Guardian Cryptic 27195 Paul

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Quite a number of clues with containment indicators. I found that some of them were a little harder, especially the ones with a containment within a containment. Thanks to Paul. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1    Wife has to leave reversible grass skirts in garbage (7)

HOGWASH : Reversal of(… reversible) [ W(abbrev. for “wife’) plus(has) GO(to leave) ] contained in(… skirts in) HASH(short for “hashish”, drug from cannabis, aka “grass”).

5    Attack shabby cloth with plain clothing (7)

BARRAGE : RAG(shabby and old cloth used for cleaning) contained in(with … clothing) BARE(plain and simple).

10    Smart young thing dropping back (4)

CHIC : “chick”(a young bird) minus its last letter(dropping back).

11    Swimming costume has trimmed features (10)

MOUSTACHES : Anagram of(Swimming) COSTUME HAS.

Defn: Facial features occasionally trimmed.

12    Dark gymslips covering the ladies, perhaps? (6)

GLOOMY : Anagram of(…slips) GYM containing(covering) LOO(the toilet, an example of which;perhaps, are the Ladies).

13    Lily a soak, one on reflection beyond ruin (8)

MARIPOSA : Reversal of(… on reflection) [A + SOP(to soak up liquid using an absorbent substance) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) ] placed after(beyond) MAR(to ruin;to spoil).

Defn: Any of several plants of a genus of lilies.

14    Rollers destroying deep rock, one coming in (5,4)

POKER DICE : Anagram of(destroying) DEEP ROCK containing(… coming in) I(Roman numeral for “one”).

Defn: Items that you roll when playing the game of the same name.

16    Composition written by snooker player starts: “I’m a famous potter” (5)

SPODE : ODE(a poetic composition) placed after(written by) the 1st letters, respectively, of(… starts) “snooker player“.

Answer: Josiah, English potter of the ceramic, and not of coloured balls, sort.

17    Fancy opening in extremely short trousers (5)

DREAM : The 1st letter of(opening in) “extremely” contained in(… trousers) DRAM(a short;a small quantity of whisky or other spirits).

19    Past master in sari and hot pants (9)

HISTORIAN : Anagram of(… pants) [IN SARI plus(and) HOT].

Defn: … or an expert of the past.

23    Oil broken-down scooter with last of lube (8)

CREOSOTE : Anagram of(broken-down) SCOOTER plus(with) the last letter of(last of) “lube“.

Can you imagine …

24    Small wedding veils in harmony (6)

UNISON : S(abbrev. for “small”) contained in(… veils) UNION(a wedding).

26    Sweet things happy to eat fish in shanty towns (10)

SUGARPLUMS : [ UP(happy, in contrast to “down;sad”) containing(to eat) GAR(or garfish, a slender freshwater fish) ] contained in(in) SLUMS(descriptive of shanty towns made up of crudely built shacks).

27    Style in T-shirt and Y-fronts, perhaps? (4)

DASH : Cryptic defn: The hyphen in “T-shirt” and “Y-fronts“, which character is also used as a punctuation mark, the dash.

28    Wary about British premier, a Canadian province (7)

ALBERTA : ALERT(wary;on the lookout for) containing(about) the 1st letter of(… premier) “British” + A.

29    I waste time cuddling sweetheart in the best possible way (7)

IDEALLY : I + DALLY(to waste time;to act or move about slowly) containing(cuddling) the central letter of(…heart) “sweet “.

Down

2    Play, collection of books and magazine (7)

OTHELLO : OT(abbrev. for the Old Testament in the Bible, a collection of Books) plus(and) HELLO!(the weekly magazine of celebrity news and stories).

3    Crazy king in Texas city (5)

WACKO : K(abbrev. for “king” in chess notation) contained in(in) WACO(a city in Texas, USA).

4    Flash on you, blue collars for dog (7)

SAMOYED : [ MO(short for “moment”;a brief time;a flash, as in “it was over in a flash”) placed above(on, in a down clue) YE(archaic or dialect form of “you”, as in “gather ye rosebuds, while ye may”) ] contained in(… collars) SAD(down;blue).

