Guardian 29,285 – Philistine

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The new editor’s policy for Mondays seems to be to alternate Vulcan with setters who we haven’t previously been used to seeing starting the week. This puzzle was perhaps on the gentler end of Philistine’s output, but still an enjoyable challenge, with one answer that was new to me. Thanks to Philistine.

 
Across
8 CURLICUE Flourish with no direct line on the phone (8)
Homophone of “curly queue”, which would not be a “direct line”
9 OOMPH Loves speed and energy (5)
O O (two loves, as in tennis) + MPH (speed)
10 AMOK Feel good in a crazy way (4)
If I feel good then I AM OK
11 ON THE HOUSE Thatcher’s work is … free (2,3,5)
Thatching is literally ON THE HOUSE
12 GRAFTS Toils at the back building boats (6)
[buildin]G + RAFTS
14 DIABETES Biochemist’s first idea for treatment set back medical condition (8)
Anagram of B[iochemist] + IDEA, plus reverse of SET
16 DEFECTS Many an imperfection changes sides (7)
Double definition
18 ADVISOR One recommending plug protection (7)
AD (advert, plus) + VISOR (eye protection)
21 ZOOM LENS What magnifies is left among people’s following animals (4,4)
L in ZOO + MEN’S
23 KAHUNA A hunk messed around with a wiseman (6)
(A HUNK A)* – Kahuna is (I learn) a Hawaiian word for an expert
24 METROPOLIS City subway not quite European (10)
METRO + POLIS[h]
26 TIME TO GO When to leave African country to chase exotic item (4,2,2)
ITEM* + TOGO
27 LIE-IN Muesli Einstein eats on a lazy morning? (3-2)
Hidden in muesLI EINstein
28 EMERGING Coming out with pride, finally getting together (8)
[prid]E + MERGING
Down
1 SUBMERGE Engulf wobbly bum in woollen fabric (8)
BUM* in SERGE
2 FLAK Criticism of a little snow, mostly (4)
FLAK[e]
3 ACROSS THE POND An X where ducks are in America (6,3,4)
A CROSS (an X) + THE POND (where ducks may be found)
4 PEPTIDE Energy with current compound (7)
PEP (energy) + TIDE (current)
5 LOVE AND KISSES Even LSD is OK as a way of generating affection (4,3,6)
(EVEN LSD IS OK AS)*
6 IMPOVERISH Make poor spelling naughty in a down clue? (10)
In a down clue, IMP OVER ISH would indicate IMPOVERISH = make poor
7 CHASTE Pure speed of light expedition (6)
C (speed of light) + HASTE (expedition)
13 FLEA MARKET Where to buy a jumper? (4,6)
Cryptic definition
19 OINTMENT It’s soothing to have date with no programme (8)
APPOINTMENT less APP (computer program)
20 PSALTER Note change in book for the church (7)
PS (note, at the end of a letter) + ALTER
22 OPENLY Just gathering Philistine’s clothing in public view (6)
P[hilistin]E in ONLY (just)

75 comments on “Guardian 29,285 – Philistine”

  2. Many enjoyable moments in this. The only one I didn’t parse was CHASTE, as the alternative meaning of “expedition” didn’t occur to me. KAHUNA & CURLICUE were new to me.

    Thanks Philistine & Andrew.

  3. KAHUNA was new to me as well, but there was only so many ways of organising the fodder and Google confirmed. I quite like the new regime of keeping Vulcan to alternate weeks with a slightly trickier puzzle in between. Took me a bit to get going with this, and had to return to the NW corner once I remembered CURLICUE. PSALTER was my LOI though once I realised what the definition was. Thanks to Philistine and to Andrew for the blog.

  4. It took me a while but I got there. Ticks for OOMPH (I smiled) and FLEA MARKET but my favourite was IMPOVERISH for its cleverness. I dream of writing a clue like that.

  5. Sorry if I’m being dim, but I still don’t get how IMP OVER ISH equates to being naughty ina down clue.
    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew

  6. Not typical Monday fare in the past, but will be interesting to see if Andrew is right about the new policy. Very enjoyable until I got totally stuck for a long while in the NE corner as I was sure that the medical complaint started with a B. Of course, the b and idea were mixed together for the anagram, rather than needing an envelope indicator as I was thinking.

  9. Well, somewhat inevitably, with a choice between the equally improbable KAHUNA and KUHANA, I plumped for the wrong one!

  11. PostMark @9: me too… should have Googled it.

    Very enjoyable puzzle with some lesser-known techniques.

