Guardian 29,014 – Tramp

80 comments on “Guardian 29,014 – Tramp”

1. Nice, steady solve with no obscure words after yesterday’s jorum feast. Unfortunately, it was themed around those BUGBEARS, but lots of clever variations. Favourites among lots of ticks were BUGBEAR, STYROFOAM, COMMENSURATE, HAIRPIN BENDS, BIG CHEESE, PHRASEMONGERS, PANTO, CAYENNE PEPPER and SHEBANGS. Satisfying end to the weekdays.

   Ta Tramp & Andrew.

2. Yeah, OK. I got this all out, but groans greatly outnumbered smiles. Convoluted, “tricky” wordplays that didn’t do anything for me. Perhaps I’m just in a grumpy mood today.

   Why is scramble “go up”?

3. Loved STEAMIER, STYROFOAM and Ricky Martin’s SHEBANGS

   UNDERIVED isn’t Chambers – these kind of UN+ words are a common cause of discord in our household Scrabble games!

   Ta T&A

4. GDU @2: scramble is a form of climbing.

5. Failed to parse STYROFOAM, GRIDIRON, HYENA (there’s a hidden GHANA in that clue which is distracting). Some fairly stretchy definitions (NAILERS, SHEBANG). I’m expecting a lot of comments about ug being easier than yesterday’s, but it wasn’t for me.

6. Lovely as always and the theme was not so intrusive as to spoil. I failed to parse STYROFOAM so many thanks to Andrew. And isn’t PHRASEMONGERS an ugly word. Wordsmiths, I love, but phrasemongers, yuk. Perfectly fair clue, though. The other one that tied me up for a bit was BIG CHEESE: I thought the short life story was a BIO rather than a short BI(o).

   Favourites include SPATES, HAIRPIN BENDS, NAILERS, POVERTY, PEER GROUP, CAYENNE PEPPER and KINGLIKE.

   Thanks Tramp & Andrew

7. Thank you, AlanC.

8. I took scramble as the military order to take to the air.

9. I agree with GDU@2 about the convoluted wordplays – few of the clues were solvable without the crossers (no bad thing in itself as discussed recently), but too many ‘I suppose that must be it’ answers. Favourite CRAYON.
   As AlanC@4 says, scrambling is climbing intermediate between hillwalking and rockclimbing.
   Thanks Andrew and Tramp.

10. The theme of H&M was one that I could do without as the subject has been given too much attention.

    I could not parse 20ac apart from CH = chapter.

    As a Malay speaker, I always find the word ORANG as an abbreviation for orangutan (in English, not Malay) amusing because ORANG = ‘man, person’. Orang utan = ‘forest person’ and is used for Pongo pygmaeus, family Pongidae. A Malay or Indonesian would never refer to an orangutan as an orang. Just saying 😉

    Thanks, both.

11. I had scramble as Take Off in a Hurry, buteither I think will do. Canada Geese fly over the Atlantic or The Pond.

    Tramp made me work hard to finish this. I liked Harry as an anagrind, That took mme a while to spot. Allin all a good work out and I my groans were appreciative ones.
    Thanks both.

12. I thought ‘Rod’ in CAYENNE PEPPER might be hinting at Rod Stewart and the dreadful ‘Hot Legs’.

13. Different sort of challenge to yesterday. As always with Tramp, I needed this blog for quite a few parsings despite having completed the puzzle. Glad to say I didn’t know Meghan called him H. Also had a Doh moment when I read the blog. I was about to ask what under-ived was, and complain about an obscure word, when the little light bulb came on. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

14. 20 Across – Over the pond refers to the US, where the phrase ‘Big Cheese’ orininated, I think.

15. Cracking puzzle, thanks, Tramp. Definitely a challenge, as others have said, but a hugely enjoyable one for me. As Andrew says, clever use of the royal pair in different ways. I can tolerate them in wordplay form, and happily ignore them the rest of the time. (Also noted, Tramp, that you’ve gone for “McDonald’s primarily” this time after the complaints last time!)

    Thanks for the blog, Andrew.

    michelle @10 – the inevitable earworm

    Crispy @13 – I also spent a few moments puzzling over UNDER-IVED. Great clue, I thought.

