Guardian No 29,786 by Kite

by

A tricky solve with some tough parsing – my favourites were 29ac, 14dn, and 17dn. Thanks to Kite for the puzzle.

picture of the completed grid

ACROSS
7 BASICALLY
Spartan friend at heart (9)
BASIC=simple, frugal=”Spartan” + ALLY=”friend”
8 JAVAN
Islander agreed in Munich to accompany vehicle (5)
JA=’yes’ in German=”agreed in Munich” + VAN=”vehicle”
9 SIDETRACK
Divert kids and react excitedly (9)
anagram/”excitedly” of (kids react)*
10 EMILY
Blunt force ultimately shown by military, one sailor dismissed? (5)
definition: Emily Blunt the actress [wiki]

last/ultimate letter of [forc]-E + MIL-[I TAR]-Y losing I=”one” and TAR=”sailor”
12 ENCORE
Nancy’s in the Centre again (6)
Nancy is a French city so “Nancy’s in” gives EN=’in’ in French; plus CORE=”Centre”
13 COINCIDE
Officer content listening to match (8)
CO (Commanding Officer) + INCIDE which sounds like (listening to) ‘inside’=”content”
16 OVERLAP
Extend beyond and above the knees (7)
OVER LAP=”above the knees”
19 CATFISH
Pet and grope swimmer (7)
CAT=”Pet” + FISH=search for=”grope”
22 LONG SHOT
Outsider with sexy trousers? (4,4)
definition: an outside chance

LONGS (as opposed to shorts)=”trousers” which are HOT=”sexy”
25 BOTTLE
When up this might conceal courage (6)
wordplay “When up…” refers to the phrase ‘bottle up’ which would mean “conceal”
27 REDID
Finished once more supplying buttered, identical sandwiches (5)
hidden in (contained or sandwiched inside) [butte]-RED ID-[entical]
28 REPAIRMEN
Couple again hands to those who put things right (9)
RE-PAIR=pair again=”Couple again” + MEN=workers=”hands”
29 TWICE
Double top (which is checkout) easy for beginners (5)
beginning letters of T-[op] W-[hich] I-[s] C-[heckout] E-[asy]

for the surface, “Double top” and “checkout” are terms in darts
30 ADMISSION
Son said: ‘I’m ordering for entrée’ (9)
definition: entrée can refer to admission in to a group

anagram/”ordering” of (Son said I’m)*
DOWN
1 RATION
Budget period lacking information provider (6)
not sure, think this might be [GENE]-RATION=”period” minus GENE=something that carries/provides information
2 FIREDOOR
Dire roof needing repair, this might prevent disaster (4,4)
anagram/”needing repair” of (Dire roof)*
3 BARRIE
Author caught in Welsh town (6)
the author is J M Barrie [wiki]

sounds like (‘caught’): ‘Barry’=”Welsh town”
4 ALLCOCK
Everyman is a former English footballer (7)
I think this is referring to Terry Allcock [wiki]

ALL=”Every” + COCK=”man”

Chambers has as a definition for COCK: ‘a familiar form of address to a man’
5 TARMAC
Singer turned up with coat, it was found over the road (6)
RAT=a betrayer or informant, who ‘sings’ e.g. to the police=”Singer” reversed/”turned up” + MAC=mackintosh “coat”
6 BALLAD
Songbird exhausted eating each of ants at first (6)
BD=B-[ir]-D exhausted of its inner letters; around/eating: ALL=”each of” plus A-[nts] at first
11 LIMA
Family essentially returned to capital (4)
inner letters/essentials of [F]-AMIL-[y], reversed/”returned”
14 ICI
One-time British company involved in pharmaceutic industry (3)
ICI was Imperial Chemical Industries [wiki]

hidden inside (involved in) [pharmaceut]-IC I-[ndustry]
15 ETH
The cycling character (3)
ETH is a character/letter used in Old English

wordplay is the letters “The” with the order of letters “cycling” with the E moving to the front
16 OIL
Product from well-limited stews (3)
definition refers to oil wells

I think this is [b]-OIL-[s]=”stews”, limited to only its inner letters
17 EON
Tense, absent from school for a long time (3)
E-[T]-ON=Eton College=”school”, with T (Tense) absent
18 ACHE
Native American ignoring a priest suffering (4)
[AP]-ACHE=”Native American” minus A (from surface) and P (priest)
20 FUTURISM
Art school briefly enjoyable before travelling, not being old (8)
FU-[n]=”briefly enjoyable” + T-[O]-URISM=”travelling” without O (old)
21 ATTENDS
Comes to by nurses (7)
definition as in ‘attends / comes to a meeting’