    Many thanks, both.

  12. I dredged up KAHUNA from somewhere – surfing slang, I suspect, though wasn’t it used in some movie 20 or 30 years ago? We found the N, especially the NW, tougher than the bottom – but it all came out eventually. LOVE AND KISSES was a well spotted anagram. Thanks, Philistine and Andrew.

  13. I thought this was excellent for a Monday puzzle. Nothing too difficult, so suitable for the less experienced, but clever enough to occasionally give one pause. Very much liked IMPOVERISH.

    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew

  14. When 27a is my first answer in I know it will be a struggle.

    No quibbles with any clues although my brain seemed in a different alignment than required.

    As a neophyte Monday puzzles were a godsend, as I might get well into the puzzle before needing my Father’s help and input. This one would have stymied me.

    Thanks Setter and Blogger

  15. Always thought kahuna was slang, as in ‘the big .. ‘ , like big cheese, et al. Nice groan for curly cue, ditto a x the pond. All good fun, ta both.
    [Meanwhile, my Crouch End rels, over here to beach and hang out, are watching Norrie v Zverev, fifth set!]

  16. Didn’t know ‘kahuna’ but got lucky with placing the vowels. A good challenge, as usual, from Philistine.

  17. Scary name to see first thing on a Monday, but this was definitely on the gentler side. I liked AMOK, IMPOVERISH, PSALTER and the well-spotted LOVE AND KISSES. Guessed KAHUNA, by thinking of the other meaning as mentioned by ginf @15.

    Ta Philistine & Andrew.

  18. For all those who know they’ve heard of Kahuna, but can’t remember from where, Big Kahuna Burger is a fast food chain in the Tarantino/Rodriguez ‘universe’ of films that get referred to in several of their films, probably most famously Pulp Fiction – “That *is* a tasty burger”…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Kahuna_Burger

  19. TassieTim@12 I thought the same. Seems ‘The Big Kahuna’ was released in 1999 and starred Kevin Spacey and Danny De Vito.

  22. Managed to complete this, NW corner last in, and had to google KAHUNA as it was not in my very new large Chambers. Ah well. Loved the curly queue and the poor imp as well as the long anagrams. Thanks all.

  23. New policy, or has the traditional structure of the week simply been abandoned? Not Philistine at his most devious, certainly, but the unfriendly grid raised the difficulty a notch or two.

    AMOK, DIABETES and OINTMENT were my favourites. I remembered the expression ‘big KAHUNA’, though not where I had come across it.

    For this chemist, ‘compound’ as a definition couldn’t be vaguer!

    Thanks to the Levanter and Andrew

  24. I was just about to comment when I saw gif’s tennis heads-up @15, so went straight to the text commentary on my laptop. Oh dear, rather wish I hadn’t. 🙁

    Ah well, the puzzle was good. Like others, I liked CURLICUE, IMP OVER ISH and PSALTER and, like PostMark and William, I jumped the wrong way with KUHANA.

    Thanks to Philistine and Andrew.

  26. Very enjoyable crossword.
    ACROSS THE POND and ON THE HOUSE set the tone, being long and easily workable witty clues .Liked FLEA MARKET .Didn’t know CURLICUE.
    Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

  28. Definitely a setter I’d like to see more of. Top ticks for OINTMENT, TIME TO GO, and CURLICUE for the guffaws when the pun penny finally dropped

    Cheers P&A

  29. KAHUNA, as Andrew says, is a Hawaiian word meaning ‘expert’. It entered surfing argot (apparently) through its use in the film Gidget – early 60s – the big kahuna being the best surfer (or maybe Gidget picked it up from surf slang). I would guess it moved from there into American slang, and hence into the films mentioned above.

  31. KAHUNA sounded better than Kuhana and also seemed to ring a bell somewhere.
    So we are getting more difficult puzzles every other week are we? Coupled with an easier one midweek? Suits me.
    I did like this, made me chuckle.
    Thanks for blog and puzzle.

  32. Really nice to see Philistine’s name any time. I dredged up KAHUNA from somewhere, and CURLICUE was familiar – something I occasionally take in to yoofwork as a craft is calligraphy pens to make bookmarks or cards, curlicues and all.

    Thank you to Andrew and Philistine.

  33. Pleasing crossword, it’s good to see Philistine again.

    I thought of ‘kahuna matata’ from The Lion King, but unfortunately that’s ‘hakuna matata’; never mind, I got the answer anyway! 🙂 I liked the (app)OINTMENT, the good anagram for LOVE AND KISSES, the nice wordplay for DIABETES, the curly queue, and the good cd for FLEA MARKET.

