Guardian No 29,742 by Fed

76 comments on “Guardian No 29,742 by Fed”

1. My heart sunk when I saw the jigsaw of linked clues but I thoroughly enjoyed this quirky offering. STRAITEN looked wrong but was obviously correct. I enjoyed the references to real people in the amusing EDITOR and AURORA. Other favourites were BABOON, ROSE TOPAZ, EXOCET, ADDLES, ONWARD, TASERING and the various long down clues. I struggled to parse BLACKPOOL TOWER, as I couldn’t see where POWER fitted in and although I got the French reference to nice in ADDLES, I was baffled by e-readers. I also wondered if HEEL and Knob were similar in meaning? Lots of fun with this one.

   Ta Fed & manehi.

2. Exocet is the French word for flying fish. A lovely name for a lethal device. I was flying for a while on this puzzle, which was less deadly than some of Fed’s offerings. I enjoyed it even more because I finally saw Dave’s hilarious crossword nemesis bit on Modern Life is Goodish last night. It added colourful context to off-colour clues about yellow balls and porn stars.

   I liked the whole thing and was pleased to get the CROW FLIES, TURN ON ONES HEEL and ON THE THRONE early.

   I think HEEL and knob are both terms for the end of a loaf.

   Bravo Fed. Top bombing! Thanks also to manehi, I’m not quite there on POWER yet either.

3. Thanks for the correct parsing of ADDLES, I was way off thinking there was a French reference as stated above!

4. Came here to find out where the Power comes from.
   Most I had was the ‘say’ could indicate “our” from Cilla Black’s Scouse catchphrase (at least according to impressionists).
   But that still left me with the P.

   Gave up. Bunged it in. And suspected Guardian copywriting mistake.

5. Commenters on the Guardian site seem uniformly perplexed about where POWER comes from in 7,23, as am I. Someone suggested the clue should read “Lancashire landmark seen when Cilla, say, might take in middle of Bolton”. Which seems to work, aside from the slightly awkward grammar. Even so, I enjoyed this tremendously, esp AURORA, ADDLES, BLUE SUEDE SHOES and ONWARD. Perhaps Fed might show up to put us right about BLACKPOOL TOWER? Many thanks to him and to manehi for teasing out the subtleties.

6. Also puzzled by POWER. Unless told otherwise, it seems to be a mistake on the part of Fed and/or the editor.

7. Good fun with some of the long ‘uns falling once a few crossers put in. I had no hope of parsing ADDLES, although I did think of Kindles. I’m also lacking power in the BLACKPOOL TOWER. I liked the wordplay of AURORA, LASSITUDE and AS THE CROW FLIES, and the surface for NEAR AS DAMMIT.

   Thanks Fed and manehi.

8. For BLACKPOOL TOWER, I think it’s “say” giving “power”, as in having the (final) say.

9. Thanks to Fed. I liked it for the most part. Glad for the blog to help with some parsing, so thank you to manehi as well.
   Had fun solving clues like 6a BABOON.

10. That’s an interesting thought, ChrisEL @8 – you may be on to something, but it feels like quite a stretch. And I read the ‘say’ as an example indicator (there being other Blacks aside from Cilla) so it would be doing double duty. Ah, have crossed with KVa, who is always right about these things!

11. BLACKPOOL TOWER
    If we consider ‘say’ as POWER (as nouns), ‘say’ has to play a dual role.
    Will wait for the right parsing/the missing word(s)…

    Edit: Sorry. Hadn’t seen ChrisEL@8

12. ChrisEL @8
    I think you may have it. It must be the word “say”. And that works, sort of.
    Having your “say” is you democratic power.

13. I needed to solve plenty of the across clues before I made much progress with all those multiworded down clues. A bit lined up like washing on a line. I liked the complicated but ultimately satisfying BLUE SUEDE SHOES with its various components within the puzzle itself. Maybe we’ll all get an earworm later to entertain us. This Fed offering entertaining in itself today, anyway…

14. Chambers associates “say” with “power” in the sense of influence. However, there is then no indication of Cilla being definition by example.

