Guardian Xmas cryptic No. 28,949

61 comments on “Guardian Xmas cryptic No. 28,949”

1. For the Guardian I had CUSTOS who was of course a Guardian setter.

2. I always look forward to the Maskarade jumbos, in particular to the challenge of figuring out what on earth is going on. I didn’t enjoy this as much as most, possibly because the majority of the undefined clues were simple instances of the terms in the preamble – but to be fair, enough of them weren’t to keep it interesting.

   The biggest annoyance was repeated scanning of the preamble for the numbers (this was before bodycheetah’s contribution). [This need was not unlike when some of our esteemed bloggers list their favorites this way, but there if I’m feeling lazy I just skip the cross-referencing, but skipping was not an option here]. I don’t blame Maskarade, but I do think the Guardian could have provided some electronic aids for those who do the puzzle online. For those of us with technical experience in this area, it doesn’t seem so difficult. In fact for almost every non-standard puzzle they let us down – but maybe they only have a skeleton web tech staff, so ok.

   I didn’t find the puzzle had too many obscurities, unlike some other of M’s offerings. In the end I was held up for quite a while by entering EGGS instead of EVES because of an incorrect interpretation of the S at the end of “PUDDINGs”.

3. This was tough but enjoyable, although having to keep searching the clue numbers for the setter’s party answers was a pain, and without any definitions many answers could have been absolutely anything until most crossers were in place. I have no idea why two random words were selected as anagrams of POTATOES with no obvious connection to each other or indeed to potatoes.

   NOEL has been missed in the answers to Father and Boys, and answer to GUARDIAN should be Curtis not Sliwa.

4. Isn’t the closing date today 5 January!?https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2022/12/19/Guardian_Xmas_cryptic_2022.pdf

5. Like Lord Jim @1, I was another who went for CUSTOS instead of CURTIS. Well, it was supposedly the Guardian Setters Party ! Apart from that, a lot of work but got there in the end. Many thanks to Leeds climber and of course to Maskarade for the challenge.

6. To answer Gnomad@3’s question about POTATOES, the modifier “mashed” indicates the anagram. Similarly TINSEL “in strands”. These are not complete clues in the traditional cryptic fashion, so you don’t get the typical second route to the answer.

7. As pointed out in the comments above, NOEL is the other boy, and I also think that CUSTOS is the guardian. I remember Curtis Sliwa, but I don’t know that he was ever known simply as “Curtis,” or that that would provide a suitable synonym for “guardian.” Good job on a giant blog.

8. Thanks for the blog, a thankless task for so many clues.
   I found this a bit of a chore just from the sheer size and the mixed clue order , very grateful to Bodycheetah for the useful list .
   I agree with NOEL and CUSTOS, he was one of my favourite setters when I was learning and could have been a double answer like Noel .
   A definite frown for 35D but the rest seemed okay .

   Happy New Year to all, it was perihelion yesterday afternoon and I trust that the Ricci tensor behaved .

9. Another one here who had CUSTOS, which makes a lot more sense than Curtis.
   This one reminded me of why I only like cryptic crosswords rather than ‘quick’ (which are often anything but). Ambiguous answers and guesses for the themed part left me a bit deflated.
   NOEL (14a) appears twice as “Christmas” and “Boys”. PAPA at 54d could equally be Pops, and 24a could equally be INLET or INSET, neither of which are anagrams of “Tinsel”.
   Ho hum.

10. Tim@9 it does say Tinsel=24s so must be INLET , not great but just about okay.

11. Roz @10 and I just thought the s was a Grauniad typo. Time for the optometrist maybe. 🙂

12. Well done to Leedsclimber for blogging this.
    I’ve enjoyed some of Maskarade’s jumbo puzzles and thought initially this looked interesting but soon tired of the need to scan the preamble to find the clues for various numbers. Started compiling a list but then gave up and decided my time would be better spent solving a standard Picaroon or Brendan. Maybe if I’d found Bodycheetah’s list I’d have stuck with it.
    So nice idea, but I think solvers could have been better served here.

13. A lot of fairly obscure general knowledge, but enjoyed this, finishing it yesterday! Custos is clearly the more appropriate answer actually meaning Guardian, rather than a random given name of someone self-describing as one. The “crackers” fooled me the most. Convinced that ?r??? must be “cream”, I spent a long time trying to find an “a??h which related to a stand up in the shower. Can’t the boys name be Neil, on the basis we’ve had Noel already!?

