Guardian 28,109 – Picaroon

68 comments on “Guardian 28,109 – Picaroon”

1. Can you explain what the reversal indicator is in 2d? Surely it’s not awful?

2. Another too class puzzle from Picaroon: greatly appreciated.

3. catflat: I assumed it was “back” (cut back = POL).

    

   Also why does Safari show “Not secure” for all 15×15 subsites?

   Seems fine to me.

4. Sorry, should have read ‘top class’. Should have gone to Specsavers.

5. catflap again: Seems you meant 1dn.

   And I’m afraid it has to be “awful”.

   In which case, it’s awful.

6. I think awful in 2d is an anagram indicator but in this case the anagram amibts to a reversal. In 3d BOOSTERISM is defined by promotional activity, surely? The disapproval is BOO and therefore not the definition. I could not parse a good number of these so many thanks for the blog, Andrew, and thanks also of course to Picaroon.

7. No need for a reversal indicator. heROWorshipping.

8. *amounts to* (sorry)

9. @Trovatore, yes I did mean 1dn and I was very surprised because I think Picaroon is an excellent setter. The only other possibility is that it’s an indirect anagram, and that’s even more unlikely.

10. I found this easier than some Picaroons, but I did have a blank left hand side for a while. Once a couple of the long ones were in, they helped open up the rest. My last two were UNCTION and OSMOSIS, and neither seems that tricky in retrospect. A fine crossword (as Picaroon’s always are).

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

     

11. Thanks Picaroon and Andrew

    I enjoyed this more looking back on the completed grid than I did completing it – too many unparsed. For instance, 2d was FOI, but unparsed except for the LOP and C. I didn’t understand 6d at all.

    LOOKALIKES was favourite.

    Why is BIB drink? The only reference I can find is “bag-in-box”, but that would need an acronym indicator.

    You say TONYS “more often”, Andrew. I couldn’t find any reference to “tonies” is the context of awards!

12. Also: there’s a story about a young lass trying to find a BF.

    So she goes to the library and borrows 7dn.

    (Along with “How to Hug” and is disappointed to find it’s a volume of an encyclopaedia.)

13. NNI @7 is right – neither a reversal nor an anagram is needed, just an awful noise.

14. NNI & beery hiker: thanks. Phew that’s a relief!

15. Thanks for another great blog, Andrew. [You’veunderlined the wrong bit in 3dn – easily done 😉 ]

    What George said @2 [and 4] – Picaroon on top form.

    Many cracking clues: my favourites were all four long ones, 11ac PANIC BUY, 12ac BORE, 18ac DIPSOMANIA, 20ac UPMARKET and 14dn LOOKALIKES – but there could have been more.

    Huge thanks to Picaroon for lifting the spirits, as always.

16. Very enjoyable puzzle.  Favourites were 2d POLICE CONSTABLE (I thought that was the answer straight away, but it took me ages to figure out why), 18a DIPSOMANIA, and 23a ANKLET for the ELK.

    Andrew: as well as the points noted by NNI @7 re 1d and Beobachterin @6 re 3d, I think the disapproval in the latter is BOOS rather than BOO.

    muffin @11: Chambers has for BIB “vt and vi to drink, to tipple”.

    Many thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

17. Muffin@11 Bib is short for the Latin Bibendum – let’s drink. It’s where the word imbibe comes from.
    There used to be a Terence Conran restaurant called Bibendum in Chelsea

18. D’oh, thanks NNI –  I was hoping it was just me as I really do think Picaroon is marvellous.

    And now I feel like a complete idiot, but I deserve to. 🙂

19. Thanks for the BIB explanations.

    btw when I was looking up “tonies” I discovered that the original Tony was called Antoinette!

20. Thanks for parsing “police constable”…I’d got as far as the “lop” and Charlton’s head and then gave up. I wasn’t sure why “kite” is a “plane” though. I had “din” in the mix for “hero-worshipping” for a while then got the answer, crossed out the lerrs of “hip-hop singer” and ended up with “wor” before seeing the “row” above it. Funny how we are all so easily misled.

    There is something about Picaroon I don’t get with many other setters which is that I fill in bits of clues (I had “police C” and “sterism” for example, and others went in letter by letter) but still cannot see the whole. With “boosterism” I’m not that surprised to be honest, as it’s an ugly word.

    Thanks Picaroon and Andrew.

21. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t bother to fully parse POLICE CONSTABLE having spotted the misdirection and being rather sleepy at the time. I had the slowest start in living memory with this but once the caffeine kicked in and the big 4 revealed themselves things accelerated nicely. BOOSTERISM a new word for me, DIPSOMANIA a favourite and possibly a factor in my slow start. Stay well y’all. Thanks P&A

22. Slow but nice couple of hours cogitating. The long ones weren’t too hard, which helped, though had to work the anagram to get get the scouting one. The only eyebrow flickers were for the two-thirds horse and stable for fast, nothing really. My SOED has bib, archaic, drink. I went eh? for Kes as film, looked it up and remembered seeing it! Hey ho, all fun, thanks Andrew and Picaroon.

23. Agree with the general view – lovely puzzle but 2d was a swine to parse. So thanks setter and blogger.

24. Thanks to Andrew and Picarroon

    I think the “horse” in 13a might be “equid”

    I’ve tried to construct a sentence where “disapproval for” = “boos” but so far I’ve failed.

25. GinF @22

    Yes, it was refreshing that “film” didn’t mean ET for a change!

26. 3d surely disapproval is BOOS plus the anagram of MISTER – giving an obscure word I’d never heard of for promotional material

27. Muffin @25 and, as I am sure folk here know, “Kes” is the film of the book “A Kestrel for a Knave” so defining it as “film” is both strictly accurate and (slightly) helpful. At least that is what I thought as it went in!

28. Gordon McDougall@26: Not promotional material but promotional activity. cf Chambers: The practice of boosting or promoting a product or idea.

29. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant – ok I know I’m a Picaroon fan but surely this must be a contender for puzzle of the year! I ticked every clue bar TONIES for the reason already mentioned. The long ones didn’t go straight in, especially as like Andrew I set off with BOAR and as I hadn’t parsed my tentative POLICE CONSTABLE started trying to make COPPER work for Bobby. Every clue was perfectly crafted – wordplay, misdirection, hidden in plain site, follow the instructions, definitions. Granted 4 15 and 4 10 letter clues mean there are fewer of them. My loi was UNCTION where I was trying to be too clever and looking for a meeting to take TAR or AB out of. Many thanks to Picaroon and to Andrew for a great blog that matches the puzzle.

30. Thanks Andrew. Along with panic buy, can I suggest bore, dropout and dipsomania as 3 other possible references to the lockdown 😉

    …and let’s not forget hero-worshipping. All love to our NHS.

31. Thanks for the various corrections, all of which (I hope) I’ve incorporated.

32. I agree with Muffin: this was more satisfying after the event than during; and also with TheZed: I never feel completely at one with Picaroon – it’s sort of as if I have the tune but not the lyrics. So, as usual with this setter, I peered blankly at an empty grid for ages until eventually 7d emerged from the mental fog, and that got things underway. I, too, couldn’t completely parse 2d and I, too, think BOOSTERISM is one of those words one may encounter in a crossword but rarely, if ever, in real life.
    Like you, Andrew, I first thought of “bear” for 13a – having originally taken “put” as present tense. Nice to see Kes, one of my all-time fave films, getting a mention. Nice to see an elk pottering by.
    Thank you Andrew for much-needed help finishing off loadsa pesky parsing – and thanks to Picaroon for the challenge. Now back to my incipient 18a….

33. I found this hard and have to admit a DNF.  I struggled with the long ones and did not know BOOSTERISM.  I did enjoy PANIC BUY – very apt at the moment – LOOKALIKES and DROPOUT.  Thank you Picaroon and for help with far too many Andrew.

34. I imagined this might be a quickish solve with the long 1d and 2d in straight away. Thought LOOKALIKES a cleverly constructed clue, this held me up for some time, but once it was sorted the rest of the puzzle fell into place nicely. But I was left scatching my head with both BORE and KITE which I wasn’t at all sure about, so thanks for the explanations, Andrew!

35. muffin @ 11 If you go down the acronym route BIB also means ‘beverage in bag’ so would work, (I once made the mistake of expressing my amusement that it is called a BIB and you bib it – got me a withering stare and the instruction to just get on and fill the glass!)

    I was puzzled by 10: ‘tonies’ doesn’t seem right for either part of the clue.

    Apart from that I thoroughly enjoyed this and learnt a new word (boosterism).

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

36. Cracking puzzle from the pirate. Favourites have already been mentioned i.e pretty much all of them.

    Are the 2d and 14d clues deliberately linked by the hilarious Bobby Charlton ‘dive’ scene in Kes?

