Guardian Cryptic 29,394 by Anto

72 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,394 by Anto”

1. Thanks for the blog. I needed it to parse STRAIGHT FLUSH. A very Antoish puzzle, I think he’s a bit of a marmite setter. I rather like him.

2. Not a bad puzzle. I agree with Peter’s quibbles, though, and add one or two of my own.

   With THROW I think Anto has fallen for the red bus/London bus trap. To throw a party is to organize one – you may well host it too but that’s a different activity. A bit of a nitpick I admit, but might as well get it right.

   As for DISSENT/DESCENT – the clue is ambiguous and the crossers don’t help. This is one the editor should have caught.

   In KNOUT, what happened to the “when”?

3. Thanks Peter, always wondered the same about downs, and I fancy there are a few other oddish geographical-feature words … fell, maybe? Anyway, yes a few little lumps, like the odd ‘when’ or ‘on’, but pretty pleasant, ta Anto.

4. Thanks Anto for an entertaining crossword. My favourites were TANKING, IN TOW, FORESIGHT, IDEAL HOME, DARK WEB, and HATHA. I couldn’t parse EUPHORBIA, STRAIGHT FLUSH, and HARD PUT. (In the latter I found it odd that ‘put’ was in the clue and in the answer.) Thanks PeterO for the blog.

5. Thanks for the puzzle and blog. No idea about the parsing of straight flush, but I guess I see it now.

   A bit disappointed that “put” is unnecessarily in the clue for “hard put”. Could easily have changed the unimportant connecting word. edit: I see now that I’m in agreement with TonyS in this!

6. An entertaining crossword, ta Anto.
   The “put” confused me for a while because I couldn’t believe the second word could be put given that it was in the clue.
   DESCENT/DISSENT a bit annoying, had to hit “check this” to make sure I guessed right. (I didn’t).
   Why is “OUT” “when available”? I still don’t get it.

   Ta PeterO

7. Thank A and P! I too wondered about “OUT”=”when available” but… you know… “when the book is available” it’s OUT

8. Washington Irvine @6
   Out / was released / available
   As in, his new record was out.

   Agree r.e. DISSENT / DESCENT. Feel likes it’s allowable if the crossers help, but not or they don’t.

9. I went through this quickly, it was like a quiptic…I thus didn’t see the problems with 5d, 11a and 20a which others have rightly raised.
   I now realise I had “Descent” instead of “Dissent”, so in fact I never finished the puzzle at all…
   Grrr
   Thank you to Anto and PeterO

10. I too struggled with 5d HARD PUT because of PUT In the clue.

    When an ambiguous clue is not resolved by the crossers, both possible answers should be considered correct. So, Washington irving @6, and TPS@9, you were not wrong with DESCENT/DISSENT at 20a.

    Apart from those two quibbles, I thought this was a good puzzle. I especially liked the doubly-short camp routine at 18a TENDRIL and the excellent surface of the “primary” clue at 7d RHOMB. Thanks Anto for the fun and PeterO for the nicely measured blog.

11. Downs, as in the South and North Downs, are so called from the Old English dūn, meaning hill, also found in Willsden and Abingdon place names, (and fells come from Old Norse for mountain, fjall). I looked it up.

    I enjoyed this and found it mostly an entertaining romp. Along with others, I tried entering DOG YEARs and hesitated to enter HARD PUT until I had crossers. I got DISSENT/DESCENT the right way round but agree with that quibble. Other than those slight pauses I found this straightforward.

    Thank you to PeterO and Anto.

12. Like most, I really enjoyed this but got descent/dissent wrong and loi was “hard put” because I didn’t think the clue and answer would both have the word put. But still a lot of fun.

13. A nice, not too hard workout of different clue types. Best loved clue was 9d. Least loved was 19d which I felt hardly cryptic at all. Not enough clash, if you will, between the two senses. I suppose it takes an editing error to distract people from what an, um, imperfect homophone 20a is?

