Guardian Cryptic 28,957 by Nutmeg

74 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 28,957 by Nutmeg”

1. Usual Nutmeg quite. Don’t like 24dn

2. Wonderful, as usual, from Nutmeg. The anagram at 1a is awesome, but all the clues are excellent.

3. Don’t know how quite gets corrected from qual

4. Took me a little while to get going on this but once I was in, everything came in nicely.
   As a lover of a fun definition, I especially liked 12a.
   Thanks for another lovely puzzle, Nutmeg – and to manehi for the blog.
   ~ Matt

5. Thanks Nutmeg and manehi
   I found this harder than usual for Nutmeg, and I never did parse MRS.
   I though 1a was brilliant, both for its misdirection and its anagram.
   14d is rather parochial.

6. Wasn’t sure about gumps in GAZUMPS but then I thought of Forest.
   For HARDLINE I thought Line was “leading chain” rather than just “chain” as in Line Managers.
   No idea what you mean @3 AlanD.
   It took a while but it gradually dropped into place.

7. WILLIAM OF ORANGE and MRS were my favourites. It was a bit of a wrench to discover how successfully I had been misdirected for 12a.

8. Fun straightforward solve with a few quite tricky to parse – thanks for TOWER BRIDGE, MRS and GET AT, and thanks Nutmeg.

9. Thanks, Nutmeg. I found this pretty tough and slow going, but very enjoyable and well worth persevering with and everything parsed satisfactorily in the end. I couldn’t make sense of 1a for ages but eventually twigged that “devious” was an anagram indicator… superb clue, double tick for that one. Very satisfying penny drop (and appreciative groan) for TOWER BRIDGE too.

   Thanks also for the blog, manehi.

10. Thank you manehi. Needed you for ACHY, ‘bearing’ a great indicator for embedding ‘children’.

    Had to look up William of Orange to get the full significance of 1A. What a find in the fodder, clever clue.
    Nutmeg usually disguises her definitions quite well but found I solved on defs a lot today. It was said recently that she’s not well (wishing her good health this year) and that others might be contributing, but after sailing through some I came up against others that were classic Nutmeg, like WHALE MEAT.
    I liked the triple in GET AT. And even though the ”broadcast” was broadcasting its intention, it took me a few attempts to figure out MRS. Thought there might be something more in TOWER BRIDGE, but apparently not.

11. A good mix of clues which needed some thought in trying (unsuccessfully for me) to parse everything. Count me as another who missed (no pun intended) MRS and I didn’t see the ‘cell being shared’ trick for LACKEYS. I tried to make more of TOWER BRIDGE as an &lit but I couldn’t get it to work.

    Favourites were the ‘devious’ WILLIAM OF ORANGE anagram at the start and the nice GET AT triple def at the end.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and manehi

12. Tough puzzle. I was not on Nutmeg’s wavelength today. I gave up on 25ac.

    I did not parse
    23ac
    2d, I thought of LACK KEYS but why ‘one cell”?
    6d
    7d – I never would have thought of AM = America except maybe Pan Am airline?
    24d

    New for me: ARRACK (which I know of spelt as ARAK in Indonesia)

    Thanks, both.

13. Great puzzle as usual from Lady Meg.
    Thanks for parsing of MRS-couldnt have been properly awake!

14. I got stuck on the lower half for a while but then one or two snapped into focus and I was able to finish. As already noted, 1ac is superb as is 12ac. Thanks to Nutmeg and manehi.

15. Gazump, great word, possibly Yiddish origin; the practice … not so great. Some lovely Nutmeg surfaces, the devious follower, the adjustable spanner, the pain of birth, and the missus that misses, all pretty nice. Not sure how get at means mean, but probly me being dim. Thanks both.

16. This took me a while to get going this morning, too. Didn’t help myself in the NW corner by bunging in Horse instead of WHALE MEAT, and imagining the anagram at 13ac gave EASY Points. Ah, well, enjoyed this ultimately, with last one in HARDLINE. Thought ACHY rather a tricky little clue…

17. A nice crossword. I thought I had finished, but only realised when I came here that I missed Mrs. With the M and S I am certain I would have got it! It’s a curious thing that this is possibly the only word in English that is only ever used in its abbreviated form, to the extent that it’s original full form “mistress” has now evolved to a different and sometimes clashing meaning.

18. I totally agree with George @2. 1ac is an absolute gem.

    Thanks to Nutmeg and manehi.

19. Entertaining puzzle from Nutmeg. Worth it just for the splendid Wm of Orange.

    Ticks also for ACHY, MRS and PREARRANGED. LACKEYS is nicely done.

    I think of ‘maw’ as ‘stomach’ rather than ‘gullet’ (probably because that’s what the cognates mean in other Germanic languages: Magen in German, mage in Swedish), but the dictionaries all list this extended meaning. And I realise that ‘gaping maw’ is the stock phrase in which this archaic word is often used.