    Thanks to Pickers and Andrew.

37. Brilliantly tricky – thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

38. Oh Dracula comes from Transylvania
    Bodycheetah @21 likes clues about dipsomania
    Johnny looked out of his bedroom window
    And shouted to his mum “Fred Titmus!”

39. Thank you Picaroon for a fun puzzle and Andrew for a helpful blog.

    Agree with muffin @25 that it was pleasing to see a film other than ET at 14D.

    Shirley @17, “Bibendum” brought to my mind the Michelin Man, and then DIPSOMANIA …

40. Interesting that we have had two types of ‘Greek’ love on consecutive days – today’s physical desire (eros) and yesterday’s spiritual love/charity (agape).

41. … and Nutmeg’s PLATONIC last week.

42. Watto @38 I feel truly immortalised 🙂

43. I had an experience rather like Wellbeck @32. My computer and I solved the RHS at first with nothing on the LHS. Eventually, we completed it and I was quite impressed with some of the cluing in retrospect, although I thought TONIES was wrong until I checked with Chambers.

    I was going to complain about ‘EQUI(ne) almost’ but Dansar @24 has probably got it – ‘equid,’ rather than equine, I think.

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

44. I too thought construction of LOOKALIKES was splendid.Always a pleasure to solve Pickers. I dont mind taking time over it as I like to chew every morsel.

45. Never heard of zero hour contracts, but the word put itself together.  I agree with Andrew about Tonys — usually proper nouns don’t follow the usual spelling changes for plurals.  The Toronto Maple Leafs, for instance.  I had BEAR too, I fell once again for the put-past tense trick.

46. I had big ticks against BOROUGH and DIPSOMANIA amongst many other very good clues. So good that I’ll almost excuse BOOSTERISM which is hardly my favourite word! Trying to work out the often complicated parsing was also a highlight, even if I failed on a few like the ‘Bobby’

    Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew

47. Many thanks to Andrew for his customarily excellent blog (not to mention his fine pianism – the cap is well and truly doffed!) and to all posters for comments.

    Tonies is given in both Collins and Chambers. I didn’t inquire beyond that as to its validity, but the dictionaries seem to like it.

    I put the word BOOSTERISM in after the election, when we were being told that it was Boris Johnson’s favoured policy for “turbocharging” the economy. My original clue was:

    Boris’s – to me – dubious “turbocharging” policy

    Because of the new context of coronavirus, with a hospitalised PM, when sending me the proofs, Hugh asked for a change. My rewritten version of the clue began “Disapproves of…” This was changed to “Disapproval”, which I don’t really like because the word “of” is now redundant in the clue. As a setter, I wouldn’t allow myself to add extra words to clues which aren’t justified by the cryptic reading.

    I hope everyone is keeping well and keeping their spirits up.

48. Sorry to be a bah-humbug, but I found the extraneous ‘s’ in “Express’s quiet about Conservative” immensely annoying. I really struggled with this one and gained little pleasure from many of the solutions.

49. Thanks for the blog and clarifying a couple of parsings.

    Zed @20 you are clearly not up to speed with Capt(?) W.E.Johns “Biggles” who regularly refers to his Sopwith camel as the kite.

50. I agree with the general sentiment that this was a fine puzzle. My favourites have all been mentioned. After reading the comments here I thought perhaps I should take some pride in having parsed POLICE CONSTABLE, but then I recalled that I had to come here for the parsing of EQUILIBRIA and KITE (still not sure why kite = plane). Thanks to Andrew for the helpful blog, and thanks to Picaroon for the challenge (thanks also for dropping by, always a pleasure when setters are willing to provide more insight into their offerings).

51. Andy @49 Clearly not – it flew right over my head…but glad DaveinNCarolina proved I was not alone.

52. Thanks to Picaroon and Andrew.

    All been said.  COD was SCOUTING FOR BOYS (I couldn’t find the excerpt I was looking for, the one where “scouting for boys” is given the full double entendre treatment).

    [A propos the discussion of “jeu d’esprit the other day (yesterday?) what do french speakers call a “double entendre”? Anybody?]

     

     

53. Alphalpha@52 – that got me wondering – google translate gives ‘double sens’ (double meaning).  That sounds about right.  Reminds me for no good reason of my worst faux ami – asking in a store if there were ‘preservatifs’ in a bottle of juice, which translated for them as ‘condoms’ – had to go home to find out why everyone fell about laughing.

