The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29035.
It’s Pasquale, so you can expect to have your vocabulary stretched (although there was nothing here totally unknown to me). Along with that, the clues are generally very well-constructed. I was particularly tickled by 12D INEBRIATION.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | ALCOCK |
A bird traversing lake, a noted flyer (6)
|
| An envelope (‘traversing’) of L (‘lake’) in ‘a’ plus COCK (‘bird’), for Captain Sir John William ALCOCK, the pioneer aviator. | ||
| 4 | BRASSARD |
Protective plate supports gemstone (8)
|
| A charade of BRAS (‘supports’) plus SARD (‘gemstone’; a BRASSARD can be arrmour for the arm. | ||
| 9 | LEPTON |
Observe learner keeping quiet — backward type interacting weakly (6)
|
| A reversal (‘backward’) of an envelope (‘keeping’) of P (piano, ‘quiet’) in NOTE (‘observe’) plus L (‘learner’). | ||
| 10 | AMICABLE |
Friendly note within an urgent message? (8)
|
| An envelope (‘within’) of MI (‘note’ of the sol-fa) in A CABLE (‘an urgent message’). | ||
| 11 | QUESTIONNAIRES |
Aids to those researching wicked Etonian squires (14)
|
| An anagram (‘wicked’) of ‘Etonian squires’. | ||
| 13 | ANEMOMETRY |
A submarine captain, first person to attempt meteorological technique (10)
|
| A charade of ‘a’ plus NEMO (‘submarine captain’ in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island) plus ME (‘first person’ accusative) plus TRY (‘attempt’). | ||
| 14 | CEDE |
Yield from what’s sown in garden, reportedly (4)
|
| Sounds like (‘reportedly’) SEED (‘what’s sown in garden’). | ||
| 16 | MARX |
Spoil vote, as one looking for revolution? (4)
|
| A charade of MAR (‘spoil’) plus X (‘vote’). | ||
| 18 | PROTRACTED |
Extended treatise penned by professional wordsmith (10)
|
| An envelope (‘penned by’) of TRACT (‘treatise’) in PRO (‘professional’) plus ED (‘wordsmith’ – a change from journalist or the like). | ||
| 21 | NOBEL LAUREATES |
Absence of instruments to welcome in golden prizewinners (5,9)
|
| An envelope (‘to welcome in’) of AUREATE (‘golden’) in NO BELLS (‘absence of instruments’). | ||
| 23 | TELLURIC |
Brief about pee containing metallic element (8)
|
| A charade of TELL (‘brief’) plus URIC (‘about pee’), the ‘metallic element’ being tellurium, generally regarded as a metalloid. | ||
| 24 | HICCUP |
Problem with this Roman vessel (6)
|
| A charade of HIC (‘this Roman’, Latin) plus CUP (‘vessel’). | ||
| 25 | SMASHING |
It’s marvellous to celebrate drinking squash (8)
|
| An envelope (‘drinking’) of MASH (‘squash’) in SING (‘celebrate’). | ||
| 26 | IN PLAY |
Parlay has a king thus functioning (2,4)
|
| ‘Parlay’ is an envelope of ‘a’ plus R (rex, ‘king’) IN PLAY (‘thus’, referring to ‘functioning’). | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | AXLE |
Bar left in sack (4)
|
| An envelope (‘in’) of L (‘left’) in AXE (dismiss, ‘sack’) | ||
| 2 | CAPTURE |
Catch caught on river, suitable for catching (7)
|
| An envelope (‘for catching’) of APT (‘suitable’) in C (‘caught’) plus URE (‘river’). | ||
| 3 | CROSSBOW |
Weapon to pass through the East End? (8)
|
| A charade of CROSS (‘pass through’) plus BOW (the district in ‘the East End’, of London, or the entire area, within sound of Bow Bells). | ||
| 5 | REMUNERATOR |
Payer regarding Spooner’s dividend (11)
|
| A charade of RE (‘regarding’) plus MUNERATOR. Here the idea of a Spoonerism is stretched: rather than exchanging sounds from two words, the exchange occurs within one, from NUMERATOR (‘dividend’). | ||
