Guardian Cryptic 27,072 by Chifonie

by

Fairly gentle with a lot of nice clues – favourites were 22ac, 2dn and 24dn. Thanks to Chifonie

Across
1 DETERGENT Stop man getting cleaner (9)
  DETER=”Stop”, plus GENT=”man”
6 MOCHA Doctor has tea or coffee (5)
  M[edical] O[fficer]=”Doctor”, plus CHA=”tea”
9 ASPIC Like film of jelly (5)
  AS=”like”, plus [motion] PIC[ture]=”film”
10 TANGERINE Can earl consume passion fruit? (9)
  TIN=”Can”, plus E[arl]; both around ANGER=”passion”
11 OVERCHARGE Rook ended attack (10)
  =to fleece, or OVERCHARGE someone. OVER=”ended” plus CHARGE=”attack”
12 LADY Poem about dead woman (4)
  LAY=”Poem” around D[ead]
14 PURSUIT Search for clean-cut set of clothes (7)
  PUR[e]=”clean” with its end “cut” off; plus SUIT=”set of clothes”
15 TREADLE Engineer altered power transmitter (7)
  =a foot-operated lever or pedal. (altered)*
17 ATTESTS Gives evidence at trials (7)
  AT, plus TESTS=”trials”
19 SUPPOSE Assume son finished model (7)
  S[on]; plus UP=”finished” as in ‘your time is up’; plus POSE=”model”
20 TASK Time to question assignment (4)
  T[ime] plus ASK=”question”
22 CALAMITOUS Devastating change to a musical (10)
  (to a musical)*
25 REARRANGE Move the bottom line (9)
  REAR=”bottom” plus RANGE=”line”
26 KHAKI Material used in making sheikh a kilt (5)
  hidden in [shei]KH A KI[lt]
27 DREAD Many look at quail (5)
  D=500 in Roman numerals=”Many”; plus READ=”look at”
28 HEPATITIS Man has stroke? That’s an illness (9)
  HE=”man”, plus PAT=”stroke”, plus IT IS=”That’s”
Down
1 DRACO Greek lawmaker is to do without car club (5)
  =the Athenian legislator [wiki]. DO around RAC=Royal Automobile Club=”car club”
2 TOP SECRET Sensitive tot creeps about (3,6)
  (tot creeps)*
3 RACECOURSE Track blood flow (10)
  RACE=”blood” as in a person’s descent; plus COURSE=”flow”
4 EXTRACT Passage from old pamphlet (7)
  EX=”old” plus TRACT=”pamphlet”
5 TONIGHT Almost getting a drink out this evening (7)
  NIGH=”Almost”, with a TOT=”drink” outside it
6 MEET Suitable match (4)
  double definition: =fitting or “Suitable”; and =to “match” or oppose adequately
7 CHINA Feature American tableware (5)
  CHIN=”Feature”, plus A[merican]
8 ACETYLENE Eyelet can deploy dangerous gas (9)
  =an unstable gas used as fuel. (Eyelet can)*
13 KEEP WICKET Field in direct line of castle gate (4,6)
  =to be the fielder directly behind the batsman in cricket. KEEP=”castle” plus WICKET=”gate”
14 PLASTERED Penny continued holding soldier tight (9)
  =drunk. P[enny], plus LASTED=”continued” around R[oyal] E[ngineer]=”soldier”
16 DEODORANT Nothing girl put in hollow hides smell (9)
  O=zero=”Nothing”, plus DORA=”girl”; both inside DENT=”hollow”
18 STAUNCH Stop being faithful (7)
  double definition: =”Stop” the flow of blood; and =”faithful” as in a ‘staunch ally’
19 SHAKE-UP Fish in drink causes upset (5-2)
  HAKE=”Fish” in SUP=”drink”
21 STATE Set down a condition (5)
  double definition: =to state the details of something=”Set down”; and =a state of being=”condition”
23 SNIPS Metalworker’s tool turns up (5)
  =hand-shears for sheet metal. SPINS=”turns”, reversed or “up”
24 GRID You put lights somewhere in here (4)
  a GRID can be a framework or network for lights; and “here” also refers to the crossword GRID, which contains “lights” or lights squares and dark squares

35 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,072 by Chifonie”

  1. I managed this fairly quickly apart from SW corner … I’m afraid I was having a few ‘senior moments’ as those few were really no harder than all the rest! Thanks to Chifonie for an enjoyable puzzle and to Manehi.

  2. Thanks for the blog, manehi. I found most of this quite breezy but failed on GRID. I’d seen references to ‘lights’ here at 225 previously but it just didn’t spring to mind today. I had just one quibble, though – does ‘it is’ mean the same thing as ‘that is’ in HEPATITIS? Close enough, I suppose.

