Guardian Cryptic 27913 Qaos

by

Thanks to Qaos, for a puzzle that started slowly. Definitions are underlined in the clues.

Across

1 G Boycott breaks 24 — an astronomical event? (3,4)

BIG BANG : [G + BAN(a boycott/an embargo on)] contained in(breaks) BIG(huge/answer to 24 down).

5 Perhaps Trump suppresses young woman model (7)

CLASSIC : CIC(abbrev. for “Commander-in-Chief”, an example of which/perhaps is that of the USA, Donald Trump) containing(suppresses) LASS(a young woman).

Defn: …/something which is a good example of its kind.

9 Biblical character had hassle over vacant inn (5)

DINAH : Reversal of(… hassle) HAD containing(over) minus all the inner letters of(vacant) “inn“.

Defn: … in the Book of Genesis.

10 Fabulous creature married fairytale creation (9)

MANTICORE : M(abbrev. for “married”) + anagram of(fairytale) CREATION.

11 Wasted one beer and it’s spilled (10)

INEBRIATED : I(Roman numeral for “one”) + anagram of(..’s spilled) BEER AND IT.

Defn: …/drunk.

12 Portion of fish abruptly returned with expression of disgust (3)

BAH! : Hidden in(Portion of) reversal of(… returned) “fish abruptly“.

14 Buries Bowman with HAL’s core, right between the stars (12)

INTERSTELLAR : INTERS(buries, a corpse, say) + TELL(William, famous Swiss bowman/archer) plus(with) middle letter of(…’s core) HAL + R(abbrev. for “right”).

The clue’s surface is a nice reference to David Bowman, the astronaut, and HAL, the computer, in Arthur C. Clarke’s great science fiction novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

18 Language of Pythagoras? (7,5)

ANCIENT GREEK : Double defn: 2nd: …, mathematician.

21 Highly attractive and flirts regularly (3)

FIT : 1st, 3rd and 5th letters of(… regularly) “flirts“.

22 Romantic hero‘s passion to steal back female (10)

HEATHCLIFF : HEAT(passion/intense feeling) + FILCH(to steal/to pilfer) + F(abbrev. for “female”).

Defn: … in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

25 Bump into bastard touring Russia, pursuing old girlfriend (9)

EXTRUSION : [Anagram of(… bastard) INTO containing(touring) RUS(abbrev. for “Russia”)] placed after(pursuing) EX(one’s old girlfriend/former partner).

26 A vice president makes very little money (5)

PENCE : Double defn: Mike, vice president to Trump.

27 Noble‘s half-eaten food sent back by Nazi (7)

DUCHESS : Reversal of(… sent back) CUD(half-eaten food sent back from the first stomach of a ruminant, such as a cow, to be chewed again) plus(by) HESS(Rudolf, high-ranking Nazi in WWII).

28 American sailor tucks into extremely cold or hot sauce (7)

CUSTARD : [US(abbrev. for “American”) + TAR(informal term for a sailor)] contained in(tucks into) 1st and last letters of(extremely) “cold“.

Defn: …, ie. heat-hot, not chilli-hot.

Down

1 Bird smuggled in Australia? (6)

BUDGIE : Cryptic defn: From swimwear in Australia called “budgie smugglers”, as in:

“Anything to declare, sir? Any wildlife, like birds?”

“An extrusion?”

2 Spice Girl drops hands with rage, blowing top (6)

GINGER : “Girl” minus(drops) “r,l”(abbrev. for the right and left hands, respectively) plus(with) “anger”(rage) minus its 1st letter(blowing top).

And here’s Ginger Spice:

3 Head off? New queen rejected church’s observances (10)

ADHERENCES : Anagram of(… off) HEAD + reversal of(… rejected) [N(abbrev. for “new”) + ER(abbrev. for “Elizabeth Regina”, the Queen) + CE(abbrev. for the Church of England)‘S.

Defn: …/acts of compliance with particular rules, laws, etc.

