Guardian 29,317 / Harpo

94 comments on “Guardian 29,317 / Harpo”

1. Tough but fair… thanks to Anto and Eileen.

2. NHO ALDHELM, otherwise I enjoyed this.

3. I enjoyed this, despite being defeated by SLOB ICE, which is new to me and although fairly clued, seemed implausible: so I was forced to look it up. Toyed with elections (selection with s skipping to the end) rather than ELECTORAL but it quickly became clear that could not work with 10d. Favourite possibly DAMASCENE, as much because I’ve always thought it a beautiful word as because it stood out as a clue.
   Thanks to Harpo and Eileen.

4. Tough but enjoyable workout – particularly liked 23 for evoking very pleasant memories of walking the SW coast path to the extraordinary chapel that bears his name. Thanks Harpo, thanks Eileen

5. Chewy, enjoyable, but all parsed, pretty much.

   ALDHELM I knew as a saint, probably from Sherborne Abbey or the chapel at Swanage, plus helming as a verb, because it’s what you do in boats. SLOB ICE and SIDEMAN were new, one entirely, the other in that sense. And I didn’t know DAMASCENE was the name of that metal treatment.

   Thank you to Eileen and Harpo.

6. Cruel but fair. Great puzzle.

7. I failed to solve 23ac and 20d.

   Favourite: SPINOZA.

   New for me MINA for myna(h) bird; SLOB ICE; OB = died; the fact that a soccer goalkeeper wears No 1 on his jersey (for 18d).

   Thanks, both.

8. Good workout from Harpo. The SE quadrant held out longest for me – ALDHELM was unfamiliar, it took a while to see IDEM in SIDEMAN (I was trying to put a musician into the SAN) and A ONE rather than the more usual AI flummoxed me. But I got there in the end. SLOB ICE was also new to me, but it couldn’t be anything else.

   My favourites were DRESDEN CHINA, GREEN BELT, SPINOZA, ESTRANGED (great surface) and ANEMONE (eventually!).

   Thanks to Harpo and Eileen

9. I’m not a big fan of Harpo and this didn’t do much to change that. I did like GREEN BELT, ADAGE & EVASION

   Not sure what the IN was doing in 11a and the Chambers app doesn’t have OB. Minor quibbles aside, this just felt a little dated and dusty.

   Cheers E&H

10. In 1ac I thought -na at the end might mean something Latin, but no it wasn’t the churchy kind of service. That term for slushy ice, a nho, did need a bit of Latin but, even with slice as helping, I needed check to get the b, so a dnf. Otherwise cruisy enough, thanks Harpo and Eileen.

11. Thanks both. I did find this hard but doable and mainly fair. Slob ice did irk me, as while it may appear in dictionaries it does not seem to be something Canadian sea farers would worry about as far as I can tell from google sources. For example was not on a Canadian maritime gov type website of types of sea ice. Also wondering whether O-level now needs an old or once indicator, I don’t think they have been called that for well over 30 years?

12. [Came across Paulo Cuelho among the other uplifting works in the little lending library in the waiting room of the late mrs ginf’s chiropractor. I read and enjoyed several, but not The Alchemist]

13. Tough, but generally little to grouch(o) about, spoiled by SLOB ICE, both on obscurity and not having come across ‘ob’ for ‘died’ before. Thanks Eileen, and Harpo.

14. Shanne @5 on HELM as a verb (23): it’s neat that it has also long been used in Hollywood-speak (notably the trade journal Variety), meaning to ‘direct’, thus directly fitting Harpo’s clue.

15. I always appreciate learning new words or things in a crossword. Had never heard of THE ALCHEMIST, DAMASCENE steel or SLOB ICE, but the answers were gettable from the wordplay, and I enjoyed looking them up after ‘check all’ was done. I asked the other day if there should have been an abbreviation marker for ‘tho’ standing in for ‘though’. Same question today re ‘tash’ for ‘moustache’ and ‘san’ for ‘sanatorium’. Is the point that these abbreviations are sufficiently widely used to count as words on their own account? I don’t have a dictionary on hand (all my books are in boxes at the moment awaiting a move) to see what it would say. I have no complaint at all, just wondering if there is any guidance on the matter. DNF as I had a toss-up between ‘aldbeam’ and ALDHELD for the LOI and made the wrong guess. Again, happy to learn a new word, but perhaps it could have been a bit more tightly clued being obscure. Thanks Harpo and Eileen.