6    Gear towards exhaust (6)

ATTIRE : AT(towards, as in “he’s coming at you”) + TIRE(to exhaust;to drain of energy).

Defn: … that you wear.

7    Rounding Cape at sea, more ready to eat delicate stuff? (4,5)

RICE PAPER : Anagram of(… at sea) CAPE contained in(Rounding …, …) RIPER(more ready to eat, or to be eaten).

Defn:  … that’s edible, and can also be painted on.

 

8    Outspoken visitor, it’s supposed (7)

GUESSED : Homophone of(Outspoken) “guest”(a visitor).

9    Star protecting a chum, being devious killer (10,3)

SUBMACHINE GUN : SUN(the star in our solar system) containing(protecting) anagram of(… devious) A CHUM, BEING.

15    Cease to be a postman packaging gold evening dresses (9)

EVAPORATE : [A + PAT(Postman in the children’s TV series) containing(packaging) OR(the golden colour in heraldry) ] contained in(… dresses) EVE(literary term for “evening”).

18    Whale getting thinner finally, or the same topless? (7)

RORQUAL : The last letter of(… finally) “thinner” + OR + “equal”(the same) minus its 1st letter(topless, in a down clue).

Defn:  A taxonomic family of whales, that include the blue whale.

20    By the sound of it, credit secured (7)

TRUSSED : Homophone of(By the sound of it) “trust”(to allow credit to a customer).

21    Disturbed, alas, with our awakening (7)

AROUSAL : Anagram of(Disturbed) [ALAS plus(with) OUR].

22    Waste of some stock, wide and soft jacket pockets (6)

COWPAT : [ W(abbrev. for “wide”) plus(and) P(abbrev. for “piano”, musical instruction to play softly) ] contained in(… pockets) COAT(an outer jacket).

Defn: Bodily waste deposited by, well, cows, an example of;some stock;farm animals)

25    Country is now delivering immensely accomplished leaders (5)

INDIA : The 1st letters, respectively, of(… leaders) “is now delivering immensely accomplished“.

42 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27195 Paul”

  1. Thanks Paul, scchua
    Lots of containers, but thematic, making it easier (eventually): grass skirts, plain clothing, short trousers, wedding veils, blue collars, evening dresses, jacket pockets. Very nice set of clues.

  2. Thanks Paul and scchua
    I liked TRUSSED, but didn’t particularly enjoy the rest. SAMOYED was a stretch with MO = flash and no archaic indicator for YE. EVAPORATE was beyond my parsing (and I disagree with the definition too – if something evaporates it doesn’t “cease to be”, it changes state). I hadn’t heard of MARIPOSA, so needed a wordsearch. I didn’t parse DASH either. DREAM was LOI.

  3. I was wondering about the latish appearance of the blog, but the care taken over the pictures fully justifies this! – many thanks to scchua for those and for the parsing. As well as to Paul.

    I found this harder than usual – took a long time over SUGARPLUMS until all the crossers were there, had to use Chambers for RORQUAL, and had not realised CREOSOTE was an oil. But my only objection is to DASH. In no way can it be equated with the hyphen. Fellow English teachers past and present will surely sympathise here. Or not.

  4. Thanks to Paul for a good workout and Scchua for the confirmations.
    I wasted ages trying to allow myself to accept that DREAM was correct. There were so many cryptic possibilities to work through. A very devious clue for such a short, common word. I kicked myself very hard when I finally saw how it worked.

  5. The most challenging from Paul for some time-definitions neatly disguised, lots of misdirects.
    And thanks for parsing of DREAM-quite devious!(That means I liked it)

  7. Thanks Paul and scchua.

    Pretty difficult I thought but enjoyable. Although I’m sure quenbarrow @3 is correct; dash = hyphen seems to be in common usage and can be found, for instance, in Bradford’s. However, it seems to me that dram is not equal to short but to shot.

    I liked the ladies gymslips and the past master among others.

  8. Quenbarrow @3 My issue with 27A was the use of ‘perhaps’ (as in there is no perhaps about it, there is definitely a dash in both t-shirts and y-fronts)!

