Guardian 27,163 / Pasquale

45 comments on “Guardian 27,163 / Pasquale”

1. Last one in was little 20 Down, very nice. But come on you Gunners, show them how to play tonight…

2. CURASSOW was new to me but clear from the clue. WHAM and MODIFIER were my LTI. I suspect I won’t be alone in this.

   Thanks, Pasquale and Eileen.

3. Finished this in record time for a Pasquale but failed to parse 24a, so thanks for the explanation Eileen. I guessed it must be that which led to getting wham, a great clue as you say. I didn’t know 13d or 25a, but the clues made them straightforward. The meaning of ‘dish’ in 8d is also unusual so I learnt something there as well.

4. Why is trad music in 21d? Trad is an adjective as in trad jazz. Apart from that, and a raised eyebrow at shoehorn defined as curved instrument, this was fun. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen.

5. Thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

   Tricky in parts, but fun. After going through the church reformers, like Eileen, ‘adjective’ came to my mind, then MODIFIER. This led to HAMs at 20d, ‘players briefly’, and the only word I could think of was WHAM, then footy came to mind, grrr, and the penny dropped – have never heard of the group.

6. PS, just realised SHAM would have ‘fitted’ at 20d, very appropriate for the whingeing football players.

7. A bit easier than I generally find Pasquale, but I got stuck in the SW corner as I couldn’t parse MODIFIER and missed WHAM (lack of footie knowledge). Liked BUSINESS, SEQUESTRATE, SHOEHORN and ACCUSATIVE. Thanks to P & E.

8. Somewhat annoyingly I entered GRID instead of TRAD for 21D. My reasoning was that GRID were/are a band and GRID could be seen as endless GRIDLOCK. Silly me….. I liked WHAM and TRESCO, though in relation to the latter of these I take Eileen’s niggle regarding non-UK solvers. Having said that Tesco do trade in a number of countries outside the UK. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen.

9. WHAM was easy for me as a West Ham season ticket holder (so it made a better surface than perhaps the Don realised!), though strictly speaking the stadium is now the London Stadium. None of that was any help with MODIFIER, the explanation for which is well over my head. The puzzle as a whole started with a rush until grinding to a halt both with TRAD / MODIFIER and BUSINESS / LINIMENT – the latter until I realised I have been misspelling it as linament for many, many years.

   Liked the misdirection in ACCUSATIVE – anyone else try to anagramatise ‘case’?

10. I think the combination of WHAM and MODIFIER was a but naff. OK, obviously W(est) HAM makes WHAM-who were they? George Michael and some other dude-not exactly my impression of a group of players.
    And I only put MODIFIER in because it was the only thing that fit with the crossers and vaguely conformed to some sort of definition.

    As for the grid, it would have been nice to continue D A L in the top with L A S in the bottom with some thematic clues.

    I’ve had better from the Don. thanks for the blog however-and noticing the typo or lack of editing!

11. As a non-UK solver I accept the cross I have chosen to bear in doing the Guardian crosswords. So no niggles from me on 23a.
    I could not parse 10a and 3d but the make sense now (thanks Eileen). did anyone else think of linen for 3d

    I’m with Trailman @9, I still can’t parse 24. Can anyone help?

12. Being ancient, I had an unparsed THEM for 20 down. And being a foreigner who doesn’t follow the Premier League, I never did get WHAM. (I know Tesco and worked out, and checked, TRESCO from that though. Tresco was indeed new to me.)

13. Hi Trailman @9 and Kevin @11

    I’m sorry if the link I gave didn’t help – I thought Collins might explain it better than I could! Here goes: a modifier is a word or phrase that modifies [or, in this case, describes] another word or phrase – very often an adjective or adverb. In the clue, ‘church’ is a noun used as an adjective to specify what kind of history.
    [I seem to have more or less repeated what Collins says! – can anyone else make it any clearer?]

