Guardian Cryptic crossword No 29791 by Brummie

by

Thank you to Brummie. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across
1. Shag pile’s end braids damaged? (7)
SEABIRD : Anagram of(… damaged) [ last letter of(…’s end) “pile” + BRAIDS ].

5. Second middling mark given to female (weight set back movement) (7)
SCHERZO : S(abbrev. for “second” in time notation) + C(the grade given in a test that signifies average performance/middling mark given) plus(to) HER(third person pronoun for a female) + reversal of(… set back) OZ(abbrev. for for “ounce”, a unit of weight).
Defn: … in a symphony or sonata.

9. Idolatrous virtuoso player, not popular one (5)
PAGAN : “Paganini”(Niccolo, Italian virtuoso violinist) minus(not) [ “in”(popular/fashionable) + “I”(Roman numeral for “one”) ].
Answer: Worshipping idles, said of one who does not belong to any of the main organised religions.

10. Dinner date might be so, if electricity’s lacking? (9)
CANDLELIT : Cryptic defn: A dinner for a couple on a date may be illuminated by candles, ie. without using electric lighting, to create a romantic atmosphere.

11. Star, eyes rolling, appearing in blockbuster early Chaplin film (4,6)
EASY STREET : Anagram of(… rolling) STAR, EYES contained in(appearing in) ET(a blockbuster movie).

12. ‘Mate’ works both ways (4)
OPPO : [OP(abbrev. for “opus”/a literary or musical work ) + reversal of OP ](… both ways).

14. Doctor says ‘three cracks to reveal guard’s question’ (3,4,5)
WHO GOES THERE : WHO(the fictional doctor on TV) + GOES(says, as in “To every question he goes ‘No comment.’”) + anagram of(… cracks) THREE.

18. Assembly overseers, such as Sheraton and Chippendale (12)
CHAIRPERSONS : Cryptic defn: Thomas Sheraton and Thomas Chippendale were furniture designers, and, for this clue, chair designers.
Defn: In this case, those who preside over/oversee committees/boards and similar organised groups/assemblies.

21. Bite lip (4)
EDGE : Double defn: 1st: A distinctive incisive characteristic, as in “His words had an edge to them”; and 2nd: The rim of a container or an opening, as in “the lip of the cup”.

22. Spike needs gravy for pot (5,5)
STAKE MONEY : STAKE(a pointed rigid post/a spike) plus(needs) MONEY(an example of “gravy”/a pleasant unexpected or unearned thing).
Defn: The total amount of bets made in a gambling game.

25. Trouble breaking into run – end circling plain (9)
UNADORNED : ADO(a state of trouble/fuss) contained in(breaking into) anagram of(… circling) RUN – END.

26. Clubs with oriental rooms? (5)
SUITE : SUIT(one four the sets in a pack of playing cards, in this case, “clubs”) plus(with) E(abbrev. for “Eastern”/oriental).
Defn: A set of adjoining … designated as such.

27. Lands: Maine, Ohio, Florida etc? (7)
ESTATES : Eastern STATES(those in Eastern USA, of which Maine, Ohio, Florida etc. ?/are examples) using the abbrev. for “Eastern”.

28. Star depressed when night-time approaches (7)
SUNDOWN : SUN(the star in our solar system) + DOWN(sad/depressed).

Down
1. Drinker’s snack? (6)
SUPPER : SUPPER(what you might call one who sups/drinks).
Defn: …/an evening or late evening light meal.

2. Dignified gold rush (6)
AUGUST : AU(symbol for the chemical element, gold) + GUST(a strong sudden rush of air).

3. Very high region spreading poison at present (10)
IONOSPHERE : Anagram of(spreading) POISON plus(at) HERE!(exclamation to indicate one’s presence in a roll-call).
Defn: …/layer of the earth’s atmosphere.

