Guardian 27,515 / Tramp

67 comments on “Guardian 27,515 / Tramp”

1. Some very nice anagrams this morning – thanks, Tramp…

2. Fun to work out. Couldn’t parse Tinderbox but the ‘might go off’ gave it away. Liked reef knots and Buenos Aires

3. Thanks both. Couldn’t parse 9a – must remember that A = PER trick

4. I failed to solve 19d but I am surprised I got that far as I am never on Tramp’s wavelength, and I always grimace when I see that he is the setter for the day!
   New words for me were HAMLET = cigar, XYLOSE, SPINNERET, ERUCT and THRASH METAL. Almost as many new words as a Pasquale puzzle. . . .
   I could not parse 1a and 15d, and still do not understand the parsing of 9a (the PER bit) and 24 – what is the connection of buttons to peanuts?

   Thanks Eileen and Tramp.

5. Put erupt instead of eruct – explains why I couldn’t explain it. Many thanks Tramp and Eileen

6. Michelle @ 4: If you work for little money you work for peanuts or buttons.

7. Hi Michelle @4

   Re 9ac – per = a as in pricing goods: ‘apples are £1.00 a / per pound’ – it quite often sneakily crops up in crosswords.

   24ac: buttons and peanuts can both mean a trifling amount of money, especially when applied to earnings. Years ago, when we teachers were in dispute over pay, there was a saying, ‘If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’.

8. PS: I puzzled over per = a for a moment but: Apples 75p per pound = 75p a pound.

   Lots I could not get in this crossword!

9. Sorry, pex – I got diverted and didn’t refresh.

10. Ha ha Eileen – we crossed each other.

11. Many thanks for the superb blog, Eileen.

    I wrote this puzzle last month.

    For 1a, I was thinking: “I sell apples AT/FOR 75p each”.

    Neil

12. Many thanks for blog and Hamlet ads. I thought LACTATE worked as a standalone CD but now you mention it…..

    Great puzzle from Tramp.

13. Twice, pex!  Funny that we both chose apples – yours are cheaper than mine 😉 ]

    And Tramp, too! So selling apples comes into two clues – weird!

14. Great stuff – real slow burner for me. Thanks to S&B.

15. How do reefs=keys?

16. Some very nice allusive definitions, I particularly liked Sharapova’s racket abuse. I’ve often thought that people should be penalised for grunting (or screaming) while playing tennis. They didn’t do it in the old days!

    I found this difficult but the cluing was very fair. I don’t know what a ‘chest dating site’ is though, perhaps I’ve misread this clue.

    Lots to like, particularly TRAGIC, EARPLUGS and MALCONTENT (is he really a happy chap?)

17. @15 Gladys In the geographical sense (e.g. Florida Keys)

18. pex@6 and Eileen@4

    oh, that PER is clever!

    thanks for the information –  I never heard buttons being used that way, but peanuts, yes.

19. Defeated me I’m afraid. Could not get on Tramp’s wavelength so gave up after only getting a handful. Despite that, as a footie fan I am full of admiration for 11a, even though it’s the WC and not the Euros this time around. And 5d: as well as the answer given by Eileen, isn’t a hippo a ‘river horse’, or did I dream that? Nice layers of meaning if so.

    Thank you to Eileen and Tramp

20. As always with Tramp it pays to persevere, I got held up by confidently entering telephone at the start of 20 and an almost parseable trapball at 16, always happy to retrace and start again rather than give up when the journey is this enjoyable.

    For 17 I thought of Malcolm rather than male but that’s probably because I was looking for a football theme!

    I was okay with at=for but plugs=blows was a stretch for me (although it’s undoubtedly valid).

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

21. Thank you Tramp for a fun puzzle and Eileen for a very helpful blog.

    24a confused me, all I could think of was that if one worked for Buttons (probably the lowest male domestic servant in the past, the boy under the butler) one would receive very few tips indeed.

