Guardian Cryptic crossword No 29,689 by Kite

64 comments on “Guardian Cryptic crossword No 29,689 by Kite”

1. Thanks Kite and manehi
   The theme helped a quick finish, but several were unparsed – YUCCA, PRAYER MATS, GEORGE, TRIANGLE. I hadn’t heard of DOHYO, but what else could it be?
   I liked the cleverness of VISUAL.

2. I remembered DOHYO from when Channel 4 here in the UK used to broadcast Sumo wresting many years ago: I wasn’t sure of how to spell it, but the anagram clarified that. Meanwhile, I thought it strangely serendipitous that ESURIENT should follow Brockwell’s ‘cheesemonger’ clue yesterday at 16d.

3. DOHYO, YUCCA were new to me, and I couldn’t parse TRIANGLE. I wouldn’t have heard of ESURIENT were it not for Monty Python’s cheese shop sketch. Mock/kid surprised me.

4. Well, someone had to provide the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz1JWzyvv8A

5. After managing to fill in most of the top half quite readily, though with one or two unparsed, I got bogged down with TREACLE, and would have been helped if I had realized that the anagram for ESURIENT was staring me on the face. Also had no idea about DOHYO, so rather wrestled myself to a standstill there.
   The theme quite obvious to me for a welcome change, but just couldn’t tease our the last few today. Many thanks Kite and Manehi for the fun and celebration…

6. I know it’s bad form to say “easy” so let’s say this was the fastest solve in a while. I didn’t know ESURIENT, but it was the only convincing arrangement of the letters that would fit. I didn’t know WOODGROUSE either, but that was simply sorted. It’s nice when a theme is blatantly obvious from the outset. It sped up KING GEORGE. Thanks Kite and manehi
   (Is there a reason so many bloggers are lower case?)

7. Nicely done theme for the 25, 14.

   Is there a reason why pigs were chosen for the surface of 16d ESURIENT, when any word ending in S would have done?

   Thanks Kite and manehi.

8. DOHYO was unknown (is it related to ‘dojo’, perhaps different transliterations of the same word?). I also remembered ESURIENT from Python, but ‘neglected’? This supports my theory that pretty much anything can be an anagrind.

9. Since when does church=service? Obviously on some obscure thesaurus site on t’internet.

10. I enjoyed this a lot more than my tick count might suggest. Podium places for CRAFTY, YUCCA and EUROPE although some might think the wordplay a bit loose 🙂

    ESURIENT was one of those odd words I recognised but didn’t know the meaning of. Another school day!

    Cheers M&K

11. Lord Jim @7 maybe a themed republican comment on wealth inequality?

    Thanks to Kite for a workout on the gentler side and manehi for an excellent blog.

12. I was sure that the Asian Islanders were “sellin’ Es” (CEYLONESE) until I worked out DOHYO, and found out it was a sumo ring. The anagram fodder for EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY is magnificent, though it took me a while to cotton on to what it was the anniversary of – not getting a lot of airplay here. Thanks, Kite and manehi.

13. Well thanks Kite and Manehi.

    I’m usually oblivious to themes so it was nice to be whacked over the head with this one.

    Lot of good material and like everyone else, I stumbled with ESURIENT, TRIANGLE and DOHYO. I assume so, but was Nipponese really used at the time? Seems sporadic from a quick search around the web.

    What’s with setters insisting U = Posh? If the bloggers have to link to Wikipedia every time it comes up, I’m not sure it’s that good an abbreviation for clues.

14. @9 My father was a clergyman and might say “we’ve got CHURCH three times today” if there were three SERVICEs.

15. Lord Jim @7 I think it is because pigs are notable eaters and therefore provide a more amusing surface. Indeed, Paul clued ESURIENT as ‘Piggy’ in his Venetian-themed Prize crossword on Sept. 12th last year.

16. Tim @9

    It’s in Chambers #2 a church service

17. [poc@8: dojo and dohyo are etymologically unrelated. Unfortunately compressing thousands of kanji characters (the “Chinese” characters used in Japanese) into first the syllabic pronunciation and then the English transliteration loses so much along the way that it is impossible to tell without going back to the original. The sumo ring comes from characters meaning “earth” (as in ground, dirt) and “sack” or “bag” but here suggesting a container as in the ring within which the fight takes place. The martial arts hall comes from a word meaning “place” or “room” and “way” (from the Chinese “dao”) which is suffixed to many studies e.g. judo, aikido, kendo (the way of the sword) to distinguish them from practical fighting arts (which are suffixed -jutsu).]

18. EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY was indeed an impressive anagram. I did this on the new Guardian app, but couldn’t work out how to see who the setter was.

19. Esurient rang familiar once entered, from crosswords I think, though with GDU’s @3 reminder, I imagine I can hear Cleese saying it, but I wouldn’t swear. Slow to get would/wood, d’oh, so woodgrouse loi. Enjoyed the VE Day refs, thanks Kite and manehi.

