Guardian 29,331 / Picaroon

74 comments on “Guardian 29,331 / Picaroon”

1. Dependably delightful. Top ticks for BARTHES, ACTION REPLAY, & SHARP

   Cheers E&P

2. I confidently wrote NAVY for 6d until the battle in 10ac meant it couldn’t be. Enjoyed this crossword, thanks setter and blogger.

3. Exactly what Eileen said – an enjoyable puzzle with some chewy but gettable clues. Too many favourites to list them. At some point someone is going to point out solemnly that a hashtag and a musical sharp sign aren’t the same thing, but blow that. See discussion about homophones/heterophones, passim.
   New to me was HYPERBATON which played absolutely fair by the solver – an obscure word with very clear wordplay. And giving Eileen the opportunity for a very witty piece of blogging!
   Thanks, both

4. Lots to love here. I was slowed down by confidently entering Navy at 6dn. Thanks P and Eileen for the blog.

5. Hands up those who initially had NAVY for 6d!

   Must brush up on my French intellectuals — I’d never heard of this one.

   Nor CASTLE HOWARD — a bit mean on us Antipodeans.

   I usually finish and enjoy Picaroon’s but I had to reveal one or two today.

6. Tough puzzle. I was going to give up in the NW corner but I’m glad I persevered.

   Favourite: WAIST-DEEP, BARTHES, SHARP (loi).

   New for me: HYPERBATON.

   Thanks, both.

   Geoff@5
   Some/many antipodean solvers will have seen Castle Howard in various films and TV series such as Brideshead Revisited, Barry Lyndon and others, see here

7. Thanks, Michelle. Looks like I need to get out more. 🙂

8. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen
   Great fun. I laughed at “Homer’s heir”. NAVY makes perfect sense, but luckily I had AGINCOURT (another favourite) first. I agree with NeilH about HYPERBATON.

9. One or two new items of GK today. The penny dropped with a loud clang for SHARP – but not for BARTHES who I needed to check. What kind of term 3d must be, I guessed, but it took some googling to track it down. However, the one that gave me the most trouble was TRILL, which I did know as a musical ornament – but failed to visualise a till as a “box”.

   Too many likes to list: Picaroon is a favourite setter.

10. I missed the navy confusion as I wrote in AGINCOURT on first pass, so RACY it was. Sometimes it helps reading the clues in order.

    Thank you to Eileen and Picaroon.

11. Shanne @10 – exactly my experience!

12. Thought baton for stick, but nkdi the term, so a bap (bung and pray). What else … remembered the Swiss Ch thing, liked the grim counterpoint of the stalag party. All good fun, thanks PnE.

13. Thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

    I thought this might be a breeze after first four across clues went in without pause. Luckily it got much harder for me and ended as great exercise.

    Congratulations to anyone who knew hyperbaton in advance. But perfect cluing made it completely gettable otherwise

14. Navy as well, but, it seemed obvious but then I was stuck, so reexamined it. I got the BATON bit of HYPERBATON quite early, but HYPER evaded me for a long time. I thought they were called light swords.
    Very chewy, but regular visits helped. I was flying back from Bangkok today, visa run, so I had plenty of time in the airport and on the plane.
    Thanks both

15. Some excellent clues from Picaroon as usual – ACTION REPLAY for the re-viewer, LAUNCHER for the clever surface with “rocket”, and lots more.

    Many thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

16. Many thanks for excellent puzzle and blog. I found the following to account for 3D’s reference to Yoda

    https://rhetconcepts.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/hyperbaton-yoda/

17. I always though CH stood for Canton Helvetia so Confoederatio Helvetica was a TILT. Googling suggests both are viable – I’m sticking with Canton as it’s easier to say 🙂

18. Liked SHARP, HYPERBATON (TILT), WAIST-DEEP and LAUNCHER (for the lovely surface as mentioned by LJ@15).
    Quite an enjoyable puzzle from Picaroon! Lovely blog from Eileen! Thanks both!