AT=”by” + TENDS=”nurses”
23 ONE-TWO
Numbers of consecutive punches (3-3)
definition: a ONE-TWO is a combination of punches

wordplay: ONE TWO as numbers
24 GLITCH
Girl suppressing a long hiccup (6)
definition: a ‘hiccup’ as in something that goes wrong, a setback

G-[a]-L=”Girl”, losing/suppressing “a” (from surface) plus ITCH=”ache” (edit thanks to KVa in comments)
25 BRAZIL
Supporter against FA banning children in large republic (6)
BRA=”Supporter” + ZIL-[CH]=zero=FA (f*** all), minus CH (children)
26 LIE LOW
Hole up in sound mattress (3,3)
sounds like (“in sound”): ‘lilo’=”mattress”

69 comments on “Guardian No 29,786 by Kite”

  1. I found this difficult in parts. I am still baffled by 1d. I like your “gene, though, Only thing I came up with was “duration” the du being a UAE telecoms firm. Far too obscure I know – unless you are a UAE resident of course. Re 4d, COCK is, of course, a perfectly acceptable term for the male of bird species etc. Thanks for the blog and the challenging workout.

  2. This started quite quickly for me and thought we’d be having an easy end to a challenging week. And then it all got mired up somehow. On reflection, nothing horrendous, but struggled to get the last ~third done.

    Manehi, I agree with your 1d and 16d parsing. Thanks for the blog, and happy weekend all!

  4. Liked ENCORE, BOTTLE, RATION, FUTURISM and BRAZIL.

    TARMAC
    Why ‘it was…’?
    GLITCH
    A minor omission in the blog
    long=ITCH

    Thanks Kite and manehi.

  5. We are very keen football fans but have never heard of Terry Allcock. Far too obscure a clue which we wasted time over!

  6. Nice puzzle. Agree with kva@4 that there seemed to be some superfluous words in TARMAC’s definition. The parsing of ration eluded me. Thanks for the blog!

  7. Thanks Kite and manehi
    I thought there were some weak clues here. I had GENE for the missing part of 1d too, and I think it works. I also had bOILs, but I think it’s a bit feeble – and boil is not want you want to do to a stew anyway (you simmer it). CATFISH could just as easily have been DOGFISH, which I entered first, but realised I needed to check. I too had never heard of ALLCOCK.
    Favourite BALLAD for the hidden definition.

  8. Is it really asking too much for the Guardian blog include the word “Guardian” in the title as it used to (and as is the pattern fpr all the other blogs)?

    While each instance is only a minor inconvenience, the repetition adds up.

  9. Difficult for me; deletions are one of the hardest types of clues and this puzzle has plenty of them. Didn’t get BARRIE or ALLCOCK (knew neither). Quite a few parsings completely escaped me, like BRAZIL; didn’t equate LONG SHOT with an outsider or ITCH with long. For 1d, I thought of DURATION without any idea what DU could stand for; manehi’s parsing is probably right, though I struggle a bit with GENERATION = “period”. Liked BALLAD and ACHE. Thanks manehi for the blog and Kite for the puzzle!

  10. Similar feelings to many above – not the world’s biggest football fan, but I’ve followed it over the years and would have expected to hear of a footballer in a crossword. I was also baffled by how “du” in 1d could be an information provider, so thank you Gene 🙂

    Muffin@7: I think “stews” here is in the metaphorical sense of being angry but I still agree it doesn’t work as if you stew over something you tend to simmer – be annoyed inside but not boil over, as it were. I also thought dogfish was perfectly valid until Lima went in and think that makes a poor clue.

    For “redid” I was confused by “supplying” as usually we have “wordplay supplies definition” but here it is the other way round, which I struggle to justify.

    All in all, some write-ins, some oddities and a couple of thngs not quite right. Kite has been better than this before so perhaps an off day.

    many thanks Kite and manehi

  11. khayyam@6
    TARMAC
    Some setters use ‘was’ to indicate that the solution is an obsolete word.
    My question was why ‘was’.
    Probably, ‘it is’ doesn’t fit in the surface reading.

  12. I’ll repeat what I said on the Guardian site: Thanks for the comments. Yes, there is a theme but maybe only visible to Gen Z and other youngsters (we setters are sometimes accused of ignoring that cohort).

    I did toy with putting ‘Norwich footballer’ for ALLCOCK but thought that might be too obvious. I’m not sure I understand the comments about OIL. As it says in the blog, the definition is ‘Product from well’ and the wordplay is ‘limited stews’. It’s not supposed to be a CAD.

  13. Given that Terry Allcock didn’t, as far as I can tell, play international football, and retired in the 60s, a bit (and I use the word reluctantly) obscure.

