Guardian 27,055 – Paul

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The brilliantly appropriate 1d is a stand-out here, but there’s lots of other good stuff too. 27a to Paul.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. MONKEY BUSINESS Hanky-panky king breaking bank, say? (6,8)
K in MONEY BUSINESS
8. LASSO Might one secure horse, or look to inhale dope? (5)
ASS (idiot, dope) in LO
9. GRACIOUS Good Lord is merciful (8)
Double definition
11. NAIROBI City where bird’s docked after brief tack (7)
NAI[L] + ROBI[N]
12. KLEENEX Cleaner artist succeeding, having wiped rear (7)
[Paul] KLEE + NEX[T]
13. AIOLI Dressing I love, head in lint, best bandages (5)
I O + L[int] in A1 (best)
15. SPRINGIER More likely to bounce back, more like May might you say? (9)
Double definition
17. RIFLE SHOT Starter despatched, desserts fresh out of the oven in range of slugs (5,4)
[T]RIFLES + HOT
20. MAGIC Marvellous computer screens generating interest, initially (5)
G[aining] I[nterest] in MAC (computer)
21. MONSTER Tremendous battle, lost cause, never ends (7)
MONS (WW1 battle) + last letters of losT causE neveR
23. PORTICO Architectural feature I see in European city (7)
I C in PORTO (local name for what we call Oporto)
25. NATATION Swimming in state, contents of bath swallowed (8)
[b]AT[h] in NATION
26. CHAFF Refuse drink, very strong (5)
CHA (tea, drink) + FF (fortissimo, literally “very strong”)
27. THANKS A MILLION Capital turned over by Hollywood actor, hero getting cheers (6,1,7)
T[om] HANKS + reverse of LIMA + LION (hero)
Down
1. MELANIA TRUMP Other half of worryingly immature plan? (7,5)
(IMMATURE PLAN)* and an all-too-appropriate surface reading
2. NISEI Welcomed back by enemies, industrious Japanese American (5)
Hidden in reverse of enemIES INdustrious – “an American or Canadian whose parents were immigrants from Japan”
3. ECONOMISE Save someone nice, shelled in error (9)
Anagram os SOMEONE [n]IC[e]
4. BIGWIGS Villain escaping justice punched by Women’s Institute, important people (7)
WI in [Ronnie] BIGGS
5. SMACKER Kiss money (7)
Double definition – slang word for a pound, I think more commonly used in the plural, as in “five smackers”, or “smackeroonies”
6. NAIVE Knowing little, one impressed by church body (5)
I in NAVE
7. SQUINTING Involved in fraud, one in five not looking straight? (9)
QUIN (one of five) in STING (a con, fraud)
10. EXTRACTOR FAN Sucker, one no longer in love with farm worker? (9,3)
EX TRACTOR FAN
14. OFFENBACH Romantic composer in many cases sounded ahead of baroque composer (9)
Homophone of “often” + BACH
16. NUMERICAL Digital manicure shaped tip of fingernail (9)
MANICURE* + [fingernai]L
18. HER NIBS Leading woman, Queen Sturgeon’s back in Scottish team (3,4)
ER + [sturgeo]N in HIBS (Hibernian, football team)
19. TOPONYM Name of a place where Cruise, say, is about £25 (7)
PONY (slang for £25) in TOM (Cruise, actor)
22. TWAIN Ultimate in American wit, a funny author (5)
Anagram of [america]N + WIT + A
24. IMARI Porcelain from Hiroshima, right? (5)
Hidden in hirosIMA RI, and an apt surface as Imari is a kind of Japanese pottery

33 comments on “Guardian 27,055 – Paul”

  1. Brilliantly clued as you’d expect from Paul-although 1d is going to win clue of the puzzle I must admit a liking for KLEENEX

  2. Thanks Paul and Andrew

    I was on Paul’s wavelength today, so a rapid finish. Lucky start with 1a and LASSO write-ins, enabling me to guess the lovely anagram at 1d. Other favourites were AIOLI, EXTRACTOR FAN and NUMERICAL. Bit surprised to see the trade name KLEENEX, and I probably wouldn’t use a Kleenex for cleaning anyway (despite its 1950s name!)

    Shouldn’t it be “familiar Scottish team” in 18d?

  3. Thoroughly enjoyable. However, and for the second time recently, fail to see how ‘see’ can become ‘C’ without a homophone indicator (23a). The letter is spelled cee, so is this just lazy clueing or some convention I’m unaware of?

    Agree that 1d was a top clue. 2d and 24d were new words here.

  4. Thanks both. Quite a quick solve for me (for a Paul puzzle) with the c=see in 23a the only quibble, as with Sheffieldsy@3

  5. No Sheffieldsy – you’re the lazy one. I know you’re only wtirring – but I’ll bite.

    Try checking in a dictionary (eg Collins online) first (under IC).