15. On the tricky side for Fed but thought this was him on top form with plenty of wit and his trademark celebrity inspired clue. I am a lot better with multiword clues of which there were plenty on offer here so made good progress on the downs.

    Thanks for clearing up ADDLES I thought it was some play on Ad(vert)less. Maybe I was just getting fed up with the more intrusive Guardian pop-ups of the last few weeks ruining my reading of the puzzle.

    Liked the supermarket getting short of marmite and the mention of my first games console.

    Cheers Fed and Manehi

16. From an AI Overview :
    The phrase “had plenty of say” means someone had a significant amount of influence —
    To me this is POWER -‘ ie “say” as a noun is synonymous with “power”

    Thank you Fed and manehi

17. C@8 POWER=say makes sense. Now I can stop wondering why Cilla had a No 2 deficit aka POO OWER

    Not sure the “say” is doing double-duty as we don’t usually have a DBE indicator when it’s a famous person’s name?

    Definitely a game of two halves with the west going in smoothly while the east proved a lot bumpier
    Top ticks for ADULATED and TASERING – nice to see shocks not referring to hair for once

    Cheers F&M

18. Thanks ChrisEL @8, that works well.

19. First-time commenter. I took ‘say’ as a synonym for POWER, i.e. the person who has the say has the power to approve or disapprove something.

20. Great stuff thanks Fed & manehi. I also struggled with the “power” but yes “say” works, and there’s a good argument that “Cilla” is distinctive enough to go without def-by-example (who else could it be?) so no double-duty?

21. KVa@11 I see what you mean, but if the “say” is there to indicate a dbe, then the comma placement seems odd. I think ChrisEL@8 must be correct.

22. Seemed to have crossed with so many while typing my remark about about “power”. Will just have to furnish the pnligatory earworm instead ( Elvis rather than Carl Perkins )

    https://youtu.be/HeXnFx7aPOE?si=t1gqUcAKZ-0BwTqK

23. I think you’ve convinced me, cranberryfez @20 and Criceto @21 – I’d noticed that comma placement too, and Cilla can only really mean Black.

24. Obligatory

25. Cilla=Black without a say or a question mark didn’t work for me because no-one would use those two words interchangeably, regardless of how easily they go together. Enjoyed the crossword and the ensuing debate though, thank you Fed and manehi!

26. No, not convinced about Black Power so far. Unfortunately I have NFI.

27. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and unlike some other commenters I found this on the easier end of the Fed spectrum – but then again I often seem to be running against the herd with these things. Faves were AURORA and NEAR AS DAMMIT.

    I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t parse ADULATED; and less embarrassed that I couldn’t parse ADDLES – pretty indirect, I thought!

    Naturally I was also stumped by the mysterious POWER; I’m not convinced by the comma placement argument offered by Criceto@21; surely the “Cilla, say” is quite literally indicating an example in the surface reading, and is how one would naturally do it: “X, say” for ‘X, for example”. So I don’t think that the comma rules out one interpretation or the other. However it does seem likely that the “say” = “power” and that there’s no DBE indicator. I guess I buy that Cilla is sufficiently obvious – but as per Hadrian@25 I also don’t think that a DBE indicator is merely a nicety.

    Anyway, thanks for the fun.

28. Put another way, as I understand the rules it’s not fair to clue a species for a genus (eg to clue ‘kestrel’ for the answer ‘bird’) without a ‘say’ or question mark, but it is ok to clue a genus for a species (‘bird’ for ‘kestrel’). (Forgive the inaccurate use of genus and species but you know what I mean!) Here Black is the genus, Cilla is the species, we need a ‘say’ or ‘?’ 🤔

29. I solved this more quickly than I usually manage, but had to come here for some of the parsing.

30. Hadrian@28, exactly.

    That said, I now remember that I’ve read elsewhere on here that forenames for surnames and surnames for forenames are exempt from the DBE indicator since the “target” can always be regarded as a member of the category of things indicated by the “given”, in both directions. In fact, in this very puzzle, Fed used “Balls” for ED without a DBE indicator, which I think wraps up the topic, really. He obviously doesn’t regard one as being necessary, and so “Cilla, say” is actually a very good bit of misdirection, albeit perhaps too clever judging by the general confusion!

