Guardian Cryptic 26,965 by Qaos

by

Fifth time lucky?

Tried to post this four times already, and I’m now bored with writing the same introduction five times, so I’ll just say “thank you, Qaos”.

Across
8 LIFEBOAT It saves doctor a bit of leg, eradicating the onset of gangrene (8)
*(a bit of le)G
9 TAUGHT Reported to be stretched tight, as instructed (6)
Homophone of TAUT
10 MARK Score book? (4)
Double definition
11 SUPERNOVAS Fireworks in the sky make Penny nervous, excited — even gassy (10)
*(P nervous) + gAsSy
12 JULIET Heroine, fair but no saint, covers up deception (6)
JU(s)T “covers up” LIE
14 DISMAYED Alarmed, Pluto made move to bite Mickey’s bottom! (8)
DIS (“Pluto”) + (micke)Y in *(made)
15 JANITOR Caretaker: “I was taken in by Trojan hoax” (7)
I in *(trojan)
17 APRICOT Answer: can son leave bed for fruit? (7)
A + PRI(son) + COT
20 MINISTER One installed in York, perhaps (8)
1 in MINSTER
22 JUNKET Rubbish film trip (6)
JUNK + E.T.
23 DOCTORATES Indoor court reportedly 88 degrees (10)
CT in DOOR + homophone of “8s”
24 APEX Top 10 record gets a spin (4)
<=X E.P. A
25 DECODE Enigma’s output and what to do with it? (6)
DE (“Germany”) + CODE

The Enigma machine decoded German codes.
26 SEPARATE English sailor monkeys about alone (8)
<=E TAR APES

although apes and monkeys are not the same thing
Down
1 SIMARUBA Author’s upset with hitch over a tropical American tree (8)
<=AMIS + RUB + A
2 PEEK Take a secret look around castle (4)
<=KEEP
3 CORSET Blimey! TV reveals ladies’ clothing (6)
COR! + (T.V.) SET
4 STUPIDS Upright held by bolts and dolts (7)
PI in STUDS
5 STARTS UP Special bitter drink gets things going (6,2)
S + TART + SUP
6 AUTOMATION Computerised equipment puts gold in tomato soup (10)
AU *(in tomato)
7 PHRASE Catchword wears thin on the radio (6)
Homophone of FRAYS
13 INITIATION Can I return? First, run away from helping Trigger (10)
<=TIN I +1 + (r)ATION
16 ON TARGET Building great? Not according to plan (2,6)
*(great not)
18 OMELETTE Dish given to me — let tea be brought out (8)
Hidden in “tO ME LET TEa”
19 PROTEST Being against Twenty20 and ODI cricket, appeal (7)
PRO TEST

Someone in favour of tests MAY be against the shorter versions of the game, although not necessarily (I llike them all, for example)
21 IRONED Pressed feed? (6)
Fe. (IRON) + ED
22 JOSEPH Mourinho’s supported by local patriarch (6)
JOSE (Mourinho) + P.H. (public house, so “local”)
24 ACRE Port causes Daily Mail editor to blow his top (4)
(d)ACRE

Paul Dacre has been editor of the Daily Fail since 1992

*anagram

57 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 26,965 by Qaos”

  2. Thanks loonapick & qaos, needed the DE part of DECODE explained.
    Thought the PEEK clue slightly unfair, as it could have been KEEP. Otherwise good puzzle

  3. Thanks Qaos and loonapick.

    Yes, loonapick, it did seem to take ages for the blog to appear; sorry to learn of your frustration.

    More success today after not doing so well on the Screw puzzle yesterday.

    I admit I did have to google the name of the Daily Mail editor for 24d, and also Jose Mourinho for 22d. At least I did get PH for “local” in the latter, due to past bitter experiences of inns, ales, lagers, pubs, barmen etc.

    I quite liked 12a JULIET, for obvious reasons, but think if you remove ST (my abbreviation for Saint) that last “T” doesn’t make sense. Sounds a bit picky I know.

    My LOI was 23a DOCTORATES. Just did not spot the homophone.

  5. Thanks to Qaos and loonapick. I struggled here but did make it through. I got APRICOT without making the prison-bed connection, had to look up Dacre-editor to get ACRE, and struggled with PROTEST and IRONED. Last in was SIMARUBA, but reversing Amis (a favorite author in these puzzles) got me home. Much fun here.

    In 5d to get STARTS there is an S missing in the blog for SUP-drink.

  9. Liked the omelette hide. Less convinced by 6d. Also stumped for a while by the abbreviation of Saint in 12a. Maybe 19d needs a question mark as I’m also pro all forms of cricket

  16. Gasmanjack @12: Fe is the chemical symbol for iron, so Feed is Iron-ed; if you iron something you press it.

    didn’t spot the theme at all. Spent ages thinking there must be something about the juxtaposition of minister and junket, but irregular verbs didn’t appear…

  17. DOCTORATES doesn’t seem quite right – the last syllable just has an unstressed schwa, rather than the full “eight”/”ate” sound, and on its own there’s no such word as “ates”. But a very nice puzzle, with some great clues. Thanks Loonapick and Qaos.

