Cryptic crossword No 29,744 by Pasquale

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The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29744.

Well-constructed clues as to be expected from Pasquale, along with the novelty at 3D SPALPEEN. There seemed to be plenty of envelopes, variously indicated – the first half dozen clues that I solved were all of that kind.

ACROSS
5 CLIP-ON
Maybe like a microphone trick to smother insolence (4-2)
An envelope (‘to smother’) of LIP (‘insolence’) in CON (‘trick’).
6 SPLASH
Cut around soft spot (6)
An envelope (‘around’) of P (piano, musically ‘soft’) in SLASH (‘cut’).
9 LAMENT
Keen officer hugging ace soldiers (6)
An envelope (‘hugging’) of A (‘ace’) plus MEN (‘soldiers’) in LT (lieutenant, ‘oficer’).
10 LILLIPUT
Place where you’ll find people who are little and large – bad place for one to be in (8)
A charade of L (‘large’) plus ILL (‘bad’) plus I (‘one’) plus PUT (‘place’), for the fictional state in Gulliver’s Travels.
11 MINT
‘Moneymaker’ that may grow in the garden (4)
Double definition. Tomato does not fit.
12 SPIDER MITE
I’m dire pest to be given spray? (6,4)
An anagram (‘to be given spray’) of ‘I’m dire pest’. As some spider mites are pests on commercial crops, the clue has an &lit definition.
13 APPURTENANT
Fitting a number into sheltered accommodation to the east of a very quiet old city (11)
A charade of ‘a’ (the second one) plus PP (pianissimo, musically ‘very quiet’) plus UR (‘old city’) plus TENANT, an envelope (‘into’) of NA AN (‘a number’ – I do not see any justfication of the transposition) in TENT (‘sheltered accommodation’). ‘To the east of’ indicated the order of the particles.
18 PRECIPICES
Creep is dodgy when capturing photo? Don’t step too close to these! (10)
An envelope (‘when capturing’) of PIC (‘photo’) in PRECIES, an anagram (‘dodgy’) of ‘creep is’. There is perhaps a hint of an extended definition.
21 ZING
Sound asleep, having abandoned party (4)
A subtraction: [do]ZING (‘asleep’) minus DO (‘having abandoned party’).
22 MANDARIN
Fellow introducing singer Bobby is a bigwig (8)
A charade of MAN (‘fellow’) plus DARIN (‘singer Bobby’).
23 PARITY
Correspondence from one in political organisation (6)
An envelope (‘in’) of I (‘one’) in PARTY (‘political organisation’).
24 SLEIGH
Reportedly top vehicle for winter conditions (6)
Sounds like (‘reportedly’) SLAY (‘top’, kill).
25 HEATHY
Uncultivated, like a Ted of yesteryear? (6)
A Pauline formation, with reference to Ted Heath, Prime Minister of the UK 1970-1974
DOWN
1 SIDESTEP
Bypass – is speed limit finally reduced? (8)
An anagram (‘reduced’) of ‘is speed’ plus T (‘limiT finally’).
2 BOOTES
Pharmacist stocking drug gets stars (6)
An envelope (‘stocking’) of E (‘drug’) in BOOTS (‘pharmacist’), for the northern constellation.
3 SPALPEEN
Rascal observed penning pages about gangster (8)
A double envelope (‘penning’ and ‘about’) of AL (Capone, ‘gangster’) in P P (‘pages’) in SEEN (‘observed’). For me, and I would guess many others, a new word, clearly clued.
4 BARIUM
Element of hospital meal, mostly very dry, eaten by tramp? (6)
An envelope (‘eaten by’) of ARI[d] (‘very dry’) minus its last letter (‘mostly’) in BUM (‘tramp’). A barium meal (actually barium sulfate, not the element itself) is not for sustinance, but a medical procedure to render the gastrointestinal tract more visible to X-rays.
5 CRANIA
Brainboxes managed to penetrate spy agency (6)
An envelope (‘to penetrate’) of RAN (‘managed’) in CIA (‘spy agency’).
7 HAUNTS
Troubles in hotel with relatives (6)
A charade of H (‘hotel’) plus AUNTS (‘relatives’).
8 PLEISTOCENE
Silence poet conjured up in a time long ago (11)
An anagram (‘conjured up’) of ‘silence poet’.
14 UMPIRAGE
Act of sports official – superior male with holy anger (8)
A charade of U (‘superior’) plus M (‘male’) plus PI (‘holy’) plus RAGE (‘anger’).
15 NAZARITE
Religious type with extreme characters in an uplifting ceremony (8)
An envelope (‘in’) of AZ (‘extreme characters’) in NA, a reversal (‘uplifting’ in a down light) of ‘an’ plus RITE (‘ceremony’).
16 GROATS
Old coins found in grain (6)
I would have expected the last word of the clue to be ‘grains’, although ‘grain’ may be regarded as a plural. A charade of GR (abbreviation of ‘grain’ as a measure of mass) plus OATS (‘grain’).

