Guardian 27,900 – Paul

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Good fun as always from Paul, with a puzzle that revealed its secrets at a satisfyingly steady rate, with just one dubious definition. Thanks to Paul

 
 
 
 
 
 
Across
1. FIFTY PENCE PIECE Some music on LP? Not a note (5,5,5)
FIFTY (L=50) + PENCE (P) + PIECE (some music)
9. SULTANA Wife of leader, a shade insular, briefly? (7)
TAN (colour, shade) “in SULA[r]”
10. AGONISE Time to welcome revolutionary Chinese brood (7)
Reverse of SINO in AGE
11. ELF A little angel, free spirit (3)
Hidden in angEL Free
12. SNOW LEOPARD Person with load unsure about weight that’s an ounce (4,7)
W in (PERSON LOAD)*. The Ounce often comes up in wordplay as “cat”, but here’s its full name
13. MONOGAMOUS Faithful cat carrying on with a meal for him, shortly? (10)
ON in MOG + A MOUS[e] (possible meal for a cat)
15. LEAF One side not quite covering a page (4)
A in LEF[t]
18. NABS Cops stopping method by corruption, finally (4)
[corruptio]N + ABS (Anti-lock Braking System)
20. HOVER MOWER Mile covered by person propelling boat near Brighton? Type of cutter (5,5)
M in HOVE ROWER (one propelling a boat near Brighton)
23. COUNTERPART Fraction on calculator opposite number (11)
COUNTER (calculator) + PART (fraction)
25. LOW Little moo (3)
Double definition
26. ROMANOV Dropping back, wander round country house in Russia (7)
OMAN in ROV[e]
27. ALCAZAR Leaving America, a poor beggar clutching cup’s heading for a Moorish palace (7)
C[up] in A LAZARUS (beggar in the parable in Luke 16) less US
28. THE MERRY MONARCH Charles the Second marrying subject, harmony with CIIR restored (3,5,7)
THEME (subject) + (marrying) anagram of (HARMONY C RR), so CIIR means C and two Rs
Down
1. FISHERMAN Person catching extremists in Ferrari with tank (9)
F[errar]I + SHERMAN
2. FILM FAN Coming up, vulgar features mainly lacking inspiration, initially, for cinephile (4,3)
Reverse of M[ainly] L[acking] I[nspiration] in NAFF
3. YEARS AGO Once upon a time, finish off gravy with a bit of corn starch (5,3)
[grav]Y + EAR (bit of corn) + SAGO (starch)
4. ERATO Gobbled up by Lancelot, a really lovely lyrist (5)
Hidden in reverse of lancelOT A Really. Erato is the Muse of lyric poetry: I was going to question “lyrist” (=”lyre player”) as the definition, as opposed to “lyricist”, but Chambers tells me it can mean a lyric poet
5. CRAB LOUSE Something turning up on female garment — unpleasant discovery there? (4,5)
Reverse of ARC (“something turning”) + BLOUSE
6. PHOBOS Bum parts outside of pants, moon! (6)
HOBO (tramp, bum) in P[ant]S. Phobos is one of the two moons of Mars
7. EPILATE Remove hairs from bottom of hirsute old governor (7)
[hirsut]E + [Pontius] PILATE
8. EMEND Correct tip overwhelms this chap (5)
ME in END
14. MOON RIVER Person proposing to install creation of iron that’s more than a mile wide (4,5)
IRON* in MOVER (one proposing, e.g. a motion). As the song says, “Moon River, wider than a mile..”
16. FORT WORTH Texas city out to impress couple on tour, ultimately (4,5)
TWO + [tou]R in FORTH (out)
17. EMOTICON Number a hundred I book up for a wink or a kiss, say? (8)
Reverse of NO. C I TOME
19. BRUMMIE Keeping mum suspiciously, French produce English citizen (7)
MUM* in BRIE
21. WALTZER Ride Disney duck, kicking tail (7)
WALT + ZER[o] (a duck – score in cricket)
22. AT ONCE Explosion of octane now (2,4)
OCTANE*
23. CARAT In trolley, a gold weight (5)
A in CART. As far as I can tell, the carat is a unit of weight for gems, but a measure of purity for gold, so the definition seems wrong here
24. ALARM Every other bit of Paul hairy: my fear! (5)
Alternate letters of pAuL hAiRy My

47 comments on “Guardian 27,900 – Paul”

  2. Shucks – a DNF as I had a partially parsed ROVER MOWER for 20a (a brand name in Australia – I did wonder about Paul’s use of a commercial brand name!). Pity, as I thought I had done rather well on this one, finishing it in what was a reasonable time for me after a slow start. Despite my fail, I did enjoy the usual Pauline fun – especially the two hilarious down clues 6d PHOBOS and 7d EPILATE. A couple of hairy references but not enough to constitute a theme, methinks.

