Guardian 29216 / Pangakupu

85 comments on “Guardian 29216 / Pangakupu”

1. I wondered whether ‘Yes and no’ was required in the MOONLIGHT clue. Would it have been an &lit without? I always find this setter’s G puzzles very tough and today was no exception and SYNECDOCHE beat me. I also had to reveal UMLAUT – I couldn’t think of a word beginning with UM that would fit but I was not considering a foreign word. My bad.

   SLIPSTREAM, CARUSO and COLLATERAL were my podium today.

   Thanks Pangakupu and duncan

2. Thanks, Pangakupu and duncanshiell!

   Something relevant from the net:

   “Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu” is a Maori proverb meaning “Love received, love returned”. This is a series of body positive portraits, reminding us to be kind to ourselves and show gratitude for what our body is capable of.

   MAORI jumbled in one column.

3. Found this a bit too tricky, and had to reveal couple – SYNECDOCHE and UMLAUT.
   I’ll now add Italian to the list of languages required to solve an English crossword.
   AROHA MAI is Maori for sorry, apparently.
   Thanks to Pangakupu and Duncanshiell.
   Re the blog – a minor gripe, but I found it too wide for my phone, meaning a fair bit of moving it around. Other than that, it was very clear.

4. MOONLIGHT (my take)
   I think it’s YES for the wordplay and NO for the surface.
   MOONLIGHT is a low source of luminance in darkness. NO. It’s bright in the darkness.

5. Yes, it wasn’t easy, but I managed to come out at the end. SYNECDOCHE, indeed! That along with INCORPOREAL & MEMENTO MORI were new to me. I wasn’t aware that “bed” meant sex. I’ll put it in my list with the other fifty pseudo synonyms. I thought 24d must be ALOE, as I’d not heard of SLOE. Both synonyms for CLOBBER I thought a bit approximate — neither is in Collins.

6. Failed on ‘synecdoche’.

7. Thanks Duncan, especially for the clarification of SLOE, where I had fixated on alone = SOLO rather than SOLE. I found myself trying too hard with the clues at first, expecting them to be knottier than they in fact were. In the end, Occam’s razor came to the rescue. Thank you Pangakupu for an enjoyable puzzle.

8. GDU @6, bed as a verb means “have sex with”

9. @5, sorry …

10. AROHA MAI AROHA ATU by Jen Cloher.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpGyTKsiI8I

11. @8, I.e. what duncanshiell said …

12. me@2
    Please ignore the sentence after ‘love returned.’

13. I had the same experience as Bullhassocks@7. Not many clues solved on the first pass, and many appeared more complex than they turned out to be in the end. On the other hand, there was SALIENT. Remembered the word SYNECDOCHE after the crossers suggested it, but had to look up its definition. Suspected that UMLAUT would also raise some complaints. Spent some time trying to fit AS into 6D (coming up with ‘arms’ initially). So I found this quite a challenge today. Thanks to the setter and to Duncanshiell for the clear blog.

14. Another insomnia solve for me. Somehow I saw synecdoche from some crossers which cheered me up

    I wonder if Google sees a small uptick in people reading about the Welsh Senned this morning. I spent a while trying to work out why AIMS fitted rest of definition

    In the end – some stretches of synonym aside – a great crossword.

    Thank Blogger and Setter (for keeping me entertained at 0230z)

15. I’m not usually on this setter’s wavelength but found this one mostly good. Favourites included BINOMIAL, COLLATERAL, MOONLIGHT. My take on the latter is that it is a low (not bright) source of illuminance, but also not low (because it’s high up in the sky).
    Thanks both.

16. Whenever I see the word SYNECDOCHE, first of all I have to look it up in a dictionary to find out what it means, and secondly it reminds me of the town of Schenectady in NY which apparently means “beyond the pines” in the Mohawk language. If so, Schenectady is an example of a Synecdoche maybe (pines = trees?).
    GDU @5, you need to get down to your local bottle-o and sample some SLOE gin. It’s heaven.

17. Enjoyable puzzle. I like the wording and construction of the clues.

    I did not parse 5d apart from CH=church, 6d apart from MO = way of working, 24d.

    Favourites: BODY CAMERA, MEMENTO MORI.

    New for me: SYNECDOCHE.

    Thanks, both.

