Guardian Cryptic 29,107 by Anto

31 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,107 by Anto”

1. Visit/do is a bit of a doozie, methinks, likewise happy/on air. Didn’t know the Labour leader, however he’s spelt. The American “ten-four” was new to me too. And my ignorance of Latin prevented my parsing STAT.

   Everything else fell into place. Thanks Anto & manehi.

2. I vaguely remebered ten’four from American cop shows, but it doesn’t seem to be in Chambers. The SCONE doesn’t really have a definition. Enjoyable, nonetheless. Thanks to both.

3. 15 seconds into this clip is Broderick Crawford acknowledging OK via 10 4 ( watched this series enthusiastically in the 50’s and 60’s !

   https://youtu.be/WO1PAwqDpr4

   Thank you Anto and manehi.

4. Thanks both,
   Mondayish fare for the most part. I only remember ‘ten four’ from ‘Highway patrol’ and that must be sixty years ago. 20d was ambiguous between double and do-able, which I would hyphenate.

5. Peel BTW is in the sense of orange PEEL = orange RIND

   The site operational and posting problems seem to continue but I seem to be able post some messages, after multiple attempts.

6. I thought the definition for SCONE was fair enough as its pronunciation is famously up for debate depending on where you come from (as a Lancastrian I rhyme it with LONE). 23A was odd as it seemed such a basic mistake to get through the edit. I wondered if ‘weird’ was doing double duty as an anagrind. The KIER spelling for Starmer is quite common on Twitter (and not as a form of abuse where ‘keith’ for some reason is preferred), as it mirrors the sound of the name phonetically, but I can’t believe that Anto would make that mistake. I too remember 10-4 from Broderick Crawford in black and white. On the whole the crossword was quite Monday-ish, though the SW corner took a while to figure out. Didn’t think of Alaska as neighbouring Russia, as there’s a sea in between, but I suppose it’s fair enough. Thanks to Anto and manehi.

7. Quoth the Alaskan Sarah Palin: “I can see Russia from my house!”

8. This is probably the first Anto that I have really enjoyed, not because it was accessible but because of the playfulness of some of the clues, where previously I’ve tended to find clunkiness.

   A pity about the mistake with KIER, but it didn’t hold me up. Last one in was SUNLIT, where I guess some Ximeneans will object to ‘central’ (after all, they object to ‘final’ and ‘first’) but I thought it was fine. As was the definition for SCONE, where the answer could readily substitute for the words ’causes dispute about what it should be called’, so it’s a clever allusion rather than a dictionary definition.

   I enjoyed the reference to the Luton Town supporter in 19a being ‘angry’ rather than crazy, or even these days just delerious. 🙂

   Thanks to Anto and manehi.

9. Thanks Anto and manehi.

   I was wondering what all the fuss was among the Guardian comments about KINKIER – now I know (I was just pleased to remember ‘Kier’ (although not Starmer)).

   I thought POST MORTEM was really quite good.

   (PEEL’s involvement with the Irish question makes for interesting reading – wiki.)

10. […or even delirious. I just can’t spell on a keyboard the way I used to be able to with pen in hand.]

11. So is there a verb “to head waiter”?

12. I’m struggling with the definition components of 16, 19 and 5. If I look at the parts underlined by manehi, none of them makes sense to me.
    Anyone help?

13. An earworm for 11a.

14. baerchen @ 12: in 16, the reference is to the phrase “living off the fat of the land,” though the clue has a singular/plural mismatch, since it should be “this” for the definition but “these” for the surface of the clue.

    In 19, you have to think of Alice’s tea-party guest, but with the chiefly American “angry” definition of mad rather than the chiefly British “crazy” one, which also marred that clue for me a bit.

    And in 5, the definition is a little off too; you could either see “one” as doing double duty, getting you to “one to oversee servers,” albeit with the “one” on the wrong end of the clue, or you could interpret “headwaiter” as a verb (as many people casually do for their professions, “off to go headwaiter tonight; hope the tips are good”). Neither quite works for me.

15. Thanks mrpenney for your plucky effort on Anto’s behalf…but your explanations don’t work really, do they? That’s my point.

16. Oh, and Webster’s has this intriguing article on the history of “mad” meaning “angry.” Summary for those in a hurry: it’s another case (alongside “fall” for autumn and “soccer” for football) of the British stigmatizing a word they themselves invented by pooh-poohing it as American after their own usage tastes changed. Except that this one has a very long pedigree.

