Guardian 29,092 / Picaroon

93 comments on “Guardian 29,092 / Picaroon”

1. Yet again I forgot to look for special instructions, but pleasingly I started to twig what was going on, when solving KEY LARGO, MARK DREAMBOATS and DELICATE. HOY was new, and yes, ARK was used twice but what a marvellous feat of clueing.

   Ta Picaroon & Eileen.

2. Ah BARK, my mistake. Thanks Eileen.

3. I loved this, and managed to parse everything in relation to the vessel theme except KEELING, which I checked online, and it seems only to be part of a ship – the bottom.
   Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

4. Solved in reverse order so APSE was FOI which gave me AHOY and then VESSEL. From there it was plain sailing 🙂

   Great fun throughout – Eileen I parsed KEELING the same way – KEEL being a poetic term for boat

   Cheers P&E

5. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
   I prefer clues not to be of the “guess the answer from the definition, then parse” type, so I didn’t like the across clues, which more or less forced this approach. In contrast, ARMOUR CLAD and NEOLOGIC were examples of the type that I prefer.
   In fact, I hadn’t noticed the special instructions at first either, so was somewhat disconcerted not to solve any of the across clues on first pass. I then tentatively entered AHOY, and “checked” to see if 12a was an (unparsed) ISLAND. UPROAR eventually pointed me in the right direction.

6. I parsed KEELING in same way as you, Eileen, in light of the fact that a keelboat is differentiated from a vessel with a daggerboard (typically a dinghy).

   Thanks both

7. bodycheetah @4
   Yes, as in the Geordie song “The Keel Row”.

8. This was tough! FOI was Ahoy and I start wondering if the key was islands or Olympians. Once I got Lordship, I realised what 12ac was and I was off. Whilst the key word was a help, there are so many words for vessel that it wasn’t a complete help.
   Thanks Picaroon for a super Friday challenge and Eileen for the excellent blog.

9. I too missed the special instructions and wondered what was going on. There seemed to be a lot of boats unclued. Doh!!!

10. Splendid puzzle, absolute joy to solve. The clue for FLAK made me laugh out loud. Thanks, Picaroon and Eileen.

    Eileen – Chambers has keel: a low flat-bottomed boat, a barge.

    AlanC – my initial thought on 14a was that the “B ARK” might be a Hitchhikers reference until I remembered that a BARK is a kind of boat.

11. Thanks for comments re 17ac: I was happy with KEEL = boat but not so sure of the ING part.

12. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

    KEEL as a boat per se has cropped up here before. From Chambers, def 2:

    A low flat-bottomed boat, a barge (also keel?boat)
    ORIGIN: MDu kiel ship, cognate with OE c?ol ship

13. Like muffin, I’m not keen on guess-then-parse type clues. Almost total absence of knowledge about boats rendered this impossible for me. My thanks to Eileen for the explanations

14. I parsed KEELING in exactly the same way. Just for convenience, I’ve assembled a list of Eileeen’s “reds” in clue order

    ARGO, PROA, ARK, BOAT, BARK, TUB, KEEL, CAT ( Catamaran), DHOW, BRIG, HOY, GIG, SHIP

    We’ve gone back to the usual “toughie on Friday”, I think, after a few weeks of easy Fridays.

    Thank you Picaroon and Eileen.

15. Greetings Eileen and all and thanks, as ever. Having read some less than laudatory comments on the Guardian page, I felt I must pay tribute to Picaroon’s magnificent skill here, where I’m sure Mr Brydon will read them. Surfaces, fulfilment of construction task, level of fun, all top drawer. I suppose some who say specialist knowledge is useful may have a point, but I don’t think we should mind that, since looking up an element to back-check is so easy these days… Not for the first time do I wonder where I would be without Patrick O’Brian. And we’d all be much less happy without Picaroon.

16. Missed the special instructions. Spent 90 minutes glumly filling in the odd down clue, pressing reveal on the across clues and thinking “I can’t even parse that – I am so stupid”.

    Only to come here and discover that I am, indeed, so stupid.

17. It’s always a delight to see that Picaróon has authored the day’s offering. I thought maybe the vessels might also include jugs, bottles, glasses etc, but soon discovered they were only nautical ones.

