Guardian 29,030 – Picaroon

83 comments on “Guardian 29,030 – Picaroon”

1. I agree this was relatively straightforward but thoroughly entertaining. I’ve not seen the word IRONIST before. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew. Pleased to hear your family member is on the mend – wishing them well.

   There is no title on this blog, Andrew, which may make it harder to find.

2. Very smoothly assembled as always. I was fortunate to be on Picaroon’s wavelength for this one – even the slightly unusual words DUODENA and HELICES were very gettable. Particular favourites include ALL OVER THE SHOP for the lovely use of OTT, CHIANTI for the neat entwining combo of surface and WP, REALISE for almost hiding the def, ENNUI – it’s always fun to see a new treatment for this regularly appearing word, VACCINATE for the nice surface, ONE AND ALL for the ‘sporting tie’ and ICING which made me laugh.

   Thanks Picaroon and Andrew (thanks for the update)

   Andrew – the headline was missing from the blog when I began typing this

3. Sorry about the missing title – now added.

4. Very enjoyable, lots of smiles. “Deliberately” is not a word I’d have used for LENTO, but I’ll accept that it works, sorta kinda. I didn’t get AUSTIN POWERS until I’d got MINIMISE. Didn’t know there was such a person as an ironist. Makes sense. I thought the definition of WIFE-SWAPPING was a bit loose, unless I’m missing something.

   Thanks Picaróon & Andrew.

5. Re 14d I’m happy with a lot of abbreviations, where there is at least some justification eg obscure medical usage, but I can’t see any basis for Ives = I.

6. thoughts on “” – Fun.
   ALL OVER THE SHOP – liked the “Time to be quiet” gimmick.
   FINGER?PAINTING – clever to get three kinds of booze in an anagram.
   COLANDER & SINAI – neatly misleading surfaces.
   Thanks P&A (good news)

7. Russtoo@5 – “overture from Ives”=I

   Thanks to Andrew and Picaroon

8. Russtoo, it’s “overture from Ives”.

9. @Russtoo@5 the overture to Ives is I

10. It’s another delight from Picaroon today. I loved every single clue.
    Thanks all.

11. Fun puzzle, which slipped down more easily than usual for a Picaroon – for me, at least.

    Two ‘lies’ and a couple of uncharacteristically odd surfaces (ICING, SINAI) were the only blemishes in a fine crossword. Some nice cryptic definitions – ‘deliberately’ is particularly clever.

    Good construction and surface for AUSTIN P – like GDU @4, I found MINIMISE was the key to this. REALISE, IRONIST, VACCINATE and ONE AND ALL were other favourites.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew (glad things are looking up).

12. Glad things are going better Andrew.

    Lots to enjoy in this puzzle from Picaroon.

13. I had to have two goes at this, but the smiles elicited made it worth it. Too many favourites to list AUSTIN POWERS eluded me for a long time, I could see the anagram around US but was trying to put the US in the surname DOH!

14. I find myself in total agreement with PostMark @2, matching all his favourites, for the reasons he gives and adding FINGER-PAINTING, as per FrankieG @ and SINAI, pace Gervase, for the apt use of ‘tablets’.
    (Or I could have simply said what gsolphotog said @10.)

    Many thanks to Picaroon and to Andrew – very glad to hear better news.

15. Favourites: FINGER PAINTING, DUODENA, ALL OVER THE SHOP.

    I could not parse 15ac (only got as far as something in anagram of SEAT).

    New for me: SONIC = figure in computer game; MINI-ME character in Austin Powers movie [thanks, google. I started to watch that movie many years ago and gave up after 15 minutes of it as I found it boring]

    Thanks, both.

16. Quite easy for a Picaroon and made me remark “Groovy Baby” to myself.

    The WIFE-SWAPPING was a bit of naughty, but tightly phrased clue. There were some tangential discussions to the usages of the verb “swing” on here ( Qaos puzzle ) on Feb 9. Locate the discussion then browser-ellipsis-> Find in Page -> “swing” will reveal the relevant contexts.

