Guardian 28,974 / Carpathian

64 comments on “Guardian 28,974 / Carpathian”

1. Quick solve with some very nice surfaces. Liked the long solutions. AVOCADO, BLUBS and BARGAIN were my favourites.

   Ta Carpathian & Eileen.

2. Is cosmopolitan a drink? I need to get out more.

   Pride/arrogance a slightly iffy connection, I thought. I’m proud of a good many people and things, but I hope I’m not arrogant.

   I’ve been trying really hard over recent months to learn all the British rivers — including Dee — but Ocado was a big ask for an Antipodean.

   (Actually Wikipedia tells me we have two rivers Dee in Australia, but you Brits have five. No doubt we pinched the name from you.)

   Apart from Ocado, which I’ll forgive you for, this was a pleasant divertissement, thank you, Carpathian.

3. 7d. How does STICK = “bear” ?

4. John Wells – that puzzled me for a minute or two: I think it’s ‘stick’ in the sense of ‘stand, tolerate’. I’ve only ever heard it in the negative, I think: ‘I can’t stick / bear …)

5. Thanks Carpathian and Eileen
   Virtually a complete write-in, with only COSMOPOLITAN as a drink needing checking. The long down ones were favourites.

6. GDU @2 (and muffin @5) – it’s a cocktail – see here
   https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cosmopolitan-cocktail
   (I didn’t know, either.)

7. I don’t think I can add much to Eileen’s excellent summary. Thanks to her and C.

8. Great Monday puzzle; Carpathian is one of my favourites. Thanks to her and Eileen.

   I smiled at SHAPELY, wondering if the bedspread-wearing primate in the surface of the clue was intended to be a chimpanzee or a senior cleric.

   And ‘’leather moved to and fro loudly” reminded me of the ‘leather pants’ scene in 3rd Rock from the Sun (if you haven’t seen it, it’ll brighten your day 🙂 ).

9. Thanks Essexboy@8, excellent clip.

10. Thanks, Carpathian and Eileen!

    COBBLESTONES:
    Before one of our music experts objects, Eileen has added three ‘?’s after TONES(pitches) 🙂
    In crosswordspeak, all is fair.

11. KVa @10
    Oops! They were a reminder to myself to check the equivalence, then I decided it was OK – deleted now!

12. Eileen @4 It appears in a positive sense with a similar meaning in “stick with me”/”bear with me”.

13. A nice easy solve, this morning. There is a school of thought that “Years” is the rhyming slang result of “Donkey’s ears”. “Donkey’s years” was one of my mother’s favourite expressions which I hold with fond memories.

    My travels have familiarised me with DoorDash – an American/Australian food delivery service, although I’m not sure how overseas solvers would have found OCADO – got AVOCADO from the crossers and removed AV, I guess – and “there’s an OCADO just for you” as Mel C would say in her OCADO advertisement voice over.

    My fave was 19 ac BLUBS.

    Thank you Eileen and Carpathian.

14. Yep, GDU @2, cocktails are a fun and variegated lot … Harvey Wallbanger, Sidecar, Cosmopolitan, Moscow Mule, and so on …

    Nice puzzle, ta CnE.

15. Thought this very gentle and pleasing, and of course got the music band theme, with SUEDE and ICEBERG each making an appearance…only joking of course!

16. We had STATUTE in yesterday’s Everyman (18d) with a roughly similar construction.

17. Thanks to Carpathian. I had fun with this puzzle. FIDDLESTICKS at 7d was my last one in, and I felt I had earned that final resolution when I eventually spotted it from the crossers. I agree with Eileen and others in liking DONKEYS YEARS at 10d a lot. You are right though, Eileen, I had no idea what was going on with AVOCADO at 17d.
    Thanks for the super blog Eileen, and I am enjoying the thread so far, fellow solvers.

18. A gentle start to the week with precise cluing, as one expects from Carpathian.

    I liked the COBBLESTONES and FIDDLESTICKS, although I, too, had to think twice about the equivalence of stick and bear.

    Thanks Carpathian and Eileen.

19. An easy-ish and enjoyable puzzle.

    Liked SUCCUMB.

    Thanks, both.

    * I am an Antipodean who knows of Ocado as I was thinking of ordering a grocery delivery with them.

20. Thanks Eileen @6 – made almost totally from things I don’t like; I must try one to see if the dislikes cancel out!

21. Thanks, Carpathian and Eileen. As per my comment in today’s Indy blog, this puzzle was as smooth, delicious and easy to digest as butterscotch Angel Delight. And this is why Carpathian is one of my favourite setters. I do like the chewier fare too, but variety in one’s diet is very much a good thing.

    GDU @2 – Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, of course. And is one of those funny words that has both positive and negative connotations, depending on the context in which you use it.

22. In what universe does stick mean bear?

23. Even I managed this one! Excellent blog, thanks (don’t like ta for some reason) to Carpathian and Eileen.

24. The COSMOPOLITAN cocktail was new : like bands, almost anything might turn out to be the name of one. I missed stick=bear, but not because I disagree with it. I’ve seen both SENATOR and ARTISAN more than once before.