14. Barely touched the sides and found this way too easy for a cryptic. Agree with the DISSENT/PUT quibbles, as but some nice clues all the same. I think DOG YEAR is fine as a singular definition. STRAIGHT FLUSH was my favourite.

    Ta Anto & PeterO.

15. Thanks PeterO.
    Most of the quibbles and challenges have been mentioned already.
    I didn’t get both opposites in STRAIGHT FLUSH.
    I liked EUPHORBIA. The ”envelope-by-subtraction” clue as PeterO calls it. Anto does like those ”if you do this you’ll get that result” kind of clue. It was also a very good surface. Made me look up plants and boron. It’s a thing!

    I was going to say, following PeterO’s comment about uplands and DOWNS, if they go up, they also go down, but Shanne has answered that@11, and so we have duns/dunes? Thank you Shanne, and for fells.

16. For down C2016 has “down 3 a bank of sand thrown up by the sea (same as dune); a treeless upland… [OE dun a hill; from Celtic dun]” and “dune a low hill of sand…. [Fr, from ODu duna; cf down 3]
    I had the same reservations about put in HARD PUT and although I just bunged in DISSENT without thinking, I can see the problem with it.
    I also originally had DOG DAYS (I must have had the film Dog Day Afternoon in mind) until the crossers didn’t work.

17. AlanC@14
    DOG YEAR

    I am with the blog on the plural bit.
    One human year=7 DOG YEARs. That’s how it works. Right?

18. KVa @17: I read it as 7 x DOG YEAR = 1 human year.

19. Noted. Thanks. 👍🏼
    Doesn’t seem to work for me.

20. Typical Anto. 5d and 20a should not have survived editing.

21. As nicbach @1 observes, Anto is a bit Marmite, and I’m afraid I usually find things in Anto’s puzzles that grate a bit. Today’s no exception – I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to be unhappy with the third definition of THROW; having “put” in clue and solution for HARD PUT seemed clunky; I’m another who confidently wrote in DESCENT when it was the other homophone that was intended; and BELT AND BRACES isn’t actually extra coverage, is it? It’s extra precautions against unintended uncoverage.
    That said, there is some really neat stuff in here; the clue for ELKHOUNDS is beautifully put together, I liked the COLT 45, I’m with AlanC @14 about STRAIGHT FLUSH and just to be perverse I also liked the clue for DARK WEB. I simply took it that it was the clue doing the engineering. Ah well.
    Thanks to Anto and PeterO

22. Re: 11 KNOUT. If my book is OUT it is available. But if I am OUT I am not available. Hurrah for words that mean opposites. (And I am not sure pedants should do crosswords.)

23. Yes, same kinds of quibbles here. Took a while before I inserted HARD PUT with a shrug, with Put already part of the clue. And whether it should have been DISSENT or Descent was a matter of conjecture too. To me they don’t even sound alike. KNOUT was an unknown, and almost went in as Known. Some other excellent clues sprinkled around however…

24. I could not parse or 9d or 24ac apart from the V+G. Sadly, my online dictionary does not speak Scottish – I did check to see if YIN = one in Scotland but it was not listed. I see it now in Collins online (I cannot access Chambers dictionary on my Mac laptop.)

    New for me: KNOUT=whip.

    Favourite: IDEAL HOME.

    I solved 20ac as DISSENT but I can see why some solvers would find the clue confusing in that it could go either way.

    Thanks, both.

25. Took me a while to get on to Anto’s wavelength, but it was worth it for some, to my mind, brilliant clues: being green and perfect place (nice use of the ellipsis), along with the beeb rant. And despite the quibbles (I was lucky on 20A).
    The EIDER in 2D reminded me of one of the Keats and Chapman stories by Myles na gCopaleen (aka Flann O’Brien). If I remember correctly it’s Keats who has started a duck farm to supply the bedding trade and is worried about something or other. Chapman consoles him with “It’ll get you down sooner or later”

26. Thanks Anto and PeterO
    I don’t consider having DESCENT a DNF – there’s nothing to show that it’s wrong. STRAIGHT is very oddly clued. EIDERDOWN is weak because the down feathers are actually derived from eider ducks; the cover isn’t just named after them. I agree that the DOG YEAR should be plural.
    I did like TENDRIL, VYING, and DOWN TOOLS.