14. I failed on many unfortunately and based on a quick scan of the answers I can see why now! I guessed many of the unclued solutions but didn’t feel confident writing them in without the crossing clues to confirm my guess.

    I always thought of cyan as a shade of blue rather than green. In wavelength it is between green and blue, and wikipedia tells me it derives from Greek kyanos “dark blue enamel” (it definitely isn’t dark) and “it phenomenologically appears as a greenish vibrant hue of blue to most English speakers”. I suppose that leaves enough wiggle room to justify it.

15. Thanks very much Leedsclimber (didn’t know the Mews hideout) and congratulations on marking your debut with such a TIGHTEN! Though I also plumped for CUSTOS (which I had to look up anyway, the setter being before my time, and not the only one needing extra help) I think Curtis is a plausible alternative and I had completely forgotten about him and his red (I think) berets. Also I think the Coventry Carol is an actual song rather than a singer – and worth reading about on wikipedia and elsewhere. That was one of the many that had misled me, first entering Canticle which fitted with rice cracker at 76d, and I had the same mistake as PeterN@13 re Cream, also had Fingers/Edam for a while at the top, and probably more. But as I spread this out over time, finishing only this morning, I didn’t mind the awkwardness too much and really feel like I got a good workout with a lot of satisfying PDMs (plenty of German/Swiss references too, which helped), so thanks Maskarade and all the best for 2023 to everyone.

16. Many thanks, Leedsclimber, I needed your explanations in several places. Btw, you’ve numbered 46d as 45d, which confused me for a while.

17. Thanks for clarifying why ‘wash’ is correct. I’d bunged it in anyway, but hadn’t thought about the ‘won’t wash’ usage – possibly because I’ve never seen wash used in a non-nagative sense in that usage.
    (I did also spend much longer than I should have done trying to justify ‘arch’ in that slot, having immediately plumped for ‘cream’ as the only 5-letter type of cracker I could initially think of)

18. I appreciate the effort involved in blogging a puzzle like this, and the enlightenment provided on the parsing of clues. But is it actually known what the solutions are yet – ie are we all just guessing about whether CURTIS or CUSTOS is correct (I’d favour the latter, but that’s just me). If so, I can’t see why this blog has appeared before the answers are known. It’s fine to debate how (or if) a clue works, but the answer will be the answer and the setter’s view is final!
    I think one of the 4 GAMES is not mentioned (Lotto at 17A). And I personally loved unraveling Masquerade’s little story- a nice variation on his usual “themes”, and taking extra time to pull it together is part of the Christmas holiday, alongside the jigsaw puzzles, goose, and mince pies.

19. I agree about CUSTOS. No idea what OTTO and APSE refer to.

20. I only had time for a quick comment @1 but would like to say that I thought this was really good. The missus and I arrived in the Lake District on Christmas Eve to spend a few days when she promptly went down with flu and was out for the count. I therefore had plenty of time to gaze at this puzzle and gradually work my way through it. It was a very interesting and inventive festive combination of cryptic and non-cryptic. Many thanks Maskarade.

    Many thanks also Leedsclimber – what a challenge for your first assignment! Given your apparent location perhaps we’ll see you at the annual get-together in York in October?

21. lemming @4

    I think it’s subjective. To me the phrase “before Thursday” means “if it arrives after Thursday has started, you’re too late, mate.” Whereas others might say “as long as it arrives by 23:59:00 on Thursday, it’s acceptable.”

    I think that if the blog wasn’t published till tomorrow, I would have received loads of messages saying, “‘ere, where’s the blog?”

    As Honest Abe might have said, ““You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not please all of the people all of the time.”

    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/275126-you-can-fool-some-of-the-people-all-of-the

22. INGE is a bit too obscure for me, as were the Bells and CURTIS but CUSTOS works fine there. Lotto seems the wrong sort of game for a party.

23. I know of Inge because he was born in Crayke in Yorkshire, where my father lived for a while. But surely Inge is now too obscure to count as reasonable GK, especially as the wordplay is also a bit of a stretch.

    Wash seemed rather feeble.