An alternative (and perhaps better) parsing would be a double definition, with GROATS as hulled and crushed grain.
17 SNOTTY
Snobbish as pig away from home apparently! (6)
An implied envelope: NOT in STY (‘a pig away from home’).
19 CUDGEL
Club characters regularly coming in could get on well together (6)
A charade of CUD (‘characters regularly coming in CoUlD‘) plus GEL (‘get on well together’).
20 SAPPER
The old man’s upset, a soldier (6)
A charade of SAP, a reversal (‘upset’ i a down light) of PA’S (‘the old man’s’) plus PER (‘a’).

picture of the completed grid

72 comments on “Cryptic crossword No 29,744 by Pasquale”

  1. GROATS
    Is it just a DD?
    Collins says:
    the hulled and crushed grain of oats, wheat, or certain other cereals

    APPURTENANT
    AN in TENT works

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

  3. Thanks PeterO. I got SPALPEEN from Pasquale’s helpful clue, and it was somewhere in my memory bank. Revealed HEATHY though. Didn’t know the word but again very fair. Nice misdirection. Tried to think of a synonym for a teddy boy.
    MINT. Tomato? My first guess for that 4 letter word was “tree”. An incorrect word association until I remembered that money doesn’t grow on trees.
    BARIUM was unfortunately familiar.
    Liked the per = a in SAPPER, a wake-up to that, but nice to see it again.
    LILLIPUT and SPIDERMITE (with the question mark) my picks.

  4. Agree with KVa about A N in TENT. I wasn’t sure about “sheltered accomodatiom” at first. But tents are not much more than shelters and a form of “accommodation” . Could have been a containment indicator with sheltered, clued slightly differently, but I like it just the way it is.

  6. Agree with kva@1 re groats and appurtenant.

    Bit of a workout after yesterday (which was nice but not hard). But for having many unfamiliar terms the cluing made them guessable. Thanks for the blog and puzzle!

  7. Obscure meanings as well as words today. I didn’t think of LAMENT for keen and hadn’t heard of BOÖTES; I Googled before entry as LOI. There was plenty here that I couldn’t have solved 6 months ago: “per” for “a” made SAPPER a write in, “pi” and “u” in UMPIRAGE made that a quick one. The comments in the group help these things stick. All solved and parsed despite the likes of SPALPEEN. (The spray obviously didn’t work as the MITE was seen on Brockwell’s SPIDER themed outing earlier this month.)

    Thanks Pasquale and Peter.

  8. Another voting for GROATS as a DD, and A N in TENT, as KVa and others have said.
    Very enjoyable puzzle, with a couple of additions to the lexicon. Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO.

  9. The usual googlefest from my least favourite setter, with the added irritation of a few dodgy definitions. Sound = zing?

  10. Happy to join the consensus on GROATS and APPURTENANT. An Irish touch with SPALPEEN for rogue and LAMENT for keen, I thought. Laughed when I got HEATHY after being misdirected as intended thinking of 50’s youth or old toys for a while. Very enjoyable from Pasquale today, so thanks to him and to PeterO for the blog.

