Guardian 29,391 / Philistine

93 comments on “Guardian 29,391 / Philistine”

1. Super cryptic, super blog. Thank you Philistine and Eileen.

2. Lovely puzzle with lots of good clues and aha moments.

   Seemed to be a few like SELF-PARODYING and ARETHA FRANKLIN where part of the answer was an anagram. Also two indirect anagrams which, for once, I got and really liked especially PAY UP which made me laugh when I finally got it

   Favourites included: CHEW THE FAT, WASP, DEPOT, CASSOWARY

   Thanks Philistine and Eileen

3. I’m so used to “dummy” ellipses that I failed to take the one in 27a seriously, and hence didn’t parse it. Serves me right.

   The L for “like” in ASTRAL was a bit unexpected. And although I now vaguely recall the British grocer in 18d, I wasn’t able to bring it to mind.

   Thanks for explaining WASP, Eileen.

   An enjoyable pursuit, thanks Philistine.

4. Good fun. I was rather bemused by ASTRAL, but now mine eyes are opened. Thanks to Eileen and Philistine.

5. More Philistine please. This was a cracker. Top ticks for SORT IT OUT, ARETHA FRANKLIN & PARSE. Bonus points for multi-word answers aligned consecutively in the grid, and ellipses that actually mean something 🙂

   Here’s a lovely way to start any day

   Cheers E&P

6. I’d pay ASTRAL as an &lit.
   I sort of knew what WASP was getting at but my uncertainty made me leave it until I got the crossers.
   Didn’t remember Ocado as a grocer (It appeared last I think in 28,974 by Carpathian and also blogged by Eileen).
   Favourites for me were MECCANO (a holy “toy”) and PAY UP.

7. I have never heard of CHEW THE FAT.
   I expect it’s american (again!). Needs to be indicated.
   (But very Guardian, though).

8. Thanks, Eileen. I did parse “yuan”, but like GDU @3 I regrettably ignored the ellipses and therefore mis-parsed it, taking “yn” to be the abbreviation for “yen” (as in Chambers), and thus referring to “another’s” currency.

9. Thanks Philistine and Eileen
   On the easy side for a Philistine, but great fun. Favourite was LOI PARSE.
   Only weakness, for me at least (probably not everyone) was 27a. I had no idea what RMB stood for, so Googled it, then the answer was obvious.

10. Thank you Eileen. SELF-PARODYING. The way I read it was cryptic definition. No need to make fun of such, ,as they were already making fun of themselves, The rest was wordplay.

11. As usual, I agree with Eileen.

12. WASP. My first guess for the STINGER. Familiar with White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Still can’t get my head around the definition.

13. I found this much harder to initially get into than is usually the case with Philistine. It was only when I realized that the helpful long down clue wasn’t SELF Important (this fitted with the several crossers I had in place at the time, but made no sense), but PARODYING, that I began to make any significant progress. I’m sure this particular setter was pleased to fit the wonderful CORONARY BYPASS into this morning’s puzzle, which contained the usual excellent clues. Last one in was FACED…

14. I think there’s a slight typo in the blog. The currency in China is the Ren-min-bi yuan.
    renmin (both second tone, if I recall correctly) being ‘the people.’
    I was going to write the Chinese, but my Chinese keyboard seems to have gone completely bonkers.

15. Very nice puzzle. At the more accessible end of this setter’s oeuvre, I thought, but that is NO criticism. All fell very neatly into face with ASTRAL and YUAN being particular joys, along with ARETHA FRANKLIN.

    Anna @7: the first OED citation of CHEW THE FAT is in a British reference from the mid nineteenth century. There is, apparently, a US version: chew the rag. That’s NHO for me.

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

16. I loved ANECDOTAL. I immediately cottoned on to ANAL for obsessive and the cryptic code (anagram) and finally left. Great definition: unreliable.

17. Anna @7 CHEW THE FAT is in C2016 with a slang indicator, but not particularly American. I can recall using it as a (non-American) English speaker.

