Guardian 29,361 / Harpo

79 comments on “Guardian 29,361 / Harpo”

1. Top Marx for this one. Maybe I’m finally getting on Harpo’s wavelength. The two DIS were very cute.

   Faves EYEBROW, OUTLIER & DISINTEGRATION which I initially thought was the answer to 1a

   Cheers E&H

2. Thanks Harpo and Eileen
   I equalled a record with 16 question marks, but you have resolved all (except RAINFALL!) Eileen – thanks.
   Favourite DISCOUNT RATE; I like clues where you build up the answer.
   I’ve never heard WHAT CHEER, but I guess it’s where “wotcher!” comes from.

3. Thanks both.
   1a and 27a are anagrams, as are 1d and 10d.

4. Enjoyed this, so thanks to Harpo and Monk. 15a was a new phrase to me but clear from the cluing, and 12a was also new to me. Sadly I came here to find out how 25a was parsed but it looks like it beat you too!

5. I’ve no idea about the RAIN in RAINFALL, but I think FA is zip and LL is lines (zip as in doodly squat).

6. That was fun! The long 14-letter clues were brilliant, especially DISINTEGRATION. I had never heard of NAAFI, so needed a check (and an Internet search) on that. ROTUNDA and EARPLUG were notable favourites, but EYEBROW was top of my list.

   I got RAINFALL from the other letters, my only attempt at parsing has been zip = FA (as in sweet FA, meaning “nothing”) and LL for lines. I’m not sure about the “filter” and “day”.

   Thanks S&B and happy Friday, everyone!

7. I parsed RAINFALL as “weather data” = (D)RAIN (filter left by D for day) attached to zip (FA) lines (LL)

8. Thanks Eileen & Harpo

9. One of my question marks is that SHOOT nearly works in 2d – HOOT as in BOO or “give bird”.

10. That makes sense to me gregfromoz@7. Thank you!

11. gregfromoz @7 and Roger @9 – that seems to work! Many thanks!

    Roger, I don’t understand your comment @3

12. I parsed RAINFALL as per gregfromoz @7. It was a slow but gradual solve. I can’t remember the last time I greeted someone with WHAT CHEER. It’s usually owyagoinmate these days.

13. For Rainfall, I had filter =drain with D(ay) left, F.A for zip/nothing and LL for lines
    Does that work?

14. Eileen @11 I think Roger is alluding to the fact that DISORIENTATING and DISINTEGRATION are mutual anagrams as are DISCOUNT RATE and DECRUSTATION. I originally had DISINTEGRATION in for 1a until I saw the error of my ways.

15. Thanks, Tim C @14
    I was just about to post that I’d just seen it – brilliant!

    I knew I should be looking out for some kind of Nina or clever device with Harpo but I had a bit of a technological crisis during the night and was just thankful to get the blog posted, so didn’t get round to going back to have a look!

16. PS: symmetrical, too.

17. Did briefly wonder about filter = drain (when you drain the pasta you’re not exactly filtering the water, but whatev). And failed to click sky = invert RU, dim! Otherwise a nice cogitative potter, thanks Harpo and Eileen.

18. I parsed COATI slightly differently: “Separated from leader, ran” as an instruction to split R + AN and then remove them “away from Croatian”
    Harpo being super-precise again?

19. I thought this was brilliant, though I needed all the crossers for OESOPHAGI and had to look up INTIMAE to check the meaning. Only saw the NINA in retrospect but the penny dropped as the fourth one went in. Lots of favourite clues but EARPLUG and EYEBROW the funniest.

    Thanks to Harpo and Eileen.

20. I saw the three DIS and wondered if 10d should also begin DIS, but no. Missed the mutual anagrams, though.

    Not convinced drain = filter

    Thanks Eileen and Harpo

21. This was chewy but eventually satisfying when put together.

    I parsed RAINFALL as above.

    Thank you to Harpo and Eileen.

22. Also I think the NUREMBER(G) goes on top of (over in a down clue), rather than round, the G?

23. Tricky, and a dnf for me (ABREAST and RESURFACE). I did manage to parse RAINFALL (same MO as others above): the ones I couldn’t do were DISINTEGRATION apart from the leading DIS; ABREAST, RESURFACE and NUREMBERG, and TSARINA took a long time.

    I enjoyed the ‘ighbrow Cockney intellectual and Wyatt Earp’s LUG. Thanks Harpo and Eileen.
    Edit: missed the anagrams.

24. Eileen, thank you for your very clear blog, as always. It’s kinda nice that there is still some innocence in this world with FA in RAINFALL.
    I was struck by the clues on the perimeter. Was Harpo just riffing, or is he suffering somehow?