    But that’s two criticisms for a crossword that was a bit different and didn’t ask us to solve complex problems in planar geometry. So overall a thumbs up and a thank you.

    Oh, and yes, surely it is Custos

24. Not a big fan of clues with no wordplay and as for OTTO / APSE – don’t get me started. Thanks Leedsclimber for explaining MEWS which I couldn’t parse. Clever festive fun though not entirely my cup of cruciverbal tea. Thanks Maskarade and lc.

25. P.S I’m another who plumped for CUSTOS.

26. Otto Apse b. Feb 1, 1879 Lizums, Latvia d. after 1941.
    Does this help? No.

27. Mr SR and I really enjoyed this – most impressed how Maskerade finds new ways to present the holiday cryptics.
    We’d made a few inroads before NYE, but settled down to it properly after dinner on the 31st Dec (Elton John, the royals and other glitterati just had to make do without us for once…).
    Depressingly, Mr SR was still far better at solving than I, despite consuming a bottle (less one glass) of champagne.

    We had a couple scantily parsed, but the main one that foxed us was: 26D – “Emperor’s supporter with paper beard” – which we put in as IMPERIAL (having the crossers I-P-R-AL) but couldn’t parse. Unfortunately I can’t see the parsing in the blog – it’s probably me being dim, but please can anyone either tell me where it is or explain how it works?
    Thanks in advance and a happy 2023 to all setters, bloggers (especially leedsclimber who has done a phenomenal amount of work here, particularly given it’s a first blog) and posters.

28. StoneRose@27: IMPERIAL is one of the ones I wasn’t sure about at first – it is a defined size of paper, and, believe it or not, Imperial is one of the categories of ‘Partial Beard’ for which Mr SR could presumably compete at the next World Beard and Moustache Championships. “Hair to be grown only on cheeks and upper lip” according to Wikipedia.

29. Great entertainment over the season so gratitude to Maskerade and thumbs up to Leedsclimber for an excellent debut.

    I plumped for ‘CULLIS’ (it’s bound to be in some dictionary) for ‘Guardian’ so had no chance with PERIDOT (and I still don’t twig that parsing – help?).

    I also spotted what StoneRose@27 says about IMPERIAL – one of the few I couldn’t parse.

    A big Xmas ‘X’ against INGE (even though I got it) – I’m fairly sure I read somewhere that an incoming Guardian Crossword Editor (a lady as I recall?) issued a proscription against further reference to the ‘gloomy Dean’ (although I thought he was more antique than indicated in the blog) so was dismayed (on behalf of novices (although I am no novice)) to see him popping up in company with an answer-in-law (‘singer’ for ‘chorister’).

    The ‘boy’ at 14a has to be NOEL – it’s also clued as ‘Christmas’.

    (And Leedsclimber the ‘pole’ portion of SUSPECTS has to be the South (S) Pole (I hesitate to nitpick but I suspect you’ll want to correct that)).

30. I struggled to get into this one so still haven’t finished it (to put it mildly), but just wanted to pop in to say well done on your blogging debut, Leedsclimber – talk about in at the deep end!

    And thanks, Maskarade – enjoyed what I’ve done… so far! I’ve still got the printout for when I get an idle moment to have another look at it.

31. Gazzh@28: Aha! Tvm. (We crossed.)

32. Probably not the intended answer, but I rather like POPPET for 34 on the basis that the presents are for girls and poppet is a synonym for DOLL (OED “girl, doll”) albeit an old term. I also thought that 54 could equally be PAPA, POPS or POPE, except PAPA NOEL when read together makes the most sense. Noted that the preamble for 81 states (after capitalisation) “A. Partridge” which may or may not have been intentional.
    Great fun, thanks to Maskarade and to Leedsclimber for the detailed blog.
    ?

33. Thanks to Maskerade and Leedsclimber, no mean feat for either. Regarding 26d IMPERIAL is a brick of a certain size, which you could loosely call a supporter. This would make it a quadruple definition, the other three being emperor’s, paper (a certain size of sheet) and beard.
    I failed to finish with INGE being beyond my ken and FINGERS going down for 6a instead of FISTFUL. Still not sure what COVENTRY is all about.