  3. Epilate had me foxed for a bit, had only heard of depilate and was wanting to put hirsuite’s bottom at the end, but all done in the end, a steady solve. Only got Lazarus minus US post-solve, neat clue, and dnk that ride’s name (tho have been on it and all the fairground tumblers when the boys were young), so the SE was last in. My only ? was for tan in sula[r], doh, so ta Andrew for that. Fun to have a couple of Pauline bottom jokes, as you say JinA. Features meaning “has in it” as an includer is a bit hmmm, but ok. ABS appears occasionally, but ‘stopping method’ was nicely disguised. Enjoyable, thanks Paul and Andrew.

  4. Always pleased to finish a Paul puzzle! I loved FIFTY PENCE PIECE. PHOBOS and WALTZER. Like George C @1, I couldn’t parse SULTANA. Many thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  7. Thanks Paul and Andrew

    I was relieved to find that the 10 minute Vulcan puzzle I found online wasn’t my only crossword for today! (On closer inspection it was dated Fri 29th July 1955 – surely Vulcan wasn’t compiling then!)

    I enjoyed this much more than I usually do with Paul’s puzzles, though I had a few unparsed, and it was a DNF as I had a careless POWER MOWER (wondering how “Brighton” came into it).

    Favourites were NABS and WALTZER.

  8. Kicking myself I couldn’t parse sultana. Paul on tip top form. Day very nicely set up. Thanks to Paul and to Andrew.

  11. Paul at his inventive best – I was pleased to figure the parsing of SULTANA out and take this as a sign that I’m still capable of learning and retaining stuff. I printed this off last night and was amused to see that The G had found a novel way of disabling the check function this morning.
    Thanks to Andrew for unpicking 1a & 28a and the rest of the blog and to Paul for the puzzle.

  12. Got there in the end, held up for a while by the fiendish but clever One Across. South-west corner last to be winkled in.

  13. Thanks both,

    Paul on top form. Not a duff clue among them and a bit of smut for light relief. I wondered if there was going to be a crossword setter theme with ‘cinephile’ (Araucaria’s alter ego in the FT) and Paul appearing in the clues and Brummie as a solution. Are there any others?

  14. I failed PHOBOS and NABS – never heard of ABS (Anti-lock Braking System), and could not parse 2d FILM FAN.

    My favourites were EMOTICON, HOVER MOWER, CRAB LOUSE, MONOGAMOUS.

    New word: WALTZER = fair ride.

    Thanks Paul and Andrew.

     

  15. Does CIIR have any meaning outside of this crossword (Charles II Rex maybe)? It seemed like a particularly poor way to add the last bit of fodder and made a nonsense of the surface to me (also wondered if ‘marrying’ was intended as part of the definition for ‘theme’).

    Fairly gentle for Paul but enjoyable with some nice clues.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  20. Just a bit of pedantry. A hobo is not a bum(6dn). It’s a contraction of “hoe boy” – an itinerant agricultural worker.

  21. Thanks Paul and Andrew.  I finished this but with a couple of question marks.  My favourite was 1d because unusually for me I managed to solve it completely “bottom up”, ie getting FI and SHERMAN, then “aha!”.  More usually with me it’s at least partly a matter of guessing the answer then figuring out how it works.

    I thought 1a FIFTY PENCE PIECE was a bit odd, with the definition being “Not a note”.  Well lots of things are not notes and it just seemed rather vague.

  22. Enjoyable puzzle I got very little of last night.  Thank you Paul and Andrew.

    Cazimir @20  “Hobo” may have originally been “hoe boy” but it sounded specious to me do I looked it up.  Wikipedia says nothing about hoes, but that the word may come from an English term, “hawbuck,” meaning country bumpkin.  But they didn’t seem sure.

    Interesting distinction: “A hobo is a migrant worker or homeless vagrant, especially one who is impoverished. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States around 1890. Unlike a “tramp”, who works only when forced to, and a “bum”, who does not work at all, a “hobo” is a traveling worker.”  (Wikipedia)

    Is SINO a word?  I’ve only seen it as a part of a word. I’ve never heard of a hover mower.  I’m not sure I can believe they exist.

    We probably have waltzers under some other name in the US, but I’d never heard of them.

  24. There were a few here that were easier to guess than parse. Quite an entertaining challenge.

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew

  25. Muffin @ 15  I guess I was hoping that there was something which might make sense of the surface (the self referencing ‘Charles II Rex’ didn’t really work for me).

  26. Drhhmb @ 16 Possibly but I don’t think that his Royal monogram was CIIR; it seems that his was a pair of overlaid capital Cs with one reversed (willing to be corrected on this – whilst googling I found a coin marked CIIR that turned out to be from the reign of Charles I so I had a look at some Charles II coins).

  27. Don’t remember ever seeing the C||R notation, just bunged it in and waited for the inevitable discussion. And while having seen many a Flymo in operation, had never registered that they hover, so bunged in hover mower from wordplay and remembering the old “Hove, actually” wheeze. Meanwhile, I’m barracking for the England middle order… c’mon, make a game (and series) of it!

