Guardian Cryptic 29,549 by Maskarade

83 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,549 by Maskarade”

1. Very pleasant, with LAPHROAIG my favourite.

2. I thought LAPHROAIG was a good spot. I bothered to check PIDGIN ENGLISH and it’s defined as jargon in Chambers, although that’s not how I’ve come across it.

   Thank you to Maskarade and manehi

3. Fun Monday outing. Felt there might be more to a few of the cryptic definitions but apparently not. Elevens very nice

   Thanks Masquerade and manehi

4. Nice puzzle.

   Favourites: DESTROY, TRADE-IN.

   Never heard of the Laphroaig brand but that’s because I don’t drink whisky. Was fun to work it out from the anagram fodder.

5. 5 annoyed me a bit because ‘here’ really implies a singular place to me. I tried SAMOVAR which didn’t fit then later realised it was a plural.

6. No complaints about the puzzle. LAPHROAIG was clever and UNIVALENT was enjoyable too,.
   In fact it was all very fair but…

   It seemed very hard for a Monday. As a lesser talent, Monday is the day I look forward to the most. But BETONY and SARAJEVO completely stumped me.

   Maybe I’m just off form today.

7. BETONY new to me and last one in. A search and a lightbulb moment opened it up. LAPHROAIG: excellent clue, excellent whisky!

8. Argot = vernacular??? Slang more like.

9. Just right for a Monday, with good surfaces. I liked LAPHROAIG as well (a good spot by Maskarade) and DESTROY. Coincidentally, I had to look up the Welsh for BETONY (Danhogen) yesterday. Thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

10. It really didn’t help with spelling LAPHROAIG (hard enough at the best of times) when it wasn’t clear whether it was CH(urch) or CE that had to be removed from the archipelago – but well spotted, and an enjoyable clue anyway.

11. Worth it for LAPHROAIG… now there’s an open bottle somewhere (next to the Talisker and Smokehead no doubt).

12. Same experience as Gladys@10 with getting the right anagram fodder for the whisky at 17d. 5ac didn’t really specify whether the solution was singular or plural, but had a good idea from the get go what it might be.
    Thought ARGOT a bit of a clunky clue, and was next to last one in, with SINGLETS the very last one. Particularly liked DESTROY and RESTRAINT. This felt just right for a Monday morning…

13. Perfect Monday challenge. Only BETONY was unfamiliar. West Mids football getting a shout, with Wolves yesterday and Villa today. Favourites were EFFUSIVE, LAPHROAOG and SARAJEVO.

    Ta Maskarade & manehi.

14. I thought teapots was a bit poor because it could just as well have been teashop or tearoom, but at least I found parka straightforward to disambiguate it.

15. Thanks Maskarade and manehi
    I didn’t think the clue for LAPHROAIG was entirely fair – I saw what was needed, but it was much more obvious to remove the consecutive CH from the fodder, as gladys says.
    As with MAC089, I didn’t see how 5a was indicated as plural. My first thought was “TEAPOT, oh, that hasn’t enough letters”.
    I liked a couple of late entries, WEIGHTY and LOI VARIES.

16. Enjoyable puzzle.

    A lot of good clues, though I found ASTON rather clunky. My pick: BETONY, GOSSAMER, UNIVALENT, RESTRAINT, SHOPFRONT, LAPHROAIG, SARAJEVO – rather a lot…

    Thanks to S&B

17. Thanks Maskarade and manehi
    I didn’t think the clue for LAPHROAIG was entirely fair – I saw what was needed, but it was much more obvious to remove the consecutive CH from the fodder, as gladys says.
    As with MAC089, I didn’t see how 5a was indicated as plural. My first thought was “TEAPOT, oh, that hasn’t enough letters”.
    I liked a couple of late entries, WEIGHTY and LOI VARIES.
    I’m having more trouble with “Duplicate comment”, although it hasn’t posted.

