Guardian Cryptic 29,503 by Pasquale

82 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,503 by Pasquale”

1. 9a is THE preceded by PA (Press Association), &lit

2. Andrew – thank you! will update

3. Thanks Pasquale and manehi

   Lovely puzzle – apart from “legitimatised” which autocorrect won’t even let me type easily and isn’t in my dictionary.

   And Hempen is an Scots arch. Meaning A tough or a thug

4. I wasn’t quite sure about hempen=tough but nothing else worked. I would also have thought medication as more like medicine (“have you taken your medication”) but I suppose it stretches to treatment, which works as a definition of enema.
   Other than those quiblets a nice crossword.

5. Nice to see archdeacon Ven back after a long holiday.

   There’s something bothering me that I can’t quite put my finger on in defining LONG SUIT as “clubs, say”. That would work for suit, to be sure, but not every hand has a long suit. There just seems to be something missing here. Sorry for the vagueness.

6. Thanks Pasquale and manehi
   Fairly straightforward except for the NW, where the 1s and 9 took ages – CHADOR completely new to me.
   I didn’t think LONG SUIT made an awful lot of sense.

7. Thanks for the blog, manehi, Pasquale is one of my favourite setters for the mixture of slightly obscure words with clear and fair wordplay. That said, I hope I never have to see the ugly AVERMENTS ever again. What an unnecessary word!

8. Liked PATHE, PIGMENTED (The question mark also seems to apply to each particle in the WP) and PHENOMENOLOGY.
   LONG SUIT
   Agree with DrWhatson@5
   NOSEGAYS
   Agree with the blog (does ‘to nose’ mean ‘to understand’?).

   Thanks Pasquale and manehi

9. A well crafted and satisfying puzzle.
   Thanks to Pasquale and Manehi.

10. Remembering those old cinema newsreels, I had bunged in PATHE at 9a from the crossers and only a bit later squinted at it again and saw the wordplay clarified by Andrew @1 and in the edited blog. I think Andrew is right to identify it as an &lit, but I know there are those hereabouts who hold aspiring &lits to a very exacting standard, so I shall be interested to hear from the police on the matter.

11. Auriga @9
    manehi’s point is that “knows” is “understandS” rather than “understand”.

12. Enjoyable but surprisingly few ticks and unusually for Pasquale, no new words except the Scottish meaning of HEMPEN

    I liked CAPUCHIN, DEUTERON & today’s ear-worm ALFIE from the Divine Comedy

    Cheers P&M

13. DrWO@5 – every hand ( in Bridge or Whist) will always have a long suit, though it may not be very long. A 13 card deal with 4 suits requires one suit of at least 4.

14. Muffin@11.
    You must have seen my comment before I twigged and edited it!

15. muffin@11
    NOSEGAYS
    I assume your comment was in response to my post@8. If ‘to nose’ means ‘to understand’, then the clue works OK
    without any change. The homophone indicator applies only to ‘look’ then. However, I am unable to verify if ‘to nose’ has this meaning.

    Edit: Auriga@14. I didn’t see what you posted earlier. Sorry muffin.

16. I really liked MIRTH, ROSETTA STONE and IMPRISONMENT. I agree with Tom N@3 re ‘legitimatised’, surely legitimised? I expect to be told it’s in Collins…
    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi for the puzzle and blog.
    [Enjoyed the earworm Bc@12 😎. Brian@7, agree averments not the nicest word and seems worse pluralised for some reason…]

17. As I’m halfway through rereading P. G. Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle stories I really should have seen the PIG MEN sooner…

18. Enjoyable puzzle but of course as is usual with Pasquale I needed help from google, eg to find out 5th book of Bible. I was brought up C of E but have clearly forgotten the order of the books in the Old and New Testaments.

    New for me: DEUTERON = the nucleus of a deuterium atom; NEWTON = the SI unit of force; HEMPEN = tough/thug (Scottish).

    Favourites: LONG SUIT (which I find humorous), ANTELOPE (mainly for the clue/surface).

    Thanks, both.

19. Pauline in Brum@16
    LEGITIMATISE (Chambers mobile app)
    to legitimate
    Collins has legitimatize 🙂

    PATHE
    Does it pass the &lit litmus test? Does the ‘the’ create any hurdle as Pathé News was a source…not the source?