    Glad your situation is improving Andrew and here, to cheer you up, is an earworm

    https://youtu.be/JmcA9LIIXWw

    Someone had to put that one in, so it might as well be me. A great karaoke tune.

    Thank you Picaroon and Andrew.

17. Thanks Picaroon: excellent as usual, and too many favourites to list. Had fun trying to make the de-tailed figure in SONIC be ON(E), and fit Dr. Evil into 25a, before the light dawned. Failed to parse ALL OVER THE SHOP.

18. Another absolute peach from Picaroon. Perhaps more than with any other solver I find myself parsing retrospectively. ALL OVER THE SHOP was especially good today, I thought.

19. Flea @16: oh behave 🙂

    I loved the idea of trying to land on the moon in a colander. I think the Clangers may have tried it, or possibly the Soup Dragon.

    Great fun, thanks to Picaroon and continuing best wishes Andrew.

20. Like Charles @18 found myself parsing retrospectively a lot today. I often find this with charade / inclusion type clues as I can’t think of the correct synonym for part of the clue and so have to get some crosses to get the answer and then parse. So a lot of penny drop moments but I did at least manage to parse all but one.

    Some lovely clues – all mentioned above. My favourite and quite early in was ALL OVER THE SHOP

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

21. Ah, so that’s what was meant by swinging, thank you Flea. I found it as definition 16 in Collin’s.(I lead an innocent life.)

22. Eileen @14: That is what comes of racing through a puzzle in the pre-jentacular period 🙂 . I interpreted ‘tablet’ as a pharmaceutical. Taken as a small PC, the surface makes perfect sense. Duh! Apologies to the Pirate.

    essexboy @19: Jumblies rather than Clangers perhaps?

23. Agree with Charles@18, but I do a lot of retrospective parsing anyway, with most of the Guardian setters. Thanks essexboy for referencing The Clangers.

24. As others have said, fairly straightforward, though I got AUSTIN POWERS, FINGER-PAINTING and WIFE-SWAPPING from the defs and crossers and just thought ‘Oh, an anagram of something or other’ but couldn’t be bothered teasing them out. I liked CHIANTI, DUODENA, ATELIER etc.

25. I’m another who really enjoyed this. Lovely, intricate clueing, good range of answers, some a bit harder but nothing really obscure. Definitely a favourite setter of mine. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

26. I started quite briskly but the bottom half took a bit longer to fathom out.

    I liked ALL OVER THE SHOP for the surface and wordplay, ASSOCIATE for the surface, LENTO for the inspired ‘deliberately’, and ONE AND ALL for the surface and the sporting tie.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

27. I’m glad others found this gentle, because I struggled to get a foothold, with only 4 after the first full scan. However, I was able to make gradual progress after FINGER PAINTING fell and got there in the end, all parsed. Isn’t “random few one’s” = (FEW I’S)* pretty close to an indirect anagram? Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.

28. Great fun with an old-time religion feel. (SINAI, IC(H)ING, and Karma CHAMELEON)

29. Me@6
    What was that question-mark doing in FINGER?PAINTING, when I’d pasted it straight from Andrew’s blog?
    I’ve just done the same now – let’s see what happens…

30. Running behind again but I could not wait to share this.
    Some of you may remember that I sometimes post a link to an article by David Astle, arguably Australia’s best crossword setter. Well today Fifteensquared and our very own Eileen get an honorable mention in his latest column.
    Jorum

31. Thanks for the blog, I liked COLANDER and IRONIST , 10D earned a severe Paddington stare. All the rest a bit obvious, maybe it was meant for a Monday ? I suppose we have had quite a few tricky puzzles lately.

32. Really enjoyed every aspect of this, gradually and steadily working my way in a clockwise direction round the grid. One of the last ones in was, perhaps surprisingly, ALL OVER THE SHOP, loi LENTO. Too many excellent clues to single out one in particular…

33. As others have said, very enjoyable and mostly on the easier side for the Pirate. SINAI, ICING, and CHIANTI were my picks.

