Guardian Cryptic 29,259 by Picaroon

94 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,259 by Picaroon”

1. I didn’t know ling was heath, nor that Acton is in London, although the latter was easy with very strightforward wordplay. I only had a vague knowledge of QUESTER. And I was educated about the Bible, and about Dickens. Yes, the wordplay for IBSEN is a bit “wonky”. And I too call them tent pegs.

   I found this very enjoyable, thanks Picaroon and PeterO.

2. Thanks PeterO.
   I liked the “wonky” envelope in IBSEN.

3. Everybody calls them tent pegs but we knew what he meant.
   Buccaneering mode today with no keelhauling or plank walking insight, but highly enjoyable none the less.
   Too many ticked clues, if I ever actually ticked any, but I think NIXON highlights the wit and ingenuity well.

4. I parsed TURN ON ONES HEEL as a charade of TURN ON (‘excite’) plus ONE (a single) plus HEEL (‘scoundrel’) taking S (‘Sierra’ NATO alphabet).
   I wasn’t helped by bunging in Quixote for QUESTOR treating it as a CD of sorts.
   I also call them Tent Pegs.

5. Thanks, Picaroon and PeterO!
   IBSEN
   Didn’t appeal to me though not a difficult parse.
   LOCATED (my thoughts)
   Could the def be ‘on set’? That’s one alternative. In that case, LO +CATE+ D.
   Or LO, CATE+D on.

6. TURN ON ONE’S HEEL
   With Tim C@4 on this.

7. Me too.

8. I parsed TASTE as “ThAt SeTtEr” regularly and was wondering for a minute what the “I appreciate” bit was doing there…

9. Was also sure Moore and Romeo were somehow involved in 2down, was terribly mistaken
   Thank you to Picaroon and PeterO

10. Nice, smart, not too tricky. Talking of which, liked NIXON (but the clue).

    Agree with commenters @4,6,7,8.

    Thanks all

11. LOCATED (contd…)
    on set=on location. In the cryptic world, it could be LOCATED.

12. I am with KVa about “on set” being the definition for LOCATED.

    Thanks PeterO and Picaroon: two consecutive Picaroon’s I have completed.

13. I read 13 as ThAt SeTtEr regularly and wondered what “I appreciate” was doing there.

14. LOCATED equates to plain old ‘set’ for me. See = LO followed by Director = D ‘with Ms Blanchett on’ = in a down clue, ‘with CATE on top of it’

15. oed.com has TENT-PIN – hyphenated
    Agree that in TURN ON ONES HEEL the S has to be from Sierra, not single
    Liked IBSEN – where the IS only surrounds the top of BEN – inventive
    Liked PLETHORA – lift and separate “Latin Mass” to get a Greek word
    ThAt PO&P

16. PostMark @14: Ah… that’s nailed it, bravo. It’s the down light I’d missed.

    Enjoyable crossword with a couple of (very slight) niggles…

    Can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone say TENT PIN, and the wonky IBSEN.

    Failed to parse MANGE but now admire the clue.

    Love this setter, many thanks.

17. Yes Me@13: well spotted. I don’t think that’s what was intended, but it makes a rather smooth clue without the I aappreciate bit.

18. PM@14
    Of course.
    I stand corrected. Overthinking!

19. Agree with PeterO and PostMark@14 re LOCATED – “on set” is misdirection, needing lifting and separating, like Mo Salah and President Macron.

20. Apologies. A bit dim this morning, and only just understood the wonky IBSEN clue. Duly removed from the niggle pile and added to the tick pile.

21. Nice crossword, a bit easier than usual for Picaroon I thought. I’m confused with TEN PIN (singular) being “target in game”, not just “game”.
    Thanks PeterO and Picaroon.

22. TASTE
    ‘I appreciate that’=TA (as mentioned in the blog). No loose ends, I feel.

23. Thanks all for clearing up a few parsings, which I always need with Picaroon. I remember studying French at school, and the text book had the Bertillons as the family. One day, Madame B pranged the Citroën. Monsieur B’s reaction was “SACRE BLEU!”. It was translated as ” Tut tut”. Couldn’t tell from the pictures whether it was delivered with a stereotypical Gallic shrug.
    Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO

24. Paul @21: essentially, tenpin bowling or tenpin bowls is the game in which one attempts to knock down with one’s bowling ball as many of the individual tenpins as possible. There are … ten of them.