    Liked DONKEYS YEARS which is also a regular part of my vocabulary. [They still pronounce ears as years in parts of Wales: a Welsh friend alleged that in his part of the world a chap who had part of an ear bitten off in a fight was known as Dai-Eighteen-Months].
    Also SUCCUMB and COBBLESTONES.

25. Robert Orr @22
    I found this in Chambers online
    STICK = colloq to bear or tolerate • could not stick it any longer. 

26. Robert orr @22 – please see comments 3, 4 and 12.

27. Not really anything to add to the comments above other than to thank Carpathian and Eileen for the smooth flow of both puzzle and blog.

28. Ronald@15 You could turn your joke into a bit of a hunting exercise for music performers “in the snippets” of the answers.

    I can see PLATTERs, STONES, (Alicia) KEYS, YEARS and years, (fat) LES, (Joe) ROGAN, STICK figure, (Chris) REA ….

    Who can remember the 70’s when AVOCADO green ( what a strange shade ) was the most popular bathroom colour ? Ugh !

    I’m off for a LATTE.

29. TIL that PENS are female swans, and that OCADO is the name of a delivery business. Both solved from necessity of definitions and crossers nonetheless.

    OCADO is a bit of a stretch IMO since they took their name from “avocado” to begin with.

30. Thanks Eileen.
    A welcome start to the week after Saturday’s mauling at the hands of my namesake.
    I knew the cocktail, not that I would ever be seen drinking it.
    The first bit of 26a was my LOI and favourite..
    Thanks C.

31. Re FIDDLESTICKS, and without thinking about it too deeply, I assumed the bear was Winnie the Pooh and he’d been cheating (fiddling / was involved in a fraud) at poohsticks. Obviously that doesn’t bear any scrutiny and the parsing mentioned by various people above is much better.

    Thanks both.

32. Flea @28
    I remember it very well – and aubergine was close behind! 😉

    Jacob @ 29
    And males are cobs – that’s the kind of thing we learned for the 11-plus.

33. Thanks to Eileen for the blog and Capathian for an enjoyable opener to the week.
    Favourites were FIDDLESTICKS; COBBLESTONES; SUEDE; BLUBS.

34. Straightforward Monday fare. I liked the long answers plus CHOICES and INFLATE.

    Thanks Carpathian and Eileen

35. A charming entertainment, apart from the -OCADO reference which led to a shrug and an eyebrow wiggle. Here’s puzzle that would make a fine entry point for anyone thinking of trying to inveigle a friend towards the dark art of cryptic solving.

    On COSMOPOLITAN I surmise that cocktails were invented to disguise the taste of low-grade alcohol – possibly during prohibition in the US. I certainly associate them with that era. A very dangerous item in my experience (limited (in fairness) to a series involving dry ice on a long-ago package holiday).

    Thanks ladies.

36. Did anybody else get hung up on EXEPENS?

    Can COBBLE mean “roughly prepare” without “together”? ((I cobbled a response? They cobbled a policy?)

    Eileen — is there another “flipping” in a clue before (or after) 5d?

    Never heard of OCADO or the COSMOPOLITAN drink. The recipe for the latter in Eileen’s link has a curious almost fetishistic step with a piece of orange zest — reminds me of my father’s martinis, which had to have a piece of lemon zest twisted over the drink so the oil would splash onto the surface. No olives, heaven forfend! (I hated them.)

    “Bar” for “barristers” in 19d seems a bit less than cryptic.

    Eileen@32 I remember avocado kitchen appliances all too well, but aubergine ones are new to me (hope they stay that way).

    What a fine puzzle and what an enjoyable blog — thanks, Carpathian and Eileen.

37. Valentine @
    There’s ‘flipped’ in 19ac. I agree with you re bar/barristers.
    It was bathrooms that were aubergine.

38. A quick solve for this Texan. One of those puzzles where almost every clue resulted in an immediate solution.

    Some days one is just on the same wavelength as the puzzle.

    While easy, I guess, a puzzle like this one is very pleasant every so often.

    Thanks

39. Like many, I was slow to get ‘bear’=STICK, being misled in the direction of Pooh, Fozzie, polar and koala. I had to resort to writing the letters out horizontally and imagining a double D before the penny dropped. Nice clue!

    Thanks to Carpathian and Eileen.

40. BTW Amused by all the solvers unfamiliar with a cosmopolitan cocktail. The signature drink of Sex in the City and one of the main drinks in the modern classic cocktail movement.

41. Thanks Carpathian for an enjoyable crossword. I needed a word finder for DEEPENS and I hadn’t heard of OCADO but I figured it had to be a grocery delivery service. All else went in fairly quickly but it took a minute to parse 7d. My top choices included TRANSCEND, 26a, ICEBERG, and BARGAIN. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

42. Eileen@37 Now I’m trying to picture a bathroom in aubergine. I’d really rather not.

43. Very Monday with lovely surfaces. Thanks Eileen for the clear and concise blog and thanks Carpathian for a suitably gentle start to the week.

