Guardian Cryptic 29,077 by Fed

73 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,077 by Fed”

1. Thanks, Fed and manehi!
   Liked RECOIL, SPOUSE, ATOMISER and DURESS.

2. This was hard work but enjoyable in the end. I liked the long anagram, the angry crocodile and MISCREANTS.

   Ta Fed & manehi.

3. As manehi says, a slow but steady solve.

   Felt some of the clues a little clunky, such as “Quickly prepare comic set with RuPaul trashing America” Wot?

   However, ticks at ATOMISER & DOUBLE ENTRY BOOKKEEPING.

   SCHEME for ‘programme’ seems a tad loose but perfectly getable.

   Many thanks, both.

4. Challenging but completely fair and with some absolute beauties tucked in there. Personal favourites were the brilliant long anagram for DOUBLE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING, ATOMISER (the double meaning of “mister” is a delight) and DURESS (one of those where the wordplay doesn’t actually help you very much towards finding the word, but is absolutely watertight in confirming that you’ve got it right when you have found it).
   Thanks to Fed and manehi.

5. Thanks Fed and manehi
   Best Fed puzzle so far – lots to like. Favourites ATOMISER and YEOMAN.
   The long one I guessed from definition and crossers, then parsed retrospectively; I had spotted the fodder but was unable to make anything of it.
   Only problem – the grid made it seem like four separate puzzles.

6. As everyone else says, DOUBLE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING was an amazing anagram and the misleading use of Mister in ATOMISER were great.

   I like Fed and was really pleased to see his name this morning. Thank you Fed and manehi.

7. Yes, some tricky parsing as you say manehi, but with Fed you get the feeling that if you carefully follow the instructions you will get the answer.

   Are we going to get a major argument about whether YE really did mean “the” (5a)? (Which reminds me of Crucible’s classic from a few years ago, He wrote the Ancient Mariner (6).)

   My current rule of always thinking COR! when I see the word “my” paid off in 20d.

   Many thanks Fed and manehi.

8. Mainly a good puzzle, but 16d confuses the Company with the product. Durex condoms are, as far as I know, made by the London Rubber Company. I also believe that Durex has a completely different connotation in the United States (as does rubber in this sort of context).

9. Between them, NeilH @4 and Lord Jim @7 have summed up exactly my thoughts on this great puzzle, which saves me a lot of trouble.

   Lord Jim, that Crucible clue is in my little book of classics. I remember laughing out loud when I wrote down the components and realised what I’d come up with. I’ve used it several times to introduce friends to the magic of cryptics.

   Many thanks to Fed and manehi.

10. Agree with Muffin that this is the best Fed so far.
    GC @8. I also believe, and I’m sure someone will correct me, that Durex is sellotape in Oz.
    Thanks Fed and Manehi

11. A slow solve, with only one unparsed, so hard but fair. A couple made me laugh – 13a, 12d 16d and the brilliant 14, 8. Early on I told our new lodger that there is always one clue where the answer is hidden in the wordplay, often backwards, but that I usually miss them until after solving – and blow me, this happened yet again with 19a! Thanks F and m

12. Most enjoyable. I always seem to click with Fed – as LJ @7 says, just follow the instructions to the letter – although I did cause myself problems by initially entering PROMISER at 4d and wondering why that meant “mister” and what to do with the superfluous K. Doh! SPOUSE was my favourite.

    Thanks, Fed and manehi.

13. GC @8 – In Australia, ‘pass the Durex’ means give me the sticky tape. One to unlearn fast if you are teaching in Britain (as I did). Aussies and Poms had to unlearn ‘pass me a rubber’ for American classrooms for much the same reason. We found this a bit tricky but did get there. Didn’t fully check the fodder for the accounting. Might
    “Club‘s highest point when midfielder initially moves up top (4)” have been better with “forward” for “up top”? Thanks, Fed and manehi.

14. In my innocence, my initial thought for a rubber company beginning with D was Dunlop.

15. Slow to get started. RHS was easier for me.

    New for me QI = British TV comedy panel game quiz show (for 1d) – thanks, google, never heard of it before.

    Favourites: RECOIL, LO-FI (loi).

    Thanks, both.

16. I liked SPOUSE and ATOMISER. I admire long anagrams, but I don’t really enjoy solving them.

17. [Michelle @15
    Watch QI if you can – as well as being informative, it is often the funniest prgramme on TV!]