34. Many thanks both Gazzh@28 and PicklePot@33 – recieved with great “Ahhs!” of illumination in the SR household. Very much appreciated. I find an unparsed clue really niggles at me.
    I’ll run the idea of new facial topiary past Mr SR – it would be jolly useful for this year’s Christmas stocking: beard oils, moustache combs, wax for the tips, a little hair-net a la Hercule Poirot…

35. PicklePot@33: The Coventry Carol is well known, at least in ‘folk’ circles.

36. I’m another who had CUSTOS, but then I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Curtis. I also screwed up a solution, with CRAZY as one of the crackers (well, once I’d got SAFE, I assumed other synonyms were possible) which left me with Z??H for 82A. Having had to google INGE & a couple of others, I ended up thinking there must be some stand-up comedian out there called, maybe, Zach. Hey ho.
    Also unaware that bodycheetah had helpfully listed all the extra clues, I laboriously wrote all the little beggars out myself, but only after spending ages faffing back & forth trying to find them…. So, all in all, a less enjoyable experience for me than many a crossword – but nevertheless, thank you Maskerade for providing much-needed intellectual diversion over a wet xmas, and hearty thanks to Leedsclimber on a mammoth inauguration.

37. As an editor elsewhere, I rarely comment on puzzles in other papers, but this one brought back memories of what I’d call a “narrative” style of crossword, rarely seen these days. No individual clues, just a lot of text, with clue numbers replacing words. The only Torquemada puzzles I’ve managed to solve in old books were this kind, and IIRC, the Puzzler mag ran them at least sometimes in the 1970s. The last one I can remember was a relatively easy Listener puzzle on the boat race weekend, probably in the late 80s or early 90s.

38. As Roz has said elsewhere, these Jumbos can be a bit of a chore and I found this one such. I’m not a fan of non-cryptic clues either, though I often warm up with the daily Quick. As Araucaria said, they are in a way more difficult because there are occassions where two or more answers fit (at least until you’ve got the crossers) and there’s no wordplay to say which is right. OTTO and APSE were unsatisfactory because they had no connection with each other or the theme.
    I had CREAM until younger son put me right, though he needed me to explain why “stand up” = WASH.
    You probably all know but I don’t think anyone has pointed out yet that CUSTOS is also a Latin word for Guardian, so it must be right. The phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who will guard the guards themselves?- from Juvenal may be familiar.
    Thanks to Maskarade (I did enjoy quite a lot), leedsclimber and especially bodycheetah, without whose setting out of the clues in numerical order I don’t think I would have bothered.

39. Re the parsing of 85 across – Ancient copper = AS without any convolution (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_(Roman_coin))

40. Yes, thanks to Maskarade and Leedsclimber. And many thanks bodycheetah, I’d got about half way and got scan-weary, but your list encouraged me to potter on. Needed help down the bottom left with assizes and Coventry, after which Eve’s pudding was guessable. Custos, too, was a guess, from custodian/guardian, and imperial was a shrug … had no idea about the paper or the beard. So, in the end quite fun, ta again M and L.

41. For those who may have missed it, OTTO+APSE comes from mashed(anagrind) POTATOES as Dr. WhatsOn says @6, in a similar way to the INLET(s), ENLIST from the TINSEL “in strands” thematic clue.

42. Pino @38 , great quotation. Often used today to refer to the security services, Juvenal meant the guards employed by patrician husbands to prevent their wives having extra nookie. Yes I find all jumbo puzzles a chore, but simply because of the sheer number of clues.
    Peter@37 , try the Torquemada “Knock Knock” puzzle, it has the funniest clue ever written.

43. Roz@42. Further east the husbands solved the problem by employing eunuchs.

44. Anyone who didn’t like this is surely a Scrooge, though scanning the list of Xmas items all the time wasn’t the best … Thanks to Maskerade and Leedsclimber, a toughie to be your first blog.

45. CUSTOS was the Guardian for me.

    And I thought that SAGE crackers might be a delicacy

46. Lippi @44. Well, all I can say to that is Bah Humbug!

    One of the reasons many of us enjoy cryptic crosswords is that “penny drop moment” when we realise how a clue we’ve been thinking about (for many days in some instances) actually leads to a uniquely correct answer. Too much of this crossword requires us to fit words in based on the crossers and an (in some cases vague or misleading) allusion in the very hard to access preamble.

