Guardian 27,821 / Nutmeg

38 comments on “Guardian 27,821 / Nutmeg”

1. Agree completely with your great analysis Eileen – except for clunky surface in 11ac.  Marvellous work from Nutmeg

2. A lovely puzzle as always from Nutmeg – when are we going to see her in the prize slot?

   Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen

3. Isn’t this technically a Lipogram? With J Q X and Z in place, a Pangram seemed likely, but no W. 14d was a special pleasure since I happened to be in Cambridge yesterday, overlooking Hobbs’s special territory of Parker’s Piece and drinking a cocktail named in his honour, at the Parker Tavern – cocktail and place are both recommended. Thanks to both, for the blog and for a great puzzle.

    

4. Thanks to Nutmeg for a great crossword and to Eileen for the blog

   I agree with Beery Hiker – it would be nice to see Nutmeg on a Saturday too

5. Very enjoyable! My favourites were DELIGHYED, PRENUPTIAL, EUROZONE.

   Thank you Nutmeg and Eileen.

6. *delighted*

7. Really good, and slotted in pretty quickly.

8. Very enjoyable solve – I particularly liked BODY TEMPERATURE, ICONOCLAST, PRENUPTIAL and HOPPING MAD.

   I can’t quite see PLAUSIBLY as ‘with ingratiating words;’ perhaps someone can give me the context.

   Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

9. Like Robi @ 8 I couldn’t see PLAUSIBLY as “with ingratiating words”. I wasn’t sure about ABOUT for “abroad” either, but these are most likely due to my lack of knowledge rather than any issues with the clueing. As always, a pleasure to solve.

   Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

10. I’m with Robi too re 18A. Can anyone explain? Thanks

11. I wasn’t sure about “plausibly” either, so I checked – and some dictionaries do give it as one of the definitions.

    Nutmeg is one of the more consistently entertaining setters, as Eileen is for bloggers. So I was spoiled today!

12. Robi, Niltac and Eric @8-10

    PLAUSIBLY wasn’t my first thought for 18ac, either. ‘Playfully’ first suggested itself [as the definition] but, of course, that didn’t parse. ‘Placatory’ – not very convincing – followed but wouldn’t parse, either. When looked at properly, the wordplay clearly leads to PLAUSIBLY and then I resorted to Chambers and found, near the end of the list, ‘ingratiating’ as a definition of ‘plausible’, with enough other definitions of both to convince me, just.

    As for ABOUT/abroad  – I thought we’d had this before. I thought of it as in ‘out and about’, which seemed OK.

    [I’ve been double checking, without refreshing, so didn’t realise Trismegistus had forestalled me – my apologies. 😉 ]

13. Great puzzle again with lots of candidates for favourite but I ll go for the beautifully observed and constructed 1d.
    Thanks all.

14. What Eileen said, basically.

    Still not convinced by PLAUSIBLY/ingratiating but if it’s in the dictionary it must be OK.

    Also, slightly queasy about spread out = long.  I’d have thought flat would be more appropriate.

    Lovely puzzle, many thanks, Nutmeg.

    Nice week, all.

15. Excellent. I managed to discover an obscure actor called Tite that almost worked for 4d, but he is/wasnt French.

16. Thank you Nutmeg.Thank you Eileen. Thank you girlpower.(you know who I mean)

17. I wondered why there was no ‘W’ in the grid. Easy enough, WEAL or WELL in 23d.

18. Lovely stuff; DELIGHTED in fact. I am rarely one to spot a theme but there seemed to be a few sports related elements, with JACK HOBBS, baseball players, athletes, a club and a squad, not to mention ‘over the moon’ and a squashed (and therefore probably sick) parrot. Great setting and unraveling from Nutmeg and Eileen.

19. Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen

    I found this much harder than Nutmeg generally is, though quite fair. Doing the clues in order, TATI was first in, then DEAL and BANG. The NE required a revisit this afternoon.

    I suppose a “plausible rogue” is ingratiating.

20. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen. Great fun. I also took a long time spotting FUSS, did not know JACK HOBBS, and especially liked IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT.

21. plausible can be smooth-talking -> ingratiating

22. Thanks to Nutmeg and Eileen.

    Quite enjoyable but I’m not in the best mood today (flying to Nice tomorrow – always tense when travelling) so I didn’t get as much pleasure as I might have. Admirable surfaces were spoiled somewhat by the occasional recondite solution (TATI, JACK HOBBS – I knew Tati but the cricketer is obscure for me)(I’ll throw in PLAUSIBLY in the sense intended as well). Nevertheless a nice stretch with TROD (in particular), FUSS and BOUQUET raising a smile.

