Guardian No 29,772 by Anto

44 comments on “Guardian No 29,772 by Anto”

1. Excellent puzzle from Anto, which wasn’t a write-in for me as claimed by some on the G site. My favourite was the surface in NIGHTMARES, having watched the spooky Barbarian on Netflix yesterday. I smiled at HITMAN and SPERM and also liked ENLISTMENT, HERACLES, IN THIS WAY, SPOOF, EYEBROW, ALPHA CENTAURI and AMIABLE. Quirky and entertaining as ever.

   Ta Anto & manehi.

2. I like clues which have a hint of the solution in the surface, like the dervish “going round”, a reference to the “whirling dervish”. They just make the whole solve more satisfying.

   A hint of “able was I ere I saw Elba” in a couple of the answers. Lovely and smooth.

   Thanks Anto and manehi

3. Fantastic fun and a timely reminder to myself of why I still bother doing cryptics. Top ticks for GELDING, PROMISE and STOMACHED which also happend to be my last three solves.

   JOFT @2 that struck me too – VERDICT being another

   Cheers M&A

4. Liked ‘bore’ = STOMACHED and felt sorry for the damaged GELDING lacking 25d, thanks Anto and manehi

5. Thanks manehi – I needed you for the explanation to AMIABLE.

   I wonder if ALPHA CENTAURI was the first one in when Anto was compiling.

   A pleasant solve, so thanks Anto, too.

6. I enjoyed this.

   I didn’t know a grunt was a soldier. It’s taken me a while to learn all the British soldiers — looks like I’ll have to start on the American ones.

   I assumed “going round” in 1a was a reversal indicator, and it almost works, but not quite.

7. My top faves: DERVISH, ENLISTMENT, SPOOF, IN THIS WAY, GELDING, AMIABLE and SPERM.

   Enjoyable puzzle. Superb blog.
   Thanks Anto and manehi.

   DERVISH
   Read ‘some energy’ as ‘some e’ (one random e out of the two e’s). Does the blog say the
   same thing? If so, sorry for repeating it.

   SPERM
   Reads like a CAD. My COTD.

8. Very enjoyable puzzle. I took a little while to get going and I was happy to be able to parse all of my answers when I got to the end.

9. Enjoyable offering from Anto this morning.

   I, too, grieved for the poor old pony, and failed to parse PROMISE due to the cleverly concealed ‘container’.

   Favourite was IN THIS WAY.

   Many thanks, both.

10. Couldn’t parse 18d and 21d but the answers were clear from the definitions. All in all I found this much better than previous Antos.

11. It’s such a cool feeling when you look at an anagram like “chaplain a true” and just write down ALPHA CENTAURI straight away. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, it’s like a minor superpower, some kind of anti-dyslexia vision. It’s one of the things that gets you hooked.

    So, that was that one…😂

    MONA LISA and NIGHTMARES were pretty instant too, but you barely needed to solve the anagrams for those.
    I was very tuned into this puzzle. It was one of my quicker solves and all very enjoyable. Not that I knew everything, for example, that meaning of con for CONTEXT. I hadn’t parsed Heracles either (d’Oh!).

    All very good though. I liked DERVISH and IN THIS WAY.

    Thanks Anto and manehi

12. Too many anagrams for me. I have an uncanny knack of looking and very often immediately decrypting. Kinda spoils it a bit. Still, it took me two cuppas to finish it off. Just didn’t twig a couple 5a) & 15d), when at last I did…

13. I agree this was an excellent puzzle. Maybe one or two were a bit obvious — you only had to read the first half of 2d to know that it was EYEBROW, and Anto was quite generous in saying “composer” rather than say “barman” in 5a. But overall it was by no means a write-in, just a nice mid-week level to my mind. There were some great surfaces — “Person dieting swaps lobster starter for white fish”, and “Revolutionary chaplain a true star” amongst many.

    Thanks Anto and manehi.

14. Great puzzle.

    Solved 28a as pendent – which also works!

15. Sometimes the “anagram superpower” works (nice) but sometimes I can stare for ages and nothing appears, and ALPHA CENTAURI was one of those. Also failed to parse PROMISE though I have no quarrel with it now I see it. Lots of nice surfaces, and I liked the ‘ighbrow Cockney.

16. GDU@6 I also “saw” DERVISH as a reversal at first, until I checked my work.

17. Is an unknown soldier’s fate the same as a soldier’s unknown fate?

18. Lautus@17 I had the same thought, it doesn’t quite work. Unknown soldiers are those killed in battle and sadly unable to be identified, but that’s not the same as MIA which implies an unknown fate.

