Guardian Cryptic 29,257 by Pasquale

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A slow and tricky solve today. My favourites were 21ac, 12dn, and 1dn and 22dn. Thanks to Pasquale for the puzzle

 

ACROSS
1 AT HOME
A big book hotel’s kept in reception (2,4)
definition: ‘at home’ means to be ready to receive and welcome visitors, or an ‘at-home’ is a reception held in someone’s home

A + TOME=”big book”, with H (hotel, NATO alphabet) kept inside
4 CAPSICUM
Plant is better with strange music (8)
definition: capsicum plants include chilli peppers and bell peppers

CAP=surpass=”better” + anagram/”strange” of (music)*
9 EXPECT
Anticipate old lover wanting to get kissed audibly (6)
EX=”old lover” + PECT which sounds like ‘pecked’=”kissed audibly”
10 ACCRETES
Gathers together in a cold island country needing sun (8)
I think this is A (from surface) + C (cold) + CRETE=”island” + S (sun)

is CRETE meant to be “island country”?
11 SIT IN JUDGEMENT
Be a squatter with determination? (3,2,9)
“determination” to be read as ‘judicial decision’ rather than ‘strength of will’

squat=sit, or possibly to squat / “Be a squatter” and to ‘sit in’ can be methods of protest by occupying buildings
13 THERMISTOR
The fighting force first needing soldiers to get electronic device (10)
definition: a thermistor is an electrical component, a resistor with resistance that varies with temperature

THE (from surface) + RM (Royal Marines, “fighting force”) + IST (1st, “first”) + OR (other ranks, “soldiers”)
14 SNOT
Contemptible person lots backed (4)
TONS=”lots” reversed/”backed”
16 RUMP
Like old parliament game joined by politician (4)
definition: the 1648 English parliament was known as the Rump Parliament [wiki]

RU (rugby union, “game”) + MP (member of parliament, “politician”)
18 ASBESTOSIS
When nicest old girl gets nasty disease (10)
AS=”When” + BEST=”nicest” + O (old) + SIS (sister, girl)
21 DISEMBOWELMENT
Be upset with semi-meltdown – it means someone’s gutted (14)
anagram/”upset” of (Be semi-meltdown)*
23 EMISSION
English campaign – there’s an issue (8)
E (English) + MISSION=”campaign”
24 PINETA
Had to rush around tree (6)
definition: a new word to me – Chambers defines PINETA as a collection of pine trees

ATE=”Had” + NIP=”rush”; all reversed/”around”
25 SPARSELY
Poles, see, at infrequent intervals (8)
SPARS=”Poles” + ELY the cathedral city=”see”
26 BERLIN
City‘s philosopher and songwriter (6)
Berlin in Germany; Isaiah Berlin the philosopher [wiki]; Irving Berlin the songwriter [wiki]
DOWN
1 ABEL
Murder victim in noisy situation, first off (4)
BABEL=scene of loud confusion=”noisy situation”, with the first letter taken off
2 HOPLITE
Old soldier‘s aspiration, inflamed within (7)
definition: a type of foot soldier in Ancient Greece

HOPE=”aspiration” with LIT=”inflamed” inside
3 MACHISMO
Masculinity of Scot, having his moment (8)
MAC=”Scot” + HIS (from surface) + MO (moment)
5 ARCHDIOCESE
Choir ceased working in province (11)
anagram/”working” of (Choir ceased)*
6 SCREED
Second religious summary, a lengthy read (6)
S (Second) + CREED=”religious summary”
7 CITHERN
Instrument hit accidentally in research establishment (7)
definition: a Renaissance stringed instrument

anagram/”accidentally” of (hit)*, inside CERN=the nuclear “research establishment” in Geneva [wiki]
8 MISSTATES
Wrongly says country will be involved in failure (9)
STATE=”country” in MISS=”failure”
12 JUST STOP OIL
‘Fair Earth’ will come with intervention of leading protest group (4,4,3)
JUST=”Fair” + SOIL=”Earth”, with TOP=”leading” intervening inside
13 TIREDNESS
Dissenter suffering from fatigue (9)
anagram/”suffering” of (Dissenter)*
15 PTOMAINE
Cat in agony given drug, a chemical compound (8)
TOM=”Cat” in PAIN=”agony”; plus E (ecstasy, “drug”)
17 MESSINA
The writer on ship in a port (7)
definition: a port city in Italy

