in 5d also referred to one o’clock, when both hands would be raised?

18. I think you have to read CONVERSE as what one studying poetry will do. WEATHER MAP was my favourite.

19. Andrew and the youngsters here went for Britney, but what I had in mind was something rather different.

    Thanks for the helpful MIDDLE LOW GERMAN link, Andrew. As it explains, MLG was a kind of lingua franca for the Hanseatic League, but its southern neighbour MHG (Middle High German) is much better known and more widely studied today, being (a) the direct precursor of modern German, and (b) the language in which Tristan, Parzival and the Nibelungenlied were written.

    [Northern MLG was separated from southern MHG by a bundle of isoglosses (like isobars on a WEATHER MAP, but linking points of equal sound rather than pressure) running east-west across Germany, roughly from Cologne to Berlin – notably the ik/ich line and the maken/machen line. MLG declined as a written language following the publication and spread of Luther’s Bible, the most influential editions of which were in High German; its successors today are the Plattdeutsch dialects of Northern Germany.]

    I was thinking of the goddess VESTA – she of the virgins – different kind of ‘heavenly body’.

    Many thanks P & A.

20. Well I knew what Andrew meant with the blogging of ELAN VITAL , even if I didn’t know the solution and had to back parse it.
    Nho the parsing of FOCI and I was left with Andrew’s dilemma of F?C? but couldn’t find the definition. Also nho ate in EXCORIATE although it had to be that. I also spent a while trying to shoehorn Russia into RUSTIC.
    I did like BASTION for the Italian French mix, but COTD by a long way was GAME BIRD for the brilliant &lit anagram.

21. Thanks P and A. I too like essexboy thought about Billy Jo first re 21d!

22. Like Andrew I was puzzled by 6d and wondered how CON was “one studying”, but thanks Petert @18, that makes sense – “One studying a bit of poetry will” CON VERSE.

    1d WEATHER MAP was my favourite too, a very nice &lit.

    A few crossword regulars here – wine is usually ASTI (22a), cheese BRIE (24a) and game RU (20d). For a change COR was “gosh” rather than “my” (25a).

    Many thanks Pasquale and Andrew.

23. Having studied “Julius Caesar” at school for O level (that dates me!) I remember Mark Anthony’s big speech where he gives Ate a namecheck.

24. essexboy@19. I studied Middle High German, Early New High German, Old English, and some Gothic (from a lecturer who did his sabbatical in Iceland — on my bucket list.)
    I learned something today “The term Middle Low German should primarily denote a West Germanic dialect descending from Old Saxon, which has merged all unstressed vowels into a phoneme /?/, which is not apocopated.” Apocopated!
    But the links between MLG, Plattdeutsch, Dutch and English are still evident today.

    How did Pasquale come up with that word and that fodder?
    Old lingo?? Seems like an incongruity, but your point about the lingua franca makes this even more clever.

25. Tough puzzle. Failed 7d – never heard of this Harris before, and also failed 21d SPEARS who I have heard of but did not think of.

    I did not parse 23d FOCI apart from I=one.

    Liked PERFORMER, BEAD.

    New: AVESTA, ELAN VITAL.

    Thanks, both.

26. Me@24. The phoneme is the schwa. eb knows how to do that. My cut and paste didn’t quite cut it.

27. Not wishing to brag, but I found this easier than most of the Don’s puzzles. Only EXCORIATE caused me trouble. I’ve read Three Men In A Boat several times, so spotted HARRIS. MONTMORENCY (the dog) might have been harder. I did wonder about CON, but since it’s a word I’ve only ever seen in crosswords I didn’t worry about it.

28. [In my first form at grammar school I sat in front of boys with surnames George and Harris. Our English teacher always regretted that we didn’t have a Montmorency…
    btw although it is lesser known, I think the bummel one is funnier.]

29. muffin@16 lol.

30. Haven’t seen the Ambridge anagram before, very nice, as was WEATHER MAP.
    Does anyone else think the clue for BASTION indicates bon inside asti?
    wine that’s good for Parisian to drink > wine that has bon to drink, which to me means wine drinks bon.
    To work the other way, doesn’t it need an ‘it’ on the end?