25. I realise now that I had two definitions at TASTE: I appreciate = I have taste, and discernment = taste. Took the odd letters of “that setter”, like TPS@8. Oh well, I got the right answer. I confidently entered TENT PEG, then thought ‘a two letter word ending in G?’ for 10d and looked again. Got the first two straight off (this will be easy) then no more acrosses (this will be hard), but the downs then helped no end. NIXON, CHESSMEN, the two multi word answers were all great. Thanks, Picaroon and PeterO.

26. Thanks PM. I understand the game ten-pin. I thought the target should be ten pins (or any lesser number of pins).

27. Thanks Picaroon and PeterO
    Very quick apart from the TENT PEG hold up. I lover the “two Old Testamanet reprobates” in 10d.

28. [Apparently, today marks the 110th birthday of the crossword. The first one appeared in “New York World” on this day in 1913]

29. Goodness. This was sheer joy from beginning to end.
    Every so often I take a screenshot of a completed puzzle with my favourite clue highlighted.
    Today’s was the superb ‘Old Testament Reprobates’
    Genius!
    Thanks all

30. Another quick finish this week, all pointing to a humdinger Xmas Prize surely?! Some slightly tricky parsings but all work out reasonably easily in the end (Ibsen, Located, Taste). Mange was COTD though. (BTW don’t say wonky Ibsen too often, you’ll just end up singing it to the tune of Funky Gibbon….)

31. Nice crossword.
    I started 20 thinking greens periodically seen about = neg, which combined with desert region gave me the answer. Then obviously found my wordplay was completely wrong.

32. I agree about the Old Testament reprobates and Dombey and Son was great as well.

33. ravenrider @31: snap.

34. Nicely clued puzzle which for some reason hit the sweet spot for me and was all over before you could say winter solstice 🙂

    I had the same peg/PIN stumble as most of us, but I had no trouble with the wording of the clue for IBSEN. Dombey AND SON is clever, as are the OT reprobates. [But a word in their defence: the Lord smote Onan because he refused, not unreasonably, to father a child by his brother’s widow, according to custom, and not because of his coitus interruptus, and the whole Eve thing is mere mythological misogyny]

    Thanks to S&B

35. I agree with PeterO’a comment: “A top setter in good form – nothing too obscure, but clever and witty.”

    Favourite: IGNORAMUS, INSTANT (loi).

    I could not parse 20ac (I got stuck after thinking it was e GrEeNs that was the periodically bit, then could not work out the EV bit); 26a unless anagram of GERMAN less R – Oh I see – very clever!

    Thanks, both.

36. Splendid puzzle, the OT reprobates made me laugh. Thanks, Picaroon and PeterO.

37. Really enjoyed this crossword. I found it relatively quick going for this setter, but I am certainly not complaining.
    I particularly liked 8a Nixon.
    Ling meaning heath was new to me, as was ‘General’ Lee.
    Many thanks PeterO and Picaroon

38. I thought it was LOCATED as in “on location”, but either works. MANGE was ingenious and took me a long time to see. Enjoyed the Old Testament reprobates, the Frenchman’s cry, the fabulous bottle and the dummy partners. I’d have spelt it QUESTOR, but never mind. Just realised that I missed parsing VINDICTIVELY.

39. Setter on top form. VENTRILOQUISTS, NIXON, INSTANT and ON AN EVEN KEEL superb. I had the same head scratch as you michelle, with the EV in NEGEV. Parsed LOCATED a la PostMark @ 14. Spent my first 5 years as a copper in ACTON, so fond memories.

    Ta Picaroon & PeterO

40. That was so much fun! I tried to persuade myself that there is a game called TEN PEG before realising that it left me with a two-letter word ending in g, and discovered in Chambers that a tent pin exists. OT reprobates my favourite.

    [Quick query, since someone has mentioned the Christmas Prize – am I safe in assuming that it will be in Saturday’s G? I normally do the crossword online (too expensive, alas, to pay for the paper every day), but always buy copies with special crosswords in. I don’t want to go for it on Saturday only to find that it was in Friday’s paper.]

41. Didn’t parse the OT reprobates but the rest went the remainder went in surprisingly quickly. As ever with this setter a delight from start to finish.
    Thanks both

42. What Widdersbel @36 said – I think the OT reprobates must go into my little book of classic clues.

    I also particularly liked the elegant ‘lift and separates’ in 8ac President Macron, 11ac Mo Salah, 25ac Latin Mass and 7dn Ted Heath. I won’t list all my other ticks.

    I feel Christmas has come early, with Picaroon’s alter ego Buccaneer in the FT https://www.ft.com/crossword – strongly recommended, of course.

