Guardian 27,467 – Boatman

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Phew, that was hard! I’m not always the greatest fan of Boatman’s style, but despite the difficulties in this one I enjoyed it, and found it fairly clued, with some clever devices and nice penny-dropping moments. Thanks to Boatman.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. FIELD OF WHEAT Fresh white loaf fed the start of bread production (5,2,5)
(WHITE LOAF FED)*
9. TOAST Brown bread for the Queen? (5)
Double definition – toast is literally “brown bread” , but it can also slangily mean dead (“he is toast”) = brown bread (rhyming slang); and “The Queen” is a toast at a formal dinner
10. CORNFLOUR Milled grain for a bloomer, say (9)
CORN (milled grain) + homophone of “flower”, &lit
11. COBNUTS Round loaf with wild hazels (7)
COB (round loaf) + NUTS (crazy, wild)
12. ETERNAL Boatman’s back with a change of heading — the French in retreat, unchanging (7)
STERN (“boatman’s back”) with the first letter changed to the (unspecified) E, + reverse of LA (French feminine “the”)
13. SWEET BASIL Herb we eat with bliss, when cooked (5,5)
(WE EAT BLISS)*
15. GARY Boy ran out of one type of bread (4)
GRANARY (type of bread – actually a registered trademark) less RAN
18. TIDE Surge observed in chapati — delicious! (4)
Hidden in chapaTI DE licious
19. HANG AROUND Loaf produced by Chinese people burying one (4,6)
A in HAN (Chinese people) + GROUND (produced?)
22. NOT NICE Nasty review about Beethoven’s Ninth (3,4)
N (9th letter of Beethoven) in NOTICE (a review)
24. SEABIRD Bread is torn apart by gull? (7)
(BREAD IS)*
25. EYE-GLANCE Quick butcher’s got you turned around, say, and cut open (3-6)
Reverse of YE (you) + EG (say) + LANCE (cut open). I didn’t know this expression, but its meaning is obvious and it was clearly clued. Butcher’s [hook] is rhyming slang for a look
26. SPELT Rustic bread ingredient specified in letters (5)
Double definition: type of grain and “spelled”
27. PASSING FANCY Elaborate sequel to Death Wish for now (7,5)
PASSING (death) + FANCY (elaborate)
Down
1. FLATBREAD Spooner’s rascal ran off, getting damper in Australia? (9)
Spoonerism of “brat fled”. Damper is a kind of unleavened bread used by stockmen and others in Australia
2. ENTRUSTS Commends review of nurses taking temperature twice (8)
Two separate occurrences of T in NURSES*
3. DUCKS They’re often seen swimming as a pair in a pool (5)
I think the “pair in a pool” are the two Os or 0s (i.e. ducks, as in cricket) in pOOl
4. FAR-SEEING Looking ahead, is gene changed to give new finish to Irish loaf? (3-6)
FARL (Irish soda bread, though Chambers doesn’t give this specific meaning) with the last letter replaced by (IS GENE)*
5. HEFTED Raised heated note out loud instead (6)
HEATED with A (note) replaced by F (forte, loud)
6. ADORN Trim a slice of bread or naan (5)
Hidden in breAD OR Naan – the second hidden answer involving an Indian bread
7. STICKS After French bread and jams (6)
When it goes after “French” it gives us “French sticks”, a type of bread.
8. BROLLY By eating a small loaf with this, one may avoid getting damper (6)
ROLL in BY
14. AGAMEMNON Greek character, a bold man born at odds (9)
A + GAME (bold) + odd letters of MaN bOrN
16. ABUSIVELY Boatman displaces everyone, starting obliquely and cruelly (9)
ALLUSIVELY (obliquely) with ALL (everyone) replaced by AB (sailor, boatman)
17. BREAKS IN Interrupts holiday — that’s wrong (6,2)
BREAK (holiday) + SIN (a wrong)
18. TENDER Soft bread, when legal (6)
Double definition, the second referring to “legal tender” for money = bread
20. DO DUTY Substitute rum, the central element in hot toddy (2,4)
U (middle letter of rUm) in TODDY*
21. WIELDS Handles sliced white, a lady’s (6)
Alternate letters (indicated by “sliced”) of WhItE a LaDy’S
23. THETA Greek character that’s undone embracing Echo (5)
E (Echo in the NATO phonetic alphabet) in THAT*. The second “Greek character”, in a different sense this time
24. SHELF Woman puts crust of loaf on place in cupboard (5)
SHE + L[oa]F

54 comments on “Guardian 27,467 – Boatman”

  1. Thanks Boatman and Andrew

    Too much use of wordsearch and Check for me to take much satisfaction in finishing this. Thanks for explaining several points of parsing that I had missed, Andrew. I’m still not convinced by HANG AROUND, as you hint that you aren’t either!