    Thanks Philistine and Andrew.

  34. I made heavy weather of this, getting almost nothing on a first pass, but got there in the end apart from the parsing of 19D. In hindsight it is a perfectly fair Monday puzzle, so I guess I need more coffee.

  35. Green’s Dictionary of Slang has ‘kahoonas n. – also cahoonas, kazooms – [joc. use of KAHUNA n.]
    1. large female breasts.’ – with citations from Viz and The Guardian and ‘
    2. (US) the testicles; thus fig., courage.’ – Cf. cojones

  36. Lovely puzzle from one of my top favourite setters. Ticks for so many clues. Particularly liked 5,15,23d LOVE AND KISSES. Thanks to Philistine for so much enjoyment and Andrew for a good explanatory blog.

  38. Thanks to Philistine for a Monday workout, which helped blow away any remaining cobwebs. Favourites were: IMPOVERISH, PSALTER; LOVE AND KISSES; and KAHUNA.
    Thanks also to Andrew for parsing two that I couldn’t.

  40. I wasn’t sure how you pronounce AMOK as I’ve heard it with U & O sound but apparently you can spell it AMUCK. Live and learn

  41. Got “Kahuna”, it came to mind almost immediately either due to, as @18 Abulafia said, watching Tarantino films or Hawaii Five-O on TV, but didn’t get “Curlicue” in spite of having all crossers, so a DNF for me.

  42. Great fun as ever, thanks Philistine. And Andrew. I think I knew the term “Big Kahuna” even before Pulp Fiction came out.

    Gervase @23 – has this idea of puzzles becoming progressively more difficult throughout the week ever been explicitly stated as an editorial policy or is it an assumption by solvers? Anyway, it doesn’t matter – I’m happy to see Philistine any day of the week.

  43. Widdersbel@42 it’s certainly true of the NYT, so the idea may have leaked over from there. I believe I heard Hugh once say that Mondays are certainly intended to be gentler, but that’s all.

  44. Like gif@15, I thought “the big kahuna.” I vaguely think I heard it applied to President Reagan. No idea it was Hawaiian. If it was in “Gidget” that explains its earlieness.

    I didn’t get much of this last night, but got a good deal this morning, with the help of the check button here and there.

    Thanks, Philistine and Andrew.

  45. I quite like the new mixing up of setters on a Monday. It leads to some nice surprises, like this. This puzzle had the quality you’d expect from Philistine, but thankfully with their usual difficulty level dialled down a little! I had smiles for OOMPH and OINTMENT, and in my opinion it’s rare to get a dd as pleasing as DEFECTS is here.

  46. Gentle for Philistine, tough for Monday — somehow that combo is my sweet spot. I loved this crossword with OOMPH, AMOK, DEFECTS, METROPOLIS, LIE-IN, LOVE AND KISSES, OINTMENT, PSALTER, and OPENLY being my top picks. Thanks to both.

  49. Thanks for the blog, very good puzzle, pleased to see the split entries in actual clue order. OINTMENT was my favourite.
    Widdersbel@42, John Perkin stated the policy as 2 easy, 2 medium , 2 hard per week. Typically the hard would be Wed/Sat and the easy Mon/Thur but this was never totally predictable. I have never seen any stated change to this policy but now we get 5 or 6 medium puzzles every week. Newer solvers are being let down and we never get a single hard puzzle.

  50. I love puns and other aural wordplay, so I’m kicking myself for not getting 8a CURLICUE, which was my favourite once I saw the answer.

    I like how Philistine places his multi-word clues in the grid, and today’s two starting at 3d and 5d were among the best of the puzzle. Also, 6d was IMPISHLY clever.

    Thanks Philistine for the superb puzzle, and Andrew for the excellent blog.

  51. Re KAHUNA: I’ve always thought it would be cool for someone to set a puzzle consisting entirely of the letters present in the Hawaiian alphabet (you’d probably have to also allow yourself to use S), and sprinkle in a bunch of the Hawaiian words that have made it into English. Of course, this would be massively challenging to set–it’s hard enough avoiding one or two letters, but half the alphabet?

    Here’s a start:

    Goose from Hawaii going from there to Seattle, and thence to Edmonton (4)

    (Cheat sheet: Hawaiian uses only AEIOU HKLMNPTW, plus the okina, which signals a glottal stop.)