22. Keyser @19 – that’s what I meant by calling it an &lit.

23. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen. Struggled a bit with this and it was a slow nearly solve. First pass yielded only obese. The long anagrams helped me get started, but there was a lot of guess and parse later and I needed Eileen’s help for a couple of others. I also had lactate as a CD (as in the term wet nurse). I was also another who entered an unparsed erupt (maybe influenced by the recent Hawaii news coverage). Therefore a DNF for me and I also failed Mantel. I entered Gattel (DC writer) for 19, which sort of worked for me. Overall still an enjoyable challenge and thanks again to Tramp and Eileen.6

24. Thank you Robert – I thought it might be that, but it isn’t an obvious equivalent to me.  Nor is HEELED for that definition, but I’m sure it can be justified and it didn’t stop me getting it.

    Defeated by this, but I enjoyed the ones I did get, with THRASH METAL in particular raising a smile.  Didn’t know XYLOSE, and I did wonder if the river creature might be OTTER – there’s a river Otter in Devon but it’s obviously not famous enough.

25. Genuinely baffled that there isn’t more love on here or the Graun thread for 5d, which is a nigh-on perfect clue

26. Tricky but worth it.   Lots to enjoy so thank you to Tramp and Lucky Eileen

27. bingybing @25 – I agree.

28. Thanks both,

    A very enjoyable solve that looked hard to start with but became tractable. My only quibble is that tinderboxes don’t ‘go off’; they are just full of dry stuff that burns easily. One wouldn’t actually explode. Surely?

29. Great puzzle – like Dutchman@5 I had ERUPT for 7d but of course couldn’t parse it. Favourites were TIMPANI, MALCONTENTS, TRAGIC and HIPPO (like Gladys@24 I put in OTTER initially, being down here in Devon). Many thanks to T & E.

30. Tyngewick @28 – I had the same thought as you and so I looked up TINDERBOX: as a secondary definition, Collins has ‘a person or thing that is particularly touchy or explosive’ and Chambers ‘a person, thing or situation that is [potentially] explosive’ – that works for me.

31. Eileen and bingy- 5d is fantastic but I may be imagining I’ve seen it before.Thats not to detract though.

32. Many thanks Tramp, highly enjoyable. I particularly liked tightrope walker, the play on being always gets me. Also liked Russian Roulette – i was thinking football right until i got the answer. I was fixated on KO for floor in Gecko and missed the parsing, thanks Eileen.

    I missed the writer, must read more.

    I also liked Thrash Music for the contrast, beautifully done. and of course the short & sweet &lit Hippo – perfect. Plenty more to like. Great stuff.

33. A great crossword, with clever and precise clues. HIPPO and EARPLUGS (mentioned already) were two of my favourites, and my other two were TIMPANI and PERTURB.
    Tyngewick@28 – I thought of tinderbox in the figurative sense of a tense, potentially explosive, political situation.
    I thought the setter would have put a ‘?’ at the end of the clue for TRAGIC, on the grounds that Hamlet doesn’t define a cigar but is an example of one.
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

34. Another fine Tramp tester.  I loved the HIPPO &lit.  GECKO is charmlessly hilarious.  I particularly liked the superb surfaces for RUSSIAN ROULETTTE, GRETA GARBO, TIGHTROPE WALKER, LACTATE and THRASH METAL.

    I learnt that I can’t spell BUENOS AIRES.  Hopefully now I’ll remember.

    Thanks, Mr T and Eileen.

35. Found this a real struggle and only finished it with a few cheats – I quite often have wavelength problems with Tramp. No excuses for not seeing BOMBSHELL earlier, or SEED which was last in. All fair enough in retrospect.

    Thanks to Tramp and Eileen

    PS copmus @31 – you have a good memory – but I think he is allowed to recycle his own ideas:

    Tramp 26133: Animal in river? (5)
    Picaroon 26400: River dweller in river (5)

36. Thanks to Tramp and Eileen. Tough going for me. I did not have difficulty with ERUCT but struggled with PERTURB, guy-tent in MALCONTENT, XYLOSE, LACTATE, SPINNERET, REEF KNOTS, and THRASH METAL.