14. PS: I’m wondering now if I’m misunderstanding your misunderstanding: the definition is simply ‘reformer’, a person who reforms, who could also be called a modifier.

15. Not a fan if this one, though finished. 9 is clumsy, line in 10 ridiculous, 24 completely beyond me even after it’s been explained, and didn’t like ‘that’s hot’ for adding an ‘h’

16. I also (still) do not understand 24a 🙁

    New words for me were DARWEN, CURASSOW, TRESCO.

    I failed to solve 20d – never heard of West Ham.

    I could not parse 9a, 24a of the I in 10a

    Thanks blogger and setter

17. Thanks Eileen

    I’m sure I would have understood if I had got round to following your link! I did get reformer = modifier, after the event; and I suppose, if pushed, I could have dragged up ‘modifier’ as a grammatical term. But the clue overall did seem a bit abstruse.

18. Re eileen @13

    Does this help?

    “say” means “church” is an example of a modifier in the phrase “church history”

19. 13dn Curassow – yes, but not until I had looked for Pugassow in Chambers!

20. Michelle @16, we’re a mid-table Premiership club from east London with a long and illustrious history. This year, moving to the London (Olympic) Stadium, has been a bit of a struggle. Find out more here!

21. Whoops!

    Sorry Eileen didn’t go back to check your blog

22. Xjpotter @4 “Trad” is (was) frequently used without the word jazz, and hence was a noun meaning a type of music. “It’s trad, Dad” was the title of both an album https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en-US&source=hp&btnG=Google+Search&oq=&aq=&aqi=&gs_l=&gws_rd=ssl#channel=s&hl=en-US&q=various+artists+it%27s+trad,+dad!+songs&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLVT9c3NEwqiTepLKksUkLlaolmJ1vp55YWZybrJ-YkleZaFefnpRcDAMS43gs3AAAA&* and a movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOAzJVf_DWc

23. Sorry. I still don’t get 8D.
    Don’t see how DISH is ruin nor how DIS is world below. Can someone explain. Thanks

24. Eric @23

    DIS is an alternative name for Pluto, Roman god of the Underworld, or the Underworld itself. It crops up quite often in crosswords, so it’s worth filing away. [It’s in both Collins and Chambers.] And both Collins and Chambers give DISH as ‘[informally] to ruin’.
    [I’m going out for the afternoon now.]

25. Eric@23
    Dis (Divine Comedy), the fictional city in The Divine Comedy that contains the lower circles of hell and alternate name for Lucifer

    Medici@18 – thank you – I think I can understand 24a now – phew, that was hard!

    Trailman@20 – thanks – I know nothing about soccer/football – as I am sure you can tell!

26. Correction . I didn’t get it all right. I had Dash for Dish. Maybe that’s the answer! D for world ‘below’ , ‘as h’ for that’s hot.
    ?

27. Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen. As a non-UK solver I did know Tesco and correctly guessed TRESCO but did not know DARWEN (or CURASSOW). I did eventually spot MODIFIER in the grammatical sense and WHAM as West Ham. My LOI was TEEM. For me a challenge but enjoyable.

28. Xjpotter@4 ‘Why is trad music in 21d?’

    Don’t get me started. You wouldn’t like me if I got started. 🙂

29. Thanks to Pasquale for an enjoyable, and relatively gentle, solve. And thans to Eileen, as ever, for the blog. I have now finally got the parsing of 24ac.

    Trailman @20 – it is a useful rule that when a 10ac moves into a glitzy new HQ it is time to sell the shares. We Gooners know that a version of the same rule applies with a new stadium, as you have found out too.

30. As always from Pasquale, an interesting mixture of some very good clues and a few rather obscure/educational ones. Thanks for explaining MODIFIER. CURASSOW was new to me but was easy enough to guess from the simple wordplay.

    Thanks to Pasquale and Eileen

31. Thanks Eileen @13, and acknowledging Trailman @17 and Michelle @16, (call me dumb) but I still do not understand the parsing of 24a (I get the definition but not the parsing.)

