Carpathian continues her travels around the various categories of Guardian puzzle (always welcome in any one of them) and settles today in the Cryptic slot.
I’ve had a few days completely away from crosswords in beautiful Wensleydale and this was a nice puzzle to get me back into routine. Favourites today were 14ac ROMAN NUMERAL, 18ac UPHOLSTERERS, 21ac SUPERNOVA and 15dn MORRISSEY.
Thanks to Carpathian for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Clear about resort (8)
BRIGHTON
BRIGHT (clear) + ON (about)
5 Writer having home in South East (6)
SCRIBE
CRIB (home) in SE (South East) I’m not sure that I’ve met CRIB for home before but both Collins and Chambers give it, Collins as ‘US informal a house or residence; NZ a weekend cottage and Chambers ‘a home , esp one’s own (sl); a beach or holiday cottage (NZ)’
9 Cheated and went first after second turn (8)
SWINDLED
S (second) + WIND (turn) + LED (went first)
10 Soldiers work in spinning class (6)
TROOPS
OP (work) in a reversal (spinning) of SORT (class)
12 Drew near Oscar for small role (5)
CAMEO
CAME (drew near) + O (Oscar – NATO phonetic alphabet)
13 Bring back checks in front of gallery (9)
REINSTATE
REINS (checks) + TATE (gallery)
14 I, perhaps, mourn real man failing (5,7)
ROMAN NUMERAL
AN ANAGRAM (failing) of MOURN REAL MAN
18 People adding padding help trousers’ alteration (12)
UPHOLSTERERS
An anagram (alteration) of HELP TROUSERS
21 Extremely negative V&A star (9)
SUPERNOVA
SUPER (extremely) + NO (negative) + VA
23 Perfect backside a lad is concealing (5)
IDEAL
Hidden in backsIDE A Lad
24 Cold around back half of studio in folly (6)
IDIOCY
ICY (cold) round stuDIO
25 Run following improper kiss somewhere in the Alps? (3,5)
SKI SLOPE
LOPE (run) following an anagram (improper) of KISS
26 Head of intelligence gripped by socially unacceptable thought (6)
NOTION
I[ntelligence] in NOT ON (socially unacceptable)
27 Corset set remains in position (5,3)
STAYS PUT
STAYS (corset) + PUT (set)
Down
1 One caught engrossed by deep fundamental principles (6)
BASICS
I (one) C (caught) in BASS (deep, ‘of a musical instrument or voice’, Chambers)
2 Primarily if distressed individuals occasionally make such expressions (6)
IDIOMS
Initial letters (primarily) of If Distressed Individuals Occasionally Make Such
3 Boat travelling holy fiord (9)
HYDROFOIL
An anagram (travelling) of HOLY FIORD
4 Excessive response ended battle involving Royal Engineers (12)
OVERREACTION
OVER (ended) + ACTION (battle) round RE (Royal Engineers)
6 Name of knight returning after church (5)
CHRIS
A reversal (returning) of SIR (knight) after CH (church)
7 Wedding vow line – a test for over-the-top devotion (8)
IDOLATRY
I DO (wedding vow) + L (line) + A TRY (a test)
8 Plant in Cambridgeshire city coming from Netherlands perhaps? (8)
EASTERLY
ASTER (plant) in ELY (Cambridgeshire city) – the UK is west of the Netherlands
11 Date inside with sailor, alien and DJ (6,6)
DINNER JACKET
D (date) + INNER (inside) + JACK (sailor) + ET (alien)
15 Sorry semi reconstructed for miserable singer (9)
MORRISSEY
An anagram (reconstructed) of SORRY SEMI – a reference to this song
16 Doubt search is initially working (8)
QUESTION
QUEST (search) + I[s] + ON (working)
17 Steal liquid polish and newspaper (8)
SHOPLIFT
An anagram (liquid) of POLISH + FT (Financial Times – newspaper)
19 Make good former monarch back revolution (6)
RECOUP
A reversal (back) of ER (former monarch – Edward or Elizabeth) + COUP (revolution)
20 Virus getting hospital department flowing (6)
FLUENT
FLU (virus) + ENT (Ear Nose and Throat – hospital department)
22 Page got certain segment upset (5)
RECTO
Hidden reversal (upset) in gOT CERtain
Reasonably straightforward but enjoyable. I thought UPHOLSTERERS was superb and liked SHOPLIFT as well. Ta for the ear worm.
