Guardian Cryptic 29,592 by Kite

78 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 29,592 by Kite”

1. Thanks Kite and Manehi

   A good struggle. Took as long as last few days put together. Will need Manehi’s blog for more than a couple of correct parsings.

   Lovely to see a well put together but teasing and challenging crossword

2. Wow that was a Wednesday workout! Top ticks for CARPET SLIPPERS, SORCERER & RANCID

   Maybe one day I’ll remember the QUARTER / NSEW trick

   Cheers K&M

3. Also thought WHEEL AND DEAL & FILTER TIP were excellent 🙂

4. Thanks Kite and Manehi

   Didn’t like 1 across or 26 thought they were a bit muddled.

5. I also found this one difficult in places and so I am glad to have access to the blog to explain some of the trickier parsings. I did like that LEG-END-ARY trick for 1,5a BAREFOOT DOCTOR. Other ticks I had were for 2d RANCID, 11d WHEEL AND DEAL and 15d FILTER TIP. But there were lots of question marks left when I’d finished.
   I was totally thrown by the anagram of “UP” and “MUSCLES” (which I thought was the wordplay in 3d) turning out to be SPECULUMS, and thought it was a rather odd definition for the whole clue “They show up fancy muscles”, though perhaps my internal wincing would be lost on anyone who has never had a pap smear …
   Thanks to Kite for an enjoyable but not so “easy-peasy” solve – and to manehi for his kindness in untangling it all, so that I felt I could understood everything in the end.

6. [I’d have acknowledged some crossovers with you, Bodycheetah@2 and 3, but I took too long to type and you posted in the meantime.]

7. What a mixture. Some great clues for LINKAGES, MAHARISHI, UNCHANGED, LARDER, RANCID and FILTER TIP among others, and some woeful cluing like BAREFOOT DOCTOR (what is the “ary” doing), NEUTRINO (defn) and CARPET SLIPPERS (horse=pet?).

8. Everything seemed to be slipping in nicely till I returned to the NW corner. Didn’t know BAREFOOT DOCTOR or BALTIC REPUBLIC even though I had the Doctor and Republic already in place. FLASHGUNS the last one in with a shrug. Couple of excellent long anagrams at 18ac and 8,20 down, however.
   This felt very much like a mixed bag, with our ex-PM making yet another reappearance at 13ac. Many thanks Kite and Manehi for this morning’s entertainment…

9. Tim C @7, I couldn’t agree more – a real mixture of delights and horrors. As for 14ac, the less said the better. Still, thanks to Kite and to Manehi for expert untangling.

10. Very enjoyable puzzle.

    New for me: RUNCIBLE SPOONS; ARETE; GUNS = muscular arms.

    Favourites: UNCHANGED, CARPET SLIPPERS, BALTIC REPUBLIC.

    Thanks, both.

11. Quite a few unparsed. I didn’t think of a horse as a “pet”, haven’t heard of guns=muscles and failed to spot the S-End for the quarter. I also realised too late that I’d left 9a as LINEAGES without completing the additional manoeuvres to get LINKAGES.

    Difficult and not a lot of fun, though I liked F-for-FILTER TIP and the RUNCIBLE SPOONS. I think I’d have liked the leg-end-ary construction better if I’d known that a BAREFOOT DOCTOR was a thing.

12. A good knotty one, thanks Kite and Manehi. I revealed the second part of FLASHGUNS which annoyed me when I saw it, I’m sure giving it a bit more of a Paddington stare would have cracked it. Am I the only one to have gone down the APHIS rabbit hole for 12ac? It parses with the wordplay perfectly all bar the definition! I even found an Asian woolly hackberry aphid called Shivaphis Celti but sensibly abandoned that track and tried again…

13. JinA@5 SPECULUMS is brilliant. I am another who found this a mixed bag. I am not a fan of clues like 14a, where the answer is obvious but the parsing convoluted.