31. …oh, and in fact forenames and surnames can and often are used interchangeably: I think Black’s up next / I think Cilla’s up next.

32. Say for power, slyly oblique — eluded me too.

33. Unless anybody knows of a different Cilla, I really don’t see the problem.

34. AP @27, I think the point about the comma is that if ‘say’ was being used as a DBE indicator it would (for the surface and cryptic grammar) have a comma both before AND after it. The fact that there isn’t one after seems to me strong evidence that it is doing something else, namely clueing ‘power’.

35. Lyssian, it seems you may not be up on Coronation Street nor Greek mythology.
    (in jest)

36. Thanks manehi and Dave

    Found this a bit feast or famine. NHO STRAITEN and NEAR AS DAMMIT. ADDLES I find very janky, BABOON got a shrug of the shoulders after I revealed it. It’s a bold strategy glomming up a grid with as many inter-referential clues, especially when the parsing is as tricky as it is in places here; but seeing as about half the grid could be picked out as favourite clues this was an enjoyable challenge.
    9a looks like an audition for the Private Eye crossword. With setters being contractually obliged to include the word VESSEL in a clue in every cryptic ever it’s nice to see it as an answer for once.

37. B P
    The argument continues…
    (I agree with others that Fed in all probability clued POWER as ‘say’, but we have to do our duty of discussing the clue
    till Fed drops in and clarifies…)

    In a wordplay, the surface grammar and punctuation are not considered. There’s no need to think where the comma is in the clue.

    EDITOR
    The surface doesn’t need a comma after Balls. So there isn’t one. However, the wordplay requires a comma after Balls. Right?

    BABOON
    While on punctuation, should it not have been ‘gift-wraps’? We would then have lifted and separated it after duly ignoring the hyphen.

38. Thanks to Fed for a challenging mid-week puzzle. A good range of difficulties including some excellent surfaces. Favourites were BABOON; AURORA; EXOCET; ADDLES; TASERING.
    Thanks also to manehi for help with the four we had difficulty in parsing.

39. I failed to solve 19ac.

    New for me: bowl = stadium (for 25ac); BLACKPOOL TOWER; NES = game console (for 4/24); NEAR AS DAMMIT.

    I could not parse 26ac apart from the AW bit – I’m not a fan of James Bond movies and failed to think of a single Bond villain; 7d apart from OLTO (middle of bOLTOn) in (cilla) BLACK POWER but like manehi I could not understand the POWER bit.

40. Really enjoyed this. One little in-joke from Dave. When he started doing crosswords he was known as a Marmite setter: love him or hate him. He’s improved enormously. Also clever the down clues following a vertical connection. Yes I now fall into the “love” category!

41. Thanks manehi and thanks all.

    I thought I’d pop in with my thoughts on 7/23dn seeing as it has caused so much consternation and debate.

    As plenty have surmised, I’m using SAY = POWER.
    Chambers has: Say: a voice, part or influence in a decision.

    I think ‘influence in a decision’ equates to power.
    “I’d like to change the rules but I have no say in the matter”

    Which then leaves us with the idea that ‘say’ is doing double duty (per KVa @11 & Hadrian @28)

    I disagree that a qualifier is always needed for a famous name when used as a definition by example. And I don’t really think that Hadrian’s opinion is as fixed as he suggests on this. He certainly managed to comment on Brummie’s puzzle a couple of days ago without pulling him up for a clue where the unqualified name Michael gives us Caine.

    I think it depends on both how unique a name is and how well-known they are. To my mind, the only person anyone thinks of when they hear the word, Cilla is Cilla Black so it can go unqualified. There are many Eds and many Balls so, to my taste, Balls needs a qualifier. Your taste may vary.

    But whatever your particular thoughts on the matter, it’s far from an unusual thing.
    A few examples: Tramp using ‘Winehouse’ for ‘Amy’, Hectence using ‘Sheeran’ for ‘Ed’ and Maskarade using ‘Ms Black’ for, um, ‘Cilla’ none of which sparked much controversy amongst solvers.

