Guardian 29,644 – Anto

77 comments on “Guardian 29,644 – Anto”

1. Happy SPD (took me longer to twig the colour change than some of the clues).

2. Tough and enjoyable.

   Favourites: NESSUN DORMA, PARAMETER, MINOR SUITS, NO ONE (loi).

   I could not parse 1d.

   Thanks, both.

3. Yet again I forgot solicitors could be touts.

   Liked: MACAU, PARAMETER ( I did remember Peter for safe), BESTIE (reminded me of the Burns poem about a mouse) NOES, MINOR SUITS

   Thanks Anto and Andrew

   (and thank goodness St Patrick’s day is just once a year – the colour scheme is too much first thing in the morning)

4. I found this straightforward but agree that some of the grammar was distracting. I almost entered GROAN RECITAL at 11D. Perhaps the exclamation mark should have been a question mark- an attack of the Grauniads perhaps?
   Thanks to Anto and Andrew.

5. ORGAN RECITAL is a jokey way of describing the conversation when two people (perhaps of a certain age) get together and talk about their health complaints. I enjoyed that one.

6. Thanks Anto and Andrew
   I agree that ORGAN RECITAL doesn’t really have an accurate definition. see the jokey reference, but it should only be a contributing part of the clue.
   Favourite NUDITY.

7. Fiona@3 me too! And I also had not heard of the ORGAN RECITAL jokey reference, but it makes sense as definition. Otherwise straightforward and fun. Thanks Anto and Andrew.

8. Redrodney just about gets the setter off the hook with his explanation of ORGAN RECITAL, but I still found this and the slightly odd Spoonerism indication a little weird.

   Enjoyed the empty vessel and the NESSUN DORMA anagram.

9. [Re 20: “Mary Celeste” was the name of a real ship which was found mysteriously adrift in 1872. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a fictionalised account of the events, in which he changed the name of the ship to “Marie Celeste”, and it is this which has stuck, for whatever reason. I prefer to use the factual name, but it feels a trifle harsh to call the fictional one wrong – it’s artistic licence, if anything.]

10. I felt clever because finally, ‘daily’ as an indicator for CHAR came to mind when solving 27, thanks to previous blogs here. A few minutes later I couldn’t fit it in anywhere and the penny dropped that it was CLEAN(S)ER but at least I was in the right territory.

    I did have questions over ORGAN RECITAL, though the apparent disparity between definition and answer wasn’t too much of a barrier to solving. I’ve never heard of the reference provided by Redrodney @5 but it seems perfectly ok to me.

    A relatively quick and fun solve overall, consistent with a Monday, but the second part of MINOR SUITS escaped me.

11. Fiona@3: in Crosswordland, solicitors are always touts (and a safe is usually Peter, which I forgot today and so failed to parse PARAMETER).

    Lots of anagrams today: my favourite was the empty vessel. Not sure about the rather allusive definitions for ROOM DIVIDERS and ORGAN RECITAL, but I didn’t find them ungrammatical: perhaps those complaining on those grounds would like to give a specific example or two?

12. Yep, first heard ‘organ recital’ six or seven years ago when a bunch of mates got together for a pint and bite for someone’s 80th. Amusing, I’ve been using it since. Ok Monday puzzle, ta A&A.

13. I’ve just noted the reference for solicitor as touts. I solved it but my parsing was from torts. I’m not suggesting my route to the answer is correct but I wonder if anyone else did the same?

14. I quite enjoyed that. Good Monday stuff. Only MINOR SUITS caused me major problems. I’m more of a poker man.

    As a kid my dad always used to say “spare us the ORGAN RECITAL” if I had to tell him I was ill. It was one of my favourite clues with the neat anagram and personal connection. The definition sits fine with me but possibly needed a question mark rather than an exclamation.

    Favourites today: HAIL MARY (coming from someone who usually detests spoonerisms), CLEANSER and the already discussed ORGAN RECITAL.

    Thanks Andrew and Anto

15. And ditto others re SPD relief. I went Oh no, first avatars, now orange on green! Phew!

16. ORGAN RECITAL is an anagram of GROAN ARTICLE…

17. gladys @11: when Andrew refers to the definition not grammatically matching the answer, I think he means for example “may keep skin looking healthy” for CLEANSER and “employed to put words together” for TYPESETTER. Personally this sort of thing doesn’t bother me. I usually enjoy Anto’s puzzles and this was no exception.

    Many thanks both.

18. NESSUN DORMA
    I do understand that the aria is usually translated as ‘none shall sleep’ but the verb ‘dorma’ is a subjunctive so it should really be something like ‘let no-one sleep’.