27. Another DESCENTer here. Some nice clues but too many quibbles to really enjoy it. Along with those already mentioned, are straight and unreliable really opposites?

    NeilH@21 it’s extra coverage in the sense of extra insurance against uncoverage!

28. michelle @24: I knew YIN from Billy Connolly, who is known as the ‘Big Yin’.

29. I also had the same raised eyebrow over the singular DOG YEAR and the ambiguity of DISSENT. DOWN came quickly after many weekends in my youth enjoying hikes along the South Downs Way and YIN from Billy Connolly’s nickname. Everything else seemed very straightfoward; perhaps the editor, having taken away the traditionally easy Monday puzzle (every second week at least) is looking to make it up on one other day of the week? Having said that, I had never heard of EUPHORBIA or KNOUT, but both were eminently gettable from the wordplay. Thanks Anto and PeterO.

30. Hills go down just as much as they go up. It is simply a matter of perspective. In the distant past (when our language developed) people tended to live on defensible hilltops. From their perspective, hills went down from their homes. Today we tend to live in lowlands and see hills as going up.

    The direction was originally adown – ‘from the hill’.

31. [The KNOUT was a heavy whip used in Imperial Russia, generally on serfs. Its use could result in a fatality. It was banned in the mid 19th century.]

32. [Andy@30. Not if you use the same Ordinance Survey app as me. My walks all start where they finish, but the app rarely has the same height ascended as descended. They sometimes differ by quite a bit]

33. Living in the Peak District – where Peak does not mean what you might expect.
    [The seven year dog ageing calculation is very loose. Some smaller dogs should have a smaller multiplier. A better approximation for larger dogs is 7 + 7x “human years” ]
    A nice stroll. I did get a bit nervous though, when my first guess for the first word for the horse shooter was BOLT.
    Thanks both

34. oed.com has an extensive Etymology page for DOWN, with a Summary at the top, in case you cqba reading it all: ‘Probably a borrowing from a Celtic language.’
    The words ‘dune’ and ‘town’ feature.

35. Enjoyable and fairly quick puzzle. Stumbled putting CHINA because I thought there was an Egyptian priest called Ani. Of course, Eli is the standard crossword priest. Parsing of STRAIGHT FLUSH is a bit clumsy but otherwise good
    Thanks both

36. I’ve grown very fond of Anto’s crosswords (for the record, I also love Marmite) and this was as enjoyable as ever.
    My only quibbles have already been mentioned: “put” being included in the wording for 5D, and the barely-cryptic LIVED IN. (And yes, of course the editor should have spotted the former, but the omission doesn’t surprise me…)
    However, these were more than offset by VYING and COLT FORTY FIVE, both of which were little crackers, FORESIGHT and TENDRIL were also pleasing – and there was something oddly satisfying about the proximity of HALAL and HATHA.
    I had no problem with the aural wordplay of DISSENT – but I appreciate others are rather more strict about puns.
    Thank you PeterO for the classy blog, and Anto for the entertainment

37. Wellbeck @36
    I don’t think anyone has complained about the aural wordplay for DISSENT. The problem is that DESCENT is an equally valid answer, and it’s not resolved by crossers. Another the editor should have picked up.

38. Thanks for the blog, very enjoyable although a few things could have been tidied up by an editor. DOWN TOOLS was very neat, I liked the record speed for FORTY-FIVE , the grid was very helpful once I put in what I had, lots of consonants.

39. [ AlanC @14 returns to the top 20 , no doubt another successful mission to save the world, somewhere exotic with glorious weather and a pristine golf course. I will now be on my best behaviour. ]

40. muffin @37, Roger GS @13 complained about the “imperfect homophone” (which is what puns and aural wordplay are). I was trying to ignore it so thanks for the reminder. 😉

41. Don’t know why, but I took a while to get started but then it all yielded quickly. Maybe I tuned in to Anto’s wavelength.