14. Hmm…

    Kite often sets Genius and other tricky puzzles and my knowledge of him from there is that, when the answer is tough, the clue is simple. I think he missed the mark here. “barefoot doctor” seems to be a lesser-known phrase judging from comments, and should really have had a fairer clue rather than one that sort of tries almost to be &lit but isn’t quite (is it saying that a “leg endary healer” is a “foot doctor” kind of, slangily?). On the other hand, “quarter final” works because, once you get the definition you know it’s right and the cleverness of the “send” wordplay is a joy when explained.

    Many thanks to setter and blogger.

15. This was a struggle and I definitely needed manehi’s help today with QUARTER FINAL. I couldn’t even see why it was a cryptic clue tbh…. I did parse BAREFOOT, but I still don’t see where DOCTOR comes from. Can anyone explain?

    [Editing to say just crossed with JofFT@14 who does explain, and I agree with his comments.]

    Although some of the clues didn’t work for me I thought FILTER TIP, RANCID, SORCERER and WHEEL AND DEAL were lovely. I also liked RUNCIBLE SPOON and have an earworm of the poem. I begin to think this must be the year of the spork, three mentions so far in crossword land.

    Thank you Manehi and Kite.

16. For NEUTRINO I had TRIO around N for ‘number’.

17. Lots of entertaining clues here to enjoy, but a few that felt a bit odd/loose. I loved the RUNCIBLE SPOON and EGOISTICALLY anagrams. And SORCERER amused me.

    I needed the blog to parse the s-end bit of QUARTER-FINAL, but now think that’s clever – there are other Guardian setters use that trick – it’s just remembering to look for it in all the puzzles. I thought cardinal as a definition for THOUSAND was a bit thin and got lost parsing BAREFOOT DOCTOR.

    Hovis @16 – so did I.

    Thank you to manehi and Kite.

18. Kite hasn’t set all that many of these puzzles and I suspect I’ll get more used to the style if more appear in future – I did find this quite hard. Liked BAREFOOT DOCTOR, SORCERER, FITLER TIP, QUARTER FINAL (after I saw its parsing here) and some others. Like gladys@11 I carelessly had ‘lineages’ for LINKAGES, and like Doofs@12 I revealed FLASHGUNS but would probably have got it with a bit more thought. I’m dubious about horse=pet, and thought BOXED for unworn was a stretch, though I do see how it works.
    Thanks Kite and manehi

19. Agree with Tim C’s assessment @7, especially the inexplicable ARY. This puzzle got a lot of criticism on the G site, unfairly I thought, and someone actually named QUARTER FINAL in their comment, which couldn’t be unseen. FILTER TIP was my favourite and Hovis & Shanne, I had the same parsing for NEUTRINO.

    Ta Kite & manehi.

20. I finished but felt quite unsatisfied. I needed help with several parsings, so thank you Manehi. Perhaps this was more fun for those familiar with Kite’s style.

    I hope our American solvers will make allowance for the British usage in 15D.

    Liked
    – RUNCIBLE SPOONS. Happy memories of The Owl and the Pussycat.

    Disliked
    – BAREFOOT DOCTOR: leg-end-ary? really? Also NHO of barefoot doctor.
    – S-END for QUARTER-FINAL. I don’t recall seeing the cardinal directions equated to quarters before. More often, the quadrants NE, NW, SE and SW are quarters. Apparently this is just me, though.
    – THOUSAND. ‘Cardinal’ as definition is very weak. I stared at this for a while thinking “Surely not? But what else fits the crossers?”.
    – CARPET SLIPPERS. I’m sure Chambers disagrees, but the defining characteristic of a mule is that it is open around the heel, which is by no means true of all slippers. Like others, not sure about “pet” for horse.
    – BALTIC REPUBLIC for ‘country’. There are three Baltic republics. I suppose I can see this, but I think it needs some indicator that we are not looking for a specific country but rather a subcategory of European country.
    – SORCERER. Is this not an indirect anagram?