    Several that were beyond the bounds of my lexicon — proa, hoy, gig and keel — but I knew all the others, even “dhow”! I also was unfamiliar with quail/cower & gigots. But I enjoyed discovering things.

    Thanks Picaróon & Eileen.

18. Eileen @11 – sorry, misunderstood your query in the blog, but I parsed it exactly the same way (I had no doubts about the ING part hence assumed you were querying KEEL)

19. Thanks Eileen. A minor typo in 23A. it’s BRIG [AND] A GendarmeE.
    Can’t help wondering if it’s anD HOW that gave Picaroon the basic idea…

20. ragged @16: that made me chuckle. Also pleased to see Anto get a shout-out along with Boatman.

21. Widdersbel, you are forgiven. 😉

    Thanks, blaise – will amend the blog now.

22. I’ve run out of superlatives for Picaroon’s puzzles. Amazingly, I immediately thought of ‘Key Largo’ at 8a and twigged what was required by the special instructions.
    Many thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

23. Thank you Eileen. I parsed KEELING as you did. A novel indicator ”in extreme places” to clue the outer letters of a word.

    I was misdirected by the instructions, thinking that ‘the other across solutions’ meant alternate ones, so I went fishing, but found there were missing vessels in all the across clues.
    Because of this misunderstanding I probably took longer than other solvers such as AlanC@, and some on the G site, who didn’t see the instructions until it was over. More power to them.

    DREAMBOATS gave me the key to the theme and the trick.
    HUMMABLE, COWERED and ARMOUR-CLAD my picks of the down clues.
    AND HOW and AHOY floated my boat.

24. Thank you, Eileen, for the excellent blog. I loved this. The game was up when I happened to seeproa in UPROAR.

    One question, don’t deli, the shop, and DELICATE share the same root? I’m no linguist so perhaps they don’t. If they do, this seems to break one of the Ximenean rules.

25. [Last time the keel/boat thing came up there was a Keel Row/Kathleen Ferrier riff, and then a, um, debate about off-topic stuff, hey ho 😉 ]

26. Lots of fun to find the boats and a tour-de-force of grid-filling.

    KEY LARGO early on gave me a route to VESSEL and with a number of Down answers the Across ones fell into place, despite not knowing HOY or GIG(OT).

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

27. Just to point out that a CAT is a type of ship in its own right, not necessarily an abbreviation for CATAMARAN

    Chambers: “An old name for a coal and timber vessel on the NE coast of England”.

    (And thank you for the blogpost.)

28. I thoroughly enjoyed this. First one in was a tentative MARK, which gave me enough to work out VESSEL. Plain sailing after that (sorry!).

29. Decidedly not a fan of this style of puzzle but the Down clues largely made up for that, with one exception: a FLAKE is inserted *in* an ice-cream (usually a cone, though not always), not *on* it. I wonder if this is a typo.

30. grantinfreo@25 [I often think that the off-topic stuff is the most fun, and sometimes the most enlightening, to read. Might even start searching for [ and ] next time there’s lots of comments…]

31. KEEL is given as A ship (poetic) in Chambers, and was used often in Old English. It’s an example of a metonym, where part of something is used for the whole.

32. Ingenious and fun puzzle from the Pirate, who clearly knows his boats, as his pseudonym implies. 1ac seemed mystifying but then I saw the likely solution to 9ac and then checked for a rubric. I never tackle a puzzle starting with all the across clues or all the downs, but avail myself of whatever crossing letters I uncover as I patch it together. Hence I didn’t find this particularly difficult, though KEELING was LOI with a shrug – I only knew ‘keel’ as part of a vessel (I’ve clearly forgotten that this has popped up before).

    A lot of good clues here, with no particular favourites for me. Like GDU @17 I was surprised (and slightly disappointed) that Picaroon didn’t throw in the odd container amongst the craft to throw us off balance.

    Thanks to S&B

33. I’m sure Qaos would have clued FLAK with something numeric, perhaps the unorthodox IC.

34. ‘The pitman and the keelman trim they drink bumble made from gin’ (from Byker Hill). I think the keelman took coal across the Tyne in his keel.

35. Like Eileen, I tackle the clues in order. Only when I noticed that there seemed to be bits of wordplay missing did I check for special instructions. As I had already solved 12ac, it all fell into place after that.
    My thanks to Eileen for the blog and to Picaroon for the puzzle.