    Favourites were SEABIRD and (LOI) SPELT.

  2. We gave up on this perhaps too soon.

    I do like the challenge and cleverness of themed clues but the fun is lost if you cant solve them.

  3. I really enjoyed this one, especially  BROLLY, DUCKS and TOAST. Couldn’t parse ABUSIVELY and I didn’t like ‘sliced’ to indicate odd letters, though the usual indicators are usually too obvious.

    Thanks Boatman and Andrew

  4. Enjoyable crossword.

    I am pretty sure that “Chinese people burying one” should be seen as “Chinese people putting one in the ground”: HAN, plus A inside GROUND.

    In 10ac, I saw the bloomer as ‘cornflower’ and the clue therefore as a simple homophone.

    Not sure whether 24d tells me to take SHE plus underneath LF.

    Thanks Andrew.

  5. Thanks Boatman and Andrew.

    At 10a, I took ‘milled grain’ as the definition, and the homophone as ‘cornflower’. I parsed 19a as Han plus ‘a’ in ‘ground’, ie, buried.

    Very good puzzle, phew indeed!

  7. I parsed HANG AROUND as HAN plus A buried – i.e. put in the GROUND

    Also had the definition for 10 as just ‘milled grain’ with the homophone being cornflower.

    Enjoyed this and thanks to Boatman and Andrew

  11. Thanks Boatman and Andrew

    In 9, rather than TOAST being ‘brown bread’, I took ‘brown’ as a verb, which I think works equally well.

  12. Failed on 21d, settling for ‘titles’ on the reasoning that ‘lady’ can be a title and adding the apostrophised ‘s. Of course, this did not account for the ‘sliced white’, but I really couldn’t be bothered by that stage.
    I managed the rest wih a struggle, but I still fail to warm to Boatman’s style.

  13. Doofs @7 & 9, we are now a company (or should that be ‘crowd’) of three (see Blaise @ 10).

  14. Never would have thought of damper as flatbread. Did anyone else look for an anagram with the letter count 9 of (milled) grainfora meaniing a flower/flower of some sort?

    Did like the ducks, although it’s best no to mention the cricket in Australia at the moment.

    Thanks Andrew for the explication of some I didn’t get. You gotta be on Boatman’s wavelength.

    I thought that  9A’s explanation should probably underline the ‘for’ as well, ie ‘for the Queen’. The whole clue could even be a triple definition, but it works as a double.  And perhaps the ‘sequel’ position indicator for 27 A be spelt out  .. pardon the pun/panne 🙂

  15. Or even the ‘pain’. How apropos..  panne de pain. ( no diacritics, or any critics, Welsh or otherwise). Night all, been a long day.

  16. One more thing.

    Initially I had for 15ac BARN (until 8d put me right).

    B (boy) + (RAN)*, ‘of’ as the familiar link word, ‘one type of bread’ as the definition. Barn bread? Could’ve been right perhaps (but wasn’t).

    Oh, and could someone please explain  how “Woman puts the crust of loaf on” leads to SHE + LF in a Down clue?

  17. I enjoyed this. Couldn’t parse abusively hang around or flatbread and also had titles for a while at 21d until i saw it. but finishable.

  18. Sil @16 – you can put a guards van on a train, even though it travels horizontally.  You can put powder on your face, a shirt on your back, paint on a wall, you can even put paint on a ceiling and have it underneath;  “on” can indicate attachment in all sorts of directions.

  19. LOI was 15a which, given my name, is very embarrassing…..I was trying to remove a letter R from a five letter bread type rather than RAN from a seven.

    Really enjoyed this crossword. For once I seemed to be generally on Boatman’s wavelength.

  20. PeeDee@18: well said!

    GaryRB@19: I too felt I was also on Boatman’s wavelength, partly because I make bread occasionally. Can’t resist quoting the old “She was only a baker’s daughter but oh how she kneaded the dough” if I’ve got it right?

    Many thanks Boatman and Andrew.

