Guardian 29,651 – Pangakupu

84 comments on “Guardian 29,651 – Pangakupu”

1. Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew
   A lot of guess then parse, aided electronically in places. I had never seen PER PRO written out, so that was a guess.
   Favourite the uncontroversial sounds like WAYMARKS.

2. Thank you Panga and Andrew. My LOI was CORONA. I didn’t understand lit = ON. I now see that it’s like a lightbulb.

3. Thanks Andrew – I had no chance with PER PRO, which I revealed. MOOR I couldn’t explain either, never having heard of MOR abbreviation.

   Thanks P too, for an enjoyable crossword.

4. This infant industry; this still-developing industry … hmm. Some fun wordplays here , eg cold house I avoided, on for lit, advisable for well, moke in sand… neat rather than gnarly. Enjoyed, ta Panga and Andrew.

5. PS looked up pukane and found puke = hill …?

6. CORONA was my FOI, in fact. I wonder if following it with Groucho, a famous cigar smoker, was deliberate?

   Does anyone else feel a bit short-changed by the considerable number of long answers meaning there were fewer clues than usual?

7. I actually liked the long answers which were very helpful in supplying crossers. My favourite was 7d SMOKE AND MIRRORS. Glad to have the blog to help explain how a couple of the solutions worked. Thanks to Pangakupu and Andrew.

8. Have to be honest muffin@6. I felt a bit that way, not only because there were fewer clues, but so many went in from definitions and enumeration.

9. Re the nina/s. I came up with a very tentative Book of Mormons. Pangakupu has said that he starts his grid off with something related to the order of his submission of his crosswords. The previous one published was his 33rd, of course we have no way of knowing when this was submitted. It could have been in the queue and published later.
   Look forward to Pangakupu dropping in, as he usually does, for the revelation.

10. Despite years of seeing them in solutions, I so rarely think of musical instructions as a possible answer. Just a mental blind spot. So LOI, ALLEGRO, was harder than it should have been. I was taken by the surface for OUTER SPACE which made me smile. And NONSENSE has a nice allusion to the mysterious Loch sightings.

    Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew

11. There also seems to be a bit of an outer space theme happening.

    Similar experience PM@10. My last two in were the intersecting CEREBELLAR and ALLEGRO, and I realised that, even with crossers, I wasn’t looking for Latinate words.

12. PER PRO was a guess and google that took me longer than the rest of the crossword combined. I thought it strayed close to indirect anagram territory but I’m in favour of those so can’t really complain 🙂

    Top ticks for GLOOMY, CEREBELLAR, and SMOKE AND MIRRORS – probably becasuse I’ve always hankered after a Mini Moke

    And a cracking earworm: Denim’s Middle of the Road

    Cheers P&A

13. S&M went in reasonably quickly on the second pass, the other long ones as they clicked, but I was over half way when I realised 2d was an anagram, although I had already written in LABOUR, At the same moment I saw what I was looking for. PER PRO I had to look up. I knew pp, but never knew what it stood for.
    Thanks both.

14. Soundly defeated by this, having entered several speculatively without much of an idea about how they might be parsed. I’m not much good at these Latin phrases that litter our language, as PER PRO, either. And when I realised the knife had to be taken twice to the two components that made up ALLEGRO, I feebly threw in the towel. Though BOTANICAL GARDEN rather an impressive anagram – might stroll down to our local one here and enjoy the Spring sunshine later…

15. According to my dictionary, PUKANE means bromine. Same experience as you, Andrew, with the long ones going in early and yes muffin @6, it did seem a bit stingy. I assumed ROOM music was something like elevator music, which is actually objectionable, so thanks for parsing that one. My favourite was STAND-UP for its simplicity.

    Ta Pangakupu & Andrew.

16. OTOTW reminded me of this iconic scene
    https://youtu.be/OjzKiEs_pHI?si=0YyfoZTBznjEQOTc

17. Re Middle Of the Road music (should that be called OA?) I didn’t understand why music in department stores was so irritating until I learned it’s designed to move you on and through the store. They even use it as deterrent for youth crime outside. But what I don’t get is why they use doof-doof “music” which stops me even entering a cafe, for example.

18. PUKANE is indeed bromine (rather surprised to find that it wasn’t a loan word from English; many element names, in many languages, are just minor variants on the canonical English words) – element 35 for puzzle 35 (34 is next month.)

    pp seems to be one of those things you see around, but never really realise it stands for something.