19. Couldn’t quite get there this morning, beaten by SPOOF amongst several others. An excellent challenge nevertheless. Perhaps I should have persevered a tad longer as the clues I eventually revealed were all very well constructed…

20. I’m inclined to agree that it’s the fate, rather than the soldier, which is the unknown here. Apropos, isn’t a Grunt specifically an ENLISTed man, as opposed to an officer? Good puzzle, with some Paulesque clues. TTS&B.

21. I liked the surfaces for DERVISH and SWIMMER, the well-hidden HERACLES, the good anagram for ALPHA CENTAURI, and the ‘most’ being fodder for a change in STOMACHED. Yet again, I was caught by right being RT rather than R. I failed to parse AMIABLE.

    Thanks Anto and manehi.

22. I think MIA works if you put virtual parentheses in the right place. The natural tendency is (unknown soldier)’s fate but the clue requires unknown (soldier’s fate). Works for me.

23. Enjoyable puzzle, good anagrams.

    Does “text” = “manuscript”? Seems a little far fetched to me.

    Thanks, Anto and manehi.

24. @22 Dr WhatsOn

    No, this does not work. This is grammatically wrong. In this instance this should really be “soldier’s unknown fate.”

    The way of solving the grouping issue when their is no proper reordering is, as in the case of the “old furniture dealer”, to use hyphens ( “Old-furniture dealer” versus “Old furniture-dealer.”)

    This was an enjoyable solve.

    I was commenting recently on only being able to solve the Monday and Tuesday cryptic offerings. Maybe I am progressing a bit…or this was an unusually easier Wednesday crossword. Please, let me keep my happy illusion for a while longer!

25. Valentine @ 23

    Prior to the invention of printing all texts were manuscripts, so it seems a fair enough equivalence.

26. Absolutely splendid.
    Took me quite a while, and two sittings, but everything solved and everything parsed. I love puzzles I can finish, but which take a lot of thinking.
    No quibbles from me about any parsing – some took me a while to agree to (like the unknown fate of the soldier), but, within crossword-land, I thought they all worked. In fact, it was the frequently odd parsing that made it so enjoyable!
    Last one in: HERACLES. And this was my favourite for a superb surface with such a cheeky, hard to spot inclusion!

27. Lord Jim @13: you may have spotted EYEBROW immediately from the first half of the clue but I went “ah, I must put its backwards inside a word meaning surprise with a dropped h to get a word meaning intellectual”. Which didn’t get me very far! EYEBROW was almost my LOI. Enjoyed this one, but I was also less than satisfied with MIA in AMIABLE as others have mentioned.

    WRT to anagram “super-power”, do others find it unreliable? Some days everything pops into place and other days everything is out of reach.

28. First time ever completing a Guardian Cryptic after a 6 weeks of trying everyday and training with the Quick Cryptics. Everything just seemed to click and make sense. Got ALPHA CENTAURI instantly and then everything seemed to fall into place.

    Got close with on a few Monday puzzles and usually stumped later in the week so i am uncharacteristically pleased with myself!

    Thanks Anto and manehi

29. I have no problem with “unknown [soldier’s fate]”; in fact I found it a clever misdirection.
    That was indeed my LOI in what I thought at first was a Quiptic – but wasn’t! 🙂

30. Very nice puzzle. I especially liked WEST showing up as a whole for once (and nicely spread across two syllables that sound nothing like the word), and MIA for “unknown soldier’s fate”–admittedly I bung-and-checked AFFABLE and then had to work out what it might be. STOMACHED also. Got held up for a while because I thought the long down answer might be a celebrity I hadn’t heard of, but it clicked after I’d got the bottom.

    re: unknown soldier’s fate, it seems to me that whoever the unknown soldier is, they will have been recorded as missing in action under their name, since their body will not be known to have been found. [Though reading up on Michael Blassie, the American Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam war who was conclusively identified through DNA testing, his original listing was Killed In Action Body Not Recovered–try fitting KIABNR into a puzzle!] The first picture caption on the MIA wikipedia article does say “Because his identity is unknown, he is missing in action.”

    Thanks Anto and manehi!

31. I don’t know why I just seem to have problems tackling cryptics,it seems that one has to familiarise with the style of the setter rather than follow the ‘standard ‘ solving techniques.Even more disheartening when majority find it easy?

32. Lovely puzzle. Since ‘unknown soldier’s fate’ can reasonably mean ‘unknown fate of a soldier’, I’d say it’s fine.

33. It was all going very well until I wrote in STROP for 16a.

34. MuddyThinking@27,
    I’m generally a poor anagram solver but I got ALPHA CENTAURI quickly. In this case, the definition is very helpful, as it was likely to be a heavenly body and many stars are Alpha something or other.
    I struggled more with NIGHTMARES but it’s a fine clue. The MONA LISA surface not so fine IMHO.
    I’m with those who think that AMIABLE is just a well written clue with an intentionally ambiguous phrase.
    I liked the complementary clueing in HERE and ELBA.
    Thanks, Anto and manehi.