19. Highly enjoyable crossword. I started with a smile at BARTHES. AGINCOURT was an early entry, so NAVY was never a possibility for me. Very much a game of charades, with not a single anagram clue, unusually.

    SHARP was my LOI – I tried in vain to find something related to ‘hash’ as there are several nods to Mary Jane around the puzzle….

    Impossible to single out favourites from so many great clues.

    I recognised the word HYPERBATON as a figure of speech, though to be honest I couldn’t remember what it was 🙂

    Many thanks to the Pirate and Eileen

20. Goldilocks for me. Tricky in places, but very clear parsing. Didn’t know HYPERBATON but it couldn’t be anything else. Favourite surfaces 10a and 28a.
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

21. Excellent work by both setter and blogger. Many thanks to both of them

22. I was missing the I in MORALISTIC – never heard of it as the name or abbreviation of a newspaper, but will file it away as I’m sure it will come up again. TRILL meaning ornament was also new to me.

    Otherwise, this was very straightforward for me, which was a relief after yesterday. For whatever reason, I am on Picaroon’s wavelength much more than Paul’s.

    Thank you Eileen for the parsings I missed and Picaroon for the challenge.

23. I’m a NAVY person, too. I’d missed AGINCOURT on the first pass, being fixated on DOCK. GDU@5, CASTLE HOWARD came to me via Brideshead Revisited. I loved the PDM for Becky SHARP. Great fun: thanks, Picaroon and Eileen.

24. Found this tough. Filled in the top half first then slowed right down and ended up revealing a couple in the SE to help.

    I did like CASTLE HOWARD and AGINCOURT (my FOIs) and was pleased to get BARTHES (who I had not heard of).

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

25. I thought ACTION REPLAY was outstanding. I plumped for RACY, thinking of yesterday’s puzzle and coincidentally, STASI was in Wednesday’s. SHARP was loi after bunging in the fairly clued, HYPERBATON. Other favourites were BARTHES, MALEFICENT, POTHEADS and MORALISTIC.

    Ta Picaroon & Eileen.

26. bodycheetah@17 and KVa@18 – mean don’t you TTLI? – ‘thing today learned I’
    [Pretty sure Yoda wrote this recent Paul clue “Group: into eighteen one twice goes! (5)”]
    Thanks P&E 😉

27. ♯ Just testing if I can produce a music sharp sign here, as opposed to the hashtag.

28. Loved the conjunction of the Simpsons and semiotician. Thanks to setter and blogger.

29. The only bad thing about a Picaroon puzzle on a Friday is that there will not be one on Saturday. Like many others, ‘hyperbaton’ was new to me but reaadily constructed from the wordplay. Thanks, as ever, to Picaroon and Eileen.

30. FrankieG@26
    😀
    Hovis@27
    I can’t even add ACCENTs to letters. No acute problem. No grave situation. Just saying…

31. Thanks Picaroon & Eileen, loved all of this but especially the ‘old buggers’, ‘camp party’ and ACTION REPLAY.

32. Thought this one of the best for a while – thanks Picaroon and Eileen.

    Coincidence that we have Stasi and tsar on Russian “election” day?

33. KVa @30. Usually, at least on touchscreens, you can get accents on letters by pressing and holding on the letter and then sliding to the accented form in a list that appears.

34. Hovis@33
    On my mobile, I have learnt how to do it but I almost always post comments using my laptop.
    I don’t know how to do it on my laptop.

35. If I press and hold on the letter on my mobile, a list comes up – but I need about three hands to keep the list in view and simultaneously select the accent I need. Luckily my predictive text knows cliché and one or two other common ones complete with their accents.

    (I thought the old buggers were a much better clue for STASI than the one earlier this week.)