17. mrpenney @16:

    Translation of ‘I’m mad about my flat’:

    UK: ‘I’m really pleased with my apartment’.

    US: ‘I’m very annoyed about the puncture in my car/bike’.

18. Only just managed to get on to here, once I googled “fifteensquared down”. I have posted a link to the official Guardian site, since so many people still having difficulties accessing 225. An earlier posting there would have helped.

    Romped through this as though it were a Monday, except for a handful at the end, which ruined a PB for Anto – so much easier than his last.

    I didn’t notice the spelling in KINKIER, but I favoured “wierd” doing double duty.

    Tomsdad@6 Which part of Lancashire are you from – in Quernmore we always rhymed it with “one”

19. Dave Ellison@18. That’s fair enough, but then you don’t pronounce Quernmore as Quernmore, do you. It’s more like Quormer.

    And if ‘weird’ had really been spelt “wierd” in the clue, that could have been a very clever hint about Keir being spelt KIER in the answer. 🙂

20. Please. Let’s stop the “double duty” conspiracy theories about 23A. Anto made a mistake (it happens) and Hugh missed it (it also happens).

21. I’d never heard of ten-four, and assumed that the setter had made a mistake in KINKIER. Only just found 225!

22. [baerchen @20: If a setter makes a mistake shouldn’t an editor try to fix it? 23a could have been changed to “… Labour leader Keir, internally confused …”]

23. While waiting for site access, I went down a pleasant rabbit hole with TEN-FOUR.
    @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-code
    @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broderick_Crawford
    @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Patrol_(American_TV_series)
    Reruns were actually titled Ten-Four to distinguish them from new episodes.
    I remembered Frank Gorshin (who played The Riddler in the ’60s Batman TV Series) was also a talented impressionist – think Dead Ringers rather than Renoir – and included Broderick Crawford in his act, saying “ten-four” after every sentence.
    Found out that he appeared on the same Ed Sullivan show as The Beatles.
    Don’t recall the series – maybe before my bedtime, or maybe before we had a TV.

24. I liked the puzzle a lot. I like Anto’s jazzy multi-word definitions and “&littish” cryptic definitions.
    DO RE MI – the clue also contains another “hidden” word – “Series of noTES TUDOr emissary kept hidden”
    Didn’t even notice the Keir misspelling when solving and confess that I misspelt weird for many years until I finally twigged it was another exception to the rule.
    Agree with Dave Ellison@18 and sheffield hatter@19 – Anto should have misspelt weird and then the clue would have been fine. 🙂
    I also like the idea of pronouncing SCONE as SKWUN to rhyme with ONE – I’ll do that from now on.
    “Which part of Lancashire are you from?” could have been “What’s your 10-20?” or even just “What’s your 20?”
    The rich do live off “these obese people from the country” – Supermarket chains make billions for their investors pushing processed food and BOGOFs while causing an obesity/diabetes crisis that needs drugs and operations to fix. They need to 86 it.
    cotd – THE FAT OF THE LAND
    Thanks Anto & manehi

25. The Prodigy wanted to rename their album THE FAT OF THE LAND to THE LAND OF THE FAT for its US release

    Sadly the record company wouldn’t play ball

26. Thanks for the blog, I am always pleased to see Anto . KINKIER would have been a great clue if it had worked.

27. TEN-FOUR was famous in the 70s from the song Convoy and a later film , CB Radio.

28. * posting now as I could not access the site since 27 June (I use a Mac) and it would not even work with http instead of https

    Enjoyable puzzle even though I failed 14d SHORT ORDER.

    Favourites: DOABLE, EUCLIDEAN.

    New for me: TEN-FOUR; SCARIFIER.

    I could not parse 1d, 23d.

    Thanks, both.

    * Error in 23ac. Maybe the Guardian needs a Crosswords Editor?

29. Hello all – I’m not seeing the problem with 23 across. It’s Labour leader heard – as in sounds like. Or maybe I’m missing something?

30. CC@29 ….Labour leader heard going after family – would be a neat solution . Without heard there is no indication of a homophone.

31. Cryptic Canadian / Roz:

    “Special instructions: 28/6/2023 Clue for 23 across has been corrected”

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