Ta Carpathian & Eileen.
I don’t think that we see Carpathian very often in the Cryptic slot (happy to be corrected), which is a pity when puzzles are as enjoyable as this one. A steady solve aided by clear and concise clues. I imagine that our friends Down Under might raise an eyebrow at the anglocentricity of EASTERLY, but I think that it is fair in a UK newspaper. Anyway, I liked it, along with other favourites SWINDLED, NOTION, ROMAN NUMERAL, and QUESTION. Thanks for the blog Eileen and thanks Carpathian.
I knew CRIB from US TV and films.
Wensleydale Eileen? Cracking cheese Gromit!!, although not quite reaching the heights of Lancashire. 🙂 I found this a very pleasant outing with only a couple holding me up at the end including EASTERLY (I didn’t have a problem as an Aussie resident paul @2) which ended up being my favourite. It also made me look up and read a bit about MORRISSEY which was fun.
Very gentle but enjoyable puzzle. I thought 6d could have been CHRIS or CERIS, shame to have that ambiguity.
Thanks Carpathian and Eileen
The miserable singer was unknown, and I too scratched my head at crib/home. Otherwise plain sailing and very enjoyable.
All I know about punk is Sid and the fascist regime, so Morrissey was a shrug, and nothing much else today to disturb the establishment. Ta to the lovely ladies C and E.
I didn’t know that MORRISSEY was particularly miserable, but the anagram was straightforward. I knew CRIB from the old thieves’ cant for a dwelling, as in “cracking a crib” = committing burglary.
For 15d MORRISSEY & 17d SHOPLIFT there’s also this song
ginf @7: The Smiths (one of my favourite bands) would be horrified to be called punk. Indie rock more like. Nice one FrankieG.
ArkLark @5: yes I had CERIS for 6d! It seems to work fine. I enjoyed the miserable singer in his sorry semi – and I thought the definition wasn’t just a reference to that particular song Eileen 🙂
I imagine muffin will have been pleased to see ELY clued as “Cambridgeshire city” rather than “cathedral”!
Thanks Carpathian and Eileen.
Do others find it easier to solve clues visually? For example, once I had spotted “SKI S….” I couldn’t solve the rest in my head but as soon as I entered the start and could see it in front of me, the remainder jumped out at me.
I read an article recently in the Guardian about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia and wondered if I have this condition. Failing to see crossword solutions in my head could be a symptom.
“Crib” seemed to me to be the sort of thing a Cockney character in a book might use.
Thanks to Eileen and Carpathian
I think, and checking I’ve had it confirmed, that CRIB for house or safe place comes from 18th/19th thieves’ cant – that’s where I’ve read and absorbed it from – so I’m afraid I wrote that one in. Funny how odd general knowledge makes some things easier.
I had the earworm already, shared a flat with someone who was a mega-MORRISSEY fan when that came out, so when I read the clue it sprang to mind. Me, I could only spell his name using the anagram fodder.
Wensleydale is pretty, I’ve walked through it on the Pennine Way and my daughter and I think we’ve stayed in Hawes YHA on one of our random meet up weekends when she was living oop north.
Thank you to Carpathian and Eileen.
Thanks, both.
New for me: CRIB=home. My online thesaurus (which comes with my laptop) noted it as a British synonym for flat, and I also never heard of it being used as a word for home unit in Australia which is where I’m from.
crib
North American informal he took the girl back to his crib: house, apartment, penthouse, cottage, bungalow; living quarters, quarters, accommodation; home, residence, abode, place; British flat; Australian home unit; informal pad; archaic cot.
