Guardian Cryptic 29,421 by Paul

80 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,421 by Paul”

1. 9A is a double definition – countenance can mean either ‘tolerate’ or ‘the face’ ie ‘mug’

2. I read 24d as notes sung by (Billie) Holiday. Just 2D not 3D?

3. 5a is PEA SANT(a)

4. 15 is MAN HAT TAN

5. 15d is MAN (piece) HAT (covering) TAN (biscuit, colour). Definition cocktail.

6. Is “on” doing double duty in 13 down as an inclusion indicator?

7. Note also 23d is A(imles)S + COTangent (function)

8. I think 15 is MAN (piece) + HAT (covering) + TAN (biscuit – colour)

9. Paul did it again. Lost me completely

10. Brutally tough pangram. I had MANHATTAN as MAN plus HATTAN a type of biscuit, doubly clever as Bourbon is also a type of biscuit. Written down to many favourites to list. I parsed BRAQUE as a Playtex, con = with and fronts as a covering I.e. bra (probably totally wrong but I wonder if Roz will concur with one of her favourite devices. Setter on top form I thought and KARATE CHOP was brilliant.

    https://images.app.goo.gl/GSR6KR65msVNAXbL8 again probably wrong.
    Ta Paul & kenmac for persistence in getting something out.

11. Thanks Paul and Kenmac!
    Liked NORTH-WEST, KARATE CHOP, PORCELAIN and BARELEGGED.
    Enjoyed the puzzle in general. Great blog under trying circumstances. Thanks
    again Ken.

    NORTH-WEST
    Anagram of THROWN=NORTH W=NORTH WEST (with the ? in place, I think
    the clue is fine).

    INCAPACITY
    Maybe we should read the ‘patriarchal seat of old empire?’ as INCA PA CITY.

    SueB@6
    BARELEGGED
    BAGGED trousers RE LI. There is no double duty.

12. SUeB @ 6 – no, the inclusion indicator is trousers. [BAGGED] trousers [RELE]

    10ac is NORTH and W anagrammed, isn’t it?

    Not entirely convinced by “a little taste” for aperitif at 7dn. Probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought if it wasn’t also paired with a groaner of a near-homophone, though. I always feel stretching the wordplay or the definition is fine, but doing both is a bit mean.

13. First pass I had only managed to get OHIOAN inserted, having remembered that it appeared recently. And that at the time I was fascinated that a 6 letter word could have 5 syllables, at least the way I pronounced it.
    Bunged in both BRAQUE and GOPHER without much of an idea about how they were put together. Thought NORTH-WEST very clever. But when I wondered whether the intersecting JAZZ and NETIZEN could possibly be correct I decided I was battling above my pay grade today.
    So feebly used the reveal button thereafter, and realised there were still several I would not have got anywhere near solving. I’m pretty sure others will say they had more success than me today…

14. Lord Jim & prospero: your parsing of MANHATTAN is of course spot on.

15. Thank you kenmac for getting the blog out today.

    I don’t understand what ‘holiday’ is doing in the JAZZ clue. Jazz with that meaning isn’t in my Chambers or my Bradford’s dictionary.

    I don’t understand the syntax of the BRAQUE clue. Loss of nude?

    And ‘que’ with no diacritic means ‘that’ introducing subordinate clauses, indirect speech etc. If it means ‘what?’ it should be spelled qué. (So that part of the clue is OK, given that diacritics are ignored).

16. Apologies David @ 4: I missed your parsing. JAZZ I had as a double definition with Billy Holiday notes and ‘all that JAZZ’ i.e. business.

17. If there was an homophone horribilis competition, some of Paul’s, like a pair o’ teef, must be in the running for the finals. Lots of fun. Ages since seeing cove for fellow, geezer, joker or bloke (Wodehouse, maybe ..?). Enjoyed, ta, and commises re the gremlins, Kenmac.

18. I groaned out loud when I figured out 7. This can’t have been too hard because I didn’t have to resort to a crossword solver at all.

