Guardian 28,972 / Pasquale

96 comments on “Guardian 28,972 / Pasquale”

1. Thankyou Eileen for parsing a few which I completed but couldn’t parse: I didn’t know COR could mean ‘my’, had never heard of ZO, and only knew FARO as a town on the Algarve.

2. The ever-reliable Pasquale does it again – smooth, precise clueing throughout. Spent a brief moment wondering what BOTHERBS might be, not being familiar with POTHER, but it had to be POTHERBS really. Nice clue.

   And thanks to the ever-reliable Eileen for the blog. I don’t know if it was Lord Jim who said that about “my” but whoever it was, I agree. I thought DIARY could perhaps be read as &lit.

3. Nice to see BS clued as British Standards, rather than rubbish!

4. GK is a funny thing. Having spent two years living in Flint, North Wales, I was very familiar with Mold, which I imagine most Aussies would never have heard of. Some very clever clues: LAZARUS, SPINOZA, TOURIST, FRAZZLED, PIG OUT… and PEPYS – [almost] everyone’s favourite diarist – is back again. Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen.

5. Yes, interesting and pretty straightforward, OSCAN was first in and SPINOZA was a write-in even half unparsed. Last in was CALIBRATE when I gave up on it beginning BA- or MA-. I particularly liked 8D and 27A

6. DNF and really annoyed with myself. NHO Faro other than as a destination on the Algarve! Should have got it from the clue though. But this was an excellent challenge with the 2 long anagrams to get one started. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

7. JimAZ @5 – ‘Snap’ on BA/MA!

8. Very enjoyable solve with Eileen covering most of my (cor) favourites. The west fairly flew in but the other side was a lot chewier.

   Ta Pasquale & Eileen.

9. Surely I can’t be the only commenter on here? Anyway, thank you Pasquale, thank you Eileen, and thank you to all the ballboys and ballgirls who have yet to make their presence felt. (There’s
   a lot of tennis going on in this town atm.)
   Relatively easy for a Friday I thought, but I was happy to have found it so.

10. Jim AZ @5: ditto on CALIBRATE.

11. Evidently, my phone, like its owner, is somewhat slow on the uptake at times!

12. Gert @9, no, Shirley will be along soon.

    Didn’t know RAZZ but I knew about the Razzies. Didn’t know MOLD, but it was the right shape to fit the space. Did any US solvers wonder how to take a U out of a word with no U?

    EGG-AND-SPOON RACE brought back happy memories and was my pick of a very enjoyable bunch, thanks P & E.

13. Very smooth as expected and it was nice to be on the wavelength for this one. I had the same momentary double take on BOTHERBS as widders @2 – pother is an even nicer word for fuss than bother. Favourites include CORTISONE, SPINOZA, TEDIOUS, TOURIST, EVENTER, FRAZZLED, TEASES, TOASTING and CHURCH. I thought MOLD an odd choice to fill M-L- , a town of just 10,000 people in Flintshire, but it was nicely clued. I was thrown by CALIBRATE right to the end; initially by looking to fit in the ubiquitous BA/MA but I also misunderstood the ‘makes a’ in the middle.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

14. me @12: she’s already been! Sorry Shirl.

15. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen
    The long anagrams went straight it, so that made it easier than usual for a Pasquale, though I didn’t know OSCAN. I saw how CALIBRATE works, but I’m still struggling a bit with the definition – does it mean what you do to a measuring instrument?

16. JimAZ, Tassie Tim, AlanC – me too! That’s why, as for Post Mark, it was my last entry.

17. OED includes the following:

    Graduate – “to divide into degrees; to mark out into portions according to a certain scale”

    Calibrate – “to graduate a gauge of any kind with allowance for its irregularities”

    Works for me.

18. Thanks, Widdersbel @17 – that’s how I read it.

19. Thanks Pasquale, I enjoyed that. I finally got CALIBRATE when I spotted the crate – though I never did find the alibi. I think I know FARO from Western stories as the typical game played by wicked gamblers on Southern riverboats – apparently it is no longer played. Nho OSCAN but it had to be that. Trust Pasquale to use the Zo (and backwards at that)!
    Pedant time: the garden centre may well sell potted herbs, but POTHERBS are the province of the greengrocer, being the kind of assorted root vegetables you need for a stew.

20. I suspected as much, Widdersbel – thanks.
    Of course, there remains the problem that alibi doesn’t mean excuse. I’m surprised Eileen didn’t mention that!