@Paul, I come from the Land Down Under and was a bit surprised that the Netherlands are indeed to the east of the UK, but I got that one OK. 11d was my LOI just because DJ for Dinner Jacket isn’t common usage down here.
Miserable could apply to just about any Smiths song
Thanks to Carpathian and Eileen. This was an outing I enjoyed. Concur with likes for 18a UPHOLSTERERS and 15d MORRISEY.
[I just had a look at where Wensleydale is and saw some wonderful pictures of a beautiful part of the world. Lucky you, Eileen! Thanks for your return to duty to help out the solvers who very much appreciate your blogs, but so glad you have had some well-deserved time-out to relax.]
Sort of proves the point I guess, Alan C@10, I hardly know what it is and have absy no idea who it’s not ..
I knew CRIB, probably from old TV crime shows. Couldn’t see SUPERNOVA but I suppose it’s fair. The rest was quite straightforward and DJ was a write-in.
I was too busy typing so failed to edit my misspelling of MORRISSEY. Apologies.
Thanks to Carpathian and Eileen.
Had to check it wasn’t Monday.
Morrissey is a miserable human being, not just singer (sorry AlanC).
We once paid a fortune for dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant which was ruined by slow service and a punishing sound system. As we paid the bill, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” was appropriately playing.
Yes, straightforward, but as sweet as a nut this morning. The only quibble I might have would be with EASTERLY, as it depends very much where a solver is situated on Planet Earth. Though perhaps it’s qualified by the mention of Cambridgeshire, from which the Netherlands are indeed in that direction. Clumsily put on my part…
I reckon you would have to be south of Manchester for EASTERLY to apply – this, to me, puts it in the London centric homophone sector.
Otherwise a very pleasant solve.
Thanks Eileen and Carpathian
It’s always a delight to see Carpathian’s created the crossword – Quiptic or Cryptic – for it means there’ll be classy, well-worded clues with lovely surfaces and touches of wit.
STAYS PUT made me grin, and the image of that curmudgeon being housed in a sorry semi was pleasing.
(I did rather like The Smiths when they, and I, were younger, but then as he aged Morrissey grew increasingly objectionable and these days I try to avoid his outbursts. Hey ho)
Thank you Eileen for the blog, and Carpathian for all the fun.
No idea what you are saying Dave Ellison @24
[Shanne @13 and JinA @18 – thanks for your comments. I think of the Yorkshire Dales as my spiritual home and I’ve stayed there during the last forty-odd years in many different types of accommodation, beginning with b and b, through holiday cottages, trailer tent and touring caravan, finally splashing out a portion of my retirement lump sum on a mobile home in Wensleydale, which I very sadly had to give up after a number of years sharing it with family and friends. Now I’m back to holiday lets – this last one being a particularly lovely one in Aysgarth, along with seven members of my family, including my one-year-old great-grandson.
I’d heartily recommend the whole area, if you’ve never been. 😉 ]
Fairly straightforward but enjoyable.
I liked the surfaces for IDEAL and OVERREACTED, and the wordplays of TROOPS and SHOPLIFT.
Thanks Carpathian and Eileen.
Pleasantly straightforward and enjoyable. Solidly clued, but with no real standouts for me.
I also wondered about CERIS, but isn’t it usually spelled CERYS?
I can’t speak for muffin, Lord Jim @11, but I was mightily relieved to see ‘Ely’ was a city and not a cathedral 🙂
Thanks to C and E
Thanks Eileen for explaining 15d – I’d heard of the singer but not the song.
[Eileen et al: Although born and raised in Liverpool, I have ancestors from Westmorland and the former West Riding, including Wensleydale, so I share some affection for the place. Incidentally, I believe it was the first W&G film, ‘A Fine Day Out’, which was responsible for saving Wensleydale cheese from virtual extinction]
All good fun. I was particularly happy to see ET clued as “alien” rather than “film” for a change.
About 8d, travelling directly east from Ely would take you to the heart of Amsterdam, so I think that’s fair.
Straightforward but enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks C and E.