ME=”The writer [of this clue]” + SS (steamship) + IN A (from surface)
19 SAND EEL
Fish? Sarah’s caught any number by river (4,3)
SAL=short form of “Sarah”; around/catching N (variable in maths, any number) + DEE=UK “river”
20 EMESIS
Eastern muck – I kept being sick (6)
E (Eastern) + MESS=”muck”, with I (from surface) kept inside
22 CAIN
Prison housing one murderer (4)
CAN=slang for “Prison” around I=”one”

67 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,257 by Pasquale”

  1. Some lovely words amongst this varied selection, such as the unfamiliar HOPLITE, THERMISTOR, CITHERN plus ARCHDIOCESE and MACHISMO. Lots of ticks but my favourites were DISEMBOWELMENT and JUST STOP OIL. I thought PINETA was an area of land for planting pines, so didn’t understand that. A nice touch with CAIN and ABEL in the NW and SE corners. In the presence of a master setter this morning.

    Ta Pasquale & manehi.

  2. Not so much Jorums as half-remembered words, conjured up by clear wordplay. I am impressed how Pasquale can provide both a Quiptic and a more stretching Cryptic.

  3. Quite tough. I could not parse 24ac (I could only see saw rev of AT E NIP and gave up!), 12d apart from JUST=fair, 19d and was unsure how to parse of 11ac.

    Favourite: CAPSICUM.

    New for me: THERMISTOR, EMESIS, CITHERN, ASBESTOSIS which were all very well-clued plus PTOMAINE & RUMP Parliament – needed help from google.

    Also new for me, after reading the blog: SAL is short for Sarah. I always thought Sal was short for Sally.

    Thanks, both.

  4. Enjoyable, especially for the anagrams, but red cards for the mistaken terms in 10 (not for 110 years, anyway) and 24.

  5. All over even sooner than yesterday… I just know we’re heading for a stinker!

    To my shame, I had to resort to a word search for the tree, which I would never have found without.

    Didn’t quite feel that SIT IN JUDGEMENT worked, but it yielded readily enough with the crossers.

    The Don usually lead us (me, anyway) to some new and interesting words, and this was no exception with HOPLITE, CITHERN (sp), EMESIS & PINETA.

    Many thanks, both.

  6. Yep, nice one, thanks Don. A few gimmes like e mission and spars Ely, and a few a bit more obscure like emesis and hoplite. All good fun, and thanks manehi.

  7. Enjoyable puzzle, with perhaps fewer obscure words than usual for Pasquale.

    BERLIN brought to mind the story about Churchill dining with Irving B under the impression that he was Isaiah, resulting in a somewhat confused conversation on both sides.

    I think there’s maybe a hint of an extended definition in JUST STOP OIL.

    Many thanks Pasquale and manehi.

  8. I happily wrote in THERMOSTAT for 13, only to regret it later. Wasn’t Socrates a hoplite once? Must try to get emesis into a conversation. I liked Cain and Abel, even if I, briefly, got them the wrong way round. I’d heard of ptomaine poisoning, but hadn’t realised it was an amine produced by rotting food

  9. Thanks Pasquale and manehi
    I knew the instrument as CITTERN, but it doesn’t parse. Wiki gives CITHREN as an alternative; if my cat would get off me, I could see if Chambers has CITHERN!
    Not imprssed by SNOT; I’ve not hears it used in that sense, and there are other possibilities that more or less work – SLAG, for instance.
    Favourite was the unexpected anagram for TIREDNESS.

  11. Yes, Chambers has CITHERN. However it has PINETA as the plural of “pinetum”, so should surely be “trees” rather than “tree”.