20. Yes Admin @16, that’s church service. If it’s synonymical why isn’t church in some way listed in the Big C under the headword ‘service’. The only ones that come close is
    13. A performance of religious worship and
    14. A liturgical form or office or a musical setting of it.
    I’ve used the phrase “I’m going to church” many times in the past to not mean “I’m going to a church service”.

21. DOJO MAN @18, I does this puzzles

22. DOJO MAN @19, I does this puzzles

23. I initially had fool instead of mock, which works just as well in itself. That gave me buff off = finish instead of bump off, which I couldn’t parse but the crossers worked. It sorted itself out once the theme became clear and the PM had to be Churchill.

24. [TT @12, dyu have the BBC app on your device? i often have its World Service live feed on while I’m solving. Heaps of other stuff on there too. (I have our own Aunty’s app too of course)]

25. Thanks EdTheBall @11 and Balfour @15. It just seems a bit odd to me. Why would pigs reunite? I was thinking that something like

    Survivors at last reunite, shattered and hungry (8)

    might have been more appropriate.

26. Hands up if you put in WOODPECKER for 22a before you really thought about it? (OK, just me then). It’s been a while since anyone made carbon copies of documents, though I notice that the cc abbreviation still survives in the “copy” boxes for email. I remember, as a student temp in the 70s, having to type forcefully enough to produce ten legible Carbon Copies on a manual typewriter – those were not the good old days! I didn’t parse YUCCA.

    Very enjoyable – was this the Kite puzzle that mysteriously appeared and disappeared on Easter Saturday, or is that still to come?

27. Saw the theme for once.

    I could not parse 1d apart from V=5, and also 17d.

    Thanks, both.

28. Enjoyable to finish but several unparsed (KING GEORGE, PRAYER MATS, TRIANGLE).

    FALL GUYS produced a wry grin but those nothing to define the answer, is there?

    Surprised that WOODGROUSE is one word.

    Many thanks both.

29. gladys @28, not only did I try for ages to parse WOODPECKER, I also had a long go at WOODPIGEON. And no, this isn’t the Kite that appeared by mistake, unless I’ve got the answers to that all wrong.

30. Oh so many people love these crosswords because they require a great deal more knowledge eg music, art, geography, history, wildlife etc etc than boring old Sudoku which only requires repetition of numbers.

31. Fortunately for you dojo man, cryptics are not compulsory 🙂

32. Enjoyed that, despite being tricky in places. Apt theme as well. A few not fully parsed but half parsing was all that was needed. Thankfully nothing fully dumbfounded me. Totally missed the anagram in PRAYER MAT and solved it as a cryptic definition.

    Nothing fills me more with dread than one word clues in the Guardian. LOI when the penny dropped but spent a lot of time trying to solve it as ‘par a troopers’.

    Liked the surfaces in a lot of the clues CHURCHILL perhaps my favourite today.

    Thanks Manehi and Kite.

33. DOJO @18 I really does these kind of puzzles

34. DOJO @19 I even does these kind of puzzles

35. I was not surprised to encounter a theme today and Kite has done a good job of blending some relevant solutions with references in the clues. The anagram for EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY is first class.

    Thanks Kite and manehi

36. DOJO MAN: I cannot see why someone who has a distaste for cryptic crosswords takes the time to visit a cryptic crossword site to complain that it’s all about cryptic crosswords. Surely, time could be better spent solving sudoku, kakuro or even kenken?

37. NIPPONESE, pretty archaic now but common enough in ’45, is also a theme answer, I think–your reminder that it wasn’t really over yet. (Over here, the dancing in the streets happened in August, not May.)

38. poc@8

    Just to add to what Jack @17 said,

    The following two characters are DoHyou (sumo ring) transliterated into English as dohyo:

    土俵 1st char means earth. 2nd = bag or sack or bale

    The next two chracters are DouJou (hall used for martial arts training) transliterated as dojo:

    道場 1st = way, path. 2nd = place, location

    So there’s no overlap between the two words dohyo and dojo.

    As Jack says, impossible to know that without going back to the source.

39. DOJO@19 Not only does I do these puzzles, I even spent the last 6 or so months learning how to do them, after I got bored with the obscure clues in the Guardian quick. I learnt the word esurient today, my vocab and life have been thoroughly enriched.

40. Fun fact: “CC” meaning “carbon copy” is a 20th century back-formation. The original meaning was simply “copies”, and long predates printing, let alone typewriters.

    It goes all the way back to medieval scribes, where every saved letter was worthwhile, and many plural abbreviations were formed by doubling the initial letter. Some still survive today, e.g. “p” for page, “pp” for pages, and “ll” for “lines” in reference citations.