18. Tomsdad @13, exactly the same, I remembered the word SYNECDOCHE after the crossers suggested it, but had to look up its definition.
    Loved umlaut especially. The “um” idea occurred and then there aren’t too many words it could be – suddenly two dots, a couple of points. Lovely.
    But if this is how hard Wednesday is, I know my place. Off to the SunFun on Friday…

19. I wonder why I find Phi so gettable and this P so hard? ?

20. My thought, for what it’s worth, was that MOONLIGHT is a perceived source of luminance Yes, but is not the actual source of it, No, being reflected sunlight.

21. I remembered SYNECDOCHE from several recent discussions on this site dating back to PeterO in 2011; and to this one blogged by guess who? Like Tim @16 I have to look it up for its spelling and meaning.

    Geoff Down Under@5 I wonder if you have Shoot twixt wind and water on your list.

    Thanks to duncanshiell for excellent explanations and also to Pangakupu

22. This was indeed tricky in places but very entertaining. My biggest tick was for INCORPOREAL, excellent.

    Anyone else think of The Eagles re 5a?

    It’s a girl, my Lord, In a flatbed Ford
    Slowin’ down to take a look at me

    Many thanks Pangakupu and duncanshiell.

23. Crispy @ 3
    The blog is fully visible on my smartphone in landscape mode, but I agree it’s a fractionally too wide for portrait mode. In theory, the table is designed to vary in width to fit the device it is being displayed on. I think that i I fixed the width of the table to fit a smartphone in portrait mode, the blog would look a bit odd on other devices with wider screens

    Dave Ellison @ 21
    I do well to remember entries from blogs I wrote a month ago, let alone one I wrote in 2012, especially as SYNECDOCHE appeared in that blog as an explanation of an entry (TROPE) rather than as an entry in its own right!

24. 1d could be understood as an and lit. Caruso certainly toured America

25. Toughest puzzle this week but I really enjoy this setter’s style. Found the trademark Maori phrases as mentioned by KVa @2. Very chuffed to get SYNECDOCHE and like Dave Ellison @21, remembered it from this site. I thought the answer referred to asking for someone’s hand in marriage. My favourites were CARUSO (agree with your extended definition Duncan) FLATBED, BATHROOM, INCORPOREAL, SLIPSTREAM and MEMENTO MORI. Didn’t know about the AM in AMMO.

    Ta Pangakupu & duncanshiell for the excellent blog.

26. Dave Ellison @ 21 … that should keep me going for a while. 🙂

27. Duncanshiell@23. Thanks for the reply. As I said, only a minor gripe, I just wondered if it was something I was doing wrong, but it doesn’t look like it. Other than that, it was a very clear understandable blog.

28. Very rewarding puzzle, thank you Pangakupu. Internet searches on aroha mai, aroha atu bring up some great things, including a wonderful report on a school in Auckland. As a long-standing Beige-later-Black-Cap-lover, wanted to say Thank you Mr Setter, but no Kiwi 22 (first half) ever did that.

29. So, I’m going to say it, really struggled to make any kind of initial impression until I took the anagram at 25ac by the short and curlies and thus found a toehold in the SW corner. If that’s not mixing my metaphors. Delighted to see MEMENTO MORI, reminding me of Muriel Spark’s 1959 novel which I read in a two volume edition with her Girls Of Slender Means, 1963, by contrast.
    Rather winged my way though this and met the buffers like so many others with SYNEDOCHE, which I’m unashamed to say I had to look up as an unknown. Didn’t much like CLOBBER or FLATBED for clarity, but did like SLIPSTREAM and BODY CAMERA…

30. Tim C @15: Charlie Kaufman, longtime fave of the indie cinema circuit, made a movie called Synecdoche, New York. I haven’t seen that one, but his work tends to be self-referentially arch. I believe the film is in fact set in Schenectady.

    Re the SYNECDOCHE clue itself, it seems to have defeated several here, including some that I think of as long-time expert solvers. Maybe some wordplay might have been in order? Just a quibble though; I enjoyed the puzzle overall.

31. Very hard but made it in the end, and for once I spotted the M?ori saying, a relic from my childhood in NZ (yes, even then we were given lots of M?ori history and visits to the museum (no Te Papa in those days and Lambton Quay was on the waterside, no landfill!). Living with that richness of culture and history ended when our father died alas. Many thanks to P and D

32. Very hard but made it in the end, and for once I spotted the M?ori saying, a relic from my childhood in NZ (yes, even then we were given lots of M?ori history and visits to the museum (no Te Papa in those days and Lambton Quay was on the waterside, no landfill!). Living with that richness of culture and history ended when our father died alas. Many thanks to P and D.