19. Liked the symmetry of the two MARYs and I’m glad Redrodney has explained ORGAN RECITAL, which along with NESSUN DORMA and NUDITY are my favourites. Now off to central London to celebrate SPD with friends from the Irish Guards, could get messy.

    Ta A & A.

20. I must be missing something completely obvious here, but why is a performer’s backstage requirement a RIDER?

21. Sagittarius @20 – one definition of rider is that of ‘condition’ or ‘proviso’. So it would appear to follow that a backstage rider stems from their agreement to perform on condition that they are provided with, e.g. x amount of bottles of wine, in addition to whatever else is in the contract.

22. A little toe tapper https://youtu.be/wWA76KDPz90?si=l81iCf1kdxVFcQ2P

23. Lord Jim@17: No, that doesn’t bother me either.

    ORGAN RECITAL is clearly a well known phrase that I haven’t encountered. Complaint withdrawn.

24. Sagittarius @20 and scraggs @21, to quote Chambers….

    rīˈder noun
    …..
    6 A list of specific personal requirements, such as food and drink, included in the contract of a performing artist
    …..

25. I remember on a visit to Los Angeles being completely baffled by airport announcements that no solicitors were allowed there. Having discovered the meaning, the first word that springs to mind in crossword clues featuring solicitors is always touts.

26. I’d never heard of the phrase ORGAN RECITAL, but it now gives me a phrase I can use to describe something I increasingly engage in as I get older. 🙂

27. Scraggs @21: good explanation, but I still don’t see the need for the performer aspect of the clue, (whether back or front of stage).

28. Scraggs@21: thanks. That sounds as plausible as anything, though I think of a rider as being simply an additional condition or extra clarification, with no implication of being under the radar or backstage.

29. Tim C @26: OK, that gets me there. Obscure for me, but should have delved into Chambers, as ever! Thanks.

30. William @27: I think the use of “performer” was there to help us to the answer as it is (for many) the most common use of the term. Many rock bands have had extraordinary riders including Van Halen’s requirement that there be a bowl of M&M sweets but no brown ones. Apparently this was not for any aversion to them but to see if people actually read and adhered to their contract.

    Certainly that use of “rider” was familiar and helped settle that I had the right film. “organ recital” seems to be one of those things you’ve either heard of or not. I hadn’t so the clue made no sense to me. The issue is that an unknown word is easy to check in a definitive source such as Chambers. A jokey definition is harder to pin down in such a way so my feeling is it has to be either very well-known or readily getable from the wordplay. With all the crossers the anagram resolved so the latter was true for me.

    Many thanks Anto and Andrew.

31. William @27, Sagittarius @28 – for me at least it’s just a matter of association. I’ve long known the phrase in relation to going to see bands play, and so making that link in my mind is second nature.

    Thanks Tim C @24 for the Chambers def.

32. Sagittarius @29, the full entry for it is….

    rīˈder noun

    1 A person who rides or can ride
    2 A commercial traveller (obsolete)
    3 A mosstrooper
    4 An object that rests on or astride of another, such as a piece of wire on a balance for fine weighing
    5 A clause or corollary added to an already complete contract or other legal document
    6 A list of specific personal requirements, such as food and drink, included in the contract of a performing artist
    7 A proposition that a pupil or candidate is asked to deduce from another
    8 A gold coin bearing a mounted figure (Du and Flem rijder)

33. Really pleased with myself that, for once, I remembered SAFE = PETER.

34. Thought this wonderfully elegant throughout with the picks being HAIL MARY and the wonderful ORGAN RECITAL. Last to yield were BEASTIE and LEFT IN…

35. Riders attached to performer’s contracts are notorious for their bizarre contents, which appear to be more about the performer demonstrating their power and influence than about real wants. In addition to Van Halen’s M&M request (mentioned by JoFT@30), Axl Rose (of Guns and Roses) once requested 7 types of cheese, 6 lamps, a rug, 2 bear-shaped tubs of honey and a cubic melon (yes, such things do exist). Lady Gaga, at one London performance, insisted her dressing room should be decked in Union Jack bunting and that she should be served Pimm’s, fish and chips and deep-fried mars bars, all served by waiters speaking in cockney accents.

36. Loved the colourful look, kenmac!
    Enjoyed this. Multiple ticks for 11d ORGAN/GROAN RECITAL!!!
    1a HAIL MARY was fun!
    Thanks to Anto and Andrew.