  3. I noticed that some people at the Guardian site were having trouble with 23d snips. Not sure why. It was one of the first tools my partner, a retired fitter, thought of.

  4. I didn’t know the tool at 23d, but apart from that I found this fairly easy too. Indeed, I had a sense of “déjà vu” in that many of the clues seemed very familiar – I began to wonder if an earlier puzzle had been reprinted in error! That said, it was typical of Chifonie’s high standard of impeccable clueing with plenty of variety and a really useful teaching tool when introducing beginners to the art of the cryptic crossword.

    I saw no problem with 28ac, matrixmania @2; they’re interchangeable, to me at least. [Your comment reminded me of the puzzled amusement I used to feel when I first visited Norfolk where they often say “that” instead of “it”, as in “that’s a lovely day isn’t that?”!]

    Thank you Chifonie & manehi.

  5. Re 14d: RE is the abbreviation for a regiment not an individual soldier. Perhaps the clue should have had ‘soldiers’ instead.

  6. 24 – doesn’t it just mean the [crossword] grid where one puts the lights [i.e. solutions]?

    Thanks to Chifonie and manehi.

  7. All very straightforward apart from the tool, which was unfamiliar and last in – I have just checked and it is a first appearance too. Apart from that the only problems were a few looseish synonyms

    Thanks to Chifonie and manehi

  8. Epeolater@5 I too thought that Royal Engineer(singular) didnt quite sound right. How many of them would she have to hold to qualify for RE. Debbie does RE?

  9. Thanks Chifonie and manehi

    I got off to a slow start by trying to find a parsing for SOLON for 1d – I couldn’t of course. I too finished in the SW. I didn’t parse TONIGHT as I took “tight” to be “getting a drink” – not quite accurate enough, though. Favourites werre CALAMITOUS and STAUNCH.

    SNIPS puzzled me too, as I thought “turns up” was the instruction – I decided that “snips” for metalworker was like “chips” for a carpenter, but I then couldn’t see why SPINS was the tool.

    I agree with matrixmania – “that is” isn’t equivalent to “it is” for me. DREAD isn’t the same as QUAIL either, though you might quail (an action) at something you dread (a thought).

  11. I enjoyed this and completed without electronic assistance, other than doublechecking DRACO (and discounting all the Harry Potter references!). Not particularly difficult but some very smooth clueing throughout. Even some of the easier clues like TASK, KHAKI and MEET.

    I particularly liked RACECOURSE – once I’d moved on from brainstorming alternatives to capillaries, KEEP WICKET and SNIPS – which, at first, I’d thought to be ‘smith’ but couldn’t get the wordplay to support it.

    I do agree with some of the reservations above – neither DREAD nor HEPATITIS were up to the standard of the others. I’m happy to let RE stand for soldier – it makes for such a nice surface.

    Thanks to Chifonie and to manehi also

  12. The discussion about RE (or, more frequently, RA, I think) in the singular has come up several times before. I don’t think that it’s correct, but it’s so useful to compilers that I expect that they will keep on using it.

  13. Re RE: I agREe with muffin et al. I’ve always assumed it could be singular or moRE.

    Mark re yesterday: yes I’m quite sure lol.

  14. Thanks manehi.

    All a bit faded for my taste, I’m sorry to say.

    Nothing really to complain about (except that I don’t think quail and dread are synonymous) but I found most of it a bit drear.

    GRID and KEPT WICKET were brief breaks in the cloud.

    Thank you, Chifonie.

    Nice week, all.

  15. I didn’t get grid either. I always thought tight meant drunk in south Wales but nowhere else. Time to get plastered. Cheers Chifonie

  16. Same here, didn’t get grid or snips. I have a quibble with 1d. The ‘to’ is de trop. Could easily have read Greek lawmaker makes do without car club.

  17. Unlike William @14 I quite enjoyed this puzzle – nothing too challenging but at this time of year time is too short to spend more than an hour on a crossword! As with some other commentators I found the SW corner to be the most troublesome and I guessed GRID rather than parsed it. Similarly I had never come across MEET as an adjective but the solution was obvious from the cross letters.

    Thanks to Chifonie and Manehi

  18. Thank you Chifonie and manehi.

    I was another who did not get GRID or SNIPS, but I enjoyed the puzzle. I went into the RE question before, and after a long search came up with an official army obituary which referred to the defunct as an RE, I cannot be bothered to dig it out again…

  19. My favourites were LADY and MEET which were both beautifully simple. (I don’t mean easy, but simple in their construction.) Although MEET in the sense of “fitting” is surely archaic – I don’t think anyone would use it in that sense now. To me it brought to mind Hamlet saying:

    “Meet it is I set it down
    That one may smile and smile and be a villain.”

