Guardian 27,336 Tramp

49 comments on “Guardian 27,336 Tramp”

1. Thank you Tramp and Eileen!

   Loved this puzzle as Duran Duran was the first band I ever fell in love with. I was in grade two or three at the time. Though I thought it could have used a few more references to their songs, I mean, how were Hungry Like The Wolf and The Reflex not included?? 😀

   P.S. Planet Earth was also one of their songs from their very first album.

2. The theme was obvious but as Duran Duran are one of my pet hates i gritted my teeth. So i missed most references apart from Rio. Thanks for reminding me!
   A decent workout but I didn’t think the anagrams were brilliant. I’m also not fond of clues which can go in either way. My FOI was tuba at 1d. No way of telling.
   Grumpy on a tuesday!

3. I know very little about the theme but enjoyed the solve – although I have to ask ‘who are your and what have you done with ‘tricky’ Tramp?

   Thanks to Tramp for the fun and Eileen for the explanations

4. Thanks Tramp and Eileen

   Sorry, Eileen, I disagree about long anagrams. I’m sure Tramp thinks he was being very clever with 6d etc. (as he was, in fact), but I just looked at “picture” and the word count and wrote in the answer, thinking “I expect that it’s an anagram”. Similarly 3d etc., although the presence of LE BON allowed me to choose MARYLEBONE rather than Paddington!

   There were some lovely clues, though. DUNKS, ORISON, LINNET and FATHOM were favourites.

   Apart from Simon Le Bon, I know nothing about the band, so the references passed me by. (For me, Duran Duran is Milo O’Shea in Barbarella – though Google has him as Durand Duran, Durand Durand and all other possible combinations!)

5. I shared your extra cherry, Eileen! A really good puzzle where the excellent wordplay more than made up for my lack of knowledge of the theme. I liked especially 28a, 16 & 27d.

   Many thanks to Tramp & Eileen.

6. I forgot to say: I was puzzled be COPIES = “models”. Surely, as a noun, models are what copies are copied from? It doesn’t seem to work as a verb either.

7. Totally ignorant about Duran Duran songs, but this wasn’t a problem. Favourites were DUNKS, FATHOM and ABUT plus the long anagrams. Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

8. 2d – Wilfred Owen, Anthem for doomed youth

9. Oops! – quite right, baldy @8: I think I should have said, ‘the first time’.

10. Many thanks to Tramp for a very enjoyable puzzle, and to Eileen (the dunkophobe) for the blog.
    I remember one of the joys of childhood being to see how long you could dunk a digestive biscuit in hot tea, and still get the soggy bit in your mouth before it dropped off! Simple pleasures.

11. Aagh – the whole point of biscuits is that they are crisp!

12. I managed to avoid DD completely in their time so interesting to read the blog, Eileen. I doubt if Tramp likes them much either but the puzzle was fun.
    I do agree that the number count in the long one was a bit of a giveaway but that was welcome when time was short.
    Thanks all.

13. Thanks Eileen and Tramp.

    Eileen – on DUNKING: you’ve obviously never tasted vin santo con biscotti (o cantucci)!

14. [cholecyst @13
    Special case; biscotti/cantucci are a hazard to teeth without the dunking!]

15. I can’t let this go on much longer but dipping biscuits into cold wine, to soften them, rather than into hot tea, where they disintegrate, is a totally different concept. Excuse me now while I get back to my elevenses. 😉

16. I won’t add to the pros and cons of dunking, noting that the US chain (?) Dunkin Donuts was in a recent prize crossword. I think biscotti/cantucci are better dunked in cappuccino than in vin santo.
    Many thanks for the blog, Eileen, and to Tramp.

17. Tremendous puzzle with a skilfully exploited theme. Thought the two anagrams were an essential part of that.

18. Muffin@4 – yes, but for those of us who are merely muffs, the thrill of seeing a long anagram without having to work it out is one of the joys of crosswords. Rich Tea last longer than digestives and I’m just off to dip one in my coffee!
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

19. I really liked this, and was relieved that a detailed knowledge of the band was not required. I agree 22d was great.

    Speaking of elevenses, I was actually eating a prawn cocktail in Marie Rose sauce while solving, so that rather helped with 26, 25. (I know it’s a bit odd for a mid-morning snack, but I just found it in the fridge and was tempted.)