21. Well, muffin, I knew you would. 😉

22. Did anyone else parse 25 as EVE (first woman) + [e]NTER (almost to register). Or does “almost” mean the missing letter has to be deleted from the end of a word?

23. Like a few already I wondered whether there was such a thing as a Botherb. I must attempt to use the word Pother more often.
    I had a bit of a frown at the (indirect?) anagram of PEPYS, but this was a steady and satisfying solve

24. Enjoyable and a bit tough in places.

    New for me: OSCAN; Mold town in Wales (looks quite pretty from what I saw via google); POTHER = fuss; CALIBRATE = graduate.

    I did not parse 12ac apart from rev of NIPS + OZ? +. A. Never heard of this type of cattle before but will try to remember it!

    Liked PIT STOP, TOASTING.

    Thanks, both.

25. C2014/6 alibi n….. an excuse for failure (inf)

26. I love the way you always learn new words from Cryptic crosswords: ZO, POTHER, FARO, RAZZ. The only problem is trying to remember them for next time.

27. Seemed easier than the usual Friday puzzles. Remembered ANTHER from biology lessons at school, as EGG-AND-SPOON RACES ( primary school ).

    Familiar with MOLD as I grew up just 20 miles away and many of my genealogical records are available there.

    On 6 dn, I was another BA/MA-er.

    Favo[u]rite : CORTISONE.

    GB@9 Yes, I’m an avid watcher of the Australian Open Tennis. I’m PIGging OUT on it. I’m TOASTING the loads of ACING going on, particularly by Andy Murray whose victory yesterday ( & today – :4 in the morning ! ) was analogous to the raising of LAZARUS. Today’s play is a date for my DIARY, after I post this.

    Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

28. not to mention OSCAN.

29. Tim C @23: I know Eileen has noted PEPYS as an anagram but I don’t think that accounts for the word ‘through’ in the clue. I read it as just YES being anagrammed by ‘working’ but then running ‘through’ the two P’s for pages. Alternating between P’s and the anagram. No idea whether that works for you or for others. But it would mean it’s not an indirect anagram.

30. Got there, after I’d searched the map of Wales for MOLD, and wondered whether loi TOASTING was what was wanted at 18d. Lovely moment as the EGG AND SPOON RACE stumbled in and perhaps wins the Victor Ludorum today. Couldn’t parse CORTISONE. Don’t often use the word Pother these days, either. CALIBRATE a nice misdirection of sorts. Enjoyed the fun and games, though I’ve never played FARO, only flown there on a package holiday years ago…

31. Somewhat surprised not to know zo, given it’s crossword-handiness. Not sure about potherbs … gladys says root vegies but the Web seems to say greens. Interesting to see razz, very familiar here (if a bit dated), but I thought it might be an Oz thing. Knew anther … amazing how some junior science stuff can stick for six decades (sepal, calyx, stigma etc). Wondered how Oscan went extinct down there in southern Italy. Anna would know, or pdm, or eb. All food for fun, thx PnE.

32. Tim@23, PM@29: I was quite happy with ‘working’ as the anagrind for YES and ‘through’ to indicate that the EYS interleaves with the two Ps = ‘pages’. Looks pretty clean to me.

33. A crossbred bovine in Tibet called a zo, zho, dzo or a dzho? Blimey!

34. Not too many obscurities this time from Pasquale – OSCAN the only one I DNK.

    Like PM @29, I thought the intention in 23 was that an anagram of yes was interspersed through pp for two pages. I got this before 3, so that was then a write-in. The long anagrams were good and I liked COMPLIANT for one getting up, TOASTING for the old garment not good, PIT STOP for the good misleading surface, and of course the tricky CALIBRATE where it seems most of us played with MA/BA at the beginning.

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

35. Not on the right wavelength today. Didn’t know Mold, Pepys, razz, pother, Spinoza or Faro, so not much hope of finishing.

36. Very enjoyable, but on the easier side for Pasquale, aided by the two long anagrams which went in fairly quickly.

    I too didn’t know “razz” but the answer was pretty clear.

    CALIBRATE and COMPLIANT were my last two in, but also my favourites.

    Now, back to the tennis. What an absurdly brilliant match Andy Murray played yesterday!

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

37. [ginf @31, Gervase knows most things about Italy, and Eileen knows everything about Latin. I had the same mental query as you, but hadn’t the foggiest. Wiki says it co-existed quite happily with Greek, but was finally displaced by Latin.]