    I liked the EUPHORBIA trick and STRAIGHT FLUSH.

    Thanks Anto and PeterO

42. Thank you PeterO for the parsing of 9D. I echo the many others complaining about the editorial lapses. Otherwise, a fun puzzle and a gentle respite after yesterday’s travails.

43. [Roz @39: thx, you know me too well and yes, The Algarve golf ⛳️ are pristine. Agree with record speed, v neat].

44. On first reading 1a “Being green…” – the enumeration (6,3,4) suggested Kermit the frog, but it didn’t parse, so I left it for later.
    Eventually it was my second to last one in – I liked it 😀 – followed by my Loi HARD PUT – I didn’t like it 🙁
    Earworm: Oh England My Leotard – Kate Bush parodied by Pamela Stephenson (later Mrs Big YIN, now Lady Connolly) on Not The Nine O’Clock News(1979–82):
    ‘I was IN TOw vYINg and yang and HATHA yoga…’

45. Good one from Anto; I did put in DISSENT but I can see the problem others had.

    TILT: HATHA and KNOUT. I liked the wordplays in TANKING and DOWN TOOLS, and the anagrams for BELT AND BRACES and DARK WEB.

    Thanks Anto and PeterO.

46. Just for the record, and possibly to encourage some others, I didn’t find this particularly easy. Enjoyable though. Thanks Anto & Peter O

47. muffin @26
    Actually, an eiderdown most probably contains goose down (if not something synthetic).
    NeilH @21
    I had pondered adding a remark about ‘coverage’ in 26A BELT AND BRACES, but decided that something like the jocular suggestion of Judge @27 was suitable.

    I would put up a (mild) defence of 19D LIVED IN: In addition to the literal meaning (‘occupied’ – “he lived in a house in East Cheam”) it has the particular meaning of not pristine, but still serviceable (‘looking well used’ – “his clothes looked lived in”) – or as a euphemism for worn out. Although not unrelated, I think the two meanings are sufficiently distinct to serve as a double definition.

48. Arib@46. I agree with you. New words for me are Knout and Yin. Because I hung out with rugby players in my youth I put in jock strap for 21 across, then had to remove it due to the other crossers. It is a tackle defender though.

49. Anybody else try to work in “injecting heroin” for “shooting horse” i 8d? Or try to fit in RE (“engineers”) into 20d?

    Is IDEAL HOME a thing? More so than, say, “ideal job” or “ideal hat”?

    This was fun. Thanks, Anto and PeterO.

50. An enjoyable solve. Same quibbles as others about 5d and 20a. I think 20a is what chess problem setters call a ‘cook’.

    Thanks to Anto and PeterO

51. Valentine @49
    There’s a yearly “Ideal Home” exhibition here, and I think there’s also a magazine.

52. [ AlanC@43 , your mission , if you choose to accept it, is to complete one of your covert Special Branch operations in a country where it rains a lot and there are no golf courses . This post will self destruct in 5 seconds. ]

53. Valentine@49 yes and yes

54. Am I the only one who briefly thought 20D’s “dodgy sites”, for which I had __R_/__B, might be PORN HUB?

55. No comment

56. Like muffin@26 I don’t agree that DESCENT for DISSENT should constitute a DNF, since both clue and crossers are 100% ambiguous as to which solution is correct. As Dr. Watson says, the editor should have picked this up. I wonder if the editor ever reads this site – or the puzzles for that matter. Thanks to PeterO and to Anto.

57. I agree Anto can divide opinion. Big ticks for 1 across, 13 across, and 17 down. But 5 down including ‘put’ in the clue and the answer is not for me and although l got 9 down, l thought it was horrible. Thanks to Anto and PeterO

58. Like, in all statistical probability, 50% of those who tackled this one, I put in DESCENT at 20a. What’s to choose between the two alternatives? The crossers are no help here.

