Guardian 28,965 / Tramp

107 comments on “Guardian 28,965 / Tramp”

1. Tramp was on my list of compilers to give a wide berth, but I was feeling brave today, and surprised myself when I quite enjoyed it. New to my lexicon: FANNY ABOUT, STEELYARDS, DHANSAK & TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE, all quite gettable from the wordplay. Pus/matter I thought was a bit loose. M for money is one of a number of initialisms that I’m not a fan of — even if it’s in the revered Chambers. Wasn’t aware that SP was “latest information”.

   Plenty of smiles today. TIDY even elicited a tiny chuckle, with its great surface. Tramp goes back to my “good” list!

2. I went down the same route as you, Eileen, with DHANSAK. Thanks for the enlightenment.

3. What Eileen said

   Tricky but most enjoyable

   Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

4. Tramp just seems to get better and better. Completely agree with Eileen’s assessment – this was superb, packed with inventive and witty clues. Impossible to pick a favourite but the Liz Truss anagram is magnificent. Thanks, E & T.

5. I was a little worried when the first two clues I solved were for SPEW, and PUMPS including PUS in the construction.

6. Kicking myself for not parsing SLEDGE now. Didn’t think of a windowsill. Otherwise, as Eileen said, Tramp set us a tricky but enjoyable puzzle today. GDO@1 I think pus for matter is fairly standard crossword fare. I’ve certainly seen it before. Took me a while to remember SP for latest information, not being a horse racing aficionado, but laughed when I did. Liked the 4d anagram as well. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

7. Thank you Eileen. I would never, ever have seen LEDGE as “silly”. Good anagrams.
   Thanks also to Tramp.

8. Eileen It’s a sign of a good night when you wake up to a DHANSAK 🙂

   So many excellent clues it’s hard to pick a favourite but I’ll go for the splendidly silly SLEDGE

   Cheers T&E

9. Enjoyed this puzzle from Tramp, lots of fun clues with EUCHARIST, SOLAR and DEAD RINGERS standing out.

10. Annoyed with myself for not getting LACE.
    Mildly annoyed, too, for needing to have the brilliant “silly thing” in 18a explained, and for going down Eilieen’s initial route for DHANSAK.
    But delighted with the puzzle as a whole. The Liz Truss (remember her?) anagram is a thing of joy. Other very clever ones include PLASTIC (a brilliant definition of a PLC as “company with stock to purchase”), REHEARSING, RIVIERA, FANNY ABOUT (a great spot indeed), SOLAR (for the wonderfully Pauline surface), COMMERCIAL BREAK (another brilliant spot), DEAD RINGER (so simple; so neat).
    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

11. Eileen sums it up perfectly. Lots of sporting clues and I was another ´stumped’ by the parsing of SLEDGE. All my favourites and new words already mentioned.

    Ta Tramp & Eileen.

12. Loved this, in spite of misparsing STEELYARDS by half. In E.C. Bentley’s introduction to the first collection of Damon Runyon’s short stories published in the UK (More Than Somewhat) the only items of US slang that he feels a need to explain are sums of money, including “a hundred dollars, a yard, or a C.” I guessed it had crossed the Atlantic and “yards” was a *lot* more than one pound. Plausible, perhaps, but you nailed it, Eileen. Thanks to you and Tramp.
    [PS. RIP Jeff Beck of the YARDbirds.]

13. Thank you Eileen, for your wonderful blog, and the explanation of STEELYARDS.

    Did others solve TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE from wordplay, or retro parsing? What an incredible anagram, and a word that’s probably not used all that often outside of health professions, with all those fascinating bits in the anagrist, and such a surface. From definition (member might be lifted by this) I was considering something like jockstrap or a crane to lift girders, beams etc in construction. Tricky Tramp.

    DEAD RINGER made me laugh. Tried to make ”Dolly” fit but she wouldn’t co-operate.

14. I think Tramp upped the fancy footwork towards the bottom of this puzzle
    I thought LACE as truly great
    Thanks Tramp and Eileen (Lady)

15. Yeah I did think what was lifting a member could be a muscle, pdm @13, but it took a few crossers to recall trapezius. Btw, the Hervey Bay kids I met in the ’70s called macadamias Bauple nuts … familiar?

16. I found this surprisingly accessible and only resorted to minor external assistance at the end. Interesting that others found it tough. More fuel for the wavelength theory.