  11. Thanks Pasquale and PeterO
    A DNF for me – I revealed ZING. A few other new words, which I was able to put together from the clues. I found it difficult to believe that UMPIRAGE was actually a word!
    I heard very recently that Bobby Darin took his stage name from a Chinese restaurant across the road from where he lived that had lost the first three letters from its signboard….

  12. Just curious — is there some reason the titles to most or all of the Guardian bloggers have begun to omit the name Guardian? It’s possible to work it out, but why?

  13. Muffin @11 – Shirley is a district just to the south of Birmingham, and boasts a Chinese takeaway called the SHIRLEY TEMPLE. I think the child star came first.
    Floored by ZING (ZANU is a party, and I now understand why I couldn’t parse my way to it); eyebrows raised by UMPIRAGE (though I’m reminded of a legendary cricket score allegedly submitted to Wisden by the captain of a public school team which reported the captain’s innings as ‘Umpired out, 0′); thought the cluing of SPALPEEN was very fair.
    Much to enjoy elsewhere.
    Thanks to Pasquale and PeterO

  14. Re HEATHY, I’m from the US and I don’t recall seeing or hearing PM Heath ever being referred to as ‘Ted.’ I do, however, recall Ted Heath as a hugely popular big band leader in the UK. I guess we get to the same destination regardless.

  15. An infants school song ‘I lost a [something] groat, Twas givn me by my Granny” bubbled up though the seven decades. Search (v brief) …zilch.
    Anyway, yes a few chewy bits from the Don; spalpeen a jorum, heathy a groan, and appurtenant a bit of untangling. But my last few in — cudgel, zing and snotty — weren’t devious, so who knows why. Enjoyed it, cheers P&P.

  17. Enjoyable crossword thankyou. I knew spalpeen from Georgette Heyer’s The Black Moth. Miles O’Hara uses it twice.

  20. I failed to solve 16d and 19d.

    New for me: SPIDER MITE, UMPIRAGE, SPALPEEN, Boötes constellation.

    I couldn’t parse 17d or 4d apart from BUM = tramp.

    Like some others who posted above, I took GROATS to be a DD and for APPURTENANT, I agree with KVA@1.

  21. RayJ @14: welcome, cousin. PM Heath was always referred to as Ted here, and curiously, to complete your musical connection, he was also an orchestra conductor.

  22. Pasquale does like to push the boat out with a sprinkle of words I/We might not have come across before. Therefore take a bow BOOTES, SPALPEEN, and UMPIRAGE. Though with that last one I was toying with Umpiring for a while. However, all three went in from the precise clueing and then a hopeful Reveal. Flummoxed by how Groats exactly parsed, so thanks for that suggestion PeterO. Finally thwarted by the SE corner, with NAZARINE, ZING (I did try a whole series of four letter sounds with just the N in position) and lastly the tricky HEATHY. And the Ted element probably continuing the discussion in recent days about what or who immediately springs to mind. I suppose Al in 3d representing Gangster is another example. But overall a fun solve this morning…

  23. UMPIRAGE is recorded in Chambers, so is perfectly acceptable. As a person who switches off the moment cricket is mentioned, it never occurred to me that anyone might regard the word as being unusual.

  26. I struggled to get Bobby Mcferrin out of my head for MANDARIN – the “fellow introducing” being the MC but it clearly didn’t work. Alll the obscurities (aka words I don’t know) were gettable from the wordplay so top marks to Pasquale

    Agree with Kva@1 and also struggled to accept UMPIRAGE as a word but there it is in Chambers

    Cheers P&P

  30. Wiki gives both spellings, but Crossbencher has a point, as it’s derived from the Hebrew word “nazir”, though I don’t know if the script gives translation ambiguities.

  31. I thought all of the expected unusual/obscure words were very fairly clued this time so no grumbles from me. I struggled to get CUDGEL, which seemed of a slightly different order of difficulty but, with hindsight, is fine. Thanks to blogger and setter.