    Many thanks to Picaroon and PeterO.

43. Terrific fun: worth it just for NIXON and ON AN EVEN KEEL!
    The latter reminds me that Dorothy Parker apparently called her parrot Onan – because he kept spilling his seed…
    I liked the wonky IBSEN, and was another Tent Pegger, till dear old Onan put me straight. So to speak.
    Big thanks to Picaroon and PeterO.

44. The Old Testament reprobates clue was marvellous, a late candidate for CotY 🙂 I also very much liked the Everyman-esque rhyming pair of TURN ON ONES HEEL and ON AN EVEN KEEL.

    NEGEV was a nho for me but geography is decidedly not my forte. I got it from wordplay though so feel educated, probably only temporarily.

    Thanks both

45. Love Dottie’s parrot, Wellbeck @43.

46. Like others, I happily threw in TENT PEG. I’m not sure I’ve heard ‘tent pin’.
    But then I’d never heard ‘match stalk’ until the song.

47. I finished the whole puzzle last night, which is a bit disappointing, since I enjoy having a few blanks to patch in on second look in the morning. But a delightful puzzle.

    Myrvin@46 Match stalk?

    Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO.

48. Sarnia Rick @37: Ling as another name for heath (the plant, aka heather) does pop up from time to time. It’s an old name particularly for the common heather, Calluna vulgaris, closely related to the main heather genus, Erica – a word also found in puzzles.

    Does anyone actually say SACRE BLEU these days? I think MERDE is more usual 🙂

49. PS There is also a fish called a ling, which is perhaps more often found in crosswords.

50. Thanks for the blog, all a bit Sybil Fawlty for my taste, NEGEV, MANGE and IBSEN did try and make us think a little bit.
    Sarah@40 I only ever remember special Prize puzzles being on a Saturday , and this year it seems the most obvious day even more than normal.

    The UK Solstice is actually tomorrow at 3.27am , try and celebrate in the traditional way.

51. The most enjoyable offering in a long time for me. Excellent surfaces and 10d has to be a contender for clue of the year. Thanks both. Merry Christmas to all.

52. [Roz @50: Thanks for the correction. I forget that the solstice is often ‘late’ the year before the leap year adjustment 🙂 ]

53. Good one. Failed to parse NEGEV and GENIE but otherwise fun. Thanks both.

54. Great fun and some laugh-out-loud moments.

    Terrific puzzle esp ON AN EVEN KEEL and NIXON

    Thanks Picaroon and PeterO

55. NHO LING so needed the parsing for 7D, LOI. 26A is a little too clever for my liking. 12A held me up for a while: I have heard of pole pin and tent peg, but never tent pin. Is that actually an alternate term, or just a little confusion on the part of the setter?

    As always with Picaroon, some delightful surfaces. Getting 1A and 1D quickly very much helped.

56. I always enjoy double pirate day.

    This one was tricky and fun

    Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO

57. Tim C@4 Also my parsing. PeterO’s parsing seems to leave Sierra unaccounted for.

58. Loved it all! A couple unparsed but what the heck – makes it worth coming here and hearing what the blogger said and others’ feedback and experiences. Lots of delightful PDMS pour moi.
    Top fave (also getting the popular vote if preceding comments are indicative) was ON AN EVEN KEEL at 10d, despite the feminist scripture scholar in me critiquing the misreading of Genesis that has led to Eve’s historical misrepresentation as a “reprobate” (cf. Gervase@34). I think I mostly liked it as it’s a nautical reference (I’m a sailor) allied with a mishmash of the Old Testament references and a bit of the New Testament Christmas story (the “stable” bit).
    Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO.

59. Thanks, Roz@50; that’s what I thought, but I suddenly panicked (been one of those days, I woke up late certain that I’d missed my long-awaited doctor’s appointment, which is actually tomorrow, as I discovered when I phoned the surgery…).

60. Valentine @47. I think this is a reference to the appalling song “Matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs”, re LS Lowry, UK charts 1977. Will suffer with the earworm all day now..

61. Very enjoyable and some nice misdirections. Liked all the long ones round the edges holding it all in place.

62. Am with others regarding TENT PIN – I would have gone for PEG but the corresponding crosser in 10d indicated otherwise, even when blank (I’d be very surprised to see a 2-letter word ending in ‘g’).

63. I can’t put it any better than PeterO’s summary, so thanks to him and to Picaroon for great fun. LOI and favourite was the two Germans.