    That meaning of STEELYARDS was new to me but very clearly clued. I loved FANNY ABOUT (it’s a phrase I do use from time to time and it’s amusing to see it in a crossword). Like many I didn’t parse SLEDGE but now see how clever that was.

    Like Eileen I am a TAD surprised that word is of US origin, having always heard it in a quintessentially English context and accent… in my head it exists alongside ‘smidgeon’. Every day’s a school day.

    And only in a crossword would one see Liz Truss described in that way 🙂

    Thanks both for a lovely puzzle and enlightening blog.

17. I’m not having a good week. Like NeilH, I’m annoyed with myself for not seeing ‘lace’, especially after I had solved the trickier clues. Failed to parse ‘sledge’ – ‘ledge’, silly indeed: How cunning. Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

18. Gem of a puzzle. Lovely definition misdirections everywhere.

    Still a bit confused by TADPOLE, though. Can’t see what the ‘in’ is doing. Was searching for an inclusion which isn’t there.

    Laughed out loud at FANNY ABOUT!

    Many thanks, both.

19. …should have added praise for the superb anagram at TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE. Bravo.

20. Yes, the TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE anagram was incredible ! Liz Truss attempted plenty of fighting last Autumn but she was SOOn kNAcKered.

    We had a Meatloaf connotation, just the other day ( Out of the frying pan, into the fire ) and an earworm from mrpenney and today we have a link – 6 dn DEAD RINGER – leave the 15^2-ers to work out the full title.

    I actually liked EMERGED – the way the misdirection regarding Germany needs the solver to relegate D(eutschland) to the end and get the MERGE “partial” in first.

    Ta Tramp and Eileen.

21. Lovely solve, but had to check here for parsing SLEDGE, SPEW and VANILLA (I had the holiday home as a van – must up my expectations!).

    OPINION in the singular threw me for a while (views = opinions surely?) and it took me a long time to get TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE, being entirely new to me. Was very pleased with myself for parsing ARCHEST though.

    Thanks to both Eileen and Tramp for an enjoyable morning.

22. NeilH@10: the oo-er missus surface of SOLAR is also very characteristic of Tramp – Paul isn’t the only setter capable of it. Anyway, I failed to parse it, and a couple of others too (Silly? Really? Also EMERGED and RIVIERA, and ARCHEST=extremely cunning). The anagrams were good, particularly EUCHARIST and COMMERCIAL BREAK once I stopped trying to make remarkable the anagrind and performing part of the fodder – and VANILLA once I stopped trying to find something like steppe or Serengeti. Also enjoyed the neat little ALIAS.

23. I did not parse:
    5ac – was uncertain about POLE being Amercian for bar
    18ac S + LEDGE – silly thing? Oh I see now, very funny!

    New: DHANSAK curry.

    Thanks, both.

24. William @18 – tad = piece in American (I guess to indicate a word of American origin as there have been so many complaints about clues not making the distinction, not that I realised that TAD was an Americanism, as a Brit who hears it a fair bit.)

    I found this fun but fair, and those anagrams were amazing. I too needed SILLy pointing out, duh. STEELYARDS are something I knew about, and entered it wondering whether other solvers would. The Romans used them and I’ve seen quite a few in museums, even played with reconstructions.

    Thank you to Tramp and Eileen.

25. ‘Sill-y thing’ is groanworthy brilliant – I got SLEDGE, but couldn’t parse it. Also didn’t parse TADPOLE, and wouldn’t have thought it an Americanism. Had to reveal SPEW: ‘sp’ for ‘starting price’ is one I do know; it seems to come up regularly but infrequently as it were. A lot to enjoy here, many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

26. My first go at 16d was ROTATED which – at a push – fits the clue.

27. Thanks Tramp and Eileen
    I don’t think anyone has mentioned it yet, but two of the definitions are just wrong: the earliest form of a frog is surely an egg rather than the tadpole that hatches from it, and the noise on a vinyl record is nothing to do with static – that’s the noise on radio broadcasts.
    I laughed at DEAD RINGER.

28. dantheman @26
    I had ROTATED first too.

29. “Still crackling on the radio” would have been a better clue for STATIC anyway – “on the radio” would misdirect to a “sounds like”.

30. Whether originating in US or Brit English, I do not believe that ‘tad’ can be used to mean ‘piece’: my Oxford cites the (nominal usage) example “crumpets sweetened with a tad of honey”, thereby illustrating its use as a quantifier for mass or abstract nouns (so we can have a tad of humility, of milk, of guano). ‘Piece’ goes with nouns that are decomposable into separate chunks: a piece of cake (a tad of cake?), a piece of a jigsaw (a tad of a jigsaw?).