18. Postmark @15 and Tim C @ 17
    OK. Good to know. Many thanks.

19. Ah good, I see that Eileen has amended the blog.
    I am worried as to why my Chinese keyboard has gone mad. It used to work fine.
    It will worry me non-stop now till I’ve worked it out. Computers! Gggggrrrrrr.

20. I’m absolutely flummoxed by YUAN. I got the reversed gold, and looked up the RMB. But no-one here or on the Guardian blog seems to have any trouble. And, even with a nudge, I don’t get the ellipsis. What am I missing?

21. Now that I have time to catch up …

    Anna @ 7 – I’ve always thought of ‘chew the fat’ as being quintessentially English: all of my grandparents used it regularly. Neither Collins nor Chambers suggests that it is American and Brewer has it simply as ‘an old colloquialism’.
    See also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chew_the_fat
    (I see that I’ve already been overtaken.)

    Thank you for pointing out my lapsus digiti @14 – corrected now.

22. If I were a CASSOWARY/ On the plains of Timbuctoo/ I would eat a missionary/ Cassock, bands and hymn-book too.
    Happy to be reminded of that verse, and liked this crossoword for lots of other reasons. Favourites included (liike Eileen) A.F. and C.B. – I don’t usually like answers split in this way but these were very good; also SELF-PARODYING and many others.
    Thanks Philistine and Eileen.

23. pdm @20
    There’s one US city in 26, and another (NY) in 27

24. I agree with Eileen. Far too many favourites and all beautifully clued. I loved the crossword solving references: PARSE (cheeky in at least two ways); SORT IT OUT; and PAY UP (which took me a while to parse because I could see YAP but had forgotten about the direction indicator – UP in a down clue). I wondered if there was a mini-theme “The art of setting”. Probably not, but Philistine certainly demonstrated it, as evidenced above by the variety of people’s favourites. Thanks a million Yuan to Philistine, Eileen, and Bc @5 for the earworm… So many classics to choose from. Have a lovely weekend everybody 😎.

25. Perfect like a sacred COW, above criticism and worthy of respect (like Aretha)
    I liked ‘a misguided notion’, TAT TOO, and ‘a broken heart’, which perhaps needs the excellent 23,24.
    Also liked that SORT IT OUT follows PARSE.
    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

26. A lot of this I found almost Mondayish, but by no means all of it, and had trouble with some PARSEing, including ASTRAL. Is L=like legit? Chambers doesn’t seem to have it. Couldn’t see what RMB stood for but obvious in retrospect, like all good clues.

27. Lots of very nice clues here, including two clue-as-solution zingers, and nothing groan-worthy or unfair (just that I didn’t know GITE) – Friday being the most difficult is only a convention, after all.

    I would leave the “No” out of 4 – White folks of English (& German?) descent haven’t been a majority in the USA for at least 100 years, and it would make a much wittier misdirection as they are often treated as the “majority group” or at least the default generic American.

28. Really loved this, but Philistine is one of my favourite setters.

    He turned up in this week’s Guardian blog where Alan Connor is discussing the sorts of clues that are found and under hidden he remarked that normally the letters are in the clue, but:

    Philistine pulled off “Fiddle in! (5)”, since the violin AMATI can be found in EXCLAMATION MARK.

    Thank you to Eileen and Philistine

29. @26: L = like is legit when it comes right after ‘primarily’

30. paddymelon @10

    There seems to have been quite a bit of catching up to do today and I’ve rather fallen behind (with other things to do in between). My apologies for not responding here to your confirmation re SELF-PARODYING – I did acknowledge it in the blog. 😉
    and @12 – I don’t understand your problem with the (double?) definition (or is it SORTED now?).
    and @20 – I hope muffin’s comment re the ellipsis helped: I thought it was a super example.

31. Thanks, Roger GS, I too had reservations about L for “like” (as I mentioned, above) and your explanation has cleared it up for me!

32. Splendid puzzle, perhaps a tad more accessible than many Philistine offerings, but that was more than compensated for by some beautiful constructions and surfaces.