  16. A toughie. In the end I had to reveal ENCORE and BARRIE (I’ve never heard of either the author or the town which is probably a reflection on my ignorance!). For TARMAC I was thinking “rat pack” for the singer (Sinatra et al) but the blog explanation is much better. Also confounded by RATION though I guessed it from the crossers. I’ve never heard of ALLCOCK either but got it from the wordplay and crossers so a fair clue I think. Intrigued by Kite saying there’s a theme…I can’t see it (I know CATFISH is a term for faking an online id but that’s all I can see) but I’m certainly not Gen-Z! Thanks Kite and manehi.

  17. I think the expression “curate’s egg” is applicable here? Can’t say I found much fun, let alone a theme, but got some clues very easily. Thanks to Manehi and Kite

  18. I had overcap instead of overlap. It doesn’t quite work (it would have to be “above the knee”, not knees), but close enough that it didn’t ring any alarm bells.

  19. I solved this and looked for a theme: there are bits and pieces niggling my hindbrain, but nothing that adds up. My daughter, who’s older than GenZ, couldn’t see anything so I suspect it’s stuff I’ve picked up working with kids. And that stuff goes in one ear and gets displaced with the next set of information as things move on.

    [Ian SW3 @8 – if you want to raise an issue on the site there’s a site feedback page which ken, the admin, will see. The Guardian is missing from the software used by a lot of bloggers to extract the information from the crossword into a blog, so it needs a change in the program to fix it. ]

    Thank you to Kite and manehi.

  21. NHO the footballer, nor do I think we should have been expected to have heard of him, and stewing is not the same as boiling (though I did get that one). I’ve always assumed that the mattress is called a ‘lilo’ precisely because it sounds like LIE LOW, but OK. Couldn’t remember the Welsh town, so DNF for me, but I did manage most of the rest after some thought.

  22. I had heard of Terry Allcock and once I found (Alan) Brazil. I was on the alert for an East Anglian football theme. There was a ‘sailor’ but no Mariner, a town in Wales but no Dublin. No idea of the real theme, but I liked FUTURISM.

  23. I think it might be something to do with computer coding: ENCORE, JAVAN, BASIC, CATFISH, LIMA, GLITCH and BRAZIL but just a stab in the dark really.

  24. Found this very hard and didn’t finish. The theme, I think, is a Welsh rock band, but all I know about them is their (terrible!) name. Thanks for the puzzle and for commenting, Kite, and for the blog, manehi.

  26. 25 comments in and theme still unclear?

    Java and basic do suggest programming languages alanc@23 and a bit of googling suggests a few others, but… pretty obscure for me.

  29. ArkLark beat me to it. I was about to say the same. There in 19, 25 and the last letters of 28.

    I don’t know any of the song titles though. Can you enlighten us ArkLark?

  32. Thanks, Shanne @19 for the explanation and link (that page does not appear in my menu), and to Manehi for the fix.

  34. Showing our age, we thought Eth was the radio character whose beloved was called Ron. Theme passed us by entirely!

  35. ArkLark @27; well done! JAVAN includes the adopted first name of the lead singer and all the rest of the Across clues are songs, including (ad)MISSION.

  37. Barbara: it is a long-standing theory of mine that the characters Eth and Ron in The Glums were named after the old letters eth and thorn (both of which are still used in modern Icelandic).

  39. Good workout from Kite today. Favourite was 10a EMILY with “Blunt” cleverly combined with “force”, and 6a BALLAD for the clever fission of “Songbird” — both took a while, and both had delightful pdms. Others, 16a OVERLAP, 21d ATTENDS (“comes to” is a good misdirection). For once I remembered to look for a theme but didn’t see it

    Missed three in the NW — 1d RATION (couldn’t parse even when revealed), 3d BARRIE (Think of an author and a Welsh town that sound alike? Good luck!), 12a ENCORE (should have got it)

    4a ALLCOCK, I think there’s been discussion before about ALL = “Every”? Is there a phrase where they can be substituted?

  40. A theme that only those under 30 will get, clued by a footballer who nobody under 90 has ever heard of? Odd, and sadly unsatisfying.

  41. Mig @39: if I remember correctly, Fed had ALL = “every” a while back, and when it was queried he gave an example (presumably a bit tongue in cheek) along the lines of “All sheep in this field must be shorn” / “Every sheep in this field must be shorn”.