16. Very satisfying, although the timing is as the press attention has ramped up on the pair in question, again, and they’ve been trending on Twitter, again, so they feel somewhat unavoidable. But this was delightful, lots of smiles.

    I double checked ORANG was right when I solved it, as my first in, because I wasn’t sure it works on its own, as michelle @10 described.

    Postmark @6, I think it’s because BIO is accepted for biography in crosswordland, even if it’s a prefix meaning life, that when shortened it becomes BI.

    And gladys @5, I did find it easier than yesterday, sorrynotsorry.

    Thank you to Tramp and Andrew.

17. Just rhe same as Crispy@13 only he/she expressed it much more elegantly than I could have done. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

18. One of those puzzles that creates despair at first but gradually yields.
    Thanks both.
    (I read “scramble” in the RAF sense)

19. Thanks Tramp and Andrew
    HYENA was a bung – no idea on the parsing. Although not a Malay speaker, I knew what the ORANG bit if orang-utan meant, so like Michelle raised an eyebrow at that one.
    13 was a neat anagram, and I liked CAYENNE PEPPER too.

20. michelle @10, Widdersbel @15

    Orang putih = white person

    (as I was when working in Indonesia).

21. Another who couldn’t read UNDER-IVED right. I tried to find a way that UNDERHAND (under 4 inches) could mean anything. I suppose “overived” could be used to describe a crossword with too many Roman numerals.

22. Indeed michelle @10, Orang by itself could equally apply to the indigenous Orang Asli (“first people”) of peninsular Malaysia.

23. Widdersbel @15, Martin @17, Petert @21. Thanks all. I feel less daft than I did now.
    Further to other comments, I preferred the kind of challenge offered today, as it required mental agility rather than (arguably) specialist vocab.

24. Didn’t really enjoy this as much as other Tramp puzzles. Too many unparsed – PEER GROUP, TAIL PIPE, RECUR, POVERTY, and TABOOS. The recurring mentions of Royalty (or once was) didn’t really gel things together for me. Last two in the awkward UNDERIVED and KINGLIKE. Didn’t spot the pod of whales in 7d, either. Only a C Minus for me today…

25. I agree entirely with Widdersbel’s first paragraph @15.

    My favourites were 1ac TAILPIPE (neat ‘lift and separate’ ‘shadow cabinet’), 9ac BUGBEAR, 12ac STYROFOAM, 13ac COMMENSURATE, 17ac HAIRPIN BENDS (three clever anagrams), 24ac POVERTY, 26ac GRIDIRON, 4dn PHRASEMONGERS (all three for the surfaces) and 19dn CRAYON, for another ‘lift and separate’.

    Thanks, as ever, to Tramp and to Andrew.

26. As has been mentioned ‘over the pond for celebrity’ is the definition in 20. It’s a nice play on words … except for shortening biography twice.

27. Am I the only one who found the surface reading of 22ac, “- on King Charles carries”, incomprehensible?

28. Shirl@18 sums it it for me. I got all the solutions correct without aids, but find that some of my parsings were not exactly right.

29. I didnt like “Nailers” but nothing else fitted or parsed-doubt if I’ll ever use it
    Otherwise very fine
    Thanks all.

30. As others have said, a most enjoyable challenge

    Many thanks to Tramp and Andrew

31. I enjoyed this very much despite finding a couple impossible to parse, so thanks to both.

32. Excellent puzzle. I’m with gladys @5 – this was trickier for me than yesterday’s. Nothing leapt out at first glance and I had to resort to finding and solving the anagram clues to give myself a foothold. Tramp’s constructions are often convoluted but it enables him to create some brilliant surfaces. References to the Sussexes are obvious, but there are other clever contemporary allusions here: the government’s fiasco over protective equipment for the pandemic in TAILPIPE, bad behaviour of members of the Metropolitan Police in TABOOS, fake news in NAILERS, and low morale in the NHS in SHEBANGS and SCARER.

    I took ‘they might fly over the pond’ to indicate (Canada) GEESE, as BIG CHEESE is an expression used on both sides of the Atlantic, whatever its provenance, but either parsing works.