  32. Crossbencher @25 & Donnut @29 etc
    Chambers gives Nazarite as the main entry (with Hebrew nazar as derivation), with Nazirite as an alternative.
    Oofyprosser @9
    Chambers has as its first definition for ZING: a short shrill humming sound, such as that made by a bullet or vibrating string.

  33. This was a bit of a slog for me, compared to previous days, although largely due to my limited vocabulary, it seems! SPALPEEN and APPURTENANT were new to me, both being effectively jorums (I was pleased to untangle the parsing for the latter, as per the consensus). As was BOÖTES in fact, despite it containing the 2nd brightest star in the northern hemisphere, Arcturus, with which I am familiar. I confess to having looked up singers called Bobby, too; and I was stumped by the second definition of groats, having also just hand-waved around “oats”. I’m another who blinked at UMPIRAGE – yuk.

    LOI was the relatively simple CUDGEL, having finally realised that “club” was the definition and not just the provider of the initial ‘c’.

    No doubt it’s just me, given that I’m entirely unfamiliar with the word, but it strikes me that there’s a transitivity flaw with APPURTENANT. It seems to be legal terminology meaning related / pertinent in the context of real estate, and of course pertinent can mean fitting… but does it really follow that appurtenant means fitting?

    Well, many thanks to Pasquale for the workout, and of course to our blogger.

  34. Well, you get what you expect when Pasquale appears – new words for me such as BOOTES (I thought there was some abbreviation for pharmacist that I didn’t know) and SPALPEEN. I liked APPURTENANT (a Paulian penniless leaseholder?), BARIUM, NAZARITE, CUDGEL and the very clever SNOTTY.

    Thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

  35. AP @33
    Chambers and the OED give APPURTENANT as an adjective from apppurtenance, which has a more general definition of something that appertains as well as the legal/property usage. It would seem to be a variant of appertinent.
    And, yes, Chambers does list UMPIRAGE.

  36. I don’t know if it’s because the temperature in my garden has already reached a horrendous 30C or because I so enjoyed Matilda’s exemplary cryptic yesterday but I didn’t have the patience for this. I liked SPIDERMITE and MANDARIN and LILLIPUT (which I couldn’t parse) and then I was just making random guesses. After revealing SPALPEEN, I gave up. I’ve never seen the word UMPIRAGE used or HEATHY and does SNOTTY really signify snobbish – surely it’s snooty? (I imagine there will be a dictionary somewhere which equates snotty and snobbish.) I’ll look forward to the Quick Cryptic tomorrow – more my level obviously.

  38. A bit of a step up from the rest of the week. Struggled through, was surprised to see SPALPEEN was right but just couldn’t guess the right order of letters the very old period of time.

    Liked SPIDER MITE

    Thanks P&P

  39. NeilH@13: Sadly the Chinese takeaway in the Birmingham district of that name is no longer the Shirley Temple,but the Entree Steakhouse,which offers “a culinary journey like no other…”
    (I wonder which of the hundreds of Turkish hairdressers that we now have was the first to call itself Ali Barber)

  40. For those who are wondering, Moneymaker is a very well known and widely grown British tomato variety – but MINT fits the clue.

    I’m sure UMPIRAGE, APPURTENANT and NAZARITE are legitimate – they were just too close to the more familiar UMPIRING, APPERTINENT and NAZARENE for me. I quite enjoy Pasquale’s real rare words like SPALPEEN (who I have met, but more as a layabout or hooligan than a gangster), but I don’t enjoy the ones that are simply an obscure variant of a better known word.

    Anyway, of the ones that didn’t defeat me, I liked PRECIPICES and PLEISTOCENE, and of course the pig.

  41. PeterO@35, thanks, that makes perfect sense. I looked only in the free Collins online, though I know that Chambers is the definitive crosswording reference.

  42. In which we learn that muffin@11 listens to Round Britain Quiz. I was going to post much the same thing.

    I must have come across SPALPEEN at some point since I pulled it up from my memory once I had the crossers. I think “Irish rascal” might have been a fairer definition. With it defined only as “rascal”, I wondered whether the word was well enough known to be the right answer.