  18. Gasmanjack,

    symbol for Iron is “Fe” so Fe’ed is ironed = pressed. I needed loonapick to explain but now realise it’s a very good clue.

  19. Great puzzle-very unqaotic. And very neat theme which I only discovered much later on.I guess it was them J’s that triggered it!

  20. Doh! I knew there must be a theme somewhere but I couldn’t see it without the hints. All very enjoyable – DOCTORATES was last in but I must admit to semi-cheating SIMARUBA as I guessed the novelist would be the usual suspect! Liked DOCTORATES and AUTOMATION.

    Thanks to Qaos and loonapick.

  21. Thank you Qaos and loonapick.

    Great fun, especially APEX, DECODE and CORSET! At first on reading that there was a theme I thought it might be “eggs” since OMELETTE was one of the answers, but could only spot OVA and two NITS… got the months after crypticsue’s hint @6.

    Having the A at 24d I tried ADEN for the port, thinking the DM editor might be Baden, surely not Jaden, but 26a had to be SEPARATE, that meant ACRE must be the answer, Dacre Balsdon came to mind, so then demeaned myself by googling to check.

  22. Started off thinking this was going to be hard and confirmed that very quickly. Didn’t even think about a theme until we read the blog. Oddly enough, protest was last in. Thanks everyone.

  23. I had no idea there was a theme to look for – so of course I didn’t see it! Well done Qaos for achieving this so neatly – and invisibly.

    Most of the clues were well-crafted and fun to solve, although I found the wordplay in 5 of the clues a bit clumsy or iffy (17a, 21a, 23a, 24a, 25a). As noted by Shirl @2, 2d PEEK could equally well have been KEEP – and the word crossing it at 10a (MARK) was the sort of double definition that I never relish, where both definition words can point to too many other words. On this occasion I got MARK quickly enough and confirmed PEEK.

    (Btw, loonapick, the Enigma machines did the encoding, not the decoding – the clue to 25a is sound in that sense.)

    Many thanks to Qaos and loonapick.

  24. Thanks[and commiserations]loonapick.

    Busy day, so late to the party but I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this, especially DISMAYED, DOCTORATES and the well-hidden OMELETTE.

    I had no time to look for a theme before going out to a meeting this morning, so thanks for the gentle nudge from crypticsue.

    And huge thanks to Qaos, as ever, for the fun.

  25. Thanks Qaos and loonapick

    I very much enjoyedn this.

    Alan @ 23: Enigma machines did both encoding and decoding: having the same rotor settings at each end of the communication chainmeant that when the coded letter clusters were entered by the recipient the original message emeregd en clair.

  27. (Alan Browne @23 – I believe that, as far as the Germans were concerned, they used Enigma machines both for the coding and decoding of messages. Sorry to be pedantic!)

  29. Simon S @25 and Shirl @27

    Thank you so much for your (identical) corrections. I forgot that the Enigma machines worked both ways (as of course they had to).

    In 25a Qaos was referring to the encoding function of Enigma – which is the one I remembered.

  30. PHRASE? How long has a single word been a phrase? It must be an awfully long time because definitions of CATCHWORD all say word or phrase. So yeah, when did this happen please?

  31. Thanks Qaos and loonapick

    I started this without computer aid and soon built up a list of 5 or 6 where I was fairly sure I had the answer, but didn’t understand the parsing, so needed to “Check”. I completed the grid entry when I went online again, but I have a list (which I won’t bore you all with) of 13 clues that I either didn’t like or didn’t understand (one being the ape/monkey non-equivalence you mention, loonapick – apes are no closer to monkeys than humans are).

    I did like DISMAYED and PROTEST.

  32. I struggled with this, especially the SW corner which contained the best clues of the day in DOCTORATES and IRONED. My failure to parse the latter resulted in a sharp intake of breath! I had to look up SIMARUBA of which I’ve never heard. Oh, and I missed the theme. Liked JUNKET.
    In the end, rather a good puzzle!
    Thanks Qaos.

  33. Again, I did this long before the blog appeared & have been busy since, but, for what it’s worth, I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Qaos.

    My last ones in, and subsequent favourites, were “ironed” and “doctorates” – two brilliant clues. I thought the latter was one of Qaos’ usual mathematical ones, but, fortunately for me, it wasn’t!

    As usual, didn’t see the theme. Many thanks to those who pointed it out & to loonapick for finally managing to complete the blog.

  34. Derek @30

    An interesting point. I think the answer is that word never means phrase and phrase never means word. (So a single word has never been a phrase, in answer to your direct question.)

    With catchword and catchphrase it’s evidently not as clearcut as this, as I have just verified for myself. All sources seem to say that catchword, with its most familiar meaning, can be a word or a phrase. (QED: the clue is fair.)

  35. ACRE (the port) was new to me but got from wordplay. The tree at 1d not so successful.

    Agree that “eights” is different from “ates” but entirely forgiveable in such a nice clue. Great surface for 24d too.

    Thanks both for puzzle and blog.