    Once I reached that pass, I was wondering whether to go on with this offering from Anto. But I persevered, although I went awry for a long time by having put IN TWO rather than IN TOW at 2d. Also, I wasn’t too keen on HARD PUT – the definition is a bit iffy and part of the solution is in the clue.

    And a few others didn’t quite chime with me. But I’ll give ticks for BELT AND BRACES, FACE SAVER, DOWN TOOLS and FORESIGHT.

    Thanks to Anto (with some reservations) and to Peter.

59. muffin @26
    I did a little digging about eider down a while back (almost certainly for another crossword), but it took me a time to recover the information. The eider duck has never been truly domesticated, although some “farmers” have built shelters to encourage the wild ducks to nest therein. Eider down is collected from the wild duck nests, hopefully without disturbing the occupant too much, and consequently eider down eiderdowns can be bought – at a price.

60. I enjoyed this, mostly cos I was able to use the wordplay for words I had never heard of like Knout and Hatha, and then being able to check if it was right cos it “worked” for the clue!
    Didn’t get “hard put”. Nice “aha” for the colt .45 but also had to check it (so got into a rabbit hole of “peacemakers” and US liquor!! Which was fun 🙂

61. PeterO @59
    I see what you mean about price!

62. The third definition (NeilH@21) for THROW (‘launch’ for example a javelin) works well for me; and I don’t mind THROW a party (DrW@2) – if not the ‘host’, then who is the thrower?

    I thought carefully about DESCENT (unlike some acknowledged bung-and-shruggers, apparently 🙂 ), and concluded that applying ‘voiced’ to ‘on the way down’ was unnatural, whereas ‘dissent voiced’ didn’t need so much of a stretch. Arguably it’s also natural to have the definition at the front of the clue, but hey ho.

    I like marmite, and I also like Anto’s crosswords. The clues pick up on things in the English language that are amusing and the occasional lapses remind us that we are all fallible.

    Thanks to Anto and PeterO for the excellent blog and for responding to comments.

63. [I’ve seen eider ducks occasionally, but when we were on Bute a couple of years ago, just off the north of the island there were literally hundreds of them! Good eiderdown pickings?]

64. sheffield hatter@62 Well expressed … my sentiments on Anto crosswords. I learn and I am unsettled – not a bad combo.

65. Easy for the experts, but I enjoyed it very much.
    Did not know ‘YIN’ = one in Scotland.
    Thanks both

66. Hoofit@65

    Billy Connolly … The Big Yin?

67. I had ME TOO for 3d; lots of other embarrassing attempts at answers, none of which were correct.

    I solved 10a, 4d, 6d and 7d.

    11a- I realised K & N were involved but I put them at the ends of the word, so I came up with KNOWN (I thought this fit with “available”)

68. 17 down ends “…”; 19 down begins “…”.
    I’ve always intuited that this notation indicates a link between the clues, and this time there sort-of is one, but my more usual experience is not to see any. What are the dots intended to signify?
    And, could the answer be added to the FAQS, please?

69. NickP@68: the dots simply indicate that the setter has constructed a pair of clues whose surfaces can be run together as a single phrase and make sense. Sometimes, but not always, that extends further, so that the answer to the second clue is linked with that of the first, as in this puzzle, and this certainly feels a neater use of the device, but it’s by no means universal (and sometimes leads to harrumphing on sites such as this, which has all the effect on the setters that harrumphing usually produces).

    On 20A,I have just solved this puzzle on-line, and DISSENT was signalled as incorrect. It doesn’t look as if that is what earlier posters found. Has the Guardian changed its own mind in the course of the day, or has it decided that it will mark DISSENT as right in the morning and DESCENT as right in the evening, thus showing that both are indeed correct answers?

70. Sagittarius@69. Absolutely hilarious! Sounds like a scene out of Through the Looking-Glass.

71. Saggittarius @69
    20A: DISSENT was the Guardian-approved answer when I wrote the blog at around 1a.m. UK time, and it is the same now.

72. I wonder what proportion of those who knew KNOUT got it from Flashman?

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