  13. 24A – I’m very troubled by ‘tree’ being used a definition of ‘pineta’. As I understand it, a pinetum is a collection of trees (in fact conifers), and ‘pineta’ is its plural. A collection of tree collections is going to involve quite a lot of trees. Some singulars are used for the plural – game birds seem particularly prone to this. You can shoot lots of grouse or pheasant, but I don’t think you can cut down lots of tree.

  14. Hoplite, Thermistor and Cithern were new to me. I thought Crete was a part of Greece, not a country but perhaps it was in the past. Pineta was the LOI and it would have gone in sooner if the clue had been trees instead of tree. It’s amazing how our brains remember words once seen in the dim and distant past e.g. ptomaine, although I knew it as food poisoning. Loved Cain and Abel. I was taught that judgment was spelled without an e in the middle. Thanks Pasquale and Manehi.

  16. Thanks Pasquale and manehi

    oakvillereader @ 14 Judgment, like acknowledgment, is one of those words where the central e is optional.

  17. This didn’t ring my festive bells at all. Ended up with a rare zero ticks – maybe a half-tick for JUST STOP OIL. I also raised a Roger Moore style eyebrow at PINETA and thought AT HOME was a bit lame too

    I suppose I did like the symmetry of CAIN & ABEL

    Bah humbug indeed

    Cheers M&P

  19. What I’d like to say this morning is that when a clue suggests a tree or a port or disease or an instrument or a chemical compound the possibilities sometimes seem particularly endless. So we rely on clarity of clueing and of course the crossers that gradually fall into place. Which I’m glad to say eventually came to pass for this solver for PINETA, MESSINA, ASBESTOSIS, CISTERN and PTOMAINE. But not without considerable headscratching. Liked TIREDNESS, and MACHISMO raised a chuckle. Many thanks Pasquale and Manehi…

  21. Well, it’s the Don, so we know to expect some religion and a few obscurities.

    Yes, PINETA seems to be lots of groups of trees, so a missing S methinks.

    PTOMAINE is not the first chemical compound that I might think of. I did like the good anagrams for DISEMBOWELMENT and TIREDNESS, and the wordplays in JUST STOP OIL and SAND EEL.

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi.

  22. Oh, he’s put an E in the middle of JUDGMENT – it must be a legitimate spelling (and I thought it was CITTERN, too). No, it isn’t THERMOSTAT: haven’t heard the other one, but it parses. Well I never: dissenter=TIREDNESS! What’s a PINETA?

    Anyway, I liked ASBESTOSIS and MACHISMO.

  23. Much to like here and usually the Don is spot-on with cluing unusual words such that you can pick up a dictionary and answer the “surely it can’t be..?” question. “Emesis” was helped by a long discussion on the radio (last week?) on emesis gravidarum, often wrongly termed morning sickness. However, I might have to take a walk in our local Langley Park with its fine pinetum which includes several sequoias, metasequoias, a Chinese handkerchief tree or two, a Bhutan pine and many other fine specimens, none of which is a pineta as far as I know!

    Many thanks to setter and blogger.

  24. Robi@21: The singular planting area of pine trees is a “pinetum” and “pineta” is the plural so “tree” is missing more than one “s”! “Treeses”??

  26. I found this rather easy for a Pasquale: biblical references and physics references straightforward, no obscurities in the vocabulary, and no crappy CDs! Variety of good clues. Held up only by the apparently inaccurate singular definition of pineta

  27. Is there a misprint in 24 – trees (even better lots of trees) would fix it. Or have I missed something? Only too likely… Perhaps DFM will pop up here or at the Guardian to clear it up.

  28. Gosh, I feel quite clever that manehi says that the puzzle was slow and tricky. It went in very smoothly for me in two passes and no jumping around. I guess I was just on Pasquale’s wavelength. Or perhaps I didn’t worry as much about the problems with CRETE and PINETA.

    NHO CITHERN, PTOMAINE, or PINETA (which briefly held me up in the SE), but managed to construct them nonetheless, which is always satisfying.

