Guardian 29,713 / Yank

71 comments on “Guardian 29,713 / Yank”

1. 22a “shelter rescue” refers to PET

2. Eileen, in PERPETRATE, I assumed the pet was, for example, a rescue dog from an animal shelter. And the definition just commit.

3. Re 22a – PER PET RATE (a shelter rescue is a pet, so it is a rate per pet).

   Thanks for the blog Eileen and the crossword, Yank. I found today’s a bit of a curate’s egg.

4. I took PERPETRATE to be PER as you have parsed it with PET RATE being the value assigned to a pet coming from a rescue shelter such as Battersea Dogs Home but I can’t pretend I am confident about that

5. Well, that was quirky with some interesting surfaces. Equating Scotland Yard with CID in OCTANGLE is just plain wrong and I hadn’t heard of TOM SWIFTY and GALLERY HOP. I liked SLEIGH, COMPOSTED, NEWT, PERPETRATE, GREAT OUSE and EQUIP. I thought PERPETRATE was something to do with a PET shelter, Eileen but might be wrong. I imagine this puzzle will be a marmite affair for many.

   Ta Yank & Eileen

6. Many thanks, all – I knew it wouldn’t take long!

7. Thanks Yank and Eileen
   What is a GALLERY HOP?
   I thought the clue for GRACE KELLY was clunky. EKG seems to be ECG, but in German!
   I liked the clues for GREAT OUSE, EQUIP, and STAMPEDE.
   Anyone puzzled by “troika” has almost certainly heard this.

8. Not sure if this qualifies as a TOM SWIFTY: “Your bow-wow’s wee-weed on my rug!” she complained onomatopoeically?

9. I’m sure it does, Blaise @8 – thank you! 🙂

   For those unfamiliar with Tom Swifties, it’s worth following the link I gave – they’re great fun.

10. I only did about half of this puzzle and came here to read the blog.

    10ac I think there is quite a difference between groupies and regular music fans (such as Swifties) because the more common usage of a groupie is ‘an ardent fan of a celebrity, esp a pop star: originally, often a girl who followed the members of a pop group on tour in order to have sexual relations with them’ (from Collins dictionary online).

    muffin@7, I also did not know what a gallery hop is but a google search on the words ‘mayfair gallery hop’ showed me that it is indeed a thing in London at least.

11. I followed Eileen’s link for GALLERY HOP and am not much wiser. Is it a new thing?
    We crossed, michelle

12. Thanks for the link @7 muffin, which now makes sense. Interestingly, Emerson Lake and Palmer also did their own take on Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

13. I couldn’t work out how to fit Gloucester into NEWT until sense prevailed and as my compost is sweet-smelling and beneficial, I found it hard to equate with turning rotten. Nho TOM SWIFTY and struggled to put GALLERY HOP together. Suffice it to say, I struggled.

14. STEN GUN went in quickly but I struggled a bit after that! I’m another who hadn’t heard of a GALLERY HOP. I initially thought the Shakespearean eye donor might be GLOS (Gloucester).

    My favourite was STAMPEDE which was clever and neat.

    Thanks Yank and Eileen.

15. COTD: TOM SWIFTY (thanks for the link, Eileen. Excellent puns).
    Also liked G HOP, C FODDER, TOY CHEST and SEXPOT.

    Thanks Yank and Eileen.

16. I see I’m not alone in my ignorance, though NEWT raised a smile when I saw it and remembered Macbeth. OCTANGLE was the obvious result from the word fodder but took me a while to realise that it referred to the road signs. Wasn’t familiar with the Simpsons character, but it was obvious from the crossers. Liked COMPOSTED and SALUTE. Thanks to Yank and to Eileen.

17. Not to my taste I have to say. In spite of having lived in the USA and so being more familiar with things like saltine crackers, I still think Americanisms should be clearly indicated as such. We all use phrases we do not know to be parochial, but the editor should sift them out in my opinion.

    I am struggling to see how “stunt” is an anagrind. As a verb it would mean to shorten. Can anyone give a reasonable explanation, or do we just accept that anything can be an anagrind now? I would like, at least, to hold to the idea that anagrinds should be an instruction to the solver (“grind meat for a friend”) or an adjective applied to the grist (“meat ground for a friend”), with occasional forays into adverbs such as (“supply meat for a friend”).

    Not sure about the “to” in “a great deal” – it’s not a meaningful link word and distorts the second meaning which would have to be “to flush”. I see it makes the surface work, but at the expense of the wordplay, which hardly seems right. Also “eke out” doesn’t mean supplement, it means to get by with what you have – quite the opposite.

    Sorry for all the complaints – but I really think this is a prime example of where the editor could’ve earned his crust and improved the puzzle significantly with a few strokes of the red pen.