31. Not a walk in the park today. Fortunately I knew Vesta, AVESTA, HARRIS and Ate – though these solutions certainly weren’t write-ins – but ELAN VITAL needed all the crossers and FOCI was my LOI; I remembered ‘father of the chapel’ only after the definition had led me to the most likely answer. It took me ages to work out MLG – good anagram.

    I did like TREASON, GAME BIRD and BASTION – well crafted clues with smooth surfaces.

    ‘Reptile’ for SALAMANDER seems unnecessarily deceptive (‘creature’ would have been less specific but less misleading). I’m sure old texts may have lumped amphibians with reptiles but this usage is archaic and contemporary biologists would consider it simply wrong. We had a similar debate quite a while ago about ‘insect’, formerly used for any arthropod but now considered erroneous if applied to anything other than a member of the Hexapoda. paddymelon @5: ‘herpetofauna’ is what herpetologists study, ie amphibians and ‘reptiles’, but in modern cladistic taxonomy it is not a valid taxon: Amphibia and Reptilia are separate groups of tetrapods – and the latter should include birds, as the modern descendant of dinosaurs 🙂

    Thanks to S&B

32. Quite a few were beyond me — HARRIS, ELAN VITAL, FOCI & VESTA (the latter both wordplay and definition). I didn’t like the clue for CONVERSE — “con” is to study, not “one studying”, surely?

    What I did solve was quite enjoyable. Can’t remember any particular favourite — it was too long ago!

33. Thanks for bringing this dinosaur up to date Gervase@31. 🙂

34. Postmark@4. I totally get why you/anyone would fail to connect SPEARS with singing.

35. The NW corner took twice as long to solve as the rest of the puzzle put together. Finally bunged in ELAN VITAL and AVESTA and then came on here to check. Wasn’t at all sure about the WEATHER MAP being correctly inserted before all this. Very much enjoyed the rest of it, though couldn’t parse SALAMANDER. Many thanks Pasquale and Andrew today…

36. …GAME BIRD clue of the day for me, too…

37. muffin @28 – I really can’t read Three Men on the Bummel aloud, I laugh too much. The ball bearings start me off and the hosepipe finishes me every time. I did read Three Men and a Boat to my daughter.

38. [Shanne @37
    …and the failed cushion buying…]

39. A typical Pasquale, not very friendly to put an obscurity as the first Across clue. However, I eventually got there and there were some good clues.

    I liked BASTION for the ‘fortified wine’, GAME BIRD, which was a good anagram spot, and the neat BEAD and BABE.

    Gervase @31, I appreciate the science, however Collins has for SALAMANDER: ‘3. A mythical reptile supposed to live in fire, so perhaps Pasquale is off the hook.

    Thanks Pasquale and Andrew.

40. Quite hard but I got there. Could not parse AVIStA. Must read 2 men on a Brummel, sorry I missed it during my misspent youth. Thanks all.

41. Robi @39: Point taken. I had forgotten about the mythical salamander – though this idea dates from a time when amphibians and reptiles were probably conflated anyway. But it reminds me that this usage is the origin of the term ‘salamander’ for an old piece of kitchen equipment: a metal plate which was heated to red heat and held over a dish to brown the top. Nowadays chefs use blow torches 🙂

42. To add, our paper Guardian was not delivered today, and I found solving on-line quite tricky. Apparently the newsagent did not received the Mirror and the Sun as well. He gave us The Times instead, but I haven’t tried that crossword yet!

43. Robi @39
    If he had given “mythical reptile” that would have been OK, but “reptile” by itself is just wrong, and probably a mistake. I remember a puzzle where the setter mixed up molluscs and crustaceans that was withdrawn from the archive.

44. [SinCam @42: You’re lucky! When I had the paper version of the Guardian delivered it failed to appear one day and the newsagent substituted the Daily Mail 🙁 ]

45. [Thanks, essexboy @19, for the link re MLG/MHG, etc. I remember the Appel/Apfel line from my (long ago) studies, but had forgotten that it was further south than the one you mentioned]

46. Robi @39: Further investigation suggests that Collins may be wrong. The idea of salamanders living in fire doesn’t seem to relate to a separate mythical creature but rather to a superstition about the behaviour of real salamanders.