20. I thought LONG SUIT was fine, though perhaps the “for” should be included as part of the definition.

    HEMPEN Isn’t hen mostly Scottish, even Glaswegian, usage for a female?

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

21. Delightful puzzle with the usual smattering of new words and I agree with manehi, that understand needs an ‘s’ to make sense. I liked COLD SWEAT and ONSLAUGHT especially and two different meanings of HEMPEN in the same week. Great earworm, Bodycheetah, Neil Hannon is so underrated.

    Ta Pasquale & manehi.

22. I agree with Sagittarius@13.
    When discussing hands with my bridge partners, to justify my bidding I might say my hand was flat (i.e 4/3/3/3) long suit was diamonds but only four cards.

23. An enjoyable romp and who’d have thought there was such thing as a DEUTERON? Thanks both

    Just to amplify what Sagittarius@13 says for the benefit of DW@2, clubs is in this case an example of a suit which in some cases can be a LONG SUIT. I seem to remember the saw ‘short suit two and long suit through’ from my (less than successful) bridge-playing days.

24. Why on earth does the English language need LEGITIMATISE when it already has the verbs legitimate and legitimise both meaning (as far as I can tell) exactly the same thing? Anyway, it exists, so the clue is fine.

    From K-MESONS yesterday to the DEUTERON today: I really must learn some particle physics. Also new but gettable: FLUOR, AVERMENTS and HEMPEN=tough, but this is what you expect from Pasquale.

    I couldn’t sort out the parsing for PATHE because I couldn’t see both PA and PATHE itself as sources of news – and what’s “coming previously” got to do with it?

    Favourites ROSETTA STONE, OVENS, PIGMENTED, PORTICOED (just down the road from Betws-y-coed?) ANTELOPE and DEBRIS

25. Love it gladys, tuuune.

26. DEBRIS took a while and wasn’t that impressed by LONG SUIT, but apart from that, there were some clever anagrams and an enjoyable solve overall. Loi was DEUTRON which was a nho, but as I knew exactly which was the fifth book in the OT it couldn’t be anything else, especially with all four crossers in place by then…

27. DEUTERON even…

28. I was beaten by DEUTERON, not knowing my Bible as well as others – but probably knowing my Bible better than I know my esoteric particles. Even with all the crossers, I was not going to get that one. HEMPEN confused me as it was in Enigmatist’s puzzle recently in its ‘pot’ manifestation, as opposed to its twisted fibre/rope manifestation. I had no idea there was yet another. It’s not in my Chambers which, confusingly, seems to list HEMPY as the Scots rogue. I took PATHE as an &lit – it works for me even if there are other sources of news – and I was as confused as others by the missing S in NOSEGAYS.

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

29. Dave Elllison @20. ‘Hen’ is indeed a common Glaswegian way to address a female, but the clue does not specify that the ‘female’ is human rather than avian.

30. As per the Don, nho…1a, 23a, 24a, 1d, 6d, 8d, 10d, 16d, 19d; but all fairly clued…
    Probably not obscure to the clever people on here, but it puts a bit of a damper on it for me.
    Thanks both.

31. Oops ignore 19d above…

32. Thanks for the blog, very relieved that we are not getting a 6 part series of Ludwig.
    Good set of clues and PATHE is very neat indeed.
    For 16D I toyed with verteron , misled by “fifth” but could not make the wordplay work so had to rethink . DEUTERONs very important in the p-p chain of solar fusion . People may have heard of deuterium which is the isotope itself with this nucleus.

33. The usual solid puzzle from the Don, with the missing S for NOSEGAYS the only (uncharacteristic) blemish.

    PATHE is clever – definitely one for the oldies. I liked all the anagrams, though LEGITIMATISED is an ugly word. CHADOR and SADDHU are concisely clued. I don’t consider an ENEMA to be ‘medication’ (and the clue doesn’t have a great surface). It took a while to spot DEUTERON, as I was convinced that ‘fifth’ was V…

    Thanks to S&B

34. Thx to Pasquale for a lovely puzzle.
    The wide range of clues produced a very satisfying solve. There were also 3 words/usages which were new to me, but gettable from the wordplay. Favourites: COLDSWEAT, MIRTH, DEUTERONT & NOSEGAYS.
    Thanks to manehi for the blog and for parsing a couple I could not.