18. Really glad that the long anagram at 14, 8 gave me a hefty leg up with this as I was initially struggling to make any kind of impression. Then rather stumbled my way to the finishing line, with the NW corner last to reluctantly yield. Only knew YEOMAN in relation to yeoman farmers, who feature way back in my own family tree. Some very tricky and sometimes devious parsing at times, I thought…

19. GC@8 – I used to work for LRC 50 years ago. Long gone now, as folded in the ‘90s, and the Durex brand now owned by Reckitt Benckiser.

20. I agree with others who said this was Fed’s best yet.

    My favourites were DOUBLE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING, ATOMISER, DURESS and SPOUSE.

    Fed/Bluth/Django has NUMEROUS setting tricks at his disposal, is never LO-FI or ORTHODOX but always PLUCKY and SCHEMing. Always manages to build his other interests into the clues, humour, mathematics, music and football…. Long may it continue !

    Thank you Fed and manehi.

21. Excellent puzzle, though as usual I bunged the long anagram once I could see where it was going. Not sure about DIY=LoFi, especially with modern equipment. A nephew has a home recording studio and has composed music for a BBC series, entirely by his own efforts.

22. Fed is the setter I find most enjoyable. Difficult to explain why but the best I can come up with is it is like being a cryptographer. Just keep scrutinising the ‘instructions’ and all becomes clear – eventually.
    As with others I thoroughly enjoyed the misdirection of Mister.
    Thanks both.

23. Widdersbel@14. You and me both. Spent ages down that rabbit hole. Thanks Fed and manehi. Enjoyed it.

24. I too thought this was challenging, fair and fun

    Thanks to Fed and manehi

25. Chris@19, the LRC didn’t bounce back then?

26. Thanks both – thoroughly enjoyable. Strictly a DNF for me because with a ‘K’ in place I confidently revealed 13a expecting to see ‘sukiyake’ (‘I’ll parse it later…’). But a similar experience to many with lots of ‘aha!’s. Fairly sure my brain could be heard creaking as it coughed up CLIQUE and OTHODOX but ATOMISER gets the auric gong for best in show.

    [Lord Jim@: Don’t get that Crucible classic – yet. No, don’t tell me…..]

27. Very enjoyable with lots of fun along the way. The Mister in 4d was brilliant, as was the annoying buzzer.

    Favourites were YELLOW, FIBREGLASS, CORSET, LO-FI and RECOIL.

    thanks Fed and manehi

28. Defeated by ORTHODOX though I don’t know why – it’s fairly clued but my mind just couldn’t get past CON, to the extent I googled ORTHOCON! Feel a bit daft now …

29. Very good puzzle with a few bits to think about which distracted me nicely from what I should have been doing in the time before lunch. Thanks to setter and blogger.

30. Lots to like here. Favorite was 12D. However, “GEL” in 17D feels like a stretch to me.

31. Never heard of QI or Durex — British TV and brands being two of my blank spots.

    Didn’t we see MISCREANT(s?) recently in another puzzle?

    Had a lot left blank this morning, but a little check button on FIBREGLASS got me going and the others revealed themselves one by one.

    Joining in the cheers for DOUBE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING. Thanks to Fed and manehi for a lot of fun.

    To kenmac — does the print have to be grey on white? It makes the comments more work to read than I’d think they need to be. Is there a way to make it darker?

32. [Valentine@31: The presentation I see (on Windows10) is dark enough for purposes. Perhaps a local setting?]

33. [TT@13 The story goes that a Brit fresh off the plane teaching his first American university class asks the students innocently “Anyone know where I can get a rubber?” That was me in 1975. Honest! The female students all burst out laughing, while the guys just reached into their back pockets. Talk about breaking the ice!]

    Great puzzle, btw.

34. Another cracker from Fed, I always enjoy his puzzles. Favourites DOUBLE ENTRY BOOKKEEPING, CLIQUE, MISCREANTS, ATOMISER, DURESS, FIBREGLASS. Surprised others have said it was a slow solve, I often take over an hour for a Guardian crossword but finished this one in 33 minutes, one of my quickest. I must be on Fed’s wavelength!

35. [Alphalpha @26: to be honest it is quite an outrageous clue, and I would think very difficult to get without any crossers. If you want to have a look at it in context it’s in puzzle number 27,144 from 14 March 2017.]

36. It took me ages to get onto Fred’s wavelength today, but as others have intimated, you just have to follow the instructions and keep plugging away. The only trouble is understanding the instructions!