    I always like to see good old crossword favourites, so “model” for T (11a), “film” for ET (21a), and “supporters” for BRAS (8d) were all welcome.

20. Thanks Tramp and Eileen.

    A very entertaining crossword. I was so much thinking of picture = painting (Dorian Gray etc) that I failed to see the long anagram until near the end. LOI was FATHOM, which had a great clue.

    I guess GOOD SENSE should be GODS [idols] with seen* around O, but I expect that was what Eileen meant, otherwise it’s an indirect anagram.

21. I’ve barely heard of Duran Duran, much less been acquainted with their music, so the theme didn’t do much for me. Never heard of Marie Rose sauce either, though wiki says it’s like the American fry sauce, whatever that is.

    I thought RESET was an escapee from a Rufus puzzle.

    I like dunking anise biscotti in any kind of plonk.

    Thank you, Tramp and Eileen.

22. Many thanks to Eileen for the super blog and to others for the kind words. I wrote this puzzle in February 2015. I like Duran Duran. I remember in April 1985, a month shy of my tenth birthday, going to Wigan to buy Smash Hits as it featured this poster of the band (with Madonna on the back):

    http://www.duranduranstore.com/duran-duran-smash-hits-1981-1985-visual-history-poster-5684-p.asp

    That takes me back.

    I would have liked to have included more song titles in the puzzle but it’s easier said than done. I still have umpteen themed puzzles in the bag but I hardly write them these days because a) I have run out of ideas and b) they take me three times as long to write and the extra effort is probably not worth it.

    Thanks for the comments

    Neil

23. Superb! There were a few complaints on his Elvis themed crossword – myself included – but I thought this was first class.

24. Super crossword on the easy side for Tramp.

    “Dunking” – not a habit, merely a preferred way of ingesting biscuits.

25. Good to have you here, Tramp.

    And it’s not unreasonable to limit the number of song titles – given that you’ve shoehorned in two long anagrams as well.

    The thing with long anagrams is that, if you get them (and I did, quickly), the rest of the puzzle gets to be much easier. This one flew by quite quickly, with just an improbable DENTS vs DUNKS conundrum at the excellent 28d holding me up for a while. And Eileen, I think I might go dunking Rich Tea with my afternoon cuppa! Sorry!

26. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen. Enjoyable. I got by with little knowledge of DD. I did not know MARIE ROSE and had trouble parsing DOGGO and FATHOM. Like Eileen I know ORISON from Hamlet.

27. Isn’t the point of dunking that you don’t drop the biscuit in, you hold on to it? Unless I’m doing it wrong. Always a possibility

28. Dropping biscuits in a drink would indeed be a horrible habit Eileen. I wonder if it shoiuld have been “dips” which works better.. I aggre aboutthe brilliant anagrams

29. Tramp, I for one love themed puzzles, and I hope to see many more from you, at least from your bag of puzzles on reserve! (Even though when the theme is rock music I’m hopelessly out of it — your cluing is always fair.)

30. A very enjoyable puzzle – probably at the easier end of Tramp’s range but as always some of the parsings took a bit of thought.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

31. I find these themed crosswords relatively tiresome – a couple of interesting anagrams, but then a number of clues unhelpfully distorted to serve references to the theme. Thankfully the limitation of the use of song and album titles here made me less unappreciative of the efforts than usual. Still enough of Tramp’s trademark casual sexism here to divert me instead.

32. Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen, and again to Tramp for dropping by.

    Most enjoyable, even though I am entirely ignorant of Duran Duran songs.

    Dunking biscuits is a serious matter, as is demonstrated here:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/462987.stm

    (apologies – for some reason my computer won’t put this as a link – it relates to Len Fisher of Bristol University winning the Ig Nobel prize for physics in 1999 on the best way to dunk a biscuit in a cup of tea).

    You have to dunk ginger nuts to be able to eat them at all.

33. Apologies again – the link worked when posted.

34. Thanks, Marienkaefer! I think I actually remember hearing about this at the time – probably because Bristol University is my Alma Mater.

35. If there has ever been a rock music themed puzzle I must have missed it, although I guess one might come along in fifty years or so when everyone with any first hand knowledge of the theme is pushing up the daisies. Ah, but wait – wasn’t there one back in the 1990s where several answers were the titles of Queen albums or songs ? Does anyone else recall that ?