  21. OK, PeeDee, clear enough and what I expected someone would say. However, there is some convention about the use of ‘on’ which Boatman apparently ignores.

    I still find it unsatisfactory (but, don’t worry, not a major point as such). The surface of the clue lets the woman put something on a shelf but in a cryptic sense the clue should be cut in two, the construction part being of the form “A puts B on” which, for me, either leads to “B + A” or even “A inside B”. I see the “A + B” explanation too but, again for me, it doesn’t really work.

    Let’s leave it there?

  22. Thanks to Boatman and Andrew. Like some others I found this pretty tough. Lots went in quite quickly but the bottom and in particular the SE took an awfully long time, with last one in do duty (an unparsed guess). A DNF for me because I am another who went for titles and I had to come here to check some other parsing. That said still an enjoyable challenge (would not be as much fun if you did not fail now and then) and thanks again to Boatman and Andrew.

  23. Glad to find myself sharing a wavelength with a decent number of you today. Andrew, in particular – Glad you enjoyed the experience.

    Sil, Green and Doofs – You are entirely correct: A in GROUND is what I intended you to spot … eventually.

    Simon@11 – Yes, that’s the way I was thinking. In fact, it’s better to read “brown” as a verb, otherwise you could reasonably complain that toast is actually browned bread, rather than brown bread.

    PeeDee@18 – Yes, exactly. The image in my mind was of a woman putting on a coat, which I think tied the surface of the clue rather nicely with the parsing required … If I’d written something like “women’s magazine puts crust of loaf on …” that wouldn’t have felt right at all. “On” is a slippery indicator – as long as you have a clear suggestion of putting on, you could even use the same logic to justify it as a container indicator.

    PaddyM@14/15 – Very funny. If I get round to writing a sequel to my (excellent value and easily obtained) book, I may have to quote you. I take your point about the damper – I suppose it would be fairer to say that it’s a close cousin of what people would think of as flatbread rather than the same thing. As for the ducks … well, let’s just say that I wasn’t expecting this to be a topical clue!

  24. Another one of those themes to which all the clues have to be forced to relate back, thereby restricting the compiler’s range. Although in Boatman’s case I don’t suppose it would matter all that much, and not in a good way! Miraculously then, I only had 11 clues that really bugged me in this, while the rest, being sound enough, were a study in how to find the hardest possible way to get around the clueing. Quite a feat, but as always with this sort of thing, the results are VERY bitty.

    DAMPER and FARL completely unknown to most of us, I’d guess.

  25. I only finished this by guessing and checking a few, and having seen the parsings I am not surprised I struggled. Can’t say I enjoyed the challenge much.

    Thanks to Boatman and Andrew

  26. Crimper @ 24
    I live in Scotland and I’ve been to Australia on holiday, so I’ve eaten both.

    I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I reckon the setter gets more enjoyment than the solver from a puzzle where the clues are themed.

  27. Thanks to Boatman for the crossword and for popping in here to explain. Thanks to Andrew for the blog. A gloss on 3d, two ducks in the same match is often called a ‘pair of spectacles’ or a ‘pair’ for short, which makes the clue even more satisfying. I wasn’t expecting to finish unaided today, so the crossword was a pleasant surprise.

  28. Defeated by this one in the SE corner. Don’t know why. It’s all perfectly reasonable now I’ve read the explanations.

    Thanks to Boatman for a tricky puzzle. Sadly I don’t think our waveforms synchronise. And thanks to Andrew for putting me out of my misery. I’m off to recover in a darkened room.

  29. This was great fun for the most part, Boatman making me think in different ways as he usually does.

    I didn’t fully understand the parsing of ETERNAL, HANG AROUND or FAR-SEEING at the time of solving them, but I see it all now thanks to the blog.  I left GARY unsolved, but I should have revisited that clue, as with the A and Y given it is really quite easy.  (A boy’s name is the first thing to try, and on looking at it now only GARY and DAVY seem to fit.)  I also put in TITLES instead of WIELDS, but I was just too hasty with that one (it was my last in).

    I liked the way the theme was woven into this puzzle and didn’t find it too forced or obtrusive.  There were many neat clues, of which FIELD OF WHEAT and FLATBREAD (my first two in) were my favourites.  (Homophones and spoonerisms are often a wekaness in my solver’s armoury, but not this time, apparently.)

    EYE-GLANCE is a new word to me, but it’s kind of obvious what it means, and it happened to fit the clue exactly.

