Guardian Cryptic 29,323 by Picaroon

89 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,323 by Picaroon”

1. I found this very enjoyable, as I usually do with Picaroon’s, with nothing too obscure nor too UK-specific. GREAT GROSS was new to me, despite having majored in maths at uni half a century ago. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve never watched Friends, and consequently have never heard of Phoebe Buffay, but the wordplay was succinct. I didn’t know why GI was “grunt” — glycaemic index is all Google could come up with.

2. I made hard work of that but worth the effort. My favourites were FRIENDS, SINGER, DESIRE and BANDWAGONS. I was worried about my poor knowledge of classical literature, but it wasn’t required. Brilliant puzzle.

   Ta Picaroon & manehi.

3. Thanks manehi, and Picaroon for an enjoyable and fairly smooth solve (my only unease was over the rarer forms such as DARER, SINGER and ASPERSE which seemed a touch awkward – I’d heard of dare, singe and aspersion, but not these. (Geoff @ 1 – I think grunt is a slang US army term for a soldier, ie GI).

4. Great fun! I spent ages looking for references to goddess/saint/titan Phoebe before the ‘duh’ moment :). Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

5. You’ve missed out the clue parsing of 9a.

   @1 Geoff Down Under GI = General Infantry. Not sure why they call them grunts though.

6. Grunt and GI (deriving from Government Issue) are both slang terms for US soldiers, especially infantrymen.

7. 9a ALE in alternate letters of JAZZMAN.

8. Clever misdirection in 13d. Having GREAT -R-S-, I assumed some sort of financial disaster in the year 1728 (wasn’t the South Sea Bubble around that time?). Professor Google pointed me in the mathematical direction.

9. Hugely enjoyable, but I feel somewhat ashamed that it took me so long to appreciate that 1728 is 12 cubed. I guess I’m a bit of a nerd.
   But, happily, it reminded me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)

10. Here’s an earworm for the day

    https://youtu.be/q-9kPks0IfE?si=98-O0712XWkvjdpb

    and a dictionary reference for ‘grunt’

    INFORMAL – NORTH AMERICAN
    a low-ranking soldier or unskilled worker.
    “he went from grunt to senior executive vice president in five years”

    Thank you Picaroon and manehi

11. Was thrown by Apollo, sun god, going to the moon.
    When the penny dropped about 1969 and all that, it tickled me.
    Very enjoyable puzzle.

12. Crossed with gwd80. Not seen that derivation of GI before. Also finding Galvanised Iron – from which many military items are made and Ground Infantry. So take your pic(caroon).

13. gwd80/Geoff Down Under – thanks for the reminder, have updated the blog

14. Yes, GI is a crossword staple, but I’d not seen the connection with “grunt” before. So much to learn …

15. Manehi, You left out Daphne, a dryad who was turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_and_Daphne_(Bernini)_(cropped).jpg

    Thanks both for a great puzzle and blog.

16. A most enjoyable crossword – my particular favourite, from quite a list, is 11a

    Many thanks to Picaroon and Manehi

17. I was a bit annoyed by 18d being defined as ‘city’ when it has a population of less than 60,000. By contrast, the town centre that I live in has a population of nearly 90,000, and I certainly wouldn’t regard it as being a city in its own right.

18. Flea @10, I’m guessing what your earworm is, and I’m going to resist checking, although it’s now in my head anyway 🙂

19. Me @15 Well, I tried.

20. Fantastic puzzle from Picaroon as always. DNF for me as I had to cheat to get asperse. Thanks to manehi for the explanations.

21. US Marine Corps on the origin of “Grunt” https://www.usmcmuseum.com/uploads/6/0/3/6/60364049/gyrenes__jarheads_and_grunts.pdf

22. Yes the Friends character was a shrug [tho confess to having streamed other weepy soaps], and Ops was totally nho. Fun anyway and pretty cruisy, thanks both.
    Nike would no doubt enjoy the tick.

23. Lovely puzzle from the Pirate, with lots of misleading references to mythological characters. Nice to see a Muse other than Erato or Clio for a change.

    Standouts for me were BANDWAGONS, FRIENDS, GREAT GROSS and ASPERSE, but there isn’t a duff clue anywhere.