19. …and I’m rather glad they don’t find time to hold a glltzy night for presenting music awards in the MOR category, like the MOBO’s for instance…

20. As an ex rocket scientist, ROCKETRY wasn’t rocket science. 🙂

21. Thanks Pangakupu for dropping in and congrats AlanC@15 for getting bromine. What dictionary do you use?

    Sitting on Top of the World. Easy listening from The Cream. 🙂

22. Favourites were OUTER SPACE for the amusing surface (as PostMark says) and MOOR for the cleverly disguised definition. I also liked CORONA, having trained myself to think COR! whenever I see the word “my”. I didn’t fully parse SLIVER, and I think it would have been a long time before “advisable” = “well” crossed my mind.

    Thanks Pangakupu and Andrew.

23. Paddymelon@9 – Bromine has atomic number 35 so there might be something in your theory (are we missing submission 34?)

24. Paddymelon@9: you could well be right about the (out of) order. Pukane (bromine) is atomic number 35

25. Enjoyed this. Had to reveal PER PRO and MOOR. I have pp’ed hundreds of documents and knew the full Latin term but never heard it shortened to per pro. As for MOOR, I had never heard of MOR as an abbreviation and was completely stuck in “fell” meaning evil – completely forgot it could mean moor or bog or I might have guessed it. Much of my solving involves writing in a guess and then reverse parsing.

26. I failed to solve 22ac and I couldn’t parse 2d.

    New for me: CEREBELLAR.

27. Never heard of PER PRO, MOR as an abbreviation, or CORONA cigars, so they all got revealed alongside ALLEGRO (which I don’t think I would have got, but had given in by that point)

    I’d also not known about OUTERS as a specific word for a miss, so didn’t put it in until the crossers made it inevitable. Of the ones I did get, I liked all of them I think, but especially CEREBELLAR, which definitely did as advertised

28. I went astray by entering ‘hogwash’ rather than ‘eyewash’, my writer being James Hogg, so unsurprisingly ‘infantry’ held me up longer than it should have.

29. PER PRO and ALLEGRO my LOIs too, despite being a muso; I just reckon our brains don’t expect words ending in O as they whizz (or slowly crank in my case) through the possibilities. Thank you Panga and Andrew.

30. A very enjoyable solve. After ROCKETRY, ON TOP OF THE WORLD, OUTER SPACE, CORONA and STRANDS, I was sure we had a theme developing, but then it stopped. Thanks P.

31. Some fun, intricate wordplay here. Another one here for whom ALLEGRO and (nho) PER PRO were the last to fall. As per MattS@30 I assumed we had a mini theme, but our setter hasn’t mentioned it @18. There were other bits of nho too, so I was grateful for the many checkers coming from the long entries!

    Favourites were OUTER SPACE and GLOOMY.

    Thanks both

32. When MOR is spoken out loud, it is normally pronounced as three separate letters ’em-oh-arr’. That might be why many people feel they have never heard it.

33. Also NHO PER PRO despite being familiar with p.p., and don’t feel like I would have got there even if I had.

    Bonus fun fact: NASA also concerns itself with inner space. A lot of its work is Earth Science including things related to climate modeling. For the time being, anyway.

34. Much too hard for me today, even if I did manage the long clues eventually. I did chuckle at ON TOP OF THE WOR(L)D. My solving wasn’t helped by having bunged in EARMARKS for ‘asseses Grocho’, thinking ‘hear Marx’. An earmark is an indicator, I think. WAYMARKS is obviously better

    Fun, if too hard. Thanks

35. Always enjoy a Pangakupu, and today was no exception. I wrinkled my brow a bit at GRIT, and not for the usual reason of my dislike of using a word to denote its initial letter. Would GRI ever have been used? We see ERII, CRIII etc., for the monarch’s following the first one with that name, but only as an imprimatur during their reign. Surely in his reign King George would just have use GR, not GRI. Is there any example of GRI (ER1, CR1 etc.) ever having existed? Thanks Andrew for the excellent blog.

36. Yes, 11a had to be something-MARKS, but it took me a while to decide what. Apart from PER-PRO, which I gave up on, ALLEGRO was my last in, and it was putting in a speculative RO(d)? at the end that pointed me towards the right group of words.

    I enjoyed all the long ones – I’m not a solver who considers myself cheated if I am able to spot an answer from def and crossers and don’t get the chance to slog through fifteen letters’ worth of laborious parsing, though it’s good to confirm the answer. But it has its downsides: I should have looked more closely at CEREBELLAR (an adjective I didn’t know existed) before putting in CEREBELLUM…

    I didn’t enjoy the vague “at various points” parsing of HISTORICAL, but I liked the cold GLOOMY house, OUTER SPACE, ROCKETRY and NONSENSE.

