Guardian Cryptic 29,112 by Vulcan

by

Typical Monday fare from Vulcan.

Finished this one quite quickly, and everything parses OK. Hope this blog makes it on to the website and that people can access it.

Thanks Vulcan

ACROSS
1 RAW DATA
Statistics needing to be cooked? (3,4)

Cryptic definition
5 PERUSAL
The girl from Lima is reading (7)

A girl called Sal from Lima could be described as PERU SAL
9 BEING
Earnestly ask about home for creature (5)

BEG ("earnestly ask for") about IN ("home")
10 GORBLIMEY
Girl, boy and me horribly coarse and vulgar (9)

*(girl boy me) [horribly]
11 IN GOOD TIME
Not out having fun? It’s early enough (2,4,4)

IN ("not out") + GOOD TIME ("fun")
12 WORN
Shabby, but put on (4)

Double definition
14 CREDIT RATING
Believe sailor is to get assessment for a loan (6,6)

CREDIT ("believe") + RATING ("soldier")
18 IDIOSYNCRASY
Characteristic muddling, so I sync diary (12)

*(so i sync diary) [anag:muddling]
21 IRIS
For girl, I almost come to my feet (4)

I + [almost] RIS(e) ("come to my feet")
22 BAGGY GREEN
Capacious playing area, topping for some Aussies (5,5)

BAGGY ("capacious") + GREEN ("playing area")

A baggy green is an Australian cap, similar to that worn by their cricket team.
25 HIT WICKET
Success with the gate, so get out (3,6)

HIT ("success") with WICKET ("gate")
26 THOSE
People over there start to tamp pipe (5)

[start to] T(amp) + HOSE ("pipe")
27 DURABLE
Sturdy rail knocked over in wild duel (7)

<=BAR ("rail", knocked over) in *(duel) [anag:wild]
28 PODCAST
Group of whales given a part in online entertainment (7)

POD ("group of whales") + CAST ("given a part")
DOWN
1 RABBIT
Leader of congregation has time to keep chattering (6)

RABBI ("leader of congregation") has T (time)
2 WHINGE
Irritating complaint from wife a turning point (6)

W (wife) + HINGE ("a turning point")
3 ANGLO-IRISH
From two countries, original moves meeting silence (5-5)

*(original) [anag:moves] meeting SH ("silence")
4 ARGOT
Try to break into painting’s special language (5)

GO ("try") to break into ART ("painting")
5 PARAMETER
Soldier coming down with device to measure boundary (9)

PARA ("soldier coming down") with METER ("dvice to measure")
6 RILL
River in a bad way — just a brook (4)

R (river) + ILL ("in a bad way")
7 SYMPOSIA
Conferences upset MP so? I say! (8)

*(mp so i say) [anag:upset]
8 LAYANEGG
A hen will have a fiasco in America (3,2,3)

LAY AN EGG is an American term for "to fail"
13 FARSIGHTED
Free gift shared, thinking ahead (3-7)

*(gift shared) [anag:free]
15 DON’T ASK ME
Teacher, give me something to do; I have no idea (4,3,2)

DON ("teacher") + TASK ME ("give me something to do")
16 FINISHED
Piece of fish I dropped: that’s done it (8)

FIN ("piece of fish") + I + SHED ("dropped")
17 DISINTER
Sit diner in mess: grub up! (8)

*(sit diner) [anag:in mess]
19 FEDORA
Iron Lady’s hat (6)

Fe (chemical symbol ofr "iron") + DORA ("lady")
20 INVENT
Newly design part of train ventilation (6)

Hidden in [part of] "traIN VENTilation"
23 GOT UP
Move, sheep! It hauled itself to its feet (3,2)

GO ("move") + TUP ("sheep")
24 LIMB
Very dangerous to be out on one leg (4)

If you're "out on a LIMB" you're exposed or in danger.

58 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,112 by Vulcan”

  2. [Are we back to normal now? This is the first time I’ve managed to access this since the problems began.]

    I thought there might be an Ashes theme here, HIT WICKET, BAGGY GREEN and listen to it on a PODCAST.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

  5. Good to be back after being unable to access the site over the last few days; fingers crossed, but whatever you did kenmac@1 seems to have worked.

