Guardian Cryptic 27,176 by Pan

42 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,176 by Pan”

1. Couldn’t get any of the first seven across clues on first reading, so I thought I was in for a tough time. But once HORS D’OEUVRES went in it all fell into place quite nicely.

   One point on the analysis: in HORS D’OEUVRES, the definition is just “starters” – “small” provides the second S.

   Thanks Pan and maneshi.

2. Oops! *manehi* 🙂

3. A fairly easy romp today. Favourites were CAPTIONS, COMFORTS and WHODUNIT. Hadn’t heard of ‘sherd’ but realised it must be an alternative spelling. Thanks to Pan and manehi.

4. Thanks Pan and manehi

   Lovely crossword – challenging but do-able. Lots of great clues, with standouts for me CAPTIONS, OKAPI, TREATY (drink supplier indeed!), COMFORTS for the misdirection of “contents”, REED ORGAN for the surface, and WHODUNIT.

   I didn’t see that “sweet” is “easy” in 13a, and “end of 26” is a bit clumsy for the Y in PACIFY.

5. My favourites were SWINEHERD & TREATY.

   I solved but could not parse 10a.

   Thanks manehi and Pan.

6. Thanks, manehi.

   A fun puzzle with lots of wit.

   I laughed to see the old favourites IMPALA and OKAPI in the same puzzle! Favourites were REED ORGAN, WHODUNIT and the delightful PRESERVE.

   Many thanks to Pan – most enjoyable.

7. 10 ac CALMER. May I be the first (and I bet – not the last) to point out that CALMER does not sound the same as KARMA – at least not in rhotic and/or lambdal (is there such a word) accents.

   Thanks manehi and Pan

8. cholecyst @7 Hm…. wondering where you hail from if you have a problem with CALMER/KAMA- Me, I’m just an Essex lad so wot would I know.

9. Thank you Pan and manehi.

   I took a while to get started, but after getting ROAST and PLIMSOLL everything else followed, it was very enjoyable. PRESERVE was lovely and so were the clues for CAPTIONS, TREATY, COMFORTS and DISREPAIR.

10. A return to normal service after yesterday’s frightener: just nicely inside my ability level. A few dodgy moments, like the limp clueing of Y in 1d and two appearances of communist, but made up for with some good surfaces, 15d standing out. And, at 5d, a flower that is actually a flower! … ‘tributary of the Indus, maybe?’ I was thinking at one stage.

11. Fun, and doable as muffin said. Liked COMFORTS for the same reason. Did enjoy SWEETCORN. And the impala and okapi as Eileen mentioned. Like Pan’s sense of humour.
    ‘Rich girl debuts’ was original. And the image of the Communist statesman spreading gold around made me laugh.
    Are there not 2 homophone indicators in KARMA? ‘Speaker’ and ‘said to be’? Have no problem with the homophone, rhotic, or lambdal, whatever that is @cholecyst.

12. Thanks to Pan and manehi. Quite a gentle canter – probably preparing us for a frightener tomorrow. As others have said, some lovely surfaces – favourites for me were SERENADE and PRESERVE. CAPTIONS and COMFORTS were witty misdirections.

13. cholecyst @7. Genuinely interested in your comment, and do get your lamdal, nice, from the Greek. I bet there’s no ‘r’ in karma in Sanskrit, probably a transcription/approximation, but I haven’t got that far. I tried to learn Tibetan once … from a lama, and he said I needed to learn patience. (True story.)

14. paddymelon @11. LAMBDAL: I made it it up as meaning an accent in which one pronounces Ls before e.g. Ms, as in some Scottish accents(from Greek lambda) And in some parts of Northumberland, we still pronounce R, esp. at beginning of words, as HR.

15. …forgot to mention that in Geordie land FILM is pronounced FILLUM and WALK similar to WAHLUK

16. After a slow start, a satisfying result. Thanks Manehi for parsing 10a, I couldn’t hear the Karma no matter how long I stared at it;also had a mind block on Tsar – couldn’t get Nero out of my mind. Don’t like Demon = expert, but that’s all it could be. Also, 24a, the Norman’s were not French but of Norse origin.

    Favourite was 27d, a lol moment.

    Thanks Pan and Manehi.

17. cholecystv@14. We crossed at precisely the same time and @15 that’s interesting .. my Mum, a Queenslander from downunder, typical hybrid (German/Danish/English) second generation 85 year old Aussie, says fillum. I must look up where she came from.

18. Trevor @ 16 “the Normans were not French but of Norse origin.” So who counts as genuinely French – just the descendants of the ancient Gauls? There must be precious few of them.

19. “fillum” is, was and hopefully always will be be Irish!
    And Lewis Hamilton is a demon driver.

20. This was the best crossword we have seen so far from Pan, whose previous crosswords were disappointingly easy. This one had a few more teeth, and I enjoyed it.

    Thanks to Pan and manehi

21. cholecyst @15, copmus @19

    I believe that the Shakespearian pronunciation would have been “fillum”. I can’t cite anything though – I think I read it in an RSC programme.

22. The first easy puzzle of the week. I wondered about SWINEHERD but it had to be right. Never heard of SHERD. Don’t see any problem with CALMER or with NORMAN for that matter. My only problem was my tendency to reject obvious answers-like BEANPOLE- because they appeared too easy! Quite enjoyable though.
    Thanks Pan.

