Guardian 29,454 by Tramp

95 comments on “Guardian 29,454 by Tramp”

1. A fun puzzle. Started with KISSES and some clever misdirections to follow.

   There were one or two examples of possible usage mismatches between clue and answer, but it might just be me. “So-and-so is the prime minister currently/UP TO NOW” – don’t mean the same to me. Your mileage may vary.

   The other question I had is whether a website is a single URL or several. Wiktionary says “A collection of interlinked web pages on the World Wide Web that are typically accessible from the same base URL and reside on the same server.” It seems to say several, but leaves open the possibility of treating the base URL metonymically, and people do that, so no problem.

   Thanks

2. HOT PANTS
   in=HOT, rubbish=PANTS
   Does it work this way?

   Thanks Tramp and PeterO!

3. I’m with you on that, KVa. I feel that PeterO is overthinking it.

4. Not much fun in this one. I gave up, revealing the last few.

   Some of the definitions were too vague, for example, “opening in UK”, “one goes up to neck”.

   Some extra words that shouldn’t be there, such as “of” in 26a.

   I agree with the others about hot pants.

   Thanks PeterO and Tramp

5. Agreed @2

   A top drawer puzzle. Such a joyful solve….
   (though I agree that UP TO NOW for “currently” isn’t easy to justify) But so much fluidity otherwise. This is a setter who cares about his surfaces, and I know one or two commenters (and at least one blogger!) who really appreciate that…
   As for clueing, I thought SCORECARD was a doozy and a wonderful example of a true &lit

   Many thanks, Tramp – as ever!

6. Couldn’t parse HOT PANTS as pants is apparently British slang that I wasn’t aware of. I am now. It makes a change from having it as an anagram indicator. It’s in Chamber’s Crossword Dictionary and in Chambers. I’m guessing it’s fairly modern slang (last 40 years?).
   I liked the &lit SCORECARD.

7. Brutally difficult for me. All gibberish and I couldn’t solve anything but the explanations are superb.

   I didn’t even find the anagrams.

   I had TAXING instead of GUTTER.

8. I am sure pants has appeared in puzzles to mean rubbish before – that’s why it works as an anagrind, surely? And KVa’s suggested parse – which is what worked for me – is rather more likely than Tramp brazenly inserting double duty which would be very surprising. As William FP notes above, some very smooth surfaces in this and, yes, SCORECARD is delightfully done. Other big ticks include TAPESTRIES for the anagram spot, OODLES for the simple natural surface, WINDSOR KNOT for the overall image conjured up and INAUGURAL which is neatly assembled. Thanks Tramp and PeterO.

9. I’m another who parsed HOT PANTS as Kva@2. And although UP TO NOW took me a long time to work out, I think it works ok as ‘currently’ (‘governments aren’t doing enough about the climate emergency up to now/currently’). Took me a while to see the WINDSOR KNOT as I thought the second word would be ‘knit’ for a while. SOLWAY FIRTH definitely helped to complete the puzzle though. I missed the wordplay in SCORECARD thinking it was just a cryptic definition. I know I’m going to have to work on lateral thinking with Tramp and this was no exception. Thanks to him and to PeterO for the blog.

10. I really enjoyed this but Tramp is one of the setters I find chewy, so not a quick easy solve

    I also parsed HOT PANTS as HOT = in, PANTS = rubbish. I hear: “That’s a bit pants” for something going wrong from a number of my acquaintance – it’s something we can say working with kids.

    Thank you to PeterO and Tramp.

11. Found this quite tough but enjoyable.

    I could not parse the SHAM bit of 8ac.

    New for me: composer John Philip SOUSA.

    I agree with KVa@2 on the parsing of HOT PANTS.

    Thanks, both.

12. Thanks Tramp and PeterO
    Taking the clues in order, FOI was 22d! I then fired up the anagram solver, which gave me a good foothold. It then went in quite quickly, though several only partly parsed (though not HOT PANTS, which I saw as nearly everyone except Peter!)
    Favourite SINAI.

13. @4 – ‘vague definitions’? You mean ‘cryptic’ I assume?

    And if you’re going to start taking setters to task for extraneous words in clues I respectfully suggest there are Guardian setters who are going to occupy your time far more than Tramp

14. Very tough, but I managed with liberal use of the check button and a word finder. I only got the four-letter words on my first attempt.