35. A fairly typical Pasquale with some unusual words but all fairly clued (except perhaps NOSEGAYS, as above).

    I liked CHADOR because of the use of head-to-foot not being a wordplay instruction. LEGITIMATISED was a good anagram for an ugly word and I liked ISOLATING for the ‘holding tongue no longer.’ Strictly, CAPUCHIN is not a monk but a friar, as they say themselves. Maybe Pasquale thought friar would be too obvious and Wiktionary does define it as monk, so maybe it’s popularly used.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

36. Hempen reminded me of lumpen (elements)

37. Lovely puzzle – liked FLUOR, LONG SUIT, CAPUCHIN

    Roz @ 32 – I really liked Ludwig. Has there been some discussion of it here?

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

38. [ Fiona@37 , i meant the crossword setter . ]

39. Lovely puzzle from Don as always learn something new. Pathe brought back memories of cinema newsreels: those were the days!

40. Sagittarius@13 et al. I’m sure from my bridge-playing days of long, long ago a long suit was 5 cards or more. But on reflection that might just have been a practice in speech, not a definition.

41. DSL – Dictionaries of the Scots Language – Dictionars o the Scots Leid has ‘HEMPIE n.1, adj., Also hempy; himpie…
    I. n. A rogue, a person deserving to be hanged, i.e. one destined for a hempen rope.’

42. Co-ed for ‘school’ seems grammatically wrong to me. One might say that a school is co-ed as an adjective, but school in the clue is a noun. On the other hand, co-ed as an noun refers to the person not the institution.

    As an aside, it’s also a word that should have been firmly left behind in the 1970s. It was only ever used of the women at mixed-sex colleges, not the men, who were simply ‘students’; and it implied that the men at the college were the norm, the women some kind of outsiders or exceptions. These days it is considered at a minimum patronizing or offensive.

43. [Hadn’t thought of it before, but proton, deuteron, triton come from Ancient Greek: πρῶτος (prôtos, “first”); δεύτερος (deúteros, “second”), τρίτος (trítos, “third”).]

44. Dr. WhatsOn @40
    Yes, when I played bridge, I wouldn’t have mentioned a 4 card suit as a “long suit”. It might be the longest suit, but not worth boasting about!

45. ‘co-ed, n: 1. 1886– Co-education; a co-educational institution or system. 2. 1893– A girl or woman student at a co-educational institution.’

46. [ Frankie@43 , it is slightly wrong , after the big bang Helium-3 was created third , although tritium is the third isotope of hydrogen. ]

47. A very pleasant solve, just as I like it. The obscurities very carefully clued as to not leave one scratching around for the fodder, followed by a dictionary check and a satisfying JORUM moment as another new word is learned.

    Many thanks to the Don and manehi

    [Fiona @37.There was an astronomic puzzle from Ludwig here a week ago to mark the first episode of Ludwig, set by Ludwig who happens to be Alan Connor the editor and setter of Everyman. It generated very polarised opinions, much like the current mess in the US. Roz who was in the No camp just expressing her relief that we don’t have a weekly Ludwig during the first series I suspect. All episodes from series 1 are available now on i-player if you liked it.]

48. I came here to escape IO in the FT, and wondered more than once whether I had made the right choice

    There was lots to like. Good variety and some amusing clues. Favourites were COLD SWEAT, ANTELOPE (lovely surface), and ROSETTA STONE. NOSEGAYS would have made the list as a homophone that makes sense for a change, and it was a pity about the missing s

    But I am afraid the number of obscure words and stretched synonyms crossed the line for me. Before anyone jumps down my throat, let me say that I like learning new words. But, new words and stretched meanings restrict the way I can solve a clue, and too many make for a tedious puzzle.

    Thanks Pasquale and manehi

49. Nice and straight forward. Sensible parsing, nice surfaces and a few new words to assimilate. Thanks.

50. [FrankieG @43: Fortunately there isn’t a tetarton, which might be problematic for those with a speech impediment]

51. Thanks Pasquale. Most of this made sense but I ended up revealing the nho PATHE as well as PORTICOED. My top picks were CHADOR, ONSLAUGHT, NEWTON, and DEBRIS. In 10a, ‘pigmen’ for ‘farmers’ was a stretch for me but the answer was obvious from the crossers. Thanks manehi for the blog.