Nothing wrong with this per se but I think this would have been better suited to the Quiptic slot in that the majority of clues were simple charades so it was just a game of guess the synonyms and spot the definitions which in true Quiptic style were mostly fairly obvious
Hopefully the run of gentle puzzles is just the calm before the storm
Cheers C&E
Morrissey is miserable without needing a reference to the song!
RECTO new to me otherwise a very nice puzzle after yesterday’s head scratcher. Liked UPHOLSTERERS and DINNER JACKET; ‘Resort’ is a very tenuous definition for Brighton 🙂
I enjoyed this. Many thanks Carpathian and welcome back Eileen. Have to say the Smiths weren’t my thing back in the day, but I still really enjoyed the nostalgia brought on by the earworms from Eileen and FrankieG. Favourite today was ROMAN NUMERAL. Also liked SUPERNOVA but will save that earworm for another day. 🎆
[rr @12, I think some people really do have a visual brain, my son certainly does but I don’t…]
Thanks Carpathian and Eileen
Lord Jim and Gervase: yes indeed!. As for the easterly, when I was at Cambridge it was reckoned that the next highest ground to the east was the Urals, so the east winds were cold!
I loved SHOPLIFT.
Tim C @4 When we lived in Skipton, my wife and I and the two children visited Wensleydale along with our next door neighbours (husband and wife and two children.
At lunchtime we visited a pub. After ordering drinks, we studied the menu and the children wanted chicken nuggets and chips. The adults opted for a cheese ploughman’s lunch only to be told they’d run out of cheese. In the middle of Wensleydale?
Gervase@31, not many years ago I went into a very good fish and chip shop in Hawes, and they had deepfried (small) Wensleydale cheeses on the menu. Probably as healthy as deep fried Mars Bars…
I get the geography about EASTERLY, but I always have trouble about the direction of winds. It’s to the east, not from the east that makes me think twice. It sounds like a description that is counter-intuitive to me. I might be hemispherically (brain) challenged, but down here our cold weather is from the Antarctic. If someone said northerly it wouldn’t mean anything to me.
Gervase@31: the Wensleydale cheesemakers do trade heavily on the Wallace&Gromit association, but the man who really saved Wensleydale cheese was Kit Calvert – try the splendid cheese they named after him if you get the chance.
As for the crossword: like the cheese, it’s good plain fare, well made and enjoyable. I liked ROMAN NUMERAL and miserable MORRISSEY stuck in his sorry semi. CERIS must be a much commoner name in some parts of the world: it never occurred to me.
Yes, ravenrider@12: the visual solving thing happens to me a lot.
When I was about half-way through, I had 4 answers that began with ID, and I thought there might be something going on. There was nothing going on.
Irr@13 and PfB above so do I. I solve on the ap, but I much prefer the website as I can get the words horizontally, partially because I’m lazy and partially to make it harder. , I’m as confused as you. Anyway, I enjoyed this, so thanks to Eileen and Carpathian.
I have a cousin called Cerys, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ceris (though my father was Ceri. He was mentioned in a rugby report in a local paper as Kerry. When he gently pointed out to the reporter the correct spelling, the reporter worked him into every report thereafter!)
Sorry Pauline from Brum, you’re above me now.
Ceri is a name for either sex in Wales and Cerys a girls’ name. Just saying.
This was a very enjoyable puzzle, with no eye rolling. Thanks Carpathian and Eileen. I put in the name CHRIS immediately as I had never heard the Welsh name Cerys until recently. It came from a rabbit hole that started with finding the song Mfamwy. In the spirit of today’s discussions, here’s the link.
https://youtu.be/PlLZP2BnN3Q?si=ArHHf411zNnINykg
[gladys @41: Indeed – a hero to tyrophiles, though our Plasticine friends have done much to widen the popularity of the product. But I’ll plump for a piece of Mrs Kirkham’s Lancs 🙂 ]
[ronald @39: Smažený sýr (deep fried cheese) is very popular in Czechia, and might even be the healthy option on the traditional menu!]