  28. Surprised that the feminists have not objected to the clue for 5d 🙂

    Did anybody else get snagged by putting in LOTAR for 4d? It slowed me down for a long time.

    Thanks to Paul and bloggers.

  29. Muffin @23:  here the ride is called a Tilt-a-Whirl (which describes the motion pretty succinctly).

    This was a DNF for me, in part because I flat-out ran out of time when I still had SULTANA and PHOBOS not entered, and hit the cheat button so I could get back to work.

  30. Well thank you Guardian. I raced through the Vulcan, came here to check the blog and saw a Paul being covered. “Oh”, thought I, “that’ll be a prize one” and opened it up to instant spoilers followed by the realisation that this was a current puzzle I’d not seen. Can a week go by without them having a major cock-up in crosswordland? It’s as bad as British politics right now. Grrr.

    A fun puzzle and “LP” was an all-time classic. “CIIR” meaning a C and 2 Rs was not parsable from the bottom up, just justifiable afterwards. Otherwise the usual mix of devious definitions hidden away and Paul’s inevitable “just do what I tell you, just not how you think I am telling you” approach which is oh so fair and oh so foul (to echo Qaos’s theme earlier in the week). A few went in too easily by definition and word count, but thank you for the lighter relief Paul, and for parsing “sultana” for me Andrew.

  31. This was a reasonably quick and unendingly enjoyable solve.  I am less daunted seeing Paul is the setter than I used to be; he is like operating a quality FM Tuner: once you get the wavelength right, the signal is excellent.  I stopped ticking clues I liked after six or so – FIFTY PENCE PIECE, SULTANA, NABS, EMOTICON, BRUMMIE and WALTZER all raised a smile, as did HOVER MOWER for this Brighton citizen.

    Roberto @28, I’m curious as to why you expect “the feminists” to object to 5D, or was this a provocation?

    Thanks to Paul and Andrew.

  32. mrpenney @29 Thank you for the info.  I had no more heard of Noah’s Ark rides than I had of waltzers, have you?  Tilt-a-whirl does sound dimly familiar, at least more so than either of those.

  33. Although a travelling fair came to Barnstaple, Devon (where I was born and raised) every year, I never had a second go on the Waltzers – I didn’t like being flung around. In fact, I didn’t sample much other than the dodgems (“bumping cars”) and helter-skelter.

  35. Peter @34

    Where is it now? I remember it first where they built the town offices (opposite the castle), then it went to Seven Brethrens’ Bank, where they built the leisure centre. Is there still room for it?

  37. muffin and Peter, fond memories of visiting Barnstaple in the ’90s, a bit of a wander, couple of pints in the Golden Lion Tap, en route to a property called Holwell where Mrs ginf’s psych colleagues ran an annual workshop.

  39. Hi Simon S, yes it was The Holwell Psychodrama Centre, run by Marcia Karp and her then husband Ken Sprague

  40. Its worth remembering that John H aka Paul lives in Brighton which is next door to Hove. The local footee is Brighton and Hove Albion.

  41. Paul at his best, I thought. Various clues that made me smile and/or chuckle, with special mention for the hirsute governor.

    And thanks to Andrew – firstly for putting me out of my misery re Film Fan – for some reason, I couldn’t work out the obvious parsing of the ilm bit – doh!; and for correcting my parsing of Merry Monarch (I missed an r) and Alcazar which i thought was A [from/starting with A{merica}] + C in LAZAR [which I now see from Chambers is a leper rather then a beggar.

    Re Agonise, Chambers Crossword Companion, to which I had shamelessly resorted for a synonym for brood, spells this with a z (as I would, probably). That delayed somewhat the parsing of the Chinese bit.

    [Alan B – I have replied to your late post on the Imogen thread]

  42. I filled in the 1955 7903 crossword without noticing the error – 6 a.m. and all that. How do I get back to it to have another look. Every search I’ve tried puts me back to 27,900 which I’ve completed. Guardian archive only goes back to January 2000.

  43. A good challenge but I don’t understand the use of ARC in 5d – answer = Crab Louse. How is ‘something’ ‘arc’. Surely a better definition of Arc is required maybe ‘a Roman Catholic’ turning up or a spotlight turning up. Where is the clue for ARC? Am I just being stupid, have I missed something?

  44. My first-ever solve of Paul! Fair enough, it did take two days, but I’m still grinning like a faithful cat. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you to English and the Guardian and the world.

    To the Andrew just above me: I understand ARC as “something turning”, not just “something”.

  47. If anyone is still reading this blog the Everly Brothers’ The Ferris Wheel has this reference to the US waltzer:
    I’ll ride the rock-o-plane or the tilt-a-whirl
    It wasn’t on those rides I lost my girl

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