    Several people have explained that OTTO and APSE come from anagramising the letters of POTATOES, but there is no satisfactory explanation – not even Dan Milton’s @26 🙂 – of what the words OTTO and APSE are doing in the grid. What are their definitions?

    And the fact that many of us had CUSTOS where our (very brave) blogger had CURTIS further illustrates the potential pitfalls in setting a crossword in this fashion. I gave up with about 20% of the grid unfilled, not because I couldn’t have solved it if I had persevered, but because it was just no fun.

    Thanks to Maskarade for the effort of setting this, and I hope you enjoyed it more than I did.

    And extra thanks to Leedsclimber (mountains or office blocks?) for accepting the challenge. I hope we see you again on a more normal crossword.

47. Lesidees@45 I had SAGE crackers too. They are a thing, apparently. I found plenty on Google. And so are SAFE crackers of course. I think this is just another example of the ambiguities in this puzzle.

48. Maybe a rock climber from Leeds? Sport, Bouldering, Alpine?
    LOTTO was missing from the games list, and thanks for explaining the others.

49. But ask of Google define:”X cracker” where X is a member of {prawn, ritz, safe, sage} it’s only the last one that returns a null result.

50. Congratulations on the clarity of the solution!
    We just failed on a couple – bunged in CASSIUS instead of ASSIZES for 85a – well, he could be an Ancient, couldn’t he? With the crossing cracker being ROTI – also just about plausible. And another vote for SAGE and CUSTOS.

51. The published solution (see Guardian website) confirms CUSTOS and INLET

52. …and SAFE

53. Much enjoyed. The storyline feature was just right for the season. No quibbles. Lovely to meet CUSTOS again.

    Once STEVE COOGAN was in, pleasure all round. Though it delayed getting FINANCIAL BACKER thinking it might be a crossing celeb.
    EVERTS was neat.

    Blowing the puzzle up to A3 size helped a lot for the optically challenged. Many thanks Maskarade. Also Leedsclimber.

54. I’m afraid I missed Bodycheetah’s list, so I wrote one out myself. I must agree that having to look back at the rubric so frequently was annoying.
    I also found the odd extra letters in the grid confusing E.g. the extra E between beer and Lib Dem’s in 29a which held me up for a bit.
    But all in all we found this preferable to Maskerade’s alphabeticals of recent years, and enjoyed coming back to it several times during the holiday.
    Thanks to Maskerade and a tour de force from our newest blogger.

55. The published solution gives the answer to 77 as ETCH which does not fit with the crossers.

56. Dior
    As one who only manages to solve the occasional Quiptic and even more occasional Monday, I was delighted to have solved this completely by Boxing Day. It took a lot of ornithological reading to find the BIRD but that did not help with the PARTRIDGE. LOI was WASH having first put CRAZY for 72. I loved the whole story for the undefined, although I can understand it getting tedious if trying to solve online rather than on paper. INGE was new to me and took a bit of research. Many thanks to the blogger and to Maskarade for making it not too difficult for a relative novice.

57. Only just spotted this blog. Saw the solutions printed in yesterday’s paper and wondered why there wasn’t a blog for it here. So went hunting for it this morning and found it.

    I really enjoyed solving this over several days although COVENTRY and INGE defeated me.

    Like others I wrote out a list of the preamble clues which I found essential to solving.

    Much enjoyed reading this blog and comments so thanks all

    And thanks to Maskarade.

58. I only managed to solve it by new years day but really enjoyed it. Custos and Coventry I liked but took me ages to Otto Apse and even then not convinced I was right.

59. The official solution, published in yesterday’s (Monday 9th) Guardian, does indeed have CUSTOS and not CURTIS.

60. CUSTOS here too.

    Defeated by INGE and all of the BELLS by a lack of general knowledge.

    Like others, I got stuck on the crackers with CREAM and RICE instead of PRAWN and SAFE, both of which gave me bad crosses and stopped me from getting anywhere near to FISTFUL or WASH.

    What I did solve I enjoyed – though for a long time I was convinced that Angel was in fact a CHRISTMAS TOPPER and that the goose was CANADIAN.

61. Finally gave up today:( after getting about 1/2 right. It didn’t help that the print out was on a4 when a3 might have been better or maybe they could have been 2 pages one grid the other clues. As others have said the continuous cross referencing was a bit of a pain.

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