4 European character finally needing car service around 2,000 (5)

GAMMA : Last letter of(finally) “needing” + AA(abbrev. for the Automobile Association, which provides car breakdown service among other services) containing(around) MM(Roman numeral for 2,000).

Defn: …, specifically in the Greek alphabet.

5 Maybe Edward, the academic, changes sides in vote? (9)

CONFESSOR : “professor”(the academic) with “pro”(the one side favouring an issue put to the vote) replaced by(changes) “con”(the other side in a vote).

Defn: …, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.

6 Still no place for tart (4)

ACID : “placid”(still/calm) minus(no) “pl”(abbrev. for “place”, as in street addresses, say).

Defn: …/sharp in taste.

7 Winter dance party is to be thrown! (8)

SNOWBALL : What one might call a dance party held in winter, when it’s snowing.

Defn: That which …

8 Catholic man’s wages for service in county (8)

CHESHIRE : C(abbrev. for “Catholic”) + HE’S(man’s/he is) + HIRE(wages paid for services done).

13 Primarily, they see close in order to gain a little bit of perspective (10)

TELESCOPES : 1st letter of(Primarily) “they” + anagram of(… in order) SEE CLOSE containing(to gain) 1st letter of(a little bit of) “perspective“.

A WIWD (wordplay intertwined with definition) clue.

15 Since the trouble storing uranium, we get life science (9)

EUTHENICS : Anagram of(… trouble) SINCE THE containing(storing) U(symbol in chemistry for the chemical element, uranium).

Defn: … concerned with bettering the condition of human beings through the improvement of their environment.

16 Sobers up, provided inside: lager brewed by daughter (8)

GARFIELD : Reversal of(up, in a down clue) IF(provided/in the event that) contained in(inside) anagram of(… brewed) LAGER + D(abbrev. for “daughter”).

Defn: …, former West Indian cricketer, considered to be the greatest ever all-rounder.

17 Delirious that Conservative’s still supporting Europe (8)

ECSTATIC : [C(abbrev. for a member of the Conservative Party) + STATIC(still/unmoving)] placed below(supporting, in a down clue) E(abbrev. for “Europe”).

19 In Austria, logician assumes 1 + 1 (6)

VIENNA : [VENN(John, English mathematician, logician and philosopher) containing(assumes) I(Roman numeral for 1)] plus(+) A(article for a quantity of 1).

20 Hurt leg and rear (6)

OFFEND : OFF(in slang, to leave/to leg, slang for to go on foot, though I’m not sure of my interpretation – my first thought was that “leg” refered to the side of the cricket field that the batsman is facing when in the batting stance, until I realised that “off” is the opposite of the “leg” side – is a correction imminent?) plus(and) END(one of which is the rear, in opposition to the front end).

23 It’s mixed into cocktails, at first (5)

TONIC : Anagram of(mixed) INTO + 1st letter of(…, at first) “cocktails“.

A WIWD clue.

24 Immense grip by snake’s tail (4)

HUGE : HUG(to grip someone or something in one’s arms) plus(by) last letter of(…’s tail) “snake“.

45 comments on “Guardian Cryptic 27913 Qaos”

  1. Very enjoyable. My favourites were BIG BANG, CONFESSOR, HEATHCLIFF.
    New for me: EUTHENICS, BUDGIE smugglers.

    I also had the same thoughts about OFF (and leg) in OFFEND.

    Many thanks to scchua and Qaos.

  3. A theme of cats, I think, perhaps 11 of them, though VIENNA, SNOWBALL and GAMMA may be a bit doubtful; the cat SNOWBALL is particularly interesting. I though for a time there might be an astronomical theme: BIG BANG, INTERSTELLAR, GAMMA and SNOWBALL, but I guess the connection is a little tenuous.

     

    Thanks Qaos and scchua

  5. I took the astronomy/cosmology “theme”, all of whose words were just too obvious to be true,  to be a puzzle-level misdirection – very clever.  It was only when I had Garfield and Heathcliff that it was clear we were going for cats, and by then I had several already but they were hiding.