33. Sorry got an error message so tried again

34. beaulieu@15
    MOONLIGHT
    Didn’t consider the low/high angle. That seems to be the key part of the clue. Thanks.
    Just taking something from your version and retaining something my view@4, I feel this should work:

    First the wordplay: Moo L in NIGHT? The answer is YES.
    Then the surface of the clue as a question: Low source of luminance in darkness? The answer is NO (It’s a high source of luminance).

35. I didn’t have a problem with UMLAUT, but had to reveal SYNECDOCHE, whereupon I remembered it. A little too tough for most I think.

    I question the validity of PORE=study in 18a. I can’t think of any sentence in which one can be directly substituted for the other without adding ‘over’, ‘on’ etc.

36. Tricky but very worthwhile and entertaining. Lots of good clues; RIGID is very neat.

    CARUSO spent a lot of time in the US – I read the clue as an extended definition. Without the ‘yes and no’, the clue for MOONLIGHT would be a simple &lit, surely? I knew the word SYNECDOCHE but it didn’t leap out and I needed all the crossers. The primary meaning of UMLAUT is the sound change, but in English it usually refers to the diacritical mark which represents it, as here (LOI for me).

    Thanks to S&B

37. All very straightforward but fun. Couldn’t help dashing off this:

    In an office in Schenectady
    The manager detected he
    Needed it manned
    So asked for a hand
    Which was, of course, SYNECDOCHE

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

38. Enjoyed this. Goodness knows which corner of my brain held SYNECDOCHE but crossers helped. Still had to look it up to parse it.
    Thanks both.

39. The clue for SYNECDOCHE turned out to be prescient as I did, indeed, need a hand with it.

40. I don’t know why it seems to be so difficult to remember the definition of SYNECDOCHE. [Apparently, in the film, Synecdoche New York, the title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a part of something represents the whole or vice versa.]

    I enjoyed the wordplays of INTIMATE, SLIPSTREAM, BATHROOM, BINOMIAL and MOONLIGHT. I took the meaning of the clue for the latter as the fact that the moon might be seen to have low or high luminance depending on whether it’s a new or full moon. I also enjoyed the definitions for RHINO and UMLAUT, and the surface for ORGANS.

    Thanks Pan and Duncan.

41. A tough but mostly enjoyable challenge. I appreciated some of the clever clueing after the fact, when justifying a guess by retro-parsing it. I only arrived at UMLAUT and LOI SYNECDOCHE by staring hard at the grid until a word that fitted popped into my head; I didn’t think the definitions in either case were particularly helpful. Having said that, I’m definitely warming to Pan’s style, so many thanks to him and to duncanshiell.

42. Many thanks for the blog, explaining so much of the parsing. Having struggled, I did enjoy SLIPSTREAM and MOONLIGHT, but I put in several answers without quite knowing why!

43. On the moonlight topic, surely it is alluding to the fact that, disregarding cloud cover, there is no constant level of moonlight. New moon = no light, full moon = max light, and all variations between.

44. SYNECDOCHE is a word I have to keep looking up as I confuse it with other terms (and the place in NY!). Pleased to spot UMLAUT. Some clunky clues but very enjoyable puzzle.
    Thanks both

45. Count me as another who knew SYNECDOCHE (and its pronunciation!) from Synecdoche, New York, though it ranks as my least favourite Philip Seymour Hoffman film. At least it came in handy for finishing this one without resorting to a dictionary, though it was a close-run thing and I was also lucky to have heard of CARUSO, given that I didn’t know “caro”, either…

46. Excellent. LOI was AMMO, got a bit tied up with whole Welsh Assembly thing!!

47. mp@43, see @40, great minds …

48. Lovely stuff and quite a challenge, especially the south east (for me at least). As to SYNECDOCHE, I note that in the glossary to Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled, he has as examples: “e.g. “England won the Ashes” where “England” means the English Cricket XI, “twenty hands”, where “hands” stands for a crewman etc.”. With thanks to Pangakupu (always welcome) and to duncanshiell for the very clear blog.

49. Thanks for the blog , utterly brilliant puzzle and lasted the perfect time. I will not repeat praise from others, just note the wickedly deceptive “vacantly” in ORGANS.
    SYNECDOCHE is such a good cryptic definition ( they are rare ) that a lack of wordplay is excused.

    MOONLIGHT Yes and no ? . My take is that it depends on the time of the month as any stargazer knows. November the best time for Andromeda and a bright moon can ruin my chances. Another 10 days it will be perfect.