    Favourites were POVERTY, UNDERIVED and STYROFOAM (which is an Americanism, and a tradename, I presume – the standard British term is ‘expanded polystyrene’)

    HYENA was my only parse fail today.

    Many thanks to Neil and Andrew

33. A lovely set of clues. COMMENSURATE, PEER GROUP, HAIRPIN BENDS were my favourites, but this was just a fine puzzle overall.

    Thanks Tramp & Andrew.

34. I do like Tramp and his wordplays once you get your head around them. Excellent puzzle with good digs at H&M, although I do think M got seriously abused by our tabloid press.

    I liked TAILPIPE for the shadow cabinet, STYROFOAM and PHRASEMONGERS for good anagrams, the ‘short corners’ in HAIRPIN BENDS, and STEAMIER for the bigamists’ threesomes. Like Stella @27, I didn’t really understand the surface of the clue for RECUR (I assume something to do with a dog?); maybe gathering or introduction would have provided different options.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

35. Thanks Andrew for the super blog, as always.

    This never started out as a themed puzzle. I had two H&M-themed clues (POVERTY and PHRASEMONGERS) which I put into a blank grid and then filled around. These days, I try to steer clear of themed puzzles as, sometimes, their clues can end up convoluted. Largely, I think, these are a decent set of clues: about five of them are late rewrites. TAILPIPE originally used “dog whistle”, but, unbeknown to me, another setter had already used that idea: I was thrilled with that wordplay!

    Admittedly, “scramble” isn’t great and I’m not ecstatic about HYENA.

    Thanks for the kind comments.

    Ps I’m in the Times today.
    Neil

36. I see BIG CHEESE more as a powerful person/ boss/crime boss, rather than celebrity, but I’m sure someone will put me straight.
    Favourites PHRASEMONGERS and STYROFOAM for their topicality, surfaces, and punch-packed wordplay.

37. Also liked NAILERS for its contemporary reference to Netflix (which I don’t subscribe to).
    Following copmus’s comment, I was curious and looked up ‘nail a lie’. Found several theories as to its origin including from Free Dictionary: nail a lie expose something as a falsehood or deception………
    shopkeepers nailing forged coins to their shop counter to expose them and put them out of circulation

38. Thanks to Tramp for commenting. Always nice to see the setter’s thoughts.

39. Michelle @20 I agree about ORANG (11a), I filled it in as “what else can it be?” while being unhappy with it.

    I was also unhappy with 20a, BI as short for BIO which is already short for BIOGRAPHY.

    Otherwise, challenging and fun.

40. Thanks Andrew, I couldn’t separate the PEPPER to parse that part of it, but enjoyed the exercise of piecing the others together and thought quite a few of these were inspired, eg 17a.
    Also Jackkt@8, that meaning hadn’t occurred to me and i think works better than my original thought of the hillwalking sense, which might just be a traverse.
    Stella@27 yes that bugged me too but I can’t think of a neater way to combine those elements, will keep trying.
    I was going to complain that a bugbear is more of an annoyance than a terrible thing, but dictionary has one definition as a “goblin that eats naughty children” – while I may occasionally wish for this at home, i think it fits the bill as a definition so thanks Tramp!

41. Stella @27 et al — I can’t make any sense of the surface in 22A either.

42. Well I’m a republican Australian but my take on the wordplay for 22a is
    RE=on. CR Charles Rex carries U (united).

43. Laborious. Why is OVER = spare? Is this one of your cricket things?

44. Trams @43. If you need 4 eggs and you have 5, then you have one spare / over.

45. I just want to add my support to Michelle’s comment @10. Using ORANG alone to refer to the Orangutan doesn’t make any sense. As my moniker suggests, I live in Malaysia and, as simonc was once, I am an orang putih, a white man. And like everyone else, an orang, a person. What I am not, is an orangutan. It resembles the use of LATTE to refer to a café latte, which equally irritates some, but less defensible, to my mind.

46. Trams. 4 sweet, 3 children; one each and one over!

47. I agree entirely with Eileen’s paragraph @25!

    All I have to add about the themed couple is that we often hear comments here about GK, but having to know, for HYENA, what one unimportant person calls another seems a bit much.

    Interesting discussion here about ORANG: I had no idea.