    I have not come across UMPIRAGE before. I don’t think that it is ever used in this side of the Atlantic.

    And thanks gladys@40 for clarifying “moneymaker”. I missed that part of the surface.

  45. Favourites were LAMENT for the keen officer hugging the ace soldiers, and SNOTTY which was very clever. I don’t think I’d heard of SPALPEEN but I wrote it in confidently from the wordplay.

    gladys @40: so Elmore James was inviting us to shake a tomato?

    Many thanks Pasquale and PeterO.

  46. Glad to see so many twigged Spalpeen from the cluing. Congrats English speakers! Its an Irish word Spailpín Fánach being a migratory farm worker long ago.

  47. Favorites included LILLIPUT once I saw the construction, and SLEIGH for the amusing homophone. Least favorite was UMPIRAGE, partly for the reappearance of the unloved PI, which IMO is long past retirement age.

    New to me: SPALPEEN (but got there from the wordplay), APPURTENANT (ditto), SPIDER MITE (the anagram was friendly enough with a couple of crossers). I was going to add BOOTES but it seems vaguely familiar from previous appearances in crosswordland.

  48. In the Authorised (King James) Version of the Bible there are 8 occurrences of NAZIRITE and 12 of the plural NAZIRITES. There are none (zero) of ‘nazarite’. The statistics are identical for the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the most scholarly modern translation.

  50. When I worked out the wordplay for 3d I heard the word spalpeen in my head in my late mum’s voice (a Northern Irish accent softened by decades in London). As it was a word she only used when I’d been exceptionally irritating as a youngster for it to have lodged in my mind in her voice I must have been that more times than I remember.

    I mentally arm-waved groats as a portmanteau of gr(ain) and oats with no real justification, I’m glad to see the explanation of the dd here.

    25a was my LOI, and once the tea tray had rebounded from my head I struggled to understand I how hadn’t brought the right Ted back from memory, my brain seemed to have locked on Dexter, maybe because of the Lord’s Test match I’m watching on TV while listening to TMS (radio commentary for non-cricket fans).

  51. Thanks Pasquale. Many of the answers seemed like ‘odd’ words to me but fortunately they were clued in a manner that made them solvable. Nonetheless I still missed GROATS & HEATHY. Favourites included LILLIPUT, ZING, and HAUNTS. Thanks PeterO for the blog.

  53. I’m another who’s never heard of UMPIRAGE, but hearing it as ‘umpire rage’ brought to mind the spat between Mike Gatting and Shakoor Rana, which resulted in the Pakistani umpire refusing to take the field until he received a written apology.
    SNOTTY is naval slang for a midshipman.

  54. Very good. I much prefer the GR (grain) + OATS (grain) parsing. I presume Pasquale prefers the NAZARITE spelling since he could have easily used the other version and clued it that way. Struggling to see how reduced is an anagrind 🙁 .
    Some great surfaces today. Faves: SPIDER MITE, PLEISTOCENE, SNOTTY and CRANIA.
    Thanks, Ps.

  55. Spent ages pondering my last few (GROATS, HEATHY and SAPPER), but I got there in the end. Phew and yay – this is the first time I’ve completed all five weekday Guardian cryptics unaided so am going to celebrate tonight.

  56. Ray J @14 I played in a band whose leader was a big Ted HEATH fan, so we did lots of his arrangements. The Heath band members did their final tour about 25 years ago.

  57. I believe I had a BARIUM MEAL inflicted on me when I was a tiny tot, after complaining of lots of tummy-aches. If I didn’t have one before the torture, I’m sure I must have, afterward. Yuck!

    But nicely clued all the same. I tried HELIUM, SODIUM, CERIUM, OSMIUM and RADIUM but they didn’t fit. So many elements end in -IUM!

    Although I had to look up SPALPEEN, like many others, the word rings a bell – I guess it’s been seen in Crosswordland before now. Would have helped if Don had put ‘Irish’ in the clue, methinks.