19. Does anyone know how Braque works?

20. I had an implausible indirect anagram of bare with the que reduced to qu as it was followed by a vowel for BRAQUE, but I don’t think the other parsings are miles better. I really enjoyed the rest of the puzzle, though.

21. grantinfreo@19
    BRAQUE
    I have a feeling that it could be something like removing a synonym of ‘nude’ from a synonym of ‘confronts’ (like BRAves/BRAces) but unable to work it out satisfactorily.
    QUE could be even A QUE leaving only BR to justify?

22. 23 is cotangent, surely

23. I had a similar experience to ronald@13: slow progress eventually coming to a standstill, after which it became a reveal and (?) learn exercise.

    Absolutely no idea about JAZZ: the nearest I can get is “all that jazz = all that business” plus a vague reference to Billie Holiday. Likewise BRAQUE: got the que, but where does the bra come from? Is it a “nude” synonym for “loss of” (i.e. stripped of first and last letters?) But can’t think what the synonym could be . An EGG is not a chick, no matter how young: I tried BOBBING at first – very young chicks often being referred to as bobbleheads or bobs.

    Anyway, GOPHER made me laugh. Many thanks kenmac for getting the blog out against the odds.

24. I’m not convinced, but could QUE no longer be nude because it has a BRA on?

25. Puckish and post-Araucarian. Great fun, but Ximenes is rotating rapidly.

26. KVa @21 it’s Paul, so I presume it will relate to bras. He likes his Carry On humour. Bras… snigger, ladies where them on their thingies, snigger.

27. An enjoyable puzzle. The surface of ACHE (“Long facial hair, bald on top”) was clever. I liked the “pea Santa”, and the groanworthy pun for APERITIF.

    Like others I’m puzzled by BRAQUE. I suppose if the model puts on a bra that does result in the loss of a nude for the artist, but that seems a bit of a leap.

    Thanks to Paul and especially to kenmac for getting the blog out in the face of all the difficulties.

28. oh dear. Failed almost all the E side.
    I too went for INCA PA CITY. I liked ASPIC. Thanks to all.

29. Thank you Paul for this, & Kenmac for restoring site and giving us the blog.
    I enjoyed all of it for the creativity, even though it took a while.
    Favourites are the long ‘tache, the asian strike and the ‘chilled surfer’.

    grantinfreo@19 & KVa@21 re BRAQUE –
    I think it could simply be that if you have lost your bra you might be ‘nude’.
    So ‘loss of nude’ = bra, and confronts is just the positional indicator maybe?

30. For 1D BRAQUE I wonder if BRA comes from the nude (unclothed) CONFRONTS becoming ONFRONT and so alludes to a bra? But there’s still the orphaned “Loss of” unaccounted for. This one’s really bugging me; Paul usually has one or two clues that prompt an eye-roll followed by an “ok, fair enough I suppose” but this one’s a baffler.

31. Thanks all for the comments. I’ve corrected the blog in light of new information

32. kenmac
    Thanks for the blog under difficult circumstances.
    22A KARATE CHOP: I do not think that Paul should be accused of committing a (derived) anagram; parsing that part of the clue as an envelope of TE in KARACH[i] absolves him of the charge.
    7D APERITIF: Perhaps at a pinch the definition ‘little taste’ could refer to a drink, although it brings to my mind the hors d’oeuvre often served with it, and as far as I can see the usual suspects offer no justification for the metonomy.
    1D BRAQUE: like, it seems, everyone else, I cannot come up with a reasonable justification for the BR[A}. It just seems unlike Paul not to have a solid reading for the clue (even if it is sometimes allusive).