23. I enjoyed this, despite being unable to finish it. Was delighted to see ‘sherd’. My late husband was an archaeologist who specialised in pottery. Sherds were his stock-in-trade (never shards!).
    Did anyone else have FICTIONS for 9ac? It sort-of worked, with FIT as appropriate, and C as compiler’s heading…. I scratched my head for ages trying to solve P-F–Y for 1d til the penny dropped with a clank….

    Thanks to Pan and manehi.

24. Thanks, Pan and manehi. A pleasure.

    The name Norman always makes me think of a Betjeman poem about social climbers’ genteel solecisms called, “Phone for the fish knives, Norman.” I just looked at a blog about it and found that “serviettes,” which used to be non-U for “napkins” is now commonplace in the UK. Is that true? It certainly isn’t over here, at least not south of the border — Canadians use the word. So you all say “serviette” over there?

25. [Valentine @24
    It reminds me of a nervous interviewer on a radio comedy programme (“Radioactive”):

    “How old is this church, Keith?”
    “Norman.”
    “I’m so sorry, how old is this church, Norman?”

    We never say “serviette” in this house!]

26. I came to this late but it provided a very pleasant afternoon diversion. Nothing too difficult or contrived but still required some brain exercise! I chuckled at TREATY and also liked FALSE and KNIGHTED. Thanks to Pan and manehi.

27. Valentine, I remember on my first visit to the UK in 1978 asking for a “napkin” in a Wimpy’s after a particularly greasy and revolting hamburger. They looked at me as if I were mad. When leaving, I had to try to get the Punch I was reading under my arm using only my elbows, and it ended up under my raincoat. That and the fact I held my greasy hands out in front of me (as if strangling an invisible victim) so as not to stain my raincoat meant I was soon stopped by two coppers who asked what the bulge under my coat was. I explained, and they obligingly helped me get the magazine into my pocket, but they too were unable to say where I might find a napkin.

    As someone who pronounces both the L and R in “calmer,” I reckoned this was just another sight-homophone. I was surprised to hear they were pronounced the same in Essex. Surely the vowels are different?

28. P.S. It never occurred to me that there might be another word for napkin. I thought it was just another thing that didn’t seem to exist then in the UK, like ice cubes or coffee.

29. Christa @23, I am sure your late husband was correct because the word SHERD comes from potsherd.

30. Valentine @24

    Another line from the poem:

    “I’m afraid the PRESERVE’s full of stones”

    I would not dream of calling my (home made) marmalade a preserve …

31. marienkaefer @30, ‘marmalade’ seems to be rather exceptional, I would never even call it ‘jam’ – just checked the COED, they give for marmalade “a preserve of citrus fruit, usu. bitter oranges, made like jam”.

32. I have somewhere a record of an exchange between an English family and a French B&B host, along the lines of
    “But madame, there are lots of different jams.”
    “Oh no, we never eat jam for breakfast; we want marmalade.”

33. Nice puzzle, but too much loose wordplay for me.

    IS for “island”?
    N for “Norse”?
    SWEET = “easy”
    Why “duly”?
    COM for “communist”?
    EX for “Exodus”?

34. muffin @32, just checked my jam pots here in France, the marmalade is labelled ‘marmelade’, whereas the raspberry, plum, strawberry etc. is labelled ‘confiture’, not sure the French eat it much for breakfast, it is usually redcurrant ‘gelée’ with croissants and apricot ‘confiture’ with baguettes.

35. Ian SW3 @27, ‘calmer’ and ‘karma’ are pronounced identically for me too (in Leeds)

36. Curiouser and curioser. I can get my head round “ar” being pronounced “ah,” but in words where the L isn’t voiced (like walk and talk), the “al” becomes “aw,” so I would expect “calmer” to be pronounced “cawmah” (or “CAW-muh”) but “karma” to be “kahmah” (or “KAH-muh”). We live and learn.

37. Napkin? Serviette? Hand us a bit of kitchen roll…

38. “Napkin” is quite an interesting word. On the whole, the “n” tends to migrate from the noun to the pronoun – hence a norange, becomes an orange, a napron becomes an apron – but this doesn’t seem to have happened with “napkin”.

39. Thanks pan, most enjoyable
    I liked okapi, treaty, preserve, serenade most but plenty more was cool

    thanks manehi

40. Thanks to Pan and manehi. I agree that this puzzle was more of a challenge than previous ones from this setter, but I much enjoyed it. REED ORGAN was new to me.

41. [@muffin – Interestingly, apron and napkin both come from the Old English “nappe”. Apron (originally ‘napron’) went through the misdivison process while napkin didn’t.]

42. Marienkaefer @30 – I don’t think the speaker in the Betjeman poem could have meant “marmalade” as being full of stones – who ever heard of orange stones? Full of pits, more likely. But this conversation has got me going on a popular British misconception, that the American word for “jam” is “jelly.” The American word for jam is jam, and jelly is the American word for jelly. Both are sweet fruit spreads, but jam is made from pureed fruit and jelly from strained fruit juice. I make jelly from the grapes in my back yard, but if I had strawberries I’d make jam. But you can also buy strawberry jelly — clear red, while jam is opaque. And strawberry preserves, which have whole fruit in them, and strawberry butter, which is strawberry puree slowly cooked till it thickens (harder to find than apple butter). We do say “peanut butter and jelly,” not because we think jelly is the only word for any fruit spread but because to say “peanut butter and jelly or jam or preserves or fruit butter or marmalade” would get tiresome pretty quick.

    So there. End of fruit rant.

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