    GARBAGE, SORT IT OUT, ASTRAL and TABLOID are clever, but biggest bouquets for AF and the surgical procedure – great wordplay and wonderful surface readings. And to have split entries on the same line of the grid is very satisfying.

    Nice to see references to both the day job and the sideline (PARSE) 🙂

    Many thanks to Philistine and Eileen

33. Thank you muffin@23 for 27, YUAN. I was following the trail of the ellipses rather than the definition, One US city, in 26. It had to be New York, but I thought it might have been another’s currency. I consider myself totally misdirected by the good doctor.

34. Favourites: CASSOWARY, AVOCADO (loi).

    Thanks, both.

35. A pleasure, as Philistine usually is. CORONARY BYPASS took a long time to work out because I was looking for other kinds of intricate work, but was worth waiting for: other favourites were SORT IT OUT, GARB AGE, ARETHA FRANKLIN and the CASSOWARY on the plains of Timbuctoo. The only problems were having to look up RMB (wot?) and trying to sort out how SELF PARODYING worked.

36. Thank you Eileen@30. Re WASP. Along the lines of what I first thought. WASPs are not an ethnic minority in the US, or here, where we also use the acronym, WASP. I just found ”no member of” a very strange way of indicating that, grammatically.

37. What a wonderful puzzle! I really relished this one. Tick after tick after tick. 17a PARSE, 19a SORT IT OUT and 23,24a CORONARY BYPASS (three in a row) attracted three ticks each! I also loved 11a CHEW THE FAT, a phrase which we often use in Australia; so clever to clue that one with just four words. Philistine is a master of the economical clue.
    I couldn’t fully understand 18d AVOCADO as I thought it was SAVE “peeled” and then GROCER “peeled” of the GR and ER, but then I couldn’t account for the ADO part. Just googled OCADO. I certainly learn a lot about British shops that we don’t have in Australia from doing my Guardian puzzles, a recent Paul where I found out a lot about UK supermarkets being another case in point.
    Thanks for a great blog, Eileen, and I fully concur with your summation of this terrific offering from Philistine. And of course thanks to my favourite heart specialist, who holds a special place in my own heart!

38. Decaf is not coffee. End of.

    gregfromoz
    Melbourne.

39. Anna @14

    尝试使用谷歌翻译

40. [Speaking of CORONARY BYPASS, my husband has coined the term ”Coronary Corner” for an intersection about 30 miles from here where there is a Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds, and Krispy Kremes (disgusting so-called doughnuts).]

41. paddymelon @40

    🙂

42. I started slowly, found Philistine’s wavelength on the Down clues, and finished at a gallop. Pleased with myself for spotting the lift and separate at 3D and reverse anagram at 19d, a clue type that often eludes me. Too many ticks to list.

    NHO Ocado but didn’t worry about it.

    Thanks Eileen and Philistine.

43. In the universal putative list of Great Female Contributors to Human Happiness, would you put Aretha above Eileen, or about the same? And, as an elderly male, am I allowed to even to pose the question, let alone imagine the category?

44. Brilliant puzzle, fantastic blog, great discussion.
    New for me, the device of ellipsis, and such a fine example of one for the wonderful YUAN. (I’ve seen these but hadn’t realised they are a thing.)
    So many more clues to love. I laughed at my first in, CHEW THE FAT. Then there were ARETHA FRANKLIN, CORONARY BYPASS, CASSOWARY, PARSE, SORT IT OUT.
    And thanks pdm@10 for your clear explanation for SELF PARODYING.
    Thank you Philistine and Eileen

45. Super puzzle, great blog – Eileen you’re right about ASTRAL.

46. @Anna 14 RénMínBì is 人民幣 in traditional characters (or 人民币 in simplified)

    Enjoyed this, a slow steady solve. LOI was SELF-PARODYING which I couldn’t parse but got it from the definition and crossers.

