Guardian Cryptic 27,204 by Brummie

by

If you like double definitions and obscure references, this one’s for you…

This was not an easy solve, although in the main, I think it was a fair one.  There was a glut of double definitions, which I normally expect on a Monday in the Guardian. 

On the whole, it was an enjoyable challenge, which may have a theme, although it isn’t obvious to me.

I also learned some new terms, such as POT-BOUND and SORTILEGE.

Thanks, Brunnie.

PS Having SEDGE and EDGY crossing was a bit clumsy, and unless they’re part of a theme, could probably have been avoided, also removing the awkward clue for EDGY.

Across
7 BONNARD Capital, once a way to make an artist (7)
  BONN (once the capital of Germany) + A Rd. (“a way”)

Refers to French post-impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard.
8 ANNULET Set aside sci-fi film ring (7)
  ANNUL (“set aside”) + E.T. (“sci-fi film”)
9 STAR Big shot: “How annoying to be rejected” (4)
  <=RATS (“How annoying!”)
10 HUSBANDRY Thrift makes old man cut drink (9)
  HUSBAND (“old man”) + RY(e) (“drink”, cut)
12 STAND Bear stall (5)
  Double definition
13 RED BRICK Not like Cambridge cherry loaf? (3,5)
  RED (“cherry”) + BRICK (“loaf”)
15 EDGY Sort of bordering on tense (4)
  I suppose if a border is an edge. then “sort of bordering” could be “edgy”
16 PRIDE Much abbreviated service offered by some councils to motorists’ family group (5)
  I assume the setter is referring to P(ark and) RIDE
17 PIAF Provided partially overlapping state singer (4)
  IF (“provided”) “partially overlapping” Pa. (Pennsylvania, so “state”)
18 RECLOTHE Get back into the habit of playing to lecher (8)
  *(to lecher)
20 SWARM Second heat gets crowd (5)
  S(econd) + WARM (“heat”)
21 PETROLEUM Oil neck part with hesitation? (9)
  PET (“neck”) + ROLE (“part”) + UM (“hesitation”)
22 MUSE Clio‘s motorway exploit? (4)
  M(otorway) + USE (“exploit”)

Clio was the Muse of History, in Greek mythology.
24 SCREENS Puts on shades (7)
  Double definition
25 LANTERN Ego-less, trembling internal light (7)
  *(nternal) (INTERNAL minus I (“ego”))
Down
1 HOST Son welcomed by fashionable party-giver (4)
  S(on) “welcomed by” HOT (“fashionable”)
2 ENTREATY Cry from wolf, perhaps, breaking gate (8)
  EAT (“wolf, perhaps”) “breaking” ENTRY (“gate”)
3 ORCHID Mythical sea monster, camouflaged — blooming thing! (6)
  ORC (“mythical sea creature”) + HID (“camouflaged”)

“Orc” as a mythical sea monster is a rare reference, with Orcs are more commonly associated with ogre-like creatures in the stories of Perrault and Tolkien.
4 UNSADDLE Ground: land used to bring rider to earth (8)
  *(land used)
5 MURDER Top champion horse raised (6)
  <= RED RUM (three-time winner of the Grand National, so a “champion horse”)
6 BEVY Females gathered for drink (4)
  Double definition

I hope that the setter is referring to a generic bevy of people, rather than the more sexist “bevy of birds”…
11 SORTILEGE Divine drawing of lots of egrets smeared with oil (9)
  *(egrets oil)

Sortilege, a new term to me, is apparently a type of fortune-telling using cards.
12 SEDGE Spades have advantage on grass (5)
  S(pades) + EDGE (“advantage”)
14 CHARM Wrong to follow cocaine appeal (5)
  C(ocaine) + HARM (“wrong”)
16 POTBOUND Cup certain to be too big for its container (3-5)
  POT (“cup”) + BOUND (“certain”)
17 PLAYMATE One in nursery, possibly cultivated yam wearing coat (8)
  *(yam) “wearing” PLATE (“coat”)
19 LITTER Refuse transport for patient (6)
  Double definition
20 SAMPAN Craft‘s auxiliary masts tops stuck in bridge (6)
  “tops of” Auxiliary Masts “stuck in” SPAN

A sampan was a small Chinese boat
21 PACK Four suits put in case? (4)
  Double definition
23 SURF Fail to stick with one channel sea feature (4)
  Double definition

*anagram

51 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,204 by Brummie”

  1. Thanks Brummie and loonapick

    All good fun, with MUSE my favourite today. I didn’t parse PRIDE.

    Two pedantic points – sedges are a distinct family from grasses (and are easily recognised from their triangular stems); REDBRICK, as opposed to older universities such as Cambridge, is written as one word.

  3. @muffin
    I think the bevy needs the single v to conform with some sort of collective noun theme thing

  4. baerchen @3
    Yes, so it doesn’t quite work as a double definition, unless one accepts bevy for the drink too. I used the Site Search to find a Philistine example from last year for BEVY, but he used a “sounds like” for the drink.