4. Staff around the church rejected ornamentation (5)
DECOR : Reversal of(… rejected) [ ROD(a straight bar as a symbol of office or authority/a staff) containing(around the) CE(abbrev. for the Church of England).
Defn: …/decoration of a room.

5. Possibly unable to feel stupid? (9)
SENSELESS : SENSE-LESS(how you might/possibly describe one who is unable to feel/does not have any sensation).

6. See 24

7. Fell back on showing electronic circuits in colour (8)
RELAPSED : [ E(abbrev. for “electronic”) + LAPS(circuits/circular routes) ] contained in(showing … in) RED(a primary colour).
Defn: …/returned to a worse state after a temporary improvement.

8. Tailor of tuxedo defeated by craft (8)
OUTFOXED : Anagram of(Tailor) OF TUXEDO.
Defn: …/outdone by cunning.

13. Maybe Jagger and mother’s performing ‘Carver’? (10)
STONEMASON : STONE(any one of the members of the Rolling Stones pop group, perhaps/maybe Mick Jagger) plus(and) MA(familiar term for one’s mother)’S + ON(performing/engaged in an activity, as in “He was there on his round”).

15. Regards pathetic steering group leader (9)
GREETINGS : Anagram of(pathetic) [ STEERING + 1st letter of(… leader) “group” ].

16. Bloke had to crack cryptic clues list (8)
SCHEDULE : HE’D(contraction of “he had”, using the pronoun for a man/bloke,) containing(to crack) anagram of(cryptic) CLUES.
Defn: … of intended events and times.

17. Talk big: ‘Jupiter’, say (3,5)
GAS GIANT : GAS(idle talk or boasting) + GIANT(big/enormous).
Defn: An example of which/say, is Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.

19. ‘Blue’, as one might say on venturing inside without date (6)
INDIGO : [IN I GO](what one might say on venturing/going inside) containing(without) D(abbrev. for “date”).
Defn: A deep blue colour.

20. Wife put on very kinky negligée top – fantastic beast! (6)
WYVERN : W(abbrev. for “wife”) placed above(put on, in a down clue) + anagram of(… kinky) VERY + 1st letter of(… top) “negligée”.

 … nobody’s wife, negligee or not!

23. Prestige gained by awkward type with nation’s backing (5)
KUDOS : Reversal of(…’s backing) [ SOD(one who is troublesome/an awkward type) plus(with) UK(abbrev. for the United Kingdom, the nation).
Defn: …/honour and praise received for an achievement.

24, 6. Western cemetery stall in a bad way (4,4)
BOOT HILL : BOOTH(a stall/a small temporary structure at, say, a fair) + ILL(feeling sick/in a bad way).
Defn: Informal name for a cemetery in the Western United States.

51 comments on “Guardian Cryptic crossword No 29791 by Brummie”

  1. The week that keeps on giving, another welcome treat. For me, this was on the gentler side with the NE last to fall. Lots of likes such as SCHERZO, PAGAN, WHO GOES THERE, ESTATES, SUPPER, AUGUST, OUTFOXED, SCHEDULE, INDIGO and WYVERN. I thought STONEMASON was the weakest clue unless I’m missing something more subtle and I guessed BOOT HILL from the wordplay.

    Ta Brummie & scchua for another great blog.

  2. Thanks Brummie and scchua
    I was puzzled in 5a why CHER was female rather than singer!
    I don’t think DECOR is the same as ornamentation – it’s more the overall look.
    Favourite CANDLELIT.

    [ESTATES reminded me of the story told by Nadine Dorries of her first cabinet meeting. “I was surrounded by people brought up on estates like me, except mine was in Liverpool and owned by the council”.]

  4. Charming. Top ticks for WHO GOES THERE, ESTATES & STONEMASON (sorry AlanC!)

    This week feels like the lull before the storm. Hopefully 🙂

    Cheers B&S

  5. As an innocent birder, the word shag immediately brings the SEABIRD to mind. I assume the question mark is a convention when going from specific to category. The same applies to clubs and suit.
    Anyway, good puzzle. Thanks both.

