Guardian 29,359 – Tramp

80 comments on “Guardian 29,359 – Tramp”

1. Plenty of smiles today, and only one that I failed to parse (SNAPDRAGON). Hadn’t heard of APPLETINI, or MEGOHM, but both easy to get from the wordplay. So “bed” is another word for it, is it? I’ve lost track of how many there are. 😉

   I wondered about at/for in 2d.

   Thanks Tramp & Andrew.

2. Nice puzzle if a little vague/clunky in places, as often with this setter IMO. Not too keen on IVY LEAGUE, MEGOHM and SINATRA (as mentioned by Andrew; I suppose ‘I got some eggs at/for £3 a dozen’ works.)
   Favourites the simple ones like DOOR and GUESS.
   Is ‘screw’ for ‘have sex with’ considered acceptable in the Guardian? I don’t care at all, but some might.
   Thanks Andrew and Tramp.

3. SINATRA
   We have seen for=AT in a few puzzles. I have always assumed that this equivalence is in the sense of
   ‘working for/AT a company’ (though there is a difference between the two usages).
   Someone might have explained it on earlier occasions but unable to recall that.

   Crossed beaulieu@2. Your example works better, I think.

4. I too found this quite gentle, with a couple that made me stop and think. Very elegant clues with good surfaces throughout.

   Re at/for, how about ‘I’d like to book a haircut for/at sometime this week’? That reminds me – job for today!

   Thanks both.

5. Very enjoyable with two super anagrams to get us started in WISHFUL THINKING and WOMANISER and a delightful swipe at the politicos in APOTHECARY. I also liked GUESS and FETCH – and how nice to see Nancy given another run out in 2d.

   Thanks Tramp and Andrew

6. GDU@1 ‘bed’ refers to a flower bed. I think the surface of 22 works better with ‘the Queen’, but Andrew is right that HM can be ‘his’ or ‘her’. Didn’t find this as straightforward as Andrew, particularly on the first pass on the across clues, though WISHFUL THINKING went in immediately. But the down clues provided the crossers to clarify the others. For SINATRA, how about ‘they’re for sale at £1 each’, ‘they’re for sale for £1 each’ for the for/at identity.
   Took me a while to see leans for tips to parse FISHEYE LENS, though the answer was obvious once I’d twigged that ‘angle’ was ‘fish’. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

7. Sorry for repeating the for/at equivalence. The other entries weren’t there when I started typing.

8. 1a & 15a my only successes.

9. Thanks Tramp & Andrew, that was great fun. GUESS made me smile.
   I thought 2d could be Function AT RA (i.e. where artists are)

10. Tomsdad @ 6, it’s a flowerbed in 13a, but I was alluding to 3d.

11. I had trouble parsing 2d. Mainly because I had Sinitta!

12. GDU@10
    FLATBEDS
    Not exactly it. To have it…
    to screw=to BED.

13. 6d – where does “NO DOFF” come from?

14. KVa @ 12, where would I be without your help?

    I confess to having used “it” in its innocent, original, unadulterated form …

15. Amusing thread. Excellent crossword. My top was FISHEYE LENS. Thanks Andrew and Tramp.

16. GDU@14
    Sorry. No offence meant. I should have added a smiley.

    Steffen@13
    NOD OFF
    without=NO
    lift=DOFF (as in lifting/doffing a hat, I think)

17. I found this enjoyable but that it was tricky to parse some clues. 18A DOOR defeated me and seems obvious now. Similarly 23A FISH EYE LENS.
    (The lens bit….). Andrew, very many thanks. I DOFF my 🎩 to you by reference to my favourite clue NOD OFF. Stefan @8&13 hope that explains that clue. Good to see you doing the Quick Cryptic as well. Hang in there. My other top clue was APOTHECARY for the wit as per PM@ 5 and because I have always liked the word. Also thank you to Bealieu@2 and following contributors re for/at. Finally, many thanks TRAMP. 😎

18. me@16
    FLATBEDS
    It was wrong on my part to have assumed that GDU didn’t read the blog or didn’t know such a simple word.
    Apologies once again.

19. Spent far too long trying to parse TBILISI until Harry & Meg put me straight 🙂

    Pretty plain sailing for a Tramp with top marks for APOTHECARY and an ear-worm from China Crisis WISHFUL THINKING

    Cheers T&A (appropriate given the themette)

20. KVa, no offence taken. Don’t feel bad. Perhaps I should have added a smiley too. Here’s one 🙂

21. 😀

    I feel good now GDU.

22. Many thanks for the helpful blog, Andrew.

    Not convinced by go out for NOD OFF. Does anyone actually say this?