18. VARIES was very good. I, too, wondered about the plural TEAPOTS and struggled to bring BETONY to mind.

19. I found this enjoyable, and chewy in places too. Another one who enjoyed LAPHROIAG.

    I needed help with two or three (e.g. BETONY and SARAJEVO), and for ages had only the F in the crossers for SEA FOG, thinking it was going to be something-FEE due to the reference to banks.

20. Liked SEA-FOG and VARIES.
    TEAPOTS: Agree with muffin and Petert.

    Thanks Maskarade and manehi.

21. Failed on BETONY. Never having heard of it didn’t help.
    I parsed ARGOT as being a reversal “picked up” of TOGRA – some Islamic thing that Google came up with when I asked. But I expect Manehi’s explanation is more probable.
    Otherwise great and not overly taxing puzzle which is how I like them.

22. I enjoyed this, something that I can’t always say about Maskarade. Nho BETONY so had to search for it, and hesitated on TEAPOTS because it seemed too obvious, but the remainder were good.

23. Very enjoyable for the most part, with particular favourites being PENSIVE, SHOPFRONT, PIDGIN ENGLISH and LAPHROAIG. Just a couple of minor quibbles… firstly the grid is very unfriendly, lots of lights with >50% unchecked.

    And EMOTIVE's clue features my pet grammatical peeve – "leading economist" does not indicate 'the leading letter of economist'. An alternative such as "head of economists" would have been grammatically sound. But I see this letter selection device used so often by respected professional setters that I occasionally wonder if I'm missing some rather clever way of justifying that it is in fact grammatically correct. I’m open to suggestions to this effect 🙂

    Many thanks both!

24. I don’t see a problem with the plural in 5a. “Where is the hot water to go?” “Here, in these TEAPOTS.”

    Pleasant puzzle, though the surface of ASTON conjured up rather a strange image! Thanks Maskarade and manehi.

25. Thanks, Manehi, for riddle = sieve. I had no idea. To riddle someone (with bullets) now makes sense.

    Funny how we have both riddle and griddle in the kitchen.

26. The east side came together in a very Mondayish fashion, while the west took a lot more out of the old grey cells. LOI was Betony, new to me, and was very satisfying after long cogitation on what ‘back’ might be indicating in this clue. Also ticks for VARIES (neat surface), SHOPFRONT (I thought it would be 5,4 rather than 9 but haven’t looked at a dictionary), AND, UNIVALENT, EMOTIVE, TRADE IN and DESTROY. Not sure about the definition of ‘jargon’ for PIDGIN ENGLISH. The former is usually specialist language, the latter a local variant of English. Seems a bit far apart, as I can’t imagine anyway describing pidgin english as ‘the local jargon’ rather that ‘the local lingo’ or some similar phrase, but I see from Shanne@2 that Chambers thinks its ok. Many thanks for the fun Masquerade and manehi.

27. Rob T @23: My interpretation of the device is that you have to take the two words ‘leading economist’ as a unit of the charade. Leading (the word) ‘economist’ is the letter E.

    Like Lord Jim, I see no problem with the plural TEAPOTS. It’s not unlike the he/she variants for occupations. Either is possible.

    It seems I was unusual and fortunate in knowing the word BETONY (though it was my LOI). I’m not exceptionally good at integral and differential calculus but rather better on the scientific names of beings animalculous, and matters vegetable, animal and mineral 🙂

28. @anne #25 “To riddle someone (with bullets) now makes sense.” I had never thought of that – but it is immensely pleasing to have it explained.

29. Fun puzzle, for which I’m grateful on this busy Monday.

    LAPHROAIG is the self-styled marmite of whiskies. Somewhere I have a pair of Laphroaig cufflinks marked ‘Love it’ & ‘Hate it’.

    Many thanks, both, failed on BETONY through a combination of ignorance and clever cluing.