18. I hadn’t heard of a GALLERY HOP – despite having unknowingly done one or two; or TOM SWIFTY, despite the familiar format. I’d forgotten the bark device so really struggled trying to unscramble the wrong letters for CATTLE FODDER. My LOI by quite some distance was OCTANGLE; nothing else would fit in the end, but I was truly baffled and it was my only unparsed clue. There was no explanation of the shape aspect here, but the UK stop sign dawned on me having arrived.

    Good challenge and an excellent blog.
    Thanks to Yanks and to Eileen for going above and beyond on the blog.

19. JOFT@17: Well said. I agree with all those points. I’d add the strange ‘to’ in 22a, necessary for the surface but extraneous to the answer. Nho TOM SWIFTY nor GALLERY HOP.

20. Well well, Tom Swifty was a total newy; the examples from Eileen’s link do feel familiar but the term itself not at all. Couple of other long stares were toy chest (remember CH the rejjo!) and octangle (as in ‘must be a thing then, like pent-‘). Enjoyable workout, thanks Yank and Eileen.

21. For OCTANGLE, Collins has ‘a less common name for octagon’. Chambers has only ‘octangular’.

22. JOFT@17
    RIFLE BUTT
    Does ‘stunt’ as an adjective in the sense of ‘related to stunt/dangerous performances’ work?
    Can we read it as stunting flier?

23. “Well, that was certainly no Quiptic”, said I, defeatedly.

    Still, it’s a Thursday. Maybe Monday will be back down to my level.

24. Decided halfway through that I wasn’t enjoying this and gave up, so I am not entitled to make any further comment.

25. How does RIFLE BUTT = stock component?

26. Beaten by 10 as both “Tom” as a male turkey, and the term “Tom Swifty” are NHOs for me. “Gallery Hop” is also new to me but I could build it from the wordplay. No complaints, there was heaps to like in today’s puzzle, and at my level I’m not expecting to finish every one.
    Thanks to Yank and Eileen.

27. KVa @22: that’s how I saw it. Just as a stunt double or a stunt pilot are engaged in showy or dangerous performances, so is the FLIER in “stunt flier”. Cryptic crosswords are supposed to be a bit playful aren’t they?

28. I don’t think I have ever passed so few answers.
    Not much fun for me, abandoned half way through.
    Thanks both.

29. Offspinner @25: The stock of a long firearm such as a rifle is the bit behind the trigger – the bit you press to your shoulder usually. The end of this is the butt, so the two are pretty nearly synonymous.

    KVa @22: Interesting thought, but how is “stunt” (a noun) to be made into an adjective here – isn’t “stunt work” a compound noun rather than adjective + noun? And even if it were, I don’t see it as doing the job it needs to without a long, long stretch.

30. Grantinfo@20 and Eileen @21, the octagon/octangle thing made me think. As I understand it -angle come from Latin (angulus = angle) and -agon from Greek (gonia = angle) which is why we have quadrangles and hexagons, but oct is 8 in both languages so octagon and octangle are both ok.

31. JOFT @17: hear-hear!
    I’m another who’d never heard of TOM SWIFTY, was flummoxed by OCTANGLE, had never encountered a TOY CHEST (since it was Yank I tried ‘store’ first, then ‘shops’ later, then in the end most of the words that fitted the crossers. Which took a while.)
    GALLERY HOP was another new one (“Mayfair” didn’t help: I was thinking of eye-wateringly expensive properties).
    So, dear Eileen, thank you very much indeed for such a helpful and informative blog.

32. Not a particularly enjoyable solve but I learned a few things along the way. Some of the phrases are not in the main dictionaries, viz: TOM SWIFTY (although in Wiktionary), GALLERY HOP and CATTLE FODDER (maybe surprisingly). I did, however, quite like GALLERY HOP with the running around Livery Hall, the river bird catching a swallow for the GREAT OUSE, EKES out where Chambers Thesaurus does give supplement as a description, and the surface for STAMPEDE. In A GREAT DEAL, it might have improved things by saying ‘give to’. I failed to see the OCTANGLE stop sign, although that was a nice idea.

    Thanks Yank (you can’t please everybody) and Eileen.

33. offspinner@25 I wondered that too – I always thought the stock was the butt, but I see it isn’t.

    With Gladys and others, though I didn’t quite give up – I revealed instead. I just can’t get to like Yank

    Thanks Eileen and Yank

34. Eventually defeated by this, I had to ultimately reveal all of NEWT, TOM SWIFTY, EQUIP and GALLERY HOP. But pleased with myself with those clues I did unravel today…

35. JOFT@29
    Chambers has these entries:

    stunt2 /stunt/
    noun
    A difficult, often showy, performance, enterprise, or turn
    Anything done to attract attention
    adjective
    Of, used in or relating to a stunt
    intransitive verb
    To perform stunts

    Probably, it’s a bit of a stretch. I confess I have been somewhat inconsistent in paying attention to cryptic grammar. 😊

36. When I worked out and looked up TOM SWIFTY I thought of Milton Jones.

    I’ve heard of saltine crackers, there was a mad diet floating around years ago based on saltine crackers my grandmother thought looked a good idea but we weren’t convinced. The nearest equivalent here are bath olivers, but those are round and saltine crackers are square.