    Really liked GUESS, such a neat clue with an all-too-familiar surface!

23. Enjoyable without being too tricky. Some lovely surfaces. The ‘for/at’ discussion pops up here occasionally but I never remember it.

    Thanks both!

24. Agree with lots of the above. For me it was the sort of puzzle when almost the majority of the answers went in half-parsed as they were obvious. So a reverse puzzle – write in then work out why.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew

25. Quite tough and also enjoyable. I did it in two sittings with a one hour walk in between.

    24d reminded me of the old joke, What did zero say to eight? Nice belt!

    Favourite: CUE.

    New for me: APPLETINI, MEGOHM; nanny/nana = grandmother (for 9ac).

    I did not parse 22d apart from MEG = meghan.

    Thanks, both.

26. Good clean fun. Laughed at WOMANISED adjacent to SINATRA, for which he was apparently notorious. SPUR is in the middle of the grid but can’t see any significance.

    Ta Tramp @ Andrew

27. This was good fun, lots of great clues with clever surfaces eg “Dismissing son during sexual revelation?”

    I liked ITALIAN but wondered if we were going to get any objections to information = I as we have in the past (I’m fine with it).

    I can never see 3d without thinking of this:

    Well, I’m a-standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
    Such a fine sight to see
    It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford
    Slowin’ down to take a look at me

    PostMark @5: “nice to see Nancy given another run out” 🙂

    Many thanks Tramp and Andrew.

28. At the moment I’m so tired that I sit down and go out / NOD OFF / without getting anything I should be doing done. Does that work? I’d tend to say go out like a light.

    That was fun, lots of entertaining clues from Tramp, and yes, solved faster than I can solve Tramp’s puzzles.

    Thank you to Andrew and Tramp.

29. As with Geoff Down Under@1 I’d not come across APPLETINI or MEGOHM before, but with HIGH MAINTENANCE in place and the other crossers they couldn’t be anything else. I’m another who wasn’t sure about NOD OFF, and my last two in were AUCTION and the tiddly CUE. I expect golf fans, hot from The Masters last week, will know that an EIGHT on a particular golf hole is often referred to as A Snowman. Because of its Curvy Figure…

30. Plenty to enjoy today, many smiles. Thanks Tramp and Andrew, and those who beat me to explaining for/at equivalence.

31. Nodding off is gentler than going out (like a light), a mere quibblettino in a nice puzzle, ta Tramp and Andrew.

32. WISHFUL THINKING was a delightful anagram, with WOMANISED a close second.
    Like Beaulieu@2, I enjoyed the succinct clues, especially GUESS, EIGHT and DOOR – and thought BUTTERFLIES was rather sweet.
    I’m another who spent an age faffing about with Tbilisi, until MEGOHM sent me to the correct country.
    Thanks Andrew. Nice one Tramp!

33. Nice to see APOTHECARY. We had two APOTHECARY’S SHOPs recently in Yank 29,346 with “Insane psychopath arose where chemist’s seen” and Vlad 29,008 with “Unpredictable psychopaths are gathering round former drug dealer”

34. All done and enjoyed.

35. I took 4d LEAST as a homophone of ‘leased’. Andrew’s parsing here makes more sense, but mine got me to the right answer, if by the wrong route.

36. I agree with Mathew @24. Some answers were obvious from the clues but difficult to parse, e.g. SNAPDRAGON. Spent more time on DOOR than all the rest because I keep forgetting about ordinary men. Never heard of MEGOHM, so put it in then looked it up. Now I know. Thanks Tramp and Andrew.

37. I agree with Andrew that this was on the gentler side for Tramp, and for a non-Monday puzzle in general. But no less the enjoyable for that. SNAPDRAGON only went in with the crossers, and like others above I came here for the parsing. I thought that ‘bed’ and ‘screw’ were vaguely connected by inserting something, e.g. a dowel into a place for holding it. I had no idea that I was so innocent. Thanks Andrew and Tramp.

38. Having read blog and comments so far, it’s one of those discouraging mornings when almost everyone else has found it easier than I did. MEGOHM was a complete unknown and having revealed it I couldn’t parse it. APPLETINI I did work out, but have never met the drink itself. Lots of those annoying equivalences that won’t quite come to mind (but you know will turn out to be justifiable).

    Yes, I tried TBILISI too. And GET instead of NET (which nearly works).

