Guardian Cryptic 27,689 by Brummie

by

The puzzle may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/27689.

This puzzle struck me as an exercise in minimalism: mostly basic clue types – even the charades were generally simple two-parters – with a good scattering of double definitions nad even a cryptic. And yet it took me as long as many puzzles with more convoluted clues. Apart from that I cannot see any theme. My last in was 11A MULTIPLIER, simply because I somehow got the idea that the numeration was (7,3), and M?L?I?L  ?E? gave me some pause.

Across
8 HAIRGRIP Lock fixer and musical stagehand (8)
A charade of HAIR (‘musical’) plus GRIP (‘stagehand’).
9 POMATO Pam too slack for graft (6)
An anagram (‘slack’) of ‘pam too’, for, as you might guess, a graft to produce tomatoes above and potatoes below.
10 PLUG Put in a good word for Seal (4)
Double definition.
11 MULTIPLIER Young producer, calculating type (10)
Double definition (‘young’ as offspring).
12 TACKLE Gear pin hindrance? Not quite (6)
A charade of TACK (‘pin’) plus LE[t] (‘hindrance’) minus its last letter (‘not quite’).
14 NIGHT SKY “Weird things” — state in which stars may be seen (5,3)
A charade of NIGHTS, an anagram (‘weird’) of ‘things’ plus KY (Kentucky, ‘state’), with a descriptive definition.
15 SPINNER Clotho‘s from south Middlesex location? (7)
A charade of S (‘south’) plus PINNER (‘Middlesex location’), for one of the three Fates in Greek mythology; Clotho spins the thread of Life, while sisters Lachesis draws it out and Atropos cuts it off.
17 TRAIPSE “Iodine in gin’s a stimulant” — Tramp (7)
An envelope(‘in’) of I (chemical symbol, ‘iodine’) in TRAP’S (‘gin’s’) plus E (‘a stimulant’).
20 CLEANSER Star’s debut appearance in daily soap? (8)
An envelope (‘appearance in’) of S (‘Star’s debut’) in CLEANER (‘daily’, a charlady).
22 MAGGOT Fly at an early age (6)
Cryptic definition.
23 CARCINOGEN Vehicle 101 has complete lack of data that produces growth (10)
A charade of CAR (‘vehicle’) plus CI (Roman numeral ‘101’) plus NO GEN (‘complete lack of data’).
24 RILL Brook‘s headless fish (4)
[b]RILL (‘fish’) minus the first letter (‘headless’).
25 GENTLE Kind of heathen, one to be avoided (6)
GENT[i]LE (‘heathen’) minus the I (‘one to be avoided’).
26 DIOGENES Cynic died before seeing about having a ball (8)
An envelope (‘having’) of O (‘a ball’) in D (‘died’) plus IGENES, an anagram (‘about’) of ‘seeing’. Diogenes was one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.