    Jacob@30. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen GEL clued as ‘posh girl’ a number of times, so I didn’t find it a stretch. One for the memory banks maybe. 🙂

    Thanks to Fed and manehi.

37. Lord Jim @35 – the penny dropped while I was out walking by the river on my lunch break. Made me laugh. I love it! (Having an idea what the last two letters would be was helpful.)

38. Thanks for the blog, SACRED is very well hidden , I liked SPOUSE for the use of steep,
    Alphalpha@26 , eat your greens if you want to get better at solving.
    { AlanC @2 so close to Number 1 but no cigar , Azed number 1 again for me this week, counting double. it is now 23-10 .]

39. Thanks manehi, enjoyed this thoroughly, Lord Jim’s 1st and 3rd chime with me, still fathoming his 2nd. And I agree with poc both on solving the central cross and the LOFI.
    TassieTim@13 I thought “up front” would have worked better for the surface (and I would have no problem with it cryptically) but as it’s a down clue I can see why he went for “top”.
    With all the complicated parsing going on I am almost ashamed to admit the part that took me longest might have been wondering why a weed might also be a pot! Seems like a long time since I have heard that particular euphemism.
    Thanks very much Fed.

40. Thanks Fed, I thoroughly enjoyed this superb crossword. I couldn’t parse DURESS and the QI in CLIQUE but all else made sense. My top picks were DOUBLE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING (amazing how 22 letters can be the anagrist from such a readable surface), KEEPSAKE, RECOIL, ATOMISER, and FIBREGLASS. Thanks manehi for the blog.

41. Thanks Manehi and thanks all.

    William @3 – not sure what you find so clunky about 18ac. Here’s a video of RuPaul performing a comic set on Saturday Night Live. Imagine the producers suddenly requiring the writing staff to come up with another one and imagine it involves bad-mouthing America. They’d been asked to quickly prepare a comic set with RuPaul trashing America.

    TassieTim @13 (and latterly, Gazzh) ‘up top’ is a phrase frequently used in football to describe a striker’s position. cf this bbc podcast asking ‘Can Newcastle get two up top?’ – in other words, can Newcastle find a system that accommodates two strikers.

    Cheers!

42. and here’s me thinking the soccer expression was “up front”…

43. Fed@41 thanks and fair enough (Ronald I think we may be out of touch!), recently I found an Italian channel that shows big games with no commentary but the crowd noise, far preferable for me but clearly not going to help improve cryptic skills.

44. Ronald @42 oh, that would be used also for sure.

45. Gazzh @43 I have found a channel with no picture, sound, commentary or crowd noise , bliss.

46. Sounds like one hand clapping, Roz …

47. So we’re not having an argument about YE then? I’ve no idea what the Ancient Mariner stuff is all about. Anyone care to explain?

48. AuntRuth I have solved the clue but should be for Lord Jim to explain and I do not want to spoil it for others. I will explain early tomorrow morning if no-one else has by then.

    Grant@46 it is a special channel only showing the most interesting football highlights.

49. I showed 4d to my daughter, explaining that it was a great clue. I gave her a pointer and she said “PROMISER”. I corrected the choice of letters from “partook” and she got ATOMISER, then said “that’s dreadful – he should be ashamed of himself”. Needless to say, I didn’t agree.

50. AuntRuth @47 – the blog of the puzzle (and it was a good one – I do miss Crucible!) is here :
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/03/14/guardian-cryptic-27144-by-crucible/
    As I said @9, the clue is one of my all-time favourites.

51. I think you are being a tad generous, Eileen – it’s very funny, but “he wrote” doesn’t eliminate many writers.

52. My curiosity got the better of me and I revealed it. Aaah. Yes, very clever. I would never have got it. Was approaching it from the wrong side. Agree with Muffin, he wrote could be anyone. It made me smile though.

53. Thanks Eileen and others. I never would have solved that. And unless I’m mistaken, ‘ye’ never meant ‘the’. Presumably it’s accepted in Crosswordland

54. AuntRuth @53
    Actually it’s the other way round – “ye” meant “the”, but the Y wasn’t pronounced “Y”.

55. AuntRuth @53 – it’s been the subject of lengthy discussion here, over the years and I can’t help thinking that Crucible had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote it.
    muffin @51 – you did explain it in that very blog @38 and 39 – but in an earlier comment, you’d said,
    “I loved this, with QUAVERS and the brilliant POPEYE outstanding.” – and over a dozen others agreed with you!