31. FANNY ABOUT was unfamiliar but guessable. However nho SLEDGE in that sense (I know virtually nothing about cricket) so could not finish, though the rest was pretty good.

32. 11ac: I took SP as meaning ‘Stop Press’, which seems to fit ‘latest information’ a bit better than ‘Starting Price’ does. But the notion of stop-press news, latest news, is less common than it used to be, the abbreviation is not in Chambers, and it makes no difference to the answer. As always Tramp is challenging but fair, and satisfying to finish.

33. After a first pass I thought I would be staring at a blank grid but once a couple of anagrams and other easy clues fell into place it opened. Still, like many others I did not parse SLEDGE (18A) although I got the answer from the definition, and failed completely on 23A. Favorites: 10A, 25A

    Oddly, DHANSAK (26A) came easily and was one of my first in!

34. I’m pleased to see Geoff Down Under @1 has readmitted Tramp to his good books; for me he’s one of the names I am most delighted to see underneath the puzzles a I know I’m in for an exhilarating ride. As I was today. Yet another not to have parsed SLEDGE and whimsical cluing can be very hard to penetrate. But it was the only one not to reveal its workings; everything else parsed as the setter intended.

    I could highlight almost any clue today but particular favourites – embracing both long and short – include PLASTIC for the plc def; SPEW for the misdirect; INNINGS for the topical surface; RIVIERA for the device; SOLAR for the smut; and DHANSAK for hiding the fodder so well. Fewer from the downs: the delightful TIDY; the remarkable spot for COMMERCIAL BREAK; the muscle – naturally; and GRATING which is simple but very satisfying. Lovely job.

    All that said, muffin’s observations @27 seem valid. ‘early’ rather than ‘earliest’ in TADPOLE would have obviated the challenge and, whilst I don’t know the science re static, the suggested improvement is a TIDY one.

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

35. Lovely crossword that went in very smoothly (apart from the silly ledge).

    The long anagrams were great, and I enjoyed TADPOLE, although I accept muffin’s @27 point. I think Chambers and Collins are out-of-date wrt TAD being American. The ODE, which has more current usage, does not give it as American. I also liked MACADAMIA, RIVIERA and EMERGED (nicely misleading use of ‘up’). Muffin @27, I found this about static on LPs: Static build-up on the record is another very common cause of crackle. Vinyl tends to produce a fair amount of static electric charge, and that charge remains locked to the surface of the record until it can discharge itself (via your turntable’s stylus).

    Thanks Tramp for the fun and to Eileen for all the silly explanations.

36. 11ac – Could SP stand for Stop Press?

37. PS I think the American usage of tad is for ‘a little lad’: (US, slang, dated) A street boy; an urchin and not for a small amount.

38. SP had me pondering. I have yet to discover a convincing explanation for my understanding of the colloquial use of ‘giving the full SP’ for the later provision of further information after the key points on a subject have been made known.

    In this crossword’s case I guess Stop Press might fit the clue best, not a lot to do with horses.

    Thanks Eileen, I needed your reassurance for STEELYARDS and parsing for SLEDGE. Thanks to Tramp for the challenge

39. Really struggled to get over the line with what I thought were some quite tricky clues in the SE corner, particularly SLEDGE and GRATING. Greatly indebted at first to both the superb long anagrams at 4d, 5d. Is this a Tramp trait, or is my recollection a bit awry? Having bunged in Rotated instead of REFUSED this held up things for a while in the SW corner. Liked EUCHARIST. And DHANSAK is what I rather unadventurously always request as my Indian dish, either takeaway or out eating at the restaurant…

40. Should of course have read Eileen’s summary re Tramp’s anagrams, I’m therefore a rather repetitive naughty boy today…

41. Thanks Eileen, as always, for the super blog and kind words.

    I only wrote this last November. I think it is decent

    I probably should have put “early” form for the tadpole. Chambers has crackle on a vinyl record listed under “static”. Someone mentioned on the Guardian site that the trapezius doesn’t lift the arm: I can’t know everything, I guess. Liz Truss didn’t last long as PM. Thank God.

    Thanks for the kind comments.

