Guardian 29,090 – Philistine

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Quite a quick solve for me on this one, though I was held up a little at the end in the SW corner (for no obvious reason). Thanks to Philistine for an enjoyable puzzle.

 
Across
1 SCRUMMY Delectable and scrappy (7)
We start the puzzle with one of Philistine’s trademark lift-and-separate clues: SCRAPPY = S + CRAPPY = S + CRUMMY
5 BAFFLED Brave and forceful at first, ran away confused (7)
First letters of Brave And Forceful + FLED
9 UNFIT Inadequate figurehead protected by soldiers (5)
The “head” of Figure in UNIT
10 UPROOTING On their feet and cheering for eradication (9)
UP (on their feet) + ROOTING (cheering)
11 GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE Age-old gent playing game in California? (6,4,6)
(AGE-OLD GENT)* + BRIDGE (card game). A bugbear of mine: I don’t like “in California” meaning “an object in …”
14 TYPING ERROR Key mistake, wiping report in panic (6,5)
Homophone (“report”) of “wi-ping” in TERROR
18 TROUBLESOME Disturbing book about money (11)
ROUBLES in TOME
21 REEF Rare earth element found primarily in underwater ridge (4)
First letters of Rare Earth Element Found
22 BESTSELLER Book that tells us where to find the finest wines (10)
Homophone of “best cellar”
25 CRAZY IDEA Aide’s wild notion (5,4)
AIDE could be anagramatically clued as “crazy idea”
26 AWARD Trophy with a drawback (5)
A + reverse of DRAW
27 SLENDER Delicate letter at first kept by source (7)
L[etter] in SENDER
28 SCEPTRE Respect harassed staff (7)
RESPECT*
Down
1 SMUDGE Spot of glorious mud? Genuinely (6)
Hidden in gloriouS MUD Genuinely; and the whole clue is a definition, making it an &lit, or cad (clue-as-definition) as some say
2 REFILLABLE About trouble in fairy tale that can be replenished (10)
RE (about) + ILL (trouble) in FABLE
3 MOTHER-TO-BE One’s expecting a different robot theme (6-2-2)
(ROBOT THEME)
4 YOUNG PRETENDER Bonnie prince after botox? (5,9)
Definition + hint: someone who’s had botox injections could be pretending to be younger than they really are. The Young Pretender was Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie
5 BURST INTO TEARS Cry for one artist? (5,4,5)
Another “reverse anagram”: if you “burst” INTO TEARS, you get ONE ARTIST
6 FROGEYED Like Kermit, of greedy make-up (8)
(OF GREEDY)*
7 LAID BARE The French innkeeper’s first bread pudding on display (4,4)
LA (French “the”) + first letter of Innkeeper + BREAD*
8 DOGBERRY Word botcher finding treacherous bog in county (8)
BOG* in DERRY (Irish county). Dogberry is a character in Much Ado About Nothing who frequently confuses words in a style later made famous by Mrs Malaprop. It was also the pseudonym in the FT of the late setter John Young, who was Shed of the Guardian. For extra fun, “word botcher” is famously a spoonerism of “bird-watcher”
13 DECELERATE Slow divorce case? Then have a party from which husband heartily excluded (10)
The “case” of DivorcE + CELEBRATE (have a party) less the middle letter of husBand
16 ATTRACTS Draws attention to terrible rebel leaders’ deeds (8)
First letters of Attention To Terrible Rebel + ACTS
17 COVERAGE News reporting from cage? (8)
Written downwards, cage is C OVER AGE
19 PLIANT One’s recruited by factory that’s yielding (6)
1 in PLANT (factory)

74 comments on “Guardian 29,090 – Philistine”

  1. Very enjoyable, thanks Philistine. Not being an expert on the works of Shakespeare, I was lost with regard to Dogberry, and I thank you Andrew for your detailed explanation. Everything else fell into place with an abundance of smiles. My favourite was YOUNG PRETENDER.

  2. Thanks Andrew. Couple I couldn’t parse in a vey enjoyable puzzle. 8d brings Humphrey Lyttelton to mind. In a radio interview, the interviewer mentioned that Humph wS a bit of an orthinologist. Humph replied: “Ah – you mean a word botcher!”
    Thanks Philistine too.