33. Ronald@13 OHIOAN actually only has two syllables as pronounced in situ – it comes out as something like A-HARN.

34. Thank you kenmac and other solvers for explaining the mysteries of BARELEGGED (trousers as indicator), INCAPACITY, and PEASANT; the de-tailed Santa made me laugh. I’m still not convinced about BRAQUE.
    What a great and generous community of blogger plus solvers, combining and contributing explanations after the site was down.
    A small correction for PORCELAIN: OR and C(hil)E inside PLAIN.
    I did love this puzzle and enjoyed the tussle, even if I couldn’t parse it all. I especially liked BEGGING, KARATE CHOP, NETIZEN, MANHATTAN, OCCASION, JAZZ.
    Thanks Paul and kenmac

35. Togs@33…many thanks for the local knowledge! As it was, I wasn’t even looking properly at the lettering of the word as I pronounced it to myself as Oh-Hi-Oh-Ee-An.
    Way back in the fall of 1969 I stayed for a couple of days in a large hotel in Akron, Ohio. There were multitudes of young Americans there from all over the States apparently attending the draft for the Vietnam War. Upsetting times…

36. 1d BRAQUE – As Admin says, a woman becomes “nude” after the “loss” of a BRA (plus (or minus) other clothes)…

37. …Plus QUE = “that” in Spanish:
    ‘… Conjunction – que – that – Él dice que está triste. He says that he is sad.’ or ‘…Pronoun – que – … that; which – la casa que yo quiero – the house that I want’

38. At least BRAQUE gave me something to think about while painting the garden fence. Not that I came to any firm conclusions. Maybe a word that means “loss of” but “nude” i.e. uncovered eg abrasion?

    I loved this and had an unprecedented 6 double ticks

    Cheers P&K

39. Thanks Kenmac and gang for parsing JAZZ (I always thought Billie had double L in her surname too, hopefully will remember now), PEASANT (I couldn’t get past PEAS for the small gifts and assumed an ANT was carrying them, so missed the big man), MANHATTAN (and well done Paul for remembering that many of us prefer Rye versions thus using “might”) and the valiant efforts on BRAQUE, i had heard of him but can’t think of eg a word _BRA_ meaning “loss of” or anything useful. All good fun and plenty of brain work, top marks for Casio too, thanks Paul. EDIT – Bodycheetah’s aBRAsion might be it but still seems a bit loose!

40. Earworm for 24d JAZZ – Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (1939).

41. Spent way too much time on this. Tbh doing a puzzle by Paul makes me yearn for a puzzle by Arachne or the late Nutmeg.

    Many of my answers were left unparsed: 5ac, 10ac (only got as far as anagram of THROWN + ?); 1d the answer was obvious to me as I know of the artist but I couldn’t parse the BRA = loss of nude; only got as far as 2d homonym GO = with a song? + FAIR= to be reasonable; 7d – ugh, groan; 13d.

    I parsed 3d in the same way as KVA@11 – INCA PA CITY. Not a great clue imo.

    New for me: COT = cotangent (23d).

    Thanks, all.

42. I couldn’t finish this: I had to cheat on a couple of clues. And I came here with question marks (indicating that I wasn’t sure I understood the parsing) on 12 clues, which is far more than usual for me. Even after reading the blog and comments, I still don’t understand how 3dn (INCAPACITY) is supposed to work, although I see all the parts.

    I’m generally a fan of Paul, but this didn’t seem like one of his better efforts: complicated and confusing, and not in a good way.

43. Another DNF for me. I could not work out ‘jazz’, ‘aperitif’ or ‘netizen’, the last of which is completely new to me. I got correct solutions for the rest, but ‘Braque’ required my meagre knowledge of art rather than any notion how the clue was supposed to work.

44. Unless JH pops in, this will be my earworm for today

    https://youtu.be/DDTvLldOgZs?si=mdcBfwNjJII-Bzk4

45. Probably not relevant: Loss of nude con fronts: nude con = nude study; fronts comes before QUE. No idea about bra thereafter.

    Thanks Paul and kenmac (and others)

46. Paul in nouvelle vague form today – gotta love him. Favourite was karate chop – had me puzzled for ages. Thanks to kenmac and the irreplaceable Paul

47. Is PA “the seat [bottom] of patriarchal” ?

48. 1d. A Google suggests that ‘qué’ in Spanish can mean lots of things including ‘that’.
    As for bra ….?

49. I was hoping Paul would come on here to explain 1d BRAQUE, as none of us have offered a satisfactory parsing. At least the solution was not difficult to find.