| 6 | SOCIAL |
Amateur seaman turned up for party (6)
|
| A reversal (‘turned up’ in a down light) of LAIC (‘amateur’) plus OS (ordinary ‘seaman’). | ||
| 7 | AUBERGE |
Tavern‘s purple fruit not popular (7)
|
| A subtraction: AUBERG[in]E (‘purple fruit’ – their general colour) minus IN (‘not popular’). | ||
| 8 | DYER’S WEED |
What’s said to be terrible root crop or plant (5-4)
|
| A charade of DYER, sounding like (‘what’s said’) DIRE (‘terrible’) plus SWEED, again sounding like (eliding the word break, and ignoring the s-z sound difference) SWEDE (‘root crop’; it’s called a rutabaga in this neck of the woods), for a plant, woad perhaps. | ||
| 12 | INEBRIATION |
You might notice it in one bar, I fancy (11)
|
| An anagram (‘fancy’) of ‘it in one bar I’, with an extended definition. | ||
| 13 | AMMONITES |
Fossils — a couple of thousand on new site (9)
|
| A charade of ‘a’ plus MM (‘Roman numeral or numerals, ‘a couple of thousand’) plus ‘on’ plus ITES, an anagram (‘new’) of ‘site’. | ||
| 15 | NATATION |
Swimming race — a time to dive in (8)
|
| An envelope (‘to dive in’) of ‘a’ plus T (‘time’) in NATION (‘race’). | ||
| 17 | RUBELLA |
Difficulty leads to jazz singer making a complaint (7)
|
| A charade of RUB (‘difficulty’) plus ELLA (Fitzgerald, ‘jazz singer’). | ||
| 19 | TIERCEL |
Hawkish type with various cruelties putting us off (7)
|
| An anagram (‘various’) of ‘cr[u]eltie[s]’ minus US (‘putting us off’). A TIERCEL or tercel is a male falcon. | ||
| 20 | SLOUGH |
Pilgrim’s bad experience somewhere near Windsor (6)
|
| Double definition, the first being a reference to The Slough of Despond, in John Bunyan’s The Pillgrim’s Progress. | ||
| 22 | SPAY |
Doctor shower’s output, not right (4)
|
| A subtraction: SP[r]AY (‘shower’s output’) minus the R (‘not right’). |
Fiendishly difficult for me, and that is the most polite thing I can say.
Wow.
Seems like a tour de force of cryptic clues way beyond my abilities.
So many questions…
12d – what is the definition here?
Steffen @1
In 12D, the whole clue is the definition (it does not quite count as an &lit, since ‘You might notice’ hardly contributes to the wordplay).
I was mad to attempt a puzzle by this setter. Once again, too many obscurities and too much requiring specifically British knowledge.
I always expect my vocabulary to be stretched by Pasquale, but there were too many stretches this morning, and I think I might have strained something. I’m with Steffen @1, in that 12d doesn’t quite work for me. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.
I didn’t know SARD or BRASSARD. I thought it was BRAS as support and looked up armour pieces. Other new words were LEPTON and DYER’S WEED, but they were JORUMS. I had to check TIERCEL because I was unfamiliar with that spelling and even though I took the RE away to leave MUNERATOR nho numerator as a dividend. I could see I needed to take AR out of PARLAY to get play and put in before it but I could not see any extraction or insertion wordplay.
Fiendishly difficult sums it up well.
Thanks Both.
Yes, a return to Pasquale of old – very difficult. NATATION, BRASSARD, TELLURIC and TIERCEL lurking in the remotest regions of my brain, but DYER’S WEED I had never heard of.
Thanks PeterO for several explanations, and thanks Pasquale
Thank you for the blog PeterO and kudos as nothing was unknown to you.
Did know SLOUGH from cryptics.
Happy to learn some new words today, all fairly clued in retrospect. Got 8d very late.