36. Had problems parsing clues, forgetting wordplay ignored the vessel. DNK KEEL without ‘over’ as ‘capsize’, but was aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_keel

37. 15ac. Why TUB ?

38. Following the same procedure as Eileen, “I abandoned the habit of a lifetime and went for the down clues first”.
    KEEL as a Verb – as well as the usual KEEL OVER, can mean (wiktionary):
    ‘2. To traverse with a keel; to navigate’ – so “navigating in extreme places” is a good way to clue the “NG”
    and
    ‘3. To turn up the keel; to show the bottom’ – (ooer sounds a bit rude) – for “capsize” – (six and seven eighths – (c) Jimmy Cricket)
    Thought I knew PROA as the Latin for prow or bow, but that’s PRORA – PROA is Spanish.
    Thanks James & Eileen

39. p e @37 – because a TUB is ‘a slow, clumsy boat or ship’ (as in both Collins and Chambers).

40. I completely failed to notice the special instructions, which made this needlessly difficult

41. Very enjoyable. It reminded me of the Maskarade Christmas 2020 puzzle which included 30+ hidden ‘fish’ using much the same technique. I hope we get more puzzles like this on a Friday. This, Azed and Genius all excellent this week (and if you enjoy this sort of puzzle, the latest WSJ also highly recommended!).

42. I agree with what Komorník wrote @15 about the quality of this puzzle and the evident skill that went into it. I started with DECADENT and HUMMABLE and then ventured into the Across clues, starting with those whose answers crossed the U and B of HUMMABLE. Knowing the wordplay was intentionally deficient, I relied on the definitions and tried to match what was possible with the wordplay. That was all I needed to get going with this excellent puzzle, some of it being nevertheless quite tough.

    Jay @41, It’s good to see another fan of the Azed (weekly) and Genius (monthly) series of puzzles. I’ve completed the latest Azed and intend to start the Genius very soon – which I see is by Picaroon!

    Thanks to Picaroon, and to Eileen for her usual thorough and interesting blog.

43. I was surprised how many of the across clues didn’t fall into the maligned “guess then parse” category, but I also enjoy deducing a previously unknown word like “proa”. The fact that I confidently assumed a “reel” was a vessel, rather than the correct “keel’ is entirely my fault.

44. I am surprised so many of you failed to see the special instructions. Maybe they display differently on my phone (where I solve), but they were too big to miss.

    I was forced to cheat on GIGOTS, which is not a word I’m familiar with, in part because GIG is also a boat I’m not familiar with.

45. I’m probably not the only non-Brit who found the chocolate flake clue at 1dn baffling. I also forgot about Clement Attlee in 7dn.

    I charged right in without noticing the instructions, but since I do clues in order, and thus begin with acrosses, I had the impression that chunks were missing from the wordplay and thought “I’ll bet there’s some kind of gimmick going on.” Sure enough, there was.

    My boat vocabulary is a lot more helpful than my cricket one, or my knowledge of British TV, so this was on familiar ground for me, once I knew what ground it was.

    Thanks to Picaroon for the puzzle and Eileen for the blog and the interesting references, especially the Flake one. I’m surprised that the square-rigged “keel” was useful on narrow waterways, since you’d think a fore-and-aft rig would be more maneuverable, but they tried it and I didn’t, so I defer to the keelmen.

46. mrpenney @44: GIGOT is a word used in Scotland for a leg of lamb or mutton (from the French of course). I suspect it’s unfamiliar to many English people!

47. An ingenious and enjoyable puzzle from Picaroon and an elegant blog from Eileen on top for a splendid end to the week. Not as difficult as I feared initially, helped by the app putting the special instructions where even I could not miss them.

    5D surely leads to an earworm, though perhaps not that easy to hum.

48. I didn’t see the special instructions! No wonder I found this puzzle so difficult.

49. Thanks Eileen, I echo George Clements@22, and while I agree with poc@29 re the Flake insertion, I got so much pleasure from eventually piecing 22d together (relying on the crossers to parse) that i can only thank Picaroon for all the fun, again.
    [mrpenney@44, lamb GIGOTS studded with garlic and rosemary and marinated in Pinot noir and Worcs sauce are a BBQ treat.]