37. I actually found this quite difficult so presumably I should now take umbrage and feel undermined by all the comments about how easy it was?

    Top marks for NESSUN DORMA, HUMANITIES & BESTIE

    Good to know the green is for SPD – I thought I’d done it messing about with the avatar CSS 🙂

    Cheers A&A

38. I’d like to know in which dialects is new ditty homophoned as NUDITY? Scottish and most American ones I suspect.
    Hadn’t heard ORGAN RECITAL before. Love it, but as a 70 plus year-old I relate to it. I’ll tell that to my doctor next time, but as she’s half my age she probably won’t get it, Much better than the ”walking well”, or hypochondriacs,

39. Simonc@16. 🙂 Like your anagram GROAN ARTICLE for ORGAN RECITAL.

40. Thanks Redrodney @5 for explaining the use of ORGAN RECITAL, which I hadn’t heard of previously. MARY CELESTE and ROOM DIVIDERS were other good anagrams. I liked the safe environment for PARAMETER.

    I have only just twigged that the green reference is to the header. I thought I was seeing only orange this morning!

    Thanks Anto and Andrew.

41. pm @38; ‘new ditty’ for NUDITY for me (and for Collins, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nudity), an English Home Counties resident.

42. I agree with our blogger’s reservations. The Spoonerism is (ironically) the wrong way round, and ORGAN RECITAL could be more legitimately clued, e.g. ‘anatomy lesson’, as nothing about it indicates health problems. However, de gustibus etc.

43. Bit of a curate’s egg.
    Like JOFT@30, I hadn’t encountered that sense of ORGAN RECITAL & so spent ages trying to make the letters of the 2nd word into some organ ailment.
    Like michelle@2, I couldn’t parse 1D – and 13D was an inspired guess: I’ve not heard petty officialdom described that way (jobsworths, I presume) and I know nothing about bridge.
    However, I really liked the surfaces for NESSUN DORMA, MARY CELESTE, NOES and ELEVATION, and NUDITY was sweet.
    Thanks Anto & Andrew

44. I’d never heard ORGAN RECITAL in that context before but it struck me as a good joke. Reminded me that, in my teens and twenties, when I got together with friends that I hadn’t seen for a while one of the main topics of conversation was the drugs that we’d been doing. Now that I’m in my seventies the only thing that’s changed is that they’re on prescription…

45. poc@42 as numerous members have already explained: An organ recital: a narration of bodily ills and woes that might start with an upset stomach and work its way downward, outward and even upward

    And if Spooner was to try and utter “male hairy” it would come out as (make) HAIL MARY. This kind of reversal of the normal sense of things is an Anto favourite

46. I was sure that 23 down was ‘axed’, withthe definition being ‘chopper used’ so I came here only to be put right and yes I suppose on my reading, zone would be redundant so I should have realised.

47. Blaise@44 – that’s very funny about the drugs on prescription.
    Reminds me of something from a fellow septuagenarian recently: don’t ask someone over 70 how they are, they may just tell you.
    I heard the phrase ORGAN RECITAL in that context a few years ago and thought it was a great clue.
    Other faves were NESSUN DORMA, MINOR SUITS, PARAMETER and the cute BESTIE.
    Thanks Anto and Andrew

48. AlanC@22. Thanks for the link. I saw that in 1970. How times have changed.

49. OneLook.com finds 11d ORGAN RECITAL in The Word Spy.
    It’s in Urban Dictionary too, of course, where you can also find jorum, lately added by kenmac. The Wikipedia link is no help for the doctors’ slang, though.
    [Can’t find anything remotely Irish in the GIFts today. At least my Gravatar is “gold”, as are the links.]

50. …I’ve just been enjoying a nostalgic look back at short clips from the film EASY RIDER which I saw when it first appeared in the cinemas in 1969. What a consummate actor Jack Nicholson was already even then..

51. FrankieG @49; as I said @40, look at the blog header to see the green.

52. My big sister MARY bought the soundtrack LP of 18a EASY RIDER – The Band’s The Weight wasn’t on it. Instead there was this version by Smith.
    [I noticed the green white and gold ok. I meant not themes in the puzzles.]

53. [“no themes” – too slow to edit]

54. Thanks A & A. I enjoyed this. Anyone else have LEFT ON for 5a? LET ON as past tense = revealed.

55. Thanks both,
    The hijacking by business jargon of ‘parameter’ to mean ‘limiting factor’ still bugs me but it is sanctioned by the online Chambers. However, ‘guideline’ is not.