    CAIN and ABEL was very clever.

  29. Michelle@3: Sally was originally an affectionate form of Sarah (compare Hal from Harry) before becoming a name in its own right. Hence Sal.

  30. Never heard of PINETA, and thought ZIP was a slightly closer synonym. Humbug! Not sure if a plural ‘trees’ would have helped; perhaps, perhaps not. Pleased to have wrangled out CITHERN and PTOMAINE nonetheless.

    Thanks both.

  31. I found this a little trickier than usual for Pasquale, but I managed it without recourse to external references. There are some unusual words here, though I’m surprised that EMESIS is unfamiliar to some of us (haematemesis is a frequent dramatic occurrence in medical soaps).

    I share the puzzlement about ACCRETES and PINETA (LOI for me). ‘Chemical compound’, though vague, is valid for PTOMAINE, though the term is well and truly obsolete, referring to a group of decomposition products once mistakenly thought to be responsible for food poisoning.

    JUST STOP OIL and TIREDNESS were the standouts for me.

    Thanks to S&B

  32. I found that most of this fell into place, though I struggled a bit with the SW. I’m one of those who questioned whether CRETE is a country and whether I was missing something. That said, Scotland and Wales are referred to as countries even though they are part of the United Kingdom; but something still feels wrong. Otherwise there was a lot to like here. I worked out PTOMAINE and then had to look it up to confirm it is a real word. With thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

  34. Relatively gentle for Pasquale, just a couple of obscurities (CITHERN and HOPLITE).

    I think Rob @12 has explained the Crete query, makes sense now.

    JUST STOP OIL was the highlight with a beautiful surface!

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

  35. Simon S@16: I believe in US English the only correct spelling is without an e. As you say, in UK English it can be either, though in a legal context it never takes an e.

  36. nuntius @35: Quite so, though it seems illogical, as the E preserves the ‘soft’ G, as in ‘management’, ‘encouragement’, etc.

  37. It’s been a while since we had an earworm, so I offer this in honour of 15d and Leonard Skinner, whose fate introduced me to the word many years ago.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi for today’s entertainment.

  38. The portmanteau THERMISTOR reminds me of the puzzle we had some time ago where the theme was prtmanteaus(x?) , and there were far more of them in common speech than I’d reristered.

    CITTERN for me too. Never saw that other spelling.

    Never heard of EMESIS, but it followed easily enough from “emetic.”

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

  39. Rob’s explanation for ACCRETE does work, though it requires a lift-and-separate. That device is frowned on by Ximenean purists, and Pasquale usually follows their conventions.

  40. Got CITHERN and PTOMAINE from the word play. Failed on PINETA because the definition is wrong. Always annoying to waste time on an incorrect puzzle.

  42. I admire Rob @16’s explanation for 10ac (ACCRETES), but to be honest I’m dubious about whether it’s what Pasquale intended. In any case, I’m not sure that Crete was ever a country. It may depend in part on what one means by “country”. There was the Cretan State from 1898-1908, which (according to my very quick reading of some Wikipedia pages) was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. And then there’s ancient Crete, which predates our modern understanding of the idea of a “country”. I’m not sure if that counts.

    I enjoyed this puzzle, although, as usual with this setter, I found it tough going. As PeterT @2 says, it’s impressive that Pasquale can set difficult puzzles like this but also produce well-calibrated quiptics.

    A DNF for me, as I was defeated by PINETA.

  43. TimSee @37. Is it just apocryphal that Leonard Skinner was also the name of the schoolteacher who was dismissive of some pupils who went on to form Lynyrd Skynrd – named in his (unwanted & unwitting) honour?
    Thanks to Pasquale for a fine puzzle & to manehi.

  44. Thanks for the blog, I thought this was very good overall, both long anagrams were excellent . ACCRETES would work fine if country was removed . CITHERN was clearly clued for a pretty obscure word, although research establishment for Cern a bit of a stretch these days. More a white elephant and a monument to the stupidity of experimentalists who would not listen to the theorists.