50. [Robert @27: not only is a CAT a ship in it’s own right: cats have a long and workmanlike history as coal carriers up and down the northeast coast. So when a tough and serviceable vessel was needed for a voyage of exploration, a “Whitby cat” called the Earl of Pembroke was purchased by the Admiralty and renamed the Endeavour for Captain Cook’s expedition.]

    Enjoyed this one very much: KEY LARGO and EMBARKED gave the game away (though it took a while to realise that the ARK itself was elsewhere). Like others, I was waiting for urns and the like to show up. Thanks to Patrick O’Brian for some of the necessary nautical education, and Picaroon for putting it to good use.

51. Like mrpenney @44 I’m bemused at how many people missed the special instruction. Personally I love this kind of puzzle and you don’t get them all that often in the Guardian. So I very much enjoyed this. More please!

    Thanks both.

52. Absolutely brilliant! So many perfect constructions. Loved the chase. Knew proa from recent read of Magellan’s ill-fated round world voyage. Glad Flake wasn’t considered too parochial. 22ac favourite. Spelling of 22d held me up a bit.

53. I too second George. Piccaroon ages like a fine claret, and this is a marvellous construction and right up my street. The locals here still make boats like proas (Vela Latina) and make them exactly the way the Phoenicians, who frequented these parts, did. One Christmas a main street was closed and filled with the fairy-lighted vessels.
    I used to cox a TUB called TUBBS – clinker built with a rudder the size of a tea-tray. One novice eight, having had careful instruction on how to get it off the rack, on the count three remained motionless. “Did you not understand?” “No, cox we can’t lift it! ”
    For those who like nautical things, I have put a link to 90 mins of naval fun and games on The Times blog for Thursday’s puzzle – but try the puzzle first.
    Bravo Piccaroon and Eileen for the, as ever, exemplary blog.

54. William @24 in German, the word is Delikatessen, and Essen is food. Once you’ve seen that, the German roots are blindingly obvious even if Delicatessen isn’t.

55. @Rob T #51 et al. – I can’t speak for others, but my eyesight is so poor I use a screen magnifier app (and a 31″ screen) a consequence of which is that I don’t see the whole screen at once. In fact I can’t see the grid and the clues at the same time. So I won’t see the special instructions unless I go looking for them, which I am not in the habit of doing. Maybe I should always check.

56. Really enjoyed this, though had to come here to find out about a Proa for 9ac. Couldn’t fathom out KEELING or GIGOTS either. Had to look up KEY LARGO too. Great fun nonetheless…

57. My heart usually sinks when I see a crossword in which everything depends on solving a keystone clue, but I had fun with this. I had to reverse engineer VESSEL but the unclued ARGO in KEY LARGO made it pretty clear that we were looking for boats. Hadn’t been aware that HOY was one such, but the clueing was clear, and after that everything proceeded pretty smoothly. Still searching vainly for JUNK, though.
    AMEERS was loi. Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen

58. Despite its cleverness I did not get as much enjoyment from this crossword as I usually get from the Pirate’s work. There were some clues I liked such as DREAMBOATS, AHOY (liked the nod to Anto and Boatman), ARMOUR-CLAD, BATTLE, and LEANNESS but I ended up revealing FLAK, GIGOTS (both new to me), COWERED (unfamiliar with that use of quail), and LEGALLY (hopelessly ignorant about cricket). Thanks Eileen for explaining things.

59. FLAK is German, too, and an acronym to boot – FLiegerAbwehrKanone (“anti aeroplane cannon”).
    Misspelt so often as Flack – but that’s Roberta, who sang Killing Me Softly with His Song.

60. Very glad that I decided to leave this and get odd jobs done first as it took longer than usual . However, thoroughly enjoyed being able to fully appreciate this at a more leisurely pace.
    Picaroon fast becoming favourite setter.

61. Where does ARGO fit into the clue for 8a?

62. Hi Steffen @61 – the Special Instructions tell you that the 12s ‘are not otherwise indicated in their clues’. ARGO is a ship (12) – the one the Argonauts sailed in.
    How did the rest of it go?