When you think about it, Pasquale was very generous with a lot of the grid, eg QUESTIONNAIRES, ANEMOMETRY, PROTRACTED, AMMONITES, INEBRIATION, NOBEL LAUREATES, AMICABLE, TIERCEL
Liked HICCUP, NATATION, LEPTON, SPAY and RUBELLA and even good old MARX.
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
BRASSARD was a guess, as I’ve never heard of it, or SARD (though I have heard of sardonyx).
Again I hadn’t heard of DYERS’WEED but I had heard of Dyers’ Greenweed.l appreciate LEPTON!
Not sure what happened – last sentence was supposed to be “Roz will appreciate LEPTON”!
Another puzzle where I started from the bottom and worked up, as nothing leapt out at me at the top.
Nothing entirely unfamiliar here, luckily. TIERCEL appears in crosswords from time to time. BRASSARD took a while to summon up – ‘sard’ isn’t something that pops up frequently in conversation.
I liked REMUNERATION and INEBRIATION and I was pleased to see HICCUP spelt properly 🙂
A few quibbles: are all LEPTONs weakly interacting?; tellurium is a metalloid rather than a bone fide metal; I have only ever come across Genista tinctoria referred to a ‘dyer’s greenweed’ rather than DYERS WEED.
Thanks to S&B
Google tells me that Dyer’s Weed is another plant entirely. How confusing!
For 4a I’d never heard of either BRASSARD or SARD, but managed to work out the first four letters with the help of the crossers and then needed external assistance. I’d never heard of 8d either, but once I had the ‘D’ from 4a, I was able to guess it (having arrived at ‘…S-WEED’ from the wordplay. I did like 9a LEPTON. 19d did not leap out at me from the anagram until I had crossers, but it was there in the memory bank somewhere. Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO
Gervase @10
Leptons do not undergo strong interactions, though charged ones, such as electrons, undergo electromagnetic interactions.
That was chewy but fun.
BRASSARD new to me, as was SARD, and was my LOI with DYER’S WEED, which I should have known. Checked NATATION was a word in English, as I knew it from French. Also the Spoonerism didn’t convince me, but I rarely get them. Got tgat from the definition and most of the crossers.
I like Pasquale because mostly I could work out the words by building them up. Thank you to Pasquale and PeterO.
Unlike others I didn’t think this was especially problematic for a Pasquale, though I lingered long over SOCIAL, dredged BRASSARD from some long silted-over memory, and had to check the spelling of DYERS WEED, which was new to me but readily gettable from the clueing.
Fortunately, I had the General Knowledge needed for this puzzle but it eas still a bit of a grind.
Me@16 – sorry for the typo, should read ‘was still a bit of a grind’.
Felt a bit like doing the Azed at times but there were some gems with IN PLAY being my pick of the bunch
Cheers P&P
Steffen @1. In 12d the definition extends throughout most of the clue, “you might notice it in one bar” as in you might become inebriated during an evening in a pub. So “it in one bar” is doing double duty as part of both the anagram and the definition.
As the man from BOW said. If this is a gem of a puzzle it SARD.
…and my apologies to PeterO, I completely failed to notice that you had already answered this question.
For nicobach @5, I think “dividend” is meant to be slyly thought of as “something that divides”, so in a fraction, the denominator is divided by the numerator. Hope I’ve got that right. Maths not my strong point, and school a long time ago….
Like many, I found this impossibly hard. But a good challenge.
LEPTON, BRASSARD, SARD, DYERS WEED, TIERCEL, TELLURIC were all new to me. Too many. And having an unknown word, sard as part of another unknown word, brassard, crossing with another unknown word in the NE corner made that part of the puzzle far too much a matter of guesswork. ANEMOMETRY was not new through my almost forgotten knowledge of new testament greek, but the clue was brilliant. The so-called Spoonerism in 5d was not helpful. Fortunately there were some more straightforward clues to keep me interested, eg, QUESTIONNAIRES, MARX, SLOUGH. Despite the difficulty there were several moments of enjoyment: AXLE, HICCUP, RUBELLA, SPAY.
Petert @20. LOL.. I don’t know if it’s universal but we have SARD’S wondersoap down here. Now that I’ve seen the colour of the gemstone, I think that’s a great claim to fame.