64. IanSW @60

    Many thanks for the earworm! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmopSVOMSsU

65. Gervase@34: I loved the clue, and take your point, but didn’t Henry VIII rely on a passage from Leviticus that states that a man should not sleep with his late brother’s wife? (He failed in his argument with the Pope of course, for purely political reasons, and this changed the course of English and consequently World history). This suggests that God’s real beef was with the spilling of “seed”. Apparently that warranted instant death. Ah, those old fashioned Biblical values. No express condemnation of slavery, torture or paedophilia, but you musn’t masturbate….

66. The two long V-words rather gave the game away, or least opened things up nicely for this pleasing Picaroon puzzle. “On board” seems to be more and more being used for chess pieces, I find. Couldn’t for the life or me parse VACILLATE, so many thanks PeterO. And Picaroon, of course…

67. …apparently (and on the Knight, Quester theme) my grandfather, who was a great admirer of the Morte D’Arthur epic tale, wanted to call his next son Gareth after one of the characters therein. However, when a baby girl – my Mum – was born instead, he called her Lynette, who as Linet in the story was Gareth’s constant companion….

68. Tim C @4
    27A TURN ON ONES HEEL now amended.
    KVa @5, 11 etc.
    Even though you subsequently retracted, it should be pointed out that “on set=on location” equates opposites – filming on set is in the studio, on location, outside of it. As pointed out by PostMark @14, 4D LOCATED is better described as a charade, with ‘with … on’ (in a down light) suggesting the order of the particles, and the definition remains just ‘set’.

69. nuntius @65: Genesis 38 (KJV):

    6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.

    7 And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him.

    8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

    9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

    10 And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also

70. PS:
    In the Hebrew Bible, a form of levirate marriage, called yibbum, is mentioned in Deuteronomy 25:5–10, under which the brother of a man who dies without children is permitted and encouraged to marry the widow. Either of the parties may refuse to go through with the marriage, but both must go through a ceremony, known as halizah, involving a symbolic act of renunciation of a yibbum marriage. Sexual relations with one’s brother’s wife are otherwise forbidden by Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20

71. Paul @21: you’ve probably already moved on, but no one’s adequately answered your question. The bowling pins are numbered in tenpin bowling. The 10 is the one in the rear right corner. It is common for that to be the only one left standing after your first roll, so on your second roll, the TEN PIN might indeed be your target.

    The consensus hardest leave is the dreaded seven-ten split, where the only way to get them both is to put spin on the ball such that it knocks the ten sideways into the seven (or vice versa). [Make no mistake; I’m bad at bowling, so I always settle for trying for just one of the two, and I still wind up just rolling a gutterball.]

72. I really liked the OT reprobates clue (it clicked when I guessed on an at the beginning) but I agree with objections above to calling them reprobates. They’ve both had a bad press they don’t deserve.

73. Couldn’t help noticing lots of women’s names in the grid – coincidence I’m sure:
    VACILLATE Black
    PLETHORA Hird
    IGNORAMUS Batty
    ACTON Bell
    Catherine of PARAGON
    ON AN EVEN KEEL Campbell
    Charlotte TRAMPLING…

74. I confidently wrote in ANGER for 26ac, thinking that “Irritating complaint” was an odd definition for this word, but I quickly realized the error of my ways. I didn’t know that “heath” could refer to a plant such as heather / ling, but with some crossers it wasn’t hard to sort that out.

    I enjoyed the “wonky” construction of IBSEN. Other favorites included VENTRILOQUISTS, ON AN EVEN KEEL, AND SACRE BLEU.

    A very enjoyable puzzle, with the only complaint being that it was over too quickly.

75. A bit late commenting, but I just had to join in the praise for ON AN EVEN KEEL which must be clue of the Christmas season. As with Eileen @42, it is definitely going in my personal hall of fame, with a note of the date on which it appeared.

76. Gervase@various: Thanks. I’m still puzzled by the Biblical arguments which Henry’s priests must have used to justify an annulment of his marriage with Katherine of Aragon. After all, she had no children with Arthur, so isn’t there an argument there to counter Leviticus? Or was the Genesis story such a special case that it could no longer apply?! Certainly not in the 16th century AD. …Of course, “the sin of onanism” has been taken by the Church for centuries to refer to masturbation per se, of that there seems little doubt.

77. I parsed 26 as an anagram of German minus the letter R (one of the three Rs (ok, it’s written not writing…)) with “out twice” to indicate that out was doing double duty, once to indicate anagram, and once to indicate removal. Thanks to PeterO for showing me the correct parsing. And thanks to Picaroon for a crossword that I really enjoyed.

