Guardian Cryptic 29,080 by Tramp

70 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,080 by Tramp”

1. In the case of INTERFERE, I don’t think the T is meant to be part of the anagram fodder. The “dancing” FREE REIN provides the entertainment for it, thus containing it.

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

2. DNF for me. Missed some simple ones (e.g. theft) and some new words (trope, for one). Thansks Tramp and loonapick). Trump = Fart again!

3. Steve B @1: that’s how I parsed it in the end but it was the only thing that didn’t sit comfortably in the puzzle. I feel the simple anagram would have done the job. Loads to like as always from one of my favourite setters: SELLOTAPE is a neat construction, DRAMA cleverly done, WEIGHT has a nice surface as does DOWAGER, ISOLATING is a splendid anagram and I did enjoy the chunk of ICE in full visibility – alongside a cunningly hidden definition in DICER. To finish, another in full view construction with THEFT and another hidden def in LOWER CASE. All great fun.

   I encounter GREENROOM occasionally and am always surprised to find it listed as one word rather than two; is there a reason, does anyone know?

   Thanks Tramp and loonapick

4. I suppose entertain can mean take in, but it can also involve uncertainty, as in entertain an idea …

5. Thanks, Tramp and loonapick!
   Liked WEIGHT, DICER and LOWER CASE!

6. The oil giant supply would have been exoneration if it hadn’t been for the small matter of the definition and the numeration. I also wondered for a while why BALTI might have bark on it, but it all came good in the end. PostMark @3 I suppose it’s to differentiate from a room that is painted green?

7. Pleased to see the setter and this was lots of fun with CIGGIES being my COTD. Plain sailing until the SW corner which I found difficult to PENETRATE.

   Ta Tramp & loonapick.

8. Mixed bag I thought. Some odd parsing INTERFERE (which didn’t entertain me) and the DICER with ice in the clue?
   Thanks both

9. Thanks for the blog, loonapick.

   INTERFERE = T + {(FREEREIN)* outside}

   There aren’t superfluous words if you parse it as I intended. I think it’s preferable to not include abbreviations in anagram fodder, if it can be helped. I remember reading somewhere that Picaroon agrees with this approach, but, sometimes he makes a judgment call and breaks the “rule” : I thought about doing that here, but, decided not to.

   I had that Simply Red clue in my list of clues awaiting a puzzle for a while. I realised they’re releasing an album today so I got it out of the attic and dusted it down.

   Neil

10. Thanks loonapick as I couldn’t see what was going on in 23d, I think the “the” threw me there, and I was puzzled by wordiness of 12a too. Was going to query enumeration of 14d so thanks Postmark for real world evidence. But 18d, 22d and 9d all hit the spot, thanks Tramp.

11. I found this to be the toughest of the week, but got there in the end. PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM took me much too long…I loved CIGGIES and TRAFFIC. Am not sure how I’ve managed to get this far without knowing that trump can mean gases expelled from the anus. Sadly, I think this is British slang only and is most probably not a meaning known in the US of A. With thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

12. Petert @6: yes – but it is normally a room painted green!

13. A slow solve for me but very rewarding. Liked FIRE ALARM, DOWAGER, CIGGIES, LOWER CASE. Trump always delivers a fun puzzle. Thanks to both.

14. Thanks for clearing up INTERFERE, SteveB @1 and for your explanation Neil.

15. As usual it took me a little while to get onto Tramp’s wavelength but in the end I found this to be more tractable than most of his offerings. I had no problem with INTERFERE.
    One minor quibble. I may just be getting old and prudish, but DO for “have sex with” seems a bit 1970s, at best.

16. A fun puzzle to round off the week.

    My ticks were for PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM, SELLOTAPE, CIGGIES, ISOLATING, LOWER CASE and TRAFFIC. I enjoyed all the misdirection, which raised a few smiles.

    Many thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

17. When did “SA” come to mean “sex appeal”? I have never seen this usage anywhere outside the cryptic crosswords. “It” I get; it goes back at least as far as the It Girl Clara Bow, but does anybody actually say “SA”?

18. An unusually speedy solve for a Tramp, even if PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM didn’t fall for a while.

    Lots to enjoy. My favourites included the piggies and the date gone wrong in DREARY. In a very pernickety point, a slight shame ‘on’ appeared in both def and solution for ON AIR.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

19. Found this tough. Got the long anagram straightaway which helped in the top half – the bottom half took much longer. Found that a lot of answers were found then parsed as Tramp used synonyms/meanings I would not have thought of but could get once I’d got the answer.