    Thanks both Picaroon and Andrew.

54. I had the almost exact opposite experience to Robi @43 with the left side filled in completely and almost nothing in the right, having struggled with the two long ones there.  Given the letters in the LHS suggestive of a pangram, I spent some time trying to lever in a J and X into my last three – 13, 6 and 9.  More fool me!  I was completely unfamiliar with LOI PUTSCH, so learnt something there.  My faves were POLICE CONSTABLE and the small but beautiful SPUN.

    Thanks, Picaroon, for dropping in.  I see no reason to change “Disapproves of” to “Disapproval for” and the former certainly is much neater in the cryptic reading.  I thought there might be the hint of a chemical processes theme with OSMOSIS and EQUILIBRIA, but there’s nothing else I can see.

    Thanks to Andrew and commenters for the blog.  Equid for horse is very useful to know.  The EQUI(NE) parsing was bothering me.

55. … and many thanks, Picaroon, for sharing your original brilliant clue for BOOSTERISM – what a waste!

56. I’ll add to Eileen’s thanks for your original BOOSTERISM clue, Picaroon – as she says, brilliant!

57. This was a bit odd. I saw the answers fairly quickly but without any attempt at parsing. The four long ones went in almost straight away and I didn’t even check the anagrams. When I went back to parse after the event, I found things somewhat harder. In the end I didn’t parse IMBIBE which is quite shameful!
    I had an actual newspaper today and consequently left the puzzle until quite late: when I print it off I start right away. Odd that.
    Thanks Picaroon.

58. Really good; amazing what some people find to complain about (what’s wrong with ‘Express’s’, for instance, as in ‘Express is’?). I’m still not getting ‘bib’ for drink, mind.

59. Hi Alphalpha @52, just seen your post.

    This forum discussion is quite illuminating regarding “double entendre” and its equivalent(s) in French.

    If you scroll down to #8 (there’s that pesky octothorpe again!) you’ll find an interesting post in which the contributor (a) suggests that ‘mots à double entendre’ was once a genuine French expression – in the 1600s; and (b) gives an example of the phenomenon, though not the expression, in the ‘Claudine’ books by Colette – before adding one of her own…

    geof @53 – posh dinner party, well-mannered English lady attempts, in her best French, to compliment French host on her cooking:  “So much nicer than English food – it’s full of condoms, you know!”

60. geof@53. The French have what many consider to be an art form: the ‘contrepèterie’, which is, sort of, spoonerism with an obligatory double-entendre. The French Wikipedia has full details here. Incidentally, my wife had a similar experience to yours. She was teaching English to adults in a French company, and they got round to discussing the differences between French and English food. And provoked wild bursts of laughter when she explained that “English sausages were made with preservatives…”

61. The Tonys are just *never* referred to as the Tonies.

62. I’m another who had BEAR first. In fact, I was so confident of this answer that it held me up for ages in finishing the NW corner. Both solutions seem perfectly correct to me (and I personally have no objection to ambiguous clues that need crossers to be resolved).

    I was also confused about the lack of a reversal indicator for ROW in 1dn. I felt quite silly when I realized that none was needed. What a relief to find I’m not the only one.

    The people in charge of the Tony Awards definitely use “Tonys” as the plural, which agrees with the spelling rules I was taught in school. John, Bobby, et al. are the Kennedys, not the Kennedies, after all. I would classify this clue as an outright mistake, but it’s the only flaw in an excellent puzzle, so it’s easily forgiven.

63. (To be precise, I should have said “in finishing the west side”, not just the NW, as it prevented me from getting either of those long down clues.)

     

64. TheZed@20 “kite” is RAF slang for a plane, you need to watch more WWII movies ?

65. Indeed, probably because the early ones were made from much the same materials.
    Tough puzzle, stuck on the RHS for a while but got there. Thanks Picaroon an Andrew.
    Boost for Birdsburg!

66. Wonderful puzzle – loved it. 2 d, 18 ac and 20 ac were my favo(u)rites.
    And thanks Andrew.  BTW, what is the KES-film connection; I couldn’t parse this.

     

67. Jay @66 (far too late to be useful): Kes is the name of a British film, based on Barry Hines’s book “A Kestrel for a Knave” and filmed, IIRC, by Ken Loach. It is considered a classic.

68. essexboy@59:

    Thanks I will check that out when I find the time. (That would be pretty soon.)(Or I could do some gardening…)(Nah.)

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