15. Dave Ellison @4: picking up on Bingy’s comment @ 13, ‘of’ is being used as a link word in the clue for GUTTER. ‘Definition of wordplay’ is an absolutely correct construction and makes for a sensible surface which ‘Drain state by government’ would not be, surely?

16. 9a UP TO NOW: “getting on with” = UP TO, as in “What have you been up to?” = “What have you been getting on with?”
    6d HOT PANTS – oed.com cites (DJ Simon) ‘…Mayo (catchphrase: ‘It’s a pile of PANTS!’) 1994–‘ – (a 30th (Pearl) anniversary).

17. [Everybody’s heard 5d SOUSA here, even if they’ve never heard of him. (Since 1969, (a 55th (Emerald) anniversary).]

18. Agree with FrankieG on the simple replacement for 9A UP TO NOW. “What are you getting on with?”… “What are you up to?”

19. Me too re HOT PANTS, along with KVa and others. Took me a silly time with SHAMPOO but some good anagrams. Thanks Tramp and PeterO.

20. Left-field definitions & anagram fodder liberally sprinkled around the wordplay – it must be Tramp day. Enjoyed this in a masochistic way. Somehow stumbled through with a combination of guesswork, reverse parsing and half-completed hypotheses

    Ticks for SCHISM, SOUSA & IRONIST

    Cheers P&T

21. 8d SOLWAY FIRTH – So the ubiquitous songbird is almost an anagram of this and Fawlty Towers? (and Flowery Twats). Nice!
    Thanks T&PO

22. Had to come here just to celebrate the clue for SCORECARD: best clue I have seen for some time. Chapeau, Neil: the rest is very good also, as always. I generally find it’s shirts that stick to me (and leather seats) but I think the HOT PANTS clue is fine: HOT for in + PANTS. Great stuff.

23. Fun and testing. Lovely puzzle. Thanks Tramp and PeterO.

24. Steffen@7 FWIW, there is a list of anagram indicators here. Too long to be really useful, but it gives you a sense of the kinds of words to look for (and ‘pants’, which I only know from the country of crosswords, is in there …).

25. In a bit of a rush this morning but wanted to show my appreciation, so will just say, ‘What Oofyprosser’ said – could have said a lot more!

26. This took me far longer than it should have done, but it was well worth it. At the first look, the clues seemed impenetrable, but they were so clever and fair that they all yielded in the end – just the way I like them.

27. Some nasty, evil parsing today. I eventually managed to get a correct answer into all the spaces, but failed to parse SHAMPOO (missed having to cut the tail off both halves), UP TO NOW (couldn’t see either up=on or to=with), or HOT PANTS (parsed that like KVa@2, though if it works that way Tramp has used in=hot twice in the same puzzle). Nho Cape SINAI. Not my idea of a joyful solve with all the twisted grammar, but satisfying to get there.

    There are cryptic definitions (like “art in suspense”, which suggested some kind of mobile until the anagram resolved itself) and then there are vague definitions like “one goes up to neck”. One makes you say “Oh yes!” and the other makes you say “Well, I suppose so…” Which is which is a personal thing for each solver. For instance, I liked the def for SOLWAY FIRTH, but you may not.

28. The right hand half went in smoothly, but had a long break and came back to tackle the left side. Wondered for a while whether KISSES could be correct but eventually inserted it/them, but couldn’t work out why until PeterO cleared the fog for me just now. SCORECARD was another puzzler with the parsing. Last two in the interlocking FOOTBALL and OODLES, both cleverly constructed. As was the ubiquitous Taylor Swift anagram fodder. Liked FALLOW DEER best of all this morning. A tough but fair work out today, I thought…

29. Great puzzle, which I found knottier than some of Tramp’s recent offerings.

    Lots of clever constructions and great surfaces (I’m one of those aficionados, William F P @5!). Nice use of the ubiquitous Ms Swift and I also enjoyed WINDSOR KNOT, RELATIVE PRONOUN and the splendid SCORECARD, inter alia.

    I agree with FrankieG @16 about the parsing of UP TO NOW and with almost everybody for HOT PANTS 🙂

    Many thanks to Neil and PeterO.