16. This looked very difficult at first but it steadily gave way. I had assumed that THE ALCHEMIST was the Ben Jonson play, and I was going to raise a quibble as to whether it was appropriate to define a play as a book, but I see from your link Eileen that it is in fact a novel which I hadn’t heard of.

    SLOB ICE and ALDHELM were both jorums for me, solvable from the wordplay. Incidentally I came across a non-crossword use of “jorum” for the first time recently – in The Old Curiosity Shop: “At the same table, with both her elbows upon it, was Mrs Jiniwin; no longer sipping other people’s punch feloniously with teaspoons, but taking deep draughts from a jorum of her own…”

    Many thanks Harpo and Eileen.

17. Very good puzzle. Thanks to HARPO.
    Crystal clear blog. Thanks to Eileen!
    (ANEMONE instead of + ‘in’ needed in the blog)
    Top faves: GREEN BELT (yes Eileen, loved the preciseness of cluing as you did), ENAMELS, DAMASCENE (these two clues have very nice surfaces–more like extended defs) and ANEMONE (‘possible suitable road’!).

    Bodycheetah@9
    BEATERS
    In ‘AT inspired by BEERS’ (we find) BEATERS. A bit odd? Or maybe it’s just for the surface.
    SLOB ICE
    ob is there in my mobile app (Chambers) under ob.
    obit(Latin), died
    Seen it a few times in CW puzzles.

18. Great having Monk on the Grain team
    Lovely puzzle
    thanks Eileen too.

19. paul@15 oops ALDHELM of course. I love the new edit function. I must remember to use it!

20. That was chewy today. I really liked ESTRANGED and SPINOZA. I’d never heard of ALDHELM or SLOB ICE, but they were fairly clued.

    I was able to parse the clue and solve ADAGE, but I can’t understand how adage means “Saw”. Can anyone enlighten me, please?

    Thanks Harpo and Eileen!

21. Thanks KVa @17 – careless error (fixed now).

22. Harpo is a setter I expect to be tough, but this wasn’t impossibly so. I failed to parse NEEDIER and couldn’t see the No. 1 jersey in NOISOME or the O and A levels in SPINOZA. A couple of quite local obscurities here. SLOB ICE for Canadians (I got as far as S_O_ ICE, missed both the obit and the slice and revealed it). ALDHELM will be a recognisable name to people who know St. Aldhelm’s Head on the Dorset coast path (as Shanne@5 says), but he definitely isn’t world-famous.

    Loved DAMASCENE and FLABBERGASTS (great words) and Stalin’s TASH. I spell the bird MYNAH, but it didn’t worry me.

23. A tough workout with the same unknowns as highlighted by others. I am often undone by insufficient Latin so both OB in SLOB ICE and IDEM in SIDEMAN did not come to mind and ADHELM was totally mystifying. I liked DRESEN CHINA when I got it, having wondered what was going to end with NA. BEATERS, ELECTORAL, GREEN BELT, STAMINA, HIDEOUT, ESTRANGED and NOISOME were my other favourites.

    Thanks Harpo and Eileen

24. Found this fairly straightforward – not to say enjoyable – though did have to insert a couple and then go and search for their validity. The aforementioned ALDHELM and SLOB ICE. And I’m beginning to wonder now whether I’m finding the solving process more straightforward since my newsagent just down the road stopped delivering the paper version of The Guardian and I have had to resort to the online one. FLABBERGASTS always makes me smile when I hear the word spoken…

25. paul @15 – both san and tash (informal) are in both my dictionaries.

    Lord Jim @16 – I only found the book when looking for a link for Ben Jonson’s play (chuntering as I did so re the definition!). Thanks for the jorum!

    Lechien @20: ADAGE = saw = saying, maxim – third definition in both dictionaries.

26. [Here’s St. Aldhelm’s Chapel on its windswept Dorset clifftop: it may once have had a light on the roof as a kind of thirteenth-century lighthouse.]

27. Eileen@25 – thank you! If I’d looked up “saw” rather than “adage”, I’d have seen that. There must be too much blood in my caffeine system. Thanks for the clarification and the excellent blog.