Diogenes living in his jar. The lamp at his feet refers to his stunt, walking about Athens in the daytime with it, claiming that he was looking for an honest man.
Down
1 GALL WASP Irk privileged American pest (4,4)
A charade of GALL (‘irk’) plus WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, ‘privileged American’). I think the definition ‘pest’ is rather strong for an insect that does little harm to its host, mostly oaks.
2 DRAG Medic wants silver for headache (4)
A charade of DR (‘medic’) plus AG (chemical symbol, ‘silver’), for a person who is a nuisance.
3 GRAMME Unit’s music award not quite the ultimate in prestige (6)
A charade of GRAMM[y] (‘music award’) minus the last letter (‘not quite’) plus E (‘the ultimate in prestigE‘).
4 OPALINE Stone-like work by a band (7)
A charade of OP (‘work’) plus ‘a’ plus LINE (‘band’).
5 SPRINGER Bounder‘s pet? (8)
Double definition.
6 SMALL THING Discontented Salzburg to restrict shopping venue? Fine — no big deal (5,5)
An envelope (‘to restrict’) of MALL (‘shopping venue’) plus THIN (‘fine’) in SG (‘discontented SalzburG‘).
7 STREAK Band‘s run exposed (6)
Double definition.
13 KANSAS CITY Spiky catkins, say, found in the American Midwest (6,4)
An anagram (‘spiky’) of ‘catkins say’, with a descriptive definition.
16 ESSENCES German city with little time to turn up distinctive qualities (8)
A charade of ESSEN (‘German city’) plus CES, a reversal (‘to turn up’ in a down light) of SEC (‘little time’).
18 SMOULDER Burn unseen, as sculptor under sun (8)
A charade of S (‘sun’) plus MOULDER (‘sculptor’).
19 BRIGADE Soldiers providing vessel support via radio (7)
A charade of BRIG (brigantine, ‘vessel’) plus ADE, sounding like (‘via radio’) AID (‘support’).
21 LEADER President‘s view of newspaper? (6)
No, a double definition.
22 MINNOW Mo has present for an unimportant person (6)
A charade of MIN (‘mo’) plus NOW (‘present’; both can be a noun).
24 REEL River fish’s swim (4)
A charade of R (‘river’) plus EEL (‘fish’), with the definition in the sense of feeling dizzy.

completed grid

42 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27,689 by Brummie”

  1. Thanks Peter and thanks Brummie! SW corner held me up for a bit but got there eventually.

    TILTs for me were Clotho the spinner and Pomato, though both answers were eminently gettable even without the GK.

    I take slight issue with your benign view of the gall wasp – here in Melbourne they infect and  eventually kill lemon trees and other citruses, so there is an annual crusade to cut out or destroy the galls before the larvae are released.

  2. Consoled by your finding it slow going, PeterO; ‘slow!’s and d’ohs written all over my printout. I thought 5 days on the couch watching the Indians beat our cobbled-together eleven had addled my brain. Took ages to finish the top half after an easy start with night sky and small things (streak was neat), then ditto the bottom with ‘slow!’ for cleanser and gentle, and for brigade, d’oh.

    Quite fun though, thanks PeterO and Brummie.

  3. Anyone’s a heathen if your god’s better than theirs’

    Looking fwd to Muffins view on this somewhat fishy puzzle.

  4. This took me quite a while to solve and I gave up on 26a DIOGENES. I solved but could not parse 7d and 20a.

    New for me was POMATO.

    Thank you Peter and Brummie

  5. Thanks for pointing out the theme, copmus. It is obvious now!
    Really liked GENTLE and MINNOW and working out CARCINOGEN and DIOGENES from the elements in the clues.
    Didn’t know WASP and spent ages looking for the parsing of MAGGOT.
    Thanks, Brummie and PeterO.

  6. Thanks Brummie and PeterO

    Odd one for me. I rapidly had a complete RHS, but only the MU of 11a in the left; I then got CARCINOGEN and the SW fell. It still took ages to complete the NW. LOI and favourite was SPINNER.

    I know that he’s trying to be cryptic, but “wants” in 2d just seems wrong – “has” would make much more sense.

    Thanks for hinting at the theme, copmus – I had missed it, of course! Not something I know much about, but I can see 7 thematics.

  7. Thank you, PeterO, I now think I made a drama of this and can’t now see why.

    Missed the fishy theme (thank you, Copmus) completely and was held up by entering MINION instead of MINNOW for no apparent reason.

    This yielded clockwise with SW corner taking longest.

    Not being a classicist, had to look up Diogenes, but perfectly fair cluing.

    My dad used to call fishing maggots GENTLEs, so I wonder if this is part of the theme?

  8. muffin @6:  Re wants in 2d, I thought the same.  Don’t want to appear impertinent but wouldn’t takes have been better?

  9. William @8

    Yes, “takes” is better than “has”.

    I counted GENTLE as a thematic, along with MULTIPLIER (a type of REEL), TACKLE, SPINNER, MINNOW and MAGGOT. There may be more!