21. Some very tricky and highly imaginative parsings here, which made for a rather slow solve. ‘Legendary’ as a cryptic version of ‘foot’ as an adjective is a bit of a stretch, but raised a smile; ‘horse’ for PET, ‘a tiny bit’ for NEUTRINO, and ‘cardinal’ for THOUSAND are vague in the extreme. S-END is extremely clever, but I don’t suppose anyone spotted this before finding the solution from the definition and the crossers.

    Favourites: SORCERER, RUNCIBLE SPOONS, FILTER TIP, EGOISTICALLY (where I spent some time trying to fit Pisa into the solution before spotting the anagram).

    Thanks to Kite and manehi

22. Jacob @20: a BALTIC REPUBLIC is certainly a European country – why should any further indication be necessary? And RE-RE-CROS(s) is reversed without any shuffling of the letters; how is this an indirect anagram?

23. Parsed 25a NEUTRINO as NEU+TRI(N)O [as Hovis@16, (and Shanne@17, and AlanC@19)]
    Saw 1a,5a “Leg end -ary” as one of those whimsical adjective inventions favoured by the setters, meaning pertaining to the FOOT. (including a Playtex)

24. Surely there are only 2 players/teams in a QUARTER-FINAL.
    There are 8 in the QUARTER-FINALS plural.

25. I really liked FILTER TIP and RANCID.
    ARETE has proved that my B grade Geography O Level was not a complete waste of time.
    Like Doofs @ 12 I mucked around with APHIS (and even APISH) for 12ac until the Siri penny dropped.

26. Similar to others, I found this a mixture of fun and bewildering, examples of the latter being the already-cited “horse = pet” and the navigation required to get to BAREFOOT DOCTOR, a term I hadn’t heard previously.

    Three reveals in the NE corner, and plenty of assistance needed with several others.

27. I’m a paper solver so rarely scurry over to the app for the check button, but made an exception today – several times. At least it confirmed my suspicions, other than 1d, where I was about to enter BALKAN not BALTIC. Balti at the start, and now it’s obvious. Still didn’t like it, for the same reason as Jacob @20. Czech Republic is (was? cf Czechia) a country, at a pinch French Republic etc. I did like RANCID though.

28. Got everything in, but needed help with parsing quite a few of them — BALTIC REPUBLIC, ARETE, QUARTER-FINAL (which isn’t hyphenated in the U.S.) and more. But many clues were accessible, which made up for the head-scratchers, at least a bit.

    Woody @24 — As soon as I saw the word ridge, ARETE emerged in my brain, thanks to Geography class from many decades ago. Nice when some part of my early education is useful.

29. I enjoyed this and got most of it, but one or two parsings eluded me, so thanks to our blogger for the explanations. NHO ‘guns’ for muscles and I wouldn’t have parsed 14A given the whole afternoon. 17D was great.

30. A@24 Chambers: “The round before the semi-final in a knockout competition”

31. I came nowhere near finishing today. Wow – and people complain about Qaos pushing the boundaries! I’ll often figure out the answers from the definitions and back-engineer the parsing but not today 🫨 I liked LINKAGES, BOXED and RANCID. Thanks Kite, manehi.

32. Doors @12 and Woody @25: I googled APHIS to see if it was a word 🙂
    Anna @24: I agree with you about the number of players in a (singular) QUARTER-FINAL, although it could also be 4, if they’re playing doubles…

33. B@30
    What’s your point?

34. I had speculums inserted for quite some time until the barefoot doctor forced a withdrawal.
    I’m glad it wasn’t just me Julie @5

35. [Liked how 12a !RISH and 13a MAHARISHI appeared on the same row, and that K resisted the urge to do any cycling, or mention the word “sage”.] Thanks K&M. 😉

36. Bodycheetah @30: Although I didn’t register it at the time, I have to agree with Anna @24: the four matches between the last 8 players are the quarterfinals (plural). A single QUARTERFINAL is contested by only two of them.

37. Excellent puzzle. Everything eventually in and parsed, except I entered QUARTER-FINAL from the ‘8 players found here’ def but was mystified by the cunning ‘Send’ which I doubt I would ever have worked out.