36. Another good one from Picaroon where I got stuck towards the end in the NW corner.

    I always think of the launcher as the rocket itself, although it is also the means to launch a rocket. I liked the definitions of POTHEADS and RETURNS, the ‘flies in’ in CHAIRLIFTS, the wordplays of CASTLE HOWARD, WAIST-DEEP and STEP ON IT, and the surface for GEMINI.

    Picaroon and Eileen, thanks to! (I think HYPERBATION not many people knew, but remember it now might I)

37. KVa @ 34 If your laptop has a separate numeric keypad, the ALT key plus varying combinations of numbers produces accented characters.

    If not, if you’re on Windows, run charmap.exe and it will bring up all the installed fonts and their complete special characters. You can copy the ones you need from there.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

38. There was a very similar clue for RACY, or perhaps NAVY, I forget which, in the Times a few years ago which prompted a sort of apology, perhaps it didn’t benefit from clarifying crossers.
    Very enjoyable mix of stuff in this.
    #notasharp

39. This was quite a journey for me this morning. Bottom half fairly straightforward, though briefly wondered with all the crossers in place whether TORNADOES might be Toreadors. And only knew TRILL from old TV adverts for bird seed? Then finally my user namesake (ronald) REAGAN suddenly popped into my head, followed by long pauses as I am an absolute ignoramus with the whole Simpsons thing, nor Thackeray either to be honest. And last two in, eventually, were SHARP and HYPERBATON which I had to look up. CASTLE HOWARD both one of my favourite places to visit in Yorkshire and COTD for me. An excellent challenge overall…

40. I agree with all the praise for this fine puzzle.

    Fave was ACTION REPLAY

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen

41. Such a delight — clever, funny, and finished.

    The animator of an Italian group commented in terms of Yoda on a particularly clumsy word order one of us had produced. No-one, all at least twenty years her senior, had heard of (?her ?him ?it) them and she had to explain. So I got the reference at 3D even if the word was new. Thank you Anna.

    Many thanks to Blogger and Setter.

42. Had to do this in two shifts, but nothing wrong with a puzzle that makes you think.

    Interesting how a word can be absent for months then show up twice in a week (I’m looking at you, STASI. Snoopers and buggers!)

    Given the increasing decriminalization and mainstreaming of cannabis, I’m a little surprised to see POTHEADS. It sounds like something your grandfather or even father would have said in the sixties.

43. Great crossword and loved Eileen’s comment on HYPERBATON.
    CASTLE HOWARD took me far back into my past and Brideshead Revisited, oh to be that age again.
    1a and 1d went in immediately and from then on it was a steady solve.
    Thanks both.

44. 3/4 of a crossword done for me, I just couldn’t get a foothold in the SE and eventually had to give up on it.

    “Pile” for a large building (?) is completely new to me, so I was kicking myself a little once I got CASTLE HOWARD, I grew up down the road.

45. Accessible enough to be engaging and chewy enough to be entertaining. Loved SHARP, BISECT and STASI (when I eventually got them). Sweated a long time over nho HYPERBATON but it was very fairly clued. Thanks a million Picaroon and Eileen.

46. [I think very junior medics are no longer called HOUSEM(e)N or even house doctors these days – it’s FY1 or FY2 for Foundation Year. Doesn’t have the same ring to it somehow.]
    I enjoyed this very much although I failed to parse the old buggers and worked out HYPERBATON by trial and error. Always good to learn a new word.
    Thank you both.

47. Simon S@37
    Thank you.

48. [TT @23, michelle @6. Decades ago, thanks to Brideshead, had picnic lunch with mrs ginf at CH, in the Temple of Four Winds. Not the first to do so, obvs; someone had left a knife behind. Still have it …]

49. Wouldn’t “up to the hips: be “hip-deep” rather than WAIST-DEEP? (Slightly less deep.)

    This was a game of four corners for me, with the corners filling up independently of each other but leaving a void in the middle.