  42. Lord Jim @41, Thanks! Yes, now I remember that example. Or “All/every fish can swim”. Bit of a dodge, but ah well!

  43. Thought that 1, 16 and 18 down were all weak for different reasons. I got them all but only from the definitions. The wordplay for me was too remote. I don’t really like clues where it is really hard going (impossible?) to come up with the answer from the wordplay, and only parse it from a guess at the definition. P for priest? Really? Didn’t like generation for period either, nor boils for stews.
    Like most others, the theme passed me by. Grump over!!

  45. I thought this was a touch easier than the rest of the week but it is the only one I had to come back to. BARRIE and ALLCOCK (not entirely sure how he got to the back of my brain!?) coming to me at work.

    Great fun. Liked EMILY, BRAZIL and the anagram for ADMISSION

    Thanks Kite and Manehi

  46. Crispy @44; I guess I was hoisted by my own petard with ?L?C?C? but I thought that it was something that could be checked on the internet. It’s a pity that Alcock (and Brown) is spelled that way. Chambers has for stew: To simmer or boil slowly with some moisture.

  47. Kite @46
    You could have had OLD COCK, a familiar friend.
    Chambers is overexplaining again. The word for “boil slowly” is “simmer”. If you boil a stew you will ruin it – I speak from experience!

  48. Muffin @47. My question re the Chambers definition is, how would you boil (slowly or quickly) WITHOUT moisture?

  50. Kite @46. So where do you draw the line then? Can we expect clues pointing us to Hungarian fencers from the 1920s on the basis that they can be looked up on the internet?

  51. I usually enter Friday crosswords expecting them to be impenetrable and only get a third before I have to start relying on hints… but today was just the right level of challenging for me.
    I don’t usually comment here, but since I know Kite is actually reading (and is getting quite a lot of questions), thanks! Lots of fun that I don’t even pay for. My favourites today were encore, Javan and admission.
    Thanks as always for the blog too. Come here every time to get the parsing I don’t understand (3 years of cryptic experience, there’s always a few) and really appreciate the service that I also don’t pay for (but I’ll do the coffee thing, honest).

  53. Barbara @34, what was that movie in which Ron repeatedly says “Take them off, Eth”, to which she repeatedly says “No, Ron”, until the last time when she says “I can’t see without them”?

  54. Re ALLCOCK, Dr. WhatsOn once used (coined?) the term “conservation of difficulty” to refer to the balance between wordplay and definition. A harder definition might call for easier wordplay, and vice versa. In this case, the wordplay (“Everyman”) eventually pointed me clearly to ALLCOCK, which I then looked up for confirmation. I would suggest this clue has an acceptable difficulty level, all things considered

  56. Just wondering if 1 down could be DU after all – ‘duration’ seems to make more sense than ‘generation. A search reveals: “The abbreviation DU stands for Display Unit, which refers to a device that visually presents data or information from a computer or system.”

  60. Jepi1951
    Someone coined the term “lift and separate” for this type of clue. It was my clear favourite. What do you object to? The definition is “song”, then “bird” has the middle removed.

  61. While found this very tough I’d like to thank Kite for putting his head above the parapet and engaging so generously.

  62. Wikipedia took me to another Allcock, Frank who seems to have had a less illustrious career than Terry. Adding ‘Norwich’ wouldn’t have helped me get the answer.

    It’s been a good week for chewier crosswords!

  63. Vlad, Paul, Tramp and Kite, and an Enigmatist Prize… Some people will be rejoicing, but on the whole, I’m glad to have been away this week and had no time for crosswords.

  64. This took me several sittings but I enjoyed the struggle and love the compositional integrity afforded by a theme, even (especially) when, like Pangakupu’s Maori Ninas, it’s one not many of us, me included, have heard of. And I’m with Mig@54 on ALLCOCK – very fairly and nicely clued, and clearly a classy player. Thank you Kite and manehi!

  66. Oh dear, I live 20 minutes from their home town and have seen them twice in local festivals, but still didn’t spot the songs. D’oh!

  67. I don’t normally leave comments as I print the crosswords out in batches rather than on the day they are set, so I’m always a few days behind, meaning not many will actually read my comments, though maybe Kite will refer back to this blog.

    I agree with MartinD @61 in congratulating Kite for coming clean with the Allcock explanation. Although maybe a reference to Tony Allcock would have caused less anguish amongst the solvers, as he is possibly the most famous British bowls player of all time. Apart from David Bryant of course (maybe he’ll make an appearance in Kite’s next offering?).

  68. The definition for BALLAD where it is part of a word in the clue, Songbird is a new one on me. I guessed it from some of the letters in the grid, as being something to do singing but couldn’t actually parse it.

  69. I didn’t know Allcock, but then again Emily Blunt says nothing to me either 🙂 But I liked BARRIE and TARMAC.

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