32. Thanks Pasquale and Eileen

    After a rapid start I had a slow finish – embarrassing, as I’ve seen CURASSOWS (in Costa Rica) and been to TRESCO (I saw how this was intended to work straight away, but for some reason it took me ages to think of Tesco as the supermarket!). I’ve also been to DARWEN.

    It took your second go to explain MODIFIER to me, Eileen, but thanks for the extra effort.

    UNREQUITED was my favourite.

33. Kevin @31
    “Church” in “church history” is acting as a modifier.

34. Grim and Dim @22
    Have a play with the [a href=”URL“]text[/a] HTML to put in long links more neatly.

    Remember to preview to see if it has worked!

    (My square brackets should be left and right arrows, but if I had used them, the HTML would have operated rather than demonstrated.)

35. Many thanks to Pasquale for another first-class puzzle: it’s always a pleasure to read such accurate and elegantly constructed clues.

    I actually got CURASSOW on the first read through, despite never having heard of this creature before: “dog” almost always equals “cur” in crossword parlance and, after that, the remainder of the clue was effectively leading the solver by the hand.

    Hard to pick particular favourites from such an excellent bunch but I did enjoy the imagery in PATIENTS and SERAPHIC, as well as the innovative way of indicating the letter “I” in BUSINESS.

36. Thanks Eileen and Pasquale
    Curassow appears to be an anglicisation of the island name Curaçao.

37. Thanks Grim and Dim. My dictionary gives trad as an adjective only but I’m happy to accept it has since then become a noun too. Still don’t think it’s a great clue. Small niggles though. Overall I enjoyed this puzzle a lot.

38. Couldn’t get to this until late but I can’t resist coming here – even after everyone else has gone! Quite a nice puzzle but I’m rather annoyed to have put TARMAC for 19dn. Got the rest with WHAM and TRAD being the last ones in. I got MODIFIER as Reformer and didn’t even think of the grammatical meaning. I had to look up CURASSOW but I have to admit it was well clued. Liked SEQUESTRATE and TRESCO.
    By the time Traditional Jazz had become TRAD, it had ceased to be jazz at all, and culminated in ‘Stranger on the Shore’ Nuff said!
    Thanks Pasquale

39. I’m usually after everyone else Peter A – but at least I’m before midnight tonight. I found this an unusually steady solve for a Pasquale – the solutions had to be teased out but kept coming. Like most, apart from the inimical Eileen, I couldn’t parse 24a and was confused by 8d as I thought hot was doing double duty as h and the definition- but then where did ruin come in? Dish as a synonym(?) for ruin is completely new to me – and I think I’m pretty good at informal usage! Does it come via “dish the dirt”?
    I was working on linen before coming here and didn’t have any stand out clues but they were mainly satisfying solves – thank you Pasquale and Eileen.

40. Peter Aspinwall@38
    I remember the phrase “not bad for trad” from the late fifties, a time of Barber, Colyer, Lyttleton et al. who all played jazz I thought, though being a purist I drew the line at Bruce Turner’s alto. (But somehow Bechet’s soprano was acceptable)
    Rather like “good enough for government work” it signified something that was passable given the low expectations from the genre.

41. A genuine oversight – I meant to say how much I enjoyed the puzzle and the blog. CURASSOW I thought was fair. I commented a few weeks back that Pasquale and others shouldn’t be allowed near the National History Museum at Tring which is full of such curiosities but my comment appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Having solved MODIFIER as a grammatical term I didn’t stop to work out what was modifying what so thanks to Eileen.

42. thanks Eileen and Muffin
    It all makes sense now

43. Bit of a stretch to use artist for Emin?

44. I am a West ham season ticket holder. I was doing the crossword in the away end at the Arsenal last night. I STILL didn’t get 20d. Maybe I should retire.

45. Commiserations on both counts!

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