  40. Can anybody expand the parsing of 13d for me?

    Can = Tin + I all reversed is fine, but where do you get ration from?

  42. Really nice crossword, indeed – for which thanks to Qaos.
    While I share some of Alan Browne’s reservations about a handful of clues, this was a good mixture of the easy (like 22d) and more complicated stuff.
    The couple at 21d/23ac was very inventive and took a while to spot.
    That said, ‘feed’ for ‘ironed’ was a bit naughty of our beloved setter as iron is Fe and not fe.

    As others have said, 2d (PEEK) works either way.
    We thought ‘keep’ would have suited the clue even better as it reads better to have ‘castle’ as the definition.
    But we were saved by 10ac, even if we entered the wrong word there, coincidentally also ending in a K.
    Hence, 1d was ungettable as we thought it might be MI (a reversal of I’m (= Author’s)) + ?I?U? (‘hitch’?) + A.
    I think such a Pasquale word should have been clued a bit easier.
    Nevertheless, it was our mistake at 10ac, not Qaos’s.

    Although we confidently entered DECODE at 25ac, I am still not really taken by DE = Germany.
    Of course, .de is the internet code for Germany.
    But in the days of the Enigma there was no internet, so a link between the Enigma machine and ‘.de code’ (if that is what it is) seems a bit of a stretch.

    We missed the ghost theme completely.
    However, there had to be one.
    It wouldn’t have helped us to get 1d/10ac right anyway.

    Many thanks to loonapick for your multiple efforts.
    And once again to Qaos for the fun.

  43. Thanks both.

    I’m still struggling with the parsing of 4 d. Is this a reversal of IP = intellectual property in STUDS?

  45. Not on Qaos’s wavelength today – too much pattern matching and missed the Biblical Mark.
    STUD as a headless double-ended bolt is a nice find. (PI is a pious or ‘upright’ person, Tyngewick).
    Thanks both.

  48. 17 of Qaos’s clues have the most basic kinds of error. These result from his trying to justify the surface of the clue at the expense of preserving simple English grammar. This is the fault The Guardian generally has. Very poor indeed. I am here all week.

  49. This was a difficult puzzle for me. I failed to solve 24a and 24d – never heard of Paul Dacre!

    I could not parse 14a, 23a, 21d – and still do not understand why Pluto = DIS

    New words for me were Mourinho (in clues) and SIMARUBA

    My favourite was PROTEST

    Thanks setter and blogger – I was waiting for the blog for a long time – I should have guessed something had gone wrong!

  51. Sil @ 42 (if you’re still here)

    DE is the international two-letter country code for Germany, akin to GB, FR (France), PL (Poland), CH (Switzerland), NL (Holland/Netherlands) etc.

    It combines with a third code to give the country’s currency: GBP, and in days gone by DEM, FRF, PLZ then PLN, CHF etc.

  52. Simon S @51: that’s fair enough then.
    Meanwhile, I read somewhere that the two-letter ISO code, for example, is used to define the internet domains (for countries).
    And then we’re back at .de which is OK but doesn’t make my heart beat faster.
    Some of the commenters above found DECODE one of the best of the set.
    To each his own, I would say.

  53. Sil and Gonzo @44 and 45. Thanks for the elucidation. If that’s it, I’m disappointed as ‘pi’ is not very close to ‘upright’. OED gives ‘pious, devout; sanctimonious’ for ‘pi’ and marks it as somewhat archaic. It’s always used negatively and IME, being pi and being upright are, if anything, negatively correlated. My old boss used to say, ‘Never trust a man with a fish on the back of his car; he will always betray you’, but that is perhaps too contraversial and off topic for this forum. I only mention it to mark up the disjunction between the two words. My parsing of IP (a right) reversed seems to work just as well if not better in this case.

  54. @41 thanks Eileen. Obviously a bizarre connection for me.

    Growing up my Mother always offered me a second helping at dinner. If she had been offering second rations I might have ended up a bit slimmer!

  55. @48 Welcome back, Paul! Guess it didn’t work out with Amanda Lynne then. How’s the ashram going? Met any hedgehogs there?

  56. Thanks loonapick and Qaos.

    Some fiendish constructions here – particularly liked DOCTORATES and APRICOT.

    Liked the “new” way to clue IRONED.

    The NW was last to fall. I needed to do some research to find SIMARUBA and I couldn’t write in PEEK/KEEP at 2dn till I got MARK which was my last solve.

    Is 2dn unfair? Not sure.

  57. Thanks Puck and loonapick

    Interesting puzzle which I was able to solve most of in a coffee shop with only the SW corner to be finished when I got home. Was able to get DOCTORATES, MINISTER and IRONED in a reasonable time but it took nearly as long as the rest of the puzzle to crack the code of the Enigma at 25a – knew it must have been DECODE but for the life of me I could not see the ‘Enigma output’ for ages and even then missed the DE for Germany bit.

    Also missed the theme after being whipped by 25 for so long.

    Have always liked this fellow’s crossword from the time that he started at the Guardian and this was no exception.

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