30. My favourite by some way was WIVES, which had me scurrying after various obscurities before its simplicity became clear.

31. When I can solve the clues, I like the way that you can’t bung in the answers from the definition. SOLWAY FIRTH for example. When I can’t, it makes for a difficult puzzle. Thanks, both.

32. Hard work

33. Exactly what bodycheetah@20 said.
    For me this was a one letter at a time job. All fair in hindsight, but nothing went in easily.
    Thanks, I think, Tramp. And PeterO.

34. Super chewy stuff and I parsed HOT PANTS as KVa @2 and UP TO NOW as FrankieG @16. A generous interchange of hot and in, in that clue and INAUGURAL. Too many ticks to mention but SOLWAY FIRTH was the standout for me.

    Ta Tramp & PeterO.

35. Really tricky but loadsa fun. Lots to appreciate. Many thanks to Tramp and PeterO.

36. Great puzzle. I love the oblique definitions personally, it is a cryptic crossword after all.

    SCORECARD was an outstanding clue.

37. Not a clue about this, total respect to all those who completed.
    Thanks Peter for the enlightenment.

38. Thanks Tramp & PeterO, some neat surfaces backed up by knotty TAPESTRIES of wordplay.
    SCORECARD is ace, as is RELATIVE PRONOUN, which is a great one.

39. A few amusing clues but mostly hard work with too many unparsed. The sort of puzzle you only complete out of habit.

40. I had to come back to this several times during the morning. I often find it difficult to get on to Tramp’s wavelength, and this was no exception. That said, it was all fair, and some great clues. I especially liked FALLOW DEER, SOUSA, SINAI, and WINDSOR KNOT. My brain feels as if it has had a good work out. With thanks to Tramp and to PeterO for enlightening us with some of the parsings.

41. I always find Tramp tough and today was no exception, with only 2 answers going in on the first pass through the Across clues. The long anagrams helped me to get a toehold, and I got there in the end, albeit with a couple unparsed, notably 8A.

    Thank you Tramp and PeterO.

42. First time poster; long time lurker.

    I found this tricky in parts. Very enjoyable, none-the-less.

    Parsed HOT PANTS as per KVa.

    My quibble, if you can call it that, is with 1a. Shouldn’t ‘children’ = ISSUES, rather than ISSUE?
    I’m assuming I’m wrong as no-one else has mentioned it yet.

    (waves nervously to the crowd)

43. Mackerel@42. My dictionary defines issue as : offspring, progeny and,just as you wouldn’t pluralise them to offsprings and progenies, so you do not pluralise issue.

44. Welcome to the site, Mackerel. I feel somewhat guilty in combining the welcome with confirmation that you are, indeed, wrong. ISSUE as a noun means offspring/children and is applied to either one or several such. Hope this does not send you back into lurk-mode!

45. Mackerel @42: Welcome to the party!

    Someone who is childless can be described as ‘without issue’. I think the singular is fine. More than one child can certainly create issues, but that’s another matter 🙂

46. Thanks, all, for the clarification. Happy(?) to be wrong – always a chance to learn!

47. Anyone else get stuck on “front of leg” = “shin”? That messed me up for a good while.

    I also thought “attractive” might be “fetching,” except that “exetching” isn’t a word.

    How does ply = sell? Selling steam irons may be the trade I ply, but do I ply the irons?

    Good fun. Thanks to Tramp and PeterO.

48. “Ply” has multiple meanings, one of which (from Collins) is “to sell (goods, wares, etc), esp at a regular place”.
    So tool sellers might be pliers of pliers.

    Thanks to Tramp and PeterO.

49. Valentine@47: I guess if you “ply your wares” then the wares are what you’re selling? Not sure if I’ve ever heard “ply” as sell for anything more specific but that is probably enough.

    Didn’t parse SHAMPOO because I too missed the trick of removing the last letter from both words (and hadn’t remotely figured out what the words were). NHO Solway Firth though there was a Solway Street near where I grew up–eventually reverse engineered the anagram once Firth was in. Ticks for AWRY, SPAR, and OODLES, very short and elegant, and the smooth &lit in SCORECARD. I spent a little while trying to figure out if OOCHES was a word!