50. Sorry Monkeypuzzler@43 , I see that you beat me to it.

51. And Robi@40 , sorry . I usually read the comments first but I was keen to post today.

52. Thanks Pangakupu for an excellent challenge. I ended up revealing SYNECDOCHE – without wordplay I had no chance – as well as SLIPSTREAM. I failed with AMMO but I managed all else. I had many favourites including INTIMATES, RIOJA, the wonderful CARUSO, RHINO, BATHROOM, MOONLIGHT, UMLAUT, and BINOMIAL. Thanks duncanshiell for the blog.
    [I can manage to read the blog in portrait on my phone by simply using two fingers to shrink the printed area a bit.]

53. Never heard of AM referring to the Welsh parliament (didn’t know Wales had one), so that one had to be a biff.

    I’m with poc@25. You don’t pore books, you pore over them. (Which raises the question, what does “pore” mean on its own?) I see in the American Heritage Dictionary (sorry, folks, I haven’t got the C-book) that it used to mean “to read or study carefully and attentively,” but I don’t think it’s meant that in a hundred years or so. I’m reminded of a cartoon that James Thurber said had been submitted to the New Yorker, of drunk-looking students “pouring” over their books, “pouring,” geddit? (They didn’t print it.)

    Thanks, Pangakapu and duncanshiel.

54. [LJ @22, always thought it was a Jackson Browne original; turns out to be quite a story …]

55. Great puzzle and blog. I don’t think this quite qualifies as a theme, but there are a lot of film titles (Slipstream, Synechdoche, Momento Mori, Clobber etc) and words associated with ‘film’ (flatbed, rigid etc) in the answers. (Not quite because movie titles are like band names … can be found in many random collections of words).

56. Brilliant. A game of two halves for me with NW & SE going in super-quick then a bit of guess and parse to finish off.

    Top marks for SYNECDOCHE, SLIPSTREAM, and BINOMIAL

    Thought this was quite raunchy what with bonking in trucks, hanky panky in the loo, organs, intimates and oral 🙂

    BTW Chambers has;
    “study” IV: To muse, meditate, reflect
    “pore” IV: To ponder
    Seems close enough for a crossword

    Cheers D&P

57. Could someone please explain the M?ori thing? Where? What? Why? Etc

58. M?ori

59. M?ORI !!!

60. M A O R I. I hope it is not “corrected” this time

61. Really fun puzzle! I was apparently on Pangakupu’s wavelength today. I know nothing of the Welsh parliament or cricket but the answers were clear. I was able to get SYNECDOCHE but had to get all the crossers first. BINOMIAL was my fave.

62. @Alec severally. Pangakupu is a Maori word meaning crossword. There is always a Maori nina in his crosswords. Aroha Mai appears in the second row, and Aroha Atu in the second to last. This was one time for me where knowing the nina would be there helped.

63. MOONLIGHT is simply MOO (low) with L (source of luminance) in NIGHT (the dark).

64. Surely the moon is never the light source. That is always the sun.

65. Thanks for the blog Duncan. I finished the puzzle but needed your blog to explain some of it.

66. [Our daughter who teaches in New Zealand suggests that panga means spring or water source and kupu is words. So vocabulary or, literally, a spring of words. Rather lovely, I thought.]

67. Bugleboy @64 your point is valid , the sun is the source of light, the moon reflects, but the clue says LUMINANCE and this is a property that is independent of the original source. Reflected light from the moon is a source of luminance.

68. Someone on here once gave a good example of SYNECDOCHE , maybe Lord Jim ? , I have not fogotten it and it was very useful today – All hands on deck.

69. I thought this was high class stuff, and quite tricky. I really like the film “SYNECDOCHE New York” so through pure luck that just fell into place for me once a few crossers were there. RHINO and BINOMIAL were my faves. My only minor quibble was MEMENTO MORI where in my view the wordplay suggests that the “i” should be included in the envelope. But that’s nitpicking because this was a well constructed and rewarding challenge that revealed its charms gradually.

70. Very late to this (grandparenting day). Mostly this was very gettable, helped by getting 1a and 1d immediately but then ground to a halt on the final three. Really don’t get the “yes and no” for 15d despite the helpful suggestions above. And having SYNECDOCHE as an cryptic def/&lit made it trebly difficult. It was just a question of”What fits?”

    Mostly very enjoyable!