As a ‘Spoonerism’, 5d is a road of lubbish. ‘Stretching it’ is an understatement.
wiktionary gives:
‘dyer’s weed (uncountable) Synonym of dyer’s rocket’
and
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dyer%27s_rocket#English
‘dyer’s rocket (uncountable) A European plant once used to make a yellow dye, weld (Reseda luteola) ‘
There’s a picture of it there. Weld = yellow, madder = red, woad = blue, apparently.
I agree with paddymelon about Pasquale being generous with much of the grid, some of what remained proving to be quite challenging. My first entries were five of the six long answers, and I found the bottom two quadrants readily solvable, but the top two quadrants were tougher. LEPTON (which I knew) helped me complete that corner, and eventually AUBERGE and AMICABLE enabled me to finish my last corner.
I expect to find new words in a Pasquale puzzle, and BRASSARD and DYER’S WEED were the two that I got today.
Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.
Lucky guesses, helped by fair wordplay, with the obscure words already mentioned by others, so I finished but painfully so. IN PLAY was also my favourite. Agree that the Spoonerism was a bit meh.
Ta Pasquale & PeterO for a tough parse, I envy your vocabulary.
Thanks to FrankieG and muffin for explaining DYERS WEED. Quibble withdrawn!
muffin @13: ‘Interacting weakly’ in the context of particle physics has the specific meaning of being subject to the weak nuclear force. A quick wikicheck suggests that all LEPTONs are, but I await the pronouncement of the experts. Another quibble seems to be disappearing, but I feel on firmer ground with Te 🙂
Needed try + check to first get the b of brassard, then guess the sard bit, then guess the weed, loi. Otherwise not too dire, more a slow meander. Thanks PnP.
Quite tough. Failed to solve 9ac – never heard of LEPTON.
I did not parse the spoonerism of 5d.
New for me: aviator Alcock, Sir John William (1892–1919); I know of the town but The Slough of Despond in John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress was new for me; A/NEMO/ME/TRY – well clued; AUREATE = golden but this was easily guessable; DYERS WEED; BRASSARD & SARD (gemstone) for 4ac.
Favourite: IN PLAY.
Thanks, both.
James G @22
The other way round. The appropriate definition of ‘dividend’ is a number which is divided; in a fraction, the numerator is divided by the denominator.
muffin @11, FrankieG @26 etc
Chambers gives dyer’s weed as a general term for a plant providing a natural dye, such as dyer’s greenweed, weld (Reseda), or woad.
I admire those who remain polite with their comments. If a list of 100+ gemstones doesn’t turn up SARD I think it’s fair to be piqued. That’s it for me , I won’t be bothering with this setter any more. A 2 hour word search might be OK for a Sunday, but not midweek.
So much to be debated about 5d alone! In mathematics, “dividend” is something to be divided and thus is, in fractions, the numerator. Imo it’s not right that a Spoonerism is occurring here. It’s more like a Malapropism of one word / a difficult word/phrase to say that defeats the speaker like nuclear “new clear” vs “new cue lar”.
I liked INEBRIATION and SOCIAL ( for the unusual word “laic” ) and even was able to use my school Latin for hic=this.
A SMASHING crossword was IN PLAY this morning. Thank you Pasquale and PeterO.
gervase@10, muffin@13,
There are four forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravity.
All leptons (electrons, muons tauons and their neutrinos and the corresponding anti-particles) are subject to the weak nuclear force.
Yes, prepared for the usual Pasquale obscurities, and today I was rewarded with LEPTON, BRASSARD, DYERS WEED and TELLURIC. Nice to have the remembrance of Latin lessons with Hic, Haec, Hoc running through my brain and not producing too much of a HICCUP for 24ac. All very fairly clued, of course. Oh, and Aye’s The Rub another earworm to assist with 17d’s complaint…
I admit to four reveals, none of which
I would have got otherwise. I don’t think there were any words here I had absolutely never heard in my life, but there were too many that I only vaguely recognised – both SARD and BRASSARD, LAIC, LEPTON, TELLURIC, ANEMOMETRY and DYERS WEED (though the clues for the last two made me smile). Like muffin@8 I remember Dyers Greenweed but not the un-green one. I did get REMUNERATOR but couldn’t see how it was a Spoonerism.