    Thanks Tramp and PeterO!

50. Valentine @47
    Not the commonest use, but Collins online includes:
    ply (in British English) 3 to sell (goods, wares, etc) esp at a regular price.

51. I found this really tough, though enjoyable as usual with Tramp. Some Yoda-ish grammar (Children out of university = ISSuE) but excellent overall. Thanks to S and B.

52. [Gervase@29 – that doesn’t surprise me! 🙂 ]

53. UP TO NOW is not a phrase in common use, surely. We know what it means, but what people actually say is ‘up until now’.

54. Alec @53
    “Up to now” is a familiar phrase to me from this great album (which I haven’t worked out how to make play, so this is just the Google result!)

55. I found this one tough but fair though I’m surprised no one has questioned the definition of “that” as a relative pronoun. It’s a demonstrative pronoun, so “that” cannot be the definition.

56. Roy @55:

    Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
    The jaws THAT bite, the claws THAT catch….

57. Alec @53
    I might have mentioned in the blog that to me UP TO NOW (and, perhaps more particularly, “up until now’) suggests to me something (situation, opinion, whatever) which has been the case previously, but has recently been changed – so definitely not ‘currently’. AS OF NOW would be a better match (but will not parse or match the crossers. of course).

58. PeterO @57: ‘Up until now’ is usually followed by a verb in the past tense: ‘up until now the weather was fine’ – which does hint at a change. But ‘up to now’ can be ‘currently’: ‘up to now Team GB have 12 gold medals’. But I did posit AS OF NOW to start with…

59. I would like to add my appreciation of the SCORECARD clue

60. Haven’t read the comments yet, but that was quite a puzzle. I had to reveal three (3, 4 and 8a) as my brain stopped working: I just (otherwise) finished after starting it mid-morning and then coming back to it.

    It feels worth the effort to have got to near-completion: some of the parsing was beyond me but some of it made me laugh or at least smile that I was able to get my head around it.

    Whatever it was about it, this was one of those that I didn’t lose patience with, regardless of how difficult I found it.

61. muffin@54: Dransfield – The Fiddler’s Dream – Songs – sounds good.

62. [Thanks very much, Frankie. I don’t know how that first site was supposed to work. Yes, great album, except the long track is a bit tedious!]

63. @56 Gervase – “that” is used incorrectly as a relative pronoun – it should be “which”

64. Wiltshire solver @63
    “which” is nearly always incorrect unless preceded by a comma. When I am proofreading, I often have to replace “which” by “that”.
    “The interesting book, which is in the library”
    “The interesting book that is in the library”
    have slightly different connotations.

65. Wiltshire solver @63 – please see here:
    https://editorsmanual.com/articles/that-relative-pronoun/
    and here:
    https://www.nurseryrhymes.org/this-is-the-house-that-jack-built.html
    ‘which’ would sound pretty silly!

66. muffin @64 – I used to love, when teaching my students the use of the comma, helping them distinguish between a descriptive relative clause: ‘My sister, who lives in London, has two children’ and a definitive one: ‘My sister who lives in London (not the sister who lives in Dundee) has two children’.

67. Thanks Eileen. Commas seem to cause nearly as much trouble as apostrophes! Did you see the news item that Yorkshire County Council had to redo their litter posters with the caption “Gerrit in’t bin” because the apostrophe was in the wrong place?

68. I was another “as of now” at 9a, until the U from 5d SOUSA made the correct answer clear. UP TO NOW is an ambiguous phrase – it can mean “before but not anymore”, or “before and still”, so I think Tramp is on solid ground here.

    Count me among the SCORECARD lovers (@4d), and among the appreciators of meaningful and witty surfaces. This puzzle had lots, so thanks Tramp and PeterO for the fun and parsing help.

69. When it comes to pronouns I long since reconciled to that there is so much I don’t understand.

    I don’t recall ‘tee’=’T’ before. What next: Aye=A, Bee=B, Sea=C (need I (eye) go on?)?

    I’ve taken to printing these off (dead trees, I know…) and doing them in the dead of night (more dead!) so it’s taken me up to now (getting on for 7.30pm) to pop up with appreciation of the wonderful OODLES’s surface.