28. I really think “book” in 10d is sloppy. Unless there’s another I’ve never heard of, it’s a splendid play by Ben Jonson – McKellen played Face in an excellent RSC production by Trevor Nunn.

29. gladys @26 – many thanks for the link. Seeing ‘Worth Matravers’, a name that intrigued us 25 years or so ago when we did a walk around there, made me realise that I must have seen that chapel.
    prospero @28 – there is a book (please see the blog for the link -and my comment @25).

30. [Lord Jim @16 – ‘Jorum’ always brings back pleasant memories for me of the old BBC adaptation of Masefield’s The Box of Delights with the splendid James Grout as the Inspector, when he gives instructions to Kay (to be passed on to Ellen the maid) on how to make a posset, for which a jorum is to be used. My now forty-year-old children, my grandchildren and I all watch it in our separate homes as a Christmas tradition. We’ve never made a posset.]

31. Same here re. THE ALCHEMIST, Lord Jim@16 and Eileen@25.
    I didn’t recall the goalkeeper’s number but had no problems with IDEM or OB(it), which shows my age. SLOB ICE was new to me and sounds nasty. ALDHELM also new, but sounds interesting.
    Found this an enjoyable challenge, but needed Eileen’s help with parsing NOISOME as above. Thanks to both setter and blogger.

32. It’s been a long time since you could guarantee a goalkeeper would have no 1 on their shirt.
    My first thought on the Alchemist was “but that’s a play” and then I remembered the novel by Paolo Coehlo my daughter tried to persuade me to read (reader, I didn’t).

33. [prospero@28: Yes, indeed! I saw that superb production, too. Those were the glory days of the RSC with Trevor Nunn and Ron Daniels directing an ensemble of brilliant actors, so many of whom are national treasures: Judi Dench, Patrick Stewart, Harriet Walter, Brian Cox, Kenneth Branagh, Alan Rickman, Juliet Stevenson, Antony Sher, Imelda Staunton,…]

34. No1 on a goalkeepers shirt? That’s going back a bit. There was a time when goalies wore a green knitted polo neck jumper. I believe there was once a rule that the goalie was the only player allowed to wear long sleeves. Presumably to help the ref with the mano del Diego type incident.

35. Just for the record, with my pedant’s hat on, OB in 12ac is short for obiit (s/he died) – seen on old gravestones and in genealogical tables, eg ‘obiit sine prole’ – ‘died without issue’. ‘Obit’ is the present tense (s/he dies) and is also short for obituary (derived from the same verb).

36. Tough one. NEEDIER was LOI – “girl” and “river” are my pet hates in word play. Either would have done for DEE but not a very common girl’s name?

37. Solving this was like climbing a hill, almost getting to the top, and then seeing a very steep bit right at the end. I’m too much if a slob to have heard of ALDHELM and it is took an age to think of a word for direct which matched the crossers.

38. Agree with Bodycheetah@9. I don’t mind hard work, but prefer it when there are more smiles along the way.

39. Alistair@36 He could have used Kiki, say, but that might have been even more obscure.

40. THE ALCHEMIST (O Alquimista) is Coelho’s best known novel and a New Age smash hit in the 90s. ‘It changed my life’ gushed reviewers. I read it years ago, but like grantinfreo I found it platitudinous and derivative. By coincidence, the man sitting next to me on a plane a few days ago was reading a copy. I forbore to tell him not to bother….

41. So we’re expected to know place names in Dutch now, are we?

42. Many thanks Gladys@26 for providing that link to Worth Matravers. Happy memories of taking Primary School kids there on day trips to that delightful village to immerse them in exciting smuggling tales from the past. Some centred on the 18thC pub there. But I don’t remember ever taking a detour to see St Aldhelm’s Chapel…

43. O levels were last seen in 1988. No one born after 1972 has taken them… crosswordland really needs to blow off the dust sometimes.