    Neil

42. I am in the other camp. Those that found this impenetrable. Solved 4 clues in the top right. Then ground to a halt. Not enough crossers to get started. Cheated on tadpole which helped me get 5,6,7 and 8. Cheated on 12a. Some say fair. I disagree. Breakdown / parsing. Going through / rehearsing.
    After 50 years still not good enough to compete with the big boys. And I’d had a good week up to now with no cheating.

43. Great puzzle, managed to complete it while trying to make a curtain (!?) so took a bit of time, but showed yet again how the brain works on while you’re not looking. Knew sledge, great clue, but needed help from Bradford for steelyards. And I definitely needed Eileen for parsing some of the non-anagrams. Thanks both.

44. zanitie@36 Coming from a racing fan family, SP always means Starting Price to us, bookie’s latest odds ( information ). There’s also a common British slang expression :
    ” What’s the SP ? ” meaning “What’s the latest information ? ”

    Redrodney@21 I thought the same thing about singular versus plural in 7 dn. Maybe the “s” of views could have been dropped from the clueing ?

    Vinyl cleaning packs are universally called “anti-static cloths”.

45. TAD is one of my favourite words (Just a tad please) – like others never thought it was American. My niece and I quarrel about whose word it is. It is of course mine.

    The two long anagrams were a great help and the NW (except for TIDY) and SW went in quite quickly. Then slowed down a bit and found the SE tough.

    However did better than usual with a Tramp puzzle

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

46. Loved this! Tramp on top form. Great long anagrams esp the Liz Truss one, which I managed from the fodder. Was expecting something Paulian from “member might be lifted by this”!

    A lot of references to holidays/travelling – Tramp thinking of his summer break?

    Thanks Tramp and Eileen

47. Better than decent Tramp@41. It was excellent. Stuffed with challenging clues and some cleverly hidden definitions. Took me all morning to complete which means it was a decent challenge for me. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

48. Flea @ 20, DEAD RINGER gave me a Stranglers earworm rather than Meatloaf ?

49. zanitie @36 – SP isn’t recognised by the usual sources as an abbreviation for stop press. I’m 100% certain it’s starting price here. The starting price is the latest (final) information you can be given regarding the odds in a horse race. (If it’s the latest, by definition there can be nothing after it.)

50. And the ? was entered as a 🙂

51. I take the point about static on records, but it doesn’t directly cause the crackle. Instead it attracts dust, which gives the noise when the stylus goes over it.

    [The discussion on TAD reminded me of a favourite Alex cartoon (I don’t get the Telegraph, but I was given a book). The cockney money man says to his son “look what those clever frogs have made. I brought it back in my jam-jar. What do you think it is?”
    “It’s a tad…it’s a tad…”
    “Yes?”
    “It’s a tad oaky, is it a chardonnay?”]

52. [muffin @ 27 – I think that the noise produced by a vinyl record is usually called “shellac” on sound effects recordings, despite this referring to 78s. Definitely not “static”.]

53. Fiery Jack @ 48 : This is an Oz one, since there are a vast amount of Ozzie’s on 15^2

    Google. meatloaf dead ringer bobby horton

    Take the “bobby horton” on YouTube ( it might be 2nd 3rd or 4th hit ) & the advert will soon finish ; you will have your answer

    As I type this, Jeff Beck footage on the lunch time news shows him playing the riff from Nessun Dorma ( whose lyrics in Italian I once had to learn for a choir performance at Emirates ! ). JB’s is an instrumental, of course, also on YouTube — brilliant !

54. I made a pleasing start to this, picking up a hint in the clue to TRAPEZIUS MUSCLE that it might be a muscle, and there it was. (And what a remarkable anagram to include all the letters of the ex-PM.) COMMERCIAL BREAK (just as remarkable!) followed soon after.

    However, I had to leave the right-hand half of this grid half-empty because for some reason I just couldn’t get either DEAD RINGER or REHEARSING. And I would never have got LACE to fill the ?A?E space. So a rare DNF (and anti-climax) for me from Tramp, but I have to say there was not much wrong with any of the clues.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

55. Thanks both,

    I failed on “lace” and “sledge” but very much enjoyed the rest. muffin@51: why wouldn’t a static charge moving under a magnetic cartridge as the record rotates cause a noise?

    I seem to recall Wodehouse characters using ‘the full SP’ to mean ‘complete and up-to-date information’.