    MAC089 @17: ‘City’ is an elastic term, in the Anglosphere it refers to a settlement incorporated with that status, irrespective of size – the city of St David’s in Wales has a population less than 2000. But why describe NARBONNE as ‘old’? (except to mislead!).

    Thanks to S&B

24. Just what I always say about Picaroon’s puzzles. Cosistently wonderful.

25. Didn’t like the look of the grid but once I realised that most of the clues were misdirections they slowly came together. I came a bit unstuck in the SE corner and with BANDWAGONS (despite having all the crossers) but otherwise it was achievable and very enjoyable. Thanks Picaroon.

26. I wondered what happened in 1728. GREAT something. Loved the clue. They didn’t teach me that in arithmetic.

27. What George said @24. Every one of the across clues contained a misleading clue word and every one raised a smile – totally impossible today to attempt to pick out favourites.

    Huge thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

28. Enjoyable and quite quick to solve. Themes usually don’t interest me at all, but for some reason I liked this one though I don’t know a lot about mythology. Favourites RESOUND (to add to manehi’s comment, Echo fell madly in love with Narcissus, who was interested only in his own reflection and rejected her); DROWSILY (I took nitwit as an adjective – ‘that is a nitwit idea’ – rather than silly as a noun, but both ways work); GREAT GROSS (new to me); and several others.
    TWO-FACED was too obvious IMO, and like Bullhassocks@3 I’m not very keen on words like DARERS which while valid, I would never actually use; though I didn’t mind SINGER as it’s a common word in the vocalist sense, even if not as ‘a scorcher’.
    Thanks both.

29. PS: I’d never heard of GREAT GROSS but there was a King George (II) in 1728. 😉

30. Even I was able to guess the theme today! That was an enjoyable puzzle with no real issues for me. The list of favourite clues is too long today (although RESCUE and SINGER are definitely in there)! The Friends character was a shrug for me too. I think I’ve seen that “weekend starts when FRI ENDS” surface before somewhere. I’d never heard of GREAT GROSS, but what a fantastic clue – especially since George II was the King in 1728.

    I suppose describing Narbonne as “old” is a bit of misdirection Gervase@23, although it is old! Wikipedia says it was founded in 118 BC!

    A lovely puzzle for a Wednesday and an excellent blog as usual. Thanks Picaroon and manehi.

31. I too checked with Google for an event in the year 1728. Never heard of a GREAT GROSS until today, and not sure I’ll need it outside of crosswords or quizzes. I join with others in praise of Picaroon, especially how well he crafted the theme where the knowledge requirement was all on his side (except for CALLIOPE I suppose).

32. Lechien @30: Certainly NARBONNE is a settlement of some antiquity, but ‘old city’ in crosswords usually indicates somewhere like Antioch, Ephesus, or the charade favourite Ur 🙂

33. Great fun. I’ve never seen the sitcom, so FRIENDS was the last in and took me longer than the rest of the puzzle put together. I especially liked CALLIOPE, AZALEA, and SPORTSWEAR. With thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

34. Thank you Picaroon and manehi for the prodigious pantheon in across clues and one beautifully voiced muse at 5d. I enjoyed the misdirection, and I loved that RESOUND included Narcissus. I also liked that the two goddesses of victory clue neighbours within the grid.

35. We’ve sometimes had some discussion about the relative merits of a surface theme (like here) and a ghost theme (as favoured particularly by Qaos). I like them both if they’re well done and this most certainly was! Very clever to get so many alternative meanings for the mythological characters.

    A very minor point. If 25a had started “Pan perhaps…” there would have been no need for the misleading capital P for the definition.

    Many thanks Picaroon and manehi.

36. Really enjoyed this despite the obscurity, for me, of GREAT GROSS, which was in fact eminently gettable from the clueing. Thought SINGER, SPORTSWEAR, COMPILER and FRIENDS were great fun once the penny dropped. The last two in were the tiddly MOON and MEET. There seemed to be some kind of theme going on but as usual I couldn’t quite spot one. Are DONALD DUCK and the hidden and backward facing Fido both Disney characters?