30. Gervase @27 – thanks, I understand that interpretation but my pedantic brain doesn’t want to accept it! In a way that I can’t quite articulate! I do appreciate that there is a difference between simple adjectives and those that can also be read as verbal gerunds (‘-ing’) and so the ‘leading economist’ case is slightly different to the case where a setter uses a simple adjective e.g. “first job” to clue a ‘J’ (which I do see in published puzzles), but I still find the syntax of the gerund interpretation unsatisfying in a ‘parts of speech’ way. But I can’t put my finger on it.

    I’m increasingly thinking it’s just an irrational mental block I’ve got… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

31. I liked this but, while I was disappointed at failing to get betony, I was furious with myself for not getting Ike.

    [Michelle – if you come on here today, I hope you saw the positive comments to your post, which seemed rather harshly picked on by the blogger.]

32. I always thought touchy meant easily offended, and emotive more like touching. Otherwise pretty straight up, thanks M & m.

33. When Vulcan isn’t due on a Monday I always worry whether the setter will honour the unwritten rule of making the puzzle accessible to beginners. But this was a good start to the week for all levels. I didn’t get 10a but accept it was a very fair clue. And like others I took out CH but knew there was a whisky spelling in there somewhere. My favourite was 16a as it was new to me but could be solved using the clue and the crossers (a boon to us novices).
    Thanks to Maskarade and Manehi.

34. Monday fun; I took almost as long to get the ELEVENS and BETONY crossers as the rest of the puzzle.

    I liked the wordplay of BETONY and SHOPFRONT, where the ‘for’ was nicely misleading. ‘Leading’ is given as a head indicator in the Chambers Crossword Dictionary (but so is ‘first’ where one would normally put ‘first of’). Using ‘leading character in’ or some such is fairly unambiguous.

    Thanks Maskarade and manehi.

35. A fun puzzle for a Monday. First pass through the across clues was a bit worrisome, but the downs were more accessible and then the rest fell into place. Betony was new to me but was sufficiently clued to bung and google.

    Minor nits:

    Ar. as an abbr. for Arab is new to me, and A for ‘active’ seems to fall into the category of ‘arbitrarily replace a word with it’s first letter’, making overall for the least satisfying clue today.

    And Pidgin English is not by any reasonable definition mean ‘jargon’. A pidgin is a simplified language [originally] composed of elements of other languages, created by speakers who have no language in common. Chambers is simply wrong on this one. It happens. However, I suppose the rule of ‘it’s in Chambers’ applies.

36. I think with pidgin/jargon it is more a case of a second or third meaning of jargon being a pidgin, rather than a sense of pidgin being jargon in its most usual sense of the language of a specialised group.

37. Fun for me, lots of crossers always helps. Agree with Jacob @35 about “Ar.” for Arab. Favorite clue was 14A which read so smoothly. And I was recently at IKEA so that was a piece of cake.

38. Rob T & Gervase: I have the same struggle with ‘leading economist’ and it seems to me that Gervase is equating it to ‘that which leads economist’ – which, though awkward, would absolutely do the job.

39. Jacob @35 – ‘A’ for ‘active’ is something I’ve seen in crosswords quite often and without resorting to a simple “It’s in Chambers” defence 🙂 I’d assume that it earned its place in dictionaries as it is used as a real abbreviation for ‘active’ in some specific contexts / sectors e.g. military, pharmaceuticals etc. So it may be obscure to some but not quite ‘arbitrary’ 🙂

    I do think though that Chambers should make room to provide that context for its abbreviations; it does so for a minority of abbreviations (e.g. the entry ‘A’ for ‘Adult’ explains that it is a former film classification) but the majority are left unexplained. So it’s the Chambers approach to clarifying abbreviations that’s somewhat arbitrary!

40. grantinfreo@32: agreed re EMOTIVE.

    I had no difficulty with “leading economist”, though I agree it’s ungrammatical. What tripped me up was “jacket potato = PO” which gave me problems with PARKA.