63. [btw Eileen – have you heard the theory about the origin of the “golden fleece” legend? Apparently the streams flowing north into the Black Sea from the south side carried gold dust from an undiscovered master lode. The locals tried to trap this dust by pegging sheepskins in the streams, so that the gold got caught in the fleece.]

64. Thanks to Eileen for taking the time to insert all the hyperlinks for ship names – it must have taken forever! And thanks to Picaroon too for a great crossword.

    I thought it was going to be impossible at first but I managed to complete it (with the exception of GIGOTS) and enjoyed doing so. I wasn’t familiar with many of these names for vessels and it was an educational experience.

65. FrankieG @ 59 I think the official term is FlugzeugabwehrKanone

66. Thanks both; great fun.

    TimSee@47: HUMMABLE certainly demands an earworm – perhaps? (Although I do see what you did there..)

    [Komorník@15, gladys@50: I’m lost – who is Patrick O’Brian?]

67. Thanks, Picaroon.
    I saw “special instructions” on a weekday and cringed.
    Luckily I guessed 1a as FOI straight off, which helped with the instruction / theme. Then I could just enjoy the cluing.

68. Apologies for the delay in responding – I had to go out at 6.00.
    muffin @63 – yes, indeed: it’s documented by (among others) the Greek historian Strabo – see Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece

    Pops @64, that’s partly the reason for the rather late appearance of the blog – but I do enjoy doing the research! (easier for a Prize puzzle, when we have all week).

    TimSee @47 and Alphapha @66 – thanks both for the earworms. 😉

69. Read the special instructions, didn’t understand them and swore never to attempt another puzzle with ‘special instructions’.
    Thanks Eileen.

70. I enjoyed the device used in this puzzle where 12ac = VESSEL -> ARGO, PROA, ARK, BOAT, BARK, TUB, KEEL, CAT, DHOW, BRIG, HOY, GIG, SHIP.

    Favourites: NEOLOGIC, SUBKINGDOM, LEGALLY.

    I did not parse 2d apart from FLAK[e] = chocolate – I did not understand the reference to ice cream?

    New for me: PROA = sailing boat (although I do know prahu & perahu in Bahasa Indonesia); HOY = small coastal sailing vessel; GIGOT = a leg of mutton or lamb; GIG = a light, fast, narrow boat.

    Thanks, both.

71. Alphalpha@66
    Patrick O’Brian wrote a series of novels about naval derring-do during the Napoleonic wars. He’s quite often referred to here. When I first started crosswords it would have been C.S. Forester and his Hornbloer novels. Can’t say I’ve read either.
    Like Eileen I broke the habit of a lifetime by trying the down clues first, having failed to solve 12a initially.
    Thanks to her and Picaroon.

72. Long time lurker joining in to share my convoluted parsing of KEELING: NILE (one navigating in extreme places) capsizing in KEG (vessel) with capsizing doing double duty as definition. Seemed OK at the time! Loved this puzzle for extra degree of difficulty.

73. Welcome to the site, MaggieCanberra – hoping to hear more from you now that you’ve broken the ice. (After all these years, I still remember the frisson at clicking ‘Post comment’ for the first time. 😉 )

74. Thanks Eileen!

75. Pino@71. I’ve picked up a lot of general knowledge from the Hornblower books – in one of them a water hoy has a prominent role. No CS Forester character ever sailed a proa, but it couldn’t really be anything else.

    I had a moment’s doubt as to how difficult this was likely to be, as the key clue made all sorts of VESSELs available to the setter, so I’m glad – unlike some commenters 🙂 – that he decided to play fair with us.

    Poc@29. According to the article that Eileen linked to, most FLAKes these days fall apart in transit, so I guess a lot of the chocolate ends up on rather than in the ice cream.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

76. I like it when a setter uses a bit of slang to hide the definition, where there’s a bit of resonance with the answer and where the surface reads so smoothly. So, for me, 2 down was an absolute joy

77. I left this until this evening when I saw the special instructions and then found it easier than I had expected, but I grew up around boats.

    Thank you to Picaroon for a delightful puzzle and Eileen for the blog.

78. HYD@69. I didn’t understand the instructions either and they caused me a lot of grief. From comments here lots of people solved without them. I think they were better off for that.