52. Dave Ellison@20. Yes “hen” is (or used to be) a casual Glasgow endearment for women, usually but not always, from woman to woman, e.g. shop assistant to customer or bus conductress (happy days) to passenger. Comparable to Merseyside “luv”, West Country (alleged) “m’deario” or “my lover.” Odd then that the tallest of the male siblings in The Broons (Scotland’s first family) was Hen. Presumably short for Henry. It confused me until about 1970.

53. Thanks Pasquale, but too many nho for me today. CHADOR, CAPUCHIN, AVERTMENTS, SADDHU, HEMPEN (in this context), NOSEGAYS, LEGITIMATISED all new, though some more guessable than others! Also didn’t get PATHE which overall made the NW a nightmare!

    But, thanks to 225 (and thanks manehi), I think all those were fair clues; just hard to work out some of them when you are fighting the wordplay without the final answer anywhere in the memory bank!

    Still learning though, and starting to understand my weaknesses better (anything relating to religion or literature, it would seem!).

54. CJ@53 I did know some of your nhos, but I’d bet that the nho score of AVERMENTS was 100% and deservedly so. Probably the same for LEGITIMATISED which already has a perfectly serviceable synonym with one syllable less.

    Lots of nice clues, though, I liked EXTORT and CAPUCHIN (not a monk, it seems).

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.

55. Taffy @ 47

    [Thanks – I had forgotten that there had been a puzzle by a setter of that name last week. I didn’t attempt it so didn’t remember it.

    I finished watching the series yesterday – I did enjoy it.]

56. Though CAPUCHINs are friars, they are still monkey.

57. Capuchin monkeys are actually named after the monks/friars, as their appearance resembles the habits of the friars.

58. At my wedding reception, my grandmother (from Fife) called all the women she didn’t know “hen”, and my wife’s grandfather (from Manchester) called all the men “cock”. Neither had a generic term for the other sex.

    Thanks to Pasquale and manehi for the enjoyable crossword and blog

59. muffin @57: Indeed so, as are cappuccinos, from their pale colouration

60. I interpreted the first two letters of PATHE (which I had to google) as standing for Public Announcement. Maybe “PA system” is an American term?
    I also struggled to figure out where to cram an extra syllable into the much more elegant “legitimize (-mise)” but I got there in the end.

61. BlueDot @60
    We do have PA over here, but it stands for “public address” – anything from megaphones up to microphones and loudspeakers.
    I remember when I used to go to the cinema when I was young, Pathe News used to come on to further delay the film I had gone to see. Did you have that where you are?

62. I thought this was very good. I enjoyed PATHE though it took a while to parse. Definitely an &lit for my money, as the whole clue is used for the wordplay and def.
    ALFIE raised an eyebrow as it’s 58 years ago and not that well known, I’d have thought.
    Gervase, wouldn’t that be a tetraton, if it existed? I imagine the LHCers have tried to make it!
    Thanks, Pasquale and manehi.

63. Phitonelly @62 it would just be the common helium nucleus . The LHC is too busy wasting everyone’s time and money looking for supersymmetry .

64. [Roz @62…. where ought they be looking next if you don’t mind me asking, from a complete novice in the field I hasten to add, not an ardent defender of CERN. Are there more theoretical ‘things’ that they should be hunting? I recall it’s been upgraded to smash with more vigour and detect with more precision, thought that would have had a specific intention.]

65. Jacob @42 and FrankieG @45: Chambers gives both the person and the institution as definitions. Interesting that it sees the person as more of a US thing. I’d fully agree that the nounal description of the person is dated and derogatory but that of the institution itself seems fair enough.

    coˈed noun
    A girl or woman educated at a coeducational institution (chiefly N American)
    A coeducational school

66. Frankie G @43 They’re the same in modern Greek as well. It’s remarkable that they, and so much of the rest of the language, have survived unchanged for over 2000 years.