47. This was a record for us – 15 minutes and all in. Everything was right there waiting for us…

48. pdm@40
    CORONARY BYPASS
    😀
    That’s equally appealing as the beautiful def in the clue.

49. Thanks, Dr. WhatsOn @45.

50. Admin @39
    Not knowing any Chinese, I used Google Translate and, well, I wasn’t expecting that!

51. ASTRAL (Agree with Eileen and Tim C on the clue being &lit) and SELF PARODYING were my top faves.
    Thanks Philistine and Eileen!

52. Worth it just for ARETHA FRANKLIN, SELF PARODYING and CORONARY BYPASS. Exquisite crossword that sent me to sleep with a smile on my face.

    Ta Philistine & Eileen for the lovely blog.

53. Huzzah! My favourite setter. Brilliant as always. Just a joy from start to finish. I particularly liked anecdotal and pay up. Thanks so much Philistine and Eileen

54. Good puzzle and I even enjoyed the meta clues. Maybe the definition for …BYPASS was a bit too thin but I got the anagram from the crossers. Nice bit of Private Eye type smut in PARSE.
    Thanks both

55. I always enjoy a Philistine puzzle and this was no exception.

    Strangely, I filled in the bottom half first with little to see in the top. A brilliant anagram for CORONARY BYPASS, and very fitting. I enjoyed the wordplays of ARETHA FRANKLIN (with an extended definition), SORT IT OUT, CASSOWARY, and TABLOID.

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen.

56. @Anna & others: A few months ago I rember being surprised to come across ‘chew the fat’ in a book I was reading. I’m guessing it might have been Barnaby Rudge??
    Anyway, an excellent puzzle as per Philistine. I was tickled by 1a for some reason.
    Thanks to P & Eileen

57. Beautifully clued – apart from 16ac, (gregfromoz @38)

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

58. [gfo @38: Point taken, though a decaf in Italy (‘decà’) is superior to anything produced by Star**cks. All things are relative 🙂 ]

59. paddymelon @various re WASP – I don’t think the clue is suggesting WASPs are an ethnic minority. On the contrary I parsed it as “No member of an ethnic minority in America is a WASP”. Maybe more of a CAD than a DD?

60. Wonderful puzzle. ARETHA FRANKLIN was genius!

    Thanks Philistine and Eileen

61. Took me a while but absolutely brilliant!
    Thank you

62. bodycheetah@59
    WASP
    DD seems fine to me but your parsing is interesting.

63. A masterclass, as Eileen said. I enjoyed this throughout and couldn’t fail to notice, and admire, the array of different clue types and disguises – and economy, too, as Julie @37 noted with reference to CHEW THE FAT in particular.

    Many thanks to Philistine and Eileen.

64. paddymelon @40:

    A little harsh to refer to what Krispy Kreme sells as “so-called doughnuts”! Surely Krispy Kreme would call them “donuts”?

65. Very enjoyable for all the reasons Eileen says – though it turns out I didn’t finish: I put in ragbags instead of GARBAGE 🥴, which seemed right to me! I failed to parse ASTRAL, and eventually looked up RMB, only to be presented with the answer like muffin@9.
    Like others, I loved ARETHA FRANKLIN, which was very cleverly clued and self referencing.
    Took far too long to get PARSE! It should be every solver’s dream clue.

66. My list of ‘favourite setters’ varies over time but Philistine is always at or near the top. This crossword is an example why — there are no ‘bad’ clues and I thought many were excellent including GARBAGE, FACED, PARSE, CORONARY BYPASS (great surface & maybe a nod to 9d?), SAN ANTONIO, DEPOT, and BREAKFAST. I revealed the nho MECCANO and couldn’t fully parse a few others but that didn’t spoil my fun. Thanks Eileen for the blog.

67. Surrely 2d is CHA + GRIN not CHA + A GRIN. The a before smile is superfluous.

68. What Eileen and just about everyone else said. A masterclass indeed. Philistine and Eileen – could you have a better combination?