37. Paul@35, I checked with my first wife and she agrees with you.

38. paddymelon @21: this is the one I found which seems very good, the same as Andrew’s actually.
    https://maoridictionary.co.nz/

39. Not sure if Pangakupu was being kind or, like Andrew, I was helped by getting all four long down clues quickly. I found this a pleasant and enjoyable solve. It’s not usually quite as smooth with this setter.

    MOOR was the only one I couldn’t understand. I thought the music was superfluous but my post solve reading shows to be abbreviated to MOR it has to relate to music and not just be unobjectionable. MOR was new to me. Surprised I’ve not seen it before an obviously useful letter combo.

    A lot to like in this: liked CEREBELLAR ( I was worried it was going to be one of those bottle sizes I can never remember), INFANTRY, ROCKETRY.

    Crosswords should come with warnings if they contain an earworm. I have the Carpenters on repeat in my head now. Although it did bring back memories of my favourite Shrek scene: https://youtu.be/rfyB8yJOf6A?feature=shared

40. Loi was moor. Like Muddy @25, took ages remembering fell as one of the landforms, like lea, moor, down, bottom, wash, fen etc.

41. [GinF @40
    I’ve posted this before, but you may not have seen it. My mother-in-law was telling me about a friend of hers who had climbed all the “Wainwrights” – fells in the Lake District with a separate chapter in Wainwright’s guidebooks. I asked if it had taken him a long time.
    “No” she said, quite innocently “he did them in one fell swoop”, and wondered why we fell about laughing.]

42. Still not seeing why “advisable” is “well”, can anyone illuminate me please?

43. Nice one muffin (and yes I do vaguely recall 🙂 )

44. PaulG@42: from my Oxford Thesaurus for well: It would be well/advisable to know just what this suggestion entails

45. I can never see these long ‘uns without quite a number of crossers, so not too easy for me. I liked the still developing INFANTRY, the dismal cold house that was GLOOMY, the good anagram for BOTANICAL GARDEN, and the surface and wordplay for ALLEGRO.

    Thanks P and A.

46. Thanks for the blog , many neat clues with clever wordplay . HISTORICAL correctly tells us to split the O and C , Arachne messed this up recently .

47. New to this solving world and completed this with a colleague. A couple we solved without fully understanding so it was great to read the explanations. Per Pro was new to us, and still not sure of how “eyewash” means 20! We will look out for more from this setter.

48. Isn’t MOR is sometimes alled hedgehog?

49. Thanks both.
    I failed on per pro. [If a letter is signed by A on behalf of B, should it be A pp B or B pp A? In my professional training I was taught to use the latter meaning ‘B by the action of A’. But in later life I have found most people use the former in the mistaken belief that ‘per pro’ means ‘for and on behalf of’. What do gentle readers use?]

50. If you find MOR upsetting, wait till you hear Adult Oriented Rock.

51. Further to the middle of the road discussion, here’s an earworm (be advised – don’t listen if of a sensitive nature!)

52. Strictly speaking, 15 isn’t a double definition. “Decide not to meet” is “stand up” (verb), not “stand-up” (noun or modifier).

53. Adrian @51
    I don’t understand why a double definition can’t give different parts of speech. Could you explain, please?
    I’ve tried to think of an example – the best I can come up with on the spur of the moment is:
    Spice put through player’s legs (6)
    in which the first definition is a noun and the second a verb.

54. muffin@52, I think Adrian’s point (with which I agree) is that the first “definition” does not feature the hyphen, so is in fact wordplay as it does not fit the enumeration – if today’s clue had been (5,2) it would be the other way round – your example is a fine double def as both parts lead to the same entry. Nothing at all wrong with the clue, of course (unlike your link – urgh! but you did warn us). Thanks Andrew for background on Per Pro which I thought was clever – have used pp a few times without fully knowing what it means, so I probably got it the wrong way round, Tyngewick@48, and thanks Pangakupu.

55. Thanks Gazzh for pointing out the hyphen difficulty.

56. Me @54
    I remember long ago being advised to ignore the punctuation in the clues. It seems that this doesn’t apply to the solutions!

57. As someone who has climbed many FELLS (including dozens of those mentioned by muffin above) and walked across many MOORS, I can assure readers that they are not the same.

58. muffin @ 55 Not necessarily – the ‘ in eg “o’clock” is generally ignored

59. Dumb & Dumber @ 47
    Eyewash is an informal term for nonsense the answer to 20 across, if a clue has a number it often refers to the answer to that clue.