48. Good tough workout and even someone like me, who detests “schoolboy humour” in these crosswords, couldn’t help but giggle a bit at PANTO!

    What did I learn today? That Megan calls Harry “H”…. who knew? More importantly, who cares?!

49. A fine puzzle, and I too loved the various uses of the unlucky pair.

    Favourite was CAYENNE PEPPER

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew

50. Stella Heath @27
    Incomprehensible? No, not to me, I detect an echo of the famous “Up with which I will not put” associated with Churchill, but here the word order seems less tortured, for emphasis.

51. KTColin @45: Why is ‘orang’ less defensible than ‘latte’? Both are similar linguistic mistakes. Ask for a latte in Italy and you would just get a glass of milk. Italian is a much more familiar language in the West than Malay. Anglophones order lattes far more often than they talk about species of Pongo. Does repeated usage excuse an error? 🙂

52. ….my point is that both usages are wrong etymologically, but that’s the way language warps and twists. We just have to get over it (though I still wince at ‘panini’!)

53. Why is three-legged TRIPODAL, but two-legged BIPEDAL? Why is a camera support a tripod but you and I and kangaroos bipeds?

    How do SHEBANGS = matters”

    Enjoyed it. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

54. Valentine @53: Tripedal is also a valid word, and it was my first thought until I realised it didn’t parse properly. TRIPODAL is a mongrel word, with a Greek basis and a Latin ending – ‘tripodic’ would be more regular.

55. Hi Valentine @53
    Tripod comes from Greek for foot – pous, genitive podos and biped from Latin for foot – pes, genitive pedis.

56. Stella Heath@27 & Toby@41 : On King Charles carries is just King Charles carries on in a fanciful word order. As in “up she goes!” just means she goes up.
    Valentine@53: my little word machine quotes the OED as defining shebang as a matter, operation, or set of circumstances.
    [On the subject of little battery powered helpers, my ancient Seiko ER900 (which I believe they no longer make) is about to die. Does anyone have any recommendations for a replacement that is currently available? I’m not always able to access the t’internet and am old enough to hate smartphones]
    Thanks to Tramp (especially for dropping in) and Andrew.

57. Collins:’
    SHEBANG in British English
    NOUN slang
    1. a situation, matter, or affair (esp in the phrase the whole shebang)
    2. a hut or shack
    Word origin C19: of uncertain origin
    SHEBANG in American English
    1. a shack or hut
    2. Informal an affair, business, contrivance, thing, etc.: chiefly in the whole shebang
    Word origin prob. var. of shebeen’

58. I thought SHEBANG was a party but had more trouble with UNDERIVED which I didn’t see as a word even after thinking of putter iv under the UNDER!
    Didn’t like the theme just because I’m very anti royals.
    Thanks both

59. DrWhatsOn @47 I (also having little in-depth knowledge of the couple in question) parsed this slightly differently as h=Husband so was quite happy with it

60. wiktionary:’
    UNDERIVED
    Etymology: un- +? derived
    Adjective: underived (not comparable) : not derived, not related. Quotations:
    1742, Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6?[1]:
    If their rights are inherent and underived, they may, by their own suffrages, encircle, with a diadem, the brows of Mr. Cushing.
    1859, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859?[2]:
    “Firstly,–if underived virtue be peculiar to the Deity, can it be the duty of a creature to have it?”
    1922, Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1?[3]:
    Thus it is that though contact of the senses with the objects may later on be imagined to be the conditioning factor, yet the rise of knowledge as well as our notion of its validity strikes us as original, underived, immediate, and first-hand.
    1988 December 2, Jonathan Rosenbaum, “The Sound of German”, in Chicago Reader?[4]:
    He held that everything in existence is composed of four underived and indestructible substances–fire, water, earth, and air–and that atmosphere is a corporeal substance, not a mere void.
    Anagrams : dive-under’

61. [If only the ‘unlucky couple’ (not my words) would just quietly retire to spend more time with their money instead of parading themselves in front of the media to complain about how they are treated by the same media]

62. Totally stuck on SW corner. Saw the anagram for SHEBANGS but couldn’t see a definition so didn’t put it in.

63. The point about ORANG, latte and panini, and probably many others, is that they are incorrect in their original language. Whether that makes them incorrect in English is debatable.

