Guardian Cryptic 29,199 by Jack

74 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,199 by Jack”

1. Thanks Jack and Peter. Insomnia solve in middle of night . Could not quite believe my swamp fever parsing – but mine same as yours so I guess correct.

   And, as usual, I didn’t spot the hidden word.

   Some proper groan-inducing homophones too

2. Thanks, Jack and PeterO!
   Liked FAITHFULLY (Jack lifts it a notch) and AVATAR (Interesting manifestation).
   Loved CRITERIA (whatever the sound engineers (or doctors?) may say).

   MEDICAL
   Maybe ‘her (doctor’s) consultation’ is the def. No?

3. SWAMP FEVER
   Considering the dictionary def of SWAMP FEVER as ‘a viral disease of horses characterized by recurring fever, staggering gait, and general debility’, could Hackney/hackney be referring to a horse?

4. I never know what to expect from Jack — I’ve found his puzzles at times delightful and other times fiendish. Fortunately today’s was the former. I was a computer programmer in a former life, but have never encountered MICROCODE. Needless to say, I’ve never heard of Hackney Marshes, but as it was the only clue requiring UK knowledge, I can’t complain. Collins insisted on putting an “a” on the end of MIASM, but I found it elsewhere.

   Missed the nina.

   Thanks, Jack & PeterO.

5. hackney
   a horse or pony of a light breed with a high-stepping trot, used in harness.
   (Just sharing for completeness’ sake. Not to clutter this space with dictionary
   entries anyone can refer to, if the need is felt).

6. It took me a while to understand the clue for FAITHFULLY, but when I twigged it elicited a smile.

7. Happy to have finished, but… SWAMP FEVER seems a bit hackneyed?

   Clearly America needed to send more R’s to Britain under the Marshall Plan, if CRITERIA = cry tearier. Not as bad as that old episode of “My Word” that claimed “what” and “wart” as homonyms, but still…

   PREROGATIVE was delightful — such a natural clue for a long anagram.

   Not quite sure I understand 13d — I get that “Yours faithfully” is a standard complimentary close, but where does the “comes before my name” part fit in?

8. FAITHFULLY
   And the extended def is nice as well (not quite a clue-as-def, I feel).

9. ThemTates@7
   After yours FAITHFULLY, my (the setter’s) name comes.

10. ThemTates @7
    Tea-tray time: What would you write after (or under) “Yours faithfully”?

11. Thanks Jack for an excellent set of clues. My top picks were MICROCODE (great construction), the nicely hidden BALLERINA, LITHE, LEAPT, the groan inducing ERSTWHILE, and ORDEAL. I’m still smarting after missing the clever nina in the Basilisk crossword yesterday but GUARDIAN was quite clear today. (I wonder if there’s more to the nina, however.) Thanks PeterO for the blog.

12. Thanks Peter O. Does anyone else think that the OUR in third row was intended to go with GUARDIAN in the eighth row?

13. I arrived at an explanation of SWAMP FEVER slightly different to our blogger Peter O
    double def. great excitement in Slough and fever (any fever) in the marsh area of Hackney

    Along the way, I’d thought of another using the East London (Hackney for example) pronunciation of th as f > ”thiever”, which would be a problem for those living in Hackney. No?

14. Agree with KVa@2 about her being part of the def. It does make you think twice as to whether her relates to the doctor or the patient in the surface. I liked it.
    Very much liked the clues which needed separation eg . ACCORDION sound agreement, and RUSTLE take stock of, REMINISCENT modern touring cars.
    Favourite UMBRELLA, for the &lit, ELL being a unit of measurement deriving from the word for arm, and the spot-on image of holding one at arm’s length.

15. SWAMP FEVER
    paddymelon@13
    Found your take quite interesting. Yet I stick to my parsing@3 (with supporting info@5). 🙂

16. Ta for that info, KVa @5. So the hackney carriage gets its name from the horse, never knew that.

17. KVa@15. Sorry, I was away for a long time and missed your posts @3 and 5. A decidedly plausible parsing of SWAMP FEVER.