47. I struggled with many of these, but HARRIS came easily as I am a huge fan of the book. I thought I was on my way with 16A filled in, but not so much.

48. Gervase @41 Apparently the term Salamander still exists in cooking but now merely as an overhead heater to keep food warm while awaiting service. At least, so I believe here in the US.

49. Jacob @ 48 Salamander in that sense is also current in UK. It’s the heat lamps that are over the pass.

50. [Gervase @44 poor you! I have just finished the Times crossword and checked with Times for Times, the blog, as I couldn’t finish, and I really didn’t like some of the clues. Hardest one: “historic work coming in awfully handy: not a poem (7,7)” Not only never heard of it, but could not understand the blogger’s parsing of the solution! ]

51. paddymelon @24 thanks for the mention of Plattdeutsch. I am learning German but hadn’t heard of that. I was aware of some pronunciation variations, but the wikipedia article on Plattdeutsch led me to further ones about isoglosses that I found interesting, though probably not actually useful.

52. Unhelpfully, my German teacher did his teaching practice in Hamburg, which means I learned very mangled German, according to most German speakers – including a lot of Plattdeutsch.

53. [Shanne @52
    A friend learnt German in Stuttgart. When he later worked in Dusseldorf, every one laughed at his accent – the German equivalent of broad Westcountry, apparently!]

54. VESTA the asteroid was new to me.

    I suppose one could say that long ago game birds were shot by Archers … (in Ambridge or elsewhere).

    [When I lived in the UK for six weeks or so in the 80s — moored in Poole and waiting for favorable Channel-crossing winds — we kept catching on the radio a conversational program that I didn’t recognize as the famous Archers. The provisional name I gave it was “Tea at the Vicarage.”]

    I have to leave and I don’t have time to read all the comments, so I’ll post this for now. Thanks to Pasquale and Andrew.

55. Tough and a mixed bag I thought. Got there in the end, but mostly through hard thought about what word might fit rather than help from the clues. VESTA was new (always good) as was ‘ate’ as a greek goddess. Thanks Pasquale and Andrew.

56. The “how G is the required GK” debate seems to run as frequently as the homophone one! Learning new things is part of the fun of crosswords.
    Personally, I’d never heard of Ate, nor AVESTA (I was thinking of Vesta instead) and ELAN VITAL was a guess – however, Britney Spears surely ought to be a well-enough known figure (even if some of the older commenters don’t care much for her music), and as for Ambridge: The Archers is such a mainstay in the output of BBC Radio that Billy Connolly once proposed its theme tune should become the British National Anthem. (On the grounds that the melody is far more upbeat & inspiring, and everyone could simply sing Dum dee-dum dee-dum dee-dum, for the lyrics. He reckoned even HMQ would join in…)
    And to anyone who hasn’t done so, I urge you – nay, implore you – to read Three Men In A Boat. It’s regularly cited as the funniest book in the English language. The sequel, Three Men On A Bummel, is harder to track down – but having read the first you’ll want to make the effort…
    Many thanks to Pasquale for the entertainment, and to Andrew for the blog.

57. I think that I once knew that printers’ unions had chapels over there, but I am sure that I never knew that chapels had fathers. DNF thanks to FOCI.

58. For ‘What could be shot in Ambridge’ wanted to put in ‘full cast’

59. Thanks for the blog, I liked WEATHER MAP and GAME BIRD.
    I think Vesta is a bit of a stretch as general knowledge, I only know it because it is the only asteroid visible to the naked eye . It is quite large and has very high albedo, the Dawn spacecraft gave us a lot of detailed information. Offhand I think I could only name three asteroids .

60. Grant@10 TMIAB used by Paul less than 3 weeks ago, across the middle but no theme.

61. Three Men is available to read on OpenLibrary

62. Though avoid the audio version!

63. Re: SALAMANDERs I’ve just recently read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and watched the 1969 film version of it (book group related activities). The firemen call their firetrucks salamanders and have salamander imagery on their uniforms.