56. Enjoyed all the fun anagrams today. Is the surface of the TIDY clue actually true?? If so, it’s brilliant.
    The only clue I have a problem with is 8. Shouldn’t it be “Jack’s” in the clue to make the verb work and shouldn’t the answer be ENSIGN’S (which I’m thinking should still be numbered as 7)?
    Thanks, Tramp and Eileen.

57. Thanks Tramp (and for dropping by) and the estimable Eileen (for the usual top-notch blog).

    DEAD RINGER and SLEDGE were the highlights for me. You just can’t beat a shaft of wit to amplify the entertainment.

    TC@42: REHEARSING was my LOI and I can sympathise – it resisted the ponder for far too long.

    Geoff Down Under@1: ‘pus’= ‘matter’ has been a feature of cryptics for forever. Not saying it’s not loose but that boat has long since sailed.

58. phitonelly: Jacks, here, means sailors in the surface reading and flags in the cryptic reading.

59. Flea @53, thanks, I do recall seeing that on TOTP back in the day, but the Stranglers version is rather more my cup of tea 🙂

60. Splendid puzzle with some great cryptic definitions and two excellent long anagrams. Defeated only by the parsing of the ingenious ‘silly thing’.

    Geoff Down Under @1 and others: my Lancastrian grandparents only ever referred to pus as ‘matter’, and didn’t use the word ‘matter’ to refer to any other substance. So not vague at all, but possibly dialectal. Tramp is himself from NW England. (They did use matter = subject, as in ‘what’s the matter?’, of course).

    Many thanks to Neil and Eileen

61. Hi Tramp @58,
    Ensign can also be jack in the sailor sense in the US navy, but I see your point. However, I was more bothered by the verb in the surface reading – doesn’t it need to be “drank” to work?

62. Did this late at night because of insomnia. Got 19. SLEDGE by ‘filling in the blanks’ and matching the definition, but couldn’t see the rest of it, and finally got to sleep trying to justify the answer! Failed to get 23. LACE – just couldn’t think of a word for ‘home’ which contained the letter P – should have cheated. Thanks to Tramp and to Eileen for putting me out of my misery re SLEDGE

63. Thanks Eileen, and to Tramp for a chewy but rewarding solve. A

    ll I’ll add is my occasional howl of impotent rage at the assumption of cricketing knowledge. Such complaints probably only encourage setters to include even more of them; I can’t think of any other reason why they persist. It only makes me loathe the game even more.

64. phitonelly: ah, I see. Sorry. I think you’re right.

65. Speaking as someone who was briefly a BBC Radio sound engineer (many many moons back, when LPs were still in use – as was reel-to-reel tape, for that matter) Tramp is quite correct: it’s static electricity that led to the crackling sound. The static attracted dust particles which built up in the grooves and were picked up by the stylus as the record revolved. Firing a de-ioniser gizmo at the disc, before playing it, generally sorted things. I should imagine nobody at the beeb has used LPs or singles for yonks – so this reference to what we sometimes called The Vinyl Frontier will presumably be meaningless to most folk under 30….
    A fun puzzle – thanks Tramp and Eileen

66. I’ve been out since mid-morning, so I’m only just catching up.
    Thanks for all the comments (and to Tramp for dropping in, of course). Glad to see that most of you enjoyed it as much as I did – and that some of you nearly fell down the same rabbit hole as me with DHANSAK. 😉

67. I was amused this morning, when checking Chambers, to find, under STATIC, ‘crackling on a vinyl record’.

68. Tramp has answered my question of whether JACKS = ENSIGNS were both flags or sailors…but couldn’t it be both? Knew TAD was more US but missed it and STEELYARD was unparsed until now.
    Nice late night puzzle for me too Eileen. Thanks to both.

69. Tramp@64: But it has to be ‘drunk’ to act as an anagrind. No matter as ‘drunk’ is a perfectly good past tense of ‘drink’, as good as ‘drank’: “I drunk a cup of tea” – nothing wrong with that.

70. Famous Parisian joke:
    Quasimodo falls out of the belfry and splats in front of the cathedral.
    First citizen: “Is that Quasimodo?”
    Second citizen: ” if not it’s a 6D”.

71. Aaw Bullhassocks@63 – your write-up is just not cricket.The setters have to put clues in to stump some of the people some of the time !

    ( Continuing a ‘tangential theme’ mainly for Fiery Jack @48 @59, I believe Golden Brown is a state you have to get the DHANSAK cooking into )

    Hope Bullhassocks is more into football than cricket, so ….
    The man with LACEs and PUMPS who FANNies ABOUT – Premier League referee, Jonathan Moss – runs a retro record shop – “VINYL whistle” ( Geddit ? ) in Leeds.