    TassieTim @27 It’s about as close as you’ll get to an indirect anagram, I think, but ‘one’ for I is so common that I think it passes muster, even if the latest it indicates doesn’t appear in the word.

    Thanks Andrew and Picaroon

34. One quibble. Is the I Ching a Confucian text? I think not, and I believe the consensus is that it was composed some time before Confucius lived. Do Confucians use it? I believe so, but so do Daoists and Buddhists.

35. kevin @30, thanks for that! – but I must, again, disclaim responsibility for the adoption of ‘jorum’. (Please see comments 22 and 23 in the current General Discussion.)
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/general-discussion/ : I merely agreed with a former commenter that I would, in future, ‘think of’ such words as jorums. 😉
    (Our Administrator recently added ‘What is meant by Jorum?’ to FAQ.)

36. …continued from @29 …Apparently WordPress has a “helpful” feature called wptexturize…
    https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wptexturize
    …which transforms quotes into smart quotes; handles apostrophes, dashes, em-dashes, en-dashes, ellipses; the trademark, multiplication, double prime and prime symbols. There is a small “cockney” list of transformations, as well: ’tain’t, ’twere ’twas ’tis ’twill ’til ’bout ’nuff ’round ’cause.
    Testing: WIFE-SWAPPING, WIFE-SWAPPING, WIFE–SWAPPING, WIFE – SWAPPING, WIFE — SWAPPING, WIFE — SWAPPING… … … … … … … … … … … … …
    123′ 123” 123″ 123×123 ’20s ™
    I wonder what was wrong with Andrew’s hyphen.

37. Thanks Andrew and Picaroon, I enjoyed this too.
    Tassie Tim@34: would you object to the Bible being described as a “Christian classic”? I probably wouldn’t, despite most of it (OT) presumably being written some time before JC, and not solely important to Christians, although I see your point. Wikipedia tells me that Confucianism has its roots in the I Ching and assuming this is true I think the two would be equivalent.
    kevin@30 thanks, that is a great link, quite right Eileen that you are celebrated for popularising the term, I was also delighted by Max Frisch’s appearance (he designed a ‘badi’ near here and very nice it is too).

38. FrankieG@29 : Bit technical, but I think you’re copying Control-Shift-and-hyphen ( already marked up and “WordPress for Web publishing processed” to guarantee hyphens don’t wrap to a new line through WordPress once more ( = your post / your markup ) and that software product can’t do a “doubler” and reacts with a question mark. You would have to make other arrangements and type up a plain hyphen.

    The “do not wrap a line hyphen” favours us in 15^2 because we get the proper “grammar” of the hyphen that the blogger is conveying to us and don’t think it’s a unhyphenated word where publishing has, of its own accord, forced a hyphen, intending us to read one composite word.

39. FrankieG : while I was typing 38, we crossed.

40. Thanks Eileen @35 for completing the picture

41. I had no idea about the majority of these clues.

    I have questions.

    1. 21a – how do you know to rearrange letters of Israel?

    2. Is “authoritarian approach” not the definition in 11a?

    3. 12a – opponent/anti? I can’t understand this; in my mind I would understand opposite.

    4. 3a – is there any method to figure out whether to omit even or odd letters?

    5. 23a – does “engaging” mean something?

    I hope these aren’t daft questions. Very frustrating.

42. @Steffen I’m sure I won’t be the first to post once I’ve finished typing, but I’ll answer anyway.
    21a: after Israel is the word “building”, which in a cryptic crossword can easily mean rearranging.
    11a: the wordplay tells you to remove loudly (musically “f” for forte) from your definition of authoritarian approach
    12a: it is reasonable to describe, in a loose sense, an opponent as someone who is “anti”. so that’s just about okay in a cryptic
    3a: no, there is no definite indication, unless the setter writes something like “without even…” or “oddly missing…” to make the surface of the clue run even more smoothly
    23a: “engaging” means holding within, so indicates that another word or anagram or idea is held within another word or anagram or idea.

    Hope this helps.

43. Steffen , no questions are daft , we all have to learn at some stage, keep asking. I will put some ideas but others will type faster.