  6. Now you mention it, there are several collective nouns:
    STAND of trees
    PRIDE of lions
    SWARM of bees
    HOST of daffodils?
    MURDER of crows
    CHARM of goldfinches
    LITTER of kittens
    and PACK of wolves
    as well as BEVY of course

  7. Beat me to it muffin but didn’t get the trees.

    Did not like this due to the many vague and obscure definitions

  9. Quite tricksy , but that’s cryptics for you! Amazed i dredged up sortilege from goodness knows where. O level Moliere? No idea. But pleased to get finished. Not sure about plate for coat mind. As in silver-plated i suppose.
    Good spot on the theme Muffin.

  10. I agree with loonapick regarding some obscure words. Mine were 8a ANNULET (only solved because ET is so often the film in cryptics) and 11d SORTILEGE (only solved as an anagram that made some sort of sense). I was also unfamiliar with the “not like Cambridge” reference for 13a RED BRICK, or REDBRICK as muffin@1 indicated.

    24a SCREENS was my LOI after several stuff-ups caused by my guessing “affects” and “accents”. I still find SCREENS a bit iffy as a double definition there.

    Like Muffin@1, I couldn’t parse PRIDE for 16a.

    I like the theme that baerchen@3 and muffin@7 discovered (though missed it entirely in the solve). That’s one reason why I really appreciate this forum.

    Sorry some of the preceding sounds a bit negative. I did have several happy moments solving 10a HUSBANDRY, 17a PIAF, 21a PETROLEUM, 22a MUSE, 2d ENTREATY, 4d UNSADDLE (thought “Ground” was a great anagrind), and 23d SURF.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

    I think a litter is like a stretcher, pex@8, though by the time I have typed this post I am sure someone else will have said that.

  11. BTW I had to smile at MURDER as the synonym for “Top” in 5d, given the huge debate over TOPPER in the forum on the Pasquale last week. I was nearly ready to “top myself” by the end of that thread!
    Oh and of course I had never heard of any kind of horse called RED RUM as the reverse of MURDER in today’s puzzle.

  12. Thanks Julie re stretcher.

    You probably know by now but Red Rum was a famous Grand National winner

  13. Didn’t get PIAF – there were some tricky clues but it was an enjoyable workout. Favourites were ORCHID, UNSADDLE and PRIDE. Many thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

  14. Thank you, pex@12. I did Google to check the reverse when I had the ah-ha moment with Top/MURDER, and saw something about steeplechasing.

  15. Thanks Brummie; not a very nice grid for solving.

    Thanks loonapick; some rather strange surfaces eg 20, 21 & 25 acrosses. I missed the theme. Collins and Chambers have redbrick as one word and Oxford has it hyphenated.

  16. Too difficult for me – I have never heard of POT BOUND or PARK & RIDE. I failed to solve 8a, 16a, 16d and could not parse 21a and 23d. Was also not familiar wth RED BRICK

    Thanks blogger and setter.

  18. Thank you Brummie and loonapick.

    I failed to parse PRIDE, but it was great fun picking out the collective nouns – there is also

    SEDGE of bitterns, cranes or herons

    I have been trying to find SORTILEGE used as a collective noun, but only found Cartier’s selection of jewellery.

  22. Beaten fair and square today, by two surnames – BONNARD and PIAF.

    I had to reveal BONNARD because I couldn’t get ENTREATY (because I’d put EDGE instead of EDGY – doh!).

    For PIAF, I’d played around with IF and state abbreviations, but I’d seen “partially overlapping” as meaning they shared a letter rather than being interlaced. Oh well – can’t win ’em all.

    Thanks, Brummie and loonapick.

  23. Julie@11, I don’t know a steeplechaser called Red Rum either, but after doing Guardian crosswords for 15 years am very familiar with the famous horse that is MURDER in reverse. I am surprised at others not knowing ‘potbound’. A common enough occurrence for anyone with house plants. But I had never heard of ‘outworker’ yesterday and that didn’t raise a comment. I enjoyed Brummie’s challenge, annoyed that I missed the theme. Thanks loonapick for the colour commentary, just curious why you have relegated sampans to history. They still ply the waters around here.

  24. This was a bit too hard for me and I had to cheat, eg on SORTILEGE which I’d never heard of. Naturally I completely missed the theme!

    Loonapick: BEVY is an ancient and respectable term for a group of women or girls, and is used in that sense by Shakespeare and Milton. It does tend to be used in a jocular way these days, but I’m not sure that makes it sexist.

  25. I do love a collective noun so this was great fun to solve
    Thanks to Brummie and Loonapick

  27. Many thanks to Brummie and loonapick – and to muffin @6.

    I discover also:
    host of sparrows
    stand of flamingoes/plovers
    bevy of swans/larks/quail

  28. A little tricky in places, I suppose the theme justifies that, though I missed it completely.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick

  29. Well done, loonapick, for parsing PRIDE, which parsing completely defeated me — as soon as I saw your explanation I smote my forehead.