18. In case anybody else is reading the blog and thinking they’re the only ones thst struggled with the puzzle and didn’t enjoy it – you’re not alone. I didn’t get on with this at all. At the moment, I’m not a fan of Jack, but thanks to him and PeterO.

19. I also thought, like KVa, that the reference in SWAMP FEVER was to horses, though via the Hackney Carriage, but seems a more direct definition than postulating possible future problems from the Marshes. I always thought FRANGIPANI was a type of pudding, so learnt it’s also a plant and a perfume from that plant. I found this puzzle reasonably straightforward once I had a few crossers in place, with no really standout clues. Theresa May having been prime minister continues to be another gift to setters. Thanks to Jack and PeterO.

20. GDU @4 if it’s any consolation I’ve been working in IT for 35 years and I’ve never heard of microcode either. But there it is in the big red book. Live and learn

    LOL when I finally twigged the parsing of AVATAR after searching in vain for a ?AVATAR that meant Indonesian sailor

    Top ticks for NORM, ERSTWHILE, and MIASM which I’d never seen without the A

    Cheers P&J

21. I think Jack has now done half a dozen Guardian Cryptics over and above his Genius puzzles. I am growing to enjoy his puzzles here perhaps more than in other places. Very economically clued and some cunningly deceptive definitions, often well blended with the remainder of the WP. REMINISCENT and ACCORDION being a couple of good examples. Other favourites for me today inc CAREFUL, MEDICAL, BALLERINA, MAYORAL, RUSTLE, GRENOBLE, ORDEAL and, COTD, the splendid UMBRELLA. The parsing of AVATAR is a bit cheeky and certainly escaped me.

    Thanks Jack and PeterO

22. Apart from MICROCODE, which even if it’s a word has the feel of something shoe-horned in to make the Nina work, this was quite delightful; and even that was so clearly clued that it wasn’t a problem. Similarly although MIASM is unfamiliar without the second A, the wordplay is correspondingly clear.
    Splendidly groan-inducing Spoonerism for ERSTWHILE; and SWAMP FEVER gets better the more you look at it. PeterO’s slightly meh parsing is the one I found; then you have KVa’s disease of horses; then the cherry on the top is the excellent provocation of the homophone police suggested by paddymelon @13. Brilliant.
    Other stand-outs included MEDICAL, ACCORDION (lovely definition, slightly reminiscent of “saxophone = an ill wind that nobody blows good”), REMINISCENT, BALLERINA (superb surface), CRITERIA, AVATAR.
    Grateful thanks to Jack and to PeterO.

23. I used to teach about microcoding in operating systems, so I certainly had heard of it.

    I am largely with Crispy@12 wrt Jack.

    Was that a spoonerism? It didn’t work for me.

    Thanks PeterO and Jack

24. Top half went in smoothly but really had to work hard below to tease out the word play, especially in the SE. I parsed SWAMP FEVER as PeterO but like KVa’s take on it. I’m one of those saddos, always looking for ninas, so this one was a gift. Favourites were PREROGATIVE, CRITERIA (groan) and the lovely BALLERINA. Anyone else think of Tom Jones in the clue for NORM?

    Ta Jack & PeterO.

25. SWAMP FEVER is a disease of horses (a fact which I had to look up) so ‘Ackney Marshes have nothing to do with it – it’s the hackney pulling the cab that would have problems.

26. Thanks Jack, PeterO
    I failed on PREROGATIVE. Before having all the letters I considered profiterole, palindromes, performance, Paralympics, Poltergeist, photography, pornography, painkillers and various others that fit the definition equally well but had to rule them all out.

27. An excellent puzzle with many good clues. MIASM was a tough one (my LOI) because I knew neither MIASM nor MSM. FAITHFULLY was a favourite at the time, and now SWAMP FEVER is another favourite, now that I’ve read all the above comments!

    Naturally, I missed the nina.

    Thanks to Jack and PeterO.

28. gladys@25. SWAMP FEVER. I think you’ve nailed it!