    So a celebrity used as a definition-by-example without a ‘say’, ‘for example’, ‘maybe’ or even a ‘?’ isn’t in itself controversial.

    The tricky thing with this example is that the ‘say’ appeared to be – and would be completely valid as – a DBE qualifier – and that leads the solver to think that it has been dealt with and is no longer required for wordplay.

    Separating things that appear to belong together is always tricky for the brain. It’s why Dawn French appears in 17across – and nobody thinks that’s unfair because everyone here is quickly on to it as a device. ‘Cilla, say’ is much harder to separate because it appears to be a device – a qualified DBE – which plays to a seasoned solver’s expectations.

    I hope this makes sense to people – and if it doesn’t, well don’t worry, there’ll be another crossword along shortly.

    Cheers!

42. Thanks Fed for coming along and clarifying the Power.
    Being difficult is not a bad thing in a crossword clue.
    It was fair. And it was clearly gettable as the first correct interpretation came in the first 10 comments.
    The only reason I didn’t get it is that I’m not very bright. And that’s nobody’s fault but me own.

43. Came to find out about ‘power’. Very clever. Like others, I assumed that ‘say’ was an indicator for Cilla being an example of Black. But I agree with Fed that an indicator is not always needed, and there is really only one Cilla (no doubt someone will be along in a minute to prove me wrong on this) and she leads immediately to Black. Thanks Fed and manehi.

44. Keen not to overflog this poor horse, I enjoyed the crossword and humbly accept I didn’t comment on Michael = Caine in Brummie. For the record I’m reasoning that surnames are generic and forenames specific, so the three examples Fed gives (Winehouse, Sheeran and Black) aren’t Definitions by Example in the way that Michael and Cilla are. But I appreciate that might not be a widely shared view and yes look forward to Fed’s next.😊

45. Thanks everyone for the comments about POWER/Cilla/say/comma, great breakfast reading, especially thanks to Fed for taking the time for the long explanation. To me, what caused everybody (including me) problems was say=power: not the equivalence, which seems indisputable, but the fact that we haven’t seen it before (or at least recently) so it did not jump into most people’s minds, especially with the misdirecting context. If we were to see a structurally identical clue in the coming weeks with the same device, I’ll bet many will get it right away.

46. I’m happy for Cilla to clue Black without involving ‘say’ because Cilla Black is necessarily the only Cilla that can exist. My mum is called Priscilla and she, like all other Priscillas, avoids Cilla precisely because of Cilla Black – it’s self-fulfilling.

47. Thanks both,
    I completed the grid without much trouble but needed help with some of the parsings. For overseas solvers it might be worth adding that the Ordnance Survey is Britain’s leading map maker and the A-to-Z is a London (and elsewhere) street atlas, although not published by the OS. All of which made it rather a good clue, I thought.

48. Loved the Elvis reference! Great warble of a song. And many others too.

    Thanks both

49. The “addles” “clue” is simply crap.
    Reminds me of the Oozalum bird in Carry on up the Jungle.

50. Thanks Fed, for sharing your thoughts! Indeed I enjoyed the misdirection once the good folks here had guided me to the correct interpretation.

    Moving on from the intricacies of this specific clue, I’m curious about miserableoldhack@34’s thought that two commas would be needed (in general) for a “say” used as a DBE indicator. I do think two commas would be better for the surface reading (in which the “say” is itself an “example indicator”) on a purely stylistic level, certainly – but I don’t think it matters neither there nor in the cryptic reading that a second one is missing. As KVa@37 says, punctuation may or may not be relevant to the cryptic reading; the requirement merely being that a meaningful cryptic reading of the intended parse be possible. So the presence or otherwise of punctuation shouldn’t be taken as a hint about the parsing, I feel.

    I also agree with KVa that a corollary of this is that more punctuation could have been added: to the Cilla clue (that second comma) and to the BABOON (hyphenated gift wrap) to give a smoother surface reading without detriment to the cryptic reading.