    Or eg Azed slip 2230 second place getter:

    See one finally departing face God at these, possibly (5,2,5)
    (anag. less c, e, & lit.)
    for GATES OF DEATH

    It’s been around for quite a while in quite a few setting approaches. Long before txmsgng.

    Excellent puzzle – nicely topical 1d without being OTT.

    Quite a slow burner for me.

    Of course 1d (my LOI) I was trying to think up some Latin with PRIMA as the second word.

    Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  7. Great puzzle as always from Paul – energy and wit in abundance. I agree with copmus@1 about KLEENEX; other favourites were BIGWIGS, RIFLE SHOT, and EXTRACTOR FAN. Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  9. The Trump related clue was a beauty and I’ll go for it as my COD, but there were others such as 10d and 12a which were almost as good. I vaguely remembered NISEI (from other cryptics) but IMARI was new to me too.

    The President-elect has been a real godsend to setters and there’ll presumably be more in the years to come. Looking on the bright side, one (? the only) positive thing about his win anyway.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew

  12. Excellent puzzle as usual from the reliable Paul.

    As was the case for Sheffieldsy, 2d and 24d were new to me which left me feeling a bit 6d…

    My personal favourites were EXTRACTOR FAN and NAIROBI.

  13. Thank you Paul and Andrew.

    MONKEY BUSINESS, so relevant, here is a quote by Mark Twain

    “I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey.”

  14. Others are obviously bowled over by 1d but I’m a bit puzzled. Is the definition just “other half”? If so it seems a bit vague. Or is the clue a “semi &lit”? (Thanks JollySwagman yesterday.) But Mrs Trump is not really the other half of a plan, is she? To my mind it was not nearly as good as Crucible’s TRUMPERY a couple of weeks ago.

    Otherwise a very enjoyable puzzle, and reasonably do-able for a Paul.

  15. After kicking myself for being too slow to get one of the long answers late yesterday, I came with a fresh mind to this and enjoyed it from beginning to end.

    I was lucky to get 1d MELANIA TRUMP so quickly – I tried MELANIE for no particular reason, spotting straight away that it needed 2 ‘E’s, and MELANIA TRUMP just fell out (as it were). A great clue, along with some others: 11a NAIROBI, 12a KLEENEX, 27a THANKS A MILLION, 10d EXTRACTOR FAN and 18d HER NIBS. Also a special mention from me for 14a OFFENBACH, having seen, just two weeks ago, a great performance of the Tales of Hoffmann broadcast live to local cinemas.

    I have seen the ‘see’ = ‘C’ device just once before, from memory, so I can expect to see it again. 13 AIOLI and 24d IMARI were new to me, but, as I always say, I don’t mind learning – the clues were fair.

    Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  16. Cookie @13

    You’re right – that’s a great quote, which I have just copied and pasted for my future use and enjoyment!

  17. [Brian-with-an-eye @10, Mark Twain was born on the first day that Halley’s Comet appeared in 1835. Then when he died in 1910, he did so on the first day of the comet’s appearance that year. Twain, in fact predicted that would happen. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it,” he said in 1909.]

  18. @JimS 14

    I’d like to express solidarity with you about 1d; although I suspect we might be in a minority.
    As I see it, the “definition” is “other half of”.
    The anagrind is “worryingly” which would raise eyebrows in a few places, and the fodder is “immature plan”.
    If one is bright enough (as I was not, despite having the crossers, and being fixated like Swaggie on the second word being PRIMA) to get Melania Trump from this fodder, then I would have thought that the grid entry should be DONALD TRUMP, since he is her other half.
    I think it’s great that clues arrive which don’t fit into any silo of well-known crossword norms, and this certainly doesn’t.
    Thanks to Paul and Andrew

  19. Lovely stuff. Many thanks to Paul & Andrew although this was one of the very rare occasions when no assistance was required. I’m still unclear about the parsing for 1d even though the anagram was easy enough. I’d be happy for the anagrind & fodder to be doing “double duty” as it were but I can’t spot the connection to the Donald

  20. Blank page and blank faces for 5 minutes then lasso went in and off we went,too. We always love Paul’s crossword and this one didn’t disappoint. Laughed out loud at 1 down. Great fun. Thanks to everyone.

  21. Thanks to Paul and Andrew. Great fun and, I agree, easier than usual for this setter. I got RIFLE SHOT without seeing (or c-ing?) (t)rifle and did dredge up Ronnie Biggs but needed Google to confirm IMARI.

  22. Thanks Andrew and Paul. I was surprised to see NISEI clued as Japanese American without a ? because the term is just ‘second generation’ in Japanese. I see that Andrew’s dictionary added Canadians but the term also applies to Japanese Brazilians etc. But apparently not used in the U.K.

  23. No complaints from me because this was vintage Paul. I was held up on 1dn owing to entering TRIPOlI
    for 11ac – can’t see why now. FOI was the brilliant KLEENEX with AIOLI being LOI. I liked PORTICO and didn’t see anything wrong with the cluing. Great stuff!
    Thanks Paul.