  6. Alastair@5, I agree. The “?”s in 1A and 26A are there to indicate definition by example. Though I prefer to see such indication next to the example word rather than at the other end of the clue.
    Conversely the “?”s in 10A and 13D seem unnecessary.
    Thanks to Brummie and Scchua

  8. I failed to solve 17d and 24/6 though I guessed HILL with the ILL = in a bad way. Never heard of Boot Hill Cemetery.

    New for me: IONOSPHERE; STAKE MONEY; SHAG = seabird.

    I couldn’t parse the C in 5ac; 27ac, 19d apart from D = date; and also 17d (which I did not even solve).

  9. Very pleasing, smooth solve, I thought today.
    (I’m presently having a go at learning Italian via DuoLingo. Their word for summer is Estate. Also rather perplexed at first to discover that Cornetto does not in fact translate to one of those ice creams advertised in scenes from the canals of Venice, but a Croissant.)
    I didn’t know OPPO, but it simply had to be that

  10. Took longer than the other puzzles this week. I was looking for a two word western (HIGH NOON, TRUE GRIT etc) but nothing worked. I also set off towards Cabinet Makers for the CHAIRPERSONS. I liked that one and IONOSPHERE, OUTFOXED, WHO GOES THERE, EASY STREET and WYVERN. There’s a pub I used to go to in Church Crookham called The Wyvern so that went straight in.

    Thanks Brummie, scchua and other commenters.

  11. Needed a few checks; didn’t know BOOT HILL or WYVERN (or OPPO, but it was easy to guess). Couldn’t parse WHO GOES or EDGE. Liked the funny CHAIRPERSONS 🙂 Thanks Brummie for the enjoyable puzzle and scchua for an excellent and pictorial blog!

  12. Entertaining puzzle with some excellent clues, my favourites being OUTFOXED (great anagram) and CHAIRPERSONS (for the misleading “assembly overseers”).

    But I do agree with Jay’s quibble @6. The question mark indicates “for example”, so spelling out the clue at 26a we effectively have “Clubs with oriental rooms for example”. It’s difficult to see how that can be read as “Clubs for example with oriental rooms” which the cryptic reading requires.

    Thanks Brummie and scchua.

  14. AlanC @3. I think “western cemetery” covers the definition, but the two words could be taken separately and still work. I also came across this film in my search, I haven’t watched it though.

  15. Martin @14: my very thought. I might try the trilogy some time, love the genre.

    bodycheetah @4: apart from the definition what’s Carver referring to? A composer, a piece of music, I just don’t geddit.

  17. Pleasant solve with some interesting clues. I ticked SCHERZO, WHO GOES THERE, IONOSPHERE, OUTFOXED, WYVERN, INDIGO and SCHEDULE. I must have enjoyed it!

    Thanks Brummie and scchua.

  18. I thought this was a step up from the first three this week. It went in reasonably smoothly though with some generously clued longer answers. Ultimately a fail though as I couldn’t work out BOOT HILL. Thanks for the parse.

    Slowed down slightly by having AIRBEDS for a while (which I thought might be a bawdy modern reference I didn’t know) before the down clues corrected.

    Thanks Brummie and scchua

  19. Thanks for the blog. Fun puzzle, some simple clues, quite a quick one for me.

    12A: I got it from the construction, but I don’t know what ‘oppo’ is. What is ‘mate’ doing, and why in inverted commas?

  20. I knew BOOT HILL from the arcade game, that or its successor Gun Fight. When the cowboys die they go up the hill to the cemetery, with a wooden label. I doubt it was in an arcade, more likely a pub (my mental picture is the Hoop and Toy in South Kensington), so, sorry, I wrote that one in when I got to it.

    Rach @ 19 – an oppo is your work colleague in army / forces circles.

    Fun puzzle – and as it’s a Brummie, I did spend some time wondering if there was a theme or not.