69. Pete@67: Beware Murhpy’s law.

70. Nice one. Very elegant, crisp clues. AVOCADO and CORONARY BYPASS stand out. Thank you Philistine

71. Pete @67

    I remember thinking when solving, ‘Why a smile?’ in the clue. Alas, by the time I wrote the blog, I had forgotten that!
    But, as Alphalpha says …
    … and, Alphalpha, I presume you wrote ‘Murhpy’s’ tongue in cheek? 😉

72. I thought it was Muphry’s Law: any post pointing out a typo, spelling mistake or grammatical error will itself contain one.

73. gladys @72 – it is!!

74. … or intended to write ‘Muphry’s law’, with reference to ‘Surrely’

75. That story (all right, ‘ANECDOTE’) of Cary Grant reminds me of my student days – the Student Union president, having passed me a few times in the corridor, one day accosted me with the question “Hello, who are you?” I realised, too late, that I should have replied (in a suitable accent) “I’m fine, laddie, hoo are you?” But alas! I wasn’t quick enough…

    All this went down a treat. For YUAN, I had only a vague recollection of what RMB referred to, but the wordplay made it clear. I guess if the clue had said “renminbi” – or even the Chinese characters 人民币 (I doubt if these will appear correctly on this blog) – it would have been too much of a giveaway.

    Likes for ACADEMY, GARBAGE, ARETHA FRANKLIN, CORONARY BYPASS, CHAGRIN, MECCANO (used to spend hours after school with my no.7 set…), CASSOWARY, SORT IT OUT and PAY UP (nice reverse clues in those last two). But this is merely a random choice.

    That bit of doggerel notwithstanding, I doubt if a CASSOWARY has ever been seen anywhere near Timbuktu!

    Thanks to Philistine and Eileen – a great solve.

    [edit] seems like this blog does support Chinese after all!

76. Greg, 38

    Agreed.

    Decaf coffee is no more coffee than alcohol free “beer” is beer.

    Gladys 35

    Yes I took ages over coronary bypass too, looking for Italian plasterwork etc.

    Great puzzle and blog as usual so thanks all.

77. [Etu @76: Decaf coffee is coffee, albeit bad coffee. And if the Germans call their non-alcoholic malt beverages beer, who am I to argue?]

78. Another fine Philistine puzzle, lovely to see ARSE and ANAL in the same crossword 🙂
    Thanks beaulieu@22 for sharing the rhyme that cassowary always reminds me of.

79. FACED was last in for me too – I agree with Greg@38, it’s just not coffee. The mention of AF by Gervase@32 got me wondering if doctors use ARETHA FRANKLIN as a euphemism for atrial fibrillation. It’s neatly positioned in the grid relative to CORONARY BYPASS, though as far as I know you wouldn’t use that procedure on an AF patient…

    Thanks to Philistine for a great puzzle, and to Eileen for a great blog and for dropping in from time to time – it’s always appreciated.

80. 1a, 26a, 2d and 18d are my solved clues.

    I haven’t checked the answers yet but I am now completely stumped.

    Are there any “easy” clues to get into the puzzle?

81. Good start, Steffen. This is a tough one when you’re learning. (Actually we’re all still learning, because the setters keep on thinking of new ideas!)

    In 3d, split the first word of the clue in two, then take the indicated letter out of a synonym for ‘tyrant’.

    22d starts with two definitions, and ends with some wordplay.

    20d is an anagram, but you have to remove one letter.

    Hope this helps you to get some more solved.

82. I admit to being a bit perplexed at this debate about DECAF = ‘not coffee’.

    I agree that I wouldn’t consider it ‘real’ coffee – but then I wouldn’t consider ‘Instant coffee’ to be real coffee either. Nor would I consider tea made from teabags to be ‘proper’ tea. I’m snobbish to that extent.

    But in the crossword universe, we’ve got to allow for other people’s interpretations of a word as equally valid as our own. So – if someone defines TEABAG as ‘something to make a drink from’, I’ll happily accept that.

83. I can’t speak for others, but my problem with DECAF was that it just didn’t occur to me, until it did. 😁

    There’s nothing wrong with the clue, we’re just having a bit of fun.