38. As a former Scrabble addict I was familiar with the ZO and just by chance had to lookup up MOLD Family Court yesterday for work

    Muffin @20 Chambers has EXCUSE as an informal definition for ALIBI. Then again it also has POT HERB as two words rather than one

    Cheers P&E

39. ginf @31 – I remember singing ‘the anther, my friend, is blowing in the wind’ in a science class way back when – certainly fixed the word in the memory. michelle @24 – Mold is a nice little town, with the superb Theater Clwyd where Anna and I saw some brilliant plays – it is on the provincial circuit for London bound productions. GDU @35 – if my memory serves me well, you didn’t know about PEPYS the last time he appeared too! Apologies if it was someone else.

40. ginf @31 and essexboy @37 – I did wonder whether to expand on OSCAN. You may find this interesting: https://omniglot.com/writing/oscan.htm

41. Willbar@22: Yes, me…

42. TimC and bodycheetah
    Well they shouldn’t! It really annoys me when a word is used incorrectly and there’s a perfectly acceptable (correct) alternative – “excuse” for example. (And don’t get me started on “epicentre”!)

43. Always like it when the setter is Pasquale. I think a lot of his clues are beautifully constructed (even when I can’t solve them).

    Got most today – greatly helped by the two long ones.

    I think my favourites were SYCOPHANTS, FARO, POTHERBS, LAZARUS

    Not heard of ZO – will add it to my crossword language lists and also not heard of OSCAN

    Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

44. Gladys @ 19

    [I know FARO from Georgette Heyer novels where the plot sometimes involves a man getting into debt through too much of a fondness for gaming.]

45. [and I am pretty sure I have seen POTHER in her novels]

46. “a Tibetan breed of cattle, developed by crossing the yak with common cattle”? Seriously, there is “general knowledge” and there is “words known only to professional Scrabble players”…

47. Jacob @46: if you have consciously chosen, on the many occasions in life when you could have spent timing chewing the fat with Tibetan yak herders, to occupy yourself with other things then you only have yourself to blame … 😉

48. Jacob @46
    … and cryptic crossword enthusiasts: that’s where I learned it – and I really have met it quite a few times since.

49. PostMark @47: Unfortunately my bovine casual conversational opportunities are completely consumed by zebu farmers, a species that rarely gets its due in crosswords! 😉

50. Sometimes the expectation that Pasquale is going to include an obscure word is as distracting as a genuine obscurity. A very enjoyable puzzle, though. Essexboy obviously has happier memories of the EGG AND SPOON RACE than I do.

51. Eileen @48 it is now firmly ensconced in my list of useful crossword-isms. (I am a late-in-life newcomer to the pleasure of cryptics). Meanwhile my brain is occupied with trying to construct an alternate clue using OZ rather than ZO and a misdirection to “a philosopher’s fantasy land” (since Plato invented Atlantis…). Not quite there yet…

    In other news, I hope before I die to internalize the extremely common use of opponents at bridge…

52. [Petert @50, it was the pinnacle of my athletics career, all downhill after that]

    [Thanks Eileen @40, fascinating stuff. When they adopted Latin it appears they must have switched from right-to-left to left-to-right. Hope they had a referendum.]

53. Entertaining puzzle from the Don. Long anagrams very good, but my favourite was CALIBRATE for the elephant trap of reading ‘graduate’ as a noun (did those of us who disregard surfaces not fall for this, I wonder?)

    Not a lot more to be said about OSCAN. In the centuries BCE there was a family of Indo-European languages, now known as Italic, spoken in central and southern Italy. The only one that survived was Latin, because it had higher prestige, as the language of Rome, the centre of the empire and therefore of business and politics (this is why many minority languages wither away – a process which is still happening). But it was still being spoken in 79 CE at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius: there are graffiti in Oscan on the walls of Pompeii. Of course it wasn’t just the other Italic languages that were displaced by Latin. The Celtic languages of Gaul, the unrelated Etruscan, and the various ancient Iberian tongues all gave way to Latin – and the various dialects of colloquial Latin live on today as the Romance languages. Never say that Latin is a dead language 🙂

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

54. Thanks Eileen for clearing up a few gaps in my parsing, i remember all the pother here when Alibi=Excuse appeared last time so thanks assembled commenters because that eventually got me to the answer, very nice clue. I failed 22A with an unparsed SAPO (a Peruvian game involving throwing a disc into the mouth of a brass frog – almost parses, i am sure we have all known some high-flying PAs). [In any case, outweighing this is the fabulous 8d bringing back memories of my sole ‘podium finish’ one year on sports day, thanks to my mum digging out an old spoon with ridges in the bowl that somehow held the egg in place and enabled me to run less tentatively than the rest of the field. Still only made 3rd!] Thanks Pasquale.