25. RAINFALL parsed as gregfromoz. Brilliant spot Roger @3. I liked the cockney intersection of EYEBROW (boat) and WHAT CHEER, now commonly pronounced ‘wotcha’ in Sarf London, although it is not rhyming slang as such. Along with trap, MUG, another slang word for face, appears as a Nina in the 4th down column. Super puzzle.

    Ta Harpo & Eileen.

26. Tough puzzle, possibly because I am not familiar with this setter’s style yet. I failed to solve 2d and I could not parse 1ac apart from *indigestion or 27ac apart from DIS + IN.

    New for me: INTIMAE; BOAT RACE = face.

    I parsed RAINFALL in the same way as gregfromoz@7.

    Thanks, both.

27. Eileen, your ENNUI should read [p]E[n]N[i]N[e] U[n]I[t] not [p]ENN[ine] U[n]I[t] if the ‘intermittently’ applies to both words. Sorry to be picky as you do a fine job.

28. Gladys @23: I also enjoyed Wyatt Earp’s LUG(holes).

29. Excellent stuff, especially for a Friday. About to have an eye operation so probably can’t do crosswords for a while, sadly. Such joy. Thanks to everyone.

30. Best wishes SinCam.

31. Thanks again, Tim C @27 – of course you’re right. I’ll amend the blog now.

    And bodycheetah @22, too. I parsed both of those as you did when solving, then was too careless when writing the blog. Not quite in TOP GEAR today, I’m afraid – see me @15. 🙁

    All the best, SinCam! – I’ve had a couple of those in the last year or two.

32. I’m relieved to find others struggled with 25a. I think the [D]RAIN explanation is correct but I’m not fond of the clue, I’m not sure filter is a reasonable synonym. But if that’s my only gripe, that’s not so bad. There were plenty of clues I liked!

33. I think 26a works perfectly without ‘separated from leader’, but bodycheetah @18 must surely be right.

34. Thanks Eileen. We do seem to have had a lot of OUTLIERs recently (is there a statistical joke here?) all clued with the homophone to liar. Does anyone know why we spell the word for “one who lies” with an “a”?

    Thanks to Monk for the excellent puzzle.

35. Re COATI: my reading was the same as bodycheetah’s – but my explanation was less clear!

36. Really enjoyed this, especially for the accuracy of the clues – eg the “latest” in INTIMAE and “separated from leader” in COATI. Ticks all over but perhaps top fave is EYEBROW. (“Drain” is defined in Chambers (2nd def) as “to filter” so seems perfectly fine, but only teensy quibblet is use of FA in that clue – accurate, and I’m sure innocent enough, but seems either gratuitously crude, in its ‘pure’ form, or unnecessarily distasteful, if referring to “sweet” FA … perhaps I’m being over-sensitive!) Many thanks to Harpo & Eileen

37. DuncT@34. OUTLIER. You asked the question about liar and it got me interested as well.
    From etymology online: liar (n.)
    “one who knowingly utters falsehoods,” early 13c., from Old English leogere “liar, false witness, hypocrite,” agent noun from Anglian legan, West Saxon leogan “be untruthful, lie” (see lie (v.1)). “The form in -ar is probably in imitation of the refashioned forms such as scholar for scoler and pillar for piler” [Barnhart]. A different formation yielded Dutch leugenaar, Old High German luginari, German Lügner, Danish lögner.

38. Finished in good time, had no idea what “escaped from trap” or “sky” indicated, so failed to parse those…so many different indicators for homophones and anagrams… Thank you to Eileen and Harpo and best wishes to SinCam.

39. SinCam@29. Is that a cockney eye operation? 🙂 Hope you come out the other side seeing more clearly.

40. I think 25 across makes sense if weather is the definition and data filter is a drain. I don’t know much about data filtering but could that apply? Many thanks to setter and blogger.

41. Excellent puzzle. Perversely RAINFALL was one of my favourites. FA for nothing is becoming a bit of a crossword staple and seems fine to me.

42. All sorts of personal reminders, both recent and from the distant past as I steadily solved this excellent puzzle. As a small boy going into the local NAAFI on the army base nearby with an old thrupenny bit to buy a bag of crisps and coming out in tears as the price had just gone up to fourpence.
    That the COATImundi may look cute and cuddly, but they can be rather vicious.
    OUTLIER one of those words that I am never sure about the pronunciation of, rather like the word Denier when I see it in a text.
    At Newmarket’s Spring Meeting this week I was urged by my daughter to back a horse called Watcha Matey as apparently I greet people with that a lot (surely not?), and it won at 50-1. So WHAT CHEER rang that bell.
    Never thought I’d be one writing an essay on here as others do occasionally. Oh, OESOPHAGI took a while to piece together, and INTIMAE loi…

43. On reflection, I thought TOP GEAR to be a bit weak. I took “box” to refer to gearbox, but why do you think they called the programme that?