    You can see that I’m a sucker for witty or outrageous wordplay, as my double-ticked favourites were the pea-giving Santa at 5a PEASANT, the singing rodent at 2d GOPHER, and the tasty pun at 7d APERITIF.

    Thanks Paul for the fun and kenmac for the hard work that keeps us going. Well done.

    FrankieG@40, thanks for the earworm, although it does put me in a mournful mood. Is there any other singer whose voice so captures her life experience?

50. After 4 successful finishes, this was not for someone of my limited intelligence.
    On to tomorrow.

51. I think wynsum @29 has the parsing for BRAQUE: a nude is someone who has lost her bra (among other things), so “loss of nude” = BRA.

52. Lots to like here. KARATE CHOP, INELASTIC, PORCELAIN and OCCASION were my favorites.
    I think Paul must be a Laurel and Hardy fan because one of their movies features a chick converted to an egg by an elixir of youth potion.
    Not sure why 20 isn’t just “Laces shoes”. And the NORTH-WEST clue seemed a little too indirect to me.
    Overall, very enjoyable.
    Thanks, Paul and kenmac. Hope the site gets better soon.

53. Fun puzzle although as with many Pauls of late, I started exceeding my self-imposed time limit and had to start revealing answers, most of which I was able to parse.

    The whole BRA thing is going to bother me all weekend. I’m still not satisfied with any of the parsing attempts. I agree that if you lose a bra, you might be nude but I don’t agree that if you lose a nude, you might be bra. Just doesn’t work.

54. Only just finished this, having started first thing. Not continuously I should add, I have a job to do, but had to keep giving up and coming back. I too am fairly stumped by BRA, and similar to BlueDot above I think it is something a nude would have had to lose to become nude. Still feels a stretch, but I cannot see what else makes any sense.

55. Okay that was tough. Did nearly all but SW corner defeated me. Then again it was emotionally draining day at work so resources limited. Am quietly proud that those I did put in I was able to parse but please don’t think that includes BRA. Perhaps this means the variety of challenge for which Roz longs has arrived! Thanks Kenmac and Paul

56. I finished this early this morning, but it took me far longer than these puzzles usually do. I too would like the explanation of BRAQUE.

    Thank you kenmac and Paul for the blog and challenge.

57. Pianoman @55 and Michelle@41, I couldn’t finish this one either and was looking for a comment from Roz. Thanks kenmac and so many
    others for the parsings.

58. BlueDot @53,
    I think of it as a nude’s loss. Her losses in general are her clothes (in order to become nude), so one of her losses may be a bra.
    Does that help?

59. @58 that’s what I meant in my explanation. Sorry if it wasn’t clear

60. Cellomaniac@49. Try lightening your mournful mood with any number of Lady’s early songs. I don’t know how to link them, but try Any Old Time, No Regrets or Me, Myself and I with wonderful accompaniment from Lester.
    I don’t much like business=jazz. What is it about the word? It’s used to name cars, perfume, all sorts. People seem to like everything the word stands for – except the music.

61. A rushed solve at the end of a very busy day left quite a few as bungs – and then I came here to find that many others had not a clue either. Braque still makes no sense (and no, “loss of bra makes you nude” does not conform with the grammar of the clue in the slightest) . I am glad I spent no more time worrying about it. An aperitif is not a small taste of anything, it’s a drink before dinner. I see no link there at all. I also don’t get “jazz” = “business”. “All that jazz” means “and all the rest” so, again, not the same thing.

    Sorry, I usually really enjoy Paul’s inventiveness and ability to come up with new devices, but there has to be a definition which is actually somewhat close to the meaning somewhere and that was lacking in several places. And no-one seems to have a clue about Braque, so this one was a very rare dud I am afraid.

62. I was well off the pace with this puzzle the second too big for me challenge this week (Boatman on Tue being the other). Pleased to have done better with Qaos and Kite though this seems to have been quite a challenging crosswording week. Now into my 8th month of giving the daily cryptic a go and being able to read the blog each day greatly adds to the learning experience. Thank you.