55. [PM@47 Many’s the time I’ve discussed zos in Oscan over a game of faro with yak herders in Mold – people need to get out more]

56. Thanks, bodycheetah. 😉

57. Having been born and raised in Liverpool, MOLD was very familiar to me. Just as well Pasquale didn’t give the town its Welsh name: Yr Wyddgrug. More challenging to clue 🙂

58. Gazzh@54. That’s just the sort of trick which caused my disillusionment with the egg and spoon race.

59. Like Lord Jim, I thought of COR immediately for “my,” and I also used the interweaving tactic for PEPYS. I had. It trouble with RAZZ. Maybe it’s more common here in the U.S.

60. …had no trouble with RAZZ…

61. Thanks eb and Eileen. Sounds maybe like the democratic Greeks coexisted with it but the Romans overran it. Just theorising … 🙂

62. [Jacob @49 & bodycheetah @55 😀 ]

63. Fun mnemonic, TT @39. Bob’s anthem came out in ’63, exactly my ‘O-Level’ (‘Junior’) year, so not enough time for that homophonic pun to emerge (esp in far-off Perth, the furthest shore of the colonial tide …!)

64. Hi Eileen, I did indeed say a while ago that I’d finally managed to train myself so that every time I see “my” in a clue I think COR! It’s just one of those things that seems to come up quite often recently.

    A very nice puzzle. EGG AND SPOON RACE was excellent.

    Many thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

65. Echoing Posterntoo, RAZZ is so familiar here that I’m surprised to find so many learning it from this crossword. So it must be American. It’s meaning is more broad now than “to give a raspberry”–it refers to jeering and slating more generally.

    “Spiv” in the clue for TOURIST was a new one for me, though. Did not know the Welsh town, either, and it took a moment before I put it in even though the clue was clear enough, because I found it odd that there’d really be a town called MOLD. (And to whoever was wondering how Americans would feel about that clue: since I’ve been doing the Guardian puzzles for going on 20 years now, I automatically switch to British spellings. But I did note that he could also have used “Welsh town’s fashion–American (4)”.

    I read SPINOZA’s Ethics in in interesting course on philosophy of religion as an undergraduate. Like so many things I read during my schooling, it’s an interesting book that I’m not sure I’d actually recommend. (The basic premise is, what if we had a limited set of axioms about the world and set about using them to “prove” ethical rules like they were Euclidean geometry?)

    Anyhoo, off to go razz some zos.

66. [ … farthest shore would’ve been better; and earlier @31 I see I’ve got an it’s instead of an its … finicky can be fun … ]

67. Thanks both,
    I had ‘solo’ for ‘faro’ so did not get 18d.

    Not happy with ‘totally exhausted’ for ‘frazzled’ which in its metaphorical sense is the same as ‘frayed’ i.e. a bit tired but short of exhausted. Pace what any of the lesser dictionaries say.

68. Tyngewick @67 – my Collins, Chambers and SOED all give ‘exhausted’ as a definition of FRAZZLED. (For what it’s worth, as I said, I use the word quite often and that’s what I mean by it!) Collins also has ”to a frazzle: totally, absolutely, as in burnt to a frazzle.

69. As ever, 4 short, still not finished a crossword this year, and only a small handful last year.
    I enjoyed this, found it approachable for the Don.
    Looking forward to checking a couple of parses and the comments.
    Thanks both.

70. Eileen, something very odd has happened to your link to Spinoza — he seems to have acquired one of those Tibetan yak hybrids. Probably the talk of Amsterdam. Can you fix it?

    I haven’t read the comments yet, but wanted to get this info to you quickly.

71. Thanks, Valentine – have only just seen your comment. Will have a look now.

72. Goodness knows what happened there – sorted now. Thanks again.

73. Petert@50: I know exactly what you mean. (“I’m pretty sure this clue is going to produce a name I’ve never met in my life for an animal I’ve never heard of, so I might as well reveal it”) And then it turns out to be DEER rather than DZHO.

74. Gladys @73 – I have done this a number of times…very annoying!

75. 27A is an anagram of INCOMER BY, not NEWCOMER BY. Apologies if someone has already said this.