56. Eileen @55
    Yes, sussed! However I now think I was misled by the entertainment to overlook the looseness.

57. [Lord Jim@35: Tvm. I’ll let it stew for a while yet but nice to have a bolthole. (I probably did that puzzle…)] (Composed some hours ago – neglected to post. 🙁 )

58. Muffin@54 The word that looked like “ye” wasn’t spelled with a Y but with a thorn, a sort-of Y-shaped letter English no longer uses, though Icelandic still does. It has a long history in Germanic languages. Y is descended from the Greek Upsilon, and never was pronounced like -th. It has always been a vowel, and thorn has always been a consonant.

59. [Well I wasn’t going to get it anyway. Now to check the related blog to see if I had a view on POPEYE…]

60. @49: Nope. Must have missed that one. (It happens, but less often these days.)

61. Roz@38: Now I understand what you were nudging me towards it represents the best ‘aha!’ of the day.
    :()

62. 😀

63. First one finished without aids since I started doing Guardian cryptics again so feeling very pleased with myself. Minor quibble about em=space in 25a though – ems are units of font height (like pixels or inches) rather than spacing?

64. Re: EM – Chambers: “A unit of measurement (equal to the width of the lower-case letter ‘m’ in 12-point) used in spacing material and in estimating dimensions of pages (printing)”

    Really enjoyed this – late to the party today due to work which I believe Oscar Wilde once described as the curse of the cruciverbal classes

    Cheers F&M

65. [Jones The Guitar @63: an “em” is both height and width. Because the lower case letter “m” is the closest letter of the alphabet to square, the horizontal space occupied by that letter is considered to be the same as the point size that is being used (its x height, the distance from baseline to the top of non-ascending letters). Thus an em space when setting in 12pt would be twelve point space. Similarly an em dash (produced in word processing by typing hyphen-hyphen) would be a twelve point dash. An “en” space is considered to be half the width of an em space, by similar logic.]

66. Best (and for me, quickest) Fed yet. Increasingly towards the top of my favourite setter list. Such good clues and delicious ‘aha’ moments.

    Thanks both!

67. Fed @41: I did wonder if it might be soccer-speak (though I have little interest any more in that game, I never heard ‘up top’ used when I did, back when I lived where they didn’t play Real Footy for a while). It must be weird to play on a vertical pitch.

68. DOUBLE=ENTRY BOOKKEEPING took me awhile ,because I had mistyped MISCREANTS as MISCREAMTS. I was searching for an M in the anagram until I thought to check the down clue. This is not the first time I have done this. I used to do the Indy puzzle as well, but their weird website where y9oub don’t overwrite led me to give it up, also I thought once a day and twice on Mondays a happy medium for many parts of life.

69. sheffield hatter @36 definitely saved for future reference. Another ten years of this and I will consider myself an old hand 🙂

70. On reading Lord Jim@7’s clue and Eileen@9’s recommendation of it, I searched the archives here for “He wrote the Ancient Mariner (6)”
    I was surprised to find 3 results:
    Guardian Saturday puzzle 28,183 / Boatman – July 18, 2020 blogged by Eileen – a previous mention of one of her all-time favourite clues.
    Guardian Cryptic 27,144 by Crucible – March 14, 2017 – blogged by loonapick – the one I was looking for.
    Financial Times 14,966 by REDSHANK – June 25, 2015 blogged by David and Linda – could this mean the clue had been used before?
    No – it has all the right words, “but not necessarily in the right order”. (c) Eric Morecambe MCMLXXI:
    ’16a Ancient Mariner’s revolutionary hollowed-out harpoon (4) … 25d He wrote verse lacking effort (3)’ – Different sailor, different writer.
    And yes, Lord Jim@35 it is “outrageous”, and I needed all the crossers to get it.
    And yes, Widdersbel@37 the discussion of YE “was helpful”
    Brilliant! 🙂

71. I finally gave up on 8,14. Couldn’t find anything that fit, only to come here and realise it was 14,8 not 8,14. I hereby apply for the Wally of the Week Award.

72. Paul the other one @71, I feel your pain but you did make me laugh!

    Rob T @66, I agree. Fed is one of those setters I’m always pleased to see. Lots of favourable comments on here too, although he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I think he’s definitely done enough to disprove the doubters who said he was only published because of his previous ‘celeb’ status.

73. Like everyone else, a slow but enjoyable solve. The grid made it trickier, but worth the effort. Lots of nice clues, but MOSQUITO probably my favourite.

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