44. Once again I can see the future. I will add just add that anti-nuclear would mean the opponents of nuclear power/weapons.

45. Steffen the Everyman crossword in the Observer on Sundays is aimed at newer solvers, there is always a blog on here one week later. You can carry it around all week, I used to when I was learning. The blog is very friendly to newer solvers.

46. Steffen : reinforces Andy L’s bullet point 3

    https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/anti#:~:text=As%20a%20word%20on%20its,Definitions%20of%20anti

    Definition 2

47. Thanks Flea@38 – I’ll never trust a hyphen again. Control-Shift-and-hyphen just turns the zoom factor down on my machine. 🙂
    I just thought it was funny that so much programming effort had been expended on quotes, apostrophes, dashes and ellipses, so that everything would look nice on paper. All out of date now that everything’s online, and none of this stuff is ever going to be printed out.

48. Essexboy @19, Gervase @22
    In the delightful story Whatever Next b Jill Murphy Baby Bear goes to the moon wearing a colander for a space helmet.
    https://amzn.eu/d/01fmLQF
    I’m not sure if this link works.

49. I’d heard of AUSTIN POWERS, but MINI-ME was beyond my ken.

    kevin@30 Thanks for the jorum link. But it wasn’t Eileen who suggested that “jorum” become the term for a word you didn’t know but put together from the wordplay — she just told the story. She’s not that self-promoting. It was the community here who took the word to its heart.

    Thanks, Picaroon and Andrew.

50. On the gentle side but good fun.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

51. Eileen @35: it’s no use protesting. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” 🙂

52. Many thanks. I will have questions every day.

53. Another entertaining brain-stretching from Picaroon

    Many thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

54. SueB@48 : your link works as a static Amazon purchases linkage. Here’s a blow-up photo, emphasising “holes” – one of the words of the clue that categorises a COLANDER.

    https://www.stchristophersnursery.org.uk/2021/10/25/author-of-the-week-jill-murphy/

    Baby Bear and Owl are sitting on the moon !

55. All present and accounted for. I thought that after I was done, and realized it’s true–a cryptic is not really solved until every letter is not just correct but explained.

    Unlike some, I had a rough time getting started on this, but once a few entries were placed it all seemed to go more quickly.

    AUSTIN POWERS and SONIC the Hedgehog: are cryptics finally catching up with Generation X? Too bad we’re already middle-aged; there’s another 25 years of pop culture still to absorb.

56. Not a fan of AUSTIN POWERS or SONIC and I got MINIMISE but not because of mini me!
    Better suited to the BEANO!

57. Thanks Picaroon for an entertaining crossword with 1a, CHIANTI, WASTE LAND, REALISE, ENNUI, VACCINATE, TOSCANINI, and CHAMELEON being my top choices. Some of these word make regular appearances in crosswords but somehow Picaroon clues them in a fresh manner. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

58. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew
    Not difficult, but lots of fun. I loved WIFE-SWAPPING (the clue, that is).
    Lord Jim @51 The man who shot Liberty Valance?
    LENTO prompts to post this link to one of my favourite pieces of music.

59. Oh dear, another disaster…still I did get 5 answers. Steffen @41 – don’t worry about asking questions on this excellent blog, I have been doing cryptic crosswords for 10 years and I’m still hopeless!

60. Great fun, but I too am not happy with lento = deliberate in 2d. Lento is defined exclusively in my dictionary as slow. Slow can be deliberate, but it can be careless or accidental too. Quick can be careless or unplanned, but if you see me after last orders have been called, it can be most deliberate.
    I had missed the coining of jorum, which as a concept I was long familiar – my most satisfying solves are such words – but I will now always think of them as such.
    Thanks to Andrew & Picaroon who is challenging Paul and Fed as my favourite setter.

61. mp @60
    This site has deliberate as a synonym for lento. I tend to think of it as “stately” (as a galleon?)

62. Re: “ironist” – while I admit that I wouldn’t have thought it an actual word – though apparently it is – am I the only one who questions the definition? Irony is not ridiculing…

    Lovely puzzle, though, and many thanks to Andrew for explaining some tricky parsings.