    [I used to watch it quite often, but dropped it entirely when they did a comparitive testing of the best car from which to do a drive-by shooting. I haven’t watched the most recent incarnation.]

44. I’d agree with the praise already recorded for this puzzle. Very tightly clued and a pleasure to solve. I didn’t find it as hard as some have suggested but maybe was just on the wavelength. EYEBROW was my favourite – I was about to turn to Google to discover if an eyebrow is part of a boat … when the penny dropped. WHAT CHEER was fun and I had no idea it was the source of ‘wotcha’ per AlanC. INTIMAE – nho – was a jorum moment.

    I’m another who parsed RAINFALL as did gregfromoz. I was advised against using FA recently, though I’d agree with Petert that it is seen often enough. The darker connection, as hinted at by cranberryfez, may not be common knowledge; it was certainly news to me.

    Thanks Harpo

45. Very enjoyable end to the week that was just hard enough. Only coati was new to me. As always I completely missed the nina, which is brilliant.

    I remain unhappy about drain for filter in 25A, but since I failed to parse the latter half either, that is the least of my worries. I also feel that “separated from leader” is not needed, or even helpful, in 26A. Minor quibbles in an otherwise enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks Harpo and Eileen.

46. For once, a Friday crossword that I completed swiftly, so the fun was over far too soon – but lotsa sniggering while it lasted, especially at Wyatt’s lugs and EYEBROW.
    (For 25A, I parsed FALL as Blaise@5 & Lechien@6, but I hadn’t the foggiest about the rest. Pleased to know I’m in good company!)
    Thanks Harpo & Eileen

47. I didn’t parse ‘rainfall’ but couldn’t see that the solution could really be anything else. Like others, I am sceptical of ‘drain’ as a synonym for ‘filter’.

48. Did not get COATI or INTIMAE, and I don’t think that coming back to the puzzle on Saturday (as I often do for a Friday crossword) would have made any difference. Highly enjoyable, with EYEBROW and CRUSTACAE as two ticks among many. I raised half an eyebrow on seeing an inspector described as a senior police officer; more like middle management I think. But I have just been watching Blue Lines on BBC where a (detective) sergeant was described as a senior officer, so maybe that’s grade inflation. Many thanks Harpo, and Eileen.

49. bodycheetah@18
    Agree with you on COATI (the ‘separated from leader’ bit).

    petert@41
    RAINFALL
    Chambers says DRAIN=filter (so the parsing is fine).
    However, if someone wants to have a sample sentence, sorry, wrong number.

50. Thank you Harpo & Eileen, that was hugely satisfying.

    Along with the peripheral pair of anagrams, there is another CRUST, a SURFACE, INTIMAE and a COAT.

51. Hmmm… A good beginning but had to get help for the last couple. INTIMAE and NAAFI were clever clues but too obscure on this Friday morning!

52. bodycheetah@18 – thank you, I hadn’t understood the need for ‘separated from leader’ but splitting r+an makes sense.

53. I use “wotcha” as a greeting, so I guess it comes from “what cheer”

54. Difficult for me but par for a Friday.

    As a scientist, I wouldn’t normally equate filter and drain, but as cranberryfez @36 and KVa @49 say. it’s in Chambers. The Oxford Thesaurus gives an example for filter as: the rain had succeeded in filtering through her jacket with ‘drain’ as a synonym, so I guess Monk is off the hook.

    I liked the wordplays in ENABLERS, INTIMAE, and DISINTEGRATION. I also particularly enjoyed the Sky Sport and the good anagram for DECRUSTATION.

    Thanks Monk and Eileen (especially for the trap explanation that had eluded me).

55. Enjoyable but had to do a couple of reveals at the end which was a bit annoying as they were do-able. Completely missed that 1a,27a and 1d,10d were mutual anagrams, brilliant. Thanks Harpo, Eileen & all participants on this excellent website.

56. A challenging puzzle for me. While I managed to finish it, I was unable to parse a few. I appreciate this blog and contributors for the explanations for RAINFALL, the boat (race) in EYEBROW, the relevance of ‘trap’ and of ‘separated from leader’. And of course I missed the brilliant pairs of anagrams.
    I liked OESAPHAGI, DISCOUNT RATE, EARPLUG and now, EYEBROW.
    Wynsum@50 is right, there are quite a few ‘surface’ words, another theme? Also TOP GEAR?
    Thank you Harpo and Eileen

57. As has been pointed out, there is dictionary support for dRAIN = filter, but my first, rather uncharitable, thought was that the setter had made an honest mistake. Many drains are covered by a grating which does the filtering action, so it could be assumed to be part of the drain itself.