  52. [And regarding the okina, it is usually typed as an apostrophe, and is usually dropped entirely when the word gets Anglicized. So Hawaii is spelled Hawai’i in Hawaiian, and the muumuu, favorite dress of Mama Cass, is actually a mu’umu’u, and has four syllables.

    [Letter from Japanese island: “Washington, get lost! (5) ]

  53. MrPenney , your goose is quite well known in the UK , at one point it was very rare , there was a breeding programme at Slimbridge, I have seen them there, it was then reintroduced to Hawaii .

  54. Thanks for that Mr Penny @51. Is Hawaiian also phonetic (no homophones) with every word ending in a vowel? If so that’s a tricky challenge indeed.

  58. The “Big Kahuna” was a TV/broadband package offered at one time by Virgin Media. I probably had it but never checked what it referred to. I assumed it was the usual puerile attempt at humour by VM.

  59. I agree that it was an enjoyable puzzle, once I got into it. Starting with the expectation it would be easy, at one stage I remember thinking “oh, dear”. But then it started falling into place.

    I share favourites with everyone else. Being a great fan of long, clever, anagrams my top pick was LOVE AND KISSES – like JiA@36. I also echo the appreciation of Roz@49 for split entries in a row and in correct order.

    One quibble: I am not sure I would equate ‘wiseman’ with ‘expert’ (never mind the choices presented by FrankieG?35). I know several experts in a field who are complete idiots, for example.

    Thanks Phillistine for an enjoyable puzzle and thanks Andrew for the great blog

  61. Am I really the only one here who had never, ever heard GRAFT used to mean “noun (colloquial) hard work”? Separated by a common language, indeed.

    Otherwise, a very enjoyable Monday (though by no means duck soup; my first pass through the puzzle only netted me five or six entries, and one of those was incorrect…). I got a nice chuckle from the curly queues and ON THE HOUSE (with or without ellipsis).

  62. Odd mix of difficulty, with almost all of it going in steadily in a couple of passes but half a dozen holding out for ages at the end – not a coincidence that these were mostly the ones with >50% unchecked, something that I always think makes a grid a little unfriendly.

    Loved ACROSS THE POND and LOVE AND KISSES – wondered if that’s a hidden message for someone…!?

    Thanks both

  63. mrpenney @51, I would hope that puzzle would also feature MELE KALIKIMAKA.

    (Still working on a clue for that one that I’d be willing to share online…)

  64. TT@61. I am another one who had never heard GRAFTS used to mean toils. But I did look it up, and the OED tells me it is correct. While I was at it, I found a few other meanings for GRAFT that I had never come across, too…..

  65. I was trying to get all my ducks in a row before realizing that it was a call out to my user name here 🙂

  66. I read the clue in 12A as “Tolls”, which didn’t help at all, holding up the entire NW. CURLICUE was my LOI, as a result. Thanks for explaining IMPOVERISH; I could not nut that out.

    If this is a new editorial policy, I think it is a good one that will help keep every body happy. There will still be simpler puzzles to entice neophytes into the hobby, but there will also be some meat for those who can’t abide anything too easy.

  67. Is “on the phone” an indicator for a homophone? There seem to be so many. How are these indicators created? Why is “picked up” a homophone as per Anto in the Quiptic?

  68. QuietEars@67, whenever there is a reference to something being spoken or heard I would be on guard for a homophone, especially if that phrase seems superfluous to the rest of the clue. Just be ready for the occasional bluff when it becomes part of the definition

  69. I agree with Gervase@23; there a literally billions of compounds in chemistry, making it even more vague than “name” or “city” (fine in this case as a synonym, not a random geographical spot)

    Otherwise a fun crossie. Thanks P+A.

  70. @various , to graft simply means to work hard , to toil . Certainly very common in the UK .
    Quiet Ears @67 , picked up simply means heard. She picked up what he was saying, as Paul notes, anything said or heard means aural wordplay.
    Greg@66 , I am far from happy.

  71. Never mind that I came to this a day late, found it a pure delight. Especially OOMPH for starters. METROPOLIS and LOVE AND KISSES not far behind. Last two in SUBMERGE and AMOK. Lovely stuff throughout, many thanks Philistine…

  72. That Hawaiian goose, along with the Celebes ox and the sea eagle, is a four-letter beast well known to American crossword grid-packers.

  73. Paul @68 thank you. I guess “picked up” can be used to mean learning a phrase – I picked up the correct pronunciation for Kahuna quite quickly, or I picked up English fast once I moved there?

  74. acrossthepond@65. Congrats on your namecheck. I thought that philistine was sending you a personal message. Love and kisses. 🙂

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