44. Enjoyable and straightforward start to the week which would have been quicker if I’d seen FIDDLESTICKS a bit earlier. No idea why, but it resisted and held up two or three on the LHS. Thanks to setter and blogger, as usual.

45. gladys @24, Dai’s year-and-a-half, or one-and-a-half years, is so quirky. [PS my uncle Sam was a rugby player, and later told stories: such things did happen!]

46. A fairly straightforward solve, I particularly enjoyed DONKEYS YEARS. I arrived at stick for bear by a roundabout route, because it got me thinking of pooh-sticks..many thanks Carpathian and Eileen.

47. A completed puzzle – albeit with a little help from word finder on LHS. Almost as rare as an eclipse. My first finish of 2023 – and possibly my last.

48. If I asked for a Cosmopolitan in my pub I would be punched and asked to leave

49. Eileen@37
    (I can not find an aubergine bathroom, in the 1970s we knew them as eggplants and that colour was white. We get white and mottled aubergines in France. The Aubergine, deep purple, colour only came into crayons and paints in 1988, [Crayola] Maybe you are recalling burgundy. The attached lists all the awful colours available. We have avocado baths in France but that is the shape)

    https://nationwidediscontinuedbathrooms.co.uk/product/avocado-bath-1700×700/

50. Well, Clive, I must have misremembered – but I’m sure I can see those baths in my head. 😉

51. Thanks Eileen and Carpathian ! It took me a little while to get a foothold but from there it was smooth sailing, even having to infer the existence of Ocado and having forgotten the name for female swan if I ever knew it.

    I’m not bothered by “stick” for “bear” (can you stick/bear it) or “pride” for “arrogance” (they are confused enough by folks who think they have the first but in fact only the second anyway…) but I did wonder if the “to” in 24A was a stray word.

    It’s funny to find out COSMOPOLITAN is new to many here, as has been mentioned it was the signature order on Sex in the City and correspondingly trendy in the late 90s/early aughts. I’ve not seen it in the wild in ages but its nickname “cosmo” shows up regularly in American crosswords.

52. Eileen – you haven’t misremembered. A cherry/burgundy/purple sort of horror.
    Thanks for the blog

53. In the 70s my dad had an AVOCADO Lancia (a car) with a caramel velour interior 🙂

    Cheers C&E

54. I found this a tad tougher than most commenters, as the general opinion above me seems to have landed somewhere between ‘fairly straightforward’ and ‘a write-in’…! It took me two visits and a little head-scratching, but in the end all the parsings checked out and I’m not wholly sure what held me up (a sign of good clueing, that).

    Liked COBBLESTONES and FIDDLESTICKS in particular.

    Cheers both.

55. KVa@10, re 26a COBBLESTONES, I am not a music “expert” by any means, but while tone and pitch might not be exactly the same thing, there is sufficient equivalence to justify the clue, as you say.

    [ ginf@14, there was a baseball team years ago who’s manager was Harvey Kuenn; they had a lot of powerful batters, and were known as “Harvey’s Wallbangers”. ]

    Thanks Carpathian and Eileen for the fun. And yes, I can stick a fiddle – they are useful in an orchestra or a string quartet.

56. Thanks, nametab @52 – that’s it!

57. I had a Welsh colleague once who was referred to colloqially as “Dai” until his wife objected. After that he was known as “Never say die”.
    In the early ’80s we bought a house in spite of the fact that it had an avocado bathroom suite. Thankfully we had reason to move in under 3 years.
    Thanks to Carpathian and Eileen.

58. Thanks, Pino 😉

59. Finished! Just in time. Perfect Monday fare for us newcomers. We particularly liked the simple charm of 22D and found 15D rather fun. Thanks to Eileen for clarifying some of the parsing we couldn’t get, and to Carpathian for a very enjoyable and fair solve.

60. Congratulations,, Kandy – and welcome to the site!

61. Thanks Eileen – it usually takes us too long to finish for it to be worth posting, as everyone else has moved on. But we occasionally manage to finish a Monday puzzle on the day. We are in awe of everyone on here who manages to whizz through them, but we are learning a lot from you and the other bloggers and contributors, so maybe one day…

62. Eilleen @32 I vaguely remember cobs now that you mention it, but I only took the 12 Plus, so we didn’t cover pens 😉

63. Nice and straightforward, certainly easier than the Everyman.

64. All of you who had never heard of cosmopolitan as a cocktail–perhaps you’re too young? It peaked about 20 years ago along with Sex and the City, where it was the characters’ preferred cocktail.

    I remember back then going into one of my favorite restaurants and seeing waiters carrying around trays of them, which they were selling for $1 that evening. It may be the only time I’ve ever had one, not being much of a cocktail drinker, but I did like it.

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