    Thanks to S&B

20. GIF @ 15 What are you getting at = what do you mean?

21. muffin@5
    I mostly enjoyed getting at least some of the solutions, my usual 50% effort. Why is 14d parochial? Many thanks Nutmeg and manehi and belated HNY to everyone.

22. GAZUMP, with the meaning expressed in the clue here, seems to be exclusively a UK/Australian usage. It has also given rise to ‘gazunder’: the late stage lowering of an offer to a vendor desperate to sell.

23. Martin @21: 14dn is parochial because Paul is a Guardian setter. The clue would mystify anyone not familiar with its puzzles.

24. Martin @ 21 It’s parochial because Paul is a G setter.

25. Gervase@23
    OK, thanks, obvious now but I’m obviously not on top form today!

26. Putting in BENCHMARK for 16d held us up, when all we had was the K – couldn’t parse the resulting ‘must be’ SCAB for 15a (because it was wrong). Gervase @22 – I had never heard GAZUMP until I went to England, and have never heard it used in Australia since. I always thought it derived from the absurd way house sales go in England – nothing locked in until the last moment, so the agreed buyer can have the rug pulled from under them by a gazumper. Thanks, Nutmeg and manehi.

27. michelle @12 – it’s LACK KEYS but they’re sharing the K, which is one “cell” in the grid.

28. Found most of this to be surprisingly straightforward but then hit a few parsing head-scratchers. Never fully got the parsing at 24d so thanks manehi. As ever, it’s obvious once you’ve seen it.

    Apart from 1a where praise has already been heaped, I really liked LACKEYS for its neat shared cell trick and PREARRANGED for the oh so perfectly smooth surface.

    Thanks Nutmeg and manehi

29. gif@15: “I see what you’re getting at” = “I see what you mean”.

30. I loved 1ac, especially having grown up in Protestant East Belfast, (King Billy, Rem 1690) was our historical hero, with murals (pronounced muriels by some) painted on gable walls across the city. TOWER BRIDGE and PREARRANGED were also super but I’m surprised some struggled to parse MRS.

    Ta Nutmeg & manehi.

31. [TT@26: “absurd way house sales go in England – nothing locked in until the last moment”. I have heard this complaint about the English procedure repeated over and over — but I can’t see how it could possibly be different in any other legal jurisdiction where buyers may haggle with the seller. The haggling stops only at the moment when the law says the haggling has ceased: up until that moment any potential buyer can raise the bid. The price isn’t agreed until it’s subject to a formal agreement: In England that is the exchange of a signed contract. Nobody can complain about an auction because somebody else offered a higher price moments before the hammer fell.]

32. Yeah I get that, SueB and pserve, but can you substitute ‘get at’, as is, for mean?

33. I thought I’d completed it, having discovered a new monarch, William of France. D’oh.

34. gif@32: No, I don’t believe “get at” is substitutable for “mean” — and it is a constant source of annoyance to me that Grauniad setters regularly use such non-substitutable defs. But I’ll bet it’s listed in Chambers, so someone will pipe up and say “It’s in Chambers, so it’s fine”. There are quite a lot of English expressions (and in other languages, of course) which are not used across the range of grammatical inflexion: I cannot think of examples off the top of my head because they’re so deeply fixed in one’s subconscious syntax — maybe “I used to drink alcohol” where “used” looks like a past tense which could be present tense “I use to drink alcohol” but that doesn’t work (or it’s now obsolete).

35. Lovely crossword from one of my favourite setters..

    1d evokes that famous WWII Vera Lynn lamentation…“Whale meat again, don’t know where…

    Il get my coat.

36. Nice puzzle, generally straightforward but I was left for what seemed like ages staring at M_S, doing repeated alphabet trawls and missing MRS several times before the penny dropped. Thanks to setter and blogger, as usual.

37. [pserve_p2 @31: Under Scottish law a contract is made simply by the acceptance of an offer. This means that prospective buyers have to do some due diligence before making the offer. But it avoids the maddening ‘offer subject to contract’ which gives both parties carte blanche to renege on the deal. And gazumping is correspondingly difficult]

38. Gazumped implies more than simply being outbid. If you are gazumped by someone, they agree to sell their house to you at an agreed price but then sell it to someone else who offers to pay a higher price before contracts are exchanged.

39. Hello everyone. After months of silent lurking I have finally been lured out to voice a pedantic comment.
    In completely unstressed English syllables there are two possible vowels, but their distribution differs for individual speakers. This is why 25 doesn’t work for me, although I’m sure I’m in a minority. (Nutmeg can rest assured that she’s still my favourite setter, though.)