    Thanks to Boatman and Andrew.

  32. Didn’t do well here. I had TITLES for 21dn and couldn’t get GARY. Managed the rest but there were some guesses here- EYE GLANCE was
    one and I wasn’t too happy with DO DUTY. I did like HANG AROUND and PASSING FANCY though.
    Thanks Boatman.

  33. Actually, muffin (@31), I often spot typos in my comments but don’t always point them out and correct them in case I do it again!

  34. [Alan @33

    When I used to use Word a lot (for writing teaching notes) I reversed letters so often that I wrote a macro – I clicked in between the reversed letters and used Ctrl+ (I foregt what I assigned) to re-reverse them.

    (I did spot the foregt, but decided to leave it!)]

  35. Made hard, rather than actually being hard. I do wish Boatman would learn how to write clues. But soft: is there not a MASTERCLASS that runs around town occasionally? There is? And who runs that? Ah….

  37. Quite easy (for Boatman!) to start with, but I got bogged down towards the end and ABUSIVELY (LOI) gave me no end of trouble.  There I go (correctly, as it happens) searching for words beginning with ALL- and nothing came to me!  Ah well, after a quick ‘check’ it finally went in.

    By pure coincidence, I had just taken my latest batch of sourdough (yummy!) out of the oven before settling down to this puzzle.  Mentioning the theme to Mrs L, she asked “is there a SOURDOUGH in there by any chance?”  I checked over the 9-letter lights in the grid, then muttered “I hope so, but I can’t see it fitting in anywhere”.  A pity – but no matter!

    As a fanatical bread-maker, with Irish Soda Bread another one in my repertoire, I have to hang my head in shame at not remembering the word “FARL” – although with F_R in the crossers it wasn’t hard to write in!  I would have thought that “Far-sighted” was the more usual expression, though FAR-SEEING will do as well.

    Some really stand out, and I have to commend GARY – so simple yet so hard to spot, and an excellent surface.  I didn’t think “Granary” was a proprietary name – seeing as that’s one of the varieties that Mrs L makes at home, perhaps we’ve been breaching copyright (or whatever the rule is) all along?!  I suppose we can always call it something else…

    On the whole a gentler cruise from Boatman than last time.  But as he explained to us in class*, you have to suit many different tastes.  Sometimes it is right to put in a few fairly easy clues, like COBNUTS and HEFTS.

    Thanks to Boatman and Andrew.

    *Yes f** @35: I have been to one of his masterclasses – and I’m booked for another!  They’re great fun!  Whether he’d welcome you after what you said about him though….

    ** Sorry I’m not about to write your full name!

  38. I should add that for TOAST (another tricky one for me, for no good reason) I spent a lot of time thinking about “brown bread” = “dead” (rhyming slang) and then went on to ponder Queen Anne (in 1066 And All That, she is constantly referred to as a “dead queen”).  But of course I couldn’t get any further than that.  That’s the trouble with trying to seek out complexity when the real solution is quite simple.  Occam’s Razor rules!

  39. Laccaria @37

    You could just write Fanshawe!

    Not many easy ones for me. I always try ones that give first letters first; TENDER was my only success there. The TIDE and ADORN hiddens were also easy, then…..no others!

  41. Muffin – rest assured your name is sacrosanct to me, and shall always be written in full….

  43. Paddymelon @14 – yes I was another one seeking an anagram of GRAIN FOR A at 10a.  For a while!  “Frangipani” almost, but not quite, fits the fodder – but it’s ten letters.  I see this device as deliberate deception: using a recognised anagrind (“milled”) followed by exactly the right number of letters.  This is, of course, perfectly legitimate in clue-setting – in fact it’s what makes a clue stand out as ‘brilliant’ as opposed to merely run-of-the-mill.  Take note, when next confronted with Boatman!

  45. I was pleased with myself for finishing this puzzle very early in the day (so early, in fact, that it was last night! — an advantage of the time zone difference here in the U.S.), but I have been tied up at work all day long, and have only just made it over here to 15^2.

    I found this puzzle challenging but enjoyable, as always.  I recognize that constructing so many surfaces around a common (yet mostly not visible in the answers) theme makes the setter have to go through occasional backflips to make it work, but I am impressed by the ingenuity required of the setter to pull off this trick, and there are usually many chuckles to be found by the misdirection of the clueing.  And of course, it is all in good fun.  For these reasons I am always glad to see Boatman’s name come up in the rotation.  I think the variety of styles among the Guardian’s roster of setters keeps things lively!