Ronald@36: thanks for reminding me that HIC CUP made me laugh.
I had LAPDOG instead of LEPTON for 9A. Seemed to fit with the second part of the clue, and though I couldn’t quite make it work for the first part the same was true for about half the clues today. Luckily it didn’t affect the crossing words.
There is another meaning of TELLURIC outside the field of chemistry: ‘pertaining to the earth’. Perhaps surprising that Pasquale didn’t use this….
I’ll leave it to my Astrophysics professor friend to reveal to me whether there are 2 types of LEPTONs, only one of which is weakly interacting, but I think I know what he’ll say.
A definite DNF for me (including the DYER”S WEED which I should have got from the wordplay). TELLURIC also took a while thinking whether pee was uric until the seemingly insignificant “about” hit me over the head.
Favourites INEBRIATION and the real nice anagram for QUESTIONNAIRE.
Nice to be stretched, even with the demands on my time as ever at the start of the month.
I always enjoy Pasquale but I have to agree with others about the ‘Spoonerism’ in 5d. I did know most of the obscurities but failed on DYERS WEED. I wondered if an editor can properly be called a wordsmith.
HICCUP made me smile.
Add me to the list who have never heard of SARD. My usual complaint about plant names applies.
Is there ever a point at which the river Ure should be retired?
Thanks for the blog , very good set of clues , I really liked PLAY ON and INEBRIATION , good to see LEPTON with a science definition instead of a Greek coin, unfortunately the definition is very poor. Blame Chambers not the setter, my next post will explain , feel free to skip.
[ LEPTONS – fundmental , six particles and six anti-particles , do not interact strongly as they do not contain quarks so cannot exchange gluons. To call them a type interacting weakly is basically meaningless, ALL particles interact weakly , ALL leptons, ALL baryons, ALL mesons . It means they can exchange the W and Z bosons. Since all particles do it you cannot use it as a defining property of any one group. The clue ( and Chambers ) could say – not interacting strongly – which is how to define leptons in terms of forces. ]
I loved this puzzle.
3 jorums ©Eileen mmxxiii – BRASSARD, DYER’S WEED, TIERCEL.
Stuck for a long time with the top left corner still empty. It took an age to CROSS BOW (and I used to live there!).
The “C” gave me a pdm with ALCOCK. Then CAPTURE was easier, but I just couldn’t see what 1d “A???” could possibly be.
And 9a “??P?O? – what’s that going to be – TIPTOE, SIPHON, LAPDOG (as simonc@39), LAPTOP?
Finally dredged up LEPTON from a combination of Ancient Greek and Physics. And then AXLE – D’oh!
This guy’s been setting crosswords for 60 years. He’s quite good at it, isn’t he? 🙂
Liked REMUNERATOR and especially INEBRIATION.
[Roz @45
Thanks for that short discourse on leptons. Chambers is, I would say, in dire need of a physics consultant, as I have come across other dodgy definitions. Although I have a grasp of the subject, I am not qualified, and when I once proposed a correction to an entry they completely ignored my letter (in which, incidentally, I suggested they get a qualified expert to verify what I had proposed).
By the way, congratulations on writing (or typing or whatever) four sentences that have full stops at the end and not one space beyond the end. The one exception was I’m sure an unlucky accident. More work to do on the commas, though.]
Thanks Roz. I was about to say the same regarding lepton but you do it so much better.
Roz @45: you beat me to it.
Flea @34, yes I’m amazed at the number of people who say nucular instead of nuclear; I mean it’s just new clear … nothing hard about it.
FrankieG @46
What more can/must I say to disclaim responsibility / credit for coining ‘jorum’ for a particular kind of clue?? I have tried on a number of occasions, most recently in my comment 35 on the Picaroon puzzle 29,030 March 29th https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/03/29/171416/#comments.