67. Nice puzzle, although I was flummoxed by PATHE (never heard of it) and wasn’t clear on how DEUTERON was parsed until I saw the explanation here.

    One minor quibble – I am of Indian origin and I have never seen it spelled SADDHU. It’s usually just SADHU, although I have also seen SAADHU (which is how it is pronounced in the vernacular…).

68. [ The whole thing has been a disaster and they had plenty of warnings . The previous accelerator LEP could have found the Higgs boson with a small and cheap upgrade and then converted into an Upsilon factory to study the b quarks. The LHC has found nothing for 12 years and has 17 more years to go , wasting virtually all the European budget for Particle Physics . At least the Supersymmetric theorists have finally shut up . ]

69. We often discuss whether a puzzle is an ideal or archetypal quiptic or easy puzzle. For me, this was an exemplar of a medium difficulty puzzle – a few challenging words, no recondite GK, very fair clueing, no unduly convoluted wordplay. Would be a good step up for someone who finds Monday/Everyman puzzles no longer challenging. Favourites were the super neat PATHE, and ISOLATING for the “tongue no longer”.

70. Phitonelly@62 Tetartos (τέταρτος) is the first dictionary entry for fourth. Tetratos (τετρατος) is the second. You’re both right.

71. My tongue is no longer than it should be, how about yours?

72. I remember ALFIE for the Sonny Rollins score. I’ve never seen the whole film but I still have the LP.

73. @Roz 68 – I just want to say thank you. I failed my a-level physics sixty years’ ago but have always kept up an interest and fascination with the subject. Your comments and references always cause me to follow them up and amaze. Sometimes I manage a clue in the Cryptics with your unseen help. Best wishes.

74. Aw thank you Chargehand , you have made my day , there is usually very little physics in the crosswords so I have to make the most of it when I get the chance.

    Zoot@72 , if somebody says ” What’s it all about? ” they will invariably get the answer – Alfie .

75. [Logically, a tetarton/tetraton would be a proton with three neutrons, rather than a helium-4 nucleus]

76. Roz@74: The correct answer to ” What’s it all about? ” is ‘You put your left leg in, left leg out…...’

77. Comment of the Day Alec@52 “It confused me until about 1970.” And DuncT@58 made me laugh a lot. Great crossword, a slow tough solve for me but well worth it. LOI DEBRIS, favourite PATHE. I always feel a bit more learned and holier after a Pasquale.

78. [Roz @68. That is really disappointing. Sounds like one bunch of ‘fanatics’ hijacked the program when it might have been saner to accommodate a broader church. Whether the cult are using all the available resources chasing their unholy grail or that the types of particles that needed to be smashed and analysed were not catered for I know not, but if the former, the ‘lunatics’ need to be persuaded to retreat to their asylum and study their data for a year I suspect and let the mavericks have their go.]

79. [Roz, the naming of things is not very detailed on the net, might you have been tongue in cheek and claimed Charm as your own? Would be seriously impressed if you did have your own, personal ‘Higgs’ though. No need to give too much away, I respect your need for privacy]

80. Thank you JayinPittsburgh @67 for your comments on the spelling of Sadhu (the only way I’ve seen it spelt).
    I was so sure that I knew the order of the first five books of the OT I gave up on Deuteron, having realised that Numbers didn’t fit the answer. Otherwise an enjoyable puzzle with quite a bit of head scratching and then wondering why it took so long.

81. Another one which needed a bit of a rest and retry, but again got there in the end. Had to look up the 5th book in the bible, then confirm DEUTERON by googling. And again, thank you to Andrew for the wordplay for PATHE. I had it down as an unsatisfactory cryptic clue.

82. Didn’t even look at this until Thursday morning, and was going along very nicely with all but three answered at the first sitting. After returning I got DEBRIS and eventually (reluctantly) wrote in HEMPEN as I don’t find the definition convincing. I wouldn’t have got DEUTERON in a million years – it definitely wasn’t mentioned in my physics A-level a few years ago (52 actually). And I was looking to subtract a final Y, not think of a synonym for ‘order’ then subtract both that and a Y from an old book. When people on here say things like “fairly clued” I guess they mean “I got the answer!”.

    Thanks to The Don for the going over, and The Man for the revelations.

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