  3. Thanks Andrew for your parsing of SCRUMMY. I was way off beam in the realms of rugby 😀
    There’s often a scrap in the scrum. Ergo scrappy/scrummy.
    Super puzzle Philistine. Many thanks.

  4. Held up in SW corner having entered FUNNY IDEA instead of CRAZY IDEA.

    Rapid but satisfying solve this morning. Chuckled at the best cellar and enjoyed all the constructions such as C OVER AGE.

    Many thanks, both.

  6. Enjoyed the puzzle and the blog. Thanks, Philistine and Andrew!
    Liked CRAZY IDEA, SMUDGE and COVERAGE.
    SMUDGE
    I am with the blog on tagging it as an &lit.

  7. Meant to add that COD for me was the excellent misdirect of “Draws attention to…” in ATTRACTS

  10. William@4, J99@8 likewise I had SILLY IDEA at first which held me up in the SW corner. I also didn’t parse SCRUMMY properly, as like TinC@3 I was off in the realms of rugby. But an enjoyable puzzle as ever from Philistine. I liked DOGBERRY and BESTSELLER (when I finally saw it). Thanks Andrew and Philistine

  11. I toyed with Silly IDEA and Funny IDEA before I got to CRAZY IDEA – too many possible anagrinds without the crossers, which slowed that southwest corner.

    YOUNG PRETENDER is brilliant and the whole crossword was a delight, as I usually find Philistine’s work.

    Thank you to Philistine and Andrew.

  12. Two reverse anagrams? I spotted CRAZY IDEAb but failed to Parse BURST INTO TEARSi I didn’t really think about it very long. I liked it when i read the blog though. I had sludge for 1d for w while, but that’s not a spot and afterwards saw the hidden word.
    A good & enjoyable puzzle and a concise but informative blog, thanks both.

  13. Fun puzzle, thanks Phil n Andrew. The botoxed Bonnie Prince reminded me of the AbFab skit where they’re mummified and too stiff-faced to say Bollie.

  14. Felt like a right muppet for not getting the Kermit clue sooner though remarkably FROGEYED isn’t in my Chambers

    YOUNG PRETENDER was great. And double-ticks for the two reverses.

    Cheers P&A

  17. Like Tomsdad@10 and Shanne@11, I had Silly IDEA before I saw the errors of my ways. I’m glad I didn’t think of Funny like drofle@9 and Weird like J99@8 or I would really have been all day doing this. It was so silly of me not to get CRAZY right up!

    This is the third day in a row I have finished the puzzle before the blog has appeared and I’m over the moon! Usually I don’t finish until the next day and everything has been said [often a dozen times ;)]

    For once I didn’t fall for the S-Crappy/S-Crummy trick. I really enjoyed the Y-PING homonym, spent an age trying to fit another B into 13a until the ROUBLE dropped. And in every way had a happy time doing this. Thanks, Philistine, for the fun and Andrew for the comprehensive blog.

  18. I agree with “quick and marvellous”. Spiffing crossword. However, I stand by the parsing of 1ac being scrummy = scrappy in the rugby sense. I like your interpretation Andrew but am not convinced. If s-crummy means sounds like “crumby” (scraps) then Philistine would have suggested a homophone. He does not. I know he does the lift and separate thing but am not buying that in this case. Thanks all round.

  21. In a bit of a rush this morning so just a quick note to acknowledge a splendid puzzle and helpful blog. SCRUMMY, REEF and SMUDGE my favourites of many excellent clues.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew

  23. Much to like, including YOUNG PRETENDER, SCRUMMY and COVERAGE. I got stuck for a long time in the SW after putting in SILLY IDEA. I later tried FUNNY IDEA, and also got nowhere. I don’t that this clue was specific enough to lead you to the correct one of several possible answers.

  24. Lots of fun today. I took longer than I should have done but enjoyed solving the whole thing. 5dn held out for quite a while despite lots of crossers and when it finally yielded I binged it in unsolved so thank you Andrew for explaining. Thanks also to Philistine.

  25. Another super Philistine puzzle, with so many great clues and lots of fun.

    I had a dozen or more ticks and so I won’t list them all – but must give top place to DOGBERRY: I did ‘Much Ado’ for A Level, so lucky there and also it brought to mind two much-missed favourites, our Shed and Humphrey Lyttlelton (thanks, Crispy @2).

    I also really liked the two reverse anagrams and the botoxed Prince.