I did finish this. Before you applaud, let me confess to no sense of accomplishment whatsoever.
Nothing wrong with the clues: it was the answers that were the problem.
I don’t sit in the vanishingly tiny central intersection of the Venn Diagram showing those who are familiar with brassard, sard and dyer’s weed, so the NE corner was intentionally closed to me – and to all those of us sitting on the rest of the Venn Diagram. Is it unfair to suggest that this might be a weakness in the construction of the crossword?
Had the clues been elevated with a touch of wit, I may have felt more forgiving.
So to those who solved this without constant recourse to a dictionary (lepton?, telluric?, laic?, tiercel?), I say well done. I hope your pleasure was more widely spread than I imagine.
[AlanB @47, totally agree about Chambers , I forgive most science words, many in the language before science adopted them or have passed the other way , so most science terms acquire multiple everyday meanings, weight power pressure etc….
However , some science terms are not in everyday usage and need to be defined simply and carefully , it is not difficult. Lepton – a fundamental particle with no strong interactions e.g. an electron ]
[ Thank you Mike@48 , I learnt all my particle physics from AlanC, he is too modest to correct my posts when necessary. ]
Yes there seemed to be even more obscurities than usual for Pasquale, and as revbob says @23, having three of them overlapping in the top right corner did make things particularly challenging. But I thought INEBRIATION was brilliant and I don’t understand the early objections to it. I think it works fine as a semi &lit, or CAD (clue as definition).
I don’t think ALCOCK and Brown are as well remembered as they deserve to be for having made the first transatlantic flight in 1919. Lindbergh is much better known and they beat him by 8 years (though to be fair he did it solo).
(Eileen @51: as I commented on the Picaroon puzzle, the story of you and the jorum has now entered crossword folklore and there’s no shifting it 🙂 .)
Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.
Eileen@51
As Lord Jim said there: ‘Eileen @35: it’s no use protesting. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”” (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
It’s all here in black and white in the Sydney Morning Herald:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/do-you-know-what-jorum-is-i-ll-give-you-a-clue-20230328-p5cvwm.html
Thanks Don Pasquale & PeterO
I also found this very hard, particularly LOI BRASSARD. I somehow vaguely remembered it as a thing, BRAS obviously worked as supports, then off to Google to check that SARD is a gemstone. SARD did not however appear in a list of 304 gemstones which I had trawled through earlier. Not worried whether that makes it fair or unfairly obscure, but a tough clue either way.
However, a very enjoyable work-out all in all. Did anyone else think that “a bird traversing lake” in 1 across was a reference to ALCOCK and Brown’s pioneering transatlantic flight?
Thanks both and more or less what gladys@37 said.
I was tickled by REMUNERATOR. It has always impressed me that otherwise articulate souls can come up with ‘renumeration’ when talking about payment. It’s forgivable because it’s rare. (Not so with the ubiquitous ‘excetera’ which makes me want to reach for my revolver.)
[Eileen@: Thanks for the late link to ‘moot’ in yesterday’s blog.]
My particle physics extends as far as recognising that a LEPTON is a particle when I encounter the word (and I didn’t know about the Greek coin), so it’s interesting to read the explanations from Roz and others who Know About These Things.
I did know about AMMONITES, having had an uncle in West Dorset (prime ammonite country) who used to dig them up in his garden from time to time.
Buddy @52
I take your point about that collection of unfamiliar words in the NE corner. I managed to get BRASSARD after finding ‘sard’ listed under Gems in Bradford’s excellent Crossword Solver’s Lists (although that same volume did not list ‘brassard’ under Armour! – it had ‘brasset’, which is the same thing but has only 7 letters and doesn’t match the clue).
What I frown on especially is what I sometimes call the dreaded double obscurity, where there is an unfamiliar word (or meaning of a word) in both the answer and the wordplay. BRASSARD is such a clue (based of course on what is obscure to me, not necessarily to others), but having found SARD (thank you, Mrs Bradford) I was obviously able to solve that clue and could have looked up the answer just to be sure.
I think Eileen’s credit for coining “jorum” is (sort of) an example of Stigler’s law of eponymy, that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.