84. I appreciate the guidance (which I didn’t know how to interpret unfortunately).

    I am not understanding where OUT comes from in SORT IT OUT 19a…I’m sorry if I’ve misunderstood the blog. Is it to do with SOLVE IT somehow?

85. Steffen@80: ‘OUT’ is an (old-school?) anagrind so ‘sort it’ ‘out’ gives us (and I think I can speak for the entire crossword community here) ‘it’s rot’. So it’s a reverse clue: the wordplay ‘solve the problem’ and the fodder ‘it’s rot’ leads us to SORT IT ‘OUT’. Imho it’s a tricky, possibly a grade 3, clue. (I don’t think I’ve explained that too well….)

    You’re showing signs of progress in my humble opinion. You will soon start accelerating and wonder what all the fuss was about.

    I’ve been meaning for a while past to direct your attention to this which is a series of articles by the late Alberich on the general theme of cryptic crosswords. It might help you to understand what underlies the thinking of the setter. I parked it for recent holiday reading but instead spent the time jousting with Boatman’s second 50 (time well spent).

    Your moniker indicates that you are possibly (and here I invent a word for someone for whom English is not their first language) a pantogrind (it’ll never catch on (someone will do (or possibly has already done) better)). But your ease with AVOCADO tends to belie the theory so well done on that one.

    Eileen@71: Hoist by my own petard! (Beware Pete’s revenge – sorry Pete (Alphalpha exits in reverse, genuflecting (not easy (try it)))).

86. ‘It’s rot’ in the clue provides the letters for the anagram. But OUT in the answer is the instruction to change SORT IT into ‘It’s rot’.

    This sort of clue doesn’t come up very often, and it can be difficult to get your head around.

87. Thank you @85.

    I am British believe it or not! My mother gets the blame for my Norwegian first name.

88. @87: Not a pantogrind then. Doesn’t really matter. There are also this which you might care to explore – rather good imho.

89. Slow start, only had CHEW THE FAT for a while, then it came together. Great puzzle, lots of variety. I liked Aretha and ANECDOTAL, last one in FACED and I needed the blog to help me parse astral and avocado. 😀 Thank you.

90. Steffen @80 and elsewhere: welcome to the 225 blogs (if you haven’t been welcomed already)!

    Yes these crosswords, the Grauniad cryptics among others, aren’t meant to be a picnic. Do please persevere!

    Not sure whether a ‘plug’ is OK in the blog, but since the book is often cited here, I strongly recommend you get a copy of The Chambers Crossword Dictionary (currently 4th edition), which is chock-full of a myriad of helpful tips about solving crosswords – and incorporates a useful thesaurus to boot (I delve into it often enough when story-writing, as well as when crosswording).

    Best of luck!

91. Although I tackled this a day late, I still wanted to come on here to thank and to praise Philistine for a masterly crossword and Eileen for the always excellent blogging. I’m also a fan of the Cary Grant (perhaps apocryphal? These tales usually are when you look into them, so I don’t look) telegram.

92. What a wonderful puzzle. NHO of OCADO or GITE, but got them from context. In the end, only SORT IT OUT eluded me. I tried SUSS and WORK and ROOT and TOSS in that first spot, but never twigged to SORT. Fantastic clue.

93. I wondered about singular vs. plural in 4dn (MECCANO). I thought the answer was singular and was wondering about the plural definition (“toys”). But I only have a vague idea of what Meccano is, and maybe it makes sense to think of it as a collective.

    I’d forgotten the word GITE, although I’m quite sure I’ve seen it in past puzzles, and I don’t think I ever knew about OCADO, but the clues were gettable anyway.

    Roger GS @29 is correct about 6dn: cluing L as “like” would be dodgy, but cluing it as “primarily like” is surely fine. To me the looseness in this clue is in the definition: I’ve never seen “astral” used to mean specifically shaped like a star. But to complain about that in such a beautiful &lit clue would be churlish.

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