    Many thanks to Philistine for a lovely start to yet another dull day here in the Midlands and to (lucky, as crypticsue would say) Andrew for another great blog.

  26. Hugely entertaining!
    A plethora of great clues but SCEPTRE, AWARD and the two reverse anagrams were particularly satisfying, DOGBERRY was truly delightful – however it was worth it for YOUNG PRETENDER alone.
    Thank you Philistine and Andrew

  27. Don’t share the general enthusiasm for this one, I’m afraid. Pretty rapid solve but found a lot of them a bit pedestrian. GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE was obvious but I agree with Andrew’s criticism, I thought TYPING ERROR was weak and that a better device could have been found in 17d rather than including cage in both clue and solution.
    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

  28. I also parsed SCRUMMY as a DD with scrum = disorderly struggle / mêlée = SCRAP(PY)

    Both explanations seem plausible. As Barry Norman used to say: “You pays your money and you takes your choice”

  29. I really liked YOUNG PRETENDER and MOTHER-TO-BE, both very amusing.

    I agree with Andrew’s parsing of SCRUMMY. According to online dictionaries the normal spelling of the word meaning unpleasant or of poor quality is crummy rather than crumby, which would mean covered in crumbs.

    Of the two reverse anagrams I think 5d is fairer than 25a because there could be any number of anagram indicators for the latter, but you don’t really do anything INTO TEARS other than BURST.

    Many thanks Philistine and Andrew.

  30. Very enjoyable.

    Favourites: TYPING ERROR, AWARD, BURST INTO TEARS, CRAZY IDEA, DECELERATE (loi)

    Thanks, both.

  31. I agree with everyone about this lovely puzzle. My favourite is my LOI, DECELERATE although the two reverse anagrams and DOGBERRY came close.
    Thanks P and A

  32. Lord Jim @29. If it wasn’t for the Golden Gate Bridge crosser I personally would have entered BREAK INTO TEARS.

  33. Rattled through this, and enjoyed it – the several multi-lights were quite gentle, which helped. Not knowing my Shakespeare, I did briefly consider DOGBEVON. Especially liked TYPING ERROR, TROUBLESOME, and REEF.

    Interesting to compare the (lack of?) reaction to some of this (‘divorce case’ for DE? Lift-and-separates/reverse anagrams without any sort of indicator? “in California”?) to the comments on Anto earlier in the week. Is it that Philistine’s not in the Quiptic slot? Or that he’s been going for longer? Or have people taken against Anto for some other reason?

    Thanks Philistine & Andrew

  34. Love a clue like Smude. Glorious mud. Setters eye on full effect. I’m 3 for 3 this week, first time ever.

  35. Enjoyable crossword at just the right level for me and with plenty of humour. Loved Dogberry, Mother-to-be, and the very clever Young Pretender.
    Did anyone notice I defended Vulcan’s honour in the Guardian today? Someone had misunderstood the well-woman clinic clue and complained. I’m afraid I don’t know how to do this link thing but it’s under Opinion > letters > then in the section headed “When toots were torture in class”.

  36. Ph is my favourite setter and this was a very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks to Andrew for parsing BURST INTO TEARS. It was obviously the answer but I just did not see how it worked.

  37. Amoeba at 33: you make an interesting point.
    I’ve often wondered why poor Anto gets criticised more than other setters, and perhaps it is just that he/she hasn’t been going for as long. I seem to recall Vulcan came in for a lot of stick at the outset, though that definitely eased off once it became generally known that this was an alter-ego for Imogen, a much-admired setter…

  38. Very enjoyable solve; I started fairly slowly with quite a few BIFDs but then parsed everything satisfactorily apart from SCRUMMY.

    I liked the TYPING ERROR with the wiping report, CRAZY IDEA, although typing ????? IDEA into WordWeb failed to find this in the major dictionaries (but Crossword Compiler accepted it), the well-hidden SMUDGE, LAID BARE for the bread pudding, and DECELERATE and COVERAGE for the wordplays.

    Thanks Philistine for the fun and Andrew for making sense of it all.

  39. Glad you mentioned that, Bonnie @35.
    [A big range of healers in my tribe, from pill-pushing to touchy-feely. One of the former said We call t-f patients ‘the worried well’, to which my sister (a therapist) replied ‘not only are they well, a lot of them aren’t even worried! It’s about enrichment’].
    But I agree, Vulcan did no harm.