37. Always have trouble with Tramp and this was no exception. It took me a long time to get started. Fortunately the anagrams let me in but I had to work for this. No bad thing I’m sure.
    I liked MALCONTENT and TRAGIC. LOI was HEELED and I wasn’t sure about it.
    Thanks Tramp

38. Took far too long on this. Interesting how you develop blind spots. Took me ages to work out BUENOS AIRES, despite working from the right parsing, and spent ages staring at TIGHTROPE WALKER, even after I had T____T_O_E, and said to myself “Let’s assume the second word is WALKER”
    Like many others I liked 5D.
    Many thanks to Tramp and Eileen.

39. I must be being thick, but I cannot see what ‘Creature’ is doing in the wordplay of 5d, it seems like a definition to me?

40. Cookie @39 – I do make a point of trying to answer queries on my blogs but this time I’m struggling to see your problem and was hoping someone else would jump in before now [where’s muffin today? – he’s usually pretty prompt] to answer it.

    ‘Creature’ is [part of] the definition but people seem to agree with me that this clue is &lit and so the whole clue is the definition – hippopotamus = river horse. I hope that helps. 😉

41. I forgot to praise THRASH METAL, which was simply wonderful, given the reference to Mahler and ‘refined’!!

42. drofle @41 – I’d never heard of the answer but the seeming paradox amused me, too. 😉

43. Excellent as always from Tramp. RUSSIAN ROULETTE was especially brilliant.

44. Many thanks Tramp and Eileen for a great crossword and blog respectively.  I was a DNF because I did not remember ERUCT for belch, and stuck in erupt!!  Tramp is a gentleman because he nearly always comes on the blog with some information about the crossword.  Usually, if I am not mistaken he seems to have set the crossword some time previous (often a couple of years) to publication, but this one was set last month.  I have never been keen on his themes, which are often pop based and leave me cold.  But perhaps his more recent puzzles have ditched the nugatory themes and found a rich seam.  I do hope so.

    As others have stated 5d is a classic, as is, in its own way, 15d

45. Eileen @40, thank you, but I think it might be a semi-&lit, ‘Creature’ corresponding to ‘It’ or ‘He’ for example?

46. Yes, it’s not precisely ‘&lit’. The definition part is ‘creature’.

47. Featherstonehaugh, thank you – the clue is super, I only questioned its classification as I have been trying to write an &lit clue recently, and was confused.

48. Very good: thank you for explanation of how REEF KNOTS and ABATES worked… My favourite Hamlet one was the car wash: the best things are left unspoken.

49. HIPPO was very close to (part of) the cluing for HIPPOCRATES yesterday. What will we have tomorrow – HIPPOCAMPUS?

50. Thanks for the comments.

    I haven’t stopped writing themed crosswords; I just find it harder and harder to think of themes. I’ve exhausted most of the themes I know anything about and I’ve written a few on topics I know nothing about. I do still have several written which are awaiting publication.

    Lately, I’ve tried writing puzzles by auto-filling the grid and setting myself the challenge of clueing whatever comes up. This was almost like that, although I did seed the grid with THRASH METAL because I’d recently written that clue and was pleased with it: I have a love of Mahler’s work.

    Thanks

    Neil

51. Hi Neil @50- many thanks, as always, for dropping in – again. It really is appreciated.

    Well done on today’s, if it was a random one – the Mahler clue was brilliant!

    [It still caused me some anxious moments, looking for a theme, but I know they’re always helpfully signposted by capitalisations in the clues, so I wasn’t overly worried.] Loads of fun – many thanks again.

     

52. Thanks Tramp for dropping in. Really interesting that you’ve clued a random fill – brave man.

53. A tough workout from Tramp, but all the more rewarding when I finished.

    Is XYLOSE an indirect anagram i.e. verboten according to those who believe in such things as “rules”? Or is SEXY meant to cycle around LO? In which case we are missing a container indication?

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

54. Tramp @50:  I discovered the works of Mahler when I was 14 I am now 71 and still find his work has plenty to offer.  But have you set a Mahler themed crossword?  I would never describe that as nugatory!!

55. Tinderbox might have been a quicker solve if the clue had correctly referenced Tinder as a dating app, not a website.