Thanks, Andrew – I give up!
Alan B @60: That ‘double obscurity’ is uncharacteristic of Pasquale, who usually clues his frequent rarities with more user friendly constructions. ‘Sard’ to me normally conjures someone like Gianfranco Zola rather than a mineral, though I did dimly remember the latter meaning.
I wondered what its chemical composition was, so I consulted Wiktionary. It defines sard as a type of carnelian, which is in turn defined as a type of chalcedony, which is in turn defined as a type of quartz! Rather a tortuous path to get to silicon dioxide 🙂
Excellent although I thought 5 down was a bit clumsy?
Oddities come with Pasquale’s territory but this crossword exceeded my tolerance. I bailed with a dozen clues left unsolved. I’m too old to persist with things I’m not enjoying unless it’s a life-or-death issue. Thanks to both.
Gervase @63
I too have generally found Pasquale to be a stickler for rules and clarity, and I mean that in a good way. It’s almost true to say that the best crosswords are free of double obscurities. But as Buddy @52 wisely said, such clues can readily be forgiven and accepted if there is a payback in terms of wit (for example).
I also had to make a few reveals to get the thing finished, but after reading everyone’s else’s posts I feel better now. I’ll just say my favourite clues involve known elements, in both clue and solution, hidden by the cunningly misleading surface. I prefer the difficulty to be because it’s obscured rather than obscure.
Couldn’t get past BRAS for 1a, for the same reason as everyone else. Didn’t know ALCOCK (providing evidence for Lord Jim’s thesis @55) or DYERS WEED. A bit too rusty in my particle physics to get LEPTON, though I’ve heard of it. Forgot to think of aubergine as a fruit rather than a vegetable (all I could think of was passionfruit), so I was locked out of the AUBERGE for a while.
I liked TELLURIC, NOBEL LAUREATES.
In relation to SOCIAL, I have my doubts about “laïc” being used as the adjective for ” layperson” outside ecclesiastic contexts.
Dare one suggest a mini theme with INEBRIATION and the HIC in 24a?
Like others, I struggled a lot with this, the top half significantly more so than the bottom. Had to cheat on BRASSARD, DYERS WEED, and ALCOCK (never heard of him, sorry). I love that the upper right is Vegetables They Call By Different Names in Britain corner, with the eggplant planted next to the rutabaga. (I succeded with the aubergine but not the swede.)
Funny–in my first pass through the puzzle looking for a foothold, I saw “interacting weakly” and thought “Something like LEPTON? Nah, can’t be.” The when I finally came back around to the top half, it turned out it was.
mrpenney @68: The anglocentricity of ‘swede’ crossed my mind as I was solving the puzzle. In fact, although that is the ‘standard’ British name, in the north of England they are often called turnips, and in Scotland they are the ‘neeps’ which are traditional accompaniments to haggis. Rutabaga is Swedish – I guess they brought them across the pond. Eggplant is an old British name for the vegetable – some of the early varieties were white, hence the name. But the Brits forgot about them, until they rediscovered them from Mediterranean cuisine. Another Frenchified vegetable in Britain is the courgette – zucchini in the US. In Italy they are (feminine) zucchine – the masculine form may be Southern Italian dialectal, as that is where most Italian immigrants to the US originated.
I had all of the same difficulties as others but I’m here to sing the praises of this puzzle and Pasquale. First I have to mention my faves: SLOUGH, HICCUP, TELLURIC. I have learned with Pasquale puzzles to take a couple of passes through and enjoy solving what I can. After that, I start revealing and trying to parse the answers rather than getting in a tizzy trying to come up with a word I’ve never heard of. What I find is that the wordplay is invariably genius and that parsing is most of the fun. Keep it up, Pasquale!
btw Tellurium is one of the least studied elemnts. No-one wants to work on it as even the tiny traces that are absorbed with the most stringent of precautions make your sweat smell of rancid garlic!