76. Nice crossword – many thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.
    One small point, Eileen, 27a is an anagram of INCOMER BY not newcomer – thanks

77. Thanks Pasquale for some nicely crafted clues. I concur with Eileen’s favourites. TEDIOUS was at the top of my list and I can’t believe that I never knew it was an anagram of that ubiquitous word “outside.” I missed ANTHER but I think I’ve seen that before, maybe with a leaderless cat in the clue. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

78. Beat me to it, Bhoyo!

79. Miraculously, Bhoyo, no one has! Thanks – I’ll fix it now.

80. I enjoyed that, and the long anagrams helped hugely. POTHERBS took me far longer than it should have, not because of the P/B-OTHER thing but because I’ve never encountered it as one word! If it was clued as (3,5) I’d have got it 20 minutes sooner…

    Thanks both.

81. [HYD @69: Missing just 4 clues in a Pasquale crossword or in any Friday crossword is actually pretty good. I consider my solving worthwhile if the number of ticks for favourite clues outnumbers the ones where I needed assistance.]

82. A great entertainment so thanks both (particularly to Eileen for ‘zo’ – who knew?).

    But I count 6 (out of 28) clues that involve in-laws (solve a mini clue and then manipulate that): ((f)ACING, LAZ(e)ARUS(h), MO(u)LD, EVE(e)NTER, CALIB(i)RATE and TO(g)ASTING). I really don’t remember this device when most of me was growing up (my armpits were growing down) and I find it borderline unfair. Just me?

83. Alphalpha @82
    I knew ZO – but only from crosswords!

84. I don’t think of FRAZZLED as “totally exhausted” so much as “stressed.” But apparently I’m behind the times.

    eb@12 No, I know your tricks and your manners, I took the U out of “mould.” It reminded me of one year when the paper gave President Johnson’s Thanksgiving menu, including “molded jelly,” and my little brother was grossed out — he thought it meant “moldy jelly.”

    “17a Stones number one track changes here.” Is there any way that can make sense?

    TT@39 and Tony@77
    If called by a panther
    Don’t anther.
    Ogden Nash

    Great fun. Half a dozen left to puzzle over this morning, the way I like it best. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

85. Valentine @84
    I think “Stones” refers to the Rolling Stones, a “popular beat combo“…

86. I would have said that Cortisone is a steroid, and Cortisol is a hormone.

87. Quite an easy one I thought. Now then POTHER isn’t a word I’ve used even in scrabble. Must have seen it somewhere. Checked Chambers who rather mysteriously state “not connected to powder” without mentioning the more obviously likely connection : “bother”.
    Sounds posh to me.
    Thanks both

88. Aha! There’s our old friend ZO making his appearance yet again! What Scrabble fanatic can possibly claim they don’t know the word? In the end we decided to ban the word in our ‘house rules’ – it made it just too easy to get rid of the ‘Z’ at endgame. Admittedly I haven’t played Scrabble for many years now – was getting bored with all the over-use of 2-letter words (ZO among them, but also JO, GU, YU etc. etc.).
    But I’m quite happy to see words like these crop up in Cruciverbshire. At least you have to know their meanings…

    A fine offering from the Don – not too difficult but entertaining. I suppose I have to pin a ‘like’ on EGG AND SPOON RACE. Now: ‘fess up, all you rotters! Who cheated as a kid? Was superglue around then?

    Thanks to Don and Eileen.

89. Damnit, so close to completing my first Friday in a while! I had to give up on CALIBRATE, as I was fixated on MA- or BA-.
    Weirdly, I found Thursday and Friday’s puzzles more approachable than Monday’s this week.

90. [Laccaria @88: My parents, being children of Italian immigrants and having lived through the Depression, abhorred the idea of wasting food on such frivilous activities as an EGG AND SPOON game. Times have changed since then.]

91. [Tony @90
    Others may have had different experiences, but I’ve never seen an egg-and-spoon race in which real eggs were used – they were always pordelain or similar!]

92. [if Roz comes by here, thanks for the suggestion to try this weeks Azed]

93. [muffin @ 91: After a bit of searching I found instances of raw eggs being used but in more recent times wooden eggs have replaced them. An amusing aside — In 1990 a runner completed the London Marathon in three hours forty-seven minutes while carrying a dessert spoon with an uncooked egg balanced upon it.]

94. Tony @81 – thanks, I am getting better (I think)

95. PostMark @29, pserve_p2 @32, yes I can see how that works, although it still grates a bit

    muffin @42 I’ll leave you to argue that with the lexicographers who compile these dictionaries, although I suspect your beef is with peoples’ usage of a word rather than with dictionaries that just reflect that usage. (and don’t get me started on proactive).

96. Tim C @95
    Yes, it’s the “desciptive rather than prescriptive” attitude of dictionaries that’s the problem here. It would be OK if they gave “incorrect” rather than “informal”.

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