79. I loved the treasure hunt for all the VESSELs! Favourite non-themed clue was 21d EARWIG. Many thanks as always to Picaroon and Eileen – always an excellent combination of setter and blogger!

80. Are people able to solve these without googling “list of boats”? Very clever but I lacked the sea legs for this journey.

81. Brilliant-Boatman could be jealous!

82. Pino@71: Thanks for that.

    JinA@79: Yes, EARWIG deserves special mention.

83. Very late to this, but wanted to express my appreciation to Picaroon and Eileen…

    …and also to say that Frankie G @59 was right about Flak – see the German-language wiki entry here. It’s most commonly given as an abbreviation for Flugabwehrkanone (= air defence gun/cannon), but Fliegerabwehrkanone also exists. Flieger (= flier) can mean aircraft in German, as well as aviator. Although Flugzeug (flight-thing) is the most common translation for aircraft, I haven’t come across Flugzeugabwehrkanone in German – pace (English-language) wikipedia.

84. [For anyone who speaks German, the link above gives a lot of interesting background. Introduced in WW1, the guns were first known as BAK, for Ballonabwehrkanone. FlaK arrived in 1916.

    The Gepard tanks which Germany, after a little hesitation, has delivered to Ukraine, are known as Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer (FlakPz).

    The weapon we call SAM (surface-to-air missile) is a Flugabwehrrakete in German, or FlaRak.]

85. The other German-related discussion was about delicatessen. Surprisingly, the ‘essen’ part actually has nothing to do with the German word for eating/food. The Germans borrowed the word délicatesse from French, and gave it a -n plural ending, hence Delikatessen = delicacies. German-speaking Jewish émigrés took the word to the US, where it became a term for the shop, not just the things sold, and from there it spread to the rest of the English-speaking world.

    So essentially, William @24 was right – deli the shop and DELICATE share the same root.

86. Despite this late post I thought this was one of the easiest and most enjoyable of the week. The special instructions made the across clues easier. How could anyone miss them? Perhaps they ought to be in large type, caps and red in future !

87. @eileen – I think EEL boat is hidden in KEELING. The type of boat depicted in John Sell Cotmans painting amongst others..https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-eel-boat-276056

88. On the Guardian website I was reading about Boris Johnson’s resignation. Then I printed out the crossword deciding that the down clues would be easier, started with 1D. What a segue!

89. Very, very late thanks to essexboy@83-4 for your support re FlaK. I just knew it was a German acronym, looked it up in wiktionary, and pasted it into my post.
    The bold uppercase was all my own work, though – FLiegerAbwehrKanone. (“anti aeroplane cannon”).
    I see now it has a synonym – FLugAbwehrKanone.
    I just wanted to make a silly point about misspelling and Roberta, but those are the kind of connections I do crosswords for.
    Why the capital K in FlaK? Why is it not there in FlakPz? – let’s see if I get an even later reply…

90. PeterOz@88 – “Self-indulgent English scoundrel overwhelmed by depression” 🙂
    Maybe you should check out…
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/2023/06/09/independent-11438-by-phi/
    …where a few of us were inventing a completely spurious Bozo theme, before he actually got round to resigning.

91. Frankie G @89, good question, and it shows the Germans, despite their reputation, are not always entirely logically consistent. Most Germans today write Flak with a small k, but my guess is that it was originally FlaK as an abbr. of Flugabwehr- (or Fliegerabwehr) -Kanone.

    All German nouns are capitalised, and continue to be so even in compounds, but only if those compound nouns are hyphenated. The word Geist has a capital G, but when it’s in the non-hyphenated Zeitgeist, it doesn’t.

    So Flugabwehr-Rakete has a capital R (hence FlaRak), but if written as Flugabwehrrakete the r is lower case. FlakPz kind of makes sense if you write the full version as Flugabwehrkanonen-Panzer (although I didn’t, and neither does German wiki!)

    For further confusion, see also Soko/SoKo/SOKO and Kita.

    Any mention of Roberta is more than fine by me 🙂 ]

92. [p.s. – i do realise that, in view of my moniker, i’m in no position to lecture anyone about the correct use of capital letters. i plead the kenmac defence.]

93. Thanks essexboy for the explanation and for the song I hadn’t heard before. “Nice!” 🙂

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