36. Van Winkle @31: Enough casual sexism to suggest a second theme?

37. I have tapped the odd foot to Duran Duran -Rio and Planet Earth spring to mind-but most of their stuff passed me by. Mind you,I was somewhat older than ten in 1985 so perhaps it’s not surprising! Anyway, quite a nice puzzle. I couldn’t work out GOOD SENSE until coming here and EXES foxed me for a good while.
    Enjoyable.
    Thanks Tramp.

38. Poor tramp – his intended theme was a band that he remembers fondly, yet people seem to think it was about dunking. Though I did like the dunks clue.

    Very entertaining, I was happy no Duran Duran knowledge was needed, as a result of which I was able to complete.

    Many thanks tramp, great stuff, and thanks Eileen

39. I really enjoyed this … although, like Valentine @21 and ACD @26 (both of whom, if I recall correctly from prior blogs, are “My Fellow Americans”), I did not know MARIE ROSE, which was my LOI by a wide margin — I think I spent almost as much time staring at that clue as I did solving the rest of the puzzle before it. (I got a chuckle out of Valentine’s further comment about “fry sauce”. Once I was reasonably certain that Marie Rose had to be the correct answer for 26,25, I googled that phrase and saw the same wiki entry as Valentine, and had the exact same reaction: What is “fry sauce”, and where in America is this term commonly in use?) The Duran Duran theme was fun, although I was not enough of a fan of the band back in their heyday to recognize some of the less well-known song and album titles hidden in the clues and definitions, as referenced by Eileen and some of the commenters above. I liked the two long anagrams, even though their inclusion allowed (once the penny dropped) large sections of the puzzle to be filled in rapidly. My other favorites were FATHOM for its concise and natural surface, NATAL for its tricky wordplay (employing what must be the least common meaning of that word), UNITISED for its chuckle-inducing surface, and FED UP, my CotD, which combined a great surface, clever wordplay, AND the theme of the puzzle. Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen, and the other commenters. May you all enjoy your DUNKING (except for those who, like Eileen, disdain dunking — may you all instead enjoy your biscuits crisp!).

    Oh, one last thing (echoing Valentine again, this time @29): Tramp, I am also a big fan of themed puzzles, and hope you’ll share as many of your “umpteen” on reserve as possible, and any new ones you may be inspired to create, in the Guardian cryptic!

40. Thanks both.
    Sauce Marie Rose is very similar to Thousand Island dressing. I’ve mainly come across it in prawn cocktails. Wikipedia says it’s British, but I think I first came across it by that name in a book of French cookery. You’d think so from the name.

41. Thanks both.
    And another thing. In academe, a course that has been ‘unitised'(5d) has been cut up into chunks rather than unified.

42. Hated Duran Duran but got there. Finished this at 9.31pm in the Tupton Tap in Chesterfield but as we started it at30 9pm in the same place we don’t feel so bad.

43. Thanks Eileen. I missed a few of the parsings in this one, and “Marie Rose” completely defeated me; not something I’ve seen here in Oz.

    Wild Boys (9a) is also a Duran Duran song, by the way.

44. To be honest I enjoyed this blog more than the puzzle which was over too quickly for a Tramp. I didn’t get all the DD references but that didn’t interfere with the solving and it’s one of the joys of coming here. I did a muffin when “solving” the 6d anagram.
    Big thanks to Tramp for contributing and to Eileen for the blog and kicking off the dunking debate – I’m a dunker especially of ginger nuts in a cup of builders’.

45. If you want to avoid a truly disgusting experience, never dunk a pink wafer in anything . . .

46. Wild Boys is indeed a DD song. As I recall, Simon Le Bon got some stick for singing a bum note on this song during the Live Aid performance. That was the picture I was trying to paint.

    Thanks for the comments.

    Neil

47. I mentioned in the blog that all the songs were capitalised.

48. I too was always revolted by the habit of dunking until I came to Italy. But here it is THE way to eat your breakfast!! Instead of cereal it’s biscuits dunked in coffee or tea. So now sort of adapted to it, though still prefer my cereal or toast and marmalade!

49. Loved this puzzle. Not least the compact clueing and innuendo. Given my name, I especially liked 28. To take the biscuit, I fathomed DUNKS as drops a helicopter into the sea (“drink”).

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