    Maybe David Ellison @3 was thinking of Vienna’s City Air Terminal.  Certainly Snowball and Gamma are just fine, jbeing names or types of cats, just as are Tonic, Dinah, Custard, Duchess, Cheshire and Ginger.

    As I said, very cleverly done.

    Thanks

  6. Andrew @4 and Dr W @5: I had also BIG. I was thinking of Vienna’s City Air Terminal, not having remembered Rising Damp.

    I found this for SNOWBALL, and also mused about SNOWBeLL, too, but the e wouldn’t fit the grid.

  8. Thanks Qaos and scchua

    An eventful puzzle for me – I had more clues highlighted for praise or need of elucidation than not. Thanks for providing the latter, scchua.

    Favourites were CLASSIC, INTERSTELLAR (lovely surface), DUCHESS, and BUDGIE.

    I think OFFEND might just be an error. Not keen about “In Austria” as the definition for VIENNA.

    Didn’t see the theme, of course, though I knew most of the cats. “It’s goodnight Vienna” was a phrase a friend used to use frequnetly!

  9. 18ac was one of the weakest clues I’ve seen for some time.

    Really not happy with 20dn; a horse can have an off-hind or off-fore leg, but off on its own seems to be pushing it. And Chambers gives LAG-END, a long delayed conclusion, which might be bringing up the rear at a push.

    Not everyone would regard HEATHCLIFF as a hero, either.

    MANTICORE and EUTHENICS were new to me but gettable via the wordplay.

    Missed the theme, but then I’m a dog person anyway.

  11. David Ellison @6: That’s an interesting Snowball, but I suspect the one Qaos had in mind was the one owned by the main characters in The Simpsons

  12. Re: 20d.  The OFF part does seem a bit off, but isn’t END sometimes used slangily as a shortening of rear-end?

  13. I thought the theme was supposed to be cartoon cats so Snowball is the one in The Simpsons. I could only find six more that fitted that strict definition however. Cheshire, Custard, Duchess, Garfield, Heathcliff and Dinah so Ginger, Vienna and Gamma seemed a bit arbitrary.

  14. I confess to missing the theme, though I looked for it. Not sure it would’ve helped at all. A real mix here – so many clues I loved (“confessor” is a new classic for me) but also so many dodgy bits including an “off” that could equally be “on”, dodgy anagrinds (“bastard”?) and a clue The Sun would’ve thought easy (“ancient greek”). But some great anagrams (“manticore” – inventive anagrind here), constructions (“heathcliff”, “interstellar”) and surfaces “tonic” as well as the trademark 1+1 and a bonus mathematician.

    Many thanks Qaos for the fun and inventiveness, even if the hit rate is not 100%, it is worth it for the gems, and thank you scchua for the colourful blog.

  15. I spose he’s the hero technically, Neil H, as in main character.

    Mixed bag this. Was hoping the Greek wasn’t ancient, too obvious, as was Pence. At the other end were the never heard ofs, manticore and euthenics, tho gettable with crossers. Then there was the dubious 20d: he couldn’t have got the cricket sides wrong, where leg is on not off, so can off be a verb, like leg as in ‘leg it’? Dunno; to off someone is to kill them. Shrug.

    As for cats, only knew Cheshire and Garfield; looked for more Big Bang/cosmic/2001 refs (Bowman was clever), but nothing. Oh well. Quite fun anyway, thanks both.

  16. May be my schoolboy humour but I was led down another path in 5a. Look up the medical term “CIC”. Perhaps “trump”?

  17. Missed the feline theme. My excuse is that I spent all my cognitive effort in trying to work out how OFF for ‘leg’ worked at 20d and I was also thrown by CUSTARD which isn’t always served ‘hot’.