64. There’s nothing wrong with “panini” in Italian. The problem in English is “a panini”, or “paninis”, as “panini” is plural.

65. Robi @34 Which digs at H&M are you referring to? All the clues in which they appear are either neutral or nice to them, making this more of a tribute puzzle (which surely it can’t be?)

66. Thanks for the blog , liked many clues, really liked TAILPIPE , TABOOS and UNDERIVED , a word I use a lot.
    Could have done without the theme, four in a row now, I hope the Guardian is not trying to beat the record of eight.
    I am just glad H and M value their privacy and avoid publicity, imagine what it would be like otherwise.

67. [ AlanC @ 1 again , three times this week , congratulations but a schoolboy error .
    The rules clearlly state such hubris must be punished by a halving of the points. You were up to 12, now back to 6, 15-6 to me. ]

68. “Cracking puzzle” as Widdersbel @15 said — thanks Tramp. As if I needed a reminder, this is why I enjoy cryptics so much — this crossword had everything I like — wit, readable surfaces, and just enough “convoluted” parsing to keep my brain fully engaged. My top picks were BUGBEAR, PHRASEMONGERS (great surface), TRIPODAL, STEAMIER, and my LOI, UNDERIVED. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

69. I probably didn’t express what I meant clearly enough. Panini is plural in Italian, but commonly used as a singular noun in English. If it were to be used as a singular in Italian it would be wrong, but does that make it incorrect in English?

    (I’m pretty inconsistent about this, having complained the other day about somebody saying “a phenomena” instead of phenomenon: another possible candidate.)

70. [gladys @69
    I was quite gratified to be served, quite correctly, a lobster raviolo in a restaurant. I would have been disappointed if ravioli had been promised!]

71. Eileen @ 55. [Takes me back to my Cambridge days when Azed, who was Gong back then, included in a crossword the phrase “tripodal success to all solvers” referring to the exam known as tripos, apparently because in days of yore students sat on a three-legged stool!]

72. [muffin and gladys passim: Italian pasta names are almost always used in the plural – because you normally get more than one piece on a plate. Spaghetti (Italian ‘little strings’) has become resolutely singular in English – you would be considered pedantically prissy to say ‘the spaghetti ARE almost done’. Usage for other types is inconsistent, particularly for larger chunky forms. muffin was lucky – I have come across references to ‘a ravioli’!]

73. [Roz @67: mea culpa (hope that’s not plural). I finished this early doors so couldn’t resist. 15-6 it is].

74. I thoroughly enjoyed this. As Tramp says, he doesn’t do themed puzzles much any more, but I find them really absorbing and am amazed at how well the clues are crafted to work cryptically and still have a currently relevant surface. Faves in this respect were 22, 24 and 4. I don’t mind the convolutions at all as long as the parsing works. So, I personally would vote for more of these themers!
    Thanks, Tramp and Andrew.

75. I found this one much harder than yesterday’s and consequently didn’t enjoy it as much. There were no “obscurities” for me yesterday, whereas solving today’s was far trickier and, in places, impossible without a lot of external help and letter by letter use of the check button. Presumably, my vocabulary and GK must be above average and my reasoning ability quite a bit less!

76. I agree entirely with Eileen’s three paragraphs @25. It was a great double feature day, with an equally enjoyable puzzle from Neo in the FT.

    I especially liked 14d UNDERIVED, for the unusual word and the clever construction, and I also liked the delightfully derisory word PHRASEMONGERS @4d.

    Re H&M, Gervais@61, I admire how they manipulate the media by using their complaints about the media to generate more media coverage, and thereby increase their income from book sales, etc. More power to them, and if people are annoyed by it all, they have only themselves to blame for reading/watching all the media coverage.

    Thanks, Tramp and Andrew, for all the fun.

77. Jacob @39 – agree about 20a. And it could so easily have be improved as “Chapter in short, short life story”.

78. Thanks Tramp, and Andrew for explaining 1 across. I missed the ppe, as I’m sure I’ve done before.

79. I don’t understand why everyone is talking about H&M.
    Other clothing retailers are available.

80. muffin@70 Your raviolo must have been pretty big if it was the only one they gave you!

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