    Didn’t parse THEFT, RIOJA

    Some lovely clues including: CIGGIES, PENETRATE, DRAMA, DOWAGER and like others thought the surface for DICER was great.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick

20. Tramp@9 : Thanks for dropping in. I believe this week is the 25th anniversary of the Simply Red CD “Blue”.

    Favourite track, as an earworm :

    https://youtu.be/ZvkBdpMXL5Q

    Had a most enjoyable night out with my daughter – many moons ago, at Wembley Arena, watching Simply Red. Fantastic ! Funnily enough, she has met Albert Hammond – the main composer of above tune.

    I liked BALSA, CIGGIES and TRAFFIC ( another city band but Birmingham this time not Manchester ).

    Thank you Tramp and loonapick.

21. Banjaxed by SW!

    Thanks both.

22. Enjoyed this on the whole but need Neil’s explanation of INTERFERE.

    GregfromOz @17: yes, I’ve often thought the same re SA, but then there are plenty of other examples of expressions which seem to be accepted by, but unique to, Crosswordland. Who do you know who had ever referred to a river as a banker for instance?

23. The starboard half flew in quite rapidly, but what a struggle I had with the port side. A great many misdirections there, I thought. Almost too many to handle. Liked RIOJA and PENETRATE. Strange how I was trying to shoehorn Bride into the construction of 14d for a long while without considering Groom for simply ages. Last two in TROPE and THEFT. A tough but fair challenge this morning, I thought…

24. I’m a naysayer on INTERFERE I’m afraid, as ‘to provide entertainment’ is to me a real stretch for a container indicator. As for the procedure for anagrams, I’m sure containing the T would be preferable, but t/free/rein? Why not!

    Anyway, this is distraction. It’s a really nice puzzle from Tramp.

25. Lots of fun, and for me a Goldilocks level of difficulty. I hadn’t heard post-doctorate abbreviated. “Do” for “have sex with”? Hmmm …

    Thanks Tramp & Loonapick.

26. PostMark@3 re GREENROOM – GREEN’s Dictionary of Slang…
    https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/cawbqqi#mnwnt5y
    …has ‘GREEN ROOM (n.) [its green-painted walls] (US prison) the gas chamber.’ – with citations from 1954 to 2021.
    Nice to see Tramp treating Trump as the pompous bag of wind he’s always been.
    And Flea@20 – my better half prefers The Hollies’ version.
    Thanks T&l.

27. This puzzle provided great entertainment! Splendid long anagram (which took me a while to crack) and some well-crafted charades with excellent surfaces –
    CIGGIES, DREARY, DOWAGER and TRAFFIC stood out for me as they display both.

    SA as an abbreviation for sex appeal strikes me as an early 20th century usage, like ‘it’, but I can’t recall any examples off hand.

    Thanks to Neil and loonapick

28. Geoff Down Under@25 – ‘“Do” for “have sex with”?
    Green’s Dictionary of Slang, again…
    https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/tcccuoy
    has a very extensive list.

29. GDU @25 – you obviously haven’t ever had to look for, or have a child look for, a job after completing a PhD then – I would say that hearing the full “post-doctorate” is the rarity! There have been several comments above on the order for solving, none of which fit with my bottom first, then NE, and last NW. Interesting, as often there seems to be a consensus. All done and parsed, though I thought the ‘to provide entertainment’ superfluous. Thanks, Tramp and Loonapick.

30. Quite tough and also enjoyable. SW corner was last to fall.

    Favourites: LOWER CASE, TRAFFIC.

    12ac – I agree with loonapick – why ‘to provide entertainment’? It did not seem necessary to the clue with answer coming from an anagram (dancing) of T FREE REIN.

    Thanks, both.

31. Great puzzle by Tramp.

    The anagram thing changes from paper to paper, fyi. The DT, IIRC, won’t accept t/free/rein*, whereas The Times will. That’s because arriving at the T from the abbrev for time counts as a separate solving operation I suppose. Other organs don’t seem to have a rule on it.

32. GDU @25: I concur with TassieTim; POSTDOC is by far the most common form for both ‘post-doctorate’ and ‘post-doctoral student’ except in the most formal communications.