    There was enough here to keep me thinking and I ended up missing the parsing of LIMB. I initially had trouble with the part of speech of GORBLIMEY, but then thought of the lyrics of “My Old Man’s a Dustman” and I guess it does make sense as an adjective. I liked the cricket related clues even though I can understand that reminders of the BAGGY GREEN mightn’t go down well after the incident at Lord’s yesterday; not our finest hour.

    Thanks to Vulcan and loonapick

  6. GORBLIMEY, Vulcan has shown no IDIOSYNCRASY. He has been INVENTive and FAR-SIGHTED. To have GOT UP “HIT WICKET” and “BAGGY GREEN” in the solutions and “Aussies” in the cluing, on a day where we’re all debating the laws versus the spirit of the game, is something we should launch a PODCAST about. DON’T ASK ME how he was so clairvoyant

    Thank you Vulcan and loonapick.

  7. I was another who thought of the GORBLIMEY trousers, and struggled with parsing LIMB, although got there in the end.

    Quibbles: a fully superfluous ‘it’ in GOT UP, and the aforementioned SAL was a bit loose.

    But good fun overall. I liked DURABLE, DISINTER, and FINISHED the most.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

  8. Apologies for the terse blog – working in Edinburgh this morning so had to do the whole solve and blog in about 30 minutes.

  9. I had PERIMETER for 5d, and couldn’t work out why “peri” is a soldier. Does GORBLIMEY mean coarse and vulgar? I thought it was an expression of surprise or shock. Was unaware of wicket/gate, and don’t know why DISINTER is “grub up”. Didn’t parse LIMB, but should have. And I’d never heard of that Americanism.

    Nice to see the site back up and running.

  10. Given the Aussie cricket themette it’s a shame we didn’t get “tampering” as an anagrind 🙂

    I thought this was one of Vulcan’s better efforts with ticks for DISINTER, BAGGY GREEN, and IN GOOD TIME

    Cheers L&V

  12. It’s lovely to have 225 up and running again after a week without it being accessible on my Mac.

    I enjoyed the fun clueing of this puzzle which matched my preference for pleasant-to-read surfaces.

    If there is a cricket theme, RABBIT also fits.

    Favourites: DON’T ASK ME, FINISHED, RAW DATA.

    Despite being Australian and a cricket watcher, I failed to solve BAGGY GREEN – never heard of this before!

    I was unsure how to parse 25ac – I incorrectly entered HOT TICKET = success with the gate.

    New for me: LAY AN EGG = fail badly although I think I have heard the saying, “Don’t lay an egg.”

    Thanks, both.

  13. Another perimeter here, Geoff Down Under – a ‘peri’ is a fairy…

    Congratulations to Ken for getting this site to work again.
    Thank you Vulcan for the puzzle and loonapick for the blog.

  14. GDU @9. I suspect the cricket wicket derives from the older meaning of “gate”. Gor Blimey is indeed an expression of surprise etc, supposedly used by uncouth people, so hence an adjective applied to them and their doings!

  15. …and I suppose WHINGE might be thrown into the mini cricket/Ashes brouhaha. Enjoyed this, particularly ANGLO-IRISH. Perhaps another incendiary topic…

  16. Problem with SSL cert sorted I assume.

    Ok with this puzzle but had perimeter and hot ticket which, of course, I couldn’t parse.

    Usual gripe about cricket obscurities and I really dislike the use of female = some girl’s name etc.

    But anyway, thanks both and glad to have 15^2 back.

  17. Nho BAGGY GREEN. I also had PERIMETER as the “obvious” answer to 5d (Chambers gives “boundary” as the last of 10 alternative definitions of “parameter”)

  18. Thanks Kenmac for sorting out the problems; hope they don’t recur!

    Good Monday puzzle, although I DNK BAGGY GREEN and LAY AN EGG as an expression. I liked the soldier coming down, the surface for WHINGE, and FINISHED, where I dropped didn’t mean get rid of the i.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick.

  19. New to me were BAGGY GREEN and RILL, although still managed to get there. I vaguely remembered TUP from somewhere, probably another puzzle.

    And happy to see I’m not the only one who struggled to parse LIMB.

    Overall, perfect Monday fare. Thank you loonapick and Vulcan.