  40. Marvellous puzzle with lots of humour and clever constructions. Too many ticks to enumerate. ‘In California’ is slightly naughty – I thought we had cured setters of this – but we all knew what he meant, and otherwise it’s a great clue.

    REEF was a bit of a snare for this chemist – I spent a little while trawling through the chemical symbols for the lanthanides before the penny dropped.

    Thanks to the Levanter and Andrew

  41. Bonnie @35. Saw it and thought, Yep, that oxymoron went whoosh right over the complainant’s head. Or maybe as it was in the Guardian, she felt a complaint was de rigueur

  42. Loved it – Philistine is a setter I really enjoy. Thanks to him and to Andrew for the blog. Isn’t 1a SCRUMMY a wonderful word!!! (BTW I was in the rugby reference camp for the parsing of this one, but I thought in the end it could work either way.)

  43. Lovely, smooth surfaces as per usual with Philistine. I too held up longest by the SW corner, misdirected cleverly by REEF and loi the clue of the day for me in TROUBLESOME. Enjoyed this from start to finish…

  44. More thanks to Bonnie@35 (revealed by the Guardian as a Norwich neighbour). The letter-writer objecting to the Well Woman clue not only mis-transcribed it, missing the crucial question mark, but treated it as a straight Quick clue rather than a Cryptic one. The episode would fit instructively into one of the books about crosswording (I happen currently to be reading the excellent Two Girls, One on Each Knee). Thanks meanwhile to Philistine for today’s witty puzzle.

  45. I’m not very keen on reverse anagrams, of which there are two in this puzzle. It’s not that they are inherently unfair, but the range of anagrinds is so wide that I tend to find it’s a fifty-fifty chance whether I will get them or not. Today it was less than fifty-fifty, and I had to cheat on both of them. I didn’t parse COVERAGE, so thanks to our blogger for that explanation: I think that makes it my Clue of the Day.

  47. Mostly great, though in the interests of fairness (ie to show that I don’t just criticise Anto for these things) the ‘divorce case’ without an indication of possession and the vagueness of the definition ‘in California’ both had me tutting.

    Also — and this is probably just me being dim — isn’t the clue for SMUDGE missing a ‘hidden’ indicator? Or is ‘spot’ doing double duty as definition and indicator?

    But overall an enjoyable puzzle. Liked YOUNG PRETENDER, TROUBLESOME and CRAZY IDEA.

    Thanks both.

  48. I started with SILLY IDEA: too many possibilities for that one. But BURST INTO TEARS was good and BEST SELLER raised a smile.

  49. Couldn’t parse SCRUMMY, TYPING ERROR, SMUDGE, BURST INTO TEARS, ATTRACTS or COVERAGE. Thanks for those, Andrew.

    Overall, lots of fun. Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

  50. Rob @47: well it’s an &lit, so every word in the clue is doing double duty as part of the word play and definition.

  51. Lord Jim @50 — hmmm, I remain somewhere between uncomprehending and unconvinced.

    Being an &lit shouldn’t preclude giving the solver the instruction on what to do with the set of letters presented in the clue, should it?

    Where is the line drawn? Can an &lit use an unindicated reversal? An unindicated homophone?

    (perhaps I’m still missing something…)

  53. Robi @51 – ha! OK 🙂 it’s a new one on me but I guess it does answer my question. I still don’t find it to be a very satisfactory clue but that explanation does have some kind of logic to it. Thanks!

  54. RT@53 Given that “of” can mean from or out of it seems fine as a hidden indicator. Whether the clue is &lit / CAD is really just icing on the cake

  55. Rob T @51: I parsed it with ‘Spot of’ as the hidden indicator and ‘genuine’ showing it’s a bona fide &lit. Excellent clue in my opinion!

  56. SMUDGE
    ‘I felt a few spots of rain.’ ‘Let’s stop for a spot of lunch.’
    Picked up these sentences from the Cambridge Online Dictionary.
    Spot can mean a small amount.
    Wordplay: A small amount of gloriouS MUD? GEnuinely.
    Does it work?