51. I didn’t parse 19ac (ADDLES) or 7dn (BLACKPOOL TOWER).

    I’d vaguely heard of Cilla Black, but I couldn’t call her to mind, and I didn’t spot “say” = POWER, but now that it’s explained to me I think it makes perfect sense (and I’m not bothered by the lack of a DBE indicator for Ms. Black).

    The parsing for 19ac is very tricky, but I disagree with those who think it’s a bad clue. “E-reader” immediately suggests KINDLE, so I was pretty sure that figured into the parsing somehow; I just couldn’t spot exactly how.

    11ac was a sort of half-jorum for me. I don’t think I’d ever heard of ROSE TOPAZ, but I knew about TOPAZ, and it wasn’t hard to get the rest from there.

52. Great puzzle, ideal difficulty for me. Needed the blog/discussion to understand BLACKPOOL TOWER and ADDLES. Both absolutely fine. Favourite was NEAR AS DAMMIT.

53. Quite a few red herrings in this one. Had BOB in as “your relative” (bob’s your uncle) for about half the puzzle. The use of “say” is a little mean, but given that I’ve seen conjunctions, prepositions and even “…” as definitions it seems fair enough. In fact, almost is a definition in this very puzzle causing me to take bits off marmite for a solid minute.

    Heel = knob seems cromulent as your heel is roughly the shape of a doorknob and they are both words for the end bit of bread. Though that one actually went in unparsed for me as it was the only thing that made sense.

54. Re: heel and knob, both can be used with regard to butter, a little bit of butter. Heel less common than knob in this context.

55. My take on the DBE and double-duty arguments arising from “say” in the 7d (Cilla Black) clue is simply this: There are no rules, Ximenes notwithstanding. Or, more accurately, there is only one rule: the clue must be fair.

    And whether a clue is fair is purely a subjective assessment, based usually on the solver’s general knowledge and cryptic experience.

    Take DBE for example. Some unflagged DBEs might be fair if they are relatively obvious (like Cilla), while others might be less fair (like Ed), as Fed has pointed out. (And why should it matter whether it is a first or last name?)

    The same goes for double-duty and indirect anagrams. If they are too obscure they are unfair, otherwise they are fair and perfectly acceptable. And “too obscure” is a subjective assessment, so not amenable to an absolute rule.

    That is my absolute and definitive rule – purely subjective of course. 😊

    Thanks all, for the great puzzle and blog, and for the lively discussion.

56. All done, but thank Heavens for 225 as much of the parsing was beyond me.
    I’m looking forward to seeing if the intelligencia found the parsing difficult.
    Very enjoyable nonetheless.
    Thanks both.

57. Hi AP @50. Punctuation is a bag of worms, isn’t it. What I meant to say, but probably didn’t express it very clearly, was that the surface reading would ideally have a second comma if ‘say’ was being used as a DBE indicator. And I think Fed is the sort of setter who pays close attention to these things. Other setters will see things differently. So in this case the fact that it didn’t have one seemed in itself a clue that ‘say’ was doing different work. All this despite the fact that of course, cryptic parsings very often (almost always?) require the solver to ignore punctuation. However, I don’t go quite as far as KVa in saying that “In a wordplay, the surface grammar and punctuation are not considered” – the obvious counterexample being question marks, which are often used to indicate a definition by example or a punning/slightly off-the-wall definition. Similarly ellipses… yes, they can very often be ignored but not always, when two consecutive clues are somehow connected. Anyway, it’s been a long day and it’s time for this old hack to have a glass of something cold and white…

58. Hi. American here, as you all know. I am afraid that I am unfamiliar with Cilla Black. Sorry? I was also unfamiliar with Blackpool Tower, as it happens–I did look it up after, and…well, it’s ever so Victorian. A red brick building with a giant but blocky Eiffel Tower knockoff erupting out of its roof? Anyway, that one was baffling for me even more than for everyone else.

59. How I managed to finish this is a mystery. If no-one else has mentioned it, there are also recordings of Blue Suede Shoes by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran.