29. I struggled with microcode because once I spotted micro I expected the definition to be a peripheral. I recall microcode from my university days, where it meant the internal code within a CPU used to implement the machine code used to program the CPU. That’s rather an obscure technical thing, but I don’t remember ever seeing any other use for the word.
    The only niggles for me are that nobody “presses” an accordion (near enough for a crossword I guess) and that for mega you shouldn’t be expected to anagram a word that’s not in the clue.
    Thanks to Jack for a challenge (for me) and PeterO for the parsings I missed.

30. I finally worked out PREROGATIVE from all the crossers, but failed to spot the anagram. Likewise failed to see the wordplay for UMBRELLA which I solved as a CD. Never met MIASM before without its final A (is MIASMA a forgotten plural?) but the wordplay was clear enough.

    I have struggled with Jack in the past and wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. Liked RUSTLE, the carful of thrifty people, yours FAITHFULLY, and the Spooner (Ouch).

31. James @26
    I might have made the same point about PREROGATIVE, but I could not think of such a good way to make it!

32. Splendid puzzle with imaginative constructions and smooth surfaces. MICROCODE was new to me but the wordplay led me there inexorably.

    Too many good clues to list them all, but the anagram for PREROGATIVE is beautifully unexpected (and I did LOL at the Spoonerism). It seems rather churlish to quibble, but the ‘her’ in the clue for MEDICAL seems extraneous, and two uses of ‘oral’ in the wordplay is a very slight blemish in an elegant crossword.

    I always solve from the Guardian app on my smartphone. The nom de guerre of the setter was missing today (this is happening more frequently) – had I known it was Jack (I thought possibly Vlad or Arachne from the surfaces) I might have looked for a Nina, but I obviously didn’t.

    Many thanks to Jason and PeterO

33. Good fun. That would have been quicker if I hadn’t carelessly stuck in carpool for 1ac and if I could actually spell prerogative correctly. Thanks both.

34. Well now, the top half slid in quite snugly and swiftly, but I spent ages staring at a pretty much a blank bottom half. Until the BALLERINA suddenly danced across the page, unseen before that, I was probably distracted by the footballer in the clue. Thereafter better progress, though wasn’t too taken by the clarity of SWAMP FEVER. Oral utilised as part of both the interlocking 20d and 28 ac didn’t impress that much, though they were arrived at by different definitions. Had no idea about what 5d might be, even with 5 crossers in places. Cheated on that one ultimately. Very much liked the long PREROGATIVE and REMINISCENT. Thanks Jack and Peter O…

35. Oh, and knew Miasma, but not MIASM, which it had to be with the crossers all in place…

36. I had a similar experience to ronald@34. I found the bottom half quite tough. The most challenging puzzle for several weeks for me. Took me a while to get on Jack’s wavelength. That said, there are many excellent clues; but I thought SWAMP FEVER too obscure in its reference to Hackney. Am also not entirely persuaded by the spoonerism. With thanks to Jack and PeterO.

37. Could not SWAMP FEVER equally well be ‘marsh fever’, but for the crossers? Given the possible meaning of Slough as marsh and the Hackney Marshes connection I would say it works better.

    Liked FAITHFULLY, CAREFUL and LENGTHEN. Was held up by misspelling ACCORDION as ‘accordeon’ (thinking the ‘one’ was ‘working’) so struggled with the otherwise excellent CRITERIA.

38. Actually, malaria, although it was usually called marsh fever, or ague was indeed endemic in this counrty for several hundred years, mainly in East Anglia, but also in the low lying country of the Thames Estuary—

39. I’m with Crispy@18 and ronald@34. Didn’t get along with this at all.

    I also put in carpool at 1a which messed things up for a while.

    I do the print version and 22a is clued “Disorder in Slough…” not “great excitement”, not that I think it makes any difference to my opinion of that clue.

    I did like LENGTHEN and REMINISCENT

    Thanks Jack and PeterO

40. Another great crossword from Jack/Serpent.

    I also filled the top half but got quite stuck for a while in the SW corner. I liked CAREFUL and REMINISCENT for the wordplays, ACCORDION and RUSTLE for the definitions, PREROGATIVE for the good anagram spot, and MEGA for the good surface and use of cycling. SWAMP FEVER is given in the dictionaries as malaria with either a dated or US connotation. It was nice, I thought, that it could refer to the place, disease and horses. The NINA was hard to not spot, although I only saw it at the end.