33. FrankieG @ 28, I’ve no doubt it’s legit. I just find it a tad amusing that the things we seem to have the most euphemisms for are copulation and defecation.

34. TassieTim @29 & Gervase @32, postdocs don’t feature much in my sheltered life.

35. Another SuperTramp!

    I liked the long anagram, the surfaces for SELLOTAPE, CIGGIES, POSTDOC and GREENROOM, and TRAFFIC and THEFT for the wordplays, I understand Tramp’s point @9 but as T = time is so ubiquitous and is used anyway in the wordplay, I personally would have shortened the clue. GREENROOM is given in Chambers and Collins but two words in the ODE.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

36. Thanks for the blog, very good set of clues, my list almost matches MrPostMark@3 so I will not repeat but must add to the praise for THEFT which was very clever.
    For INTERFERE I prefer the shorter clue, indirect anagrams do not get a frown as long as the letter (time=t) is actually in the clue.
    POSTDOC is widely used in this form , in science more commonly Research Assistant , RA for short although the general term is dogsbody.

37. [AlanC@7 your recent Number 1 duly recorded. It is now 23-11 .]

38. I left the 19 letter anagrind well alone until I had progressed from bottom to top to get some crossers. Then it sort of dropped in.
    I really likes W EIGHT, the child’s toes and THEFT
    And nice to see a variation on a theme for RIOJA
    Really fun puzzle
    Thanks NW and loonapick

39. Hasnt anyone heard of that band Post Doc and the Mail Megapause
    I’ll get me coat

40. When will I ever learn that SA=’it’? Great fun – all has been said. Thanks both.

41. GDU @25. See Vindice’ opening speech in Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy

    Duke: royal lecher? go, gray-­haired adultery,
    And thou his son, as impious steeped as he:
    And thou his bastard true­ begot in evil:
    And thou his Duchess that will do with Devil,
    Four exc’llent Characters —

    It goes way back, therefore.

42. Everything solved, but needed Loonapick’s parsings for 9A, 2D, and 22A. Eventually I will remember that “books” is often OT or NT; “it” is Sex Appeal; and E.T. is every setter’s favorite film.

43. When you write a clue, you make choices. Not everyone will agree with the choices. On reflection, the clue for INTERFERE isn’t great, anyway. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it: Everton are taking up most of my spare thinking time. To me, as with a lot of crossword debate, it’s a bit like how much salt do you like in your soup?

    Have a good weekend
    Neil

44. I got stuck in the SE by putting in READOPT in 20d, which made a mess of 22ac. Anyone else?

    I had no idea Simply Red was a thing, thought it was just anagram filler, so thanks Neil.

    Thanks Tramp and loonapick.

45. Tramp @43; fair point, it’s not the most important thing in the world (but neither is Everton to me).

46. I was another puzzled by the excess verbiage in 12a. Nothing unfair about including ‘time’=T in the anagrist.

    Usually I find myself appreciating the most difficult clues, but this time I really enjoyed WEIGHT and CIGGIES, even though they were very easy. Struggled the longest with THEFT, because I was seeing ‘lift’ as an instruction rather than a synonym. Doh!

    Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

47. Valentine @44 – yes, me too. I had another look when I couldn’t find a word to go in front of ALAMO.

48. [Tramp@43: unfortunately Everton have lost their secret weapon – my father in law. Since he passed away, they have been in decline. A lifelong supporter, to his great frustration the team thrived whenever he was living away from the UK and did poorly when he was based here and able to attend the matches. Now he is, effectively, permanently installed in the UK, there could be trouble ahead]

49. Thanks to Tramp for a playful Friday puzzle. We also had the same thoughts as loonapick and others regarding INTERFERE. Favourites were WEIGHT, DICER, LOWER CASE, SELLOTAPE, TRAFFIC, ISOLATING and CIGGIES [the later brought back lovely memories of grand-daughters laughter when we played the rhyme ‘little piggies going to market’ on her toes.]

50. POSTDOC? As one word, and not even hyphenated. Stumped me as a synonym for researcher, but I wasn’t on the right wavelength today perhaps.

51. An enjoyable crossword of a Friday level of difficulty. My favourite clue was 13a. No problems with postdoc being all one word, I used to work with lots of them

    Many thanks to Tramp and Loonapick

52. TT@47 My problem was that I already had FIRE and was trying to convince myself that FIRE ALAMO was a thing;

53. I expect I’m missing something blindingly obvious, but I can’t see what the word ‘cube’ is doing in 5d.

54. [GdU@33, you could add death to that list. As TS Eliot put it, “that’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks”.]