72. Bullhasocks@63: all I know about cricket I learned from cryptic crosswords.

73. Did most at breakfast and some apparently harder ones popped straight in without studying the clue. Only properly read some now. My kids got Eucharist and the bottom corner which I’d become blind to.

    There is a Smith & Jones sketch where a court case is waylaid by an elaborate argument about quantities. Something like:

    “Would you say it was a spot or a smidge?”
    “Actually m’lud I’d say it was a tad more than both.”

74. Me too – today I managed to sound quite knowledgeable!

75. … just like “we seen it in the movies”, or “he rung the bell”, Alphalpha @69 …

76. Sorry, I crossed with David (thanks for that!) .
    Mine was in reply to gladys.

77. I’m pretty sure that silly trick isn’t new; it’s like the schoolyard gag, What’s brown and sticky? A stick.

78. [blaise @12, Flea @53, for some reason my Jeff Beck earworm all day since hearing the radio news has been the track on his eponymous album on which raspy Rod Stewart sings “I don’t know much about love, people, but I sure think I got it bad” …]

79. Tramp@41, I’m with JerryG@47 – this was much more than decent, it was brilliant.

    Everyone liked the two long anagrams, but you seem to have liked the clever Liz Truss (now that’s an oxymoron) one better, because most of you are Guardian readers, I suppose. I thought 4d COMMERCIAL BREAK was the best – I don’t recall seeing such a well-hidden long anagram with such an impeccably smooth surface.

    My other favourites have all been mentioned by Eileen in her typically excellent blog. Thanks all for the fun and enlightenment.

80. Are we the only ones who had “flatlet” for 17D?
    Plain – flat
    Holiday home – let
    Providing accommodation for one.
    Just as well we checked or we’d have been severely stuck.

81. gif@75: It’ll be in some dictionary.

82. To me “arch” refers to a failed and convoluted attempt to be witty rather than being cunning

83. I’m surprised no-one has mentioned 15a (Bullhassocks@63?). A batter’s time on strike is not equivalent to their innings – for some of their innings, they are at the bowler’s end, and hence off strike.

84. Hmm, quite right TT@83, never crossed my mind.

85. Thanks Tramp for your usual excellence. I got to this late because I decided to tackle Monk in the FT first — that’s never a quick solve. In any event this was quite enjoyable with MACADAMIA, RIVIERA, the splendid COMMERCIAL BREAK, and DEAD RINGER among my favourites. There were bits and pieces I couldn’t parse so thanks Eileen for the help.

86. I am late to the party here again, as usual, being based out of North America, but I would like to thank Tramp. I usually find his crosswords too difficult but the long anagrams helped a lot. I find my lack of British cultural knowledge an impediment at times and was pleased that I managed to complete this one

87. TT @ 83 / gif @ 84

    That depends on how long the innings lasts – it’s possible to be out without having been at the non-striker’s end!

88. Andrew @82 – I’ve never been really sure of the various meanings of ‘arch’. I looked it up this morning and found (Chambers) : ‘waggish. mischievous, roguish, cunning, shrewd’.

89. Thanks also to Eileen for explaining the parsing of “sledge“, which had me baffled. I love the fact that Eileen is so thorough with her explanations. By the way, I always thought “tad” was a British word and have never heard it used here in Canada, only by my British relatives

90. Wellbeck @65
    As I said, it’s the dust that causes the crackles, not the static!

91. [gif @ 78 Surely that’s Blues De Luxe on Truth? So far as I know there is no eponymous album, and I think I’ve got them all.]

92. [gif@15. Yes, Bauple nuts is the only name I knew macadamia nuts by as a child, as my mother’s extended family all lived in that area. Christmas at grandparents, classic Queenslander house on stilts, macadamia and mango tree in the yard, us kids with yellow streams of juice running down our chins and forearms, cracking the nuts with Granddad’s vice in the shade under the house, feet all rust-coloured from the red soil, stepping over cane toads on the stairs. Kiddie heaven.]

93. Tramp is my absolute favourite. This was just brilliant and worth the hard and patient slog – thanks Eileen for the parsing and esp SLEDGE which will live long in the memory.

    ‘FANNY ABOUT’ (often in derogatory sense) is used a lot up here in Scotland but I didn’t ever expect to see it in a crossword!