  9. Thank you Paul and scchua.

    Very tricky, but enjoyable. I, too, failed to parse DREAM.

    robert @8, surely the ‘perhaps?’ should nullify queenbarrow’s @3 objection to DASH?

  10. Robert @8; the perhaps is there probably because as quenbarrow @3 points out dash is not strictly equivalent to hyphen.

  11. Robert @8: yes, there is definitely a HYPHEN in both! Perhaps the word ‘perhaps’ is a shamefaced way of admitting that dash and hyphen are not really the same. Maybe Paul will clarify?

  12. yes, while I was preparing @11, Cookie @9 and Robi @10 had jumped in with apt comments… nice instance of the creative interactivity of this site.

  13. Cookie @9 That was what I considered after reading quenbarrow’s comment (that maybe the perhaps was about the terminology rather than the fact of it being there) but as only the setter knows the answer we can both be happy.

    I was taught to differentiate hyphens, dashes, minus signs, etc by size when writing but in the QWERTY age they have become one and the same symbol so I don’t have problem with the usage here.

  16. Cookie @15: thank you for your courtesy- had not noticed! The name incidentally came to me in a very vivid dream 20 years ago…

    I still find dash and hyphen easy enough to distinguish, and to write differently, in the QWERTY/computer age.

  17. Thanks Paul and scchua.

    I enjoyed the puzzle but did not see the clothing theme as elicited by James@1. Cleverly spotted!

    I also had to come here for the parsing of 17a DREAM. Furthermore I was not sure why 15d was ELABORATE even though I spotted the OR, until I read the blog.

    22d COWPAT was my favourite.

    Enjoy the S&B gathering tomorrow, crossword colleagues.

    [copmus as we can’t attend, I posted a message for you on the S&B Forum.]

  18. My only quibble was grass=hash. Not quite if my memory serves me well. But near enough for jazz-and crosswords.

  19. In the computer age, to get a hyphen, you type one hyphen. To get an en dash, you type two hyphens. To get an em dash, you type three. Most word-processing software will recognize this and replace them accordingly. On this site, hyphens and en dashes look the same, but you can definitely see the length difference with an em dash:

    a well-typed hyphen
    an en dash is 1–2 times as long as a hyphen
    an em dash—placed like this

    As for the crossword, I found it difficult, and failed to get either DREAM or RORQUAL without cheating. I find “turducken” clues [where you put one thing inside of another inside of another] particularly difficult, so things like SUGARPLUMS gave me grief. Nice that the homophone clues work in my dialect for once; Paul’s homophones often don’t.

    I think the question mark in the DASH clue is intended to indicate a definition by example, not a looseness in the definition, unfortunately.

  20. quenbarrow @3 etc is quite right. A dash is a punctuation mark. The spelling, not punctuation, of words such as T-shirt and Y-fronts involve a hyphen, shorter than a dash, without a space on either side and (like the apostrophe)not a punctuation mark. Words are not punctuated. Punctuation is for sentences. Teachers of English unite to prevent debasement of the code!

  21. I interpreted it as Paul referring to the sign (or character or keystroke) “-“. One can tell if it is a hyphen or a punctuation mark or even a mathematical sign depending on the context in which the same sign is used. For this cryptic clue, he’s only saying that the answer may (perhaps) be used to describe that sign.

  22. One of Paul’s tougher ones. MARIPOSA was unfamiliar, RORQUAL and SAMOYED dredged up from the recesses and a lot of tricky parsings. Annoyingly DREAM was last in. Did like COWPAT though it took me ages to see it.

    Thanks to Paul and scchua

  23. re 27a – well said scchua @21. All that is required is that the “-“s contained in the letter sequences can be taken as dashes when isolated from those letter sequences. Ignore the fact that the letter sequences happen to be hyphenated words. The only technical question is whether the “-“s used in the clue are long enough to be hyphens.
    Surprised that no-one has pointed out that the clue should also say “or not “and” for the solution to be singular. HYPHENS does have seven letters, though.