    I was a big fan of BAREFOOT DOCTOR, which I think could be parsed as an &lit (DOCTOR for ‘healer’, though OK, FOOT for ‘legend-ary’ is a bit loose as others have noted) and OPEN MARRIAGE which is arguably also straying into &lit territory with the whole clue as a cryptic def and OPEN for ‘Free’ and MARRIAGE for ‘union’.

    Thanks to Kite and manehi

38. An odd mix of straightforward and anything-but. OPEN MARRIAGE was one of those ‘pure cryptic’ clues that I found to be barely so – it’s simply two synonyms making a phrase; a good pure cryptic has a convincing but misleading surface that leads to ‘aha’ moment… here, not so much. My views on leg-end-ary have been adequately covered, though I’d also point out that the puzzle had more than its fair share of such in-word L&S tricks. Not keen on the device in ARETE, to have half a hidden refer to another clue.

    On the other hand I thought that RANCID, WHEEL AND DEAL and FILTER TIP were marvellous.

    Many thanks both.

39. I am not sure that I have ever tackled a Kite before but this was an absolute gem.

    Thanks all

40. Hard but some belters. Filter tip, nice.

41. I got 8 quite early, and seeing the reference to this was gleefully hoping for an owl-and-pussycat themed puzzle, searching for rings, noses, sieves etc. Disappointed!!! Never mind. A tough puzzle. But good. Just my pet bugbear: 1 biceps muscle. No such thing as a bicep, even as an adjective. Sorry.

42. As ever, Manehi’s summary encapsulates my own feelings about the puzzle. Liked MAHARISHI, RANCID, FILTER TIP and NUBILE. Nowhere near parsing QUARTER FINAL or CARPET SLIPPERS which just went in from crossers. Like others, found this a curate’s egg of enjoyable challenges and frustrating “how would anyone get that without having the answer to work back from?” moments. Thanks Manehi and Kite.

43. G@36 & A@34 Chambers defines the QF as the round rather than an individual match. So the QF is made up of QFs but I think you can also call the QF round the QFs in which case the individual match would be a QF 🙂

44. Definitely a mixed bag, as a lot of people are saying. I’ll mention one of each.

    WHEEL AND DEAL my fave, great clue.

    As for BAREFOOT DOCTOR: if you combine a cryptic definition with a pun, you don’t get an &lit. but just half a clue.

45. B@43
    Oh, interesting. Thank you for pointing that out.
    I suppose that, if it’s in Chambers, we have to accept it.
    Grudgingly.

46. The clue that puzzles me is 22D. The answer is clear enough, but can anyone think why Kite has clued it with a reference to 26A? Normally setters cross refer because it helps the surface of the clue, or picks up some specific reference, but in this case there’s no obvious link between the two clues or their answers, it does nothing for the surface of 22D, and there is no shortage of words ending in ET, which is all that was required. Setters are usually cleverer than I can appreciate; what am I missing here ?

47. Yes, I agree that RANCID is good, but I’ve seen it before, so it was a bit of a write-in. Like several others I parsed NEUTRINO with a TRIO.

48. Sagittarius @ 46 I suppose carpet might be the most suitable ET-ending because you might get a ridge in a carpet and turn it over to erase it. I guess including the word might have been a spoiler for 26 in some subliminal way!

49. Like many others I found this a mixture–had to reveal DOCTOR in the end and didn’t feel bad about it, also couldn’t parse QUARTER-FINAL, CARPET SLIPPERS, or BALTIC REPUBLIC, the last I guess because baltis are much less common here. I fear that I find “S” for quarter over-egged in this clue.

    Liked SORCERER, RANCID, UNWORN, and WHEEL AND DEAL very much. I was expecting a complaint that NUBILE means “of marriageable age” but that meaning has shifted, though I do find the new meaning creepy as it hasn’t lost the connotation of “very young.” Jacob@20, yes my first reaction was “how’s that?” but I figured it must be the UK usage.