  20. @loonapick: typo in the parsing of 14A: RATING (“soldier”) should obviously read RATING(“sailor”)

  21. Time once again to complain about my pet peeve: “girl” or “woman” to mean “any of the hundreds of names usually given to a female.” Fourtunately for Dora and Sal, this was an easy enough puzzle that we all got there anyway. (But isn’t Sal just as likely to be short for Salvatore, so a man, as for Sally? But maybe only in a place like the US with a lot of Italian-descended folks.) Anyway, no crossword editor in the US would let it fly–you’re expected to reference a specific notable person, real or fictional, with the name, so Dora the Explorer or Sal’s Pizzeria (a Salvatore, that one), for example.

    I didn’t know BAGGY GREEN, so I guessed LARGE GREEN, which fits the clue rather better. Oops. Otherwise this went pretty quickly.

  23. Thanks Vulcan and loonapick
    GORBLIMEY is a corruption of “God blind me”, one of a number of similar oaths. “Strewth” is another – “God’s truth”.

  24. mrpenney@21: it is good to learn I was not alone in opting for LARGE GREEN – it sounded as if it could be an Australianism and I’d never heard of the alternative. FINISHED, WHINGE and CREDIT RATING were my podium from a solid Monday puzzle.

    Thanks Vulcan and loonapick

  25. Thanks to Vulcan for Monday treat and loonapick for the blog.
    Lots of ticks from this topical puzzle 1d, 3d, 14a, 16d, 25a, 27a,
    [Thx to kenmac for dealing with the online glitch.]

  26. mrpenny@21 Sal is a diminutive of Sarah which means “princess” I believe. “Lima’s little princess” might have been more technically correct, but probably harder.

  27. Lovely to have the blog back – I was getting a bit Joni Mitchell about it. (Don’t it always seem the way . . .) Yorkshire Lass is made of sterner stuff.

    We too were unparsed PERIMETER, and I bet that in some language, somewhere, a PERI is a military person.

    Many thanks V&l.

  29. Thanks both,

    Unfortunately the misuse of ‘parameter’ to mean a boundary has become entrenched, but one would have hoped setters would have the knowledge and good taste to avoid it.

  30. Unfortunate timing to have a BAGGY GREEN after yesterday’s incident. Mathematical methods are used to create statistics from the raw data; the raw data are not “statistics”. MJC Smith BSc hons (Maths) MSc (Modern computational Mathematics) btw.

  31. Agree with Tyngewick re parameter. Like Irishman @ 27 I too spent time trying to make PERIMETER work.
    Good to be back on 225 and thanks to Vulcan and loonapick.

  32. I raised an eyebrow at PARAMETER, as I wouldn’t use it in that sense – I entered perimeter, then checked – but boundary is common in online definitions, and my meaning is difficult to find in this one!

  33. M@32 & T@29 Chambers has PARAMETER – “A boundary or limit to the scope of something” along with nine other possible meanings. Surely this kind of linguistic diversity is a key part of what makes cryptic crosswords possible? And fun!

  34. BAGGY GREEN and HIT WICKET were both new to me.

    A PARAMETER isn’t a boundary, it just sounds like on — like “perimeter,” which is. It’s often misused that way, but I’m disappointed to see it so here. A dictionary’s job is to report how people use words, so Chambers has, but it’s regrettable.

    I had LARGE GREEN and HOT TICKET too.

    kenmac — if the site’s been unavailable for a week, how is it that all the previous puzzles now have blogs and lots of commenters?

    Thanks, Vulcan and loonapick, and welcome back everrybody.

  35. V@34 so which of the ten definitions in Chambers do you consider the only correct one? I imagine Paul would go for “the latus rectum of a parabola” 🙂

  36. Valentine @34: The problem revolved around the secure network protocol https: being unavailable — usually a certificate problem, but as commentators on theregister.co.uk will remind you “it’s always the DNS” (domain name server). The site was still available using the older, deprecated, and less-secure protocol http:.

  37. Quite right, Bodycheetah@35. There’s absolutely no reason why parameter shouldn’t be used in mistake for perimeter to mean boundary. You only need to look at the word’s atomology.

  38. Gavin @28: a rabbi is the leader of a congregation (specifically a minyan), and T is a common abbreviation for time, if you recall your physics class from school. And among the meanings of RABBIT is to talk on and on. So RABBI has T to get RABBIT.

  39. A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The priest says, I’ll have a glass of wine, please. The minister says, I’ll have a pint of stout, whenever you get a chance. The rabbit says, Don’t look at me–I’m only here because of Autocorrect.