  10. Ditto re Gent[i]le, copmus@3; it raised a fleeting eyebrow, as in ‘could do with a ?, at least’.

    And Clotho the Fate was a tilt, thinking ‘cotton mill slang, maybe’…oh well! Never too late in life to learn the Classics.

  11. grantinfreo @10:  No doubt the rest of crosswordland knows this, but what is a tilt?  I’m guessing an acronym like bifd.

  13. muffin @9:  A PLUG is a sort of lure, and the DRAG is the setting on the reel which allows the line to be drawn out with greater or lesser force.

  14. When I was a young lad I was told that gentle was the northern term for a fishing maggot, but now I’m not so sure about any regional distinction..

  16. Must be just me but felt this was a bit meh – a mix of simple and wilfully obtuse.
    GinF what’s the time difference for you and Adelaide? I always remember lying in bed in a hotel on the swan River at 8amish watching the MCG boxing day test live. Blighty sticks with a single time zone even though in Winter it only makes sense for 2% of the population.

  17. William @15…and the word gentle I’ve always thought was a much nicer, descriptive word than the harsher sounding maggot.

  19. BlueCanary@16, 2.5 hrs in SA summertime, 1.5 normal (WA having voted No to daylight saving in three! referenda, because the last thing we want, after a stinking hot blinding bright day, is yet another stinking hot blinding bright hour; no, we want the evening!)

  20. Thanks PeterO and Brummie.

    I was looking for a  theme throughout but saw nothing, until muffin elucidated!

    I found this quite tough going – I wonder how Bill will fare today.

    The old chestnut ESSEN I haven’t seen for some time, but it always springs to mind immediately I see “German city”.

     

  21. Thanks to Brummie and PeterO.

    An enjoyable offering for me – I had a similar experience to Muffin@6, the NE shot in followed by an increasingly slow clockwise spiral towards a finish in the NW; and in spite of sniffing slightly at ..EEL and (B)RILL in passing never spotted the fishy angle. I was pleased to get (on re-visiting) KANSAS CITY the of which its misdirection was amusing.

  22. Again, the NINA grid without a NINA made this very heavy going for me. No doubt the SPINNER and cynic are crossword chestnuts but I  didn’t know either of them, although luckily I did know PINNER. Like muffin @6 I completed the RHS with nothing in the LHS. I agree with him and William @8 about the ‘wants’ in 2D, where ‘takes’ or some such would have been much better. I didn’t spot the theme.

    Thanks Brummie and PeterO.

     

     

  23. I’m surprised nobody has yet (I think) commented on 20ac. Surely very weak, since CLEANER and CLEANSER are so close to being synonyms?

  24. Thanks to Brummie and PeterO. I started off quite slowly and never really speeded up. Therefore generally slow going for me, but I got there in the end. The SW was the last to fall, with tackle (never fully parsed) cleanser and leader last ones. I liked multiplier and hairgrip but missed the theme completely. Only been fishing two or three times in my life and one of those was my attempt with two mates to avoid the street parties surrounding Charles and Diana’s wedding. Enjoyed the puzzle and so far have really enjoyed the week. Thanks again to Brummie and PeterO.

  25. Thanks Brummie and PeterO – I also found it slower than it ought to have been but solutions dropped in with reasonable regularity, though the last two, in the NW, came to me as I walked the dog. I missed the theme, being a very incompleat angler, though noted a couple of fishy references. It wouldn’t have helped me but glad for people who speak that language! Pinner came to mind quickly as it used to be the home of an annual tiddlywinks tournament.

  26. quenbarrow @23:  Good point.  I imagine the setter missed it as he was thinking of the person and the product.  I still think you’re right, but it’s a neat clue despite that.

  27. GENTLE was easy, because it was in the Quick that I solved first – interestingly as a “grub” or MAGGOT.

     

  28. Thanks to Brummie and PeterO. I knew DIOGENES and Clotho but not GALL WASP and the spelling of GRAMME and struggled  with STREAK and especially MULTIPLIER, my LOI.