    [In Small World by David Lodge (RIP) there’s a wonderful passage where a translator queries the novelist about the line of dialogue “Bugger me, but I feel like some faggots tonight”: Does Ernie mean that he has a sudden desire for homosexual intercourse? If so, why does he mention that to his wife? Or is that about dumplings rather than cigarettes?]

    Thanks Kite and manehi!

50. A good deal of grumbling about this I see. I found it pretty tough but overall fair and entertaining, which for me is a winning combination.

    I particularly liked SORCERER, FLASH GUNS, IRISH and UNCHANGED (what a great surface!)

    Also aren’t quarter final and quarter finals interchangeable? It’s often said that teams are at the quarter final stage ie in the quarter finals.

    I didn’t have a problem with that or the use of legendary in 1a

    Thanks Katie and manehi

51. Bodycheetah @43: I still believe Chambers is being economical with the definition. From Wikipedia:

    In English, the round in which only eight competitors remain is generally called (with or without hyphenation) the quarter-final round; this is followed by the semi-final round, in which only four are left, the two winners of which then meet in the final or championship round.
    The round before the quarterfinals has multiple designations…

    I have certainly never heard the last four matches in a knockout competition referred to as the ‘quarterfinal’, only as the ‘quaterfinals’ or the ‘quarterfinal round’ – in the latter expression QUARTERFINAL is adjectival, or at least used attributively in a way not used on its own.

52. Too much is too contrived, for me.
    Having completed it, it was a bit like hearing a comedian having to explain how his jokes work, when nobody laughs.

    Embarrassed setter, getting the bird (3,4)

    Good blog, Manehi

53. Jacob@20, matt w@49 re 15 FILTER TIP: I know it’s a British usage, but don’t quite get the parsing. F is one tip of both “fag” and “filter” but are the words being treated as synonyms here (which would help explain “fag end” for an unusable remnant)?

54. Greg @53: F is the ‘filter tip’, which is a type of cigarette or ‘fag’ (in British English).

55. S-END was too much for me.

    I didn’t know ARETE was an English word. I’ve only met it in French, where it also means the spine of a fish.

    Many clues were lots of fun, as already pointed out.

    Thanks, Kite and manehi.

56. Re QUARTER-FINAL, my goto in such cases is the OED which I believe to be authoritative and definitive. For QUARTER-FINALS (sic) it has: “the four matches constituting the round before the semi-finals in a tournament; also sing., one of these four matches.”

57. Thanks for all the comments. This was unusual for me in not having a theme, For BAREFOOT DOCTOR, I had naked/BARE and leg-end-ary healer as FOOT DOCTOR, so a type of punny all-in-one definition. My parsing for NEUTRINO was (as manehi originally had) NEU/NO with TRI- inserted; the alternative has, I think, ‘intercepting’ in the wrong place. Interesting discussion about QUARTER-FINAL, Chambers, Collins and the ODE all have ’round’ as a definition, so I think it can have 8 players. The s-end device seems to be equally loathed and loved by solvers. An internet search will show that some people very much think of their horses as PETs, and I couldn’t resist the ‘horseshoes’ to go with mules. Interesting points about SPECULUMS; imaginative solving but I don’t think the definition would really apply.

58. Loved this, but then had heard of BAREFOOT DOCTOR so that was first one in. Mind you, thereafter failed to get confirmatory crossers for a bit but all came right in the end. Enjoyed it much more than yesterday’s Qaos where we really struggled with the top few lines and got a bit fed up with it.
    Thank you Kite, come again soon, and also Manehi for excellent blog.

59. Thanks for dropping in Kite with the explanations. E.N.Boll& @52: I think I’ll stick with the bird, unnecessarily rude I thought.

60. Just for my own peace of mind (as it is driving me nuts) is the -ary in leg-end-ary superfluous and only there to make the surface neater or am I missing something where it applies to either FOOT or DOCTOR?

61. Gervase @54: Ah, synecdoche. Thanks for clarifying!

    [Rethinking my @53 thought on “fag end”: that expression may be connected to something being exhausted or worn out (as a person is after a hard day; also predominantly UK, I believe) rather than to the butt of a cigarette.]