44. ronald@42 (me@29) – I do remember the pub at the end of the walk. 😉

45. [BTW I agree with all of the mutterings about the relative merits of the two alchemical works, but it’s a safe bet that more people currently alive have read Coelho’s book than have seen Jonson’s play, perhaps even in the Anglosphere]

46. Thanks Eileen@35 (me@17 I had only to see my app and type it here…yet…)!

47. MAC089 @41: I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect Europeans to know the native names of important European cities, but it might be more difficult for solvers from elsewhere. Italian has its own names for a lot of European cities – I was puzzled by announcements of flights to Monaco until I realised that it was the Italian name for Munich (or München, if you prefer). The Italian name for Den Haag is L’Aia, which means ‘the farmyard’ – not a direct translation!

48. Agree with Gervase about the quality of the novel and most of the other comments about the crossword difficulty.

    I love clever clues like Green Belt with well clued switch

    Thanks Harpo and Eileen

49. I had never heard of OB for dead, so I tried SLOW ICE, SLOP ICE, and SLOT ICE, all of which also sound plausible, before giving up and hitting reveal. So I’m afraid I can’t agree that that clue was clearly written. Otherwise, this was all gettable. I hadn’t heard of the Brazilian novel, but with most of the crossing letters in, it was obvious what it was. And thanks to the negative reviews above, I won’t put it at the front of my queue.

    Incidentally, the American short form of mustache is stache, not tash, so that clue for STASH felt a little like a weird detour.

    I agree with Alistair @36: “girl” for “any of the thousands of names usually given to women” is one of my biggest pet peeves in British crosswords. (American editors–of cryptics or straight crosswords, it doesn’t matter–insist that the setter indicate a notable person with that name, so this is a particularly British phenomenon.) And in this case, the first notable person named Dee to spring to my mind is heavy-metal singer Dee Snider, who is a man!

50. Eileen @25 thanks!

51. DaveF@43: well… O-levels are history, and history is surely a valid field from which crossword compilers might draw material?

52. I lived in Canada for many years. I never once heard the term Slob Ice

53. Fairly clued? Not IMHO.
    Expected irritation and a Harpo delivered.

54. Paul@15 asks about SAN. Well, it is fairly commonly used in cryptics, although maybe it shouldn’t be, according to one particular line of argument: A sanatorium is not the same as a hospital, at best it is a very particular kind of hospital. So getting an abbreviation for a kind-of is a two-step operation not unlike the anagram-of-synonym, which people vehemently dislike. Now, single-letter abbreviations are all over the place, as well as some 2-letter ones, but longer ones like SAN just seem a bit different. I don’t for a minute think they are going to go away, but I just thought I’d offer these thoughts.

55. Excellent puzzle, I too had to look up SLOB ICE

56. Normally I’m a fan of Harpo but I’m also a fan of smooth, sensible surfaces. This crossword seemed to have too many convoluted clues for me to enjoy it. Thanks to both.

57. Another one who was stymied by OB and ALDHELM. Also had to do a check on NARKS as the US spelling is more NARCS (specifically for an undercover narcotics agent), though given ARK it’s fair. I was blocked in the NE for a bit because I had NEW MEAT for “lamb”–it is young I figured! Also NHO “Pollard” though that was clear from the crossers.

    In 21ac is “chatty” part of the definition of MINA, or is it a homophone indicator for myna/mynah bird? I guess Collins has “mina” as an American spelling but I haven’t seen it much.

    Agreed with Alastair@36 and mrpenney@49 about “girl”; girls can be named anything these days! “River” is fairer for me because there are at least a finite number of those.

    Bodycheetah@9: I took “in” as a linker: ‘In (“darts, regularly inspired by drinks”), [is the definition of] (we raise game)’

    With all those grumbles said, most of it was good fun–thanks Harpo and Eileen!

58. matt w @57 – the dictionaries variously give mina, myna and mynah as spellings for the bird, so it isn’t a ‘homophone’ indicator – ‘chatty’ because it ‘can be taught to imitate human speech’ (Chambers).

59. Started but it was apparent after I had conquered the SW corner that the rest of the puzzle was going to take more time than I had available, it being a work day. So I abandoned ship. Reading the blog, I think the remaining quadrants would have indeed taken a fair while

60. So Harpo is Monk in The FT. And there’s also a one-off Christmas Eve 2021 Tramp/Monk hybrid: Trunk. FF: 8 DD :10+. I must find it solve it.
    nho SLOB ICE, but it was gettable. SNOW ICE would have fitted, but been too boring.
    Liked 7d “My FLABBER has never been so GASTed!” (Frankie Howerd). Or this variation in Carry on Up the Jungle(1970):
    FrankieH as Professor Inigo Tinkle – “I’m FLABBERGASTed! My GAST has never been so FLABBERed!”
    11d BEATERS: “In darts, regularly inspired by drinks, we raise game” – “In”‘ is needed for the surface misdirection: darts is what we drunkenly raise our game in.