    Thank you to scchua and Brummie

  21. This one was a pleasant solve. A bit short on humour perhaps? Favourites 21a EDGE (for conciseness) 26a SUITE (nice surface), 2d AUGUST (for “gold rush”), 5d SENSELESS (amusing!), 20d WYVERN (for “very kinky”)

    Last ones in 24/6 BOOT HILL, 12a OPPO, both nho, but clearly clued. For the former, apparently it’s a common name for cemeteries in the W US, to the point of being a generic term

    23d KUDOS, I couldn’t parse DOS. “Sod” = awkward type? I thought maybe as in “poor sod”? scchua suggests “troublesome/awkward” which I guess works? Someone who’s troublesome makes things awkward for everyone?

  22. In 27a, I figured it out but Ohio is a fairly unhelpful example of an Eastern state, there’s about a dozen more appropriate choices. Sure some of the Ohio teams play in Eastern Conferences in major American sports but it’s definitely in the Midwest.
    NHO of EASY STREET, SCHERZO and BOOT HILL; that aside very enjoyable crossword. Thanks Brummie and scchua.

  24. Tachi @22. I am inclined to agree about Ohio. Both of the Major League Baseball teams in the state (Cleveland and Cincinnati) play in the Central divisions of their respective conferences.

  25. Odd one for me. On the first pass not much went in, but second time through thanks to a friendly grid and helpful crossers I was able to fill in everything. So over quite quickly.

    It also helped that I had all of the GK for once, apart from having to guess that a shag was a seabird.

    Thanks Brummie and scchua.

  27. Enjoyed the puzzle, but share the aforementioned eyebrow-raising over Ohio and the question-marks (sounds like a band from the 60’s).

  28. There was a pub in Swaledale that had a picture on the wall of a dark bar with a single drinker seated with a half-finished pint. It was titled THE LAST SUPPER.

  29. 20D: That’s a very bad AI picture of a dragon, as it has five limbs. A wyvern only has two legs and two wings.

  30. Enjoyed the puzzle, did most last night except BOOT HILL and GAS GIANT.

    scchua — pagans worship idles?

    Thanks to Brummie and scchua.

  31. Boot Hill is the cemetery in Tombstone Arizona where a number of gunfighters are buried including those involved in the Gunfight at the OK Corral – a well known Western film as well as an actual event.

  32. Jay #6 and Lord Jim #12
    In my experience, setters use question marks not just for indicating examples. Paul had 13 out of 28 not long ago, if you remember.

  33. Lindab@31 The gunfight happened in Dodge City, Kansas, not Tombstone, Arizona. There is a Boot Hill cemetery in both places, although both reused a name that was already in common currency.

  34. [Alastair @5, our children, on spotting a large black seabird, would say, “Hey, Mum, is that a Cormorant, or is it… (mischievous grin) …”A SHAG?”]

  35. AlanC @ 15: I wonder if Brummie is tipping the hat to Charles Sergeant Jagger, sculptor of the magnificent WW1 memorial to the Royal Artillery on Hyde Park Corner

  36. AlanC @ 15: I wonder if Brummie is tipping the hat to Charles Sergeant Jagger, sculptor of the magnificent WW1 memorial to the Royal Artillery on Hyde Park Corner

  37. AlanC @ 15: I wonder if Brummie is tipping the hat to Charles Sergeant Jagger, sculptor of the magnificent WW1 memorial to the Royal Artillery on Hyde Park Corner

  38. This was a slog but got there in the end. Nice clueing as I got several purely from wordplay although I didn’t know the word (SCHERZO, OPPO, WYVERN, BOOT HILL and others). Thanks Brummie and scchua.

  41. Very nice puzzle. Quibble that I agree with Tachi@22 about E States–if you look on a map Ohio seems eastern but no Ohioan would identify that way! In the same way that southern California isn’t southern even if it is farther south than much of the South.

    mig@21: I took at as referring to the expression “awkward sod,” which comes up in “Why Paddy’s Not At Work Today” though I think I’ve heard it elsewhere.