41. paul, Jacob: I agree that technically a pidgin is a rudimentary language devised for transactions between people who don’t have a ‘full’ language in common. But colloquially, someone talking in a garbled or highly ungrammatical fashion is often described as speaking PIDGIN ENGLISH. ‘Jargon’ is either a specific technical register, or more generally, speech which is unintelligible. Close enough in common usage.

42. I’m Teetotal. However I thought everyone would have heard of Laphroaig.

43. If the more pedantic the quibble, the better the crossword then this was pretty good. Especially for a Monday. I thought there was some nice misdirection with “picked up” not indicating an homophone and “oddly” not meaning non-even

    BTW Wikipaedia: “The term jargon has also been used to refer to pidgins, and is found in the names of some pidgins, such as Chinook Jargon. In this context, linguists today use jargon to denote a particularly rudimentary type of pidgin”

    Cheers M&M

44. I’m surprised that people haven’t complained about Laphroaig, given that it’s a particular make. It’s probably an indication of who does Guardian crosswords that nobody gives it a second thought. I look forward to Sneck Lifter, Riggwelter, Speckled Hen et al being clued as “beer”.

45. Crispy @44 – a quick search revealed that Everyman clued STELLA as ‘lager’ a few years ago 🙂

46. Crispy @44: LAPHROAIG is one of the best known single malt whiskies and widely available in many places, unlike the beers which you mention. Just be grateful it wasn’t Bunnahabhain 🙂

47. Gervase @46
    The beers Crispy mentions aren’t all that obscure. Speckled Hen in particular is very widely available; I would expect that more people would have heard of it than Laphroaig.

48. I enjoyed this, maybe because I’m a Laphroaig-drinker from Wallasey.

49. Gervase@46. And be especially thankful you don’t need to know how to pronounce them! As a whisky drinker (purely medicinal, you understand) I’ve heard of most, and can pronounce most of them. Glenmorangie is one that is typically mispronounced – and Caol Ila (that’s a capital I on the second word) I don’t think I’ve heard pronounced the same way twice consecutively.

50. Crispy 🙂

    [And muffin is right about Speckled Hen – the others are more niche…]

51. Muffin @47: Laphroaig is widely available in the USA (well, not *widely* exactly–single malt Scotch is always on the expensive end here, so it’s not going to be in every dive bar, but it will be in every mid- to high-level liquor store and on the top shelf of many good bars). Speckled Hen is not something I’ve ever seen here. (To be sure, the American beer market is odd–local craft beers eat up almost all the space not taken up by major national or international brands, leaving little space for niche imports.)

52. …and I always have to tread carefully when I spell the word Whisky. As there’s the variant Whiskey which applies to that which is produced in Ireland or the US, I believe. Though I might be wrong. My favourite tipple is Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, sometimes referred to as The Dublin Cure, or simply The Cure. To confuse things further, there’s a professional Scottish golfer who spells his name Jamieson. I’ve rather rambled on, apologies…

53. First Wolves in the quiptic, now Villa! This is a disaster!

    (Nice puzzle though, ta 🙂 )

54. So far as I know, Ar. = Arab is from the equestrian world.

    And A = Active is, I think, from the study of language, specifically the voice of verbs, where A = Active and P = Passive.

55. copland @48. I enjoyed it too. Not only was Laproaigh one of my favourite whiskies and my mum from Wallasey, but one of my best mates was John Copeland “:D”

56. I at first tried to remove CH from ‘archipelago’ and then wondered how on earth that brand of whisky might be spelt (not being a drinker myself). But after realising that it was E not H to be removed, I figured it out.

    My other lapse was trying to pencil in SAVORY instead of BETONY: the plants are closely related anyway, both belonging to the mint family. But of course only BETONY would parse.