60. There are also other Carl Perkins’s available.

61. Cilla wasn’t a DBE; she was only an OBE. Shirley Bassey is a DBE

62. sorry fed, but i don’t buy it, and i’ll continue to believe that you just stuffed up the clue for 7,23.
    asserting that “say” (rather than the obvious DBE indicator) is reasonably synonymous with “power” is absurd; it’s a grimonym at best.
    “say” in that context literally means “a thing you could say that might influence an outcome”.
    any ‘power’ is only inferred from that influence, not implied by it.
    that is, influence and power are not synonymous, just related.
    good puzzle overall, mind you. 🙂

63. moh@57
    Punctuation
    Sorry. My statement was faulty. Your point taken.
    I think AP says it better:
    punctuation may or may not be relevant to the cryptic reading

    Sometimes, a comma or a colon in the surface ends up as the definition or
    is used as a part of the worplay (as COMMA or COLON).

64. KVa @63, I think we can agree to… agree!

65. ozof @62 per Chambers.
    Influence:
    1: the power of producing an effect
    2: the effect of power exerted
    3: something having such power
    4: someone exercising such power

    And for what it’s worth

    Power: control or influence exercised over others

66. Oh that was a lot of fun. It was my teenage son who got Blackpool Tower from having the K as a crosser and then I backward parsed.
    Thoroughly enjoyed it all, I am getting better at Fed with closer acquaintance
    And this discussion! Thanks Fed and Manehi

67. Fed@65 – dangerous to argue against the contributors to this website, who are the World’s experts on the English language and the laws of crosswords and whose say is written up in expectation of great influence. None of whom seem to be claiming that they were unable to write the answer in, but plenty unwilling to admit that they failed in the parsing because of clever misdirection. Happy to have been got.

68. I came here for the parsing of ADDLES and TURN ON ONES HEEL. Should have got (kind)LES as they’re the only games consoles I know about. Hey guys look at my new video game, it’s called reading!

69. I was working on ‘Power’ coming from ‘Black Power ‘, with Cilla being another example of a type of power (‘say’). I got the answer anyway, but not much else!

70. I was working on ‘Power’ coming from ‘Black Power ‘, with Cilla being another example of a type of power (‘say’). I got the answer anyway, but not much else!

71. I was working on ‘Power’ coming from ‘Black Power ‘, with Cilla being another example of a type of black (‘say’). I got the answer anyway, but not much else!

72. ozof @62 – as a setter myself I would hand on heart say that in the rare instance that a setter or a crossword editor (or anyone else involved in a crossword being published) has made a genuine mistake, it is admitted to, 100% of the time.

    The idea that a setter would try to bamboozle solvers by making up a spurious explanation – as opposed to, say, the setter fairly getting one over on the solver – is arrant nonsense.

73. Van Winkle@67,
    [ Nice to hear from you, and I agree completely with your comment. But the frequent assertion of total understanding of both the English language and the “rules” of cryptic crosswords does lead to lively discussion on this very enjoyable site. ]

74. Perhaps say=power in sentence like “I have little say in the matter.” I wish thesauri gave examples of sentences where a word can be replaced with another.

    This was tough and I had to cheat a bit to complete the crossword. Some clues were a bit convoluted imho (the ADDLES one after the explanation looks nice but…) I must admit I think so because it simply was just a bit too difficult for me!

    Thanks Fed and Manehi.

75. I love the idea that ‘near as dammit’ comes from the fact that damn it’ was deemed to be only ever so slightly more acceptable than full blown expletives or blasphemies. In other words, it’s so close that it amounts to the same thing.

76. Fourth completion in a row. It was touch and go for a while. The LS fell quickly, and the RS a little chewier, with loi 29a TASERING taking a long time before the penny dropped. “In the forces, not against” for SERING was diabolical

    I both solved and parsed 19a ADDLES — a brilliant clue. “Nice” a great misdirection, as it usually signals something in French. 6-14d BLUE SUEDE SHOES my other favourite, for a great misdirecting surface

    I thought I’d be defeated by a few bits of UKGK, like “volunteers, once”, “supermarket”, “Cilla”, and “Lancashire landmark”, but I worked them out. Fortunately I didn’t have to look very far through an alphabetical list of UK supermarkets before landing on ASDA!

    Pino@61, well done!

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