62. AlanC@59 – I didn’t like E.N.Bolls clue either.
    How about this one?
    E-Kit? Dick’s favourite pastime, so we read (4,6)

63. I didn’t really enjoy this. There is no country called Baltic Republic, my wife has always had horses and would never think of them as pets, all a bit loose for me. S – end would never have occurred to me but that might just be me being dim. I think I usually enjoy Kite but this was a slog and I ended up revealing three because I lost interest.

64. Took ages to think of lineage for genealogy, which might’ve happened quicker had I remembered that top cops ran CID, which is an occasional regular. So, not much on first pass, but it wove together steadily. Enjoyed, thanks Kite and manehi.

65. I found this far too complex. Didn’t actually enjoy it. Even after reading the blog-excellent by the way- I still found the parsing difficult to understand. Hey ho. Can’t win them all.

66. Being fortunate enough to have married a Lady Alpinist, I literally came across ARETE some time ago 🙂

    I also found this tough, and was, as ever, glad to have manehi’s parsings.

67. Initially had FLASHMOBS straight in for 3d, anyone else?

68. Sagittarius@46, ARETE appears reversed in carpET ERAsable. Well, this was a struggle requiring both the check button and Word Wizard, but I got there and got most but certainly not all of the parsings. Favourite was RUNCIBLE SPOONS – several candidates for least favourite but they have already been extensively covered above. Well well, Enigmatist and Kite in the space of five days – I wonder what tomorrow holds ? Thanks to Manehi and to Kite

69. It’s a long time since I got so few solutions. I gave up.

70. Apparently no longstanding Observer readers here. No mention of the BAREFOOT DOCTOR column years ago.

71. [Fingers@67, I did too]

    [Some entirely OT trivia. At Sydney Uni Med School, the 1973 intake was the last of the old six-year course, so we were the ‘slow learners’. The 1974 intake was the first of the new five-year course, so they were the ‘barefoot doctors’.]

72. Tricky, as our blogger says, and it took me a while to get going, but I somehow sped up towards the end, which is the reverse of my normal tempo change. Yes, it’s loose in parts, but fun and witty in parts too.

    I thought OPEN MARRIAGE was two straight definitions and an overall cryptic definition, but the latter is too straight to generate a proper penny drop moment. Nice try though.

    The unusual -ary ending making a noun into an adjective was inventive, as was S-end. (S for QUARTER is accurate, and so is ‘eight players’ in the non-plural QF.) I can’t see why some people are finding ‘European country’ an unsatisfactory definition. Lithuania is a Baltic republic, as is Latvia, as is Estonia. What’s the problem?

    Thanks to Kite for dropping in, and thanks for the challenge and entertainment. Special thanks to manehi for blogging such a tricky puzzle.

73. Surprised that so many here found this one especially difficult, it seemed a hard but steady solve to me, helped by several of the answers to the longer clues jumping out at me, with the parsing usually following a moment or two later. I guess I was just on Kite’s wavelength today (doesn’t always happen!). Especially liked RANCID AND SORCERER. Thanks to Manehi for the explanations of CARPET SLIPPERS and QUARTER FINAL.

74. I’m another who wrote in SPECULUMS for 3d, the resulting crossers made me check, fortunately.

    Thanks all.

75. Too much for me today. Lost interest in the end. I’m new to it and was completely out of my depth today. Maybe Thursday will be kinder.

76. I did not like it for a number of issues mentioned above.

77. A Baltic republic is a European country, so I thought that was a neat definition. Unimpressed with 4dn as a cryptic clue. 25ac: I don’t think I agree with cluing 3 as “tri” or 2 as “bi” or 1 as “mono”. I was impressed by 3dn, 8dn, 15dn, and 1ac when the penny dropped and I finished groaning.

78. Tough. Couldn’t get a foothold with this one. I solved eight — not quite enough to get some momentum. Just two or three more would likely have put me on the downhill slope

Comments are closed.