94. What about a partnership’s innings or a team’s innings? Is that not their period batting or on strike?

95. Tramp@64
    I think you were right first time. As Eileen said, G(U)INNESS drunk (anagram fodder) = ENSIGNS= Jacks. “Are” is understood after Jacks, a usage common in crosswords and newspaper headlines. And “drank” isn’t an anagrind.
    Thanks to you and Eileen.

96. Tramp@41. The trapezius muscle shrugs the shoulders. Hard to do that without the arms going up. Fair clue, brilliant anagram

97. I think just about everything has already said about this puzzle, except that I parsed SLEDGE a tad differently – LEDGE can also mean an idiot i.e. a silly person. Well, according to the Urban Dictionary it can ! Thanks to Eileen and the ever-entertaining Tramp.

98. Good puzzle. I parsed STEELYARDS, but could not understand why they were balances. I have used them, the sack scales that we used to use for weighing corn, potatoes etc. were basically steelyards, where you added weights to the end and moved the small weight along the beam to finesse, but I had never heard the name before.

99. I don’t know if anyone is still reading this, but, to try to clear it up, phitonelly made a valid point.

    In the cryptic reading, “drunk” works perfectly as an anagram indicator. However, in the surface reading, it should really be “drank” (which doesn’t work in the cryptic reading). That was the point. However, “drunk” is an archaic usage of the past tense of “drink” . It is also used a lot locally where I live: “we drunk a lot at Christmas”.

    Incidentally, Hugh suggested a rewrite to this clue which would have avoided this issue, but, I asked to keep the original. I still think it works OK (although it relies on a non-standard past tense) and the cryptic reading is sound.

    Neil

100. Well, as you all know, bloggers receive emails of comments on their blogs, so I’m still here.
     I did have misgivings about this clue but I take Neil’s point about colloquial / regional variations. And it’s not just local: it seems that almost every day I come across this confusion between past participle and past tense – perhaps more often the other way round: ‘We’d already drank quite a lot’, ‘He hasn’t rang me all week’.
     It still ended up as one of my favourite clues – for the use of G[u]INNESS!

     (Of course, the clue would make perfect sense if we presumed a typo for ‘Jack’s’, as phitonelly suggests – although, of course, the mistake is usually the addition, rather than the omission of the apostrophe!)

101. Thanks Eileen

     Hugh put the apostrophe in and I argued it didn’t need it. I was wrong. However, I still think the clue is decent for the reasons we’ve mentioned.

     Neil

102. Tramp – I noticed the minor solecism when solving but didn’t think it was worth commenting on. It’s still a fine clue for the reasons Eileen gives.

     Also no problem with the traps definition – they support the arm, which is close enough for me.

     There was far too much to enjoy in this puzzle to let any minor imperfections spoil it.

103. Hi, Tramp and Eileen,
     Thanks for the follow up. Interesting discussion. I’m a firm believer in usage trumping strict accuracy so I’m fine with the clue. I just wasn’t aware of regional usage – I’ve been too long out of the country. Always enjoy Tramp puzzles and this was no exception.

104. Apologies for this being so late Eileen and thanks for another excellent summary but I have had some catching up to do and this was so good I didn’t want to let it pass unfinished(and I have enjoyed the cut and thrust above). I had an eyebrow raised over INNINGS, having twice been run out without facing a ball, and wondered if there may be a baseball get-out-of-jail but that would be singular I suppose, but it’s such a minor issue especially when the superbly misleading surface is considered and I certainly would not want it to overshadow the brilliance on display throughout, not only those long anagrams but the wonderful (to my unreconstructed brain) 24a (Peaches is of course my favourite Stranglers song) and others. Thanks Tramp especially for coming here to face the beamers and bouncers we’ve chucked down.

105. Thanks, Gazzh @ 104 😉

106. American here: What sort of pound equals what sort of yard? Are we talking like a car impound lot?

     Sledge (cricket meaning), dhansak, steelyard, and maybe SP are new to me, but yeah, we use tad where I’m from for a small amount or piece, never seen it for a child.

     That was fun and I definitely needed the detailed parsing of a few.

107. Mercy@106 hello and yes I think you have the right sense of “pound” – when I constructed that one (not knowing the full definition) I was thinking of eg a dog pound as a (secure court)yard – rightly or not, I associate that use of “pound” with your homeland far more than I do “tad” whose origin, like many above, i only learned thanks to Eileen’s blog.

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