61. My worst performance in several weeks with five left unfilled when my time was up. That said, after a very slow start I did start to speed up as I got into Harpo’s way of thinking (sort of…). You really do need to think out of the box. ALDHELM was also new to me, as was THE ALCHEMIST, though it could only have been that. With thanks to Harpo and Eileen.

62. I had to leave a while ago and everything I might have said has been. Thanks to Harpo and Eileen.

63. Sorry but I think this pushes the boundaries of fair cluing. 11ac is an example of ridiculous obscurity. You not only have to guess the drink (beer), you have to combine it with other letter to find an obscure definition. 18d is another. Does noisome mean foul? Noi for goalkeeper is stretching it. Add these to almost unknown words and people – Slob ice, Sideman. Challenging, yes. Fair, no
    Roy

64. DaveF@43 Here in Pakistan we are still doing O and A levels from Cambridge.

65. Thanks both,
    I quite enjoyed this. Because of the precision of the clues one could identify the parts of the wordplay and bang them into shape until an answer appeared.

66. Roy@63: I couldn’t agree less, frankly. 11ac seems to me to be one of the most accessible clues in the puzzle. Beer is hardly an obscure drink, and most people have heard of beaters chasing birds towards the guns, even if only by watching Downton-like period pieces on the telly. And noisome does mean foul, yes. It appears all over the place in classic literature. I too was ignorant of slob ice, but compilers aren’t obliged to confine themselves to subjects with which I am familiar.

67. Roy@63 – having got back into the swing of solving cryptic crosswords since the various lockdowns, I like the occasional more challenging crossword as it gives me more to think about and stretches my brain further. Harpo’s crosswords are fun, because they are tougher than some of the others around, and they make me think laterally and build different links with words.

    [There was a recent article on whether crossword solving did help stave off dementia, but I’ll take that to General Chat.]

68. Thanks Eileen.
    Undone by the obscurities and OB for died.
    Thanks H, top Marx.

69. Shanne @67 – would be interested to read the post about dementia, can someone direct me to ‘General Chat’, deuced if I can find it!!

70. Shanne@67@ I agree with what you say about Harpo. Neill97@64: I love the fact you tackled this while resident (presumably) in Pakistan. I’d love to know how many people complete the puzzles in which countries in the World, though I suspect that is not known, or even knowable.

71. HoofIt etc.@ 69: That must surely be the “General Discussion” link within the grey band at the very top of this page…

72. Failed with 12. SLOB ICE as I had never heard the term before nor unfortunately had I previously come across ‘ob’ for ‘died’, so I was unable to construct the answer from the constiuent parts.. For want of 2 letters a crossword was lost. C’est la vie (say we old folks – it goes to show…). Overall a really enjoyable puzzle. Many thanks to Harpo and to Eileen for the usual immaculate blog and for filling in the blanks in my understanding

73. It does seem that hardly anyone had heard of SLOB ICE – and I wouldn’t have got it, either, if I hadn’t been lucky enough to know OB (worth filing away – I’m sure it must have cropped up before: it’s a fairly common abbreviation).

74. https://images.app.goo.gl/GvJ86HLi6y4qorTe7

75. Like mrpenney @49, I had no chance at SLOB ICE, between never having heard the term and never having seen OB to mean “dead” (as opposed to meaning “obituary”). NHO TASH for moustache, but solved it from ‘stache and a handwave. NHO ARDHELM. Didn’t get SIDEMAN; components too obscure and “musician” insufficiently precise. I know what NARKS are; wouldn’t call them “spies”. Didn’t know that mynah can be spelled MINA.

    I quite enjoyed the rest, and I’m happy to have learned what pollarding is.