41. DOJO@19 and ff. This is a classic example of “stop liking what I don’t like”, as the kids apparently say.

42. Wood Grouse is 2 words

43. DOJOMAN@18, I really don’t comment very much but thanks for the entertainment.

44. Good point, Jacob @44. Also survives in “tt” for tiresome trolls

45. DOJOMAN@19, I don’t even comment very much,but thanks for the entertainment

46. Many thanks to manehi for the great blog and to all who commented. I realised with the date and some heavily hinting clues that some might find this relatively easy once the theme was unravelled. It was fun to set and I was pleased to discover the anagram for EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

47. Thanks Kite for an excellent crossword. Those of us in the US who had parents & family who fought & died in WW2 certainly recognised the 80th anniversary of VE day. The clue for EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY was stellar. I also enjoyed the shorter ones like OTIC & AMOUR. I liked ‘at the Centre’ in the wordplay of KING GEORGE; I couldn’t parse the clever PRAYER MATS. Thanks manehi for the blog.

48. Thanks Kite. Excellent given the day that’s in it. I stared at 25/14 for a time (I only had the final Y as a crosser) before I thought “there is no way that’s an anagram is it?” But it was and very impressive indeed. Came here late so missed DOJOMAN’s comment (I guess it was deleted) which seems a pity given the very entertaining responses!

49. I agree with William @28 that FALL GUYS (8dn) is a strange clue, lacking a proper definition.

    As I see it, it’s a sort of a reverse cryptic definition: if the answer PARATROOPERS were clued as “Fall guys? (12)”, that would be a fairly ordinary cd. I don’t recall ever seeing a clue like that.

    I enjoyed this clue and found it quite gettable, so I’m not complaining, but I think that this is a device that should probably be used very sparingly.

50. PeterT @18. You can get back the crosswords on the main page and will be able to see the setter’s name. To do so click on Menu (bottom right on main page) then on the “person” icon top right of page. You’ll see a home page customisation option appear.

51. PeterT @18. On the puzzle page if you go to the archive section and press on Crosswords you get to see the setter’s name

52. Thanks for the blog , good set of clues , I liked the precision of AMOUR the fission for EUROPE and the cleverness of PRAYER MATS .
    No reflection on the setter today but I would like to scratch my head now and then , it will be five weeks tomorrow .

53. Nice use of theme. Greeting from USA, where our leader has announced two new national holidays, one for each WW, reminding us that America won both. You are invited to check out my short opinion pieces at georgebriangreer.substack.com

54. Now, Roz, you described Vlad’s Prize on 26 May as “pretty tough when cold-solving” with the down solutions and the grid finally helping out. How far above ‘pretty’ does the ‘tough’ index have to be cranked up before your fingernails are applied perplexedly to your coiffure? And for what puzzle, out of interest, did this cranial procedure last prove necessary?

55. Balfour @54 , pretty tough first look , about 15 seconds per clue , if I do not get it I move on . Once I put in what I had it collapsed , I never once stopped . I only scratch my head if I reach twenty minutes , put it down , have a think and come back later .
    The last one was Enigmatist , April 4th , not hard by his standards but did go beyond my 20 minute journey home .

56. What are these references to DOJOMAN all about?

57. jeceris @56
    Earlier, someone using the handle “DOJOMAN” made some posts criticising anyone bothering to do cryptic crosswords. There were some ironic replies. They have now been deleted.

58. I’m another whose only previous exposure to ESURIENT was courtesy of Monty Python. Indeed, having never read the word, I’d have been inclined to give it two S’s if asked’

59. Enjoyed this, apposite theme and one tremendous anagram. Easier to complete than to parse in several places. Not convinced that FALL GUYS is a complete clue.

60. I quite liked FALL GUY, along the lines set out by Ted@49. Yes, it’s a little deficient as a clue, but the enumeration helps to convince us that our answer is right, even if we haven’t already achieved all the crossers. 🤔

    I had no idea about the wrestling ring, though DOHYO was the only pronouncable possibility. And I’d never heard of a wood grouse and it also never occurred to me that ‘would pronounced’=WOOD. I don’t think I was having a particularly thick day, just not really on Kite’s wavelength. Or do I mean planet?

    I must admit I found the theme a little crude, though rendering the fodder of 25/14 as ‘everything in this area’ was quite an achievement.

    Thanks to setter and blogger as ever.

61. That was fun. I knew that “esurient” was a word but I couldn’t have told you what it meant and I didn’t get it till I had all the crossers in place. “Everything in this area” is a neat anagram 🙂

62. My late father was a Military Policeman with the Polish Airborne Division.

    He survived the Battle Of Arnhem, being the last to jump from his plane, seconds before it crashed – having been shot down – killing its crew.

    Yes, the paratroops indeed were the fall guys, in every sense.

    Many thanks all.

63. muffin@1 and sheffield hatter@60, I too didn’t know the sumo place at 23d, so I happily entered DYHOO, which is as pronounceable as DOHYO, wouldn’t you agree?

64. Great puzzle. One of my occasional completions — yay! Picked up the theme along the way, which helped

    I know ESURIENT from the Latin text of the Magnificat: “Esurientes implevit bonis…”

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