  24. I loved this–late to the party.

    While the MELANIA TRUMP clue is good, I also enjoyed RIFLE SHOT, OFFENBACH, and THANKS A MILLION, among many others.

    There’s this bar in Chicago (specifically, in Wrigleyville) called the Nisei Lounge; it was the gathering place for a small community of Japanese (and later Japanese-American) emigres after World War II, and the bar eventually changed its name in their honor. Their last Nisei regular died about six or seven years ago, which made the local news. (The neighborhood has changed three or four times since the bar was named–it’s now a haven for first-generation emigres from various Midwestern fraternity houses.)

  25. @JimS #14

    I think the way to look at 1d (if a technical audit is really necessary) is to treat it as an “extended definition” – ie “other half” (meaning wife) defines the answer, even if only very broadly – *extending* it by borrowing some of the next few words tightens the meaning.

    That’s not double duty because those words are not strictly needed to make a definition – it’s not strictly &lit either – but we’re obviously in neighbouring territory.

    That’ll get it past most people’s rule-books.

  26. Thanks JollySwagman, I do see what you mean. And it was quite clear from the clue what answer was intended. My views on what is a “sound” clue come largely from reading Don Manley’s Chambers Crossword Manual at a formative age, and I don’t think 1d would quite pass by those standards. But I know such things are conventions rather than enforceable rules!

  27. Thanks to Paul for a quirky puzzle (without recourse to underwear or initmate body parts!) and to Andrew for the blog.

    I finished it earlier in the day, but did not feel the need to comment – I was happy to share the delight of 1d with my “other half”, who is not in the least bit interested in crosswords.

    Suffice to say that I am with Jollly Swagman at @25 – I don’t really understand Baerchen’s “solidarity” with Jim S on this, despite producing a sufficient justification of the clue – I would add that although it is politically incorrect, “other half” is normally a reference to the female member of the couple.

    On a very minor point, I don’t know how many of our contributors are within the ambit of the BBC, but anyone who had not heard of IMARI must have avoided the almost wall-to-wall diet of Antiquest Road Show, Great Antique Hunt, Flog It, etc, etc.

  28. JimS @ 14 (and baerchen @18). I’m glad you’ve spoken out about this. It seems to me that admiration of the subject matter has clouded what seems to be an incomplete clue.

    Attempts to explain and justify it IMHO only serve to show how iffy it is.

    I’m a great fan of Paul so I suppose it niggles me more when a clue is not right (again IMHO)

    I’m surprised it hasn’t already been pointed out (esp by our historical expert) that 10d has been used before. I don’t mind though because I loved the clue last time and loved it this time.

  29. @JimS #26

    That’s a shame. Anyone who comes to the so-called Chambers “manual” after a lifetime of solving Guardian crosswords (especially those by the all-time greats Araucaria and Bunthorne) will immediately realise what mendacious nonsense it contains, since those setters (and their counterparts on the Telegraph – together the source of our tradition) are airbrushed out of existence and the myth is propagated that the ximenean heresy is actual the orthodoxy – when of course (at the time of the first edition) it was not; nor is it now.

    Of course it just pushes the same line as a prior effort by Guardian setter Custos. What motivated these people to deceive in this way is hard to fathom. The only motive I can guess at is that professional jealousy can be a very strong emotion.

    They have certainly fooled a lot of people since then because many beginners read their way in via this sort of material and, as beginners, they are not in a position to evaluate its veracity.

    There are other better books but sadly they have not sold so well nor been so readily available. Actually one by Tim Moorey actually indicates that solvers should be ready for “you” to be a proxy for U. Same sort of thing as the C/see issue which arose with this puzzle; this long before text messaging.

  30. Thanks pex @28. I too am a great admirer of Paul, but in the case of this particular clue, like you I just felt that it didn’t quite work.

    JollySwagman @29: you won’t be surprised that I don’t agree with your very strongly held views on Don Manley’s book. I won’t get into the question of whether it airbrushes other setters out of history because I think that’s a separate matter. But on the general principles of cryptic crosswords, main clue types and so on, I still think it’s an excellent starting point, and yes I have been solving Guardian crosswords, if not for a lifetime yet, for over 35 years.

  31. jolly@29 – Well said. As I firmly believe – and sometimes comment – without poetic licence, there would be less great poetry! Were all cryptics “Ximenean” I may have lost (some) interest years ago.
    As for this puzzle – spot on as ever. And I loved Mrs Trump (but please don’t tell her worse half!).
    Thanks to Andrew, and to Paul for the pleasure he invariably supplies.

  33. While 1D was easy to get, the fact is that the clue says to write in the other half of Melania Trump. No amount of arguing can counter that fact. The clue is cute, but incorrectly clued. There, I’ve said it, so it is true! I only get the crossword some 10 days after publication so I doubt anyone will read this anyway.

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