56. Only just finished this as the NW corner resisted stubbornly. I always persevere with Tramp because he sets such beautiful clues and it’s worth the effort to me. I had ticks galore with 5d my cotd and 2d my smile of the day, and COLLIE – I could go on and on. Thanks to him for the puzzle and blog contribution, to Eileen for the blog and helping out with some parsing.

57. I am arriving here very late, again.  Really enjoyed the puzzle and the blog and comments, but I was surprised that only one commenter in 56 (Hornbeam @49) mentioned the recurrence of HIPPO two days in a row (“Trendy Italian banker” yesterday; “in river” today).  Usually something like that elicits multiple comments, criticisms of the Guardian’s crosswords editor, etc., here on 15^2.   There were many fine clues.  I think my favorites were SPINNERET, HIPPO (despite the recurrence), and THRASH METAL.

    Many thanks to Tramp, Eileen and the other commenters.

58. cookie@39,45,47 – You are absolutely correct, HIPPO is most assuredly NOT an &lit since “creature” is not part of the wordplay. It is true that the whole clue may also define the answer since it derives from the Greek hippos (horse) and potamos (river, as in Mesopotamia; mesos meaning middle and the rivers being the Tigris and Euphrates). I think in the past this has been referred to as a WIWD clue (Word Intertwined With Definition). An &lit would need all the clue to be wordplay and definition.
    I suggest what has happened here is that those who “agree” with Eileen have actually just followed her lead (quite understandably given the extraordinary esteem which she enjoys here). But in my, suitably humble, opinion it is a simple charade as Eileen has otherwise parsed.
    For myself, I found it disappointing, but only because I recall the ploy being used a number of times before (including, but not, I think, restricted to the Guardian examples cited by beeryhiker).
    But still a great clue, especially first time….

59. DaveMc@57 – I was also surprised by the absence of comments on the (lack of) editorial presence with the HIPPO(CRATES) juxtaposition – but it was late and I let it go as most others had. Maybe since there is never any indication that comments regarding editorial input are even read,let alone taken on board, then commenters have chosen to save their breath – or fingers and time.

60. Re 5d HIPPO

    I would call that a standard wordplay clue with an extended definition as a bonus, which is not quite the same as an &lit, although very close.

    Ie the def is Creature

    in (HIP) river (PO) is the wordplay

    Appending the WP to the def tightens it, but is not essential – it’s a bonus.

    Personally I don’t need to be able to categorise every clue – if a clue hits me in the face with the answer without my being quite sure why I am still happy – but this one passes on both counts.

61. matrixmania @53

    Bit late in the day (after), but I’ll add my two cents re: XYLOSE.  I don’t think “cycling” is an anagrind at all.  It’s an instruction to take letters from the back and put them in front sequentially.  So the clue requires solvers to convert “look sexy” to LOSEXY, then cycle the Y and the X to the front sequentially to get the answer.  So no indirect anagram or containment indicator needed, IMHO.

    If you do use “cycling” as an anagrind with something like “Sugar to look sexy cycling around”, that wouldn’t distinguish between XYLOSE and LYXOSE unfortunately.  Perhaps that’s why Tramp chose the more exact parsing, smart chap that he is 😉 .

62. @61 Actually, it would.  Strike the last paragraph – not thinking straight today.

63. Jolly – I completely agree with your final paragraph but thought it chivalrous to step in to remove confusion since cookie’s original view – a completely correct view – was described as “your problem”! Like yourself it was not I who chose to (mis)categorize the clue thus sowing the confusion. Just trying to help…..!

64. I must be being dense, as no one else has asked for an explanation, but in 6d I can’t see why “blows” translates to PLUGS. Can someone please help me? Thank you.

65. Geoff @64

    Chambers: ‘plug – a blow or punch’.

66. ” ……a real pdm when I finally saw it.”

    What’s a pdm?

    As always thanks to all the bloggers and setters.  This was a toughie but we got there in the end after we realised that 24a bonuses  was wrong.  “Buses” as in picks up used dishes containing “on”.  We never seem to remember that a is per and piece is man.

67. Jan Fralick/Tom McGuirk @66 – a pdm is a penny-dropping moment.  😉

    [I’m sorry, I didn’t see your comment last night.]

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