    Among many good ones, I did like the surface for 1a, the BUDGIE (smugglers) at 1d and the ‘1 + 1’ in VIENNA. Annoyed to have missed the parsing for CONFESSOR which was v. original.

    Thanks to scchua and Qaos

  18. Garfield (a comic strip), Heathcliff (animated TV series), Snowball (The Simpsons), Duchess (The Aristocats), Dinah (Alice In Wonderland), a.k.a. / ditto The Cheshire,  Custard (Roobarb & Custard),  Vienna (Rising Damp) are all fictional cats, five of them exclusively animated, whilst Ginger, Tonic & Gamma and Duchess (again) are types of cat. A manticore is variously described as part- sphinx/lion/tiger.

     

    I’ve looked in vain for a cat called Budgie but I suspect I’ve already exceeded Qaos’s intentional collection by looking too deeply.

  19. Thanks, scchua.

    I’m here to claim again that totally missing a theme in no way detracts from the enjoyment of a good puzzle.I knew there must be one but I don’t do Twitter, so this one completely passed me by. I didn’t know many of the cats, anyway.

    My favourites today were BIG BANG, HEATHCLIFF, CONFESSOR, GARFIELD and VIENNA – many thanks, Qaos.

     

  20. Got the theme post completion, though did not realise gamma and tomic were cats so only had 9. Nevermind, that’s not catastrophic. Many fav clues but agree that 18ac was weak- I hesitated for ages as thought it couldn’t be that straightforward.
    Thanks to Qaos for the fun and to Scchua for the blog.

  21. Good fun and relatively straightforward I thought. Lots of good clues and a couple that missed the mark for me (18a and 20d). My favourites seem to be the same as others – BIG BANG INTERSTELLAR CONFESSOR and I also had GINGER for its &lit reference (or WIWD) ECSTATIC for its surface and TONIC for its WIWDness.
    I missed the theme of course – despite looking for it – but as an anti-cat person I’m quite pleased about that. Thanks to Qaos and scchua – especially for the manticore picture.

  23. I was another dog person who missed the cat theme but liked the crossword anyway.

    I thought 1d BUDGIE was particularly clever, though I remain embarrassed about our former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who brought the budgie smugglers into prominence (!). [I tried to paste a pictorial link but it didn’t work. Either that or it was censored for graphic content.]

    I did like the 1a G. Boycott and the 16d GARFIELD Sobers references. The little quirky links Qaos incorporates are truly delightful.

    DINAH at 9a has been one of my favourite Biblical characters since I read “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant. And on the other hand, there too was Emily Bronte’s “Bad Boy” HEATHCLIFF at 22a, a favourite case study from literature.

    Many thanks to Qaos for these and many other enjoyable moments, and to Scchua for the explanations and elucidations.

     

     

  26. Like Eileen @19 I enjoyed this without noticing the theme.  My favourite was 14a INTERSTELLAR for the clever 2001 references.

    Does anyone say “bah!” any more?  Come to that, did anyone ever really say it or was it a convention of fiction?

  27. Fine feline fun, though as usual the theme and I passed each other by like ships in the night or something.

    I had thought, with BIG BANG, TELESCOPE and INTERSTELLAR (with its additional 2001 references in the clue), that the theme might be spacey, or else in US politics with the current White House imposter and his ghastly Veep, or on the cricket field, but those cats were too well hidden for me.

    Favourites included INTERSTELLAR, GARFIELD and CUSTARD. First I’ve heard of EUTHENICS. Thanks to setter and blogger.

  29. I enjoyed what I did of this – the clues were excellent – but I came to a stop without getting MANTICORE (unfamiliar) or HEATHCLIFF (long forgotten) and without understanding BUDGIE, ACID or OFFEND. If there was a cat theme, I missed it.
    BIG BANG made my day – a super clue.
    Thanks to Qaos and scchua.

  30. Venn is best known for Venn diagrams.  Heroes don’t have to be good people, they can also simply be leading characters in literature, e.g. Macbeth.