37. Maths nerds may also know 1728 from the film “The Man Who Knew Infinity”, about the pure mathematician Ramanujan. He famously(?) pointed out that 1729 is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways:

    1000 (10 cubed) plus 729 (9 cubed) = 1729
    1728 (12 cubed) plus 1 (1 cubed) = 1729.

38. …it’s Pluto, not Fido, of course…and meant to mention I couldn’t parse DROWSILY.

39. Very enjoyable and clever puzzle with plenty of very clever mythological misdirection. Picaroon never fails to impress.

40. Each clue was a pleasure as this one unfolded. The former Ancient History teacher in me loved the plays on Greek and Roman mythology in the across clues. My favourites have already been canvassed. Thanks many times over to Picaroon and manehi.

41. Defeated by the GROSS component of 13d, and despite running through possible meanings of Victoria didn’t think of the station, but otherwise I enjoyed this very much.

42. Tough but fair – this was a fun puzzle and I loved the theme.

    Favourites: DONALD DUCK, MOON, MODIFIER, NARBONNE (loi).

    New for me: GRUNT = GI / a low-ranking soldier; 1728 = GREAT GROSS

    Thanks, both.

43. Baggins @21: many thanks for the interesting link. However, I thought GRUNT was an acronym. Raw soldiers would be classified as “General Replacement Unit, Not Trained”.

    Now that I write it, it seems a little too contrived, though!

44. Thanks for the blog, I have only seen this sort of mythology theme 1727 times so I was a bit surprised by GREAT GROSS , although that was the one clue that almost made me have to scratch my head.

45. Excellent with theme amusing rather than helping. I had winged Mercury pencilled in which slowed down that corner.
    Note to self that key can be ESC or DEL, not just musical
    Thanks both.

46. William @43, yes, I found that derivation here:

    https://www.dvidshub.net/news/431731/respect-grunt-and-work-they-do#:~:text=Others%20credit%20WWII%20for%20the,Not%20Trained%2C%22%20or%20GRUNT.

    But I share your scepticism about the acronym, which has the feel of a retro-fit…

47. The top half went in surprisingly quickly for me but the bottom half took much longer.

    I liked FRI ENDS, although it must have been done before, the well-hidden VESSEL, the wordplay for GLIDER, the 1728 definition that I DNK, and the ‘news about’ in DROWSILY.

    Another tour-de-force from Picaroon.

    Thanks to him and to manehi for highlighting all the theme words.

48. Well this was one of those “themes” that you don’t need to spot, in fact if you do (not that it was hard today) it might only lead you astray, since almost all of the instances’ meanings for solving were something else. I had a name for that kind of theme once, but I’ve forgotten it. Anyway, fun puzzle.

49. Excellent! I thought I was really going to struggle as I know little about mythology but then I got Freddie Mercury and realised there was going to be a lot of misdirection. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

50. A further nice point about 12a is that Freddie Mercury was of course a scorcher in Don’t Stop Me Now:

    I’m burning through the sky, yeah
    Two hundred degrees, that’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit

51. Dr What’sOn@48…probably not the misdirection theme word you were looking for, but the term “red herrings” springs to mind. Rather more here today than The Five Red Herrings of Dorothy L Sayers’ 1931 whodunnit that I enjoyed reading in my teens…

52. I am amazed that so few people have come across GREAT GROSS. A lovely clue that might have been penned by Qaos…

53. Thanks Picaroon and manehi!
    Loved SINGER, STATIONS, BANDWAGONS and GREAT GROSS!

54. Victoria was the Roman goddess of victory, but more the personification of an abstraction than a character with a mythology of her own. As she would have said herself, ‘We are not a Muse’.

55. Not easy, but a very satisfying solve. Like Bullhassocks@3 I raised an eyebrow at SINGER, and half an eyebrow (if that is possible) for DARER. Thanks Picaroon and manehi

56. Thank you Picaroon for the delightful puzzle and manehi for the blog. I enjoyed the fact that so many of the classical references were misdirections.

    Like many others I learned a lot about the year 1728 before the penny dropped. I needed the blog for the parsing of ASPERSE and the alternate reading of SINGER.