    I’d never heard of the hopped-up stick either, and it didn’t look like a real word, but I assembled it eventually — LOI. FOI was AGINCOURT, which saved me from the Navy and left me with the Agincourt Carol as an earworm. The chorus, “Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria” translates as “To God thanks England give for victory”. Bet you didn’t know Yoda was around for the Hundred Years’ War!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQZiW8zRSUY

50. Faultless; absolutely loved it!
    Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

51. Enjoyed this, maybe because the general knowledge required–with the exception of HYPERBATON–was in my wheelhouse. Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author is a staple reading in graduate studies in the humanities, so I had that one as the first in, but was expecting him to be less familiar to the many here with more science-y backgrounds. Knew Castle Howard from its many appearances in imported TV shows. Anyway, many clever clues throughout. Thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

52. Many thanks for the earworm, Valentine @49 – I’d never heard it.

    While we’re at it, why not?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvUemTqJRk

53. Delightful, just delightful. As always with this setter. It has all been said by now and I could tick almost every clue as a favourite. Sadly, the requisite stick did not come to mind as I stared at -A-O- though, with hindsight, it should have done; the word was unknown to me. Or, as someone on the G’s own page rather wittily put it, Ignorant of the word for that I was.

    Thanks Picaroon and lucky Eileen

54. I’m old enough to remember the death of Roland Barthes in 1980. He was knocked down by a laundry van. Aged 64. He was a leading light in semiotics and structuralism. Great clue. One of many. With thanks to Picaroon and Eileen.

55. I never got beyond the first Star Wars film, so was fearful for the Yoda clue. As said above, though, it was fairly clued and constructable.
    I havn`t looked too closely into the precise definition of HYPERBATON, but maybe former England football manager Graham Taylor had an unfair press ?

56. Me@55 ( I wish)
    I have got my Star Wars ignorance in early. Just wondering then, whether a HYPERBATON is a model of light saber that “Yoda often employs” ?

57. Fine puzzle but a DNF for me, as I was floored by SHARP, having not read Vanity Fair or remembered the hashtag trick. Interestingly, I got RACY without any crossers and without even thinking of NAVY. Go figure.
    So, the famous “Able was I ere I saw Elba” is a hyperbatonic palindrome then? Who knew.
    Thanks, P & E

58. Aaagh! Looks like I am alone in confidently putting in BECKY for 9A which held me up in the NW until the excellent BARTHES made all clear.

59. A fine puzzle – as others have said, HYPERBATON was very nicely done. I recalled Barthes from a first-year module, and have heard my parents talk about visits to CASTLE HOWARD.

    Thanks both

60. NeilH@3, I will not bite, even though I’m embarrassed to say it took me too long to think SHARP instead of hashtag at 9a. If you ever have to read manuscript music you soon realize that the vertical and horizontal lines of the sharp sign can go in any direction.
    (I sometimes think that they are a clue to whether the composer is right- or left-handed.)

    I loved this puzzle and Eileen’s blog, especially her example of 3d HYPERBATON. Favourites were the double on’s in 18a ACTION REPLAY, the gravity-defying pee in 5d WAIST-DEEP, and my COD, the infamous old buggers at 4d.

    Thanks Picaroon and Eileen for the fine Friday fun.

61. Thanks to all for your comments on this enjoyable – and, in several ways, it seems, nostalgic – romp, especially to those, including Cellomaniac @60 – I’m grateful for your diplomatic response to Neil’s bait re the sharp / hashtag thing! – who appreciated my iambic pentameter. 😉

    George @29
    I know what you mean – but it’s my blog tomorrow! Who knows?

62. Thank you Eileen for your illuminating blog and your fun explanation of HYPERBATON. I didn’t know Yoda-speak but that clue has led to all sorts of WTICNTTLIs for me. An apt sample of Yoda language I found was: “Much to learn, you still have.”