39. I looked at 18a and thought DOOR but couldn’t parse it. Later I got the D, wrote it in and saw it almost at at once, I think that’s probably a lesson; if you have the word physically in front of you, it’s easier to see the connotations. I don’t see that it matters who’s on the throne, we are still expected to call them his!her majesty, even the shortarses we have at the moment.
    I had APPLE for a long time wondering where the I would go, duh. To be fair, this was a ride in the country day and tAther a lot of BIA had been consumed.
    Thanks both.

40. Gentle fun indeed – my favourite was 12a

    Thanks to Tramp and Andrew

41. Good fun and I congratulated myself for getting WISTFUL THINKING straight off but I still had to work to unravel the rest.

    I particularly liked the surfaces of SNAPDRAGON and FISHEYE LENS, and the wordplays for WOMANISED and NOD OFF.

    Thanks Tramp and Andrew (or should I say ta?)

42. For Tramp on FOR/AT see here – He got in early @2, having used debuted “belly”. We were mostly FOR it and not ANTI.

43. For FLATBEDS see Admin@33 here — [Please ignore “used” in @42]

44. Great fun – not Tramp at his trickiest, but full of good constructions and clever witty surfaces, as usual.

    I liked the anagram clues, and DOOR, CUE and GUESS are all neat.

    Thanks to Neil and Andrew

45. Thanks for the ‘flatbed Ford’ earworm. I wonder if we’ll see ‘flatbed’ defined as a type of trolley instead of a type of truck in a crossword soon, it’s used with that meaning all the time but I haven’t encountered it cruciverbially yet.

46. Liked this. Couldn’t parse “Nod Off”, and determined = Out escaped me at the time, as did Etch = Eat into, but finished in good time. Thank you to Tramp and to Andrew for the blog

47. For someone so interested in drugs (3 clues in this puzzle) it is surprising the setter thinks being high and being on a trip are the same (28a). They are not.

48. Lord Jim @27: The objections to ‘information = I’ seem to have died down. My own rationalisation is the ‘i’ which is the ubiquitous signage for (tourist) information places

49. Gladys@38 You are not alone in finding this trickier than many others did. I failed to see the can in the clue for Appletini, so ended up with Pepperoni, (pp in Peroni) imagining some ghastly concoction involving Dr. Pepper and a Negroni. I now see there’s an extra “e” anyway.

50. AlanC @26: Indeed. Our Frank, with his womanising and mafia connections, followed a very long tradition of religious hypocrisy.

51. Dr. WhatsOn@47. ”being high and being on a trip” rings bells from my era, 60s and 70s. I don’t understand how you’re differentiating them. Maybe I’m naive, or don’t remember.

    Haven’t counted the number of clues relating to drugs. There are quite a few, including “‘trip”‘ in the surface for HIGH-MAINTENANCE which you mention. And ”trip” again in the answer TRIPOLI, and ”drug dealer” and ”supply” I think a couple of times in surfaces. HAMMER is another word for heroin. And someone on heroin, is often described as NODding OFF. An EIGHT is a measure of some drugs.

    Does anyone think that the very central SPUR in line 8 could be a Nina? I can’t connect it to anything else, but it just jumps off the page. Has it got anything to do with drugs?

52. One of those I couldn’t get last night was 13ac. This morning, though, I thought “Oh, pain = agony. Cut it short, add “doctor” and precede it with”cut.” Snipdragon? Oh, yes, now I see.”

    I’ve heard of APPLETINI somewhere, but don’t expect ever to drink one.

    Thanks, Tramp and Andrew.

53. Simple fun but BED=screw (tacky).

54. I had not previously come across MEGOHM, having always seen it as MEGAOHM, so having constructed it from the wordplay I had to look it up to verify. According to Wikip this is an American usage, which perhaps ought to have been signaled in the clue?

    Mind you, having lived in the US for almost 30 years I don’t recall seeing it here either.

    That minor quibble aside, it was a fun puzzle on which I got barely a toehold on the first pass but eventually climbed to the summit, as it were.

55. me@51. Timed out before I could say that I worked for 25 years in prisons and community case management. But there may be more references from ”the street”. If it is a theme, it’s a surprising one, as many of our illustrious Guardian solvers may not know this stuff.

56. Don’t know if anyone here attempts the crossword in Viz, but I get the impression some of the Grauniad setters have lately been slipping into the same level of toilet humour. And very welcome it is too. We had a SHITE the other day!

57. manhattan@53. Agree that screw for bed is ”tacky”. I know that it’s a word in the vernacular and therefore is fair game in cryptics, but for me it just has unpleasant connotations of male, physical sex without considering the other.