    Thanks Brummie and scchua!

    [As a few people have pointed out, there were several Boot Hill cemeteries in the western US. When I was younger I had a Wild West role-playing game called Boot Hill–an early attempt to branch out from the makers of Dungeons and Dragons, which didn’t get very famous because it was too easy for characters to get shot and die, compared to fantasy settings where you can handwave away surviving swordfights!]

  42. +1 to Ohio being pretty firmly Midwestern. (It is the easternmost Midwestern state; it’s true that southeastern Ohio is part of Appalachia, but the majority of the state is west of the mountains and covered in cornfields.)

    I took the BOOT HILL definition (“western cemetery”) to read as a cemetery in a Western.

  43. Long time lurker here…decided to post as 1a made me laugh (and helped with the clue) remembering the lyrics of a Hale and Pace song from years ago which had nuns singing : ” gay means happy, a pussy is a cat, a shag is a seabird, and that is that” it rather went on in the same vein…
    Otherwise pleased to finish this with only a bit of wifely help needed for 5a and 19d.

  44. The mealworm @32: I agree that a question mark doesn’t always indicate a definition by example, but I think that’s how it’s intended in 1a and 26a — a shag is an example of a seabird, and clubs is an example of a suit.

    WhiteDevil @29: well spotted! I hadn’t noticed the five legs. A wyvern (two legs, two wings) is perhaps a bit akin to a pterodactyl, and therefore maybe a slightly more believable creature than a dragon (usually four legs two wings) which doesn’t really resemble anything real.

  45. Good puzzle – I enjoyed the careful constructions of both RELAPSED and SCHERZO in particular.

    [There is a Johnny Cash song titled “The Ballad Of BOOT HILL” about the gunfight at the OK corral. The BOOT HILL cemetery in Tombstone features prominently in the opening credit sequence of either My Darling Clementine or Gunfight At The OK Corral (can’t remember which), films dramatisations about the gunfight made by John Ford and John Sturges respectively and both recommended. The gunfight certainly took place in Tombstone not Dodge City, although there is a museum to Wyatt Earp in Dodge City which may have created an earlier poster’s confusion. To add to the geographic inclarity concerning Ohio, American Football has it as northern – with both Cleveland and Cincinnati playing in the NFL AFC’s North Division. Although given the same sport has Florida in both the south and the east, and also has Dallas in the east, perhaps we shouldn’t complain.]

  46. TM@32, yes, completely agree that there are many uses for a “?”.
    In this instance, however, LJ and I were commenting that when used specifically to indicate a DBE the “?” should – for reasons of fairness – be placed next to the DBE in question.

  47. Muffin@39 I too thought of that poem, I could only remember the first and last couplets though. Must have been Isherwood on a good day!

  48. matt w @41 Thank you! That answers my question. I had nho the phrase “awkward sod”, and don’t get the impression from a Duck search that it’s widely used. And some versions of the “Why Paddy’s Not At Work Today” lyrics have “awful sod” instead of “awkward sod”

  49. Thanks Muffin@39 for unearthing that shaggy little verse. Inspires me to unearth one of my own, to celebrate 10A’s datenight:

    Wow, your beehive is hot, but beware
    Of a candlelit evening affair.
    Naked flames are romantic,
    But coifs so gigantic
    Are hazardous — candle with hair.

    Fun puzzle, Brummie, colourfully illustrated by schuaa.

  50. AlanC@14: Robert CARVER was Scotland’s greatest composer of the 16th century, and does fit the context, however obscure he might seem.

  51. Copland at 7 – when I grew up on the Wirral, supper was definitely a snack, usually later in the evening, often before bedtime, eg toast. When I moved south supper seemed to be an interchangeable word (although usually used by posher types) for the main evening meal (what I would still call tea but also dinner by others)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.