[The popularity of Stinking Bishop as a result of W&G was a bit of an embarrassment to the tiny producers!]
Hooray this is the first Guardian cryptic that I have been able to complete and work out all of the parsing before checking in with Fifteensquared! Thank you for a lovely clearly clued puzzle Carpathian and the explanation to check against Eileen.
Congratulations, Amanda! 🙂
This puzzle was my fastest solve in a long time–and that includes the last three or four Quiptics. So I agree with the notion that this maybe should have run in that slot instead. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a fun puzzle!
Crib for home is certainly familiar to me, though it’s not a slang term that I’d actually use myself. It has a sort of “bachelor pad” connotation as it’s usually used here.
[Gervase @49: here in the Midwest, we’ll deep-fry anything. It follows that deep-fried cheese curds are a staple of menus in Wisconsin, and have found their way south to Chicago too. Delicious, but pretty firmly off my diet these days!]
Another quick solve but no less enjoyable for that – l do like Carpathian as a setter. Crib used a lot in rap and hip hop to refer to home. Favourites were basics, idiocy and dinner jacket. Thanks Carpathian and Eileen
Yeay Amanda@51 and may you have many more happy solves.
Thanks Carpathian for a super crossword. I enjoyed many of the clues including BRIGHTON, SCRIBE, TROOPS, ROMAN NUMERAL, SUPERNOVA, and SHOPLIFT. I failed with EASTERLY but with ‘aster’ and ‘Ely’ being such crossword staples the fault is all mine. Thanks Eileen for the blog.
paddymelon @40: Re wind direction, my mnemonic is; “I don’t care where it’s going, only where it’s come from.”
Lovely puzzle. But bunging in NEVICTORA for 21ac held me up. Pretty silly!
What GDU@6 said. I had the same favourites as Tony S@56
I found this very easy and straightforward for a Guardian – where are the cross-references and 30-letter answers?
I did like the super no, and the dinner jacket had good misdirection. I ended up stuck on 16, until I remembered if you see a U, try a Q,
Like Amanda – another first for me: a non Monday cryptic completed. Thanks Carpathian and Eileen. Perhaps the new Guardian Saturday cryptic has helped.
(For those who can’t remember whether winds come from or go to their name: “The North Wind doth blow, and we shall have snow” might help. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere that is)
(Glad you love Wensleydale Eileen. My second favourite place after the Lakes where I am lucky enough to live. Hope I’m tackling cryptics when I ‘m a great grandfather!)
[Tyro @61
“…and what will poor robin do then, poor thing”]
Gervase@31: my ancestors Westmorland and West Riding too (predominantly on facing banks of the Lune).
Thanks to Eileen and Carpathian for typically neat puzzle
A crib is a holiday home in South Island of New Zealand. A bach in North Island.
There’s a rather annoying advert that turns up regularly on Sky where a bloke says “welcome to my crib – let’s show you what I done done to it” (or something similar).
I enjoyed solving this, just right for a newbie lots of favourites,
ROMAN NUMERAL particularly.
Thanks for all the comments – glad the puzzle went down well.
[I feel slightly guilty at having introduced Wensleydale – but I did use square brackets and and it was lovely to hear of others’ appreciation and anecdotes.]
Why doesn’t 15 squared do the telegraph crosswords. The toughie is at least as hard as the guardian. And they even show the guardian quick cryptic on here now.
RB @ 69 Toryrag Toughies are blogged at bigdave44.com
No doubt the reference to the particular Smiths song was intended, but I didn’t get that. I thought it was just a general editorial comment about The Smiths’ songs in general (à la Mike @16) or about Morrissey as a human being (à la TripleJumper @22).
I was feeling pleased with myself for having solved a mid-week puzzle so quickly until I read some of the comments suggesting its suitably for the quiptic slot; it is just what I want in a puzzle: wit, humour and solvability without recourse to dictionaries or other cribs. Thank you Carpathian and Eileen. I wonder, though if roman numeral as a solution should be confined to history. Surely its number is up!