    I needed online assistance to solve 11ac.  I don’t believe I have heard of hazelnuts being called COBNUTS, and moreover I was unfamiliar with the meaning of COB as a “round loaf”.  So 11ac was most definitely a TILT (Thing I Learned Today) – or two of them!

    My favorites today included NOT NICE, HANG AROUND, and my CotD, PASSING FANCY — the last for its clueing, which I thought was superb (even if not bread-themed!).  The original “Death Wish” movie starring Charles Bronson was a reasonably entertaining, albeit violent, 1970s crime thriller about a man who becomes a citizen vigilante to avenge his wife’s murder.  But after the success (here in the US, at least) of the original, Hollywood kept making sequel after sequel over the next two decades or so, with each one being more of a cinematic stinker than the one that came before.  When the last sequel was made, Bronson was 70-something, overweight and sickly looking, and it was ludicrous to cast him in an action role where he was supposed to be physically menacing to thugs on the street.  [If I recall, a Death Wish remake just came out this year, starring Bruce Willis.  It’s safe to say (there being no wild horses nearby, preparing to drag me anywhere) that I won’t be seeing it anytime soon!]

    Many thanks to Boatman and Andrew and the other commenters.

  46. I did waiver before starting this as I always wonder which Boatman I will find. (The one pushing the boundaries or the one on a different planet).

    I’m glad to say I chose to have a go as this was a very enjoyable solve. All fairly clued and definitely of a terrestrial nature.

    I failed to parse ABUSIVELY as I became convinced that the “ALL” had been replaced by the “I” or even “IVE” which made no sense. As this was my LOI I couldn’t go elsewhere and come back. Perhaps I should have made a cup of tea?

    Anyway great fun.

  47. DaveMc @45 and others.

    I think it’s fair to say, solvers from English-speaking countries outside the UK (USA, Australia, etc.) will always be at a disadvantage when tackling UK-based cryptic puzzles, unless they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British usage.  I take my hat off to those (on this forum and off it) who are brave enough to leap into the fray.  Well done for persevering!

    As it happens, both COB (loaves) and COBNUTS are fairly common words in British usage.

  49. Laccaria @47 –

    Thanks for your post … but you are being too kind to suggest that I am “brave”.  This is Fun!  And even when there’s a DNF moment (or, as I prefer to call it, a TILT), I feel like I “won”, because I learned something new.  New words, new cultural knowledge … I “LOVAT”!

  50. I’ve been in and out today and this evening so attempted this in fits and starts. Like others the SE was the last corner and I said to Mrs W “I’m going to give up”. This seems to be just the prompt needed for her brain to kick in and we finished it, except for WIELDS where I was looking for some such use of sliced but failed to see it.
    I liked the theme and admired Boatman’s ingenuity with 19a being my favourite for the definition. Thanks to Boatman and Andrew.

  51. Thanks to Boatman and Andrew. Too tough for me, so I’m with berry hiker @25. I did a lot of guessing but had seven or more items unparsed or left blank. Maybe I need more bread in my diet.

  52. For 12a, I took “changed heading” to mean change from S (south) to E (east), so a bit more nuanced than just changing to an unspecified letter. (It is Boatman after all, there has to be some nautical reference in there somewhere….)

    Loved the theme.

    Thanks to Boatman & Andrew

  53. I saved this for the holiday (holy days) weekend, something I do with setters who may offer especial enjoyment and puzzle. Boatman is new to this category.
    I’m glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed the solve to start Good Friday morning. Thanks, Boatman. Indeed, there were some cracking clues (loved DUCKS) with my first one – FIELD OF WHEAT – putting me in a good mood straightway. I was reminded of an earlier Boatman favourite, 25459 (where the &literal “Origin of creation heralds appearance of stars (5)” was arguably one of the best Guardian clues of October 2011).
    I didn’t feel that the generous sprinkling of flour products (in both clues and solutions) disturbed the puzzle’s elegance as some others have suggested. In fact, it added to my enjoyment.
    Many thanks to Boatman. And to Andrew for a splendid blog (though I disagreed slightly with the parsing of 10ac and 19ac in the same manner as several early commenters above).

  54. Apropos of nothing, Australia’s damper (flour and water, cooked in the hot coals) is known as bannock in Canada but usually pan-fried.

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