  47. The most puzzling thing for me was trying to figure out if 24 was a factual error by the setter or a typo by the G. We may never know, but I’d guess the latter.

  48. A poor effort from me today, with a good handful of solutions eluding me. JUST STOP OIL is an excellent clue, and I too liked the good anagram for TIREDNESS.

  50. [ AlanC it was a not so subtle dig, I apologise . I have no interest in football but I have my spies everywhere . ]

  53. These things happen , both clues could be solved, I did not know PINETA was wrong until I checked a few words afterwards. A slightly awry definition is better than a clue with wordplay that simply does not work.

  54. Couldn’t get 1d (despite both crossers) until I hit 22dn when if course it doesn’t to mind immediately.

    Enjoyable but slow solve for me.

  55. Fun as always and I looked sideways at those two clues as well. Thanks for dropping in Pasquale.
    I wondered if something more was going on when I found CAIN & ABEL, CAPSICUM & sPARSLEY, PTOMAINE & ASBESTOSIS, as well as a few others that were almost pairs.
    Thanks to both.

  56. Mr and Mrs S obviously on fine form today, all apart from the last two (pineta and Abel – doh!) fell into place without protest.
    Being an ex Dr, ptomaine and asbestosis weren’t too far from the surface. We saw lots of tiredness and snot, women would expect and have their babies at home. And of course capsicum cream is good for chronic pain.
    Mercifully I never encountered disembowelment.
    Consultants occasionally sat in judgement but were generally very constructive, and some registrars were known for their machismo.

  57. I said that I had never heard of SNOT as a term of abuse, but I’ve just come across it in the book I’m reading!

    Thanks for apologising, Pasquale. The clues have now been modified online, though the usual “Special Instructions” haven’t been added as yet.

  58. Slow and tricky — manehi’s description is spot on. Pasquale is always worth the effort though with ASBESTOSIS, MACHISMO, and PTOMAINE being favourites. I failed with PINETA. Thanks to both.

  59. If the Past can be described as a Foreign Country, so perhaps can the amazing Minoan culture on Crete all those years ago. Well done for putting your hand up, anyway, Pasquale. Your reputation in no way diminished in my eyes…

  60. surely Sal is short for Sally, but Sally is a familiar form of Sarah (or was for my Aunt Sarah, always referred to as Sally, in E. Yorkshire/N Lincolnshire.

  61. Sorry, nametab@43, I don’t know, though Wikipedia seems to agree. The Leonard Skinner I had in mind got ptomaine poisoning after dinner at the allegedly disaster-prone Camp Granada, and made a frequent appearance on Family Favourites in my distant youth.

  62. Thanks manehi, my observations mostly made already, so remains to thanks Pasquale for enjoyable journey as usual and for his confessions. Small slips more than outweighed by the surface for CAPSICUM even though I prefer him accompanying Rock and Roll.

  63. I’m not sure that I can identify a definition in 11A. Manehi parses the whole clue as the definition, but I don’t see it.

  64. I really enjoyed this and was blissfully unaware of the error until I came here. Favourite was JUST STOP OIL for the extended definition as mentioned by Lord Jim and Arklark. Thanks blogger and setter.

  65. I finished this late last night (or early this morning) and see that the definition of PINETA has been changed to “tree plantations”, which is presumably the plural of “pinetum”.

  66. A pinetum is an arboretum of pines
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pinetum#Latin ‘From pinus (“pine”) +? etum (“grove”)’ so already more than one tree. PINETA in the plural so lots and lots of trees.
    The 1838 citation: ‘…I even anticipate revelling in quercetums'(oak)’, fraxinetums'(ash)’, salicetums'(willow)’, pinetums, aceretums'(maple)’, &c.’ gets all the Latin plurals wrong.
    Here’s some clickbait from 1827 – https://thegardenstrust.blog/2019/09/07/the-harcourt-arboretum-or-how-to-become-a-millionaire-by-growing-pine-trees/
    , ,

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