    I dimly recalled SORTILEGE as a divinatory technique, though couldn’t remember which one it was (I inclined toward the notion that it was divination through examining entrails). A check this morning (I was solving last night, here in the US) reveals that it’s divination through drawing lots, so I’m freshly admiring of Brummie’s clue here.

    Nice to see “orc” being used in its real, as opposed to Tolkienesque, sense.

    Julie @10: The sense of SCREENS = “puts on” is as in screening a movie.

  31. Too hard for me, not helped by the deliberate nightmare of one of the least-forgiving grids. I was pleased to get half-way, though I used an anagram scrambler to work our SORTILEGE – annoying, for that’s a word I might have guessed, from its appearance in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges. I had HENS at 6d, not at all unreasonable for a cd, even if undeniably sexist. In retrospect, I could have got further: out of the recent hard ones, I wanted to keep on going with Enigmatist, but this and Imogen sapped my spirit. Well, we’re all different.

  33. I missed the collective nouns – pity murmeration wasn’t there-but the theme makes this a better puzzle than I thought. PRIDE was my LOI which really should have alerted me. I found this a little easier than is usual for this setter. I didn’t know SORTILEGE but I did know POT BOUND because Mrs PA is a gardener!
    Good fun.
    Thanks Brummie.

  35. Hard for me and I couldn’t get a few including SCREENS (Grr!) and POT-BOUND as well as missing the theme. I did manage to parse PRIDE though, dragged up SORTILEGE from somewhere in the hidden recesses and remembered RED RUM as the horse who beat ‘our’ Crisp in the Grand National in 1970-something. No big deal, but I parsed PACK as a triple def.

    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick.

  36. Delighted when we saw the theme – after the event, so to speak. A lovely puzzle through and through. Thanks to everyone.

  37. You can have:
    a cry of hounds; 2d
    a litter of cubs, kittens, pigs or pups; 19d
    a pack of dogs, grouse, hounds or wolves; 21d & 2d
    a stand of plover; 12a
    a suit of mallard; 21d

    and I hereby suggest a surf of eider [23d] and a pedantry of solvers.

  39. Enjoyed this, despite not getting the theme. Thanks to Muffin for pointing it out and to those who’ve made extra suggestions. Liked the clues for “pride” and “sortilege” very much, by the way.

    Thank you Brummie & loonapick.

  40. I was another who had EDGE instead of EDGY. I thought there was some double duty going on with “bordering” and an allusion to the phrase “on edge”. I had a hard time equating thrift with HUSBANDRY. I didn’t think “partially” was needed in the PIAF clue. I liked PETROLEUM and UNSADDLE the best.
    A Disambiguation of Wikipedia Contributors?

    Thanks, loonapick and Brummie.

  42. Thank you for being honest Muffin – you were very informative, though. Apologies to baerchen, I was half asleep when I read your post!

  43. Thanks to Brummie and loonapick. This one was too tough for me. I did dredge up SORTILEGE and knew RED RUM from previous puzzles (and The Shining), but I came up short elsewhere and ended up making much use of the check button.

  44. Didn’t like this much for the same reasons as pex @7.

    On a more general point, this is a pretty pathetic grid: no entry longer than nine letters, so (almost inevitably) there’s too much black in it. Then, at the very least, it would be reasonable to expect a solver-friendly crossing ratio throughout but, alas, even this isn’t the case (7a, 8a and the corresponding entries in row 14).

    When, oh when, will the Guardian employ a crossword editor who understands at least the most elementary principles of sound crossword construction?!

    Thanks anyway to loonapick for the blog.

  45. I also had edge which left we with 2d unsolved. Many thanks loonapick for some of the parsing.

    Theme helped me see e.g. murder and bevy.

    Many thanks Brummie – actually I thought this was easier than some other brummies, though i did not parse everything (PRIDE)

  46. We found this a real slog and came here feeling drained and then uplifted by discovering the theme – spotting this whilst solving would have made it easier and more enjoyable. I rarely spot themes unless they’re obvious – which I guess they always are when you spot them.
    Thanks to Brummie and loonapick and to everyone for the entertaining and enlightening blog contributions.

  47. [Thank you realthog@29 -(if you see this) – that makes more sense of SCREENS for me now..].
    [Good to see you back, WhiteKing. I have been wondering where you have been as I haven’t seen you on the forum for a while. I was concerned there was something wrong so it was good to come back here and pick up your post @46 today.]

  49. JinA@47 – thank you for noticing my absence and your lovely welcome back. I have been doing the crosswords late in the day and I’ve not been commenting as it’s seemed too late to add my contribution, and I’ve been falling asleep! Thanks again for your encouragement – I’ll be back :-).

  50. gofirstmate@44

    You are quite correct.

    I do believe our “illustrious ed” does understands at least the most elementary principles of sound crossword construction. However he appears to have been on his “holliers” for the last couple of years 😉

  51. I found this to be a crossword of two halves, raced away at the start and then ground to a halt. finished up short a few. SORTILEGE was a new one on me, but fairly clued. Slightly annoyed with myself for not getting PRIDE, relieved to see I’m not the only one. Many thanks Loonapick and Brummie.

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