    So I’ve been learning about HYPERBATON. It appears that what is distinctive of Yoda-ese is the Object Subject Verb word order, fairly consistently, as occurs in a tiny number of ”natural” languages. Hyperbaton and anastrophe are devices altering word order for effect.

    For the literary buffs here, hyperbaton (with a link to anastrophe) in Shakespeare:
    https://myshakespeare.me/shakespeares-works/elements/figures-of-speech/by-name/hyperbaton/

    For the maths, computIng and linguistics buffs:
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/11/solve-it-can-you-speak-yoda-how-to

63. 5a – I don’t understand “in”/“boards” – what is the connection here?

    10a – how do you know to use A and G from “abetting”?

    12a – how do you get “E” from introduce?

    6d – how do you know to use “Y” from motorway?

    15d – is a group of deer not called a “herd”?

64. Steffen @62:

    5a. Boards means gets into as in boards a bus. Insertion indicator
    10a. Case of abetting means the letters that provide a case for the word A(bettin)G. Outer letters indicator
    12a. Finally introduce means the final letter of introducE. Final letter indicator.
    6d. Close to motorway means the final letter of motorwaY. Final letter indicator.
    15d. Yes, a group of deer could be a herd but it is also indicating that there are multiple deer. Multiple deer could be DOES.

    Hope that helps

65. @62

    5a – BOARDS is the doing word which tells you to put the R(right) into WASHIP
    10a – The A and G are the outside letters of AbettinG, the CASE of AbettinG.
    12a – FINALLY indicates the final letter of introduce, which is the E
    6d – The last letter of motorwaY, ie the closing letter, close of, is a Y
    15d – A group of deers is a herd, but it is also true that a number of DOES will also be in truth a group of deers as well, lateral thinking is requisite!

66. Hi Steffen – you’ve just caught me on my way to bed!

    Sorry if it wasn’t clear:
    5ac: to board a bus is to get on/in it, so R in WAS
    10ac: A and G are the outside letters (‘case’) of A[bettin]G
    6dn: close (end) of motorway is Y
    15dn: separate the ‘a’ from the clue: DOES are a group of deer.

67. I’ve been overtaken again!

    Many thanks to PM and Antonknee. 😉

68. Oh man, didn’t get hyperbaton despite knowing what the clue meant.

    Backwards I will speak until hit me you will want to!

69. Thank you 64, 65, 66.

70. My first one was 6down – navy. It’s blue, it’s a vehicle reversed and it ends in y as does motorway. Bit unfair I thought.

71. Rosemary @70 – you were not alone: see comments early on. No other complaints about unfairness, though: two crossing letters made ‘navy’ impossible.

72. Eileen@: A happy St Patrick’s Day to you (and to anyone else who sees this, but primarily to you).

73. RACY: (1979)

    Some clues will, some clues won’t
    Some clues need a lot of puzzlin’ and some clues don’t
    Well, I know I’ve got the fever but I don’t know why
    Some say they will and some clues lie

74. Very late coming to this – had to look up HYPERBATON (in Fowler’s – I guessed it was something to do with Mr Yoda’s grammar rather than his fighting prowess…) and BARTHES but the rest went in OK – though STASI held me up for a while (for the second time in three days – courtesy Vlad!).

    Re SHARP, and the comments about the correct shape of the sign, I thought I’d do a bit of digging, and came up with this screenshot of Beethoven’s manuscript for the ‘Moonlight’ sonata (3rd movement). As you can see, Beethoven tended to keep the vertical lines of his sharp signs pretty much vertical, but the crossing lines are nowhere near horizontal: sloped all over the place – mostly the wrong way! I guess we should take Beethoven’s style as the model. So Picker’s clue isn’t quite accurate.

    Much to like here – I’ll put ticks for AGINCOURT, WAIST-DEEP, CHAIRLIFTS, and ACTION REPLAY – but this is just a random selection.

    Thanks (belatedly) to Picaroon and Eileen.

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