57. Very good although didn’t get the reference to Phoebe et al, thanks for enlightening me!

58. Lots of fun with Picaroon and all the mythological characters – some useful, some just there for decoration. Favourites FRIENDS, DONALD DUCK, SPORTSWEAR and the complicated relationship between VESSEL and SURGEONS.
    Once again I learned something – i.e. what a GREAT GROSS is. Needed Google for that, since MDCCXXVIII seemed an unlikely anagram. Missed singe-r = scorcher and the silly in DROWSILY.

59. What a joyous crossword day!
    Just completed the delightful Picaroon and still have Basilisk and Eccles to play with !

60. Well, I don’t know from Friends the sitcom, but I am well grounded in Disney characters, having had many years’ worth of subscriptions to Disney comics, thanks to my grandfather, who kept buying multi-year subscriptions for me — the company sensibly added them onto each other rather than sending me double or triple copies, so I got them till I was about twenty. And I’m here to tell you that Pluto and Donald couldn’t be friends, because they’ve never met. Pluto is Mickey Mouse’s dog, and Mickey and Donald live separate lives with their respective associates (Daisy, Minnie and assorted nephews). Donald never appears in the Mickeyverse.

    That said, fun puzzle. Thanks to Picaroon and manehi.

61. This reminded me why I do crosswords.

    That mounting anxiety as nothing yields and then slowly, slowly, like popcorn in a pot, the clues crack one by one and then more quickly until a residue is left and then the decision to wait or press on. I left GREAT GROSS (nho but had guessed it as a possibility) and NARBONNE (wha?) as scorched kernels and sat back with a glow of achievement. (I can’t explain why I was delighted to see our old friend ‘Fido’ showing up instead of more frequent canine subterfuges – it rang an ancient bell among the memory bats.)

    Valentine@60: Yes, Pluto – what you said, but I got the answer so I forgive.

    Thoroughly entertained and somewhat enlightened. Thanks both.

    [Not for the first time in this forum I am intrigued by the number unfamiliar with ‘FRIENDS’ – it’s frothy but well wrought for the most part.]

62. Thanks both,
    A super puzzle. Has anybody pointed out Narbonne was the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Transalpina when it doubtless counted as a city.

63. Tyngewick @62 – I did have this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbonne#:~:text=Politically%2C%20Narbonne%20gained,100%2C000.%5B10%5D
    all ready to post and didn’t get round to it! (I was a bit nervous as to whether the highlighting would work: I’ve never tried it before!)

64. A few googles didn’t detract from a really fun puzzle. Thanks both.

65. Valentine@60 – perhaps not in the comics, but certainly in the films they have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_and_Pluto

66. Gervase@54 If she was including Albert in the conversation, Victoria might well have said: “We are not a museum” – and would have been wrong!

67. 😀

68. Dr. WhatsOn @66
    🙂

69. 🙂

70. 😀
    I came for the crossword and stayed for the dad jokes.

71. Fun & rather gentle I thought. SPORTSWEAR held me up a bit at the end. The theme was enjoyable, but FRI-ENDS was my highlight.

    Thanks Picaroon and manehi

72. Thanks Picaroon and manehi
    Great puzzle. I loved SINGER for the misdirection, and the FRI ENDS for Phoebe.
    I got a bit lucky with 13d. I had worked out GREAT, so Googled GREAT 1728 to find out what had happened then, but Google was clever enough to give me the correct answer!

73. Very enjoyable puzzle, with too many favourites to list. I was amused to find DONALD DUCK in the midst of all these classical mythology figures.

    I’m another who had not heard of GREAT GROSS. It’s always good to learn something new on the way to solving a puzzle. Thanks to both.

74. I wondered if “Zinger” would be an acceptable answer for 12a, in the sense that it could be a synonym for “scorcher” and sounds like (say) “singer”. That was before I saw it as “singe….(e)r”, which makes more sense. Just a thought.

75. Valentine @60: Professor Wiki tells me there was an animated film in 1936 called “Donald and Pluto”. Donald plays a plumber and Mickey’s dog Pluto is his assistant.

76. Thanks Picaroon for an enjoyable crossword with DONALD DUCK, FRIENDS, SPORTSWEAR, and MODIFIER being my picks. Thanks manehi for the blog.