    There are a lot of galleries in Mayfair, as well as expensive properties. The sort of expensive galleries that sell art, not the museums that just exhibit it.

    Thank you to Yank and Eileen.

37. A slow but steady solve. I suppose I have been in the US for too long as none of the Americanisms stood out to me.

    NHO GALLERY HOP but it was fairly clued and I got there in reasonable order.

38. Thanks both and Eileen’s task here was well beyond me so ‘chapeau’.

39. Very poor. CID is wrong related to Scotland yard.
    Eke out does not mean to supplement

40. Definitely on the tougher side, today. Had some of the same quibbly thoughts as earlier posters.

    I got OCTANGLE without too much of a struggle, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it before. Maybe I lead a sheltered life.

41. Same as gladys.@24 but I’ll add that I don’t know where ‘please’ came from to make PLEAS.

42. My Chambers is 30 years old and states that “eke out” does mean “to supplement or make up to the required measure.” Out is the anagrind here though. Ekes as a plural noun also means supplements. It is of Scottish origin.

43. paul@42: It’s not great but if it suits you to, say, commute a death sentence it might also please you to do so.

44. martin@42 thank you! Makes (sort of) sense now.

45. I had NITTY for 4 down. One of its meanings is ‘spruce’.

46. Found this to be a joyless trudge for some reason.

47. For the record, I, an American, had not heard “gallery hop” before either, but it’s obvious what it is once you’ve heard the term.

    Saltine crackers, however, are an important part of any American life.

    (I associate them with childhood illness–whenever I had the sort of flu that causes nausea and vomiting, when I was ready to get back on solid food my mom would always give me saltines as a component of those first gentle-on-the-stomach meals. But more broadly, you will find them in restaurants everywhere, in packs of two, alongside your soup.)

48. mrpenney @47 For genuine flu (only happened a handful of times) my mum gave me hot toddies before introducing chocolate when I was ready. She was a nurse, so I guess this was best practice in the early 1980s…maybe!

    I was pretty sure what saltine crackers were, but, although it helped the surface to know – or at least recognise the name – the task at hand was very clear.

    OK, that’s too many comments from me – slow work day.

49. I remember SWIFTIES from That Was The Week That Was back in 1962/3. No TOM back then. Haven’t heard of them since.
    4/10.

50. Anybody else spend time trying to work the Earl of Gloucester / King Lear into 6d?

    Thanks to Eileen and Yank

51. Too many glaring errors in the clueing (as identified by others above) to be publishable. Just awful.

52. Yes, spent ages trying get Gloucestershire into four letters. Great clue but had to look up the answer.

    Veronica

53. Sorry, the Earl not the county.

54. Thanks for the blog , well I loved it and I just finished as my train reached home so perfect timing . Clever and original wordplay and anything partly obscure was clued precisely .
    Paul@41 it will please/suit me to have another Yank puzzle soon .
    TOM SWIFTY turns up in Maslanka’s Puzzles in the Guardian on Saturdays so no excuse for Guardian readers .
    Hoping for a big , bad wolf tomorrow or Saturday , the nits think it is the Montevideo Carnival .

55. Spent a long time on this.
    95% of the answers eventually fell into place (one or two because nothing else would fit, despite being NHOs, such as the Gallery one and the Swifty one).
    Didn’t much like TOY CHEST or OCTANGLE.
    SALUTE and EQUIP were more satisfying and agreeable.

56. Muffin@7: EKG is in common usage in North America as an alternative to ECG

57. ..

58. Donnut @56
    a) Why Kardio rather than Cardio?
    b) Not common usage over here!
    c) Having to use an obscure abbreviation to make up an anagram seems grasping at straws

59. E-quip is so neat and classy! (26 a) I do like Yank.

60. Enjoyed learning that Tom Swifties had a name. But I can’t agree with Uank’s depiction of Taylor Swift fans as groupies. My idea of groupies is more like the depiction in the Shel Silverstein song performed by Doctor Hook – Roland the Roadie and Gertrude the Groupie. If you are unfamiliar with it and want to find it and listen, remember the words we often hear in Radio 4 Extra. It contains language and attitudes of the time (1970s).

61. Donut @ 56, Muffin @ 58, AIUI, ECG is electrocardiogram, EKG is echocardiogram.

62. Broadly enjoyed this even though it was a DNF. Bit bemused though by SWIFTY = groupie. A Swifty in my book is someone who is as big a fan of Taylor Swift as I am of The Fall. Neither of of us qualify as groupies, which is an altogether higher level of engagement.