    ICONOCLAST for “heretic”? Doesn’t it depend on the success or otherwise of the iconoclasm? Dangerous waters….

    Eileen, I’d be here ’til Tibb’s Eve trying to parse SPEND – how do you do it?

23. Alphalpha @22 – sometimes I’m lucky, sometimes I have to rely on you folk to help me out. This one didn’t come immediately but I think it was perhaps the ‘rod, pole or perch’ clue that made the [old] penny drop.

    I was fascinated by ‘Tibb’s Eve’, which I’d never heard of. I’ve just found out from Wikipedia that it’s a Newfoundland / Labrador festival – is that where you are? That’s my new thing learned today – thank you. 😉

24. I couldn’t parse SPEND and I’m not sure I get it now. The answer had to be right but it was still my LOI. Mostly I liked this especially JACK HOBBES and HOPPING MAD.
    Thanks Nutmeg.

25. Peter A @ 24: S & D are shillings and pence, i.e. old money; and a pound is a pen.

26. Thanks both,
    I completed this in fits and starts as a break from decorating. 17d held me up and caused me to read about organ stops. I couldn’t make bourdon parse, but when I got the now completely-bloody-obvious crave, it all fell into place.

27. I’m not going to join the echo chamber today although I usually do with Nutmeg. I found enough clues that grated a little to make the experience less than perfect, although there certainly was a lot to like.
    Regarding PLAUSIBLY, I agree with a number of posters. You know the meme: in an argument the first person who brings up Hitler loses, well I feel the same way about weekday Guardian puzzles and dictionaries. Yes of course they can be needed for prize puzzles plus the significantly harder ones you can find in other publications, but what makes the weekday Guardian puzzles such a joy is that they generally just don’t need reference works for justification (maybe this is de facto not de jure).
    13d looks at first like a fine clue, but what I think makes a good clue is that you can get it from either direction, but this one you just can’t – to come up with a non-standard descriptive phrase and then do an operation on it, I don’t think so.
    I don’t see the need for the ? at the end of 16a. I wouldn’t say it is wrong, but it is misleading, and not in a good way!

    This is not a complaint!: I parsed 22d SPEND totally differently from any prior mentions. SEN is an old Japanese coin, plus of course D, with P for pound inside. I think it actually works.

    Thanks Nutmeg and Eileen.

28. Thanks Eileen and Nutmeg. As for parsing SPEND it was made much easier thanks to a recent puzzle puzzle which used pound in the same way – otherwise it would have passed me by. Yes, I hrumphed over plausibly but it works as a clue and just because it’s a usage I’m not familiar with doesn’t make it invalid. Lots to enjoy with details over construction of clues not spoiling my fun at all. I did have SPORTSTOP rather than SHORTSTOP so a dnf.

29. GRAMMAR POLICE – Its not it’s usage!

30. No! I was right first time!

31. Dr W @27 — I can see two flaws in your proposed parsing of 22d.  Sen is a word, but P and D are abbreviations.  Looking at these abbreviations, penny is only abbreviated to D in the system that abbreviates pound to L.

32. Thanks to Eileen and Nutmeg

    A very nice crossword. I’m with William @14 in preferring FLAT, but LONG still works.

    I too stumbled over PLAUSIBLY, my LOI, but in the end I thought that it, and, WITH INGRATIATING WORDS, met in the middle at insincerely.

    1d was a great clue, not requiring GK, but I wonder if there was a particular Sir Henry in mind?

33. To John E. Yes those are two correct facts, but they do not invalidate the explanation. A very common device used by setters is to use non-parallel interpretations of what are grammatically parallel constructions. So as long as P is used as an abbreviation for pound somewhere (it is) it doesn’t have to be in the same context as D = pound, nor do the pieces have to be all words or all abbreviations.

34. Dr W @33.  The flaws I saw in your explanation were not related to what is technically correct but rather to the desirability of maintaining a consistent style of clueing within a crossword commended for its “characteristic blend of wit, elegance and fine surfaces”.

35. Dr Whatson @33 – I’d be interested to know where you have found P as an abbreviation for pound. I have only ever seen L or lb.

36. Too late, but can’t resist… Dr Whatson @33 – while Sen is an old Japanese coin, it is more importantly the unit of current Malaysian coinage. So in an English crossword, not reasonable to define SEN as “old coins”. (No problems in a Japanese crossword, haha.)

37. A fine crossword but I disliked 25 Across. “37 or so” does not define BODY TEMPERATURE any more than, say, “26 or so” would define MARATHON or “0” CALM.

38. I like Dr Whatson’s parsing of 22d SPEND but I assumed that Sen was short for senior = old and p was short for pound. D may be outmoded as a shorthand but penny coins were still around last time I looked and therefore not old

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