77. Thanks Maheni and picaroon.

    Today fitted into what is becoming a normal category for me – Fall just short (in this case one, but sometimes it’s two or three). Which is very annoying for the ‘completist’ in me. I need to either a) get better or b) learn to consider one or two short a success.

    Todays failure was 19d. I don’t read Shaky, but I’m guessing there are hundreds of killers. There are hundreds of languages. I’ve never heard of the word that was the answer. I could’ve left that clue for years and never got it. I’m not sure Picaroon wanted me to finish today! 😀

78. Thanks manehi esp for explaining DROWSILY as I couldn’t parse that at all.
    Stuart@77 hard lines but it will come if my experience is anything to go by. In my case today the ERSE was dragged out from crosswords past and while I have never ASPERSEd either, I may have cast an aspersion or two, and that got me there. Similarly the surface theme and maybe a Brendan or two led to CALLIOPE. Not long ago I would have had no chance on those.
    On the other hand perhaps I should still call myself a failure as I didn’t get SINGER. But MaestroP@74 I will let you have ZINGER if you let me have WINGER (winged messenger of the gods, and a fast rugby or football winger has scorching pace). Deal?
    Thanks Picaroon, loved this.

79. Usually, when I have nothing to add here, I say nothing, but I did appreciate this puzzle as much as everyone else did. I particularly appreciated the fact that with the sole exception of JANUS, all the apparent mythological references actually referred to something else. Oh, and CALLIOPE (wonder why he didn’t find a way to clue the musical instrument instead).

    For those not familiar, Phoebe from FRIENDS is the sort of spacey, kooky one, always good for comic relief during episodes when the other characters have a more serious plotline. She’s played by Lisa Kudrow (who in real life is nothing like Phoebe).

    There is a village in southern Indiana called Gnaw Bone. The usual theory on the origin of its unusual name is that the town fathers wanted to call it NARBONNE, but it got somehow lost in translation.

80. [mr p
    I loved the episode when Phoebe teaches the “Smelly cat” song to Chrissie Hynde!

    (and, of course, the giant poking device…)]

81. Very enjoyable puzzle, almost fully parsed. My only failure was 2d for which I had SPED, and although I was puzzled by the S, the CAPED minus CA seemed such a good fit that I didn’t worry further.

82. [muffin@80 Yes, me too:
    Phoebe: How many chords do you know?
    CH: All of them!]

83. Very clever theme. Thanks.

84. This was a bit of a pen in for me. Very rare for a Picaroon.

85. Gazzh@78: I had WINGER too with the same reasoning.
    I have watched a few episodes of friends, but it leaves me cold, I fail to see what everybody is laughing at, so I had to look up the characters.
    Thanks both.

86. Like others before me, I assumed that Pluto the dog generally hangs around with Mickey rather than Donald – but I guess there’s room for cruciverbal licence. I notice that with almost all of the gods and goddesses here (is Batman a god? 🙂 ), you actually have to take up alternative meanings.

    I got stuck on SINGER – wrote in WINGER at first (the god Mercury has winged sandals) – then I changed it to SINGER after I remembered ‘Freddie’ – but I still couldn’t get ‘scorcher’ to work.

    GREAT GROSS was new to me – seems a rather archaic term. Reminds me of the unique property of the next number up, 1729, known as the ‘Ramanujan Number’. It is the smallest known number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways (12³+1³ or 10³+9³).

    Another guess was FRIENDS – I’m not a devotee I’m afraid and I had to guess that Phoebe was one of the characters. But the superb wordplay makes up for the rather (to me) obscure def. So it has to be one of my faves. Also likes for COMPILER, SPORTSWEAR, MOON, MODIFIER, BANDWAGONS, and MEET.

    Thanks to Pickers (always good fun) and manehi.

87. When I parsed CALLIOPE, it immediately set off an earworm of Blinded By the Light (“With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing, the calliope crashed to the ground”), which I am still humming. So that’s another pleasure I got from this puzzle.

88. southofnorth@82, your comment reminded me of a member of ZZTop being asked for the secret of their long success. His reply: “Same three guys, same three chords.”

    This one was fun. Thanks Picaroon and manehi for the Wednesday wit.

89. I recognised 1728 as a cube but have never heard of great gross, so this was my last one in.

Comments are closed.