60. Cliveinfrance @59
    But not always – look out for the tricky ones where a number doesn’t refer to another clue!
    I hadn’t noticed your request, Dumb & Dumber – sorry I didn’t respond.

61. #47 Dumb and Dumber: the 20 in the clue refers to the answer for 20 across, which is “nonsense”. Eyewash = nonsense = rubbish.

62. That post @47 has sneaked in somehow ? It was not there before or I would have replied .

63. Roz & Muffin & D&D
    [I was wondering why no one had responded as normally these are picked up quickly. I did say often, for D&D every number has several possible answers/ references which you will discover, this site really helps. I’ve been doing cryptic for over 50 years and still discover new ones.]

64. Thanks AlanC@38 for the link to the Maori dictionary. I have used that before but didn’t think to use it this time and just got some hit and miss stuff on a web search.

    gladys@36. Has Roz@46 addressed your comment about ‘the vague’ at various points in the clue for HISTORICA or is it that you find it unsatisfactory? It took me a while to get that. I didn’t mind it..

65. Would middle of the road music be the White Stripes?

66. MOR is my guilty pleasure. Indeed, my most played Spotify Playlist is entitled MOR. However, even I don’t agree that many wouldn’t find it extremely objectionable!

67. Found this if not GLOOMY, nevertheless a bit dull somehow, although did like (I)GLOO and other clever stuff mentioned by others.
    Our first one in was SMOKE AND MIRRORS (from the suspected K from probable MARKS and the letter count). This is the problem with long clues like this, you don‘t need much if they‘re a standard saying. I think Paul is the wizard at this – his contemporary stuff is completely ungettable until nigh on every crosser is in, even though we‘ll have heard what-ever it is many times.
    Thank you Pangakupu and Andrew.

68. Me @66
    I am probably STILL laughing at Brynner never wearing Cologne, although that was not Paul‘s joke and I expect everybody knew it but me!

69. [Caroline @67
    That was mine – actually my daughter’s.]

70. Thanks everyone. Don’t worry about not noticing my comment. I’m new and had to verify so that delayed the posting. I didn’t feel ignored!!

71. paddymelon@64: I’m sure there is nothing technically incorrect about the clue for HISTORICAL: as Roz says, it tells you clearly that the first-letter abbreviations for Old and College need to be separated and dropped into the synonym TRIAL (court case) “at various (unspecified) points”. But I don’t have to like it.

72. True gladys@71. I hope you don’t think I was challenging your opinion, just genuinely interested.

73. PDM & Gladys , a recent Arachne clue – Actively desires to clothe backs of young waifs and strays – Answer DIGRESSES .
    The backs of younG waifS have gone in seperately , very bad form .

74. [Mmm Roz@73. That’s not like Arachne.)

75. Quite new here so I don’t get what the references to Nina and Pukane mean. Please educate me!

76. [Muffin @69
    It was your daughter‘s joke?!! Please tell more!]

77. Roz@73
    Or even separately.
    paddymelon@74
    Mmm, that’s not like Roz.

78. Anthony Flavell@75
    A Nina is a message (or theme words etc) hidden in the grid, sometimes round the perimeter, sometimes along a diagonal or sometimes in the unchecked squares in a particular row or column (or more than one of each). Its name is derived from the American cartoonist Al Hirschfeld’s habit of hiding his daughter’s name, Nina, in his cartoons.
    (This comes from the site’s FAQs, accessible from above the day’s blog)
    Pangakupu is a New Zealander and includes a Maori word as a Nina in all his crosswords.

79. paul@35 both George V and George VI were Emperors of India and used GRI as their cyphers – Georgius Rex Imperator. It’s the letter I, not one.

80. Nice one, Zoot @57. I couldn’t believe that I had to scroll so far down, (to number 57), before someone pointed out that “moor” is not a synonym for “fell”.

81. [Google Translate has Maori, but it appears to get “pukane” wrong, translating it as “book”. Other dictionaries don’t seem to back that up, and neither does Google Translate if you go in the other direction: it says that the Maori for “book” is “pukapuka”. And if you ask it to translate English “bromine” into Maori, it doesn’t know.]

82. I solved 2d with lots of guesses/checks.

    Nothing else. Very tricky.

    Even with the blog – thank you – I cannot engineer my brain to bend anywhere near enough.

83. Crackers @65. I see what you did there, LOL.

84. All but four. How did I miss ALLEGRO? Also MOOR and PER PRO, which many others commented on

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