    And I had to guess the second half of MANDARIN (my ignorance again!) but it went in OK.

    I put SLEDGE instead of SLEIGH. Me stoopid!

    Liked a lot here. SIDESTEP, BOÖTES (Wiki says it’s pronounced boh-OH-teez, the diaresis is a help! – I tend to say “booties”!) ; SPIDER MITE; LILLIPUT; PLEISTOCENE (my Neanderthal roots emerging!); UMPIRAGE; SNOTTY (excellent WP).

    Thanks to Don and Peter.

  59. [A barium meal is quite interesting. Barium sulphate is opaque to X-rays, so can give an image of the gut. Barium compounds are actually rather toxic, but barium sulphate is so insoluble in water that there isn’t any hazard.]

  60. Re @15, found that song with “groat” in it, it’s called Gossip Joan. Third verse goes
    I’ve lost a Harry groat
    Was given me by my Granny
    I cannot find it out
    I cannot find it out
    I’ve looked in every cranny,
    Gossip Joan.

    I feel better now 🙂

  61. Congratulations Rosencrantz @55 and I’m glad that you found your song Grantinfreo @60.

    As for the crossword, like with the debt my mother owed to Sears Roebuck, I have nothing to say. Rather I have nothing to add. Like the blog, it was enjoyable. Thanks all

  63. [muffin@59 – I remember learning at school about the naturally occuring mineral barytes or barium sulphate – and a specimen of the stuff was handed around for us to get the ‘feel’ of. We noted the fact that it was extremely heavy – not surprising since barium, with atomic mass 137, is nearly four times heavier than chemically similar calcium, atomic mass 40. Not surprising that its name comes from the Greek βαρὺς meaning ‘heavy’.

    I have no personal recollection of taking the barium meal – it’s just what my parents told me, probably years later when I could understand. Whether I really did raise Cain is speculative…]

  64. I gave up in the end and did a word search in the Chambers app for my last three: HEATHY, GROATS and SPALPEEN. The last crossed my mind, but I ignored it, the other two may have come eventually.

    I spotted APPURTENANT while checking the spelling of APPERTINENT, as I couldn’t parse the latter.

    And “reduced” for an anagrind? Really?

  66. Arjeyeski @65
    The Royal Society of Chemistry have conceded the “f” spelling – you notice that I couldn’t bring myself to use it, though!

  67. SPALPEEN is mentioned in the song “Arthur McBride”

    “Oh now!” says the sergeant, I’ll have no such chat
    And I neither will take it from spalpeen or brat
    For if you insult me with one other word
    I’ll cut off your heads in the morning”

    More detail here

  68. [arjeyeski@65, muffin@66 – it was always ‘sulphur’, ‘sulphuric acid’, etc., when I was doing Chemistry O- and A-levels in the 1960s – but I think US spelling and usage are inexorably creeping in, this side of the Pond. So we’ll have to accept ‘sulfur’, I guess. And the ending -IZE is now more common than -ISE in many words.

    At least I’ll never have to fill my car with ‘gas’, seeing as mine’s electric! But it’ll probably run on ‘tires’ before too long…

    Mr Noah Webster was very influential!]

  69. [Laccaria @68
    Roz was extolling -IZE endings the other day, but she misses the point that if you spell them all -ISE, you don’t have to remember which ones can’t be -IZE.]

  70. Has the setter any Irish background? A Spaleen was a wandering labourer in the late 18th and 19th century. Check out an old Irish song “An Spalpín Fanach™

  71. Arjeyeski @65
    Like it or not, sulfur is now the preferred spelling for the chemical element (as laid down by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry).

  72. A really great puzzle. Loved the beautifully constructed surfaces. I started to list some favourites, but I was selecting pretty much every clue. Also, precise clueing led cleanly to unfamiliar words

    My sixth completion in a row, but with an asterisk. I needed corrections for 13a (I originally had …TANENT instead of …TENANT) and 19d (I originally had the unparsed CADRES — they get on well together). After the check, I did eventually solve both correctly, although the parsing for CUDGEL took a while

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