    Like some others I had problems in the SW corner. I agree that DREAD does not quite = “quail” as one is transitive and the other intransitive. And I must admit I entered SHAPE for 21d – it still seems to me that it just about works!

  20. Thanks Chifonie and manehi.

    I also got a bit stuck in the SW corner but got GRID as my LOI, nice!

    Both Chambers and Oxford Thesauruses do not have quail=DREAD, but both have DREAD=quail! (or quail from in the case of Oxford.)

    I managed to drag DRACO from my memory bank somehow; must have been from a previous puzzle.

    I liked RACECOURSE and KEEP WICKET.

  21. Not too hard after the mauling I got from Paul at the weekend (completed but uphill!)
    DRACO was familiar from “draconian”. I’ve been using SNIPS (short for tin-snips) since childhood; electricians also refer to wire-cutters as “snips”. LOI was GRID – a bit self-referent!

    I have no quibble with RE; my father was one.

    Thanks manehi and Chifonie, both.

  22. Thanks to Chifonie and manehi. I look forward to puzzles from this setter, and this one was no exception. I had no trouble with MEET or GRID but did not know SNIPS (my LOI) and had to look up KEEP WICKET (I saw the two parts but did not know the term – as usual my knowledge about cricket is very thin). Lots of fun.

  23. I can’t say I got SPINS;I thought I’d completed the puzzle and only
    realised I hadn’t when I came here. Not sure I would have got it either.
    GRID was a guess based on the crossword grid. Can’t see how it relates
    to the answer – unless it’s the National Grid? Don’t see it though.
    I thought the rest of the puzzle was Ok.
    Thanks Chifonie

  24. Peter @23
    It’s referring to entering clues in the grid. I don’t think it quite works though, as the “lights” are the spaces where you write the answers, not the answers themselves (though there are differences of opinion on this!)

  25. muffin @24: I took the grid to be the, initially empty 15×15 box into which lights are entered, separated by dark spaces. That works for me, and does away with your – correct – distinction between lights and answers. It doesn’t work if you define grid as the the puzzle that we solvers see, prior to the entry of answers. Still not the smoothest of clues, though.

  26. Mark @25
    Well explained, but I think that would work better as I put lights somewhere in here – it’s the compiler who decides which are the light and dark squares.

  28. Yes 24d GRID took me ages to see as well. And it really was a guess. I also hesitated over 27a DREAD – as others have remarked, to quail would be more like a symptom than a synonym of a feeling of DREAD. So nothing new to say as this was otherwise a fairly straightforward solve. Wondering if we are up for some more challenging ones to usher in Christmas.

    Thanks to Chifonie and manehi.

  29. Just back to GRID for a moment; I thought it referred to the electricity grid as well as the crossword layout. We feed excess power generated by our solar panels back into the grid, and the grid powers lights (as well as, of course, feeding all the other uses for electricity) – I guess that is what you meant in your reference to the National Grid, Peter Aspinwall@23.

  30. I had never seen meet as an adjective either, but I got this thinking of “meet” as in a sporting contest (e.g. swim meet), or “match.”

  31. Zygonix @ 30 – I remember meet as an adjective from the Prayer Book (I think): “Lift up your hearts . . . It is meet and right so to do.”

  32. On 24d I am as usual at one with Muffin. I’ve always thought that lights were the empty squares that the setter challenged me to fill. If so then it should be “I” not “you” in the clue – but I’m no authority on crossword terms. I don’t think that there is any need to consider the National Grid or theatrical lighting though Chifonie may have meant to misdirect us this way. I didn’t get SNIPS. Not remembering the word until coming here I started my search for an S_I_S word with SAILS but got bored before I reached SN…
    Thanks to Chifonie and Manehi.

  33. Pino @32
    Concerning SNIPS: I went through the same process of elimination to find the answer – I often do with this type of clue, intuition being the only other way to get it. I too would have stopped if I had got bored, but, guessing it was a reversal (it might not have been, and one has to allow for that), I went through S–I–S alphabetically in my mind and happened to find SNIPS very quickly.
    I remember commenting before that with ‘simple’ types of clue like this it gives me no joy to slog through myriad possibilities (e.g. where there are fewer crossers than in this example) just to find an unrewarding answer, and I’m always happy to give up – I can come here to see if the setter had done something clever that I missed.

  34. Alan B @33.
    Thank you for that. I rarely start the puzzle before 9.30 pm and occasionally wonder if anyone sees what I write here.

  35. Pino
    I often go back to recent blogs to see what has been added – I enjoy reading the comments on this forum as well as doing the puzzles. More often than not I start a puzzle relatively late too, although not usually that late.

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