64. Really great puzzle with a good mix from the straightforward to the very knotty. But all very fairly clued with some delightfully simple surfaces.

    PERFORMER, BASTION and SPEARS were gems (and so refreshing to see an almost contemporary pop culture reference.)

    FOCI was my LOI too.

    Thanks Pasquale and Andrew

65. Tricky indeed! I’d never heard of AVESTA nor ELAN VITAL, got those in from the wordplay (lucky that the crosser was a V). And my LOI, too, would certainly have been FOCI if I hadn’t cheated and wrote it in, ignoring the wordplay…

    I’ll endorse the comments that a Salamander is definitely an amphibian. A shame, really, because the clue would have been just as good if it had read “…alien amphibian.” Better, in fact – a bit of alliteration does no harm in a clue!

    Another one who tried to write in RUSSIA at 20d. I took a while to remember that ‘Country’ can be an attributive.

    Best? I think WEATHER MAP (I tried THERMAL MAP but never heard the phrase) and CLOCK TOWER. I live near Brighton, where the Clock Tower is a significant landmark.

    Thanks to the Don and Andrew.

66. Often I’ll find a crossword difficult but ultimately satisfying but that wasn’t the case with this one. Much of the parsing was beyond me and I guessed quite a few from the definition and then checked it for accuracy. No fun in that approach. Thanks to both.

67. Many of Jerome K Jerome’s books are available on project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173
    Including both of the three men. Also felt cross about salamander, and would have liked 2 down to be bulls eyes…. Thanks all

68. I didn’t know Vesta as an asteroid, but only as a rather treasured item I own. It belonged to my great-uncle and is a silver Vesta match case. Apparently in those days the safety match did not exist, and people kept their matches in these sometimes quite ornate cases, to be struck on the roughened underside of the case. This was given to my relative by a great friend of his who had taught with him at a famous school before The Great War broke out, with a particularly poignant message inscribed on it. This was quite a common gesture then. By July 1915 the friend had perished at the Battle of Loos, when the Germans used “liquid fire” for the first time…

69. Well I did it but with a lot of guessing: eg the new ELAN VITAL, totally misssd the Ambridge anagram and presence of SWING in clue! Also I thought “sirrah” was the cheer rather than “rah”. But happy to complete at second go after usual break. Also needed several crossers for DENIGRATES.

    Thanks Pasquale and Andrew

70. The usual from my least favourite setter. Two obscurities crossing just to make it more frustrating, even if one is an anagram. Pity the non-codgers (not me) who won’t know the book.
    Grumpy thanks Pasquale, and thanks Andrew.

71. When solving 21d, my first thought was BILLIE JO SPEARS. I’m showing my age, I guess.

72. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to be a bit alarmed when I was left with the letters F-C-!

    I enjoyed the puzzle though – it gave my brain a bit of a workout. Thanks to Pasquale and Andrew.

73. Thanks Andrew for explaining quite a few bits and bobs, Essexboy for more linguistic topping, and various for another reminder that I should find and finish 3MiaB. Enjoyed the head scratching today and hopefully some new knowledge will stick. Magdalene college used to give 3 Rahs after rugby, like in the Hokey Cokey, a strange bunch. Thanks Pasquale.

74. 21d I had SISKIN (IS penetrating SKIN), a similar ploy to BEAD @ 4d, which mucked up the bottom rh corner.

75. Sometimes it’s really obvious that the crossword setter is a English person in their 70s.

76. Failed again. That’s 3 in a row. Ho-hum.

    Could not parse EXCORIATE, because I didn’t bother to look up Ate. Didn’t know either the books or the asteroid for AVESTA. Put Russia unparsed instead of RUSTIC (didn’t think of using Country as an adjective), thought of SPEARS but didn’t convince myself it meant Penetrating, so failed to go further to think of the Songstress.

    Ah well, tomorrow (that’s today now) is another crossword.

77. This was great, thanks both. I’m with James @30 in thinking BASTION would be better as “…that’s good for Parisian drinking it”

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