63. Thanks for stepping in with the blog , I thought this was much better from Paul , KARATE CHOP and OCCASION are very neat constructions.
    BRAQUE I agree with KenMac though it is not good, nude is the sitter for the painting , loss of means what has she lost ? the answer should be clothes , BRA will have to do .

64. A quick go ogle tells me that ABRAY is an old form of ABRADE or ABRAID.
    ABRADE can mean wrench out or wear away – hence “loss of”.
    ABRAY nude would be BRA.

65. Wellcidered @64 ABRAY=abraid/abrade in the old sense of awake or rouse , from Spenser ,comes from braid and bregdan.
    The other abrade comes from the Latin ab and radere , different meaning and does not have the form abray.
    Very nice try but sometimes we just have a very weak clue.

66. There’s also a parts of speech mismatch (verb vs noun) in that suggestion.

    I agree, Roz, that Ken’s original explanation is almost certainly what Paul intended – and that it’s not his best clue ever.

    Great fun puzzle apart from that.

67. Yes , much better from Paul recently , this was really solid high quality , BRAQUE the only dud really.

68. KVa@21. Coming v late to this but, taking your point that “QUE could be even A QUE leaving only BR to justify” I wonder whether LOSS could be a BURDEN? Lose NUDE and you’re left with BR to confront A QUE? (Too fanciful?)

69. Seeing as no-one has mentioned it so far, it needs to be said. Re 24a JAZZ and “business” – both OED-sanctioned synonyms for the act of procreation.

70. This was above my pay grade! Though funnily enough BRAQUE works fine for me; loss (sustained by) nude = the thing(s) she’s lost, taking ‘to lose’ in the sense of ‘to take off (an item of clothing)’. The misdirection was to convert it to a noun, making it unfamiliar. ‘Confronts’ -> faces, comes alongside of.

    No worse than ‘to sprout’ = ‘to shoot’ ergo ‘sprouted’ = ‘shot’ in one of the puzzles the other day!

71. c.f.: I’m taking a photo of you – lose the sunglasses!

72. As an earlier commenter said, I don’t think a chick is an egg, no matter how very very young! So how about “Crooner cuddles chick, wannabe, on bended knee (7)”.

73. Can someone explain why 5ac loses the last ‘a’ of SANTA? I feel like any old c**p could be a clue if you just abandon letters at random, so I’m supposing there’s a justification that’s so obvious to everyone else they’ve not bothered mentioning it.

74. With no disrespect to the blogger (whom I am amazed completed this puzzle so quickly), I think 10ac is better explained as:

    [THROWN] out = NORTH W = Northwest

75. James @73 – I think the indicator is ‘detailed’ as in ‘de-tailed’ – to have the tail removed. I couldn’t parse that one either until reading this blog

76. James @73

    Sorry. It’s a symptom of the fact that I was rushing. Ex-225 is right. It’s a fairly regular trick, which I knew most readers will have encountered. Also, I had it wrong initially and was put right by early commenters.

    Ex-225 @75

    I had a lot of help from the original blogger, Eileen, who wasn’t able to access the site at the time

77. Van Winkle@69 That was said to be the original meaning of the word, or ‘jass’ as it was then.

78. Ah, thanks Kenmac/Ex-225 – yes of course, not come across that one before! Will add it to the mental toolkit.
    As an occasional dabbler recent Guardian crosswords have been a very bumpy ride!

79. Always look forward to paul but got stuck on this one halfway.
    “Go to work on a braque”

80. I have visited this page belatedly because I’ve only recently done 29,421 and wanted an explanation for 1d.
    I see that a full analysis eludes everyone. The comment at the head of the page that it was hurriedly put together may be the real answer, i.e wasn’t thought through properly and left as it is in error.
    The definition is ‘cubist’ = Georges BRAQUE, and QUE is ‘that’ in Spanish.
    The beginning ‘a loss of nude confronts’ does not relate properly to BRA using any known cryptic tool except a vague indication of putting a bra on and ‘confronts’ a link word. Someone noticed that ‘confronts’ could indicate BRAves but I think that is coincidental.
    So in conclusion it’s up to Paul to put us out of our misery (if he can remember it) or admit the mistake.

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