    Thanks Jack and PeterO.

41. Not happy about MICROCODE as ‘computer commands’. I taught Computer Science for many years, and doubt if anyone would have used that as a definition. Microcode (also microprogramming) means the internal operations used to implement a CPU’s instruction set and is normally invisible both to users and to programmers, whereas ‘commands’ generally refers to a much higher level, either in the operating system or applications software.

    I had no idea of the significance of HACKNEY in 22a, but managed to fill it in regardless.

42. I missed the anagram for PREROGATIVE and didn’t connect SWAMP with slough… I was thinking of snakes there.
    Good puzzle. Thanks both

43. Thanks PeterO for sorting out a few which were ‘bung and hope’ for me. Like others, I was unconvinced by SWAMP FEVER but now that it has been explained that it is a disease of horses, and ‘hackney’ is a horse, I like the clue very much. I am more with Crispy@18 than with most other commentators, but liked BENT (concise surface), PREROGATIVE (surface and a neat anagram) and RUSTLE (for the misleading definition). LOI was MEGA, there are simply too many sporting occasions to go through and think of possible anagrams until the crossers were in place. Thanks Jack.

44. Another former computer programmer here who hadn’t met MICROCODE, and now that ravenrider@29 and poc@41 have explained what it is, I can see why, as I never got nearer the CPU than machine code. Anyway, it’s a valid word and clearly clued, so I’m not complaining.

45. Many thanks to PeterO for the excellent blog and to everyone who has taken the time to comment.

    As KVa notes @3, SWAMP FEVER is a disease affecting horses, so “Great excitement in Slough” provides the wordplay and “Hackney” is part of the definition by example.

46. Crispy @18 I’m in the same camp. I filled in perhaps two thirds, with several of those incompletely parsed, before throwing in the towel. I was happy to get MICROCODE, and rightly thought that many would find it unfamiliar.

    Oh well. Horses for courses.

47. Thanks Peter O for elevating UMBRELLA as I had though tit a mere cryptic def, and KVa for a better explanation of SWAMP FEVER than I managed – in fact I had CABIN FEVER for a good while, trying to make sense of the Hackney. I didn’t like FAITHFULLY because of the “accurate” in the clue – surely a letter addressed to a specific person is signed off with “yours sincerely” whereas the broader Dear Sir/Madam gets the faithful treatment? At least that’s what I learned at school. I know that the first part is a different cryptic definition but it ought to work as extended def too unless correspondence is doing double duty, i think. And I noted the double Oral too, Gervase@32. Nonetheless enjoyed piecing together these solutions especially MICROCODE and LENGTHEN, and the Spoonerism, thanks Jack.

48. Clue for 22 across in my paper says Disorder in Slough, not Great excitement in Slough

49. I found this one a difficult solve, like Crispy @18, but Mr Paddington Bear and I managed to solve it eventually, but we needed PeterO to help us parse a few. So thank you, PeterO and Jack.

50. I particularly liked this one. SWAMP FEVER was a “bung and head to 15^2 for an explanation of the UK geography” and then it turns out not to involve UK geography! I had thought one of the places might be in the SW and would believe AMP for excitement (at least, one can AMP something up).

    MICROCODE I particularly liked for the wordplay and I’d heard of the concept, though for a bit I tried “computer” = MAC to get macrocode before I worked it out. Also a big smile for LOI FAITHFULLY when I figured out how it worked. A lot of very smooth surfaces, and even the non-rhotic homophone didn’t get me this time.

    For 5a, I thought “her” might be part of the definition. [It reminds me of Key and Peele’s Feminist Pirate Chantey, with one verse ending “but the scariest part of the story from the start/is I bet you assumed the doctor was a man.”]

    Completely missed the Nina of course. Is CIRCAN a thing in the center column?

51. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/circan

52. Another spelling lesson today. My other half and I erroneously thought a packed car would be a CARFULL.

    I’ve been to Hackney Marshes and it hasn’t been a wetland since WWII so agree with the horse parsing.

    Thanks to both.