    All the rest was fine and not too taxing – at least not compared with Maskarade’s Bank Holiday monsters! Special ticks for ELEVENS, UNIVALENT, WEIGHTY, PARKA, TRADE-IN, PIDGIN ENGLISH. That last brings to mind this clip “pigeon – like your English” – sorry about that! 🙂

    Thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

57. I’m unsurprised to see that I’m not alone in being defeated by BETONY, which I had never heard of.

    My dictionaries don’t list Ar. as an abbreviation for “Arab” (“Arabic”, yes). But maybe I just don’t have the right dictionaries. It sounded implausible to me until I read Simon S @54’s comment: I can easily believe that this abbreviation exists in the equestrian world, about which I know virtually nothing.

    I had the same question as grantinfreo @32 about EMOTIVE, but I convinced myself it’s OK. It’s defined as something like “tending to cause emotion,” and “touchy” in the sense of “That’s a touchy subject” seems close enough.

    I confidently put in TEAROOM for 5ac, but eventually the crossers set me straight. In general, I don’t mind if a clue requires crossers to remove ambiguity, but I do think a cryptic definition with too many possible answers is a weak clue.

58. [Crispy @49
    Last year we had a week right next to the Caol Ila distillery. It is named after the channel between Islay and Jura, but, in my hearing at least, the locals pronounced the channel and the whisky differently!]

59. Simon S @54: Ar for Arabic (language) is familiar but I read the clue too quickly to spot that it says ‘Arab’. So it’s equestrian? Like Ted, such terminology is outside my purview. As Naomi Royde-Smith put it:

    I know two things about the horse
    And one if them is rather coarse

60. [Perfidious Albion @53 I thought there was a clue that included baggies not too long ago if that helps]

61. Ted @57 – the ‘go-to’ dictionary for crossword solvers (and, crucially, setters!) is Chambers. The easiest and cheapest entry point, if you have a smartphone, is the app version 🙂

62. A fun solve. Favorites were BETONY for the clever synonym for “back” and DESTROY for the beautiful surface. The grid did mean that I had to work around it in quarters but it came together.

    Rob T@23, I agree: though it’s gettable and there are ways to justify it as Gervase and others have shown, it seems forced. OTOH sometimes the setters need to force something, if we’re to get a puzzle every day!

    My other quibble is my usual pro forma protest against “girl” for SARA, mostly for the vagueness. A Sara will usually be a woman these days but at least there are still many girls named Sara, unlike some of the names that get used. Still someday I would like to see a setter dare “Train Vivien and another girl (7)” (according to the Baby Name Grapher Ryleigh briefly snuck above Sara for a few years in the US, but it has thankfully fallen back off).

63. Rob T — I know that Chambers is the usual standard, although for some reason I hadn’t bothered to download it to my phone. One can go to the Chambers web site and look words up, but as far as I can tell that’s a somewhat different dictionary from the One True Chambers.

    I’ve just downloaded the app and can report that, as far as I can tell, it does not include “Arab” as a meaning for the abbreviation AR. (I looked under both “Ar” and “Arab”.)

64. Thanks Maskarade for a fine set of clues with LAPHROAIG being my favourite in more ways than one. Thanks manehi for the blog and parsing 9d.
    [Gervase @46: Or Bruichladdich!]

65. As relative newbie solvers, Maskarade, Arachne and Vulcan are amongst our favourite setters so it was a treat to see his name as the setter today. Loved it, especially Laphroig as I used to live in Scotland.

    Thanks Maskarade for the fun and Manehi for the excellent explanations as usual.

66. Ted @63 – it’s under “Ar.” — the full stop makes it a separate entry to “Ar” 🙂

67. Another newbie solver here who had never heard of BETONY.

    Glad I am not alone in finding “girl” frustratingly vague.

    Other than that, highly enjoyable Crossword and clear explanations. Good start to the week

68. I think Rebus drinks Laphroaig?

69. @53, @60; Zulu Warriors tomorrow?