63. I agree with Fiery Jack and others that a fan and a groupie are definitely not the same thing!
    And I didn’t know that a male turkey is a Tom, so that clue took a long time to work out. It was one of those crosswords that Mr T and I had to join forces on after we both struggled to progress beyond half a dozen answers. We got there in the end though. Yay!!

64. Thanks, Yank! Great fun! My favorites were 10 and 26. A DNF on the second part of gallery. I was thinking of gallop but I still didn’t see it 😂

65. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I almost gave up at the two-thirds point; but I was too lazy to come here for the answers, and soon enough the remaining clues started to fall into place.

    A lot of grumpy voices in the discussion, which I do understand; but, myself, I’m more than happy to see a crossword unashamedly written with American usage in mind. I see no reason to strike them out for the benefit of British solvers. I have spent so many years trying to get my non-British friends into cryptic crosswords. Very often, just as they are starting to get excited about it, we run into a clue that uses some obscure Britishism. Those Britishisms are often very specific and very obscure, if we are being honest with ourselves.

    Obviously there is legitimate pleasure in knowing the deep recesses of our language. It does surprise me when people who presumably delight in the deep recesses of our language suddenly get grumpy when it’s not exactly the dialect of language they are familiar with (rather than taking additional delight in the rich variety of different Englishes).

    Likewise it surprises me when people who love cryptic crosswords, the existence of which depends on the complicated ways in which language has evolved historically, seem to take a dislike to evolution of language as it is happening today. It’s the same process! It’s just that some people prefer to accept changes that happened before they were born, while looking down on changes that are happening here and now.

    Some USAges not yet remarked on in the comments:

    “Slay” is a surprisingly common word in the USA. Newspaper articles will use the adjective “slain” to refer to murder victims. In the UK, that word has an air of Arthurian legend about it.

    “Eke” is used differently over the pond. The “supplement” meaning is much closer to how it is used in the USA.

    “Gallery hop” is easier to guess when you remember that Americans looking for a night of alcohol from multiple different establishments will go on a “bar hop” rather than a “pub crawl”.

    I do not know all the characters from The Simpsons, a show as American as any, but there was only one palindrome fitting the two crossing letters.

    When I was younger, I would not have known the word “ATM” because in the UK we would withdraw money from Cashpoint machines. Nowadays “ATM” seems to be used everywhere.

66. Girabra@65. Like your comment. It probably comes easier to Antipodeans to adapt to British and USAnian terms, as we’ve been exposed to both via literature and television programs, and have an open mind to things beyond our ken.

67. I gave up last night, finding it a bit of a grind.

    However, on finishing (the bottom half) this morning it appeared quite different, a very engaging challenge and a satisfying solve, with some nicely fresh devices.

    Thanks all.

68. I was left with nine blanks overnight, and they didn’t seem any more likely to fall this morning, so I gave up. Looks like I’m going to have to limit the amount of time I give to Yank’s efforts in future.

69. Eileen. Thanks for alerting me to the notion of Tom Swifties. Never heard of previously, but now I can see hours of fun ahead and exercise for the rapidly decaying brain cells. Whether they want it or not.

70. I liked this. It took me a long time to get the last handful of clues but being patient paid off.

71. Only solved about 2/3 of this one. It all made sense, though, when revealed

    11a I couldn’t get SILVERY TAY out of my head, but it was clearly wrong

    I’m surprised there weren’t more TOM SWIFTYs in the comments, so I’ll make up for it here. A few years ago I had a TOM SWIFTY competition with my sister-in-law. Here are some of my favourites:
    “I don’t want to read any more Lewis Carroll,” Tom said snarkily.
    “I wish I could play cards more often,” Tom said whistfully.
    “I think we have around twelve visitors,” Tom guessed.
    “Fold that paper again,” Tom replyed.
    “I love hot dogs,” Tom said frankly.
    “Hand over the nice gun,” Tom said disarmingly.
    “There must be a thousand snakes here,” Tom gasped.
    “Remember chaps, obey the poop and scoop law!” Tom bantered.
    “Open that window now,” Tom said summarily.
    “This tea is hot,” Tom noticed.
    “Follow me quietly,” Tom pleaded.
    “I’m sure you’d love to come to the police station,” Tom said arrestingly.
    “Don’t go north,” Tom said simply.
    “Psst…let’s get off this island,” Tom said discretely.
    “I remember the second time we raised money for charity,” Tom recollected.
    “Take the eraser and rub it across the page,” Tom described.
    “You can’t stop me from playing the chimes again,” Tom said rebelliously.
    “French criminal,” Tom said laconically.
    “I’m going to grade this paper again,” Tom remarked.
    “It won’t do any good, but send the SOS again,” Tom said remorsefully.
    “Absolutely no ironing allowed in this apartment,” Tom said flatly.

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