55. AuntRuth @53: It’s a key element of the definition. A dicer turns things into cubes – ie it cubes them – cube as a transitive verb – so the def is ‘Cube? One might’

56. AuntRuth @53: Read ‘cube’ as a verb. A DICER might be ‘cubing’ something – cutting it into to small cubes.

57. Brilliant puzzle. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly like the way Tramp takes the trouble to write meaningful surfaces, so I’m a fan of clues like 12, even if they seem a bit more complicated than need be.
    A couple of trivial differences in parsing today: I saw mostly stick in 24 as JA(B) and LOWER CASE as adjectival, so just Small, with LOWER as a type of cow (as opposed to those ecclesiastical ones that have taken a vow of silence 😉 ). loonapick’s parsing are just as good and probably much better (for the latter anyway).
    Thanks T and l.

58. [TimSee@54, whoops – birth, not defecation, of course – but also lots of euphemisms around that area.]

59. Thanks Tramp for a very satisfying crossword. I eventually revealed SECRET but all else fell into place without any issues or complaints. I was lucky to guess PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM with just two crossers in place so that helped a good deal. My favourites were DOWAGER, PENETRATE, TROPE, and THEFT. Thanks Loonapick for the blog.

60. I agree with all above on three points:

    GREEN ROOM reads much better as two words (PostMark @3, Frankie G, @26 Robi @35)
    POST-DOC reads much better hyphenated (Geoff Down Under @25, Tassie Tim @29, Gervase @32, Roz @36, Kate E @50, Cryptic Sue @52)
    Using schoolboy slang three times in one puzzle — copulating (Charles @15, Geoff Down Under @25, Frankie G @28), having sex appeal (Greg From Oz @17, William @22, Gervase @27, Alphalpha @40, Jacob @42), being flatulent (Crispy @2, Frankie G @26) — is either too many, or not enough. If these toilet terms are going to become a theme then many more are required.

    One quibble: LOWER CASE letters can be set as display type in very large sizes indeed. Yes they are smaller than upper case letters of the same type size. But these letters are not small in and of themselves.

    One question: the solution to the anagram in 1A, 4A, 7D is (6, 7, 6) which is 19 letters. However, because one “S” is used twice (both as the last letter of 4A and the first letter of 7D) the number of letters needed in the anagrist is only 18. Is there a rule that the anagrist must always include the double letter? Or would it be acceptable to pose one with only 18?

61. A great puzzle – I’m glad I had time for it late in the day. I started with CIGGIES and POSTDOC, and the rest flowed from there in a clockwise direction, ending up in the bottom left, and certainly not too quickly. There were many clues to savour, of which I liked the Simply Red anagram and THEFT best of all.

    Thanks to Tramp and loonapick.

62. AndrewTyndall@60: That would be an ecumenical issue. Seriously though I can imagine howls of indignation if the setter started dropping letters from the anagrist to take account of crossers (although personally I think it would pose an interesting test, for both setter and solver).

63. Bit tough for me but I like Tramp. I think this whole ‘it=sa’ thing is so out-dated it won’t make any sense to anyone under 60 and should possibly be scrapped?

64. Andrew@60. When I looked at the anagram for 1a etc I had, I think, four crossers. From the remaining 15 letters I was able to work out that the last letter of 4a and first letter of 7d had to be either D or S, as there were no other doubles; in fact there were three S’s. This helped me to deduce the possible shapes of both words.

    If Tramp had given us only 18 letters it would have changed the balance between setter and solver rather unfairly, don’t you think?

65. Sheffield Hatter @60: my practice when checking the solution of an anagram is to enter my proposed definition, then to delete one by one the letters in the fodder to make sure I end up with none. Obviously, with this one, I deleted one “s” too few.

66. Tramp@43 The EPL without Everton would be like a home without Plumtree’s potted meat-INCOMPLETE

67. As a Yank, I’m delighted to know that TRUMP is Fart. Second time I’ve seen it this week.

68. Thanks for help with 5d, PostMark and Gervase. I get it now, but the surface seems awkward. Oh well, on to today’s Prize….

69. In radio show, “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, Lady Constance de Coverlet trumped at bridge,….”ooh I do beg your pardon!”

70. … ergo propterdoc?

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