Thanks, Pasquale and PeterO. Nothing much to add to the fascinating discussion. FrankieG @46 sums up my feelings on this one – loved it. I sit in that happy zone where my general knowledge is sufficiently deep that I could finish the puzzle unaided, but superficial enough that I don’t have any quibbles with any of the definitions.
Gervase @69 – “Swede” is of course short for “Swedish turnip”
Gervase@69
In this part of the world (Yorkshire), swedes and turnips are completely different vegetables, although both are root crops.
In the UK we have swedes and turnips, turnips are much smaller, rounder and whiter flesh. To confuse things further the names are swapped over in some regions.
Roz@74. And to confuse things further still, in some places “turnip” used to be used for both. I was an adult before I discovered that not all swedes were blond.
Gervase @69: another fun fact is that courgette and zucchini both translate, roughly, as “little squash.” We should make a trans-atlantic compromise and all just call them squashies.
It is very confusing , my mother used to call them opposite and the market she went to also.
My “Vegetable Expert” garden book says they are closely related and both are brassicas .
We tried to justify putting BRASSETS for 4A, recalling the great song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida, where the armoured fighter removes his encumbering protection: “These brassets, truth to tell, are like a lobster shell . . .”
But then we did some armour research, which led us to check “sard.” Whew.
Quite a few places where we impressed ourselves by miraculously being able to dredge up the GK needed. Or at least get to where we could confirm something hovering dimly in the back of the brain.
Nicbach@5 said it for me too pretty much.
Thanks Pasquale for the brutal workout which I didn’t quite finish, and to PeterO for the explanations.
Bonangman @67: Me too! Botanically they may be fruit — but aubergines are sold by the greengrocer not the fruitmonger…or, where I live, eggplants are to be found in the vegetable section of the produce stand.
Thanks PeterO for explaining that NE corner (add me to the gem failures, with that looked up i did guess the weed but spelt it wrong, and SOCIAL also a guess from def) but very enjoyable discussion above so thanks everyone too and Pasquale, you beat me today but I enjoyed the experience, especially the reminder of Baker’s “Peregrine” thanks to 19d.
Like Widdersbel @72 my GK appears to have been deep enough for me to recognise a correct answer when it emerged, as Pianola @78 puts it, “hovering dimly in the back of my brain”. Pasquale seems to provide a challenge that no other setter can, but it does sometimes seem to be a matter of struggling grimly on to the end, with not much prospect of a laugh.
Even his playfulness with the Spoonerism, and the reverse clue for IN PLAY failed to touch the corners of my mouth. It reminded me of going for a walk in hilly country when the clouds are lower than the hilltops. Seeing anything at all is a relief – expecting whatever you do see to be a beautiful view is bound to result in disappointment.
Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.
Oof. This was a slog and a half for me, and I only got to the finish line with some cheating and some unparsed answers, due to a combination of gaps in my vocabulary & GK, and getting stuck on some of the simpler ones because by the time I’d clawed my way into the grid I was all psyched out. I’m not sure how I can claim was a US vs UK issue. Good to have a challenge sometimes, I suppose!
Thanks PeterO and Pasquale
Like lorem ipsum@83 I found this a slog, although I gave up cheating/revealing half way through because I couldn’t give a d…arned hoot past the first half. In the course of 10 years I’ve worked my way up to proficiency with Everyman, Quiptic and the Monday Cryptic. Many weeks I can make it through Thursday before Paul puts my brain in a blender. To get one like this on a Tuesday is super discouraging. Please keep this elitist internecine nonsense until Thursday, at least, please.
Only finished it this morning, and with much bung-checking for the last handful. It was a bit of a slog. I honestly don’t mind learning a smattering of new words in a puzzle but my NHO count was just too high for this to be fun.
Thanks both, and onto the next!
Alan Tyndale@80: This recalls the old maxim, also applying to the tomato, that knowledge tells you it’s a fruit but wisdom says not to put it in a fruit salad.
Glad to find that this was unanimously considered to be really difficult. I’ve had a bit of a long break from Guardian daily crosswords and my god did this one make me feel like a philistine!
Thanks for the crossword I enjoyed all of the clues besides the many I did not know.?????