70. I had not only heard of BETONY but I have a background in betting, and still couldn’t solve 10a. I think this is because I had automatically lifted and separated ‘medicinal’ from ‘plant’, and was looking for a reversible five-letter plant that would mean medicinal if you put a Y on the end. Ah well, another day, another dnf.

    On my recent holiday in France I was introduced to a young brewer in Cognac who had just bought some barrels in which to mature his Baltic porters: brandy (as you’d expect), calvados (Norman apple brandy) and lafrog (which took me a little while to translate back into Scottish).

    Thanks to Maskarade and manehi.

71. Thanks, Rob T @66! I should have seen that.

72. Late to comment but wanted to praise ELEVENS, DESTROY and UNIVALENT. Many thanks Maskerade and manehi.
    Chardonneret@68, I think he does if someone else is paying, but his usual tipple is Highland Park 🥃!
    In my family it was always Tullamore Dew…

73. Solidly in the Monday zone. BETONY took me a while as I’ve never heard of it, a lovely surface. Agree that VARIES is very nice. The appearance of LAPHROAIG threatens to lead me into temptation on a Monday night.

74. RobT@61 – thanks for the tip about the Chambers app. I haven’t bothered much with dictionaries thus far and tend to reveal answers if I can’t get them quickly without research. My husband would say I’m very impatient. But if I want to improve I will have to be more persistent, I guess. So I just bought the app and was charmed to see that on first opening it, I was greeted with definitions of ‘welcome’.

75. NHO “Betony,” so I ended up timing out. I still print to solve, since it keeps me from using the internet of “Chambers:” (whatever that is) in any way. I either get it or I don’t. But, man, have I ever leaned a lot about Brittishisms from doing it this way. Probably for the best.

76. New note to self today in my quest to improve as a solver – when looking for a synonym remember it might be more than one word; I fear my brain was searching (all day 😬) for a one-word 5-letter synonym of ‘back’ meaning BET-ON-Y was very much my LOI; it finally clicked just now on the Elizabeth Line, i remained expressionless of course, its’s an unemotional line. Thank you Maskarade and maneh!

77. I join in the almost universal appreciation of 17d LAPHROAIG, both the clue and the whisky. On the subject of pronunciation (Gervase@46 and Tony@64), my preferred pronunciation of 17d is “leapfrog”.

    This puzzle was chock full of excellent clues. My favourites, for their good constructions and great surfaces, were 16a UNIVALENT and 18d the hilarious SARAJEVO.

    Thanks M&M for the sweet puzzle and blog.

78. Matthew @28 – I’d never thought of the origin of that phrase before (someone being riddled with bullets) but now I can’t stop thinking of the expression “shoot first and ask questions afterwards”! (As illustrated by Larsen in this Far Side cartoon!)

79. Shanne@2, Paul@26, Jacob@35, Petert@36, Gervase@41. I object strongly to the PIDGIN ENGLISH = jargon definition, whatever Chambers might say. A pidgin language is a full language in its own right – take Tok Pisin, which I can speak – one of the major languages of Papua New Guinea. Nothing “rudimentary” about it at all – it is not simplified English, but a full language that has evolved from (mainly) Melanesian grammars and (largely) English vocabulary, with a smattering of words from other Melanesian and European languages (and even Bahasa Indonesia – ‘susu’ = milk – another pidgin language, but not of English).
    Thanks, Maskarade and manehi.

80. A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle. Favourites were DESTROY for the surface and the whisky for finding a way to clue it. I also assumed A = active came from active and passive verbs.

81. TassieTim @79: Linguists distinguish between pidgins, which have limited grammatical complexity and are used mainly in restricted contexts, and creoles, which start that way, but develop the full capability of natural languages and are learnt by children as their mother tongue.

82. Jacob @35 et all, you’ll find the abbreviations A for Active (as well as N-Neural and E-Earth) on electrical terminals in plugs and sockets.

83. Tim C @ 82

    Not if you’re in UK, where it’s L = Live, along with N = Neutral & E = Earth.

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