    Thanks Pangakupu and Duncan

71. Mandarin @69. ‘The writer’=ME, ”advisor accepting second’=MENTO(MO)R, ‘idea, initially’=I, exactly as Duncan wrote in the blog. Not sure how you see this as quibble-able?

72. I agree with ArkLark@70 about “what fits?” Like many have mentioned, this was my final missing solution, but fortunately I had sussed the clue and just needed the crossers to help bring the word to mind. A very satisfying finish to a challenging puzzle.

    Thanks to Pangakupu and Duncan.

73. Roz @49: concerning the wickedly deceptive “vacant” in 2D, may I add that “regularly” too is not an instruction? So the clue is not only wickedly deceptive but doubly so.

    Manadrin @69: my quibble with the wordplay for 14A is the apostrophe in “writer’s advisor”. Surely that makes the pronoun possessive, producing MYMENTO instead. Only two days ago, I tried parsing “what makes Brendan tick” as his modus operandi, to get the MEMO of “memorising” but was advised by Eileen that it would be *his* MO and therefore MYMORISING.

74. … not to be confused with metonymy, where something else stands in; e.g. when the waiter says to the boss “the ham sandwich left without paying” …

75. First time I have appeared in a crossword. Thanks, Pangakupu.

76. A fine piece of work from Pangakupu: I think I’ll put SYNECDOCHE (though I had to check the spelling!), COLLATERAL, and UMLAUT as my favourites.

    I’m wondering if the ‘other’ meaning of MOONLIGHT (i.e. work covertly) was somehow implied by “yes and no” – but I don’t see how.

    Having heeded the warning on earlier Pangakupu blogs, I looked around for a nina in the Maori language (not that I know any of it!). Sure enough I soon spotted AROHA MAI in the second row and AROHA ATU in the 14th: they looked so plausible that I checked up on them. Seems that other commenters have mentioned this before me…

    If Pangakupu is saying “I’m sorry”, no need to! Excellent puzzle. Thanks to you and Duncan.

77. jeceris @63.
    Yep. That’s how I got it.
    Many seem to be overthinking the obvious.

    Or they are forgetting the Christmas carol, Away in a a Manger.
    “The cattle are mooing, The baby awakes”.

78. Cricket often stumps me, so I failed on 22a SLIPSTREAM. Also, I got fixated on “I’m” to start 20d UMLAUT, which, when I read Duncan’s excellent blog, became a favourite clue.

    Thanks, IanSW3@37 for the fun limerick re 11a. Well done.

    And thanks, P&D for the puzzle and blog.

79. Cellomaniac@78: A cricketing metaphor to explan your lack of knowledge of the sport?

80. nicbach@79, it was a slip of the tongue. I know stump, wicket, bowler, LBW, overs, innings, and my favourites, silly mid-off and googly – all learned from cryptic crosswords and P.G. Wodehouse. Also, I believe (Don) Bradman was a cricketer, as well as a great FT cryptic setter. But for the Grace of god, I know little else.

81. Jumping in belatedly to say how much I enjoyed this–particularly liked the intricate constructions like MOONLIGHT and SCHUBERT and BINOMIAL and SALIENT, and the misdirection in a lot of clues like “focus” meaning HUB instead of “central letter” and “vacantly” as part of GAS rather than a wordplay indicator. CLOBBER was a bung and check because I can never remember the various UK senses of “clobber.” Thanks Pangakupu and duncanshiell!

82. Thank you Duncan for the beautiful colourful blog, so helpfully explained! My favourite was slipstream and flatbed. Didn’t get quite a few – synecdoche, incorporeal (spent ages trying to fit rose or maroon etc! Coral is more orange…) -and didn’t know the Welsh parliament term for AMMO…

83. Polyphone@62. A belated yet heartfelt and fulsome ‘thank you’ for your explanation of the Nina. I feel Pangakapu is doing a sort of haka in front of me as I contemplate the empty grid!

84. Re Yes and No part of 15d – I immediately thought of the very weak illumination of a new moon compared to the often “read a book” strength of a full moon.
    Brilliant crossword and blog. Thanks Pangakupu and duncanshiell!

85. I’m late getting here, but I wanted to thank beaulieu @15 for clearing up the “yes and no” part of 15dn. I think the clue would have been better as an &lit without that part, but now that I understand the intention, I like the clue much better.

    I quite liked the CD for SYNECDOCHE, but I can certainly imagine that I wouldn’t have liked it if I hadn’t known that word! [I couldn’t stand the film Synecdoche, New York, which put me at odds with all the highbrow film critics at the time.]

Comments are closed.