    At the other end, I thought zip lines was very clever.

58. Rainfall. Filter = drain with d (day), zip = (sweet) f.a. Plus ll(lines)

59. @3 1d and 27a aren’t anagrams

60. E.Foster @59

    1a and 27a are anagrams of each other, as are 1d and 10d, symmetrically placed in the grid.

61. E. Foster @59
    What Roger @3 is saying (correctly) is that 1a is an anagram of 27a, and 1d is an anagram of 10d; not that they are all anagrams of each other.

62. @60 & @61 Sorry. Didn’t twig

63. Jim @ 58 I did think of posting about sweet FA as being a ‘polite’ alternative, but of course the clue did not have ‘sweet’ in it, and on googling sweet Fanny Adams, I discover she was a young girl murdered and chopped into small pieces.

64. This was towards the tough end of my scale – I give myself 75 elapsed minutes before throwing the towel in and this took 57.
    Thoroughly enjoyed the battle though. Everything fair. All parsed apart from, yes you guessed it, RAINFALL!

65. Thanks Eileen, RAINFALL took me a long time to justify, I first had drain in the sense mentioned by Dr Whatson@57 and also decided that, when instructed to “drain the spuds”, I am doing no more than filtering the contents of the pan through a colander etc but keeping the residue rather than the filtrate, so was happy all round. Unless anyone wants to claim that filter and drain are opposites for that very reason!
    Well spotted on those anagram pairs Roger@3, while trying to unravel 1A I got as far as wondering if the answer was the same as 27A but didn’t spot the other pair, and I didn’t notice the surfaces at all.
    For some reason I thought the NAAFI was a shop for service personnel, looking online it is clearly much more, has it always been thus?
    Anyway i thought this was a fantastic puzzle, appreciated the precision and the wit noted above, thanks Harpo.

66. Still not quite on Harpo’s wavelength so a DNF for me with 3 outstanding, but no complaints. 25ac was just plain clever and 7 down and 11 across introduced me to new things to watch out for when solving, with ‘sky’ and ‘escaped from trap’. Thanks to Eileen and to Harpo.

67. [My comments have all been made, so I’ll just say that I met a coati at the Iguazu Falls park in Brazil (the big park is over the line in Argentina, both worth visiting). There were coatis all over the place, completely unafraid of people. One of them climbed me like a tree and grabbed the snack I’d just bought out of my hand. They didn’t seem vicious at all, just very socialized.]

68. I thought this was great, and I must have been on uncommonly good form this morning as I finished it quite quickly. Loads to enjoy, nearly all the clues are excellent, but EYEBROW was my favourite.

69. SinCam@29: Best wishes for your eye op. When I had my first cataract operation I developed Irvine-Gass syndrome (swelling of the retina), treated quite simply with eyedrops but with regular visits for retinal scans to check it was healing properly. The technician who performed the scans was quite the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. As it was in France I didn’t dare say “You’re a sight for sore eyes” in case she misunderstood and refused to scan me again… I was quite disappointed when I had the other cataract done and had no complications whatever.

70. Hermano @70

    Sorry you were less than satisfied.
    I would politely refer you to Site Policy
    https://www.fifteensquared.net/site-policy/

71. [Well put, Eileen]

72. The most pointless comment I’ve ever seen. Jog on.

73. Marvellous fun.
    With NUREMBENRG, is rugby broadcast on a Sky channel in the UK?
    Like many others RAINFALL parsing escaped me so thanks for the explanations.

74. Thanks Harpo for a splendid crossword that I managed to complete except for DECRUSTATION. I agree with everything Eileen said.

75. If anyone is still there…
    Sorry, probably being very thick, but….
    ICEY SOU
    COT BREED M
    UFO NBC U
    TEE RU G
    GUS
    What am I missing ?

76. Me at 76 The MUG lined up vertically when I pressed post.

77. Hermano @70: Compilers are supposed to entertain us by providing obscure hints to abstruse conclusions!

78. I had an unparsed ISTHMAE (not really a word) instead of INTIMAE, but otherwise filled them all in. Did not parse RAINFALL or NUREMBERG. Guessed that NAAFI was going to be some British dining institution that I’d never heard of, and was correct. In general, thought this a very tightly clued puzzle with better than usual surfaces.

    But… am I the only one here who doesn’t think ROT can mean “infestation”? You wouldn’t want either in your woodwork, but they are unrelated problems.

79. ThemTates@79 I thought of both as being general terms for problems within an institution – “how to stop the rot?” being a request to purge some entity of whatever clique the speaker deems it to have been infested by. But as both dry and damp rot are (I learn) caused by fungal spores, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to describe either as infestations (Collins: a troublesome invasion) of the timber by said spores.

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