40. Lovely puzzle, faves were MRS and WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

    I sympathize with pp2@34, and I think it comes down to the “at least one” rule, usually applied to synonyms. Here the question is: can you come up with at least one sentence where the terms are substitutable, in the given grammatical form? I can’t think of one, but I’m currently pre-caffeinated.

41. Due to a wavelength mismatch this took me longer than yesterday’s two combined. I had a higher-than-usual proportion of ‘spot the definition, guess the synonym, hope for crossers and parse later’ entries!

    But the explanations here check out and there’s really nothing I shouldn’t have been able to parse given enough staring time. ARRACK is new to me, but the wordplay was fair.

    The ‘mean’ / GET AT discussion is interesting. At first glance I thought this was fine, but the quibbles above led me to examine it more closely, and I think the quibblers do have a nuanced point regarding substitution: people say ‘what are you getting at?‘ and ‘what do you mean?‘, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard ‘what are you meaning?‘ or ‘what do you get at?‘. So really the equivalence isn’t ‘GET AT’ = ‘mean’, more ‘to be getting at’ = ‘to mean’. But I’m definitely overthinking it now.

    All that said, I found it a fair example of a CEFAC* clue 🙂

    * Close Enough For A Crossword

42. [Gervase @37 – French system is very similar. I recall when we bought our first French property many years ago, we saw the flat in the morning and signed a legally-binding contract later the same day! Sounds scary but actually takes a lot of the later pressure off. I once tried to explain ‘gazumping’ to a French friend, and while finding the word amusing to French ears, he didn’t understand the concept at all…!]

43. Stared at this blankly last night, filled in ACHY, PROTRACTOR and TARPAULIN and went to bed. Didn’t actually notice PAUL in the latter until this morning!

    Still loads of ‘chestnuts’ I was informed about yesterday (thank you again!) and synonyms I haven’t heard of before for me to get much further.

    I might just be inexperienced, but seems like clues often refer to bridge rather than other card games? Really nice to read these all, thank you!

44. William @35: There is no plaice for comments like that 🙂

45. Thanks to Nutmeg and Manehi – this was great (and fairly quick) fun. Watching the Rangers-Celtic game yesterday I saw there was lots of (archaic) chanting about William of Orange (mostly by gumps with ferocious expressions).

46. A fine entertainment with TOWER BRIDGE getting the Oscar for Best Make-Up.

    Woe is me that I am a bore but we now have for two days in a row a clue (for RAZORS) requiring the removal of four letters from an ‘answer-in-law’ which we are expected to obtain from somewhat frothy wordplay. I take Roz’s point (made yesterday) that the information is there and in fairness ‘bill’ is in plain sight today but it’s not a trend I would applaud: it strikes me as being an EASY OPTION for the setter.

    Squealer@39: I’m not sure what you are intending to get at. (I’m not alone a bore today but dim).

47. Sorry if my last comment was too obscure. All I meant was that for me ‘Mrs’ (‘missiz’) and ‘misses’ (‘missuz’, with a ‘schwa’) sound quite different.

48. Squealer @47: For me they are pronounced identically as ‘missiz’. But I do put a schwa in the last syllable of Messrs.

49. 1a went in straight away and the top half went straight in, the bottom half was a mystery unfortunately.
    Thanks both.

50. Squealer @39/47 – complaining about homophones? You’ll fit in perfectly around here. 🙂

    That one didn’t bother me at all. I subscribe the view that you have to allow a lot of leeway with homophones, though I appreciate that they are much harder to solve if the required homophone doesn’t match how you naturally pronounce the words. But them’s the breaks.

51. I was especially taken by the idea of Tower Bridge being a big adjustable spanner!
    Thanks very much Nutmeg and manehi

52. I looked at 17D HARDLINE for a loong time. When I see “firm’s” in a clue where “firm” would work just as well in the surface, I expect HARDS and not HARD.
    Sadly HARDS – – E does not make anything reasonable! Tripoli finally put me out of my misery 🙂

    Thanks as always to Nutmeg for just the right amount of head scratching and manehi for the blog.

53. Well done Alphalpha @46. Definitely dim here. SueB and pserve, I think he’s got it!

54. Or she, of course (by George!).

55. Not on Nutmeg’s wavelength today and had to go away and come back to this one. Glad that I did. 1A is magnificent, as many have noted. Thanks Manehi for explaining PALLADIUM (nho the element) and NOMADIC, two more great clues. Must have heard of arak during my travels in Asia, but don’t think that I have ever seen it written down, and was my LOI. Thanks Nutmeg.

56. Very much on wavelength for me today and I really enjoyed the tight little phrases that delivered so much throughout the puzzle. I am another giving ticks to WILLIAM OF ORANGE and TOWER BRIDGE with ACHY, PROTRACTOR, NOMADIC and the elegant MRS the others I particularly enjoyed.