78. The usual box of delights from Picaroon. I’m with Eileen – ON AN EVEN KEEL is an all-time classic. I thought NIXON and INSTANT were also superb.

    I don’t always get around to cryptics when on holiday (they’re normally a commuting activity for me), so I’ll take the opportunity today to wish everyone all the compliments of the season!

79. Thanks Picaroon and PeterO

    I thought this was a good puzzle well over on his gentler side.

    But I’m a little bemused by the praise for ‘On an even keel’. Sure, it’s a witty construction, but I can think of many setters who would be pilloried if they used an ‘anagram’ that just consisted of moving one letter to the start of the word and left the rest in their original sequence.

    I like Picaroon’s puzzles as much as anyone, but that construction jarred for me.

80. Simon S @79

    But the seasonal surface is surely superb. And the indicator ‘trembling’ suggests to me just a tiny movement, rather than a major upset – in fact, I was rather tickled by it.

81. Thanks mrpenny@71. I usually check in the following morning and was pleased to find your explanation. It’s been a while since I’ve visited an alley but I don’t recall there being numbers on the pins over here in NZ.

82. 12ac is a stoppage-time entry for clue of the year – brilliant misdirection.

    In 13ac, is “appreciate” a second definition, making it a triple clue?

    Thanks to Picaroon and to PeterO.

83. All the same, “target in game” probably warrants a question mark, as the ten pin would be an unlikely target in the first roll, and only with particular splits in the second.

84. Stylish puzzle as expected from Picaroon helped by the long 1Dn/1Ac, although I’m with the ‘tent peg’ crowd. Fortunately the -g in 10D made no sense so it had to be pin even if the parsing evaded me. My non-existent OT knowledge was rescued by the definition in 10Dn, fortunately. Lots of nice clues but DARWINIAN gave me the broadest smile

    Thanks Picaroon and PeterO

85. Paul @83 – as per the OED, a tenpin is any one of the ten pins in a game of ten-pins. You bowl at all ten pins collectively but a single tenpin could be considered a singular target.

    The OED also gives citations for use of tent-pin as an alternative for tent-peg.

    Simon S @79 – it was the “OT reprobates” part of the clue in particular that tickled me. (I have no strong feelings on whether or not it’s fair to call them reprobates – they’re fictional characters anyway.)

86. I don’t often comment – usually it’s all been said by the time I do the crossword.

    But I’m surprised by the relative lack of praise for INSTANT, which I thought was brilliant and got 2 ticks –
    1. The surface is so natural, and could almost appear in a Guardian Minute by Minute match report [although it may not have appealed to people with no interest in football].
    2. I’m a Liverpool supporter.

    The OT reprobates also brilliant.

87. PS
    Thanks to Picaroon for a really enjoyable puzzle, and to Peter O for the blog (although on this occasion, unlike many, I didn’t need it; but nearly failed to parse MANGE my loi).

88. Thanks Widdersbel@85. Your non-specific tenpin is more convincing. Objection withdrawn.

89. I enjoyed this. Only quibble was “”red”= CHE in 9a. For newcomers it’s unfair (he died in 1967) and for more experienced solvers it’s well past its sell-by date. My solving process was MAN, then SS, then on board, then “Oh no, not CHE again”.
    Thanks to Picaroon and PeterO

90. anotherAndrew @86: INSTANT was one of my favourites @39 and I agree it definitely deserved more praise. I’ve just finished Brendan’s offering and it’s brilliant. ‘Night all’ as Dixon of Dock…

91. Can’t say I’m a fan of 6d. I’ve seen a couple of clues like this recently. Might be something the setters are experimenting with. Perhaps I’ll get used to it in time.

92. Pino@9 I have to agree for CHESSMAN , unfortunatly I felt the same for nearly every clue , I am totally out of step for this one.
    I can’t even agree with AlanC for INSTANT , we have home=IN and six-footer=ANT hmmm .

93. I really loved ON AN EVEN KEEL. I also thought NIXON and NEXUS cleverly clued. Thanks Picaroon for the fun and Peter O for the explanations.

94. Very enjoyable. I completed it fairly easily after a slow start. Thanks to Picaroon for the puzzle and to PeterO for the explanations, particularly on 20, 26 and 16 which eluded me. I agree about TENT PIN, but it was obviously not going to be PEG from the structure of 10 down.

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