63. In 27A, what is the force of the “eg” and the “say”? Presumably one or the other indicates a definition by example, but I cannot work out why both are required. Indeed, is either required? Wouldn’t “…with bit of whisky and beer, drinking a mixed gin” do the trick?

64. Yeah CC @62, my eyebrow did briefly flicker, but not a hanging offence, esp for Pickers who is almost always unblemished.

65. CaymanCanuck @62. When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it was said that this signified the death of irony, in that nothing would ever seem ironic after that. If that is not ridiculing both HK and the Nobel committee then I don’t know what it is.

    Thanks to Picaroon for a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle, and to Andrew for the excellent blog.

66. sh @ 65

    When Kissinger was awarded the Nobel prize, it was Tom Lehrer who announced his retirement because satire, not irony, was dead, so there was no point in him continuing.

67. Simon @66. Thanks for that. I’d forgotten it was Lehrer. But Chambers has for irony: “conveyance of meaning (generally satirical) by words whose literal meaning is the opposite, esp words of praise used as a criticism or condemnation”. I would suggest that the words “Henry Kissinger is a man of peace” would be satirical and therefore fit this definition of irony quite nicely. And if HK didn’t feel ridiculed then he obviously wasn’t paying attention.

68. First attempt at completing a non-Monday crossword on the day – we got within 3 clues of finishing, though with a couple unparsed. Defeated by top left (should have got lento) and, for some reason, Toscanini. Always love Picaroon – always fairly clued, once Andrew has explained the parsing.

69. Sheffield hatter at 65/67 ; Simon S @66

    Far be it from me to quarrel with Chambers, (which certainly supports Simon’s point) but I still wouldn’t describe irony and satire as synonyms – satire is indeed ridiculing. And the definition for “ironist” – which I definitely had to look up – refers to someone using irony mainly in literature (I paraphrase, admittedly.) One example – not the best, just off the top of my head(!) – of irony (IMHO):
    “I decided to travel to Spain for some hot weather last summer – ironically, it rained the whole time I was there while, in my absence, the UK enjoyed a heatwave.”
    This is irony – and definitely neither satire nor ridicule. Admittedly – irony is often used in the broader sense – so perhaps we have to accept it? Bit pedantic about this – sorry, I’ll go away now 🙂

70. GiF@64

    Agreed – meant no disrespect to the setter – it was a very enjoyable puzzle, so a minor quibble in the scheme of things.

71. Late posting back from op.Lovely puzzle as usual. Not sure maestro Toscanini would appreciate being called leader. He/she is the one on his/her left who keeps the troops in order and signifies the tune-up just before a performance. All those who direct are conductors! Thanks for blog: glad family matters improving.

72. Cedric @71 I agree about the leader of the orchestra. Didn’t we have a clue last week where the leader of the orchestra was (correctly) the leader of the first violins? A very enjoyable puzzle though with some very satisfying solutions l

73. CaymanCanuck@62 8and others) – while I think irony is not exactly the same as satire (being subtler, certainly than sarcasm) there does seem to me a sense that it operates similarly. If you search for “irony” on dictionary.com and scroll down there is an interesting para titled “Synonym Study…” that explains better than I could (key is some sense of absurdity in both).
    Cedric/Hawa I think this is the same issue that many of us have when a scientific term with precise meaning is used in its broader sense in a puzzle. The conductor may not be “The Leader” but he/she is surely leading proceedings in a general sense – eg when the conductor points their stick at me to tell me when to bash my triangle.
    AndrewTyndall@63 yes I thought maybe Picaroon was trying to be technically correct/helpful and maybe one was supposed to be edited out, agree “measures of whisky and beer, say” would read easier.

74. Valentine @49 , Eileen is the last person I would accuse of self-promotion. She has already tried to deflect the credit for coining the term.

75. CaymanCanuk @70. The example you posit of “irony” is not really irony at all – it’s what I think of as football commentators’ irony. It’s more like a faintly amusing coincidence. I prefer the dictionary definition, though no doubt the latest edition of Chambers will reflect the ever-growing change in usage.