    Thanks Nutmeg and manehi

57. Not too easy, not too hard but I did occasionally check my answers and I ended up revealing the clever MRS. I love concise clues like YARDSTICK and Nutmeg seems skilled at these. I thought the surface and anagram at 1a was brilliant and I also ticked MACAW, INACTION, and ACHY (great surface) as favourites. Thanks Nutmeg and manehi.

58. Thanks both,
    I opted for ‘Ms’s’ being the possessive of Ms rather than Mrs. Oed tells me that ‘entitlement’ for title is rare, colloquial and chiefly used in representing African American speech. But it’s not the actual answer to the clue, so the setter is entitled to her fun.

59. Paul @55 – another Paul here who has never heard of the element PALLADIUM. I spent far too long trying to make sense of it as the West End theatre.

60. [CalMac @45: My 1st thought when I read “Rangers-Celtic game” was, “Why is a NY hockey team playing a Boston basketball team?” I quickly re-oriented myself. Thanks for the amusing imagery.]

61. Tony Santucci @60: yes, quite – there are lots of Rangers and Celtics versions. The Glasgow football/soccer variety is infamously and problematically sectarian in its religious divides (though such divides are more inherited than real/practising these days…).

62. Thanks for the blog, a mini theme of tools , implements and measurement . Neat use of Palladium in REARRANGED and a clever way round the double k in wordplay for LACKEYS.
    And of course GET AT= mean ( colloq) in my brand new Chambers 93 .

63. [ If by some miracle you have clear skies, the Quadrantid meteor shower is usually reliable, prolific and very impressive. Tonight or tomorrow night should be the peak ]

64. Particularly liked male jockey but took a while as did HARDLINE and YARDSTICK. Some very good clues and got stuck on a lot but got there in the end.
    Thanks Nutmeg and manehi

65. pserve_p2@34 “Use to” in the present tense, meaning “habitually do.”

    Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain.
    The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
    And the free maids that do weave their threads with bones
    Do use to chant it. It is silly sooth,
    And dallies with the innocence of love
    Like the old age. (Twelfth Night, II, )

    I enjoyed this, as I always do Nutmeg’s. Thanks, Nutmeg and manehi.

66. A great puzzle as always from the incomparable Nutmeg. TOWER BRIDGE made me LOL. A belated Happy New Year to all.

67. . . . and ACHY was terrific.

68. Late to the show again, but this time because I finished the puzzle before the blog appeared (first time that has happened), and then went to bed.

    I usually find Nutmeg’s puzzles challenging, so was pleased to complete this in one (albeit long) sitting. She is one of my favourite setters, for reasons demonstrated in this crossword – amusing surfaces, constructions that lend themselves to aha moments, and a general air of coviviality. Best of the bunch for me were 23a PREARRANGED, 25a MRS, and 16d YARDSTICK.

    Back in December blaise challenged us to write a limerick about Nutmeg, and Flea (@35, December 12) responded with a gem. I tried my best but could only come up with these two weaklings:

    A marvellous Manchester setter,
    Of solvers she oft gets the better;
    Her clues are so clever,
    But, never say never,
    One day I shall parse every letter.

    A former Man Uni professor
    sent me chastened to see my confessor,
    For cursing her clever bent
    He bade me be penitent,
    To render my sin somewhat lesser.

69. Cellomaniac @68 – golden pear for you.

    And kudos to Roz @62 for being the only one to FIGURE OUT the (mini) theme. I can see PLUMB LINE as well as YARDSTICK and PROTRACTOR for the measurement, KEYS and RAZORS for the TOOLs, as well as spanner/instrument/measuring device/put straight/chain in the clues.

    Squealer @39/47: Once again Brotherhood of Man comes to the rescue. It’s definitely kissiz, not kissers 🙂

    Also good to see Gaz get a mention (the ZH would have been difficult for any setter to clue!)

    Thanks N & m

70. Cellomaniac@68: 🙂

71. cellomaniac@68

    Had nowt PREARRANGED for today.
    So ceasing INACTION I’ll say.
    CELLO M’s a sharp bard,
    Praised light starting with YARD;
    I liked LACK KEYS – drop one “K”.

    Ta (MRS) Nutmeg. & manehi

72. pserve @31. Late, but… Perhaps you have never agreed to buy a house in a place far from where you are living (North Wales), set a move-in date just before you start work and then had the owners change their mind – not exactly gazump, just decide not to sell – leaving you with nowhere to live. And they can do this with no penalty. Here, there would be a significant financial cost, as contacts are signed well before completion.

73. Gervase@22
    “Gazunder”, not to be confused with “guzunder”, a porcelain item of convenience so called because it guzunder the bed.

74. Ravenrider @17: Not quite. The phonetic form “missus” is still found in reported speech, as a common form of address for a woman.

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