76. MACO89@41: be grateful that is wasn’t ‘s Gravenhage!

77. Dave F@43, while I have completed sympathy with your point, it’s not entirely accurate. O Levels are still set in quite a few Anglophone African countries (& quite possibly in other continents, too, although that’s beyond my limits of knowledge).
    I wonder how old you have to be, however, to associate No.1 with the goalkeeper?

78. Dave F@43, while I have completed sympathy with your point, it’s not entirely accurate. O Levels are still set in quite a few Anglophone African countries (& quite possibly in other continents, too, although that’s beyond my limits of knowledge).
    I wonder how old you have to be, however, to associate No.1 with the goalkeeper?

79. I’ve been following Premier League football for about ten years now, and the only positions I have ever heard referred to by number are number 10 (very common) for a playmaking midfielder and number 9 (occasional) for a center forward — usually in the context of describing someone as a “false 9”.

80. Oh, forgot to mention — surely “inspired by drinks” means that a word for “drinks” goes _inside_ the other, not around it. BEATERS needed to say “In darts, regularly inspiring drinks, …”

81. TT @ 80 No, ‘inspired’ means ‘took in’, so the drinks took in the regular darts.

82. As someone from Warwickshire, I only ever use the word ‘gambol’ in its Brummie dialect sense of ‘forward roll’ or the related verb sense ‘perform a forward roll’ and pronounce it ‘gam bowl’ not as ‘gamble’, though of course I’m aware of its alleged ‘actual’ meaning and pronunciation (‘frolic’ and ‘gamble’ respectively). Fairly tricky today and a DNF but I got most answers without cheating and some more after revealing a few – coming back to an unfinished grid after a break recharged my batteries and helped me complete more than I first thought I would.

83. Martyn and Matthew popped in today too. That was great.

84. Like Shanne@5 I knew Aldhelm from Sherborne but mainly from the girls’ school which had boarding houses called Aldhelmsted West and Aldhelmsted East.

85. Here’s another Canadian who has never heard of SLOB ICE. And when I saw the definition, it didn’t seem like a particularly Canadian phenomenon.

    I always thought that the general idea of a cryptic crossword was to write a plausible sentence that also, as deceptively as possible, leads to a cryptic solution. “Stuns fat South African mountain idiot eating tons” is not exactly the finest example of such a clue.

    Thanks, anyway, to Harpo for the puzzle, and Eileen for her yeoman’s service in coming up with an entertaining blog.

86. Found the “one-off Christmas Eve 2021 Tramp/Monk hybrid” here

87. Bear of little brain@76 – I remember, on a long ago pre-satnav driving holiday, trying to find The Hague on the map. All it had was ‘s-Gravenhage
    tilt – ‘Etymology – From the 17th century des graven hage (“the count’s hedge”), referring to the Count of Holland. The older name was Den Haghe (“the hedge”), which continues into the modern name of the city’ – 1d DEN HAAG “the enclosure, hedge”. All these hedges are getting pollarded in 13a HEDGES.
    Thanks H/M&E

88. Can anyone explain to me how ‘frightful, all but’ can mean ‘most of hideous’?

89. All but slob ice. Tough one.

90. Ex-225 @88 See Chambers: “all but” = “everything short of, almost”, and one meaning given of “hideous” is “frightful”.

91. Thanks Eileen, I like to think I may eventually have twigged to the HELM of 23A but don’t think I would ever have got SLOB ICE. Will console myself that IDEM would once have been far beyond my capabilities! This was dry but kept me plugging away, GREEN BELT my pick I think, thanks to dragging up memory of an obscure arcade/Spectrum game, thanks Harpo!

92. As a relatively new and inexperienced solver of cryptics (taught myself during lockdown as it was a long held ambition to make snse of this obscure world!) this was a real struggle by comparison to most other Grauniad setters I have come across.
    I got about 50% without checks or reveals and loved Den Haag, Spinoza and Independence (FOI). Needier came from isolating the definition and I needed this blog to parse that (among morre than a few others!)
    Thanks for the clarity of your explanations Eileen and thanks all for the entertaining and elucidating comments. I’ll keep bashing away but will be wary of future Harpos!

93. Will-S – if you’re still there …

    Keep at it! – we all had to start somewhere (and Harpo is certainly one of the harder ones). 😉

94. Thanks Eileen 🙂

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