56. Bodycheetah@45: yes, I understood ORGAN RECITAL. I just didn’t like the ‘definition’. And as to the Spoonerism, it’s immensely more likely that the Rev. Spooner would mistakenly say ‘male hairy’ for HAIL MARY rather than the other way around, that’s all.

57. At about the expected level for Monday cryptic for me i.e. easier than Tuesday – Friday so there is a half chance that I can complete it.

    I liked 20a and 24a.

    I got HUMANITIES parse totally wrong and did not twig SOLICITORS = TOUTS.

    I just don’t understand CLEANER = DAILY.

    Thanks Andrew and Anto,.

58. I thought GROAN RECITAL a better fit to the definition for 11D than ORGAN RECITAL when there’s no mention of a concert in the clue. Silly me for expecting a proper definition.

59. AR@57
    DAILY=CLEANER in the sense of a day worker who does a cleaning job.

60. You were not joking, Andrew, when you said that this puzzle features some grammatical idiosyncrasies. Was the editor having a bit of a dorma here?

    Thank you 225 for the opportunity to have an avatar. I will try to get one on.

61. Is 22d a triple definition? With “up nails” as the 3rd. Enjoyed puzzle and blog. Thanks both.

62. Cut is a first def, up nails is the cryptic, and that are cheap is a second. But the gist is in the plural usage, warranted by the first def plus the cryptic part. Not to my taste, I’m afraid.

63. paddymelon@38 I’m an Brit/Australian living in the US for over 30 years. I never quite know where my pronunciations come from … though I do note with horror that it’s much easier for me to say ‘zee’ now rather than ‘zed’ (I held out well past use-by date). For me ‘new ditty’ and ‘nudity’ are homonyms.

    Another grand puzzle from Anto.

64. sorry, homophones, thought I’d corrected that.

65. I stress the “nu” bit more in “new ditty” than in “nudity”, but apart from that the sounds are exactly the same.

66. Thanks for the blog , good set of neat clues and fine for the Monday tradition .
    NESSUN DORMA made very popular in the UK by the BBC in 1990 . They used it as the theme for their coverage of the World Diving Championships in Italy .

    I do not mind the green but find the orange very hard to see , makes me appreciate the clarity of the usual colour scheme .

67. I’m with Tyngewick@55, It would seem that the business definition of PARAMETER as ‘guideline’ or ‘limit’ stems from a confusion with ’perimeter’, just as people now use ‘inchoate’ to mean ‘chaotic’. But yes, it’s become common practice. Thank you A&A

68. SueM48 @48! Dennis Hopper was just the coolest actor ever, even beating Jack Nicholson imo.

69. KVa @59 Thanks! I’ve never heard of that usage.

70. The organ recital phrase has been known to be used, somewhat disparagingly, by the overworked and tired medic faced with his or her hypochondriacal patient’s long list of complaints, perhaps telling his colleagues over their morning cuppa. So the “doctor” in the clue isn’t quite accurate, but was needed to direct the anagram. .

71. I remember Ian Wallace on My Music suggesting “None Shall Sleep” as a theme tune for hospital wards.

72. Robi@41 and polyphone@63. Thanks for your replies re new ditty/NUDITY. I realise my post was unclear.
    Should have looked it up. My pronunciation of NUDITY is noo for the first syllable, whereas new is nyoo.

    [AlanC @22 Thanks for Easy Rider! Great movie, and great acting as you say.
    SueM48@48 The sound of the album matched the funny grittiness of the movie when played on my little old portable turntable, with worn out stylus and grooves, around 1970)

73. 67, Hadrian.

    Yes, and people use “performative” to mean “presentational” or “transactional” etc., especially in the Guardian.

    As to grammar, it seems that the clues would often lead one to expect a different part of speech as the solution, but on allowing for that most appeared OK to me.

    Cheers all.

74. I came here for help with parsing PERIMETER for guideline. Why was RIME, strike?

    No I see I’d got it wrong.

    Re “noo ditty” versus “nyoo ditty”. Most dialects would treat both as either “noo” or “nyoo”

75. Inchoate as a subtraction indicator then. I’m bored with unfinished.

76. 18 across. The Setter was alluding to the GREEN ROOM obviously, on St Patrick’s Day

77. All completed, except for one letter wrong. I always thought the aria was NESSUM DORMA, so I carelessly put that in without checking the anagram fodder. That mis-spelling got plenty of search hits, so I’m clearly not the only one!

    I enjoyed 11d ORGAN RECITAL as I’ve given plenty of the literal kind. Very funny alternative meaning

    MARY CELESTE sent me down a rabbit hole — what a curious story!

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