  59. KVa & Gervase – thanks both. I get that parsing. I think it comes down to the difference between the clue being &lit and words doing double duty, and I suspect that’s a highly subjective question that we could circle around for far too long, so I will accept that the clue works and move on 🙂

  60. Thanks for the blog, a lot of good clues here, the Y PING in 14Ac is very neat , COVERAGE is clever.
    I think CRAZY IDEA is the strong favourite , it does say “wild notion” and other suggestions are not very wild.
    I agree that SMUT is a hidden &Lit , pretty rare and well done.
    Bobcat in the FT yesterday had a remarkable compound anagram &Lit .
    FT today is IO for anyone feeling brave, quite friendly really.

  61. Thanks both.

    The dreaded frisson today – I got as far as 28a SCEPTRE before it began to crack. Lovely entertainment thereafter with an impressive range of devices on display. Each clue seemed to offer a pleasant pdm.
    YOUNG PRETENDER – hah!

    Rob T@ et al: I don’t see how SMUDGE is an &lit. How does ‘genuinely’ contribute to the definition? I think it’s just a straightforward ‘hidden’ clue, and a good one (I certainly stared at it for long enough).

  62. Alphalpha @61 – I didn’t think it was really an &lit either, but decided against opening a secondary can of worms 🙂

  63. Thanks Philistine for a most enjoyable crossword with my top picks being BAFFLED, TYPING ERROR, TROUBLESOME, CRAZY IDEA, AWARD, LAID BARE, and DECELERATE. I failed to parse the clever BURST INTO TEARS. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

  64. On the first pass I got two across answers, the downs yielded more, and then all of sudden lots of things fell into place.

  65. Thanks Philistine and Andrew
    Lots to like. Favourites were TYPING ERROR for the”wiping”, and DECELERATE.
    Several of us had issues with 25a, which seems to make it a weak clue. My first entry was DODGY IDEA.

  66. My first time posting on here (not sure how I found it) flushed with excitement at completing it in record time. Most enjoyable but I agree with Charles about “cage “ in the clue & solution.

  67. Just been thinking through the various comments on SMUDGE. Sometimes a clue can work both as a normal def + wordplay and also as an &lit, and this seems to be such a case. In the former interpretation, “Spot” is the definition, with the rest of the clue as wordplay, including “of” as the containment indicator. In the &lit interpretation, the whole clue is the definition, with “Spot of” as the containment indicator. Alphalpha @61: I think “genuinely” can reasonably be seen as part of the definition – it’s adding emphasis. A definition doesn’t have to be as succinct as it possibly could be.

    [By the way, is the Quick crossword getting more cryptic? Two clues in today’s wouldn’t seem out of place in the Cryptic:

    Pocketed equipment for a ball game (8,5)

    Suspect picture? (7)]

  68. Great fun puzzle, thanks, Philistine and Andrew.

    Re SMUDGE, there’s a lot of overthinking going on. The definition is spot. Genuinely is not part of the definition and nor for that matter are mud or glorious. Philistine has form for using “of” alone as a hidden word indicator, eg:
    Repeated words of claimant, rambling (6)
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2022/11/25/guardian-28924-philistine/

    It’s a delightful clue – anything that puts Flanders & Swann in mind is a good thing – but it’s not &lit, whatever that means.

  69. I am not sure that fairy tales and fables are the same. Doesn’t a fable have to have a lesson or moral? Can’t a fable be non-fictional, like Alfred the Great and his burnt cakes?

  70. Lin Pollard @66: it’s a bit late in the day and you may not revisit but a debut post should not go unacknowledged. Welcome to 225. If you are completing Philistines in record time you’ll be able to show up a few regulars!

  72. Re 25a CRAZY IDEA, I thought of crazy right away because of Steve Martin. And wild seems closer to crazy than funny, silly or weird.

    Philistine remains one of my favourite setters, and this puzzle illustrates why – smooth and witty surfaces and clever constructions. Any crossword that gets Flanders and Swann, Shakespeare and the Muppets onto the same page gets my vote.

    Thanks, Philistine and Andrew for the fun puzzle and excellent blog.

  73. Here’s a CRAZY IDEA for CRAZY IDEA – Why not just fill in the IDEA, then wait until you have all the crossers for the rest? – C?A?Y
    Missed the S+CRAPPY = S+CRUMMY schtick, so that’s my cotd.
    Thanks P&A

  74. Came to this a couple of days late, but thoroughly enjoyable. Always good to see the Constable making an appearance.

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