  24. Thanks to Paul and scchua. I could not parse DREAM or HOGWASH and did not know PAT = policeman but did dredge up RORQUAL, SAMOYED, and MARIPOSA. A challenge for me.

  25. ACD
    “Postman Pat” was a very popular children’s stop-motion series in the UK.

    That reminds me – what was Postman Pat called after he retired?

    Pat

  26. I never knew any of that stuff about hyphens and dashes — I’ve been using single keystroke hyphens ubiquitously as long as I’ve been typing. No one’s ever pulled me up on it. Were they just being polite? I must assume it was from ignorance, because surely no one would let that sort of thing slide if they knew the difference. In future, it is my intention to boldly dash where no dash has gone before

  27. Tough going at times. Last in was dream to a collective groan. Didn’t see the theme although only attire made it to the grid. Thanks to everyone.

  28. Muffin @25: Post-postman Pat?

    James @26: It takes a special kind of pedantic SOB to correct someone about the length of their dashes, which is probably why no one has. And anyway, most editors will not scold the writer, but will instead silently correct to the right type of dash.

  30. mrpenney@28
    Although I have no editor, I’ve just noticed that MS Word has been silently correcting me all this time. Terribly clever, if somewhat officious, these computator thingies.

  31. I found this tough and a number went in unparsed – SAMOYAD,MARIPOSA, which I’ve never heard of, and, needless to say DREAM. I liked TRUSSED, GUESSED, SPODE and DASH. How many had NARWHAL for 18dn ? It took me a long time to rectify that, which, of course, threw quite a lot of the SW out. Still, got there (sort of) in the end.
    Thanks Paul

  32. Thanks Paul and scchua. A real toughie – (that’s a dash) so particularly appreciated the blog.

    Creosote is now banned as it is a carcinogen. Goodness knows what damage it did as a vapour cure. At least all I used it for was the garden fence.

  33. Thanks both. Caught out in NW as grass and hash may both be preparations of cannabis but – compilers please note – are not synonymous! Amusing coincidence with Lib Dems proposing legalisation today!

  34. I must have been on the right wavelength as I found this pretty easy apart from the lily which I correctly 8dn.

  35. A fail for me. I did write in 24A but under protest, since harmony and unison are not synonymous. Not that I was ever a choirboy or anything.

  36. My God, I thought I could be pedantic!

    I found this hard to get started on, but once I had tuned my brain into Paul’s wavelength, I really enjoyed it. I’m more than happy to let subtly different shades of meaning pass (e.g. unison/harmony, (en-)dash/hypen) for the sake of the game. After all, it could be argued that there are no true synonyms, and if you insist on taking that line, there’d be no point to crosswords at all.

  37. I enjoyed this, in spite of putting NARWHAL in where RORQUAL belonged, which held me up for a bit, until even i couldnt figure out how I’d parsed it. I didn’t put in 16a cos I couldnt decide if it was EPODE or SPODE, so thanks scchua for the blog, and thanks Paul for occupying most of my journey to Nottingham!

  38. Well nuts! There is no excuse whatsoever in using the word “harmony” to suggest the answer “unison”. This is not just slack – it displays woeful ignorance: they are not synonyms but antonyms. Mumble, mumble, mumble….

  40. Jaydee @38
    This is very late, and nobody will see it (!), but I felt I should support your view that unison and harmony are opposites. They are. Admittedly, both words have extended meanings beyond the musical sphere (as happens all the time in language), but even so I don’t see that ‘in unison’ is the same as ‘in harmony’ with reference, say, to points of view on a live issue. Collins allows it (unfortunately, IMHO) but Chambers does not. Paul has sound enough backing, but it’s not something I would have allowed myself to do.

  41. Alan B @40
    Not so! I saw your comment. And I agree wholeheartedly with your unison/harmony objection. I usually do these crosswords about a week after publication so I so think it’s possible nobody will see MY comment!

    Whilst I’m here, I’ll express my dislike of containment clues like 17A and 22D where the arrangement of words in the clue serves the surface but not the parsing. So instead of the clue saying A contains B, it will be written as B A contains. YUK! But no-one complains about this, so maybe I’ll just have to accept it.

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