    Wolf@56 disagree. The setter who used to compile the most ”toilet humour” clues seems to have that let that obsession go in favour of groanworthy puns, and to my knowledge, no one else is taking his place. I don’t see ”toilet humour” in Tramp today. Drugs and sex maybe. Don’t understand your comment.

58. [pdm@57 and 53. I have volunteered in prisons for some 30 years with the Alternatives to Violence Project, very big in Australia as well as the US. Thank you for what you’ve been doing there.]

59. pm @51: I also mentioned SPUR @26. It’s synonymous with stimulant, which would fit your theme? I was in the Met for 35 yrs, so I’m on board with you.

60. [And you Valentine@58 ]

61. Sorry AlanC@59. Missed your earlier comment. That could be it. SPUR as stimulant. I’ll pay that. And good on you for your work.

62. Thanks for the blog, I am glad the BUTTERFLIES were not commas for once, and they hovered above the SNAPDRAGON which was my favourite clue.
    Jacob@54 , MEGOHM is not really correct but is in Chambers so fine for a crossword, our Senior Lab Tech says it so it must be okay, perhaps the a-o bit is too awkward.

63. Bravo to those who have never heard of an APPLETINI, an abomination of mixology that thankfully seems to have gone back out of fashion. It’s bright green and sweet, with only a little bit of tart-apple flavor to cut all that sweetness. It’s aimed squarely at amateur cocktail drinkers.

    I also would have assumed it was a MEGAOHM, so thanks to Jacob @54 for checking the dictionary for me.

64. AlanC@ 59 , I was linking SPUR to the football team , so a tranquiliser.

65. Roz 🤣 Their supporters have been tripping for years.

66. Good fun. LOI megohm, not heard of it but remember it used to be Frogmore Cottage. Thanks Andrew and Tramp.

67. Paddymelon@51 Tripping usually refers to the psychedelic experiences from LSD, mescaline, mushrooms. Getting high is more generic, and is also used to refer to the effects of alcohol. Or so I’m told!

68. @67 And trip electrically is not always cut off. Alarms get tripped which actually turns them on not off (so not cut).

69. @27 we were very close to Winslow AZ a few years ago to check out the spectacular petrified formations nearby. We took it easy and didn’t go into town 🙂

70. Thanks for the super blog, Andrew and thanks for the comments.

    I don’t remember writing this but there is no theme. For the record, I’ve never taken drugs, I hardly drink and don’t particularly like cricket or golf. But, for some reason, those themes seem to make decent surfaces for clues. I have written the odd toilet-based clue in recent puzzles. I know many don’t like them, so sorry about that.

    The sell at/for £1 synonym is a favourite of mine.

    Neil

71. The APPLETINI sounds nasty. I’ll stick to APPLETISE.

72. Thanks Tramp for an entertaining crossword. For some reason I found this difficult to start but once I reached a ‘critical mass’ of answers the rest fell very quickly. My only failure was MEGOHM and that doesn’t bother me a bit. My favourites were WISHFUL THINKING (great anagram & surface), MEDIATE, BUTTERFLIES, HIGH-MAINTENANCE, and FETCH. Thanks Andrew for the blog.

73. Padymelon @56 – so ‘screw’ is ok now? I’ve been teaching my kids wrong all these years. When will we get ffforget it

74. Thanks for putting us themesters out of our misery Neil. It did make me chuckle, that with all the comments about being high and tripping, you couldn’t actually remember writing this 😉

75. Really enjoyed this.

    “Doff” reminded me how recently it was that a friend pointed out what should have been bleeding obvious. “Doff” and “don” are “off” and “on”.

76. Thanks to Tramp and Dr Whatson for putting me straight. 🙂
    And to Wolf for educating me about ‘toilet humour’. I see the term is used in a wider than my interpretation.

77. AlanC@74 … nice one.

78. Tramp@70, thank you again. Lovely to see you drop in. As a slowly improving solver, who has had to learn basics of cricket terminology without any desire to, it’s really great to know you’re not actually a fan 🤣. That really has made my day 😎. Night all. 💤

79. Sleep well PiB

80. I can remember Tramp saying in the comments here, with regard to another of his puzzles, that he would continue to use ‘for’=AT, but it still took me much longer than it should have to parse SINATRA, though I had written it in readily enough.

    I enjoyed Robi@41’s WISTFUL THINKING. I hope that wasn’t the grid entry, but if so, commiserations.

    I think ‘trip’ and HIGH are near enough for a crossword. Without having experienced the drugs first hand, like me and, apparently, Tramp, how are you supposed to know what the user has taken and what stage of enlightenment they have achieved?

    Thanks to setter and blogger as always, if a little belatedly. (I did finish it yesterday, honest.)

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