    (And can we (pleeeease…) not open the apostrophe’s debate..) 🙂

70. The choice of whether it’s “which” or “that” can be determined by whether the phrase would make sense if the words following which or that were omitted. If yes, then it’s which, if not, then that. For example “the shoes which I am holding are made out of crocodile skin” would make sense if you also said “the shoes are made out of crocodile skin”. Whereas if you said “I must remember that I have a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday” would not make a lot of sense if you said “I must remember”

71. Wiltshire solver @69
    I see what you mean, but “I must remember a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday” makes perfect sense?

72. Wiltshire solver @63: It was good enough for Lewis Carroll! In fact, RELATIVE PRONOUN is a rather out-of-date term. ‘Complementiser’ is what many grammarians would use today 🙂

73. muffin @ 67 – I like that 😉

    [The thing was that they (like many people) used to strew commas around ‘like confetti’, just to look pretty, without realising that a misused comma can radically alter the meaning of a sentence. The text book example was ‘Cyclists who ride three abreast are a danger on the roads’.
    As for using a comma instead of a full stop, that was a ‘gross error’ for our coursework moderator and would seriously jeopardise a ‘pass’ grade.]

74. Eileen
    Yes, probably over half of my corrections when proofreading are deleting (or inserting – I’m a user of the Oxford comma) commas.

75. Sorry Muffin @67 – I should have said “I must remember THAT I HAVE…”. I was distracted by him indoors fussing distractedly about his PC (STILL on Windows 7, but more dead than alive)

76. Wiltshire solver @74
    ? You did?

77. We seem to have several different discussions going on now. I’m puzzled as to why, on my screen, my comment @65 is still ‘awaiting moderation’, presumably because it includes two links, the first of which unequivocally, I think, demonstrates that ‘that’ is a relative pronoun, which is the point at issue, as far as the puzzle is concerned.
    It does, of course, do double duty 😉 as a demonstrative pronoun, which can cause confusion!

78. [muffin @74 – I’m not going down that road: (you may have noticed) I’m not. 😉 ]

79. Eileen – have you tried switching it off and switching it on again? 🙂

80. [It’s a bit late and this is extremely tangential to the current punctuation debate but other marks can be just as important as commas. Someone recently tweeted a headline from a US local newspaper that missed a vital hyphen: Students get first hand job experience ]

81. PostMark @79
    🙂

82. PostMark @79
    🙂
    I’m giving up on ‘that’ – my head’s sore.

83. PostMark @79: Yes, but – wherefrom is the hyphen missing? Perhaps ’twere better elided altogether and left to the discrimination of the reader to plumb the meaning, (am I doing too many crosswords?), thereof.

84. [PostMark @79: Syntactic ambiguity is a perennial hazard in headlinese: Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans etc etc]

85. I do love these. There used to be Private Eye books with acres of them. I have seriously almost done myself an injury laughing at them.

86. Surely part of the lifeblood of cryptic crosswords

87. At this stage in the comments, I think we may wander a little. My favourite is “Giant waves down Queen Mary’s funnel”. Any advance on four interpretations?

88. There was once a headline on the BBC news website “Man held over flat fire”.

89. Directors of Triang refuse to have the company wound up. BBC

90. “Police help dog bite victim” is a classic.

    [Late today because I have had a very long day involving airplanes, missing phones, walking tours, and exhaustion. I know, I know, tomorrow’s is already up. Wanted to add that I too used to have to teach the difference between “which” and “that”, back in my teaching days–even in classes that weren’t supposed to be about grammar! I had a few good examples that I no longer remember…I’ll have to dredge them up when we get back to Chicago.]

91. Murder trial victim scared stiff.

92. Oops. ‘Witness’ not victim.

93. Keir Starmer was in trouble a few weeks ago because in speech it is impossible to tell the difference between “Bangladeshis who have no right to be here” (a few) and “Bangladeshis, who have no right to be here” (all of them). The Bangladeshi community was not happy.

94. KVa @2 is absolutely right about 6
    The one given above in the analysis section can’t be. Anagram indicators are in the clue not the answer.

95. iStan @94
    “Anagram indicators are in the clue not the answer”? Not always, but in this case KVa @2 gives a far better version.

Comments are closed.