  29. Thanks both,

    ‘Leader’ too is part of the theme as it is the bit of line between the hook and the rest of the tackle (eg swivel, bead, sinker, etc.).

  30. FOI POMATO,a word l first heard in 1994 when a friend mentioned it after coming from Russia where he studied. LOI GENTLE. COD 20a.

  31. Neither a streak nor a traipse, this was more of a gentle smoulder. At one point I thought we were getting a selection of small things – like minnow, maggot, gall wasp and even rill – then belatedly I spotted the angling connection – with tackle, spinner, maggot, minnow and reel, etc – but even without landing the theme this was a fun,challenging tuesday crossword. Thanks Brummie and Peter O

  32. Cheers Brummie for the puzzle and PeterO for helping with some of the parsing.

    DNF due to 23, I got hung up on vehicle 101 being an oblique reference to the space shuttle Enterprise (designation Orbital Vehicle 101) and completely failed to try Roman numerals. Rookie error, will do better next time 🙂

  33. Like most everyone else this took me longer than seemed plausible in retrospect, but I took that as evidence of the puzzle’s brilliance. Apart from the slight weakness as queenbarrow points out of 20ac I loved it all. Thanks to Brummie and to PeterO.

  34. Late on parade again. I didn’t see the theme even though I looked for one. I’ve only ever been fishing once in my life. It was with my ex father-in-law and I managed to catch something and he didn’t. He never asked me again and that was fine with me. Anyway, I found this quite tough and somewhat less enjoyable than usual for Brummie but Ok.
    Thanks Brummie

  35. I enjoyed this.  I solved the SE corner first and thought at the time that there might be something fishy going on, but I had to put the puzzle down for a few hours and then forgot to look for any other possible themed answers once I finally came back and solved the rest.  My favorites today included KANSAS CITY, NIGHT SKY and TRAIPSE.  I would have included SMALL THING on that list as well, except I thought the surface was made klunky by “Discontented Salzburg” and that there might have been smoother ways to clue the S-G envelope.  [Say, “Sword-wielding extremists restrict …” or “Sandbag perimeters restrict …”, but I expect that there are other and better possibilities than those.]

    POMATO was a TILT.  It sounds like the mullet [but not the fishy kind] of the edible plant world — “business in the front, party in the back”, and all that.

    Many thanks to Brummie and PeterO and the other commenters.

  36. Thanks to Brummie and to PeterO.  Better than yesterday.    Sadly,  knowing nothing about fishing and caring less, I failed to spot the theme just as i did with yesterday’s Victorian bodice-rippers.

  37. JohnB: much as I smiled at your description of yesterday’s theme, the pedant in me feels compelled to point out that Jane Austen was not a Victorian, and that her heroines did not get their clothes ripped off.  Whether part of their clothing is correctly referred to as bodices I will leave to the experts.

  38. JohnB @36

    Your post makes me suspect that you haven’t actually read any Jane Austen! I can only recommend that you try her – the best writer in the English language, as far as I’m concerned. I think you might be confuaing her with later Victorian writers (the Bronte sisters, perhaps?)

  39. I’m afraid Brummie’s cluing for 1 Down and 15 Across are very poor. Who knows that WASP IS AN AMERICANISM and Clotho is a ‘SPINNER’ rather than a ‘Thread of life’ which most dictionaries and reference books give for this Fate. This crossword was a curates egg. Some bits Good some bits Bad. Not good cluing I’m afraid. Thanks PeterO for some explanations. Setters should be more cosmopolitan than internationalism, perhaps?

  42. Kept coming back to this one over 48 hours (!) and eventually managed to finish it, albeit with a reveal for 21d. Very much a hard slog, and not a particularly enjoyable one. On the plus side, having taken 2 days on this one, I now have an extra crossword to do today 🙂

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