     

  31. Happy to see some much loved cats incuded (though I missed the theme…)

    Sad to see many of my childhood favourites excluded. Where is Top? Benny? Chooch, and Fancy? Not to mention Spook (who would have been easier to clue than Chooch….)

    Isn’t a TS Eliot cat “de rigeur” in cat-themed crosswords? Not sure who the representative is here, but it ain’t the standby Macavity….

  34. Thank scchua and Qaos. I too was startled by some of the anagrinds, bah!
    I see Blue Duchess is indeed a breed of cat, but Gamma and Tonic I can find no citations for.

  35. Interesting comment from TheZed @ 14 on anagrinds – “bastard” is dodgy but “fairytale” is imaginative. IMHO they are both a stretch.

    howard @ 7. Anything goes as an anagrind these days. If a word in the clue is not obviously part of the fodder, it’s probably an anagrind.

     

  36. jeceris @35 One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian, as they say. I liked “fairytale” because of the way it fitted into the clue, and it does have the ring of “make it up” about it which (to me) “bastard” lacked. “Manticore” came to mind readily from playing Dungeons and Dragons in my teens. Who knew when that would come in handy?

  38. A minor point: I don’t see how “hassle” can be a reversal indictor, although it works as an anagram indicator. So I think that 9a involves an anagram (that coincidentally happens to be a reversal), not a reversal as such.

    I remembered that both LEG and OFF were cricket terms, and cheerfully assumed they were the same. As a result, I thought 20d was an elegant clue. But if, as I gather, LEG and OFF are not the same, then I have to remover it from my list of favorite clues.

    I particularly enjoyed HEATHCLIFF and TONIC.

    Unusually for me, I did spot the theme, although I was familiar with only one of the cats. Incidentally, the Simpsons’ cat, at least for much of the run of the series, is Snowball II, the original Snowball having met a premature end at some point (before the series began, if I recall correctly).

    Thanks to Qaos and scchua!

  39. By the way, in addition to the typo “remover”, the word “one” in my post should say “some”. If I’d only recognized one of the cats, it would have been impressive indeed for me to discern the theme!

  41. Not the best crossword. Too many general knowledge clues and info not up to date. 18 ac. Not a cryptic clue but a general knowledge one. 9ac. Dinah. Worked it out as an anagram, but cannot find her in the bible unfortunatley. 1 down. ‘Budgie’ smugglers is not Australian. I had them in the early sixties and is a British term! 27 ac. Duchess I got from the letters provided not from the poor cluing. 4 down does not work because a car service is an MOT; However a car ‘Servicer’ might be the AA or RAC! and 20 down: who is Venn? If you are going to put obscure people into a clue they must be famous or we’ll known. Otherwise add their name as an anagram. QAOS… like a scholarship report… ‘must do better’. Try studying Paul. Now there is an inspiration! Thanks for Scchua for the interpretation.

  42. Gilly @41

    I couldn’t disagree with you more.

    Dinah is a daughter of Jacob.

    I’ve only heard “budgie-smugglers” in an Australian context.

    What’s wrong with DUCHESS? – one of my favourite clues.

    An MOT isn’t a car service, it’s a test of roadworthiness.

    Surely you have heard of Venn diagrams?

    As for Paul, I refer you to today’s travesty of a Prize!

  43. To add to muffin @ 42, the clue for 4D is not stating that the AA service cars (though it’s possible to read it that way. AA (and RAC) provide a service*for* cars and their drivers, eg roadside assistance, recovery, insurance and the like.

  44. Ralph Houston – Yes indeed! Fat Freddy’s Cat has to be the best cartoon cat ever?! And – I think – only five comics were issued….(just three originally)?
    I wondered about clue for CLASSIC as I thought the surface rather tame. What’s wrong with “Trump ‘overcomes’ (or ‘devours’/’entraps’/’seduces’/’engulfs’/’ravages’/’bags’…) young woman”? These may be more apt!
    Many thanks, both and all.

Comments are closed.