76. [Irish Comedian Ed Byrne explains Irony Using the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette]

77. sh/CaymanCanuck

    Wiktionary has quotes which neatly illustrate the difference between ‘correct’ and ‘proscribed’ usages of ‘ironic’:
    It’s somewhat ironic to have a wave of smog right on Earth Day.
    It’s ironic that we are eating a sandwich in Sandwich, Massachusetts.
    …followed by ‘Usage notes’:
    Some writers complain about an overuse of the word ironic to extend to situations which are remarkable for reasons other than irony – perhaps just coincidental or merely odd.

    I think CC’s sentence @69 falls into the first category – it’s fine.
    The Wiktionary link above is instructive (same essentially as Collins online, but more concise). Sense 1 corresponds to CC’s usage, sense 3 to sh’s. Both are perfectly valid.

    Of course it’s true that ‘ironic’ (in sense 3) can shade into ‘sarcastic’, and ‘sarcastic’ into outright ridicule. But I take CC’s point (and ginf’s eyebrow twitch) that the definition in 11a is a little off-centre. For me it’s a question of degree: irony is akin to a smile, albeit a wry or bittersweet one; ridicule is more of an outright laugh of derision.

78. essexboy @77. It’s all shades, isn’t it? Sardonic, sarcastic, satirical, ridicule. All accompanied by a smile of various grades from amusement through shared enjoyment of another’s discomfort all the way through to outright glee (and eyebrow twitch, for that matter). Ridicule is part of the identification and pointing out of what makes us laugh at the person or situation – isn’t this what an IRONIST is doing? I’d be surprised if they weren’t.

    But eating a sandwich in Sandwich is just neat, and not ironic at all. And wouldn’t your first quoted example require the smog to have an awareness of Earth Day? Having good weather at home while you’re away is just Sod’s Law, I reckon. Nothing ironic about flying thousands of miles to a warmer climate, and thereby contributing to making a complete mess of the planet’s weather and climate, when you could have stayed home and had better weather, thanks to changes brought about by the excessive burning of fossil fuels. How ridiculous. Oh.

    Anyway.

    Is it ironic that essexboy, who is so well informed about language and meaning, should prefer Wiktionary to Chambers? No, just difficult to explain. 🙂

79. sh @78, I agree about the shades (I think there is an overlap) but your 2nd para is mistaken. If you (unreasonably, in my view) don’t like Wiktionary, then here’s Collins, which includes:
    If you say that it is ironic that something should happen, you mean that it is odd or amusing because it involves a contrast.
    and
    Having the quality of irony; directly opposite to what is or might be expected

    It provides plenty of examples to back up that usage, including not a few from The Guardian.

    And as etymonline confirms, the meaning of irony as “condition opposite to what might be expected; contradictory circumstances; apparent mockery of natural or expected consequences” has been known from the 1640s – certainly not the invention of football commentators. Both Wiktionary’s smog on Earth Day and CC’s rotten Spanish weather fit that definition perfectly.

80. Agree with the general opinion here that this was an easy crossword. Enjoyable nonetheless and looking forward to James’s next one already.

81. essexboy @79. Thanks for that. I’ve obviously been too much influenced by Chambers! I’ve certainly always thought of irony as involving satire and ridicule rather than amusement and oddity, but clearly you have support for that.

    My reference to what I call “football commentators’ irony” was meant to be similar to the example of eating a sandwich in Sandwich. It might be odd or amusing but not because “it involves a contrast” or is “directly opposite to what might be expected”. It’s just coincidental that the snack and the place share a name, just the same as it’s a coincidence that a particular footballer scored a goal in the same fixture last season but for the other side, for example.

    We seem to have drifted a long way from ridicule, so I’ll leave it there.

82. @43 Roz, I live by the principle that the only stupid/daft question is the one you didn’t ask.

83. This erudite discussion of the meaning of irony has been dizzyingly instructive. Ironically, I will henceforth avoid using the word, for fear of getting it wrong.

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