35. Victoria G@33,
    That’s pretty good. Is Do a dialectical word for strop? I can only think of a to-do as being related.

36. Phitonelly@35 Maybe it’s Yorkshire. I sometimes find it’s quite hard to tell! He had a right do: he was in a right strop

37. Every clue a winner today I thought. I left no clue unparsed, which isn’t always the case with me. Were there more anagrams than usual?
    My LOI was 25 down which provoked a puerile chortle. Haven’t read the blog yet but thanks in advance to manehi and of course to Anto. Onwards and upwards!

38. Jay @31. You’re right about styles and wavelengths but I promise you will crack them one day. Celebrate small wins and learn from this blog. I think the most important thing is have a time and place where you won’t be interrupted and to go with the flow. You need to be “in the zone” and if that seems impossible some days there will come a time when you’ll look forward to the cryptics as an escape from horrid reality!

39. Very good puzzle from Anto. Favourites were ERASED and STOMACHED.

40. Amazing puzzle with some funny surfaces.
    I liked the going around (whirling) DERVISH most of all. Laughed at HITMAN and HACKSAW.
    Thanks Anto!

    Couldn’t parse 11a, 19a, 21d, 28a. And revealed 17a…
    I didn’t know this meaning of “con” for CONTEXT. Didn’t know MIA. And SCOOF was a new word for me.
    Thanks manehi!

    13a… we had this type of clue in QC just a couple of weeks ago, maybe it helped me to see HERACLES.
    Thanks Budmo!

41. Beyond what was mentioned by others I was intrigued by the relationship between 10ac and 27ac: symmetrically opposite places and related but also opposite, in a way, wordplay.

42. My partner Janet Fralick and myself live in Toronto where the The Guardian Cryptics appear in the Toronto Star. We are so far behind at this stage that the comments on the one we are doing have long since closed. I came across the following this morning, shows how far behind we are.
    TerriBlislow
    August 26, 2019 at 8:36 am
    There’s a thought-provoking discussion this morning in the Guardian forum for this crossword. Someone sneers at those of us who like to thank the setter. The argument goes they get paid so we only need to comment on their ingenuity etc and thanks are superfluous. (Pascale comes in with a pertinent semi-snarled retort.) I don’t bother contributing to the forum as it is always so advanced by the time I see it (here in the UK) so I shall comment here: some of us thank people for their services regardless of their being paid (from bus drivers to checkout operators to the post person, etc). In the case of the setters, never a day goes by that I do not marvel at their generosity in providing us all with such fabulous, life-enhancing entertainment. Of course we should thank them – and I bet they get paid tuppence a throw anyway. I also thank the Guardian – long may they continue to allow us to do these crosswords for free. I really cannot bear the ungracious wingeing that I see in the various fora, with some solvers thinking they are far smarter and superior to the witty and clever setters who – quite obviously – set crosswords because of their love of wordplay and of the fun involved in laying traps and springing delicious surprises. The bloggers also are to be thanked – they are part of the fantastic service and fellow-players in the great game that helps me (at least) keep my grey cells alive and kicking.

    We would like to second Terri’s comment wholeheartedly. A little good manners and kindness never hurt anyone. We thank everyone who does us a service, whether it’s the surgeon who saves our lives or the high schooler packing our groceries in the supermarket.

    Thanks to ALL the setters and ESPECIALLY the bloggers. Our solving ability has increased exponentially down the years thanks to your explanations of clues we’ve solved without a hope of ever parsing them. You are much appreciated.

43. Gradually fell into place, for my third completion in a row. I liked 5a VERDICT, 12a ERASED, 26a NIGHTMARES, 4d SLENDER, 25d SPERM

    Tom McGuirk @42, from a fellow Canadian, thanks for the lovely comment. I’ve been working through the Guardian archive for a few years now and am about to catch up with the present day. Very grateful indeed for the Guardian, setters, bloggers, and commenters

44. Hadn’t done a cryptic crossword for a long while (since Waitrose stopped giving free newspapers to MyWaitrose customers with a shop!) but printed off a batch on a rickety printer to take on a trip to visit elderly parents, and was pleased to find that it was somewhat like riding a bike. Feels meaningful in that it was my dad who taught me the art/craft of solving them – something of him will live on in me in this hobby. Equally pleased to be able to feel part of a world-wide community of solvers via this blog.

    Kicked myself for not parsing PROMISE or AMIABLE, but less so for CONTEXT as it seems I was not alone in that. Gave up on 28a in impatience and came here for the answer. Probably shouldn’t have been trying to finish it off before breakfast!

    Thank you Ricardo @38 for saying “there will come a time when you’ll look forward to the cryptics as an escape from horrid reality!” – so true!

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