  40. [navidier@36. I was able to access the site using http:, or using a different browser, but even this stopped working for me after Friday. Other people had different experiences, no doubt. Kenmac has described the process of fixing the problem in a separate thread. Some of us have taken the opportunity for buying him a donut or seven, using the Site Funding link at the top of the page.]

  41. Thanks for the blog, a good puzzle in the Monday tradition , I really liked LIMB .
    When solving differential equations the boundary conditions are often called PARAMETERs .

  43. In addition to BAGGY GREEN, HIT WICKET and WHINGE, we also had ‘boundary’ and – in honour of World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan – ANGLO-IRISH.

  44. I thought ANGLO-IRISH was superb with its political undertones. GORBLIMEY was nice as well. Good to be back Roz.

    Ta Vulcan & loonapick.

  45. [bodycheetah@35 along with nine other possible meanings
    More like possible obfuscations: aren’t dictionaries supposed to explain meanings of word in language that is amenable to most people? We have commented many times on Chambers misunderstanding of mathematical materials. One of the definitions of parameter is: “in conic sections, a third proportional to any diameter and its conjugate diameter” Well, this may well be correct, but not understandable by this mathematician. After much google searching I see it is more or less straight from Websters 1828 Dictionary.]

  46. DE@45 so which definition do you consider to be the correct one? And does this mean dictionaries should only offer one definition for any given word? It would make them a lot more portable and save a few trees too

  47. My teachers 60 years ago drilled into me the difference between parameter and perimeter. They would be turning over in their graves at how the language has (d)evolved. I had no problem solving that clue (5d) from the wordplay, and fully expected to find the “incorrect” boundary definition in the dictionary.

    I originally tried HOT TICKET for25a, with “success at the gate” as the cryptic definition, but couldn’t get the wordplay; eventually I thought begrudgingly of cricket, and the correct solution hit me like a willow bat.

    Thanks Vulcan for the fun and loonapick for the remarkably good blog under the circumstances. Well done.

    (And thanks mrpenney@39 for the joke. I have already used it.)

  48. b@35 and 45 Many words have more than one meaning, and I’m not against including them. I doubt that Dave is either. I’m only commenting that the particular definition that actually refers to “perimeter” rather than “parameter” should be attached to the former word.

    I’ll also request that if you disagree with someone on this forum, that you do so without sarcasm, which spoils the flavor of any discussion.

  49. Re Amoeba (7) — “it” isn’t superfluous if the solution is ” get up”, the definition “go” and the rising sheep is a “teg”.

  51. The parameters of an inquest (or a review, or an investigation) are the terms under which the inquest (or review, or investigation) is required to operate. In practice, this often means a limitation of its scope, and hence a boundary within which it must operate.

    Surely this is where PARAMETER gets its definition as a boundary. I have not heard anyone use it mistakenly for PERIMETER, and would not expect Chambers to bless such a usage before it has become unavoidably common in use.

  52. “It’s great to be back…(isn’t it Ronnie”). PARAMETER for boundary was only hiccup.
    Thanks both

  53. Thankyou Roz@41. Your comment seems to being ignored though.
    I couldn’t aceess the site with HTTP: or Firefox, which was suggested to me as an alternative browser.

  54. I too bunged in PERIMETER without bothering to check whether PERI can be a soldier as well as a fairy.

    I loved the autocorrect joke, mrpenney. It’s the best comment I’ve seen on fifteensquared for at least a week!

  55. I never knew what GORBLIMEY meant but managed to figure it out. Never heard of LAY AN EGG in this context. Does anyone under 60 in the US say it?

    Agree that PERUSAL has a poor clue.

  56. Heard of baggy greens but didn’t get “baggy” from “capricious”?? Can’t find any dictionary (admittedly internet searches) that suggest it’s a synonym or anything remotely near. Am I missing something or is this an archaic use of the word?

  58. I found this quite hard for a Monday. In fact, I failed to finish in multiple places, including the unparsed guesses LARGE GREEN and PERIMETER.

    [In principle, I believe in descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to language: words mean what people use them to mean, not what they “should” mean in some abstract sense. But I confess that this usage of PARAMETER raises my prescriptivist hackles.]

    Personally, I have no objection to the use of “girl” and the like to mean any girl’s name, as long as the rest of the clue gives a clear route to the solution, as it did in the two cases people have discussed here. As a matter of fact, the elegant simplicity of 19dn (FEDORA) made it my favorite clue in this puzzle.

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