53. poc @41, Gladys @44
    I think ‘computer instructions’ would have been an accurate definition of microcode, as I remember the term from three and four decades ago. But ‘computer commands’, referring properly to commands given at run time rather than coding (programming) time, is not far off and perhaps could be construed as a loose definition at worst.

54. 37 I agree but was I the only one to put in MARSH FEVER and muck up my crossers?

55. Really liked most of this today but will never recover after thinking of MAY and ORAL in the same space…I may have a gutter mind but even I have standards lol

56. I like the surface of CAR(E)FUL.

    Does anybody ever say “let” (in the obstacle sense) without “hindrance”? Has anybody ever?

    MICE as “peripheral devices” — oh, my! Here I am using one and I’d never think of that a a megayear.

    Unlike nuntius and ronald, I filled in the left half with almost nothing on the right.

    Never heard of the faithfully/sincerely distinction. Probably too fine a point for us Yanks.

    Thanks to Jack and PeterO.

57. Boyinabeerglass@55 🙂

58. I wonder if Circa n, indicates that Jack has set a round number if puzzles for the Guardian???

59. Of puzzles.

60. This was Jack’s sixth puzzle for the G, and as moaljodad, the statto over on the G thread, has pointed out, if this had appeared on Saturday Jack would have been the first G setter to have their first six puzzles appear on a different day of the week.

61. No, and not sex bomb, AlanC @24 😉

62. ravenrider @29, its nickname here was squeezebox, near enough, as you said.

63. Neil H@22 The ” ill wind that nobody blows good” was the oboe, according to saxophonist and writer Bennie Green. If you want to hear one blown good, type my username followed by the surname Sims into YouTube.

64. NeilH@22 That’s the sax, not the oboe.

65. Like Crispy@18 and others, I’m not yet on Jack’s wavelength so this was a DNF, but unlike Crispy I enjoyed much of it. One that I didn’t get, 13d FAITHFULLY, became one of my favourites, once I saw PeterO’s explanation. My other favourite was 7d CRITERIA, for its cheeky aural wordplay.

    I was another CARPOOLer, until 3d FRANGIPANI made me rethink 1a.

    Ravenrider@29, I think 24d MEGA is a cycle clue, rather than an anagram. For some reason that I cannot fathom, indirect cycle wordplay appears to be acceptable, while indirect anagrams are not. I have never understood the objection to the latter, unless the indirectness renders the clue too obtuse for most solvers.

    Thanks Jack for the lesson, and PeterO for the much needed and very helpful blog.

66. I didn’t know hackney couldn’t be a horse, and was looking for something that could be a problem with a coach. I filled it in from the crossers. And I need KVa’s complete explanation for FAITHFULLY. Thanks, PeterO and everyone.

67. Thanks for the blog, good puzzle with clever wordplay, I liked the “take stock” for RUSTLE , the (J)AVA TAR and the reference to KPR in 11Ac.
    Where has the “Great excitement ” come from for 22Ac?

68. I can’t fault Peter’s assessment – a pleasant outing indeed. Enjoyed RELEGATION and the excellent surface + anagram of PREROGATIVE. All very neat and tidy, with only one bung and hope (SWAMP FEVER, which turns out also to be rather clever).

69. Boy In A Beer Glass @55: plus ORAL being used twice in the crosser — across for MAYORAL and down for ORDEAL — was clumsy as well as gutterminded

70. Tough and mostly enjoyable.

    New for me: MSM = mainstream media (23d); MICROCODE.

    I did not fully parse 13d, 17d, and did not understand all the fine points of 22ac.

    Thanks, both.

71. Roz @67 – E. Foster @48 points out that the clue in the paper differs from the clue in the online version. You will naturally have solved from the former. Jack’s proprietorial intervention @45 does not mention this or how and why it came to pass.

72. [Roz :67 low blow, ouch. At least I wasn’t 12ac] 🙂

73. I’m guessing Disorder in Slough would have led solvers trying to anagram..

74. The ‘her’ in 5 ac is glossed as a red herring
    I had thought that every word in a crossword clue was meant to have a purpose. Is filling in with irrelevancies legitimate?

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